CABAL's shortfalls? A seasoned player's take.(3/3)

OK, I admit, I must've been too hyped up when I typed the second part. But still, there are some parts of gameplay balance that I feel should be addressed.

For example, my understanding is that Force Bladers, at Transcender skill level (for the uninitiated, that's the highest level) has a lock-down skill that aims against magic casters - Mana Freeze. According to a person within my current guild, to shut down an entire enemy guild would only require less than six such FBs if the correct posture is used. That basically leaves entire groups of magic casters - meaning the Wizards and the Force Archers - totally useless. While one or two may not be a problem it would be more so if there are many such FBs, and given time it is possible for multiple guilds to be this strong in one single year's time.

Talk about break of gameplay and strategies involved - all cut down to THE FB(s).


People might dismiss what I say as being too worrisome, that there are strategies that can counter such. I wouldn't discount such arguments. Maybe I worry too much for my own good, but the fact that six FBs can shut down a guild's magicians seriously disturbs.

The other thing that may not be so much of a shortfall is the way weapons and equipments are more commodities than really rare drops, as was the case with RO and Maplestory (think godly equipment that isn't really player-accomplished but rather, through lucky drops and gachapon mechanisms). This means that anyone can make weapons, or armor, but a select group of individuals would control the economy because they can craft a certain kind of equipment. Localising control of the economy to these select few may be a bad idea in the making, since prices are dictated by the equipments they make.

An example - Early May the prices of Bluestin Adept +3exp equipments would cost a pretty penny, closer to 800k alz, and then Bluestin Adept +4exp would fetch for 2 million alz a piece. But by late May the prices have all universally dropped to less than 450k a piece of the former and to around 800k for the latter. With time, the same situation is to be expected of the Titanium equipment series.

There is one anomaly though, but probably because of the limited market for this series of equipment, which is basically the weapons, whose prices haven't dropped as drastically. Perhaps there were some complications to weapon-making that my inexperience hasn't covered, but what is for sure is that the prices of such weaponry would drop as well once enough players have discovered the difficulty in breaking the over-saturated armory market.

Everything I've said here is my sole opinion, with regards to the pluses and minuses of Cabal as a whole, including the current trend in the SEA server. I am in no way related to ESTsoft or its SEA distributor, AsiaSoft. So please, minus all that legalese and everything, we're not related to each other and this blog post is only meant as an illustration of the current situation as I see it.

With it, that's the end of my blog posting on CABAL's shortfalls as a whole.