f13.net

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/Pearl%20Abyss.jpg)


Title: Black Desert
Developer: Pearl Abyss (South Korea)
Estimated Release Date: Late 2013 in South Korea

---




This is far from finished and has no publisher in the West yet, so it could be early to post anything, but I think the trailer and the few videos out are already more than enough to deserve the interest and the buzz. This coming from the guy who made Continent of the Ninth (C9) for Webzen.

>> Take a look at this and pretend to be unimpressed if you can << (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXCiN1J2JI4&list=FLH_utxR8sYp9ypEacAnJJhw&index=3)

So, in short, this is going to be a big huge sandbox, seamless world with castle sieges and territorial control, no faction PvP even though the lore hints at two big warring nations, housing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-ynpolUV7o&list=FLH_utxR8sYp9ypEacAnJJhw&index=2) (check video) and farming stuff, horse riding and mounted combat as an integral part of the game (apparently inspired by Red Dead Redemption). The engine has been developed in house according to the developer specifically to be able to handle the massive pvp battles, and the combat is action focused with dodge and block. There's also supposed to be a parkour system (http://steparu.com/latest-news/910-black-desert-online-parkour), and a dynamic weather system that "should" affect some parts of the game (crops? battles?) and that will include occasional mean stuff like hurricanes (http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/02/05/new-black-desert-screens-show-blader-class-hurricane/).

Also worth noting that, so far, the game does NOT seem to include any pedo-shit or kawaii-race, and it seems to recreate some Italian Middle Ages towns like I've never seen it before, and all characters seem to be geared towards photorealism more than any kind of fantasy.

I mean,


Here's an interview. (http://www.mmoculture.com/2013/03/black-deserts-interview-with-developer-pearl-abyss/)
Here's another. (http://steparu.com/previews/mmo-rpg-previews/897-black-desert-online-interview)

I'm concerned with the female armor, it's seems very unrealistic.  I mean, I saw a flute player completely covered in chainmail.  How are girls supposed to be awesome with their belly buttons concealed?

(paging Lantyssa's wrath, paging Lantyssa's warth, isle six, stat!)

Photorealdollism, maybe.

I'd still take WoW graphics over this any day. It's going to look absolutely terrible once animated.

Quite an interesting mix of eastern and western art styles in that, that work out rather well. IMO.


The Shadows and lack of AA kill me in that video though, made my eyes hurt.

Dunno Id bang the brunette!

Yeah you are right, Photorealcartoonism is clearly better than Photorealdollism. But I gotta be honest with you, if it were Photorealstickism vs Photorealcartoonism I'd take xkcd over WoW any day of the week. It just looks so much better when animated.

 :awesome_for_real:

The art style in some places really reminds me of the style in Dragon's Dogma, which was one of the best things about that game.

Do you not have realdolls over there? If not, you should google it.

Preferably with safesearch off.  :grin:

At any rate, once these characters start moving and emoting, they're going to straight to the uncanny valley. The lack of realtime subsurface scattering makes attempts at realistic flesh/skin look plasticy, and all worthwhile facial animation requires large amounts of offline tweaking to look right.

I wish a game of this type worried a lot less about graphics,  if you have massive sieges you are not going to play with those kinds of graphics.

I did. it seems you can get your RealDoll fitted with elf ears for just $150 extra.

I love the character/armor design. Finally a Korean MMO that isn't too embarrassing to play? There are a few dumb looking armor stockings but it's miles better than their competitors at home, at least.

The faces are a little bit super airbrushed model time, but baby steps.

Looks pretty awesome. Unfortunately it's another interesting looking Korean game with zero western support so far. Sad.

What is it about spell effects and mmo's, the big battles looked like fucking raves.  Can we just stop it with the neon flashing shit on everything please?

The problem I have with korean games is that as pretty as they are, I usually hate the fuck out of the mechanics.

That said, I do like the armor style, even if everyone in the game is apparently a fashion model in their spare time.

*deleted* ( i should have read OP post before posting redundant stuff)

Animation looks a bit eerie but otherwise it looks really pretty.

But knowing it's a Korean game, I expect all the good stuff like sieges to be locked behind a wall of nut grinding.

Is this really going to be much different from Age of Wushu?

Well it certainly looks better and it apparently has nothing to do with ancient china.  I fail to see in what way it is anything like Age of Wushu actually, unless you expect it to also be horribly translated.

Grindy looking open world MMORPG with player faction PvP, territory control, etc?

Maybe I will be able to actually PLAY this one after I download it?  :oh_i_see:

There is zero grind in Age of Wushu.

Korean MMO = grindy is no longer the case. They've yet to make a game where the story/questing wasn't a joke that I know of but the raw # of mob kills and time investments are not huge hurdles that like they once were. The Koreans still do love their gear enhancement "grinds" but money sinks are a necessary evil and that's more min/max endgame stuff which I'd say is a bit different.

Reality is at this point they are making better MMOs than the west right now. They have more style, more flair, they take bigger game system risks and its not like LineageII days when along with that you had to put up with kill 80,000 mobs with no quest rewards to level.

Some of the ladies are fighting in heels too, but yeah, baby steps. The characters and environments are still ten times more attractive than anything found in TERA.

That's hardly much of an achievement.  :why_so_serious:

They are +5 to agility, -50%  fumble chance  magical heels

I missed that, possibly because I was giving the animations the stank eye at the time.

Have they stopped the gambling system grindfests finally? Those were kind of offensive offshoots of the grinding of mobs. Now you just have to grind mats because getting +1 to your gear has a chance of wiping it's stats out!

DIKU is getting kind of old in western MMOs, but I cannot for the life of me play most Korean MMOs without feeling like they aren't even trying to disguise the dick punching.

In TERA at least you don't risk losing your progress on incremental enchants anymore.

Yeah, that was one of the things they westernized when porting it over. The actual korean system for it was pretty crazy.

From a new interview, about housing:


 :awesome_for_real:

What, really, tent cities? Stay classy, Korea.

Tents for housing is lol, but those are probably out of reach for Free loading players - that said, looks interesting. Gorgeous, without blatant T&A spam we used to experience in Lineage 2.

You can see them animated in that preview video linked in the OP. It doesn't look bad, i'd say they avoid the uncanny valley precisely because they're more simplified there than in the high-res bullshots.

In any case I saw that video a while ago, not knowing where it's from I thought it's for some new single player RPG. Learning it's going to be attached to the usual MMO grindfest was a crushing disappointment.

I lived out of a blue tent (http://uo.stratics.com/homes/tent.shtml) in Ultima Online and it never did me any harm. You young people etc

Tents are visibile in this video at the 1:15 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=H-ynpolUV7o&list=FLH_utxR8sYp9ypEacAnJJhw#t=75s) mark.

Then what's the point in playing?

This looks nice.  I don't mind the wonky armour in Korean games.  I just have to be careful to only get hit in the boobies and girl junk because they are the only areas most of the armour covers.  I've become good at it over the years. 

Didn't SWG have tents? I remember camping being a "thing" althought I never did it.

Camps were a Scout and Ranger skill that let them set up temporary bases out in the wild.  These sound more like semi-permanent homes.

This entire thing is basically going to be hilarious trash. I'd appreciate it if no one thought otherwise.

Edit:
No.

As much as we were talking about the nice armor designs earlier: is it me or is the lady at around 1:00 basically just in boots and a shirt?

Occasional instances of that stuff are fine, though. If a lady in a fantasy world wants to fight in just boots and a shirt, fine, more power to her. It's a problem when my female characters are completely locked out of all the badass chainmail and whatnot the dudes get because it doesn't cross the designers' minds that anyone would want a female character to be wearing clothing more substantial than dental floss. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the outfits are still pretty silly (in particular heels on combat gear just completely kill it for me), but it's a relief that, from the screens, there are at least a couple outfits without exposed midriffs or boob windows that the designers actually put some effort into. It's not perfect, it's just better than what anyone was expecting.

You know, if there was one thing I always wanted from my heroic fantasy, it was being able to roleplay a vagrant.

THANKS OBAMA KOREA.

It looks that outfit has one sleeve and one pant tight leg removed, but it's otherwise not far off from some medieval garments. Not the first Korean game which goes for this sort of asymmetric designs, from the recent ones Tera comes to mind. It's rather silly, but then perhaps not really more silly than leaving one's stomach or back exposed, fashion is often odd.

Limited space for housing?  When they said sandbox MMO I wasn't expecting the litterbox.

That's how it was in UO though. If anything, they are imitating the one that started it all and arguably still the most beloved sandbox mmorpg of all time.

Yes, but UO didn't have houses in special housing-instances but right in the gameworld. Some at a very prime location...major roads, just outside city-gates, such things.

That was rad!*


*I hope that means what I think it does.

And is Black Desert gonna have them in special instances instead? I am really asking since I have no idea. If that piece of information was given out at some point, I missed it. I assumed that since they were going to have limited availability it had to be in the shared gameworld.

I assumed its kinda same as in archeage/UO- they are in actual gameworld and the space is limited and expensive.

I assumed the same thing. Maybe Cala knows something we missed.

No, not at all. I just assumed that:

Black Desert E3 Dev Preview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw5QWOFSwYI).

There's a new video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN8ZqNTc-6M) out (here if you want the HD version (http://pub.game.daum.net/common/popup/clipView.do?vid=v1ad5S4f7S60690ZSjq7eBj)) which makes my sandbox senses tingle. Pay attention especially to the last 20 seconds or so, the map with resources and trade routes.

(http://i1.gamecdn.net/pub/black/m/gallery/6week_1280x800_12.jpg)

...did he pull of a Google+ Social Combo in the first 20 seconds of the video? He like looked at his circles, dragged them in, and got a combo.

wat

All of these companies just need to start showing their games in English and have an American front-office (doesn't even need real employees) for people to take them seriously.

I have literally zero faith in anything 'online' that comes out of Asia. Now and forever.

What did they do to you?

They made bad games.

^^

First leaked videos that I know of from Korean closed beta (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmb76GpWxO4) (watch it in HD). There's many more in that person's channel. They are boring, but hey, it's a sandbox. You don't see characters "stealing vodka" in a MMO every day...

The fighting animations are awesome, i couldn't tell if he was a mage or some kind of monk though.

Resource gathering and Crafting explained (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2u_s3OFbGc).

A few recemt videos of the sandboxy activities (miniugames) that will be in Black Desert at launch.

Flute playing. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KelpRPbe6SM)

Pigeon shooting. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmSYRuliEjw)

What mounted combat is going to look like. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RERAoQB-JeU)

And a video of what it's like to adventure on a stormy night. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR59v5uyYYw)

There are supposed to be different mobs populating the world depending on the time of the day and the weather conditions.

There's also a lot of things that are still unclear to me, for example it seems like completing quests in Black Desert won't give you XP, it will give you Contribution Points instead, which are used to buy services from NPCs, or to rent tools, workshops and other things.

It looks like they are developing an English client themselves so they are clearly hoping to "sell" the game in the West although no publishing deal has been signed yet.

Oh good, mounted combat shaky cam.

Looks like headbob is not disabled while riding.  :awesome_for_real:

LotRO has the most sandboxy music system of any MMG. That's just a Flash game Flute Hero.

Stop making me want to play another Korean MMO. :)

Black Desert Pre-beta Interview with the Producer Kim Daeil (http://2p.com/5403317_1/Black-Desert-Pre-beta-Interview-with-the-Producer-Kim-Daeil-by-Nichole.htm)

The graphic style feels positivly restrained for a Korean MMO:

(http://i1.2pcdn.com/node14/image/article/201403/27/20140327075535a0dqt9epm7be230m.jpg)

A bit about combat:


(http://i1.2pcdn.com/node14/image/article/201403/27/20140327080306a0dqt9m6imfottpl.jpg)
(http://i1.2pcdn.com/node14/image/article/201403/27/20140327080315a0dqt9mbx23txmob.jpg)
(http://i1.2pcdn.com/node14/image/article/201403/27/20140327080323a0dqt9mgiptaeiau.jpg)

That is going to end horribly.

We've gone from dancing during boss fights to line dancing!

Unless the "melee" characters have hit range of 10 metres and more, it'd appear there's only room for one melee guy in each formation and the rest may as well not apply, because it's a choice between getting a ranged in that slot, or bringing a melee that breaks the formation just to be able to hit shit, and gets the 'penalty' of not having the formation bonus thanks to it.

Either of these being impressively idiotic, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone but apparently the designers of this wonder :grin:

Necroing this thread, because I haven't looked at it in a while. This is an old announcement, but:

http://black-desert.com/news/western-publisher-and-cb3-announced/

They're self-publishing in the US. They just wrapped up their final Korean closed beta, and open beta starts in Winter.

Also, I guess at some point in time since people last talked about it in this thread, they did a combat overhaul. It's almost character-action game fast now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvgCGjRyLvE

The teleporting kung fu mage looked fun as hell.

FLASHY BING BANG BOOM!!!

Game looks really really good.

Here's a more accurate video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsyZ29egA64

Between this and Archeage, I personally welcome our new Korean MMO overlords. Sort of cool that they've taken up the sandbox mantle.

Half-hour of character creation?

I might try this.

So basically it will be translated in four years and westernized to a point where anything that made it fun is stripped out of it and it will just be a limp shell of what they get to play in Korea?

Hah, don't be silly.

Like there's going to be any fun to suck out in the first place. :why_so_serious:

Yeah, going by history, any changes to it can only improve the fun over what ever they are doing in Korea.

Game looks pretty cool, hope it doesn't take them to long to get it to the west.

According to the developers, they've been preparing a western version along with the Korean release. When they get up to speed in the NA, they won't be that far behind according to them.

This is kind of old thinking. A lot of the Korean games these days don't have too many big differences over what western audiences want. The only legacy of the "lol korean game" is the RNG of crafting and upgrading stuff which is awful still.

South Korea is one of the few markets where there still is a player base for new MMOs.

Someone sounds bitter they're no longer part of the target demographic.  I think someone's on yer lawn, better go get em.

What a dumb thing to say.

True, he forgot Brazil.

Brazil uses Orkut. I barely qualify that populace as human.

And a strong world PvP, "steal their stuff, burn their house", tendency.

I admit I've stopped paying attention, but which Western companies have announced new MMOs recently? And I mean 'MMO', not MOBA or multiplayer Diablo.

South Korean devs are still launching new MMOs and then converting them for Western markets. They have a player base that supports that. Western devs have moved on, except in the cases of already announced projects like EQ3.

Wildstar and TESO have performed as expected. It's just not worth the investment any more to start a new MMO in EU / NA.

Well do you could shit like Elite and Star Citizen? I don't even know if they are MMOs. Then there is the Garriot thing, and god knows what that is. There are a lot of smaller games too like Albion and Camelot Unchained who are all kickstarter funded.

I can't think of any other MMOs in the pipeline outside EQ3 that are being made by bigger studios though since Wildstar and TESO launched though. You're also dead wrong about the investment nature of new MMOs. SWTOR is turning a pretty awesome profit. TESO was just poorly run and so was Wildstar. You can't mark the genre by two shitty games.

I just don't think we'll see many, if at all, traditional DIKU/Raiding games released by NA/EU devs with any real money attached to them in the near future.

A lot of information was released (or at least videos) from Black Desert as it's going into open beta. They also announced it's going to be in the NA/EU market in 2015. We'll see.

This game looks like Archeage on steroids.

Can someone confirm that it's not another epic looking exploit clusterfuck with calculation done on client side?

No way to really tell until it leaves Korea I have to imagine.

Surely someone here can understand korean?

Well access to this game is tied to a Korean SSN/ID and the majority of the time that means less hacking/exploiting. At least, that's what I've heard. Once it hits Russia we'll see.

Why wouldn't it be?

Will play and hate myself even though it's definitely going to be a hell grind crash grab chock full of client side exploits

It will be interesting to compare it to Archeage since they decided to go with a Korean publisher for the english version too instead of getting some western company like Trion to do it.

Well...


(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/BLACK%20f13%20Clipboard01.jpg)

I got in the South Korean beta and I made my first character. It's too soon to tell if the game is any good, or how good it is, but ot is undeniably shocking to enter a MMORPG with such absurd graphics. The closest thing would be Vindictus, which had an incredible character creation tool, but was limited to 4 people instanced content.
Similar to Vindictus is also the fact that your class defines your gender and race, so archers are all elf women, warriors are human men, and so on. And again, similar to Vindictus, the combat is wild, fast, fulfilling, ridiculously fun. So far there are four classes but apparently more will be added before launch. As I said, I just got in so I can't really comment on any other aspect of the game, especially one so focused on many different sandbox elements, but so far the visuals and the responsiveness of the action targetless combat, as in TERA but better, seem to be what lots of people have been dreaming of for quite some time.

Yeah, that model is pretty outstanding. I wonder what the budget for this thing is.

How does it hold up when animated? In most games all the hair, layered clothing, and frilly bits would be a clipping nightmare.

Please keep us (or atleast me) appraised on how the game feels since I'm actually kind of excited (though that is too strong a word) about how it turns out. It offers (on paper) alot of what I'd be looking for in a mmo compared to other upcoming titles in the foreseeable future.

It's almost 2015 and still with this shit?  Especially after that insanely awesome character generator. 

