Toshiwoshi

Same happened in my clan. We always had like 15-20 persons online every day just some months ago, and now you are lucky if you find someone else playing when you login. We went from doing 2 VT raids, 4 BT raids, 1TT and prepare 1 ET every week, to now not even having enough people to raid. I don't even have any wish to keep playing the game as is, and even if I think UE4 will be great for the game, I don't think it will solve anything if the developer keeps doing changes on their own without listening to the community of players. You can't keep milking the players to the limit, reducing the rewards and increasing the costs of basic things like the weapons, repeating again and again and again old events, and expect players to applaud when you announce UE4 for 2020. Blade and Soul is a game that doesn't have any social feature, it is based completely in character progression and combat. Combat is very fun, that's true, but last patches have completely screwed character progression, at least for those of us who had to level up our GC weapons. You can't expect to keep increasing the costs of things (like weapon upgrades), and have the playerbase happy. Also RNG is good at some degree, but you just transformed this game to Blade and RNG... Just let the players chose, add guaranteed rewards or RNG boxes, and let the players chose what they want (with chance of RNG being worse or better than the guaranteed reward), at least then we won't have the feel that we are farming for absolutely nothing. And really, if we are doing an event to get tokens of that event and then get a selection of clothes or accesories, don't ask for fabrics to open the boxes of clothes, we already worked in the event to get the tokens and get those boxes, for god's sake... There are so many things to be fixed right now, things that you changed to the worse slowly since Jonathan Lien left the team months ago... I really hope that the big patch in december will be good for the players, because sadly, lately every single patch has changed the game to worse for us.

They already answered: There are no plans to change this. Did you ever see a company sabotage their own game before? Here's a perfect example, it's what NCWest has been doing in the last 3 to 4 months.

I'm completely tired and unmotivated to play the game as is right now, I can't even afford to level from GC6 to GC9 thanks to the wonderful "reduction" NCWest gave us. And every time I think in a frash start in UE4, it sounds better for me, as long as adds enough changes to not be just the same with better lightning. Just play, enjoy, and not caring about having to buy things from F10 to be able to progress like they pretend you to do right now.

I've been watching the stream for 3 hours to get the assassin's suit. After 3 hours, I've tried to claim the reward, and for like 5 minutes only said "Server Busy, try again later". When I finally could try to claim the reward, this is what I got: :claps sarcastically: If you were half decent, you would let claim the suit for at least half an hour to avoid those server busy situations.

Why I'm not surprised? One day we will get patch notes or event description that will prove to be accurate, and we won't know what happened there. Lately I prefer to laugh at things like this, in the end it's only a game. You just have to learn to not trust a single thing they say about the game, and if you do that, playing is always an adventure. You never know what will happen next, like surprise changes to the game hidden in patch notes, changes that are completely different as stated, different rewards that change after you get them... I used to get angry about that but not anymore, I guess I'm just tired of getting disapointed. What amuses me the most is that most of the time, they seem to be as surprised about the changes as we are.

I don't think he's insulting you. Maybe he was slightly mean, but he's right. I'm afraid you missunderstood what the new jewels were for, but in the article it stated correctly what those were for. Maybe you can ask support to revert them back to legendary Jewels for you. NCSoft is lately making many mistakes to be blamed for, but in this case, I'm afraid it's only on your side.

Do you really think that after the last few patches we don't deserve a clarification? Im sure you expected all of this when you read that letter on June, right? At least I didn't read "We will increase the ammount of effort you need to do to get lower rewards than before. We will also put wrong patch notes, and hide changes that we know you won't like.".

