The direction this game is heading.

[JIFSTER]

I have never seen a game ignore its player base as bad as this one.  Each update has been more damaging than the last as this game attempts to fix an irreparable imbalance. Take a look at all the previous games that have followed the same path as BNS is going down right now. Each patch led to an initial net loss of players, sure it might spike after the patch launch but overall the playerbase is diminishing. 

 

The only game that was able to dig themselves out of this hole was Runescape (not that I play it, but i do admire the dev team) And do you know how they completely fixed their game and went from less than 10k players per hour to 100k players per hour? They Polled their players, they asked them what do they want to see fixed, what can we do to make you happy, and it worked (Not the useless ignored polls that BNS has right now) The players voted and the majority all agreed on what needed to be changed. Player base exploded, 200million total accounts strong 100k per hour. Can you imagine blade and soul if there were 100k players per hour? Just that alone would change the entire game, the mats, the gold, everything.  But you will never get their NCSOFT, you continue to make changes that result in diminishing player base, overall negative viewpoint of the game, updates and patches that scream PAY-TO-WIN and not listening to its players. 

 

There is no reason to log into this game on a daily basis anymore. After the weeklys/raids its time to forget about it. There is no reason to have membership anymore, if you converted the membership bonus into moneys it's worth about $3 maybe $5 depending on your extra daily dash.  Whales are buying 1k gold for $14 and you want people to pay for membership? NCSOFT wake up, take the dollar signs out of your eyes. The only possible way to keep up  was by running all the dailies and weeklies on your alts for mats which was still a poor solution to a terrible problem. You thought that by giving everyone a soul was going to fix... what? The Sacred Viles demand?  Why was this even a discussion at NCSOFT. You said that you were going to fix the material problems. Have you checked moonstones, elysian orbs, t stone, pts lately? Do you feel you fixed the problem? Don't even get me started on all the youtube videos of 10+ PTS failures in a row. Really? 

Half the bracelets don't work, how do you even mess that up, That is not a simple coding error that takes time and effort to get wrong and plenty of red flags jumping out at you before you push it through to a live patch. Why is that not an emergency shut down of all servers and fixed ASAP. Any major game out there would have done that immediately, but you don't listen to your playerbase so it makes sense.

 

I'm not going to go into the class changes, (YOU CAN BUFF THE SF WITHOUT CHANGING ITS KEYS AROUND) 

I'm not going to go into the terrible FPS on high end pc's. ( I feel bad for you laptop players) 

I'm not going to go into the simple pathing errors littered throughout the game. (How many invisible walls is a new player going to hit)

 

The point is, you need to listen to the customer, the people that are responsible for your income, for your rent/mortgage, for your food, for your lifestyle. POLL YOUR PLAYERS IN GAME. Listen to the majority and do something about it. Stop coming up with your own theories and ideas on fixes, JUST ASK THE PLAYERS. ASK FOR HELP. HAVE SOME HUMILITY. Stop focusing on releasing more endgame content when it only applies to such a small amount of players. Stop releasing patches that are complete insults to fellow Dev Teams, patches that screams pure incompetence or you are going to see more and more players quit.

 

42 players in my guild, including myself, have stopped paying for membership and have quit this game after this patch. I know that isn't important to the point I am trying to make, because why would BNS care about 42 measly players paying out a combined $500 a month + More for NCOIN, all quitting at the same time. But multiply that by a couple thousand players and maybe you'll get the point I am trying to make. You even pissed off the whales, who are spending $70 on the worst 100 RNG boxes out there. At least that part is funny.  

 

This game is a virtual casino, they follow the same model and they use the same tricks, except this time you've somehow found a way to ruin the satisfaction of winning. 

 

Pole your players and listen to the community. Maybe then the diminishing player base will slow down. See you guys 6 months from now, when I'll just be given all the necessary items and gear to catch up and run all the end game content that we have now. 

 

[Shintensen]

Squeezing core players to make up for sacrificing new players ? Let's see how long you can handle this hemorrhaging without new blood injected in game. 

