Shackled Island Taking Too Long to Fill

[prietess]

I think Shackled Island is taking too long to fill at most of the times. We need 20 people and the waiting time is sooooo long especially not in the prime time.

I wasted 15 mins last weekend just to wait for the lobby to be filled which later ended up failed to fill (the gate closed after 1 hour) AND the match did not start. Literally wasted the 15 mins of waiting and couldn't do anything. It was 15/20 inside and I was the 10th or 11th, imagine the 1st person in the lobby waited even longer.

 

2 days ago I went in again and wasted another 10-15 mins and it was stuck at 4-5/20, only 1 or 2 people went in after me and this time it is not even at the end of 1 hour duration.

I went in after 15 mins the gate was opened (still have 45 minutes to close).

 

So my question is, is it effective?

Does it have to be opened so many times in a day and for so long?

 

On the contrary, the daily Koldrak's Lair is only opened so short 10 minutes and it gets filled so fast without problem even if you enter at the last minute before it closes. 

 

The reason is because Shackled Island can be just done once in a week and you can maintain your rank (or even go up), I think most people do that.

 

While Koldrak's Lair is a daily thing to get the Garnet gem which takes so long to acccumulate.

 

Is the developer focusing on wrong thing?

Shouldn't they actually open more Koldrak's Lair timing or open the gate longer because it is popular? And players need Garnet gems farming and some more now we have Dyad Triangular Garnet Obsidian?

 

Why open the same number of slots for Shackled Island (with Koldrak's Lair) and open it for so long while the lobbies are not filled fast and in the end wasting players' time?

 

Edited May 31, 2019 by prietess

[Nivalias]

1 hour ago, prietess said:

The reason is because Shackled Island can be just done once in a week and you can maintain your rank (or even go up), I think most people do that.

Sure, there's that thing, but that doesn't quite explain why so few people are queuing now, when the rewards are about equal in value and it used to be quite lively there.

There's also the fact that PvP is still pretty unbalanced in general, and the items in that place give some classes a much bigger advantage than others, not to mention some occassional glitches.

*gasp* Could it be that people are actually getting tired of this jiggery-pokery?!

[Grimoir]

3 hours ago, Nivalias said:

Sure, there's that thing, but that doesn't quite explain why so few people are queuing now, when the rewards are about equal in value and it used to be quite lively there.

There's also the fact that PvP is still pretty unbalanced in general, and the items in that place give some classes a much bigger advantage than others, not to mention some occassional glitches.

*gasp* Could it be that people are actually getting tired of this jiggery-pokery?!

That and also koldrak imo is more worth it in terms of reward than shackled isles. People are generally not happy with the pvp content, the only reason they do it for is moonstones and thats about it. Take those out and PVP is dead meat.

Edited May 31, 2019 by Grimoir

[Arohk]

The rewards for this event are too little to attract players, and some classes+items are bullshit and just frustrating to play against (70k dmg demon bomb)

[Bobthemonk]

The reason shackle isles is open for longer is because it can be farmed multiple times on the same character, koldrak you can enter it once then it locks you out until the next one.

 

Most people just do it once a week for the weekly rewards, not many people farm shackle isle. Part of it is because people probably got sick of being tag-teamed by people going in at the same time (since it's slow to get a game and very easy to take a pre-made team in and tag team people 1 at a time to not kill each other). Even though there are seperate solo and duo que's, it is much more advantageous to just go as 2+ in the solo que and it's not against the rules... it makes it frustrating for anyone trying to farm it solo and the majority of players just gave up on it.

[LaraKelly]

When it first started on the first week, if you que late and there was not enough 20 as the time ran out it started anyway after 10 mins. This was then removed the week after that and thus it won't start at all unless there is 20. I think this feature should be put back in.

[Bobthemonk]

It would just make it even more toxic due to the people who go in to team

[prietess]

On 6/1/2019 at 2:55 PM, Bobthemonk said:

The reason shackle isles is open for longer is because it can be farmed multiple times on the same character, koldrak you can enter it once then it locks you out until the next one.

