When Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis was first launched this past July, fans were happy with the overhauled graphics and combat, but there were complaints about the lack of content. At the time, those quibbles were explained as launch issues. It’s now October, and Sega is addressing why New Genesis still doesn’t have much gameplay content.
In this week’s PS02 New Genesis Headline Operation Report, Sega community manager Hiro Arai fielded a series of questions that have arisen over the past few months. He pointed out that New Genesis is scheduled to get major updates every six months, which will bring new regions and stories. The upcoming December update will add a new region as well as a new chapter. It’s a different approach than PS02’s more frequent updates.
Because there are big gaps between the updates, and because the game launched a few months ago, the dearth of things to do has been even more noticeable for some. One piece of feedback reads, “There is not a lot of playable content. Please update it more frequently, like you did with PS02.”
“Allow me to answer that,” began Arai. “The difference in the frequency of updates between NGS and PS02 is as I described before. However, the dev team also thinks the small range of playable content in PS02: New Genesis is a big problem. They have taken your feedback and will make some significant changes based on that.”
“Planning and production are already underway for a higher volume of content to come in updates after December, so players can enjoy the game even more,” Arai continued, adding that Sega will need some time to solve this problem. He said,
“We do plan to further enrich the game, so we ask for your patience.”
PS02: New Genesis was a massive overhaul with a revamped graphics engine and updated game system. One must wonder if the developers focused more time on those elements than things for players to actually play. Sega is clearly aware of this issue and is apparently working to rectify the problem. But will players be patient enough to stick around?