Sticky just following up with you guys...

I am a bit surprised that the devs of this game a few of them came from Aion and they made this game Faction vs Faction.... and that ruined Aion because servers were imbalanced and it eventually made people quit when one side was taking up all the territories simply because they had more people...
Even in Bless that faction lock is not 100% useful because people will just make placeholders until the other side is open and never play them...I don't want Bless to end up like Aion and have imbalanced servers....

Puremystic wrote:

I am a bit surprised that the devs of this game a few of them came from Aion and they made this game Faction vs Faction.... and that ruined Aion because servers were imbalanced and it eventually made people quit when one side was taking up all the territories simply because they had more people...
Even in Bless that faction lock is not 100% useful because people will just make placeholders until the other side is open and never play them...I don't want Bless to end up like Aion and have imbalanced servers....

Far i remember there are not only DEVs from Aion, but there are also more that comes from DAOC, L2 and Tera... it wont end like Aion, i'm sure

Bryan Fury wrote:

Puremystic wrote:

I am a bit surprised that the devs of this game a few of them came from Aion and they made this game Faction vs Faction.... and that ruined Aion because servers were imbalanced and it eventually made people quit when one side was taking up all the territories simply because they had more people...
Even in Bless that faction lock is not 100% useful because people will just make placeholders until the other side is open and never play them...I don't want Bless to end up like Aion and have imbalanced servers....

Far i remember there are not only DEVs from Aion, but there are also more that comes from DAOC, L2 and Tera... it wont end like Aion, i'm sure

I said "a few came from Aion" a lot of the devs are past NCsoft employees actually but yeah ugh their way of faction locking doesn't seem strong and honeslt if this game didn't have faction vs faction the story could really progress further as of right now it seems like it doesn't matter what each side does... in the end they'll still keep fighting eachother and the faction-only storylines really make no difference....

Hello Chris,

NeviKesh from the Reddit here. I'm happy to see that the Aeria Bless team is still alive and kicking after the few weeks of silence (from putting the 'nose to the grindstone' I'm sure). It's extremely uplifting to see you being so engaged with the community and it has noticeably changed the overall outlook of some players in my inner circle of friends. They have gone from singing songs of woe about Aeria Games obtaining the publishing rights to a more optimistic tune. If you could, please give yourself and the team a pat on the back for me. Not saying there still isn't a bit of a PR hill to climb, but you and your team are taking on the challenge beautifully.

Now that I've buttered you up...

I'd like to take the time to respond to each of the points you put in this letter to since you opened yourself up for the dialogue. However, I wanted to first jump to the question you posed here.

ChrizzzB wrote:

The
work relationship couldn’t be better. In two weeks, we will travel to
Korea to visit Neowiz. If you were with us, what would you do / ask /
bring / sing?

If it would not be to much trouble, could you please relay a message to Neowiz for me and on the behalf of the Roleplay Community? We would like to express how thankful we are that the developers made the right decision, although difficult, to halt the release of Bless Online to ensure that a quality game was sent to market. I understand this could not have been an easy decision to delay the game and work on the problem areas from scratch (it is the whole "Is it better to be perfect and late or just okay and on time" conundrum) but I honestly believe if they would have chose to release the game in the state it was in 2014 Bless would not have had a fighting shot given the competition/market at the time. So thank you Neowiz for making that tough decision. Also, if you could get them to confirm if lupus/pantera player characters will be able to transform that would be an awesome bonus!

And on we go with my novel...

Combat Systems: To be frank as well, I agree with you and so do many of my friends. Of course, they and I are veterans of the MMO Genre and have been craving a 'traditional' MMORPG feel for some time. We actually talk about this point at length and while some fluidity issues still need to be address (oh the ping!) for us the combat is coming along swimmingly. For those who complain about compelling animations I say, watch an EQ raid on youtube. Oh the memories.

The Shop: So you will be keeping the system as it is eh? Well, I'm glad to hear it. Unless my compatriots here on the forums have proven otherwise, there doesn't seem to be a large 'Pay to Win' vibe in game currently. I know it is to early to talk about pricing because you are still in the technical integration but I'm excited to hear more as the future updates come in. But, as an aside, are you able to advise who runs/will be running the back-end cart functions for the store? Just a curiosity.

Changes to the Game: The infamous sex scene lives! However, the topic of the 'infamous cult outfit' has come up in discussions multiple times with my budding RP community. I'm not saying anything should be censored by all means. Just letting you know of a topic I have seen come up multiple times.
IT Infrastructure: Good to hear something is in the works. I'll wait for more to come in future updates. Though, a question to pose (not for immediate answer of course) is there a possibility of a 'Benchmark' program or ping test program so we can see what we are working with closer to release. You know, so we call can go spend all our money on upgrading our rigs to play this gorgeous game on max settings. Because the steparu Pivot Painter Trailer makes the environment look gorgeous


So yeah, thank you for taking the time to read this monster! I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend and the trip to Neowiz! Be sure to take us some pictures!

well thanks for the update.

