Dear Sega: Halloween is Not an Update!

Seriously, it boggles my mind that Sega would even try to pass the Halloween lobby change off as a weekly update. This "update" is not new, nor is it content -- unless you're one of those people that thinks it'll be fun to spend the next three weeks hunting Rappy Latan for a slim shot at some rare weapon.

Give me a break.

Sega really needs to get their shit together if they want people to continue playing. It's as simple as that. Week after week, they make promises to the fanbase that things will change -- but nothing ever does. Sega said they would try to get us more frequent updates after MAG 2, and they've already failed at that.

What will it take to make things change? Do we all need to cancel our subscriptions? If things keep up like this, most people will make the easy choice and do just that.

Don't get me wrong -- I want to see the game succeed. I'm trying not to complain too much about the lack of updates, though it's obvious that the majority of the community lives and dies by the maintenance announcement each week. It won't be long before there's nobody around to pander to.

Hopefully this didn't come off sounding too angry -- the last 24 hours has been rather frustrating (but for other reasons). I'm not going to get too worked up over this, but you can only bend over and take it for so long before the shit hits the fan.

The bottom line is this: This week's update is pure crap.

Update for October 31st

A post on the official PSU site has brought to my attention that the Japanese Xbox360 site (translated version) has been updated with information on this weeks update. The only things changed this week is the Halloween lobby and item changes in the casino. Yes, that's it.

Looks like we are in for another dry spell until Sega gets to the lightning carnival event. I don't understand why our Japanese overlords over at SOJ can't give us content that while they work on getting the lightning carnival out, you know like some Parum AOTI S2 missions or something. Instead we continue to fall further behind the Japanese PC/PS2 server...

Mission Spotlight for October 27th to November 2nd

RubyEclipse has posted that the mission spotlight has started again today which takes place at Electronic Brain.

Sega has posted the same old information about the "event" on the mission spotlight page. The only interesting change mentioned is that two community groups are sponsoring this spotlight; but it's not interesting enough to go into detail about it.

Requesting real updates please. Please!?

PSU Turns Two

Today is the second anniversary of the release of Phantasy Star Universe in the United States. The then-highly-anticipated "next-gen" PS game was released on October 24, 2006.

Since that time, the online game has hit a number of snags. Surprisingly, the hacking problems that were so prevalent on Phantasy Star Online have been largely contained in PSU. The main issue has turned out instead to be the slow delivery of content updates. In fact, this has been a problem from the very beginning, when critics knocked Sega's decision to keep Moatoob locked for the first three weeks of the game's existence.

Yet despite the mechgun glitching, room hacking, grinder glitching, robot lagging, forum drama, and so on, PSU continues to survive in the United States and Europe. The game is certainly not as popular in the West as it is in Japan, but it's hanging on.

As we enter the game's third year, there's still quite a bit of content left to see. Events, S3 missions, story missions, and plenty of other stuff is out there. Sega needs to get on the ball and get the game back on track, though; otherwise, PSU may not ever make it to October 24 again.

Server Changes Change Nothing

As we mentioned in a post earlier this week, Sega of America decided that they would drop a number of universes (on both the PC/PS2 and XBox 360 servers) in this week's maintenance. This downsizing left the PC/PS2 players with 10 universes and the XBox 360 players with 20.

I imagine that this change was implemented to make the server populations appear higher by forcing players to play on fewer universes. While this strategy is probably a good idea from a marketing perspective, it doesn't seem to be working:

In related news, Sega's efforts to put out new content every two weeks have officially failed. Two weeks after the last content update (if you can call it that), only the universe modifications were delivered today.

Not even the Halloween lobbies were added, meaning that the earliest they could arrive is... Halloween? What the hell?

A new GM

RubyEclipse has announced that Edward from Sega's billing and customer support department has become a full time GM for PSU.

