TL;DR
I created a laundry list of high-level tenets that drive the game design of specific genre I coined the World game based on Brad's famous quote. These aim to be applicable to any game that would scratch my old school MMO itch.
What tenets would you choose?
Preamble
The MMO community is, to some degree, divided by the different expectations and desires of its player base. Even an MMORPG can mean so many things to so many different people. I wanted to get to the root of what a good MMO is to me, and in the process, I found that the ambiguous label of MMO is likely getting in the way.
Passionate players across the board seem to complain about the same issues. Ease of difficulty. Cash shops. Single-player focus. Theme park design. Players of these games either leave the genre, ultimately disenchanted with the thin veil over Skinner box design, or they continue to search for something better, because they know it is possible. Maybe this is intentional. Developers piggy back on the MMO genre to hook the player-base before extracting as much as they can from the whales in their glorified casino.
So, here, I present the tenets of a specific game genre: the World genre. The focus on world over game is not a new idea. Brad McQuad famously said, “I want to make worlds, not games.” That focus can be seen right there in the name of Visionary Realms. And without the right language to describe what we are after, the community is continually bit by games that fit the abstract label but disappoint in the details.
The goal with these tenets isn’t to create a template so much as it is to create rough guidelines. In fact, these guidelines probably wouldn’t do a game designer much good in creating a solid design. But they should help in evaluating different options and validating an existing design. Certainly, none of the tenets get as specific as the theme or even the existence of combat. They should apply equally well to a game set in feudal Japan, The Sims Online, or the next zombie apocalypse.
Some tenets are broad, while others more specific. Some tenets are rigid, others more malleable. Some tenets are critical pillars of the genre, while others are less important. Tenets frequently conflict, creating tension.
A note on intuition
The tenets below are driven by the principle that they should be intuitive. The World genre is trying to capture something deeply human, buried in our brains because of the way we have interacted with ourselves, each other, society, and our planet over millennia of evolution. There is no right or wrong answer. When in doubt, we err on the side of realism.
A note on ownership
Establishing reasonably prescriptive tenets on the World and gameplay highlights the necessity of strong ownership and vision for this style of game. This is particularly true given that many of these tenets go explicitly against what makes a great game in general. For example, how many games would actually benefit from less player matchmaking? This also does not lend itself well to player-generated content, where those tenets can be easily violated.
The tenets of immersion
TENET 1 The player should be directly represented in the World
The World genre requires the player to form a direct relationship with the World, not with the character. This is a key difference between Eastern of Western RPGs (both of which I love) and so this may be controversial. The player should be able to insert themselves into their avatar. On the flip-side, it precludes certain mechanics, such as squad-based designs.
TENET 2 The World should be realistic in both form and function
That is, the World should minimize the need for suspension of disbelief. It should pull the player in naturally. I have always felt conflicted by WoW’s appearance. I absolutely loved the cell-shaded look of Wind Waker, but instinctually disliked the cartoon-like nature of WoW. This goes back to immersion. That doesn't mean the visuals have to be photorealistic. They just have to pull you in. It may be possible to get around this through the setting. For example, if the setting is a digital afterlife, you may be able to get away with a more abstract appearance.
TENET 3 The player and World should interface only through the player character
The player should only be able to influence the World through their character. And the World should only be able to influence the player through the character. This means, respectively, no cash shops and a first-person camera. It also means no GPS — unless, of course, the setting supports it. Taken to an extreme, this precludes voice chat, at least without something like racial voice filters.
TENET 4 The player should directly engage with the World around them
The key here is “direct”. No minimaps, no waypoints, no fast travel. Of course, these are not absolute deal-breakers. The key is that the player is able to establish a connection with the World around them. The player should, over the course of the game, develop a strong mental model of the World and its relation to their character.
The tenets of freedom
TENET 5 The player should not be assigned a story
The World itself can (and should!) have a story to tell. But the player character’s story should be their own. The player must have the freedom to make their own place within the World, eschewing the rails that a story provides. Side quests are lesser evils, but still evils. The more choice the better.
TENET 6 The player should be able to pursue multiple forms of progression
The choice should not just be in how to progress. It should be in which ways to progress. The most obvious example is crafting, but this can also include loot, skills, the economy, faction, or even — maybe most importantly — growing in strategy and skill.
TENET 7 The World should be demanding, but not prescriptive
This is an extension of the idea of a lack of story. If the game is too prescriptive, it becomes a job. A chore. To combat this phenomenon, the player needs significant choice at all times. This may, in fact, be the primary draw of the World genre: to provide an environment where players are purely driven by their own will. It is equally important to avoid visibly and overtly influencing the player’s decisions. The player’s incentives and motivating factors should be an organic part of the World. No daily XP boosts, for example. Alternate forms of progression can help here, because even once a player is motivated to progress, they have the choice of which dimension of progress to pursue.
TENET 8 The World should encourage downtime
The player should not feel compelled to move forward at all times. There should be joy simply in existing in the World, experience it moment to moment. Even better, progression itself can require downtime; this is related to the notion that players should be encouraged to play any game in the most fun way possible. This can be accomplished with world design, such as guard-protected cities or social taverns, or mechanics, such as fishing, firework shows, and waiting in queue for a boat. This is effectively the white space of gameplay. And it is all but lost in modern MMOs.
TENET 9 The World should be dangerous
Choice is meaningless without consequence. With real, negative consequence, comes danger. This not only gives weight to the player’s decisions, but also helps to establish the intricate give-and-take relationship between the World and the player. Looking at you, death penalty. If a World game is about finding your place within that world, then danger and risk makes this a meaningful pursuit. If that tension between risk and reward does not exist, even at the start of the journey, it undermines those goals. Note that this is different than challenge — and challenge itself is not enough.
TENET 10 Players should be encouraged to explore the World
This doesn't mean that players are constantly seeking some never-before-seen point of interest, but it does mean that players get out and move. In other words, the world provides resources across its footprint, and you must seek those out. Most forms of progression should require you to get out and explore. This also does not necessitate baubles scattered around the landscape to find.
The tenets of impact
TENET 11 The player’s actions should be worn like a badge
You should be a product of your choices. Your reputation, gear, and skills should tell a story about where you have been and what you have accomplished. Your spoken languages can tell a story of what cities you have spent the most time in. As you spend time in different climates, you may develop a natural acclimation to those environments. Imagine you walk into town and one of the NPC gnomes recognizes the scent of the nearby crystal caverns you have been exploring. This is interesting because it relates to life; the player’s accomplishments should come with artifacts. This also means that auction houses should be limited, as they create an artificial divide between adventure and outcome.
TENET 12 Players should have something unique to offer
The ways that a player can help others in their progression should be relatively unique to that player. As much as possible, they should tell a story about adventures undertaken; e.g., a proc from an item dropped by a famous mob. Of course, classes and class-specific skills are one way to accomplish this, but the more ways the better. For example, if one form of progression is fishing, then fish should be useful to others in many ways. A cooking skill is obvious. More creatively, certain kinds of fish could be used as powerful but low-level weapons. A butcher could extract gills or eyes to, in turn, be used as reagents for spells.
TENET 13 There should be no end game
Even the name “end game” is problematic for several reasons. It suggests a hard limit to progression. It suggests a hard divide in the way the World is experienced once the player reaches this limit. It also suggests that the focus is no longer on the World, but on the game — which is to say, the core promise of the genre is lost. This doesn’t mean to eliminate raids or AA points. It just means that those things should be included in the game proper. This tenet also implies that progression should be relatively limitless. Skyrim is an interesting example of this. One way to accomplish this is to create exponential progress; for example, having each level take 10% more experience than the last. Granted, this is a much harder problem than the simple discussion here suggests.
TENET 14 The player should leave a mark on the World itself
Can a World be meaningful if there is no way to make an impact on it? Of course, their character is one such mark. It is easy to imagine statues erected in town, or NPCs chatting about the first character to hit max level. But there should be a means for all characters to leave some lasting impact. Given that players can already say whatever they want in chat, breaking immersion, a simple example is the ability to leave a journal. These could even be curated. Other possibilities include geocaching, naming items, plaques that can be erected in various places throughout the world. Player-owned housing is perhaps the most obvious.
TENET 15 Power, fame, and fortune must be possible
A world game should be able to provide all three of these drivers. As with reality, these should not be the only reason to play. Fame is largely supported by communication; fortune by economy and loot. Power can be found even outside the game, in the player’s mind, as they grow in skill and strategy.
TENET 16 The player should have a home
Can you have a world without a home? Some place in the world should feel like your own. Where even the NPCs tend to be supportive of you: merchants give discounts and trainers more assistance. This could simply be your birthplace, your hometown.
The tenets of socialization
TENET 17 There must be no explicit matchmaking
Players must find each other. In fact, a World game should ideally employ the opposite of matchmaking: some players should have barriers preventing that connection. This makes it all the more meaningful when these seemingly unlikely relationships form. There are many ways to accomplish this, including separating players by distance or climate or language. Allowing certain players to engage in PvP is another.
TENET 18 There should be risk in trusting others
Trust can only exist when that trust can be violated. Otherwise there is no trust — just a cold, lack of consequence. By allowing negative consequences through socialization, we enable trust, and so enable more meaningful relationships. For example, a player might grief the group, log out at the wrong time, or simply lack the skill to effectively play their character. They might steal your loot.
TENET 19 Players must be able to communicate with language
The purpose of having a World is to allow the player to tell their own story within it. And what story is worth telling that doesn’t involve real connection with others? Connection with others requires communication. And not just any form of communication, but with language. This communication should extend throughout the game, as much as possible. That is, it should be limited to the tavern, but should naturally extend out to the dungeon as well.
TENET 20 Players should be able to help each other organically
Those that have the means to help should find themselves naturally in proximity to those that might need it. For example, have high-level dungeon entrances in low-level areas. Have new characters start out near big cities.
TENET 21 Cooperation should generally benefit progression
For example, a blacksmith could gather all of her own materials or rely on other players. In some cases, a blacksmith might actually require an enchanter to lend a hand in creating the best equipment. This is not a difficult tenet to design towards; it is more a warning against designing forms of progression that specifically do not lend themselves to cooperation. In many MMOs, solo combat is so fast-paced and rewarding that there is little incentive to try to find a group.
The tenets of the World itself
TENET 22 The World should be persistent
Things can change, but not so frequently that it harms the connection the player has with the World. This is one reason why Minecraft may not work as a World game, and perhaps one reason why the focus on player-generated content in EverQuest Next did not lend itself well to a fun experience.
