About the game future...

[VincentBari]

Greetings, warriors! I created this topic to talk about the future of the game, because to me it seems like the game is slowing going downward for various reasons, and I want to at least make people know the consequences of some bad attitude towards the game.

I will start saying this: I like the game, the mechanics are really good, the characters are really cool, the maps are really enticing to me; the only thing I am sad about it's the fact I have an old PC and I can't enjoy the graphics of everything, and I wanted to get a decent one to put all settings at max. The story, I enjoyed every single part of it, I always watched all the story cutscenes and even dungeon cutscenes, especially the ones related to the story (mainly the Raid ones).

[WARNING, SPOILERS! DON'T READ IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE STORY OR IF YOU DIDN'T REACH THE LAST CHAPTER!]

[I wasn't happy about Chol Mugo betraying us in that way, after we were allies against the bad guys; I was really really really pissed off about the fact my students died like that, it was so random, I think they could have survived if Bunyang just said 'I got a bad feeling about this, I think we should run for our dearly lives and never look back.', and instead nope, he jumped down and then Ryu appeared and said 'Sup guys? I'm evil, and you're gonna die, bye.' and Bunyang was annihilated (the body disappeared as if he was a monster); I went into the Talus prison to find Bunya who was completely destroyed by the grief, and she was blaming me for what happened, and I couldn't tell her otherwise, it was something it could have been avoided; but it was only the beginning, because then that Mushin guy came after I don't know how many months and in a matter of seconds even the other two students were killed in front of me and the poor Jinsoyun, I was like 'Wtf man, first Bunyang and now the little Bunah and the spiky guy too? No no no no, that is not acceptable, I'm gonna beat Ryu's mother first and then deal with Ryu in a more private way!' (10.000 stabs)]

I am glad they didn't decide to eliminate the little Jinsoyun too (I swear, I would have thrown my Pc out of the window), but after what happened I simply came back to windrest to grief for my students, and when I saw their spirits I was like 'Omg, please tell me they are coming back due to the power of love or something, or I will find that magic talisman to bring them back alive.'...nope, chapter ended, and it even gave me a black outfit that I put for 1 week.

Now, for the point of the post, all I wanted to say that in my opinion this game is really good; of course, not all the events I participated to were acceptable, like the Valentine one in Cinderlands (it was a bloody massacre, it was nonsense, like you put normal players with average gear to spin a wheel with ultra instinct players around, who could sneeze you to death), or some decisions regarding items or upgrades were questionable, but I didn't complain about those in the forums except for the Bloody Valentine. However, what I see in the forums is people complaining about EVERYTHING: they don't like the events, they don't like the fact you use tokens for the events, they don't like the rewards for the events; they don't like servers merged and the fact they lost 1 DAY OUT OF 30 DAYS of Premium, and whale players say 'I lost 1 day of premium benefits, I am pissed off, never gonna pay for this again, I want 100.000 gold of compensation and 10 rare items for free or I will leave.'; they don't like this and that etc etc etc. All these posts or comments about in-game stuff is going to destroy it, and one sign is the fact servers merged, and if you think I am exaggerating I can tell you this: you have a standard game, with 10 servers that can host 5000 people each, and the people are distributed randomly in each server; 5 servers have less than 2500 people in there, so they company decides to merge those servers with the other 5, so their capacity go to 10000; with time 4 servers happen to have less than 5000 people (due to various reasons), so the company decides to merge 4 in 1 server of 25000 people; the capacity increases again, this causes more lags problems and overcrowding, but people still keep on leaving the game because of those issues and even if the server can host 25000 people only 10000 actually play it, and there's no merge possible anymore. As you can see, a game can't go on for long time if there's only 1 server that is overcrowded that causes continous lags, and if the people that are playing are still minor than those distributed in more servers; then, add the fact people are not even trying to be understandable about the work developers are doing, and I am not justifying all the things they do, because as I said before some of the events were really awful; but, how do players respond to devs? Vulgar language and insults (i saw them censored on some forum posts); also, I can't believe players are even complaining about an event THAT IS NOT LIVE YET!

With that said, I wanted to tell you this: if you really like the game, try to help this game alive with suggestions and constructive arguments, instead of throwing everything into the trash because you are not happy about 1 thing, or because you lost some hours of your precious whale in-game life. Thank you for your attention. 

[Hanuku]

I actually managed to read, more or less... FIRST, tip, divide your thoughts into paragraphs. Helps people read better. Anyway. I do agree on the part about people complaining too much. But they complain for a reason. Sure, there are some special flakes out there who want everything handed to them, and only to them. And they are usually very noisy about it. That's the so called "vocal minority". Meaning, there are more people playing this game than those posting here. Those either post their rants elsewhere (reddit), or don't really have rants worthy of their time to post about.

