I will only play B&S when the ridiculous weapon grind is balanced and all the different forms of currency goes away. Seriously, I could not manage my bags at all. I will say that B&S combat is 2nd to none.
If anyone has any feedback regarding any changes since the April 2016 time frame, please share.
Comments
I will start with my personal observation, that those things you dont like, multiple currencies and huge grind for gear upgrades, are designed that way in order to push more people towards cash shop, where you can buy more bag space or exchange real money for game gold, and therefore it is unlikely that they will undergo any major changes in future.
With that said, there were couple of patches this year, that reduced or changed the costs of gear upgrades to make the process a bit easier. For example, this December, with introduction of stage 7-9 legendary weapon, they lowered the cost to upgrade stage 1-6. When leveling you can now obtain some of the gear required for evolutions from those surveys you get every few levels. There is new path for Silverfrost weapon upgrades that uses less old materials but requires you to get a new kind of material, SIlverfrost Refining Stone, instead. From time to time there are also in game events that allow you to obtain an item that replaces the weapon/accessory required for evolution and reduces amount of materials needed by certain percent.
As far as I remember, the only change regarding multiple currencies, was making many of them account bound, which allows you to mail them to bank alt (if you unlocked mail).
Speaking from perspective of mainly PvE player, the bots have also been partially dealt with, although indirectly. Back when level 45 was max, there were bots that would join groups and afk at entrance of blue dungeons to get gold from boss drops, now level 50 blue dungeons dont drop anything expensive so the bots are gone. There were also bots in Arena, farming Zen Beans in order to buy Soulstones, now if you want to buy them you need also an item that drops from dungeon dailies - this change reduced their number significantly. Gold spammers in chat are still there, that's the problem that is very hard to deal with, as the game is f2p, however they added the Report Spam option that also blocks the user for you and apparently, if enough people use it, blocks the reported person ability to use chat as well. As for hackers the only place I encountered them is world PvP zone Soulstone Plains when you can sometimes see people use speed hacks to get Meteors or Injured Soldiers, however you dont see them that often because the entire thing isnt that much profitable. There might be bots/hackers in other places that I've not visited, but all in all they were not affecting my game experience in direct way.
Upgrade costs seem to be reduced each new patch. I do agree that spending a bit of real $$ for bag space or whatever is a good idea. Myself, if I'm playing a game, I figure I ought to contribute to the cost of running the game.
Game is unplayable without a VPN despite living 100km away?
Customer support is horrendous, don't even bother contacting them with any issue ever.
They have their spreadsheet that they follow and copy-paste replies from no matter what.
I'm not sure if that's something to wish for.
Combat is good, its just a shame about EVERYTHING ELSE.