Nicolee

You are misunderstanding. If you are less than HM-level-18, they often can't solo higher dungeons. It's not a matter of laziness that most HM17 and below characters won't be able to solo the highest level content. As for things not dropping from the sky from asian mmo's, that because they arose in a culture and/or age where time was more available. One of the features (or deficits) of western culture is so often not having enough time. In US culture, spending hours and hours at getting little or no benefit isn't considered "fun" or even tolerable. To correctly and successfully port a game to US or western sensibilities and culture, has to be a removal of the the most boring parts and substitute other means for achieving those items/levels that require less work (ex.: swiping). When kids are younger and have the option to spend more time in a game, that's one thing, but as people grow up -- outside life, work life and family life tend to take much more time than when one is younger and, initially living at home. If you don't go to a University but get a good-paying-job coding java apps, you can have more solo time playing mmo's than those who go to University for 4 or more years. After a graduation and beginning new job, you are still likely to find free time lower for playing mmo's than a next step for many -- starting a family. How much time can you spend playing that mmo vs. spending time with with a partner and later kids? As you get older, you don't have time for the hours one might need for an unported asian mmo that expects lots of free time available for farming. At some point, people want more out of their free time than mindless farming for hours on end. The game can either adapt to such a culture or not, but at the expense of not being playable for players as they have less free time for hours+hours of farming and realize they'll lose their players to age -- the exact same ones that could be enticed by systems that allow trading money for $$ to stay caught up or to get ahead in a fun game. Sure, those who have tons of time but not so much cache, might resent those able to make such a tradeoff, but those who have tons of time may not be able to bring in as much money. There's always a tradeoff.

What you said could be the case for those who initially made the mistake or took advantage of the good pricing to fill holes in their wardrobe. However, those who demanded "punishment" were not "simply buying" things that were available from the NCSoft merchant, but wanted to see others suffer for having received any benefits for using the pricing as set by NCSoft (via the NPC). Those are the "haters" who will never be happy at having or winning such items, but only happy if others DIDN'T get those items. They are "broken" -- in that they won't be happy if they won -- but only if they see others lose and not get the same item. Their happiness comes only from seeing themselves benefited at the expense of others' UNhappiness. It cheapens their happiness to see others receiving the same happiness achieved via some "lesser" cost. The group demanding "justice" (fr. the greek root meaning vengeance) can't be happy by being first, and should never be rewarded with 'exclusive', time-limited prizes because if any of those prizes are later made available to others for some different reason, they'll be unhappy. A symmetric [in]justice for them would be loss of all uniq items in the game that others don't have access to because they weren't around or didn't know about the initial offering. Certainly, having a unique knowledge that something was available ahead of everyone else means they got a benefit that others won't only because they happened to take advantage of information that others didn't have the opportunity to use earlier on.

So you are saying that some other players talked to the NPC on a specific character -- and on the same character didn't lose any outfits? From the last update of @Hime, characters that interacted with the Bamboo merchant were presumed to have taken advantage and therefore had all items that the NPC sold, directly (and in some cases indirectly), removed. Are you sure the specific character that they lost nothing on, also purchased from the Bamboo NPC? Maybe they had the full azure dragon outfit on another one of their chars that didn't interact with the NPC who transferred the outfit to their 'main' after their main lost it due to NC's 1st attempt at compensation? That would seem more likely than them being specifically exempted, but not knowing all the details, I'd have no idea.

What really is sick about their solution -- those who have been her longest are likely to have lost the most. Or phrased another way -- the longer you've been here, the better the chance you have some of those items from the original events where they were introduced. So if they remove all of those items, only the longest veterans will get the "full punishment" from having talked to the NPC. Conversely, the newer the player, the less likely they are to have such items, so newer players will get hit the least. Isn't that a "cool" effect for a community? The longer you've been around, the more likely you are to have lost a bunch of outfits. Its just another way NCSoft shows special consideration for their oldest players.

Saying that they won't do anything for individuals -- but will wait for a systemic approach is what they told me up front. I've yet to see such a fix be implemented or be rewarding.

