Skinny Peen

Absolultely NO MILESTONE locking the PA boost ticket. The idea of having a PA boost ticket is maybe good, locking it behind a "server wide milestone" is senseless. I would prefer we not repeat the same Illuminus Collusion shenanigans with the milestones.

Absolutely not, this should not be a discussion, end of story.

This is something Clem is really struggling with at the moment and I nor anyone that isn't on the balance team can give you or the community a definitive answer to balance overall.

I was not exaggerating difficulty, enemies were 76 levels above us. That is factual, not exaggerated. It is the fact that GM has level 5 Zalure on Clem. Sure you're not DPSing while applying Zalure, but when that lvl 5 Zalure is on an enemy it greatly affects TTK. You should give more examples of "a lot of classes are doing as good and the GM do". Your responses feel more emotive than constructive. "Just stop with GM lmao"? So you don't want people to give feedback on something that is effecting how the game plays? Should we just stay silent on things that need attention? Don't you play GM? Is this you defending the class you main? You should give more examples of "MF outperform GM".

I knew about being able to interrupt RM's attacks. To make things a little more clear, as a fighter, if you're agroed by RM specifically the timing window to try and dodge his attacks are small, especially if you've been hit and he's still attacking you. I agree with you that a boss fight should be a boss fight. It was really the other factors (the damage gates and the traps) that made the boss fight insufferable as a fighter. I also have to agree that if Howzer and RM could be CC'd infinitely it would render these enemies as a boss fight pointless. I kind of jumped the gun out of frustration. With that being said I think my point on the boss fight was understood, even if you had to read between the lines lol. And you are correct when saying that different doesn't necessarily mean bad, that wasn't the tone I was going for, but I didn't really go into much detail besides fighters struggling with the environment in the boss fight. Honestly after the traps were taken out of S2 IC the boss fight was felt way better to play as a fighter, I think this was the one change that made the boss fight tolerable. The giant level gap and the B3 and boss fight traps. These examples fall in the out of player control category, which made these parts frustrating. I don't think that forcing players to face enemies ~76 levels above you is good game/mission design. Getting hit for 1k+ damage by a handgun feels like being in an area that you're not supposed to be in yet, which is frustrating when you feel obligated to play this mission due to the limited time drops and limited availability. I really appreciate you pointing this out. In my opinion this mission seemed to be geared towards more experienced players, it didn't really feel balanced for the whole community. I do understand that this was the first custom mission, so there is always room for improvement. I figured the Milestones were a test. Don't get me wrong the idea was neat, it was just implemented weird. The Milestones being global (not just tied to the event) was a good detail. CLEM PLS FIX I LOVE this and really hope this is how the design of later custom missions and later difficulties will be implemented. I just want to thank everyone who participated in this discussion, even though I sort of disappeared for a few weeks immediately after posting the original post. It's really nice that all of you took this seriously and actually gave tangible feedback to something I posted based on my history with Clem. I think this discussion topic has given the Devs plenty of feedback for the future content in Clem. I am excited to see what comes next after this.

