Blade and Soul

Hi guys,

I got into the closed beta 3 test for Blade and Soul. Played for a few hours. I am a bit on the fence about the game. Even though its run on the unreal engine 3 it still feels clunky even though its 4 years old (in Asia)

The combat seems interesting but what I didn't like was the invisible walls everywhere. I tried a few games of the 1 vs 1 pvp at level 4. Might as well just auto gave up. Even though there is no gear advantage there is a massive skill advantage and the match making was broken. I was fighting max levels most of the time. I thought there was a lot of CC in wow. I spent most of my games unable to do a single thing. Either permanently rooted to the spot unable to move or in a stun combo.

Maybe it gets better at higher levels but I think you will have to go though quite a lot of pain until then.

Any one else tried it or have any thoughts?

Edited by KriLL, 28 November 2015 - 01:29 pm.

Game runs smoothly for me, not sure what you found clunky aside from some invisible walls, which is probably my only gripe with it atm.  Movement and combat is one of the best aspects of the game for me. 

As for the pvp, yeah, at level 4 you will have a very hard time, that is possibly why you were not running into very many lower levels as well.  A lot of classes don't unlock their extra blocks and dodges until level 20 or higher so you will have no chance against someone that has unlocked everything at level 45.  As far as I understand the matchmaking is based on both your rank and availability not level, so it's no surprise that you came up against max levels since a lot of people wait until then to have all their skills unlocked before jumping into 1v1 pvp.

Levels 1-20 are really still part of the learning phase, you barely even come across any hard fights etc. so you have enough time to learn and get use to your skills and combos, which become very important later on. For most classes you can't really maximize your damage unless you do your combos. There are no healer classes either so surviving difficult fights are largely based on how well you use your blocks, counters or dodges, depending on how your class is played. 

I don't really see this as a problem though because leveling up if you follow the quests is really fast, speed levelers reach max level in less than a day and I managed to max out my second character over the course of a weekend without much trouble.  You also unlock more movement abilities later on, so you can run up walls or dive straight down out of the sky while gliding, which is a lot of fun too.

So far I am loving the game and am planning to play it at launch as well.  Aside form the art style which I really adore, the fast paced, almost arcade like combat is really addicting, not sure I am going to find another game that does this as well anytime soon.

I made a post asking about BnS before and got no responses so it seems the real issue is that there is simply not enough interest to do something guild wise.

I think the issue is that people don't really want a Korean import that already has catch up mechanisms incorporated day one. Like Archeage Hasla farming. 

I played the Playbns Russian private servers with the really good english patch months ago. The gameplay is generic, but the combat features are fun. If they don't put in the catch up crap and we get a player base, I would play this.

The other issue is that Black Desert may release around the same time and crush it.

I played on the Russian private server for a while too but it is just so far behind the current game.  I don't think the game is releasing with the most recent version either since Warlock wont be available at release but I am guessing they will have regular updates.  They did include the more recent hairstyles and such so I am assuming updates will mainly be content.  Not sure if there is anything in BnS that would cause catch up in the way Hasla did though.

Yeah BD will release around the same time but they are two very different types of games so will have to see how it goes.  Combat in BD so far seems very generic to me but I will have to actually play it a bit to really get a feel for it since videos only tell you so much.  So far though I am not seeing anything all that unique compared to ArcheAge, just some updated graphics and a fancy character creator.

Game runs smoothly for me, not sure what you found clunky aside from some invisible walls, which is probably my only gripe with it atm.  Movement and combat is one of the best aspects of the game for me. 

 

As for the pvp, yeah, at level 4 you will have a very hard time, that is possibly why you were not running into very many lower levels as well.  A lot of classes don't unlock their extra blocks and dodges until level 20 or higher so you will have no chance against someone that has unlocked everything at level 45.  As far as I understand the matchmaking is based on both your rank and availability not level, so it's no surprise that you came up against max levels since a lot of people wait until then to have all their skills unlocked before jumping into 1v1 pvp.

 

Levels 1-20 are really still part of the learning phase, you barely even come across any hard fights etc. so you have enough time to learn and get use to your skills and combos, which become very important later on. For most classes you can't really maximize your damage unless you do your combos. There are no healer classes either so surviving difficult fights are largely based on how well you use your blocks, counters or dodges, depending on how your class is played. 

 

I don't really see this as a problem though because leveling up if you follow the quests is really fast, speed levelers reach max level in less than a day and I managed to max out my second character over the course of a weekend without much trouble.  You also unlock more movement abilities later on, so you can run up walls or dive straight down out of the sky while gliding, which is a lot of fun too.

 

So far I am loving the game and am planning to play it at launch as well.  Aside form the art style which I really adore, the fast paced, almost arcade like combat is really addicting, not sure I am going to find another game that does this as well anytime soon.

 

I made a post asking about BnS before and got no responses so it seems the real issue is that there is simply not enough interest to do something guild wise.

Oh don't get me wrong the game ran smooth at a high frames per second. I just think the movement felt a bit off and the invisible walls annoyed me. More of a fact that when you compare the game to WoW, Gw2 or Wildstar even though its already 4 years old it just felt unpolished.

According the the server polls so far it looks like Windrest is the most popular.

http://strawpoll.me/6349969

http://www.bladeands...the-most-voted/

So I will be playing on Windrest, if anyone wants to group or meet up feel free to give me a nudge.

Hi All, been silent for a while (exams, life etc)  This look interesting and prob be playing - will join up on windrest - release is 19/01/2016?? 

Thinking of Blade Dancer

And silly question - is it F2P?

Yes, release is on the 19th and yes, it is F2P. ^^

Blade Dancer is a fun class, the good thing is classes are pretty well balanced so you can really afford to simply play whichever class you enjoy most. 

Edit:

Also, I would suggest picking the blue (cerulean) faction.  You can pick your faction pretty early on, at around level 4 I believe, and guilds can only recruit players from the same faction.

Both during alpha and beta, red faction chat was always worse than blue faction chat.  I think this is mainly because the blue/cerulean faction's motto revolves around order and unity while the red/crimson faction's is more about freedom and rebelling, and the younger players love the "rebel" faction more. 

So in general blue faction tends to have more mature players and that is why I am suggesting sticking with blue.

Of course you don't have to choose right away either, the option is simply available at level 4 already, but I don't think you come across any faction based quest until around level 20 somewhere.

Edited by Kiraki, 10 January 2016 - 06:28 am.

Thanks Kiraki.  see you there

My characters on Windrest are Mini and Mitsori, feel free to give me nudge or add me to buddy list.

My characters on Windrest are Mini and Mitsori, feel free to give me nudge or add me to buddy list.

Which faction are you / have you gone with?  I'll add your characters to buddy list until we clear on faction choice!

At the time I chose Crimson Legion but as all in Clan need to be same I'm happy to change if most people feel they prefer to go with Cerulean Order (once I have enough silver - 10 required).

Anyone else intending to play, would appreciate your thoughts on preference of faction also.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts I am playing on cerulean faction, I accepted your friend invite so will chat to you later in game.

just started this yesterday, got to level 10. liking the combat, enjoy all the different combos. cant really say too much atm. ill level more and see what i think then. i joined wildsprings with a friend, but the queues are insane. 3000+ 

i got alot of suggestions to go to wild springs.. and so i did and made a kung fu master and so far the server seems pretty good! before at peak times there used to be around a 3k ish server queue and now that all seems to be fine.. managed to log on no problem around the back of 6 or so today

server upgrade done its job but still alot of bugs needing ironed out!