Ren36

LF whiteknights I wanna be honest, with the latest patch deep down we all know that this game is past reparation. If ncsoft had a shred of goodwill, they would hire gamers of their own playerbase or play themselves in an last effort to find the problems and get rid of their causes. Yet for the last 3 months efforts were feigned, while adding layers upon layers of failures with every patch. This game has literally no future and if it had, you could tell from their actions. Feeling as though that ncsoft wants most of us to quit, to close the servers for good, with the least amount of complaints, but with just enough leeway to fit a trove inside, while avoiding claims. Wondering what else there is to take? What has to be seen, to be heared to realize where this game goes? And just how much more you choose to excuse? This game will close, just make sure you don´t spend anymore. I wouldn´t put it past them to close with a trove.

While it may be what the a part of the playerbase wanted, it was NCSoft´s decision to execute and promote this. On other occassions they don´t listen to us either. Phrasing it as though the players are completely at fault completely dismisses that this update tries to mask and counter the population problem and gear gap between players and their inability to join parties.

People seem to jump to conclusions, easy mode being soloable. We don´t know it yet. If we get KR´s-Version we still need 6 party members, only the wipe mechanics and damage output were reduced. To solo some of these dungeons you will need around 4million dps/s.

That´s not diplomatic enough. "We´re constantly gathering and forwarding feedback to the developer in headquaters to ensure a pleasant and exciting gameplay experience. Welcoming and encouraging players to share their ideas and views with us. Be sure, that even if we do not answer to your topic, that you´ve been heard and that we´ll give our utmost to relay this idea." Sincerely, your NCTeam

I can´t imagine these kinds of actions other than intended by NCSOFT. Driving their players out might just be their means to close the servers for good with the least amount of players & complains in the west. The game balance became just too rigid, while scaling the needed materials with every item. When high geared players run out of party members, they´ll lose interest in waiting and start to mind their own business. Soloing everything they can to finish as fast as possible to log out and repeat everything the next day. Until everyone grows tired of waiting for better times.

And then there are people, that say our publisher can do nothing only the devs

PvP is a means to advertise, but who in their right mind would show a broken and unbalanced state, where you can enter without gear. You would just get competive players, that would leave after the 2nd week, giving negative reviews, while broadcasting it to their followers. So better to stay silent.

The question is do we play a singleplayer game or a MMO. With the latest patches, the following will happen. Since the incentive to interact with others might as well be gone and with the social aspect being taken out, it will justify and further promote twinking to gear your main in a game where you´ll feel that you´re all alone. While NCSoft will consider that they provided a solution, that we can still solo content regardless about the population. Ultimately you won´t even know what you play for anymore, wasting away in dungeons for gear you will never have, unable to compete, accepting the circumstances, while further splitting the community, without meaningful and engaging content. BnS truly just became a husk. Thinking that even the playerbase and their freelance programmers are capable of better decisions than a multimillion management department, that is not worth their pay.

Instead of just adding content without gear to normalize dps, give time for players to catch up and make dungeons challenging again, upgrade paths are forced to create gold and money sinks, which is one of the reasons content gets outdated so fast. Additionally initial upgrade costs are that ridiculous to force saved materials to be spend by wealthy players, until they get reduced to reasonable amounts for normal players, to make them spend again with the next trove. While cost reduction is always kept to a point & upgrade stage that doesn´t threaten paying customers. But this only works out if less paying players can enjoy the rest of the content. In BnS though you are forced to engage with every content to gather materials such as Moonstones from BG, Soulstones, MS crystals from PVP, and sacred orbs/crystals and elysians from PVE to progress your gear. While you can buy some items from the market, you go bankrupt even as long term player, due to the decline in the playerbase and competitive players that go for arena and bg material prices are just that high. In the end this causes a stopgap for many players, which they cannot progress past until 2-3 cost reductions or several dungeons nerfs follow. It´s to a point that we will get easy mode dungeons soon for players to safe time, but also be able to solo/duo everything. Instead of countering the main problems, such as unchallenging, gear discrepancy and the declining population they leave it up to time and how long these players can endure this kind of gameplay with UE4 as bait.

