This game went from 100 to 0 Real quick!

[switchSL]

On 2/4/2016 at 5:53 PM, heavy71 said:

Funny that you refere to pwi i did mean pwi to in my last post i can only say people who complain about prices and economy in bns should try pwi they come back screaming after 3 weeks top

Agreed.  PWI was brutal with their cash shop.

[psymix]

I actually agree with this topic.I was so hyped for this game.The game itself is great by my standards.Best gameplay wise mmo for sure on the market for me.But this greed of theirs is slowly going to turn me away from the game as well.I thought for sure this game would kill WoW finally and put that shit game to rest.Turns out its better to pay 10e a month than this cash grab insanity.Not that i played wow since long time ago.Sadly there are no great mmo's on the market at all.We don't have many choices handed to us.I swear i would be fine if the game was actually buy one time and play like a boss, but no ty like this.Not to mention all the BS pvp unbalanced shit.... in a pvp MAINLY game.

[Blossom]

TLDR

 

I don't see what's shady in their business -_- the game is 100% free you are not forced to buy anything on the BnS Store to get anything more in the game ..... Also some of the outfits on the hongmoon store are already available through the game so if you're not willing to spend the time in game of spend the money to get it then you have no room to complain . As per the account wide skin .... idk any game that has account wide skin ... its part of a free to play business , if you put it account wide then after buying it you have no chance of buying it again which makes it smarter to put it this way otherwise after a while people would stop buying their items because once you have them all there is no repurchase chance .... idk if you understand what im saying .

[Dexyn]

I agree, completely to everything OP said.

I'ma be quite honest my purchase history looks something like this:

23x Dragon Pouches

1x Cinderlands Key

23x Dragon Pouches

1x Moonwater Key

1x Moonwater Key

1x Moonwater Key

 

Costumes are overpriced and don't attract me at all. If there was one costume I'd buy and keep on wearing pretty much forever it would be the swimwear set. Although after hearing that they were $40 to $50 in Korea when they were released i'm starting to get worried. Dragon Pouches and Brilliant Keys should have a craftable and tradable version in my opinion. These new RNG boxes that they just released are a trap, I learned my lesson wholeheartedly during my Tera days. I now avoid RNG boxes like the plague unless of course they give guarantee chance to actual good items, but then it would be p2w and quite frankly, even though I have enough disposable income, I wouldn't want that to happen either...

[Keawen]

Personally i find we get enough costumes in the game for free that i don't feel like i need to gamble on those boxes.But i'm not a wardrobe maniac either so to me the p2w argument is pretty hollow.People gonna tell me but u need more storage place and u need to buy some dragon pouch.So far i bought only the 10 copper and 1 silver 1 and i got enough dragon pouch to still have some room but maybe other people wants more stuff i don't know but it hasn't been a problem here.

[Blossom]

There is no p2w in this game .... pay to win what ? pvp ? pvp is entirely optional and in arena your gear doesnt affect your stats ... you can be lvl 15 or lvl 100 you will still both hit as hard the only difference is how many skills you will have unlocked .

[Tabasco]

On 2/4/2016 at 1:51 PM, wishery7 said:

So many small things completely wrong! The shady business practices put upon this game is slowly killing it for me. The fact that outfits are EXPENSIVE and cannot be used between your OWN characters just shows how out of touch NCSOFT is! 

  - snip

 

 

Couple of things:

- What did you spend $80 dollars on, if you don't mind?

- It seems that all of the problems that took this game "from 100 to 0" for you were in place since the game launched. That said, when was the game ever a 100?

 

lol this thread accrued three tons of drama.

[cubess]

12 hours ago, Silverwolvie said:

I have to say trying to read trough this whole thread gave me moments that my eyes glazed over...
That said although the OP makes some good points BUT take some things into account also.

 

First point somebody on Reddit pointed this out most of our Asian counterparts  AKA other regions love to P2W.

So they buy that stuff a lot and generate a income for the devs to make more content.

For example (and I over simplify it) 50% they sell is P2W, 50% is cosmetics.

We westerns dislike P2W, by that definition we create a cash flow shortage of 50% income. (see were I am going?)

So prices here in the west will have to compensate for that.

Does that make for a valid argument Yes and No It al depends on what did NCsoft west had to do to Westernize BnS purely from a cost point of view.

But that the prices would be higher then the other regions for this simple reason.

Yes I can understand that.

Should I like that? No but it's kinda a fact of life.