42 + 1

[Amarathiel]

While i agree economy of this game and dungeon gold nerfs are out of control and some store elements and membership are not that great, i dont agree with anything else. Everything else is nothing but a problem created by the toxic community and community alone, not the game. Some parts of the game certainly has absurdly low rng such as asura ember but otherwise i dont see a problem in game design.
It is not games fault if people decide to be arseholes and demand 2 times higher ap for dungeons than what is needed.  It is not games fault if people decide to afk in middle of the dungeon or if they decide to spawn kill someone in faction area.
Sure game doesnt have failsafes to prevent such bad behaviour BUT that doesnt make it games fault. It is the fault in attitudes and mindsets of people themselves and that causes new players to be stuck, unable to progress and get into certain dungeons they should already be able to do to get the next set of upgrades (naryu foundry was designed for baleful 7 to 9, raven was designed for baleful 10 to 12 to get raven(duh), etc. it only comes to the ability to complete them assuming you get the party). And because of that it creates an illusion that the game is heavily p2w and you cannot get anything without paying, which is most certainly not true.
Especially now that they nerfed most of the old content making it practically easier than easy mode. You can get mats easily, you can get all those upgrades easily if you put the time to it and that is the second part. Time. Yes there are absurd amounts of bad rng boxes and trove and whatnot but that doesnt mean you cannot farm dungeons for mats. Sure it takes a longer time to do now, still you can farm them. Nothing stops you. Realistically if you have around 2-3 hours time to play per day, you CANNOT expect to be in the same level gearwise in same amount of time as someone who either A. Pays for the gear or B. plays the game 10 hours a day farming stuff. Obviously if you play that little it takes longer to get gear, logic. This game was designed to be played more than 3 hours a day, unfortunately, so deal with it. Yes gold has been nerfed in old dungeons and all that. I agree gold rewards are bit sh*t atm, yada yada all that. If those were to be fixed, in my opinion there is nothing else but the toxic community preventing you from progressing after that. You are supposed to farm all your mats from dungeons, basin etc. Instead of buying everything with gold. Even f2p daily wheel can help you a bit. The End

 

As for the bugs and performance issues of the game, devs are currently working on upgrading the game engine to UE4. That means they most likely fix majority of those issues. Hopefully. And the reason they most likely dont fix some bugs right now is probably because of their work to upgrade the engine. They think its not worth fixing the same bug twice in 2 different game versions.

[JIFSTER]

You must not remember when games started first utilizing unreal engine 3. It was a mess. UE4 is just a new tool, if the person using the tool is incompetent then you will run into the same problems. You mentioned hope, that's funny, this game has been crushing hopes since the day it came out. No more. The game doesn't listen to its players, its as simple as that.

[Moment]

well this is disappointing to read. i was hoping to make a return to actually start the game, since Bless news is rather worrisome , it also doesnt help that when i got on, played on my 50 destroyer i got from a free event but never actually played, i crashed. twice . and i dont know why. i liked the training program it forced me into though. but i dont know what the deal is with the crashes 

[Amarathiel]

@JIFSTER I dont have any issues with finding parties and whatnot, im not talking about my own problems. Im talking about in general how things are. And post is relevant for the point you made about game being too much pay-to-win and people not being able to gear up and catch up players who pay to get their gear. I responded to that with my post saying its not for the reasons mentioned in my previous post.

 

As for the bugs and errors, yes those should be fixed. Problem i see with the devs, who are the ones that decide and give these updates to us not ncwest as people think, is that they dont treat western side as well as they do their Korean playerbase. That can clearly be seen in some areas and this needs to change aboce all else.

[ItSome1]

Well I agree my clan have 70 people only 5 maybe less active all quit... GG NcSoft GG...

[Steve115]

3 hours ago, Amarathiel said:

 

As for the bugs and performance issues of the game, devs are currently working on upgrading the game engine to UE4. That means they most likely fix majority of those issues. Hopefully. And the reason they most likely dont fix some bugs right now is probably because of their work to upgrade the engine. They think its not worth fixing the same bug twice in 2 different game versions.

What? Are they really working on a UE4 version? how do u know that

[JIFSTER]

39 minutes ago, Steve115 said:

What? Are they really working on a UE4 version? how do u know that

So far UE4 is for their mobile platform... That'll fix BNS, playing it on our phones...

http://www.letmegooglethat.com/?q=Blade+and+Soul+UE4

[Fufia]

They take 6 years to fix the stuck in combat bug and is not 100% fix

So yea good luck on this.

JIFSTER You are right but I think it's too late I do not know how this game goes in other countries but UE4 for NA/EU is a loss of money. plus the fact that after all that NCS has done we can only expect a lot of bugs and P2W.

[Jack Valent]

Even Granado Espada SEA Online can sustain players to keep playing for 11 years.

Surprisingly international english server like NC now having problem to keep players having fun in game.

 

Lots of people quitting this game. 100+ Friend list now sinking to 7-10 online everyday.

 

This patch is seriously kicking butt most of players. And Alts *giggle*

 

[thieve]

I am totally agree with @JIFSTER .  I am stayed log in the game maybe 4 or 5 hours total since from last horrible-terrible patch.Just did weekly and some dungeons.