When Jonathan Lien was producer of the game, one of the things he usually did was writing Producer's letter where he explained what were the plans for the future of the game, and what we should expect to see in the game. That was very useful for us, the players, since we learned what to expect in the next months. Now, with the new management of the game, we are lost. And what's worse, in the last few months the game is becoming worse with every patch. Yes, there's usually a few good changes in the patches, but mixed with those are usually horrible changes to the game that no one asked and that makes everything more and more expensive for the players. I used to be optimistic, but lately what you are doing as a company leads me to think that there are only two possibilities: You don't know what you are doing because you don't know the game at all, or you just want to destroy the community of players and close the western servers. You now may think "What an as***le this guy is", but let's face it, this is what it seems for almost every single player in the game. You can't keep doing what you are doing in the last few months and think that we are just a toxic community because we don't like any changes, when almost every one of those changes are making the playing experience worse and worse every single time. Just one year ago I was always expecting new patches with content, but right now I deeply fear them... That's the level of confindence you are giving us. We have FEAR for any change you can do to the game. And let's face it, you have your statics and you know the game is losing it's playerbase day after day, so you must know there's something that isn't right. So that's why I think you should write a Producer's Letter explaining what will be the direction of the game, what you think about the recent changes, and what do we have to expect in the future. At least you should let us understand why are you doing all of this... I know in a recent post I said I wouldn't care anymore about the game or what you are doing, but this is my last chance trying to get at least some common sense from you, and I thought I had to try.

Exactly. That got lost around one year ago when they removed almost every single blue quest in the world and left only a few. You can find almost every outfit of those lost quests in a merchant in Mushin's Tower, you buy them with pvp arena points (they are not expensive so even if you don't like pvp, it shouldn't take you much time). Sadly, Secret Agent is not one of those, there's no way to get that outfit anymore in any way.

I think it would be easier to just make a both-factions chat channel. That would do things way easier when trying to recruit for weeklies, raids, etc., specially if you are on the lowest populated faction (Cerulean in EU, for example). And since we are losing population everyday, it will be harder and harder.

I used to care about thie game, it's the game I play with my clanmates, I made friends here, and I usually enjoy it. But when you notice that lately they keep lying, increasing prizes and making horrible and never asked changes again and again, you realize there are only two possible reasons: They don't know what they are doing, or they just don't care about what we think. Neither of them is good. So I decided not to worry anymore for this, there's no point. If you think for a second, you'll notice that they are following a pretty simple strategy: They make a horrible patch to increase the needs of buying from F10 and milk the players to the limit. Then people complains a lot. Then they just act like if they care about our opinion, and change the game a little. The end result is that is still worse than before the first patch but slightly better than with the patch, and people is happy because "they have heard us". I don't know if they are doing this on purpose and are the personification of evilness, or they just don't know what they are doing because they don't understand their own game, but as I said, the reason is not important, only the facts are. And you just have to take a look to the game right now to see things are not working. You know, some days ago I was planning to write a new message with ideas to make the game more fun, like givin second lifes to now dead content like they did with poharan's dungeon, etc., but then yesterday's patch arrived and as we are used to lately, for every good change there are 3 or 4 horrible ones that didn't appear on patch notes. And again, I don't know if they are doing this on purpose or they just don't know what is happening, but it's sad either way, it's sad for a player, it's sad to see a company doing this type of shameless things. You know, it's not possible to please every single player, but when with every patch they release almost every player get's disapointed, that's the time when NCSoft should reconsider their plans and try to understand what's failing, something that is not happening. But as I said, I decided I won't care anymore about this, I will just keep playing, and I won't pay premium or a single thing until things begin to change in the right direction, until the game dies, or until I get bored and frustrated to see how every day that happens, we need to do more for less. There's no point in trying to give them advises, since they will ignore us and we will end completely frustrated, even more than now.

"Reduction". I don't know if If I should laugh or cry. Another perfect example that shows they don't know anything about the game or what they are doing.

Sure, just buy 6 to 12 resets with ncoins or hmcoins before next wednesday to get your wonderful 6 elder scales. *Sarcasm mode Off*

People who bought resets are the people who, in the end, support the server and the company. Until NcSoft realizes that the best way to get income would be a good premium subscription everyone wants (for example 50 daily hcoins if you login instead of 15, discounts in every item on f10, a free weekly box with granted materials and chance of goodies instead of those crappy 30hcoins premium boxes, etc), those players who buy resets and things like that are the ones that keep the game going. And what NcSoft did with this is just slap them in the face. Dont get me wrong, changing the price of the bracelet is the right thing to do, the problem is the timing. They should have done that the first week after the patch disaster, like they did with the dungeons. But they waited until most people bought the resets to announce and do it, and that's a very abusive and shameless strategy. To be fair with all that people, they should reimburse the coins of the resets, at least as hcoins, but let's face it, they won't do that. I really, REALLY hope they are learning something of this series of disasters. Otherwise, the ship will sink sooner than later.

