Ancient System is unhealthy

[Jizumi]

So,

 

The Support told me to create a topic and collect community feedback if, in my opinion, something in the game need some changes. So they can read us and adjust what players like and don't like to make a better game togheter. 

And i wanted to talk about the Ancient System, because i hate it. And i didn't find a single player yet who think this system is good.

 

Don't misunderstand me, free stats on many items is cool, but let me go ahead.

 

 

 

First, i think that the failure rate and the way we collect Fusion Stones don't fit;

- Create a system that (for real) don't allow players to reach the max level (because that's what it is, some ppl did the maths about this system, others created a simulator      with the real ratios, you just can't reach max level, and all items slots will become able to go Ancient, that's absurd) will just bring frustration.

- The fact that we can fail, but above that, you can downgrade your items level is pretty bad in the way it is made. You spend time to collect components and money, then u lose stats, lose components and gain frustration. I know many players that stopped playing actively the game because they don't understand why in-game time spent should be something else than benefit.

- The Fusion Stones are not farmable. And no, the recent fact that we can buy 3/day in afk farm area is not what we can call farmable considering their cost and the amount we need. The best option to collect them are 6v6Battlegrounds ladders, but i'll talk about it too. The way Ancient System is made requires so many stones that we won't have enough time in an entire life (really) to reach decent level on a single item, 99% people don't try to go above +11 or +12 (when they're lucky enough to reach it).
 

For this first point, my proposals are the following:

- Allow us to collect more Fusion Stones in a repeatable way, so we could collect dozens of them every week.

And added to this, one of the following two

- Change the failure rate, take the actual upgrade path, and decrease the levels we lose when we fail upgrading by one. Means we couldn't downgrade our items until we reach +12, and don't make possible to lose more than 1 level after that. 

or

- Increase the success rate ALOT, because for now, ratings make that we average have more chances to be stuck under a level that is under the half of the max level (that is impossible to reach).

 

U'll still have a frustrating system that gives stupid low chances to reach max level, but more balanced and less unhealthy.

 

 

 

Second, i told i'll talk about the Fusion Stones in Battlegrounds.

So we have here the real way to collect Fusion Stones, but it's ladder based, so higher players are in the ladder, more Stones they recieve. And when u're not sub90, u don't even get stones. 

I think that it's not considering the fact that some players don't want to play PvP contents and there's no viable way to get the same amount of Stones. And in case u forgot, first item that recieved Ancient levels was the PvE weapon, other items that recieved Ancient levels next don't give anything else than PvE attack power until u reach +11.

And my personnal opinion is, make an RNG upgrading system for pvp content was the worst idea, why would RNG have influence on stats players will have in a pvp content?

 

I really think the entire system is a mess, but here are my proposals,

- You could separate PvE Stones and PvP Stones for items that are associated to them, so people could just do contents they are interested in.

and

- Give Fusion Stones on many other ladders, and further in the ladder, like sub150 or sub200, so more people could collect it, gearup and progress. If the game is ladder based, why would top ladders keep the monopoly of optimization? 

 

And i personnaly think u should rework the ancient system for PvP items and remove RNG from it.

In 6v6 Battlegrounds, players should only count on their skills and their stats, so why would it be possible to have more stats than someone else provided by luck?

 

 

 

I really think there is something to do with this, as i said, for now, i never met a player who is happy about the ancient system, that's definetely the worst upgrading system implanted in the game.

I'm sure other players had some ideas to improve it and make it more enjoyable, so please read them and do something, because they are probably more than 9 players out of 10 that really hate this system, and you don't hear them, so you're gonna give us more and more items with Ancient levels as "new content", and most of us don't want it.

 

 

 

Jizu

[TearsRabies]

Totally agree on that one.

The way fusion stones are acquired with pvp ladders is reinforcing people frustration in pvp, which is already high considering all the cheats that are used in this game.

So people who don't like pvp are forced into doing pvp to have a good pve gear, just as people that don't like pve are forced into doing pve to have latest pvp gear. Congratz, the two sides are unhappy.

 

You could say that fusion stones are farmable in conquest mode. Previous season was Naryu Sanctum bugged NPC season, we had no reward. And conquest mode is supposed to be a hard content isn't it? So this is locking unmaxed people, again.

 

RNG is fine when it is on top of other things, like trove or rng boxes, that's just speeding up. This system is purely based on RNG. This is not what we want. If we wanted RNG, we would go for lottery tickets.

 

[And by the way, please, change Nova Core so that the middle point is automatically owned by the team with the most kills at 2:30 so that we stop having dumb 6v6 15min fights in the middle of the map. That is laggy, unbalanced and boring...]

 

Please add more ways, farmable ways, to get fusion stones. I mean, non pvp ways. It takes TOO MUCH fusion stones to upgrade everything, even to +11. Especially with the first lvl needing 50 stones. (And the failures downgrading the item.)

 

Prawl.

[GenericNick]

I don't think Ancient system is even close to being The most unhealthy upgrade mechanic in BNS.

Remember, past half a year or so forced like 500 sacred oils for basic non-rng upgrades on us.

Any reasonable human being should consider +11 as a cap, and if you have access to rank reward stones it's doable with time and no real P2W.

That said...

Yes, there should absolutely be a reliable non-6v6 related way to acquire them at a reasonable pace, that shouldn't even be a discussion.

[LaVersus]

Well while I agree that the failing rate is somewhat frustrating I have to say that they are farmable after all trough Challengemode  where 1 per kill is rewarded and stacks of 5 will drop fairly common

[Hioot]

it is really needed some big changes for this downgrade system. Atleast downgrade should be start after 12 or 15 cause otherwise imposible to reach +20 many ppl lucky ones not even try +13. 

