NorbertTheOpinionated

Support cannot make changes to the game. I understand that the Support Team is not the Development Team. I am not blaming Support for what I am about to say. Support says that if we want to make our voices known to the Developers, the best place to do it is to post on the forums. Well we have done that. I read the forums. We, as players, have done so consistently, but we keep getting ignored. Not just me. Lots of players. NCsoft keeps ramming changes we don't want down our throats anyway. We say we don't want it. They do it anyway. We say we don't want to keep the changes. They keep the changes anyway. If you want proof of this, just read the forums a decent amount. At the same time I cannot contact the Development Team because that is the way the system is set up. I literally cannot ask the Development Team this question even though it is a question for the Development Team. The system tells me that I have to ask support, so I did. Once again, as the formula directs, they tell me I should come here to post my opinion to, once again, probably have it not be acted on. Apparently the Support Team is the flame shield for the development team. That's how NCsoft wants it. I feel sorry for them frankly. Their job is to be paid so that the developers don't have to waste their time talking to someone like me. I don't know if Support actually gets any kind of real insight or communication with the Development Team either, but if Support has any kind of "gut feeling" for it, here is my question: Does the Development Team (again, not talking about Support here) actually understand that, from the players' perspective, the Development Team has ruined Blade and Soul to an extreme degree as a game? Do they know that they had a nearly perfect game in the game's early life cycle, and they have progressively ruined it, making it worse and worse over time? I want to know if the Developers understand that many aspects of what they have added to the game over the past several years is NOT what the player base wants. Sure, early on, there were a few changes made that were ACTUAL improvements to the game. They were unnecessary, but they were ACTUAL improvements. Then, it's like NCsoft HAD to keep fixing it whether it was broken or not. Maybe this is what led to all these additional aspects of the game no one asked for? Something about the requirements of their development pipeline? They have a quota of some kind? They HAVE to add some new mechanic every so often maybe? Bad design if that's the case. If the Development Team actually reads the forums or, at least, gets monthly or even quarterly reports or summaries from their community managers about their own forums regarding what the player base thinks to any reasonable extent, I don't see how it would be possible for the Development Team to not understand the extent to which they have ruined Blade and Soul as a game from the players' perspective. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that the Development Team does, in fact, understand a general idea of the extent to which the players feel that the Development team has ruined the game. We feel betrayed. Now, if the Development Team knows this, the next logical question is, "Why?" Why does the Development Team keep doing this? I mean, honestly, why? Money? Do the Developers think this is the best way to make the most amount of money? It isn't! Blade and Soul had SO MANY players at one point. They lost them because the Development Team ruined the game. Think about it. Sure, maybe they made more money in the short term, but look at Blade and Soul now. The player population is a joke compared to what it used to be! How much money can they possibly be making now? They sold out, and lost all their customers. Just look at NCsoft's quarterly reports. The income from Blade and Soul is a mockery of its former self. I don't have to guess at that. It's a fact. It's listed right there on NCsoft's quarterly reports. Go look them up if you don't believe me. Watch the income from Blade and Soul decline over the years. If the Developers had kept Blade and Soul the game that the players wanted, sure, the game would have made less money all at once, but Blade and Soul could still have a healthy player population today. This would make less money per year, but it would make MORE money over the game's total life cycle. I presume you have seen the pictures of NCsoft telling us how Blade and Soul would be managed when they were first releasing the game, first advertising it to us, telling us how the game would be- the "advertising packaging on the box" so to say. False advertisement is more like it. Here it is: https://imgbox.com/WlbieR9i Do the Developers think that it's too late? Maybe they think they might as well milk the game until it dies? They can't build it back up? Is that the logic? If so, look at Final Fantasy 14 for an example. Final Fantasy 14 had a HORRIBLE launch. Everyone spit on Final Fantasy 14. It crashed and burned hard. The Developers for Final Fantasy 14 took the game back and fixed it. Now it's one of the most popular MMOs out there. Final Fantasy 14 is an excellent example of a ruined first impression. They lost that first big boost, and lost most of their players despite the Final Fantasy brand name. Then they clawed their way back to the top... slowly... the hard way... for years. How? They did it by giving the customers what they want. Blade and Soul, as a game, is like a shining diamond in a pile of coal lumps that are a bunch of other games around it. However it has a festering, rotting, maggot ridden, fly infested banana peel on top of it. That banana peel was put there by NCsoft AFTER the game launched. At first, the game was great! They could just take the banana peel off! At this point, they could make the game better by removing some aspects of it. They don't though. They just keep adding more nonsense that no one likes, wants or asked for! Why?! It's not too late. NCsoft could fix Blade and Soul. Why don't they? Like, honestly, WHY are they doing this to Blade & Soul? Rationally, I don't think money is the answer, because, surely, by now, even they can see that this approach is NOT making them more money. Just look at the quarterly reports since the game launched. You can see it came out. It was great. They got that initial boost. They started making some ACTUAL improvements. The popularity grew. Then they started adding in all the unwanted changes, ignoring their customers feedback. You can see the decline from there just by looking at the revenue the game generated. Put it on a chart. Graph it out! You'll see it. It is also wasting tremendous potential of, what is, at its core, a fantastic product. It makes no sense! It's bad for NCsoft. It's bad for the game. It's bad for the players. Who benefits from this behavior? If not money, then why? I want to know why. Do they understand, and why? Please explain to me why NCsoft is doing what they are to Blade and Soul in a rational way. How is what they are doing a good idea, and if it isn't, then why are they doing it? That is the perspective of this player. There you go.