I agree that more stamina would always be nice. When I leveled up my archer this last few weeks I missed more stamina so much... But then I remember Moon Refuge, where you have infinite stamina, but the area is so extremely huge, that it still takes 27 years to get anywhere and is boring as hell... So I guess that only would help in certain areas and while you are leveling your characters.

It's a good thing they give oblivion fragments back to people who already bought the bracelet, but lets face it, the problem persists: You cant expect people to pay ncoins or sell gold to get an item fast (since it was the ONLY way to get that in a reasonable time), and then change it one month later once you have milked the players with the resets. Dont missunderstand me, I think the new price for the bracelet is way more logic, but ¿Why it didnt have that price on launch? Yes, you may argue that is a good strategy because it works and players keep falling in the same trap, but that's not true, just look at how the population gets lower every single day. In the last 4 to 6 weeks I've seen like 1/4 of my friendlist have left the game because they were so tired of how the game is managed right now... I really don't know who is in charge of the game right now here in the west, but he/she should be fired inmediatly because probably has no idea about the game or it's community of players. Even if you compensate a little for your mistakes, you still make mistakes one after another, and they keep comming, and compensations never cover the damage done (give the fragments back, but people already paid hundreds of hcoins or ncoins for resets wich they will lose for nothing, removing the brilliant venture tokens from daily dash to reduce the ammount of hcoins people can get and force them to buy ncoins instead, recicle old events but with worse rewards than before... ). Is like "We don't have idea of what we are doing, so we will do this to see if we get a lot of money, and if players get angry, we will give them some candy later to calm them down once we have their money". And even worse, you hide things you know will angry players from patch notes to try to minimize the damage. Seriously, this is a great game, it has huge pottential, but you are killing it with your horrible decisions focused only in the income without thinking in how the players will feel. At this rate, the game will be unpopulated for his next birthday... But hey, don't worry, you'll be able to sell resets for the next item... at least to the 3 or 4 players that will still play the game.

Don't ask for a stream. Last one they did showed us all the people doing the stream have absolutely no clue of what they are doing, they don't know the game, neither the patches, watch one of their streams now is a completely loss of your time. I would be Ok with complete and honest patch notes, not hiding changes that they know will anger the community (even if we find out anyway some days later just by playing the game). As for the event... I hated that twin event last time and I'll hate it now too, it was horrible and unrewarding, and completely out of theme (they didn't even change the description of the event, that's lazynes level 100) . I don't remember the last time we had something new and slightly fun. I will probably do it if they let you buy old halloween event costumes since I missed the chance to get them at the time, but that's it.

And this is exactly the opposite thing they should have done. Congrats NcSoft, you surprise me every single time. The idea of selection boxes in the trove is in fact good, but the rewards you get as a whole doesn't seem very good compared to other daily dashes (come on, only 1 jewel-element per stack?). And removing the Brilliant Venture Tokens... Ah well, everyday is more obvious that what the dev team is trying to do is milk the players until they leave the game and then close it. Otherwise, this has absolutely no sense.

The problem with BnS poor optimization, is shared among a lot of other korean MMOs of that time (even though BnS takes the podium imho): UE3 was not very good for big open games like MMOs, so they used a modified version of the engine, wich ended with pretty poor performance and some other problems (UIs for example are pretty rough for the performance, try to play with Control X and you'll notice how the game runs way smoother). UE4 is different, it's a newer engine, more capable and way more scalable, so, in theory, the game could look exactly like it looks now, or even slightly better, and run WAY better, have faster loading times, etc, and at the same time, since it's more scalable, it should be able to change to better graphics (at the cost of performance). But on the other hand, as far as I know, they already had a UE4 version of the game that looked almost like it looks now, and people who saw it was dissapointed since they expected better graphics, so they discarded that version and began a new one from the bottom. I hope that at least it looks like our current version with better performance in it's lower settings, if they accomplish that, it will be a great success.