 

Second point, account width stuff (AKA costumes)

Here are a few problems with that some costumes are race bound so those will be a problem.

But and I think that is the biggest idea behind it.

If you have 2 characters and the shop sells 10 costumes and they where account bound all you would buy are 10 costumes.

But if you have to buy all 10 again.... because they are not account bound....

They would make a lot less money to develop the game.

So they will not be in a hurry to change this, from a business point of view.

Do I like the idea no of course not, do I understand it YES

 

Third Point Premium...

This one yeah I think they got it wrong in some places.

Paying for more benefits I have no problem with, like faster level, more storage and more.

But they missed the boat on other benefits.

By putting the wardrobe behind a paywall is not totally wrong, but then give the free players limited amount of slots say 25 slots.

Give premium members a 10% discount on the hongmoon store.

Just make it worthwhile to go premium.

 

RNG boxes are a fact of gaming life, I don't like them either.

But at the same time I say don't like them don't buy them plain and simple.

 

Everything is plain economics.

I am sure each NCsoft region has to generate it's own income to survive.

How they do it is up to them.

 

At the moment as it stands now NCsoft west... sorry it is flawed.

I am not saying stuff as this game will die no it will not go that easy, but you guys could have made better decisions.  

I have no qualm with your first point, if raised prices is the cost of negating p2w strategies then so be it, so I'll let that one be.

 

On the second point, that scenario only works if we are to assume that all players would willingly purchase multiples of the same product freely with out hesitation or conflict,  which sounds more like a marketers daydream than a realistic take on consumer behavior. Methods like this could just as easily cause people to simply not buy costumes (as they see the already raised dollar value to make up for other lost revenues as you mention in your first point, combined with a restriction that isn't all too pleasant, and just don't find it worth it) which is not beneficial in the least. 

 

For the third, I also don't really find the subscription offer as it is to be of any real value. Though my take on it is that they actually need to just allow some of the options to naturally exist in the game for free if we hope for them to actually allow the subscription to be of actual value at some point. To explain, I believe where thing went wrong with the subscription model is when NC thought they could remove standard mechanics from the game and place them behind a paywall and expect players to find it rewarding or a benefit. Sure from a marketing standpoint it sounds solid, instead of putting work into giving them more, lets take some of what they already have a just stick a price on it. Sure its scummy but still its no work for the same bucks. What it doesn't take into mind is the experience the consumers already have with mmos or that they already have this pre-shaped vision of what is default vs what is exceptional/extra, so this whole deal winds up seeming extremely lackluster, even though it is technically providing benefits as it entails, because the players know where the scales should actually be already / are already accustomed to those scales. It'd be easier for NC just to allow those more rudimentary aspects to just be for all players, and then build ontop of them, so there is no way they could fall into this trap again of offering more but then it not actually feeling like more. 

 

As for the boxes, while they might be a little low on the marketing ploys bar, I don't really care much for or against them so long as it keeps out of p2w. I would say though that a pity system for these kinds of items would probably be in everyone's best interest, so after so many boxes your chances for items you didn't get increase, the system would still make a killing while also improving pr by making it seem like they actually care for their repeat buyers. 

 

And flawed is putting it nicely, they've rubbed a lot of people wrong with the way they've handled this games release as I see it. Don't get me wrong, I understand the desire to make money, but they weren't in the least bit clever about it, and that did them really no favors. I'm not condemning this game to a death sentence yet either, but the way NC has presented is making it seem the most likely route at this point. 

[Kyojin]

This western community is so damn entitled. What did you expect, getting all your "p2w" costumes all for free? Theres no pleasing to you people. I never belived someone would cry about COSTUMES. I wanna see how all of you brats will scream in agony when ncsoft gets tierd of you and sells the game to some third hand publisher like gameforge or trion, then you'll see what actual p2w is...

[xaqq]

all this hate for speaking the truth. All these people live in the MMO hell hole and have never played a legit game outside the disgusting f2p genre.

[cubess]

2 minutes ago, Kyojin said:

This western community is so damn entitled. What did you expect, getting all your "p2w" costumes all for free? Theres no pleasing to you people. I never belived someone would cry about COSTUMES. I wanna see how all of you brats will scream in agony when ncsoft gets tierd of you and sells the game to some third hand publisher like gameforge or trion, then you'll see what actual p2w is...

How is it entitled to want something equal to what you are expected to pay for it? That is quite literally the exact opposite of how entitlement works. 