I’m usually not the type of person to have a serious take on content in Clementine. Most of what I post in the discord or in game is played up as a character, aside from my past piss-drunk rants or whatnot. I’m putting my shenanigans aside and want to be taken serious on this topic. This post is going to be a general review on the custom event mission Illuminus Collusion. I’ll then go into mass-detail on general gameplay and balance changes that I think need attention. Keep in mind this review is my opinion. I don’t know EVERYTHING about PSU or Clementine, but I feel like I have enough experience with past builds of Clementine to put my thoughts out there. Despite what an ass I have made of myself in the past in game or in the discord, I still care about Clementine playing and feeling like a good version of standard PSU and I think the devs need honest feedback for future custom content and overall changes. Illuminus Collusion: The Good Mission Structure and Setting · The mission overall plays like a PSU mission should. Going into the mission for the first time felt natural, like the mission had existed before. · The areas or “blocks” of the mission were done well. It looks nice and is fitting for a spring event mission. · The “story” behind the mission is short, but the fact that it exists was a nice touch for the atmosphere of the mission. · The area and scenery were done well for it being set at the Paracabana Coast, a favorite area of several players. · The missions “secret” is a neat idea. I was always a sucker for the event missions that had a secret on official. Having to work together to figure out how to complete the mission in full is engaging in my opinion. Rewards, Drops, Custom Gear, and Milestones · MP and Meseta payouts are fine compared to all other mission in the game. An update came out rather quickly after the mission was released that boosted MP and Meseta payouts. I don’t know if it was a mistake that it didn’t have this right on release. I think it was intentional and player feedback caused the devs to increase the payouts, but I don’t have substantial proof to back this up, this is just my take. · The customs gear is great mainly for Techer based classes. If you play a tech heavy class you’re going to want to make and use the armor and units that come with it. The set bonus for all units/armor are good for the current state of the game. · Drops are alright. After the clear box drop rate increase milestone the NPC weapons are a good Meseta farm. The HRP is either a must have for rod users or a great boost in Meseta for gunners/fighter/hybrids. · The Milestone idea is neat. I like that the player base has an incentive to play the event mission to obtain more stuff for everyone. The Milestone rewards give a lot of good stuff, so it makes sense that players are running nonstop for the goods the Milestones have to offer. Illuminus Collusion: The Bad Mission Structure, Again (Walking Simulator) · There is WAY too much walking. The first secret is immediately left upon entering the mission. To enter this gate, you must shoot a coconut (which can insta-kill you! HAHA funny!) in a palm tree to get a key in the first room, then you must walk all the way back to the beginning to fight one Grass Assassin. One. Grass Assassin…. Thankfully, a teleporter spawns after killing the Grass Assassin that takes you in front of the next area gate in front of a corridor with one Jarba and even more walking. · After clearing block three you are taken to a blue gate and must wait on all players to arrive. You then must walk to the boss teleporter. This walk was really cool the first time through. It fit with the story the devs implemented behind the mission. The knocked out or dead NPCs on the ground made going to the boss teleporter suspenseful. After your first time, you realize you must walk this path every time. This walk is LONG. You’re literally walking for around a minute just to get to the boss teleporter. A minute isn’t a long time, but for PSU a minute of walking with no enemies or goal is excruciating. · The mission’s secret was implemented poorly. As stated in the first point you must walk back to the beginning from the first enemy room to access the first secret area. Three of the secret rooms contain only one enemy. The clear boxes in the secret rooms can drop good loot, though. All the walking and one enemy per secret room (besides the bee room in block 2 and last secret room in block 3) makes the secret rooms feel forced instead of extra neat content. For example, I want the HRP, so I must walk all this distance and fight this one enemy for a slight chance at a good clear box drop. · Block one and Block two feel too open. The first room in Block one is huge and a lot of enemies spawn here. I feel like the huge area could have been mitigated with the crazy amount of walking. Like, instead of big areas and walking through long, empty corridors it could have been smaller rooms sectioned out through the blocks like most PSU missions are structured. The huge areas and long walks feel out of place for PSU. The wide-open areas seem like they weren’t really thought out in practice. Block three feels much more like I’m playing a PSU mission. I think block three’s structure is really good. The secret in block three is satisfying when cleared as it has two tough enemies and are usually the last ones to fight before the boss. Difficulty · Illuminus Collusion on S rank difficulty feels good. Its not too difficult and not too easy, especially block three with the narrow bridge and Barta turrets. · S2’s difficulty spike is INSANE. You will die in this mission at some point, sometimes multiple times. In certain areas is almost impossible to avoid if you don’t have a diverse party. I’m not saying that dying in a mission makes it bad or unplayable. But not having a healer for certain parts of this mission will result in multiple people dying several times. Going from tolerable enemies on S to absolute TANKS on S2 that hit like a freight train is frustrating. · Some players have structured a strategy to make this mission more bearable. One or Two players split to do the secret rooms while the other players continue with the mission as normal. The amount of players doing this is low, more often you will join a party of players that are not doing this strategy, making the mission take around 20 minutes. 