Do you think you'll quit this game in the next year?

[jones6]

There is no content coming for my play-style listed on the road map, so most likely I will take a long break soon. Maybe an upcoming event may be worth logging in for, but I don't know.  

[Mevelios]

Though I enjoy playing my main character (BM), I doubt I'll wait next year to stop. Might renew for a month my subscription, not sure I will once summer's over.

 

Besides the usual reasons (random disconnects, bad pings, lack of optimization of the game's engine), the game goes way too far into the farming for my taste. Obviously, that fact alone makes it unfriendly to having alts, the weeks (not to say months) I already spent on my main are worthless to my alts, which would require the same amount of time to progress and become eligible for endgame content - no way, just no, far too much, doing the whole levelling again was already a pain, at least I chose the right class fitting me for my main (maybe I would enjoy another one? No idea, too much farming to get to a comparable point, especially since it includes also HM skills when my main still misses some crucial ones, oh dear HM block, where art thou?).

Events are mostly made to push us (or should I say shove us) forward in gearing up, but by us, I don't include newcomers: just look at the current event, moonwater rewards are terribly small compared to silverfrost ones. And silverfrost ones aren't really accessible for those who are standing at the lair/necro/yeti steps.

PvP is a joke; only the arena is worth visiting. Nothing can be done about open world, but whirlwind valley, seriously? I don't care if it's the worst output for time invested, I just can't stand gear-based PvP, it's the showdown of skill that I enjoy. If I want to have PvP on unequal footing, there's already the open world content.

That leaves only PvE; I don't play 10 hours a day so I still have things to work out especially for 4-man runs, but I can clearly imagine how repetitive that would be when the usual 6-man runs are already boring. Well, that's the korean MMO touch I guess, farm as if you were a machine.

 

If at least it were more alt-friendly, I wouldn't have lost that much interest in playing (now I just log in for my crafts and sales, maybe a cold storage run, no daily challenge, and stopped bothering to log in everyday). Guess one more break of several weeks won't hurt, though looking at the roadmap, it won't change anytime soon.

 

As for solutions, well, few of them come to my mind and of course, all with their pros and cons... Many were already given out by other players, one I'd defend the most would be bringing in an alternate path for the weapon and jewelry, one that would have a crazy low cost but would stop at the level of true oathbreaker (true siren for the jewelry). It should have a poor skin (such as the green trash we pick up from mobs) to make it interesting for the company, 'cause since we mind the appearance of our character, a poor skin would give a lot of interest towards checking various weapon appearances, including those offered at the cash shop. Making it more alt-friendly would bring in interest towards additional character slots as well. Then, what would be the interest of going through the usual oathbreaker path? How about badass titles, and (why not) special outfits that could be the topic of costume design contests? It could also simply be the requirements for additional stats, instead of farming 100 times the same dungeon. The easy access weapon could also have limited gem slots, maybe up to 3 at best? As the content keeps progressing, the "low-end, easy access" gear could be raised towards the level of true breeze weapon/awakened oath jewelry when endgame content would state that it requires legendary-level gear.

Such a thing would quickly kill the interest in early endgame content (at least moonwater dungeons), but leaving room for more alts as well as for players would help countering it. Can't tell for sure though, only speculation.

[DomiSotto]

I've been doing some Revelation browsing, and the more I research, the more alarm bells I hear for that game. It has all the triggers for the 'grind the best gear in the shortest amount of time to rule the hated noobs!" attitude.

 

On the other hand, I think, the BnS is actually actively moving in the other direction, towards being more inclusive and welcoming a non-obsessed player.

 

I am also impressed by how responsive the BnS team actually is. BnS is a small game, but it has a solid core despite much cheese and certain unpleasant stuff.

 

I think that BnS inevitably is going to see is a couple of exodus as the new games hit the market, but if it survives, it might make it a better game. Fingers crossed. :)

[BeK]

Any other MMO's coming out next year that make this game worth quitting or something?

i signed up for a 12 month subscription so I will be around for a year unless this game takes a steep downfall. 

[jones6]

3 minutes ago, BeK said:

Any other MMO's coming out next year that make this game worth quitting or something?

i signed up for a 12 month subscription so I will be around for a year unless this game takes a steep downfall. 

