Snowyamur

I agree with requiring all boss kills to earn a reward, but I disagree with creating a contribution-based system of rewards @Grimoir. Making this kind of system will definitely combat leechers because they tend to not do anything, but what about those players who need some rewards and they contribute to the boss effort? What would count as "contribution" towards dungeon rewards? If damage towards a boss is the factor used in calculating contribution, how will low-geared players compete with high-geared players for rewards? Sometimes, when readying up for a dungeon, a high-geared player could join, and let's say they inflict at least 1m DPS. On a contribution-based reward system, because these kind of players inflict a lot, usually the most, damage, they're going to get the best rewards, while low-geared players would be left with the scraps. It's a system that would prevent leeching altogether, but hurt how players receive rewards in the long run.

This source doesn't seem credible given it's hand-typed on a Discord server. Wasn't there a direct resource to refer to? As for the past Ring of Reckoning event, the main issues seemed to be achieving 1.7m DPS to do Stages 4-5, and the rewards for those able to reach that DPS limit were useless. If anything, the rewards should be more enticing for the game's end-game players, not low-tier rewards that low-geared players can use.

Apology taken. I'm not one to point people out, but if I mention one thing and for some reason someone starts spotlighting me for it, that's when I have to speak up. No reason to do that, as that can lead to problems. As for the process you provided, that makes sense. Although, doing Hong also helps, albeit takes a long time, and is not efficient in some aspects compared to doing Outlaw.

That doesn't sound realistic, more like exaggerated. If gold was that easy to make, F9 would be useless. Spending under an hour a day to make around 200g a day at your current AP? You must speed-run just about everything, or you're possibly botting. Also, why do you keep addressing me directly @Bobthemonk? I'm not the only one who says this game is P2W, and there are many others online who take this argument to an aggressive and hostile extreme. You can state your case without spotlighting me for it. Also, as I said before, I just came back to this game from a 2-3 year break. I barely know what's new and what isn't, aside from usual system and combat changes. If you can make 800 - 1k gold/ week, good for you, but I think others would disagree with your claims. Care to explain to me how you're able to accomplish this?

I took a break from the game since 2017; that's the main reason why I'm at the bottom bracket. But I'm back doing Dailies everyday and Weeklies every week across my main and alts. Hopefully by doing this it would help me progress in the game. If not, I guess this game isn't for me. The fact that this game is designed so as to compel those impatient to spend could only mean getting things in game take too much time, or too much grind. However, I still play it because it's fun.

We always wait for everything. I don't know why we can't get updates at the same time as KR. It would make it much fairer on both fronts and at least give some decency to the other side of the consumer market.

Well, you can't tick off your main consumer market, right? Look at what's happened with Bethesda; they decided to disrespect their main consumer market and player base, and now they're distrusted internationally.

What do you mean by "swapped over" @Grimoir? Do you mean we can freely change what spec. our bracelets apply to? Something like this would be very convenient.

True, but if people have to play thousands of hours to get one item they really want, I don't think that's good either. Almost every MMO game involves grinding for better equipment, but there are certain instances where the grinding is acceptable and certain instances where it isn't. With Blade & Soul, the grinding was intentionally-designed to be difficult such that the implementation of a microntransaction-based system is viable. It was also designed to keep players hooked on the game and continue playing. Granted, this game is F2P; microtransactions are inevitable, but not many F2P games have microtransactions that don't give players in-game advantages. With this game, given that grinding for gear involves tedious repetition, the executives use this to their advantage by appealing to impatient players unwilling to go through this grind by incorporating a Pay-to-Win-based system. This is usually why a lot of loot boxes that enter this game are loaded with useful resources that people can buy with external currency. As for the grind itself in this game, it clearly isn't fun when most of the same content is being recycled repeatedly, with nothing new to the table. Additionally, when having to farm mats., it takes a very long time when Peculiar chests and other loot chests only give you 1-2 in quantity of the mats. you need, while it's only 1 more that's determined by RNG. When faced with how high gear upgrade costs are for weapons and accessories, ranging in the hundreds to thousands, how much you get for grinding is outrageous. Worst of all is that players can play this game for hours non-stop, but some items they need to progress gear-wise in Blade & Soul aren't even obtainable by normal means, which reinforces the ridiculous limits that were set in the game.

That makes sense. PvP as a whole for Blade & Soul is still poorly-designed and balanced when it comes to class balance, though.

