MassivelyOP is brutal against Bless MMO

TheScavenger

http://massivelyop.com/2018/06/28/the-soapbox-the-western-port-of-bless-online-feels-like-a-curse/

Noteworthy because MassivelyOP almost always lays off the "punches" and downplays negativity. They tend to be quite a bit laidback in their reviews. For them to come out and destroy Bless in their review shows a lot of the current state of Bless.

And this shows how bad the classes are designed, I never heard class design THIS bad (quote from the article)

"Paladins begin the game with a single non-chain skill, Concentration, which reduces the cooldown of five skills when activated. The problem, however, is that you don’t unlock the first of those five skills until level 21. Who thought it was a good idea to give a class a skill that is literally 100% useless for a good 20 levels? That’s nearly halfway to the level cap before you can make use of a skill that you have from the beginning of the game."

Speaks for itself

MadFrenchie

"Each faction is comprised of four different races, but I’m certainly stretching the definition of “different,” as one race – the Mascu, which I can only describe as the result of unethical genetic experiments crossing Guild Wars 2’s Asura with Final Fantasy XIV’sLalafell – is available to both factions, and the other races are exact mirrors of one another, identical in every respect save for their names.

On the Hieron side, you’ve got the requisite human-analogue Habicht, the forest-dwelling Sylvan Elves, and the uncreatively, inaccurately, and somewhat unfortunately-named Lupus, who, despite the name, are more catlike than anything. On the Unión side, you’ve got the Amistad, the Aqua Elves, and the equally uncreatively but more accurately and not quite as unfortunately named Pantera. The lack of distinct races for each faction, or at least any effort to differentiate each race from its parallel on the opposing faction, smacks of laziness to me."

The gaming landscape has truly hit new lows with this relaunch bullshit.  This game is the most obvious amateur level cash grab I think I've ever seen.

mgilbrtsn

meh, it's bashed so much that this isn't much of a 'scoop.'  This is merely riding the wave.  I'll be more impressed with some of these sites break from the pack in some of these reviews.  Merely parroting what everyone is already saying seems kinda, kinda.. just kinda.  

MadFrenchie

mgilbrtsn said:

meh, it's bashed so much that this isn't much of a 'scoop.'  This is merely riding the wave.  I'll be more impressed with some of these sites break from the pack in some of these reviews.  Merely parroting what everyone is already saying seems kinda, kinda.. just kinda.  

If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, why would anyone call it anything but?

Kyleran

MadFrenchie said:

mgilbrtsn said:

meh, it's bashed so much that this isn't much of a 'scoop.'  This is merely riding the wave.  I'll be more impressed with some of these sites break from the pack in some of these reviews.  Merely parroting what everyone is already saying seems kinda, kinda.. just kinda.  

If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, why would anyone call it anything but?

The article went into more detail on the systems and problems than any other written review I've read so far.

Its disingenuous to accuse the author of just "piling on."

Kyleran

MadFrenchie said:

"Each faction is comprised of four different races, but I’m certainly stretching the definition of “different,” as one race – the Mascu, which I can only describe as the result of unethical genetic experiments crossing Guild Wars 2’s Asura with Final Fantasy XIV’sLalafell – is available to both factions, and the other races are exact mirrors of one another, identical in every respect save for their names.

On the Hieron side, you’ve got the requisite human-analogue Habicht, the forest-dwelling Sylvan Elves, and the uncreatively, inaccurately, and somewhat unfortunately-named Lupus, who, despite the name, are more catlike than anything. On the Unión side, you’ve got the Amistad, the Aqua Elves, and the equally uncreatively but more accurately and not quite as unfortunately named Pantera. The lack of distinct races for each faction, or at least any effort to differentiate each race from its parallel on the opposing faction, smacks of laziness to me."

The gaming landscape has truly hit new lows with this relaunch bullshit.  This game is the most obvious amateur level cash grab I think I've ever seen.

Oh no, you have it backwards. It is most obviously an amateur game development effort, but a very masterful cash grab.

Pure evil genius in taking a game with three previous releases that failed spectacularly and convincing gamers that "this time" things would be better.

Even now there are those who give the devs a pass believing all will be fixed when the game officially releases.  

ROFL, I'm almost in tears when I see such hope, nay, faith this will come to pass.

Genius I tell you.

MadFrenchie

Kyleran said:

MadFrenchie said:

"Each faction is comprised of four different races, but I’m certainly stretching the definition of “different,” as one race – the Mascu, which I can only describe as the result of unethical genetic experiments crossing Guild Wars 2’s Asura with Final Fantasy XIV’sLalafell – is available to both factions, and the other races are exact mirrors of one another, identical in every respect save for their names.

