Snowyamur

This is the last post I am ever going to make for this game's forums. After that, I'm leaving. It's just not right being a part of this anymore, and it's not the player base nor community being awful. It's the publisher and developer(s) being this untrustworthy and shady. Thanks for reading through all of this if you did. I've been playing this game ever since it came out in NA back in 2016. I quit for 2 years, then came back to find this game become one huge Pay-to-Win mess. I dismissed it, believing this to be one huge obstacle to overcome for this game to achieve its true potential. But then we get: recycled and repeated events, poor reception and feedback from NCWest community coordinators, very little to no bug fixes or status updates, poor game design decisions and changes made to the game, and now even more Pay-to-Win garbage. This has been evident over the last few weeks, and this game has shamefully continued falling from grace since 2017. With the release of the "patch," if we can even call it a patch, for Hongsil's Summer Blast event, NCSOFT decided to increase the Unity cap from 220,000 to 500,000. You can find the patch notes here: https://www.bladeandsoul.com/en/news/hongsils-summer-blast-patch-notes/ From a surface-level perspective, that doesn't sound so bad, and that's probably how some people saw it. Not really a huge deal, but not one that's game-breaking either. What it does is it allows players to farm more Unity, which doesn't really break the game. If Unity applies for PvP, then it definitely broke PvP, but I wouldn't know because I don't dare to touch it for Blade & Soul because of how poorly-balanced it is. The thing is, the Unity system itself is dominantly Free-to-Play because you can't spend real money to buy Unity levels, which made it a decent progression system that's earned through playing the game, not spending money on it. In fact, having Unity is likely a core reason people would get online daily to play, thus it was a good thing to add to the game. Unfortunately, little did we know that both NCSOFT and NCWest increased the cap with this patch just so they can ninja-add a bunch of bundles that include: Purple Ascension stone chests Unity XP charms which can be bought 10 TIMES PER ACCOUNT! And keep this in mind: they increased the cap because they knew the whales would hoard all the Unity charms and use them, which wouldn't work if the cap was set at 220,000, but increase it, and now it's effective for use. Considering Unity provides permanent stat upgrades, this game has officially become dominantly Pay-to-Win now that you can BUY permanent stat upgrades. Let me ask NCSOFT this: what happened to your promise mentioned below? Did this fully go out the drain? I think it did, considering what you did for this event contradicted everything in your "philosophy, especially where it says Outright shameful; you just scammed and cheated on your own player base and community, on top of breaking a promise you set forth from the beginning. You can read more about their revealed business model here: https://www.bladeandsoul.com/uk/news/business-model-revealed/ Now, being P2W screams NCSOFT, and we all know that. It's been seen with the daily material offerings that we can buy with NCoin and have reset daily, and it's been seen with Trove, especially Trove. But what they did that was absolutely disgusting was not tell us about these bundles being released, or plans to make Unity become a purchasable in-game item through microtransactions, completely turning it into P2W, only to carry them out and sneak them in with this "patch." That's disgusting, pathetic, and shameful; it has high D.P.S. written all over it. Players in Blade & Soul need high dps to even participate in the so-called "content" you roll out, well, now you can appreciate having your own high D.P.S. For those of you who might not have known this, one of NCSOFT's community coordinators made a reply to me when I said that we should have more daily livestreams to give us a look at events before they go live. This is what they told me: Hyunkel told me this 2 days before the event released, and he is a GM Community Moderator. You can find its parent thread here: So they tell me this, and what do we get? Nothing! No livestream, not an even an announcement for one, and after what we all saw when we logged in looking at the cash shop, we can see why. They knew we would flame and frown on them if they showed us this: and they were right: we're frowning upon them now. Guess what, unlike NCSOFT, I'm not afraid to show that I spent more than 25+ USD on NCoin through these screenshots because I'm not someone who keeps secrets and scams people, unlike NCSOFT. They never told us about this, and these bundles were NEVER mentioned in the "patch" notes before the event went live. A BnS Reddit user named Ponifex actually theorized the price to be paid if a whale wanted to overspend. While it may not be accurate, it's a horrifying estimate: You can find the Reddit thread here: Is this what you're expecting from EVERY player? Is that how much you want us to spend on your poor excuse for a gambling simulator?? Are you joking??? To all members of the BnS community, if you can't see it clearly, see it now. NCSOFT, more like NC$cam, is not to be trusted. Their greed has plagued the gaming culture with their focus on profit over quality and performance. I've been patient with them and tried to make this game seem more appealing, that in the future, it would improve, but clearly, it will NEVER improve. It only goes more downhill from here. Leave this game behind and don't come back. You will never get back the time wasted on this poor excuse for P2W garbage, but that will be made up with time spent on doing other things you know will not scam you in the future, like NC$cam did just now. I will not spend another penny on this game ever again for what it's becoming, nor will I spend another ounce of my time and energy putting up with this. This has become an illness on the gaming culture, and it's only spreading and getting worse.