Not only that, this trove has IMHO the worst 1 star options I've seen since the Trove started. I've opened like 160 keys, didn't see a single 3 star crit, and apart from the granted critical you getn when you fill the bar, i've only got 2 mediocre 2 star crits. In the end a complete waste of resources. At least, in old troves, you always had something useful to get in 1 star options. Not this time, it's like throwing hongmoon coins in the toilet. I don't think I will be selling gold again to get keys, I'm the person with worst luck I know with trove XD.

I don't know wich antivirus do you use, but I used to have Emsisoft Antimalware, and with one of the updates of the game didn't even let me launch the game. No error, nothing, but just didn't launch at all. I had to completely uninstall the antivirus and the game worked perfectly.

Jokes aside, there are a lot of other things that could be done to improve the game, but we cant expect Ncsoft to change the whole daily challenge mech and other core things to work better (wich, imho, could even improve the game more). So some twists and small redirections could help the players greatly, and probably ncsoft too. If the game ends dieing for their lack of knowledge and interest in their own game, it would be an extreme waste.

Ping is determined by many different factors, but distance to the server is the biggest issue here. It doesn't matter the bandwitch of your connection, the information still has to travel to the server and go back to you.

First of all, sorry, this will be a long post (and since english is not my main language, you might find some gramatical mistakes, sorry for that), but as a UE4 game developer myself (yes, an unknown indie one, but that's not the point ) I have to think a lot on how to make a game rewarding for the players, and at the same time, keep a balance ingame (you know, you will never please every single player, but should have the community happy while you reach your own goals). I have to think a lot in how I prepare the content, so I will give you what I think would be some interesting changes to the game that would keep the balance, combat the gold inflation, etc. This is only my idea on how to make the game better for everyone, but I could be extremely wrong as well, so well... 1: Dungeon difficulty, reward, etc. That easy mode we got was, in fact, a good addition. The problem is that it shouldn't be called Easy mode, but "Hard Training" mode, and Normal mode should have stayed. Also, there's no point in adding a mode to learn hard mode dungeons if you remove those hard mode dungeons. The best you could do is to get back normal mode to all dungeons, get all hard modes you removed back (except maybe starstone and hollows, wich were the only ones that were supposedly removed in patch notes), add the Hard Training mode on the dungeons that still have hard mode, and if you want people to really do hard modes, give better dynamic rewards in hard (for example, one extra materials chest, etc.). Hard Training would have same rewards as normal mode, but players could use that mode to really learn the hard mode mechs, wich would do the transition from normal to hard smoother. 2: Combat gold inflation There is one thing you should never, NEVER do in a MMO: Reduce the rewards and increase the effort needed to get those rewards. If you do that, you are punishing your players instead of rewarding them, and there's no way people will be happy with that. But there's a two step trick to combat the inflation (and just keep in mind that inflation is always a thing, but you can try to keep it at reasonable levels), and is quite simple: A) First, make a standard gold reward for dungeons. For example, let's say that the 3-4 hardest ones give 15 gold, the next one 13, next 11, and you keep decreasing as you go down the list until you give your base reward for old content. When a new dungeon launches, you just move the list rewards one position up. Yes, I know there are dungeons sometimes that are faster to complete, and others are harder and longer, but you could make modifiers on top to that (+2 gold if it's hard-long, -2 if it's super fast, etc.). If you do this, you NEVER reduce the ammount of gold people can get, but you don't end with tons and tons of gold ingame. B) Add money sinks. A money sink is a way for players to spend the gold ingame, a gold that dissapears from the game instead of changind hands. Right now, the biggest money sinks are the equipment upgrades, breakthroughs, etc. The problem is that if you only do moneysinks there, that might be something a veteran player can afford, but with your actual gold policy, new players find it VERY hard to get enough resources to get new equipment (more on that later). So, what you could do is add new optional money sinks. For example, a wheel that you can spin spending a few gold pieces, and in return it can give you cosmetic items, like the clothing from region wheels (stalker, etc.), older events accesories and clothes, etc. I can tell you for sure that a lot of people would spend a lot of gold there to get clothes that they missed from old events or wheels, and that would lower the current ammount of gold, thus reducing the inflation a bit. As an example, a lot of people in my clan spent a lot of gold to get the Catwalk). Another