On the Hieron side, you’ve got the requisite human-analogue Habicht, the forest-dwelling Sylvan Elves, and the uncreatively, inaccurately, and somewhat unfortunately-named Lupus, who, despite the name, are more catlike than anything. On the Unión side, you’ve got the Amistad, the Aqua Elves, and the equally uncreatively but more accurately and not quite as unfortunately named Pantera. The lack of distinct races for each faction, or at least any effort to differentiate each race from its parallel on the opposing faction, smacks of laziness to me."

The gaming landscape has truly hit new lows with this relaunch bullshit.  This game is the most obvious amateur level cash grab I think I've ever seen.

Oh no, you have it backwards. It is most obviously an amateur game development effort, but a very masterful cash grab.

Pure evil genius in taking a game with three previous releases that failed spectacularly and convincing gamers that "this time" things would be better.

Even now there are those who give the devs a pass believing all will be fixed when the game officially releases.  

ROFL, I'm almost in tears when I see such hope, nay, faith this will come to pass.

Genius I tell you.

True enough, they somehow managed the hype through Aeria games pulling out literally due to "quality concerns."

Mikeha

/yawn

idontlikemyname

Men i like this Bless drama.

Tokken

MassivelyOP, Bless you for your honesty. LOL

kitarad

What an in depth scathing review but this chap really played the game to a respectable level and has a good grasp of the game and its problems . His analysis of the combat and its flaws together with a glimpse of how it could have been made better. What stupidity forced these developers to send this game out like this and shouldn't the last three attempts have taught them something. Greed for short term gains is not an attractive thing.

Scorchien

Many were bashing it here , 6 months ago , bout time others were catching up to this moneygrab compie

SpottyGekko

NA/EU was the last "untapped market" for Bless. They just finally got around to tapping it...

Kyleran

SpottyGekko said:

NA/EU was the last "untapped market" for Bless. They just finally got around to tapping it...

You are forgetting one for sure....regionally specific  China version. 

Could also try for regional versions in Brazil, India,  N. Korea..

Then they can fix/upgrade it all again and relaunch in prevously failed markets.

People will buy it, gamers are stupid about their money.

Scorchien

Kyleran said:

SpottyGekko said:

NA/EU was the last "untapped market" for Bless. They just finally got around to tapping it...

You are forgetting one for sure....regionally specific  China version. 

Could also try for regional versions in Brazil, India,  N. Korea..

Then they can fix/upgrade it all again and relaunch in prevously failed markets.

People will buy it, gamers are stupid about their money.

Bless Remastered EE launching on Mars

btdt

mgilbrtsn said:

meh, it's bashed so much that this isn't much of a 'scoop.'  This is merely riding the wave.  I'll be more impressed with some of these sites break from the pack in some of these reviews.  Merely parroting what everyone is already saying seems kinda, kinda.. just kinda.  

So very true.  

News stopped being news a long time ago.  There hasn't been one legitimate gaming website on the internet for years.  It's all advertising.  If you want a real review, just play the game yourself or ask your friend.  They will be blunt and to the point and they won't subject you to a myriad of advertisements along the way.

If this thread gets enough post count, I'm sure some OP Ed will end up on the site written by some noteworthy person suggesting that through scholarly research and intensive gameplay they were able to come to the same conclusion as you did.

Scot

The MMORPG.com review had more professionalism. I assume the people who thought that review was not telling it as it is, will find this dramatized review more to their likening?

You do not have to be "brutal", call the game cursed or any other shouty man nonsense borrowed from video reviews on You Tube.

The review on this site mentioned every single issue we had talked about in the forums, you don't need to act like the Incredible Hulk to get that across.

Kyleran

Scot said:

The MMORPG.com review had more professionalism. I assume the people who thought that review was not telling it as it is, will find this dramatized review more to their likening?

You do not have to be "brutal", call the game cursed or any other shouty man nonsense borrowed from video reviews on You Tube.

The review on this site mentioned every single issue we had talked about in the forums, you don't need to act like the Incredible Hulk to get that is.

I'm thinking you didn't actually read the MOP review eh?

Despite its attempt to be humorous title I found nothing "shouty" about it in any way.

It is thorough, well presented and if it comes across as a bit hard hitting,  I have no issue with it, Bless deserves a good smackdown.

MadFrenchie

Yea, I'm assuming those who are trying to label the MOP review unprofessional haven't actually read it.  It's brutal, but it's still professional and detailed.  These things aren't mutually exclusive, Neowiz is a company out to make money, not a child showing you his pet project, put on your big boy pants folks.


