Is the game dying?

[Chad1123]

Hello for those who are interested in about weather the game is dying in a very slow way i made a new theat asking players if they would start the game once again from the scratch.

 

Most of the replies i had was that almost everyone would totally not, beside one single guy who said that he found the game enjoyable in finding friends, which i have to admit is very nice becouse is hard to meet non toxic players in this game. In my opinion a game can be cosidered dead once it stop welcoming new players and it survive in giving stuff for real money ( the biggest example being trove which was gently explained in the post above). If you guys can give a serius replay and not flaming each other it would be helpful to understand this situation more. About this thread becoming toxic bewtween users i have to admit that it happened i my self think that i was a littel bit nervouse while talking to the user called HateME because he was continuously saying that the game have no problems in terms of player but the discussion itself diden't get personal maybe a few other users felt more offended and replay in a more drastic way. I really have to admit that this thread diden't brought up how to solve this issues but at leasi i understand more this situation, it was very helpful for me and i want to thank you guys(every singe one of you) for replaying.

[EWindfield]

Left BNS last year and never look back. The worst thing about BNS is the fps drop(stop) when doing world bosses in crowded area. Not only making it hard to dodge aoe, you wouldnt even be able to clock enough dps on the boss to get a drop. (Yes, not enough dps means no drop. Even if you aggro and tank the boss, the boss throw you around while the rest dps the boss, you still get nothing if you never hit the dps percentage) You can simply waste time waiting for the boss to spawn again and then stuck on fps drop while other high AP player killed the boss. After the fps unstuck, usually when people left or change instance, to get nothing at all. Happened on SSP, baylee etc. The graphic cant handle that kind of population, i believe almost everyone need to reduce to lowest graphic when doing SSP, this is unacceptable for a game running on unreal engine 4. And not to mention the number of bots, gold seller, character seller and hacks (even at pvp arena). Although they implement the "report bots" function, I can still see bots with speed hack running around in SSP. Yes, many will say there is a reduce in bots population, but it is really too late. Bots probably left because there are not enough new player left to buy gold from them; When players left, bots stop farming as well, becos no money to be made.
 

They also reduce the drop rate for older dungeon, making it harder for new player to get gold, resulting in most people ignoring those now. Rather than just releasing new content to prolong the player-base, they choose to make older content redundant. A lot of raid instance are basically ghost town now and yet they still continue to put it in game. They could have just remove those to reduce the game size.
 

This game is super P2W and super grinding now. I understand many current player want to keep the game alive, but please kindly give a better insight in gearing up, crafting materials, dungeon population etc to new player. No point spending time completing the story quest and then realize you are stuck in a repetitive grinding to level up your gear so you can join in on endgame content.

[LiNe171]

54 minutes ago, EWindfield said:

Left BNS last year and never look back. The worst thing about BNS is the fps drop(stop) when doing world bosses in crowded area. Not only making it hard to dodge aoe, you wouldnt even be able to clock enough dps on the boss to get a drop. (Yes, not enough dps means no drop. Even if you aggro and tank the boss, the boss throw you around while the rest dps the boss, you still get nothing if you never hit the dps percentage) You can simply waste time waiting for the boss to spawn again and then stuck on fps drop while other high AP player killed the boss. After the fps unstuck, usually when people left or change instance, to get nothing at all. Happened on SSP, baylee etc. The graphic cant handle that kind of population, i believe almost everyone need to reduce to lowest graphic when doing SSP, this is unacceptable for a game running on unreal engine 4. And not to mention the number of bots, gold seller, character seller and hacks (even at pvp arena). Although they implement the "report bots" function, I can still see bots with speed hack running around in SSP. Yes, many will say there is a reduce in bots population, but it is really too late. Bots probably left because there are not enough new player left to buy gold from them; When players left, bots stop farming as well, becos no money to be made.
 

They also reduce the drop rate for older dungeon, making it harder for new player to get gold, resulting in most people ignoring those now. Rather than just releasing new content to prolong the player-base, they choose to make older content redundant. A lot of raid instance are basically ghost town now and yet they still continue to put it in game. They could have just remove those to reduce the game size.
 

