Blade & Soul: New player feedback

[AliamRationem]

Hi! I just started playing a few days ago and would like to share my impressions of the game so far.

 

Quick background: I'm a long time MMO player (mostly WoW and GW2) looking for another MMO to play.  I tried ESO (good game, poor combat system, feels floaty, imprecise, with odd/slow pacing).  I also tried FFXIV (2.5s GCD on skills, extremely generic WoW-clone feel to the early game).  I became interested in Blade & Soul because the most important factor for me is combat and I hear that is what this game does best.

 

Pros:

Combat. I love the mobility and speed and the combos give this game a very unique feel! A+!

Music and environments are beautiful.

1v1 PvP with equalized gear is a huge plus for me!

 

Cons:

Generic storyline.  It's not as bad as FFXIV's intro, but that isn't saying much.

No way that I've found to feasibly level without running through the storyline (Although I admit I am new and likely haven't exhausted all options!).

Gear? Crafting? So far it feels pretty light on this aspect of the MMO experience. I assume that changes later on.

Awful anime-style character models and outfits. I know some people love that, but I can't get into it.

Terrible optimization. I couldn't even produce playable framerates without switching to 32-bit mode as the game kept inexplicably maxxing out my RAM! Now it gets random crashes from time to time.

 

So far my experience is limited to the early game, so I have a lot left to learn and get a feel for. These are just my initial impressions. If I had to make a quick recommendation to other new players, I'd say that this looks like a pretty generic Asian MMO with what looks to be a potentially amazing combat system.  If not for the combat system, I don't think I'd give this game any more of my time. But because it feels so great even just a couple of days in, I think I'm going to stick around for a bit and see if this might be my new MMO home for awhile.

 

I look forward to thoughts from experienced players. I'm sure some of my impressions aren't accurate, given I've only been playing for a couple of days.

 

 

 

[LilyFU]

PVP in this game is very bad and is practically dead. even 1v1 with equalized gear have many problems. like you can cc and atk  your opponent with him stuck in loading.

Yes storyline it's the only way to level up. 

Crafting is very bad and it does not get better. you have few items where you can do gold but is very bad.

If you already have problems with optimization Wait until you start do raids. It's going to be a complete disaster.

[LilyFU]

forgot to mention one thing about optimization. You can use blade and soul buddy is a program that helps with this.

although it was used for cheats in the past and These days it's still cheating. because of the problem I mentioned earlier in 1v1. this program among many things can make loading faster so yes is cheat in 1v1.

But NCS does not care people admit to using this program openly and NCS does not do anything.

[AliamRationem]

Thanks for the reply. Really? PvP is dead in a game like this? It seems like the combat system would lend itself well to that sort of gameplay. But then I don't yet have any sort of feel for class balance, how counters work (i.e. can you 100-0 people with little means of fighting back, etc.), how the ranking system works, etc.  That's discouraging. And if it's normal for people to win matches while their opponent is stuck in a load screen...ouch.

 

I admit raiding is not something I'm huge into. I really enjoyed it in WoW, but GW2's raiding is pretty awful without proper tanks and healers and my understanding is that this game is only somewhat set up around the "trinity" style of group play. Is that correct?

 

I also just found out that they only give you 2 character slots, which is rather annoying since the only way to try the various classes is to repeatedly play through the same generic story over and over again, deleting the character each time (or pay money just to try a new class...in which case you still have to play through the story, but don't lose your progress). Very lame.  It doesn't appear that the "subscription" benefits include character slots either. I would gladly sign up for that if I felt the game was worth my time, but I'm really not sure about it at this point and making it such a headache to test out the classes isn't helping!

 

[prietess]

On 5/31/2019 at 8:55 PM, AliamRationem said:

Thanks for the reply. Really? PvP is dead in a game like this? It seems like the combat system would lend itself well to that sort of gameplay. But then I don't yet have any sort of feel for class balance, how counters work (i.e. can you 100-0 people with little means of fighting back, etc.), how the ranking system works, etc.  That's discouraging. And if it's normal for people to win matches while their opponent is stuck in a load screen...ouch.

 

I admit raiding is not something I'm huge into. I really enjoyed it in WoW, but GW2's raiding is pretty awful without proper tanks and healers and my understanding is that this game is only somewhat set up around the "trinity" style of group play. Is that correct?

 

I also just found out that they only give you 2 character slots, which is rather annoying since the only way to try the various classes is to repeatedly play through the same generic story over and over again, deleting the character each time (or pay money just to try a new class...in which case you still have to play through the story, but don't lose your progress). Very lame.  It doesn't appear that the "subscription" benefits include character slots either. I would gladly sign up for that if I felt the game was worth my time, but I'm really not sure about it at this point and making it such a headache to test out the classes isn't helping!

