PSO Questions & Answers

[Aleron Ives]

Are both discs the same region (both US or both JP, as EU doesn't have Plus)? If so, even Sega would allow you to switch between discs at will, so it's perfectly fine to use the serial from your regular disc along with Plus. You can even load your character with either disc whenever you want.

Note:

If you play on Sylverant, there is no double save, anyway, AFAIK. I think that was something Sega's server did, but none of the private servers copied that behaviour (assuming there's a way to tell when it's happening). Whenever I loaded into the Hunter's Guild, I only saw the saving message once, not twice.

[Celendo]

Yes, both discs are the US versions. Thank you for your reply Aleron Ives. I think that is what I will do. I didnt notice if the double save happened on sylverant, I will test it and report back!

[Aleron Ives]

I don't know what it's supposed to look like, so I can't tell if it's happening. The memory card icon only appears once upon joining a team. I had heard that double saving meant the game saved again as you were walking around the guild, but if that's the case, I would have thought that the memory card icon would be visible while that was happening, and it isn't.

[Treamcaster]

Where's the bug report thread? Anyways, I've found a bug in a quest today:

Mop Up 2
PC player created V1 compatible game

PC player (green gem loads fine)
-Yellow and Red gems load on the usual non-quest place (unlike the other one witch loads in front of the soldier);
-Main teleporter doesn't work for both of us, so we go down via pipe cast by green gem player.

[Aleron Ives]

That's a known bug. The PC player must not finish talking to the soldier until the DC players load into the Hunter's Guild, or the DC players will get stuck on Pioneer 2, i.e. the PC player must sit there and not advance the speech bubbles until the DC player finishes loading the quest. I already fixed it in my pending batch of Ver.2 quest updates, but I'm not planning to alter any Ver.1 quests.

The same kind of thing happens if PC players use their fast loading to start the fight with Dark Falz before DC players have finished loading: if that happens, the DC players will get stuck in the garden until form 3, and there's no way to fix that aside from PC players having the courtesy to wait.

[s3phir0th115]

Hi Guys,

So I just got a Dreamcast BBA, and also a copy of PSO v2 second hand.

Problem is, because PSO v2 is a second hand copy, it didn't come with a serial number and access code.

I see there is functionality to generate a serial number and access code for the PC version of the game, and there were certain areas I read in the past that said you could use that function and generate a code that you can ultimately use on the Dreamcast one, but the game isn't having it after I select New Game and try one of them.

My question is, can I have a Dreamcast serial number and access code generated, like can be done with second hand Gamecube ones, to play? I'll gladly provide proof of ownership if needed.

[Aleron Ives]

No. DC and PC serial numbers are in a different format, and DC serials are region locked with an unknown formula that makes it impossible to generate unofficial ones. You'll need to buy a sealed or like new copy on eBay with the original case. USv2 copies have a sticker underneath the disc with the serials on it.

[BlueCrab]

My question is, can I have a Dreamcast serial number and access code generated, like can be done with second hand Gamecube ones, to play? I'll gladly provide proof of ownership if needed.

Generating and registering any non-official serial number/access key pairs for any version (other than PSOPC) is explicitly against the rules of the server.

Other than that, I don't have anything to add to Ives' response.

[s3phir0th115]

Ok, I've ordered a new copy on ebay, and fortunately the seller of the original one is willing to give me a refund. Luckily the one I found was reasonably priced at $13 with free shipping.

Thanks for the info, hopefully I'll be able to join you guys soon.

[BlueCrab]

Glad you were able to get your problem sorted easily enough. Welcome to the server!

[tellet]

So, what's the diffrence between sdrops and not sdrops (default) ? I've read that it's the SEGA Server Droprates.

Does the rates only change and not the drop chart?

[K_I_R_E_E_K]

sd drops uses the server drops to determine what drops, usually they are the default sega ones with the default drop rates, but they might be tweaked directly to include drops for events for example.

No sd drops means the drops are the ones on the host disk, this doesn't necessary mean they are the original ones, it may and it may not, depends on the files on the disk itself.

Sd drops was probably a feature to change drops on the fly without having users to download isos or patch the game with the new drops for a seasonal event, it also made possible modded players to enjoy regular drops once in a while if the host decides so.

If you are a player with the original files and sd drops has no extra drops, then there is no benefit in using the command, the calculation for the drop itself may be "more random" (if that makes sense) but the results are the same, same drops, same chances.