First of all I really don't mind about new "end game" dungeons.Cuz I know no1 will let me join till to after several months get some nerfed.HM 13 rav9 BT gear 1150+ ap but not enough for whales.About clans.Clans are mostly toxic too.And why I must join some clan and beg to some1 to do that dungeons? The game should be more firendly for pug teams for maps. I couldn't still VT once...Once man....This is horrible...The game is wont let u play if ur wallet not enough.Have tons of wings but u have to get title even for damit VT ss..Good job..

Anyway that was my "personal" problems. 

What about new players???? I mean really new ones to started play 2 weeks ago for example...After 1 week they saw the all mats,gold are gone.I really dont have any idea for them how can they r obtain their mats for even bale/seraph stage 10....And nobody cares Bale...They have to get raven/rift at least stage 3...To buy from f10? really? Do u think this is work? Do u think even pay to players bite that to start new game in these days?With so many other options in game market?

The new player incoming to game will be dramaticly cut off after this patch.This is suicide.

About returners...2 of my firends was return few weeks ago.Both of them quit again immidiatly after this last "famous" patch.

About this last event....Finally they found another "RNG" way for event too.Congratz them.

About the new  game engine bla bla.I really dont mind that too.Who cares some more shinny visual effects even u cannot play the game without wallet.And the engine changing will be cause so many new bugs,issues etc etc.I really dont think it will fix something.

Every working brain can understand this is really wrong way to managment.

 

EDIT: Just one of my friend told this in discord:))) : Korean games like as Hyundai,U like them,u buy them after 3 years u have to try sell them.

[JIFSTER]

You guys are bringing up alot of great points that I didn't think about. New players are suffering more than ever right now.

[Deadly Intent]

New player are not going to "deal with it".  They have very little invested in the game and will quit.  And with so many longer time players quitting nc is not going to be able to keep the lights on soon.  Whomever is making these decisions needs to be shown the door if they care anything at all about the game continuing.  But if you consider what happened to MxM they have a record of ignoring the player base which ended up killing the game.  Really sad to see.  

[JIFSTER]

R.I.P MxM, had such a cool concept that last 6 months. I would tell people about it and almost no one had heard of it and by the time I got people interested in it, it was gone. They completely ignored the players and pushed the MOBA aspect and had too many pay walls, and the lag so much lag....

 

How many games is NC going to lose before they listen?

[MassiveEgo]

19 hours ago, Amarathiel said:

It is not games fault if people decide to be arseholes and demand 2 times higher ap for dungeons than what is needed.

 

As for the bugs and performance issues of the game, devs are currently working on upgrading the game engine to UE4. That means they most likely fix majority of those issues. Hopefully. And the reason they most likely dont fix some bugs right now is probably because of their work to upgrade the engine. They think its not worth fixing the same bug twice in 2 different game versions.

1. And is it also not the game's fault that it requires so much ingame time in the form of gameplay for us to max out ONE toon? Surely it's also community's toxicity that makes the grind so huge. There's only so much grind players can take. And now that our ingame time is less fruitful, things are at the breaking point;

 

2. It's not here now, is it? Which means we are stuck in a situation where the performance is poor, the game isn't really enjoyable due to being unrewarding and to top it all up, since patch went live the lag has been going offroad. If they don't throw us a bone to keep us busy in a fulfilling from our perspective way, well, there are other games to play? You might say "you won't be missed", but say that enough times and the game goes empty. Everything has it's limits, even insolence.

[amokk]

20 hours ago, JIFSTER said:

So far UE4 is for their mobile platform... That'll fix BNS, playing it on our phones...

http://www.letmegooglethat.com/?q=Blade+and+Soul+UE4

No, it's for PC, too. They showed a preview that included UE4, Housing mechanics etc.

BnS PC is listed in UE4 Wiki for 2018, while mobile versions are still TBA.

[Why Bother]

16 hours ago, MassiveEgo said:

1. And is it also not the game's fault that it requires so much ingame time in the form of gameplay for us to max out ONE toon? Surely it's also community's toxicity that makes the grind so huge. There's only so much grind players can take. And now that our ingame time is less fruitful, things are at the breaking point;

B&S by around the level 50 update has since always been more of a top heavy grindathon game that expects you to focus on one character. If you want to play alts, it's better to play more alt friendly games, like those town hub, instanced dungeon type games (ex: Continent of the Ninth, Dungeon Fighter Online, SoulWorker, etc). B&S is more of a side game to me, those town hub games are more my thing, sounds like they may be more your thing too if that's what you want.

