I think this update might've killed a lot of the playerbase.

[Uldrum]

Can we please revert or rework A LOT of this patch to somehow save the game?

 

Lots of players are jumping ship and getting rid of their accounts.

[Fury Moor]

No surprise if true, since:

-new npc doesn't work and you kinda forced to do stage 6

-gold needed for full upgrades is insane

-soul boost kinda ruined since the dungeons needed are not in f8 (but I'd say dungeon loot better now)

-village gives some gold, but feels like a drop in an ocean

All of these might make some leave..

[Uldrum]

7 minutes ago, Fury Moor said:

No surprise if true, since:

-new npc doesn't work and you kinda forced to do stage 6

-gold needed for full upgrades is insane

-soul boost kinda ruined since the dungeons needed are not in f8 (but I'd say dungeon loot better now)

-village gives some gold, but feels like a drop in an ocean

All of these might make some leave..

Not to mention all the write RnG decision around the new dungeon.. making it such a pain

 

"Class blind" loot should've stayed gone

Edited May 13, 2022 by Uldrum

[DieBaumchen]

44 minutes ago, Uldrum said:

Lots of players are jumping ship and getting rid of their accounts.

Completely understandable. Imagine how I felt when I spent 750 Sacred Vials and 125 Sacred Oils to get 1(!) upgrade from +12 to +13.
Meanwhile a mate one tapped it from 12 to 13 for 14 Sacred Vials (3% chance).
That's a difference of 736 Sacred Vials and 125 Sacred Oils.

The RNG span is too big, the pity system a joke (it didn't even fill 100%).

We are grinding a dungeon with RNG drops for RNG class accessories with RNG stats with RNG upgrade chances that use RNG materials.

[Shiro]

I'm someone who has been playing this game since day 1. Actually even from headstart and Closed Beta. I have never seen something even close to as ridiculous as this patch in this whole game's lifespan.

 

I made another thread about my issues with this patch:

https://forums.bladeandsoul.com/topic/253568-upcoming-upgrade-costs-are-absolutely-insane/

 

Sure, there were a lot of shitstorm patches in the past. Talisman release patch, needing 350 pet packs (due to multiple tiers) had a LOT of cries, but that's baby numbers compared to this patch, which needs literally THOUSANDS of sacred oils to +20, not to mention another thousand to reroll the rng stats at 5/10/15/20, and the stat gains are not minor, they're crazy too. 3k debuff damage best roll at +15 (1% chance because rng is fun?) is insanely broken. AND THIS IS JUST THE SOUL

 

First time since release I actually didn't farm the new dungeon at all, simply because I'm almost sure I am gonna quit. Unless something changes. But I really doubt it at this point.

Edited May 13, 2022 by Shiro

[FriendlyFox]

13 minutes ago, Shiro said:

First time since release I actually didn't farm the new dungeon at all

And you're not alone, normally EU had ~150k lobby numbers on Thursday 6 PM.
Now it's Friday 10 PM and EU just passed 40k lobby numbers.

Sure people aren't botting Aerodrome anymore, but it's still an insane decline, especially since it's 1 day after a new dungeon release.

Edited May 13, 2022 by FriendlyFox

[Green Storm]

Hi everyone,

 

I've forwarded all the community feedback, including bugs, to our teams, and we’re discussing it with the development team to figure out the next steps.

 

Thanks.

[SaoChan]

As someone who played the game in the beginning but stopped due to life and returned not so long ago, I am again tempted to stop. I welcomed the idea of soulboost which helped me quickly catch up with the server standard and at least put me on a playable level only to find out that after this patch I can't do anything. The dps is too low for HM dungeons so no one wants to carry a pleb like me. The second issue is Den of ancients where I have same issue with the last boss.
This patch literally stopped my path to catch up with others and put me on hold.

