ThePrelate

Whoah! I've learned much about this game from that guy. I haven't played the game for quite some time now and it looks to me like I won't be coming back at all, seeing as so many good people are leaving it... Too bad, it was fun while it lasted. Cya guys! P.S. These points he made were basically all the things numerous players and threads were stating or stated on this forum at points in time.

You obviously have never had an incident with cheaters and bots. You have the right on your own opinion but please don't play a saint with those 'Oh I don't know what's wrong with this world because people enjoy watching some hacker suffer'. You obviously don't know how awful people can feel when a cheater kills them and steals their hard-earned PPs just by teleporting around and you obviously don't know how irritating it is to witness a bot stealing an injured soldier or a meteor right in front of your eyes. So please refrain from your saintly preaches and try to understand that people have their own view on this topic as well. Some people have struggled with those bots and hackers for a long time and would really be content to see a name of that hacker who robbed them of their spent time on that list. That's the least NCSoft (or any company for that matter) could do for their playerbase. Because hackers are nothing more than those people who hurt other people and take joy from that. If you still think that naming and shaming is childish and just plain stupid, well that's your opinion but I seriously hope you'll show the same understanding for those cheaters when they hurt you in some way.

While the drop rate of an item can indeed be influenced in code, it's impossible to say anything about the RNG without tampering with game files and I think a lot of people would rather stay out of that. So we can only have theories. But yeah, this is entirely possible, doing a few simple lines in the code could determine the drop (as it does, for instance, with quests in many games).

Your first bit makes no sense. You're gonna have to explain to me what you meant, or you didn't even read the two sentences I replied to your second post? As for PKing, I agree with you, people really need to stop demanding things in a game that is first of all a PvP game. You have faction uniforms which make you flagged for PvP and as long as you don't put those on, you're golden. Having said that, I can also understand people who complain. I don't do PvP aside from arenas, mainly because I can't even score a kill in areas like SSP or Misty Woods due to game's bad optimization and the fact that 10 attacks hit me while I do 1 because of stuttering and FPS drops. Most people don't want to do OWPvP because of that (if forum and faction chats are to be believed) simple fact. But the thing is they have to do their dailies because of sheer amount of Soulstones that are needed for weapon improvement. Personally, I don't see OWPvP as fun or a thing where I could have challenge and opportunity to improve my skills because someone forces me into it every day and let's be honest the area is unstable as is.

If you didn't bother to read the whole post, why do you even respond? Or visit forums for that matter?

WoW has it worse when it comes to OWPvP so what the *cricket* are you talking about?! Dude you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Since you took WoW as an example, let's compare the two, even though these two games are not on equal grounding. First of all, WoW has its players constantly flagged for PvP, aside from very few areas which have PvP off by default either because it's meant for players who are starting out or is a common ground for both factions. That means you're in danger of getting killed ever since you go beyond level 10. Hm, I wonder if BnS players still have it worse. Furthermore, WoW has a clear distinction between PvP and PvE content. You don't use PvE currency to buy PvP gear and neither do you use PvP currency (or gear for that matter) to buy PvE gear or run PvE content. BnS is nowhere near that level and this design makes it harder for everyone to play and progress. In addition to that, with the inclusion of achievement system, WoW makes it easier for players to do other objectives in PvP than just kill other players. In my opinion, PvP should be fun and the PvP in BnS is anything but fun. Or you don't see that most people do things like SSP just to get materials for their expensive upgrades? I agree, PvP is supposed to pit a player against player in order to have fun or hone their skills. In WoW, I do OWPvP as much as possible, mostly because I want to get better with my class. If I die, no problem, it just means the person was stronger than me. And if I see that the person is simply too weak or inexperienced I just skip them, there's no challenge in that. The problem with OWPvP in BnS is that there are no objectives in any of their PvP areas and that there is no distinction between this content and PvE content. NCSoft prides itself in this game because the game is supposed to equalize player's characters so that it comes to skill instead of gear. Why, oh why then do we need to do PvP in order to get PvE gear?! Add to it that game is poorly optimized for most players and most PCs struggle with displaying things with Ctrl+F on let alone without it and you get why most people are disheartened by this content.

They usually offer USD prices in EU :P

NA has fallen, I repeat NA has fallen (to bots)! They have breached the EU!

Dude, don't do this to yourself. If this feeling carries on to tomorrow and the next day and the day after... I recommend you to stop playing the game and I mean it. Take a break or completely leave the game. It's for your own good. I was in a similar situation and it wasn't good at all. Once I started experiencing anxiety symptoms over this game, that was it for me, I had to take a break from the game and wasn't back till I got a right attitude towards it. I am serious about this, if this post was just some sort of vent for you, okay, but if nothing changes in following days, seriously, stop the game. No game and I repeat, NO GAME is worth losing your head over it!

