A Final Stand?

Ah the RAcast...definitely a bitch to use in ultimate, i used to use them a lot but at the same time they really are a pain to use unless you have some really freaking good percents on weapons and even then they are hard to use, traps are essential in a party especially damage because they can tag large groups at once but freeze are by far my favorite

Btw what got you killed on Dark Falz, did you die on the final form? on the swipe? Grants? I usually have to equip some light resistant gear (ELT in your resists) in order to survive, I can usually beat falz near the early 40s with a racast provided i have some good gear and a gun with dark percents, in any case RAcast is fun but challenging to use, so good luck if you choose to continue with that character

The problem with Falz is that he is a test of HP, nothing more. As long as you have the minimum HP required to survive the swipe, he's a piece of cake to defeat. If your HP is below that magic number, you'll get raped six ways from Sunday unless you have an assload of Scape Dolls and a Mag that is good at making you invincible. Falz is in no way fair or a good judge of any difficulty level.

If anything, Very Hard mode lasts too long, not too short of a time. Levels 70 - 80 are the most boring in the game, seeing as you level like a snail and the enemies are downright boring to kill. If the enemies were harder, it would be very difficult for level 40 players to do Very Hard, which makes it not such a great idea to change them.

As for weapon pecents, you will not be able to have maximum percents (60%). 60 is cheap, so the limit will be capped at 30% (20 for Mechguns). However, you will not be able to add percents, you can only replace them. As such, if you find a weapon with say 45% Dark and you also want to have Hit, you must make a choice. Do you sacrifice the 45% Dark and downgrade it to 30% for the benefit of 30% Hit (and 30% on another stat, if you want it), or do you forego having Hit and enjoy the extra Dark? The choice is yours...

As for RAcast, he's not at all difficult to use in Very Hard mode; all classes are easy to use in Very Hard because it's not very hard. (lolwut?) Droids are simply difficult to use in Ultimate mode because of their lack of Shifta and Zalure, both of which are needed to penetrate the obscene DFP of the Ultimate mode enemies. It doesn't have much to do with their selection of weapons, seeing as how Hunters have a pretty bad selection of weapons as well due to the shitty droprates. However, a RAcast can solo Forest and Cave with ease even without Shifta once his stats are maxed. The enemies there have no DFP compared to the Mine or Ruins.

Ah heres where i may be wrong, but i have been on GC v3, at around this sort of level, but with a RAmar instead. Weaker atp, defence and hp, but you can use techs, but v3 doesn't allow RAmars to use jellen/zalure (or HUmars shifta/deband etc.). And i actually struggled more, it was the same story really, i could manage forest, i just tended to take my time on it. The boss isn't too difficult if you keep out of harms way, but as soon as you get to caves you're screwed because even with my most powerful weapon with around 30% damage can't hit. But again it has been a while since i played the GC version, and i don't know if the enemies were stronger/weaker, but i do know that it was a struggle even with shifta (i also noticed that my character was hitting less than HUcasts 5 levels below me, even with shifta, so i guess it may be down to Ranger's general weakness in attack)

(yes i know HUmars and RAmars can use all techs on V2, so that argument is flawed)

I did have to equip light resists for Dark Falz on hard, that was really the only way i managed to beat it. But on vhard it was a piece of cake, probably down to finding so many common rares (varistas, vises, justices, visks etc.) that you were bound to get 35%+ against dark. As far as i am aware my light resistance when i did it on vhard was only around 28, compared to around 35 i did it on hard mode. But it still didn't manage to 1hit me with Grants. (EDIT: I found my problem on my first few tries of hard mode, i actually ran out of scape dolls, even with plenty of mates/star atomizers to spare. on vhard it was just a breeze, a lot easier than it should have been)

Anyways i am slowly levelling a secondary HUmar character, so when i eventually get to around level 80 i will see why RAcasts suck so much on ult, although that will take a while... only time will tell. Anyway, you guys have more experience at this game than me, but i just wanted to point out the large gap between vhard and ult, and strengthening the monsters on vhard modes (aswell as increasing the exp yield) by as much as about say 25%, it would mean vhard ruins would be a viable alternative to ult forest for players around my level of any class. It isn't needed much now, but if you strengthen Forest and caves on ult, you should strengthen caves and ruins on vhard to balance the difficulties, otherwise level 80-100 is going to be a lot tougher, even with slightly better weapons. And if those better weapons are available for drops on vhard (strengthened common rares?) then vhard ruins will become even easier, so i think the monsters on that difficulty should be strengthened to some degree.

I have a hard time on ult forest because my +50% nature crush bullet doesn't help at all, it does 0 damage with normal hits, and the special attack rarely hits (so i guess that justifies what you said about leaving EVP the same). But increasing the DFP and not the EVP works in favour of Hunters i imagine, Rangers extra ATA means nothing if they can't do damage to the enemies. It forces us to work in groups with people casting shifta/zalure constantly, which in a way is good, but the proposed changes would make ultimate impossible on single players until around level 100-110 for rangers, and so i think instead of filling the gap with a 5th difficulty, vhard should be extended to bridge that gap.

The real problem is that there is no ideal solution. One thing to remember is that you're in no way forced to apply my patch for better drops, harder monsters, and stronger weapons. If you can't handle Ludicrous mode, then don't play it until you're ready. I think players will be able to handle it, since they'll have the opportunity to acquire a selection of weapons that should help them survive Forest and Cave until they can get some of the weaponry from Ultimate mode.