moneysink could be, for example, a hairstyler. Right now, the only way to change your hair is by equipping a new one as accesorie, or buying a character customize voucher. Since the last option is too much for just a hair change ¿How about adding a hairstyler where you could pay gold to change your hairdo and hair color?. That would have sense ingame, and also could give players the chance to get the new hairdos you release every once and then. Even new social features that right now the game ignores, like housing, etc. could work as a money sinks and alternate ways to spend time in game. To summarize this point, when you combat gold inflation you have to do it by adding new content for the players to spend gold on, not by punishing players and reducing their rewards. That will never work. 3: Make the game more newplayer friendly Right now, the game is quite hard for new players to progress. A few new players joined my clan and ended leaving the game after a couple of weeks because the game is too demanding for them at this point, even if we tried to help them. Let's face it, the content we had to fight so hard to get once (raven jewelry, etc.) right now is very easy to get, but get those pieces to level 10 still requires a huge ammount of effort, and for a new player, with their little equipment, no alters, etc., is something that can, and indeed does often, overwhelm them. I know that veteran and loyal players are the ones that keep the game going, but if you dont take care of new players, the game population will keep decreasing and decreasing, so it pays to sit and think how to make the game more friendly for a player that just joins. We as players are also to blame when we ask for a lot of AP just to rush dungeons and don't want to see a single 1200 AP character in our parties, and that's something that might be hard to change, but also we as a community could do an effort to support new players that would in the end benefit us too. For example, make campaigns to help new players do content they never did before (a couple of high level players could take new players to do some content, learn the mechanics for the first time, so they can do that on their own in the future, and who knows, maybe once they become high level they could do that to help new players again). But let's face it, that's an utopia, I know some people are willing to do that, but a lot wont. So that's the reason why the game design must adapt to help those new players. Maybe adding back some low level dungeons to the daily challenge, reducing the materials and gold to level up low level legendary jewelry, etc. In the end, we want as many new players to stay as we can. 4: Keep the monetization at a reasonable level. I know this is a sensible topic, for players and for ncsoft. Let's face it, as a free2play and pay2win game, there must be some monetization ingame. The problem is when the monetization takes over the own game, like it's happening now. A good example is Throne of Oblivion, the weekly raid needed to get the new unrefined bracelet. In a worst case scenario, it can take 24 weeks for a player that does it every single week to get his unrefined bracelet. ¡24 weeks! that's half a year, and that is not reasonable no matter how you look at it. However,¡Dont worry! You can buy resets from the store to get your bracelet in a reasonable ammount of time. And That's not how you monetize content, my friends. I dont mind if anyone want to buy a reset to get it faster if a player that can't pay for resets can get it in a reasonable time. Lets imagine the bracelet costed half it's prize (12 instead of 24), and you got at least 2 coins in the raid, with the chance of getting 1 extra. In the worst case scenario, you would get your unrefined bracelet in 5 weeks, wich is a reasonable ammount of time, but people with resets would still get it way faster, thus making those resets proffitable. What you did here was doing it the opposite way: The only mode to get the bracelet in a normal ammount of time is by buying resets. Otherwise, good luck and see you in 4 to 6 months. Monetization should work to get things faster than normal, not to get things at a normal rate and laugh at people who cannot buy resets. Also, There's a few things I will never understand in Blade and Soul monetizaiton policy: You sell a couple of cosmetics every now and then, instead of adding plenty of cosmetics at the same time, that would produce a good income. A lot of store clothing, even old Trove clothing could appear on the store, I myself would buy a couple of accesories I couldn't get back on the day. ¿And how about new animations? In a game like this it's VERY easy to add new animations (if I can do a dance animation in less than one day with a simple mocap rig, imagine a full dev team), you could add new dances, new iddle animations, new emotes, etc. to sell them for ncoins/hcoins, and a LOT of people would love that, that's not a game breaking thing but would be pretty nice to get new things like that. It's something really easy to add in game (for god's sake, there are event mods to change some animations, etc.), cheap to produce, and the benefits would be for everyone, since having them or not wouldn't be a game breaker. 