Yes, really, that's crap I agree. I wonder if it's something that somehow helps the server load considering the ridiculous amount of details for a MMORPG, or it's just some idiotic Korean gaming tradition. Anyway, looks like before launch they will add 4 more characters: Valkyrie (female warrior with heal), Blader (male route that can transform blade between 2h and dual wield), Tamer (female ranged pet class), and Wizard (male aoe nuker: Gandalf class) to bring the total to 8.

I spent 10 bucks and go access to this to play around with it. I had 30 noobs with me fighting on screen with zero lag.

Animations are great. Game feels great. Graphics look great. The UI is awesome. There appears to be interesting skill/class mechanics, crafting and other systems.

Is there a game in there? I have no idea. Only play for 20 minutes or so.

I think its a ridiculous korean thing, like in vindictus you are actually playing a named character not a random warrior or whatever.  Also pretty much a deal breaker for me.

I am trying the monk now. This is insane, it's like an old arcade beat 'em up. I can't wait to find the CATCH cause so far the combat is ridiculous(ly good) and there has to be a huge hidden mess here somewhere as I have a hard time believing this can work in a PvP environment... hell it doesn't even have the little slow downs of Vindictus or TERA. How in hell can this work? THE MONK IS MINDBLOWING. Low kick, high kick, projection punch, it's like a Jackie Chan movie.


EDIT: Bonus screenshot of another character.


(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/BLACK%20Suomen%20Clipboard01.jpg)

Holy shit  :heart: :inluv: :inluv:

It's not like there was some revolutionary breakthrough in 2014 that led to artists being able to churn out content dozen+ times faster than before.

If anything, the extra fidelity only means things got slower.

They already have the content, there is no reason to gender lock classes.  It is actually limiting your already made content for no reason at all.

It would probably double the amount of combat animations required as most would need male/female versions, but yeah - if you're sinking whatever crazy amount of resources these people are into your art production, I don't know why that feature in particular would be the one to make your team say "no, too much effort."

And finally F13 finds the one minute thing that makes the game unplayable for them and then dismisses the game as shit. Congrats guys, you're all dumber now.

Unless the existing characters of both genders use the same outfits then no, they don't -- for each outfit for say, female elf archer they'd need to make equivalent of it for male elf archer. And then ones for both male and female human and whatever other races they have, which may be more or less complicated depending how much of body differences there's between the races.

Not to look too far for examples, that's pretty much why even TERA didn't make their new added class available for all races/gender combos like they did with their original content. They simply didn't have the manpower for it (anymore)

Except no one did that.

I kinda did, and I'm okay with it.  I'm not dismissing it as shit, but I'm disappointed they are going to limit the classes based on gender because it promotes sexist attitudes.  Only the men can be warriors and only the women can be archers?  Silly and irresponsible design.

It's almost 2015 and we can do better.

I didn't say the game was shit, i said gender locking is a deal breaker for me. 

I'll still give it a shot because the character creator looks like the dog's danglies.

The catch is that it is a Korean game and they are going to publish it world-wide with a Korean company. They lean too hard on that KSN-to-account method to limit exploits. It will be a bug ridden mess that is completely filled with exploits everywhere else in the world.

If you like the game you may as well learn Korean, because it will be a fucking disaster in the rest of the world.

In fact everyone talking about how well it runs with all of the attack animations and combat and stuff points directly to it being mostly client side.

I'd just write it off right now. I'd love for a single product out of Korea to prove me wrong, but the chances that this are it are slim.

KOREA.

Asia in general doesn't give a fuck about US Coastal concern over gender stereotypes.

He does have a point.

Yeah, he does. However, I'm not going to bitch about it when it comes from a culture that still somewhat views women as property.

I was saying you have a point, but hey.  :drill:

I thought about that after posting and it's a completely valid point. 

Look at that, a Christmas miracle. 

LOL


It's really good.

I have been playing with this. However, I'm finding it hard to understand what's going on while the game is in Korean (in contrast to Archeage, which I also played on Korean servers and found pretty simple in the early stages). So I will probably wait until the Russian beta comes out - when there is likely to be an unnoficial English language patch - before I give it a serious go.

Character creation is a blast though. You can drag different bits of the face around, set how frizzly you want the facial hair to be, set whether the character should look sweaty(!), decide whether different bits of the face should look aged or not and loads more.

Here is a barbarian type I made:

(http://i.imgur.com/haYKT9z.jpg)

Some footage of the character editor: http://youtu.be/9rzjzNBCGzY

That looks like Ron Perlman in that show he was in with Linda Hamilton, Beauty and the Beast.

Across between Perlman and David Boreanaz.

I am afraid you are, or will be, 100% right here.

Hard to pretend this isn't happening. I heard about the many flaws of this game already, but shit....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh7LJtd-bt0

Is that the Gandolfini class?

Edit: Phone error - read Gandolf

TangentGaming (http://www.twitch.tv/tangentgaming), the most popular English-speaking Black Desert Twitch streamer is currently leveling his new Wizard (made yesterday). He's up to 43 50 already.

Edit: streamer

Edit 2: actually the game has a soft level cap of 55 not 50 as I originally listed

Know what'd be awesome? If we could get a company that embraced the Asian market's understanding of spectacle and mechanics flow with the US market's ADD when it comes to time to dedicate to things.

New trailer for the Ninja class. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X8OkYNIQuM)

Ok, this is not Black Desert, so I am officially Off Topic, but I don't want to open a new thread just for Bless, and since it looks like it's going to be the direct competitor to Black Desert in the Korean sandbox business it's not too weird to put this quite stunning video here.

As I said, "Bless" is the name of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QfeYTE_ZdI

Is this game ever coming out? Or is it out in Korea?

Black Desert is in (open?) beta in Korea, and yes it is coming out in NA and EU, the Korean company (Daum, it's huge) is self publishing it in the West and they just opened a studio in Germany just for that.

Interview with Daum Games Europe (http://mmoculture.com/2015/09/black-desert-interview-with-daum-games-europe-for-action-online-game/#prettyphoto/3/)

Bless online is a 2-faction PvE-themepark, typical grind quests and holy trinity dungeon gameplay, with some instanced PvP-content. Its definitely going to be a competitor in the mmorpg market but there are very few similarities between the games.

I think these games may be sandboxing the wrong stuff. Or I've just grown up past the Sandbox everything! Make it like a real virtual world we can live in phase?

I tried to check a little of this out and I saw some kind of insane horse breeding system that involved <some system> that results in your mount actually being fast or not. I'm curious if it involves slot machine elements, I never saw the actual horse birth screen or however it works. Then stabling them different places all so you could have the sandbox joy of long realistic travel times between places in the world. It all looked like a crazy travel time sink just so you could have horse breeding as part of the game. Fuck horse breeding? Seriously sandbox features for the sake of themselves aren't always good.

The thing is for a game to do stuff like that it basically needs to be Eve, where players can do crazy shit everywhere otherwise you are just making my play experience more tedious so that people with more time get more epeen and can play the game how they want to faster and more often than me.

That's also one of the only things I figured out about the game because its crazy in korean and of the about 1hr of streaming I watched basically nothing happened. This is not a dig on BD because all mmo's are fucking awful and boring to watch on twitch in my experience.

***

I will say you guys getting your panties in a bind over gender locked classes are cute. And this is the only issue that actually matters:

It's a Korean MMO. There's no "if".

Are we going to need to pre-stage an intervention for Lant for the tamer class is my only question...

Depends how Korean the rest of the game is.  If Dragon's Prophecy can't hold me, a game where you have stables upon stables of dragons you can fly on right from the start, I'm not sure this will either.

How about a game where you can have your pet red panda (http://i.imgur.com/dA7P0uf.png) ride around on the character's head (http://i.imgur.com/31zMKlB.png)?  :grin:

Adorable, but FF14 didn't hold my attention for long.

Jesus. Go forward to 00:45 (https://youtu.be/IGWc1lmUnIs?t=47). Now that's a magic wielder.

I thought the gandolf video looks better. Game always looked awesome though.

Wait, there's a class called the Valencia Witch?

...I work in Valencia, I'm pretty sure I know a few of those.





I'll see myself out.

Eh, that's like your every MMO AoE wizard class ever, except made easier because you barely even need to kite the stuff. Just have to sit through seizure-inducing gfx that already got repetitive by the end of that clip.

Yay release timeframe:

Press Release: Black Desert West will be B2P | Black Desert Online (http://"http://black-desert.com/news/press-release-black-desert-west-will-be-b2p/")
Black Desert will go Live early 2016 as a Buy2Play Title:

Daum Games brings Black Desert Online to North America and Europe

Highly anticipated action MMORPG will launch in early 2016 as a premium service

Amsterdam, The Netherlands – October 14, 2015 — Daum Games Europe today announced that it is working with developer Pearl Abyss to bring its successful MMORPG Black Desert Online to North America and Europe. To celebrate, Daum Games launched a teaser site, which went live at 13:37 CET.

Black Desert Online (BDO) is an open world action MMORPG with next generation visuals and skilled based combat that will rejuvenate the genre. Black Desert Online has the best character customization system of any game that is currently on the market. This feature allows for unprecedented detailed character creation. Its intuitive controls, beautifully designed world and extensive lore will excite both newcomers and veterans of MMO games and action RPG’s in general.

The upcoming Western release will differ in many ways from the already launched Russian and Korean services, such as the game’s balancing, progression and monetization model.

Teaser Site: Black Desert Online, the next gen MMORPG (http://"http://www.blackdesertonline.com/")

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/excellent.jpg)

So it will be going F2P in June?

Founders packages to access the closed beta (from December 16th to December 22nd) are available. 20, 50 and 100 € - Only the 100€ one gets you in he December closed beta.

https://www.blackdesertonline.com/preorder

One thing I just learnt: there is no trading between players outside of the auction house, as this apparently kills all unofficial gold selling attempts. Granted, you can still buy gold, but you'll do so from the Devs.

Can't you just put a worthless item on the auction house for a ton of gold and have the gold sellers give you the money that way?

Apparently not, don't know why.

Anyway, the big news is that the game sucks. I am reading around and turns out it's pretty much 100% solo, there's no group content, no end game, PvE is super easy and PvP is supposed to be the meat of the game but it's a potion spam fest (5 seconds cooldown), item driven, and it supposedly allows you to conquer cities but having a city does nothing. And it was supposed to be a big sandbox but seems like most of the sandbox functions have been maimed, cut and/or turned off.

Fuck.

My impression from watching people steam is that it's a horse-riding simulator.

That's not news. It was a huge flop even in Korea for a reason :why_so_serious:

I've heard the game is shit but I was holding out small hope that the game would be modified for the west.

 :cry:


I'm really starting to think a half way decent sandbox is impossible these days.  It's amazing how every attempt in the last 15 years has been a total cluster fuck.

If you followed the early interviews with the game developer he spoke of the game as an open world game, unlike C9's fully instanced gameplay. When asked by western media if it was a sandbox he said yes, so in many way its western media that turned this game into a sandbox.

If you look at korea blade and soul is way more popular. Now B&s is higly instanted. So theres that black desert isnt. But the game B&S is way better imo. As allways your milage may vary. (and I havent played black desert, just watched youtube vids.)

Falcs critisism is what he heard from US testers and Koreans that play both western style games.

In Korea the pvp is a shitfest. It's a karma based system with a lot of grind in it.

Allegeddly closed western beta is now on until the next week.

These RPS beauties deserve some recognition:

I'm in it. I toyed around with the Korean version a few months ago, but MMORPGs barely feel real to me until I can play a translated version where every aspect of the UI is clear and helpful.

About this western version, liking lots of things, and disliking some other. Pitch black nights? Awesome! I am thinking of making an "impressions" video that would try to consider f13 sensitivities.

As mentioned in previous posts though, the bad of the game seems to come out once you reach max level. Up to then, it's all fireflies and lullabies.

What is Korean for "moe"? :uhrr:

What do you do when you're at max level?

Well I am level 12 so I can't say :/

More seriously, this is/was supposed to be a PvP oriented game, so when you are max level you are expected to fight Guild vs Guild wars for trading towns and castles. But the status of all that is unknown. Reports are that -of course- if you are not in a big guild you find yourself out of activties soon as PvE has been kept uninteresting to funnel people into PvP, and a lot of the sandbox stuff has been either cut or simplified. And even in PvP, the most blatant problems is that you have to feed your PvP needs (enchantments, potions) with TONS of money, which you have to endlessly grind uninteresting PvE content for. Also, seems like the enchantments are game changing at the highest levels, and they are money and RNG based as usual for Korean MMOs.

I haven't verified any of this firsthand, just reporting what I've been reading.

So, after playing around with this enough I found out that it has A LOT more stuff going on than it is immediately obvious. And for the most part it's all good stuff. Seems like the sandbox part hasn't been chooped as much as those who complain around claim to be. Let's have a random list:

- First things firsts: THERE IS NO FAST TRAVEL IN BLACK DESERT. This means logistics play a big part in the trading game. Sadly, THERE IS NO DIRECT TRADING BETWEEN PLAYERS, only Auction House to positively kill any form of gold selling. It works apparently. Yes, this game is weird like that.

- Node connections. Every city, town, village or settlement in the game is a "node", meaning that it has its own market of goods bought and sold and with unique prices floating up and down depending on real time supply and demand. Some nodes also produce specific raw resources that you can put your workers on "auto-gather" on, but we'll see that later. The important part to understand about nodes, is that you can't really trade between different nodes/towns/villages unless you have connected them to each other, and you do this by investing points from your "contribution points" pool, which grows as you level but it is not infinite. Basically, you have to create your areas of influence and your own trading routes in the game and choose where to invest. You can't just trade from wherever you want to wherever you want, you have to "make your name" in those places in a way, or open an agency if you prefer. And you can also at any point take your contribution point back and change your node network, but they still have to all be linked to each other somehow.
Investing in nodes also raises the drop rate for that area.

- Guild Wars. Guilds can build "Node Castles" and take control of the nodes. No idea what benefits that entails but I am sure that on top of bragging rights they will have a cut of the profits and a chance to manipulate prices and production. Also worth mentioning that the PvP is pretty much all built around Guild vs Guild fights. You can kill people randomly, but the "karma" punishments are so harsh that it's never a good idea. GvG is where it's at.

- Trading - This is not really trading items you use, it's a specific activity where you trade "goods" that have pretty much only the prupose of playing the Trading Game. For the other kind of trading, you'll use the Auction House as in any other game. While these Trading Goods have an expiration date of 24 hours, so no one can game the market by buying bunches of them low and waiting days ntil the price is convenient.
A lot of things have different value dependng on where you sell them including loot. A little bit like Elite and EVE the whole thing is regulated by supply and demand, which is of course artifically manipulated by the underlying game simulation, but also by dynamic events, like weather events or monsters attacking cities and so on.
Trading has levels that determine what kind of stuff you can trade. There's also a "bargain" function that you can use with NPC to get better deals. As I mentioned before, you have to build your own trading routes by connecting nodes or you will sell your goods for 30% of their true value. The longer the route between purchase point and selling point the more oney you get, but to do that you need to have those two points connected with all the in-between nodes, which means a lot of "Contribution Points" invested. So it's all about planning how to do the whole long disance merchant thing and understand how to better invest both your points-resources and your actual playing time.

- Workers. You hire workers from a randomized lists. They have different names and looks and skills (like move speed, work speed and luck) depending on race too, and when you level up your crafting abilities and your influence in a city (since workers are local, and tied to the city are born in) you can get better skilled workers. They lalso evel up themselves anyway, and they gain new skills as they do. When  they reach leel 30 they get a RNG chance to go up a tier. Workers can be sold and bought between players, which makes it feel a bit like Football Manager. Workers need houses to sleep in and you see them actually walk to work in the morning and walk back home at night (unconfirmed).

- Carriages and mounts. Without a carriage or a mount, you would have to do the trading part with backpacks which slow your character down to the point of tears. Like in Archeage, you want mounts, which make trading viable and also give you enough room to move large quantities of goods you wouldn't have any other way to transport. There are different kinds of mounts and carriages, and you can also decide what kind of horses attach to it in order to improve the performances even more. A nice touch is that you can even attach your personal mount, which would give the carriage a unique looking horse among the default ones. Carriages are also good for when you go out grinding, so you don't have to go back to town too often. Remember that even money has weight here.
Worth mentioning that you can buy mounts, but you can also tame wild ones which supposedly are better (unconfirmed). Every animal has randomized stats AND talents, and they level up. You can also breed horses if you have two of different sex. Remember, NO FAST TRAVELING in Black Desert so mounts, their quality, and leveling them up is of the uttermost importance. Also, you can fight from horseback.

There are also elephants (which can be used by three people at once in batle) and camels that can be mounted and used as transports, and regions are important so camels are best in the desert while horses are optimal in temperate climate. And one last thing worth mentioning is that you wanna stay on the roads when you transport goods or they could get damaged and their value decrease. That, of course, also makes you a target for bandits hunting merchants and the riches they move around.

Like in Archeage, it seems that when you are moving goods you are "flagged" as a Merchant, which means you are open game for PvP, so players can attack you and steal your stuff without the usual consequences (which are a loss of Karma, which in turns makes you lose stats or even items when you die). This is unverified though, and they say it might change for the Western versions.