Revelation online supposedly, but I don't see anything I love about it from game play videos.  Bless online is about the only other Korean made grindfest game that looks remotely interesting to me.  Aeria games being the publisher has my hopes for the game set super low.  

[KzE]

We will come back next year. Maybe 1 year is enough for NC to fix the game :D

[SyntaxError768]

I played the first 2 or 4 months after release and slowly saw people I played with and my friends abandon the game because they hated the grind or they completed the story and got bored of the lack of content.

Maybe I won't quit permanently; I can't say I won't get nostalgic and tempt myself to come back, but the definite gaps in story content is enough that I stopped playing when the level cap was still 45 HM5 and the third continent wasn't added yet. There will be people avidly playing this game on the western servers for a few more years, and I'll come back to it in a year or two. I don't want to come back too soon, get excited, and then be left hanging because they haven't finished the story and added all the end-game content, that kind of thing leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

I really enjoyed the grinding and leveling the first time through with my main, but after I made 2 alts to try out KFM and WL but after about level 20 I saw the flaw with the grinding system, in that you have to go back and individually get all the upgrade items a second time through, and after the wave of people who joined when the game released leveled up and the lower level areas became deserted, the dungeons were significantly harder because everyone wasn't grouping up to do dungeon raids for the lower level ones anymore. Honestly one of the main reasons I would have loved kill-based grinding instead of dungeon grinding for items to upgrade your gear is that the combat system in Bns is one of the best I've used, and it's really fun to run around with a group of friends and PvP occasionally. I imagine a lot of the playerbase will pretty much leave for a while and come back when there's a lot more content, since that's the main limiting factor on player retention.

 

[Piper]

7 hours ago, KzE said:

We will come back next year. Maybe 1 year is enough for NC to fix the game :D

LOL no. Not only will I never come back to this RNG grindfest but I'll never touch another Asian title. 

[Mitsuki S]

3 hours ago, Piper said:

LOL no. Not only will I never come back to this RNG grindfest but I'll never touch another Asian title. 

I'm in the same boat.  I spent a few weeks playing all of the classes and finally decided on my main, Jin F Warlock.  Ah she's so fun to play and the animations are so satisfying!  

 

So I get her to level 40 playing around with different builds and finally decided on the skills I really enjoy using.  I've been poking around in the Warlock forums and knew my class was quite dependent on HM skills, but I didn't really understand the effort required.  Until I started asking questions, in game.  It's going to take months and months of grinding to get to the required AP to even have a chance at getting the skill??  Not to mention getting to the AP is also RNG heavy.  I talked with someone who had just spent $100 of RL money to get +10 AP...  I don't know how exactly they spent it, but they were satisfied with the results...  They only have 100 more AP to hit 600, which is apparently my goal to unlock the skill.

 

Grinding is actually fun for me when the combat is fun like this game.  I would not have minded the gear treadmill if I could have access to all of my skills so that I could enjoy my class more.  But gating skills behind months of grinding gear feels backwards to me.  It's one of the things that are gated, that don't make sense to me.  It almost feels like...they took everything that would allow a player to really enjoy the game and put some sort of gate in front of it.  Maybe they thought it would motivate the player to grind/spend to getting through it to enjoy the game more, but it's hard to spend the effort when the game is not that enjoyable without it.  Other things are like, time spent managing extremely limited inventory space, way point traveling costing a huge portion of my money since quest rewards are almost non-existent forcing me to back-track by foot over and over.

 

I spent a couple hours last night, waiting for some random strangers to come attack the Tidelord with me for a weapon upgrade.  I finally joined a clan but they all seem too busy for a low level nobody they don't know.  Regional chat is non-responsive as usual.  I spent a couple more hours this morning waiting at the boss...wondering if I would have a better chance solo with my HM skills...I will never know.  I spent all of my keys so I had to pool keys from my alts.  I am almost out and still no weapon, and not enough gold to buy more keys.... I'm assuming I have to grind dailies for keys now.  

 

I pretty much lost my will to play and I am quitting before I spend any more money.  I don't know if I will touch another Asian MMO again, as they all seem to follow the same design:  heavy grinding and RNG that can only be offset by heavy RL spending.  It used to be okay when I was in school and had plenty of time...now, not so much.