His post:

Hey everyone,

Congratulations and a warm welcome to Edward, who comes to us from SEGA's billing and customer support department! Edward has been involved with the PSU community for some time, and as of today, will be stepping into a full Game Master role here at SEGA.

Edward should already be well known by PC/PS2 players for his great work helping out during last summer's billing issues, and you can also listen to our interview with him on the latest episode of the PSU Podcast.

We're all very stoked to have him onboard as the newest member of the team - Please join us in welcoming Edward as our newest PSU Game Master!

Oh yes we all remember him on the PC/PS2 side. Not only did he deal with the error 065 problems he also cleared up the billing error where people were charged for an incomplete billing cycle. This guy got my money back; he's cool in books.

Congrats, Edward and good luck, you're going to need it.

Unsurprising Server Changes

The unnecessarily-hyped "big server change" is now official.

Beginning Friday, the number of universes available to PSU players will be reduced by 18. PC/PS2 players will lose eight universes (leaving 10), while XBox 360 players will lose ten (leaving 20). In addition, PSU will continue the Phantasy Star Online tradition by having its servers renamed after constellations.

An announcement detailing the news had been posted on the main PSU site, but was yanked after a couple minutes for unknown reasons.

This actually might be a good move by Sega. Reducing the number of universes might create the notion that the game is more populated (on both sides), which might lead more new players to join up and stick around. I'm not holding my breath, though: we all know the root of the problem is lack of new content, and until that changes for the better, the population sure won't.

Update: The announcement has reappeared on the site and can be found here.

Warning: Potential Failure to Deliver

Well, here's a shocker. According to PSU GM ChillAura, there's a problem with the next content update and it may not be ready for delivery by the time next Friday rolls around.

If this does in fact turn out to be the case, it means Sega will have failed at their "every two weeks" update strategy... after only four weeks.

According to his post at the official forums:

Just for the record this was most definitely not a promise: "We actually have updates scheduled 2 weeks apart for the rest of the year, although we do not yet assume that we can rely on this."

We might have some news for you tomorrow, but there are issues with the scheduled update for 10/24 and we are waiting to hear back from Sonic Team as to when they can realistically go live with the next content update.

-Chill

I hinted at this back in a previous blog post: Sega of America has no confidence in their update schedule. However, it would be in Sega's best interests to get the work done and roll out content on time. With each passing week with no updates, more people leave. Getting some of these updates delivered on schedule would at least stop the bleeding somewhat -- though I guess if Sega hasn't figured that out by now, they never will.

Phantasy Star Portable coming March 2009

According to 1up PSP will be released in the U.S. March 2009. While that is good news an interview on 1up with director Satoshi Sakai confirm that the character transfer option found in the Japanese version of PSP will NOT be in the English version.

1UP: Can you explain the functionality between the PS2 version and the PSP version and how it works?

SS: Unfortunately, that won't be incorporated into the Western version. But just to describe what it does: You'll be able to take your character from the PS2 version, download it from the network, and upload it on to your PSP, complete with that character's weapons, armor, facial features, and everything.

1UP: Why isn't that in the U.S. version?

SS: Because of technical difficulties.

1UP: But PSU servers are still running in the U.S., right?

SS: Yes.

I figured that this would happen. It's probably because of the garbage playsega billing system and the low population compared to the 360 version or maybe because it wouldn't work with the 360 version.

Now this leaves a few questions: What will happen with the PSP related quest that was released on the Japanese version of PSU? Will we still get the items like on the Japanese version? Will it show up at all?

Chillaura gave a repsonse on the Sega forums about the two items this quest offered:

Yes the Whitill Wing and Vivienne Fluge are still potentially available, not that we can tell you if how or when they might come to our servers.

-Chill

I don't know about you guys but it sounds like Sega hasn't planned that far ahead and it doesn't give me much hope for getting either of them.

PSU Community Links

Sega's current PSU PR stunt, the Community Links page, is now online. The initial version of the page at the PSU site features links to nine fansites, blogs and/or informational sites.