You assumed wrong @Bobthemonk. One of the first things I've done on returning to Blade & Soul was trying out many of the features that were new to me. When I took a long break from this game in 2017, Shackled Isles didn't exist around that time, until now. On returning to the game, it was one of the features I tried first. After having done about 10-15 runs on the Shackled Isles on my Warden and Warlock classes, I can say that not all stats are equalized. Excluding the fact classes are different from each other, some players had higher health than me and inflicted more damage, and so the "stat-equalization" that PvP promises is not entirely the case. I'm not sure how they were getting more health because I would start with around ~70k HP, and they had around 89k, and I wasn't sure how that was possible when all stats were equalized. If everyone has different health from each other, that doesn't mean stats are equalized. Even while their classes are different, the fact one player has 20-30k more health than another doesn't make it a fair fight. The only thing that should be different among all participants is what class their playing as; that's it. Health should be the same, and damage should already be balanced for each class such that one isn't dominating the other. To answer your question, I guess I honestly don't know how spending money improves one's ability to play Shackled Isles. This is a consequence of continuing to hear people spout how P2W this game is non-stop that it ends up spreading like a disease. After trying out Shackled Isles, I stopped playing PvP altogether because it isn't worth my time, and it wasn't fair to begin with when some classes could stun-lock you in place for a long time. Doing the Dailies & Weeklies, doing dailies in Mushin's Tower and the Blackram Arena, and just farming high-level dungeons for mats. mattered more to me, and I found that more fun because I knew that what I was doing wouldn't be competed for. I could run most dungeons I want on my own, and I could get even better rewards from doing these dungeons than PvP alone.

Agreed. Allowing us to make our own report tickets while in-game would be more convenient and easier than submitting tickets via the support system.

That's a lie. The fact that players can buy materials from the Hongmoon Store used to upgrade their weapons and accessories is Pay-to-Win because they're able to gain gameplay advantages by buying them off with external currency.

The greater concern for running is Blade & Soul is the CPU, not the GPU. You're going to need a very powerful CPU and combined GPU if you want 70+ FPS in dungeons.

If it's low-level content, why aren't you finishing the Campaign to access the high-level, more farm-rich content?

I prefer if bugs and issues in the game were fixed over allowing small children to become ninjas.

The player base for Blade & Soul isn't high when comparing it to its launch in NA and EU and a year following its launch in both. This is expected of most games, really. When they launch, the player base spikes, and then it dies down; that's normal. However, as I said, the player base isn't high @sokiking. It's more like medium to small because I still see a lot of players around in commonly-populated areas, but I can't really say for how it is as a whole. It's definitely way smaller now compared to when I played it on release in NA, but that's how most MMOs are now today.

An i3 600u processor running at 2 GHz won't help your game one bit when it comes to improving the FPS. That processor isn't strong enough to run a game of such heavy caliber like Blade & Soul. You're asking what you could do? I'd say try to purchase a computer/ laptop with a better processor, or stay away from this game until it releases on UE4, where the optimization is hopefully better. Or, dangerously-mess with your system files to improve the FPS, but I wouldn't suggest it.

I like to look at "dead game" comments this way. People say a game is dead for various reasons, but most say this when a game lacks an active playerbase. I can think of a few online games that were started in 2003-2005 and are still standing today, and despite people having said they were dead many years ago, they're still alive, and they're doing better-off than most starting games today. A "dead game" is defined so differently among many different people, but when players notice a drop in player numbers, that's when they go for that comment. Your case is interesting @darthBaal because you're saying this game is dead because the content is bad instead of going for how the game is dead because there are a severe lack of players. How does your outlook and personal opinion on what's good or bad in a videogame define its health? Your opinions can cast a projection of a game's future successor failure, but humans are bad at predicting. To each their own opinions, but while some may agree with your statements, others don't, and that's where I disagree with you about this. Your reasoning for why this game is dead sounds more like you giving personal opinions for how bad some features are, and you concluding immediately the game is dead without focusing on how the game is in its current state player-wise and reception-wise. One thing you said is correct: PvP is horribly-designed, let's get that right, but everything else doesn't seem right. Only 5% of dungeons being ran? I mean, the old dungeons were made back in 2016-2017; are you expecting a full party of 6 players to run them? As MMO games age and grow in content, old content becomes obsolete, but never removed. Expect them to be empty. Mechanics are too complicated? How does that define a dead game? That sounds more subjective and opinionated than factual about how the game currently is where it stands. It might even be insight to how you are as a player. Something about the open world not allowing you to farm monsters for stuff? Blade & Soul wasn't built to be like a traditional MMO game, which is why it's unique. The game has flaws, yes. It's still P2W in many aspects, the grind is dreadful, optimization is terrible, and the list goes on. Defining a game as "dead" is different for just about anyone, and I can say for my own opinion that this game isn't close to dead as you think, but at the same time, it isn't fixing problems it has to make itself better. Optimization still isn't fixed, so many players still can't play the game; this harms the player base significantly. The P2W stigma held by this game receives negative reception from the western consumer base; that doesn't help the game publicity-wise. The fact that this game still has bugs and issues; that doesn't help the game either. These lingering issues hurt the game, and I can say that these truly define how the game's health currently is on a general level, but can't immediately conclude the game is dead from these factors alone. There's a lot involved with a game being dead than you might think @darthBaal, but your reasoning is flawed. These sound like opinionated complaints about what you don't like; not what's actually wrong with the game, and that's where your argument doesn't make sense. As @Asuramon pointed out well, your reasoning doesn't say much about the game overall; you're here expressing dislike for certain features of the game and claiming it's dead because you don't like playing the game. As someone who still plays this game and continues seeing activity here on the forums and on social media, I don't think this game is dead.