The game's just an objectively poor effort.  Again, even Aeria Games knew it and bailed before the release for that very reason.

Scot

Kyleran said:

Scot said:

The MMORPG.com review had more professionalism. I assume the people who thought that review was not telling it as it is, will find this dramatized review more to their likening?

You do not have to be "brutal", call the game cursed or any other shouty man nonsense borrowed from video reviews on You Tube.

The review on this site mentioned every single issue we had talked about in the forums, you don't need to act like the Incredible Hulk to get that is.

I'm thinking you didn't actually read the MOP review eh?

Despite its attempt to be humorous title I found nothing "shouty" about it in any way.

It is thorough, well presented and if it comes across as a bit hard hitting,  I have no issue with it, Bless deserves a good smackdown.

It started with "Bless Online feels like a curse" as part of the title. It also had:

"the fact is that Bless is poorly optimized, riddled with buggy shenanigans, and nowhere near finished, much less polished, enough to warrant Neowiz actually charging people money to play it."

"Do I think Bless is a fun game? No. Obviously. Could it, with enough effort from the developers, become a fun game? Maybe. But at the rate things have been going, it seems increasingly unlikely that it’s going to happen any time before the sun implodes, heralding the end of days. Or before the game starts hemorrhaging money and gets shut down, which hopefully will happen first."


Now to be fair it is not as bad as shouty men on You Tube, but it is borrowing the sort of drama and language that they use. My concern is that gamers now expect that sort of nonsense in written gaming articles.

To me the MMORPG.com review which gave it 5.5 was smack down  enough. I know we are supposed to give anything we like a ten and anything we don't like a one, but the 5.5 was enough to tell me posters opinions had been confirmed, don't buy it.

Leiloni

Scot said:

Kyleran said:

Scot said:

The MMORPG.com review had more professionalism. I assume the people who thought that review was not telling it as it is, will find this dramatized review more to their likening?

You do not have to be "brutal", call the game cursed or any other shouty man nonsense borrowed from video reviews on You Tube.

The review on this site mentioned every single issue we had talked about in the forums, you don't need to act like the Incredible Hulk to get that is.

I'm thinking you didn't actually read the MOP review eh?

Despite its attempt to be humorous title I found nothing "shouty" about it in any way.

It is thorough, well presented and if it comes across as a bit hard hitting,  I have no issue with it, Bless deserves a good smackdown.

It started with "Bless Online feels like a curse" as part of the title. It also had:

"the fact is that Bless is poorly optimized, riddled with buggy shenanigans, and nowhere near finished, much less polished, enough to warrant Neowiz actually charging people money to play it."

"Do I think Bless is a fun game? No. Obviously. Could it, with enough effort from the developers, become a fun game? Maybe. But at the rate things have been going, it seems increasingly unlikely that it’s going to happen any time before the sun implodes, heralding the end of days. Or before the game starts hemorrhaging money and gets shut down, which hopefully will happen first."


Now to be fair it is not as bad as shouty men on You Tube, but it is borrowing the sort of drama and language that they use. My concern is that gamers now expect that sort of nonsense in written gaming articles.

To me the MMORPG.com review which gave it 5.5 was smack down  enough. I know we are supposed to give anything we like a ten and anything we don't like a one, but the 5.5 was enough to tell me posters opinions had been confirmed, don't buy it.

I agree but it's not limited to just this article. They write that way in everything they do, and add in a lot of opinions not to just what they write, but how they write it. If they don't like a game they either won't write about it, or will add snark and negativity into even a simple news post about a patch. They lost objectivity and professionalism when their corporate overlords dumped them a few years ago and they went independent.

Edit: They do a lot of clickbaity stuff too which I can't really respect, either. I think a lot of what they do is just to get attention.

MadFrenchie

Scot said:

Kyleran said:

Scot said:

The MMORPG.com review had more professionalism. I assume the people who thought that review was not telling it as it is, will find this dramatized review more to their likening?

You do not have to be "brutal", call the game cursed or any other shouty man nonsense borrowed from video reviews on You Tube.

The review on this site mentioned every single issue we had talked about in the forums, you don't need to act like the Incredible Hulk to get that is.

I'm thinking you didn't actually read the MOP review eh?

Despite its attempt to be humorous title I found nothing "shouty" about it in any way.

It is thorough, well presented and if it comes across as a bit hard hitting,  I have no issue with it, Bless deserves a good smackdown.

It started with "Bless Online feels like a curse" as part of the title. It also had:

"the fact is that Bless is poorly optimized, riddled with buggy shenanigans, and nowhere near finished, much less polished, enough to warrant Neowiz actually charging people money to play it."