From the patch notes: "Mythical Enchantment for Heart, Pet Aura, Soul, and Talisman Mythical enchanting is expanding to the highest Heart, Pet Aura, Soul and Talisman. Use 5 Enchantment Stones, 5 Transformation Stones, and 250 Gold to upgrade your eligible equipment to mythical. After that, Fusion Stones, Transformation Stones, and gold are required to upgrade to the next stage with 20 stages total." YES! Finally! I can't wait to have more RNG in the game! Thank you NCsoft! May I have another?! Why stop at heart, soul, pet, and talisman? I think ALL of our gear should have that RNG upgrade possibility put on it! I haven't mortgaged my house for this game yet! What is wrong with you and your small minded, narrow thinking NCsoft? Let's ruin this game even more! I can't wait to fail at trying to advance my character and lose resources with absolutely nothing to show for it! Can I give you my credit card right now? Sign me up! In case you are wondering if NCsoft is listening to us, yes. They are. I guarantee it. They know what you want. No, they don't obey though. They know we don't want this. They don't care. They are putting it in anyway. Deal with it. They are going to ram it down your throat. Pay for it... or be less powerful than people who are willing to deal with this system. That is how this game works now. It's not about having fun. It is about paying for something or you will fall behind. If you fall behind, you won't be as competitive as your opponents! You don't want to be at a disadvantage and lose do you?! So pay for the new system! This definitely isn't a violation of their philosophy! https://www.bladeandsoul.com/uk/news/business-model-revealed/ I mean... hah! That promise was made 5 years ago. Promises go bad. Promises have expiration dates you know, and the expiration dates are certainly shorter than the life span of the product the promises are made for! If NCsoft cared about what they say compared to what they do, they would have halted this downward spiral long ago. From the patch notes: "The Primeweald Level Recommendation: Level 60, HM 22 or higher The Primeweald is an auto-hunting zone, and PvP will not be enabled in this zone." Do you not understand how stupid auto hunting zones are? Think about this philosophically. If you need an auto hunting zone, why do you need it? By putting something like this in, it is an admission that you know that people don't want to play your game. It is putting in a feature to have the game play itself so that people don't have to play it, but ... that isn't playing the game. If I don't want to play a game... I don't play it. If there is a game that I DO want to play, I don't want a auto-self-play button because I don't want to watch the game play itself. I want to play the game myself! Therefore, under no circumstances should you ever put in an auto-hunting zone. If you just use some logic, you will realize that it makes no sense. Instead, what needs to be done is the game needs to be made more FUN. Make us want to actually play the game! Do you understand the concept of "fun?" "Entertaining?" "Engaging?" You actually have no idea how to do that do you? That is a severe problem. That means you have this multi million dollar product that is slowly going down the tubes... and you have no idea what to do with it next. That means you are out of ideas. You need new ideas. Hire some people. Figure it out. It isn't about grinding. It isn't about a reward or a handout. It isn't about penalizing people by making them fall behind if they don't pay. "Fun" gets your heart rate up. Fun is interesting. Fun is novel. Fun makes you feel emotional connection. Fun is engaging, and entertaining. Fun makes you think, and consider something. Fun gives you a sense of achievement. Fun is also enjoying the journey to get there. Fun makes you excited to log in so that you can play more because you want to, not out of some feeling of obligation.

For all of you thinking that maybe if you just buy a powerful enough computer, you could run B&S well: Results: 1) 3 min to load the game - I didn't count seconds. I just looked at my cell phone when I hit the "Start Game" button on the launcher. 2) Another 1 minute to get through the loading screen to actually get into the game from the character select, so... about 4 minutes to actually start the game. 3) FPS with characters turned on: 10 frames per second. Here are the screen shots to prove it. FPS in top left central area. https://puu.sh/GDKpK/a537be9c75.jpg 4) FPS with characters turned off: 18 frames per second. Here are the screen shots to prove it. FPS in top left central area. https://puu.sh/GDKrT/f136d43368.jpg This is on GeForce's own super powerful computers. This is proof that literally no matter how powerful your computer is, you CANNOT get B&S to run well no matter what. NCsoft... will you acknowledge that the game is optimized poorly due to programing, and it is YOUR fault, and NCsoft needs to fix it now? https://puu.sh/GDKpu/98fe9a6d4b.jpg Discussion: Ok so I signed up for this GFN thing to test it out. For those of you who don't know how it works exactly: Have you ever contacted a customer support company about your computer, and the tech support guy gets you to let him remote control your PC from his location using a program like Remote PC or something so that he can fix it as if he was there? Ok... Now imagine doing that in reverse. In this case, GeForce Nvidia builds a super hyper powerful gaming machine that they have at one of their locations. In fact, they have a whole bunch of them. You sign up to this service and then log in. What this does is lets YOU remote control one of Nvidia's really powerful gaming computers. This means that their machine will play Blade & Soul for you. This takes all the strain of running the game off of your computer, theoretically letting you play a super demanding game in terms of resource requirements at max settings even if you are on a pretty bad computer. Instead, the only thing your computer needs to be able to do is stream a 1080p video feed from Nvidia's computer to your monitor. Pretty neat concept. That is how this works. What that means is... this allowed me to test how well B&S runs on a SUPER powerful machine. Basically, if you bought the best gaming computer imaginable... how well would B&S run on it? Well the results are above. The answer is very poorly. Once I was in the game: I set it to 1920x1080 resolution (1080p). I also set it to a cap of 60 fps because 60 is enough. 60 is fine. I also set vertical sync to yes because I don't want any screen tearing of course. Then I went to MSP, and fought the sacred longui for the remnants for this current event since they just recently refreshed MSP, and the current event wants those remnants. CONCLUSION: Should you buy a super powerful gaming computer to get Blade and Soul to run well? No because it won't fix your problem. Blade and Soul will not run well on ANYTHING no matter how much money you throw at it. Only NCsoft can fix Blade and Soul. Even if Blade and Soul gets upgraded to UE4, that might or might not make it run any better. We haven't seen solid proof an upgrade to Unreal Engine 4 will improve performance yet, and UE4 was announced what? 2 years ago? I wouldn't hold my breath on that if I were you. It might not happen at all... ever. Should you sign up for this service? Seems like an ok service actually. Is it going to play B&S well for you? No, but that's not GeForce's fault. That is NCsoft's fault. If your computer is really really quite bad, then it might play B&S at least somewhat better for you though. Would it work well for games other than B&S if, for example, you are on the road a lot, and have a not-so-great-laptop that you use to play games in hotels at night? Yeah, it is probably a super good service for someone in some kind of situation like that. Oh, but boy does it chew monthly data if you have some kind of data cap!