[ThousandMiles]

If people still spending money on every Trove or RNG box in new patches, it's simple, NC Team won't stop doing this so you can cry whatever you want. They dont wanna change anything. Money its money. Sorry for people who wants to play F2P, but not , this is not a F2P at the moment, i suggest to people who wants to play F2P to, quit right now from this game and start a new one instead of sinking money like i did, telling you guys for experience, i spend a lot of money on this game, and every patch they lowered all, and its like "❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ you who all those people who spend that money" , we just want more, and literally its very sassy the way who make people spending money, but well. Whatever you guys can still sinking money. Forgot to mention about those " sealed Material aransu" like wTf who is the first F2P who can bought this *** for 10000 Gold in the Bns Economy...

[898005_1452550635]

18 minutes ago, ThousandMiles said:

If people still spending money on every Trove or RNG box in new patches, it's simple, NC Team won't stop doing this so you can cry whatever you want. They dont wanna change anything. Money its money. Sorry for people who wants to play F2P, but not , this is not a F2P at the moment, i suggest to people who wants to play F2P to, quit right now from this game and start a new one instead of sinking money like i did, telling you guys for experience, i spend a lot of money on this game, and every patch they lowered all, and its like "❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ you who all those people who spend that money" , we just want more, and literally its very sassy the way who make people spending money, but well. Whatever you guys can still sinking money. Forgot to mention about those " sealed Material aransu" like wTf who is the first F2P who can bought this *** for 10000 Gold in the Bns Economy...

F2P funded by whales like you who want things immediately and buy mats at a high price. Remember how sacred orb were 10 silver each  a few months ago? And whales made it reach 2.7g in just a few months? well thanks for the gold. 

[MassiveEgo]

1 hour ago, Why Bother said:

B&S by around the level 50 update has since always been more of a top heavy grindathon game that expects you to focus on one character. If you want to play alts, it's better to play more alt friendly games, like those town hub, instanced dungeon type games (ex: Continent of the Ninth, Dungeon Fighter Online, SoulWorker, etc). B&S is more of a side game to me, those town hub games are more my thing, sounds like they may be more your thing too if that's what you want.

Don't jump on me with the "alt friendly" nonsense. This game progresses so fast that people had to run alts in order to be on the edge of the gear progression, whether you like it or not. No matter how you cut the onion, you end up with inevitable absurdly high expenses, which you'll not cover unless you get more gold than you physically can with one character, even with the most profitable "safe" crafting professions. Nobody said anything about not focusing on one character. You won't get that character where it should be in order to be eligible for  all of the next patch top content, unless you p2w or have alts. Now alts are out of the question. Do you comprehend the insinuation?

[ThousandMiles]

7 minutes ago, 898005_1452550635 said:

F2P funded by whales like you who want things immediately and buy mats at a high price. Remember how sacred orb were 10 silver each  a few months ago? And whales made it reach 2.7g in just a few months? well thanks for the gold. 

Yeah its true, thats why iam saying quit and stop sinking money, and for every material whales made it higher, in this case of sacred orb was because NC has the wonderful idea, to make 5k exp charm with sacred orbs and Soulstones, x100 SS x 100SO , for F2P its a lot of material, so they preffer to sold on F5, not mention every single material or new transmutation they made it. All have a reason to got higher than before " NC  and Whales"... Sad but True

[thegamekitten]

New player here. I know if things don't change in this game.. I will not be sinking a sub and buying NCcoins after sub runs out. This whole game right now is horrible since patch. My characters are getting plain old dumplings and tonics in chests now (One character level 27 has 200 tonics).. Then the old bugs of not being able to get my rewards not being fixed and read and even they admitted that it is an old bug.

 

I really love the style of the game..the different mechanics of how your skills work is another pro... 

 

I am not a whale that buys mats.. I just buy outfits..character slots.. I will not depend on their Cash Shop for game money that should be there to begin with.. And I will not buy their gambling boxes..ever..

 

But who am I kidding.. This NCsoft... greed is their favorite word, right along with ka-ching.

 

 

 

 

[LaraKelly]

yeah I am personally getting bored too. I used to do the end game dungs and low level dungs which I perceived to enjoy more since I can solo them. I enjoyed soloing EC etc but now it almost pointles 1+ g for EC now?  and for higher dung the excitement of the Strong box, secret safe  etc dropping is gone. I even felt it still exciting to help other with their multi HH even tho I already had my 100 since they may be this strong box dropping. or generally any multi run was more exciting with it.

I never got that 1k drop from daily challenge but at least some gold dropped, now no gold at all! Even the free moonstones+ box from battleground  has been removed  on each  3 wins. feel just kidna demotivating even tho it easy to buy with 1k bp.

I see lots of friends too starting to lose interest too....

maybe all this will finally bring a positive which is the lag issues, maybe no more lags soon since maybe nobody would really care to play it anymore. Thus less people less lag lol

[Loony]

The direction the game is headed is pretty clear, it supports the  whales and becomes nearly unplayable for the f2p. I wish they would just add monthly sub and stop frecking it up further.