That dungeon gives you 3/20ths of 1 scale. It isn't on the daily every day, and I know I can't do it solo. So maybe every other day, so about 540/20 = 27 full scales / year. 27 isn't enough to level up 1 item. Even if you did it every day, that would be 365*3/20 = 54 full scales over 1 year. Each accessory takes at least 7 fragments at level 3, 6 and 9, 10,11,12,13 (11-13=awakened). So 1 item takes 49 scales. There are 5 items. Other dungeons give those items as well, but none of them are soloable. H0, SP and the newest one in the heavenly realm. In addition to 5 accessories, your weapon requires them, as well as your heart, soul pet and token. That's 10 items that require ALOT of those scales and only 3-4 dungeons you can get them from -- all at the top of difficulty. So claiming they are easily available is bogus -- sorry but you ain't my pal unless you want to start carrying me everyday to all of those dungeons. And how often do I hear whales whine about taking HM<18 along? Thanks for your note, you just forced me to prove the issue. Only when you are past all the ET items and accessories and are into the steel series do you stop needed them. Percentage wise, not many of the players are done upgrading items that need those scales. If you think the scales are plentiful, it means you are collecting the steel-even items. Congrats, maybe I'll see some of those in several more months. Right now a full equipment purchase of those is over $20,000. Not everyone can afford such equipment.

It seems dungeons up to Shadowmoor have chance to give an associated outfit. Why do no dungeons above Shadowmoor have no clothing drops in 'easy' mode? It seems that everyone used to be able to get outfits, but in newer dungeons outfit drops have been removed for normal play. Could older dungeons -- maybe below H0 or CC be updated to drop their dungeon outfits + accessories? Have those outfits drop at a reasonable rate as account-bound, and reserve sealed outfits for the harder level dungeons seems a reasonable compromise. For a game who's main difference is is clothing and outfits, older outfits shouldn't be *that* hard to get. Thanks!

In years of time whenever there has been a problem where things "disappeared" or were made valueless on a wide scale, I don't recall any solution where people felt compensated. That is, to a large extent, the root issue of why so many felt no qualms about indulging. I.e. ncsoft's exemplary behavior in prior situations. Something to think about. The longer someone has been playing the game, the greater the chance that they would have any of those costumes legitimately. In other words, the longer you have been a player, the more you are likely to have lost. Only new players would not be likely to have acquired very many of those outfits.

It's a channel on discord. Levels of membership determined by DPS on the training dummy. Minimum is 3M DPS average on training dummy. I think it is called Ocean as being a home for whales.

If they have no problem getting those scales, all they have to do is sell one at 1000g, and buy 6 pet pods off market at the pre-"event" price. If they scales were that easy to come by, they wouldn't be 1000+g on market while petpods have been maxing around 150. You can get 20 pet-upgrade tokens for $20 on F10 -- that's closer to $1.25/pet. The pet pods haven't been a limiting factor for a long time.

Then your equipment is already maxed. Weapon, and all top-tier accessories take those scales. So the only way you'd have a ton of those is if your equipment was steel tier and above when you no longer need scales. And you call that "decently geared". You've exposed your equipment as being in the top tier if you don't need scales to upgrade, but then you would need steels, I suppose you have tons of those too? That would mean you have no equipment needing upgrades, and you are calling that decently geared? Lol. nice.

and where did they get the scales which can't be purchased on market? Oh, excuse me, I have seen some at 1000G+ -- meaning the cost of the pet pods was incidental.

Because at one point you had to have others who had higher gear than you who helped you through dungeons. Now you are only concerned about yourself in a 'social mmo' game and are seen as unwilling to help out others get through their newbie stage. If it was a minority who formed insanely high groups, it wouldn't be taken so bad, but almost all the groups in MSP are asking for high level equipment. Before this, MSP was open to most players -- now, it may have become an elite-only event that has taken the place of an open one. That's not going to make people happy and people who recruit in faction / area chat for other elite members are going to get flack for stiff requirements that many might not be able to meet. If you want less flack, go organize your runs in a Discord like Ocean, then just show up at MSP with your group and do it. No announcements in game -- so you won't become a lightening rod for people's frustration with the new MSP requirements.

I wish people would stop spreading this nonsense, because to upgrade pets/talismans, you need Elder scales for the higher upgrades, and those items are not free nor easily obtainable. Claiming you can upgrade without, near-impossible-to-get, scales is just false. While this has been pointed out earlier, some people continue to spread lies in order to create more drama and pour fuel on the fire. That's often called trolling. Perhaps people who are trolling here and trying to stir people up are the real ones who should be given suspensions.