- Knowledge and unlocking quests and dialogues. A lot of effort has been put into creating a believable world with characters and stories. To simulate this, the more you do in an area, meaning killing monsters but also just having dialogues with NPCs, and the more you get to know them and in return they get to know you. By doing this you get "knowledge" points, which are a visible resource for every area you are in and unlock other pieces of dialogue so other quests and rewards and so on. It is nice because while it impies reading a lot of VERY BADLY translated (so far) lines of text, it makes looking for NPCs and exploring way more satisfying than usual.

- Night and day and secret Store. Weather. The night and day cycle matters a lot in this game. First of all, at night you can't see SHIT. It's pitch black (which is beautiful) and you have to use a lantern, but on top of that monsters become stronger while at the same time yelding more XP if killed. Night is also the only time when the Secret Store appears. Not sure if it's a static location or not, but it's a store with unique products that you can only catch when the sun is down. Also, if I get this right, your workers don't work at night, and finally weather has an impact on player stats like attack power and the likes. In short, not a good idea to go killing a boss during a snowstorm. Weather also impacts growing crops.

- Pets. There's plenty of pets, and they have different functions and abilities, and they even interact with your player model (Cats jump on your shoulders when they feel like it), and you can have more than one out at the same time.

- Houses. Houses are instanced but the system works really well. They look good, they can be decorated, and they serve another million functions. They are used as warehouses, because as I mentioned in this game everything has a weight and a volume so you need places to physically store your stuff. And they are used as your crafting places, since it's where you'll put your processing stations. By leveling up your houses or paying more money you can also have access to higher end processing stations. Also, this is where your workers will go to sleep. So if you want to have more workers in a specific town, you have to buy houses for them.

- As mentioned before, there is no fast travel but your characters are part of a family and travel when you are using another. So, when you want to move one charcter to another place but don't want to just look at the screen while it auto-runs to destination, you can order your char to go to a place, while switching to another one of your toons. Eventually, the former one will reach its destination while you are playing with the other. Having multiple characters in this game is important because they can literally be like agents in different towns and markets taking care of your interests in that region as there's no fast travel and so many actions require your physical presence there. Another cool thing is that while there's no direct trading between players, all your characters can share everything and there are no level restrictions on gear so you can give your level 55 armor to your level 5 alt, and that's fine.

- Crafting. It can be done manually, the traditional way with gathering stuff (some of which your workers can't get theselves) in the world and going to build things to a crafting station, or automaticlaly through the "workers". The first way is only for consumables. The second one is to craft anything else. But they overlap in many stages. There's also actual farming, where you put down fields and grow your crops like in Archeage. But here, stuff like ground water level, humidity, temperature and weather matter. Also scarecrows or birds will steal it from you. Fishing is a (mini)game on its own. Pretty developed it seems.

I am not even sure I've covered everything. I keep reading negative comments about this game and after playing it for a while now I can see a huge amount of positive stuff that for some reason keeps being downplayed left and right. I know very well that a MMORPG doesn't show its real face until you have reached the level cap, so I am NOT claiming this is amazing or anything, but it's safe to say that if nothing else Black Desert tries some new things or brings back some that have been too often set aside.

And this is all on top of what are HANDS DOWN the most amazing graphics in this genre ever. Seriously, screenshots or videos don't do it any justice. Especially if you are familiar with European landscapes and the medieval legacy, this game is just pure joy.


EDIT: Added a line for Guild vs Guild wars.

Argh! That wall-of-text was enough to make me actually check whether they had set the release date yet (still 1st quarter of 2016 and no exact date).  :grin:

Sounds like it may at least be worth a go.

All of that sounds incredibly interesting.  I hate you.

We all know that, two weeks in, the net fun is gonna be about 5% of that. It is actually sad. The blander games look these days, the less they are going to disappoint. But these ones, like Archeage, they have so much cool stuff going on on paper that it rips your gamer heart when a month later you realize you are not enjoying it anymore.

EDIT!

For example:

Absence of instanced Dungeons & Raids - You will not find a traditional dungeon in Black Desert and there is no large scale PvE content. Currently players can summon bosses in the open world at specific locations, then kill them solo or with a group of up to five members. The only exception to this is the guild quest bosses which are intended for your guild.

No dungeons or raids is another mark on the good column in my book.

Can I have them all out?  Can I have ALL the pets out?

Same here. People have been bitching about terrible combat, but when you ask them why, they say because there is no trinity.

Lack of trinity is pretty meaningless.  It translated to shitty combat in GW2 where lack of trinity just means "everyone DPS and no one heals worth a damn".

And potion every 5 seconds.

Are your workers and farms and stuff vulnerable to PvP at all?  If so can you log in to find over night all your stuff has been killed/destroyed/stolen whatever?

No they aren't. The only thing that is vulnerable to PvP is yourself when you are moving around trade packs.

It is also worth mentioning that Black Desert doesn't provide the same kind of excitement that you can only get out of persistent house-building like in UO, SWG and more recently Archeage. Nothing beats finding your own piece of land and building houses and gardens in a non-instanced fashion. Archeage truly was/is a great game. It just fell short due to some highly questionable design decisions concerning the late game.

Black Desert seems to offer a lot, but judging from what everyone say it suffers very similar problems in the late game. Specifically, it is said that there's close to no group content at all, and player interaction is almost non-existent outside of Guild vs Guild warring. Lots of patches are coming out in Korea, but it's hard to say how much of that is being changed and when it'll make it to the English version.

Character Creation tool available as a standalone download. This is an infinite amount of levels of awesome, and the best (and cheapest) advertising ever that an MMORPG company came up with... since City of Heroes.

 :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real:

https://www.blackdesertonline.com/events/ccm/?trcode=PRCCM1

EDIT: Characters made this way will be available to be imported in the final game.

That'll keep creepers occupied for years.

The character creator is 6 GB and requires an account login?

It's lucky it's so pretty.

From the Character Creator, someone has crafted Rey.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/BLACK%20Rey%20cut.jpg)


Or, you know, Charlie Sheen.  :uhrr:


(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/BLACK%20Charlie%20Sheen%2013v4aP1.jpg)

Official launch date: March 3rd.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6rmBCMBJWs

Here for a chance to join the last beta stage: https://www.blackdesertonline.com/events/cbt2/ApplyForm.html

If you downloaded the Character Creator, they have a contest to enter to win some Beta keys, which closes Feb 5th.

The Beast phase of the Beauty and the Beast Event (https://www.blackdesertonline.com/events/ccm/ShowEvent.html#participate)

An interesting article on why you should care about Black Desert. My own personal addition is a concern I've expressed about longevity, and the end game.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/03/black-desert-online-preview/



EDIT: Since launch is now imminent, I also feel like pointing you all back to my lenghty notes. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=23161.msg1398441#msg1398441)

That article boils down to "i expected to get the usual chains of quests but instead got the usual chains of quests gated with jumping through undocumented bullshit hoops to unlock them, so it's all new and exciting".

edit: come to think of it talking with NPCs as preliminary to get quests dates back as far as Everquest, if i'm not mistaken. And turning that into a mini-game was supposed to be major point ("diplomacy sphere") of that whatitsname Everquest successor that flopped pretty bad, no?

edit2: Vanguard! that's the flop's name, google to the rescue :grin:

giggle

I keep telling myself, "It's a Korean MMO, you know what happens with these things", but I like a lot of the more worldly aspects this seems to have, even if they become just another grind/frivolous thing in the long run. Gonna try and get into its final beta before buying it though.

Tmp has some points on that review. That said, you can read my notes and see what's new here and worth taking a look at. If anything, as I said before, Black Desert tries a few new things, or tries to put a twist on a lot of old things, and that's definitely something for a MMORPG these days. It could not be enough to make the genre interesting again, or make it stick (the end game as previously mentioned seems to be only about PvP and a guild of 20+ is pretty much mandatory), but there's clearly enough fresh stuff, on top of unbelievable graphics and a fantastic combat, to make it worth a look. Too bad it has a purchase price.

PSA for those with pre-orders: 1pm est is when name reservation goes live. So 1.25 hours from now.

https://www.blackdesertonline.com/shop/preorder/namereservation/ (https://www.blackdesertonline.com/shop/preorder/namereservation/)

Name Registration server already collapsed  :why_so_serious:

I have this game.  Well, not yet, obviously.  I did get names though.  My old standby, Stabitha, and the surname, Apple.  Because A is for... and I couldn't come up with anything else because my brain is tired today.  So, I'll be using fruit oriented names for any other character I might eventually create.  I hope this game is worth the 0 dollars I paid for it!

I want to try this game, but I am not sure I want to pay dollars for it yet.

Reserved my name: First name Palmer, family name Palmer

Apparently archers are a bit overpowered so that's what I'm going for.

Here's my effort on the character creator

(http://i.imgur.com/dxL2n7S.png)

The package I have comes with 2 extra beta keys so I can send you one.  I don't know when beta starts... soon-ish, I think.

Edit:  oops.  It's for 7 days of gameplay, not beta.  I don't know when the game is launched, either.  :)

So yeah, name reservation was handled poorly.

Nice. I only messed with it a little, but I'll figure something out before beta. Until then here's the template for Obama - The Warrior of Change! (http://bdo-templates.com/1288/obama-the-warrior-of-change)

(http://bdo-templates.com/king-include/buzzupload/2016-01-31_775291956-1971046384.jpg)

He looks like a nice friendly guy, who could crush your skull with his bare hands.

I have to admit, the avatars in this game look gorgeous. I do wonder how much soul draining grinding there is and whether open world PVP will be as annoying as it usually is.

"Hi new peson!" *gank!*

And I don't want to hear "oh it affects your karma" because I've never seen that actually work as a deterrent.

Has there ever been an MMO out of Korea that wasn't a soul-crushing grind?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cgbZqR2AGI

There has been plenty. The Korean grind is actually a trope from the past, especially when it comes to those ported to the West. It's like saying: "Oh I don't like western MMOs because when you aggro a mob they all follow you like a train to the zone line". Their MMORPGs now all follow the WoW formula (quest grind), and the leveling curve is way way faster than vanilla WoW for example. I guess you haven't played a Korean MMORPG in the last ten years.

Just because they moved the soul crushing grind out of leveling and into other areas of the game doesn't mean it's not there.

The grind is there in the same measure it is there in ANY other MMORPG in existence. West, East, South, North, all that slighty changes now is the character style and the way to get the best end gear. You are still gotta grind your eyes out in ANY MMORPG no matter the country of origin when you get to the level cap if you want to get new stuff.

Ok, so the grind is covered. And the PvP? Is it a Shadowbane/UO style gankfest?

What Threash said. The average KMMO is way more punishing in terms of time-to-acquire endgame gear; it's usually just hidden behind an awful RNG crafting or enchanting system.

Nope Riggswolfe. The open PvP is really regulated by the karma system, in fact the forums are on fire as they say the karma system is so punishing that the game basically has NO open PvP. It's quite true: you can kill whoever you want, but you will get such a negative karma hit that after three ganks you are flagged permanently, which means a potential enchant loss on death, and to be sent to prison town to grind for freedom. On top of that, ganking basically gives you nothing. Anyway, the devs are discussing some changes to this system because they are aware their target audience seems disappointed with it, and they are considering a bounty system where you can hire a PK to kill another PK. It's convoluted and I think it's quite crap, we'll see. I don't think they will really do it.

PvP though is supposed to be the endgame, in the shape of Castle sieges and Node Wars. The former are supposed to be for guilds of 60+ members, and the smaller Node Wars apparently require at least 20 members to have a shot.

As you can see, there isn't much room for smaller groups to PvP and since the end game is basically the PvP you can see why a lot of people are concerned about the future of the game once they hit the cap.

Ugh. Thanks for posting that; I've been jonesing for an MMO a bit lately but now I know not to bother with this one.

(http://i.imgur.com/8QXkohR.jpg)

The PvP part with all the guild vs. guild going on will probably be what pushes me away eventually, but I'll be trying out everything and maybe some of the non-combat oriented pve aspects will keep me around.

The game looks a bit intriguing. I wish I could beta test it before making a decision whether or not to buy it. I still have a sneaky suspicion that when it goes live it is going to devolve into a UO-style gankfest which I'd find to be less than entertaining.

This game penalizes random banking. Pvp is shaping, node wars, guild wars and sieges.

Did you mean ganking?  Or is random banking an actual thing? 

It's when you're minding your own business and the person next to you shouts "VENDOR BUY THE GUARDS A BANK!" for no apparent reason

Just because that other player in a deathrobe is walking towards you doesn't mean he's a thie... oh wait, he is. GUARDDDDSSS!

Britain bank (#1) offered the ultimate banking experience, complete with nervous, paranoid people who think everyone else there is only after their stuff^tm (and they were). Will we ever see its like again?

Yay phone. Ganking.

Daum are running a contest for the most lovely characters, so if you want a good look at what the character creator is capable of then you can browse the entries, here:

https://www.blackdesertonline.com/events/ccm/ShowEvent.html

Here's a selection:

(http://i.imgur.com/uenvH9S.png)
I'm the girl next door

(http://i.imgur.com/B6B9M8W.png)
I'm a dakimakura

(http://i.imgur.com/C3sTluj.png)
I'm Hermoine

(http://i.imgur.com/i1O3Wng.png)
I'm Falconeer

(http://i.imgur.com/g13EBMZ.png)
I'm a hottie

(http://i.imgur.com/CYYOmwL.png)
"People think it's weird that I always play male characters but who wants to look at a girl's ass when they're playing video games?"

(http://i.imgur.com/vih229F.png)
I'm troubled but you can reach me

That's inaccurate. I always have pupils.

Is the lazy eye on half of the characters some sort of a meme, or just software quirk?

Mmm not sure I even see it other than in a couple of those shots. Anyway I think you can independently change each eye shape and direction separately, so maybe that's what they were going for.

I'd be willing to bet it is just the angle the heads are turned. The eyes are probably programmed to "look" at the camera and if the camera is at an odd distance and the head turns just right then one eye has to move a little more than the other to look at the camera. I do 3d renders (around 100+ a month since I use them to make comics) and I've had this happen from time to time when, for example, I set the eyes to look at another character's face and they're not in the "sweet" spot as far as the distance between the two characters. In the real world eyes work together and so you don't see this without nerve damage (aka a lazy eye) but in the world of computers eyes often just "appear" to work together.

The default option is for the eyes and head to follow the mouse. You can turn it off if ya want.

First impressions, beginning at 3am local time my time. Some issues with load and the initial first hour log jam which resulted in a couple of awesome images.

First, the anti-cheat engine decided it wasn't AS ready for the beta to begin, even though the game was..  So, I spent the first 20 mins or so watching XIGNCODE fail repeatedly.


Then something with that loading changed, and the XIGNCODE3 pic became an image of Black Desert instead of the above screencaps, and then it miraculously let me into the "game".


I was presented with a Start/Quit/Settings screen, but when I selected "Start" it spewed a cryptic message saying "Failed to connect" with the only option on it to hit "OK (Enter)".


Of course Clicking OK/Enter caused the whole game to close, and started me over again watching it burp at the XIGNCODE3 or exit at the Start screen multiple times in succession. I basically spent the first hour and ten minutes going in and out from the Start screen, or watching the launcher open over and over.

Then finally I made it into character select. I'd already messed with the creator download, which I could've sworn I'd saved some characters for, but since I couldn't seem to see any saves to use (maybe deleted when I removed char creator) I created a character to finally get in and look around.


The loading screen was very low resolution and almost made me wonder if they shouldn't have made a small tiny map with a high res picture in the background (like the main Start screen)

Then I was finally inside the game. The menus were what I consider very clunky, there are almost too many notifications, and although it did look pretty I can't really say that the beginning quests had any appeal for me ESPECIALLY because everyone gets the same exact quests... So, for an alt-aholic who plays bunches of characters through the starting levels, it saddened me. Why can't each class have quests, why funnel everyone into the exact same content? It also was very distressing I couldn't jump through the quest giver cut scenes.

The first couple of intro quests were the normal fare use controls, talk to people, then go over to combat training.


So wander over to the combat trainer guy, and.... OMG this was where the hell was..

5 target dummy scarecrows were in front of the skill trainer, and no less than 100 characters all around this area all trying to use combat skills.

After that it moved further down outside the town, and to another bunch of quests, which of course was kill # mob, collect mob asses, kill # mobs.. over and over. In the area where I was shown to hunt I counted maybe 6-8 spawn points around which now that horde of people from the first trainer was now crowding kill-stealing one another.


Definitely needs more mobs and larger newbie areas, especially if everyone is going to be thrown into the exact same sequence of newbie quests. At least the newb/intro quests don't actually require standing at some NPC (like the first combat trainer guy) and instead use a quest spirit who speaks to you in korean that allows turn-ins or new quests just by pressing the ","-comma key.

I completed maybe the first 5 quests that way, kill-stealing or being kill stolen for at least a half hour, before finally giving up in frustration.

There are only two servers and only 8 channels people can spread over. That is always a problem at launch but channel switching should help sort it. Did you try changing channel?