Are you not seeing the big picture here? Unity and Ascension stones were supposed to be the ONLY ONE FEATURE that was NOT Pay-to-Win. NCSOFT changed that with this "patch" by introducing bundles where you can now buy Ascension stones and Unity xp for real money. It doesn't matter about being happy or mad about the whales funding the game. After this patch, there will be nothing left but whales in the game, and the fact that they kept these bundles a secret is shady as hell, on top of proving the reasons why we as a player base cannot trust them. Honestly, this has to be illegal somewhere because this is screwed up, and in a way, it's extorting money from us by saying, "You want to keep up with the end-game? We made it much harder for casual players, so you either spend on NCOIN to catch up, or you die off with the rest." This is outright wrong and disgusting that they would do this. Best way to save the game: just don't buy anything at this point.

You can tell they're desperate with the amount of bundles they dropped in the cash shop, especially the ones with the Unity xp charms and the Ascension stone packs that you can buy up to 10 times.

How is NCSOFT a multi-million dollar corporation again? With all this negative stuff about them coming from their EMPLOYEES?

Yeah, and the fact BnS is declining in Europe/NA isn't good for the lot of us who continue playing the game because, knowing how NCSOFT operates their business, they might just withdraw the game from both regions just to profit heavily off of their Korean and general Asia player base. It's sad that most game industries are turning into this, but no one said life is fair, right? We just have to roll with it and see where it goes. Or, we can take a step forward with initiative to helping new players get into the game, all the while improving the community-aspect of Blade & Soul while it's still in-check.

I didn't make MMO-Populations, so I wouldn't know if it tracks the player activity across all regions, but I think it does. However, what's important to understand about MMO-Populations is that their tracked MMO player counts are based primarily on active Reddit subscribers and users for the respective MMORPG Reddit pages. The actual player count is not as accurate as it's shown, mainly because getting accurate player numbers for any MMORPG game is very difficult unless this data was publicly released by the leading industry that developed the game(s). What makes the site good, though, is that it provides accurate comparisons between different MMORPGs as they are ranked against each other. So for Blade & Soul being at Rank 14 might not be accurate considering there are some dead MMORPG games not removed from the charts, but the fact that it's up there is a compelling argument against the fact that the game isn't dying. If there are still players talking about Blade & Soul on both Reddit and general social media platforms, it means the game's community is still active, and with that comes the assumption that in-game, there is an almost-equal number of active players as well. It's just about being on at the right place at the right time to find said players.

Where was this?

I wouldn't use those numbers as a good projection of the current Blade & Soul player population, mainly because of the reason you explained: not everyone uses BnS Buddy. Better to use MMO-Population, as the statistics closely resemble those from Statista. The Blade & Soul MMO-Population graphs can be found here: https://mmo-population.com/r/bladeandsoul/

Ahh, okay. It just sounded like the dislike came from the playerbase, even though the lot of us are continuing to press for better changes to be made for the game. Unfortunately with this "patch" coming up, it sounds like the worst changes are still being made.

So are you blaming the actual BnS community players or the developers and executives on this one? It sounds like you're hating on us for these changes.

That's the one thing I'm upset about. Of all changes, why was that one made? Allowing players to switch out their legendary mystic badges freely was so player-friendly and convenient, and now that it's being removed, the developers want us to farm for another badge? Yikes.

Some of the changes are for PvP, and I don't do PvP in Blade & Soul, so for that, I wouldn't know if the changes are good or bad. But, for changes to the gear, the Marketplace, and the merchants, those aren't really fixes but are instead changes to systems already in the game.