TENET 23 The World should be shared
There should be no instancing. If you need to come up with elaborate lore and mechanics to facilitate this, then so be it. For example, say all of the top tier raid bosses are spirits that can only be summoned by rare relics. And the spirits can only be hurt by those that share a clan sash with the one who summoned them. Obviously this is terribly contrived. But it demonstrates that it is possible to work backwards from the need of a shared world.
TENET 24 The World should be big
You should move slowly compared to the size of the world. It should always feel as though there is somewhere new to explore.
TENET 25 The World should be open
Big by itself is not enough. Theoretically, you could create a massive, linear world — imagine Ant Hill: The MMO. But that is not sufficient for a World game. Exploration is critical, and so the specific layout of the space is important. For another example, imagine Destiny but with hundreds of expansions. The game would be large by any standard, but it would not be a World.
TENET 26 The World should be alive
To some degree, the World should be the main character. Day and night cycles are a simple start. Other possibilities include transient events or even changes to the landscape over time. The World should be full of surprises, unpredictable. You should come across enemies not normally found in the local climate. You should discover loot normally reserved for much tougher mobs. Emergent gameplay can help here as well. The more mechanics and attributes that can be projected naturally to some underlying physics, the greater the chance for interesting and unique interactions. In the same breath, the World should have history. The best example of this is Hollow Knight, a game that tells the history of the World through visual storytelling, environments, enemy design, dialog, secrets, and journals.
TENET 27 The World should be consistent
The World should carry an underlying consistency through it. The World should feel congruent. Variety, also important, must be tempered.
TENET 28 The World should be varied
Different places within the World should have an identity of their own, through climate or culture or environment. Different environments should encourage different play styles and behavior, even downtime.
TENET 29 The World should have landmarks
The World should be defined by the interesting places within it. More than that, the World should have locations that pull players together. Breath of the Wild does an amazing job with this, whereas it is one of the weaknesses of The Witcher III. In EverQuest, the camps themselves often serve this role — think Treants — showing how landmarks can emerge from gameplay rather than, say, visual interest.

[Videogames] Zhengtu Online, The Original Sinner of free-to-play gaming and lootboxes

Hi everyone, this is my first contribution to HobbyDrama, I hope this is an entertaining read and also to the community's standards. Let's go!!
Brief glossary before we begin (and some foreshadowing)
MMORPG: massively multiplayer online role-playing game, MMO for short. A videogame genre that generally invites hundreds, or up to thousands, of players to share a space. Depending on the game, anything from general adventure to large-scale war to economy and politics can be simulated. I find it hard to believe that anyone reading this could possibly not know what this is but it's included anyway.
Electro-convulsive therapy: ECT for short, it is a form of treatment where electrodes are "carefully" hooked up to a person's head and a "precise" level of electric shock is delivered, in order to treat major psychiatric disorders. Developed in 1938 when most psychiatric treatments was in their infancy, it is still used today occasionally for serious cases of depression, mania, or psychoses. In its early days however, there were widespread claims of abuse associated with its use.
Pt1: The Root of all that is bullshit
Zhengtu Online (hereafter referred to as ZT) was an immensely popular MMORPG that was developed in China and primarily served a Chinese playerbase. Released in 2006, at its peak it boasted more 2 million players, which while not particularly impressive relative to World of Warcraft (8mil worldwide at the same time), was a truly insane amount of success in a gaming scene that was very much in its embryonic stage.
The game itself was an unimpressive Diablo-style top down fantasy setting, and its gameplay loop primarily revolved around improving your ability to kill various things, but what made it special was the overarching metagame: every player population (sharing a server) was divided into 10 kingdoms. Kings and generals were all individual players, and they dictated politics to their neighbors--primarily in the form of initiating player-vs-player (or PVP) warfare.
Most contemporary MMOs had an upfront price plus a monthly subscription fee. In China, such pricing models were mostly replaced by paying oney for a set amount of ingame playing time. Unlike all of them, ZT was completely free to play (F2P).
Free to play, however, meant pay-to-win: the best weapons and armor, and even leveling up your character, needed you to pay real money. Since so much of the game was focused on PVP, it also created an eternal arms race between players, each paying for the privilege of not being evaporated by a high level enemy.
The way they did this was unique at the time. While F2P online games had already seen their rise in South Korea, equipment was generally priced explicitly via in-game currency and bought in virtual shops. ZT fused this with the sweet, sweet taste of gambling: gear in the game was primarily obtained in loot boxes, and you had to pay for keys to open them.
It needs to be emphasized that gambling of any kind was illegal in China, but, in an eerie parallel of American CEOS in the future, ZT's developers said it wasn't gambling because, well, you weren't getting your money back.
By combining this with multiple other exploitative practices, such as providing a small amount of premium currency like a casino giving you a free bet on the house, or awarding special items to the player with the highest number of lootboxes opened in a day, ZT was making money like taking candy from a candy-hating baby, and made gaming history.
As far as what this means for gamers, this was Eve giving Adam the apple, Oppenhemier splitting the atom, Prometheus stealing fire, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, and goddamn Helen Keller signing "water".
If you play any kind of videogames today, you've stepped through the long shadow that ZT had cast. Zynga (developers of Farmville) would be founded in 2007 and focused exclusively on free games with real-money integration. Lootboxes made it into Team Fortress 2 in 2010, one of the first major western-developed games to include them.
Similar mechanics (with varying degrees of exploitative practices) came to FIFA in 2010, Mass Effect 3 in 2012, Counter-Strike in 2013, League of Legends in 2016, and NBA 2K in 2017, infecting every genre of gaming under the sun, including the most popular MMO, World of Warcraft. As an aside, corporate defense of lootboxes in Star Wars Battlefront II also led to the most downvoted Reddit comment of all time.
Finally someone speaks out
The System, an article published in the Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly in 2007, was a hard-hitting expose on the exploitive practices of ZT. It chronicled the rise and fall of a gamer who accidentally becomes the monarch of one of these in-game Kingdoms, her addiction to the game, and final disillusionment when she realized that in-game player behaviour was being explicitly manipulated by its designers for the purpose of creating addicts and selling more lootbox keys.
The whole article is worth a read, even if it is sensationalist in a way that immediately tells you the writer was clearly a failed novelist of some kind - describing virtual destruction with the kind of prose most people would consider and then discard for a gang rape, for starters. But it had gotten its point across. It created an explosive backlash against the game in China, and was even translated into English and propagated across gaming forums.
The fallout
In an act of censorship usually reserved for the CCP government, this article--including its English translation--began to be scrubbed from the internet, with speculation pointing to the immensely powerful CEO behind ZT. I mean, who else could it be, right?
This article would light the fire of China's first moral panic regarding videogames. In its wake, swift legislation would be enacted regarding internet gaming addiction as well as online proxy gambling. ZT would heed the new laws and remove its lootbox mechanics in the following years and many other similar games followed suit.
Most tragically, the panic (which, to be fair, was fueled by a very real problem) allowed unscrupulous characters such as Yang Yongxin, vice chairman of a hospital in Shandong province, to create "internet addiction centres". With its legitimacy established by a docuseries ("Fighting the Internet Monster") on the state-run television channel CCTV, these centres charged terrified parents exorbitant prices in order to keep teens by force in, essentially, private hospitals and asylums, subjecting them to inhumane conditions and abusive ECT in order to "cure" them of their disease. It was estimated that Yang earned the equivalent of more than $6million USD from his addiction centre in the short space of 2 years. While his centre was eventually closed by state order, he received no punishment of any kind.
As for ZT, it limped on until 2018. A mobile game reboot was made in 2015. A tie-in fantasy movie was released in 2020. it was not very good.
~~~~~~
Addendum: how we got here: Of Mice and levers
In the 1950s, an American scientist named BF Skinner discovered the following: when mouse is put in a box with a small lever that, when pressed, dispenses a food pellet, they will quickly learn to start pressing on the lever as fast as possible. If you then stop the food from dispensing, the mouse will lose interest quickly after pressing a few times and seeing no food coming out.
If, however, you hooked up the lever to dispense food at random intervals, the mouse will be practically glued to the lever and hammer on it nonstop, sometimes long after they become full, and long after any food has been dispensed.
This discovery, known as variable outcome operant conditioning, formed the foundation of our understanding of addiction and gambling. Skinner would go on to try and fail to make bombs guided by pigeons, but we're not interested in that here. His research tool--the Skinner Box--would become a descriptor you may have come across when discussing exploitive game mechanics.
Summary
Once upon a time, a game combined the random outcome of videogaming with real-money gambling. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

I never thought my work injury would cause me so many issues in PSO2 socially

The biggest problem I've ever had with MMO's?
The other people.
I started playing PSO2 back in May. Found a work around for getting the game here in the UK early, and what with being on furlough due to the current pandemic, I sank a lot of time into it. I'd played Phantasy Star 2 on the Megadrive and a little bit of PSU back in the 360 days, so was excited to give it a go. However, there was an issue...
Last year I sustained an injury at work (an accident involving machinery...) resulting in my index finger and middle finger on my right hand being semi-paralyzed. Basically, I can very slightly move them sometimes, but I wouldn't rely in them to do anything. Occasionally my thumb seizes up too, so I can't exactly rely on that either. If I attempt to use any of those digits extensively, I get bad pains and cramps along the back of my hand. Isn't permanent nerve damage fun? I've had various physio sessions and am on a repeat prescription for painkillers, but I will never have full use of my right hand ever again, and yes, it was my dominant hand.
It's an ongoing struggle to not let it rule everything I do, but obviously I've had to make a lot of lifestyle adjustments. The most relevant one here being how I game. I'm very much a console gamer. Turn based JRPG's are now my best friend. Classic Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and Pokémon remain very much unchanged, just at a bit of a slower pace. Everything else... When I booted up a new game, usually the first thing I do (if the option is available) is to crank the game up to the highest difficulty. I just find games more fun if there's a fair challenge. Let me... try my best to describe how I use a controller now for the longest and easiest gameplay. I rest the whole controller on my thigh. So left hand, as you'd expect, left hand is fine. Right, I use the palm of my hand to control the right thumbstick (thankfully most games, just the camera). A thumbgrip on the stick makes this easier than you'd think. My ring and little finger do all the rest, so on an Xbox controller that's A,B, X, Y and the two R buttons. I'll use my left hand if I need to use the Menu button. It's really not easy, and whilst I'm learning to get used to it, it is still a struggle, and my days of hardest difficulty are long over.
Now back to PSO2...
There's many different ways to play and enjoy the game. Explorations and ARKS quests are no real issue for me, Casino sessions are a ridiculous amount of fun, I love the story, and fashion... DAMN, I love CASTs. Urgent Quests... For the most part, I'm actually OK with it. Mining Bases and Gone With the Wind and Rain were my first few UQs at max level (75 at the time).