You know... this new Amulet slot that sits right next to your weapon... I don't think it is enough. An amulet is a necklace, and we already have a necklace slot, but we should have 2 necklaces because I don't look enough like a rapper yet. Bling me out! 5 necklaces is probably enough. Even though, at this point all the items NCsoft has added don't even fit on the page anymore, I think we need more. I mean, we have a soul, and a heart item. Why not add a body, and mind item? Mind, body, heart, soul! See? It works! Also, who wears 1 ear ring? Rebels, that's who. I think we should have 2 earring slots. Be a conformist, not a rebel. Also, 2 bracelets, and 2 rings. I haven't paid NCsoft enough yet. I need to whale harder. *spews from my whale blow hole and makes whale call noises* Don't you understand? Why haven't I mortgaged my house yet? Blade and Soul only costs about as much as an associates degree at college right now! What is wrong with you NCsoft? Look at this. I have gloves, but no pants! Where are my pants? I am naked! Where are my shoes? No shirt, no shoes no service! I want enchanted underwear with gems in it! Hongmoon underwear! The Hongmoon codpiece! Really, why can't we put gems in every piece of gear? Oh! Here's an idea! Enchantments should have stages. Oh... no wait... that is basically psyche's, and you already outdid that because rather than having stages, it is RNG on how high the stats get. Hmm. Well who cares? Even though it is basically the same thing, lets have enchantments for our gear AND psyches! I mean... that didn't stop you with amulets and necklaces! Why should it stop you with psyches, and enchantments for gear? Consider gems. We could be enchanting our gems. Why isn't that a thing? I think the gem enchantment system should really be an irritating RNG based system like the compound system, or... the unity radiance stone system or the mystic enchantment system though, and have a chance of failure. If you fail, it should go down too... by multiple stages. The chance of you getting it to max should be less than 1 in 10. Actually, why have there be a max? Just have it keep getting less and less likely to succeed forever. In fact, actually, when using the mystic enchantment system, can you add literally a picture of a slot machine, and to activate the upgrade, I have to click on the lever, and pull it down? I need it to be really loud with lots of sirens too. When it fails, I want to see a picture of a hand flipping me the bird zooming in and out as my weapon literally gets weaker for paying NCsoft money. I am glad you let us put pet gems in our pet aura. I did ask for you to let us put stones in our stones, so that is awesome. Belts - there is really no limit to how many belts you can wear around your shoulders, ankles, chest and so on. I think at least 4 belt slots seems appropriate. Why can't I duct tape multiple gloves together to wear some kind of stapled-together "super glove?" That makes sense! 100 of them! Know your greek mythology! "Hekatonkheires" - Hundred-Handed-Ones. Actually... here is a better idea. Just have us turn into dragons, and let us have a dragon hoard. We'll just throw items that we don't even use into a pile. It basically turns the entire inventory and bank INTO an item slot. You just stuff your inventory with as many high grade items as you can based on the compound system's power potential system. The more power potential in your inventory the more powerful of a dragon you are! Well... that pretty much is what the compound system already is when you think about it, but why not expand it to the whole inventory? (I am intentionally trying to be as ridiculous as possible, but NCsoft has already implemented something similar what I am suggesting in multiple ways. That should tell you something right there. Good job NCsoft!) Oh, but you can't have as much power, and don't have access to the power from the items in the Premium Membership Vault Storage Space (the Stash) unless you are paying for premium membership because GREED! We'll make ALL the money and definitely not drive away more people, or make the game even more ridiculously complicated! ALL the money don't you understand? In fact, more money than all the money. We'll actually make more than 100% of the money. We will make more money than actually exists! I don't have enough items yet. Build me into a suit of armor by adding more and more items, and then keep adding until the suit of armor is actually built into a mechanized tank made out of jewelry and gemstones that I am inside of, and it fires attack diamonds at people. After all, diamonds are the hardest things, pretty much. Why not use them as disposable ammunition in a game about ancient eastern stuff? I mean... the fact that it doesn't make sense to add it in the setting didn't stop NCsoft from adding gunner, or advanced robots that we don't even have in 2020 with the silversteel stuff.

I actually managed to kill someone in pvp 6v6 whirlwind valley battlegrounds, which apparently surprised the game so much that it froze up, probably because it didn't know what to do. I had to force shut down the game with CTRL + ALT + DEL. Then I logged back in. When I logged back in, it didn't log me back into the battleground. Instead it logged me back in to the normal game world and asked me if I wanted to rejoin my previous team in that battleground. I was dead though, so the yes option was greyed out. I couldn't select it. I resurrected myself by pressing 4, but that forced me to go through yet another loading screen, and when I came back in, even though it was still within the time frame to rejoin, the box that allows me to rejoin the battleground available anymore. This is most likely because I had to resurrect, which put me through another loading screen. Therefore, I couldn't rejoin. That is a problem right there, but wait. There's more. THEN I went to go join a new battleground, and it said that I couldn't join another battleground for 5-6 more minutes or so because I was a bad person for ditching my previous team, and that if I did it again, it wouldn't let me do battlegrounds for 60 minutes... except... it wasn't my fault. I actually did try to rejoin. The problem is that if you disconnect in a battleground, your character keeps standing there. Since you are in a battleground, do you suppose that your character just standing there in whirlwind valley next to a control point will probably get killed? Yes, of course right? Then when you log back in, you will be dead. Then you'll have to press 4 to resurect before you can rejoin, but doing that will cancel the rejoin box. You won't be able to rejoin at all, which gets you penalized... at no fault of your own. You see the problem there? That is the bug. B&S needs to be changed so that if you log back in while dead, and the game offers to let you rejoin, you either need to be able to rejoin while dead, or... press 4, resurrect, and STILL have the option to rejoin. I imagine this might be applicable to pve parties too. UPDATE: It happened. I waited the 5-6 minutes, queued up again. I crashed again. Then, since the boot process takes so long for the game and you have to wait through 2-4 MORE loading screens after the game starts, I couldn't get back in time the second time. The system banned me for an hour. I understand the purpose of not wanting people to log out in the middle of pvp, but in order to have a system like that, Blade & Soul needs to be a game that you can get back into reasonably quickly and reliably if you crash or get disconnected or whatever... which it isn't. Therefore, having a system like that is unreasonable unless the improvements I mentioned were made.

