Producer's Letter Q&A Livestream Answers

[kytt]

Clueless. This team is absolutely clueless.

 

You guys don't have any clue what the experience of playing your version of this game is like. None at all. 

 

Your answers are contradictory (how many times did Nico say some version of "Yes (but) No", employs circular logic (the SSP ?), and reflects an attitude that you think your players can't or won't go to another game. They are.

Just earlier tonight I talked my buddy down from the uninstall ledge, for the 2nd time in a week. There won't be a 3rd time; we'll both be gone when he really hits his limit. (BTW, he's a game dev and doesn't have any clue why you guys are running this game into the ground beyond temporary short-term profit)

 

Your reactions to several questions prove your ignorance; there were too many questions none of you understood either openly or failed to address the intent of the question (proving cluelessness).

 

Far far too many answers here boiled down to "we'll look at that/talk to the dev team/plan to maybe see about revisiting that".  Those aren't answers. Do a livestream AFTER you have those answers.

 

Too many answers are "we can see that might be a problem but.... there will be no changes".  Ie, the official version of "you just want free stuff" even though the players are just asking for a better effort/reward balance; which is kind of a critical core concept of game theory ya'll seem to be missing.

 

Too many answers are "we have to be cautious and not mess anything up" when what you NEED to do is fully shake everything up. The game is already a total mess and it's entirely between the development team and your publishing team. The game fundamentals are great. But the execution is absolutely unforgivable.

 

I'm starting to think the only way to save BNS NA and EU is a full re-launch of the game after a complete re-write of the translation (look into "style rules", guys), re-scaling of every progression system in the game (designed for SF to be end-game, not MW), and fully implemented anti-bot and hack measures. 

 

This stream was mostly entirely brain-breakingly ignorance. Nico, you don't play this game. That's extremely clear. Entirely all of your answers consist of fantasy-theory and have no grounding in play experience or even shows any familiarity with current, common player feedback. The game and player base which exists in your mind is NOT the game which you are publishing.

 

Example: Players have repeatedly requested changes to 24-man Ds for weeks to revitalize these areas and make them playable again. You wanna know what's wrong with them? Just pop into the new one, Zeiwei Ruins, and see how many players just AFK at the entrance and wait for the big boss less than a week since release. Just see how many failed boss spawn cycles occur because the channel is full but maybe 4 or 5 people show up at the House of Pleasure

 

It should be embarrassing that players are loading into active dungeon zones and choosing to play some other game instead of playing yours. But that's what they're doing and your attitude is "blah blah too easy free stuff so no"

 

You should be embarrassed by the answer to the SSP/moonstone problem. If you don't understand the problem of putting NOT-uber-ultra-end-end-endgame material exclusively in an area described in this stream as "ultra-end-end-endgame content" then then you have no business in the game industry at all. And miserly doling out a random moonstone here or there though RNG and double-RNG special events and acting as if that is a great balancer... even worse. Just wow. Mats for legendaries? Sure, those can be uber-ultra-end-end-endgame content materials. But moonstones? Required en masse for the Silverfrost gear upgrades players were forced into by removing S/P from MW? That's not uber-ultra-end-end-endgame materials. They're for required gear upgrades so you can get into PUG groups to run those higher SF dungeons we've been told are "the best content" and should be done before you can expect to be able to do end-end-endgame SSP where your upgrade mats are, Or something inane like that.

 

Try reading the player forums sometime. Then maybe you would have understood more of the questions, like the one about the currency exchange. Player market, our kitty-butts! Clueless, clueless, clueless.

 

As that NPC guy says, "Pathetic!"

 

[KzE]

I like, how they skipped the "permanent" part in my question. Solving bad rng (material drops) with another bad rng (merchant of wonders) is a joke.

[Cherish]

Every week I religiously watch the Stream eager to see what is coming.  I was particularly keen for this weeks episode due to it supposedly answering our questions. This week for the first time I walked away thinking these people totally think all us gamers are idiots.

 

Don't tell me that you play the game and not understand that there is seriously a lack of inventory space EVEN WITH EVERYTHING MAXED OUT BY BUYING DRAGON POUCHES.  EG: Flower of Lament *untradeable*, Flower of Lament *tradeable*, Petal of Lament = one item taking up 3 inventory spots.  Crafting mats, tokens etc that never reduce in variety but instead multiply.  Every 2nd or 3rd night I have to transfer stuff to alts simply so I have enough room in my bank to play with.

 

It was a missed opportunity guys, we didn't as you infer request MORE for free we were asking simply for MORE.  Selling Dragon Pouches makes you so much money ........ yet you don't want to open up the closed spaces in our bank?  MISSED OPPORTUNITY TO SELL MORE OF THEM.

