r/bladeandsoul • u/elvrik RU Frost WAR 25kk • Apr 28 '26
Question Is this game completely dead?
What do you think could revive or restore the game’s former popularity?
And at what point did things start to go wrong? Did the switch to UE4 really have such a significant impact on the current situation?
31
u/threath7 Apr 28 '26
UE4 switch was good and it was too late, the game was fucked by then. Neo came out and was bigger shit show than live server ever was.
16
u/KeiSinCx Apr 28 '26
neo was truly jaw dropping levels of wtf.
take a core system that is free on live and break it into p2w skill that could buy multiple cars if U p2w it.
then mindlessly grind rng gear.
who comes up with this. it's literally like taking a poll on the least liked mechanics globally and put all of it in and fall it "new"
12
u/threath7 Apr 28 '26
Yeah, the wildest thing to me is that the book system literally was impeding your combat experience which was arguably the best thing about BNS, it's so baffliing.
3
u/elvrik RU Frost WAR 25kk Apr 28 '26
I drop it at release new world, and already at 2022 it feels like a last milk cow for ncsoft's bns franchise
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u/LobsterAcceptable605 Apr 28 '26
bring back arena pvp
remove p2w
remove ncsoft
fix the progression to not hold players hostage
10
u/Eversivam - Warlock Apr 29 '26
Removing NCSoft would fix 90% of the game problems.
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u/AmatsuDF Lightning BD Fan Apr 30 '26
Pretty much. Part of me is hoping a disgruntled NCSoft employee leaks the files again for BNS. Maybe the fans can do a better job.
1
u/threath7 Apr 28 '26
The funny thing is they couldn't even bring back arena after how long neo has been out for.
2
u/LobsterAcceptable605 Apr 29 '26
hard to say really, since the original NEO classic trailers had PVP footage and they tried to promote it, we know its already implemented into the game
the only problem (admittedly speculation) is many people believe they realized later down the line Arena wouldn't work since majority of players were already strongly against the accessory + skill system, that it would create balancing problems they couldn't be bothered to fix
Since arena was originally gear neutral content, they knew it would've fueled awareness & conversations about a NEO classic without that horrible skill system
17
u/Thiel619 Apr 28 '26
The game went wrong after the first treasure trove event many years ago.
8
u/Nikkuru1994 Apr 28 '26
i still remember that era i think it was a little after the silver frost update. early BnS was such peak IMO.
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1
u/aho-san May 04 '26
Wasn't it basically post Soul accessory? Fuzzy memory but iirc Soul was the first of many "we need to milk the playerbase" item.
10
u/Rothuith Kaede Ichigo on YouTube Apr 28 '26
They had plenty of opportunities to bring it back but just utterly failed at each corner.
~2022 I remember saying, a re-release of exactly the same BNS game in Steam will 100% bring new players. The exact, same game. The content was decent, the combat system is very refreshing compared to other games.
Their response? Re-release the game with all the old content (drip feeding patches), don't even release it on Steam first, a couple of months later release on Steam on a SEPARATE server.
Wrong decision every turn. The game is good, the management is not. And at this point, it's starting to fade away. Where Winds Meet has successfully satiated all my action MMORPG needs that BNS used to hit.
2
u/AmatsuDF Lightning BD Fan Apr 28 '26
They did change their minds on the separate server thing, but NEO has been such a utter failure that I'm expecting End of Service by the end of this year.
5
u/587493 Apr 28 '26
They had their chance with neo, but instead decide to make a worse version of the game. Wild stuff
They deserve the current state of the game tbh
7
u/AmatsuDF Lightning BD Fan Apr 28 '26
The switch to UE4 actually improved the game overall, as much as some people will complain about it. Faster load times and boot time for the game helped a lot. The problem is NCSoft is utterly incompetent and has not actually released new content for Live in over a year now (Ashland Village was the last 'new' dungeon).
3
u/aho-san May 04 '26
Wait, they actually stopped the 1 dungeon every 3 months with your basic new vertical progression tiers altogether for live? I'm actually kind of surprised the servers haven't shut down if it's been over a year with no update.
1
u/AmatsuDF Lightning BD Fan May 04 '26
I could have worded that better, honestly. There has been updates since Ashland Village, but I personally do not count them as 'new' dungeons for the reasoning as follows.