While I say it won´t affect PVE and arena, it´s only for now. The patch also included new higher tiered PVE weapon paths. Competive wise not many will care, but for me MMO was either about competition or the time spend in challenging dungeons, but with the latest additions PVE content is killed with every upgrade, because the damage output and that one geared person can make all the difference to ignore every mechanic. Unless you do high end raids, Blade & Soul has nothing to offer, aside from battleground ranking that becomes rigid with every patch. There is just no thrill, because you´re able to tell who wins from the start. Watching it from the beginning as this game deterioated to this point, I cannot recommend anyone to pick it up and only hope for a change.

This will happen anyways once we caught up to Korea, but as of now too much is added within a short period of time, which makes it impossible for players to enjoy the competive mmo part, since they cannot catch up. Complaints come up, because the players cannot even enjoy the current content, due to the lags, DCs and repetitive unchallenging dungeons. Just the same old events.

That´s the problem to be honest. While NCSoft said to balance battleground through skill seperation, which can be considered a nerf and damage reduction for some classes, they added another way to compensate for the loss. To promote and make wealthy players pay more. Practices of which we can expect more in the near future. Such as psyches for gems/unity stones, psyches for pets, higher tiered pet gems and possible gear for pets, which can be expected to receive psyches too. It won´t impose on pve, since the damage output is too high for any content, but the fast paced updates to catch up to Korea, which had 1-2years to assimilate to every patch is not feasible for EU.

https://www.bladeandsoul.com/uk/news/storm-of-arrows-items-and-systems-preview/ - introduction of pet gems - higher tier of unity stones and pet stages I might as well ask, who even wants to keep up anymore? Because neither is needed for arena, nor pve, the only place it will imbalance is battleground. The thing that NCSoft said will try to fix with skill separation. Will be exciting to see, if bg balance was just meant to make wealthy players spend more money to gain the edge again.

It´s not like many just think, there reasons to worry. This is what the CEO of NCSoft said in 2018: "These regions are very competitive, so we must do more to keep the player's interest on our games. For Blade & Soul, I believe the wrong steps were taken in the beginning, and our second attempt to reorganize our western branch was not very successful. We will be undergoing another reorganization later this year, and bringing our western branch closer into our Korean operations." Kim stated that this reorganization was intended to close the gap between localization releases and patches, while also facilitating western player's feedback better so they reach the dev teams with minimal delay. NCSoft seemed to signal that if the third attempt to reorganize their western branch wasn't successful, then they would have to consider if continuing to operate in North America and Europe would be wise. Aside from this, very little was discussed of Blade & Soul 2, other than a nod towards more information being shared at G-Star in November. And after I gathered and looked at what the employees of their own company even said, we can be certain that the money we spend for the enjoyment we might have now, won´t last long. NCSoft employee 1: https://imgur.com/a/cwCtzyM NCSoft employee 5: https://imgur.com/a/rTczsrU Source: https://www.glassdoor.co.uk Literally everything comes together if you take a bit time, from the "resigning" community manager to the producer and changes in-game. I really don´t think the average player can soon keep up anymore. And if the fishes leave the whales will follow. In it´s core this business plan even for a layman is so fundamentally wrong, that it makes you question how ncsoft became a multimillion company, if they worked everywhere liked that. At this point there are so many construction sites, I don´t think ncsoft will think of the western market as feaseable anymore, because the reputation of bns and their practices are just that low. I understand that people want to enjoy a game not looking at what goes wrong. but we´ll all be the same if the server close. We´ll lose our characters and most of our contacts. This is just the beginning, but I might as well give up. Even if I showed what is wrong, I think now that there was no point to it.

Tbh I am confused as to why a publisher would purposely act like that. Let alone the publisher, ncsoft that dictates what ncwest has to do With every action they take causes for a decline in the playerbase. For that all i can think of is to make everyone want that it ends, so they can close the servers with the least amount of complains. And to keep bns in good memory as a game that had potential, but was mismanaged.

It´s nice that she brought it up, but it´s too late at this point. The best they can do is to reduce the limit again, like with 5m charms, but they cannot revert the damage that is done. Be it trust or the unity stones that have been already purchased.

That is sadly our only means to get noticed, because we were always just numbers to them. If not everyone is pulling into the same direction we can forget it, but everyone should be aware that regardless how much money he or she spend, that they will lose everything. From their costumes to their chars to the gear and the time they invested.