At one point, NCSoft had a policy to disable any accounts that had a funding recall issued against them. "Not their fault?" NC Soft could take the position that losing all of those items is the penalty for having touched the NPC even if they didn't see any caution not to. As far as the money? I know some that have spent well over 65K USD since they started playing. I noticed that many of the items taken from accounts have been made available in F10 and via the event currency. Coincidence?

Uh and your mom says not to put your your hand in the cookie jar to get fresh baked cookies... And she tells you this because? And she leaves the cookies on the counter where you can easily see them vs. on top of the fridge where you can't? And then she goes to the store. And of course, you do just as she says because if you had a cookie that she left out on the counter for you and told you about, you'd be "immoral". Have you ever thought maybe others might assume that their mom deliberately left them on the counter and told you about them before she left so that you might have a few? Though, of course, if you eat half the jar and try to sell the rest to your little brother (or sister), that might be going a bit far. If you look at the times NCx took mats or items that cost money and gave no compensation -- you have to realize that it seems compensatory for them to give items that don't require full compensation. This game is tends to be very much focused on overpowered players getting ahead and NCx not listening to players in forums who want more rewards with the money we pay. Like all of the dailies -- why are there no outfits from DST on up? Why are they relegated to HardMode? It's not like you can recruit a HM dungeon in F8 (I've seen less than a handful since the 'easy/hard' mode split). Outfits out 2+ years ago are still not out. Is it "moral" to only give rewards to "op" players or elites? I say not. If they can't even be bothered to give lower or normal powered players outfits in DST, BC and WC (all in older tier dungeons), the unfairness or "immorality" starts with the NCx". You can't claim that the players aren't emulating NCsoft. We learn our "morals" from those who sculpt this world. If they were always fair with us, and/or listened to us more might feel different, but in this case, accessing 2yr old outfits from an NPC -- ALL of which I have on some character -- but maybe not in a new class -- I should feel like I shouldn't help a new character class get those same outfits because NCx refuses to let us have a shared closed with every cosmetic shared between characters? So please just get a life before you start preaching on what is moral/immoral and realize that among most who dictate "morals", RNG-gambling is considered immoral. That's not an argument for halting availability of those items either like they do to punish players who live in countries that outlaw RNG -- that's adding salt to a wound.

To those who scream justice, how have you, personally, been harmed? If you lost money, or items, then ask for a refund. But complaining about how others "got" stuff, is really poor taste. First off, prove it was a bug and not someone's intention. It allowed people to purchase old outfits and a few pets. Anyone buying had to realize whatever they bought was way below normal price. Anyone playing the game instead of spending time here, had to see the influx of hard-to-get outfits and never thought where they came from? If I saw some ask, I told them. Personally, I didn't sell anything, but you claim 100k profit? items were selling at 4-5g, that's over 20K sales. Even at 40G, that's 2000 sales. Sorry, I don't believe that. Only thing I've seen is some claiming good money from from selling soulstones they got in pvp. At 5G ea, that would be 4000 SS sales. I've no idea how many rounds in pvp that would take, but that's alot of SS sold and anyone buying at 4-5G/SS would have to know the high price is a temporary phenomena.

You have the ancient fragments/scales? I don't. Pet pods were always the easy part, limited by prices in F10. Oils, OTOH, are nearly twice the pod price -- because of a lack of a similar deal through F10. Nevertheless, the golden scales are still in short supply because they are needed for everything. Lowering the price of pet-stuff is of minimal benefit. Considering I already had near max lvl pet + talisman, and I don't care if others are able to get it easier. It's the same with guild outfits -- I became a member and made my own guild outfits to become a member of every guild. Now people can get all guild outfits through the random trader that shows up at end of various runs. Do I scream about it being unfair and how easier that makes it for everyone? How is this different? The golden ancient scales don't grow on trees, nor were they available from this supposed event. I really don't care if others get benefits to catch up to me -- just wish more benefits to catch up to those that have all steel equipment would happen. FWIW, I had my pet fully developed long before they became popular as well as max gems (when max didn't include any guilded) when they were considered more PvP than PvE.