 

Showcasing low level dungeons in the Daily Challenge is helping low levels and new people to the game?  This was a perfect example that you don't run those dungeons on Challenge days because if you did you would see high levels flying through leaving the new players with crap tons of mobs and walls of fire.  Having dungeons such as lvl 20 Blackram Narrows as a daily challenge for level 50's is doing your game way more harm than it is good.

 

No change to spawn times in 24 man dungeons.  Maybe in countries where players play with a code of ethics that doesn't have them standing at the end dungeon boss waiting for it to spawn while 5 or 6 players are running around like crazy people killing the mini bosses wouldn't be an issue.  I totally love Zaiwei but it is almost unplayable due to 18 players standing at the main entrance waiting for the other 6 of us to do all the work, they get the *so-and-so boss is coming* bingo port there and get the kill.  Again the fact you guys are not aware of this HUGE problem shows that you DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME.

 

This is just 3 of the most glaring things that smacked me in the face while watching the stream but there were more instances.  eg: I have yet to play a game where items in endgame were cheaper than start of game.  Every game I have ever played as more and more game money is generated people ask for higher and higher prices for their goods.

 

It saddens me that you try to portray yourself as actually caring for your customers and then you treat us like fools.  Might be time to actually spend a few hours playing the game and seeing some of these things firsthand.

[RoXor]

They asked for feedback so i ll try one more last time:

 

For new characters , alts and rerolls , leveling and path until level 50 is not a problem. Problem is  wall after this, for PvP in form of 15 hm levels  and crucial hm skills, while for PVE in form of huge ammount of materials and gold required for upgrades and non tradable items.

 

From stream I have impression, that :

 

- you want to wait till economy will "fix itself" 

- wait until pvp community will grind their way just to be equal, do it on several characters and learn to PvP by playing mostly PvE grind.

- new players will spend several months on old content just to be able to play with "founders".

 

My opinions is 

 

- economy will eventually change , but you cannot afford time to wait for this. People already quit because they feel overwhelmed.

Your temporary events are NOT enough and all they do is turbulence in prices and inflation of gold.

 

- most of PvP community will NOT have patience to grind their way just to be equal .  There is large amount of alternatives for PvPer on NA/EU market, where they can hop in PvP much easier. Hopefully you will not deny decline in pvp community.

Lowering prices of hm skills will help but not solve this. You need to provide reasonable long and enjoyable way to level up several characters to their full PvP potencional. Majority of the path has to be PvP content. You do not need to separate pvp and pve , but at the moment its 99% PVE grind.

Hands on experience on several classes is way to improve in game. There is simply not enough time for playing PvP for PvPer...

 

- New players will NOT stay unless you provide faster ways to catch up. They will become frustrated by grind and requirements for newest content, inability to catch up without huge RL money investment. Again your temporary events are NOT enough.

Experience boost is negligible. 

 

Success of this game in NA/EU requires requires more systematic and  bold changes. So far I can see only patches , small event type adjustments, which are not enough. After stream I am also not sure there is full understanding of current problems and not really many solution on table.

[DomiSotto]

20 minutes ago, RoXor said:

For new characters , alts and rerolls , leveling and path until level 50 is not a problem. Problem is  wall after this, for PvP in form of 15 hm levels  and crucial hm skills, while for PVE in form of huge ammount of materials and gold required for upgrades and non tradable items.

You are absolutely correct.

 

The crucial problem with this game is that the only way to play this game is:

 

One Player = One Character, 5 hours a day, broken down as Dungeons (3 hrs) + SSP (2 hrs).

 

Arenas offer no benefits comparable to the PvE/Faction PvE content. Fun has no place in this game, it's all about earning cricketing mats. The moment you start falling behind the pack, it becomes a 'sliding back and accelerating' process, because no gear = no rewards, no rewards = no gear.

 

It is a nice simulation of a sweat-shop.

 

[se]

It was a bad stream, indeed, they wasted their time, might as well made a coffee break this week since they didn't provide anything relevant for the players. 

I was surprised to see Omeed, Juliane was announced last week to participate and I much rather prefer her, since she is more interested to give a much straight forward answer and she knows more concerning the game than her boss seemed to. 

I found it funny Jonathan was so flustered, I guess 2 bosses in one room made him feel too on the edge. He seemed like a nervous student in the front of the class. 

