This is some “VIP quality” stuff here.
VIP Quality in the sarcastic sense for those not familiar with this 2channel (popular Japanese messaging board) meme so yes, low/bad/poor quality.
Note that I just clipped this stuff from game videos since as I mentioned in a previous post, I refuse to take part in this cash grab. There’s a point where the signal needs to be sent to these Korean studios that the NA/EU player base aren’t going to be suckers for throwing their money at every single title they decide to try to bring over.
The above is no excuse for hiding behind the “early access” moniker. It’s being monetized (buy 2 play + cash shop + virtual currency sales). Those duplicate advanced settings (with max number of “” taking the cake) are like a reality check with just how poorly this title is being QC’ed. This isn’t a game that was just in recent development (not even the “rebuild” project qualifies for that because that is nothing like starting over with the core design for combat and other systems). They were working on releasing an english version with Aeria/Gamigo so that was like around 2016ish.
Normally, the publisher deals with localization and submits those back to the developer (Neowiz in this case). Now I’ve actually tried some of Aeria’s published games like Twin Saga (developed by a Taiwan based studio) and have not seen poor localization like this so I’m beginning to wonder just how terrible the client codebase Neowiz delivered to Aeria was back then where they (Aeria) came to this decision to not publish the game (to the point where they didn’t even bother trying to perform a lot of the localization).
I do realize the constraints and priorities Neowiz has been under in recovering from that plus the prior shutdown of the Russian server (by that publisher) with doing this bandaid fix (rebuild project) and also doing the localization (German is also lacking for EU and is something they will be adding). Neowiz hired staff for their Steam release version. Some of those folks obviously would have seen this same stuff but I’m also not naive to know that the higher up leadership in Korea likely just filed it into the round filing cabinet. I know “it’s a job” but I wouldn’t have the nerve to be able to put on a straight face and say this was anywhere close to launching even with an early access label. I’d walk away from that job first (but thats me).
We’re still talking about first impressions (more so when there are folks who know this game has been in development for many years and has already experienced several failed starts). Seeing this 7-year in development game looking like the above in this still half-assed state along with parts of the client using machine translation (I couldn’t find a frame with skills being “mounted” aka equipped) and actually having the nerve to price it at $29 (non Founder’s pack) is a pretty ballsy (cash grab) move. Sure, some are asking for refunds and receiving them which is only backfiring on Neowiz (lost revenue from that upfront sale + cash shop revenues and now a further tarnished reputation).
There’s an old saying that I’ve subscribed to: do the job right the first time. Focusing on quality may cost a lot in the beginning but it pays off in the long run where you don’t have to then deal with an “exploding parts” problem in the future where it costs a lot more to fix (usually via bandaid fixes). This is a title that had core design flaws from the start. I’m not even talking about the poor optimization (using “out of the box” settings for UE3) which causes way more client side FPS drops in populated places like the city (which can be alleviated with tweaks to the engine configuration file).
Rather than just starting over from scratch, they just continued building on that flawed foundation to the point where there really was no turning back. The result was 3 previous poorly received launches. MMO players were looking forward to Bless Online given the recent drought of MMO’s. This unfortunately is NOT the title that will have any longevity in terms of maintaining a large population.