I play Braver. Initially this was because in games where you can choose a class like this one, I've always favoured bows and quick melee weapons. Braver appealed to me. I stuck to this class because Morning Mistreaver combined with the Katana Combat invincibility is very forgiving for my ailment.
Dark Falz Elder I remember being the first one I died a lot in. I majorly ticked off my alliance at the time with how badly I was doing. I decided to explain my injury in the alliance Discord, hoping they'd just keep it in the back of their minds when they played with me. What happened next... My alliance basically split in two with me. Half I expected, the other half I didn't.
So one half did exactly what I feared an shunned me. Wasn't allowed in any triggers, was never invited to the UQs, wasn't even allowed to come along for VHAQ and SHAQ's which I had no real issues with. I was sad but I can't expect serious end game players to bring along a player with a handicap. What bothered me was that people who I had banter with in the lobby now would no longer even talk to me. That hurt.
The other half... I became a charity case, or maybe a challenge? People would take me, but encourage me to just be there. I was being prompted to be carried. UQs would come along, not even Elder, and alliance chat would have people telling me they don't need a 4th so I can 'tag along and watch'. Also, some people started talking to me in layman's terms, or over explaining things, talking to me as if I had a mental disability. No offence to people who do of course, but my disability is physical. I know how to augment and I research the market and drops to see what gear is best. I don't need someone telling me to 'imagine your weapon is a pet. You want your pet to grow big and strong, don't you? So you need all these vitamins to feed him to make him the best he can be! So get these other weapons with the vitamins you need, and you can get an even better weapon for yourself!'. I wish I was exaggerating... as I sat there with my Nemesis Cougar with 6 augments I did myself including ARKS Max and Apprentice Soul (which if you remember back then was a big deal).
I left that alliance, switched the blocks I frequent and moved on. I joined a new alliance and told myself I wouldn't tell anyone else about my hand. I'd rather have people just think I was a bad player. I ended up just joining randoms for the boss UQs from now on. It stayed this way for a long time... until the Fellwyrm. Before the first time it popped up, I was already chilling with fellow alliance members in the lobby. My plan was to break off when the emergency announcement went up, but received a party invite from an alliance officer before I could. I decided what the hey and accepted, figuring I could play it off as a new UQ and that I'm not sure how it works if I died a lot. I made the mistake of saying as a joke 'Sorry if I die, new UQ, gotta learn it! XD', to have the officer say they're a JP vet, explaining the basic outline and giving a few tips. It was genuinely quite helpful, and I only died twice! Then I learned it was a 2 part quest...
Yes, I had attempted Deus Esca with randoms before this one, and yes, I was responsible for 4 of the 5 deaths (2 of the people in the party blocked me afterwards). I told myself OK, not going to burden anyone with part two any more, that's unfair to others. I tried to back out of my party before the second half, saying I didn't want to do it, I'll make us reach the death limit, to be told there wasn't one. I left the party to be re-invited into it... So because (I thought) I got on well with the officer, I decided to go for it. We... ran out the timer. Granted, not just my fault (another member of the party wasn't fantastic either), but I got singled out by the officer for the blame on it as they noted I was pretty much just using one photon art (Morning Mistreaver. It does good damage and helps with aim and gap closing, genuinely so helpful) and rarely if ever used my bow. I met the ugly side of this officer and was asked to give a public apology and an explanation for my actions, as I had now 'deprived 3 members of the alliance a proper experience with the Urgent Quest'. There was even talk of me compensating them with Meseta. I tried to plead my case that I did say and try to leave (with one party member thankfully taking my side in that one), and even contemplated explaining my condition... but instead just logged off. I was pinged many times in Discord, but muted. When I logged into PSO2 the next day, I was no longer a member of the alliance, and had a Discord PM from the leader (who was offline during this UQ) saying they heard I had purposely gone out of my way to deprive my fellow members of a good experience, with logging out (to escape abuse) apparently solidified I did it out of spite.
I decided to go at it as a solo player, and told myself I'd never do another UQ.
I changed blocks again but... This time I found it hard to socialise with anyone. If people would chat to me, I would go quiet, bolt if asked to join anyone for stuff, and often pretend to be AFK and just lobby watch, forever torn between wanting to join the fun and not wanting to spoil it. I also made an Alt as Summoner class in hopes that maybe that class would work out better for me, and honestly it probably does but I find it such a dull class to play. Just a personal preference.
I do log into this game everyday. That can be a full session, or can just be 15 mins or so to knock out the daily missions. One day whilst I was lobby watching in a popular block, I actually jumped on a conversation when people were talking about Phantasy Star 2 on the Megadrive. There's lots of players who have been playing Phantasy Star since the Dreamcast, but it's less common to find people from the old bit days. Turns out the people in the conversation were in an alliance together, one of which being the leader. They invited me to join. I hesitated at first, telling them I hadn't had much luck with the social side of things. They told me they were a chill alliance, and a bonus is the leader and a lot of members were UK based, so no problems with time zones matching up. I went for it... However I still had issues socialising.
I often still lobby watched. I think subconsciously I didn't want to build up more social connections to have them severed again by my abilities. Honestly I'm not bothered about going to UQs, I'm more upset that the social aspect of the game is being hindered because of my ailment. We were in the second or third week of Halloween events when I joined this alliance, making Trick or Treat my first UQ since the dragon. It was a pretty easy one too, had a lot of fun with that one.
This alliance liked to have characters of NPC players too, spurring me to make one and try out ranger class. As much as I love my braver, Ranger class actually works stupidly well for me too, and honestly I don't know why I didn't try it sooner.
And yet despite this, I still couldn't find it in myself to properly be social again. I'd see events in Discord and say I was going to join in but then just didn't. I tried joining in with more NPC shenanigans but...
It was like my mind was telling me to back off before I was shunned again.
We had a lot of alliance drama completely unrelated to all that recently. It involved a rift in the officers and the leader leaving and taking most of the other members with them. To my dismay it was pretty much all the UK players that left, meaning I'd now often be logging out as all the alliance events were happening. I wasn't scouted for the new alliance. I guess I wasn't social enough, but to be honest I don't think I would've joined anyway due to my views on how the ordeal went down.
I want a 15* fancy weapon, so I've been braving the Persona UQ. To be honest I think I'm definitely getting used to it all, I'm managing to get through it with no deaths on both my Braver and my Ranger. I even decided to run with the alliance again... which got me invited to a 4 man trigger. Yes, I died a lot, but I needed that void stuff. To be honest, the alliance reacted very well to it, not bothered at all that I was down a lot. I took myself out of the equation for future 4 man triggers, but was pleasantly surprised that there was no backlash. The only thing that's bothering me is I'm getting advice on skill trees and tactics that I can't pull off, but that's nothing major. Hope they're not expecting to see any improvements.
This now small alliance is so different to the others I've been in. Maybe they'll react differently to my ailment, and I'm concerned that if I don't say anything that I may get pushed out. Should I tell them? I'm contemplating confiding in my alliance leader first and then seeing how they react, but then if they react negatively that could affect my position. I don't want to switch social blocks again, I'm enjoying the social atmosphere of the game again. Maybe I'm overthinking it, and these bad experiences I should just disregard as isolated incidents, but then I think of how well I got on with people in my previous groups before they found out about my ailment and/or how bad I was at the game.
What do I do? I genuinely don't know any more.
I guess what I'm trying to say is don't treat people badly for not being great at the game, and remember that the social aspect can be taken separately to the core game. You never know what your actions will do to people long term.

As someone who spends $1000+ a year on video games, here's my perspective on what is putting me off from spending money on RDO

I feel like Red Dead Online in general has highlighted some worrying trends in regards to Rockstar's design philosophy and I am concerned about the online experience in their future titles such as GTA 6.

I don't expect this post to have any massive impact on the future of RDO, but I wanted to share my expectations and attitudes as a consumer in hope that it might help Rockstar gain a better understanding of their audience. After all I have money that I am willing to spend and they seem to be after, there just hasn't been a reasonable incentive to do so.

For a long time GTA:O was my main source of entertainment and I used to regard Rockstar Games as the best video game publisher in terms of quality and value of the experience their games provided.

When RDR2 released two years ago, I was excited by the massive step-up in terms of complexity and immersion from GTA:O. I was also quite burnt out with GTA so I was prepared to turn RDO into my main source of entertainment.

I didn't own a console so instead I decided to save and build a high end PC in time for the game's PC release. I was prepared to commit 100% to this game.

October 2019 came, my PC was ready and I pre-ordered the Ultimate Edition.
I got the game, played Story mode through all of Arthur's chapters, but stopped when I reached the Epilogue - I was excited to get into Online and see how it felt. And then it all fell apart.

Meh, the game felt a bit GTAish at the start, but I didn't mind it so much. I think I experienced some bugs or technical issues that made me take a break from the game and wait for a fix.

I was away for the holidays and then travelling for work so I get back to the game in late January. I finish John's story too and then head back into online. At this point I'm greeted with a message that Outlaw Pass season 2 is in progress.
"Great, so I've already missed one?" I tell myself. I was not aware at that point in time that Steam PC players didn't even have access to Outlaw Pass season 1. But this was already starting to become a deal breaker for me and I'll elaborate on it further:

What is the appeal of Rockstar's games?

Let's take a look at GTA:Online, Rockstar's most financially successful title, success which they are probably trying to replicate with Red Dead Online.
I don't know what goes through the minds of other players, so I'll share my personal experience.
Before I stumbled upon GTA:Online in 2017 I had been mainly playing World of Warcraft for 3 or 4 years, but I was at a point in life where I just started my first full-time job and no longer had the time to pour into an MMO. I remember I used to describe it as "I come home from my job and have to log onto my other job" on raid night. I was also fed up with 90% of the game's content becoming irrelevant whenever a new update came along. it was just the same gameplay loop in a different packaging.

So what was so special about GTA: Online?

The biggest aspect for me was the Sandbox experience. It's an open world environment, you can fuck around freely, there is no linear gameplay imposed upon you or other restrictions that limit gameplay for the purpose of "balance".
You are also free to experience the game at your own pace. There is no FOMO (fear of missing out) mechanic dictating that you play now or risk being locked out of content permanently.

Another big element of GTA Online that appeals to me is Customization options for the purpose of immersion and roleplay. The game contains so many references to Hollywood tropes and it allows you to act almost any persona that crosses your mind: Pablo Escobar, killer clown, every Charlize Theron role I can think of, the list is endless...