At over 2500 AP, I strongly doubt that I can be said to not be improving. You didn't read what he said. He didn't say he'd be teaching, anything. You already had to know. In any sport, reading and watching a video isn't considered either "learning" or "knowing". Learning or knowing are only related to "doing". I'd already passed your reading and watching many times, months ago. And how do you test for "knowing"? Also, in a raid, most raids begin by assigning parts. You learn a part first. If you are a raid leader, I'm guessing you pretty much should know all the parts, but someone knew? Nope. With no other information than what I provided, you have already made some other "judgement". That is called "pre-judice" and is never considered fair to the person being pre-judged. I am over 2500 and over 2600, w/personal buffs.. I don't mind having people like me. Therefore your assertion that "litterly[sic] everyone dont" is wrong. Your assertion that everyone in 2xxx believes anything can't be true unless it includes my beliefs. I don't believe your assertions, therefore you are mistaken.

To be honest this is a personall problem. That's amazing! Hearing a situation that you know nothing about, saying, not only that it isn't true but is the "speaker's" personal problem is incredible. Are you representative of this community? very few guild expects you to have their progress when you just start running with them but they expect you to read guides and ask stuff if you didnt understand it from the guide alone. I guess you just droped in and wanted them to teach you. This is a quote from the raid-leader "It was expected that recruits would come in hitting the ground running, and if you could not cut it or show potential, I didn’t want to waste their time, and most of all mines." You couldn't just "drop in" as RAID times were never posted to the clan or in clan-chat, but only organized on a private-message basis, to minimize questions about who was invited and why (that was the 1st time I'd ever seen such a dynamic in a clan). Oddly it was one of the first clans where I began to have hopes of having found a family. Unfortunately over nearly the year I was in the clan, things changed. Guides ? Vids ? Talking ? Playing BnS is a physical skill dependent on fast reflexes. How many sports players or professionals would claim to have learned by using guides, watching vids or talking about their sport or profession? I would say that no professional sport player or other professional would claim their profession is learned from any of those sources. You want to learn a raid, you need to do it. There is no substitute for experience. You can't learn how to catch a softball or hit one by watching a video, reading a guide or talking to someone. It's one thing to know the mechs, but quite another to be able to actually do them, let alone do them under pressure. I dont believe that. Even if you turn on BNS Buddy Addons you are unable to see atleast 2 players DPS. unless they kick everyone not in the dps meter they kicked you cause of other reasons. For example you do the wrong mech or you need ages to run to the boss. Ok to be more accurate, they expected more because of my level and equipment. But I've easily seen players 3-4 HM levels below me exceed my damage. But I got around 700K in H0, vs. others getting 1-4M DPS. I wasn't asked to do any mechs. I was bottom of 4 people, and 2 people left the group before I was kicked. Your belief that such things don't happen doesn't make any sense. Why would I make something like that up? Your disbelief of what other people tell you about their experiences in BnS is weird. People have been asking for weaps or AP for "forever", and I quickly learned what was required to get accepted into dungeon F8-groups.

I'm on my 2nd day trying to complete 1 quest, I've gone back in about 8 or more times. I can't get very many stones/entry due to slowness and frequency of having to go back in before I am killed by pvp'rs. I tried to watch for pvp'rs, but with it so slow, 2 of them were on top of me and I was dead before I could respond. Maybe as a weekly, I could do this but as a daily....how can I get 300 when I'm killed off so often and everything else is as slow as molasses on pluto!? For a daily maybe find 60 stones. We have to have time for other dailies as well as weeklies. There aren't enough hours in the day to do this. I know -- can you offer a new item: a ring or amulet of reflection -- only useful in _optional_ pvp zones . It would toss back 2-5X times the damage done by the attacker. It only damages those who are attacking. Would still hit person they are attacking, but person being attacked would benefit from normal defensive damage reductions before the damage is applied, vs. reflected damage would bypasses all defenses, evades, counters or blocks. All would have equal access to it, so it's completely fair. It might slow down the frequency of getting killed, as those who attacking at least have a chance of taking damage as they kill you. Thanks!

There's only 1 place that I know of that time is stopped, and that's in F8 while you are getting a party together. You can't do anything, can't even look at your inventory! Ability to do anything in time-stop is greatly limited. But one other place I know of where you can't do anything -- when you are loading another area (and usually have a static loading pic). More than once I've watched my buffs be slowly drained away by long loading or (maybe cut scenes, but if in a group, I usually hit ESC). You can't help that external clocks that spawn events have fixed times (like the dragon challenge), BUT at 10-30 seconds (and more for some people) passing by when you can't do anything, it would be nice to know your potions/buffs weren't being being wasted while you wait (usually impatiently) to get to the other side. I was surprised that it wasn't already done (especially given that it was done in F8), but would it be possible to also stop timers when we enter a wait-state where we are loading something? Thanks!

