Nicolee

But but but ... they were two separate save types. That has to be an unintended mistake/bug. Maybe try reporting it in the "bug report" section? Can you even load your appearance from a saved appearance file?

IF it is out of the reach of 90+% of the userbase, I'd call that broken. I doubt even 1% have even 1 of the higher level gems that need ~800 pet packs.

Especially, since, apparently, S.Korea still has them. This makes for another difference in the code base where things can break. But more to the point -- why can they have them in SK, but not NA or EU. And please, lets not have users spreading misinformation about laws "somewhere" being a problem -- if you know of something concrete, give a URL, else, don't create FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) by posting opinions that can't be substantiated.

I don't think that's what the OP is talking about. If you are going with a static party, you aren't (or shouldn't) be advertising for people in global or faction chat -- you just go. No one will know you are a static party because your party wouldn't be looking for other members. Compare that to random PUG groups that are formed by adverts in global and/or faction chat. There you are going to get a mixed group -- I regularly form random groups with players from HM30+ down to less than HM20. Doing easy and stage1 content isn't a problem for such a group -- there aren't any significant mechs. The earliest you need to worry about mechs is stage5 -- and now only AT is the big problem on s5, because of split-second block requirements. Some classes only have a 1s block, if they aren't in position exactly right and hit their block so the orb hits their position within 1s, they and/or someone else dies. I know I am not playing in the "same game", when no matter how fast I enter a dungeon, the rest of the party has already completed the first few stages. They are, at least, several-to-12s ahead of me. And yet the dungeons are relying on 1s timings. SK may have a uniform fast internet, but NA+EU don't. I know its a pain to program for, but really, creating the game for a variety of target internet speeds to self-synchronize is an interesting programming problem to solve, but clearly synchronizing at the 1-2s level is a moot discussion when announced reset times are off by an hour, and shorter, 3hour maint windows end up being as long as 6. If maint windows and reset times are off by over an hour -- how is it remotely possible to expect 1s accuracy on dungeon events?

And how does that let me view/see what another character looks like? Looking at another character's chosen self-representation let me see how they viewed themselves -- how they wanted to be viewed. I have a visual memory, as many do -- while I can remember someone's face in RL, I may have problems remembering their name. Does anyone know if they removed the character photos in S. Korea as well?

How many games have as many outfits as BnS? I've never played any other game where so many outfits were gone "for good" -- many might have to catch up, but it was doable in a finite time. Can you cite any other games where 100's of outfits are out of reach for years? Only outfits in the Hong Moon Store section are tradeable that way. The other outfits are number around 500 -- you call that a "few". Are you deliberately attempting to deceive? So if something was broken at launch, then that is some sort of justification for it being broken forever? Are you saying bugs are never fixed in BnS? There's also the idea that something that is a small problem with only a few items available, can become a large problem with 1000+ items/costumes available. Imagine if comments were outfits. You stand on 6.4k outfits, which is significantly more than the average. You can hardly be expected to have views that are remotely likely anyone else's. You are in a class all on your own, especially since many of your comments contain incorrect and/or misleading information, (example: few=500?). Why do you post more than anyone else when your information is often, highly suspect?

It takes huge amounts of pet-packs to upgrade pet gems to even mid-level squares -- 63 for a square from triangles,~190 for pents, ~590 for a hex? That's insane given the increase in stats. Why are they so impossibly high?... How about 30 for triangles, 60 for pents and 96 for hexes? How many people have anything more than triangles for pets? It's not like the added stats are *that* much, but 800+ petpacks for a hex level gem? That's just mean! And claiming *pet* gems are end-game is no excuse -- they aren't end-game changers.

It's very hard to start a new character -- at the very least, they are missing 7 years of outfits. I'm serious. Starting a new char, I can't borrow anything from even one of my own characters -- many outfits were tied to events that will never happen again -- achievements and accomplishments take forever to accumulate -- fine if you a char that's been around for 4+ years, but starting a new character -- many you can never catch-up on. This makes it impossible to interest new players -- not to mention elimination of all the blue-story/ back-story quests in Viridian and Cinderlands. Seems like producers have been trying to kill off new player interest for nearly 50% of the time the game has been out. What's up with that? One of the easier ways to help new chars on same accounts would be to allow sharing any/all cosmetic items. But that would only help new chars on a same account -- really need to open up old stories and outfits to have a chance of attracting new players -- which I think NC has given up on -- in which case, this plea will fall on deaf ears. I just realized in trying a new class how many outfits I'm missing and will never have, and it's depressing...

