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SmokeSauce

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  1. Firstly after reading this whole thread, I can understand that both sides of this debate has some good points that need to be addressed by NCSOFT. However from personal experience from this game and others, unfortunately I'm going to have to side more towards being against an anti-cheat in this game. Here's why... 1) I used to be a player of a popular Korean-developed 1st person shooter game called Alliance of Valiant Arms which got published to EU/NA region just like BnS has (sadly the game got shut down in July 2019 due to licensing issues, but is in the process of redevelopment and is soon to be re-released). You maybe thinking how is this relevant? Well let me tell you. This game used to use XIGNCODE3 as it's anti-cheat, that was one of the major flaws for it. It would ban random players for the dumbest sh*t, and over half of the bans or account flags that it gave to players were false-positives. Did it stop cheaters? No, absolutely not... It was getting a higher percentage of 100% legitimate players banned from the game than actual cheaters, any cheater with half a brain was able to bypass it as there were loads of individual coders with separate bypassing and cheat methods for the game, making it almost undetectable. My biggest worry and concern is the same happening to Blade and Soul, where it is mostly innocent players being caught in the crossfire of this with a shoddy anti-cheat being to blame. Also with how this anti-cheat worked it would ban players through the anti-cheat itself, not through the publisher, meaning if someone did get banned they would have to appeal it to XIGNCODE3 instead of the game's support team, which the XIGNCODE3 team never responded to tickets for, meaning all those innocent players who did get caught in this trap never got to play on their accounts again. Saying this, it wasn't totally impossible to "unban yourself", since at the time it would either IP-Ban or HWID-Ban a user, both of which an individual who knows what they are doing can essentially change their system files, to make it look like they are playing from a different machine or from a different IP, rendering this banning method useless for actual cheating players (again harming innocent players). If they are to actually add an anti-cheat system, it needs to have NCWEST in FULL CONTROL of it and understand the difference between what is malicious and what isn't, so even if there are false-positives, it can be looked into by the support team here and dealt with accordingly. 2) Most of the edits to the game files that the community are using is for Quality of Life purposes which has previously been stated clearly earlier in this thread in which should be added to the game itself as features/options that can be toggled on/off in the game by a player at anytime they wish. Let me give you a few examples of Quality of Life edits which makes this game so much nicer to play, which does not alter the gameplay or give an individual a particular "advantage": -World Lighting Removal (This made it easier to see boss attacks, such as the red/purple/yellow markers on the floor, currently without it, it can be very difficult to see this on any current in-game graphics setting, especially in certain areas of the game) -Less Loading Screens (Most of the time the loading screens are pointless and is ultimately time-wasting, this basically helps a player be able to actually play the game instead of being forced to watch a stuck screen while everyone else with faster pc's are already clearing a dungeon being impatient to wait for your butt to load in) -Cutscene Removal (I understand that a lot of effort went into making these cutscenes, but my strong belief is that after a character has viewed this cutscene atleast once, they should be allowed to have an option within the settings to permanently skip the cutscenes from triggering, as again this wastes a lot of time and can be annoying, sometimes killing a player if they are gliding/jumping over a spot where you can fall to your death is a cutscene triggers by another player at that exact moment, such as in Cathedra Cliffs or Shadowmoor) -Skill Rebinding/Relayering/Simple Mode edits (I understand this can be considered "controversial" depending on the desired outcome, but honestly despite the negative points against this, I still think the positives of having this as a feature in the game outweighs the downsides to them. This adds a lot of playability to a great deal of classes and specs, especially when "simple mode" is tuned a lot better on some classes/specs than others, so allowing this gives a player freedom to decide what they want it to do, putting everyone on a more even playing field, fairer overall. Those of you who just say "learn your class" over being able to rebind/relayer/edit simple mode is simply not a good enough argument in my opinion. Why? In certain situations FPS can be really low and can be difficult to trigger skills properly to get cooldowns from gear to proc correctly/do proper rotations, not only making someone with a worse pc/connection at a major disadvantage, but completely making their class/spec unplayable; this is more noticeable on Soul Fighter and Assassin from personal experience. Whereas with the ability to use Simple Mode and edits to what skill goes where on your keyboard, it counteracts this, allowing someone with a worse pc to do just as well as someone with an expensive high-end pc.) -Instant box opening/transmutes (Honestly