So can you increase the number of daily quests, so there is at least chance to do current F8 dungeons instead of HM or Ancients? Right now you put 9 daily quests, which 2 are pvp which you already managed to kill. So those 2 quests are out of questions. This leaves us with necessity to finish the rest but.... as I experience myself... no one is going to take me to HM dungeon with HM 16 and story/soul boost equip.

[Shadowfury]

16 hours ago, Green Storm said:

Hi everyone,

 

I've forwarded all the community feedback, including bugs, to our teams, and we’re discussing it with the development team to figure out the next steps.

 

Thanks.

 

Your efforts are appreciated, they really are. Unfortunately, it's too late for that. NCWest ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ up enormously this time around. Biggest ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤-up in the history of the game, actually. BnS in the west is simply not going to recover from this. I don't even know what's more baffling: the fact that we got nerfed gold income compared to KR while at the same time the NOT-nerfed gold costs from KR (and for anyone who doesn't know, gold value in KR is literally 10 times lower than here due to inflation), or the fact NCSoft/NCWest thought this patch was a good idea and greenlighted it.

[DenialOfTruth]

15 hours ago, Shadowfury said:

 

Your efforts are appreciated, they really are. Unfortunately, it's too late for that. NCWest ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ up enormously this time around. Biggest ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤-up in the history of the game, actually. BnS in the west is simply not going to recover from this. I don't even know what's more baffling: the fact that we got nerfed gold income compared to KR while at the same time the NOT-nerfed gold costs from KR (and for anyone who doesn't know, gold value in KR is literally 10 times lower than here due to inflation), or the fact NCSoft/NCWest  thought this patch was a good idea and greenlighted it.

BNS makes 5.5 million USD (and about 10% of that is NA/EU) before operational costs every quarter. I don't think Green Storm's job security is in danger any time soon, and besides that...why would he be moved to a game that is never going to release in our region?

 

I don't disagree with your points, this patch is an immense mess and damaging to the game, but...it's not going anywhere any time soon despite the best efforts of NCSoft to do otherwise.

[Budda Slaps]

I agreed, this patch literally screw NA population not to mention they nerf classes like Summoner,BladeMaster,ForceMaster and didn't even give them some sort of buff while in KR summoner wind spec (Swarm) got buff they needed and the focus issue they had fix, yet all this patch note did was screw our only dps option. Archer literally didn't even get the buff they supposed to get either. Like a lot of stuff implemented was pretty terrible. not to mention dps requierment is much worse than poharan. this game has A LOT of POTENTION to be one of the top games, but man you guys in NC soft need to start listening to the player base and log in and interact with your community more. you be surprised how much stuff you can learn about the issue with the game just by interacting.  i just hope the nerf they did to some classes who weren't even needed a nerf to begin with are reverted or at least buff them like they needed to begin. 

[thewhoracle]

The last event no pet packs, no sacred Vials.

This event, no pet packs no sacred vials.

This patch everyone complaining that they spent 100s of pet packs or sacred vials and not NOTHING.

Let's start off by saying that NO Classes need to be nerfed but here we are.   Several needs buffs to lesser the gap between them, but they got nothing or they got nerfed.

Unless we are operating on the pure korea build, we are playing a different game than they are, they can't be changing things that wreck gameplay or RNG, then give us absolutely no method of making back the difference.  For example, in korea, True Poharan Ss drop as a selectable box, not in 3 separate boxes of RNG.  That we need to RNG, to get the proper box, then RNG to get the right Soul Shield from the box, then RNG on the stats on the soul shield.  300 runs later, and  I am still staring at my 7 piece SS with crappy stats.

NCSOFT needs to realize you can't give us half an update.  

NCsoft needs to stop altering drop rates of important items to make it take longer to get the necessary bis items.

 

And when things help the players though not intentionally.  NCSOFT needs to just let it happen.  No one was hurt by the pink and black gem factory, the players that were helped the most were not the whales.  Those guys already have thier dyads.  

