Nihilu

Ok now for the actual topic of the thread. Building a good and profitable MMO is hard. There are so many flops out there, and the current mind set of gamers out there makes it even harder. Pay2Play games are becoming a thing of the past, you need quite the roster of players keeping it going (these games I think should be able to survive off of cosmetic shops, as they are still getting revenue else where). Even a well known name like Elder Scrolls switched to a B2P game only a year after release (with DLC and progress increasing purchases). i have also seen a view point coming around now where being F2P is a badge of honor. While it is true F2P players are needed as they inflate a population to keep a game active and healthy, saying “hey I like this game but am not willing to spend money on it” and then complain that there are a few more hurdles is kind of ridiculous, like you said it is a product, and rarely do we get any sort of product for free. This is a mind set tho, and as players can get a decent experience for free out there, they will jump on that. This forces companies to find ways to make money, gating content through DLC, putting timers on everything to be sped up, limiting slots in a collection and strategy gearing game, so on and so forth. While you can upgrade faster with money, at least we don’t have to worry about buying DLC. With that hat out of the way, the developers are doing better then given credit for. Yes this event is targeted at a high gear level, it could be that way due to ET coming out. It is also true the last event/update was amazing for newer players/alts. You literally just had to log in every day for an hour and a half and be able to get a legendary soul, not run a single dungeon. With the upgrade to CS and HM they added a great new gold source to the game for newer players. Combined that with 20th floor, and later OI and you got a descently easy 33 gold for F2P players (I think premium might be throwing off my numbers) along with mats to upgrade in unity (which is cheap till you start refining and still cheap but rng). You could get 4 dgs if you did the event every day, one short of fusing a badge. All of that is amazing for gear catch up, yes high gear players got it too, but the need for it isn’t as high as it is for new players. To get your fused badge for some classes is almost needed. To get a Legendary soul for less then an oil worth of event currency (+gold). And looking at raven you just need a raid upgrade mat to go from seraph>raven, they are literally making the base raven now. So the climb to TT is a lot easier. Another thing missed I think is that if they continue with the trend they will basically be giving players an oil a month for just being logged in (3 for premium users, any upgrade to premium is always good). But yes there are areas to improve still (need better source for gem powders), and threads should be made to highlight them. But to be so up in arms that one event was built with higher geared players in mind over catch up events is no reason for the forums to have gotten so doom and gloom. As long as this isn’t the norm, then it will be a drop in the bucket. There will be a lot more events catering to helping low gear players, while only giving a bit to end gear players.

I believe he means 1 - 5 piece not the turtle. You can do it going 1-5 turtle anyways. Due to the msc requirement for oils you could end up stacking more lesser demon orbs then you can craft into oils. You can then use those with the yellow shards to make purple to work on TT set. Yes it will take a while, but combine with the wings you get from weeklies (as if you aren’t running TT you won’t need them for the accesories right away) you could get a basic three piece set in a reasonable amount of time.

the Rewards for it use to be better, I believe you use to need the mats to upgrade gear (wasn’t around but I think I heard that?). Later they put pet pods in HM and CS part that took the orb. HM is honestly an easier dungeon not to fail due to dps (or mechanics as mechanics are ignored mostly for first boss of CS) so that could be an argument as to why it requires an orb. I am fine with the orb requirement, but I do believe they should boost the rewards from HM, or give better chances at a good Merchant of Wonder due to the requirements of needing the orb. Thus making HM the more rewarding but gated dungeon, and CS the more consistently able to run dungeon, with still descent rewards.