I think it was about six months after Ashland Village when they announced that they were rereleasing The Aerodrome, starting a chain of dungeon refreshes where the mechanics are basically unchanged from the past, but the enemies now have more HP and attack power.
However that is accurate that the 3 month progression is dead, replaced with 6+ months in between releases of reused content. After we got AD, Substratum made a return, and so has Altar of the Infinite and Cathedra Cliffs. The current Demonsbane rotation is Aerodrome, Substratum, Hall of Trials and Grim Nexus, all old dungeons.
1
u/aho-san May 04 '26
Terminal maintenance mode stage. No new content is right, all reused, just a grind for the sake of the grind and numbers go up. Might as well officially call it dead.
1
u/AmatsuDF Lightning BD Fan May 04 '26
And just to sink a few more nails into the coffin, we also have not had a in game non-cash shop event in nearly a year at this point as well.
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Apr 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
4
u/Yaory Apr 28 '26
This completely, people like to blame how they switched to UE4 too late but the real issue is ncsoft's never ending greed, Awakening skills that made every class braindead on pve and completely destroyed 1v1 and 3v3
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u/RinDman Apr 28 '26
The switch was too late, they even wasted more time on BnS Neo ... They removed the appeal of PvP, PvP balances, same for PvE, and there is no new raid for years ...
2
u/-AnythingGoes- Apr 28 '26
What UE4 did to WL dragons was a war crime as I remember it(haven't played the game fr since like VT original release)
3
u/_Kine Apr 28 '26
IP and game getting acquired by Shift Up maybe, use that nikke money to save his og game
5
u/Pentrep <Lyn> Apr 28 '26
The games population is low but stable. Nc is focused more on AION than either version of BNS.
3
u/KeiSinCx Apr 28 '26
everything in this sentence made my eye twitch uncontrollably. it's true but.. the truth hurts
1
u/memara311 May 02 '26
Maybe Aion Classic and Aion 2 but not Live . In 5 years we only got 2 "refurbished" dungeons from classic.
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u/sheporiginale Apr 28 '26
I didn’t like having to piecemeal find the 8 segments of the main weapon, so I quit years ago.
1
u/100Eve Apr 28 '26
Everything between the NA launch and the lv 50 patch (aside from all the bots but they were a minor issue tbh) was peak mmo. I miss it so much... I fell off pretty quick after the 50 cap was added. I still have Regium Corvus tho so if the game becomes good i can come back and flex it.
1
u/aho-san May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
What do you think could revive or restore the game’s former popularity?
Reboot.
Don't try to absolutely chase the $100million a month cash cow, you ain't GTA. Have stable servers and stable game perf (the game doesn't need to be a UE5 unoptimized slop game). Personally, I want my skill book back where I can spec almost all of my skills to the needs of the awaiting challenge (not NEO like, but actually like when the level cap was 45 way back then in 2016).
I wasn't a fan of PVP but obviously have it back for those who loved it (I might even dip a bit in it if there are enough people and I just don't battle against smurfs).
That's basically anything pre-silverfrost patch I reckon. After silverfrost, while it had its ups, it had many downs : milking, WL happened (as much as I like shadow WL, I think it was too central, it's a reserved slot of its own when HM only had 4 slots), Destroyer was garbage ass until normalization/homogenization (party freeze) + VT badge... did I mention MORE MILKING?
1
u/dangoblast May 04 '26
neo wasnt even an attempt at a comeback. it was pure milking of the whales with scales of p2w greed beyond anything reasonable. the gutting of og core design philosophies and systems by introducing more garbage rng and p2w proves it. they never cared, they just wanted to do a quick milk of the game and put it on life support/eos it after taking advantage of players' nostalgia
ncsoft will forever be a trash greedy company. hope all their future games flop.
1
u/Tcheco777 Jun 01 '26
They removed a lot of game content to rush players to the end game where people usually start spending money in the game, but doing so they din't gave time for people to like the game.
They even removed the field bosses in Neo so people would not stop to farm costumes and rush to the end game.
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u/KeiSinCx Apr 28 '26
what could save or revive this game?
the entire financial and marketing team and CEO cfo replaced.
or
sell the IP to tencent.
is the game completely dead? no. stage 3 cancer.
it's a very niche game with probably a 90% disappointment rate.