 

I can't say the game is fine right now. Much less population than before. The whole MMO genre is failing hard in the West, while still thriving in the East. There are two main reasons for this. First, what the people of the East likes is not the same as what Westerners like. And MMOs in general are more suited to Easterners from the start. Actually, MMOs usually have to be edited, sometimes heavily, to "Westernize" them. And the few Western made MMOs have vastly different experiences to what is made in the East. Western players prefer more pvp and things based more on player skill with fast rewards and gratification (bragging rights), while Eastern players like a mix of pvp with pve and lengthy grinds.

 

Second. Corporate greed has placed their evil hand on the gaming industry harder than ever before, forcing out incomplete games and making players pay afterwards through DLC and micro transactions with the goal of producing an exponential amount of money from each single title. Americans were taught in the 80's by the so called economic experts that "Greed is good" for the whole capitalism process to expand. And they used that exact term to explain it. Anyway, MMOs are not the exception to this. And companies are doing what they can to skim through the laws while trying to milk their games for the last cents. The results are less than stellar and players are often left with a reduced experience and a sour feeling in the end.

 

So really, I understand why so many are unhappy with this and all the other games. Even new games like Krutzpel (or whatever is called) gained quite a bunch of negative reviews on launch, all because what the end user experience turned out to be.

[Snowyamur]

TL;DR

 

Okay, first off, you seriously need to fix how you word this; everything you wrote here... is in a cluttered mess, and I'm sure you won't fix it because no one fixes their posts. If you do fix your post, organize your thoughts into paragraphs; take big-boy steps and organize your thoughts cohesively so me, as a human, can read this and comprehend what you're saying.

 

Secondly, actually get straight to the point. Stop adding filler to what you write; we only want to know what you're getting at from the thread title. You ruin your own writing with all this filler.

 

That said and put aside, let me try to digest some of the things you wrote.

 

21 hours ago, VincentBari said:

However, what I see in the forums is people complaining about EVERYTHING:

All these posts or comments about in-game stuff is going to destroy it

I'm going to start here. Yes, people complain on online forums. Are you implying that players aren't allowed to complain on a game's forums?

 

The whole point of the forums is to allow players not only an outlet to express their problems maturely, although 80% of the people here can't seem to do that, which is sad, but also allows them to address issues in a game that come to the attention of the developers. People could post problems on Reddit, but an official games forums is much more convenient and easier for game developers to access when considering what's wrong with their game, and how to fix it.

 

If players didn't say ANYTHING that was wrong with Blade & Soul, this game would turn into a dumpster fire. The fact that people are stating problems is good; the issue, though, is that some people are stating problems that don't really help the game; these problems are more like problems with them not being good at the game to begin with.

 

What's making this game go down the gutter is:

 

1.) NCSOFT is greedy

Since NCSOFT only cares about making money, most of the designs and decisions made for Blade & Soul are geared towards profit over player-interest and positive reception.

 

2.) The general community is toxic and unbelievable

That's not to say all players are like that, but both on the forums and in-game, there are a large majority of players who are toxic, and ever since the merge, we've had more toxic people in Faction chat. For the forums, when people make mistakes on what they type, they're berated for it rather than simply being told that they made a mistake, and that makes the entire conversation go from constructive to outright hurtful for the person that made it.

 

3.) There's a lack of public reception

This game is an eastern game, and it's more popular in Asia than it is in the U.S. and Europe. As an NA player, we don't get the updates KR receives until a month or two later, at worst, a year, and this game has poor publicity in the west right now due to people continuing the P2W hate-train online and further giving this game unnecessary levels of hate.

 

4.) There's poor community engagement

No matter what we type, NCSOFT doesn't listen. How do I know this? Look at the changes made in the game; very few changes come from our feedback; that's a sure sign you know NCSOFT has closed its doors to use, leaving them only slightly ajar to let some air in.

 

And there are many more problems. Complaints on this forums alone doesn't mean the game is being destroyed. Rethink that aloud and see why that's illogical.

 

21 hours ago, VincentBari said:

As you can see, a game can't go on for long time if there's only 1 server that is overcrowded that causes continous lags,

Haha... people still saying the server merge is killing the game... ah...

 

Okay, realize that not everyone stays with a game they initially play on. Players come and go for varying reasons. Server merging is becoming a more-common practice for MMOs, and these merges happen to save money, to consolidate space, or to unify communities that are better off together than on their own somewhere else. Additionally, as games age, they lose players. I keep hearing players say how 2016 was more active for NA; yeah, that's because that was when the game was released, wake up; of course it's going to have more players. This game is about 4 years old for NA now, so obviously the game's going to lose a lot of players, and that just has to do with aging, but also what direction the game is headed.

 

As for the merge for this game was successful, albeit it brought in the worst of the player base into Faction chat. There were issues here and there, but for the most part, now public chat is more active, finding dungeons is slightly easier, and the marketplace is more active. Server merging != dying game definitively and immediately-conclusively because there are other factors that lead up to a game's demise.

 

I would type up more, but I won't because no one's going to listen. But regardless, you seriously need to reorganize your thoughts in this thread.