UPDATE! NCsoft has fixed this bug. My UI can save, change and update properly again. Happy day! Thank you NCsoft! I know I have been quite critical for the past few months because it feels like nothing has been getting done, and because of that, I don't want to ONLY be critical. When something gets done about the complaints, I want to give recognition and credit where credit is due! With the Cosmic Horizon update, this bug, that I reported has been fixed. I am not at all being sarcastic, or speaking in satire or anything. I actually mean it. Thank you for fixing this bug. My UI works again. Let it be known... I am shouting it now to anyone on this forum to see this: NCSOFT FIXED A BUG THAT WAS REPORTED TO THEM, WHICH PROVES THAT EFFORT IS STILL BEING MADE. IT TOOK 6-7 MONTHS, BUT IT HAPPENED! THAT GIVES ME HOPE FOR THIS GAME, AND THAT IS WORTH A LOT. THAT IS IMPORTANT! THIS WILL KEEP ME PLAYING LONGER, AND WILL MAKE ME MORE LIKELY TO PAY INTO THE GAME BECAUSE NCSOFT SHOWED THEY ARE ACTUALLY PUTTING EFFORT INTO FIXING PROBLEMS. THEY ARE WILLING TO LOOK BACK AND NOT JUST FORWARD AT NEW CONTENT! Yes, caps, but you know what? I AM shouting. That deserves to be shouted. It should be. THANK YOU! In case NCsoft wants to see what gets a positive response from their players, here it is. Fixing performance and bug issues. PLEASE, let's see more of this.

UPDATE! This bug has been fixed! See my other post. I wanted to give credit to NCsoft for fixing it!

UPDATE! NCsoft has fixed this bug. Shadow drain works for the shadow spec assassins again! Happy day! Thank you NCsoft! I know I have been quite critical for the past few months because it feels like nothing has been getting done, and because of that, I don't want to ONLY be critical. When something gets done about the complaints, I want to give recognition and credit where credit is due! With the Cosmic Horizon update, this bug, that I reported, has been fixed. I am not at all being sarcastic, or speaking in satire or anything. I actually mean it. Thank you for fixing this bug. My class works again. Let it be known... I am shouting it now to anyone on this forum to see this: NCSOFT FIXED A BUG THAT WAS REPORTED TO THEM, WHICH PROVES THAT EFFORT IS STILL BEING MADE. THAT GIVES ME HOPE FOR THIS GAME, AND THAT IS WORTH A LOT. THAT IS IMPORTANT! THIS WILL KEEP ME PLAYING LONGER, AND WILL MAKE ME MORE LIKELY TO PAY INTO THE GAME BECAUSE NCSOFT SHOWED THEY ARE ACTUALLY PUTTING EFFORT INTO FIXING PROBLEMS. THEY ARE WILLING TO LOOK BACK AND NOT JUST FORWARD AT NEW CONTENT! Yes, caps, but you know what? I AM shouting. That deserves to be shouted. It should be. THANK YOU! In case NCsoft wants to see what gets a positive response from their players, here it is. Fixing performance and bug issues. PLEASE, let's see more of this.

NCsoft has confirmed that they have cancelled UE4? There will be no Unreal Engine 4 upgrade for B&S PC? Is that what you are saying? If so, I am going to need a link to an official source for that please. I would be very interested to see proof of that.