Um, it is hard to get a group of 12 people together for most of the raids -- while there are a few dungeon options, most of the weekly challenges involve 12-person teams or 6v6 (still 12) where you will be hated if you aren't up on your pvp equipment. You can't even get a clan to come in multiple times over a week to do multiple raids or use multiple days for a raid. You think they want to do weeklies that are more work than fun every week? IT shouldn't take a week to get through quests -- unless they can all be done solo by average players (not needing a group, let alone a large group of 12). That's nice. At least 3-4 of the guilds that accepted me, eventually kicked me because I didn't meet their performance expectations -- I well had the minimum reqs for what the RAID required, but only once was I able to get into a progressive RAID group, and then I had game problems where I couldn't login (kept getting dropped by what appeared to be a crashing DRM, but couldn't really figure it out since the DRM would kick in if I tried to look closely at the problem). That was a problem for almost 3 months, and then when I came back, the guild lead didn't think I was making enough progress (she didn't know I couldn't login and said it looked to her like I only logged in during trove events!!! She didn't care that support spent over 8 weeks trying to find the problem -- only to eventually give up). Then one day...I was able to log in again! It was horrible! Sorry, it wasn't AP (over 2K), they just thought I didn't do well enough for my equipment or didn't come up to speed enough -- last guild expected me to already know the RAID and just be able to drop in to where it had taken them 4-6 months to reach in a progressive. But how can I learn if I can't get into a progressive? So of course many of the groups I go with for higher dungeons, I feel carried and I don't like it! If it was a multirun, more than a few times, I was kicked because I was the low DPS leader but got invited in based on my stats. This isnt' a cooperative Multiplayer game in reality -- it's a pretty confrontational and hostile multiplayer game with some really toxic people who like to make others feel bad (for whatever reason). In name its a MMORG, but nearly NO-ONE does any roll-playing of even pretending to be their character. Most seem to project their own personality and problems on other people. Someone tried to criticize me for not doing more DPS, when I pointed out that I was having to tank and trying to do the mechs because I wasn't sure the group could just DPS it. They laughed and told me no one does the mechs on that dungeon any more. I pointed out that most of my problem was not having a tank...when I noticed they were a tank class -- and asked them why they weren't tanking... Seems like the logged out after I asked that.

I know the extra channels are created dynamically, but the figure at which another channel is offered is broken. Instead of say 200/channel, it seems to be set to 2000/channel. I'm sure someone just left out a zero somewhere. The lowest the Ebon Realm event ever had was 2 and was as high as 7 (that I saw). Is it really the case that the user base has dropped to about 1/3rd to 1/4th of what it was then? That was only 6 months ago -- there just couldn't have been that many people that dropped out. The area is huge and already you have to travel a long distance to find anywhere with some space, but my frame rates drop from 25-120 down to less than 1/sec (frequent freezes mean 1 frame is displayed for 2-5 seconds, meaning 0.5-0.2 FPS!) and my ping times are easily double what they were in EbonRealm. It really has to be that someone left out a 0, because when I was in there had to be a huge number in 1 channel -- I wandered around looking for space, and it was hard to find such because too many people in "such a small space" (it's not really small, it seems about 2-3X larger than the EbonRealm), BUT, I'm sure you know that having 2-3X more space doesn't really increase performance. Only lowering the player count will help performance. If you can't offer more channels, maybe you need to put a cap on number of people that can be in concurrently, like you did on some previous Hunter's Refuge(?) event? Then I'll know not to try, since I never got in on that once -- so no idea of what it was like in there. The Ebon Ream never had less than 2 channels, and usually had 4-5, so I'm guessing the server is way overloaded with only 1 channel (that I ever saw -- I gave up on it as it was just too slow for it to be fun. Oh, that reminds me of a problem I was going to ask about...

Doesn't it require something equivalent to a Hive Queen's Barb or tail, or whatever? Isn't this is giving valuable options to those already waiting to upgrade that no one else will have? Is it not when some players using options or benefits that the rest of the community won't have access to, very similar to or the same definition used for cheating?