So Many Broken Promises, It's Time to Go

[Snowyamur]

This is the last post I am ever going to make for this game's forums. After that, I'm leaving. It's just not right being a part of this anymore, and it's not the player base nor community being awful. It's the publisher and developer(s) being this untrustworthy and shady. Thanks for reading through all of this if you did.

 

I've been playing this game ever since it came out in NA back in 2016. I quit for 2 years, then came back to find this game become one huge Pay-to-Win mess. I dismissed it, believing this to be one huge obstacle to overcome for this game to achieve its true potential. But then we get:

 

• recycled and repeated events,
• poor reception and feedback from NCWest community coordinators,
• very little to no bug fixes or status updates,
• poor game design decisions and changes made to the game,
• and now even more Pay-to-Win garbage.

 

This has been evident over the last few weeks, and this game has shamefully continued falling from grace since 2017.

 

With the release of the "patch," if we can even call it a patch, for Hongsil's Summer Blast event, NCSOFT decided to increase the Unity cap from 220,000 to 500,000. You can find the patch notes here: https://www.bladeandsoul.com/en/news/hongsils-summer-blast-patch-notes/

 

From a surface-level perspective, that doesn't sound so bad, and that's probably how some people saw it. Not really a huge deal, but not one that's game-breaking either. What it does is it allows players to farm more Unity, which doesn't really break the game. If Unity applies for PvP, then it definitely broke PvP, but I wouldn't know because I don't dare to touch it for Blade & Soul because of how poorly-balanced it is. 

 

The thing is, the Unity system itself is dominantly Free-to-Play because you can't spend real money to buy Unity levels, which made it a decent progression system that's earned through playing the game, not spending money on it. In fact, having Unity is likely a core reason people would get online daily to play, thus it was a good thing to add to the game.

 

Unfortunately, little did we know that both NCSOFT and NCWest increased the cap with this patch just so they can ninja-add a bunch of bundles that include:

 

• Purple Ascension stone chests
• Unity XP charms

 

which can be bought 10 TIMES PER ACCOUNT! And keep this in mind: they increased the cap because they knew the whales would hoard all the Unity charms and use them, which wouldn't work if the cap was set at 220,000, but increase it, and now it's effective for use.

 

Considering Unity provides permanent stat upgrades, this game has officially become dominantly Pay-to-Win now that you can BUY permanent stat upgrades. Let me ask NCSOFT this: what happened to your promise mentioned below?

 

 

Did this fully go out the drain? I think it did, considering what you did for this event contradicted everything in your "philosophy, especially where it says

 

Quote

"We don't like pay-to-win, so what we are offering are cosmetics, convenience, and consumables - not power, not gear, not permanent stat increases."

 

Outright shameful; you just scammed and cheated on your own player base and community, on top of breaking a promise you set forth from the beginning. You can read more about their revealed business model here: https://www.bladeandsoul.com/uk/news/business-model-revealed/

 

Now, being P2W screams NCSOFT, and we all know that. It's been seen with the daily material offerings that we can buy with NCoin and have reset daily, and it's been seen with Trove, especially Trove. But what they did that was absolutely disgusting was not tell us about these bundles being released, or plans to make Unity become a purchasable in-game item through microtransactions, completely turning it into P2W, only to carry them out and sneak them in with this "patch." That's disgusting, pathetic, and shameful; it has high D.P.S. written all over it. Players in Blade & Soul need high dps to even participate in the so-called "content" you roll out, well, now you can appreciate having your own high D.P.S.

