Thread: PSUJP Update 11/1: Birth of Guardians' Boost Road

Info page here

Boost Road main site here

Guess Sonic Team decided to address the fact that nobody was going to find out about the new drop table if everyone's running new missions and/or just v2 missions; also to address the ever growing concern of the "no charge" party. So with that comes the birth of a new ingame system, Guardians' Boost Road.

The simplest way to describe this is, for a set period of time, ST will designate a set of missions, and put them in boosted condition. The boosted bonus could be anything, some example conditions:

• Boosted drop rates
  Boosted EXP
  Boosted Mission points

The boost system works as follows: The designated missions will have conditions set for them that affect the level of bonus they designate. Repeatedly running a mission will up the boosting rate. Also, the boosting rate goes up with the number of actual players in your part (much like the expansions' meseta system).

The first invoking of GBR will be held over the 5 v1 missions.These missions are:

• Raffon field 1/Mad Creatures
  Raffon 2 De Ragon/Plains Overlord
  Lakeside/Mad beasts
  Endrum Base
  Denes Relics

The bonus: drop rates.

Duration: 11/1 - 11/29

Personally, I think this is going to help eliminate the "hotspot or bust" situation a little bit, as well as educating players the new drop table changes. Also, since this is a system change, and not just an event, GBR in the future might surprise us with a few more unexpected bonuses, outside of the ones we know will come.

Rare rates up (drop rates and rare rates aren't the same).
Meseta rates up (like we need this, but it could still happen)
Boosted Stats (This has been hinted at before)
Boosting Certain types of drop.

It's really up to ST to decide.

Pardon moi, but...what's a "no charge" party?

Remember, its just to drag people to other areas. Even if people were to sit in the lobbies and encourage soloing, remember what made no-charge popular in the first place: The mission was easy to run and it was profitable. Most v1 missions don't even follow both, and are pretty much excluded from the meseta rule, due to v1 plays still existant.

While no-charge will always exist I don't think its going to encourage it any more than the norm. Even to this day, no-charge makes up maybe 10% of the available games. If you aren't able to find a party to play in, you're not looking in the right place.

On 2007-10-26 09:41, Xaeris wrote:
Pardon moi, but...what's a "no charge" party?

No-charge party is a translated term from the Japanese, as in no-charge to afk level you; a.k.a. the mooch party.

The basis of this is due to the new meseta system; with more actual people in party, the meseta count goes UP. So what happens now is players will start a no-charge party, and get people to join them, asking them to go back to the town or outpost they were in. While underhanded, its rather a win-win situation. The player gets to solo the mission for well over 5x the meseta he would normally get soloing by himself, and the rest get to reap rewards PA Frgs if its S, and free class experience.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Lyrise on 2007-10-26 09:52 ]</font>

And this has become a popular convention? Everyone on the JP server sees "no charge" in the title and knows what it means? My, you have to be impressed at just how much organization random strangers are capable of when it comes to finding ways to do less work.

Thanks.

On 2007-10-26 09:49, beatrixkiddo wrote:
Other people join and stay in the lobby while they AFK. They get the MP reward at the end of the mission, and the "payment" they give is in the form of boosted meseta drops in the mission. But since they're outside, they don't get any of that meseta, so they're "paying" for the MP, in a sense. It's madly popular on the JP servers, especially for short easy missions (most AoI ones).

It's popular in the sense that whenever you createa game like that, it WILL fill up in less than 30 seconds, no need for guarantees. Starting one isn't that hard but running it might suck a little if you don't have great equipment. Of course, most people in their party comments will give an estimated time of run completion, allowing people to decide if this is the one they want to sit in (see? Even moochers have choice.)

That said, there is a declining number of no-charge parties lately on the Japanese servers. Probably due to new areas, general loss of interest, etc. It may just pick up again later, but as of now, there's clearly less.

Back on topic though, Boost Road should be interesting in that its pretty obvious ST designed it to spread out the population over as many areas as possible, without turning the affected areas into the next hotspot (other than rare rate up, but that's an entirely different story).

I mean, the first Boost Road is for Drop Rate. Meaning if you needed materials, or some low end S rank, you can get it. Since it doesn't affect rare rate, it won't quite attract people looking for boss drops and whatnot.