Hm, to answer your titular question. NO. MMOs are about fun and community. Sad to say it but this one is anything BUT community and fun. Part of it is because the design of the game is really bad. What with too high upgrade costs in materials and gold, what with content coming out way too fast for anyone to properly catch up with it, what with a multitude of servers and what with automatic match-up tools the game offers, but this game is losing... Well I wouldn't say players but its community aspect. No one talks to anyone anymore, people are mostly just trying to finish up daily quests and dungeons to get on to even more grinding to get money for their equipment and so on. IMO this is not what a good MMO should look like. Games in general should be about fun, not about working constantly to get things. Until I have set it up so in my mind, this game felt like a job to me. Add to that numerous RNG-based aspects of the game, hackers, farmers, lags and bad optimization and you basically get a discouraging environment where only those who pay or cheat want to play. So, I don't really think the game is any fun even when you reach max equipment in it as there is simply nothing to do there besides constantly doing the same thing. There is also the community which is terrible. I don't think it's necessarily our fault because most people I hear are seeing the game as another job. And when you have that attitude towards the game, it's likely to happen that the attitude you have towards your colleagues on your job will carry on to the game. And that attitude is quite bad for most of the people. I had a friend whom I managed to persuade to play the game and what's even better, that friend was actually optimistic about it but once the game had started, it quickly turned into a nightmare. After all of that, I advised my friend to not even bother with the game as the game where you get gray hair from stress is not worth playing. You are supposed to have fun in there and all of the above mentioned reasons are why most people don't want to play the game or make the atmosphere more bearable, less toxic. I still cling onto the game for some reason. Maybe because I hope it will get better but that hope is slowly dying. I've got better things to do.

It's Blade and Soul 2: Invasion of Bots :D

The wall of fire is in place to prevent people from re-engaging the boss once the encounter starts and they die. Think about it, it wouldn't be much of an encounter if you died and could easily resurrect and then just run back to the party to kill the boss. Too easy. Having said that, I don't understand why it had to be flame walls. They cover a much larger area than things like doors or rubble or something which would be even better in its place.I agree completely, this system feels like someone's messing with you when you can actually just implement closing doors.

I agree with this. The game doesn't have much to offer in terms of downtime activities. It mainly puts its entire focus on grinding endlessly for materials you need to upgrade weapons. There isn't much incentive to do anything besides that. PvP is a wreck because of bots and hackers, SSP is hindered by poor optimization and BW has turned into a grindfest due to faction imbalance. As far as achievements go, they are mostly down to repetitive doing of dungeons (seriously, killing Blackram Narrows boss 1k times?!) or quests or collecting soul shields which again require doing more repetitive dungeon grinding. Even leveling professions is out of the question because of profession design. There isn't much worth doing in terms of meaningful content but yeah, the person with imagination can always find new ways to entertain themselves even in a game that has nothing interesting to offer. I personally have an alt which changes outfit every once in a while and the outfit varies according to the story. I have bunch of weapon skins in my vault to match those outfits as well so I'm kinda having fun and entertain myself with it. But on the serious note, I really hope this attitude changes.

Au contraire, I talk to people, I explain tactics and I don't mind running with newcomers or people who are in the dungeon for the first time. You are confusing me with those elitist jerks who are all about their gear and no skill. But don't go around telling me that I should have patience with you if you're in it with too low gear or no knowledge about the content whatsoever (that's my personal PoV). That's not fair towards me because I don't go into your groups expecting to just die on the first boss special attack (or otherwise struggle to survive the boss) and let you struggle even more with outputting enough damage to finish off the boss. I don't then expect you to do that either, let alone *cricket* about how people have no heart towards you because you just want to enjoy the game and do a dungeon the whole day. You also need to understand that the game is heavily grind-dependent and people usually don't want to spend any more time in given dungeons than they have to (that's not my PoV but general PoV). As for this syndrome, congratulations! You have just discovered warm water! No offense but this way of thinking was adopted in games much less strenuous than BnS and with the addition of dungeon finder tools. Believe me when I say, I have gotten my hands on games which are old and don't have those mechanics enabled, and the amount of conversation just the omission of dungeon finder tools (meaning you have to go to the entrance of actual dungeon and talk to people to actually recruit them for a party) sparks is incredible. The problem with this is debatable and there are many reasons for and against it, but I digress with it. Last part, I don't expect people to be pro, I expect them to at least carry their own weight in a dungeon. By that logic, neither should you expect people to be sympathetic to you for going blindly into an encounter. I agree with this. This is just absurd but there are plenty of PUGs doing Poharan and BSH with lower gear. Don't pay attention to those guys who demand that much AP, just make your own group.

I agree. This is definitely an idea worth reviewing.