 

For those of you who might not have known this, one of NCSOFT's community coordinators made a reply to me when I said that we should have more daily livestreams to give us a look at events before they go live. This is what they told me:

 

 

Hyunkel told me this 2 days before the event released, and he is a GM Community Moderator. You can find its parent thread here: 

 

So they tell me this, and what do we get? Nothing! No livestream, not an even an announcement for one, and after what we all saw when we logged in looking at the cash shop, we can see why. They knew we would flame and frown on them if they showed us this:

 

 

and they were right: we're frowning upon them now. Guess what, unlike NCSOFT, I'm not afraid to show that I spent more than 25+ USD on NCoin through these screenshots because I'm not someone who keeps secrets and scams people, unlike NCSOFT. They never told us about this, and these bundles were NEVER mentioned in the "patch" notes before the event went live. A BnS Reddit user named Ponifex actually theorized the price to be paid if a whale wanted to overspend. While it may not be accurate, it's a horrifying estimate:

 

 

You can find the Reddit thread here:

 

Is this what you're expecting from EVERY player? Is that how much you want us to spend on your poor excuse for a gambling simulator?? Are you joking???

 

To all members of the BnS community, if you can't see it clearly, see it now. NCSOFT, more like NC$cam, is not to be trusted. Their greed has plagued the gaming culture with their focus on profit over quality and performance. I've been patient with them and tried to make this game seem more appealing, that in the future, it would improve, but clearly, it will NEVER improve. It only goes more downhill from here.

 

Leave this game behind and don't come back. You will never get back the time wasted on this poor excuse for P2W garbage, but that will be made up with time spent on doing other things you know will not scam you in the future, like NC$cam did just now.

 

I will not spend another penny on this game ever again for what it's becoming, nor will I spend another ounce of my time and energy putting up with this. This has become an illness on the gaming culture, and it's only spreading and getting worse.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Snowyamur
Updated ending statement

[Miggy Miggs]

Amen

 

thank you for putting in the time for writing,posting and giving reference  of ever point you made. i feel this patch is a let down and slap in the face to alot of players. buying stats in games now , just wow just wow . whats the point of playing when u can buy stats.

 

the damage is already done . i just really hate the fact how they sneak in all of these things without even giving a patch live stream ....how can we trust them, no community post they said live stream soon and no live stream . 

 

 

i didn't even know we getting system changes ..i just thoguht we getting the dungeon and thats it full stop. all they talked about in post

 

 

when i logged on  complete different story .. like more than 50 percent of community doesnt read patch notes and it shows when u logged on and look in fraction chat ...thats how people are .

 

i for one read every patch note but for some reason i didnt read this one as it wasnt talked about or felt interesting enough to pay attention to ..as i knew we getting a mini patch as archer comes in September .

 

no community manager post anything about anything  ,not even to say BADGE EXCHANGE ENDS MT DAY. nothing , to at least let people spread the word.

 

 

all your points are 200 pecent true .

 

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Miggy Miggs

[Merlin DE]

Nothing more to say, it perfectly discribed what many people including me think.

Thanks for this extensively summary.

Sadly our community managers, NC-Soft and NC-west wount even take notice or take care about what you wrote. They will go on like nothing happens like they always did.

Ill guess this is the beginning of the end of BnS in NA/EU (if it havent already begun a long time ago)

 

My best whishes and good luck, farewell

[RagingPhenix]

15 minutes ago, Merlin DE said:

Nothing more to say, it perfectly discribed what many people including me think.

Thanks for this extensively summary.

Sadly our community managers, NC-Soft and NC-west wount even take notice or take care about what you wrote. They will go on like nothing happens like they always did.

Ill guess this is the beginning of the end of BnS in NA/EU (if it havent already begun a long time ago)

 

My best whishes and good luck, farewell

In that case all we can do is make sure this post always stays number 1 on the forum. Keep bumping it up till we get a satisfactory response from the devs.
They mass reverted with the Xanos hands, lets have them do the same here.

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by RagingPhenix

[Starthz]

You didn't even mention the ET raid box that literally allows you to p2w through the new weapon making the most end game content totally useless for those who can pay...

[BrianB]

I would be surprised if Cyan or any of them actually answer 1 of these posts. 

They think these are "negative" posts and we are all dickhead that they wouldn't even care about at all, and will act like what they did are all right. 

Anyway thank you for your post brother.

