In a previous post I said I wouldn’t be spending any money on World of Warships unless a special event or a specific Black Friday ship showed up. Well, I’ve got mixed feelings on this, but it looks like the Enterprise B will not be making an appearance this year. They chose Saipan B. Enterprise B was my condition for any and all Black Friday purchases which is disappointing because Yoshino is a ship I’m actually saving coal for in the armory. Just buying the Yoshino B would have saved me a lot of effort and let me focus on a different coal ship like the Immelmann or something. Pommern B would also have looked nice beside my Tirpitz B and Scharnhorst B, but assuming Wargaming doesn’t seriously improve before then, that’s not happening either.

I guess it’s just as well. My wallet has endured enough and my time is precious these days.

Speaking of my wallet and my time, I’m also getting to a point where I may start pulling back from Phantasy Star Online 2 and New Genesis as well. Sega had probably the easiest setup imaginable, but because of terrible release schedules and next to nonexistent player progression, they’ve managed to shoot themselves in the foot multiple times. I’m having a really hard time figuring out why they’re staying on their current course and not switching things up for the sake of the player base. They shouldn’t be banking on the hardcore PSO2 crowd to carry NGS through this content drought. They should be moving things forward as quickly as they can.

Hell, even I’m putting more time into Final Fantasy XIV than NGS and I vastly prefer the latter’s combat and UI. FFXIV is a newer game than PSO2 with vastly more content than NGS, so it falls into a sweet spot that made the switch extremely easy. Now I’m not the type of person to drop a game for good when things get boring. I’ll come back if things get interesting, but in the big scheme of things, I don’t matter. It’s the huge swaths of players that do drop these games for good that matter here. First impressions matter and I really hope Sega doesn’t think that the competition isn’t relevant here. They’re not going to be able to bring back nearly as many players at the end of the content drought if they stay their course. Moreover, the content they’ve let us in on isn’t looking to be anything spectacular or game changing, either. I’m actually worried it’s going to come down to the new Mission Pass system and the new area, because raising the level cap, adding more skills to the existing classes, and introducing one new class, is about 5 to 10 hours of new content at best. What then?

Even Rappy Burst threw in the towel, and I don’t blame them. I’m not quitting, but I’ve been on a bare minimum approach to playing the game for more than a month now. I only log on to buy and sell items on the player market, try out new looks for my characters, and do daily missions and alpha reactor gathering. That’s it. Unless there’s someone to chat with, NGS doesn’t warrant a second more of my time at the moment. I hate to put it that way since I love this game, but it’s just gotten that stale thanks to Sega’s quiet, stubborn, drip feeding of content.

I don’t know why this is so hard for them. I’ve heard spectacular ideas from people who play NGS on how it can be improved at next to no cost to Sega, and I’ve even come up with a few of my own. What we’re seeing from them right now could easily be mistaken for self sabotage. It’s honestly baffling considering PSO2 and the way that game is structured. It’s a huge game and it’s an old formula for success that Sega could shamelessly copy without much if any complaint from the players. Why are they putting all of us through a content drought with no player progression or NGS specific achievements to hold us over in the meantime? Is this an attempt to preserve the PSO2 side of the game? If so, that’s stupidly dangerous because the player numbers in general are going down, not just NGS. There’s no new content coming in for PSO2 so the state of NGS is going to have a direct impact on PSO2 as well. Sega needs to account for the short term and not just think long term because a lot of people aren’t coming back. Why should they? There are other great games out there that will respect the time they put in and reward them accordingly.

If there’s a Chocobo Burst out there I’m sure I’m going to run into it soon.

Shifting gears, it’s good not to sink too much time into these games. I’m more concerned with their health and longevity than how long I can enjoy playing them. No matter how well they are or aren’t doing, I’ll pull back from things if I feel they’re getting in the way of my own work. So this isn’t all bad; I just want WoWs and PSO2: NGS to do well for as long as they can. Live long and prosper and all that.