Awkward NA PC Launch of PSO2

Strap in folks, because I am certain this mornings post is going to seem more like an airing of grievances than a review. Yesterday was in fact the North American launch of Phantasy Star Online 2 on the PC, a game that we have been waiting nigh on eight years to arrive on our shores. To say there was some pent up demand is a bit of an understatement. I had played the game on Xbox One and it was fine, and as such I had a handful of characters already created and associated with my Xbox Account. My start should have been easier than most but was plagued by several issues that ultimately will define this game launch.

Using the Right Microsoft Account

First off, lets get this out of the way. In order to play Phantasy Star Online 2 you must be using Windows 10 and you can only download it through the Windows Store. This means that you are going to need a Microsoft Account that should in theory be the same account as one that you have used on your Xbox if you have ever owned one. There are many valid options for a Microsoft account including but not limited to Hotmail, Outlook, Skype, Microsoft Store, Xbox Live, Office 365 or any other equivalent Microsoft account that you might have.

The challenge that I ran into specifically is that for years I have used my Outlook.com account as the account associated with Windows and my Xbox Account through the Xbox App. Since this game installs through the Windows Store and not the Xbox Game Pass beta app, it kept trying to use my Windows account instead. If you run into this problem you can pretty easily swap your Windows account by first converting your login to a local one, and then associating a different Microsoft account with it when you have finished that process. Going through this process allows you to maintain all of the configuration that was associated with your account, whereas just logging in another windows account without this process would create a brand new profile.

PSO2 Uses WUDO

WUDO is Microsoft Windows Update Delivery Optimization, and it effectively allows you to receive update packets from other computers. You can determine if you want to turn this completely off, allow it only on your network or allow it for the internet at large. Normally speaking I would suggest turning this shit completely off because it is spammy as hell creating a significant amount of “chatter” on Port 7680. However Microsoft Windows Store games appear to use it for distribution, essentially allowing you to be downloading from the store and several peers who already have the completed game at the same time. If you start downloading and it is going extremely slow, you might flip this setting on under Settings > Update & Security > Delivery Optimization.

PSO2 Relies on Xbox Live Friends

This isn’t much of a bullet point, but PSO2 is going to pull in all of your friends from Xbox Live. This is awesome if you already own an Xbox system and have a friends list ready to go. This is awkward if you have never owned an Xbox and are having to build a friends list from scratch. You can invite folks as friends in game but even this process is a little strange. My suggestion would ultimate be to configure the Xbox App on Windows 10 and do your friend invites through that, as the interface seems considerably more rational.

PSO2 Patcher Hates Dxtory

One thing I encountered is that the game finished downloading and when I clicked play, the cursor would spin for a second and then nothing would actually ever launch. I checked Task Manager to make sure there were no hung versions of the launcher. Ultimately I rebooted and the game patcher launched fine. Later on I started up my game capture software of choice Dxtory, and then experienced the same behavior of the patcher not launching. I shut down Dxtory and once again had restored patcher function. I am not sure what other game capture software is impacted by this, but if you run into an issue where the patcher is not launching, you might try shutting down anything that is performing a Direct X Overlay or does any sort of capturing. Once the game launched, I was able to turn back on Dxtory without any issues, so this is going to require additional research.

Late 90s Game Configuration

Every single player went through a sequence yesterday. They logged into the game, balked that it was running at 1280 x 720, and then got frustrated that they could not figure out how to change this in game. Remember those games in the late 90s and early 2000s where you had to launch a separate configuration program to set the resolution? Surprise, that is exactly what you have to do with Phantasy Star Online 2, and this can be accessed through the Environment Settings button on the launcher.

This will allow you to configure “Virtual Full Screen Mode” which is effectively Borderless Windowed mode. The oddity that we all noticed is that you can configure the size of your window, but once you toggle on full screen that setting disables. Essentially what you have to do is set your resolution first and then flip it to Fullscreen and it appears to keep that resolution. While you are in here I highly suggest going over to the Graphics tab and also disable the live video playing in game. This was a significant cause of stutter for me last night especially in the Gate as new players were constantly loading in.

The configuration options seem to be limited to 1080p or lower, and GeForce Experience recognizes that PSO2 has been installed but seems to not be able to actually correctly configure it. The configuration file that is important can be located in your Documents folder under a “SEGA\PHANTASYSTARONLINE2_NA” and is called “user.pso2”. The above screenshot shows the section that you need to modify. For example I have configured mine to run at 4k resolution, and it appears to have worked just fine. Your mileage my vary if you need to try a specific custom resolution. It seems as though you might be able to do dynamic sampling as my working theory are the 3D height and width are what the game is rendered at and the other settings are what size the actual screen is.

A Full House

So far Sega/Microsoft seems to be extremely cautious about launching new ships, because prior to the PC launch there were only two ships available on Xbox. For much of the day yesterday Ship 2, the ship that all of my characters and friends are on… was showing as completely full. However during prime time last night all three servers were showing full. It appears that capacity can be scaled in two directions, by adding ships and then by adding blocks to those ships. There was a point last night where I could not leave our Alliance Quarters because there were no available blocks to move into. However we noted that brand new blocks were added to the server which seemed to fix the congestion.

This leads me to believe that “full” doesn’t mean full at least not in the way that it does with Final Fantasy XIV. They don’t actually stop players from creating characters on the server, but it denotes the blocks reaching a certain level of congestion. This ultimately bodes well I think for the health of the servers because as they populate they can either grow or shrink the total number of blocks, which now makes sense why they have been so slow to add more ships to the list.

Create Your Player ID

One of the first things you will want to do after selecting your ship, and likely before actually creating any characters is to set your player ID. This option is free the first time you do it and can be found on the Support Menu immediately after ship selection. If you do not do this you are going to show up to other players as PN and then a long string of random digits. This effectively allows you to set a friendly name for your account, and I highly suggest doing this as it will stop some future confusion in the “who the eff is messaging me” department.

Finally You Can Play the Game

I decided to go back to my “Mandroid” appearance since I mostly just look like I am wearing heavy armor. There are certain body parts where having a human head on a CAST body would look real disturbing. All in all once I jumped through the many hoops above, the game launched and performed admirably for the majority of the evening. I am sure I will provide additional posts in the coming weeks as I dive into other features of the game because it absolutely seems like PSO2 is a giant box of confusing systems. The core loop however is enjoyable to me, but it is more of a Destiny 2 type of loop than something along the lines of Final Fantasy XIV. Drop to the planet, kill a bunch of stuff, get a bunch of loot… sift through said loot and feed some items to your Mag, rinse and repeat.

I did manage to play with some of my friends for a bit, but the same issue that I always run into reared its ugly head. A lot of them aren’t really available until 9 pm, and that is generally when I start trying to shut down for the night since I get up at 5 am each morning. We ran through a really fun map that was themed on Ancient China… which was not something at all I expected from this game. In my own personal progression I finished the night at level 22, and have a ton of quests and stuff to do on my own. mostly I am just enjoying running around and shooting things… and not questioning the subsystems too heavily at this point. I loved playing this game back in the Dreamcast days, and while they have added a bunch of layers of complication… the core gameplay loop is still enjoyable to me.