[Patch Notes] Who can keep up any longer with this game?

[Ren36]

https://www.bladeandsoul.com/uk/news/storm-of-arrows-items-and-systems-preview/

 

- introduction of pet gems

- higher tier of unity stones and pet stages

 

I might as well ask, who even wants to keep up anymore? Because neither is needed for arena, nor pve, the only place it will imbalance is battleground. The thing that NCSoft said will try to fix with skill separation. Will be exciting to see, if bg balance was just meant to make wealthy players spend more money to gain the edge again.

[KlausFlouride]

Those two items have been discussed going back many months, so that's no surprise to anyone.

[Uldrum]

I'm Very suprised that people still care about BG's in this game, I haven't touched them for years and never understood why anyone enjoys going there.

 

I like to upgrade my stuff simply to see higher dps numbers in raids or to kill M'ao faster.

 

 

[iKickz]

I can't keep up. This is a good time to quit this game for any f2p player. 

[KzE]

3 hours ago, iKickz said:

I can't keep up. This is a good time to quit this game for any f2p player. 

Just start +10 alt on another account, problem solved :D

[FlCosmin]

This game is already became a Whale Bait to grab their money because as an F2P player is impossible to keep up with the new content unless you are a no lifer and have 10+alts and your job is to work at BnS Grind Simulator 2k19.

[lillvargen]

the only thing I pay for in this game is premium, if you don't want to grind then don't. I evolve my characters when I can not when others tell me I need to

[CookieDAce]

vor 4 Stunden schrieb FlCosmin:

This game is already became a Whale Bait to grab their money because as an F2P player is impossible to keep up with the new content unless you are a no lifer and have 10+alts and your job is to work at BnS Grind Simulator 2k19.

Nobody said you need to have max equip, just do your thing and progress as fast as you can. I am not rushing anything just continuing step by step and I am barely at max gear atm.

 

vor 11 Stunden schrieb Ren36:

https://www.bladeandsoul.com/uk/news/storm-of-arrows-items-and-systems-preview/

 

- introduction of pet gems

- higher tier of unity stones and pet stages

 

I might as well ask, who even wants to keep up anymore? Because neither is needed for arena, nor pve, the only place it will imbalance is battleground. The thing that NCSoft said will try to fix with skill separation. Will be exciting to see, if bg balance was just meant to make wealthy players spend more money to gain the edge again.

So for the new stuff comeing, I won't make a big deal out of it and continueing of doing my thing xD

[Ren36]

3 hours ago, CookieDAce said:

Nobody said you need to have max equip, just do your thing and progress as fast as you can. I am not rushing anything just continuing step by step and I am barely at max gear atm.

So for the new stuff comeing, I won't make a big deal out of it and continueing of doing my thing xD

That´s the problem to be honest. While NCSoft said to balance battleground through skill seperation, which can be considered a nerf and damage reduction for some classes, they added another way to compensate for the loss. To promote and make wealthy players pay more. Practices of which we can expect more in the near future. Such as psyches for gems/unity stones, psyches for pets, higher tiered pet gems and possible gear for pets, which can be expected to receive psyches too.
It won´t impose on pve, since the damage output is too high for any content, but the fast paced updates to catch up to Korea, which had 1-2years to assimilate to every patch is not feasible for EU.

[Ryunosuke Takahashi]

5 hours ago, Ren36 said:

That´s the problem to be honest. While NCSoft said to balance battleground through skill seperation, which can be considered a nerf and damage reduction for some classes, they added another way to compensate for the loss. To promote and make wealthy players pay more. Practices of which we can expect more in the near future. Such as psyches for gems/unity stones, psyches for pets, higher tiered pet gems and possible gear for pets, which can be expected to receive psyches too.
It won´t impose on pve, since the damage output is too high for any content, but the fast paced updates to catch up to Korea, which had 1-2years to assimilate to every patch is not feasible for EU.