[Eileithia]

3 hours ago, kytt said:

Example: Players have repeatedly requested changes to 24-man Ds for weeks to revitalize these areas and make them playable again. You wanna know what's wrong with them? Just pop into the new one, Zeiwei Ruins, and see how many players just AFK at the entrance and wait for the big boss less than a week since release. Just see how many failed boss spawn cycles occur because the channel is full but maybe 4 or 5 people show up at the House of Pleasure

Zeiwei would be a super simple fix too.  Give every boss a chance to drop 1 stinger, 3 off the end guy, and up to 5 off the RNG boss.  Problem solved - Everyone would run every boss, zone would be cleared in half the time.  Can't count how many times I've been the only person who goes to the Inn to start off the event chain, only to have 15 people show up once the boss spawns.   Seriously people, there'd be a hell of a lot less waiting around if you'd just *cricket*ing help.

[JNH]

When I read this thread, I'm sad and lose even more confidence to the future of the game. I was already crying about the poor management of this good game.

What a waste...

 

I missed the streaming, but according to this thread maybe I should not watch the replay, for my heart safety.

[DomiSotto]

39 minutes ago, Eileithia said:

Zeiwei would be a super simple fix too.  Give every boss a chance to drop 1 stinger, 3 off the end guy, and up to 5 off the RNG boss.  Problem solved - Everyone would run every boss, zone would be cleared in half the time.  Can't count how many times I've been the only person who goes to the Inn to start off the event chain, only to have 15 people show up once the boss spawns.   Seriously people, there'd be a hell of a lot less waiting around if you'd just *cricket*ing help.

Oh, gods, yes. Seriously, we need more ways to get stingers anyway, so a win-win.

[Infamous]

Good thing Jonathan was there, so the questions when where you needed to play the game to answer were all given to him to answer, else it would be 2 clueless guys trying to pretend that they know nothing about nothing. Seriously, I don't think we need those 2 guys, just give both of their paychecks to jonathan, he at least knows wtf is going on.

EDIT: After seeing those 2, I understand why bns is going downhill.

EDIT2: Extremelly dissapointed that there were no questions answered about arena pvp, guess stuff will stay the same about that.

[Mastrof]

Seeing the developers telling that is nothing coming up to change the unbalance of Crimson/Ceru issue, and worst thing telling best thing you can do is change side was really heart breaking.

 

And also hearing "Game was build to be this way so nothing more to change" , like... Game was build to be perfect but you dont count on people, human factor that change things. Is like telling communism was thinked to be a great system, but then you see human factor again, and is fked up.

Theory is good but real life is different, and you need to be in constant change to fix that issues.

 

 

 

[DomiSotto]

13 minutes ago, Mastrof said:

Seeing the developers telling that is nothing coming up to change the unbalance of Crimson/Ceru issue, and worst thing telling best thing you can do is change side was really heart breaking.

To be fair, the ability to change the Faction as the last resort is not  a bad thing. In another game I played, every one of 8 classes was fixed in its faction. So, if you were a Smuggler, and your server PvP was all Imperial, you had to level an Imperial Agent mirror class. Granted, there was Legacy Armor, so you just shared the set between the two.

 

All and all, if they let you share accessories, it would really was the best idea. You could level an alt on another Faction, same class or different, and no skin of anyone's nose.

 

The root cause of Faction woes is that you can gear out one and only character. And if anything at all was a mistake on your part, class selection or a Faction or you are simply someone who likes to switch up, you are not gonna enjoy BnS.

[KzE]

9 minutes ago, Mastrof said:

Seeing the developers telling that is nothing coming up to change the unbalance of Crimson/Ceru issue, and worst thing telling best thing you can do is change side was really heart breaking.

The faction balance will be solved with the server merge later.

[Nattia]

To me it looks like only Jonathan knows the game in-depth... 

The stream was enjoyable but I felt like Nico and Omeed were kinda talking in the spirit "players only want freebies for zero effort", which is not true...

 

Also a lot of answers in the style "we will look into it"... that's like a non-answer.

 

Saying that, I still look forward to next streams -  I love the game and will support it :)

 

[Mastrof]

19 minutes ago, DomiSotto said:

To be fair, the ability to change the Faction as the last resort is not  a bad thing. In another game I played, every one of 8 classes was fixed in its faction. So, if you were a Smuggler, and your server PvP was all Imperial, you had to level an Imperial Agent mirror class. Granted, there was Legacy Armor, so you just shared the set between the two.

 

All and all, if they let you share accessories, it would really was the best idea. You could level an alt on another Faction, same class or different, and no skin of anyone's nose.

 

The root cause of Faction woes is that you can gear out one and only character. And if anything at all was a mistake on your part, class selection or a Faction or you are simply someone who likes to switch up, you are not gonna enjoy BnS.