5. RNG, that hated RNG. RNG is good at some degree, it gives you that factor of randomness and expectation, but right now this game should bne called RNG and soul. You should understand that RNG should be there to add a certain degree of randomness, but when you abuse of that, you make the game a constant matter of luck. Its very depressing when you work hard to get something, and you end with nothing due to RNG not being on your side. I dont talk about Troves, loot boxes or anything like that, because we all know how that works, I mean ingame boxes you get from questing, etc. Every single thing you get ingame should have a granted reward that had any sense, not just chance to get something useful. A perfect exmaple for that is the pet bags you get with pearls. I've seen people opening tens of those to get just crapy exp charms. That, my friends will never work in a long term, you can't expect players to spend hours and hours of farming, fishing or whatever they are doing, and then say "ok, good luck, you probably won't get a thing from this". There are ways to change this and make this type of content more player friendly: adding a granted reward that makes the effort you had to do to get it at least sligthly rewarding, adding some coins you can use to get the things you didn't get from the rng like you do in loot boxes, etc. But you cant have a game that everyday that passes looks more like a scamming gambling post , and expect players to be OK with that. So please, keep RNG for certain things, but grant worthy rewards for the player's efforts. 6. Daily Challenge Daily Challenge is the base core of this game. You have to do it every single day, with multiple characters, to be able to progress ingame with at least one character. The changes that are coming in October's 2 patch seems nice, but for players who enjoyed PVP, removing the PVP segments of the daily challenge has destroyed the game for them. Since there's no point on doing that, ¿Why don't you bring those pvp options back? It hurts no one, and PVP players will probably enjoy it again. As for PVE, as I stated before, I think adding at least one or two lower level dungeons for new players and alters could be a good thing. You should understand that you are forcing players to do the daily challenge with multiple characters to equip just one main, but making daily challenge harder wont make people buy materials from the store (if you really think that will work in general, then you understand your community less than I thought). It's ok to have materials on F10 for people who wants to buy them, I even bought some moonstones once in a while just to complete the lot I needed to upgrade something, but it's the same thing than the oblivion reset I talked before: Its alright to do things faster if you want and can afford it, but you cant force players to buy them by reducing rewards. Also, talking about rewards, since you added a daily in Moon Refuge, at least give us something we can buy there as high level players. At least with peaches we could buy material pouches, so adding those to Moon Refuge merchant for a fair amount of buds would make that daily less infuriating. In conclusion I probably forgot a lot of things, but I think that taking care of every single of those points would make the game way more enjoyable for the players, while keeping a good income of money for NcSoft. Remember, you can't expect players to do more work for less reward and cover their loses buying with real money, that's naive and greedy, and it will never work in the middle to long term. You have here a great game, Blade and Soul has a fantastic combat mechanics, it's very fun to play it with friends, learn new dungeons, face difficult raids... as long as we, as players, feel supported by the company that is managing the game, not milked and extorted like, let's face it, sometimes seems. I don't know if what I wrote will ever be read by anyone, but I kinda like the game and I thought at least I could try.

AS people said, this changes are a big step in the right direction, so thanks for sharing this info. I would love to see a reduction in bosses hp in easy mode, and a comeback of hard mode dungeons of all but starstone and hollows, wich were suposed the only ones that were removed, with better rewards than easy versions. With this, an easy mode to learn hard mechanics would have sense since there would be hard mode versions to try after you learn them. Right now, the easy mode we have, even if it's easier, has zero sense in every dungeon except the last 4 that have hard mode. Also, for new players would be awesome to add some lower level dungeons in the daily challenge. But most important and what you should be doing since now, is make a special server to test the patches with people who knows and understands the game. I know the people in charge of blade and soul in EU and USA doesn't know their own game and their community (I don't want to offend anyone, but its just obvious when you see what happened). Since learning everything you need about the game to be sure everything will go as expected in patches may take some time for the producers, etc., the best you could do is make a test server for a few selected players with deep understanding of the game so they can try the changes and give feedback before the patch goes live, so any possible dissaster like the last big patch can be avoided.