Blade & Soul is amazing

I love the game. The success it has in Asia, here’s a recent exmaple, shows that it is both able to be competetive, fun to watch & just a beautiful MMO that most likely tingles a lot of people’s Spider-Senses when it comes to that genre.

In no regard am I trying to “bash” the game or being a pessimistic c**t about it. But, as good friends do aswell, one should be allowed to point out minor-major points of flaw or room to grow.

To me & my experience with MMO’s:
I am NOT a game developer, nor do I know how to program anything. I couldn’t “write” a calculator. So I actually do not know how much effort each “change” I’m going to suggest – it is not my goal to push through those changes and make them happen immediately, my main focus lies on letting the Dev’s know (especially those here in NA/EU) and have an awesome and active discussion about this!

Quick, in a chronological order what MMO’s I’ve played: Flyff (actually ashamed to even BNS Gold), Metin, World of Warcraft (Since Burning Crusade Release), Guild Wars 2, Neverwinter, Wild Star, Continent of the Ninth Seal

To my procedure on critizicing points below:
Generally speaking, I’d not only like this thread, I’m typing with my keyboard right meow, to be logical, structured, comprehensible and constructive; I’d also like the upcoming (hopefully) discussion about this to be sprinkled with said attributes.

A review of Blade & Soul

The part where you talked about skills being spammy? I dont feel that. I love the skill system in BnS!! Unlike other mmos where there are shit tons on skills that your 12 button razor naga cant even be assigned to all the skills , in BnS there are 4 basic skills that combo off into so many different skills and I love how when you perform one skill it opens up other skills for the same hot keys. The combat is so fluid and combos are so damn fun to execute Blade & Soul Gold. Never before in an mmo I have performed so many combos that feel satisfying even on a low stupid mob. And this translates so easily into pvp as exactly the same unlike other mmo’s where they change the stats or some skills cant be used in pvp.

Also about not having gears in game. I actually much prefer BnS system of wearing costumes for armor. This was I am not forced to wear class specific ugly armor or settle for the best in slot armor for stats but look ugly.Their system of wearing any costumes that you like for any class helps you with making your char look good no matter what and its satisfying. They even have head gear , back items , etc to add more customization. Instead of gears we have bopae or tables which are your main stats for combat ( which i think you should have mentioned more about in the video) so basically there are 8 bopaes that are pretty much like collecting different pieces of armor for your class.

And yes I do agree the crafting system is easy but then again i personally prefer the crafting system. Its easy and you just order stuff from npc which i find much better than gathering and farming for stuff your self makes the game even more grindy and boring.

Other than that I do agree with some of the bad things like grindy quests and same old kill 10 of that or collect 10 of that etc etc. Also BnS has A LOT OF invisible walls that block you from getting Blade & Soul Items. Sometimes it just doesnt make sense. They give you the skills to fly glide and run on stuff but cant cross simple terrain at times.

But at the end of the day , the combat is fun even when you are fighting simple mobs. I like how you can fly and move fast in this game and there are no need for mounts. The art style is impressive and game looks amazing even though it was developed in 2009. I am excited to play the NA version and experience the game in english and having a player base that speaks english will make combat and pve even more fun.

How do you feel about Arena PvP of Blade & Soul

Arena PvP:
Arena supports both group play and 1v1, both are ranked with an ELO-style point system. At the start of each map, you can get a glimpse of the opponent and have a few seconds to change your spec according to their class (or their playstyle if you recognize them with Blade & Soul Gold). Then it’s a duel in an open area with no line of sight obstructions or walls to run up on. There are PvP-specific consumables but you can only use a certain amount(1) each match. You gain PvP currencies and there are also daily quests for participating in arena.

Equalized-Gear in ranked PvP: Gear in arena is supposed to get equalized before end of 2015, so it’ll come for NA eventually.

eSport. As of 2015, CH and KR are the biggest contenders and they have international matches. TW and JP have local tournaments but they are not competing with CH and KR. It’s partly because TW and JP are not on the same patch schedule as the older regions, while CH and KR are very close.

Mushin Tower:
Many PvP players actually love the Mushin Tower even though it’s PvE content. It is a series of solo-only end game instances where you face stronger enemies as you climb the tower. Unlike regular PvE instances, the encounters in Mushin Tower can get very intense and require almost as much timing and reflex as PvP.