It has nearly no defense and dies easily unless they are way beefed up w/maxed out equip. The DPS it does is its main highlight.

What friends -- my rl friends don't play BnS because it's too caustic. The clans I've been in have fallen by the wayside. As for clans -- most were too competitive / demanding.

FWIW, now Astro is widly derided as the weakest class. I never played it, but there's another example of over-correction. I visit the friend-shop on a regular bases looking for good deals, but discount-friends rarely has quality, long lasting ones. When I tried applying on a lower lvl char (as well as some others that were not high-end, I occasionally found myself disinvited after a while. They aren't friends, they are BnS pug groups -- the type of 'friend you most often are exposed to in BnS. Go for it -- opposite of me -- I think the BnS system sorta sucks since even traditional ranged characters like gunners and archers end up being melee in 1 jump from the boss, where in many games an archer can shoot from out of site, and a gunner from over a mile away -- no way are they likely to end up being in melee in 1 round. But in many play systems, a person with a rifle can do fatal damage from well over a mile away, with relative impunity. Not something you see in BnS. While archers don't have that range, they could still deal high damage with impunity as they often shot from cover and targets died before knowing where the archers were. Not so in BnS. Bard is also likely to die quickly if they become tank due to their damage -- I've seen this happen, first hand, many times. If there isn't an "official tank" who specs some threat, the bard often dies when a real tank does not. If there is no tank, I need to respec for lower damage and higher defense (among other things). That's why I'm nervous about people's desire to nerf Bards, since they really don't have alot of defensive abilities by default. Fortunately I have a main that is stronger and if Bard becomes unplayable, I won't fall apart, but I sympathize with those who have put their play in such a class. Anyway, in BnS, DPS is the main currency with which you forge in-game friends. Its what everyone sees in battle and what people count on -- eventually, over mechs, which become obsolete when faced with high enough DPS. How many worry about mechs in twisted or the steel raid dungeons? Today, 12 people walk in and wipe the floor with high DPS characters.

oh balony...I loved my archer when the class came out, but after nerfs, class was too hard to play..and you don't enjoy playing a class that doesn't do similar damage as other classes -- you get ragged on for why you are so lame, not pulling your weight, not knowing your class, etc... enjoying playing is about being able to run w/groups and contribute -- if you can't contribute similar DPS as others in the group -- your equipment and level don't matter, you will find poeple don't want to run with you -- and that's no fun. So you can't separate DPS you do in battle from how fun it is to play your class. Ultimately, they are very interrelated. Loved the archer class and the bows, but couldn't begin to get the DPS out of the class that I needed. So I switch to a less fun, more boring weapon, more mechanical class that isn't as fun. But at least I get invited/allowed in groups and don't get ragged on so often.

The special event times really should be relative to the local server clock -- not some fixed, inconvenient time that hurts the local userbase.

They are new to the roles they are undertaking -- i.e. they are taking over jobs that were done by others in NA/EU and are predictably running into unexpected problems.

New laws? Where? that cover all online materials everywhere? In the US pre-labeling on a game like 'Mature' or 'Mature 17+', have covered risque content in games. Especially, since with this game, you need to sign-up and login. Will they next be censoring all outfits like is done in China? The outfits the reason many flocked to this game -- to censor pics (and outfits?) seems like shooting one's self in the foot.

You can still hit the 'info' card prompt on them and it still says 4/18. I noticed this too...before I saw your post....guess, I'll try to delete my post, but new people are taking over the jobs of people who did it for years, there are bound to be problems -- especially, since it seems, much of BnS maint+changes are done manually when it seems much of it could have been more automated. Like I can't see how a simple backup-maint update that wasn't supposed to really implement changes, could introduce such common problems like no-login rewards, and trove-keys no longer being available. Perhaps if upper management stopped trying to implement special downgrades for N.A. (like eliminating F2 pics?!) N.A. would stop getting special bugs that seem like they couldn't exist in S.K. (do they?) Aren't trove percentages required to be published in S.Korea? Why would they remove that feature in the US?

