About B&S's pacing

[NorbertTheOpinionated]

I have to say the pacing of progression for this game is pretty bad. I want to offer some alternative ideas. Here is what I mean:

When I say progression I mean the rate of advancement of a character for a player who wants to play B&S. Consider the previous call to arms event. Let's consider several scenarios:

 

1) You want to make a new character, and apply the Call to Arms items to that character. Well the call to arms 18 hour cooldown box was once per account, so you would have to claim it on the new character, but then that also meant you had to accomplish all of the requirements to open the box each day on the new character. You could not do the tasks on a high level character, and then hand the rewards needed to open the boxes to the new character. Nope! You would have to level up that new character super quick, and then somehow manage to do all those tasks to gain the rewards to open the boxes stage 1-12. The problem with this is that you probably aren't powerful enough to accomplish the tasks to get the rewards to open the boxes unless your gear is already at least pretty close to what you are going to get out of the box anyway, which means you probably won't be able to do it with a freshly level 60 character, which means it isn't really good for new characters like NCsoft seems to want to advertise.

 

2) You want to claim the box on a character that has better gear than you will get out of the box: What would be the point of doing the event then? Most of the stuff is not able to be given to your weaker characters. It isn't tradable or account bound except a few things.

 

This means that the event is not for high end players AND it is not for new characters. Then... who is it for? Realistically, it is only for band of players who are not super high gear, and aren't new either. Wouldn't it be wise to design the event in such a way that is good for new players and high geared players too?

 

3) You have a character that is already max level, so you don't have to level it up, and it has "OK" gear but really not that good: Ok, yes. This event will be ok for you, but NOW, I want to talk about the game's pacing.

 

 

 

I participated in the last Call to Arms event. I had a character that fell into the appropriate place on the "bell curve" to get a minor upgrade from the event, but not crazy. Thus I was able to barely do the event, and ended up tossing most of the gear, which made me cry because I couldn't transfer that to even lower geared alts that could have used it. If I had claimed the box on a lower gear alt, even in hindsight, I can say with confidence that those characters of mine would not have been able to do the event. They simply didn't have the power, but they COULD have actually used all the gear that came out of the box, which puts you in this weird situation where the only characters that can barely scrape through the event still won't need probably half of the stuff you get from the 12 box stages. My character was able to use a few items as a moderate upgrade here and there.

 

After that, I continued playing Blade and Soul semi regularly until now. Now we have another Call to Arms Event. I looked at what it hands out. Now I only just now earned my Awakened Stage 3 Ring, Earring, Necklace, Bracelet, Belt and I WAS working on the gloves, which are stage 7 presently when I find out that this Call to Arms Event will be handing out Awakened Stage 1 versions of all the stuff I have spent the last 6 months earning, and am only now just getting there. I feel like I just ran up a mountain from the previous Call to Arms Event, only to have a bunch of people landing on the top 3 days later that took a helicopter. Why did I play NCsoft's game for the past 6 months? I could have just waited... and then had everything handed to me for minimal effort by participating in this event, and saved all that effort an 5400 gold, and a ton of resources. (Moonstone crystals, sacred crystals, Elysian crystals, etc.) I could have taken the Helicopter too, but no no! I played the game! Why did I do that? I was stupid!

 

Now ... think about what this teaches players. This teaches me... DON'T play B&S. Don't do it! Instead, just wait. Don't upgrade. Don't pay money. Don't try hard. Even if you do, NCsoft will spit in your eye, laugh at you, and hand out out a set of gear almost just as good as what you spent the last 6 months earning, and they will do this every 6 months, so there is no reason to actually play, or try, or earn. Instead... just wait, but you have to pay really close attention and make sure that you DO play B&S a ton during the upgrade events. If you miss them then... you miss them. Therefore, don't play the game... until NCsoft encourages it. THEN play the game a lot for a little while... then stop playing again. Just make sure you are here to play B&S a whole bunch around March-April, and Sept-Oct every year.