[Misaki]

Welcome to the quitters club! I'm sure you'll be happy here i know i am. Its actually quite enjoyable to watch this game go downhill from behind the curtains.  I just wish i could get my money back i spent i could buy so much more useful stuff with it, but oh well lesson learned never playing NCsoft games again, i should have learned after Aion went to the trash.

 

[Miggy Miggs]

Heres nc plan from the get go ....

 

1.they knew if they introduce this in stream they would get flame, and have to do something about it or else they will look bad come mt day, thats a couple days of getting flamed and after mt more flame until fixed . they couldn't remove it from the patch stream because people will see it , when showing off rewards and boxes 

2.so what they did ,cancel any possible stream and just let it be as is.

 

3.when it finally dropped they knew they were gonna get complain but it would be too late the damage is already done , then later on patch it out after reaping the earnings . the perfect plan at people with wrong badges expense of not getting a better warning of these changes 

 

 

 

for some reason i think they tried this in the past too ..to think of it 

 

before the sunfire chest came out  they didnt stream or show the rewards for that tab which held the all mighty legendary gloves ....they knew people would want mao gloves drop rate increase or better way to get it so they slide that under the carpet .no way they forgot that part of stream . its all planned. thats what i believe .as they didn't show any rewards of it at all  what so ever 

 

i just wish they stop and just be honest with everyone. i dont like this sneaky movements of this team not one bit 

 

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Miggy Miggs

[Asuramon]

Flipping tables over something as insignificant as unity....

Nothing was sneaky. Rng boxes and new F10 items are kept secret until release 90% of the time.

Badges? You had SEVERAL months to decide which spec you wanted to play. You knew exchange wasn't permanent. Wanted to play 2-3 specs at same time? Get 2 badges like everyone else.

It's also risible to claim "unity was the one f2p thing without a way to whale it". More and more people forgot about trove and other rng boxes it seems. Unity boxes were there. The unity xp charm boosts by laughable 50k points..... How many would you have to buy to even make a dent on your usual progress? A LOT. Meaning It would be the last thing you spend money on, when you have nothing else to upgrade - because you would already be maxed, and unity would be even more meaningless.

[ImoutoMaster]

vor 8 Minuten schrieb Asuramon:

Flipping tables over something as insignificant as unity....

Nothing was sneaky. Rng boxes and new F10 items are kept secret until release 90% of the time.

Badges? You had SEVERAL months to decide which spec you wanted to play. You knew exchange wasn't permanent. Wanted to play 2-3 specs at same time? Get 2 badges like everyone else.

1.  it gives more than 100 AP (not home so i cannot tell how much exactly but i guess even 200 is possible) and alot of stats which can give you alot of DPS. Its no farmable ingame only via F10.

 

2. They used to announce Casher stuff and even show it in streams. And back then we had more than 1 Week without casher stuff.

 

3. Alot of people tryed different specs just like the KFM we have in our guild he tryed to main third spec but wanted to switch back to wind on the long run. Now he was already offline when the patchnotes came and the next day he probably had work or whatever. Now think about it what if you upgraded the badge to awk 8 and cant change it to your spec anymore ? its a loss of severl thousand gold.

[MarjoKun]

Lets spam one thing!

"NCsoft! Reply on this!"

[Javice]

logged in after maint yday, saw what they did in f10, logged out again

 

this p2w bullshit is getting out of hand, everytime i think im getting somwhere boom, more p2w to widen the gap between whales and f2p again ....

 

The second i find another game to play its byebye bladeandswipe

[Severia]

1 hour ago, ImoutoMaster said:

3. Alot of people tryed different specs just like the KFM we have in our guild he tryed to main third spec but wanted to switch back to wind on the long run. Now he was already offline when the patchnotes came and the next day he probably had work or whatever. Now think about it what if you upgraded the badge to awk 8 and cant change it to your spec anymore ? its a loss of severl thousand gold.

No you can ask the support to change them back. I'm pretty sure they will do that.