I think it was a good idea for Sega to add a links page to its PSU site, but why now all of a sudden? This should have been there from day one. I understand that the site's purpose is to show potential players what kind of game they're getting into, but having a page for fansite links shows that community support exists for the game. In an online game, that's critically important.

The forums were a good first step, but they tend to bring out the worst in people. The new Community Links page might be a good way to put a more positive spin on community interaction.

Playsega.com has a new look

It's true playsega.com has been updated as was pointed out by chillaura in this topic.

In a related note I bring some bad news: it has nothing to do with Sega's billing system for PSU. It seems the site now hosts some flash based games. The crappy billing site we all know and love is still located at billing.playsega.com.

The Sliding Updates Continue

Looks like Sega's prediction of an event in October won't come to pass.

According to a post on the official PSU forums by GM ChillAura, the estimated date of the next event (which was the Dengeki "Lightning Carnival" on the JP servers) has slid out past the 24th of October due to "delays".

Although he didn't specify when the event would arrive on the US/EU servers, I estimate that we'll probably see it running from mid-November until the second week of December. If it's not here by then... Heaven help the US/EU PSU servers.

In the meantime, the next few weeks are shaping up to be boring as hell.

What? There's More?

The outlook for Phantasy Star Universe might be bleak in the United States and Europe, but that doesn't seem to be the case in Japan as of yet.

In fact, things are apparently so good over there that Sonic Team may have decided to begin work on another expansion pack for PSU! According to this article on Shougai PSO (untranslated), this news was revealed yesterday in a press conference at the Tokyo Game Show. Of course, very little information was provided about this "update", but it's interesting news nonetheless.

If this expansion or update actually happens, though, I'm skeptical that it will ever see the light of day in the United States. The game is on life support at the moment, and I just don't know if Sega of America will want to risk working on another expansion for a niche game. A lot of people said the same thing about the Ambition of the Illuminus expansion, though, and look where we are now.

This is still a long way off, so don't worry too much about it just yet.

(This news was first reported stateside in this thread over at PSO-World. A discussion on the official Sega PSU forums can also be found here.)

Price Jackers Beware

Wow, I've done a lot of ranting on this blog this week, but that's just the way things have been going lately. Today, I'm going to rant a little about the players jacking up prices on the room decorations needed for the Transfer: Neudaiz room move pass.

To trade for the pass, you need three different room decorations: a Paper Lantern, Kakwane Figure, and Scroll. Prices haven't skyrocketed too much for the first two items, which is understandable because they can be synthesized cheaply. Player pricing for the Scroll has left me a little bit confused, though.

Unlike the other items, you actually have to find the Scroll decoration in a mission. I have to assume that sellers are hoping that players will be too lazy to go hunt down the item themselves. However, Scrolls are ridiculously easy to find. I found one during my second run of Mizuraki Defense C, less than ten minutes into the hunt.

Despite the fact that the decoration is common in missions, some players have raised the price for one as high as 5 million meseta! Is the community really that dumb?

If you want a Neudaiz move pass, take my advice: don't give in to the greed of the players running these shops. Find or make the trade items yourself, and watch the prices come down. Let the lazy idiots buy up all of the overpriced junk, and instead show a little effort to get what you want.

Ten Minutes of Frustration

It seems that the PSU servers have recovered from a major hiccup.

The problem began at about 5:10 PM Eastern time today, when lag became so unbearably bad that the game was only responding every 30-40 seconds. These super-long lag cycles continued until about 5:15, at which point the game stopped responding altogether. I was disconnected two minutes later.

It doesn't look like I'm the only one that was affected by this, either:

(Perhaps this is a glimpse of things to come?)

Things were back to normal around 5:20. Nevertheless, hopefully Sega will provide some information about what happened. I say this because some players are already annoyed enough with the lag. Does this mean that things are getting worse?

UPDATE: Sega GM RubyEclipse reports that the brief outage was an ISP issue.