One thing that GTA Online did well and I used to praise them over other games for it was the inclusion of Universal Reward/Currency. Any activity you carry out in the game rewards the same currency, it's always meaningful progress towards your next goal. You had the ability to purchase it via Shark Cards, but the microtransaction served as an alternative in order to save time, not as a means of unlocking content behind an exclusive paywall.
With the Arena Wars and the Casino DLC it looks like Rockstar has been experimenting with new ways to milk both "player engagement" in the form of time spent grinding secondary currency and revenue in the form of microtransactions. They can go claim to their shareholders "our playerbase is more active than ever and also spending money on the game". It just feels very limiting and at least the Arena Wars currency comes across as an artificial incentive for people to engage in gameplay that R* is not confident about it being popular on its own.

So I've established what were the most appealing elements of GTA:O as a consumer: 1.Freedom of Sandbox environment 2.Immersion and Roleplay in the form of customization options 3.Unique Currency serving as the means of progression

Now let's take look at Red Dead Online. You've got a Rockstar title that is expected to play out as a sandbox, but displays the characteristics of a live service game. Here's a definition of a live service game, see if it rings a bell

In my opinion, time-limited exclusive content should have no place in a sandbox game. I like the Outlaw Pass as an idea, it gives people something to work toward. I am just not a fan of the thought that development time goes into creating the rewards, they're added to the game, take space on my drive, but they are just locked forever with no means of obtaining them.
It just diminishes my perceived value of your product. "Oh great I didn't play from the start? Time for an incomplete experience." Not to mention the fact that PC players are getting an incomplete product by default because Outlaw Pass 1 was never available on their platform.
Some would argue that it's rewarding players who have been playing from the beginning. At what cost? It's also penalizing new players. Players that would've easily spent money on the pass, they just picked the game up too late, so now they are locked out of features forever.
As someone who has missed almost 3 Passes worth of content, this is my biggest gripe about the game and what's holding me back from committing to the game to the point where I'd be willing to drop real life money on it.
And I'm not arguing about getting the rewards for free. I am arguing for making that content available through other less efficient means. I didn't play the game when I was supposed to play it and now there's less content available for me. Oh sure, that'll definitely bring me back to the game and not make me abandon it on the spot. You can still reward players who buy the pass by unlocking the rewards for them, but why lock content forever and devalue the experience for any future player that buys your game? You could add them on a rare rotating stock for a ridiculously high gold bar price. There's a gold sink for you right there, now you're giving people a reason to spend money on your game. Or I don't even know, sell the passes again at some later time. You probably have the technology to allow players to purchase multiple passes and keep one active at a time. Just make old passes no longer reward gold or whatever.

Rockstar, you're concerned with reducing people's means of obtaining gold while also falling behind on delivering meaningful content. That's cause you're digging your own hole with your shortsighted approach on FOMO, working on adding content to the game only to then lock it away. But most importantly, you're establishing your stance: "Monetization by all means, screw player experience, screw a quality integral product, pay us right now or risk the game becoming more incomplete."

Some would argue that the Outlaw Pass is just cosmetics. I would totally get that point if this were a MOBA or a FPS or any other genre where gameplay is the predominant feature. But have a look at what's the most popular GTA content on Twitch: roleplay. Immersion and Roleplay have always been defining features of Rockstar games. Time-limited exclusive content just detracts from the value proposition of a sandbox game. If not cosmetic options, what else is there to work towards in RDO? It's not supposed to be a competitive game. K/D has no meaning, high scores have no meaning, It's a Club Penguin with guns and horses. Also the whole point falls apart because with Outlaw Pass 4 and 5 there are actual gameplay upgrades that are featured as time-limited exclusives,

The perceived loss of value from missing one outlaw pass was what made me drop the game again back in January. I picked it up again a month ago and I was actually enjoying it to the point where I was prepared to buy gold for the Outlaw Pass. Inaccessible content was a minor issue that I was willing to overlook since it didn't look like I missed out on any gameplay impacting features from previous passes. But oh boy, Rockstar, you didn't even try to be subtle in the latest update. You just reinforced the statement that you're after my money at any cost. I get that daily challenges had to be addressed, but at least the nerf didn't lock away access to content. But now you're taking gameplay impacting upgrades and holding them hostage behind a time-limited paywall. To me that's a sign that you're willing to compromise the quality of gameplay for a Q4 financial boost. It's very hard to justify spending money on this game at this point when there is no sign of good will from its developer.

GTA Online didn't need all these extreme incentives of monetization and look how well it performed. RDO feels like monetization came first and the game was build around it. Every feature feels like it was designed to psychologically entice me into spending and that's its biggest flaw. Everywhere I look I see a price, but I don't see value.

Rockstar and Take2: Here's some reasons you missed out on immense amounts of money by not architecting dedicated servers into your multiplayer setup

To bring everyone up to speed on network topology in games:
GTA Online uses what's called a peer-to-peer mesh network setup. This means that every PC/console on a connected session is talking to every other PC/console in that session. The preferred alternative for most multiplayer games is sever-client, where in every PC/console is talking with a single server.
With p2p mesh, this means that everyone shares authority. What this translates to is that a server is not the single authority checking for malicious activity, much of which anyone who has played GTA Online for is familiar with. This also means that anyone with the know-how can figure out what IP every other person is connecting from. This can lead to other malicious activity outside of the game.
But standing up dedicated servers costs money. Why not avoid that?
There are plenty of cases to be made where peer-to-peer connectivity makes sense, especially from a cost-savings perspective. But in some cases, like GTA Online, the benefits/gains from using a server-client setup far outweigh the costs.
So, in no particular order:

What Dedicated Servers Would Have Brought to RS/T2:

More purchases of cash in the Social store.
We'll start with the obvious here. When someone can get into a game and ask about [redacted method of obtaining money] and get a response 50% of the time, it's an obvious miss on being able to purchase prepaid in-game credit cards from the store. There's no incentive. And if they don't want to ask someone to do it, they can do it themselves.
Higher volume of Twitch streamers.
It seems easily correlated, but Twitch's research shows that livestreaming leads to better game sales. The reason this isn't streamed as broadly is because not everyone can get enough reliable people for a heist. Private sessions can be invaded by the same people who also [redacted method of obtaining money]. This is regardless of the privacy of a lobby, because those same people can find a unique identifier on the public Rockstar social site and join it, regardless of whether or not they're a friend or a crew member-- or simply not invited.
What this translates to are people who have such a low bar to pass to join a streamer's game and hold the experience hostage, crash the session or do any other number of malicious things. They can also impersonate people and send messages as them. So this further leads to things like not being able to do:
Twitch Rivals streams between competing streamer teams.
Imagine this: the game is pretty solidly protected from people who [redacted method of obtaining money] and those incidents they generate are rare, and when they do pop up, they're punished. So, streaming this game is far more viable. Competitive crews start forming, and Rockstar promotes an event with streamers where they're able to host lobbies and get 24, 36 or even 48 streamers in one session running 12 different crews for things like:

Business goods battles
Arena wars
Deathmatches
Races

And so on and so forth. But because items have to be obtained through legitimate game mechanics, it also implements a grind. Maybe these groups/crews have been running for a while. But then you'd also be able to do:
Streamer Drops through Connected Accounts
We've seen other games do this, where viewers can get "drops" into their game by watching the streamer play it. These drops could have been literally anything that was on the Diamond Casino Wheel of Fortune. It could have even been a bonus spin at the wheel, to encourage getting the player in the game.
The Long-Term, Sharded MMO Experience
This translates to cash because people would be continually playing the game, which means more people paying for in-game cash and general popularity because more people would be streaming it, but this is the bigger buyback to the player, too.
Imagine a crew that worked hard at completing a certain set of heists on hard difficulty, no deaths, consecutive. Four people who are streaming their attempt like people do for raid bosses. And their reward was a unique yacht only available for them.
A ranked arena war system that awarded players who got 100 wins with a unique vehicle or livery.
The system could have been adjusted to make some things a grind. Making that money with friends, and then knowing that if someone had a high-end apartment, much less a casino penthouse, that they earned it through blood, sweat and hard work.
Powerful crews that were running around and happen to land on the same lobby and an all-out war with tactics, reinforcements and a consideration of cash drain to get the win in Los Santos.
These are the things that Rockstar and Take2 missed out on by not having dedicated servers with protections against [redacted method of obtaining money]. They were on the verge of greatness. They were this close. And I know that a lot of this translates over for Red Dead Online, too.

Is It Too Late to Do All of This?

No, I don't think so. If RockstaTake2 were to seek redemption from this, here's what they'd have to do:
Implement a dedicated server gamemode, and only allow characters created for this game mode specifically.
If people want to continue messing around in peer-to-peer sessions, maybe they allow that for a time before slowly forcing people over (because it's all about that money, right?). But create a new character (or duplicate the looks of one), and make it only available for play on controlled, dedicated servers.
You can even put Ye Olde GTA 5 spin on it and have Lester come in and say, "Yeah, I know the simulation was pretty fucked, right? It got hacked by kids on Christmas break. But anyway, now that you know what's possible out there in this stupid, god-forsaken world, well... uh, perhaps it's time we started making some money. And you remember Fleeca, right?"
Then people start off fresh, and work on earning things through the grind. I promise you, that'll net you some untold money and viewership. And I have faith enough that even if you made a very solid push into authoritative client-host conversion from peer-to-peer mesh, allowing the authoritative client-host to be controlled by Rockstar servers, you'd get something out of it.
And I will put a disclaimer on here: I don't know if the game engine is so archaic that it wouldn't allow for this kind of change. And if that is indeed the case, then the only thing that I can say is you missed out on all of the above by choosing to design what you did, because it is a proprietary engine.
But if you can, imaginary Rockstar or Take2 directory reading this, please, I implore you. Push for the change. This has been one of the best social games for me during lockdown, and I can't overstate how much everyone will benefit from this.
Sincerely,
~The Village Idiot

Rockstar and Take2: Here's some reasons you missed out on immense amounts of money by not architecting dedicated servers into your GTA/RDR2 multiplayer setup

This is mostly written in the GTA Online perspective, though it has crossover into RDR Online as well.
To bring everyone up to speed on network topology in games:
GTA Online uses what's called a peer-to-peer mesh network setup. This means that every PC/console on a connected session is talking to every other PC/console in that session. The preferred alternative for most multiplayer games is sever-client, where in every PC/console is talking with a single server.
With p2p mesh, this means that everyone shares authority. What this translates to is that a server is not the single authority checking for malicious activity, much of which anyone who has played GTA Online for is familiar with. This also means that anyone with the know-how can figure out what IP every other person is connecting from. This can lead to other malicious activity outside of the game.