[Troska]

13 minutes ago, Kyojin said:

This western community is so damn entitled. What did you expect, getting all your "p2w" costumes all for free? Theres no pleasing to you people. I never belived someone would cry about COSTUMES. I wanna see how all of you brats will scream in agony when ncsoft gets tierd of you and sells the game to some third hand publisher like gameforge or trion, then you'll see what actual p2w is...

We could be so lucky if they sold to Trion. At least I'd get what was paying for. En Masse of course would be the better choice.

[EChondo]

On 2/4/2016 at 1:51 PM, wishery7 said:

So many small things completely wrong! The shady business practices put upon this game is slowly killing it for me. The fact that outfits are EXPENSIVE and cannot be used between your OWN characters just shows how out of touch NCSOFT is!

Expensive outfits...uh it's F2P? Duh? I do agree that it should be transferable between characters.

 

Quote

The fact that paid items are treated and regarded as any old plain items does not encourage me to continue to buying items. It's very discouraging that players have to decide whether they keep there characters forever, delete the character (and the money spent on it), or just spend more money on slots. You're doing everything to push me away from this game.  

Imagine this for a second... Buying a costume (especially holiday costumes) and it could be swapped around on all of your toons because you paid premium *cricket*ing price for it :)

The fact that the game's mechanics appear to be based around the hongmoon store, and the hongmoon store is expensive and unfair.... I digress (trying to make this short)

So then don't buy the items or outfits? I'm almost at level 45 and I only spent $5 for another character slot. So I don't see how "game's mechanics appear to be based around the hongmoon store".

 

Quote

-7 Days deletion period is screaming you want people to buy slots (Do you think all of your customers are this stupid). Many popular mmorpgs don't do this and Final fantasy 11 a relic mmorpg had a system where deleted characters could be recovered before 1 year. I find it hard to believe a game as big and new(in the west) as BnS can't compete with that.

An old system that came directly from the Korean version of BnS. This isn't a money grab, it just shows that NCWest was lazy reviewing and porting the game over to NA. Also BnS is 4 years old as this point, it doesn't matter how "big" or "new" it is in the West.

 

Quote

-My first time crafting, my first day.. Took me about 3-4 hours to get my first basic items.... (Of course hongmoon store)

I haven't done crafting at all, so no comment.

 

Quote

-Don't like how NCSOFT might charge us so we could use our paid items across our characters we own.... This makes no sense! If you make microtransactions for nearly every aspect of the game you're going to lose a lot of people (especially the ones who are buying your expensive unfair items) to other upcoming mmos.

"Might" charge you what for what? You're making zero sense with this point. Please provide an example.

 

Quote

-Warlock items taking up my % chance pretty much also encouraging players to buy special keys....

Again with this "cash grab" idea. I just said this before, but I'll say it again, NCWest is LAZY. They poorly ported the game over, this was an oversight on their part and either way, if Warlock was available DAY ONE you'd be here complaining about RNG anyway.

 

Quote

-Is it a necessity to only release expensive clothing? And why is the only cheap(lol) one is 800 NCOINs and it's pretty much copy and paste from a free version just a different color?

Again. DON'T BUY COSMETICS IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT. If no one buys it then they'll decrease the price. Obviously people are buying them and you're here whining for the sake of whining. YOU'RE NOT FORCED TO BUY COSMETICS, GET OVER IT.

 

Quote

- The insane amount of bot spam. I have played a lot of mmorpgs, and i never had to block over 10 bots per minute. This is absolutely crazy, i actually made a chat just for party, local, and clan. So i'm very limited in the social aspect of the game.

The spam was getting pretty bad a couple days ago, so I'll give you this one, but NCWest is taking action to negate the spam and it has definitely shown these past few days.

 

Quote

-If the devs plan on releasing new content in the hongmoon store, why should players have to dwell on things they already bought? It should be once you purchase this item/costume, you can look forward to the future content(costumes), but you cant at the moment.

Another comment that makes absolutely no sense. It sounds like you're complaining that people are somehow regretting their decision of buying an outfit just because a new one will come out later? I think you're mixing up two very different points. You should proofread next time before submitting because your comments are so jumbled it's hard to even understand what you're trying to whine about.

 

Quote

I'm apart of the small percentage of players that purchases items in F2P. I believe i already spent over 80 bucks, but i stopped buying after reaching lv 38 and realzing how unfair and greedy this system is. I challenge an NCSOFT employee to look at my purchase history, and see the gap between my lvs and purchases.