"Do I think Bless is a fun game? No. Obviously. Could it, with enough effort from the developers, become a fun game? Maybe. But at the rate things have been going, it seems increasingly unlikely that it’s going to happen any time before the sun implodes, heralding the end of days. Or before the game starts hemorrhaging money and gets shut down, which hopefully will happen first."


Now to be fair it is not as bad as shouty men on You Tube, but it is borrowing the sort of drama and language that they use. My concern is that gamers now expect that sort of nonsense in written gaming articles.

To me the MMORPG.com review which gave it 5.5 was smack down  enough. I know we are supposed to give anything we like a ten and anything we don't like a one, but the 5.5 was enough to tell me posters opinions had been confirmed, don't buy it.

Call a spade a spade.  Neowiz shouldn't have been taking money for such a shoddy effort.  I encourage being blunt about it, because sugar-coating it does a disservice to gamers, who are the people MOP should be serving, not the game devs.

Trying to gloss over or handle Neowiz with kit gloves is a much larger disservice than a little bit of hyperbole.

EDIT- remember, the article is a second look at Bless a month after launch.  If you read the article end to end, you would know that they were checking back in to see if Neowiz had made good faith efforts to fix some of the most glaring issues.  The article found Neowiz wanting.  The italicized parts are criticism based on that.

Scot

DMKano said:

Leiloni said:

Scot said:

Kyleran said:

Scot said:

The MMORPG.com review had more professionalism. I assume the people who thought that review was not telling it as it is, will find this dramatized review more to their likening?

You do not have to be "brutal", call the game cursed or any other shouty man nonsense borrowed from video reviews on You Tube.

The review on this site mentioned every single issue we had talked about in the forums, you don't need to act like the Incredible Hulk to get that is.

I'm thinking you didn't actually read the MOP review eh?

Despite its attempt to be humorous title I found nothing "shouty" about it in any way.

It is thorough, well presented and if it comes across as a bit hard hitting,  I have no issue with it, Bless deserves a good smackdown.

It started with "Bless Online feels like a curse" as part of the title. It also had:

"the fact is that Bless is poorly optimized, riddled with buggy shenanigans, and nowhere near finished, much less polished, enough to warrant Neowiz actually charging people money to play it."

"Do I think Bless is a fun game? No. Obviously. Could it, with enough effort from the developers, become a fun game? Maybe. But at the rate things have been going, it seems increasingly unlikely that it’s going to happen any time before the sun implodes, heralding the end of days. Or before the game starts hemorrhaging money and gets shut down, which hopefully will happen first."


Now to be fair it is not as bad as shouty men on You Tube, but it is borrowing the sort of drama and language that they use. My concern is that gamers now expect that sort of nonsense in written gaming articles.

To me the MMORPG.com review which gave it 5.5 was smack down  enough. I know we are supposed to give anything we like a ten and anything we don't like a one, but the 5.5 was enough to tell me posters opinions had been confirmed, don't buy it.

I agree but it's not limited to just this article. They write that way in everything they do, and add in a lot of opinions not to just what they write, but how they write it. If they don't like a game they either won't write about it, or will add snark and negativity into even a simple news post about a patch. They lost objectivity and professionalism when their corporate overlords dumped them a few years ago and they went independent.

"objectivity and professionalism" - myth

There never was, never is never will be such thing as long as journalism exists.

People are inherently incapable of objectivity because we are story tellers and our own bias is inescapable.

Humans are story tellers, our brains have been tuned to look for and detect patterns of story telling, this is why data-driven hard facts alone are boring, but you put a narrative and a fun story around them and masses will eat it up.

video game journalism is more infotainment than hard hitting fact based journalism - the articles are written so they are fun to write and fun to read, that's the whole point.

Indeed, but journalists do realise that bias, the whole point is to try to be as impartial as you can in spite of it.

MadFrenchie said:

Call a spade a spade.  Neowiz shouldn't have been taking money for such a shoddy effort.  I encourage being blunt about it, because sugar-coating it does a disservice to gamers, who are the people MOP should be serving, not the game devs.

Trying to gloss over or handle Neowiz with kit gloves is a much larger disservice than a little bit of hyperbole.

EDIT- remember, the article is a second look at Bless a month after launch.  If you read the article end to end, you would know that they were checking back in to see if Neowiz had made good faith efforts to fix some of the most glaring issues.  The article found Neowiz wanting.  The italicized parts are criticism based on that.

To me you should realise it is a shoddy effort from the review, and both reviews do that. MOP just felt the need to add drama. Indeed so much drama that one of our posters felt the need to do a thread about it here. I doubt MMORPG.com's review got talked about as much because it did not say the game was "cursed" and so on.