Inexplicable Decisions

(Warning: Really long post ahead)

You know, sometimes I swear that Sega of Japan is trying to kill off the Western community. After four months of botched events and limited updates, the feeling seems to hit me almost every week.

And, after getting our first look (untranslated version here) at this week's update, that feeling is here again. If you'd rather not click the link, all you need to know is that a bunch of items are being added. No new missions, difficulties, or anything like that.

Many players will be quick to point out that we at least got something added. But I'd also like to note that an update this small is just barely removed from getting nothing at all, and that is the reason that people continue to leave this game.

Updates like this irritate me, because they pose a problem for Sega as well as the community. It's no secret that Sega of America is trying to garner up some enthusiasm for PSU through fan support. They want to show potential players (and customers, and anyone else that cares to know) that this game is still worth picking up and enjoying.

But here's the problem: if the current trickle of updates continues, it won't be. Some players will already tell you that this game isn't worth playing. I understand that Sega of America wants more people to play the game -- I do, too -- but just saying that they want people to play (or even hinting at it) just won't do the trick. Actions speak louder than words.

Sega needs to show potential players that this game is still strong and still being supported. That means delivering content updates that are more than just one short free mission, and certainly more than just adding items to an exchange mission. Unfortunately, this isn't likely to happen anytime soon, and what we're bound to see is a resurgence of bitching threads on the official forums. Few people will want to join an online community that has no confidence in the game's support, nor will existing players want to stay any longer. In the end, we'll simply be stuck in a long downward spiral towards the game's demise.

Members of the community are hurt, too, and for many of the same reasons. Over the past few months, some players have made numerous attempts to get the word out about PSU as part of a grassroots initiative to drum up interest in the game. It's certainly a great effort, but it's an effort that has largely been foiled by Sega's own hand.

When the first version of PSU was released back in October 2006, it was widely panned for the lack of content initially provided to players in the online Network Mode. A lot of people that were looking forward to the game saw these reviews and made the decision to stay away, essentially crippling the game community right from the start.

Things have gotten better, though, and right as the community began to try and demonstrate that to the rest of the online gaming world, PSU got hammered with a poorly handled billing disaster conveniently placed right in the middle of a highly anticipated event (MAG). This was followed by months of no updates, which was followed by a period of minimal updating that includes this Friday's bare-bones content addition. And we're trying to get people back into this game? These blunders only lend more credibility to the early reviews! Poor support then, poor support now. Even though things have changed, does it look that way to skeptical outsiders? Surely it does not.

So, here's the TL;DR version for those of you with a short attention span: this week's update only strengthens the argument that Sega's support for this game is fading. They want people to continue to play the game, but the community wants updates and Sega isn't budging. You can acknowledge the community's concerns all you want, but you don't gain any support among fans unless you make the effort to do what they ask.

Sega's Content Strategy: Here Come the S3's

A lot of people have assumed for a long time that this was coming sooner or later. Sega of Japan today confirmed that the Japanese PC/PS2 servers will be receiving S3 difficulty missions, beginning in next Thursday's content update with four missions on Moatoob.

With this new information, Sega has made it perfectly clear what their intentions for this game are regarding updates. It seems they've pulled a page from the PSO playbook and are simply going to milk the existing content as much as possible, rather than develop new content such as a new expansion pack or DLC (though thanks to the PS2 I suppose DLC isn't a viable option).

It's widely believed that Sega is running out of new PSU:AotI disc content to provide to the Japanese (and 3-4 months later, US/EU) players. For many, this new development will only further that belief.

Don't get me wrong: I don't have any problem with Sega bringing out increased difficulty levels. A lot of people will probably appreciate it. But it'll get old really fast, and over time will surely cause many more to quit the game. New versions of existing missions are fine, but how about some new, original content to go with it?

I posted a link to a translation of the Japanese update page above, but if you'd like to see the original, click here.