[Aleron Ives]

Note that you shouldn't rely on /sdrops on GC right now, because the people who have tested it have found that it drops a lot of random things that it shouldn't drop. The feature still needs more debugging on GC.

[BlueCrab]

If you are a player with the original files and sd drops has no extra drops, then there is no benefit in using the command, the calculation for the drop itself may be "more random" (if that makes sense) but the results are the same, same drops, same chances.

More uniformly random would be a better way to describe the server-side drop functionality in comparison to Sega's built-in drops. The pseudorandom number generator that Sega employed in the Dreamcast versions of PSO is notoriously bad. It gets stuck in ranges of numbers and is pretty predictable. Definitely not suitable as a random number source on its own (which is how Sega used it for drops).

That said, I believe Sega did improve the random number generator in the Gamecube version of PSO so that it isn't as crappy as that that was used in the Dreamcast versions of the game, so there's probably very little benefit to using it on Gamecube, even when it is fully working (since, as Ives pointed out, there are some kinks to work out in it still).

[Thoranhippo]

Hi there!
I just got started playing online on Sylverant. I'm a GC user, there's a couple things I was wondering:
- My characters are obviously bound to a section ID; can we go around other section ID's online?
- I was looking at getting Photon spheres and such. I could farm hundreds of Photon drops but that could take a while. The Festivity on the beach quest has some in the rewards; however I need some "Hearts" and "Masters" from the Maximum attack quests; how do I get those?

Thanks!

[Aleron Ives]

Your Section ID is generated from the name you chose when you created your character. The only way to get new IDs is to make more characters with different names. The Section ID of the leader determines the drops of the team, so you can also play with your friends who have different IDs to get access to the drops on those IDs.

Getting the MA Photon Spheres takes a long time and requires you to get the maximum number of kills in the MA1 and MA2 quests and then to exchange hearts with characters of other classes and Section IDs who have done the same.

[Thoranhippo]

Righto;
getting PD and PS seems really important. Any suggestion on where to get them? Pso-world suggests Lost Heat Sword, 1 PD per run does take a while though.

[Aleron Ives]

They can drop anywhere, but they aren't that important. You use them to add percentages to your weapons (which is useless on most weapons, since you're not allowed to add Hit), add specials to S-Rank weapons (which is also useless if you haven't beaten Challenge mode), and to buy various items ranging from AddSlot to Photon Booster (which is probably the most useful option). Photon Drops are only popular for trading when at least one party wants to do one of these three things (or wants to trade again with someone who does). Most people won't trade uber rare items for PDs and will only part with their stuff in exchange for an equally rare item (or a combination of several items that aren't as rare).

[Thoranhippo]

I see, I didn't expect to hear that. Is that because end-game tend to use Hell type of weapon or because S-rank cannot get added %? I had in mind that if I gave 100% on native to my red sword (for instance), I'd be able to slash through forest areas much faster (+ 600 ATP or so).

[Aleron Ives]

Percentages only affect the base ATP of the weapon in GC, so yes, on Red Sword you'd get ~500 extra ATP from sphering it. Most weapons don't give very much ATP, though, so sphering them isn't worthwhile, e.g. mechguns that would only give you +50 ATP from having 100%. It's also often more useful to just get a better weapon than it is to spend the hundreds of Photon Drops it takes to get a weapon to 100% on any one attribute, especially since a weapon with higher base ATP will be stronger against all enemies and not just those of a particular attribute (which is important in Episode II, since attributes are always mixed). Forest is easy even with 0% weapons, so Native is probably the second least-useful attribute (with Machine being the least useful, since very few Episode II enemies are machines). Most people give their weapons A.Beast and Dark, since those are the attributes of most of the enemies in Seabed, which is actually semi-hard enough to warrant having percentages on your weapons. Having a Hell Raygun with 50+ Hit is more effective on several of the enemies there, though.

Don't get me wrong, it's probably worth it if you find some sort of super sword that has 50+ Hit on it, but you could probably get more from your Photon Drops by trading them with others. The only effective way to get enough of them to sphere stuff is to trade away your other rares for other players' Photon Drops. You'll never find enough on your own, since you need an obscene number of them to reach 100% on a single attribute, let alone on two attributes or on multiple weapons.