Its bad thinking by devs, like i tell, the theory is good but practice is different.

Game is supose to have equal side factions, they told in the video, but having more dead characters in one side, more bots in one side, let that balance die, since one faction would have more active players than the other.

If SSP wasnt that important this wouldnt happend, if you could get SS and Moonstones easily from other place, people wouldnt care much about it and take the faction side easily.

 

If the solution is switch side why dont make a single faction game, take out Crimson and Cerulean and this is over, just pvp in arena and 6v6.

 

 

[DomiSotto]

Just now, Mastrof said:

Game is supose to have equal side factions, they told in the video, but having more dead characters in one side, more bots in one side, let that balance die, since one faction would have more active players than the other.

If SSP wasnt that important this wouldnt happend, if you could get SS and Moonstones easily from other place, people wouldnt care much about it and take the faction side easily.

I actually come from a server that is equalized for about 6-8 hours per day, the rest of the day the Crim dominates. I would hate to lose the incredible fun that an actual war ad a large scale battle creates. In the other MMO I played, the OW PvP was not stimulated like it is here specifically due to the mats, and I feel that I am lucky to be able to participate in the Faction War when it breaks out seriously.

 

But, I do have two character, one on each faction, just in case, and I would have switched even if it cost me the reputation with the faction if I had to.

 

SSP is the only end-game activity, along with the Cold Storage, Mandate and Zaiwei Ruins that I can participate without feeling stressed and useless. So, for me it is of the uttermost importance that the materials obtained from SSP are unique to SSP. My whole BnS gaming is driven towards doing well in SSP, and SSP is why I keep playing BnS. Otherwise, I'd have quit already, because I do not understand or like the end-game dungeons.

[Mastrof]

16 minutes ago, DomiSotto said:

I actually come from a server that is equalized for about 6-8 hours per day, the rest of the day the Crim dominates. I would hate to lose the incredible fun that an actual war ad a large scale battle creates. In the other MMO I played, the OW PvP was not stimulated like it is here specifically due to the mats, and I feel that I am lucky to be able to participate in the Faction War when it breaks out seriously.

 

But, I do have two character, one on each faction, just in case, and I would have switched even if it cost me the reputation with the faction if I had to.

 

SSP is the only end-game activity, along with the Cold Storage, Mandate and Zaiwei Ruins that I can participate without feeling stressed and useless. So, for me it is of the uttermost importance that the materials obtained from SSP are unique to SSP. My whole BnS gaming is driven towards doing well in SSP, and SSP is why I keep playing BnS. Otherwise, I'd have quit already, because I do not understand or like the end-game dungeons.

Can i ask wich server is that? So i look into it when server transfer comes up.

In my server, Yunwa, im on Cerulean and we done a complete mining i think that only 2 times, and other minings interupted by Crimson maybe 10 times since silverfrost went out.

And those times when we try to do mining and we have OW Pvp is the more fun, but is only 1 day a week or 1 day in two weeks cause all know that SSP is a lost cause.

I would love to be on a server were both sides can do mining and also are OW Pvp in some hours of the day.

 

[DomiSotto]

6 minutes ago, Mastrof said:

Can i ask wich server is that? So i look into it when server transfer comes up.

In my server, Yunwa, im on Cerulean and we done a complete mining i think that only 2 times, and other minings interupted by Crimson maybe 10 times since silverfrost went out.

I am on Iksanun. We only have 2 channels. Crimson mines both till around early afternoon CS time, then Cerulean gather up, take a channel through a few pitched battles, and we either share channels, or do a few swaps through harassment, killing the drills, and all that. Both sides do the nasty, so it ain't like one is somehow nicer than the other. The only problem is that it is hard to get a tent boss on the Crims, as they prefer to rotate channels at the expense of the 20 ss for tent boss. Ceru always kills the boss, and by some reason really loves killing the big baddie in the end. I guess some people have a lot of keys. Faction warfare is one really cool thing about Iksanun, otherwise a rather quiet server.

[Buseira]

Its so sad to see this game go down.  I've been wanting to play this game for years.  I hope it doesn't die too soon.  =[

I'm too stupid to figure out how to play in the other servers like CN, and KR.  But if NA ever goes down, I'm gonna need to figure it out.

 

Why don't they listen?  

Oh I know, money.   Because thats all that really matters right?  When will businesses understand that money is a side effect  of happy customers.  We the players are the customers in this case.  They may be racking in money now just from wallet warriors and stuff, respect because the amount of money those wallet warriors are willing to put in is ridiculous.  But the amount they are making from them is nowhere near the potential of truly happy players and a huge player base.  And then for the F2P players, they are just basically getting screwed.  Its so sad.  What money does......