I have to say the pacing of progression for this game is pretty bad. I want to offer some alternative ideas. Here is what I mean: When I say progression I mean the rate of advancement of a character for a player who wants to play B&S. Consider the previous call to arms event. Let's consider several scenarios: 1) You want to make a new character, and apply the Call to Arms items to that character. Well the call to arms 18 hour cooldown box was once per account, so you would have to claim it on the new character, but then that also meant you had to accomplish all of the requirements to open the box each day on the new character. You could not do the tasks on a high level character, and then hand the rewards needed to open the boxes to the new character. Nope! You would have to level up that new character super quick, and then somehow manage to do all those tasks to gain the rewards to open the boxes stage 1-12. The problem with this is that you probably aren't powerful enough to accomplish the tasks to get the rewards to open the boxes unless your gear is already at least pretty close to what you are going to get out of the box anyway, which means you probably won't be able to do it with a freshly level 60 character, which means it isn't really good for new characters like NCsoft seems to want to advertise. 2) You want to claim the box on a character that has better gear than you will get out of the box: What would be the point of doing the event then? Most of the stuff is not able to be given to your weaker characters. It isn't tradable or account bound except a few things. This means that the event is not for high end players AND it is not for new characters. Then... who is it for? Realistically, it is only for band of players who are not super high gear, and aren't new either. Wouldn't it be wise to design the event in such a way that is good for new players and high geared players too? 3) You have a character that is already max level, so you don't have to level it up, and it has "OK" gear but really not that good: Ok, yes. This event will be ok for you, but NOW, I want to talk about the game's pacing. I participated in the last Call to Arms event. I had a character that fell into the appropriate place on the "bell curve" to get a minor upgrade from the event, but not crazy. Thus I was able to barely do the event, and ended up tossing most of the gear, which made me cry because I couldn't transfer that to even lower geared alts that could have used it. If I had claimed the box on a lower gear alt, even in hindsight, I can say with confidence that those characters of mine would not have been able to do the event. They simply didn't have the power, but they COULD have actually used all the gear that came out of the box, which puts you in this weird situation where the only characters that can barely scrape through the event still won't need probably half of the stuff you get from the 12 box stages. My character was able to use a few items as a moderate upgrade here and there. After that, I continued playing Blade and Soul semi regularly until now. Now we have another Call to Arms Event. I looked at what it hands out. Now I only just now earned my Awakened Stage 3 Ring, Earring, Necklace, Bracelet, Belt and I WAS working on the gloves, which are stage 7 presently when I find out that this Call to Arms Event will be handing out Awakened Stage 1 versions of all the stuff I have spent the last 6 months earning, and am only now just getting there. I feel like I just ran up a mountain from the previous Call to Arms Event, only to have a bunch of people landing on the top 3 days later that took a helicopter. Why did I play NCsoft's game for the past 6 months? I could have just waited... and then had everything handed to me for minimal effort by participating in this event, and saved all that effort an 5400 gold, and a ton of resources. (Moonstone crystals, sacred crystals, Elysian crystals, etc.) I could have taken the Helicopter too, but no no! I played the game! Why did I do that? I was stupid! Now ... think about what this teaches players. This teaches me... DON'T play B&S. Don't do it! Instead, just wait. Don't upgrade. Don't pay money. Don't try hard. Even if you do, NCsoft will spit in your eye, laugh at you, and hand out out a set of gear almost just as good as what you spent the last 6 months earning, and they will do this every 6 months, so there is no reason to actually play, or try, or earn. Instead... just wait, but you have to pay really close attention and make sure that you DO play B&S a ton during the upgrade events. If you miss them then... you miss them. Therefore, don't play the game... until NCsoft encourages it. THEN play the game a lot for a little while... then stop playing again. Just make sure you are here to play B&S a whole bunch around March-April, and Sept-Oct every year. Now think about whether this is a good way to manage the game's advancement / pacing. Is it? It discourages alts. It discourages new players because if they see the opportunity and THEN make a character, it is already too late. They will miss it. It discourages old players because it shows that all their effort and gold and money to upgrade their characters is for nothing. They were fools! They should have just waited, and gotten the hand out welfare items! It also encourages people to NOT play the game except when events like these are running because it is a waste of effort compared to playing during the events where you can get 6 months worth of effort done in 1 month. Why play any other time? But then, realistically, if you don't play B&S except 2 months a year, it will be very easy to miss one or 2 events, and fall too far behind to be able to accomplish the next event when it comes up, so you can never catch up? Therefore, even for the players that take the elevator at the right time... make sure you NEVER miss that elevator. You better be there for it. "You better play our VIDEO GAME when we tell you to instead of when you want to." Do you see a problem with this? Is this the way NCsoft thinks players want to play? Keep up to date with the news and only play when NCsoft says it is time to? How is that what gamers want? I don't think it is for most of us! Therefore, I said I wanted to offer some constructive criticism after explaining the problem: I think it would be better if a player could create a new character, level it up, get to max level, get on the dungeon treadmill, maybe all the way at the bottom... then do each dungeon maybe 10 times... get all the gear they need out of it, move on to the next dungeon. If each dungeon run takes 10 minutes on averages, 10 runs per dungeon is asking that they spend a little over an hour and a half in each dungeon. This keeps old content from being obsolete. Maybe make old dungeons solo-able. Work their way up the dungeon ladder. Get to the top. You COULD have the top become exponentially more difficult like it is now, or... just let people hit the cap, and then make a new character. I think it is important that rather than having these events that people can miss where it is feast or famine in terms of character advancement, it would be far better to have a smooth, steady, enjoyable climb that rewards effort consistently with a satisfying effort to reward ratio rather than effectively punishing consistent effort like the game does presently. And NCsoft wonders, "Why doesn't anyone keep playing?" WHY DO YOU THINK!? You get a bunch of people to pay you money to upgrade or really try-hard and earn the gear. Then NCsoft laughs at them, spits in their face, and hands out comparable gear to people who have barely played for the last 6 months for comparably minimal effort just because they were in the right place at the right time. Now... I am not suggesting that being able to catch up is bad. No no! It isn't bad. It is good, but the "WAY" NCsoft is going about it is bad. I am ok with stuff getting cheaper, as the new "cap" keeps getting raised. That part is ok, but the upgrade times shouldn't be done in limited-time bursts during events. It should be something you can do consistently, any time you want, rather than something you just have to keep your eye out for like a hawk, reading the B&S news for events like these so you don't miss it. The current way isn't that good. Just make it so that anyone who wants to come back can always come back and upgrade whenever they want, getting up to speed with the current players easily, quickly and cheaply because it is a linear or consistent difficulty curve rather than exponential. If you REALLY want it to be exponential, at the very end (last top 2-6 dungeons) just so that people can't reasonably hit "hard cap" without paying a ton of money, then fine. Just understand that effectively means, "Current content is for paying customers only" though. That is the way the game is right now. That wouldn't be "terrible." The reason I say this is because, realistically, most players cannot reasonably grind hard enough to do current end game content without paying money to be powerful enough to do the top stuff. Thus, "current content is for paying customers only." To me, that particular aspect is not unacceptable. I understand that I can just wait, and those dungeons will be made easier, when new dungeons are stacked on top of them, and THEN I will be able to do those dungeons. I can wait. Again, what you have right now, due to these call to arms events is basically teaching us, "Only play B&S during a call to arms event. Only have 1 character. Only play March-April, and September-October. Then quit again." Is that what you want to be teaching us? Understand that the behavior you encourage is the behavior you will get. Do you think I am going to keep playing after this next Call to Arms event after what NCsoft did to me after the previous one like I said in my story? Probably not! Why grind my way up? It is enormously inefficient in terms of gold, and time. Why not just quit for 6 months, come back in March-April, keep my eye on the news, and take the elevator when it is time? That is what I am going to do. NCsoft is encouraging me to stop playing their game except during certain times, which is exactly what I am going to do.

They tried to do a broadcast from in-game for the Astromancer patch. Here is what happened: https://puu.sh/GtI6F/cb4bdf8dd0.jpg You click on the little TV Icon. https://puu.sh/GtI7F/63c7cdc0b5.jpg It gives you a little message that says it want to launch it in your browser. You click confirm. Then you go look at your browser. https://puu.sh/GtI9Q/201b799e61.png Then you click on the little documentation button, and it gives you this: https://puu.sh/GtIaV/f035d1a98e.png And I am not dealing with that because I don't care enough. It doesn't work, so... oh well. I guess your in game broad castsystem just doesn't work, and won't reach me, and ... who knows how many other people. Do I care that much? No. Should NCsoft care? Well, since they are the ones putting forth the effort to make the broadcast, they should probably care that who-knows-how-many people aren't able to hear what they wanted to say to us even if we were willing to listen because it kinda defeats the purpose of having that in-game broadcast function if it isn't going to work. I don't know if it is a browser compatibility issue or what, but, you know, frankly I don't even care much anymore at this point. It isn't my problem. It is NCsoft's. They are lucky I was willing to even write this to notify them that YET ANOTHER aspect of their game is ALSO bugged. ... but... What else is new? Will they fix it? Probably not. I mean, they don't fix most of their other bugs, so the percent likelihood this one will get fixed is statistically probably pretty low. So... Continue wasting your effort NCsoft? You're pretty good at that. Note: Yes I could just go to twitch and watch the broadcast there, but shouldn't the in-game broadcast actually work instead of just being so dysfunctional that it ammounts to little more than a notification that a broadcast is happening? Am I a little jaded and cynical by this point? Heh.

I posted this in the general section, but felt it would make sense to point to it here as well. It is legitimately a bug after all. Please fix it NCsoft.