 

Just need some changes and fix this downgrade system or must be never downgraded just only fail cause its allready so expensive no need to downgrade items.

 

Plus need more farmable places for this fusion stones.

[Jizumi]

1 hour ago, GenericNick said:

I don't think Ancient system is even close to being The most unhealthy upgrade mechanic in BNS.

Remember, past half a year or so forced like 500 sacred oils for basic non-rng upgrades on us.

Any reasonable human being should consider +11 as a cap, and if you have access to rank reward stones it's doable with time and no real P2W.

That said...

Yes, there should absolutely be a reliable non-6v6 related way to acquire them at a reasonable pace, that shouldn't even be a discussion.

 

So if +11 has to be considered as a cap, levels above are a bait, making players try impossible things and lose mats for nothing -> unhealthy

 

-----------

 

1 hour ago, LaVersus said:

Well while I agree that the failing rate is somewhat frustrating I have to say that they are farmable after all trough Challengemode  where 1 per kill is rewarded and stacks of 5 will drop fairly common

 

Considering that we need 6 characters doing weekly quests to do a single Conquest mode run, and also considering that we still waiting compensation for the last Naryu's Sanctum season where the quest npc disappeared so we couldn't generate Stones this way.

And considering the fact 5 Stones packs are rng based loot on content you cannot run endlessely for free.

I think we don't have the same reading of the word "farmable". ^^ 

[campclan2]

NEWSFLASH: They don't care. Never have and never will. They run this game their way and their way only. 

[Jizumi]

15 hours ago, campclan2 said:

NEWSFLASH: They don't care. Never have and never will. They run this game their way and their way only. 

 

I don't know friend, maybe u're right, or maybe they just don't recieve real feedbacks, and when someone try to bring constructive ideas, most of players don't really care so there's no visibility and no height in the balance.

Why would they change anything if a single dude like me complain? But maybe if 10k told them something is wrong they will consider a rework.

 

But u're maybe right 😧

[ImoutoMaster]

17 hours ago, Jizumi said:

Why would they change anything if a single dude like me complain? But maybe if 10k told them something is wrong they will consider a rework.

We dont even have 10k players left in this game. From the past we know the only times they do something in this game is when people discontinue their Premium Membership on mass. For example the fiasko we had shortly after Archer got released.

 

Their Management is $$$ > Players which is proven time and time again.

 

Proofs we have for it:

Support does things for high spending players which you wont be able to get from them as F2P. (Gear Transfer, Free HM coins......)

Bans for cheating are not permanent for high spending people and if they are they get unbanned after some days. (A certain assasin for example)

When alot of people canceled their Memebership the isse of to many dailys got fixed back when archer got live.

[luzt]

Agreed with the OP

It took me till yesterday to get 3 items to Mythical level since it was released without pvp'ing and I even bought 25 Fusion stones from the Cash shop.

I am auto-farming Primweald every night and when I'm at work and I havent started upgrading all the items to decent levels yet..

Please change the system or add several new ways of obtaining fusion stones!

Edited February 12, 2021 by luzt

[FeralStripes]

Tera also used an +awakening weapon/accessory system that had similar RNG chance too fail on upgrades.

 

I suggest most players skip Blade & Soul's  "Ancient System", it is designed in a way to trap new players & is a massive gold sink. Playing Blade & Soul as a "F2P" you have to be smart with your gold, for example: I never recommend players upgrading their gems because NC will give free gems from events.ect The unity system is also another gold sink because you have a chance to RNG fail transmuting from blue to purple unity stones...

[Kicsiduda]

The ancient system is for whales only. It's too expensive, not worth it. As @FeralStripes said, you have to be smart with your gold, use it on other things and you'll gain more power.
In a F2P game, there have to be some P2W systems. Sadly, that's how it is. The game is free because it's running on players' money. There would be far fewer players if the game were P2P.
Maybe my mentality is wrong, but in a f2p game, never aim at the top. Don't grind for the top tier soul/heart/pet/talizman, the penultimate level is enough. Don't try to max out the secondary systems, like unity, compound and ancient, use them moderately.

But I'd be happy, if the ancient system was cheaper and had no rng.

[Tchikily]

On 2/13/2021 at 4:48 AM, FeralStripes said:

Tera also used an +awakening weapon/accessory system that had similar RNG chance too fail on upgrades.

 

I suggest most players skip Blade & Soul's  "Ancient System", it is designed in a way to trap new players & is a massive gold sink. Playing Blade & Soul as a "F2P" you have to be smart with your gold, for example: I never recommend players upgrading their gems because NC will give free gems from events.ect The unity system is also another gold sink because you have a chance to RNG fail transmuting from blue to purple unity stones...

 

Slightly off topic there, it's not about finding the most efficient way to spend your gold and/or your time and dodging 'traps', it's about raising a barrier against predatory elements in the game. NC systems were already pretty scammy until now with every release of new tiers for cashop items, but we never hit a spike like that before. Until then, you could hardly farm your way to the top, getting your items maybe 4 to 6 months after the top players, but a vial was still a vial, you'd get something for your efforts (even if it only accounts for 0.6%-ish of your next upgrade). Here the game pretty much spits in your face weeks after weeks and tries after tries, you actively spend hundreds of gold to (most likely) lose power, not to mention the abysmal quantity of fusion stones required. The cherry on top being that the ultimate super dupper max stage is mathematically unattainable in your lifespan no matter how big of a whale you are (at least until we get new cashop items that guarantee upgrades *wink* *wink*).

 

This kind of system was already present in other regions in one way or another, and we didn't get hit by it cause they used to understand that the western community would hate that. It'd be cool if the remains of this exact community could gather and remind them.