This game is super P2W and super grinding now. I understand many current player want to keep the game alive, but please kindly give a better insight in gearing up, crafting materials, dungeon population etc to new player. No point spending time completing the story quest and then realize you are stuck in a repetitive grinding to level up your gear so you can join in on endgame content.

The game is running on Unreal Engine 3, not 4, 4 is coming (next year is what we are expecting)

[Ren36]

UE4 doesn´t mean by default that the game will end up better.
The engine offers more features, but this also means that unless it´s optimized, it can end up worse than UE3.
In depth explanation:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/general-discussion/31564-real-advantages-and-new-graphical-features-of-ue4-over-ue3

Summery:
"Engine's rendering is only as excellent as the engineers currently writing code for it

"...UE4 has no real advantges over using UE3... (since) features (were) added on top of UE3 making it function closer to UE4 in methodology and practice."
In short, while UE4 grew from the kernel of methods that might have been introduced in UE3, Unreal Engine 4 is now a vast improvement over its predecessor offering more breadth and ease of use and a rendering system which is quicker, leaner and stronger.

A final note on those AAA Game companies that are using UE3 to make current gen (Xbox One, PS4) games. Chances are those same companies were very far along in the development process using UE3 when UE4 became viable to use, to warrant the cost of licensing UE4 or the time necessary to pass any original code into a new game engine. These same companies however were and are still doing similar research to methods which they are themselves adding on top of UE3 making it function closer to UE4 in methodology and practice.

[alpha9]

I just want to say that there is no other game feels like B&S, and I quit many times and come back at the end not because of anything, its just i'm a type of person that gets bored fast and this is with all games, But blade and Soul is a unique game I hope NCsoft try to fix and keep its alive as long as possible.

[Rychael]

Quote

4) The free to play option died, imagine yourself just starting the game and u almost finished the main story, with that gear of 950-1000 ap u can't do many dungeons all u can do is EC DT NF and NS if u find a carry run, this is about 20/25 gold so you're daily incame could be around 30-40g, as a new player aiming for the 1100 ap for not getting kicked out of dungeons how are you supposed to do without selling your kidney and buy some trove keys. That's the main resons there are no more new people, and this mean the game is dying.

This is by design!  When the rest of us got to the same point, those were the top dungeons in the game. Many ran them hundreds if not thousands of times. (see achievements for doing it 100 times) What you're suggesting seems to be let new players skip ever more content and give them for free even more goodies we had to work hard for. The main story already gives away a whole lot, and doesn't teach the necessary skills for the higher content as it is.  

[Sarunghakan]

The problem is just not even the gears, the mats, how much time people go through. It's the exact elitist, toxic community, resulted from the insufficient explanations for each dungeon mechanics (And even the higher ones) . And even the Hongmoon Training Room just gives some lackluster sentences on each bosses damage type/range. Even some friends I know who actually whaled hard on this game, they just left, after completing VT halfway through. I don't know if the game will actually die out in 3-5 years, but NCSOFT's teams, Bloodlust, etc, better not pull the plug if they haven't finished the story till' its utmost completion.

 

 

 

[i wanna die]

On 8/4/2018 at 12:17 PM, ombremq said:

The goal of this/those threat isnt to motivate people to quit but to sensibilize devs that something have to be done before its too late...you all can't fool people anymore or come trolling saying game is fine  and alive, summer is the time where most of people (kids especially) can dedicate time to play a game, so i dont understand this argument...a dead pvp arena is a sign of a dead game, a dead bG aswell, people waiting for new patch? what are you talking about? you see plenty of guild/people doing weekly TT 1-4 full of celestia weapon waiting for next patch? no, people are tired to farm, they burnout and progressivly quit the game, the ones left are the one able to brainlessly farm and blindly throw money, you have to understand that we are in 2018 not in 90's, games have to evolve and human being got other project than farming 2/3h+ per day to collect 250moonstones end of week...

