MAG 2: Thoughts and Ramblings

With the second round of Maximum Attack G almost upon us (finally), a lot of the attention seems to have turned once again to the leaderboard issue. When MAG 2 was announced way back in June, Sega reps commented that they would not allow characters from the first leaderboard to compete for prizes in the second event.

(Of course, if a player wanted to try and get a different character ranked on the board the second time around, they said that would be OK.)

Now take a look at this post:

. . . we do want to discourage players from using the same characters, and will most likely be asking Sonic Team to delist them, but as always Sonic Team will get the final say on this and they may not have the time and resources to prevent players from double dipping into leaderboard exclusive rewards.

I'm not exactly going to complain about this yet though, because it could turn out to be a non-issue.

One major reason: We've been capped at level 130 for a couple months now. Players have had lots of time to level their characters up to the cap, so it's a good bet that there are plenty of people with multiple LV130 characters. With no new content for the past 7 weeks, players have also had time to work on their class levels, too. So a lot of people will be starting this little competition on equal footing. After all, if you're spamming C runs to get yourself on the personal leaderboard, a high level character is all you really need. Whether you do it with LV130 Character #1 or LV130 Character #2 seems really inconsequential to me.

On the other hand, allowing the same characters to compete twice would be unfair to the newer players who don't have the luxury of having multiple high-leveled characters. But even in this case, these players are probably going to wind up competing against the players who ranked in MAG 1, only this time with different LV130 characters.

We'll have to see what happens. There is one group of MAG 1 players I hope Sega keeps tabs on, though, and you can probably guess who they are. Yeah, that group would be the "mechgun glitchers" that were removed from the first competition.

I stress that these players should not, under any circumstances, be allowed to compete with any of their characters. People who go around cheating or using exploits to win at an online game get absolutely no sympathy from me. These players cheated to gain an advantage, and were correctly punished for it. Allowing them to compete this time around would negate these efforts entirely.

Well, that was a pretty long first post. Congratulations if you actually took the time to read all this! Hopefully MAG 2 will go off without a hitch, and we can move on to the next event.

Error 060 says you can't log on

It seems that Sega's authentication server is down again. So anyone trying to log on now will be greeted with error 060. I thought the new billing system was going to fix problems like these?

I'm starting to have a bad feeling about MAG2 now...

Update: The problem is now fixed.

What's better then one person complaining?

If you said anything other than "two people complaining" then you were wrong.

Introducing Minus X, the other person that will be posting here occasionally. We go way back to PSOBB on the team enforcers and regularly team up on PSU. I'll let him handle the rest of the introduction if he wishes or he can just jump right into some rants. Either is fine with me.

Guntecher and S rank Cards

This has been annoying me for a while now. I've seen multiple posts (Ex: 1, 2, 3) about people wanting GT to have S rank cards. If GT were to get S rank cards it would be more disappointing then Sega boosting attack technics from 20 to 30 (lol, useless).

I'm not sure what the appeal of cards on GT is anyway. I mean they take too long to hit their target and the auto-aim on it sucks. The only thing I can think of is because cards show "big numbars" but still fail compared to the superior crossbow. The only time I use them is when I play a type that can not use crossbow, and even then it's not often since I don't care for them.

Yes GT needs a boost but S rank cards not the way to go. It's like saying "lets make GT better by making them worse!"

I'd like to see these changes to GT (not that Sega will bother with any of this though):

• Raise Skills from 10 to 20
• Keep Bullets at 40
• Lower Attack Technics from 20 back to 10
• Keep Support Technics at 30

Weapon changes:

• Remove access to cards, and long bow.
• Upgrade rifle from A rank to S.
• Add access to A rank grenade and A rank spear.

Also a small ATP boost couldn't hurt.

OK, I'm done for now. Of course I could complain about Wartecher but I'll save that for another time. Maybe.

Mission Spotlight for July 25th to 31st

I totally forgot about these but RubyEclipse has posted the new mission spotlight is Galenigare Lake lobby on Moatoob. Which has four missions and a chance at FOI. Oh my!