[Shadzar]

28 minutes ago, Mastrof said:

Game is supose to have equal side factions, they told in the video,

So the game is supposed to be bad? Since 1992 games have had PVE and PVP server separate. There is a reason, because EVERYONE doesn't enjoy PVP in their PVE. NOT FUN.

 

Seriously, they designed a bad game in Korea, won't accept they designed a bad game, and refuse to change it. there is NO hope for this game to get better since the people in the video are:

 

1. mindless puppets that have no say in the game (Korean devs do EVERYTHING, IN Korea)

2. just sitting back and soaking up money for porting the game to NA/EU

3. for the most part don't even know anything about the game. Even Jonathan doesnt have to go through actual play of the game, he and Bethany have GM tool access so don't know the real grind on a REAL server, as they play on test and Q&A servers.

 

It is another case of too many cooks spoiler the soup, and the company thinking it knows what is best for the payers, but have NO idea what the players want, and can't figure out why everyone isn't licking the boots and just drinking the companies Kool-aid like Omeed was doing.

 

That idea MIGHT work for Korea, but doesn't here where it is a different style of player, the rushed content, etc. Korea is just stupid for not seeing that, and I wish the video wasnt kissing the rear ends of Korean devs and drinking the kool-aid each time.

 

Sorry I cna't sit through the video a 4th time to pull out more specific questions and their answers, just the attitudes on stream and the disconnected speech have made me not able to get things from the video, and i definitely aint getting paid to do so... and probably wouldn't be enough paid to have to suffer transcribing that.

 

IF that stream ends up on Youtube, since many dont; I am pretty sure the disdain for the player that comes through will be the end of BnS enthusiasm from NA/EU players.

 

"Making the factions balanced will fix it for people who hate PVP." The ignorance in that thought just befuddles me.

[Xelo]

Well, I guess my reaction to viewing the stream is a simple one: my Premium is running out in 8 days, and I'm not going to put any more money in this game.

Simple lesson: unhappy customer -> no more money.

 

[TigerKFM]

16 hours ago, MistahJayden said:

So they don't care about us is what I'm getting here.

 

Well, Black desert looks nice...

It's a really immersive game, I'd suggest you give it a go if you're tired of BnS, my husband and I got it and we're having a blast.
(Not to mention their support has been superb for me, I bought the wrong item in their cash shop, and within 12 hours they refunded my pearls and gave me 10 extra to help me get the item I actually wanted!)

[jones6]

30 minutes ago, DomiSotto said:

I am on Iksanun. We only have 2 channels. Crimson mines both till around early afternoon CS time, then Cerulean gather up, take a channel through a few pitched battles, and we either share channels, or do a few swaps through harassment, killing the drills, and all that. Both sides do the nasty, so it ain't like one is somehow nicer than the other. The only problem is that it is hard to get a tent boss on the Crims, as they prefer to rotate channels at the expense of the 20 ss for tent boss. Ceru always kills the boss, and by some reason really loves killing the big baddie in the end. I guess some people have a lot of keys. Faction warfare is one really cool thing about Iksanun, otherwise a rather quiet server.

I only play at night when no ceru are there. I always miss the battles then I guess.  I see lots of people from ceru clans around, so I have no idea why they don't mine very often.  It sounds like they know how to do SSP better if they kill the unbounds for keys and actually fight the end boss.  I have done dailies pretty much everyday there and only killed the end boss once ever.

[Zuf]

5 hours ago, DomiSotto said:

It is a nice simulation of a sweat-shop.

Spot on, excellent comparison.

[DomiSotto]

56 minutes ago, jones6 said:

I only play at night when no ceru are there. I always miss the battles then I guess.  I see lots of people from ceru clans around, so I have no idea why they don't mine very often.  It sounds like they know how to do SSP better if they kill the unbounds for keys and actually fight the end boss.  I have done dailies pretty much everyday there and only killed the end boss once ever.

There are a couple of take-charge folks in specific time window that direct the flow of battle. It just takes one guy willing to call reasonable commands out as in 'after this, go mid-terror for keys' or 'after tent master N, for 5 terrors for keys'.  Ceru also kill the middle boss to speed up the next capture as Ceru normally works in one channel. Crim have good leads too, at least in the early morning, but for the most part relies on the fast channel rotation, so it's probably more efficient for them to skip the tent/mid.

 

Overall though, every round of SSP imo should have a terror-farming, because from all the activities in the SSP, it is the most profitable one.