20-minute event missions are not a new concept. In my opinion, this mission is too hard, takes too long, and for too little reward. When I say this mission is too hard, I don’t mean I or anyone else is incapable of doing it. Enemies take too long to die and can slap you for 1500 hp no problem. Wearing 40-50% armor with Legsless seems to do very little when a level 180 buffed Grinna Beta machine guns you to death in around a second. We are at 104 Level cap fighting enemies 76 levels above us. I’m sorry but that just doesn’t make sense to me. The Boss Fight · If you’re a fighter, you have it the worst in this mission. From super TANK mechs taking half damage to striking to Howzer and Renvolt Magashi not able to be CC’d. Fighters must be close to Howzer and RM to deal damage, and you will get hit most of the time by either of them. On S2, if you get knocked back, there is a good chance you will hit one of the damage gates. These gates tick a percentage of your HP, so if RM hits you twice, knocking you back into a damage gate, you’re incaped. Even with perfect 50% armor and Legsless you can die in 2 to 3 hits on the boss fight. Honestly, if you could CC Howzer and RM this boss fight would be a lot of fun. Instead, its constant incaping if you don’t have a healer (for S2). · (THIS IS MY PERSONAL OPINION ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOSS FIGHT) The order of the three bosses doesn’t logically make sense in the PSU world. It should be Renvolt Magashi first, then Seed Magashi, then Howzer. This is the order of their appearance in PSU and AOTI, so it would make sense to place them in this order for the boss fight. This doesn’t affect gameplay, its just attention to detail that I think was missed. Milestones · I stated above in the good that I liked the idea of the Milestones. But the Milestones for this event mission are just basic event mission extras locked behind a kill/clear count. · 2x PA and EXP payouts were standard with past events, why force players to “work” for these extras when we have already gotten them in the past? Same with Voloyal Coins, although not to the extent that this event offers. The Voloyal Coin payout is a nice addition for the Milestones, ill admit. But all the other rewards aside from the PSU discs were tied to the event existing. · The Milestones seem like a ploy to get players to test the mission out. This is okay and bad at the same time. Its okay as this was the first full custom event mission released by the Clementine devs and they needed the player base to play the mission to get feedback. Its bad in the sense that if the mission was good and a nice experience overall you wouldn’t have to rely on the Milestones to get players to run the mission. Hence why I pointed out that the rewards are things that came default with past events. Locking these rewards forces players to run the mission, regardless of If it is fun or not. I think most players won’t give any kind of tangible feedback for the mission. Mostly “It was good because I got stuff”. The State of The GameTM Gameplay · Hard missions and enemies DO NOT equate to fun and engaging gameplay. The mindset that Clementine must be hard to be fun doesn’t make sense to me. The test server proved that enemy HP scaling with party members was not fun. People complained and the devs dialed it back significantly. But then did a complete 180 with the enemy HP scaling per difficulty. 150 enemies on S2? With buffed HP? I don’t understand this. When the final release came out, AFTER the MP and EXP rates were changed to official rates, the party HP scaling felt fine. But now we have Illuminus Collusion on S2 difficulty with level 180 enemies. So does this mean that S3 will have 220 or higher level enemies? For what? Are we going to fight level 300 enemies at S4? Why? S2 enemies literally wiping your HP in one or two hits isn’t fun. Masterforce has it the worst in IC S2 getting one hit by most large enemies. Its driving people away from playing MF which is supposed to be one of if not the strongest class in the game. You cannot put damage on enemies if you are constantly on the floor having to rely on others to redo player buffs. · I recently watched official 360 Masterforce gamplay videos on Youtube and the gameplay looks fun! Throwing Diga at S3 Grinna Betas and killing them in 2 or 3 Digas looks great. Watching closely the Grinna Betas on S3 have around 20k HP. What happened? Grinna Betas on S2 with a full party on Clementine seem to have around 60k+ HP. Constant attacking and nothing dying feels bad. Clementine doesn’t have to be Official easy, but 180 enemies absolutely tanking everything and spitting in your direction resulting in an incap ON S2 is frustrating. It does not feel like PSU. Balance · Gameplay balance is… all over the place. Gunmaster is crazy powerful with level 5 Zalure with twin Mayalee, the stun shotgun PA, the 3 hitbox shotgun bullet AND an insta kill rifle PA. MF and FM seem like they are being left in the dust. MF is super squishy to the point of getting one hit by several enemies and FM cant compete with GM in most situations. GM