NCSoft can not add news to Blade & Soul

They are in charge of only one of the things you have mentioned. They cannot add brand new things to the game, only cycle things that are currently not available in the game, but have been created by NCSoft Korea, such as outfits and content that is available in other regions. This is evidenced by how they updated the AH and added “Character Info” which was not available in any other region. They added a link to a website which you can access in-game, but they could not add a whole new system where you inspect people in game, they have to use a website.

E: Everything else, I agree with, though. Should be able to scale UI elements individually, skills should be explained and worded better, quests should be share-able, bidding should be through-out the whole instance, not just that section and the floors shouldn’t randomly stop you from sprinting. Sadly, I do not think NCSoft NA can fix most of these issues. Only forward them to NCSoft Korea and hope they get fixed in a patch, which they can push to us.

If you thought that little doors were annoying, just wait till you’re trying to jump up clearly open paths to get through places quickly to Buy Blade And Soul Gold, and you hit zone walls which make you fall in and outta zones instead of taking you foward on your path. It really makes the whole freedom of movement thing feel alot less free.

I have some pretty huge performance issues and I have no idea why. Rolling with a geforce 970, i5 4590, 8GB ram and windows 10; depending on what’s on screen I play most of the time at like 30-40 FPS with everything set to the 4 preset and 1920*1080 res. (Not even the low performance mode gets me a steady 60 FPS so obviously something is fucked up.)

It honestly seems entirely random. I posted in a thread a couple weeks ago with someone having performance issues. I think it’s either a graphics driver issue or OS issue because I can run the game on my windows 7, i3 3.4 GHz, 32gb Corsair vengence, and GTX 650 with 45-60 fps while streaming with very little fluctuation in framerate. There were a few people in that thread with FAR better specs than me who were having trouble running the game at a steady framerate without streaming.

Hongmoon Weapon of Blade & Soul

You only want to upgrade your Hongmoon Weapon, which you’ll get from your class quest in Bamboo Village. This weapon can be upgraded up to Level 45. The same is true for your Hongmoon Amulette, Ring and Earring, which you will also get from your class quest.

When you are at Croaker Lagoon (North of Jadestone Village, around Level 16 or 17), kill Ploggle King Giganura a few times. Using a few spare keys (but not all), open his loot boxes until you have a Ruby with 50-60 Additional Damage on Attack, and an Amethyst with 30-50 Life Leech or 30-50 Instant HP Recovery on Crit. They will help you greatly up to level 45.

Keep your Soul Shield up to date, but only replace parts if the stats are better. You will get the first set from the Wheel at Foshi Pyres (level 8). This set can be replaced at level 20, either with the Viridian Stone Soul Shield, bought with Viridian Stones from the Merchant in Jadestone Village (more HP), or with the Heroic Set dropped in Blackram Narrows (more Block and slightly more Crit at Blade-Soul). The next upgrade should be at level 28 with a choice of a Cinderlands Set, bought with Cinderlands Valor Stones in Yehara’s Mirage, or the Golden Deva Set from the wheel at Crescent Spring.
Here’s a great guide for which soul shields to use at which levels if you’re more interested.

More tips from /u/Terrormeep , link to comment:
Once you get to Jadestone do all of the profession gathering quests. They’re extremely easy to do and give a whopping 1000 exp each, which lets you skip more time-consuming quests early on (such as the first hub in Cinderlands).

Once you get your desired professions, try to make as many crafting orders as you can reasonably afford. It’s low-maintenance and saves you some time endgame as there’s no way of decreasing the time required to level it.

You can use macros to work around the mouse input delay and rebind the ss evade to a single key.

From /u/Brysonds , link to comment:
One very important one to add is that doing achievements increase character stats with Blade And Soul Gold. For instance, doing Blackram dungeon 10 times gives your character 400 HP.

Another is once you are level 15+ winning ten 1v1 PvP arena matches gives you 70 defense.

He’s working on a list atm. I’d like to add though that from what I remember you can only choose one of these stats increases, you can choose which one from the Achievements tab.

The teams priority of Blade & Soul

Please come back and share your opinion on release and if you will have the same issues as now i will give you credits. Till then, everyone can talk like they are an expert on the field and know the exact insight of the teams work and priorities. The issues you guys talk here (forum generally) are a small fraction that needs to be fixed, there are way more in the background that players have no clue about because are no visible in game directly, because what players test out is what they need to test just a part of the issues.