Well here we are on September 12, 2020, and it is still broken. If it was fixed, we didn't get the fix. My class doesn't work. At this point NCsoft has literally base class abilities that don't work, and they aren't even fixing those bugs?

2 Questions: NCsoft recently introduced the concept of Premium Transformation Stone Crystals. 1) Similar to how: Sacred Orbs turn into Sacred Crystals. Soulstones turn into Soulstone Crystals. Moonstones turn into Moonstone Crystals. Elysian Orbs turn into Elysian Crystals. You see the pattern I am sure. The crystal is the non-tradeable version of the item, but they are used for upgrading items. You can turn Premium Transformation Stones into Premium Transformation Stone Crystals. you can get a hold of Premium Transformation Stone Crystals a lot easier and cheaper than getting a hold of Premium Transformation Stones though, so you should rather use the Premium Transformation Stone Crystals. Theoretically, since the upgrade system uses Crystals and not the trade-able version for upgrades, you should be able to use the Premium Transformation Stone Cyrstals too right? Is this the case, or do upgrades that say they require Premium Transformation Stones require specifically ONLY Premium Transformation Stones, and it will not accept the crystal version? 2) I see that Premium Transformation Stone Crystals are used to upgrade the Raid Weapon side of the Equipment Upgrade Paths, but not for the PVE or PVP paths. My second question is about the "intent" of this. Why do that for one path, but not the others? If it was intentional to bring down the cost of the Raid Weapon path by comparison to the cost of the other 2 paths then is it reasonable to presume that they will not be switching to using Premium Transformation Stone Crystals in the PVE or PVP paths? Alternatively, if they are planning on switching to using Premium Transformation Stone Crystals for the PVE and PVP paths, then it makes sense for us to sit and wait to upgrade until they do that because you can save a lot of gold if you wait. You see what I mean? Therefore, are they going to switch to using Premium Transformation Stone Crystals on the PVE and PVP path soon if we wait, or is that only for the Raid path?

https://imgbox.com/W6nlDoej Heya. @PhoenixMitra I did what you said, and gave the info in a ticket to NCsoft support. If you can check it, the support ticket is: #23606098 as well as #23479876 It has been 6 months. They haven't fixed it, and they haven't followed up with me. 6 months is ample time, so now I am forced to come back here to you. What do I do now? Here is the evidence of the bug. I can post it at least. It is a legit bug. I asked some people in-game. They say that, "yes," they have this problem as well.

https://puu.sh/GoY6f/a5c4abb69b.png This? This is your 0 Hongmoon Coin Compensation bundle for the mess NCsoft caused in the negligent, incompetent handling of this issue? This is it? This is actually more insulting than if you slapped us in the face and told us to go pound sand because we aren't getting anything at all. Doing that would have actually been preferable to this corporate mealy-mouthed linguini-spined half hearted insult/apology.

(This is me paraphrasing, talking ABOUT my experience not copy, and pasting, and not direct quoting. I HAVE to come here to talk about it because support has proven they are utterly incompetent.) Right now NCsoft is selling the Avenging Warrior Soul shields for their current event: "Midnight Reborn." I opened a support ticket to ask if there is a way to see what the potential stats on this soul shied are before I buy it. I asked that if they are going to tell me to check a 3rd party source, please provide one after they confirm whether it has information this up-to-date. Unless I am mistaken, NCsoft is offering a product that is in a box and we literally can't see the stats on it in any way until after we buy it, which is pathetic, and shows no thought in the design. So the GM posts all the stats of each soul shield to me without the set bonuses. I ask if the GM can include the set bonuses for the Assassin class since it would obviously boost different skill abilities in different ways and different amounts from class to class since different classes have different abilities. The GM tells me it provides the same set bonuses. NO IT DOESN'T! I guarantee it. Now... let's think about this answer. What this means is that NCsoft has people who are being paid to provide support for B&S who know less about the game than the players. For this GM to give this answer, it requires that this person doesn't even play the game. This is outright offensive. No wonder support is useless! They don't even know what anything is! Of course they are going to be useless for whatever YOU need when YOU need them. I bet they are the cheapest support service NCsoft can find too, probably not even based in North America, despite the server being an NA server right? So, at this point, Blade and Soul as a game is basically a big empty box. Who is even running the show? I don't think anyone is even here. Hime, and Sunshine I guess. Is that it? What is NCsoft doing? There is no support! It is a lie. It is a joke. It is there to make you FEEL like there is competent support, but it is some guy they found in another country who would answer tickets for $4 an hour, who doesn't even play, and doesn't know anything or something. I mean this is proof!

So NCsoft recently removed the Favorite Fantasy chest from the clothing merchants. I opened a ticket asking if the contents would be coming back. They said that if I want that I should come suggest it here. There were outfits in that I would have liked. I would like to request the return of the contents of that chest. Here is the thing though... the return of the chest would be nice, but I would prever the return of the contents of the chest ina different way. The reason I didn't have the things I wanted already is because: 1) Those boxes cost Designer Thread, and NCsoft doesn't make those particularly available very often, and usually not without purchase. (I mean "legitimately available" HAHAHAHA! Anyway...) It doesn't make much sense to gate so much sell-able content behind a currency that is very rare to get even if you are willing to pay money for the outfits. That doesn't get us outfits reliably, and doesn't get NCsoft money reliably. 2) I really don't like the RNG nature of those outfit chests. Those outfit chests from the clothing merchants would have FAR more value if they allowed selection of the outfit you want like the "Admiral's New Clothes Selection Chest." COULD just sell the outfits one at a time similar to how it is done in the Hongmoon store, BUT... It seems to be a good idea to convert all the outfit chests to allow you to select the outfit you want and then hand them out for various reasons: Seasonal events, sell them via the Hongmoon Store, etc. This way you could make a massive amount of outfits available by just offering 5-10 outfit selection boxes like the "Admiral's New Clothes Selection Chest," and "Admiral's New Clothes Adornment Selection Chest." There are a bunch of old outfits I want, so I'd probably end up buying/earning the same chest multiple times to get multiple outfits out of it. NCsoft could sell the outfit chests for the price of 1 outfit in the Hongmoon Store. This is assuming you get to select the outfit of course; not an RNG system.