Have no idea how to select channels, or that I even could. Where do you select that..

I'll have to try that next time assuming I actually get in. Right now I was going to try the game again and it got into the "Start" screen and when I clicked start it said "Authentication Failed", so who even knows.

Supposedly press ESC and select "Channel shift", but I am not in the game now so I can't check that for you.

Anyway, one interesting and weird thing about this game: to talk in public/global chat costs 1 energy, which is what you accumulate over time and use to do everything that isn't combat related. This is not simply to punish spammers (gold selling is basically already impossible), but to reduce trolling and overall immersion breaking, encouraging people to talk in local chats (which are free). Not sure if that will work out at all, but I am curious to see it.

It's not going to work.  Spammers will just use 15 bajillion stolen accounts and credit cards and just rotate through them to spam as they use up their energy.  Trolls just won't care.

You can't trade player to player in this game so gold selling won't be a big thing.

I am not particularly happy at the fact that there are only 3 full costumes/outfits in the real money store, but 9 lingerie combos.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/BLACK%20Lingerie.jpg)

The cash shop in this game is hilariously expensive.  It is also hilarious that it won't go 5 minutes without crashing.  All I've done so far is laugh at the bits and pieces of my assploding computer.  :)

This game is fun. I'm questioning whether I would even end up getting to level 50 because of all the non-combative parts of the game that I am consistently distracted doing. I feel like I'm getting sucked into some sort of weird management simulator with axe-bashing on the side.

And the world is nice. Reading all the bits about the people you meet is my favourite thing, it works in a way that I find compelling as opposed to all the other lore elements cramped into quests from other MMORPGs.

I thought this came out in march?

Closed Beta Test 2 weekend.. I also scored an extra key for this weekend if anyone wanted to try this. Only received this key today, and already had one applied, so if someone wanted to download this for maybe a day and a half of trying it send me a private message.

I've been hearing good things about this, but I'm basically at the point where I just assume by default that new MMOs are going to suck.  Am I wrong to assume that here?

The thing with MMOs is that they used to have one and just one thing over other games: longevity. An addiction factor (Remember, "evercrack"?) that simply isn't there anymore because society and social interactions changed.

Well, sort of. I mean, I played Counter Strike as much as I've played any MMO. MMOs were always interesting to me because there was some stake in things beyond just what I was immediately doing, but they have moved in the direction of making the game about whatever you are immediately doing. I totally get why they've done that, but it removes the interesting bit from the genre.

Edit: What I miss is something to care about even when I'm not playing. The mark of a good MMO to me is, I'll be working and wonder "Gee, I wonder what's going on with X in the game right now." A game that can get me that way is an MMO I'd be willing to at least give a shot.

They definitely also had another important element: huge explorable open worlds that gave you a sense of wonder, which if you think about it is another trait where MMOs have lost their edge over single player games.

This is true, but with the exception of procedural worlds, this is essentially gone from gaming anyway. Most games will tell you exactly where to go, and if they don't they don't then if you want to not be on terribly unequal footing with everyone else you are probably going to want to rely on 3rd party sites and resources so you don't "waste time" looking for things.  I know no one makes you use those resources, but especially in the kind of game I'm going to care about at this point (pvp oriented MMOs), putting yourself at a huge disadvantage for the sake of preserving the exploration usually isn't a great choice.

It's also a pretty limited element anyway. At some point you're going to run out of things to explore.

Oh fuck me.  I should not have tried this beta.   :ye_gods:

What, why?

Because so far it feels like what I wanted GW2 and Archeage to be, and I have a month and a half old kid.  I should not buy this.

I feel you. And I am not even ashamed to admit that it wins me over with silly things like being only able to dry your fish on sunny days (so not at night), or thin some feathers on windy ones.

I wish there were buildable houses like in Archeage, even though I am well aware of the problems that would cause, and I wish they found better ways to give small groups a reason to exist, but the world stuff so far is really engaging. I am liking a lot the "knowledge" system, and I found myself doing quests and conversations just for the sake of knowing more about some characters and unlocking more quests and privileges along the way.

In a way, while combat as we said is extremely satisfying, I would say it is the part I care the least for so far.

How's the crafting?

Hard nut to crack. There are some things that you do yourself, and a lot of other things that you need to have workers hired to do it for you, and you need houses purchased that you can arrange as workshops. A lot of managing and micromanaging of resources, materials, nodes, personnel, and all of this is tightly connected to the actual "world-space" since there is no fast travel, since the goods literally have to be in the place where you want them to be crafted from and a lot of other things like this. And this is on top of stuff like the afore-mentioned crafting actions that can only be performed on certain days. I know I am not saying much but the bottom line is that it is a lot of stuff and a combination of "oh yeah, like in that other game" and "wait what?! Say that again but twice as slow". To me even the confusion is refreshing, as if I had to play the SAME crafting game once again I would have puked.

The best I can say is that there is no way you would be able to start crafting without reading a guide of some sort. Like this ones: Part 1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH2eRhGWM48) and Part 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpJ7g751hUI).

If your question is instead how viable is crafting, and what does it do for you at max level, I can't answer. I can tell you that there are game-wide leaderboards for all the nine crafting specializations, and I have heard that most of the best gear comes from crafting, but NOT the Top gear which is a result of the usual enchanting/RNG bullshit we all hate.

In short, the whole game seems to be more about "crafting" than anything else to be honest. It's a sandbox full of activities and even minigames. But as usual with that kind of stuff, "satisfaction" becomes a personal thing. From what I can tell, you cannot craft the ultimate set of weapon and armour, but you can and should craft pretty much everything else along the way. And that's more than 50% of the whole Black Desert experience.

I got a beta key for this from someone on the site and I briefly tried it. It didn't grab me right off of the bat though I suspect if I give it more time some of the sim aspects might appeal in the long run. Something about the controls annoyed me though. I can't really explain it but it seemed a bit "off".

This is actually one of the big things that unsold me on Archeage pretty fast.  It ended up just alienating smaller guilds and solo players due to the land rush.  I vastly prefer the way Black Desert is doing it, especially how they limit economic whales from dominating the whole world due to the node system.   I didn't play it enough to really see how everything works, and that alone worries me a bit, because it took a few hours for Archeage to really burn me out of the game.  This one was different enough to make me want to go back though, so I'll probably be giving them money all the same, even if I shouldn't be :x

Just sharing a couple of things I found interesting
-A pretty solid interview from a few days ago with Jouska http://forum.blackdesertonline.com/index.php?/topic/14858-interview-with-cm_jouska-by-docgotgame-talks-about-p2w-cash-shop-channels-jouskas-job-etc-added-transcribed-notes/
-A few month old guide for money farming with production/crafting https://www.reddit.com/r/blackdesertonline/comments/3jvfgd/make_millions_with_afk_npc_trading/


Side note - yes Ard, you're fucked with this game. :grin:

Stop enabling me  :mob:


thanks for the links

Here is a guide that is being dubbed "The Black Desert Bible" (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JnFambQifvui7-V68QMsfuXuhAuu4C0NsVJCxJIv84E/edit) which is a mere 256 pages long....  

:ye_gods:


EDIT:

A nice description of what characterizes Black Desert.

From the other starter guide the guy linked to in the first page of that one.


Urge to play waning.

There is an NPC in the main Calpheon that is an arms dealer. You have to go around town and talk to about a dozen or so NPCs to "unlock them" and then speak to the arms dealer and play a knowledge minigame to increase your Amity and then use that to purchase decent weapons (whole process takes an hour or so the first time to set everything up). You have to keep playing this minigame to keep your Amity level up since it goes down everytime you buy a weapon.

Just one thing hidden in the game among many other systems.

This was disabled in CBT2. Don't know if it'll ever make it's way into the game. In KR it wasn't in the game until later so I'm not sure if we'll be following the same path, or it was disabled on purpose.

I can't play this until I replace the gfx card it broke.  :(  Hopefully, I'll have that sorted before the game launches.  Should do.  I'm looking forward to it.

I felt the same way.  There was just something about the controls I didn't like.  Overall, I wasn't very impressed and won't be playing, at least at release, and I don't see the reason for all the hype.  I might pick it up later when it goes on sale.

There isn't much hype. But the interest comes from the fact that it is different.

I just enjoy the game because the combat is the best I've ever played in an MMO. Especially after a decade+ of tab target. There are more game systems to play through and have fun with compared to an empty game that was TERA.

I think part of me just doesn't want to get involved with an MMO again after quitting FFXIV only a few months ago, so I may not actually play this afterall. The more I look at how much grind there is overall, I don't feel particularly thrilled about doing any of it. The trading, farming, workers and what not was fun over the beta weekend, but I sort of feel it's already lost its charm on me. I dunno, part of me wants to and doesn't want to.

Personally, the combat is fun enough that makes grinding enjoyable. It's not complicated enough that I have to stress paying attention 100%, but it's also active enough that it's not a groan fest like most MMOs. I think playing a ton of D3 over the last two seasons got me back in the grove of grinding.

Whelp, fuck that last post. Bought the 30 dollar version, so much for my unsureness. I'm going to just take it easy going through this game, was seriously debating on blitzing to 50, and that got me reading into a bunch of things about the game that I shouldn't have and it started to mess with my thinking.

And yeah, grinding can be fun and quite cathartic. Especially as the giant in this game, so that's a plus.

Decent video answering the questions about the supposed hype and hate (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwyqxm_r1rE) surrounding Black Desert.

Maybe it was the class I played (ranger) but I really didn't care for the combat at all.  It just felt like a hot mess.

I played a ranger in beta and it's really complicated. Not sure if all classes are the same. Lots of attacks which can be combo-d with other attacks. You need to do the right key-presses to make attacks fire off and then remember how one attack can be chained with another.  It's possible to hot-key some - not all - attacks but to chain attacks together you often need to use the key-press method.

For example, if you choose the right skills then an attack which involves dodging sideways can be quickly followed by an attack which stuns your opponent if you press (from memory) something like backwards (S), Q and right mouse button together at the right moment

That video really piqued my interest in the game.  It sounds really intriguing (I've only been half following this thread)

I didn't like the ranger either. I've heard they don't shine until 40 something.

Combat starts to become interesting when mobs stop dying just because you looked at them. For the first 15 levels if not more, all you have to do is spam your basic left mouse attack and everything melts. You don't even need to spend points on skills. Later, things slowly start to change. But it's important to bear in mind that all the combos and combat intricacies are meant for the fights against other humans, as the PvE AI is very dumb at all levels.

This is true. I'll be using the full combat system from the start though, as best I can, as I don't want to suddenly have to learn it from scratch when I start PvPing.

First 15 levels in like an hour or so of play time. You should start learning how your abilities flow together as early as possible.

Having not followed this at all until now, I have to admit this feels like it might be worth playing at least a little while just for the novelty value. Maybe it'll even catch on.

I played in the CB2 (random invite) and played a Sorceress and Tamer up to 20 and dabbled with the Valk and Wizard.  I enjoyed the combat and the depth of the game is staggering.  I pre-ordered it yesterday at the $30 price point and feel like I'll get my money's worth just leveling a toon or two to 50(ish) and dabbling in all the various side systems.  If I end up liking the late game GvG and continue playing after that all the better!

Action Combat. Black Desert vs. Blade & Soul. Which one is better? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIKIoOM5gJI) - video.

Without watching the video, Blade and Soul shoots itself in the foot in this regard, imo -- they seem to have tried to create a pretty interesting system of customizable skills combining into chains, only to add animation canceling on top of it, which just happens to throw that whole intricate setup out of the window, as your best dps comes from just hitting the same two keys over and over and over.

Though going by posts upthread it doesn't sound like BDO gets any more taxing, PVE-wise at least :why_so_serious:

Im thinking the combat is ok both ways. Its the cock block. There was a cock block at 5-6 but its do-able. The 20ish is just a pain. As Ive said Ill buy into BD when it goes live (just a few days). But B&S, well I hevent logged in for weeks so there you are.

Aaaaand we are live!  :drillf:


(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/BLACK%20Suomenlinna%2011.jpg)

The only wayou can sign up is go buy a paysafe card? Really? Well how about fuck a whole bunch of that.

I used paypal, not sure what issue you are running into.

I used a credit card...

Ok, I was wrong.

Anyone know how the server populations are looking? Wanted to go onto Edan but if it's as crowded as I think it is along with Orwen, Uno might be my choice.

As far as I can tell, no info is remotely valid as of today since only the 100€/$ people are in. As many as they can be, they are not representative in the slightest of the 400.000 preorders this game sold.

Actually:

The head starts below are only for Pre-Order holders:
Head start for Conqueror’s package holders starts the 28th of February, 08:00 UTC.
Head start for Explorer’s package holders starts the 1st of March, 08:00 UTC.
Head start for Traveler’s package holders start the 2nd of March, 08:00 UTC.
The official launch date is March 3rd. (maintenance scheduled at 08:00 UTC / approx. 4 hours)

It was a rolling headstart depending on how much cash you dropped on the game. Cash shop opens tomorrow with official launch.

Uh? That was my point. Considering it is a rolling headstart, there is no way to figure out what the real population on the servers will be until tomorrow, when the final flood gate opens. And when I wrote that post, only the 100€ tier people were in.

Ah sorry, I thought I was up to date on the thread when I clicked to latest post.

If only there was some way to see when a post was made. Like a stamp, which shows time. Man, scientists need to get on this one :why_so_serious:


Anyways, fuck fishing. Fuck node management. Fuck crafting. They're time consuming as hell, and yet I find myself enjoying the crafting more than any other game before to a point that I'm just taking a slow ride to 50. It's actually kind of refreshing.

I bought a new gfx card so I should be able to play this soon.  I had to get more power for it.  Bleh.  Tax refund gone in a micro second.  :(  Do we have like guilds or whatever for this game?

I have 20 hours spent in the game so far, and I am combat level 15. Which I attained in the first 3 hours.  :awesome_for_real:

I've gotten about 2-3 levels just from all the non-combat things I've been doing. I've also gotten sucked into farming and now have 5 farms outside of heidel that I am constantly running back to to make sure my precious greenlings don't get overgrown or eaten by bugs. I don't quite 'get' farming though, so I'm gonna have to read a guide on it. My best skill ups have been random chance ones from getting 'Spirit Leaves' after I kill bugs that have infected a plant. One got me 40% of my farming level, then it jumped up by 80% the second time. Wheat's probably terrible for farming for actual skill though, but atleast I'm getting plenty of ingredients for fertilzer and beer.

Game's fun, should have just named myself the gentle green giant.

EDIT: And now I just found a magical stick from pruning that shot my farming skill up another 50%, weird.

So you got lvl 15 in a few hours and spent 17 hours doing other stuff.  I like that!  I haven't tried the game yet.  I broke my computer.  :(

Ugh, so not only are classes genderlocked 5 out of 8 are female? that is so fucking annoying.

FTFY  :why_so_serious:

Levelling gets really slow after 25 or so.

And by slow, you mean, 1-50 finished in 8 hours in a dedicated group pushing to do so.  15 is average from what I hear if you're actively trying and group up.

With the hordes of people around now, I'd be surprised if even 15-20 hours is manageable any more.

I'm confused. Are we really complaining about not being able to get to max level in about three days?

I have to say, this game is forgitable.

I have to ask two questions. First, how do you consistently ignore the spell checker? I mean come on man, put just a tiny bit of effort into it for us. Second, why do you feel that the game is forgettable?

Uh compared to tera, compares to blade and soul. (ive played both today and black desert a bit). Theres no comparison. Its a weaker game. Done.

Hahaha.

Ok, NO. The combat is on par with both games if not better. And then, on top of the combat, there's an immense amount of things those games wouldn't even have if they tried combining their efforts together for a decade. This coming from someone who thinks both TERA and Blade & Soul were more than fine. And bear with me, I am not even saying that Black Desert is better, cause that's a matter of taste I guess. It is simply different enough and so bigger that "weaker game" is pretty much the most ridiculous comment one could make when comparing it to two traditional theme parks only saved by the wonderful execution of the combat portion.

All I can tell from your post is that you prefer quest hubs, instanced dungeons and a clear vertical progression path. Good for you. Now let's forget your opinion.

So, during the Closed Beta Test 2 I managed to snag 3 keys to this (one gifted to me, one I won in a giveaway, and one mailed to my account, that I'd applied for >after I'd already redeemed one). I barely was able to play 5-6 hrs during that weekend, but what I did see made me want to try more, yet also didn't really inspire me enough to think anything other than "when F2P" or "at a severe discount in a year". I just today won a Guest pass to get another 7 days, but I really can't see me finding anything (even massive crafting diversions or housing) that will make my initial opinions change.

The combat was very mouse clicky (carpal tunnel inducing pain 4 me) and although it was pretty with lots of sparkly effects going on, it didn't really seem any different to me than Tera or Blade and Soul (I'd even say Blade and Soul felt the most varied in terms of attacks). The classes of Black Desert all had different attacks, but all the combos seemed damned near exact in BDO regardless of class, and for the most part it seemed every class had only one optimal or expected build that couldn't really make me unique compared to all the other clones of my exact class. It also seemed overly busy, with too many players all competing for resources and spawns, with all of us jammed into a not very large and varied world compared to Tera and Blade and Soul. If getting kill stolen throughout the entire game for the same quests everyone is funneled into, it definitely would be bland and frustrating way too soon for me.