But standing up dedicated servers costs money. Why not avoid that?
There are plenty of cases to be made where peer-to-peer connectivity makes sense, especially from a cost-savings perspective. But in some cases, like GTA Online, the benefits/gains from using a server-client setup far outweigh the costs.
So, in no particular order:

What Dedicated Servers Would Have Brought to RS/T2:

More purchases of cash in the Social store.
We'll start with the obvious here. When someone can get into a game and ask about [redacted method of obtaining money/goods/vehicles/XP] and get a response 50% of the time, it's an obvious miss on being able to purchase prepaid in-game credit cards from the store. There's no incentive. And if they don't want to ask someone to do it, they can do it themselves.
Nevermind that the same group of people who can [redacted method of obtaining money/goods/vehicles/XP] will also just grief sessions. Better yet:
Better Control on Hackers/Modders
Anyone who is on the outside of RDR2 or GTA multiplayer has probably only heard telltale of what modders do in these games. Here's a list of what I've personally experienced:

Crash game sessions for individuals or the whole lobby
Send text messages as players in a session
Cycle the daytime so frequently that it can cause seizures
Blow up and kill all players instantly in a session
Join sessions regardless of session privacy settings (friends only, solo, crew only, invite only)
- This is done by finding a unique identifier in Rockstar online. I don't know the details; that's how a modder described it to me.
- This is especially impactful to anyone who streams, as they only need to see their in-game name and do the aforementioned to join their session and hold it hostage/ruin it. Getting rid of this yields more, is written about later.
Grab other players and teleport them around the map
Attach objects to players so they can't get anywhere
Cage players
Generate endless in-game currency (which is something Rockstar offers as purchasable in their store).

The list goes on. The biggest reason for using dedicated servers, honestly, is to get rid of the griefers. It's enough so that I've seen people ask if someone is running a specific type of mod, and they know the commands to use to get gifted vehicles, cash, etc. It's prolific and horrible.
But cleaning those things up and preventing them means:
Higher volume of Twitch streamers.
It seems easily correlated, but Twitch's research shows that livestreaming leads to better game sales. The reason this isn't streamed as broadly is because not everyone can get enough reliable people for a heist. Private sessions can be invaded by the same people who also [redacted method of obtaining money]. This is regardless of the privacy of a lobby, because those same people can find a unique identifier on the public Rockstar social site and join it, regardless of whether or not they're a friend or a crew member-- or simply not invited.
What this translates to are people who have such a low bar to pass to join a streamer's game and hold the experience hostage, crash the session or do any other number of malicious things. They can also impersonate people and send messages as them. So this further leads to things like not being able to do:
Twitch Rivals streams between competing streamer teams.
Imagine this: the game is pretty solidly protected from people who [redacted method of obtaining money] and those incidents they generate are rare, and when they do pop up, they're punished. So, streaming this game is far more viable. Competitive crews start forming, and Rockstar promotes an event with streamers where they're able to host lobbies and get 24, 36 or even 48 streamers in one session running 12 different crews for things like:

Business goods battles
Arena wars
Deathmatches
Races

And so on and so forth. But because items have to be obtained through legitimate game mechanics, it also implements a grind. Maybe these groups/crews have been running for a while. But then you'd also be able to do:
Streamer Drops through Connected Accounts
We've seen other games do this, where viewers can get "drops" into their game by watching the streamer play it. These drops could have been literally anything that was on the Diamond Casino Wheel of Fortune. It could have even been a bonus spin at the wheel, to encourage getting the player in the game.
The Long-Term, Sharded MMO Experience
This translates to cash because people would be continually playing the game, which means more people paying for in-game cash and general popularity because more people would be streaming it, but this is the bigger buyback to the player, too.
Imagine a crew that worked hard at completing a certain set of heists on hard difficulty, no deaths, consecutive. Four people who are streaming their attempt like people do for raid bosses. And their reward was a unique yacht only available for that achievement.
A ranked arena war system that awarded players who got 100 wins with a unique vehicle or livery.
The system could have been adjusted to make some things a grind. Making that money with friends, and then knowing that if someone had a high-end apartment, much less a casino penthouse, that they earned it through blood, sweat and hard work.
Powerful crews that were running around and happen to land on the same lobby and an all-out war with tactics, reinforcements and a consideration of cash drain to get the win in Los Santos.
These are the things that Rockstar and Take2 missed out on by not having dedicated servers with protections against [redacted method of obtaining money]. They were on the verge of greatness. They were this close. And I know that a lot of this translates over for Red Dead Online, too.

Is It Too Late to Do All of This?

[GAME] Anyone bored wanting to find a good mmorpg on your browser?

Anyone bored wanting to find a good mmorpg on your browser?

A Constructive Criticism on Genshin's Current Experience

DISCLAIMER: THIS THREAD IS FILLED WITH MY PERSONAL OPINIONS AND EXPERIENCES ONLY, AS SUCH, IT MIGHT BE DIFFERENT THAN OTHER PLAYERS AND PEOPLE WITH DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES.
This post is about criticism regarding Genshin Impact's current gameplay experience. This means, highlighting the good aspects of the game while shedding light on the current issues it has. This also means that it doesn't consider future known versions of the game, as it might be subject to change.
MY GAMING BACKGROUND I have been gaming for 17 years, and have played over hundreds of games throughout the years, which also includes puzzle games, fighting games, RPGs, MMOs, RTS, FPS, MOBAs, and interactive games. I've watched games grow and evolve, fall up and down in trend, and see how it shaped gamers today.
HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN PLAYING GENSHIN?
As of now, I'm AR31. I haven't completed every sidequest, nor have found every chest in the game (yet). I have, however, completed the main storyline, finished completing the oculi (geo/anemo), finished some of the side quests (some because I haven't found them all), and currently 9 star up until Floor 5 on abyss (I don't do floors until I can 3* every floor). I'm at the point where the endgame feels sluggish. There's no more content to do except doing daily battle pass, burning up resins, collecting Philanemo mushrooms from Monstadt rooftops, and occasional mob hunts for ascension mats. Basically, at the point where genshin just becomes a chore.
WHY AM I MAKING THIS POST?
I love genshin. I've told my friends to try it out, and still explore the world even if there's rarely any more to look for, expecting there's more content that I might have missed. I started since early October, and I'm still excited to login to genshin despite it being empty right now. With that said, I am hoping that this post lightens up the current issues the game is facing, as well as show the games upsides and downsides. No game is perfect, but I believe genshin can be SO MUCH MORE than what it is right now.
THE GOOD SIDE AND BAD SIDE OF GENSHIN
WORLDBUILDING
THE GOOD: Genshin's world is BIG. For a version 1 game with the promise of constant updates, casual gamers will always have content to look for. The main storyline is quite compelling, and exploring the world is initially very rewarding. It feels great opening chests, killing mobs, and getting loot. The scenery is pretty great, with a decent amount of flora and fauna without being flooded with cities and structures. There's also secret(s?) that tackle my interest (Nameless island in Monstadt, might be a few more). Monstadt and Liyue have unique experiences in exploration (Liyue IMO might be a mountain climbing simulator but it lives up to its name as the region of the geo element and it has a certain feeling of satisfaction reaching the top and then gliding down,while Monstadt has some areas where flying and gliding is important. Also, there's a middle finger mountain southeast of taishan mansion in Liyue). The bosses look GREAT and are actually frightening the first few times you see them. The music is beautiful as it has me listening to it even while in combat, or just simply exploring.
THE BAD: There's not much else to find after your initial explorations. The chest respawns aren't noticable. Little mob variations (I have hilichurl sickness). Domain interior is recycled (every domain looks the same when you go inside) and domains don't have specific mechanics to look for aside from party comps. For a big world, there's few awe-gasping structures to be found in comparison to the world size. Most NPCs feel lifeless.
THOUGHTS: Better respawn rate, add random-generated dungeons, more mob variations, add more interior design to domains, add more variation than time-attack combat, add more structures that feel mysterious and that goes deep into lore. Give NPCs more life (Give them voice at least). Arguably, the protagonist dialogues should be voiced too, but this is entirely my opinion, as some people actually prefer the silent protagonist (Persona style), but the witcher series somehow proved to me that voicing dialogues does indeed improve immersion.
COMBAT
THE GOOD: The combat system is great, it utilizes the party system genshin has, with elemental reactions/combos/synergies being the highlight of it. There's also launcher attacks that can possibly open air juggles. Limitless unit synergies. The dodge feels balanced thanks to the stamina in place.
THE BAD: No midair attacks. I'm talking about attacks that you can do while you are in midair, not the dive attack. Fighting airborne enemies with melee units is annoying, and hitting weakpoints being exclusive to archer units for big units like the ruin guards/hunters feel a bit bad (I'm a bit mixed on the weakpoint part, since I somehow feel that that's what makes archers great, but the airborne units like the ruin hunter and the flies feel annoying especially when your archer dies.) Midair attacks are also important for air juggling if they ever do enhance air juggles.
THOUGHTS: TBH the combat system is great, not much to say except that it would be great if we could do midair attacks or air juggles better, similar to DMC, pre GoW4, and KH, but possibly not as hardcore.
UNIT DESIGN
THE GOOD: Each unit is unique, usable, and well-designed (so far). The art is great or good at best, and each character's kit synergizes well thanks to elemental reactions, which make each unit great at any comp.
THE BAD: Amber.
THOUGHTS: Buff Amber pls.
GAME DIFFICULTY
THE GOOD: If you're just here to play the game for the story, exploration, and lore, then lucky for you, this game is playable and clearable with the free units given in the game.

THE BAD: For thrill seeking hardcore players out there, the only way to have a challenge in this game is handicapping yourself (I tried to kill a WL3 Boreas with a level 20 Amber with some artifacts and weapon smashed in, enough to deal 2% of his health per hit of charged arrow and enough to get oneshot by anything except the ice he leaves on the floor which deals damage).
THOUGHTS: For the open world, the difficulty seems reasonable. However, time attacks in domains aren't hard, there's no challenge aside from killing monsters faster. Of course this implies that the real challenge is building your characters, which is behind a resin system, and constellations, which is behind a paywall (of course for whales it's not a deterrent, but for f2ps, it's going to be a big problem if they make it something like kill 10 abyss mages in 30 seconds). My point being, the difficulty is not raised by (just) having better reflexes, but also by having better gear. My notion of "hard" is not a time handicap, but by punishing player mistakes, like slow reaction time, inefficient stamina use, or going in blind. The exception to this are the world bosses and elites, but domains can opt to have "hard" modes that give more loot, that is not time attack. However, I'm not saying that time attacks are ineffective at increasing difficulty, but making things spongier isn't the (only) solution, as it stands, I've never died to a boss (except on my amber vs boreas first run) or any mob, most of them was falling or drowning due to 0 stamina (jump attacks remove/reduce fall damage significantly, but can't be performed at 0 stamina). I might be wrong on how damage is on this game since I'm only on WL3.