"We don’t like pay-to-win, so what we are offering are cosmetics, convenience, and consumables – not power, not gear, not permanent stat increases." Well, clearly this practice went out the drain now that Blade & Soul does more Trove and has its daily pool of in-game upgradeable materials that affect the gameplay in the cash shop, which players can buy with real world money. NCSOFT clearly caters to the whales, and one would be foolish not to see that. It's a damn shame, but a business is a business. Too bad other game industries are leaning in this direction.

I wouldn't say these are really patch notes because from what I read, it sounds like there wasn't any fixes to any preexisting issues or anything. There are only a lot of things being changed and shifted around, which is really not fixing anything in the game aside from removing what needed to be removed and replacing it with something else.

Maybe try playing at a different time then for a potentially better result?

Well, let's just hope changes come soon, then. The sooner, the better. Thanks for the reply @Cyan.

I brought this up months ago, and I'm bringing it up again. I know this isn't as important right now as properly-optimizing Blade & Soul and making it less and less Pay-to-Win, but I think the community deserves some improvement towards the input, posts, and threads it provides on these forums. When could we expect maybe a list of numerous pre-made avatars for us to use so there's some differentiation among users? What about us allowing to edit and freely adjust our forum profile? Perhaps giving us cool unique titles for actually participating in these forums? That'll be a good incentive. These will definitely help improve the community-aspect for this game, and that's the one thing right now keeping this game afloat. Hopefully, improving the BnS forums is still under consideration.

Honestly, this is the core issue that's plaguing both the game and its forums. If we feel like we're not being heard, or what we say doesn't matter, we're going to quit. We won't sit around and be part of a community that's being constantly ignored by people in higher positions than us. We're the ones playing your game, some of us are the ones spending money on it, and we're the ones giving it publicity. We have just as much a right to be updated on what's going and learn what's hoping to come for Blade & Soul as much as you guys asking for feedback, and us providing it free of charge. It's a two-way exchange. There really needs to be more consistent communication and feedback with what people say on these forums so people know they're being heard. If they feel that their opinion(s) matter, that's encouragement to continue supporting the game. I see none of that happening right now. This is a videogame, not a gambling simulator. I've said it many times before. A lot of us are already well-aware of how Pay-to-Win this game is, and we know how it's accomplished: Simply make it where loot doesn't drop in large quantities from dailies/weeklies, on top of making loot chests provide the lowest-grade of resources available, and make it where breakthrough materials have very low percent drop rates, and when players are at their most impatient level, throw in the resources for an NCoin price, and they'll buy it. Intolerable, unacceptable, and very anti-consumer. That's not okay. We play your game, and just because we play videogames, we aren't stupid. Stop treating us like we are. We're past that now. Do what's best for all of us and make this game an actual videogame because no one is going to tolerate this anymore. Not me, not the rest of the community, no one. We're going to leave if stuff doesn't change, and it's a fact of the industry and the game consumer market, not the shareholders you're giving in to. Okay, so this goes both ways. Some player wishes I've read are not good for the game, while some can really help improve it. This goes into communication: players make suggestions, and no GM provides real feedback on it. We feel left out and ignored, and that's not okay. However, the right thing that should be done is to respond to players as to what works/ doesn't work so they know what to think about for next time. Not okay to just leave players in the dark.

@Hyunkel I hope so. If there's one thing you guys can improve on, it's communicating with us more and hosting more livestreams. It's clear that hundreds of people watch it, but they have to wait for a bit for the next one. Keep the audience engaged, don't let the crowd die down fast.

Hopefully NCSOFT is reading that, because that right there is how a lot of players see the game right now, and that's unacceptable. Clear and straight-forward as to why people don't like Blade & Soul right now, explained in such a way that it explains for the rest of us how poorly-managed, business-focused, and RNG this game really is. It's not even a game anymore; it's a gambling simulator. Well, keep in mind that previously, a lot of players were complaining about how over-the-top complicated certain boss mechanics were, and it's likely they were too lazy to read or analyze the boss fight moves/mechanics, so NCSOFT made it easier as a response. At least they're listening to us, unfortunately, they're listening to the part of the community that refuses to do the heavy-lifting to get better at the game. If anything, the one thing they made easy was leveling, and that I have ZERO issues with, but when you drop the CC bars from 8 to 4 in raids to make it "easier," it kind of makes it a bit boring. Then again, people in raids seem to struggle landing successive stuns/knockdowns/dazes, so the simplification of boss mechanics could've been done to make the fights less frustrating, as you rely on other players, not yourself alone.