Yes i agree it is like impossible to find a tag match if you arent searching from like 7pm to 12am.. i mean yea i get it most players work during the day but what about players who work on evenings? 

I dont work on evenings and my classes end at around lunch time most of the week and when i try to pvp there barely is any ppl. Just a few days ago i couldnt find a single tag match for an hour in the afternoon. 

But i cant just go complaining that everyone works at day time and i cant play tag match. And also bg is the same last time i did bg a few months ago i noticed it is impossible to find a tag match any time before the frenzy which starts in the late evening. 

This game is practically completely dead before 6pm when everyone comes back from work.

also its been months since the gold nerf and it still hurts f2p players. I feel like 100g/day is a minimum income for f2p if they wanna feel like they are slowly increasing their gear cause now the daily income for f2p is probably 50g from what i have noticed from most players. I mean ppll with premium gold increase were also affected by this.. their income is around 80g probably.. but still its closer to what it was before for f2p players. Honestly when i could still make 100g everyday before the nerf i felt like there was no gear gaps and that there was no gear i couldnt get. The gold farming wasnt too hard and it felt super rewarding. Now gold income is less than half you can barely spare the gold to craft pts (which i have good luck on). Honestly if the prices keep being the same on upgrades and the gold reward will become like it was before it would be super.

Because the gold income was decresed but only old content gear got cheaper and mo the current one. I feel like bns should be a game like the in game arena.. all stats are equal and every player with good gear or bad gear has the same chances to become good at something whether they trove or not. 

It should be like this in pve too. Bns maybe should sell more costumes instead cause i buy those alot and thats how i support the game. And no im not a f2p cry baby i actually spent money on trove and buy lots of costumes and buy premium. But even though im not f2p i want f2p players to not be shut out from new content.

[KahokoHino]

The inherent problem is, endgame is horrible by insane grind walls(Soul Badges for example.)  Not many players who are already at max want to spend hr's and hr's helping newer players catch up because there isn't much insentive to do it. Unrealistic dungeon ratings. Blade and Soul has one of the most confusing rating systems of any mmo out there. Upscaling dungeons further locks out new players. Being told to Celetial Basin can only be said so many times. yet Celetial Basin offers very little too the player and after a few hr's gets mundane and boring.

Daily's for example now only seem to show most endgame raids. That u can't find a party for if u aren't already atleast Raven 3+. and going from Baleful to Raven requires materials from a Raid that you have to pay for Carry as u don't meet the minimum for Shouts or get kicked because of a gear check.

My biggest pet peev is still Floor 15 Naksun, absolutely horrible mechanics.

 

The only thing that really draws new players into the game is the main story, After that they have to decide whether they want to put up with the grinds since getting into dungeons is somewhat hard to do, upgrading becomes a chore.

Why this game survives on 2 servers vs. 10 servers.

The game is already broken by design, we continue to play it because we fell in love with the visuals, the story, the pve, the pvp.

It really is a love/hate relationship.

[matthew]

The biggest problem the game has is the segmentation of players by thier equipment and ping.
So normalise it by removing 2 of the biggest factors that are the cause of anxiety between players.

 

Remove death timers on normal difficulty tiers.
Remove complex mechanics for dungeons at normal difficulty tiers.

 

The only way keeping these mechanics present in normal tiers work is if they actually built proper tutorials with clear and simple instructions on what to do. But they dont, and they havent as someone who has been playing this game since beta its been a spiral of making things worse rather than better.

I remember when i started playing this game, one of the fun things about the dungeons was the fact that only 1 person needed to know the mechanics to carry a squad. My friends who all couldnt care less of gear and mechanics enjoyed the game how it played and didnt need to look for any harder challenge. Dodging bosses/mobs was challenge enough.

 

Now it seems dodging isnt a required art anymore and instead we simply have to execute mechanics while outputting enough damage. Its rubbishly trivialising the games actual combat.