RESIN SYSTEM
THE GOOD: ???
THE BAD: This is what I think of when I S*** so hard I get hemmorhoids and think this is the experience players should have when I play this game, because sitting on your PC too long and finishing contents in genshin means you're stuck pooping hard and painful just to raise your units past AR 30+ or so. Building a character can take a month or so, which involves: Leveling, Ascension, Talents, and TONS OF MORA. You also have to farm ARTIFACTS on top of that, since artifact stats are RNG, it can take you weeks, months, or a year to find the optimal stats for an artifact. For a game rolling out new content every 6 weeks, if they release better artifacts on top of a resin system, it will result in a very big problem: POWERCREEP. sure, this is a single player game, but all gacha games I've played have had this issue, at least at one point, and gacha games I've played are PvE oriented. Powercreep in itself is not a bad issue if it's at a reasonable pace, but since this is just version 1, I can be wrong and mihoyo might be good enough to deal with this. But resin is a very big hurdle to endgame.
THOUGHTS: Either they be more generous with fragile resins, reduce primogem cost for resin refills, increase regen rate and max cap, and reduce resin cost for claiming treasure (all of the above at the same time) , OR make resin a drop booster, OR remove it entirely. There's barely any competitive aspect to this game that warrants the stamina system. It's not gonna keep players playing, new updates and content will.
COMMENTS/OPINIONS ON OTHER CONTENT
THE COOKING SYSTEM: Right now it's useless. It could be useful on abyss, but abyss doesn't allow food buffs. It's an interesting mechanic, but the only use it has is if you don't have a healer in your team (domains or in combat against an elite/world boss), or if a unit dies at which point you use food to revive them during a fight. Outside of emergency use however, There's really not much else.
GACHA/GACHA RATES: First of all, I would like to clarify that, despite widespread info claiming "gacha" is a genre, it is, imo, NOT A GENRE BUT A FORM OF MONETIZATION. if you want to play using your money just go to your local casino or hit up your phone and download casino games. As such, "gacha" shouldn't be the defining genre of genshin, as the gacha is actually only restricted to earning units and rare gear, which is just a part of what genshin plays out; Genshin is, first and foremost, a hack and slash open-world ARPG. What this means for me, in big part, is that rationalizing the resin system just because there's gacha elements in obtaining units and rare weapons doesn't mean it should spill over to the RPG experience. Gacha =/= Stamina system. The rates for 5* suck, so to be fair, just reroll until you get the 5* unit you want and they'd still be usable in the long run.
STAMINA/RESIN SYSTEM: As I mentioned above, Gacha =/= Stamina System, MMOs have them too, for a multitude of reasons. Gachas I've played do have stamina systems in place, but does that mean every gacha game should have one? the answer is simply NO. Genshin is unlike any other "gacha" game out in the market; and I hope it doesn't become one.
CONCLUSION
Genshin, as of now, is a great free game with an immersive 20-40 hours of gameplay. As the game constantly will get updates, it is expected that more hours of gameplay will be put in the future. with a development budget of $100 Million, and a reported $100 million in 2 weeks, players SHOULD expect more quality content. The game currently has a vast world waiting to be explored, compelling story, great unit designs, a deep and interactive combat system, with huge potential for more. Despite the game's greatness, it is ultimately held back by the resin system, which hampers the only potential endgame content this game has to offer.
Rating: 8.3/10

What you are looking for is..... (Link in the Desc.)3

What you are looking for is..... (Link in the Desc.)2

First impressions from a complete fresh player

After 15 years, EVE Online is having it's first $1,000,000 battle tomorrow. Here is your guide to the action.

tl;dr: Four years ago there was an EVE battle where $300,000 worth of stuff was destroyed, and it made the news. After that battle, EVE’s greatest player, The Mittani, made a bunch of money selling out his massive 15,000 person super-organized gaming community to other games for cash. This went well, but then he tried to raise $150,000 in a kickstarter to get Sci-Fi Author Jeff Edwards to write a book about himself and a famous war he won in EVE Online. The rest of the EVE player community revolted against this idea, the kickstarter fell short in spectacular fashion, and the community then united to destroy The Mittani’s EVE empire once and for all, bank rolled by a massive EVE casino run by one guy. Towards the end of that war, the guy who ran that casino was banned because the CS:GO gambling scandal made the game company behind EVE afraid of lawsuits related to gambling. With no money bankrolling them, the EVE community split apart before they could deal the final blow, and now 15 months later, EVE’s greatest player is back for revenge in what could be EVE Online’s first $1,000,000 battle.
Hi, IAMA fleet commander in the MMO video game EVE Online. EVE Online is the game that many of you “love to read about, but would never actually play”. I don’t blame you, it’s a complicated time sink, and if you’re not careful it can add a few years to your college career (plenty of people take 6 years to graduate though, so it’s no big deal). It’s likely that the last time many of you read about this game was back in 2014 when roughly $300,000 worth of warships were destroyed in a single day, as reported by Wired, CBS, ABC, etc. Well, nearly four years later, a crazy timeline of events has led us to what is going to be EVE Online’s first $1,000,000 dollar battle, that will dwarf the size of the famous battle four years ago. This battle will be occurring tomorrow at roughly 20:00 UTC (3 pm US Eastern). Since plenty of you gamers enjoy reading about the crazy people who play EVE Online, I’ve decided to type up a simple guide to the battle happening tomorrow as well as the unbelievable events that led up to it, so you can continue to read about EVE from a safe distance.

A super basic guide to EVE Combat:

EVE combat really isn’t that hard to understand if you’ve ever played even just a few video games and understand basic video game concepts. EVE has many many ship classes, divided into three main groups: subcapital, capital, and super capital. But there are really only two that matter: Titans (the biggest super capital class), and Force-Auxiliary Carriers (the only capital class ship that can efficiently heal capital and super capital ships). Titans are the best ships in the game because they have the largest hitpoint pool by a large margin and they do the most damage. Titans are also the most expensive ships in the game by a large margin, which is why two sides with lots of titans rarely fight each other, and when they do it tends to make the news. The big fight that happened in 2014 that I mentioned above is the last time that two real titan fleets faced off against each other. In that battle, each side fielded roughly 80 titans, with the losing side losing 59 titans and the winning side losing 16 titans. Tomorrow, each side will field over 250 titans, and likely 1,000 support capitals and super capitals. The story of how the game went from a 100 titan battle to a 500 titan battle in 4 years, with no big battles in between, is truly amazing and worth reading for even the most casual observers, but before I get into that here’s a brief aside on why all the news media like to quote EVE battles in $$ values (hint: for clicks, but it’s technically accurate).

How did $300,000 get destroyed four years ago? And why is this a $1,000,000 battle?

Though a majority players are content to just pay the monthly subscription and play the game, EVE Online has a convenient method for calculating the conversion rate of in-game currency (called ISK, I’m going to use ISK from now on) to real world currency because it allows its players to buy “subscription time” and sell it on the in-game market for extra ISK. Basically, I can take $15 dollars, buy a 30 day subscription code, put that on the in-game market, and someone can use ISK to buy that game time and play the game for free. Using this, we can calculate the conversion rate for any ship or item to generate amazing headlines so the EVE players can justify how much time they all spend on this game.
Fun Fact: Just like other games with microtransactions, there are crazy people in EVE who blow stupid amounts of money on this game. Not many EVE players know this, but the current Chinese Player group (Fraternity Coalition) has had their current war funded by one guy for the last two months, and he has spent $70,000 doing that, and they’re still going to lose anyway, which is kind of hilarious.
But enough about that, let’s get to the fun part, the crazy story of how the game got to where it is today.

Why are $1,000,000 worth of nerds facing off in a battle tomorrow?

The great thing about this story is that we can pick up right where we left off in 2014. After that big giant battle, the winning side (The ClusterFuck Coalition, CFC from here on) were kings of the universe. While they didn’t own all of the space, it was clear that no one could challenge their power. Their leader, The Mittani, had built the largest and most organized online gaming organization on the internet, with an estimated member count exceeding 15,000 people, and capable of summoning over 1,000 players to login to the game at a moment’s notice. With nothing left to conquer, he decided to try and grow the CFC into something even greater. He had already started a gaming news website named after himself, so he started a Twitch channel to go along with it, and then started cozying up to people in the gaming industry. He started approaching different gaming companies and offering to bring the CFC to their game if they would give them special promotions and free ingame items, and this worked. They did this for Planetside 2 and H1Z1. The Mittani would constantly push these promotions on his members in the CFC, and for the most part this went pretty well.
Then, in late 2015, they decided to aim even higher. The Mittani had somehow gotten to know Sci-Fi author Jeff Edwards, and convinced him to write a Sci-Fi book about a war that happened in EVE Online. The Mittani was going to do a $150,000 kickstarter to pay Edward’s fee, and his media machine spun into full action to attempt to raise the money from not just the CFC, but the entire EVE Online community. There were two problems with this plan though: 1) The CFC was starting to turn on the idea of being constantly harassed for money, and 2) The war he wanted to write about was one that his side won, and The Mittani, famous among EVE players for his ego, was likely going to be the main character. The final straw was when he renamed his gaming organization to ‘The Imperium’, because ClusterFuck Coalition wasn’t advertiser friendly. The events surrounding the failed kickstarter are immortalized in one of /eve’s greatest post
The EVE community was ready to revolt, but it took the richest person in EVE Online to get them all together into a cohesive coalition capable of defeating The Imperium/CFC. That person was Lenny, who ran a wildly successful casino website where players could use ISK to play. Bank Rolled with virtually infinite money, the newly formed Moneybadger Coalition absolutely steamrolled the Imperium in a few months, taking every single piece of land they owned. The Imperium retreated out of their territory, and most of the Moneybadger Coalition was content to let them run away, satisfied that if the Imperium ever threatened again that Lenny would be there to throw money at the problem.Rock Paper Shotgun wrote a good summary of the war
Then, the CS:GO Gambling scandal happened, and the company that makes EVE Online, CCP, became scared that lawsuits could start coming their way if they continued to allow a giant casino website to run using in game money. This was exacerbated by the Imperium publicly whining and complaining about the casino website for weeks, until CCP made an announcement. The announcement declared that gambling was no longer allowed with ISK, and that they had identified one player who was trading ISK for real life currency against the rules. Though Lenny still denies it and no concrete evidence was ever provided, Lenny was banned from the game and all of his in game assets frozen. Moneybadger's bank disappeared in a single day.