With MAG supposedly coming back next week hopefully this will be the last of this no update filler.
I mean seriously the only time people even bother with it is when a GM is there for that small chance to win some PSU related items.

From the bottom of the mission spotlight page:

A few lucky GUARDIANS each week will also be gifted exclusive PSU Prizes, including PSU wristbands, collector texter tins, Inflatable "Pete" Partner Machines, and PSU T-shirts!

I am so there! Actually on second thought...

August 1st update is official

Or is it?

Chillaura has posted the official announcement for the August 1st update.

About time they did something with the game. And it's nice of them to finally raise the level cap. Although like I feared there is no new content.

Don't tell me there will be nothing new until MAG2 ends. Looks like it's going to be another boring month for those of you who don't care about MAG.

Despite that, Sega just don't delay this update again we really need to get things moving again.

Error 065: It's back baby!

Well sort of. According to Edward@Sega it is a temporary error that happens the last day of the billing cycle before the account is re-billed.

Well at least Sega is making some progress with the billing system, right?

Gameguard update

When I finally got around to load up PSU today there was a gameguard update. Initially it downloaded 8 files and then it downloaded another file when I loaded up the game again.

I'm not sure what the update did but it probably did nothing just like how gameguard does nothing to stop cheating.

Update: Seems that this update actually did do something. On the official forums someone has posted that in Vista 32bit and 64bit it has caused some programs to crash and problems with Windows dialog boxes such as open and save file. So far no issues with XP have been reported.

I really wish Sega would replace this crap program with something that actually works and doesn't mess up your computer.

I have discovered the use for debuffs!

So last night a friend invited me to play with him and some of his friends on Moatoob doing Desert Goliath S/S2 (and looking for FOI). So I switch to my alt (which is around Lv85) and go .

Anyway fast forward a few runs: we found FOI not once but twice, the first one ended up giving it again. The second time they invited some newman AT lv130. This guy tells me to not to buff but to debuff. My first reaction is: "lolwat."

So yeah he wanted me to use debuffs to tag monsters. So that's why debuffs are in the game. To tag monsters for exp in FOI. I never knew that!
And the guy was like "lol" when I said I didn't have them. I mean seriously I'm sure most force types ditched them months ago when we realized how crappy they are. So why expect me to have them again? Plus they are still annoying to level up. People should be happy I even bothered to get my buffs to lv21 on my FT.

Now more of a rant about how the guy played:
This guy had lv31+ buffs yet only cast jellen, which was also lv31+. It was the first time I've seen a non-NPC use a debuff since they first came out. And since he was lv130 he obviously didn't need the exp so to me it was like his way of idling for FOI rares while pretending to be useful when he wasn't useful at all.

Update next week?

According to GM chillaura our Japanese overlords have almost finalized an update for the game on August 1st!

His post:

From Sonic Team

Team finally agreed to release update on Aug. 1 with item delivery . This MAG extension will continue 3 weeks because Aug. 15 is our holiday (SOJ office closes).

So MAG extension will end on Aug. 22.

Item delivery should include MAG rewards and Sonic birthday statues, we are still getting the final details.

-Chill

Also it seems that part of the MAG rewards will be delivered at this time as well and the rest will follow after the extension.

But I'll believe it when I see it. After this thing has been delayed so long it seems sort of silly to do this now. I mean we did have a whole month with no updates that would have been perfect for the extension.

Now it seems this will just put us behind in updates even further. Yeah MAG is back, that's great, really it is but I want some new content as well.

This extension better not delay new content. Oh right, we have to wait for Sega of Japan, who totally sucks at running online games outside of Japan, to decide our updates. So I'm sure new content will be delayed.

First post

Well I've been pretty bored lately and Sega has been pissing me off with its crappy PSU service. So I decided to make this blog to kill some time or something. My posts won't be limited to things Sega does but also various annoying elements I run into. I got this idea from a friend I regularly play the game with.

Anyway I've been playing PSU since its release on the PC/PS2 server so most of the complaints will either focus on that server or just general PSU problems.

So sit back and enjoy. I don't know how long this will last so lets see how this goes.
(Wait is anyone even reading this?)