You are in no measure to criticize teams priority since you have no clue of priority schedule in lack of insight knowledge on what issues needs to be fix in order the fix the last which without, cannot be fixed with BNS Gold. Everyone is suddenly an expert around here and think that what they say is “how it is”, not “how i assume”. Not everything you read on WIKIPEDIA is 100% legit or 100% complete, honey.

Yes, they are testing Network and server stability now. That’s why we test several times, to check to solution and search another if did not work .

(it’s funny that NCsoft manager answer to some questions and makes topics in B&S Dojo but not official forum :derpface: )

Talk to you on release. Till then you can continue with bashing with your only 3-4 sentences you know about this whole process.

I have been in several closed betas, many of them for NCSoft, including – City of Villains, Going Rogue, Aion, Tabula Rasa, and Wildstar, to name a few. Posting issues on the forums is all well and good, but when several posts including those from a previous closed beta test are saying the same thing and there is not one dev response, a support ticket might not be a bad thing. It is a performance problem and the first pinned thread in the Closed Beta 2 Known Issues topic is “How to submit a ticket for performance issues”. I have searched the forums and the faqs for Blade And Soul Power leveling. The only thing I found, in the faq, was to unplug my cable from my router and go directly into my modem… can’t do that as I will lose my TV and Phone.. that is not an option.

Whether it has been active in other countries for 1 year, 3, years, or 12 doesn’t matter if the new infrastructure for this country is not working. If they didn’t want to know about performance problems, they wouldn’t have told you how to report them.

Blade & Soul quest and NPC text is being ‘sanitized’

Notice how all of these SJW types happen to be in localization? Can’t outright ban the game so lets just sanitize it to BNS Gold hell. This is censorship plain and simple. The localizers have decide to police for you instead of allowing you to decide for yourself. All you are doing is stealing some clothes for a perv.

An unpopular opinion: When it comes back around to being right-wing chucklefucks again, the vast majority of right-wingers involved with GG will be suspiciously fucking silent, just like how an absolute fuckton of people fighting the right’s moralizing in years past have shut the fuck up or outright starting pushing authoritarian bullshit for the left.

I have no doubt that even in this sub there’s a lot of folks who think authoritarian media control is fine and dandy if it pushes their values and beliefs. This is not particularly discouraging to me; useful tools are useful.

I’m implying that we have been fighting the religious right for a hell of a lot longer than GG has been a thing. Libertarians are libertarians because we are for individualism, which is anathema to identity politics in any form. You are accusing us of supporting an ideology that we explicitly reject just because you support it. That is projection, period.

Yep and this is happening right now in manga fan scanlation groups as well. There’s a group who’s “sanitizing” Tokyo Ghoul:re because they don’t agree with the original authors decision on a female character who was dressing as a man. They wanted this to be a trans character but turns out she just had a phobia of being leered at by men and even clarifies she doesn’t have the heart of a man. Tumblr of course went nuts crying and accusing Ishida of “transphobia”, “trans erasure” and “triviliazing transgender people”.

So how does this tie back to the scanlation group? Well they took it upon themselves to purposely alter the script in order to keep this character “trans” when she’s clearly not. They also removed some “misogynistic” stuff they disagreed with Blade And Soul Power leveling. Yeah it’s free scanlations but it just goes to show their mentality and what they will do when given the power to do so whether hobbyist or professional. They don’t deserve these jobs if they aren’t going to maintain the integrity of the work.

Blade & Soul: Name Reservation

Blade and Soul is a Korean martial arts MMO that utilizes fighting as its predominant source of leveling up. Different from other MMOs focused on magic and fantasy, Blade and Soul will be releasing in North America and Europe on January 19th. Players can get a head start, however, and begin reserving their in-game character names today.

Name Reservation for Disciple and Master Founder’s Pack owners begins January 11, 2016 at 7pm CET for the Blade and Soul’s European servers, and 6pm PST for North American servers with Blade And Soul Gold. When Name Reservation begins you’ll be allowed to log in, and servers for your region will be available to create characters on. Please be aware of which region you’re logging in to from the drop down on the launcher.

If you participated in any of the Closed Beta weekends, you’ll need to reinstall the game before Name Reservation. While it’s not necessary to uninstall any previous clients, it is recommended. You can download the Blade & Soul launch client here.

If you own a Disciple Founder’s Pack you’ll be able to log in, select a server, and create one (1) character in your region. The character will remain there until you’re able to begin playing at Head Start on January 15. If you own a Master Founder’s pack you’ll be able to create two (2) characters, and reserve two character names. Be aware that Initiate Founder’s Pack owners will not be able to reserve a character name, but it is still possible to upgrade to a Disciple or Master pack.