That´s the thing, the amount NCWest received exceeds the visible effort they put into this game. With this amount every employee can be paid for years to end, because intellectual property // the game can be just copy pasted into the next region by porting. That the profit is declining doesn´t matter, they just have to cut off more employees that are responsible for irrelevant jobs, like advertisement, community manager & producer. With the next patch the ones that matter will spend again.

Though we weren´t on the same page at the beginning, that it would turn around and only last a few weeks is a pity, but in general I lost one more reason to come back to this forum. If everyone would be so fast on the uptake and actively deny in groups the money that ncsoft is craving for from the beginning, I can´t even say for sure if NCSoft wouldn´t have closed BnS in the west at this point, seeing how their greed is leaking and became visible. In the end this game is funded by whales, but it was also destroyed by them.

Funding? With the amount of money they spend, they could have bought their own development studio. Soon we´ll get pet gems too and several other stats through achievements. Literally every item is scaling and I don´t mean the modifiers I mean the money you have to spend.

Check your purchase history and contact support with a screenshot of the last premium payment. Unless you got it gifted, they will help.

If you wanna do something for this game, don´t buy these packs. How much more money do they need to fix this game? You can already tell that nothing goes into this and nothing will. This patch screams that this game shuts down, simply because we already are one-shot. At this point these modifiers make no sense anymore. There is no way for the average player to keep up with soul, heart, unity, talisman and pet upgrades to stay competitive. Let alone pvp you won´t see yourself in dps meter any time soon. Same as pve ladder. If you buy these pouches, you contribute to the end of this game.

We can´t be certain, if it doesn´t matter. Remember evolved stones during Misty Woods times and that they went for 50silver? Faction/PVP clothes might become relevant again and it´s not bad to try out different contents from the beginning. So he might as well do it.

"These regions are very competitive, so we must do more to keep the player's interest on our games. For Blade & Soul, I believe the wrong steps were taken in the beginning, and our second attempt to reorganize our western branch was not very successful. We will be undergoing another reorganization later this year, and bringing our western branch closer into our Korean operations." Kim stated that this reorganization was intended to close the gap between localization releases and patches, while also facilitating western player's feedback better so they reach the dev teams with minimal delay. NCSoft seemed to signal that if the third attempt to reorganize their western branch wasn't successful, then they would have to consider if continuing to operate in North America and Europe would be wise. Aside from this, very little was discussed of Blade & Soul 2, other than a nod towards more information being shared at G-Star in November. The more I look into it the grimmer the outlook, if you look at what their own emyplees have to say. Considering that we´re now at the 3rd attempt to reorganize the western branch - their management is not only disconnected from us, but also their workers, if you look at the reviews. NCSoft employee 1: https://imgur.com/a/cwCtzyM NCSoft employee 2: https://imgur.com/a/6jj1w7a NCSoft employee 3: https://imgur.com/a/LpqhXtC NCSoft employee 4: https://imgur.com/a/acCBzFX NCSoft employee 5: https://imgur.com/a/rTczsrU Those who think I picked the bad ones, this is the overall rating of NCSoft as employer, which shows a deep dent in 2019, which resembles the progression of our game: https://imgur.com/a/Hig2yGh (2.7 rating) Source: https://www.glassdoor.co.uk

This problem was caused by neglecting the playerbase. Let alone the devs not even NCWest knew about mechanics and promoted this behavior on stream with their GM weapons and commands to bypass mechanics. Yet if asked, enough players would have gladly helped to execute and even clear (new) dungeons. The start of this game, like the CEO of NCSoft said, was also messed up since no effort was put into advertising the game the initial playerbase mostly consisted of gamers that already played in other regions. Players, who didn´t have to learn the mechanics up to lvl 55 content and were used to watching videos from kr/jp/cn to learn dungeon mechanics before they came out, while new players were left in the dark. For whatever reason NCWest and NCSoft even decided to reduce the difficulty of dungeons from the beginning, which became obvious with the Poharan event dungeon and its real mechanics, including the removal of the secret boss from Yeti, which many never saw before, but made itself noticed when the portal to the outside was not triggered. In the end, instead of laying a foundation by creating wikis and showcasing via streams how it can be done, new players were never showed the ropes until next to no one was left, just for the mechanics to be reduced into oblivion, due to the mindset the publisher fostered.