I tend to believe that Shackled Isles fills up slowly because of how it's Battle Royale, and that's PvP, and people who play MMOs aren't playing MMOs for Battle Royale. That was an unheard-of thing until Fortnite started becoming increasingly popular, and when it started to make millions, other game industries sought out Battle Royale as the newest money-making game genre. This game is no exception; why do you think an executive decision was made to include Battle Royale in Blade & Soul? Sure, it had that potential with the combat, but the main reason was because people believed doing this would make them money, and that by doing this, all the battle royale fans would rush over to give it a shot. Unfortunately, this game's PvP is so poorly-designed that this plan backfired, and considering people continue holding the belief that this game is P2W, myself included, PvP continues going downhill for this game, and so does the Shackled Isles. The reason why Koldrak's Lair does better is because that's PvE co-op, and people don't mind doing that. If you die to a monster, there's no being salty or angry at anyone but at one's own mistake, and that can be resolved easily. But when you die to a player, one who's probably spent millions of real money to "get better" or is hacking, that's very different, and the anger is worse so in that scenario. The rewards for Koldrak's Lair and Shackled Isles are both beneficial, but how they're beneficial is player-determined. Koldrak's Lair rewards [Koldrak's Scales] which can be exchanged for cool rewards, but they have to be farmed every day. Shackled Isles is the same thing. The only difference between both of them is that one is PvE and one is PvP, and in a game that has horrible PvP, I'd personally go with the PvE.

