(03-31-2014, 10:31 PM)Naunet Wrote: Blade & Soul loses for the simple fact of being NCSoft and eastern and thus doomed to grind and inevitable F2P shittiness. I learned from TERA that no amount of beautiful graphics or even fun combat can counter the insidious nature of Korean f2p models.Okay.
What?
Besides the fact that Blade & Soul is not the same game as TERA (or Aion for that matter), even Tera is an extremely tame game relative to old stalwarts like Lineage or, gods forbid, Lineage II (which, I should remind you, are still two of the most popular MMOs on the world stage to this day). We're talking years to hit the level cap in those games. Years of regular play. Tera has some shittiness in its model but most of the shittiness comes in the form of straight-up RNG bullshit, which is something every MMO ever made has in spades - just look at the Atma grind in FFXIV for a very recent example.
Speaking of Blade & Soul specifically, you're talking out of your ass and making an assumption based purely on the location the game was made at (lolwut?). For the record, Blade & Soul NEVER reaches the level of sheer RNG-related asshattery a game like TERA or Aion does. At most you'll get several weapon evo fails at level cap, but those utterly pale in comparison to the absurdity of weapon enchanting in the aforementioned games.
The thing is, Team Bloodlust is remarkably smart about their approach in this - regular weapon leveling cannot fail, except at two break points: the "breakthrough" going from weapon level 5 -> 6, and the "fusion" when going from one tier of weapon to the next. This limits your exposure to the constant and unending "fail fail fail PASS fail fail fail fail fail fail fail PASS" grind you see in other games. They also don't consume your materials on failure and instead merely require you to grind more gold, mitigating the frustration element considerably. I still remember trying to enchant weapons in Aion where you go through tons of evolution stones before finally hitting +10 on a single weapon - and that's assuming you don't also buy the powder to increase the chances of success (shudder).
I'm playing Blade & Soul right now and I don't see any of this "grind" or "inevitable F2P shittiness" you seem so certain is coming - and for that matter, this is the Chinese version, with Tencent as the publisher. Certainly, my progress slows down considerably once when I reach "endgame" status, but that goes for all themepark MMOs - it's an intrinsic element of the genre, and until the genre itself changes that's just something you're going to have to accept and deal with when it comes.
(04-01-2014, 08:30 AM)Ignacius Wrote: I'm waiting for the game so unforgiving that there are no more healers or tanks, just players. Â And you don't get to refill your health until after the fight is over. Â There's just no economy in HP in the trinity system forcing you to adapt and make hard choices, sometimes putting you at a severe disadvantage. Â If anything, games these days refill my HP so quickly that I don't even notice it.Funny that you should say this, because this is pretty much how Blade & Soul works. There are no healers. There are healing potions but those have 30-second (special potions) or 60-second (normal potions) cooldowns, so you can't rely on them except to help you recover from an occasional mistake. There are lifesteal gems but those only account for a very insignificant fraction of your HP pool. There are lifesteal attacks but they're either really weak or have really long cooldowns like the healing pots.
I quite enjoy it. Actually, it all feels remarkably intuitive. You're responsible for your own well-being, and while your teammates can help mitigate for you with some support abilities and CC effects, there's no situation in the game's later dungeons where you can just sit there, take aggro, and let the healers cover the rest. You have to move, block, dodge, or otherwise avoid taking damage if you want to survive.
Also, the fact that everyone can revive others is something I sincerely miss when playing other games now. As it is, in FFXIV, when the healer goes down, you're fucked, pure and simple. Letting other players get the healer back up would do a lot to mitigate that harsh dependency.