Don't forget that events are being recycled, as that's something that can't be ignored anymore. We're going to receive our third Sacred Longgui replica event on August 21, which is to say the least that nothing remotely NEW is being done, other than changing the theme, boss, and setting of the event, putting it under a new name. Recycling events is fine because people are familiar with them, but when it becomes this common, i.e. happening a few times in a row, that's a red flag.

This is what I pointed out a few threads ago. The one thing NCSOFT and NCWest struggle with the most is community reception and feedback. It doesn't appear like they're talking to us, even though they are, but they aren't doing it enough. It's about consistent communication, not a one-time deal. You talk to us once, then leave us in the dark; it doesn't really do much, and that's what's going on with events. They announce the events, we give our feedback, our opinions, our suggestions, and they don't say anything; they keep quiet. We've been informed a few months ago by a GM who posted in a raging thread that they do acknowledge our feedback and communicate what we say to the developers. If that's the case, why don't you guys update us on it? Your business is your own, but when you start shutting out the community from things and not update us on anything, that's when people quit. They feel left out and ignored, which is why they leave. Forget the Pay-to-Win for a brief moment; if the community alone isn't stable and making hostile comments against the game industry, that's a critical concern.

That was a big mistake you made: responding to them. You should've just reported them from there.

That's what happens when you combine Pay-to-Win with severe power creep. Granted, power creep is going to happen in any MMO game because new content uncommonly comes with a new level cap, alongside higher-leveled stuff to do, but when Pay-to-Win gets mixed in, it becomes ugly. Companies use this combination because they know there are players out there who don't want to go through the grind, so make money off their impatience. This is true. Blade & Soul had on its website clearly stated that they are trying to promote the Free-to-Play nature of the game and make it fun, while avoiding going too much into Pay-to-Win microtransactions, which has since then changed. The fact that this has changed means they didn't keep their word on what they promised, or what they said they were going to do, which all the more makes them look bad. Yeah, I use lots of alts. of my own just to keep up with materials because using only one character gets me nowhere. It's sad how suppressed resource rewards are from dungeons, raids, dailies, and weeklies because they are intentionally designed to inhibit player growth in a Free-to-Play game unless the player spends a ridiculous amount of money. A lot of Free-to-Play games do this to compel players to spend to at least "make progress," but that turns it Pay-to-Win, and this game does it so often that it's almost Pay-to-Win in every corner. Making dungeon/raid resets as purchasable items for NCoin supports this fact. That's Pay-to-Win if you can spend a little money to re-run the raids just to get the wings needed to buy SS, on top of the large crate of materials you get as a reward. Classes in this game have been so horribly balanced to begin with, and that's on the game designers. I do more PvE than PvP, so I'm not sure of the situation regarding the constant stun crap with KFM and BM, but I can confirm Warden and Gunslinger have stupid power-spikes with their gear that it's insane. Why doesn't Warlock have that, or the Soul Fighter? Kryptonite the very powerful classes so they have some weaknesses, otherwise it's just silly and stupid.

Having only 1 server for 1 region doesn't mean the game is conclusively dying; it's actually an attempt to save the game. Server-merging is becoming more uncommon among game industries that host MMOs because server-merging helps save money when it comes to hosting, on top of potentially unifying different communities together. If one server is empty, or both servers are empty, the merge helps consolidate two populations into one to help people have faster dungeon queue times and find more clans to join. In fact, for this game, the server merge made finding parties for daily/weekly dungeons/raids a lot faster and easier because now there are a lot of players online only one server everyday, so it's usually full most of the time. On top of that, the F5 Marketplace is more filled with items to buy, which is even better because that's a positive sign that items are being bought and sold daily. The result was more positive than negative. If you're one of the few late-game players with maxed gear, of course dungeon bossing is going to be easy. Dungeon bosses don't scale with your gear and AP levels, and because of power creep, there's always the possibility for old-content bosses to be obliterated in seconds. The fact that bosses became too easy for late-game players was the main reason the developers added a Hard Mode as a challenge, especially for the newer dungeons and bosses recently released. If you can't enjoy dungeons because they're too easy, fight a dungeon boss on Hard Mode using a weapon bought from one of the weapon merchants. That changes things around.