Not really feasible to NA either for the most part but you can't have things both ways. A) we could play at a steady pace with updates here and there making this version of Blade and Soul stretched out for the timeline that KR had which this would result in less complaints about changes that we seem to get every month but would also make people unhappy because they watch new content going to KR including the new classes, 3rd specs etc. B) We stay the course we're on now and stay semi current with the content and just deal with the complaints since we have changes every month to systems that we aren't use to. Either way people will ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ one way or another. No one is ever just happy.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Kitsune Takahashi

[Ren36]

18 hours ago, Kitsune Takahashi said:

A) we could play at a steady pace with updates here and there making this version of Blade and Soul stretched out for the timeline that KR had which this would result in less complaints about changes that we seem to get every month but would also make people unhappy because they watch new content going to KR including the new classes

This will happen anyways once we caught up to Korea, but as of now too much is added within a short period of time, which makes it impossible for players to enjoy the competive mmo part, since they cannot catch up.

18 hours ago, Kitsune Takahashi said:

B) We stay the course we're on now and stay semi current with the content and just deal with the complaints since we have changes every month to systems that we aren't use to. Either way people will ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ one way or another. No one is ever just happy.

Complaints come up, because the players cannot even enjoy the current content, due to the lags, DCs and repetitive unchallenging dungeons. Just the same old events.

[Ryunosuke Takahashi]

30 minutes ago, Ren36 said:

This will happen anyways once we caught up to Korea, but as of now too much is added within a short period of time, which makes it impossible for players to enjoy the competive mmo part, since they cannot catch up.

Complaints come up, because the players cannot even enjoy the current content, due to the lags, DCs and repetitive unchallenging dungeons. Just the same old events.

That is why the updates really should of been spaced out more so players could catch up like how Korea was able to for the most part on their version.

Lag for the most part while I can only speak of my own internet and the NA server. I don't disconnect often in the last month maybe once. I'm on cable. I don't lag unless it is peak time in my area but the lag isn't very noticeable which means it isn't so much their servers but your net when it comes to lag. I always felt that the dungeons never should of been 'dumbed' down and why remove hard mode / merge the loot tables, it gave players like myself a reason to do hard mode for the minor challenge they offered. Lets face it all of the mechanics in the current dungeons / raids are far from challenging compared to other games.

Event wise, they really should have a team solely working on those which most companies do, but they cut down costs and time to fling them out every month by reusing events and just changing rewards which sorry NCSoft but that is just lazy. It doesn't attract new players and it makes the current players abuse glitches that they can to just speed through the stuff to get it over with like with the current Frozen Firing / Carnival Event. Personally, I feel to get newer events we need to cut them back to like every 2 months to give them time to work on them and to fix glitches / bugs and actually listen to players in order to give better rewards for effort / time involved that works for our version of the game not korea's timeline.

[Ren36]

On 11.9.2019 at 1:41 AM, Uldrum said:

I'm Very suprised that people still care about BG's in this game, I haven't touched them for years and never understood why anyone enjoys going there.

I like to upgrade my stuff simply to see higher dps numbers in raids or to kill M'ao faster.

2 hours ago, Kitsune Takahashi said:

That is why the updates really should of been spaced out more so players could catch up like how Korea was able to for the most part on their version.

Lag for the most part while I can only speak of my own internet and the NA server. I don't disconnect often in the last month maybe once. I'm on cable. I don't lag unless it is peak time in my area but the lag isn't very noticeable which means it isn't so much their servers but your net when it comes to lag. I always felt that the dungeons never should of been 'dumbed' down and why remove hard mode / merge the loot tables, it gave players like myself a reason to do hard mode for the minor challenge they offered. Lets face it all of the mechanics in the current dungeons / raids are far from challenging compared to other games.

While I say it won´t affect PVE and arena, it´s only for now.
The patch also included new higher tiered PVE weapon paths.
Competive wise not many will care, but for me MMO was either about competition or the time spend in challenging dungeons, but with the latest additions PVE content is killed with every upgrade, because the damage output and that one geared person can make all the difference to ignore every mechanic.
Unless you do high end raids, Blade & Soul has nothing to offer, aside from battleground ranking that becomes rigid with every patch.
There is just no thrill, because you´re able to tell who wins from the start. Watching it from the beginning as this game deterioated to this point, I cannot recommend anyone to pick it up and only hope for a change.