I hope that gaming sites and also any magazines do not get effected by the language on social media, which is becoming the way we communicate in every medium.

MadFrenchie

Scot said:

DMKano said:

Leiloni said:

Scot said:

Kyleran said:

Scot said:

The MMORPG.com review had more professionalism. I assume the people who thought that review was not telling it as it is, will find this dramatized review more to their likening?

You do not have to be "brutal", call the game cursed or any other shouty man nonsense borrowed from video reviews on You Tube.

The review on this site mentioned every single issue we had talked about in the forums, you don't need to act like the Incredible Hulk to get that is.

I'm thinking you didn't actually read the MOP review eh?

Despite its attempt to be humorous title I found nothing "shouty" about it in any way.

It is thorough, well presented and if it comes across as a bit hard hitting,  I have no issue with it, Bless deserves a good smackdown.

It started with "Bless Online feels like a curse" as part of the title. It also had:

"the fact is that Bless is poorly optimized, riddled with buggy shenanigans, and nowhere near finished, much less polished, enough to warrant Neowiz actually charging people money to play it."

"Do I think Bless is a fun game? No. Obviously. Could it, with enough effort from the developers, become a fun game? Maybe. But at the rate things have been going, it seems increasingly unlikely that it’s going to happen any time before the sun implodes, heralding the end of days. Or before the game starts hemorrhaging money and gets shut down, which hopefully will happen first."


Now to be fair it is not as bad as shouty men on You Tube, but it is borrowing the sort of drama and language that they use. My concern is that gamers now expect that sort of nonsense in written gaming articles.

To me the MMORPG.com review which gave it 5.5 was smack down  enough. I know we are supposed to give anything we like a ten and anything we don't like a one, but the 5.5 was enough to tell me posters opinions had been confirmed, don't buy it.

I agree but it's not limited to just this article. They write that way in everything they do, and add in a lot of opinions not to just what they write, but how they write it. If they don't like a game they either won't write about it, or will add snark and negativity into even a simple news post about a patch. They lost objectivity and professionalism when their corporate overlords dumped them a few years ago and they went independent.

"objectivity and professionalism" - myth

There never was, never is never will be such thing as long as journalism exists.

People are inherently incapable of objectivity because we are story tellers and our own bias is inescapable.

Humans are story tellers, our brains have been tuned to look for and detect patterns of story telling, this is why data-driven hard facts alone are boring, but you put a narrative and a fun story around them and masses will eat it up.

video game journalism is more infotainment than hard hitting fact based journalism - the articles are written so they are fun to write and fun to read, that's the whole point.

Indeed, but journalists do realise that bias, the whole point is to try to be as impartial as you can in spite of it.

MadFrenchie said:

Call a spade a spade.  Neowiz shouldn't have been taking money for such a shoddy effort.  I encourage being blunt about it, because sugar-coating it does a disservice to gamers, who are the people MOP should be serving, not the game devs.

Trying to gloss over or handle Neowiz with kit gloves is a much larger disservice than a little bit of hyperbole.

EDIT- remember, the article is a second look at Bless a month after launch.  If you read the article end to end, you would know that they were checking back in to see if Neowiz had made good faith efforts to fix some of the most glaring issues.  The article found Neowiz wanting.  The italicized parts are criticism based on that.

To me you should realise it is a shoddy effort from the review, and both reviews do that. MOP just felt the need to add drama. Indeed so much drama that one of our posters felt the need to do a thread about it here. I doubt MMORPG.com's review got talked about as much because it did not say the game was "cursed" and so on.

I hope that gaming sites and also any magazines do not get effected by the language on social media, which is becoming the way we communicate in every medium.

The curse was a play on the title.  Much like the staff here uses regularly.  "Lichdom, I Hardly Know Him" is currently on the front page.

The article backed up its criticisms with full explanations of the issues.  Adding in hyperbole isn't uncommon in any realm for an opinion piece, which is what that article is.

FlyByKnight

Wow look at people trying to discredit a pretty straight forward article about a badly done game, that's been bad 3 times before.

Any retorts toward what was actually said? *Puts on reading glasses* nope.

Motivation? I'm absolutely interested in knowing why.

some-clueless-guy

First time I read of this game I felt apathy. Like being shown some colourful pictures of delicious food right after gorging yourself on a max sized pizza, except that in this case I was starved of MMOs, have been for almost two years, but seeing this thing coming up I really felt no interest in waiting for it.
Worst part is that, for a time, I though it was me; I thought it must have been because I have outgrown MMOs and I am not the target audience any more. Luckily — or maybe not, because it means I am still craving a good one — it wasn't me.