Dear NCSoft,
First off, I just want to say that I love this game. For the last 2 months since the NA release, this game has been my life. I get off work then I play Blade and Soul until I want to go to bed. I have spent over 100 dollars on this game, just out of the Hongmoon store; buying outfits, spec tabs, character slots, premium memberships etc.
I will give the benefit of the doubt and say, yes, this is a new Free to Play MMO. Bots were just bound to come. It happens in almost every MMO. I understand that to the fullest. But I have never ever seen bots this bad in an MMO. Last night alone, I played 21 1v1 games and 19 of them were bots. It’s disgusting to see how many bots are in the game right now.
If you are unaware what the bots are doing, they’re basically multi boxing in groups of 6, grinding to 45, doing the beginner level 45 dungeons, getting dragon certificates from the dailies then splitting into arena using bot programs to grind Zen Beans. Then they’re spending the Zen Beans to get the soulstone pouches from the Zen Bean vendor, and then selling the soulstones. That is why on most servers soulstones are now 12-16 silver.
If there is no way to internally combat the bots, (ie: ban waves, better and upgraded firmware for GameGuard, credit card verification when signing up etc.) I have came up with a few suggestions that would help the bots deter away from arena:
Remove the soulstone pouches from the game. If that isn’t an option, put the pouches in, for example, the 7th floor of Mushin’s Tower. After you beat Junghado, a vendor spawns and you’re able to buy an RNG soulstone pouch for 10-30 Warrior Tokens.
Make zen beans only acquirable past Platinum rating.
In place of the soulstone pouches at the Zen Bean vendor, give us outfits, weapon skins and adornments at each rank that would cost zen beans. That way, PvPers are able to grind for something and feel rewarded, and stand out amongst other players. For example, the Platinum outfit would cost 15,000 zen beans. The weapon skin would cost 20,000. The adornment(s) would cost 10,000. Diamond cosmetics would cost more, of course. (I’m just throwing numbers out there guys.)
I have a feeling something like that would work since the bots are grinding out zen beans to get fast Blade And Soul Gold. Take that away, and they’ll most likely stop doing arena. They’ll have to find something else to get BNS Gold.
I understand free to play MMOs will always have bots. That’s just the nature of the beast. And I’m sure you guys (NCSoft) are doing your absolute best to combat this, but I honestly don’t see this game living for another month if this bot problem persists. I love this game. I would hate to see it die along with City of Heroes and Tabula Rasa.
I was just using Mushin’s Tower as an example. My point was to have something that is somewhat gear dependent so the bots couldn’t get to them.Get your soulstones from the faction dailies or gear up in order to get the pouches.
Regards