Look at warframe for instance.
One of the reasons its as successful as it is is because casuals can come in. play with friends and pickup and play no matter where they left off.

Theres no gear checks because the game keeps Branching content outwards rather than upwards. Meaning most content remains relevant to most of the power levels. Outside the absolute endgame content which DE's own stats conclude only 1% of players actually take part in.

Theres no mechanics you need to learn, adjust and deal with. its just a good old fashioned slaughterfest of fun. Where you dont have to worry about anything once youre in mission.

Meanwhile what does blade and soul offer for casual players?
PVP?, Ladder and celestial basin. Thats a pretty narrow window to burn yourself out on. Its also allot of wasted content that a portion of the playerbase never experiences.

[iKickz]

Omg don't be babies. Go do all your orange quests, then spend some time at peak hours around BT map and look/wait for a BT run, after you get your basin gear and mystic badge. You're literally guaranteed to eventually get one on wednesday, friday, and the weekend. You don't even need a clan. And go to f8 and run SSM, EL, IF, and NS. That's like 30 gold, plus 5 gold for the DC. Sell your orbs and moonstones, and use your soulstones, but keep your evolved stones and do Cold storage every day and save up the demon orbs that drop because you can make sacred oils with those. Rinse and repeat, and use that to level up your weapon.  And please for your own sake, buy a bunch of seraph weapon boxes and keep rolling until you get an 8 soc  Sure it's slow, but it's definitely not a grind. Just a two or three hours a day on a bad day for those tiny dungeons. After a few weeks, you should be riftwalk 6 or higher, with BT accessories. Go raven 6 or 9, and level up your bracelet and earrings. Things get more expensive, but after you're raven, you can do DD and HH, which is another 30 gold, so you're making 65 gold a day or more. As for mechs, you get them at higher level dungeons that require aransu/vt+ stuff. The real grind starts after that, and if you're complaining about pre-raven stuff, I think you should really calm down. 

Edited January 20, 2019 by iKickz

[MassiveEgo]

@iKickz Also once you git on over 100k dps, clobbering through the circle of sundering is easy and good gold for mere minutes.

[StrykersGaming]

Okay, as a returning player after a long absence, I'm seeing acronyms I'm not familiar with associated with the last few game updates. These being VT, BT, and the like. Can someone drop the list of these and what they're associated with? I'd most certainly appreciate it. This will help me get caught up on some of the things going on with the game today. Thanks!

[iKickz]

14 hours ago, MassiveEgo said:

@iKickz Also once you git on over 100k dps, clobbering through the circle of sundering is easy and good gold for mere minutes.

Yeah plus outlaw and f20. I kill f20 in 7 seconds lol. 

[DrindiX]

It's dying cause ppl are leaving and no new players are able to refill the ranks since they can't catch up with the gear system.

[Estellia]

I see that the game only is dying because of the community itself. Most people will blame things on the Devs and NcSoft, however; more people make people quit then not. Every time I turn around someone is telling someone to quit, I've seen someone making fun of someone else telling them to kill themselves and someone laughing at someone else's bad luck and that same person complain that NCsoft is doing them wrong but have the latest items while everyone else onlooking is trying to catch up even to that.

It might be some of Nc's fault but it's more of the unfriendliness that the community pushes out. Only a handful are good people.

[MimJun]

I returned to the game after 2 years. I made a force master and love it! My friend plays with me so we can do a lot of the content together. I got myself to HM 12 so far, working on upgrading my gear, I am taking my time with it. I think the OP is frustrated because they see with their eyes wide shut. I learned that in any environment we can see just about anything we desire, if we look hard enough. Maybe take the time and enjoy what is presented?

 

Also I noticed some have suggested they may have latency issues. Have you considered updating your net card drivers? You have to do that manually. You could also have host programs running in the background eating your bandwidth. Also having more than 5 devices on a home router (cable/dsl/fiber) will cause latency issues cause the dns server is constantly trying to keep up with the work load and assign dynamic ip addresses which cause disconnections and latency.