The sad state of GC

A few months ago ST added Guardians Cash to PSU. We already covered it twice. Today I want to talk about one of their practice in that domain that could lead to their demise.

While GC is acceptable to upgrade your items and armors, find rare items that already exist in the game or completely new items that are more for looks than actual use, it poses a problem when you can use GC to find the best weapons in the game. Note that all those new best weapons are better by a significant amount. They’re no small upgrade. Getting them will definitely improve your character by a long shot.

Why is that a problem?

Well, ever thought of what you will do when your characters are completely maxed? You could continue to hunt for less interesting items (because you can’t trade GC items). You could TA all the high level missions (20 of them maybe). You could play with your friends and kill things without any goal. And… that’s about it.

PSU’s endgame is all about improving your characters. When you’ve done that, sure you can TA a few days, but that’s about it. And you just got all the best weapons handed to you in exchange for some real money! Better look for a new game to play when you reach this point. And just fire up PSU when there’s an update with all its great new (old) items and new (difficulty levels for existing) missions.

Thankfully they didn’t release the best Fighmaster or Gunmaster gear through GC at this point. There’s still hope. But if they do, it’ll be an interesting day in the world of PSU JP.

Masterforce is already even more screwed than the other types though. While no better rod has been released yet, they got their best wand released through GC: Motav Prophecy. And sorry for those who couldn’t get this, but the best TCSM was released as the kill-count reward of the Absolute Zero event: Okikudohg. Of course, many people couldn’t get one. Of course, it’s account bound.

The Upgrade Device

Anyone who’s been keeping up with the AoTI supplemental update will remember a foreword about the ability to pay cash to upgrade and tweak your weapons. A possibly neat feature even if the thought of spending money on top of your subscription turns your stomach. Well with the recent almost all-round disappointment with the Guardians Cash missions, in light of shunning those this update came a bit suddenly. The Upgrade Device (Shortened from “Supervisor’s Office Upgrade Device.”) has hit just as hard as the cash missions in terms of price. Here are the wonderful deals up for grabs as posted on Psupedia:

Weapon grinding

Weapon grind Req. GC 0 → 1 10 GC 1 → 2 20 GC 2 → 3 30 GC 3 → 4 50 GC

Weapon grind Req. GC 4 → 5 80 GC 5 → 6 120 GC 6 → 7 160 GC 7 → 8 250 GC

To get to +8 then costs a whopping 720GC, or around about $7.20 (£4.30). Paying for guaranteed grinds may sound like a pretty sweet deal, I mean otherwise say for Srank weapons you’re going to have to hunt down Grinder Base S (or just buy a load for ~30k meseta each), synth and pray a few come out +10. Then pray the weapon doesnt break on the way to x/10, which if your luck is anything like mine is pretty much guarenteed. In the end you may end up with a 5/5 or worse. So if your luck is like mine, you may consider upgrading your very best Srank weapons this way, but only those who are the most brave and those with the greatest confidence in their luck should try to then use grinders to take it to +10, because if it breaks you may end up paying your way back to where you were. However, even for many Sranks this isn’t really worth it unless you are really willing to pay extortionate amounts for minimal extra damage. With the possible exception of a 50% Agito Repca, I can’t see myself using this on any weapons.

Weapon Repairs

Grind limit repair Req. GC 0/0 → 0/1 10 GC 1/1 → 1/2 20 GC 2/2 → 2/3 30 GC 3/3 → 3/4 40 GC 4/4 → 4/5 50 GC

Grind limit repair Req. GC 5/5 → 5/6 100 GC 6/6 → 6/7 150 GC 7/7 → 7/8 200 GC 8/8 → 8/9 300 GC 9/9 → 9/10 600 GC

Related to the above I’m sure. I will laugh heartily at anyone who pays $6 (£3.60) to un-break their 9/9 weapon only to have it then break back to 0/9. This picture from the JP uploader neatly summarises the financial minefield this could become: http://www.psuxxx.info/uploader/src/up2098.jpg

Attribute Modifications

	Attribute rate after upgrade	Req. GC
Remove element	0%	100 GC
Change element	No change	750 GC
Add element	10%	800 GC

At first I was bewildered as to why anyone would want to pay $1 (60p) to remove the element on a weapon and make it neutral, then maidenessen pointed out that you could use to to have multiple attempts at getting a decent element Falclaw. That essentially turns that option into a gamble of sorts. As for that atrocious fee for adding a chosen 10% element, it is utterly laughable. Change Element is expensive enough, but at least I could use that on a weapon that dropped at a high %, but not with an element I desire. Of course I could also just sell it in the player shops!

Attribute Percent Modifications

Attribute rate	Rate of increase	Req. GC
1-10%	+1%	5 GC
10-20%		10 GC
20-30%		20 GC
30-40%		40 GC

I misread this at first. I first read it as 5-40gc for +10%, which you know seemed pretty reasonable. I’ll pay 40cents or 30p to turn my 36% into a 46%, sure, why not? In the position I’m in on JP it’d take a good while before I’d find make or buy a weapon like that, surely? And then I stopped being quite so dumb. That’s 5-40GC for each single increment! To take a weapon from 1% to 40% would cost you 750GC. Now you’re hardly ever going to see a weapon at 1%, in fact since aoti it’s quite unlucky to synth anything below 20% for that matter. Elements also make the biggest difference in damage, so its not so bad. That said, even though it’s the better of the deals listed so far you could still luck out and get something above 40%, plus numerous 40%ers arent too expensive either on the japanese server anyway.

I have to wonder what it is Sonic Team wants to do with Guardians Cash. These tweaks really don’t give any significant advantage over non-paying customers (in fact if anything lucky non-paying customers get a significant advantage instead) and many of them act as a means to gamble depending on how you approach them, expensive gambling at that. You’d think that in order to justify these high prices you could take your weapons to the max, 10/10, 50%ers, all that junk. I suppose the potential to ruin the economy with guarenteed top-end weapons may have put them off that thought, and frankly I doubt the JP community would have liked that idea much anyway. About the only use I can currently think for this is to boost weapons to 40% which a) don’t have a board drop and b) don’t drop with an elemental percentage higher than 30% or so. For example: Mugunburga. 40% mugunburga does sound might sexy to me. Does it sound ~$5 sexy? I’d need to be feeling a might frivilous and have a significantly better disposable income than I currently have but that not totally in the realms of insanity, unlike the rest of the offers listed here. Of course I could spend the money making a really awesome Mugunburga to sell in shops for some legit RMTing, too. Ho hum. So in conclusion far too expensive once again and only barely useful for a very limited selection of equipment.

As for the reaction so far from the Japanese community, it’s been about as positive as their opinions of the Guardians Cash exclusive missions when they came out, complete.with numerous quitting pics being added to the JP Uploader. It remains to be seen what actual harm this update will cause to the server population as a whole, though. I expect we’re in for a few star-counting images over the next week or two.