 

Most people just do it once a week for the weekly rewards, not many people farm shackle isle. Part of it is because people probably got sick of being tag-teamed by people going in at the same time (since it's slow to get a game and very easy to take a pre-made team in and tag team people 1 at a time to not kill each other). Even though there are seperate solo and duo que's, it is much more advantageous to just go as 2+ in the solo que and it's not against the rules... it makes it frustrating for anyone trying to farm it solo and the majority of players just gave up on it.

And yes, I also got gang-banged a few days ago for people doing tag teams. It felt so bad, they shared the kills and killed other people who obviously can't fight against 2 people at the same time.

I am a solo player and I felt really unfair.....

I honestly wouldn't really want to do that place again if not for the 10 moonstones weekly...........

And I don't feel like doing that place for all of my chars.

[prietess]

On 6/1/2019 at 10:41 PM, LaraKelly said:

When it first started on the first week, if you que late and there was not enough 20 as the time ran out it started anyway after 10 mins. This was then removed the week after that and thus it won't start at all unless there is 20. I think this feature should be put back in.

It is really a waste of time when the match didn't start.

Now I won't even wait that long.

If I enter and i saw the # of people is less than 10, I just quit.

[Snowyamur]

I tend to believe that Shackled Isles fills up slowly because of how it's Battle Royale, and that's PvP, and people who play MMOs aren't playing MMOs for Battle Royale. That was an unheard-of thing until Fortnite started becoming increasingly popular, and when it started to make millions, other game industries sought out Battle Royale as the newest money-making game genre. This game is no exception; why do you think an executive decision was made to include Battle Royale in Blade & Soul? Sure, it had that potential with the combat, but the main reason was because people believed doing this would make them money, and that by doing this, all the battle royale fans would rush over to give it a shot.

 

Unfortunately, this game's PvP is so poorly-designed that this plan backfired, and considering people continue holding the belief that this game is P2W, myself included, PvP continues going downhill for this game, and so does the Shackled Isles.

 

The reason why Koldrak's Lair does better is because that's PvE co-op, and people don't mind doing that. If you die to a monster, there's no being salty or angry at anyone but at one's own mistake, and that can be resolved easily. But when you die to a player, one who's probably spent millions of real money to "get better" or is hacking, that's very different, and the anger is worse so in that scenario. The rewards for Koldrak's Lair and Shackled Isles are both beneficial, but how they're beneficial is player-determined. Koldrak's Lair rewards [Koldrak's Scales] which can be exchanged for cool rewards, but they have to be farmed every day. Shackled Isles is the same thing. The only difference between both of them is that one is PvE and one is PvP, and in a game that has horrible PvP, I'd personally go with the PvE.

[Arohk]

3 hours ago, Snowyamur said:

I tend to believe that Shackled Isles fills up slowly because of how it's Battle Royale, and that's PvP, and people who play MMOs aren't playing MMOs for Battle Royale.

The game mode itself is kinda interesting but needs a few changes that are just garbage:

 

#Onehit Powerups

getting kicked out by a hammer and die instantly or getting bombed out of nowhere is super stupid, the poison flask s somewhat okay , depending on class.

I myself once killed THREE people at once with the bomb, i just ran up to them (bomb can be channeled while moving) and throw it at them, they didn't even see me coming while fighting.

The Hammer is too powerful because the zone outside deals too much damage, there must be a chance to get back into the ring and not kill you in 2-3 seconds at the very end, there are too many classes who can simply grab you and throw you out of the ring for an instant kill.

Happened to me multiple times that a forcemaster grabbed me, walked me to the edge and just threw me out, i was dead before my character could even stand up.

 

#People playing Tag-team in solo game

I have no idea how this could even be fixed, but getting ganked by a group of three people who work together while you're solo is just terrible.

I know the guy who is currently #1 ranked BM and he also goes in with a KFM friend for easy kills.

