Why Bother

Different games, have different needs in terms of player volume, due to how much of the content in the game requires either six, or twelve players to do it, B&S certainly needs more active players than most games, especially given the general shift in online games to be more solo friendly over the past fifteen, or so years. Combine that with how difficult it currently is to get a new player, especially a new non-whale player up to where NCSoft, and most especially the bulk of the player base wants players to be, and the game certainly isn't doing too well now, as saying it is bleeding players is quite accurate. Although the game can only bleed out players so much, before it finally does just up, and die, as the less players the game has that can participate in the intended content of the game, the less playable the game will be, and there certainly is a breaking point for all that. I imagine things will improve after Act IX is released, all the indicators seem to show that the Baleful/Seraph weapon line is about to get phased out, like older weapon lines before it, as with the reward nerfs to all the associated content to that weapon line, the recent upgrade event, and so forth, it just seems the likely result. Right now a new player fresh out of the story content likely would have something like a stage two, or three Baleful/Seraph weapon, and maybe not even 900 AP, while for anything NCSoft wants us to be doing, people tend to demand you have at least a Raven weapon, and 1100 AP. I'd rather expect that in Act IX we'll be handed, or pretty much handed a current tier two weapon, the older legendary accessories, a better soul, a better pet, and some better gems, or at least be given a healthy collection of peaches, so one can buy some of such things, plus maybe a Raven soul shield set, which will then have a new player sitting at over 1000 AP, and be in a far better state than a new player is now. That's been the basic cycle for this game, it just looks especially bad now as we're at the tail end of the cycle. Although keep in mind that I think this way of doing things isn't a good idea, and I'm pretty fed up with the game as it stands as a result of all this, it eats up far more time than I feel like spending, I'm sick of the retched player base, and basically every time I log on, I wonder to myself, why I even bothered to do so. At this point I think I'll finish up the current pet event, then may not bother to log in till Act IX, and go back to playing very casually after that, or just uninstall. Add: Also being Korean, or not has nothing to do with an online game being grindy. The whole "Korean grinder" term likely got coined with the first Lineage, back before the shift to free to play. These days though grind your life away, or pay up is getting to be the basic norm for free to play online games, regardless of their country of origin, some are just worse than others.