After 9 years, the MMORPG Blade & Soul receives a major engine update. The change brings the game from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4, but many players are far from happy about it. We at MeinMMO summarize.
What happened in Blade & Soul? Coinciding with the successful launch of its successor, Blade & Soul 2, the now 9-year-old Blade & Soul has also received a significant update. You can now experience the MMORPG in beautiful Unreal Engine 4 graphics, but this also has negative aspects.
An engine update is a significant event that brings a lot of changes, and players are not happy with many of them. While there have certainly been positive feedbacks, the following issues particularly upset the player base:
- Significant deterioration of performance in open-world areas
- New color palette makes characters look “strange”
- Backgrounds and environments appear blurry
- Controller support has been removed
- Upgrade paths for items are no longer in the game but are expected to return later
What was the update supposed to bring? In fact, the goal of the update to Unreal Engine 4 was mainly to improve the performance of the MMORPG, which in the eyes of many players backfired.
While previous performance issues were managed, such as the game not needing to load as frequently and the stuttering seemingly disappearing, the frames per second have noticeably decreased, especially in the open world.
Players report 30 to 40 less FPS on current hardware, which completely ruins the open-world experience for many fans. In a survey on reddit, where over 200 people participated, more than half of the users say that performance has either deteriorated or has not changed at all.
45 users believe that only minimal changes have occurred, and just over 20 people think that performance has improved. A devastating verdict for the update. (via reddit)
“The update only shows me that it was right to stop playing a year ago”
What does the community say? As can be seen from the survey, the mood among players is rather negative towards the new update. Users criticize many changes.
- The user potatoandbacon writes (via reddit): “Loading times are now at least twice as fast, that’s great. However, the performance of the game noticeably fluctuates. In the open world and in raids, my FPS drop significantly. Blade & Soul 2 does not have this problem. I hope they manage to fix this. It’s playable, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement.”
- The player SaiyanBorly is outraged and writes (via reddit): “After the update to Unreal Engine 4, I noticed that the controller support is no longer working. They [the developers] didn’t announce this and only confirmed it upon request. Playing this game with mouse and keyboard feels terrible. I think I’ll take the update as a sign to finally stop playing Blade & Soul and look for a new game.”
- The user LMGDiVa misses his old character (via reddit): “I knew that there would be some graphical changes with the update, but somehow my character really looks weird. […] The new lighting makes the face look totally off, and I feel that characters with darker skin tones are more affected than others. It just doesn’t feel right.”
The community’s sentiment is rather gloomy, and they hope for improvement. A fan notes in a comment that Tera displayed similar problems after a similar update and was able to fix them later.
Whether Blade & Soul can do the same remains unconfirmed. However, the developers have already announced further updates to bring back features that have currently been removed from the game. However, there is currently no mention of controller support.
What do you think of such updates? Are you excited about the new graphics effects or do you miss how your character looked before? Do you find the reactions of the Blade & Soul community justified, or do you consider them minor issues? Let us know in the comments.