All these games have twitch like combat, with really linear progression, and no real differences between class origin, starting areas, or quest-lines , with only tons of repetitive gameplay to look forward to, imo. Since I prefer trying multiple classes and progressing through storylines or exploring, when all of these games had me doing the exact same things regardless of class (Tera being the one exception and only after I think it was lvl 20), none of them really grabbed me and made me want to adventure through them. In the 5-6 hours during Black Desert's CBT2 I had 3 character classes all to 15, and had nearly exact experiences with all 3 characters EXCEPT that they had different combat effects and animations.  

Black Desert also doesn't really appeal to me because there is no real content, dungeons or raids, with mostly just strings of really bad quests (that are the same regardless of class from what I saw) in one of the most horrible FULL SCREEN quest UIs I have ever seen. Localization and terrible voice-overs certainly made this even worse. The ghost creature was annoying to me, and not explained enough in the early game, so along with people literally bumping into one another tripping over the same content or limited resources/NPCs, (every character and NPC getting anyplace near one another kind of rudely body check you? and stand u up briefly stopping you? Huh?) I really can't see grinding through this being a "fun" experience.

I'd have done more testing, and probably will in the next 6 days, but from what I've seen and heard I can be level 50 probably before my 7 day guest key expires, and only have grinding, crafting or PvP to look forward to... So, basically even more reason to keep me from investing. Maybe after their content catches up with the Korean version or at a steep discount, but for now Tera and it's f2p is probably more appealing than Black Desert is.

I could spend hours in the Black Desert character creator, though, and probably will now that I'm done downloading the gigs of data over again.

Just to clarify again: Black Desert does NOT offer ANYTHING to those looking for the traditional theme park / WoW / EQ formula. NOTHING. The loot is crap, there are no instanced dungeons, no bosses, no PvE end game whatsoever. If that is what you are looking for, the game will look "empty of content".

It's a design choice though. It just means the game is not for you. Clearly clearly something they didn't advertise too much because why not snag some extra money? But there's a reason why expansion after expansion they still refuse to craete instanced dungeons or simply scatter some bosses around the newest open ones.

In Black Desert the ONLY end-game that I know of is PvP warring over castles and nodes, and/or becoming a rich merchant or crafter.
You know what is it inspired to? EVE Online and SWG. Not WoW, or Tera or B&S.

Black Desert is much more about its Trading/Crafting/Spreadsheet simulation in a "realistic" world than it is about the usual things you do in MMORPGs. Or at least it's 50/50. And that's why it is so confusing. There is a lot of content. Just not the kind of content most people expect or were looking for. It tries to draw people in with graphics and the stellar technical execution of everything, but I would say that design wise it's almost a niche game.

Maybe it's because I haven't played a Korean MMO in forever, but this game is weird as fuck. I have no idea what I'm even doing.

If anyone ends up with a guest pass they don't have a need for, I would like to try this game.

Please and thanks!

I should have two guest passes but I haven't got any preorder stuff yet.  I might be buggy!

THIS  :uhrr:

Uninstalling and asking for a refund, I hope. What ARE you doing?

Free trial.  :awesome_for_real:

I played for an hour or so today.  This game makes me cry in my soup.

But we both know you'll inevitably blame me when you end up buying it.   :oh_i_see:

That's a given. 

It's actually interesting enough to at least play through the trial. It's just confusing, and I'm not really sure if I'll like it or not once the whole picture is apparent.  I had a very poor initial impression of Warframe but ended up loving that.

At worst it's a 1 week break from playing D3.

It's a giant absolutely confusing mess.  I finally got my head completely wrapped around the crafting and worker situation last night, and holy shit I can't stop playing now.  I went to bed way way too late after setting up the start of a copper refinement pipeline, and I still have to do a bunch more to pad it out tonight if I get time.  I definitely don't give two shits about the combat or the pvp in this game even if they are good now that the crafting stuff has it's hooks into me.

That sounds familiar!  :awesome_for_real:

I hope this happens to me!  Even though I'm having a bit of a problem sorting stuff out right now, it's hard to stop looking at this game.  It's really pretty.  I still haven't figured out the free guest passes and other stuff.  I have a feeling I'm gonna have to read something, aren't I? 

I'll go do that now.  :(

Oh yes, I have two guest passes. So if anyone wants one, post here and I'll PM a code to you.

They last for seven days and I think the advantage is simply that they let you try out the game without having to pay (for anyone who doesn't know, the game is is buy to play, no sub, cash shop).

The servers are new but everything seems to be stable. No particular reason to wait, although the zones are busy with people levelling which may be a good or bad thing depending on your point of view.

I'll take a guest pass; didn't get around to trying it in the beta.

Sent - one left

Thanks mate.

I got a pass from Signe - thank you so much!

The biggest problem of this game, and its biggest glaring contrdiction, is that 80% of it is basically a single player game. This is even more annoying considering how beautiful and real and alive the world looks and feels.

Can you not rebind keys? Or invert the mouse?

Edit: Nevermind, found it. It's in Settings, not Hotkeys.

Edit 2: How do I get rid of these button prompts? I think I turned them on by accident somehow.

ESC ---> EDIT UI ---> Find the culprit window and click the tiny eye button ---> Save.

If you don't have many many hours to spare stay the fuck away from this game.  It will suck you in!

Yeah it will. My goal right now is to get blue special seeds of every plant I can because.... because.

Is there an F13 clan or guild up and running?

It's good overall.

The translation is bad and the new player experience is terrible. I quit after an hour last night in frustration. Today I committed another hour or two to learn what some of the stuff does and it makes better sense.

Also, black soul thing is irritating.

There's so much here that's inscrutable, and half the guides out there are from the Korean version so they use the wrong names for everything (vigor vs energy, etc.) which doesn't help.

I tried to figure out how to cook but can't find a cooking station anywhere in Heidal.

Also, searching the AH doesn't seem to work. Whenever I search for anything it gives me 0 results, even when I search for things I see clearly.

Searches in the AH have to be made under the appropriate category AND you have to capitalize the first letter of whatever you are searching for.

Not sure where you can get a cooking station in Heidel, but I know you can get it from the innkeeper in Velia. So maybe, the innkeeper of Heidel, too?

You need to buy an oven (might be called a stove or cooker or something) from a cooking merchant. (Find merchants by clicking the magnifying glass with "npc" written below it in the top right corner of the screen).

Then you need to place the oven in a house to use it.

If you don't know how to get a house, you do it by going into the map, click on a town or city icon (a blue square with house symbols on it) and then all the available houses appear. Choose one to buy (or more than one if you like, you can have loads).  It costs money and contribution points to buy a house, but you can get contribution points back if you get rid of the house later.

You need to choose how to use your house. Each house has a number of possible uses, of which "residence" will be one. So you find a house which can be used as a residence, buy it, make sure you set it to residence and then go there and place the oven.

Yea I got the house figured out. The NPC called <Cook> in Heidal doesn't appear to be a merchant. I checked everyone else that seemed likely but none of them had one; I'll just go back to Velia.

There's a cooking merchant in the tavern in Heidel.

Yeah, this is a massive time burner. Still barely have a clue as to what I'm doing. Realized I'm going to have to figure out something to do with trade soon though, money's starting to come too slow.

When ever I have real life shit to do, I go afk fishing. Once I have started fishing I send the game to the system tray (check box option when you click on end game in the menu). Come back to 20 to 50k worth of fish. Sell fish to trade manager.

(While I have no illusions as to how long it will last) I'm enjoying being more or less clueless about alot of things in BDO and finding them out the hard way and by chance. It's a nice change to the way I've played other MMOs in the past decade where everything was about just taking the optimal path to the end game and that path felt very clear in most cases (and the sense of wonder was lost).

this was "helped" by the fact my computer died on me at the start of the year so I missed the betas and headstart before getting it back to working order.

AFK fishing is great, discovering money has weight is evil.

And what about money deposited in a city's bank only existing in that one specific city's bank?

I bought this game after a real life buddy was creaming over carts in the game being full of art that reflects the cargo.  The opening cinematic was so boring I skipped it, and that's coming from a guy who read the entire 14 book wheel of time series.

All the quest dialogue was equally bad.  That's when I realized I was playing a Korean mmo. The combat felt visceral and satisfying, but after an hour, I realized I was just running around, following one bright flashing arrow after another pointing the direction for things to murder Orr people to reward me for it.

That's when I realized I had been down this road before, and didn't like where it ends.  Only buy this game if you want an attractive grind, our you never played an mmo before and the boom is still on the rose

The funniest part is that most quests actually give very little "combat" experience and actually grinding mobs is far more effective for leveling. Quests on the other hand are usually good for contribution and crafting experience (and for stuff like inventory slots).

I won't even say its a good game, I'm really not convinced it is. But it has eaten up an entire weekend for me so far.

To someone like me, who feels like the "quest grind" has gotten to the point where I don't really find it any more pleasing than just grinding whatever mobs I happen to want to kill, that doesn't really bother me in an MMO.  The more I hear about this the more I think I will at least be able to get the box price worth out of it. I don't know if it has any legs, but it might be fun to play something like this for a while at least.

Because grinding mobs is the least engaging activity in the game, but there's about another nine millions to become addicted to. At least for a while.

If all you are doing is level up (Dusematic), you are doing Black Desert wrong.

Clearly, I am not saying this is a great game either. But it is much more going on than what you can see if you try to play it like any other MMO. Blame is on Pearl Abyss for not making that more obvious. It's very freeform, even though it has levels and mobs are arranged by areas: you can just grind, or you can let quests guide you, or you can ignore quests altogether, or you can ignore leveling up completely. It's easy to feel a need to play it like the games it is supposed to come from, but that need isn't there.

Also, ProTip: forget about quest dialogues. The meat of the lore is in the "knowledge" tips you get in the upper right corner after you meet new people. What they babble in conversations is often unbearable, but their backstories and how they are often linked with each other is what makes this virtual world interesting.

Yeah I just realized I may be a dick for coming into a BDO thread and saying it sucks, sorry.  Perhaps I'm just an old mmo-cynic at this point, going through UO, The Realm, EQ, DAOC, FFXI, Aion, WoW, Rift, Vanguard,  Guild Wars 1 & 2, Shadowbane, and probably others that I have forgotten or would like to forget.

Having said that, my typical notion is to level to max level, and then do crafting.  For example, in UO, it's going to be a lot easier to do some mining and blacksmithing if you don't have to worry about a stray orc executing you while you're off in the wildnerness with your pack mule.  In WoW, I can rapidly train up blacksmithing and mining if I'm max level, whereas, if I try to do it concurrently, it's a huge cash and time sink, and I'll probably get ganked a lot.

I've been thinking about going back to something very simple and straightforward, like The Realm.  The Realm doesn't have a lot of bad window dressing.  You just grind and watch the numbers go up.  And there are 999 levels, so the numbers are ALWAYS going up. 


It's weird.  All the super bogus cut scenes are just a terrible distraction, and somehow make the game worse and interfere with the fact that we all just want the numbers to KEEP GOING UP.

Holy shit that game is still running?

Okay, this needs to be stated a few more times, and probably on every page of this thread at the top, since they made a terrible decision regarding the interface and quests by default.  Most of the quests in the game are disabled so you don't seem them by a UI toggle.  Go into the quest log and find the switch, on the top right if memory serves, that turns them all on.  This game has almost too many quests, and the vast majority of them have absolutely nothing to do with combat.

I missed a lot of quests early on because of that; I've been going back and doing them for more contribution points now that I'm getting the hang of crafting.

I noticed that I can ship goods from one warehouse to another; can I do that without actually being at the warehouse with the goods I need? Is it important to have a completely connected line of nodes, or just have each node connected to it's city?

You'll want to have a line of nodes between two cities at least at some point.  That's what allows you to run trade goods and fish to them and get full price for them.  The further you can go, the more money you make usually.  Otherwise you generally want to keep your node network relatively close to home since your workers actually run around and do stuff, so the distance they move and their speed stat matters (ie don't have workers in velia mining in heidel, etc).

As far as the warehouse goes, I believe you can drill down into the city from the world map and have stuff shipped around from anywhere, but I haven't personally tried yet.

I just discovered that quest toggle before I logged out last night. It hides all the crafting quests by default. I kind of understand why, the game already floods you with pointless info. You walk in to a busy part of town and its just a wall of damn text and icons. That said, I would have liked to have known those quests existed sooner. I'm doing "kill and skin a weasel" quests now at level 14.

The game has its quirks. I couldn't remember where the market was in a town, so I went to the map. I couldn't zoom in enough to figure out exactly where it was, so I right click on the label to set a marker... which lead me to the middle of an alley three blocks away from the actual Market.

There's a NPC-button in your UI (might be at the top right corner) where you can choose "marketplace" and then just press "t" to run/ride there.  :grin:

Use the NPC button next to the minimap to find markets and such. It's super useful, and the auto run will take you right to them most of the time (it doesn't do great with stairs).

Day 4 of the 7 day pass, and my character is now 17, but this time (UNLIKE my time in closed beta 2) I began working on crafting and questing while doing small bits of combat, and am slowly starting to see the appeal of this game.

I bought the shoddy tools from the very first person I found selling them and was gathering from nearly everything I killed and from various resource nodes everyplace. By the time I reached Velia Saturday I was Combat level 15 and was also Gathering level 11.. Meaning, I had lots of resources to craft and sell, as well as a bunch of quests to teach me crafting. I bought a horse on Saturday after selling some of the wood and ores I crafted together, and the Energy for crafting is certainly an interesting mechanic. Yesterday and today I was in Heidel doing quests all around there, and actually completed quests specifically for gathering and got free worker contracts, along with numerous different decorations for my house... I even have a bed to rest in now, that helps me recover Energy to complete even more gathering.
I definitely could see myself doing the crafting part, and even enjoy the combat more as I've played longer, but I don't really have any interest in Pvp. Since the only real thing to do in end-game is PvP or trading, I can't really endorse this game for long term play, although I definitely was considering buying just to corner the chopped wood market.

BTW The wheel-barrow and cow milking mini-games made me chuckle with delight.

Where'd you find a bed? And/or a light for your house?

What server is everyone on? I'm on Uno > Serendia; not sure which of those is my server (or how hard it is to switch) but if a lot of us are on the same server we ought to get a Bat Country together. If only so I can spam my random questions there instead of here. :why_so_serious:

Speaking of which, what level cooking do I need to make the Imperial Packages I can trade? I see them listed here on the recipes list (http://blackdesertfoundry.com/2015/05/03/all-recipes/) but all it says is Apprentice 1; I'm at Beginner 8.

Uno, Orwen, and Edan are the servers.  The other names are the channels.  You can not switch servers, but you can switch channels mostly at will.  I'm on Edan.Calpheon.E2 running a small friends and family guild.

I gotta say, if this is want you want. Is is the best (is it better than eve?). But it isn't a mmorpg where you see your char gain more power. I'm thinking, eq. wow, tera and blade and soul. But this isn't that game. Its a sandbox like eve. But this isn't a mmorpg and we need a new category. Sandboxes.

In North Heidel Territory, in Northern Guard camp is a dwarf Jemkas Whyrmsbane, I did a bunch of quests with him, both yesterday and today, including creating a garden, planting things there, killing mine imps, and also played his conversation game at least 3 times. Then after he gave me a production lesson on fertilizer he told me to go to Heidel and talk to the guild NPC about housing... The reward for that was a bed and decorations for the house.  I am using my lantern while inside, because that particular building is super dark.

I'm also on Uno, and like Ard said the "channel" doesn't matter, and any character on the 3 servers can join any channel. Ironically though I had been mostly on Serendia or Serendia 2 depending on how busy it is. I am seriously thinking of buying this

As far as I know the term MMORPG was coined for Ultima Online, which has been the biggest sandbox for about fifteen years. So what the hell are you talking about?

Thanks for the advice on fishing, whomever said it - money is no longer such an issue. Now I need to setup nodes so that I get proper value from carting the fish from one town to another. Well, carrying on horseback, don't have a cart yet.

I think one of the more amusing things about this game - I'm combat level 15 and I have no idea what the death mechanic is. I think I've been under half health once. I have a stack of 138 basic health potions.

Oh, and the game did become a bit more pleasant once I figured out how to turn off character names.

I can't wrap my head around what a big mistake it was on their part to turn off player-to-player trading. I know why they did it, and I know what kind of shit it saved us from, but the consequence of that is making people play alone even when they are in the same room. Unless you want to mindlessly grind mobs together, of course.

The inability to really play with your friends, other than looking at their toons, will really hurt this game in the medium and long period. Such an incredibly huge shared world, and such a strange forced solo experience.

Here's our massively singleplayer online-only game.

Man, this hobby gets worse every year.

Wait, you can't trade from player to player? ... the fuck?

