Hello,

This is GM Meiji, hiding in the research center and observing user issues.

First of all, I would like to deeply apologize for the elongated wait and anticipation due to the enormous amount of update contents that is in progress currently. The April’s update will be scheduled for progress on April, 25th.

For April and May’s update, we are concentrating on the motto, “More Fairness, More Value” in throughout the progress.

1. More Fairness in Gameplay (No Pay to Win)

In every game, it is essential to provide all players equal and fairness. Especially when Black Survival is in the PvP Genre, it is necessary to have strictness in the game. This is because in PvP genre games, win and lose are determined by player’s skill and luck unlike any other RPG games.

Feel free to enjoy gameplay even without purchasing for pay commodities is important in our stance. It was our intention as well for the March update such as removing some of the items from the supply box.

However, there is still a burden factor that still remains. Although the fairly expensive contents such as “Character” and “Aptitude” can be purchased with Gold Coins in the game, but it can be obstacles into reaching a fair game. Balancing both Character and Aptitude is what we intended to do, but with every update, there were parts that doesn’t seemed fit for the balancing. Every player has different combination styles for Characters and Aptitudes they are versed or proficient with. However, when a player wants to try new things such as being a main for another new character, the enormous amount of Gold Coins that is needed to invest. In order to purchase for just a character that is worth 99,000 Gold Coins, an immense amount of gameplay is required. Also, more Gold Coins will also be required to make a character up to 5 stars for that character to be viable in combat.

Hence, we are improving largely on these issues for this April’s update.

First and foremost, we are removing the success chance for the character promotion, and characters can be promoted by filling the Confidence Level. Players can now attempt to promote their characters for free by fulfilling the Confidence Level to full by playing matches in Normal Game during player’s freetime. The character promotion will automatically promote your character once the Confidence Level is full, and players can also now buy Confidence Injection using Gold Coins to increase the Confidence Level immediately. Although players wanted to use Gold Coins to reach the character’s 5 stars, we can highly ensure that players would spend less Gold Coins in character promotion like before.

Bear Points will also be reorganized. There are various types of items now that can be purchased using Bear Points, such as Aptitude Trial, Gold Booster, Confidence Booster, etc. The amount of Bear Points earn will be increased in a single play. The amount of Bear Points that will be earned is increased in proportion to time. Quests will also be implemented in the game as a new method to earn more Bear Points. There will be Daily Quests and Weekly Quests (which will last long for a week) added, and players can now earn Bear Points a lot more through various types of methods. As a result, collecting more commodities are possible in this new update.

In May update, we are planning to add some more systems to collect more Gold Coins and Bear Points through Policy Cards and Weekly Mini Leagues.

Enhancing characters and skills is in order to provide a different game experience while playing different characters is our goal that we wanted to achieve. As much as the core contents for each and every characters, players can now obtain characters much easier than before.

Even changing the detailed policies, we are planning to approach the idea of “Allowing users to obtain more Characters” in a bigger frame, and so “Allowing users to choose Characters and Aptitudes freely without even paying a single cent”.

2. More Valued Commodities (More Pay to Love)

As a matter of fact, the reason we did not make this decision a little bit sooner was due to the fact that character sales accounted for half of our sales. Revenue is not important in building game elements, but surely it cannot be disregarded as the revenue is what makes a game studio keep on going and progressing. Hence, we are adding new commodities in this April’s update.

In conjunction with the idea of “Allowing users to choose Characters and Aptitudes freely without even paying a single cent” and “Ensuring users who paid for commodities that is worth for what they paid” simultaneously, we are planning to make our pay commodities worth for all players when they decide to purchase.

From the April’s update, we are utilizing “Gacha” mechanics, which the idea would be closely related to the use of probability-based commodity. We have been avoiding for a long period on the controversial stochastic commodity system, however, to monetize such utility would probably be essential. Although it is not a best method, we are still holding on the principle of not affecting the game play even if this is implemented. The stochastic commodity will only affect the out-of-game elements such as Character skins and Housing. In-game related elements such as Characters or Aptitudes are not affected by this new mechanic.