It was August 2016 by the time the dust settled, nearly 10 months after the failed kickstarter, and the galaxy slid into a semblance of peace. But The Mittani swore revenge (publicly on his twitch channel), and what followed was the game’s greatest arms race, with the Imperium/CFC and the former Moneybadger forces each building massive super capital fleets. Over the past few months the Imperium has been hinting at a major invasion, even feigning a few attacks north into Moneybadger space. But that time is now over. Suddenly and without warning, the Imperium turned a harmless border skirmish into a full scale invasion, catching the Moneybadger forces with their pants down. Tomorrow is the first decisive battle of this new war, it could potentially dwarf the famous battle from four years ago.

So what will actually happen?

In all likelihood? Nothing. And it’s at this point that I must reveal the reason for typing this post. You may be thinking, “Wow, EVE has a really engaged community for someone to take the time to type up a post like this”, but oh how naive you are. The purpose of this post is to point out that the fleet commanders on both sides of this battle are nothing but complete cowards.
I’ll tell you exactly what’s going to happen. The Mittani will hype his people up for hours, and the Moneybadger people will do the same. Then their fleet commanders will get their fleets onto the field of battle and place them into their “safe zones” that they’ve setup for themselves (it’s a dumb new game mechanic). Then, they will stare at each other for literally hours, and send out NPC drones that they barely control that mostly do nothing, while leaving all of their Titans in complete safety. They will then each make up a bunch of excuses, declare the other side as “cowardly” for not directly charging into their defensive position, and tell everyone to log off from the game. Don’t believe me? Everyone in EVE knows this, even the players involved in tomorrow’s battle. I’m serious, here was the top post on /eve for most of today from a group within the Imperium
Don’t let these people tell you it’s “the game’s fault that they can’t fight each other”, it’s no one’s fault but their own. I’m just hoping that both sides don’t end up staring at their computer screens for 8 hours tomorrow doing nothing, but that all depends on the fleet commanders.

Phantasy Star Online 2 NA Confirmations, Speculations and Information

I thought I'd do a follow-up post to my previous post over here: https://www.reddit.com/PSO2/comments/evz3c7/pso2_na_misconceptions_pc_release_content_etc/
That one isn't going anywhere and I appreciate some of the comments and discussions that went on, however:

The post (and in some places, my responses) were rushed in some areas.
I will admit that I didn't make my intentions clear with the previous post. While some responses I made were meant to give some insight into what may be going on with certain things, other areas (e.g the status of collabs) were speculation, albeit ones based on research that went on.

For this reason (and the fact that the PSO2 Twitter released some new information), I wanted to do a second post that addressed some of the things I failed to address last time as well as make things more clearer. The information provided in the post is a combination of conclusions I made together with discussions I had with various acquaintances and friends on the Phantasy Star Fleet Discord.
With that said here we go...

Confirmations

PSO2es
The release of Phantasy Star Online 2 NA will not be accompanied with PSO2es at the moment. (https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1222957649915858944?s=20)
Xbox Live Gold
More of an issue to pick with Microsoft than SEGA, although Phantasy Star Online 2 is free to play as with many other free to play titles on Xbox One you will need an Xbox Live Gold subscription.
Windows 10 games that make use of Xbox Live do NOT need an Xbox Live Gold subscription.
No Character Transfers
A response to a question regarding character transfers has revealed that there are no plans for JP players to be able to transfer their characters to the NA version. (https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1222371507948548096?s=20)
Casino Confirmed
Nothing much really, the Casino is confirmed for Beta for those who had doubts it would be in the game at all. (https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1222707050741809152?s=20)
Group Chat & Voice Chat
In addition to the Group Chat introduced in Episode 6 a Voice Chat functionality has been added in the game. The way they worded it seems to imply that it will be between party members with no details on whether you'll be able to Voice chat with Team Members. (https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1223048445474242560?s=20)
In addition, one thing to keep in mind is that the Group Chat was a feature added to the Episode 6 client of the game. (http://www.bumped.org/psublog/countdown-to-pso2-starsepisode-6/). While it is possible SEGA might just have isolated the feature, keep in mind that features are tied to Client versions. If this is the case this might mean PSO2 NA will start off with Episode 6's Quality of Life updates and balances. Whether Episode 6's story, classes and content is gated temporarily on release will be seen.
English Dub & Dual Audio
In a surprise announcement, it has been confirmed that PSO2 NA will have full English voice-overs. (https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1222323522598526977) Apparently even Quna's songs have been dubbed to English. If this is a bother do not worry as the game will have Dual Audio options. This does however change the approach the game's text would have as dialogue boxes would essentially be transcribing the dub as opposed to just simply translating what is being said so playing the NA version in Japanese would make the text more of a "Dubtitle".
There is no information on VAs involved though hopefully, we can expect the same kind of quality we've seen with SEGA's other dubbed games like Judgement and Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise.
Closed Beta Content vs Final Game
It has been confirmed that the features and content available to players during the Closed Beta will not be indicative of the final release. So if content is gated (its beginning to look like the Closed Beta will be limited to Episode 1), please don't jump to the conclusion that the full game would launch in that same state. (https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1221535315422109696?s=20) (https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1223459098919723008?s=20)
No IP block for EU
A very vanilla confirmation to bring up, especially since it was brought up today but I feel its important to emphasize since it was a worry many outside of North America had. Today's tweet however confirmed that an IP block will not be taking place: https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1222967403895611392. Xbox One (and Windows 10) regions are not account bound so you can freely change your region to US or Canada to gain access to the Beta and eventually the final game from the MS Store.
Azure Cloud
Many people came to conclusion that "Powered by Azure Cloud" meant the game would be streamed akin to the likes of PSO2 Cloud or a Google Stadia game. The announcement of the game's file-size and that there will be future updates expected should confirm that Phantasy Star Online 2 will be running natively on Xbox One (and hopefully PC). To give some clarification about what MS Azure's use is for, Cloud Servers are now used to host game servers. Notable examples include Minecraft and Sea of Thieves making use of Microsoft Azure and Fortnite using Azure's competitor; Amazon AWS. According to a Japanese exclusive interview, the reason SEGA decided to use Cloud Hosted servers is to be able to cover more geographical areas much easier (Anyone who's played Phantasy Star Universe might remember that game being hosted on a single data centre in the West Coast)
SEGA ID
As a recent tweet from the social media accounts confirmed, Phantasy Star Online 2 NA will NOT be using a Western version of the SEGA ID. (https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1222586390094827521?s=20) This essentially makes PSO2 NA similar to Phantasy Star Universe's Xbox 360 version which utilized Xbox Live as your account. GamerTags are also present on Windows 10 which is how your Xbox One characters would be usable on Windows 10 and vice versa.
This doesn't rule out a Steam release or other platform releases just yet either. I can't vouch from Steam (*can anyone who plays Halo: Master Chief Collection tell me how you sign in to Xbox Live on the Steam version?) but in recent years Microsoft had been interested in rolling out Xbox Live to other platforms with Minecraft and Cupheads on Nintendo Switch making use of Xbox Live functionalities.
"All the Content" is still happening... to an extent
Like it or not, to many of us "All the Content" was very vague... all the content up to that time? all the latest content? do Collabs count as content? This entry is as vague as their post but if there is one thing to confirm... is that they are at least working on it apparently: https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1222956665621733376?s=20
Microsoft's Role
I want to make clear that Microsoft is NOT the publisher. According to a Japan-exclusive interview, Microsoft approached SEGA with the intention to have PSO2 released in the West and have one of its platforms be Xbox One. They do however bring up that they will be co-operating with Microsoft due to them having more experience managing Online games and dealing with the Western communities, though as we've seen... SEGA does have the final say regarding some matters (Phil Spencer couldn't comment about an EU release or account transfers)
Windows 10 Version-Release
No one knows EXACTLY when it is we'll be seeing the PC version released. However given some posts from the PSO2 Twitter (which I have put in one place here: ) we can probably narrow down a rough timeline of when we MIGHT expect it.
*The Windows 10 version releasing "later in 2020" was not meant to mean "later in 2020", but rather that it simply releases AFTER the Xbox One version. (https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1217980202858381312?s=20)
*The Windows 10 version is still scheduled for release during Spring. Now bear in mind that Spring lasts from March to May (or sometimes June?) so I'm not implying that both of them might launch simultaneously (https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1213892177224318976?s=20)
*I'm stretching "confirmations" a bit here but... its to be expected given how vague the PSO2 Social Media can be. There appear to be implications that some kind of Beta (Open or Closed) will be taking place for Windows 10. (https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1216039123355455489?s=20) (https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1220433244237303809?s=20)
I am aware that some scepticism may be present in trusting PSO2 NA's social media accounts, but given that most of what we know about the NA release (including the fact that its dubbed, has voice chat, Beta rewards) had been given out on Social Media and NOT put on the website... I think it's fair to say their information might be a bit more valid in comparison to the website for now (check in Speculations for a theory on why) which leads to...
The Website's Information As we already know, the current website has had problems in terms of updates, no Beta rewards announced, None of the new information posted there. Thankfully, the Closed Beta date announcement revealed that a new website will be going up at the same time as the Closed Beta. While we don't know all the new information that would be present on the site, we have gotten some hints that we will at least get to know a bit about a potential Community/GM Team. (https://twitter.com/play_pso2/status/1222245074911686656?s=20)
Terminology & Name Changes
As we already know, there are some names that are spelled differently and terminology changes that have taken place. Some of the terminologies that were confirmed to be for NA were first revealed to us through the PSO2 Episode Oracle official subs so it's fair to say it counts as a reasonable source for what got changed. Although this section is called "Confirmations", I bent the rules here a bit by me trying to explain the potential reason these terms were changed so please bear with me...

Patch Name	Official Translation Name	Potential Reason
Darkers	Falspawn	My only guess is, the localizers didn't like the name "Darker". SEGA JP's Official Spelling is "D-arkers" (You can see this spelling in the English track name in PSO2 Volume 1 Japanese Soundtrack). I seriously doubt it has anything to do with "Darkers being offensive" when the antagonist "Dark Falz" remains as is. These kind of changes are what is commonly known as "Woolseyism", look it up on Tv Tropes for reference...
Darker Infection	F-Factor	Changed to match new name for Darkers. Also creates an allusion to PSO1 and its "D-Factor" infection.
