The Producers from Bless had this to say:

It has been over a week since Bless Online’s Early Access began, and the whole Bless Team including developers, customer support, and community have been very busy. We are also very thankful for all your feedback in the form of bugs, suggestions, and more.

As we encountered various issues shortly after our first server opened, we did our best to address the situation and come up with solutions to implement as quickly as we could.

However, as important as it is quickly solve individual issues, it is also important to share the current and future milestones of Bless Online with you so that we are all on the same page. We will continue to communicate with the community in order to improve our game all the way up to our official release. I will also continue to use the format of the Producer’s Letter to discuss Bless Online during Early Access.

EA Week One Patches

First of all, we have reviewed all of your feedback regarding server stabilization, localization, monetization, game content, and more. As a result, we found that the biggest issues were server stabilization, client optimization and game content adjustments that differ from our originally intended game design.

Last week, we updated the game with multiple patches for improved server stabilization and bug fixes. We plan to continue improving server stability in addition to catching any critical errors.

• v1.0.0.1 Patch Note: EA release specification
• v1.0.0.2 Patch Note: Quest item respawn time adjustment for smoother quest progression and bug fixes
• v1.0.0.3 Patch Note: Loading screen freeze fix and 5 other bugs fixes
• v1.0.0.4 Patch Note: Peninsula War update, first game balance adjustment and 5 other bug fixes
• v1.0.0.5 Patch Note: Quest tracker issue hotfix
• v1.0.0.6 Patch Note: Peninsula War buff deletion issue hotfix
• v1.0.0.7 Patch Note: Berserker stance skill issue hotfix
• v1.0.0.8 Patch Note: second game balance adjustment, appearance change item with gender change, and 3 other bug fixes
• v1.0.0.9 Patch Note: Fixed the NPC store selling price of a specific item and 3 other bug fixes
• v1.0.1.0 Patch Note: Changes to Chain Bonus interruptions, field boss drop-table, and 6 other bug fixes

Works in Progress

1. Localization (L10N)

We are aware and agree with the community’s criticism regarding the poor quality of current localization. I’d like to inform you that the completion rate of the main storyline’s localization process is over 90%. However, just before EA, we realized that there were some serious localization errors in newly developed areas such as the tutorial, skills, and system messages, all of which could be found early on in the Steam version of the game. As a result, we decided put a stop to all localization projects and focus on language QA.

We have improved the localization process and assigned dedicated personnel to the L10N team for higher quality results. We plan to improve and finalize the English text before starting to translate the English text into German.

Below are some changes made to the live server last week.

• Corrected mistranslations in the NPC script
• Corrected mistranslations of skill names and synced all the UI terms (still work in progress)
• Corrected the level up phrase
• Corrected faction mistranslations in character creation
• Synced the terms found in the Spirit and Gear Score UI

Our top priority right now is to increase the quality of the English translations and to eliminate player confusion caused by poorly translated text. As mistranslations can be patched without server maintenance, we will apply the new edited files to the client to as soon as they are available to improve the quality of the translation.

2. Customer Support ticket delays

We unfortunately did not prepare enough infrastructure support or service personnel to meet the demands of players at the launch of Bless Online. The amount of inquiries and requests received through our customer support channel and Discord, and other channels was many times more than what our customer service and community team could handle. We are well aware of this issue and are treating it with utmost importance. In order to quickly respond to the tickets, we have temporarily recruited customer support staff from other Neowiz projects. For improved service in the long run, we are adding more dedicated staff to the team. We expect our speed of response rate to increase and normalize soon.

3. Server performance improvements and game optimizations

Last week, we encountered serious issues that affected game connectivity and progression such as the loading screen freezing, server crashes, queues, and in-game delays. As a result, we carried out various performance improvements to solve these issues.

• Installed new servers without maintenance (there are currently 6 NA and 5 EU top-level servers).
• Upgraded the DB systems/storage to high-performance equipments to solve in-game delays.
• Increased cloud server capacity to solve queue issues.
• Improved stability by tuning server-to-server network connectivity.
• Switched to the previous generation AWS instance type to solve the network interface problems introduced by the latest AWS instance type.

Our development team is currently looking for additional ways to improve performance, and will continue the optimization work through consistent monitoring and analysis.

In addition to our original patch schedule, we are working hard to update our live servers right away every time a fix is prepared. As with scheduled patches, we aim to share detailed information through patch notes for each and every update.

In addition to bug fixes and game optimization, we are also working to add new content ahead of schedule for players to enjoy.

Soon we’ll be updating Bless with the “Siege of Castra” battlefield that was introduced in [EA Update Preview #2 – Siege of Castra]. We look forward to receiving your feedback on the new content when it becomes available, and I wish you all victory on the battlefield.

Sincerely,
Sungjin Ko, Executive Producer