My assessment so far.

[Bowdon]

Well, after waiting a long time to try Blade and Soul out, and having played in the beta, I'm saddened with how limiting the design of the game as become.

 

I'm an average western player. I like pve and the workings of games.

 

At first I was impressed by BnS. It has a semi open world feel. It's better than any other asian-type game I've played. It is immersive. The story is good and deep. The side quests and daily's are always rewarding. I also like the way combat is done in the game. Blocks and counters playing a big part. Also different classes play differently, which I like.

 

But having said all that, the way the game as been implemented on purpose it zaps the life out of it. This RNG element of breakthrough weapon drops doesnt seem to have any limit on it at all. It seems just as random to get another classes weapon as it is to get your own. Basic programming writing should at least tilt the percentage to the current class. The RNG element seems so basic that it gets stuck sometimes and I end up with the same breakthrough weapon for the same class (usually a different class than what I want) many times in a row. I'm sorry to say that western gamers aren't going to put up with grinding the same dungeon over and over again, especially when its blackram narrows level 20 dungeon.

 

If people are lucky enough to get the random weapon drop for their class then my comments will seem over the top. But then the grinding aspect breaks the immersion I mentioned earlier. I've been lucky to have got my weapons fairly easily. But trying to help my girlfriend get hers, only for us both to be getting random weapons for every other class apart from hers for 10+ times is ridiculous. Also the fact you purposely make those weapons so they cant be traded, yet you allow the main weapon your holding to be traded!? Is this so you can profit if someone makes a mistake? They either have to pay or they literally go right to the back of the line and get treated to the totally random, no weighted-RNG element again.

 

I've spent the last week trying to help my girlfriend get her weapon drop on 2 characters in Blackram Narrows. Out of 30 runs between us, only I got her weapon once. But again, I can't trade it with her. Why can't you even set a minimum price for me to sell it? That way the bar could still be high, but it would get around the RNG element.

 

Moving on to the technical side of things. The glitchy lags and disconnections to the game have never been fully explained. From what I've observed the game playing on either AMD motherboards and/or graphics cards seem to have big problems transitioning between the 'gates' between areas. Also people have random disconnects and the game seems generally unstable, especially at peak evening times. This is nothing to do with a persons connection as they can play other games, even NCsoft's other big game Guild Wars 2, and suffer no 'lag' stuttered play. Yet connect to this game and its all there. While its very humbling to see players helping other players out on the forum. There hasnt been much constructive fact finding by the devs or support to actually investigate the issues from the game server side. It seems to all be assumed to be the fault of the end user.

 

For my personal gripe about the game really focuses on these trolls and bots in the game. I'm assuming I'm getting these spam friendship invites because I've advertised on the party board to run that blackram narrows dungeon. It's the same names all the time. I block them, decline their invite and they can still attempt to re-invite me. When I try and report them it says they can't file a spam report because they can't be detected on the system. So somewhere your system is being tricked. One way to solve this issue would be to have a block friendship invites option in the menus. But so far this hasnt been done.

 

To recap. I like the basic game. But the there doesnt seem to have been much change of style when this game was released for the western audience. It's still setup as a grind fest. Which I don't mind to a degree. But when I'm spending a week talking about grinding the SAME dungeon over and over all the time, it stops progress in the whole game. You're ruining your own game with this grind-fest. At the very least lean the RNG element to the class searching for breakthrough weapons. I'm sure this wouldnt require too much programming in.

 

This post should be seen in a constructive way. It's from someone who likes the basic game. But points out things that need tweaking to get the right mix. Please look in to the things I've mentioned in this post.

[drkn335]

Something to think about in terms of the RNG, non trading and grinding aspect is this. I watched some videos on a game creator and expert that said asian games are different from the west in terms of the fact that (unlike the west) eastern gamers dont want to pay to buy weapons and upgrades and just blitz through the game, instead they want to show off their hard work through grinding in order to get powerful. The eastern game design is based around this, that there is RNG and non trading on weapons so it makes it harder to progress with the weapons and accessories so that when you finally do get it it showed that you got it through hard work and is something to be proud of rather than just buying it from other players. Since this game comes from the east originally and some of the features will be unchanged of course I think its to expect that the game will still have these features (rng, non trading, grind etc) and I also feel like it fits the game well since the entire game and story line is also about hard work and slow progession.

Personally I like the rng. Sometimes you get it first go or first few, sometimes it takes a while, thats what rng is. I feel like if you could just buy all the weapons and accesories and everything the game would nearly be as fun and interesting, i probably wouldnt play as long if i could just get through it easy like that, you'd have no motivation to work for anything. If a game isn't a bit hard or challenging then whats the point in playing