Through this mechanic, we are adding new animated skins created using Live2D and also limited-edition skins that can be obtained. The limited-edition skins will change in monthly basis, and the first animated skins and limited edition skins will be announced within two weeks prior to the update. In preparation for this animation work, there was a little late of matter that is needed to be done at the time. Unlike the sample with a simple GIF, the In-game animated motion will appear much smoother and exquisite.

In addition, a Housing system will be available in the new update that allows you to obtain furniture and decorate your background through probability-based commodity mechanic. In April, we are planning to add about 3 to 40 kinds of furniture that can make the current lobby background, and new backgrounds. (I want to get a Happy Rosalio who is standing by the beach!)

Unfortunately, probability-based commodities are not always exciting for some users. To reduce the dissatisfaction or resentment caused by unfortunate lucks or probabilities, we will provide Mileage for each purchase of the Gacha commodities, and users will be able to purchase limited products with Mileages. If it fails more than a certain number of times, it will get just the product of the user’s desire.

And even if a user wins a duplicate, users can still redeem it with a Credit, which allows a user to buy another limited products. The Animation Kits for existing skins will be updated a little bit for each month, hence users can purchase it at the Credit’s store.

In May, we will be adding a Research Support Product for 3,000KRW~5,000KRW, which allows the users to receive Gems every day as an attendance. Users can obtain 2 to 3 times of the amount of Gems with the combination of reasonable price and attendance.

Overall, paid commodities/products do not affect the gameplay, but rather maximizing the enjoyment for our users can achieve within the game.

3. Progress of the request

I’m going to talk about some things that I showed you in February.

First of all, I looked at the questionnaire conducted by the community about the rewards by league, and the result that came out was about half of each that those who want to reward goods and those who want costume skins. If you can not buy an animated skins in the store, wouldn’t it differentiate the costume skins?

① Achievement of Lion League: Test Subject Skins reward

② Achievement of Bear League: Lion compensation + Animation kit for Test Subject Skins reward

③ Achievement of Dragon League: Bears compensation + Costume skins for Test Subject Skins and Animation kit of costume skins reward

④ TOP100: Dragon Compensation + One choice of original Skin Animation Kit reward

Costume Skin: Skins that have a distinctive variation based on existing skins (for example, Black Acolyte Isol)

Animation Kit: Application of Live2D that is applied to skins and animated skins are used.

Original Skin Animation Kit: Every month, a little original skin animation kit is released. You can only choose from the skins released at the time upon receiving.

Season 4 Test Subject Skins will be determined by community vote. A total of 31 characters from Jackie to Jan are going to be in the form of the ideal world cup tournament.

We are going to progress on a Mini League rather than a league that runs once every six months. The Mini League is organized in the form consisting about 20 players every week, and that the top winners will be rewarded Gold Coins and Gems. We think it would be better to get the commodities for a shorter term than to progress with once in every six months. We are proceeding with the goal of starting in the month of June.

We will now display the average tier in rank match. Players will be able to find out whether it’s a top match or a sub-match. We thought that hiding nickname would solve the issue as an available option, but due to load problem due to repeated nicknames, we will release it as a product by necessity. However, since TOP100 is often targeted, we are going to reward Top100 for free every month.

We will expand the functionality of hiding League Borderline to allow you to select or deselect the desired border. In addition to last year’s league rewards, there will be some more seasonal event like Christmas for borders. The above features will be updated one by one between April and June update.

The new skins will be available in April, with a total of four to five additional skins, including limited skins for Gacha. New skins will be announced one by one from April 11th onwards.

We mentioned about the enhancement of the setting while anticipating the change of the story production method. We will show you a little about how “Jan” was set up and how it progressed through the official Twitter from next week.

The balance update will be scheduled for next Wednesday.

We will reduce the intervals of Mastery ranks and adjusting number of items (together with dropped items) in an area and character balances. We will announce this part as a Patch Note. Please note that due to some crash issues related to sound, we are solving this issue altogether and client update will be needed. The balance update will be postponed for an unavoidable week because iOS validation has to be passed in order for the client update to progress.