And yeah those supply chests are a bit to much. I bought them myself.and got really good legendary stones out of them. I mean it would take years to get these Legendary stones just by playing the game. Dunno if that will make the game losing more people but I can understand the people that will lose hope for this game and leave.

[Javice]

Releasing this p2w ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ a week before wow classic comes out ? pretty sure they will lose alot of people

 

BnS has been bleeding alot of people over the last couple months, iirc there were 1m+ f8 lobbys before the awakening patch, now we didnt even hit 600k couple hours before maint ....

 

This is just to milk out the last bit they can out of bns, they know its dying ....

 

And mark my words, next unity stone tier + lvl cap increase will come with the next patch, so they can bring out more of these boxes and have twice the profit for the same thing

Edited August 22, 2019 by Javice

[Blade Master]

I guess enough is enough 

not gonna miss any of what ncsoft is doing in this game 

[Ren36]

Though we weren´t on the same page at the beginning, that it would turn around and only last a few weeks is a pity, but in general I lost one more reason to come back to this forum. If everyone would be so fast on the uptake and actively deny in groups the money that ncsoft is craving for from the beginning, I can´t even say for sure if NCSoft wouldn´t have closed BnS in the west at this point, seeing how their greed is leaking and became visible.

In the end this game is funded by whales, but it was also destroyed by them.

[MarjoKun]

12 minutes ago, Ren36 said:

Though we weren´t on the same page at the beginning, that it would turn around and only last a few weeks is a pity, but in general I lost one more reason to come back to this forum. If everyone would be so fast on the uptake and actively deny in groups the money that ncsoft is craving for from the beginning, I can´t even say for sure if NCSoft wouldn´t have closed BnS in the west at this point, seeing how their greed is leaking and became visible.

In the end this game is funded by whales, but it was also destroyed by them.

Saying that "We can play because of whales, we should be happy because of that" is stupid af. There is bunch of games that have really fair business model (Path of Exile for example). BnS had really big opportunity to have a lot of players but they destroyed that because of:
1. Not listening community

2. Unbalanced gameplay + mixing pvp with pve

3. P2W elements

 

What if they would instead of focusing on item shop and how to milk more money, Focus on balancing game, listening community  and adding only outfits, pets, particles, and other visual shits which will make you vomit rainbow on f10 like PoE do? ITs not even a problem to test this out. Doesnt work and players quit? Alright then maybe lets milk whales only. 

 

Im playing since alpha test, I was a leader of one of the biggest guilds on start, I meet a lot of ppl and I know why they was leaving the game. 3 pointed things which I meant above.

Edited August 22, 2019 by MarjoKun

[Showta]

3 hours ago, Asuramon said:

Flipping tables over something as insignificant as unity....

Nothing was sneaky. Rng boxes and new F10 items are kept secret until release 90% of the time.

Badges? You had SEVERAL months to decide which spec you wanted to play. You knew exchange wasn't permanent. Wanted to play 2-3 specs at same time? Get 2 badges like everyone else.

Logged in specifically to tell you that you're wrong.

 

Yes it was sneaky. Or more like, they probably felt too "anxious" to deal with streaming that and just opted out of doing it entirely.

Which is no excuse and actually made things worse.

 

RNG boxes are always told about and shown to us via stream just about a week before they come out. I've been screenshotting streams for people who missed them for 2 years now. We always see the RNG boxes and everything new that comes to F10. If you think they don't, I'm inclined to say that you've never actually watched their streams.

 

The length of the badges being there isn't the problem, the problem is that they were supposed to give players plenty of warning time so that they could get their final use out of them/swap them back before it was time to settle into main spec. It's like a landlord telling you that you're abruptly evicted a week in advance vs 12 hours in advance. Obviously, you won't be ready in just 12 hours and chaos will ensue. This is the issue. Again, because you're a little unique, the problem is the lack of warning time.