7/7 quests is dumb, when there is no reward, should never have been 7/7

Why did it take so long to fix den of the ancients and that other one.  Unacceptable.  All characters should have been granted full completion for those dungeons if they made it to a certain point of soul boost where they would be trying to do it everyday.

This doesnt feel like a Billion dollar company.   At this point, I am considering ignoring that new game NCSOFT comes out with because I don't trust them as a company anymore.  

[Amane]

10 hours ago, DenialOfTruth said:

BNS makes 5.5 million USD (and about 10% of that is NA/EU) before operational costs every quarter. I don't think Green Storm's job security is in danger any time soon, and besides that...why would he be moved to a game that is never going to release in our region?

 

I don't disagree with your points, this patch is an immense mess and damaging to the game, but...it's not going anywhere any time soon despite the best efforts of NCSoft to do otherwise.

 

Sorry but 10% is a big cope. Roughly 2-3%... but even profits in Korea are declining right now. 

[FriendlyFox]

According to their earnings releases (https://kr.ncsoft.com/en/ir/irArchive/earningsRelease.do) which got released yesterday Blade & Soul dropped by 25% compared to 4Q 2021 and it doesn't surprise me in the least.
It's now at 5.2m € (or 7,024,840,905 Korean Won) across all regions with the lions share still being in Korean and Asian market (the earnings release doesn't split regions for each game, but EU/NA have 7.4% of Korea in total and last time I checked KR had ~15x more players in the rankings compared to EU).

But as a player I can fully understand the big drop in numbers (and 25% is a big drop). I can't imagine that even Koreans love more and more RNG systems being piled on top of each. New players don't get any explanations of any of the new systems.
And with the latest patch this game went more into a lottery kind of direction. It doesn't feel like you as a player accomplished something, it only feels like you were lucky when an upgrade succeeded. And even worse it feels like you wasted so much time when an upgrade fails.

I can understand that they wanted to add systems to keep players invested for a longer duration (since you previously just maxed stuff and then waited for new content), but as a player I'm vehemently against the way they did it.
Players (at least me) want to feel like I accomplished something,  I want to feel like I get better the more I play. But with the current patch you just can't. A successful upgrade doesn't feel like an accomplishment, it feels like "finally done with this ****".
I want to grind and see my stats slowly grow higher, I don't want to grind for feeling like I wasted the last 7 months for literally nothing.

The current patch is a dungeon where you farm RNG drops with RNG accessories with RNG stats with an RNG upgrade system which require RNG materials for even more RNG stats you can reroll with yet another RNG system (oh and did I mention RNG gild stones you can put into it with yet another RNG upgrade for RNG stats?).

Edited May 14, 2022 by FriendlyFox

[Wolfengel]

Nice outfit in the cacher event.

 

But, at this moment, no.

Otherwise I would have bought it 4x for my Female Lyn.

Thanks for helping me to save my money.

[Ylkrad]

16 hours ago, Green Storm said:

Hi everyone,

 

I've forwarded all the community feedback, including bugs, to our teams, and we’re discussing it with the development team to figure out the next steps.

 

Thanks.

Thanks for this, hopefully would allow people to swap the class specific requirements on weapon and accessory, the rest is not too bad since rerolling is not a big investment on a gildstone since the commitment is +3. Mythical upgrade chances, if everything was properly obtainable without grinding hours for a single vial or petpack, etc. then some of the cost's would be fine, or even a higher pity timer amount given on a failed upgrade. If the accessory or weapon we're tradeable until you equip, this also would be fine since that would move the economy around and not give someone a compound fodder on the 1st accessory drop. Or something less painful, letting AD/SUB accessory equip gildstone so at least that part is progression.

[EnithD]

15 hours ago, Green Storm said:

Hi everyone,

 

I've forwarded all the community feedback, including bugs, to our teams, and we’re discussing it with the development team to figure out the next steps.

 

Thanks.