I would like to point out one thing about BnS event system, it doesn’t follow the typical event system of P2P MMO’s I have done or even F2P MMO’s. It seems to be more closely related to that I see in cellphone games, where there is always one going on. So it isn’t as much of events, but more so part of the routine to keep the game fresh and allow ways to acquire items (or oils in BnS case). Some of these events in cell phone games have “challenge mode” or higher difficulty tier, in a way to encourage players to work up to. Now I don’t think this is something that should happen consistently, but having one in a blue moon isn’t bad. There are some players I have talked to that basically don’t care about upgrading till a reduction happens, everything in this game can be done with pretty nominal gear if willing to learn mechs and find good groups. Outside of challenge modes and first introduction of new raids, this is the main time the game actually required high end gear (TT raid and Challenge events sometimes require players to cut back on dps or can cause issues with scoring higher or mechs). At the same time, they still have the same event avaliable to everyone, but with decreased rewards, so it isn’t an event for the top 10% but one that gives an extra reward for the top 10%. I would say similar to how upgrade event give better type of rewards for the bottom “X”%. No one is being excluded, the low event is there for everyone with the typical “event” rewards. And the rewards for the heightened event isn’t so outlandish that it will give them a ridiculous increase from where they are at. The wings, like Aztael mentioned, are the main thing that could be considered over kill to put in there. But at the same time wings are a huge money maker for ncsoft that I don’t see them going into normal events. My thought on this tho is, keep these type of legendary events, bring back old bosses, preferable with out nerfed mechs. Require pretty good gear (preferable not to this ratio of end game if mechs are required) and allow players to buy tickets to get past “Legendary” Events cosmetics, use this as a carrot for people to reach for, so we have more reasons to work on and upgrade equipment.

I should also clarify, I am not saying the event is balanced 100% right. I am not sure if it is or isn’t, Korea had thE turtle too I believe. So if we aren’t hitting the same amount of target audience, or if they didn’t properly take into account the difference in regions (pink badge ET raid, unity time, soul level?) then the hp should possible be lowered a bit. My argument is primarily that it is nice that an event is catered to others then just those gearing up. Where an army of alts aren’t always the best for the event.

I know people who can do it who don’t have full gilded squares yet. The octas are very useful for them to help get to the squares. They would be equivalent to those aiming for gilded triangles getting heptas. It is just one stage up, so not much in all reality, but still can be very useful to them. The TT mats aren’t as useful, but some might not have GC9 as the accesories can sometimes be more meaningful to some classes too. The fully maxed players are aiming for the title probably, but that is quite a bit higher dps requirement then just killing the turtle.

For those who do have a problem with the event I would like to pose a question, how should the developers create an event that can prioritize higher gear players? Most events we get are to help level up, we have gear events (last event soul). We have raid events (low tier ones get more consistent reward). This is the first event I have seen that gives something more to those who are geared, while most favors those who aren’t. Why should events cater more to those who aren’t geared? I do wish it was a little different with more mechs and slightly less dps, but I am glad to see something that at least can be a reward for those who do gear up. As long as these events aren’t the most common then it can be a nice goal to work up to. Give players a reason not to just wait for the next reduction to level up their gear.

I did say I wish it was more mechanical and less dps, but it is probably to put some kind of gate on the rewards. Wings seem to be one of the highest selling points (other then high end gems) of trove/rng boxes, it causes even some players who rarely pay to take a chance at them. This is a F2P game, they need to keep both paying customers and F2P customers happy. Recently there hasn’t been an event really aimed at high geared players, realm rift had nice rewards for them, but the thanksgiving event was a joke (most players I talked to wish they didn’t use CoS currency as the drop rates where to low). But to note, this Poharon wasn’t all that hard with suji, mostly players again not willing to use food/potions. I notice that on average if I don’t use a friendship charm no one will, and you get those for basically free. If they make things to hard, then you will get complaints that the mechanics are stupid and shouldn’t be hated behind high mech dungeons, you can not appease everyone with every event, it is a sad but honest truth. I did say “harder part of the event” I wasn’t trying to claim that the actual dungeon was hard other then dps.