Dark Falz Double	Dark Falz Gemini	In addition to maybe the localizers feeling "Double" sounds like a weak name given the context, the Kanji used to spell Double's name actually means "Twins". Please check back with my original post for a more thorough explanation on this. So again, "Woolseyism" at work.
Emergency Quest	Urgent Quest	"Emergency" and "Urgent" are the same word in Japanese. This is also the terminology planned to be used for the 2013 translation and which would be carried over to the SEA version. My guess is... it also helps to avoid confusion with "Emergency Codes" since even now that's what people think got changed.
Naberius	Naverius	No idea why this change took place, especially since SEGA JP's official name spelling is "Naberius"... though strangely, although Nab Rappy don't have an official English spelling... the Katakana for their name reads "Navu" as opposed to "Nabu" while the planet is spelled "Naberiusu".
Campship	Gateship	Localizers used SEGA JP's official terminology. You can see this name used in the English track name in PSO2 Volume 1 Japanese Soundtrack.
Dewman	Deuman	Localizers used SEGA JP's official terminology. You can see this in the Opening video (after character creation) for EPISODE 2
Gettemhart	Gettemhult	Localizers used SEGA JP's official terminology. You can see this spelling in EPISODE 1's end credits.
Melphonsina	Melfonseana	Localizers used SEGA JP's official terminology. You can see this spelling in EPISODE 1's end credits.
Lisa	Risa	Localizers used SEGA JP's official terminology. You can see this spelling in EPISODE 1's end credits.
Tea	Tia	The twin's names were meant to be a pun on "Patientia". Official SEGA JP spelling is "Tiea" as seen in EPISODE 1's end credits.
Patty	Pati	The twin's names were meant to be a pun on "Patientia". Official SEGA JP spelling is "Patty" as seen in EPISODE 1's end credits.
Zig	Jig	Localizers used SEGA JP's official terminology. You can see this spelling in EPISODE 1's end credits.
Ulc	Ulku	No idea why this happened.
Photon Rings	Photon Halos	Attempted Woolseyism
Coat Edge	Coated Edge	Attempted Woolseyism

If by any chance I missed anything, please let me know and i'll try to keep this list updated
SEA Translation
Before I start this section I would like to define what counts as "SEA terminology". You see, portions of PSO2 SEA's scripts were based on that of the translation intended for the original 2013 release and are in fact SEGA of America's terms. Some of these terms include:

Lillipans Lagomites
Oodan Woodan
Fangulf Phongalph
Darkers D-arkers
Matter Board Paradigm Matrix
Mechs Automata
My Room My Quarters

With that said, "SEA terminology" by my definition, of course, refers to changes that AsiaSoft (at SEGA of Japan's request) did which usually goes against established Phantasy Star terminologies like:

Monomates Health Drink
Force Wizard
Braver Samurai (counts since Braver was in Phantasy Star Portable 2 where it was localized in the West as "Vanguard"... though this one can be allowed to slide since Braver in PSO2 are completely different from PS Portable 2's Braver class)
Techniques Photon Magic
Photon Arts Photon Moves

Terms like these were thought to make a return to PSO2 NA (and changes like Falspawn get compared to them... despite the fact that Darkers haven't appeared in a past Phantasy Star game). The class list today, however, made use of the proper class name "Force" and throughout various posts referred to Monomates by their proper name. So rest assured... despite all the name changes, the AsiaSoft terminology that goes against past PS games is not being used.

Speculation

Why no concrete date is given I'll keep this one short and simple, given what happened the last time the game was 'delayed', could you imagine if a REAL (and not just "actually cancelled but we say its delayed") delay happens how the community would react... yea...
Why information is different across Social Media and the Official Website
As many of you have known, there has been some conflicting information regarding PSO2 NA. First, the website says the Windows 10 version isn't expected until later in 2020, then the social media confirms "Later" does not mean "Late 2020", then another confirmation that states the Windows 10 version is still planned to release in Spring.
Simply put, the website hasn't been updated much, in fact, the most recent update only added the Closed beta date without including any of the new information revealed in the Twitter such as the Beta rewards (site stills says "rewards will be announced soon"), said Open Beta that was recently brought up, specific information (if you were new to the game, you wouldn't know about each Race and Class from the website... but the Social Media feed).
Hopefully, when the full website releases on February 7th we will get more concrete information on these details that the current "Teaser Site" has. (*Fun fact... did you know the PSO2.com domain is actually owned by SEGA Europe?)
Why the Closed Beta is exclusive to Xbox One
I will not disregard the complaints there have been about the Closed Beta being an Xbox One exclusive. However I at least wanted to give an idea on why Xbox One gets a Closed Beta. Simply put... its a new port and no matter how alike Windows 10 and Xbox One are there are still some things that would need to be tested on it, particularly in how it handles with Xbox One exclusive features.
Ideas on when the PC version comes out
So if you read the details above concerning the Windows 10 version's release, you'll know that SEGA can be quite vague with their information but have given us some details to narrow down a potential time frame for when we can expect the Windows 10 version. Furthermore, the game's website brings up "Windows 10 version coming soon" in a section talking about the Closed Beta and also responded to various people's comments with things like "Closed Beta test is for Xbox One. Windows 10 version coming soon". The vagueness comes in the sense that we don't know whether "Windows 10 version" refers to the full game or one of the Betas (Open or Closed), however assuming it is and combining it with the points previously brought up, one of the following scenarios might take place:

Only the Closed Beta is exclusive since, as was stated in the previous point, its purpose is to test the Xbox One port. Open Beta in comparison is more or less a test of server-load so it would make sense to have Xbox One and Windows 10 active at the same time. If we count the Xbox Closed Beta as the game releasing FIRST on Xbox One, this still fits the whole "Windows 10 version releases after the Xbox One version but not late 2020", especially if the Open Beta is planned to take place during Spring.
Following the Xbox One Closed Beta, Windows 10 might get an exclusive Closed beta followed by the full release. I can't give a timeline for when this could happen; at best we might get a Windows 10 Closed Beta not too long after Xbox One's, at worst... Windows 10 will be on Closed Beta while the Xbox One version's launched.

Windows 10 Version Will be UWP
I am aware that not many of us would be happy for this. However, from a development point of view it makes sense why the PSO2 Team might choose to do this. Currently in the Japanese version patch files have to be compiled for each specific platform... so now add needing to compile and put out patches for the multiple platforms and also prepare the patches for the NA version. Assuming the Windows 10 version of PSO2 NA is distributed on the MS Store, a UWP port of PSO2 makes the game nearly the same under the hood so only a single set of Patch files that work on Xbox One and Windows 10 would need to be created.
This in turn helps to explain why the game would be exclusive to Windows 10.

General Info

Who does the port
Game publishing, especially when it comes to MMOs, is not as straightforward as SEGA JP giving Microsoft or SEGA of America the source code to the game. All features and content for past version of PSO2 (SEA and Taiwan) were in fact developed by the Japanese team. While SEGA West (and/or their outsource responsible for portions of the game) might do things like translating the text and recording the voices, things like porting to Xbox One, programming Dual Audio support, Implementing Voice Chat and (once the game releases) developing potential NA exclusive content all fall on the development team in Japan who also need to work on PSO2 JP updates.
Circumstances Regarding other Platforms
Yes so... as much as I'd like PSO2 to be available on all platforms as Phil Spencer said, there are various circumstances that might affect their release in the West.

The PlayStation 4 version might be affected by Sony's censorship and cross-platform policies. While I am sure that the cross-platform policies may be easily solved by having PS4-specific blocks the censorship policies are another issue. Basically, as it stands Microsoft doesn't have as strict a censorship policy as Sony does (being more worried about outright religious references and what players do and say on their Xbox Live service). As a result, unless SEGA decides to self-censor, if the PC and Xbox One version have content that might be deemed unsuitable for PS4 then either SEGA would have to censor the game ONLY on PS4 or censor the game on all platforms to maintain consistency.
The Nintendo Switch... we live in a world now where Nintendo of all companies allows uncensored visual novels on their consoles and Sony censors em... so content-wise, PSO2 is MORE than fine. The problem lies in that the Nintendo Switch version isn't a native port but a Cloud Stream. Many people suggest throwing money at the problem will allow this version to be released, keep in mind that other Japan-exclusive Cloud-based titles on Switch from the likes of Capcom (Resident Evil VII Cloud) and Ubisoft (Assasin's Creed Odyssey: Cloud Version) aren't released in the West either... a proper NA release on the Nintendo Switch would need a proper port. While the Switch could probably handle PSO2 without problem, there is the issue of PSO2 having very limited storage capacity. (PSO2 NA is 70 GB). While its true the PS Vita version is smaller, it does have various graphical compromises.

Server Host
People bring up that Microsoft is "hosting the servers", I figured I would explain what this entails. The way MS Azure works... Microsoft has about as much involvement managing the server as Amazon does managing Fortnite (sorry for bringing it up!) servers. Microsoft Azure is a Cloud Platform that any company that subscribes to can use for various purposes, including hosting servers. Microsoft's responsibilities fall on making sure that service stays active, is well maintained and doesn't have problems. As such, SEGA's responsibilities involve less managing the physical servers and more managing the server software and what goes on in the actual game.
I'd like to bring up also that using Microsoft Azure should have no bearing on the game releasing on other platforms. Microsoft Azure is NOT the same as Xbox Live in the sense that it's more 'general purpose' and is something that even Sony uses.
No release date and Radio Silence since E3
I cannot explain the EXACT reason why SEGA does this sort of thing, but I will say that its not something specific to PSO2. There has been radio silence and lack of information for SEGA's localized 2020 titles, namely Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix and Project Sakura Wars. Much like PSO2, those games have only a vague 'release period' (Project Sakura Wars is also planned for "Spring 2020", Miku Megamix has a vague release period of just "2020").
This post may be updated over time so please check back from time to time, especially whenever a new update is available. Proper criticism on certain points I bring up will also be taken into account and changed accordingly (if you feel an entry doesn't belong to the right category, etc)
EDIT: New confirmations I forgot to add when I first wrote this.
EDIT 2: Added info on the dub (nothing new for many of us) and specified about the Xbox Live Gold subscription not being needed for PC. Also.. thanks to whoever gave me Silver and Helpful Award! ^{^} I'll be sure to keep us updated on things.
EDIT 3: I got Pati and Tia's name wrong. As a result, it doesn't line up with SEGA JP's official terminology. In addition, another terminology discovered, F-Factor.
EDIT 4: Rephrased some sections, added some extra details on certain localization entries and added an extra line on the origin of some of the statements said.

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