Anyone still play this over private servers? Got my broadband

>>2817079
I play on Ephinea, it's alright

Schthack broke up because they're all niggers that can't get along some shit and probably some combination of everyone jumping ship to PSO2, making it pointless to maintain anymore

>>2817082

Yeah, I feel ya. Fuck Sega for not making an NA version of PSO2. I want to buy the jap version but that's a lot of nonsense just to play it and not know wtf is going on

PSO is awesome, played the original DC version way back in the day, still got my save file but using it online is a pain nowadays.
Easily the best game on the Dreamcast for my money, even with all the cheaters, although even the cheaters were pretty high quality. I can't think of any other games where somebody could maliciously overwrite your save with a random low level NPC.


It's a shame that schtserv went down. It might not have had the best admin team but it really feels like the end of an era.
Lately I discovered a pretty good PSO-like game in the sadly not retro (just turned 10 years old on Monday) .hack//fragment for ps2. They definitely weren't subtle about how much they loved PSO, I haven't tried the private server online mode yet and this is pretty off topic so I'll shut up, but yeah PSO is great.

>>2817101
You know it's free, right?

>>2817101
You aren't missing anything. It looks pretty and feels nice but you always 1 shot everything, and the exp rate is insane so you hit max in under a month of even casual playing.

You can't even get excited over a rare drop (which happens about 20 mins into the game and every mission from then on) because you'll outlevel it within the day.

The days of PSO where you can slowly play through a mission with your friends and get excited over your gearset are gone. Do you remember the crowd that used to run TTF all day, every day and nothnig else? That's all of PSO2.

>>2817354

This makes me sad.

>>2817354
I felt the same way. It has the visual asthetic but it doesn't feel exactly the same. Don't get me wrong - I had fun for a hot minute but otherwise I really did appreciate the pace of the original. Shit, I just like the franchise in total. Not exactly on topic but I downloaded Ephinea BB recently to just stab at every now and then.

>>2817302
I'll have to look into fragment.

>>2817302
>>2817781
So one thing I don't really get about fragment, isn't it incredibly repetitive? I don't mean in the regular dot hack sense but it's actually designed to have not much going for it mechanically. I've played almost every game in the series and their wonderfully made to look and feel like an MMO but if you actually look at the character building, or what's required of you there's not much to it.

I guess in PSO terms I imagine all of Fragment to be like running the maps over and over, without any of the missions. I fear it'd get dull really fast.

>>2817801
>isn't it incredibly repetitive

I could see this. I'm fairly sure that it was just a quick tie in to give people what they wanted plus some of the charm is the ability to build your own dungeons with the map maker.

Some of the pleasure that came from PSO was how repetitive it was. Like you said, there were missions and obviously playing with people would add some flavor to the gameplay. I've played the first three games for that franchise but I couldn't say how quickly I would get burned on it.

>>2817836
>>2817801
Fragment has an offline mode which is more or less like the original mode, but apparently the developers of the private server are working on custom events and bosses.

It is tremendously boring, nothing at all like PSO, hard to set up and also not retro.

>>2817852
>Fragment has an offline mode which is more or less like the original mode
I err, meant to say offline mode is more or less like the original 4 games...

Do you guys remember playing the rappy festival mission? That board-game was so slow and shitty but was tons of fun when playing with a full group of friends. Playing soccer in the lobby was also pretty awesome, especially if you were all in chairs.

I know everyone on /vr/ is pretty burnt out on PSO, but it's a shame there's no other game we can all jump into and have similar fun with. I feel we're overdue another community game invasion.

>>2817894
>I know everyone on /vr/ is pretty burnt out on PSO

You can get burnt out on PSO? News to me.

>>2817903
Well over the years I've started 3 or so initiatives to play PSO with /v/ + /vr/, they usually start out pretty well but then 3 or 4 guys turn to hacks and that gets passed around or players start running TTF exclusively and they quit a week later.

If there's a group of people out there who just want to chill in the game, maybe play through the missions, that'd be swell but 7+ years and counting and I've met only a few. The majority seem to prefer to hack, get PSO out of their system for a bit and leave.

>>2817925
I would be more than happy to be part of a steam group. There was one I joined four years ago that eventually kicked people that weren't playing everyday. If there was something casual I wouldn't mind joining and hopping in every now and then. I'm >>2817781 but I don't know if you guys play on Ephinea.

>>2817894
not /vr/, (and also not playable online anymore) but Phantasy Star Zero for DS I think is the closest they ever got to recapturing the general feel of PSO.

They added a few techs and weapon types, broke up fields into multiple sections to work within hardware constraints, and added a dodge-roll mechanic, but otherwise it's pretty much PSO exactly.

Shame the story was so bad.

>>2818432
Yeah, I missed the boat with that one. PSU was another one, I've heard almost nothing but bad things but I never hear a good reason other than it's different. I'd have liked to play it at the time if the servers didn't shut down so quickly.

>>2817354
You've fairly accurately described how the current gameplay from level 1-40, but 40-75 isn't like that at all. Except, sadly, for the rare drops. You're right in that anything less than 'endgame' rares is just mag food not worth grinding. But the game can still be a challenge at relatively low levels & you're certainly not going to be 1-shotting anything late game.

I only played PSO on the DC for the first time about 3 years ago. I'd really like to be able to experience the online, but I have absolutely no way to get a dial up connection (student halls, we don't even have a landline), and even if I did I don't think I'll ever get to know what the game was like back in 2000.

Had to buy a second copy of the game, as some asshat scammed me for a GC copy. Ill be on Sylverant in a few days.

>>2820140
I'm not sure anybody is ever on there, in fact since schthack went down I don't think I've seen a server above 20 people. It's a real shame.

>>2818432
PSP PSO games are bettter.

>>2818783
40-75 isn't like that if you're soloing, but mpas are literally just particles and big numbers all over the screen. Even at 75, mpas start to become turn your brain off boring after a while.

>>2820148
Never played'em. I heard good things, but they where based on PSU, so I assumed they where radically different from the PSO experience.

>>2820373
>they where based on PSU, so I assumed they where radically different from the PSO experience.
Correct. They do throw away a lot of the worst parts of PSU, and bring back a couple of PSO ideas (even going as far as to bring back the diamond shaped drops in PSP2) and refine gameplay but they still suffer greatly from being based upon PSU in both gameplay and setting.

>>2820445
At least it can be played online with emulator.

>>2820459
I read about that, apparently you need to give some dude complete access to your network? Sounded sketchy.

>>2820793
Not required, just recommended.

>>2820793
It's just your standard VPN software like hamachi.