A Letter From the Head of Development: Open Beta Feedback

I would like to thank everyone who took the time to join the adventure in Bless Unleashed during our recent open beta. Please accept my warmest regards for your constant enthusiasm and effort to help us prepare Bless Unleashed for its coming launch. We here at Round 8 are continuing to learn a lot from your feedback and play experiences. These will provide meaningful insight and guidance to creating a stronger, thriving experience for you to enjoy.

We are going over each and every issue that was actively discussed in game and in various community channels. We were amazed at the insights our community was able to provide from areas of the game that were new to them, and many of our development team agrees with the players’ perspective. Discussions regarding future plans and improvements for Bless Unleashed are currently underway.

Open world PvP

As more and more users reached level 30, Open World PvP became a controversial issue. We became aware of a few problems we did not anticipate while monitoring the in-game situation and player response.

In response to player feedback, we plan to expand the Protected Zones, and disable PvP around Soul Pyres so that low-level player progression will not be disrupted. These changes will help to improve the Open World PvP experience. Our development team is also working on a brand new feature called Unions, which will introduce additional new features and skill sets that will affect players based on their play style, including those who participate in open world PvP a lot. The Union System is vast and extensive and will play a major part in the game experience. We’ll release more details at a later time.

Class Development/Individuality

Bless Unleashed takes a unique approach in which players will need to unlock different Blessings, and progress through the game to unlock their unique features. However since the amount of Blessings available in the early to mid-parts of the game are limited, there was a lot of feedback on how all classes end up having the same skills and combat methods. Blessings are intended to be customizable and modified by the player through choices made when equipping their character. High end gear will contain special modifiers which will change the way your Blessing Skills work, allowing the player to customize the Blessing to fit their needs better. However, since the open beta did not allow players to reach this level of gear, we were unable to show you this during the open beta. To help address this feedback, we will be introducing gear which modifies Blessings earlier in the game. This should give players more time to find out what kind of modifications they like on their Blessings while advance to late and end game.In addition to this, Unions will expand specialty skill trees to create more character diversity and incorporate a player’s own combat style.

Grinding in Levels 18 to 20

There was a good deal of feedback regarding the amount of grinding between levels 18 to 20. We are currently addressing the issue by changing the placement of all our dungeons in the next build. While progressing through the main quests, players may be met with obstacles and difficulties such as having an insufficient Gear Score to defeat a Field Boss, or not meeting the entry requirements to eliminate a Dungeon Boss. Instead of simply grinding, we think that it is important to discover and experience new parts of the game while looking for ways to overcome such barriers. Our hope is that by changing when players may interact with our Dungeons, there will be a smoother transition from the mid to late game.

Enhancement System

As many of our players enter areas of increased difficulty and needed to enhance items, we’ve seen numerous concerns regarding the possibility of the game being Pay-to-Win. Please rest assured that we are working closely with BANDAI NAMCO to avoid Pay-to-Win scenarios.The enhancement system will only ever utilize in-game currency/goods such as (Gold, Artifact Shards/Cores etc.) and if damaged, can be repaired and recovered by using an item of the same rank. A Repair Tool that can be purchased only once a day from a Limited Time Merchant can also be used to repair/recover broken equipment, this item may only be purchased for Starseed. In this vein, we’ve also ruled out purchasing Star Seeds with real-life currencies.

Future Content Releases

Numerous content that has yet been released will be available at launch. Estates that can be privately owned and developed, brand new dungeons and bosses, and new zones to adventure in will all be unveiled. New Blessing Skills, Invasion quests and the most popular content within our studio, the 3v3 Battlefield, are all being polished for release. All this and more, including the Union system mentioned earlier, will unite players who share similar interests and goals in the game.

We have found from countless hours of developing Bless Unleashed that developing an MMO is similar to a long journey. There will be paths that are clear and paths that must be forged. There will also be times where you must take a step back to see the road ahead. But if you have someone walking alongside you, there is always encouragement and strength to continue on. Everyone here at Round 8 Studio hopes that our players will continue to support, guide, and walk with us side by side in our journey and continue to be a beacon to guide us in the right direction. We hope all of you enjoyed the open beta, and look forward to seeing you all return to Lumios and Bless Unleashed at launch!.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Jason Park, Head of Round8 Studio