without this, the game feels sluggish and can be annoying to sit there for AGES, just for completely pointless countdown timers to trigger something that can be done right away. If the ability to use this gets taken away, I personally would feel very annoyed as this has to be one of the biggest QoL improvement that the game needs.) -DPS Meter - So you can see top 3 DPS in your party in a dungeon/top 6 DPS in raids (I personally love this and cannot understand why it is currently limited by default to just your own DPS... It's nice to be able to see what other players you are playing with are capable of doing so you can use it to improve your own gameplay) -There are more that I can cover but the ones listed above I would consider to be actual proper Quality of Life changes that should be added to the game by default without the need of modifying game files to do so. 3) At the end of the day, I believe that when it comes to the use of "modified game files" such as addons/XMLs etc, it should be used with common sense. By this I mean, to use it purely for improving the quality of the game itself and NOT using it to abuse in PvP/Leaderboard content. I'm personally all-for people being able to use these 3rd party tools as long as it's not used to gain a significant advantage over another player that is playing without them, such as for ranking rewards on leaderboards or in PvP/Clan Battles for example. So yeah, my point still stands, common sense and courtesy to other players in a "competitive environment" is important above all else. They only become a major problem when it is used in such a manner. TL;DR -Anti-Cheat needs to only be a thing if NCWEST is in full control of it and can understand the difference between malicious intent and simple QoL changes etc. -XIGNCODE3 is known to cause false-positive cases, catching out and banning far more innocent players than actual cheaters. -QoL 3rd Party tools should be added to the game by default as features without the need to modify the game files. -Common sense and courtesy is important... do not use cheats/3rd party assistance against other players for personal gain such as ranking rewards on leaderboards or in PvP aspects of the game.
  2. I think people forget that they can easily obtain the gear needed to do any of the dungeons at their current difficulty from Mushins Tower and Outlaw Island after they complete the story. Sure it can be tedious, but it really isn't difficult. From what I see, the current easy-mode dungeons drop gear a tier higher than Mushins Tower, so it seems clear that obtaining gear from Mushins Tower first was the intended way for new players to be able to do their daily dungeons in F8. On a side note, I would like to ask if they could add the ingame gear progression menu again, so we can see what materials we need for higher gear tiers again.
  3. I just opened Stage 10 of the Armoury Box after today's maintenance and noticed that I only got given half of the required crystals needed to upgrade my weapon from Thornbreaker Stage 3 to Stage 4. I did however already have the needed crystals from doing the dailies each day, but since the event is supposed to give "all" of the necessary and required materials from stage to stage, I thought I would bring this up. I have added screenshots as proof so you can see what I'm talking about. (I did notice that there is a "True Cosmic Soul Material Chest C" which gives materials and sacred vials too, although I'm assuming that this is intended for the purpose of upgrading the Soul that was given earlier in the event.)
  4. I have a Blade Dancer of my own, and yes I still use lightning spec with it. I also haven't noticed any dps decrease with it (I'm using War Song Soul Badge). However I will say that the dps scaling from the items with this class/spec compared to most other classes is rather low and underwhelming, but this has been like that for as long as I can remember.
  5. Yes, this is definitely the item causing the "XP Charm Cooldowns Bug", I was actually going to put up this same screenshot myself that I took this morning until I saw you had beaten me to it! I hope @Himecan pass this info along to whoever can fix this.
  6. Hiya, I put some more thought into it and after what a guy earlier said, it's starting to make sense. I believe he is right at one of the event charms used has caused this bug to occur on all of my XP charms on the same character I try to use them on. In this case, being my Kung Fu Master character. The item that I believe has caused this bug was named "Deluxe Special Hongmooon XP Charm" which provides 1m Hongmoon XP (same as normal Special Hongmoon XP Charms, but different name). I acquired this item last night while opening one of the Holiday Gift Boxes on this character with a Yellow Key. After using that charm, I was kind of astounded at the fact I was seeing a 24hrs cooldown on all of the other XP charms for this character. I can confirm that my only affected character is the character I claimed and used this "Deluxe Special Hongmooon XP Charm" on, all of my other characters have their normal 2 seconds cooldown like normal. I hope this helps pinpoint the problem to get it sorted out before other people get the wrong idea or confused about the whole situation like I did.
  7. I have now tested that this 24hr shared cooldown applies to ALL of my XP charms including those that never had this cooldown before today's update, from all sources. The charms that I have had sitting in my "Received Items" box for a few weeks also now have this cooldown, which until today, they never had.