Part of the problem with the new event dungeon isn’t with dps, but people partially not realizing that there are dragonbloods you can get, and up to 15. I had some lfp groups where I wasn’t able to grab dragonbloods before they engaged the boss, so one mistake and they lost 1/6 (or more) of their dps. I have cleared it with all my raven 3 alts with just slightly better then out of story gear, so definitely doable for anyone. the harder part of the event I do wish was more mechanical and less dps (I don’t quite have the dps to clear) but at the same time why should every event be catered to specific players? High end players rarely have an event to help them gear up, so putting orcas in there for them isn’t unreasonable. Most of the gear up events end before it even helps them.

The last event was actually pretty new player friendly. If you get through the main story and the side quest, you actually had enough dps to clear HM and CS. The problem is most people don’t use food for one, and knowing mechs for a CS if your team is all lower in dps. The last event also was a soul upgrade event so you were able to get a descent soul with a lot less work then without the event. The current event isn’t as useful for newcomers, but by doing the DM dungeon you can get some jewels/elements that could be nice for upgrading as well.

If they did that they would increase the cost to get each of the items in the dragon exchange. I wasn’t able to find the post I was looking for, but in an event a while ago, they basically said they pay close attention to keep balance with the rewards (argument at the time I want to say was the market). Sense then it seems the rewards always follow a similar pattern of like 1 less oil the weeks done, and a few extra for like pet packs. Most other events put in a box with other rewards from the dungeon, I feel they replaced that with the DGS currency this time. So we lost some other mats (like upgrade jewels) but now people were able to farm dgs. This balance is why they won’t let you exchange currencies most likely in any event. They don’t want people just switching all currencies to get oils, or dgs. They will always also never allow you to trade event currency through alts as it slightly disrupts the ratios too. More importantly tho, for events like this it would also go against the upgrading mechanic of it. This was a soul/badge upgrade event, if you used your currency in your soul you save twice as much oils as you could obtain (but can’t save for reduction then), if you could trade currency to alts you literally could go from 0 soul - the max the event will give, current design you have 0 ways of doing that, and that is fine.

I was trying to show more that the fact of having double currency isn't an issue more so then what should be obtained via an event. I honestly feel like the "second" currency is more of the event, while the main currency is just part of the norm, and is just reskined to try and keep things a little (little) less feeling repetitive. As you both noted, the rewards of the main currency is always about the same, and happening all the time, the second currency (or in some cases the boxes that come from event, IE Poharan dungeon last event and choosing which rewards to get) is what the real event is. It is all about how they integrate it, like most people hated the Halloween event as you needed both currency for a single item. As long as they don't require both for purchase, and have different pools all should be good.

Having 2 currency isn’t inherently a bad thing. One thing that is pretty apparent by now is that for events they are aiming at about 7-8 days per oil, this is probably due to business aspect to keep a demand for oils consistent. With them introducing 2 currencies they can still add to the excitement to the event rewards while maintaining a balance in quantities. Take this current event, right now if we do the event dungeon each day and weeklies we get to get an oil just over 7 days. But as it cost an orb I could see a lot of people not being able to get the currency every day. But with the second currency they allow for different rewards to be obtained in different manners, and they have a more specific theme for the second currency (dgs/badge this event, higher grade rewards next event, costumes anniversary event) This allows you to ignore it, if you don’t need the rewards for the currency. I like the next event idea as it allows them to put slightly heighten rewards in, while limiting who can obtain them by a difficulty gate (less just out of the story alts, theoretically). At the same time leaving the generic rewards more obtainable by everyone.

To be fair the increase to HM and CS was massive for lower geared players. I believe for CS you need to have only 400K dps to clear first boss for 12 gold and mats to upgrade your character through unity (super cheap upgradeable options in the beginning). They drastically cut down the cost to upgrade raven and raised the base line of weapons to at least riftwalk 3. These changes should increase everyone’s dps at least by a little, heck my alts have even gained some dps. So now that you are doing more damage you should be able to clear more content/harder content in the same amount of time. So is it really a good nerf when there is a rebalancing of speed to beat the dungeon from the new player all the way to the veteran? There are still plenty of good gold sources out there, and takes a lot less time now.