 

I do not and cannot understand why and how several problems exist in our region:

 

 

1) Game design for EU/NA servers

 

This was explained in a video i cant find, but video games are made from a cycle of "challenge" and "reward". You do something challenging, you get rewarded for it, and you feel good.

In the case of BnS this cycle goes as: you grind dungeons or pvp(in the past) or dailies, you get rewarded gold and material, you use these rewards to upgrade your items, and unlock new dungeon in the old system/higher floors in new system and this feels good.

Currently this cycle is completely ruined because rewards are extremely low to upgrade anything at all, and upgrading anything at all is non existing because instead of upgrade you can "attempt" to upgrade, and fail way much more than you succeed.

 

For rewards, for some reason all of our income is far lower than KR server while our upgrade costs are the same, and by income i am referring to everything, gold, sacred oils, pet packs, sterling scales (KR have this in their weekly while we can only get them from f10 with real money). We get a patch KR got 5 months after them, and for some reason some people in NC put in an extra effort to reduce our income while doing no adjustment to the upgrade attempt costs.

 

For upgrading, west hates RNG, this is an undeniably fact and knowing this, NC kept NA/EU servers with less RNG until recently. If making a western version of the game with less RNG was too hard, why extra efforts put into game to make it more RNG for us? (referring to unity stones having an extra middle tier before the best tier for us that KR server doesnt have, for the latest soul shield drops from chaos supply chain it is possible to pick which number of soul shield you want in KR server but we dont have it, there are more but i forgot).

 

 

2) Response speed and response result of NC to bugs and problems in EU/NA

 

Best example right now is the gold problem, gold problem is discussed in this froum in mid February heavily, Green Storm responded to it late March saying its looked into, and we got Kaebi Village in mid May. During this 3 months, soul arena, demonsbane rankings, f10 got gold boxes, premium parts of battle pass and master pass got boxes, and these are thought to be a temporary fix. Soul arena rewarded gold to top 20 people of each class only, while rewarding nothing to the rest of the leaderboard, demonsbane rankings in my case rewarded 200g in total per week only for being in top 100, and f10/battle pass/master pass gold boxes don't really matter because currency exchange existed in game anyways, if people wanted to buy gold with real money they were able to do that since mid 2016. We explained with numbers in detail how we need so much more gold income to properly attempt any upgrades, after all those explanations how could anyone in NC think that these temporary solutions make any sense?

 

Regarding the main gold income solution which is the Kaebi village, from the time the problem first discussed here (mid Feb) to the time its implemented (mid May) 3 months passed, and as a result the solution NC came up is to give something that already exists in KR but with reduced rewards while our upgrade attempt costs remains the same. Did NC spent 3 months only to discuss how much to nerf the rewards of Kaebi Village for our region? If the solution was something copy pasted from KR anyways, wouldn't it be easier to just give it 3 months ago with no nerf? It would save NC from the 3 month long discussion, and it would give us a solution to the gold problem 3 months earlier with better rewards.

 

Regarding other bugs, problem and solutions, a bug that comes to our region had existed in KR 5 months ago when they got the same patch we got, but for them this bug patched the next week, even so we get an update for our region with the exact same bug anyways and unlike KR this bug cant be patched next week here and remains for months, why? Why something like this even happen? How can it even happen? Why not KR send the update with the bug already patched out? Why the bug in here cant be patched a week later? When KR complained about gold income they got the Kaebi Village 1 week later, why do we have to wait 3 months for a Kaebi that its rewards nerfed severely?

 

 

3) Vision or purpose of NC

 

 

I don't understand the vision of NC. The changes that are brought to our region benefit no one, neither players or NC.

 

For player side game and upgrading is frustrating than ever, seeing ourselves fail to upgrade an item after countless attempts is not fun, and due to the low gold and material incomes we can attempt to upgrade very rarely which makes it even worse. 