Was that to kill gold sales or something because...  :uhrr:

Yes, to kill gold sellers. And it worked very well. Except it slayed a good 30% of the fun of MMORPGs if not more in the process. Think about it, so much crafting, so much logistics to take care of, so much economy, this game seriously has a lot of the cool things (YMMV) of EVE, and all of that has to be played with/versus just the auction house, which for all we know could be actually an AI, and you can't trade SHIT with your friends. You can't give them money, you can't give them equip, you can't give them any of the things you craft, or ingredients, and you can't share with them any of your achievements. Literally all you can do together is grind monsters or, at some point, PvP.

No, you can't trade players directly except for consumables. TBH, it's really not that big of a deal. It would be nice to trade farming seeds and what not with other players, sure, but I've barely missed trading so far. The AH has pretty much everything you need regularly, only the boss drops and certain armor pieces are rare, and money is easy as hell to make that pretty much no matter what you do you'll make money unless you're fucking up badly.

And as for goldsellers, yes this scorched earth way to get rid of them seems to be working. I haven't seen any spam


In addition to what Falc said, there is a very clear power gain. Blackstones and skill upgrades for vertical power, quests for lateral progression. So wtf are you talking about?

Early portions of MMO games were never about trading. Everyone had started out even and were scrambling to get through all portions and find what they really enjoy. It's later in the game's life that you start to miss it. Especially if you don't like some game system in particular.

I hated resource farming in SWG, but I could trade power for it. I hated leatherworking in WoW, but I could trade gold or mats for the finished product from other players. You've lost all that from the start here. It's a lot of interaction down the line cut off to spite something better resolved other ways because this was "easier."

My biggest issue is being unable to split specializations with my wife straight up.  I can't make her tools, which is a bit annoying, but it's not the end of the world.


You can still do this as there's still a player to player auction house, but it has price floors and ceilings set for all items to keep it from being a race to the bottom or rampant gouging.  The main issue is no direct trading, I can't give things away..

We can rationalize as much as we want and repeat to ourselves that it's being fun anyway so who cares. It may be true FOR NOW. The reality is that, from wives and husbands to your group of friends you are playing with on Teamspeak, this game does a great job in making you feel like you are all separated by an artificial invisible and impassable wall that murders one if not THE most interesting part about playing with friends in MMOs: collaboration.

Unforgivable.

And it didn't even work to it's intended purpose after all. Roughly one fourth of whatever the hell chat channels default to the bottom left screen was gold sellers duRing the two hours I was on last night. Nowhere near Tera levels, but still annoying.

The Countess has dragged me into this along with some friends, because of the interesting open world, crafting and trading aspects. But if you can't do the crafting and trading together? ??

The UI is atrocious as is the localization.  Wtf is up with the voiceovers that are completely different from the text? Can I just turn the creepy things off completely? Also wtf is up with all the hyper caffeinated junkie npcs jonesing for a hit and jittering all over the screen the whole time you talk to them?

 I'm loving all the crybaby pvp-ers complaining about to being able to gank at will.  And not seeing any pvp at all in the two hours it took me to get to 10th level - the last three levels were a side effect of me trying to figure out how to do a combo when the on- screen instructions differed from the tool tips and both required a key I'd remapped to try to alleviate their use of my push-to-talk key (L-Ctrl).

And what is up with some commands you can remap to most any key but others can only be assigned to an eclectic select few? Did we time warp back to 1999?

This is interesting. Gold sellers? I have seen none, and mostly because there is no known way for anyone to sell gold (or anything else). I would dare to say what you saw were trolls.

Also, no one can be attacked by other players until they are level 45.

I've seen gold spam too, and I assume they're scammers but they look like any other gold spam I've seen.

I've only seen a handful of messages about it total, but I assumed it was someone making a bad joke since there's no real way to transfer money.  I tend to mostly just ignore general chat.

Here's an example:
If that's someone trolling it's pretty elaborate because the website actually exists.

I've seen these messages too, only like one or two, and both times I clicked on the name in chat and did "Request Chat Ban".

That costs 30 Energy, and I don't think they refund it like Arche Age if they actually ban the fucker. I just block them and move on.

You are right. The sites are real. How do they work? Probably like in Skyforge, where the only way was for buyers to lend their account to the gold sellers for a few minutes. With login information and all. Yeah...

Probably that.

Is it possible to refill a lantern or do I need to just buy a new one?

I dunno about the gold spammers, but is that wagon a thing a player can ride around in? Or is it just some NPC fluff?

There are several types of wagons players can use, from rickety ones up to something like that I believe.

That looks like the Farm Wagon with a wagon cover equipped. Around 250k on the market, so it's pretty cheap.

There are even bigger ones than that too, but they're around 2mil on the market or require zinc in order to create

Honestly the auto run to quests thing means many people do wagon, horse and running automatically. I also can use my horse usually at his max speed and run past anyone auto steering. I also seem to lose horse stamina slightly quicker but I steer way faster than the auto run and shave minutes from travel. Been nearing end of the 7 day guest pass I won, and still not sure about buying. Part of me wants to, but I also don't know if I enjoy the combat enough. I haven't yet grouped, and many people seem to ignore messages I've sent, and although I've seen many duos and trios, I see more people solo who seem to fumble through how to combat where I am furiously destroying things (and was at their level).

Combat level 19, and gathering.production experience into apprentice, owning lots of property between Heidel and Velia.

You can have that wagon and also some much more luxurious ones. But also some cheaper ones and shittier ones, and you can pick how many and which horses attach to it, and you have to buy or capture and tame and/or breed the horses and they all have different characteristics. Breeding horses and create better rare and valuable ones is a profession in itself. So is the "trading" profession that requires those wagons, although honestly I just bring the wagon with me when I go grinding and park it on a road nearby so I can put the things I loot and the money (cause they have weight) on it and can grind for a longer time.
See, in all these things the game is wonderfully crazy and engaging. It's the inability to really share these aspects that hurts it.

Regarding the texture pop-in, never seen anything worse than this, unfortunately (playing on max. settings minus the "high end" option). It's quite distracting  :oh_i_see:

I honestly don't know what to think about this game as I near the end of this trial.  I mean, it's amusing to just fart around in, but to what end?  The goal here is rather nebulous and there's no clear path to it.  Do I build stuff? I can't trade it.  Do I PVE or PVP? I don't love grinding, and I'm not going to be competitive in any sort of PVP with how much I play.

There's just a lot here and not all of it fits together neatly.  It's buy to play for $30 so the investment is minimal... until you find out that pets are gated behind the pay wall.   :| There are friends online but are they just afk fishing?  :awesome_for_real:  

This almost makes me want to play GW2, but then again, it makes you see the flaws and shortcomings in that game's design as well.   :headscratch:

I'm sort of in the same boat. I'm enjoying all the various bits and I love how sandboxy it is...but not being able to trade really hurts. I can't twink my friends, I can't make shady backroom deals circumventing the AH, etc. It feels like a single player game that requires me be online because reasons.

See, I am sort of in this same mindset, it was enjoyable but it being a sandbox with only PvP >>should I continue progressing was where PVP+me was making me really allergic to continuing.

I enjoyed the little farming, collecting and mini-gaming, plus earning silvers quickly is not hard, it just was just sort of empty... It was way too crowded, and felt like even when there was a vast world that focusing on low levels and alting grinding farming was not going to be long term enjoyable, and I probably got the $30 worth of enjoyment out of it already to this point... but since the money isn't there for me and I feel it's worth less and might be more fun less crowded I'll wait to see what price drops or populations/discussions lead to. Honestly if the chat engine was better, and I were roleplaying, even then it was a maybe at steep discount for kicks thing.

Not being able to trade and even everything marketplace price limited are both nice in theory, but that too will make most of this game kind of pale and eventually boring imo. Voice coms of people planting corn, making planks for seiges or yelling attack.. /shrug not fun as multi-player to me anymore.

I haven't been able to play this at all, really.  I get a headache when I try and read the text.  No one wants to play a game with a headache! 

Levelling becomes really grindy.

What my BDO playing seems to amount to instead of killing monsters:

I am still loving it. It just can't be stressed enough: it sucks that they basically forced it into a FUCKING SINGLE PLAYER game unless you are in a 30+ guild. But even as a single player game, it can be a lot of fun. It stands as a testament of how much of an interesting and well crafted product they put together.

Horse racing guide. (http://blackdesertfoundry.com/2015/10/12/horse-racing-guide/)

Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_o30U4v-wA).

I hope these kind of games are around when I retire. This is exactly the game I wanted 12 years ago, but now I can't devote the time.

So I haven't angered myself by playing an MMO in awhile.  Anybody have one of those free trial codes left to give out?  Might save me some cash.   :awesome_for_real:

Code sent.

Fakeedit: Apparently posting twice in 15 seconds is not okay.

Also have an eye out for a code, because I don't want to drop $30 on MMOs only to be crushed with disappointment.  I'm just too jaded now.   :heartbreak:

I'll pm you one later.

Finally got to level 50 yesterday. It took a while not because the leveling is that time consuming but due to the various other projects in the game that distracted me like building a fishing boat and a trade wagon.
I just wonder how long getting to 51 will take (nevermind 55)  :why_so_serious:

Interesting thing is that the difference in power between level 50 and 55 is nothing compared to the difference in power between your equip qt +15 enchant or +17. Or so they say. And that is ALL RNG hell.

Other than this kind of crap, still enjoying the exploration, and all the conversations, and the expansion of my economic empire, and all the million activities. I just found out for example that if you get to rank #1 in apartment decoration in any given house instance, you unlock the "Investments" feature, which allows you to turn your silver in gold ingots and make investments in some cities for eventual, long term returns. It's not that fun per se, but it is so refreshing to keep finding new stuff after almost a month. I am only level 26 on my main and I have never been slower to grow my combat level in ANY mmorpg ever.

And the funny/interesting part is that you can then put that equip on a level 1 alt if you want (except for some infrequent bound items mostly from quest rewards)  :why_so_serious:

...or just buy it if you have the silver

Yes the over-over-over-twink is strong in this game. But I don't even hate it. Here, as your ALTs are really part of a family so considering the sandbox nature of it all it just feels right that your brothers and sisters can use each other's stuff.

The silver-into-gold-ingots thing is a regular feature; you can do it at the warehouse in Heidal. It's a way to transport large sums of money.

Yes, the conversion is. The investment bank isn't. The transmutation into ingots, which is available to everyone right off the bat, is necessary to invest, but you can't invest unless you got the #1 ranking into a house.

A decent video on the story of Black Desert. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53n2DFmw35o)

It almost makes me wish they had done a better job implementing it but for the most part it's your basic mmo filler (but at least this fan video makes it coherent compared to the mess it's in the actual game)

I'm a broken record when it comes to the qualities of this game, but I like that the story is there if you want it. And I like that it is fragmented and you have to look for it and piece it together almost as you would do in a Demon's/Dark Souls game. Sure, translation is terrible and the original writing was probably bad anyway, but the fact that you can miss the story or only get a few fragments if you don't pay attention makes perfect sense to me in this "worldly" world.

I'm a broken record when it comes to its flaws too: FUCk single-playerizing my MMORPG.

Quote for the virtual box  :why_so_serious:

That's the sort of thing that intrigues me.

How is the crafting/gathering/professions side?

Some random questions:

- Node level: does it decay over time (for example, from lv.3 to lv.2 etc.) if you don't keep investing points on it?

- Quests you get through the amity minigame (feel da grind :P). Are they repeatable by your alts?

- Regarding crafting tools (skinning, fishing and others): should I wait for quests that give them to me or should I just purchase them straightaway from the first vendor that sell them?

- Does the game eventually guide you toward profession tutorials or, given the sandboxy nature, you have to dig for information outside the game (not that I have a problem with it, just wondering).


While I wait for the (now extended) EU maintenance to be over, I'm trying to understand how workers...well, work because it's quite an intricate system.

No, unless you remove your contribution from the node, in which case it reverts to zero, but the game warns you about that.  That said, energy costs for node levels gets exponential, and it goes up to level 10.  I've been blowing most of my alts' energy on my potato farm since launch, and I'm only at level 5.


Most of the amity quests as far as I've seen are dailies to begin with.  I'm not sure if all characters can do all dailies in general every day or not, I haven't tried.


Just buy them, the price is negligible and they wear out insanely fast for the base tools.  You'll go through tons of them until you start making or buying steel or better tools.


The display of those quests is turned off by default.  It's something that really should be mentioned on every page of this thread.  Go into the quest log and find the toggle to turn them on.  You'll be drowning in quests when this happens.  There are more of those than combat ones.

As someone that hates crafting usually, it's addicting. I have more crafting workshops than I'd care to admit.


-No

-Yes - amity is shared across all characters in the family. The only time I've seen amity decay (resulting in a bonus not being usable) is when you buy something from the amity shop.

-Get them from quests, supplement from vendors as needed. However, the crafted ones are definitely better. While they're expensive, they heavily reduce the time to gather, and their durability is really good.

-Look for the quests from crafting NPCs. That is the tutorial for crafting. They show you how to gather, process, and use crafting tools in your residence. If you aren't seeing the quests, cursor over your quest tracker and click one of the buttons in the upper right side of it to turn on the filter to show quests you want to see

-There are two ways to use workers. One is to have them gather at a node, the other is to have them craft items in workshops you buy with contribution points in towns (example: armor workshop, or wagon workshop). If you click on the town icon on the map, then click on a building and buy it with CP you can see options for craftable items if the workshop if applicable after it's build. If you have materials in the bank in the town of the building, and a free worker, you can select manage crafting and pick the item you want to craft. If you don't have materials in the town's bank then it will have a red line through it or something like that. For items like armor, tools, crates, etc you can change the quantity you set your worker to build but only one worker can be working in that workshop at a time. For something like wagons/boats (bigger items) then you can have up to 4 workers per material per item being crafted. So with a strong wagon, it takes 1 wagon horse, 5 hides, 5 ingots, 5 plywood, and 15 black stone powder. You can set 1 worker to use the hides or use up to 4 workers dividing up the 5 hides, 4 workers dividing up the ingots, powder, plywood, etc. What I usually do here is use 4 workers total. 1 to process the 5 hides, 1 for the ingots, 1 for the plywood, and 1 to make 5 stone powder. Then the first two done I'll have them help with the remaining 10 powder.

For workers in general, humans have higher luck, average stamina, average speed. Giants are high stamina, low luck, low speed. Goblins are fast, low stamina, low luck. I use giants for gathering at nodes and fishing boats, humans for crafting armor/weapons/tools/wagons, and goblins can fuck off as I'd rather just set a worker to a task and forget about them for a while.

Is there a tier 2 Wood Workshop anywhere? I need Sturdy Pine Plywood for my Noble Wagon and it doesn't exist on the AH; it requires Processing and Gathering (or maybe Alchemy) at fucking Professional to make by hand.

I think those can only be made by players. Rather, any of the items that need an alchemical item to turn into an improved version. Sturdy plywood, pure metal crystals, etc.

Ugh. Guess I'll settle with my Trade Wagon for the foreseeable future, then.

Sturdy pinewood is the reason I chose to go with a trade wagon myself (and pure <metal> crystals are why I haven't crafted any additional parts for my fishing boat)

Then again both are things that are attainable once you level up your skills and you don't even need an alt to do it so there's that.  :awesome_for_real:

I need to get some sort of trade wagon set up. I connected Trent to Velia recently and have been making sunflower/mushroom crates for some time in preperation for my great trading spree, but damn if I can pull myself away from everything else to actually start it.

I caved; going to give it a shot.  My Warframe play time is getting a little grindy (shock) so I'm hoping this will be a bit of a palate cleanser.  And see what Tree of Savior has in store at the end of the month.       

I think we (Ard, I, others) are on Edan -> Calpheon 2.  

My play is very schizophrenic.  Mostly it's fishing while I do other things/play other games or grinding/working my way through combat quests and the main story with my witch.  Oh, and I make beer.  Everyone makes beer.

It's all very unfocused and a majority of the time I feel like I'm getting nothing done.  Still interesting.  There's so much complexity baked into absolutely everything.   :ye_gods:

I'm on Uno > Serendia 1 as Rendakor if anyone needs a hand.

I gotta Ranger on Edan - Mediah 2 (Bzera/Bzyra)  I don't remember which was the family name, I got that confused.

I'm really torn about this game: I  applaud the developers for the horizontal approach and how creative (and devious :P) they were when conceiving all the sub-systems. At the same time, it's a VERY time consuming game and honestly I'm not sure that I want to devote the vast majority of my gaming hours to it when there are lots of single-player games out there waiting to be played.

I understand they wanted to provide something original with the conversation system and the web of knowledge; but, in the context of an already not-so-interesting world, everything is a bit...well, boring, or not catchy enough.
I ask myself: "am I having fun when I partake in the [pick any activity Black Desert offers] mechanic?". The answer to every one is..."not really". There is depth, yes, but it's a confusing depth that, at least for me, it's becoming more and more of a chore.