  8. Hello, I'm not sure if I'm the only player to notice, but some of my XP charms, including the ones acquired from daily challenges, have a 24hrs cooldown between each use... I really really hope this isn't intentional and that it's just some bug that gets fixed. I haven't tested whether it's a cooldown across all of my XP charms yet or if it even carries across all characters on the account like Unity Reputation charms do. But if this can get fixed soon to the way it was yesterday, would be appreciated thanks.
  9. That's similar to my suggestion I put on my thread: (Post #3 is my suggestion on how they could fix this mess while keeping everyone happy, both players and devs)
  10. Ok... so I've been thinking about what happened regarding the whole item removal thing yesterday and came up with this genius idea where everyone wins, both the playerbase new and old as well as ncsoft themselves. So first off, all of the items that were removed and deleted should be restored and given back to all of the players regardless of whether it was obtained illegitimately or not (excluding designer threads+outfit chests; those should stay deleted, as I will explain later what and how they should use these threads). Why? Let me explain... I believe that all of the "moontide event" outfits, ones that were and could be obtained from the broken clothing merchants should be unlocked by default for all characters and players, both brand new characters and old characters that have already been made. This gives people a selection range and choice of cosmetics that don't affect the gameplay in any way at all to make their characters look good. Obviously make the tradeable outfits from this untradeable since it won't be necessary to sell stuff people already have. Remove the ability to salvage these outfits. Ok so now you are thinking, great! Everyone now has a bunch of free cosmetics and most of their stuff back, but where do ncsoft win from this? Right this is my next bit. The outfit chests that are currently selling these outfits should have their contents changed to contain the accessories and weapon skins that accompany and go with these outfits. They should still be obtained with the Designer Threads at a reasonable price. These threads should be a rare drop from hard-mode dungeons, as well as purchasable from the NCoin/HM-Coin store at like 300Coins each or something (because if these are too cheap, it would devalue the item and subsequent purchase items with it). I also believe that they should remove the RNG aspect from the outfit chests from these threads, perhaps have like a checklist system from the box meaning that when you open the outfit box, it gives you a random outfit accessory/adornment but one that you don't already own yet until you own all of those items in which case that box is no longer purchasable until new outfits/accessories/adornments are added. Ok so, this fixes the outfits issue, but what about the other things obtained from this event and the impact it had? Good question, this is where it gets tricky because of how much time has passed with nothing done to fix the problem. Ideally as mentioned in my other post, the servers should have been temporarily shut down for an emergency patch/maintenance to fix the error before it got out of hand like it did. But as this didn't happen, we now have the problem of an excessive amount of pet pods, fish pets, silver saberfang pets, pet pack (from the pet pods) and an inflated market for soulstones. The pet cosmetics themselves, the fish ones and the silver saberfang ones should no longer be salvageable/transmutable into pet pods, but those should all be returned to the players. This way we can still enjoy the way they look, they should also be purchaseable directly for like 2 Designer Threads each from the merchant as a direct purchase (no RNG involved), and since they will be cosmetic only with no other benefits, it won't break the pet pods/soulstones market. And because people probably farmed an absolute load of them thinking they can get pet pods out of them, they will likely just sell them to an NPC/dispose of them themselves or store them for whatever reason (but I think it's important the players get to choose what they do with them, not to be forced like it was yesterday). Because they were previously marketable, with my new suggested method of obtaining/using them, they wouldn't fit the marketable pet criteria as they would impact the price/value of threads themselves if they were. But what about all of those pet pods? It is hard to tell which pet pods were obtained legitimately, whether it was obtained from a dungeon, with money from a box or F10, or purchased from F5 with actual gold. Sadly this is too late to fix in my opinion; yes they should be all returned to the players regardless of where they came from... it may be seen as unfair to players that didn't "abuse" the "moontide event", but this one is on ncsoft I'm afraid as it was their mistake. Instead this should be seen as a monumental lesson to the devs of what not to do in such a scenario we all witnessed in the past few weeks so it doesn't happen again and if it does, hopefully it gets handled more appropriately before things get this out of hand. I do still want to play Blade and Soul deep down and I'm already missing it; but due to yesterday's course of action... I'm finding it difficult to bring myself to even want to load up the game until something is done. I do still feel strongly about my points I made in yesterday's post above as far as what course of action Blade and Soul needs to take when it comes to growing their playerbase again and making it enjoyable for everyone new and old. I would like to see what other players think to my suggested solutions and reasonings including NCSOFT/NCWEST themselves. @Hime Please make this game great again, it still has potential!