[Ren36]

1 minute ago, MarjoKun said:

Saying that "We can play because of whales" is stupid af. There is bunch of games that have really fair business model (Path of Exile for example). BnS had really big opportunity to have a lot of players

That´s the thing, the amount NCWest received exceeds the visible effort they put into this game.
With this amount every employee can be paid for years to end, because intellectual property // the game can be just copy pasted into the next region by porting.
That the profit is declining doesn´t matter, they just have to cut off more employees that are responsible for irrelevant jobs, like advertisement, community manager & producer.
With the next patch the ones that matter will spend again.

[Dlacik]

I think that the whole thing they've written in that "Our Philosophy" paragraph was merely a dream. I think it's not completely fair to blame NCSoft for trying to make a profit with their product.

What we get is the result of the plague called "free 2 play". The market is pushing game publishers to go f2p because of the strong competition. If they won't go f2p they simple won't get enough players unless it's really popular brand. But even if they go f2p they still need to make enough money to pay the costs and make the profit. Because that's why they released the game in the first place.

But the cosmetics only won't motivate ppl to spend as much money as items that will actually push you through game progress or give you some kind of advantage. So you have to make a choice: 
You can cut the costs of development and/or costs of running resulting in trash game. Or you can sell the "p2w" items to make more money.


Actually I think there are much bigger problems than P2W items.
1) The players can't trust what NCWest say about game changes.
 - They've said that we would be able to exchange the white orbs, hm/cs resets and demon spirit stones for their new counterparts when they were going to remove them. Many players lost a lot of those because they've trusted what they said. The compensation for that mistake was a mockery because it was nowhere near the value of what ppl lost.
 - They've promise that they would make sure to give players more than enough time in advance if they were going to remove badge exchane (see the quote below). Yet they only announced it in patch notes right before the patch. I don't mind the removal of exchange itself just the fact that they haven't let players know in time.

 

On 5. 3. 2019 at 11:05 AM, Youmukon said:

Hi,

Just wanted to give a quick update regarding a question that was asked a lot: "how long will we be able to exchange our badges/accessories". I got the confirmation that there's no time limit for now. The NPC present at Mushin Tower enabling you to switch your Mystic/Soul Badges will remain there indefinitely, no time limit as well regarding accessories meaning that you do not have to rush to Stage 10 Legendary / Awakened before the update hits. We will make sure to give players more than enough time in advance if we were to change the above.

If you have any more question regarding Mystic/Soul Badges or Accessories specialisation change don't hesitate to ask in this thread. Thanks!

 

2) They treat some bugs as "working as intended".
For example the new AP achievement for hard mode DST, BC, WC dungs. The previous HM achievements counted runs retroactively and even this one counted the DST runs retroactively. Only BC/WC counter was bugged. Yet they annoucned that the achievement was not supposed to be retroactive.

[Merlin DE]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb Dlacik:

2) They treat some bugs as "working as intended".
For example the new AP achievement for hard mode DST, BC, WC dungs. The previous HM achievements counted runs retroactively and even this one counted the DST runs retroactively. Only BC/WC counter was bugged. Yet they annoucned that the achievement was not supposed to be retroactive.

Did they? Wonder why i didnt get those archivments when they where introduced cause i had much mor then 50 runs in each of those dungeons.

 

[RagingPhenix]

2 hours ago, Ren36 said:

That´s the thing, the amount NCWest received exceeds the visible effort they put into this game.
With this amount every employee can be paid for years to end, because intellectual property // the game can be just copy pasted into the next region by porting.
That the profit is declining doesn´t matter, they just have to cut off more employees that are responsible for irrelevant jobs, like advertisement, community manager & producer.
With the next patch the ones that matter will spend again.

 

2 hours ago, Dlacik said:

I think that the whole thing they've written in that "Our Philosophy" paragraph was merely a dream. I think it's not completely fair to blame NCSoft for trying to make a profit with their product.

What we get is the result of the plague called "free 2 play". The market is pushing game publishers to go f2p because of the strong competition. If they won't go f2p they simple won't get enough players unless it's really popular brand. But even if they go f2p they still need to make enough money to pay the costs and make the profit. Because that's why they released the game in the first place.