Your character name isn’t guaranteed to be available as other players will be registering names at the same time. It’s recommended to try reserving your character name as soon as possible. Knowing which server you want to play on, your race and class, as well as character appearance options can all help reduce the time needed to secure a name. Also be aware that your Disciple or Master Founder’s Packs come with either one or two Character Alteration Vouchers that you can use to change the appearance of your character later once Head Start begins.

You only have a few days left to Buy Blade And Soul Gold and get in on Name Reservation and Head Start, get a stockpile of in-game NCoin currency, and receive rare boosts and bonuses—as well as costumes and weapon looks that will never be available again.

Blade & Soul: f2p will have to limit something

That really comes down to business model, f2p will have to limit something, else there’s no incentive to pay them any money. They chose not to sell stat increases in cash shop compared to other regions so some additional features had to become limited. Limiting wardrobe is basically inventory limitation, one of best things to limit imo. (See PoE)

I really dislike many aspects of f2p though. There will be ways to pay for an advantage, be it through gifting in cash shop, or like you say, gold exchange. Personally I think it’s very important for BnS in particular to be F2P, the artstyle and age scares a lot of people away. Had they put a price tag on for just trying the game as well, I don’t think many would’ve touched Blade & Soul Items. It’s really a shame. Blade & Soul, even with all it’s downsides, is so amazingly revolutionary and fun once you master the combat. It deserves so much more recognition than it has. It really is the first mmorpg I played where combat doesn’t feel like an annoyance you can live with due to the rest of the game making up for it. Instead it’s actually one of the greatest things with the game.

Its a balancing act to be sure as to what gets restricted and what doesn’t, but locking the wardrobe just feels like too strong of a push into VIP. VIP should be a nice option, but currently feels like a requirement, which isn’t a great feeling because then you’re looking at a monthly fee plus microtransactions.

I think they would make plenty of money just selling the cosmetics at their existing price point. If I didn’t have to worry about not having inventory space to actually keep them, I’d have bought some myself, but as a general rule i don’t allow myself to spend more than $15/mo in f2p titles, so that not an option.

The only thing I can think of is if they’re concerned because there’s a set number of costumes, and they have no direct development control to make more, so they’re trying to go for a recurring income option, but thats always going to effectively be a sub however its presented. That’s typically ok, as long as its either very optional, or cheap to offset having a storefront as well.

I like B&S as a game. I like the art style and I like the overall feel, but NCSoft, while not as bad as most by a long shot, still has an iffy rep with over extending its hand with this stuff at Blade-Soul. I’m all for people supporting the games they play, but people should be doing so because they want to do that, not because they feel like they’re being twisted into it. Sell your founders packs and cosmetics and such, just don’t compromise gameplay and fairness for profit (p2w) and be respectful with your offerings. That’s all I really ask for personally, but it so rarely happens.

Black Desert over Blade & Soul

I prefer Black Desert over Blade & Soul. While the B&S alpha was alright, I can see the P2W features a mile away and while most people are complacent with that, it’s too much for me.

I’d rather B2P like with Guild Wars 2 and not face things like bots and P2W shops while still being able to further support the game with a cash shop for cosmetics.

Also these two games are wholly different from each other. Other than both of them being MMORPGs, there’s really not a lot to compare. Blade & Soul is largely based around it’s dungeons where Black Desert doesn’t have any and instead opts for world bosses. There’s also a lot of other things to do in Black Desert to gain EXP (fishing, farming crops, merchant trading, ect) that B&S simply doesn’t have.

When it comes down to it it’s really all about what you want personally in a game because no one will force you to put up with something you don’t enjoy

You can pay as much as you want in BnS but i will still own your sorry butts with free account in arena if you two are so noob that you think those things are pay to win.

On the contrary, BDO is a huge farming game and open world pvp is the ultimate end game. If i am willing to get more Blade & Soul Items, i can pay farmers to farm for me and since main pvp are gear based and skill cap is lower than BnS, i will literally own you with my bought gear. This is why BnS arena has equalized gear so gear doesn’t matter in serious competition.

If you think buy to play stop this… easily get around with. A guild can be a farming guild who ally with a pvp guild for protection. Then the farmers can easily feed items to the buyers. Even if the admins find out, how do they verify it? Its not like theme park games where if you sell a high price thing for 1coin, its obviously suspicious. Here guilds ally and make concessions all the time similar to Eve online.