I spent more money in beta because the game just seemed so awesome, but now after playing through everything... i'm starting to get turned off. I'm going to wait a few months before i leave blade and soul for good, if these people don't learn or read complaints about their own game then i don't feel valued as a costumer. It would be a shame to lose a significant portion of your paying customers because of how unfair and expensive the hongmoon store is. I cut things really short, but these are my main concerns. 

Blade and Soul has a lot of potential to compete and stay thriving in the west if they revise their business practices. But for right now.. I'm just playing because i want to feel like i did not waste my money on a game that is outright making a disgusting name for microtransactions. It's 2016, NCSOFT is not new in the mmo market, and they don't know how to do microtransactions correctly? 

How the devs handle things during the coming months will determine if this game is honestly worth my time, effort, and money. Really sad how i feel like we are going to be ignored. And if we are ignored then i'm just done with NCSOFT and i'll be done with BnS too (especially after buying premium price wildstar). And if Black Desert is just as fun as BnS in combat and less greedy in their practices you can bet 100% i'm out of this mess in a heartbeat. I'll spend my money where it is appreciated! When players buy items it like getting spit in the face and then you feel guilty for buying it.

If you delay these problems during the west first impressions of BnS then you can kiss a lot of potential customers goodbye..
 

No one is forcing you buy things off of the store. I don't even understand how you could spend $80 before level 40 when I've only ever bought ONE character slot for $5. It seems less an issue with NCSoft and more of an issue with your *cricket* poor handling of money. It's not my fault or NCSoft's fault if you do not learn about the limitations the game has, it's YOUR FAULT.

 

And the store being unfair and greedy? Have you NEVER experienced RNG? Have you NEVER played a F2P game before? These are issues with ALL F2P games, there's limitations with ALL F2P games. I don't see how you're even remotely surprised about any of this.

 

NCWest was obviously lazy putting this game together for the West, but they are trying to alleviate the problems that have been occurring, you can see that yourself just these past couple days. But these issues you have are your own fault.

 

Bye Felicia.

[Rhyster]

Make a list of things you did not like about Blade and Soul and future games. Compile this list and walk to a game design studio and create your own game. This world needs better games and they do not happen with words alone. Gather like minded people and craft a game.

[illutian]

This is pretty typical of all Korean MMOs that come to 'The West'.

 

Also, NCWest has very little say over the business model, but more say than an external publisher would have. --  Basically, if it's not in the Korean version it's not happening.

[Lifa]

.....this is how NCsoft business model run in asia for a very long time................if this thing failed in the west...then so be it......

[Madmidori]

23 hours ago, Rhazes said:

I agree with the OP and I'll be going F2P as soon as my month is up. I don't even like F2P and have always subscribed in every other F2P MMO but the premium benefits are nearly worthless because NCSoft is greedy and ripping us off compared to their customers in other versions. The daily dash sucks compared to the other versions. The premium benefits require you to spend close to 1000 dollars  to unlock them so that are worthwhile. I've bought 4 outfits and I know I will buy no more because I see NCSoft running this game into the ground so its just a waste of money to invest in it. I can use my limited vault and bag space that NCSoft wants to nickle and dime premium customers into pay a ton of extra cash to expand to store my costumes I like the rest will get vendered if I run out of room. I will be just fine without the wardrobe.

 

All these chests I have unlocked as premium and its 99.9% of time a small healing tonic. I have almost 500 of them and they are so boring to open I wait until I have dozens of them because I know its just crap. NCSoft can't even give premium members better odds or better stuff.

 

 

You do understand if they gave premium members the "boost's" you're talking about then they would basically be forcing the need to have premium. Should also not be looking at other area's, yes they have a better system but they are also required to pay more in return. Would you really spend say 30 bucks a week to have the same boosts? 

This bit goes out as a general question because I've seen so many of these threads. How does NC try to "nickle and dime" their player base? How is their cash shop "shady"?  Yes I would not mind having account wide -cash shop- costumes, who in there right mind wouldn't but as far as I know none of the other bns clients have this feature. 

[Rhazes]

2 minutes ago, Madmidori said:

You do understand if they gave premium members the "boost's" you're talking about then they would basically be forcing the need to have premium. Should also not be looking at other area's, yes they have a better system but they are also required to pay more in return. Would you really spend say 30 bucks a week to have the same boosts? 