But the cosmetics only won't motivate ppl to spend as much money as items that will actually push you through game progress or give you some kind of advantage. So you have to make a choice: 
You can cut the costs of development and/or costs of running resulting in trash game. Or you can sell the "p2w" items to make more money.


Actually I think there are much bigger problems than P2W items.
1) The players can't trust what NCWest say about game changes.
 - They've said that we would be able to exchange the white orbs, hm/cs resets and demon spirit stones for their new counterparts when they were going to remove them. Many players lost a lot of those because they've trusted what they said. The compensation for that mistake was a mockery because it was nowhere near the value of what ppl lost.
 - They've promise that they would make sure to give players more than enough time in advance if they were going to remove badge exchane (see the quote below). Yet they only announced it in patch notes right before the patch. I don't mind the removal of exchange itself just the fact that they haven't let players know in time.

 

 

2) They treat some bugs as "working as intended".
For example the new AP achievement for hard mode DST, BC, WC dungs. The previous HM achievements counted runs retroactively and even this one counted the DST runs retroactively. Only BC/WC counter was bugged. Yet they annoucned that the achievement was not supposed to be retroactive.

NCWest's investment in this game is very minor, from day 1 the reason why bugs take so long to get fixed is because there are no devs. Any debugging that needs a dev to look into needs to be sent back to Korea. This is the reason why the friends list is still bugged, the Korean devs haven't been able to reproduce it and as such have no clue how to fix it.

BTW the friends list is a server side bug, every time F2 bugs that's a server side bug, the bugged weekly rewards was a server side bug... Consider this, everyone has been dealing with ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ping, random DC's and freezes not cause the servers are ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ but because we only have a bunch of technicians who can't fix anything not hardware related. If they really cared or had a brain they would of fly in a couple of Devs from KR to fix our issues.
Going with that train of thought it's possible that they did in fact want to do that but KR refused to lend NCWest some of their Devs, or that making the devs travel wasn't feasible;
In that case the game's issues would lie with KR's refusal to lend us devs or Immigration.
 

[Woah64]

This move they made, sneaking in p2w stuff made me rally sad....
I farm feathers like every other player to buy stones...to buy blue stones from CS.....

And i see they sell now purple in f10? That is slap in face for f2p players who work on their gear and stuff.....

Not to mention u can buy gem powder,and octa gems, and scarlet flowers from last raid????
Like wtf last raid was almost new release and its still endgame raid, now u sell mats in f10???
is that normal?

 

This i big slap in face, and im very tilted...

I was hoping ue4 will come and more player will join, but now i can see lots of ppl leaving before that....

INSTED OF FINDING WAY YO MILK MONEY FROM F10, BETTER MAKE US NEW EVENTS!

DONT GIVE US SAME EVENTS EVERY FEW MONTHS!

 

ALSO GIVE US SOME NORMAL PLACE TO FARM MATS, NOT SOMETHING THAT IS DEPENDING OF YOUR GEAR....

LIKE PPL WITH 1.8-1.9K CAN FARM FAST (MSP) GIVE US SOMETHING THAT ALL PLAYERS CAN FARM AT SAME LEVEL...

SO NO ONE WILL ASK HIGH AP, AND ALL CAN PLAY TOGHETHER....

[Chupakabra]

Quit the game 9 months ago, thanks to overwhelming p2w, but plan to return... Just for the story. Had toster-like computer, now almost done with decent hardware to play on ultra-settings, and going to play in single-player mode and after that quit it for good.

What ncsoft did to such a great game like it was years ago is a crime.

[Miggy Miggs]

i stop doing pve cause if i remember quite well that there was a time when u could get weapon and be close to whales in dps now so much contribute to dps ...i dont see why i would want to upgrade anything not being able to catch up to those 6 mil dpsers ...dps went out the window quite fast i remember when i was doing 260 k dps and whales doing like 400 up to 800 i felt like i was achieving something then all that went downhill . talisment is a def stat item but when u coming close to max it it becomes a pve item . thats another dps u locked from.