[Merlin DE]

Am 11.9.2019 um 16:39 schrieb Ren36:

That´s the problem to be honest. While NCSoft said to balance battleground through skill seperation, which can be considered a nerf and damage reduction for some classes, they added another way to compensate for the loss.

Well thats the big Problem. On one side they split DMG in PVE / PVP multiplier, on the other hand they sell Unity stones.

Unity stones can also give defencen and HP, the Unity rank also give HP. Now imagine you are avereage PVP geared and and meet someone with mas Unity rank and lot of Def / HP Unitystones while your PVP dmg is reduced. Good luck trying to kill him.

This just add even more advantage to BG for those who are perfect in creditcard anicance or sold their kidney to the chinees / russian mafia.

 

Am 11.9.2019 um 16:39 schrieb Ren36:

Such as psyches for gems/unity stones, psyches for pets, higher tiered pet gems and possible gear for pets, which can be expected to receive psyches too.

Korea get or already got the ancient weapon level some kinde of psyche with 20 levels that increases stats of the weapon and soul.  Anyway i dont find the stats at the moment, but when i remembr right, the last level will give you additional few 100AP and also a lot of Crit and Elementaldmg.

Of course you need oils to upgrade this weaponlevel and since this system is RNG where you can fail an upgrade and drop a few levels on a fail.

Ill guess we wont get the RNG-version but since the chances of a successfull update getteing more and more worse with every upgrade it will cost a hell of a lot oils when we get a save upgrade version.

Am 11.9.2019 um 16:39 schrieb Ren36:

but the fast paced updates to catch up to Korea, which had 1-2years to assimilate to every patch is not feasible for EU.

By now we are about 3-4 month behind korea. We had 2-3 years less time to gear up compared with korea.

And even Korea have a lot of RNG based upgrades they had way more oprotunities to farm gold and mats than we have.

vor 4 Stunden schrieb Ren36:

Complaints come up, because the players cannot even enjoy the current content, due to the lags, DCs and repetitive unchallenging dungeons. Just the same old events.

Yeah they made a few big mistakes in my opinnion:

1. Removing the old 4 men groups and introducing the hardmode / normalmode just ridicolous, we had to do desolate tomb in 4 men what was realy challanging and they they removed 4 men groups and our normal mode suddenly became the hardmode while the removed the mech in normal mode LoL

2. constantly nerving even quite new dungeons. It just took 4 month befor they removed the mech in TSM normalmode and the dungeon is just a bad joke. and now they want to introduce a third mode (easy) what the hell they want to nerf anyway, you can burst down every dungeon up to BC at least in NM and lower dungens even in HM.

The only challange are raids starting at TT, even VT is just a bad joke and if you didnt need at least 2 persons for BT boss 3 you could even solo BT

And overall boosting the dmg output to the sky that people kill MAO with 99.8 Mio HP in 2.5 - 5 seconds.

 

BnS once was an interesting challanging game with interesting dungeon mechs. Now its just a grindfest where the only interesting variety are TT and ET everything else is braindead hack n' slay bursting.

 

vor 4 Stunden schrieb Kitsune Takahashi:

That is why the updates really should of been spaced out more so players could catch up like how Korea was able to for the most part on their version.

Well catching up with Korea wouldnt be a problem, at least when they would adjust upgrade costs to the 2-3 year we had less time compared with korea.

 

 

[Ren36]

18 hours ago, Merlin DE said:

Korea get or already got the ancient weapon level some kinde of psyche with 20 levels that increases stats of the weapon and soul.  Anyway i dont find the stats at the moment, but when i remembr right, the last level will give you additional few 100AP and also a lot of Crit and Elementaldmg.

Of course you need oils to upgrade this weaponlevel and since this system is RNG where you can fail an upgrade and drop a few levels on a fail.

Ill guess we wont get the RNG-version but since the chances of a successfull update getteing more and more worse with every upgrade it will cost a hell of a lot oils when we get a save upgrade version.