This bit goes out as a general question because I've seen so many of these threads. How does NC try to "nickle and dime" their player base? How is their cash shop "shady"?  Yes I would not mind having account wide -cash shop- costumes, who in there right mind wouldn't but as far as I know none of the other bns clients have this feature. 

Sounds like you're a F2Per wanting to keep premium benefits worthless so you don't feel like you need to pay to support the game. That's cool I'm going F2P to as soon as my month is up.

[Madmidori]

Just now, Rhazes said:

Sounds like you're a F2Per wanting to keep premium benefits worthless so you don't feel like you need to pay to support the game. That's cool I'm going F2P to as soon as my month is up.

Nope I'm a premium player and plan to still be one.

[Syko]

where's the tl;dr

[Mewna]

This is how this game runs from the beginning way before it ever got here to NA an all you guys are doing is (trying to change everything bns is ) after all the whining of * makes sure they don't change anything bs* you all complained about.  you don't like how the game is run? then simply leave an go else where. i want how this game was meant to be, you should have done your homework before playing this game, see how it's run in KR, CH,TW an JP. yea every ver. has its tiny ass things that are different but when you look at the bigger picture its all the same an original and you guys are just trying to change it when you asked not to in the first place...GTFO, its *cricket*ing rude to see how you treat the bns team after they worked so dam hard to even get this here, they are doing their best an you all take it for granted...plz dont try to *cricket*ing ruin it for the rest of us who enjoy what we were given.  

[Bahiti]

13 hours ago, Kyojin said:

This western community is so damn entitled. What did you expect, getting all your "p2w" costumes all for free? Theres no pleasing to you people. I never belived someone would cry about COSTUMES. I wanna see how all of you brats will scream in agony when ncsoft gets tierd of you and sells the game to some third hand publisher like gameforge or trion, then you'll see what actual p2w is...

This is how all MMO's seem to be anymore. Let's whine about every teeny tiny little thing, but forget that even this game has cheaper costumes than other games.

It's understandable people don't want to pay a lot for things, but it's not like you can't live without it.

[Mizuo]

I didn't read it completely, but if noone has mentioned it yet, keep in mind the NA and EU servers are based on the Korean server and this "greedy" cash system is exactly the same like on all the other servers, it's not like we´re getting "unfairly treated". I agree with you that there are some adjustments to be made, but that's how the game is and if you don't agree with it then it's pretty much your problem, not the problem of the game.

[Kitzu]

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The fact that outfits are EXPENSIVE and cannot be used between your OWN characters 

 

As I do understand the fact that some people find these "expensive"  a lot of f2p games have outfits that are anywhere from 10-20 dollars and that get character bound. 

A lot of games (older games) have the same price point as well. Now,  pay to play games some times have micro transactions but the prices are much lower. Why? Because its PAY TO PLAY.  While yes, lower costume prices would be awesome, I doubt that'll happen because so many games go with the 10-20 dollar price range (sometimes a bit more depending on the costume.) The only thing with costumes I don't agree with is the RNG boxes. 

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Warlock items taking up my % chance pretty much also encouraging players to buy special keys....

 

I BARELY get any drops for warlock (maybe I am lucky with weapon RNG) However, I get my weps i need with in maybe... 3 tries ? 

And some weps are able to be traded, so why not try  and do that? Or purchase them for really cheap. 

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 The insane amount of bot spam. I have played a lot of mmorpgs, and i never had to block over 10 bots per minute. This is absolutely crazy, i actually made a chat just for party, local, and clan. So i'm very limited in the social aspect of the game. 

 

I RARELY see spammers any more, they ARE working on it (I am on Mushin by the way) and i don't have to block spammers every minute. More like once a day. Also, there are games with WAY worse botting issues. Along with spammers/gold sellers. This i think is in MOST games (even some if not most of the pay to play games) Maybe more people should report.
 

 

 

 

ANYWAY as our opinions will differ, along with everyone else in this forum. That is fine, if you don't like certain things, and can't accept certain things. Then I guess its time to move along. Lets agree to disagree. 

[Kensho1996]

On 2/4/2016 at 4:59 PM, Lunaus said:

I wish people would use the ticket function, I understand the want to post feedback but the general discussion forums usually isn't the best place if you want them to see, especially with the recent flood about the RNG boxes. I think they're avoiding most negative topics.

This is so true ..

 

I do wish there was an easy way to make a ticket (help or suggestion) in the game BUT the forums really isn't going to get you the support you might wish for as all you will get is attacked by people against you