To help droids survive, I'm going to enable S-Red's Blade for use by Rangers, so they will have the ability to cast Shifta and Deband, albeit weak. I'll also enable Prophets of Motav for all classes, which will then give droids the ability to cast Jellen and Zalure, albeit also weak. Even so, it should offer great help combined with the ability to add percents to weapons. There's always offline mode for wanting to solo; online should be difficult enough to benefit from having a team.

While I could change Very Hard mode, I'm not going to attempt to rebalance the entire game and level flow. Such drastic changes would be warranted if we could add new difficulty levels or Episode II, but we can't do either.

Bad drop rates? lol. The rates are bad, but hunters still have it easier because they can use partisan weapons (lol Imperial Picks drop like dead flies). The post I made about weapon use was more directed at hunters being able to use the Pick and Plantain Huge Fan, when Rangers cannot, rather than the whole drop list as a whole. My buddy Nash who's a ranger, still has it bad in ultimate because he can't do shit. Sure he has the whole red handgun going for him, but when it comes to hitting multiple enemies, rangers get screwed. They could find shotguns with decent percents, but shotguns still pale in comparison to partisans. Not to mention Ranger stat growth isn't the best. Yeah, when they're maxed, they're O.K. for the first two areas, but that'll take Seismica awhile, lol.

Yea, really the hunters are the only ones who have it decently easy, probably the best weapon a ranger can get that isnt statistically impossible to find or very hard to get would be an s rank needle or mechgun, if your lucky maybe a yasminkov if your lucky enough, its a shame too because i really like to use rifles but not many can even hit or do damage in ultimate

Its a shame we cant change the stats or weapons rangers can use to at least give them a chance without having to be in a party


Edit, three people online! Yays

lol. I was fixing a grammatical error, and you posted. Nu moar IMz? Dx

Rangers just don't have enough weapons that hit multiple enemies and actually does decent damage, lol. Did you say FIND an S-Rank?

no, well maybe it looked like it, I meant getting an s rank in cmode

@ Wing

Well since I'm fixing the drops, Rangers will have a lot more equipment to choose from. I think I'll probably make PHF usable by RAmar since it's retarded that he's the only one who can't use it.

MuCast wrote:Its a shame we cant change the stats or weapons rangers can use to at least give them a chance without having to be in a party

Um, we can, and I'm going to. o.o

yay

I was going to post this last night, but my internet cut out It does that a lot.

...So heres what i was goi ng to post:


I also read earlier that the Spread Needle is usable by Hunters?

!!!!!!!

That is an outrage, probably the best multi hit gun weapon, that is not exclusive to rangers.

And why is there no Red Rifle? Or Red Shotgun for that matter? And no more powerful equivalents for either of those... The Red handgun is usable by all, and the red mechgun has a 1/82000 or so drop chance from a Govulmer (according to PSOworld). The good weapons in the game are clearly geared towards hunters (who already have higher base ATP).

I think you should hike up the attack power of the rarer rifles in the game to make them usable

I want an anti android rifle, but by the time i get to mines, i probably won't need it anymore It has fairly average drop rates so not too hard to find i guess. (anyone have a spare one? )

Right about now my internet has crashed so i will post this tomorrow lol...

Well that was it...

Oh and also,

How is this patch going so far anyway Ives? Close to finishing? Despite the downfalls (from not being able to introduce a 5th difficulty), it is a definite improvement to the game, and it will stop me from moving on to Blue burst Trust me, i'm tempted lol

Seismica wrote:Blue Bitch Trust me, i'm tempted lol

Fixed.

PSO has always been a melee based game anyways. That's why magic sucks.

Not the case on PSZ though.... lol.

Aleron Ives wrote:Yeah, PSZ = 2 Rafoie and everything is dead I guess. xD

xD

SEGA is notorious for making something more imbalanced than another. They've always sucked at making everything fair in their games. If they fix one thing, then they will inevitably screw up another.... They always do.

Seismica wrote:And why is there no Red Rifle? Or Red Shotgun for that matter?

Rico is a Hunter; she couldn't use those weapons.

Seismica wrote:How is this patch going so far anyway Ives? Close to finishing? Despite the downfalls (from not being able to introduce a 5th difficulty), it is a definite improvement to the game, and it will stop me from moving on to Blue burst Trust me, i'm tempted lol

The patches for Ludicrous mode and the weapons will be easy to do because there's no variability in them; all I have to do is change the stats and I'm done. I'm still working on the drops, because there's so much randomness involved it's terribly hard to get it right.

Ver.2 has a horrible drop system; it tends to get stuck and generate similar results repeatedly. What this means for players is that you generally either find very few decent rares, or you get showered with them. I have been moving the rates up and down, and in the end it took me around 30 runs to find Handgun: Guld, which is one of the rarest items. The problem is, is 30 runs too easy? Well, someone who's luckier than me might find it in 20, and someone less likely might need 50. For all I know, it was simply a fluke that I didn't find one sooner, or it could be a fluke that I found one as soon as I did. There's no way for me to know, so I fear that my only option is to just make a decision and hope that PSO behaves and players aren't disappointed. -_-

ah man. I know what you're trying to do, Ives. However those are some massive risks. I personally don't want the entire community walking around with shit they found in a couple weeks that took me like.. years. XD

Or it could be the other way around and be worse... I suppose we won't know till you try.

I'm BAAAACK!

Gah, I hate Blue Burst. Oh, and I'm making a tour of PSO PC for Youtube, but since I can't go online on the PC PSO is now installed (and the only one on it), Dark Falz Hard+ mode won't be up for a while.