 

For NC's side, which is income, paying real money for the game makes less sense than ever now because normally when someone pays for something, they would expect a return from it, with all the RNG upgrade attempt systems you can end up wasting all the money you spent, and for the mtyhical upgrades you can even end up with a worse item than you started to upgrade with. And lowering the rewards of everything from the game barely pushes anyone to spend more real money on the game but push much more people to either stop spending real money to game or straight up stop playing it.

 

How much of these are according to NC's vision? How much of these things that we hate are in the game because NC thinks and believes this is how a game should be? How hard it is to take feedbacks from these forums and change the game according to that? If its too much of a pain why dont we get exact same patches KR gets with exact same rewards?

 

 

Conclusion:

 

TERA is shutting down soon, and if you read the comments everyone says similar stuff: "it was a great game but it was poorly managed"

Same problem in BnS, for the past many updates more people get annoyed and frustrated at the game and leave, both player amount and income of NC from BnS go lower and lower, and eventually this game or west servers will shut down, but this does NOT have to happen, NC can prevent it, just take action, take our feedbacks and make the game more fun, if NC cant remove or reduce the RNG upgrades, even taking the laziest approach which is giving us the exact same KR patches with no change and no nerf to rewards would make the game much better than our current version. There are so many solutions and some take even less effort than it is currently put, BnS is a great game, i really hope NC or the team or whoever responsible starts to care real soon and start fixing things before the servers shut down.

 

[DenialOfTruth]

3 hours ago, Amane said:

 

Sorry but 10% is a big cope. Roughly 2-3%... but even profits in Korea are declining right now. 

Not sure how my post is a cope in any capacity, but if it was 2-3% it would have been shut down by now. It must be higher then that for our region. Regardless, I do not see BNS going anywhere for at least a year.

[SugarAndSpices]

57 minutes ago, EnithD said:

i really hope NC or the team or whoever responsible starts to care real soon and start fixing things before the servers shut down.

 

Extremely optimistic, it won't happen so don't waste your time waiting, they have been proving it for years, why do they still believe?

[Ylkrad]

Will take alot more than this to shut down bns. enjoy the game for what it is, report on bugs or gameplay elements in a constructive manner, things should change, and have been changing under new community manager's.

[Fynn58]

Talk to who .... "SUPPORT" ? according to them they can't do anything because they aren't allowed to; all they say is go to Forum.  My opinion of the Forum as for use by the DEVs and Corporation that runs BnS is that all it is for is FILE 13. FILE 13 basically you gather all issues, problems , suggestions into 1 place then forget about them so the Powers that Be never have to deal with them. I truly want to know has any issue that the people who play BnS has ever been dealt with by the Devs or the Corporation to anyones'  satisfaction?  Have they ever responded at all with anything real?  This Last Patch nearly crippled the game in NA and maybe EU, SA ... I don't know about those severs.  But i do know if they keep going they way they are BnS won't survive.

[metadune]

With SB being broken, it killed daily trains. SB is such a great idea and really helped to support keeping the game going in this lack of different content drought (like besides new dungeons and solo runs, we need raids and open world type content.)

 

I really hope the devs prioritize and quickly fix the issues and not take like longer then a  week to do it. They should just push back the patch to make sure the currently systems aren't broken at the very least.

[DenialOfTruth]

As long as the game profits exceed their operational costs (which they do or it would have been shut down already), it is likely to stay around. For how long this is true remains to be seen, but if we see another 25% dip in profits for second quarter I'd be inclined then to believe the days are numbered. Keep in mind we don't know how much it actually costs them to operate BNS as there isn't a breakdown available for it, but it probably ain't much based on AWS costs for what they need and a very small staff working on the game.

Edited May 15, 2022 by NaceryDWU
Quote removed

[Amane]

8 hours ago, metadune said:

With SB being broken, it killed daily trains. SB is such a great idea and really helped to support keeping the game going in this lack of different content drought (like besides new dungeons and solo runs, we need raids and open world type content.)