Instead of just adding content without gear to normalize dps, give time for players to catch up and make dungeons challenging again, upgrade paths are forced to create gold and money sinks, which is one of the reasons content gets outdated so fast. Additionally initial upgrade costs are that ridiculous to force saved materials to be spend by wealthy players, until they get reduced to reasonable amounts for normal players, to make them spend again with the next trove.
While cost reduction is always kept to a point & upgrade stage that doesn´t threaten paying customers.
But this only works out if less paying players can enjoy the rest of the content. In BnS though you are forced to engage with every content to gather materials such as Moonstones from BG, Soulstones, MS crystals from PVP, and sacred orbs/crystals and elysians from PVE to progress your gear.
While you can buy some items from the market, you go bankrupt even as long term player, due to the decline in the playerbase and competitive players that go for arena and bg material prices are just that high.
In the end this causes a stopgap for many players, which they cannot progress past until 2-3 cost reductions or several dungeons nerfs follow. It´s to a point that we will get easy mode dungeons soon for players to safe time, but also be able to solo/duo everything. Instead of countering the main problems, such as unchallenging, gear discrepancy and the declining population they leave it up to time and how long these players can endure this kind of gameplay with UE4 as bait.

[Sarunghakan]

Actually, easy mode dungeons might be the solution, if worse comes to worse. I was originally scoffing at the idea of NCSOFT just increasing Cold Storage and Heaven's Mandate bosses with more HP for the sake of teamwork, and they didn't make it challenging as what you said. They just made them bullet sponges. Even though F8 is a usually no-go, there are players that don't involve themselves with guilds, clans, or at least able to.

[Merlin DE]

vor 19 Stunden schrieb Ren36:

In the end this causes a stopgap for many players, which they cannot progress past until 2-3 cost reductions or several dungeons nerfs follow.

But befor the cost reduction appears they lower gold and material income in the lower dungeons, therefore most players standing again for the same problem, Cheaper gearupgrades but less income and the vicious circle closes.

With the comming update we will have HM dungeons in daily rotation which will be a problem for a lot of players. Also Goldincome in Easymode will be reduced from what i saw.

So again less income for the majority of the playerbase. Again they didt the wrong thing, instead of making Hardmode more worthwhile they nerfed income of Easymode.

Seems like NC-Soft is extremly learning resistant, plain stupid or they want to kill the game on purpose.

vor 1 Stunde schrieb Sarunghakan:

Even though F8 is a usually no-go, there are players that don't involve themselves with guilds, clans, or at least able to.

You can do F8, even in HM but yeah its always a bit like playing russian roulette ;)

A guild dont help that much either, since most guilds just raid together, some even have so statig groups for Daily / HM but you have to be luckie to become either part of the raid or static group when you join a guild.

I have a great guild, i have no problem to get my tt gear, even on alts when i want, but only when someone is missing and there is a free spot. With my main i have a static raid with some people from random guilds.

So joining a guild is not realy the solution to get a static raid / dungeon / hardmode group. And with low / medium gear you have to find a guild that accept you in first place ;)

 

[Ren36]

8 hours ago, Sarunghakan said:

Actually, easy mode dungeons might be the solution, if worse comes to worse. I was originally scoffing at the idea of NCSOFT just increasing Cold Storage and Heaven's Mandate bosses with more HP for the sake of teamwork, and they didn't make it challenging as what you said. They just made them bullet sponges. Even though F8 is a usually no-go, there are players that don't involve themselves with guilds, clans, or at least able to.

 

6 hours ago, Merlin DE said:

But befor the cost reduction appears they lower gold and material income in the lower dungeons, therefore most players standing again for the same problem, Cheaper gearupgrades but less income and the vicious circle closes.

With the comming update we will have HM dungeons in daily rotation which will be a problem for a lot of players. Also Goldincome in Easymode will be reduced from what i saw.

So again less income for the majority of the playerbase. Again they didt the wrong thing, instead of making Hardmode more worthwhile they nerfed income of Easymode.