  11. Hello all, It saddens me to have to say this, I truely did enjoy playing this game, even through the rough patches that made a lot of other people upset and not play the game anymore... but today was the straw that broke the camel's back... So today I was kind of looking forward to seeing what today's patch would bring, maybe start upgrading some of my other characters a bit more perhaps? But no... the first thing I was greeted with was almost everything I have on every character completely deleted and gone... Stuff that I have purchased from F10 included and things I have bought from F5 marketplace and other players with my own gold that I played for... I have lost hours of progress, if not days at this point... and then I hit F3... oh dear... yeah... oh dear indeed... I'm greeted with literally an empty wardrobe on all of my characters except a few outfits that I didn't care about... But it's ok though... do you know why? Because the first thing that pops up at the bottom right of my screen after feeling deeply saddened and depressed is "Hongsil Treasure Draw Starts Soon". Are you serious?? You want people to still spend money on this game after doing this to the entire playerbase? First we had nerfs to dungeon gold, then weeklies get ruined with this new Silversteel Laboratories that only whales can participate in and remove the VT weeklies that anyone can do... and now this... I'm aware that there were also many other changes that slowly ruined the game, but these are the main ones that put the nail in the coffin for me. If you want me to play this game again, and I'm sure other people will most likely agree with me here, these things need to change and soon before there is no players left on the servers at all: 1) Optimise the game for once... it should not take 10 minutes to load a game on a high spec computer, and then crash if you get impatient at a loading screen or do something too quickly in game... We all want to be able to enjoy a lag-free experience on this game, both ping and fps wise. Can it happen? I'm sure it can with a bit of time and effort; but not if money is the only thing on the developer's mind. A stable game provides a stable income, not a dying game and "milk everyone for whatever's left of the dead game". Players shouldn't NEED to modify the game files themselves just so that the game actually runs smooth-ish without crashing at any raid above and including Nightfall Sanctuary... Or at Stonescale Passage for example... one some of the paths, some genius decided "let's put like 50 mobs here with like 10m hp in a tiny space so that the moment you go close and attack them, you literally can't play the game anymore because it's completely frozen... oh wait... you died because you can't play with 0 fps for 10 seconds? Too bad..." 2) Stop rushing with "buffing dungeons/raids", as in making stuff have way more HP etc... because it's locking content out away from new potential players. Right now new players complete their story, just to be greeted by an environment where there's literally barely anything for them to do because the difficulty is too high for their gear level. It's not fair on anyone. 3) If you are gonna make a mistake such as the "moontide event", atleast deal with it there and then... don't let it become a week-long issue and then do this to everyone today where literally everything gets deleted from everyone's accounts. No one likes investing hours and hours of time into something just for it to be taken away without warning. Ideally, they should have shut down the server the moment the issue was spotted instead of publicly advertising it and then not doing anything at all about for over a week; it's disgusting. 4) Make the game more friendly to newer players, and give veteran players a reason to explore and visit places around the map during the main story. There is a lot of beautiful graphics and scenery in this game to explore and engage with; but literally no reason at all to visit those places other than the 5 minutes you run through it during main quest; it's kind of sad and a lot of wasted potential. 5) STOP WITH THE RNG STUFF... No one likes spending money, especially real money to get literally nothing in return... and yes, getting small amounts of "event currency" in return which you end up needing to spend £100s just to buy one decent item with is not value at all... it's disgusting. If you are gonna have an event, fair enough... the Wishing Charms event was actually nice and I thought it was good, allowed newer players to gear up without needing to spend any money on the game, plus was free. Whereas things like the hongsil event and trove are just pure scams. 6) Make an actual official wiki/guide for new and veteran players on the official BnS website which will consistently get updated with accurate information about EVERYTHING in the game. If RuneScape can do it with the insane amount of stuff there is in that game, I'm sure BnS can too. It's actually hell for new players to figure stuff out in this game and find out important information to make decisions in this game. Long story short, I really enjoy the core of this game, and I love how the combat works in it. It's unique, satisfying and is pretty fun to progress in, but due to recent major issues as mentioned above, the cons have far out-weighed the pros in this game. Unless something is done soon to address these problems, an excellent game will just die. Farewell Blade and Soul, I look forward to when the the developers start caring more about making this game more new-player-friendly and less pay-to-win, as well being able to run smoothly in any fight or raid. Farewell, B&S Community; I just want to let everyone who's helped me in game up until this point that I'm grateful for all of the help and support you've given me. Just unfortunate we all got screwed over like this :(
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