From my experience playing Blade & Soul, the combat is definitely a plus. It's fluid, it's fast-paced, and it forces a player to be both proactive and reactive instead of one or the other. The animations and art-style? Truly a wonder to behold for this game; not many MMO games can top off what Blade & Soul has accomplished and maintained for years. Personally, I think the story is good. It isn't hugely a fantastic or a very well-written story on some parts, but the pacing is decent, and there are a few characters I like from the storyline, some of which are returning in the upcoming Empyrean Citadel update, which I'm looking forward to. Character customization and design? Complex and intricate down to the detail. I spend more time customizing my characters than playing the actual game sometimes, and that says a lot for how well character customization is in this game. For the most part, I'm not that content with how NCWest made the mechanics for certain dungeon and raid bosses slightly easier because they were supposed to be challenging, which in-turn made it fun, but I'll overlook this because it makes playing the game a lot less of a pain. The best part of all for this game that I truly love are the outfits that you can collect once you reach the end game; in-fact, you can start collecting them right off the bat once you finish certain areas. It's a fun activity to do in this game and I recommend it to all those struggling to find a decent end game. However, one thing that's horribly-evident about this game is the optimization. I hear it from many people and they aren't wrong; this game has some of the worst optimization in any MMO. Unreal Engine 3 was just not designed to uphold the massive processing, animations, and weight Blade & Soul brought with it, and it shows from all the complaints players have about how their game runs at 3 FPS, which is undoubtedly true. Luckily, UE4 is going to be released, so hopefully this alleviates some of the problems. The grind? Dreadful; as someone who farms Dailies and Weeklies with alts., this is mind-numbingly dull. Content in-game is repeated and recycled so as to make the grind somewhat easier, but it's still a grind, and it's just boring. The only thing allowing me to have fun while doing this kind of grind is the combat, and that's about it. The grind is especially inherent in the upgrade system with upgrading your weapons and accessories. It's truly a pain to do and takes a somewhat-lengthy amount of time to upgrade a weapon by one level. Speaking of grind, a possible way to bypass this is to venture through Blade & Soul's Pay-to-Win system. As I tell people: if you can buy in-game items that provide gameplay advantages with outside currency, it's P2W. That's what this game mostly is, and has been, ever since 2017-2018, and it's continuing onward in 2019. I'm not a fan of it, and I know I don't have to spend money in the game, but if players can get stronger by whipping out their parents' credit card, that's just ridiculous. The game is full of RNG, and almost everything in this game is basically RNG. Even free content is RNG, which makes the game all the more unbearable at certain times. The crafting system is, agreeably, very lame. It's reminiscent of an AFK-esque game where you just start up production on a few things and wait for a certain period of time for it to finish. For an MMO game, that's kind of a shameful system to have, and that's more meant for AFK-oriented games like AdVenture Capitalist, or for mobile games at best. As for the community, I think there are both sides here. Some parts of it are good, some are bad; you could never get an extreme of one nor the other. However, what pesters me is the lack of community engagement from staff with the player base because as players, we're continuing to play and enjoy this game, but when we want to see things changed in ways we think are better for ourselves and others, they aren't received effectively. Suggestions, feedback, ideas; most are left unnoticed or unheard of, and that's sad because some are actually really good and can improve the game. These are a few of my thoughts. Overall, I still play Blade & Soul and I like it, but I hate the P2W and the severe grind behind it.

Not always. If higher-ups had that absolute mentality, they'd end up as Big Brother.

To be honest, what I'm more concerned about is if through this Archer update, most if not all bugs will be fixed and resolved, and that paywall barrier will be weakened a bit so new players have a chance. That's something that'll help in the game in the long run if they're addressed and fixed through this upcoming update.

I agree with you there @Grimoir. The sad truth is that I don't think people really understand how difficult parenting is. It's not about just keeping your kid fed, bathed, and rested, which are the only things some parents do and say, "Well, that's done. Back to Game of Thrones." It's about nurturing their growth and helping them walk through their stages in life. It's about being there for them every step of the way and loving them with unconditional positive regard. Most importantly, it's about being someone they could always trust when times are tough, and being someone they could feel acknowledgement and love from. [moderated content]

You'd be surprised how many game industries nowadays would try to break a law to make a profit. It's a cutthroat business, and it's a "go hard or go home empty" situation for most game industries today, especially large-scale ones. But thanks for the correction @LilyFU. This was referring to about the 5-year thing I replied to. Let's be real here; the game isn't where it should be, and the direction it's going in isn't something that's sitting well with people. The game remains poorly-optimized, events are more-or-less "meh" to a large percentage of Blade & Soul players, and most, if not all systems, are RNG and P2W-centered. If the game keeps all of this up, it'll be gone sooner than 5 years. Like you, I didn't want to admit this nor discuss it here, but part of improvement involves facing the hard facts, and this is a truth that needs to be understood. The article I provided was meant as an introduction to that topic, not the whole explanation. However, I appreciate that you read it because the Red Cross policy is under continuing debate in the game industry, and it's a serious policy. I agree with this. If game industries are going to include RNG elements in their games that involve external currencies, they need to be regulated such that kids aren't "gambling" their mom's credit card away for a bunch of stupid, digital goods. Also, you aren't wrong. NCSOFT makes the core of their money off of whales who spend thousands on gambling through Trove, and that's something many know already. It's a truth, and it's not going away for a long time. Personally, I like Pay-for-Convenience: if I could spend money to bypass stuff that would take me hours to do, I wouldn't mind, and if the game was being handled by a trusted game industry who's proactive and listening to us, I wouldn't mind spending to support them. However, P2W is bottom-line not good when it comes to gaming because wealthy gamers are essentially "cheating" by spending more to make them stronger in-game. Even though it isn't cheating per say, like hacking or using actual, programmed cheats, they're always going to be stronger than the player who goes F2P. P2W continues to plague many videogames to date, but that's because most games are F2P now, and game industries are out there to make money and please their shareholders, not please the players. Plus, how else will F2P games make money? They're free; that's the whole point; microtransactions are inevitable because of that.