Anyway, for now I'll keep playing and see if it's going to finally "click" for the better or worse  :oh_i_see:

To me, so far, it's the world. Just the world. Too beautiful, too rich and detailed to pass. At this point I have 3 days of /played and I am only level 28, which is something you can seriously achieve in the first five hours playing not too seriously. I am raising my gathering skill and my processing skill, and a bit of my cooking skill to provide the beer for my worker and the food for my pets, but what I am really doing with my time in the game is simply enjoy every single nook and cranny of the incredibly detailed world and unlocking every single piece of Lore I can come across. It's not the story, it's the people. Never cared so much about quest givers and their personality, ever. Finding secret spots and caves is fun, but it's not even what I am looking for. Just living in these lands feels great. Getting on top of mountain and looking around is breathtaking, especially as you can see the outline of towns and places for kilometers. You feel like all the places are really there, and they don't go away when you log out or they are off screen. I enjoy sunsets and dawns in a way I've never experienced before in any MMO. Time of the day matters a lot aesthetically, and so does the weather. The noises, crickets, birds, the occasional dog, a far away bell tower, it all feels heavenly to me. And when it starts raining and it all gets visually wet I feel the desire to hole up in my apartment or in a private room in an inn and spend time with the my cat by the fireplace reading a book (something you can do in the game, it raises your knowledge) and wait for the storm to pass.

And on top of all that, when I really want some action, I can go play superhero in any monster area and play Tekken/Soul Calibur with some lousy AI that is more compelling than the combat I have experienced in any other MMORPG, at least with the Valkyrie.

I get ALL the criticism this game gets, and I have said it a million times myself that nothing hurt it more than preventing people from sharing resources, and I also have no problems being pointed and laughed at for spending hours just walking around killing nagas to get the last bit of Knowledge I need to unlock another tiny bit of lore. But the world they created is mindblowing, it's uncanny, it's glorious, and I believe it's part of why a lot of people are having a harder time quitting than it would be resonable to expect at this point.

I have no long term plans in this game. My friends all left after three days, and we pretty much started playing The Division semi-seriously. I thought I was done, and yet I found myself coming back day after day, to check after the workers, to spend some energy smelting iron, and to look around some more and see if I missed some line of dialogue, some hidden cutscene, or some piece of lore scattered around the land. Sometimes I feel like the Google Car. Or like a Sim, yeah, you know, from the Sims. I'm trapped inside this little Nativity Scene that is wonderful, absolutely pointless, but feels so very comfortable. And I want to see it all.

Here I am, on top of a lone mountain where I went looking for a secret cave.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/BLACK%202016-03-25_1408469417.jpg)

Or my sister Saturnine chilling in Velia's tavern.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/BLACK%202016-03-02_1436730066.jpg)

This shit makes me happy.

I have set up a business empire making ham sandwiches.

Toh, the first "expansion" is hitting our servers tomorrow.
This was expected, as they are just segmenting content already out in Korea to keep things fresh, but yay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCTJVJLS4T0

I'm having problems with the game right now.  I can't seem to use the world map and some other functions in the game.  Bleh.  When I hit M, nothing happens.  If I try to access it through the options window, it just closes the options window.  I've put in a ticket but haven't heard back yet. 

You will never hear back from them.

I had a similar issue but I solved it restarting the game, and another time it was the Black Spirit that demanded my attention. None of those two things work for you?

Yes, I restarted the game several times.  I don't know what you mean about the Black Spirit, though.  This only affects my main character, Stabitha Apple, at the moment.  I had deleted and remade her a while back and then didn't play for a while.  I wonder if that has anything to do with it.  I'm not too fussed about it since I have plenty of other characters to play with.  I do wish, however, that it didn't take 24 hours to delete a character.  I'm of the opinion that if you delete the wrong character, tough shit, that's on you. 

If restarting the client, switching chars, or using /reloadui isn't working then it could bthe Black Spirit thing like Falc is talking about. The issue is that sometimes the Black Spirit (especially on newer characters) has a quest that requires attention. This is usually the quest to learn about combos, and every now and then the combo list at the top of the screen disappears but it is still the priority and doesn't allow usage of the map at that time. So check your quests for the combo training quest, or any other Black Spirit quest, abandon and re-accept the quest.

Those are usually the fixes for a map not working. Last resort, imo, would be deleting the user cache found by default in C:\Users\username\appdata\local\black desert.

On a different note, Mediah is coming tomorrow. So Zinc nodes (needed for brass metal), bis armor for every class named Grunil Armor (dunno the NA/EU name), new desert area, possible increase in softcap for level, and likely increase for gear capping at +15 to capping at +20.

The black spirit thingy was it.  Thanks lots, you guys!   :heart:

I'm not sure I want an expansion as I'm just now beginning to feel like I understand a little bit about the vanilla game.

It's not a real expansion anyway. Just patching up the game to where it is supposed to be. We are still another big huge area behind (Valencia) anyway.

Any chance we're getting a T2 Wood Shop? Fucking Sturdy Pine Plywood is my cockblock to Noble Wagon.

The game itself isn't really changing, they're just adding some more content. With sieges things will change a bit due to additional taxes from guild owned nodes, more of a difference in power between the tops and bottoms due to an increase in max enhancement level, and when we receive the missing classes balance will change a bit (example - witch/wiz will have their counter). But for now, in general, the game is still the same unless you were level 50+ and competitive to some extent.


Don't know about the t2 woodshop or if it would even have that recipe, they could have it and be coming with Mediah. However, like almost all things in this game, you'll be better off just leveling up your gathering/processing to make your wagon. It will save you a shitload of money over using workshops. I'm to a point where if I process my own things I'll use about 25-33% of the materials required instead of needing 100% like when I had low processing or the few times I used workers to make products.

Getting from Apprentice 5 to Professional 10 is gonna take a while, particularly since I'm blowing most of my energy on cooking.

Ahh, yeah. I use a different character for cooking for that very reason. There's little to no reason to have cooking on the same character in the beginning. Also, the more energy the better. It's worth running around gathering as much knowledge/energy as you can. I think I'm at ~170 now and it is noticeably less shitty for leveling processing.

Also, the reqs for hardened plywood are only processing professional 5 and gathering apprentice 10. Someone has stated repeatedly the wrong requirements for the quest for hardened plywood. Prof 5 takes some time, I'm almost prof 9 and it's sucking some major balls about now. I'm at a point now where I'm using some failstacks to make better silver embroidered clothes than my current +1 set so I can have a higher bonus than +10%.

Sturdy Pine Plywood says Gathering Professional 10, Processing Professional 5 (I had the numbers backwards in my head). Both of mine are still in the apprentice stages; I already have Cooking to Professional 5 so it seems a bit late to move it to another character.

It is very important to create as many characters you can and give them one crafting profession each. Only way to progress beyond a certain point without cursing the energy limits.

It's Processing Prof 5 and Gathering Skilled 10. Link to the quest (http://bddatabase.net/us/quest/3208/1/), showing Processing > Prof 4 and Gathering > Skilled 9.

But yeah, if nothing else move your processing/gathering to another char. Going to apprentice stages takes little time. Otherwise, gl on getting that all on one character.

edit - I know the actual item says prof for both professions, but the quest you need to make it is definitely not that high. I think it's just a bad tooltip translation, especially since the sturdy pine plywood was on the market long before anyone could have had both at prof 10, and it's been confirmed by a few people already to not need both skills in the professional range.

Hmm, alright. Wish I had known; I just wrote it off because it's so stupidly high. Guess I need to level an alt up a bit so I can work on those skills; gathering might be rough at level 9.

Does anyone still have some spare testing key?

Alts are great for gathering stuff like logs, rough stone and blood which can't be gotten from workers and aren't usually on the market (and log from a newbie area tree is as valid as some log from a tree in 50+ area).

 :ye_gods:

As a thickener for sauces and soups? Maybe?

There's a quest at Finto farm near Velia where weasel blood's requested just for that, hah. Blood's actually used for alchemical purposes though.

This fucking game. The Spring event is centered around cherry blossoms, which means  that there are now cherry trees everywhere in the world making it look like it's actually Spring in the game world too. As if this thing weren't beautiful and realistic enough, now it feels like real seasons are in.

I claimed my package with a horse and stuff in it but it never turned up in my inventory.   I checked all my other characters to see if it was that bug that send stuff to the wrong server/character but no, it's not that.  Idid send in a support ticket but, like someone already said, I probably won't hear back.  I never heard back from the other one I sent but, luckily, you guys solved that issue for me.  I still haven't totally wrapped my head around this game.  I don't know if it's because there are so many things going on in it or what.  This game makes me feel dumb and confused! 

At least some of the account stuff takes about a day to appear in your pearl inventory (probably to counter some scam/abuse stuff).

Yes, check your pearl tab in the inventory. It's easy to miss it. Or your in-game mail.

I was so set on moving my residence to Altinova but the houses there are just so small and shabby compared to something like Heidel's 9-4 (a 3-story residence with a balcony).  :oh_i_see:

I know right?! Love that balcony!

RNG hates me, spent about 100 energy before I got a single cherry blossom seed. Don't think I'll be going for any more purposely, but at least I have a nice cherry blossom in my house now.

(http://emoticoner.com/files/emoticons/smileys/thank-you-smiley.gif)

Started this last night as a Valkyrie. Had a quest to kill two wolves. Been doing kill x quests since Everquest and this was the first time I felt x was too low.

Was it a rare spawn?

The numbers go up until finally some large (guild quests but still) ask you to kill 4800...  :ye_gods:

edit: and as a bonus guild quests also have a time limit measured in minutes  :why_so_serious:

This game is one huge virtual catridge with "100 games in 1" packed in beautiful graphics.

Two new classes (well, more like one and a half) coming in a week. April 20th. The Musa and the Maehwa, also known as Blader (male) and Plum (female). Although they are related and similar, they have a lot of different skills too, to the point that the Musa is AOE oriented and the Maehwa is single target oriented.

Short sword and bow are their weapons.

http://black-desert.com/news/musamaehwa-coming-april-20th-naeu/

Gameplay videos:

Musa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwSkD7q8DdA

Maehwa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79iyR7Yl3L0

This game is still taking far too much of my time and I am more or less enjoying it. I have to wonder though how the game will keep it's appeal (for me at least) once it catches up to the Korean version and the grind will become more apparent as the new distractions will be further apart.

Supposedly, by always giving you something more to strive for in whatever is your field of "work". Are you a horse trainer? Have you obtained all the horses combination? Are you a fisher? Have you caught the rarest fish? Have you built the bigger wagon? Have you cooked the most delicious dinner? Have you got the most beautiful house? Have you become filthy rich by trading? Have you learnt all the knowledge? Have you seen all the cutscenes? Have you got all the titles? And have you looted the rarest items?
And if instead you are playing it for the combat as you would any other MMORPG, then it's about the guild vs guild PvP.

But I am not defending it. I actually have no idea.

I don't end up with a lot of time to play, but I'm constantly online accruing energy.  Which I spend in the moments before I sleep and after I wake.  Heidel is level 9.  I don't know if that's useful, but it's level 9.  Which is higher than level 8.  I feel it's supposed to be an accomplishment.

This game has some really great visuals at times:

All of these are essentially one and the same, and appeal only to the top catass who actually gives a fuck about having "the best" X. And even Wildstar devs know by now how well building a game for that particular sliver of market works out.

In some ways that's true but it doesn't mean you can't enjoy it without going all catass with it. I mean games like Skyrim or Fallout have their own home/settlement building stuff which seems quite popular (based on the number of mods and the downloads they get) despite having very little to do with actually "beating the game".

Is anyone still playing this? Is there an active Bat Country?

I'm a little confused about servers - I created my character on Uno but couldn't log into it there, so joined a different server for my last play session. Can one join whichever server is open, such that characters aren't tied to servers, or does this change later on?

So far, I've just followed the little spirit and done quests. It's very pretty.

For servers, there's Uno, Edan, and Orwen for NA. Your characters are then limited to the three servers, but can change channels (Velia, Mediah, etc) every ~13mins

I'm on Uno.  Last week they took down 3 worlds or shards or whatever they are and haven't brought them up again so everything is crowded nearly all the time.  I use the Mediah (sp?) U2, for the most part, and it used to be sparsely populated most of the time.  Now it's crowded, too.  Bleh.  I get very distracted in this game because there's so much to do and so many parts and levels to work on for each discipline.  Like trading and workers and all that stuff.  It takes forever to finish anything.  It took me 3 days to make a fucking raft.  I only built one because my horse got stranded on some island.  I keep losing my horse.  There is no Bat Country on Uno, I checked, but there might be on another server.  Drew would probably know. 

After all my complaining, I'm still playing.  Highest character is only 25 because of the distraction factor.  I might be ever so slightly very reluctantly semi-addicted.  Le sigh.

Ah, I see - I was confusing servers with channels.

My level 10 beast tamer or w/e it's called is on Uno.

I've gathered some weeds and a plant or two - do I just vendor the weeds? Every time I go to vendor, I'm told that I could get more for it in the marketplace, but does this count for weeds too?

There is way too much going on, and I keep running here to there. The distraction factor is high.

Weeds can be used in some alchemy as a replacement for some herbs (like 5 weeds to replace 1 wildgrass or something like that) and you can also make herbal juice with 10 weeds and mineral water.

As to whether it's worth it to put it on the marketplace check the market price (and remember that you lose a third of it on taxes) if it's worth the effort.

I have a 54 Sorc on Uno and a bunch of alts.  I'm currently distracted by the new season of D3, however.  There's a lot to like about the game, but trying to keep up with the top power curve for pvp is fruitless and a huge turnoff.

OK, coming up on 3-months.  Now that the new MMO smell has given way to stale french fries and spilled coffee smell... is it worth entering the game?  I won't ask if there's anyone still in an F13 guild at this point (we all know the answer to that)... but if someone has a spare 7-day trial code, I'd be grateful for the oppty to poke around a bit.


edit: thanks for the code, Signe.

You are totally welcome.  :)

I don't really have time for this, but it looks cool.  Do the boobs jiggle?

They do but only when I'm bouncing around.

*scribbles in notebook*

You can buy lingerie for your character in the cash shop if that gives you an idea of where the game's priorities lie. 

It's quite addicting.  I am currently farming Contribution points.  I wish to have every node possible.  I'm currently at 237.  I have a nice daily rotation where I'll get 5 to 7 CP a day, but then I want to bank all the resources I gathered.  So I buy houses in Velia, with the CP I farmed.  So I have to farm more, but then I think I should save even more mats, since putting them on the market at 20-30 a time is wasteful since you can only have 30 items registered.  So I buy more bank space.  It's a vicious cycle. 

Meanwhile, I own Velia.  All of it.  Olvia is holding all the trade goods I haven't linked yet, and the Black Spirit is just dumping silver on me left and right.  Last time I noticed I was 46.  Somehow I hit 50 today.

It's been a while since I felt like dedicating entire days to a game.  And now that I teach for a living, I have the entire summer to do so!

Most effort I've put into the game seems to have gone to my Heidel residence which is now a magnitude above all others in score (well over 30k).  :why_so_serious:

I just wish that investing was something that would actually make residence score worth the effort but as of now the ROI is just so low on the safe investment and the high risk isn't much better considering how often it fails and diminishes the capital.  :oh_i_see:

I haven't even looked at residences yet beyond a place to plop the bed and three cooking utensils.  For beer.  I'm up to 10 workers (all Giants) and they get thirsty!

The only thing I use giant workers for is making black powder. It's short, ~11 min, so it runs 25 times over my typical play sessions and the giant's large stamina pool is actually useful. Otherwise it goblins and humans since everything else is in the 30 min and up range so even a goblin won't run out of stamina. Except that one odd iron node on the coast near Velia which is only 15mins to harvest, so much shorter than other nodes of that type.I'd use giants if I left the computer on all night to afk things though, then I could see the stamina pool being useful.

RNG is brutal and omnipresent and I already know it's what'll make me quit once I set up all my nodes and workshops just how I want them and start on the gear treadmill. Just fucking +1 my silver embroidered cooking costume already goddamn rng. I mean that's the least of it and I'm already annoyed.

I afk all night usually.  I really didn't put much thought into the workers other than I got giants on my first 3 contracts, so I kept the theme running. 

I mostly don't worry about the RNG at the moment.  I bought out +15 armor spots, and managed to get a +12 bow of the market, but I can tell the accessories are going to be a bitch.  At some point I'll get over my social anxiety and group up for boss scrolls, but for now I'm just a hermit scraping coins together.

Ok, So this game has gone totally pay to win. Just like the Korean game. Uh just saying.

I had heard about this...apparently the player base is actually staging in-game protests/marches.  :popcorn:

Srsly?  I had to stop playing this game a while back because it was too hard on my wrist (the one I broke).  I missed all the excitement!!!   :ye_gods:

OMG in game protests! that's so Everquest!

So why is it sometimes I can activate a trade node and other times the option doesn't even appear?

Nodes must be chained together starting from a city and not all nodes connect to other nodes. http://bdomap.mmoguild.org/ shows node connections.

In order to invest contribution points in a node you need to be at the node manager, but you can add energy (invest) and remove contribution points from anywhere (unless you have the Value Pack item which allows you to purchase with contribution points from anyplace, but costs 10 energy). If you can't buy one node it's likely that it's not connected, and should direct you to the previous node (or city), as was already said.

Thanks, I thought I had chained them. But obviously not.

AAAaaand Temporary Price Drop (https://www.blackdesertonline.com/shop/GamePass.html) along with a new cheaper "Starter Package" (with the "discount" is only $9.99 US) and an "event" (http://forum.blackdesertonline.com/index.php?/topic/112520-explorer-event-series/&page=1) disguising itself as "Loyalty", but is really intended to encourage new/returning players. So, obviously this indicates that they are hurting for players, and losing them in droves.