<Commence satire> Because NCsoft put developmental time and effort into it. They aren't going to take it out now even if it costs more players, and thus more money over time than it cost to implement it. Yes, but companies say they learn things, but then forget again a year or 2 later because the employees who learned things have moved on to other jobs, or got transferred to new projects within the company... or the company thinks they can get away with it THIS time... or just doesn't care and is going to ram it down your throat whether you like it or not, and is counting on the sunk cost fallacy to keep you a customer. Also, frankly, it doesn't matter what the players want. What matters is how to get the most money out of them, specifically in the short term even if that damages the long term viability of the product. Also, if you look at Junsorei, the vendor NPC that sells the items for cores right now, 1 item is 250 sovereign cores. There are 6 of these items. Going at 1 core per dungeon... go ahead and run this dungeon 1250 times. Buying progression doesn't count as pay to win you know because... you CAN earn it on your own... technically. Hue hue hue! The fact that it requires more effort to max yourself out in this game than to get a college degree is irrelevant! NCsoft loves the apologists on the forums! HAHA! Pay more money while NCsoft puts your money towards other projects instead of B&S! The NCsoft execs need another drink with an umbrella in it on the beach! If you are driven enough to reach for every last little 1% power, then NCsoft is going to absolutely kick your teeth in. You need to accept less than the top, and be happy with that. This game punishes you for being driven to achieve more than a certain amount. NO! Get back on the gear treadmill slave! *cracks whip* <End satire>

That does make sense actually IF UE4 is actually coming. Is it though? I really really hope it is, but... I dunno. I mean when we got a preview of UE4 with the frontier server, it wasn't even for the PC version of Blade and Soul. It was for a mobile version of B&S, so is UE4 even for our PC version, or do we not get it at all? Personally, since it has been 6 months, I would like at least a confirmation statement from NCsoft saying, "Yes, the Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) upgrade is being worked on with the intent of bringing it to the PC version of Blade and Soul. Unfortunately, since it is taking so much longer than we wanted, it would be irresponsible to give you a projected date for when it will be done because if we gave you a date it might not be very accurate. Sorry about that! We are working on it though! Yes, the intent is to upgrade the graphics, AND the game performance too." Just that. That statement from NCsoft would be enough for me. Here watch this: I think Jarke is the last B&S streamer / you tuber. Eckogen quit. Keroppi quit. EvilDoUsHarm quit. NeroKoso said that he has a bit more of backed up content to finish pushing out, but then he is going to quit. They all quit relatively recently in the last 6 months or so. I'd say that NCsoft needs to hurry up, which is true, but at the same time if they rush UE4, and it doesn't at least fix performance (letting us get at least 60fps SMOOTHLY with characters and effects turned on while in a 12 person raid)... and people see that it isn't fixed... there probably won't be any second chances for them. That will be it for this game, so it is more important that they get it right immediately when UE4 comes out... IF it comes out at all... IF NCsoft is intending to bring it out for B&S PC, which is in question at this point. Make sure UE4 is right the first time NCsoft! DON'T mess up. I would also be MUCH more accepting, tolerant, and patient if NCsoft announced, "Yes we realize a ton of stuff is broken, buggy, only partially functional, messed up and such. We have limited resources, time, and employees, and there IS such a thing as having too many cooks in the kitchen at once when it comes to development. You run the risk of having a bureaucratic system so bloated that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, which leads to other problems where things that are being released conflict with each other. Therefore, we want to release UE4 first, which will help a lot, and THEN mop up all the bugs that remain after that. That's the plan. Please be patient. This will take time, and won't all happen at once." I haven't seen any statements like those though. That is IF that is the plan.

Clarification questions for NCsoft: 1) NCsoft has had 5 months~ish notice to fix the moontide outfit bug and they only now fix it when it blows up in their face and becomes 100 times the amount of work to fix? They ignore the concept "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." They'd rather pay for the pound of cure. Is that correct? 2) They complain about how complex bugs are, and how hard they are to fix for months... but then show they can fix it in less than a week once it becomes a problem for NCsoft, which shows they are lying? They only care if a bug becomes beneficial for the players or a problem for NCsoft? As long as the bug harms the players, no big deal right? Just leave the bugs in? (Another example is that there are tons of bugs that haven't been fixed for months, but when the cash shop broke, that was fixed in less than a week.) 3) The assassin class is broken right now, not in the sense that it is too powerful. I mean in the sense that it has a class ability that literally doesn't work right now. Here is the proof: 4) The moontide bug was even more dangerous than a class ability not working. When you put all this together, does this mean we can assume that NCsoft will not be fixing the assassin class any time soon? Basically, be honest with me - are you going to fix my class in the next 3 months, or should I just stop playing? 5) Note that there are other bugs that I personally made NCsoft aware of with support tickets and here on this forum 6 months ago that still aren't fixed too. I was just using that as one example, but there are many. Why aren't you fixing the bugs faster? 6 months is ample time to get these fixed. I mean that is an honest question. Why aren't you? What is the excuse? I would like to know the true, blunt, non-politically-correct answer, not a mealy mouthed corporate, smile, wink and nod answer. Don't say, "Because B&S doesn't have enough earning potential." Yes it does. NCsoft ruined it and lost over a million players. It isn't the game's fault. Why aren't you people fixing this game faster than you are? 6) What needs to happen in order for this game to get fixed faster? What do you need? Do you need more people? Why aren't you hiring them? You can't find them? Then why not offer to pay more? What do we need to say or do to get this game fixed faster? I mean, honestly. What? Because I actually don't know. 7) Why is NCsoft working on stupid nonsense like the Mythical Weapon Enchantment System, the Unity system, and the Compound system which no one, or practically no one asked for instead of fixing bugs? Again, this shows that they DO have developmental effort going into the game, so this isn't just ranting. It is honestly a very logical question! Do they think that fixing infrastructure doesn't get as many applause as clipping a big red ribbon with a giant oversized pair of scissors on a new system? They would be wrong! Just look at what the players are asking for. If they had taken bug-fixing seriously, the moontide-chest-vendor-designer-thread thing wouldn't have been an issue in the first place!