 

Now think about whether this is a good way to manage the game's advancement / pacing. Is it? It discourages alts. It discourages new players because if they see the opportunity and THEN make a character, it is already too late. They will miss it. It discourages old players because it shows that all their effort and gold and money to upgrade their characters is for nothing. They were fools! They should have just waited, and gotten the hand out welfare items! It also encourages people to NOT play the game except when events like these are running because it is a waste of effort compared to playing during the events where you can get 6 months worth of effort done in 1 month. Why play any other time?

 

But then, realistically, if you don't play B&S except 2 months a year, it will be very easy to miss one or 2 events, and fall too far behind to be able to accomplish the next event when it comes up, so you can never catch up? Therefore, even for the players that take the elevator at the right time... make sure you NEVER miss that elevator. You better be there for it. "You better play our VIDEO GAME when we tell you to instead of when you want to." Do you see a problem with this?

 

Is this the way NCsoft thinks players want to play? Keep up to date with the news and only play when NCsoft says it is time to? How is that what gamers want? I don't think it is for most of us!

 

Therefore, I said I wanted to offer some constructive criticism after explaining the problem: I think it would be better if a player could create a new character, level it up, get to max level, get on the dungeon treadmill, maybe all the way at the bottom... then do each dungeon maybe 10 times... get all the gear they need out of it, move on to the next dungeon. If each dungeon run takes 10 minutes on averages, 10 runs per dungeon is asking that they spend a little over an hour and a half in each dungeon. This keeps old content from being obsolete. Maybe make old dungeons solo-able. Work their way up the dungeon ladder. Get to the top. You COULD have the top become exponentially more difficult like it is now, or... just let people hit the cap, and then make a new character. I think it is important that rather than having these events that people can miss where it is feast or famine in terms of character advancement, it would be far better to have a smooth, steady, enjoyable climb that rewards effort consistently with a satisfying effort to reward ratio rather than effectively punishing consistent effort like the game does presently.

 

And NCsoft wonders, "Why doesn't anyone keep playing?" WHY DO YOU THINK!? You get a bunch of people to pay you money to upgrade or really try-hard and earn the gear. Then NCsoft laughs at them, spits in their face, and hands out comparable gear to people who have barely played for the last 6 months for comparably minimal effort just because they were in the right place at the right time.

 

Now... I am not suggesting that being able to catch up is bad. No no! It isn't bad. It is good, but the "WAY" NCsoft is going about it is bad. I am ok with stuff getting cheaper, as the new "cap" keeps getting raised. That part is ok, but the upgrade times shouldn't be done in limited-time bursts during events. It should be something you can do consistently, any time you want, rather than something you just have to keep your eye out for like a hawk, reading the B&S news for events like these so you don't miss it. The current way isn't that good. Just make it so that anyone who wants to come back can always come back and upgrade whenever they want, getting up to speed with the current players easily, quickly and cheaply because it is a linear or consistent difficulty curve rather than exponential.

 

If you REALLY want it to be exponential, at the very end (last top 2-6 dungeons) just so that people can't reasonably hit "hard cap" without paying a ton of money, then fine. Just understand that effectively means, "Current content is for paying customers only" though. That is the way the game is right now. That wouldn't be "terrible." The reason I say this is because, realistically, most players cannot reasonably grind hard enough to do current end game content without paying money to be powerful enough to do the top stuff. Thus, "current content is for paying customers only." To me, that particular aspect is not unacceptable. I understand that I can just wait, and those dungeons will be made easier, when new dungeons are stacked on top of them, and THEN I will be able to do those dungeons. I can wait.

 

Again, what you have right now, due to these call to arms events is basically teaching us, "Only play B&S during a call to arms event. Only have 1 character. Only play March-April, and September-October. Then quit again." Is that what you want to be teaching us? Understand that the behavior you encourage is the behavior you will get. Do you think I am going to keep playing after this next Call to Arms event after what NCsoft did to me after the previous one like I said in my story? Probably not! Why grind my way up? It is enormously inefficient in terms of gold, and time. Why not just quit for 6 months, come back in March-April, keep my eye on the news, and take the elevator when it is time? That is what I am going to do. NCsoft is encouraging me to stop playing their game except during certain times, which is exactly what I am going to do.

 

 

Edited September 22, 2020 by NorbertTheOpinionated