Blue Protocol: Free to Play, Season Pass, PvP – Everything You Need to Know From Their 2nd Livestream

Now that the latest livestream from the Blue Protocol team is over, let’s talk about what changes they’re bringing to the game.

Remember, the Closed Beta registration for the game closes at the beginning of next month so if you haven’t applied already, you might want to.

I have a guide on how to register for those of you that need one:

We also have a large community subreddit for the game dealing with updates, news and a place to discuss the game with other interested players. You should definitely join as well!

Now let’s start this off with the announcement you’ve all been waiting for: What business model do Bandai Namco plan on using for the game? Well, in their Q&A, it was revealed that Blue Protocol will actually be going free-to-play.
Yup – but not only will the game be free-to-play, it will also feature an additional Season Pass which will act similarly to how it does in Battle Royale games and will offer small premium incentives that they promise won’t give any player an advantage over others.
They’ve made it very clear that no outfits, no accessories, nothing will provide stats or bonuses to players in-game. There will also be a functional cash shop available, which stands to reason, this is a free MMO after all and that is to be expected.
Without one they’d never make any money from the game, after all. They did state that the only items available in the store will be cosmetic items, outfits and items that will not impact the game or gameplay overall.

Then there were some questions regarding character customization, such as if it’s possible to alter your characters’ appearance once you’ve created them.
There is no system in place right now, but they’re working on allowing for players to alter their skin color, hairstyles, facial hair and more in the future. You can also select your characters’ voice from a selection of pre-set voices, and finally names are not locked to a single character.
Which is honestly a little weird. They went on to say that there can be more than one character with the same name, meaning we will have potentially hundreds, if not thousands of random “Kirito’s” running around.
I guess adding friends or blocking people will have to be done on an account-level, then, kinda like the Battle.net IDs for World of Warcraft?

They’re planning on adding a guild system into the game in the future. Currently, there is no guild functionality implemented, however, that is specifically for this Closed Beta.
The next Closed Beta may feature a functional guild system, and it is definitely confirmed to be in the live version of the game.
They went on to state that they didn’t want to force players to have to join a guild to participate in content, or gate content behind needing them so like partying with other players, the game is targeted at being possible without the need for groups, guilds or parties.

Crafting is present in-game. During the Alpha test you could craft weapons, and were capable of gathering resources in the form of mining ore, harvesting materials via gathering, and then straight-up murdering monsters.
They plan on adding in various types of social activities moving forward such as fishing, casinos and even player housing, however, they’re doing this very slowly and carefully as it’s important to them they release them in a complete, functional form.

As of right now, there will be no PvP in-game. Specifically, they stated “This hasn’t been planned yet,” meaning there is no functional form of PvP currently implemented, nor do they have plans for it in the foreseeable future.
There is an arena planned, but that is going to be the player grouping up with a full team and fighting against another full-team of enemy controlled AI monsters.
While they did state that PvP isn’t currently planned, PvP in Japanese MMOs have always been heavily underutilized like in Final Fantasy XIV and Phantasy Star Online 2, so I guess it makes sense, really.

Interestingly, they also went on to elaborate on classes. Initially, they stated that there would only be 4 classes available. However, as of their latest livestream, they confirmed that they are already working on the creation of additional classes.
Whether this means they’ll all be DPS is up for discussion, but this could mean dedicated tanks and healers down the line.
Worth noting is that they mentioned they were working on it – preparing for additional classes, not that they were finalized or would be ready to actually create any time in the near future. It could be planned for the full launch of the game, or a DLC after the launch.

One topic that players were really invested in having answered was concerning controller support.
Thankfully, the devs elaborated on that as well stating that they are actively working on providing support for a large variety of console controllers, and that there are already quite a few PC controllers already supported.

Then they went on to showcase new features, like the Class Skill Trees. The Aegis Fighter was used as reference, and these images, along with the info is courtesy of the BlueProtocolDB website by the way.
Skill points are used to unlock various skills, with skill points being obtainable through leveling and questing.
A lot of you were interested in seeing the new Skill Tree system in action so you should be glad to see it’s actually pretty extensive!

The next livestream is going to take place on February 27th, ahead of the final week for Closed Beta registration