 

#The reward is too little.

I would say increase the amount of badges you get from the daily quest reward, ONE badge is simply not enough to attract players to this PvP zone,

the quest should reward 10 Badges so it is on par with the Arena daily quest at least.

[sojaa]

People dont q it because it sucks lol. The class imbalance shows. Most ppl hide out looking to creep items. No one likes to be gang banged either and communication is all you need to do that. If they wanted this to work it should've been implemented long before the release of gunner when everything was a little more balanced.( Not saying gunner is that bad its not. The skills were better and there was more balance.) There was counterbreaks on more classes and you could stop sin stealth counter or kfm counter spam.  Its getting boring now you have to wait to fight or run from ranged classes lol. Just to outwait their skills. so its wait to pvp now.

[Bobthemonk]

@Snowyamur I am going to assume you have never touched the battle royal gamemode, otherwise can you explain to me how spending real money can give you an advantage in a game mode where a story-line geared char and a max-max-max char have the exact same stats?

[Snowyamur]

1 hour ago, Bobthemonk said:

@Snowyamur I am going to assume you have never touched the battle royal gamemode, otherwise can you explain to me how spending real money can give you an advantage in a game mode where a story-line geared char and a max-max-max char have the exact same stats?

You assumed wrong @Bobthemonk. One of the first things I've done on returning to Blade & Soul was trying out many of the features that were new to me. When I took a long break from this game in 2017, Shackled Isles didn't exist around that time, until now. On returning to the game, it was one of the features I tried first.

 

After having done about 10-15 runs on the Shackled Isles on my Warden and Warlock classes, I can say that not all stats are equalized. Excluding the fact classes are different from each other, some players had higher health than me and inflicted more damage, and so the "stat-equalization" that PvP promises is not entirely the case. I'm not sure how they were getting more health because I would start with around ~70k HP, and they had around 89k, and I wasn't sure how that was possible when all stats were equalized.

 

If everyone has different health from each other, that doesn't mean stats are equalized. Even while their classes are different, the fact one player has 20-30k more health than another doesn't make it a fair fight. The only thing that should be different among all participants is what class their playing as; that's it. Health should be the same, and damage should already be balanced for each class such that one isn't dominating the other.

 

To answer your question, I guess I honestly don't know how spending money improves one's ability to play Shackled Isles. This is a consequence of continuing to hear people spout how P2W this game is non-stop that it ends up spreading like a disease. After trying out Shackled Isles, I stopped playing PvP altogether because it isn't worth my time, and it wasn't fair to begin with when some classes could stun-lock you in place for a long time. 

 

Doing the Dailies & Weeklies, doing dailies in Mushin's Tower and the Blackram Arena, and just farming high-level dungeons for mats. mattered more to me, and I found that more fun because I knew that what I was doing wouldn't be competed for. I could run most dungeons I want on my own, and I could get even better rewards from doing these dungeons than PvP alone.

[Bobthemonk]

All classes have different base stats, the same in shackles isles + solo / tag in arena... Otherwise warden shouldn't be allowed to use resilence in them since the extra shield = boosted hp = "unfair".

[Snowyamur]

1 hour ago, Bobthemonk said:

All classes have different base stats, the same in shackles isles + solo / tag in arena... Otherwise warden shouldn't be allowed to use resilence in them since the extra shield = boosted hp = "unfair".

That makes sense. PvP as a whole for Blade & Soul is still poorly-designed and balanced when it comes to class balance, though.

[Nivalias]

On 5.6.2019 at 3:53 AM, Bobthemonk said:

All classes have different base stats, the same in shackles isles + solo / tag in arena... Otherwise warden shouldn't be allowed to use resilence in them since the extra shield = boosted hp = "unfair".

You know, have you taken a look at how much Resilience Warden's have in equalized modes? Given that their skills cost HP to begin with, that "boost" more or less equals it out.

At least in BR mode anyway, 20k Res vs 80k HP makes even the long CD E a loss in overall survivability.