I'm glad that the shop remains the same (mostly) and to be honest if they do some more iterations to the combat system as well as other systems both systems (classic and action) might become real good - not that they were bad but could have some tweaks here and there.

In the end the game is currently far from being finished so I have high hopes that it will grew into the game we are looking for.

Sindeya wrote:

(...)

Also the costumes in the shop were too expensive and not so diverse.I would also like to add the fact that the item attributes don't vary enough, i mean you have SO MANY items at this point in the game but the differences between them are so small... especially the crafted gear from dungeons... that's quite some farm and in the end you don't even get some "great" item just a very slightly better one than you had before.
Also it's quite easy to get the full pvp items from sieges compared to other mmos. These stuff should be the high end mega gear that only a bunch of ppl can achieve.Imo there are stuff from other mmos that keep people in the game gear pvp pve -wise... i am sure that there are so many others like me who want to experience a real mmo again and Bless has the potential for it...
I don't think that the key to success is to reinvent what's keeping people hooked up in an mmo for years, it's to go back to the roots and apply what already worked, in a maybe new clever way, but not reinventing it completly.

QUESTION TO ASK: Would they consider making the game NOT RvR? The game can be even better from a pvp perspective if it is focused on clan wars and arenas instead of race vs race... i personally never saw the point of race vs race.

First it's Faction vs Faction or Realm vs. Realm. The whole idea is that you fight for territories on your faction ground and at some point taking over enemy territories (not sure how it works or how they planned it).

About the costume prices as well as the look of it - pretty true that they aren't looking that fancy and are quite expensive but on the other hand it's better than gambling for it.

You also earn Government Points via Guild vs Guild battles which will get you the currently best gear.

Next is: the original siege schedule was 2 sieges per day and with 1 siege you earned around 300 PvP Rank Exp. Not sure about the Rank Exp Tables but you need quite some time to reach the highest rank even if you manage to win each Siege. Also your Exp get drained by a certain amount of points per week so you have to compensate that as well.

Since they adjusted the schedule to I think 4 sieges per day you earn points too fast in my view.

The stuff that only a few people will achieve will be the government gear or stuff crafted with legendary mats from gathering which are incredible rare. The current equipment is not high-end equipment but only stuff to get you geared up.

About the stat difference - well they still keep adding epic (purple) gear. I think the legendary equipment will be something better. Also I think it is quite nice to actually have multiple ways to get your gear as well as the fact that I still have a chance to kill someone even if he has the current bis equipment. And it's not really the case that a with a full blue equipment it is still easy to kill a full purple equipped player. It's quite a challenge unless you are an assassin and land a crit or something.

ChrizzzB wrote:

Combat System

Please allow me to be frank: I found it hard to replicate the negative experience causing rants other players had. I am not saying the combat systems are perfect. I am simply honest here. I played free targeting and tab targeting, I played a Guardian, Berserker, Ranger and Mage. In the end, I liked playing the melee classes with free targeting and the ranged classes with tab targeting best. The more I played, the more I got used to it. We’ve talked to Neowiz about this a lot as well. During the first three Closed Betas in Korea, there was some feedback that led Neowiz to change aspects of the combat systems to what it is now. There are ongoing improvements happening, right now they are working on the “tab” key and how it functions. As of now, we will monitor this further and we are particularly interested in the experience once we have our test server up and running. My suspicion is that with great ping comes great responsibili… errr… better combat experience. We will try to find out if the theory latency issues = clunkiness is correct. Please everyone, share your thoughts underneath as well.

​

Playing via proxy in South Korea hardly creates an environment that lets you judge the combat accordingly.When I tested Bless the latency would vary between bad 200 to 300ms and horrible 500 to 700ms.Combat tests should be performed in a closer to reality setup with latency ranging from good 30 to moderate 90ms.

ChrizzzB wrote:

The Shop

We’ve analyzed the existing shop and are focussing at the technical integration right now. From what we can see, there don’t appear to be any major changes to the Korean shop and its contents required.

I can only plea that you avoid pay 2 win scenarios.
Shop items should be either for convenience or customization.

ChrizzzB wrote:

IT Infrastructure

We’re working with Neowiz on setting up test servers on our future infrastructure, which is virtualized and that way a lot more flexible to handle peaks, but also posing a few challenges.

Please avoid the pitfall of too many realms.
A lot of MMOs start with a certain hype behind them. On launch day capacties are easly blown out of the water.
Many publisher then add more realms to solve issues such as long queues. Then two or three month later the "flavour of the month" crowd moves to something else new and shiny and the actual committed players are left with mostly empty realms with maybe one or two that actually have a healthy population. Then starts the realm merging which is bad for puplicity.
Just do something else than that.

ChrizzzB wrote:

Changes to the game

We are moving away from the idea of requesting changes to the game in order to acquire a certain age Rating.

Good I dislike changes to games.
People got interested in the game because they saw the footage from South Korea. They want to play that and not something else.
Furthermore changes tend to require adjusted updates as well. Games adapted from South Korea often lag 6 month behind in terms of updates and those are the "good" ones. No Need to delay it any further.
IMO the job of a publisher in this regard should be to provide the infastructure and services to run the game for its territorial audience, adapt if necessary the business model to fit the market needs, translate the game and manage its operation.
Not make a new game out of the original.

ChrizzzB wrote:

Neowiz and Aeria Games

The work relationship couldn’t be better. In two weeks, we will travel to Korea to visit Neowiz. If you were with us, what would you do / ask / bring / sing?

I hope you can appreciate the effort we take in order to be transparent. I understand that this piece of information may not feel good enough to some, but hey... It’s a long journey and we need to take it one step at a time. From what I’ve seen on discord as well as here on the forum, I am really sorry but right now I do not have the time to run another ama and this post is not meant to be one. All I wanted to do is to follow up with you.

Good to know and good communication is important.
Is there any rough time table when we could hope to expect to see the game released?

Puremystic wrote:

I am a bit surprised that the devs of this game a few of them came from Aion and they made this game Faction vs Faction.... and that ruined Aion because servers were imbalanced and it eventually made people quit when one side was taking up all the territories simply because they had more people...
Even in Bless that faction lock is not 100% useful because people will just make placeholders until the other side is open and never play them...I don't want Bless to end up like Aion and have imbalanced servers....

IMHO a major issue regarding the faction imbalance in AION was simply due to lack of race (one per faction and same story for starter places). Assuming somebody didn't like one of both then you litteraly had no choice while BLESS currently features few races on both sides coupled with multiple beginners areas so people should be more inclined to equitably play on both factions.

"Ishigami" wrote:

Please avoid the pitfall of too many realms.
A lot of MMOs start with a certain hype behind them. On launch day capacties are easly blown out of the water.Many publisher then add more realms to solve issues such as long queues. Then two or three month later the "flavour of the month" crowd moves to something else new and shiny and the actual committed players are left with mostly empty realms with maybe one or two that actually have a healthy population. Then starts the realm merging which is bad for puplicity.
Just do something else than that.

well, when the OBT will start, they'll be bound to open at least a minimum of 3 servers.

however, i fully agree with what you wrote, and i sure hope that there will be only 1 international language(english) for all the servers, because if they plan to get 1 server per each different language like Gameforge did with Aion, it's not going to backfire, it's literally going to blow up.
it will be a guaranteed fail, and i know it by experience because i played Aion since 2011 before quitting for good the last year, and i'm glad i bid farewell to that sinking ship.

when u have too many servers around, the population can get very thin after a while due to multiple factors(new games coming out, boredom, etc.), forcing the publisher to either do server merges, or do server transfers.
and neither of those are good solutions, because in the long run they'll cripple the community even further if there's more than 1 language involved.

"Momoruk" wrote:

IMHO a major issue regarding the faction imbalance in AION was simply due to lack of race (one per faction and same story for starter places). Assuming somebody didn't like one of both then you litteraly had no choice while BLESS currently features few races on both sides coupled with multiple beginners areas so people should be more inclined to equitably play on both factions.

i wouldn't be too sure about that.
it is true that racial variety offers also more choices, but forcing a side against another due to a "lore-system" doesn't always work fine.
that's because most people don't really like to play the underdog in a server dominated by the opposite faction, so there's more chances that they'll either reroll on the opposite faction, or change server altogether.
when it's about server population balance, variety of races matters very little, if nothing at all.


i'd rather prefer to have a RvR-free game where you actually have your own reasons to fight with someone else, rather than being forced to fight "X player" because of the game's lore, but that's just me.
and considering the current stagnating situation with publishers and mmorpgs overall, there's not really much choice for people that like PvP rpgs.

in the end, it all boils down to player preferences anyway.
i'm already thankful that at least we're getting something "new", even if it looks very familiar for most people that played this kind of games before.
Bless has potential, let's just hope it doesn't become another copy-paste KR mmorpg.

Fenrir wrote:

i'd rather prefer to have a RvR-free game where you actually have your own reasons to fight with someone else, rather than being forced to fight "X player" because of the game's lore, but that's just me.

Thecnically the game is actually working that way (RvR-Free), because you can engage on whowever you want. Also, i'm sure it will not take so long to have Clan Wars pretty active with people that when see a Clan Name, they have a grudge against, will start to attack on sight totally ignoring the "silent non-aggression pact" that usually is estabilished on this kind of games (like was happening on DAOC).

And when this will happen, it will be a good way to start Clans working togheter... the beginning of alliances and big scale open wars..