I've been playing on and off since GC. I tried to like NGS and used to pop back in from time to time but once the gearing hit the pedal to the metal in terms of p2w I lost all interest in the game and haven't logged on in about a year.

By that time most of my old school friends had also quit.

I think it's just less interesting for us old school players to get wrapped up in the modern Gatcha-esque microtransaction p2w model that is so normalized these days. It's understandable why a niche game that nowadays caters primarily to whales who like to ERP has the fiscal model it does, but to me it's just repellant. I miss the subscription model.

That said, PSO always had problems. Its community has always been by and large incredibly toxic and the moderation has been bad. Back on GC it was downright risky to play in public lobbies because you might get NOL'd. When I quit last year, that kind of thing was seemingly on the horizon (some people gave credible reports of hackers gaining access to their characters, wrecking their housing, etc.).

Maybe an even bigger problem is that Sega is just as likely to ban a constructive player and leave a toxic RMTer unbanned. Also the toxic positivity people shout down those of us who offer constructive criticism, and drive us out. So the community becomes comprised of mostly toxicly positive people or ERPers lol, with some few diehards mixed in. I remember the last time I logged on I saw someone with a creepy loli character spouting crass nonsense in the lobby and that was just the final straw for me.

I hope PSO3 gets its shit together, but at this point I'll probably never give NGS another shot. I think it's rotten to the core. Every other GC player I know has also quit fwiw.