having level 5 Zalure makes AT less valuable. Sure AT has level 50 buffs, but AT’s Zalure is a huge part of what makes the class work well. Giving GM level 5 Zalure throws off the balance immensely. · Gunmaster literally has no weaknesses. GM’s DPS is insane and its utility is unmatched, rivaling or beating AT utility in some cases. Level 5 Zalure with Twin Mayalee, insta-stun larger enemies with Barda Maga, speed boosted Killer Shot to wipe out spawns of humanoids/machines. The list goes on. Even enemies with bullet resistance get DESTROYED. · Limit Break is not a buff, LB is something techers should have by default. Taking away the 20% techers had before LB was figured out and implemented is counter intuitive. It seems like techer hybrid classes aren’t being inspected as closely as they should be. AT shouldn’t just be a party buffer, that’s not engaging gameplay. Masterforce, the squishiest class, has one of the lowest DPS compared to the other Master classes. Its primary LBs, Basic and Gi-Techs, requires MF to move in close to a boss or enemy for it to take effect. FMs already take a beating and at the rate the enemies’ ATP is scaling, its just going to get worse. The squishiest class should not be the weakest. · How is accuracy being balanced? The inaccurate classes don’t seem to be doing more damage than gun main classes. I don’t think that low range/low accuracy classes should be falling back in damage. For example, beast FMs using ANY double saber will hit 0s consistently. This is anecdotal, but when leveling Tornado Dance on my Beats FM, there were several instances where I hit four 0s in a row. FOUR 0s! that’s the entire TD PA! Content being a way higher level than the player doesn’t help the current accuracy problem. Several accurate striking skills have been gutted and the less accurate ones suffer. · (This point is more specific to Illuminus Collusion.) Fighmaster is in a comfortable spot in the majority of missions, but in IC, it falls behind significantly. With incap being so strong in the mission, it makes GM feel even more powerful but makes FM feel weeker. This doesn’t help that the humanoid enemies like to run a million miles away. Other fights have the same problem. · There should be an open resource for damage calculation. Like a public DPS chart for the players. This also sort of goes hand in hand with a drop chart. We had a drop chart for the test mission, why don’t we have one now? What’s the point of hiding this from the players? How is DPS being calculated in general? · How exactly is potential damage between the 3 damage types compared? What is the stance on which damage type should be the strongest? While it makes sense for the least defensive MF to be the strongest that doesn’t seem to be the case. Melee weapons having to deal with the most 0s and simply not having 50% element seems to not factor enough. · Meseta NPC rates. This is something that has bothered me since the final release went public back in October 2020. I don’t understand why NPC weapons and armors sell for so little. Like, I get that 120k for a 9 star armor is a lot, but nuking that down by like 90% to 9k per 9 star armor feels bad. 99% of the useful gear you obtain is dropped by an enemy or clear box, so why nerf the NPC meseta rates if the community controls the market via the player shops? To me this is counter intuitive. It feels too late to redo this system now. So now we just deal with getting next to nothing for NPC weapons and armor. IT DOES NOT FEEL GOOD. This change seems like it stemmed from literally nothing. Do the devs not want players to have meseta? Why? There was and is no good reason to nerf these rates. · Enemy incap rates to my knowledge have been fixed. But small enemies still cannot be incaped. This means Ares Espada is directly nerfed without being able to incap enemies that should be susceptible to incap. Why is Ares so weak still? Ares is supposed to clear rooms and now struggles because of the enemy incap rates. This is the same ordeal as Skadd’s potential and likely nerf. It just makes Paradi Cataract the meta when they should both be useful. Ares Espada’s damage in my opinion was nerfed too much. It should have been a tradeoff. Enemy incap was nerfed so therefore Ares should deal more damage. Instead, it gets both nerfs. It seems senseless. Espada’s range is straight up bad; Mars, Ares, and Gigas. Espada’s range should hit enemies slightly behind the player but is now struggling to hit directly in front and on the players sides. Espada’s range/hit box is generally too small. Cataract is supposed to be a utility-based SUV, while Espada is supposed to be a damage dealing SUV. Espada is designed to wipe out spawns, if its not doing that, it’s not doing what it is intended to do. Keep in mind that SUV gain is significantly lower than it was on Official JP/360 too. Final thoughts This review is long and dragged out. I think I covered most of the important stuff. This is not me drilling Clementine because the game is awful. The game is alright. It just needs changes that have thought put behind them. Its great that we have a way to play Phantasy Star Universe online again. The amount of work the devs have put into this game is incredible. The game seems to be at a crossroad right now and in my opinion has taken a few too many wrong turns. I am just one guy, one fan of PSU and Clementine so I don’t expect this review to completely change the state of the game. I just want the devs to have some concise player feedback from someone playing the game. -Skinny Peen

Its really not that serious

What does a psychology degree have to do with Phantasy Star Universe?

arent you under level 50 atm?

Nah fam

Skinny Peen / Cast / FM / lvl117 / TIME = 4:38

Yes.