A guild dont help that much either, since most guilds just raid together, some even have so statig groups for Daily / HM but you have to be luckie to become either part of the raid or static group when you join a guild.I have a great guild, i have no problem to get my tt gear, even on alts when i want, but only when someone is missing and there is a free spot. With my main i have a static raid with some people from random guilds.So joining a guild is not realy the solution to get a static raid / dungeon / hardmode group. And with low / medium gear you have to find a guild that accept you in first place ;)

 

The question is do we play a singleplayer game or a MMO.
With the latest patches, the following will happen. Since the incentive to interact with others might as well be gone and with the social aspect being taken out, it will justify and further promote twinking to gear your main in a game where you´ll feel that you´re all alone.
While NCSoft will consider that they provided a solution, that we can still solo content regardless about the population.
Ultimately you won´t even know what you play for anymore, wasting away in dungeons for gear you will never have, unable to compete, accepting the circumstances, while further splitting the community, without meaningful and engaging content. BnS truly just became a husk.
Thinking that even the playerbase and their freelance programmers are capable of better decisions than a multimillion management department, that is not worth their pay.

[KzE]

21 minutes ago, Ren36 said:

 

The question is do we play a singleplayer game or a MMO.
With the latest patches, the following will happen. Since the incentive to interact with others might as well be gone and with the social aspect being taken out, it will justify and further promote twinking to gear your main in a game where you´ll feel that you´re all alone.
While NCSoft will consider that they provided a solution, that we can still solo content regardless about the population.
Ultimately you won´t even know what you play for anymore, wasting away in dungeons for gear you will never have, unable to compete, accepting the circumstances, while further splitting the community, without meaningful and engaging content. BnS truly just became a husk.
Thinking that even the playerbase and their freelance programmers are capable of better decisions than a multimillion management department, that is not worth their pay.

We will see after the patch. But if we will get even the nerfed materials from easy mode, i will delete this game. Pointless to play hours for 2 moonstone crystals.

[Ryunosuke Takahashi]

5 hours ago, KzE said:

We will see after the patch. But if we will get even the nerfed materials from easy mode, i will delete this game. Pointless to play hours for 2 moonstone crystals.

Run stuff on Hard Mode and profit? It doesn't take long to learn mechanics. Plenty of videos and guides.

[KzE]

6 hours ago, Kitsune Takahashi said:

Run stuff on Hard Mode and profit? It doesn't take long to learn mechanics. Plenty of videos and guides.

There will be only 4 hard modes, and i dont have gear even for the lowest.

[Ren36]

I can´t imagine these kinds of actions other than intended by NCSOFT.
Driving their players out might just be their means to close the servers for good with the least amount of players & complains in the west.
The game balance became just too rigid, while scaling the needed materials with every item.
When high geared players run out of party members, they´ll lose interest in waiting and start to mind their own business. Soloing everything they can to finish as fast as possible to log out and repeat everything the next day. Until everyone grows tired of waiting for better times.

[Ryunosuke Takahashi]

5 hours ago, KzE said:

There will be only 4 hard modes, and i dont have gear even for the lowest.

If you learnt the mechanics, you don't actually need much gear to run those, but then again you know how people are stuck on the whole lets burn it down so it doesn't take long so you are probably right...

[KzE]

14 minutes ago, Kitsune Takahashi said:

If you learnt the mechanics, you don't actually need much gear to run those, but then again you know how people are stuck on the whole lets burn it down so it doesn't take long so you are probably right...

Nobody will join your 1.4k party, except some alt, who will die on first attack. You cant join high AP parties. LFP is dead on HM.

And again, my progression doesnt require items from that dungeons.

[Ryunosuke Takahashi]

6 hours ago, KzE said:

Nobody will join your 1.4k party, except some alt, who will die on first attack. You cant join high AP parties. LFP is dead on HM.

And again, my progression doesnt require items from that dungeons.

Well again I refer to the whole make friends, get in a good clan comment. It can be done is my point as long as you know the mechanics. Most people still fail Normal Mode which honestly I don't really see why since the mechanics are so easy.