Let me take this line by line. Yes it is "free," but they incentivize you increasingly hard to spend money the further you want to progress. NCsoft doesn't gain absolutely nothing from doing "The something." They retain players. More players = more money per month for them since happy players that see a future in healthy game that they enjoy will be more likely to spend money. I used to spend money on this game. I stopped because the FPS got terrible... somehow, which... to go off on a tangent for a moment doesn't even make sense to me. You run a dungeon 3 years ago, and it ran fine. You run the same dungeon now, and you get less than 20FPS sometimes. It is the same dungeon! It has the same number of people in it. How did it somehow get worse even though our computers have gotten stronger?! How is that even possible? It doesn't even make sense, but that is exactly where we are. I am also still waiting on a bug to be fixed that I reported to NCsoft 6 months ago. I went through support with them for over a month. They couldn't find anything wrong on my end. They acknowledged it, and sent it off to the dev team to get fixed. It isn't fixed yet. Why pay if they aren't going to support the game with some of the money? This is true, but Blade and Soul had over a million players at one point. Blade and Soul had over 15 severs in the NA region at one point. https://puu.sh/GiFLN/9be56c9d83.png Dochun, Gunma, Hajoon, Iksanun, Jiwan, Junhado, Juwol, Master Hong, Mushin, Old Man Cho, Onmyung, Poharan, Soha, Taywong, Yehara, Yunwa. That is 16 servers just in the NA region. We are down to 1 now, and it isn't even an overfull or crowded server, which is why it is taking longer to get a party in F8 these days. That is over a 90% loss. The reason why we are down to 1 server is BECAUSE NCsoft mismanaged Blade and Soul. Blade and Soul didn't bleed out all those potential customers because the mobile market happened or some other MMO came along or because B&S doesn't have the potential to be competitive in the MMO market or something. They bled out all those customers because of the way NCsoft treats the customers. It is a direct result. Their customers told them to do "the something" that you mentioned, and NCsoft said, "Nah." The result is that, over time, a bunch of people quit because they got tired of waiting for NCsoft to do what they told NCsoft to do. Yes, as a company, you need to do what your customers tell you... or the customers leave, and quit spending money, NCsoft. This is how it works. This is what happens. Ultimately, it is NCsoft's fault. It is their game. They have the power to fix it. You cannot fix it for them. The EULA literally legally prohibits you from doing so. They won't let you fix it even if you would volunteer to do so. NCsoft's solution is: Make a new game and scam new people, or people dumb enough to be scammed twice. Customers years ago: "Hey NCsoft, this is bad for the game long term." NCsoft: "Hah! That is Future-NCsoft's problem." 2020: Now NCsoft is Future-NCsoft. NCsoft: "Oh. They were right about Blade and Soul... and Aion. Darn. Oh well. Fix it? Nah! Let's just make a bunch of mobile games that are even more cash grabby. Pretty sure it won't damage our brand even more or yield the same result that happened to our previous games!" What they could also do though, is just do what the customers tell them, and not lose the customers in the first place. It isn't the customer's responsibility to pay a company enough to care. It is the company's responsibility to stand behind their products enough that the customers care to stay and spend money. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. If NCsoft fixed Blade and Soul, people would come back. Personally I feel bad for the people giving NCsoft another chance with their mobile gaming market. NCsoft has shown who they are - what they are made out of. They threw Aion under the bus, ignoring what people wanted. They are doing it to Blade and Soul. You see the pattern? You think they won't do the same to those new products just like they are doing to Blade and Soul? Why give them another chance with their new products? I say no. They need to stand behind the promises that they made us with Blade and Soul with ACTIONS that produce RESULTS. THEN... I will consider their new products. If they want more money, NCsoft needs to prove to us that they are honorable. They need to prove that when they give their word, it is good. https://www.bladeandsoul.com/en/news/business-model-revealed/ Also, fix the FPS. The lag... maybe that can't be fixed. Not sure. Where is the UE4 engine update? Where is the optimization? Where are the bug fixes? Assassin Shadow Drain doesn't even work correctly for Assassin shadow spec right now. I mean we are talking about literally class moves not working. You say that they only care about money, which seems like that may very well be the case, but without trust, we cannot do business. Do you like doing business with a company you don't trust? Trust is very important in business. Given NCsoft's behavior, why should their customers trust them?

Yes sir. https://www.bladeandsoul.com/en/news/producers-letter-february-2020-update/ "We’ll also be concluding the ongoing epic story arc this year with Act 11, and we’ll be adding lots of new dungeons for players to attempt."

If NCsoft is going to stop developing or making content for this game, I have a request: Please give Blade and Soul to us, the players. What exactly do I mean by this? Give us a way to download a copy of all our character data, and save it on our local computers. Give us a way to download the ENTIRE game, and host our own games the way Conan Exiles does. Conan Exiles is an MMORPG, but people can host private servers. Please give us GM tools and creation tools to grant ourselves gear and stuff on our own private servers the way Bethany and Jonathan had. We could make something like that in NA if we were allowed. (I am not suggesting this unless NCsoft lets us of course, and is going to shut down BNS the way they did to Wildstar.) Don't think NCsoft would never do it! Wildstar is gone gone gone. That was NCsoft. B&S is down to 1 server, and it is getting harder to get groups in F8 due to lack of enough players. It seems like maybe NCsoft is slowly giving up on not just Blade and Soul, but PC gaming and moving to mobile games, forsaking the employees and the customers who helped get them where they are. If they decide to ditch us, at least, please give the game to us. DO NOT underestimate the power, ability, or diligence of the modding community in games. Look at Skyrim. Look at the Fallout games. Look at the tweaker community for Phantasy Star Online 2. Look at Minecraft. That is another good example of a big open world game you can host private servers for that has a significant mod community. Look at Counter-Strike just as a few of many many examples. I am telling you right now, if NCsoft can't fix Blade and Soul, we can. All you would need to do is let us. If you are going to throw in the towel, please let us fix it. Please let us have it. We love this game, and we see massive potential in it. Blade and Soul is like... a shining diamond in a pile of coal chunks that are other games. The diamond has a rotten, smelly banana peel with flies on it though. All you would need to do is take off the banana peel, polish the diamond, and it would be fine! We would hate to see the server simply shut down and... that's it for our beloved Blade and Soul. We can't play it. We can't download it. All the employees are fired. We can't host private servers, or fix the bugs. Everything is gone? That would be terrible! I am not saying NCsoft IS going to quit on Blade and Soul, but they did already announce the end of the story. If they end up giving up, please let us have it. This guy outlines why I am concerned about NCsoft giving up on Blade and Soul very well, and why it looks like NCsoft is moving to mobile games: