Feedback from playing the JP server

I've played the JP server for a few days now and I wanted to suggest a few things that could be implemented and improved upon.

Weapons: 
In order to get a weapon for your class you need to constantly kill monsters within your level range in order to receive a weapon. I find this to be somewhat monotonous. Instead I would add a Weapon Smith crafting so we'd be able to craft our weapons. But make it so that we cannot salvage the weapons that we craft.

Crafting: 
The limitations set for crafting seems tedious. I think instead you should add crafting as a part of a skill set like ESO has and let us decide which ones we can level. In order to level this crafting though it wouldn't take skill points, but instead using EXP from using a skill line(like crafting) would auto-unlock the next level like it does at the moment. Basically if your Black Smithing was level 1 and needs 1000 EXP to get to the next level once you go over 1000 EXP it goes to level 2. You should also remove the recipes for crafting. When it comes to Alchemy and Cooking, you should do what BDO does. In order to discover new recipes you have to put in ingredients and see what comes out. This will make crafting interesting.

Dungeons:

In order to level up based off of the guides currently on the internet for leveling on Bless. You need to run the level 13 Dungeon and the level 23 Dungeon. Both of these can be ran solo. I think they shouldn't be. Dungeons are a group activity. You should need a group to run them, not be able to solo them. So increasing the difficulty for the dungeons should be added. MMORPG are about community. So many MMOs simple make everything soloable which defeats the purpose of the MMO in MMORPG. (I know some people might say "Oh, but I like playing solo" Well, this isn't about you)

Monster Log:

In order to receive these shards which can be dismantled to get the Blue Balls in order to upgrade your gear, you need to kill monsters which has 3 Tiers(usually). The amount required to kill in order to receive these shards isn't rewarding at all. I believe these shards should instead be added to dungeon bosses, and the chest at the end of the dungeon. Instead, you should add some crafting material that drops from these mobs in order to craft things for food and alchemy. That way you can add more meaning to your crafting.

Side Quests:
Side Quests offer no value to the game. They give very little EXP and no reward. There's so many, yet I avoided them because they offered nothing in return. I think they should be reworked on. Offer something more. Crafting materials, the Blue Balls, more exp. Or maybe hints on how to craft certain recipes for Alchemy and Cooking. For instance: You receive a quest to go kill some dragonflies. After you complete the quest the NPC might tell you "Dragon flies wings are used to make HP pots. You just need the Wings, Sugar, and Wheat" It could make the side quests have more value.

Combat:

I found the combat slow for most classes. But, this has already been reworked so there's no point in talking about it.

Gathering:

I enjoyed the gathering. I find the fact that I have to purchase multiple pickaxes and gathering tool to be redundant. I think instead you should add durability to them instead. BDO does this with their gathering tools. I think this would workout well for this game as well.

PVP:

I think the disable-PVP pots should be increase to 1 hour instead of 10 minutes. But do not add PVE servers. There's no need. PVP pots are good enough.

Taming Mounts and Pets:

I like that you can basically tame any monster in this game. It's unique, what I don't like is the Space bar smashing while taming the monster. I think you should add a WSAD type of macro for taming, but keep the time limit. Also increase the chance of upgrading a pet to a new rarity a bit. I found the fail rate very high. 15% success using the same monster when they're both level 10 feels like a cheap way in order to get players to spend IRL money to increase the chance of it succeeding.

Add Fishing:

The world is massive, and I like games with big open worlds. But there's nothing to do. I feel like adding fishing to the game could offer the players something to do when they're bored and don't feel like pvping or pveing. So fishing would be something that could be looked into adding into the game. You can also add a way to craft boats for players as well. Navel PVP can be pretty interesting and you could add a world boss in the ocean as well. You could also add achievements for fishing as well.

I can't think of anything else right now.

Namus wrote:

I have to disagree with crafting suggestions. Limiting people to certain crafting skills is important for economy and having recipes (especially rare ones) is a great way to add additional loot to various content and it gives more value to crafters because discovering stuff will last for 1 month maybe after that you can just google it...

There is no limit, because they can just create another character. Which defeats the purpose of assigning one craft to your character to begin with. I do agree that crafting skills are important, but as they are now they're very shallow. It's based solely on either getting a recipe as a drop in the open world, or buying it off the market. The loot in this game is what I will describe to you.

Kill mob:

Trash

Sometimes gear

Sometimes crafting item for cooking, alchemy

Coins

Kill Elite mob:

Trash

Sometimes gear

Sometimes crafting item for cooking, alchemy(I'm not 100% on alchemy)

Sometimes Blue Shard to dismantle into Blue Balls

Coins

Kill Dungeon bosses:

Coins

Gear

Blue Shard on final boss

Dungeon Chest:

Recipe for gear within that level range(RNG)

The loot content in this game is very shallow as well. I do agree with you with the google thing. Which sucks, but not everyone is going to spoil it for themselves. There's spoilers for movies when you google a movie, but not everyone reads the spoilers.

Kuzah wrote:

The vast majority of my history lies with WoW and BDO so I can relate to a lot that you're talking about. However, since I don't know much about Bless I can only speak to the little I've managed to discover so far since I'm relatively green. Here's what I'd like to add to the conversation.

About crafting:

I feel like the Bless crafting formula hearkens back to WoW specifically with the fixed recipes. BDO has two systems in play. One that is similar to 'fixed recipes' (weapons, armor, siege equipment, mount gear, boat gear, etc workshop) and the other that is this exploratory/variable recipes (alchemy and cooking). A little more detail about what those mean so we're on the same page (and to make sure I don't have an incorrect perception of them).

Fixed recipes from BDO would be the respective craft-able equipment's workshop that show a specific recipe and the exact number of materials required to manufacture them with your workers. Yield is not impacted while quality of the product might be as well as depending on your workers you may gain efficiency (i.e. chance to refund 10% materials used, craft 3x at a time, work speed, etc).

What I'm referring to as 'exploratory/variable' recipes (I'm not sure if there is an official or semi-official way to identify them) basically boils down to these main specifics/differences: 1. No recipes to learn. 2. What you obtain is based on the combination you put into the 'attempt'. 3. Efficiency increase with your proficiency. Also, to note that this specific segment of crafting only applies to cooking and alchemy (almost a sub-profession so to speak, but they are the only two aspects that provide buffs and this game is all about buff stacking). The gist is throwing in a combination of materials and varying quantities of each to see what gets produced along with the yield. Instead of recipes you may find some side quests that involve producing a specific elixir or dish and they will hint to what it contains without telling you the required quantities. Alternatively, you can look up the items on sites to see the list of results and required counts for each.

I do agree that this exploratory/variable approach is interesting (at first), but with so many possible combinations and minimum quantity requirements for a base success you will quickly burn through materials (be it quantity of common ones or ability to acquire rare byproducts/materials). Since every combination is unique to one product there are quite a lot of base ingredients as well as secondary tier of ingredients along with a tertiary tier of ingredients to produce for the end result. Also, the higher your proficiency allows you a chance to yield more per attempt, a chance to produce a 'super' version after a certain level, and even allows you to reduce your failure rate when you go below the minimum required materials.

Reference point: Here's a thumbnail (click to expand the full chart) of a flowchart draft I made to get a better understanding of how to manufacture the two primary teas in the game. You can take those two end results (in purple) and craft them into imperial crates as well. Note: light-yellow = obtained by workers, green = player gather-able/producible, grey = npc vendor, white = player production w/method. Also, yes this is dated because since the Kamasylvia Part 1 patch you can worker harvest a Strawberry node at Viv Foretta's Cabin now (which is really nice btw).

These teas are just the tip of the iceberg really. When you get into crafting a single meal there are quite a few dishes you need to craft that become ingredients to combine into the full meal. And even the meals aren't all defacto 1x of each source dish all the time (maybe people wanted two Grilled Sausages in their Mediah Speicals instead of one so that's just how it is I suppose).

I know I typed out a lot, but my points is I don't think it'll be beneficial for Bless to convert the entire system or even parts of it to the alternative production method. This would feel like a serious (and possibly time consuming) overhaul to the crafting mechanics in addition to needing a two or three fold increase in the variety of possible materials as well as ways to obtain/source them and possibly some means to pre-process or post-process them. However, if Neowiz was interested in making the crafting profession much more in-depth then this is a great way to accomplish that. This aspect was what I personally enjoyed the most in BDO without a doubt.

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I also enjoyed the crafting in BDO. I'd say that BDO crafting in terms of Alchemy and Cooking aren't very advanced, but have a lot of depth to them. The thing is with Bless the crafting isn't that fun. It could be more in-depth like BDO, but not exactly like BDO. For instance, the Tea you referenced in your chart, I would call it too in-depth for Bless.

There's gathering in this game, but not at BDO's level of gathering. I'd say it's a more relaxed version of gathering. But, the crafting almost feels pointless. They need to add more meaning to it. There's so many monsters in this game that drop items for crafting, if they put more attention towards how important crafting is these monsters wouldn't lose their value. In BDO the only real value for monsters is to grind. Which is dull.

I see your point though, it would definitely require an almost complete conversion of the current crafting system. From what I could understand in the previous version of bless before the Rebuild version. They had a somewhat similar type of crafting that I'm talking about. The problem was that the materials for crafting gear was almost impossible to gather.

I used to play Perfect World International a long time ago. Their crafting system was somewhat useful. As they added forges into instances(Dungeons) and these Dungeons would drop materials needed to craft Weapons and Armor at these forges. I find this for Armor and Weapons to seem somewhat interesting. But, I do think the Cooking and Alchemy needs some more depth added to it.

Kuzah wrote:

I can understand and see how crafting isn't that fun right now in Bless. Some changes would be welcome, but to what extent I'm not quite sure what would work. Mainly because the crafting aspect must be changes post EA launch or even post full retail launch, but the fact of the matter is that it will potentially evolve from day one and not start off as such from day one. Complete overhaul is out of the question because of this, but improvements and additions to the existing system make sense.

Do you think a small number of some complex things like the teas or maybe even just one or two items that are extremely complex like a boat from BDO might be beneficial for Bless?

Here's my old flowchart on the BDO boat, the Epheria Convoy, to show one of the most complex crafting workflows I have personally ever witnessed in my gaming career. Note, the bottom is breakdown of the lowest tier of raw materials and the darker blue ovals are the processing/questing methods needed to produce their respective refined goods.

I can tell you without a doubt that people who love crafting or guilds that specialize in economy/crafting would certainly enjoy the level of complexity. Just being one person who crafts something like this is a special personal achievement on its own, but I can certainly tell you that when I see an entire fleet of these Epheria Convoys (in less than a month after the ability to create this was released) sailing under one guild banner it truly is a sight to behold and an amazing group achievement.

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I was turning my head towards the more complex crafting because I was looking at it from a time investment point of view. The Devs of this game definitely listen to the community, but this game has also failed in 2 countries that it's launched in. So I think putting more depth into the crafting, but not going full scale like BDOs crafting will work well for this game. I think before they decide to even rework anything though, they want to see if it will even succeed.

Pentrep wrote:

Ask too much from crafting and you could get something similar to what FFXIV has. I didn't really like that system but I know a lot of people who did. By the same token, no one person should be able to master every crafting class. Oversaturation of the market does nothing except decrease price which is good for the consumer but bad for the market overall. They need to control how much crafting expertise one can obtain outside of primary choices.

Like I said earlier in this thread, you can already master every craft in the game. You just need 3 characters.

Kuzah wrote:

Oh yeah totally agree. In terms of what to spend time on I'd also focus on the combat system since that kind of system directly impacts everyone on a much closer level no matter what they do in the game. Crafting could just be entirely avoided by individuals so there's not as strong of an incentive to work on something that may or may not have a direct impact or only satisfy a minority.

Even though I might talk a lot about the crafting aspect I think that it's a good strategy to focus on other, more important, things first.

I also agree. The combat on the JP rebuild is quite slow for most classes. I only enjoyed the Rangers combat, but even that has flaws. I hope they will rework the crafting though once they're pleased with the combat.

Pentrep wrote:

Right, which is sort of my point. Are people going to actively pursue mastery of all crafts? I'm sure there will be some but it will hardly be the majority. But I could see them reworking crafting in the future. Just please...nothing like FFXIV's system .

Well, Blacksmithing is useful for crafting your gear if it doesn't drop in the dungeon that you are farming. It's also easier to gear alts this way as well instead of running the dungeon again. Jewel crafting is useful and needed to craft end game jewelry. Rune crafting is useful for crafting taming papers and crafting runes. I think the recipes for runes are very rare because I couldn't find any on the market place. Cooking and Alchemy seem useful for the buffs and the restoring of stamina for your mounts and pets.

So I think most people would pursue all 5 of them. I never got too far into FFXIV's crafting. But from what I recalled, it didn't seem to bad. Just a really long grind. Granted I only scratched the surface of the crafting in FFXIV. I did enjoy it though, there was just a lot of questing which turned me off.

Pentrep wrote:

I wasn't really saying it wasn't worth it. Crafting has to be incentivized or their will be little reason to improve it. There are plenty of games where crafting is basically meaningless. The problem with FFXIV was that it required everything in order to be good at anything. So literally your hardcore crafters were left with very little time to do anything else but craft. The question for this choice is simple: How many people are going to come into the game just to craft? I'd assume not many.

There are a lot of people in the mmo community who enjoy other activities besides farming mobs and dungeons. Like crafting, so I think your assumption is somewhat wrong and not realistic when it comes to the mmo community. Since it's a wide variety of pvpers, pveers, craftings, and life skillers. Crafting in this game isn't meaningless, it's just shallow and not as in-depth.

Pentrep wrote:

Of course there are some who prefer crafting in comparison to combat. FFXIV's system wouldn't exist the way it does, if that wasn't true. EVE also has a pretty healthy crafting community. But as it stands right now, Bless' crafting is pretty meaningless and needs work in order to attract any sort of following.

How is it useless if you need to craft runes for your gear, or craft gear for your alts?

Pentrep wrote:

Every piece of gear that I encountered on the crafting list was obtainable from an NPC, and at a fairly reasonable price. Additionally the entry level curve for crafting on JP was substantially higher than it was on KR. I found myself hard pressed to even consider let alone actively pursue a craft. As far as runes go, you can always rely on quests. In short a good portion of craftable goods are readily obtainable elsewhere. There is no incentive to craft without some unique element to it and as it stands right now, nothing is unique about crafting or it's benefits.

from an npc? You mean a boss, in a dungeon? Because that's the only way you can obtain gear on the JP server or by crafting it. Do you currently play the JP server?

Pentrep wrote:

Nope, I stopped. I got to level 40. I was find to get every set of gear I got from an NPC. An NPC meaning a vendor in the main city. Now I wouldn't say dungeon gear could be found on NPC's, because it couldn't. But the green gear was readily accessible on a wide variety at a wide variety of NPC vendors.

Well, I'm talking about blue gear which only drops from bosses in dungeons. Not green gear. Which I know you can buy from the NPC armor vendor. Green gear can't be crafted, only blue gear and up can. I guess you didn't know that?