 

I really hope the devs prioritize and quickly fix the issues and not take like longer then a  week to do it. They should just push back the patch to make sure the currently systems aren't broken at the very least.

 

It's sent by korean devs over in Korea. They don't care at all. Any player would've noticed at this point as on how long it took to fix the Den entrance and missing Soul boost items. How are people this blind... 

 

5 hours ago, DenialOfTruth said:

As long as the game profits exceed their operational costs (which they do or it would have been shut down already), it is likely to stay around. For how long this is true remains to be seen, but if we see another 25% dip in profits for second quarter I'd be inclined then to believe the days are numbered. Keep in mind we don't know how much it actually costs them to operate BNS as there isn't a breakdown available for it, but it probably ain't much based on AWS costs for what they need and a very small staff working on the game.

 

Okay, fair point... but even if that is the case, the game is in such a bad state, is it even worth playing anymore? Tbf, and if profits keep dropping, they will care less and less and less... (I mean, recent patch actually showed that they don't care anyway.. so we're probably at that point already.)

 

What this game needs right now is a massive overhaul. No more updates until all crucial issues are fixed... but the likelyhood of this happening is beyond zero percent. I expect this sadly to become even more of a mess as they keep NA/EU changes around but copy & paste KR updates 1 by 1 while making certain stuff worse. At this point, they should make everything like KR to not break more stuff every single patch. 

Right now, this game is very poorly managed. We had issues for years with performance and the old engine, but this right here is a new low point. 

[DyoxEvo]

This patch has very, very bad problems, it was not a good idea to put daily challenge like that, if it is a player that just started to play, or an alternative character, not only you have to do Koldrak everyday, solo instance, and if you want to get seven dailies done on Soul Boost, you have to do PvP quests, which is not good, I was going to complete the Soul Boost on 7 characters on the start of the new patch, now I am not going to, next Soul Boost it is I guess.

To add to the Soul Boost, on the Stage 2 quests, it is impossible to complete the Aerodrome level quests, sure, I did have that completed, most players had  that completed as well I suppose, but those that did not have it done yet, cannot complete it.

This new accessories have a reinforcement mechanic on them, which is nice, but if I am not mistaken on the Korean region Skystealer accessories had them too, for some reason in our region it is not there.

The instances from Sandstorm Temple to Thornwind Cavern are not on cross-server, are not in Guide (Ctrl + J), and those same instances are needed to complete Soul Boost, or get materials such as scales, I am pretty sure a substanciable percentage of the players are confused by this, or think the instances are gone, I do not know how this did not got any mention on the website, considering it is a very important thing.

Regarding the new instance, Nykarri Hall of Trials, maybe this is simply something on my end but the weapons do not drop at all, based on the Korean region, or any other region that has the instance on the game, there was supposed to be a vendor to buy accessories or the weapon with the essence of the respective items, it's not working.

Regarding the new mythical soul and pet aura, it is quite a mess to upgrade this, not only you need a large quantity of sacred oil/sacred vial or pet pod/pet pack, but those weekly sacred vials/pet packs were removed from recent events, including the last one, this taking into an account the problem that one try barely increases the Reinforcement progress, and you need a large amount of them, how did you think (ncsoft) this was a good idea, mentally ill or something?

And speaking of events, the rewards from the dragon express tab are terrible, the reward from the kaebi village instance is not bad, but the ones in dragon express are terrible.

Not only it does not have weekly sacred vials or pet packs, like I mention above, the anima  are account limited, which is terrible, you cannot even put it on alternative characters if you wanted to, it does not have any xp charms, not even outfits, even if it was outfits from previous events, not even that, no weapon illusion, it does not even make a full page and 50% of the items are account limited and to top it off, it has a Fortune Potion for 1 Kaebi Coin, really funny huh you degenerate.

 

Thank you

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by DyoxEvo