 

For character slots, you can buy character slots with Hongmoon Coins which you can get for free either from Daily dash or RNG drop from quests.

 

If you just want to try combo and get a quick feeling about a class, you can create a Level 50 character to go to a Training room to try the skills (you can't go to real world aka the game without spending a Level 50 (or maybe 60 now) voucher which can be only bought with NCoin (real money))

[Snowyamur]

From my experience playing Blade & Soul, the combat is definitely a plus. It's fluid, it's fast-paced, and it forces a player to be both proactive and reactive instead of one or the other. The animations and art-style? Truly a wonder to behold for this game; not many MMO games can top off what Blade & Soul has accomplished and maintained for years. Personally, I think the story is good. It isn't hugely a fantastic or a very well-written story on some parts, but the pacing is decent, and there are a few characters I like from the storyline, some of which are returning in the upcoming Empyrean Citadel update, which I'm looking forward to.

 

Character customization and design? Complex and intricate down to the detail. I spend more time customizing my characters than playing the actual game sometimes, and that says a lot for how well character customization is in this game. For the most part, I'm not that content with how NCWest made the mechanics for certain dungeon and raid bosses slightly easier because they were supposed to be challenging, which in-turn made it fun, but I'll overlook this because it makes playing the game a lot less of a pain. The best part of all for this game that I truly love are the outfits that you can collect once you reach the end game; in-fact, you can start collecting them right off the bat once you finish certain areas. It's a fun activity to do in this game and I recommend it to all those struggling to find a decent end game.

 

However, one thing that's horribly-evident about this game is the optimization. I hear it from many people and they aren't wrong; this game has some of the worst optimization in any MMO. Unreal Engine 3 was just not designed to uphold the massive processing, animations, and weight Blade & Soul brought with it, and it shows from all the complaints players have about how their game runs at 3 FPS, which is undoubtedly true. Luckily, UE4 is going to be released, so hopefully this alleviates some of the problems.

 

The grind? Dreadful; as someone who farms Dailies and Weeklies with alts., this is mind-numbingly dull. Content in-game is repeated and recycled so as to make the grind somewhat easier, but it's still a grind, and it's just boring. The only thing allowing me to have fun while doing this kind of grind is the combat, and that's about it. The grind is especially inherent in the upgrade system with upgrading your weapons and accessories. It's truly a pain to do and takes a somewhat-lengthy amount of time to upgrade a weapon by one level.

 

Speaking of grind, a possible way to bypass this is to venture through Blade & Soul's Pay-to-Win system. As I tell people: if you can buy in-game items that provide gameplay advantages with outside currency, it's P2W. That's what this game mostly is, and has been, ever since 2017-2018, and it's continuing onward in 2019. I'm not a fan of it, and I know I don't have to spend money in the game, but if players can get stronger by whipping out their parents' credit card, that's just ridiculous. The game is full of RNG, and almost everything in this game is basically RNG. Even free content is RNG, which makes the game all the more unbearable at certain times.

 

The crafting system is, agreeably, very lame. It's reminiscent of an AFK-esque game where you just start up production on a few things and wait for a certain period of time for it to finish. For an MMO game, that's kind of a shameful system to have, and that's more meant for AFK-oriented games like AdVenture Capitalist, or for mobile games at best.

 

As for the community, I think there are both sides here. Some parts of it are good, some are bad; you could never get an extreme of one nor the other. However, what pesters me is the lack of community engagement from staff with the player base because as players, we're continuing to play and enjoy this game, but when we want to see things changed in ways we think are better for ourselves and others, they aren't received effectively. Suggestions, feedback, ideas; most are left unnoticed or unheard of, and that's sad because some are actually really good and can improve the game.

 

These are a few of my thoughts. Overall, I still play Blade & Soul and I like it, but I hate the P2W and the severe grind behind it.

[Duschenka]

I am not new, i left with 3 level 50`s, that i used way to much real money on to get upgraded. That and the the constant grind got to a point where i slowly lost all interest and one day i stopped playing all together. 

 

I stayed away for almost four years before i read about the changes made to the game, and it once again peeked my interest.

So i logged in again, found "40" pages of stuff and mails waiting, a ton of notices, and i decided to leave my old characters alone and make a new one just to see what it felt like this time around.

I hounestly have to say that it feels better than it ever did.

It took me four days to finish act 9 and at that point i was a lvl 60 HM 12 with 1040 AP just by following the story.

And the story ... ooh the story ... i am not really a fan, there is too much dying for me, but it is an interesting one as well ...

I hate what happend to some of the characters, but it also makes me want to continue and rip Mushin a new one, so i guess from a company point of view it is a good story when it makes me want to stay on and not leave for another four years ...