What time in SK was the old maint time? How did it become inconvenient for the devs? For my own systems, they do backups automatically by a maintenance script run on a scheduler. Don't the devs in SK have such things? Such tech is at least 40 years old. How much human intervention does it take to do automated backups? FWIW, a 50+ year old system (developed 1970 to early 1980s) that needs to be brought down for weekly backups (plato/(cyber1.org) -- still Free to play for ancient games with ancient graphics) does it via scripting that only takes about 10-20 minutes (no updates, FWIW). It only has to be brought down because it still uses a mainframe OS+disk subsystem that was developed back in the 70's and predates logging file systems found on more modern systems (the main frame + disk subsystem is run in an emulation that runs on a PC-desktop (that is faster than the original CDC+Cray mainframes it ran on). What OS underlies BnS? If the support costs of BnS could be lowered by using modern SW and SW techniques, it might last longer...? If BnS is only 7-8 years old, its underlying OS can't be THAT old...can it? If the server is still in the US, they must be doing it remotely. Wouldn't that also imply it could be scriptable? *curious*

I thought they used the spare CPU cycles to compute Bitcoins or similar? So wouldn't that help support BnS?

So now they do maint at 9am vs. before at 7pm? Is 9am better for software engineers? I don't think so -- or do they only work 9-5 in Korea? Besides, noon in EU is at 7pm in S.K. Since they are different servers, doing them concurrently shouldn't be a problem.

That doesn't explain why it should be mid-day or so long for anyone.

If they had a 2nd server running in parallel when maint was needed, same could be done. Patches come out less frequently than weekly, and that's more understandable. But backing up rolling database files by temporarily freezing things with updates going to a log file (that's replayed on unfreeze) was in Windows 7 that came out a decade ago. It was in linux & xfs that came out over 20 years ago. That's old tech that could be (re)-used in BnS. Then, no matter what time maint caused a game interrupt, it would be less often. I noted the max interrupt time on Blizzard related games was 2 hours for 2 of their games, the rest, including for WoW was 1 hour. Five hours seems excessive by any measure for weekly backups.

the static ip's referred to are ones seen by external sites. Your router may hand out static ip's for internal devices for free, but static ip's as seen by websites, are a premium commodity that is usually charged extra to obtain.

Why does this game even need a weekly maintenance? Most games don't. Can you imagine amazon or google going down for several hours every week for maintenance? They are certainly more complex than this game. Is weekly maint really needed? If so, why can't it be during non-prime time hours?

In a game where outfits and appearance are KEY items of play -- how can they think about removing our custom pictures? Why would they do this -- the game is rated mature -- which includes naked pictures, though I've never seen any of those. Is someone offended by risque pictures in a mature+ rated game? Again, think of how you you shoot yourself in the foot -- the game is based on outfits + style, and now you are deleting player's pictures of them wearing fave outfits? Why don't you just remove outfits all-together and only supply a generic gunny-sack for each class? No more outfits -- well no more reason to spend anything on this game. This is totally lame! If we can't wear outfits in F2, why have outfits?

This got "solved" by them noting the problematic items in my inventory and issuing a refund for unopenable items. As a side effect, I'm a bit more nervous about trying to acquire any class(Bard) specific items, because I don't want to try to deal with trying to obtain an item that may not be working for my class. Sad, but I realize that it is non-trivial to supply a texture that looks good for the Bard class's weaps, cuz they are a high-detail weap (vs. classes that have lower detail weaps, like bangles, that are only seen as a long flowy thing off the char). The Bard's weap can be something that provides much detail that can be seen at a distance, like Archer bows (some were rather pretty), and destroyer's axes. Things like swords and guns have a intermediate level of detail due to their size -- some show enough detail to make custom illusion weaps an attractive buy, but other weaps are just too small to allow much detail, making them a less attractive buy as an illusion weap.