I bought this game in mid July, and have casual-ed my way to mid 30s with 2 characters, and am enjoying myself (although I spend more time afk'ing than actually "playing"). Still are massive issues with balance, RNG and the high level grind... Plus they've released 2 awakenings (Soldier and Sorceress), but are trickling those way too slowly while everyone complains and quits.

I have a spare 7 day trial if anyone was interested PM me, and if anyone does return or join hit me up on Edan.

I was having fun with this game until I started getting near the PVP-active level, and realized I was just playing a wagon trading sim and had no desire to turn that into a getting ganked sim so I stopped. Maybe I'll pop back in for the free shit; it's not like the game had a sub.

I'm playing Black Desert in a way that should enable me to avoid PvP for quite a while, and might actually better prepare me for it once I actually reach that level.

I decided that instead of "grinding" a single character, that I'd create a bunch of alts to sort of level at a slower pace. This has resulted in my having 4 characters whose abilities I found to my liking, all leveling at about the same pace, grinding the quests, instead of just mindlessly trying to reach max level or pvp range. I have all the character slots filled to "bank energy" and also utilize the additional inventory space, but have 4 of 6 all in the 29-37 range.

The benefits of doing this are that I have a large number of contribution points, Energy, and also have built up a huge industry of ways to make silver, along with collecting tons of the "upgrade pieces" (that I barely understand) saving them for when I'll need them. The Attendance awards, gains made while leveling, as well as abusing the Luck stat with Gathering and loot, should allow me to easily upgrade at least 1 character of 4 and possibly lessen my grind when in higher levels because of the plus scrolls and items I'm hording.

Right now my highest character is 37 (a Ranger doing processing/gathering) and basically after nearly 2 months in the game I'm not even close to burning out or feeling the grind (+ fear of PvP) at all. The quest mobs are also still in a range where it's efficient to do the quests, and still a challenge, instead of just a mindless grind. I also let my characters fish, ride horses or walk around encumbered a lot while afk, so even though there's tons of actual game time logged, I've probably spent only one eighth of it actually combatting enemies.

I must say I actually enjoyed the time I spent with BDO a few months ago and I think I'll eventually revisit it when I'll complete some of my single player backlog (I'm looking at you Dishonored/Pillars of Eternity/D:OS).

Still, while I don't consider myself a "graphics whore", I found the horrendous texture pop-in a game breaker (yep, cranked up everything plus the "experimental" options). Can't stand it and drew me away from the game.

I've encountered very little ganking. I'm lvl 55 and there's been around 3 instances over the past couple of months. I don't go to the more contested areas like pirates or sausans so I don't know the pvp situation there. To progress your gear you really need to get past the 45 mark and start doing your daily boss scrolls in a group. That's when you'll have enough stones to play the rng upgrading game. Also afk fish for shards, memory fragments are rare on the market.

I think I'm playing this game wrong..

I like chopping trees, mining rocks and breeding horses.
Now all 4 characters are level 30-37 and I have 114 contribution points, with hundreds of millions worth of stored/horded stuff, and waaaay too many horses.

I have 37 horses.
Sort of embarrassed, and sort of proud... but if anyone needs a decent mount hit me up, I have timed listing horses and been able to trade somewhat..

That's really what bothers me most though with the game, is how trading is almost entirely blocked and forced price restrictions in the market, kind of kill the community, imo. Decisions about delays, balance and rng luck don't help either.

Still is a huge time investment, and me running minimized doing things is easy as a low level, but keeping the game open for the high levels grinding doesn't appeal to me anyway.

i cant get passed the fact that gear looks like shit and i have to buy costumes for my Giant to not look like a fucken New Orleans plantation RP'er.

and wtf is with the dark knight being gender locked? W T F.

This is on sale on Steam and for a few days. You get the whole game for 6 dollars, and there's no subscription. Also, in two years since launch they have almost tripled the size of the explorable world, and doubled the number of playable classes. Finally, if you played at any point, you'll be welcomed back with about 50 to 100 millions in the bank and XP bonus and unfairly powerful gear of all sorts, making it very easy to explore and grind without needing help.

The combat is still the best, and it is still all stupidly pretty.


(https://scontent.fapa1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/22904941_1676436129075052_6335624601813526637_o.jpg?oh=95eb16602374d9cde7a5156e4a0fde13&oe=5A63F746)

Six dollars is difficult to say "no" to.

For six dollars it would be worth it even without mobs or combat, just to visit the cities.

There's been quite a change to how you progress through levels. Previously they made 50-56 easier, and then this recent patch were making the 59-61 lesser as well. There's also been recent changes that enable significantly more silvers (like 100s of millions) through quests, and are also many more changes and new items that drop (Asula set in Mediah areas), or you receive through quests (like mid 30 gears -and a lvl 50 to 54 set of off hand & main armor).

There is still a lot of content, and also grinding, but honestly what drives the majority of people away is the enhancement of gear. Past 58, and with TRI gear being so difficult to enhance it really tends to make everything at that level very counter-productive. For $6 though there's a ton of content, and casual life skills things to putter around with, and is what I'd mostly done.

This week however isn't a particularly good one to buy the game or return though, because the two most recent patches have included some sort of change in their net code that seems to be making connections extremely unstable. The servers were mostly crowded prior to Halloween, but since this weds it's been barely any population, with 1-3 showing Crowded and most channels empty on NA server. There's lots of forum threads and an announcement about "ISP issues" but I am kinda convinced (from my own instability) that the game changed how it transmitted to the client which is presenting itself mostly as connection problems.

Progress is incredibly fast now. Maybe too fast, but considering how grindy the game would be otherwise I think it all feels right at the moment. It rains XP and money, and as a result the grind at least until the late 50s is completely optional.

I haven't had any problem with disconnections or crowded servers anyway. It is also worth noting that there are many "servers" but they are just instances of the some ONE server. Which is great because you can pick if you want to see a lot of people moving around you (crowded server) or just enjoy the content for yourself without having to fight for resources.

See, but up until last Thursday, every channel was routinely showing "Crowded", excepting the head-start/boost servers (Olvia). Since the update the connection issues have dramatically trimmed much of the populations, and of course I speak of this from personal experience since I can't remain in the game for more than a few minutes in cities where players congregate. There wasn't really "crowding" but there's definitely a much lower count of afk people in major cities, and less overall populations than just 2 weeks ago.

The way they designed channels make it really easy to just avoid most PVP if you want to, but there still really aren't many places to go toward the higher levels, which does end up leading to competition for "camps".. Now though, it's more about "rotations", where a solo player or group will claim a series of spawns that they rotate through, and some people will pvp you just for being near "their" mobs.

I personally like many things about the game, especially the variety of casual lifeskills or things to do. The combat is very smooth and satisfying feeling, but it definitely does a number on my carpal tunnel if I combat grind too much. I also am not trying to make it to max level because of that wrist/finger pain, and instead do little bits of combat combined with many hours of the game doing things while minimized (cooking, leveling horses, processing, etc.).

Ah, funny side note: I recently found out that there's NO max level  :awesome_for_real:




And this is the screenshot of a statement made by a GM

(https://i.imgur.com/Rw3Y48Z.jpg)

I downloaded this to play again after a year of not playing.

I have to pick a class. DK, striker, ninja? Can't decide. Maybe a valk.

DK and Striker are both very good with PvE, and have some nice combos and abilities that make them easy to progress with and that damage large groups of mobs (AoE). Striker right now is slightly OP, even after a slight nerf to their accuracy in the recent update. Striker kind of is the meta now, and in PvP they are one of the classes that can compete against witches/wizards (which was the previous PvP meta class).

Ninja (and sister class Kuno) is a very mobile and fast class, more about quick stealth attacking at melee range and then using evades to return back to range. I personally like this class, but it definitely isn't as easy to clear mobs in PvE as a DK, Striker, or witch/wiz can. They also aren't great at PvP except maybe in a support capacity.

The Valk is a class I really want to like, and supposed to be a tanky damage dealing class, but right now their accuracy and AoE ability just doesn't stack up to some other classes. A well geared Valk is maybe able to sustain PvP with their tankiness but I really wouldn't consider them unless you really like their combos and abilities. They also seem to not really open up many AoE and massive damage attacks until post Awakening (after lvl 56) when their weapon goes from Longsword to Lancia.

My main is a Valk. Up to level 50 or so it's a lot of fun, mobs just explode no matter what button I am mashing. But that can be said for every single class in the game, at least until level 55.

Yeah. I have a 55zerker, 50 tamer, 40 something maehwa and witch.

Looking to play one of the newer classes. I had to delete some characters last right and I forgot I had to wait 24 hours.

I need to pick one class or else I'll just waste my time in character creation.

/shrug
I have 13 characters, and the only class missing is Wizard.

I picked this up and have NO IDEA what to really do besides follow the quests around. The combat is pretty cool.

Basics are, in top left near "Level" are 3 bars. Top is combat experience, middle is energy, bottom is contribution. Across the top of the screen is bar for progress through the Level. You get Energy exp from knowledge and quests, you get contribution exp from questing or turn ins of by products from professions.

You use contribution points to "invest" in nodes across the map (by visiting node mgr) or in buildings in towns (can buy cp things of towns anyplace using map). Linking nodes allows you to get distance bonuses with trade and send workers to linked nodes to collect items (great for some passive income). Town buildings also allow for creating items (armor, tools, weapons) or trade crates, etc with workers, or can be turned into lodgings, residence or storage space.

If you open the P (professions) panel it has experience bars for all the different types of lifeskills toward the bottom. Life skills are mainly where you'll spend energy. Gathering is basically all the tools at General vendors (lumbering axe, pickaxe, etc). Leveling lifeskill Gather you have a higher chance to not spend energy gathering, as well as more things or count of things you receive. Mining after artisan for example you would get not only rough stone, and metals, but a slight chance for gold, gems, or the like.

Other things you can spend energy on are rolling workers, doing mini games, using Channel chat (1 energy per msg lol), or going to the "Night vendors" in cities to sell 50 energy to get a possible item buy chance (great for some black stones now). You also can bottle energy, but only from Alustin in Velia.

The leveling of other stats in your Professions panel, Like Health, Stamina, and Strength, are also things you should consider progressing. Strength will help you carry more, and can be leveled using a trade pack auto loop, and Health increases your overall health/mana pools (increased by eating foods). Stamina is "Breath" experience, which is basically running with shift held down all the time (and maybe in loops). There's also mini games for some of these too. ;)

So I caved and bought this because it was $5 on Steam. Holy shit is this thing dense, throws a ton of shit at you and doesn't explain hardly ANY of it. I I facerolled to level 13 kind of picking it up as I go. I'm going to assume leveling speed slows down a little but I don't assume I'll be told much about what the fuck I'm supposed to do.

There are quests around nodes, professions, etc.
Leveling is fast but lvl's are not essential part of this game. Grind is :)

I tried to get back in to it, but it's too much for my lifestyle these days. Too much work, a lot of kids.

Hameish, leveling does not slow down much. Sure, it's not one kill = one level as in the beginning, but it stays steady fast for about 50 levels.

It is SUPER dense. The fact that it makes so many things in different ways from all previous MMORPGs is the biggest hurdle and also its biggest strength if you ask me. Finding out stuff is fun. Especially when you can just ignore it and simply level up by melting mobs if you so prefer.

Actually the leveling slows down to a trickle since there is no level cap but the grind needed to advance past certain point is insane (luckily the start is easy and most will get bored of leveling before the real grind begins... though the grind to upgrade eq is just as bad)

It's real disconcerting to level in fact because unlike every other MMORPG I've ever played, leveling doesn't even feel like it's happening. Like the game doesn't even really celebrate it. And this horrible UI just layers shit on top of shit all over the screen so it's hard to even know what the fuck happened. Also, goddamn but I hate the text font on all the buttons. It's like 1998 LCD font that has no weight and looks unprofessional as all get out. However, I am intrigued enough that I'll be delving in some more so it hasn't completely failed.

We are all weird! I love the UI.

Thanks for the heads up about $5...I picked it up.

Is there a plex system like in Tera?  For example, cash shop items can be sold in game for gold, or whatever the currency is called.

Yes, everything you buy with real money (Pearl items) can be sold in the game auction house for fake money (silver).

Ah that's good. 

At this point I'm focused on customization, and how someone who looks great in the creation screens can look like Daffy Duck when you first enter the world.  From what I've gathered, the Value Pack enables unlimited trips to the salon?  And there's loyalty points to buy a day's worth of this? 

The way I see it, they are doing a really good job in helping late comers. Quests COVER you in money, and daily log in bonus are pretty serious. I am sure someone would disagree cause - after all - end game weapons cost 800.000.000, but who cares? It is true that level up slows down until an impossible crawl after level 60, but it flows incredibly fast up to that point thanks to the many gifts you get from different sources.

While this is theoretically true, there are two problems. The first is that there is no direct trading, only the AH which has a hard cap on what things can be sold for. Second, players can set alerts for when certain items are listed on the AH, which means that when a popular Pearl item is listed it's sold instantly because 100s of players want it.

I always thought the UI in this game was fantastic.

So..

You can sell Pearl "Outfits", Pets or "Value Packs" for silvers. You cannot sell outfits tho if you've worn them (and you can't sell as a "package" if you've removed from the set box ) and using pets also means can resell their "tokens". The majority of other pearl items also get locked to characters (weight etc) and the items/buffs are tradable to ur alts using storage. You can also gift pearl items to other players when buying them.

The auction house for Pearl outfits is around 37 million for most "Premium" sets (meaning has awakened), around 29 for Classic (no awaken weap), and some outfits only 20-22 million (if they don't have boots, gloves, or helm as pieces). Value packs sell for 14.5 million on Auction house.

I've had a Value Pack running since they started Marketplace sales of Pearl items last September, and have gotten all of them from the auction house.

The UI does take some time to grow on you, and it mostly is after you customize it from "default" that it actually becomes evident how good it is. One of the tiles on the "Escape" menu is "Edit UI" and this allows you to move all the panes around (+ now they're detachable from the game too), or change their sizes -even turn some panes completely off. Disabling things in options also helps, like the on screen notifications of sales (+everything) which is default to on -despite how annoying and laggy this makes the game.

The Value Pack allows you to alter you character via the looks (creation) menu, and also to freely dye all the colors of armor outift (Merv's Palette). Any character change stays permanent if the Value pack expires. Loyalty purchase of a Character Custimization coupon would allow change of character creation look, and Merv's palette for the dyes.

Those are kind of expensive for purchase with Loyalties, and I'd recommend either using loyalty for storage space or inventory/weight, or saving Loyalties for additional character slots for your account..

Alts actually share your family "knowledge", energy pool, and contribution empire/storage, and since armor is inter-changeable it's easy to swap around testing each class for feel and which you enjoy or like the effects/combos of. Only thing new classes would need would be weapons.

You definitely want to spend 5 dollars on a pet. Or two. Or three. They are the only way to collect all the loot you drop at a decent speed. Get the pets. No really. Do it now. Get the pets. They just make the game flow properly and more enjoyable.

Jesus Christ, where in the options is this? That spam is goddamn irritating as fuck.

On the "game" tab, under Settings (the cog wheel at the bottom right, or the tile on Esc Settings) there's a section for "Turn off system Notifications". This is the hovering on screen ones, and I only have "Combat/Safe Zone" and "Nearby Monster" on mine (so all but those two are checked).

Also can turn of certain types of chat too, to eliminate this spam taking over your chat  (by clicking the cog on chat tabs, and filtering out the "System" messages). This way can remove the market chat spam for those, or only add them to a single chat tab.

Well that may have saved me from having a Persona 5 type mental shutdown.

And yet there is a known long standing bug that keeps pushing lots of crap in the middle of your screen even after you have done all the afore-mentioned disabling.

Hey Haem, I see you are still playing. What do you think?

I hit level 23 on a Musa and have started trying to set up some kind of trading operation. It's interesting but I'm really thinking that I'm not going to make it too much farther. It's so goddamn dense with all the crafting and seventy-billion different types of experience/grinding. The contribution and node thing is odd. The fact that I tend to dabble and then get bored with crafting in other MMOG's and this one being so focused on crafting something, I don't know how much longer my patience can hold out.

The combat, once you get the idea, is actually the best part of the game. I just don't think I'm going to have the patience to get to the PVP.

Even if you did get to the PvP, you'd hate it. There's absolutely zero balance to anything, with certain classes really being near invulnerable, with 1 level meaning 30% of your attacks miss, and how the gear disparity is HUGE (even if levels are identical). A level 58 will always have a decided advantage against a 57, and be nearly damage resistant to anyone 56 or lower. The battlefields and PvP ganking you're likely to experience isn't all that fun, and I feel like is best avoided in this game (IMO).

There's also very little about the node wars that is really appealing either (IMO), because of how heavily the Zerg mechanic becomes the norm, and the PvP issues can result in completely imbalanced contests with lots of wasted resources building siege emplacements.

The lifeskills and making a node empire is supposed to keep you creating passive income and have more to do (level) for the sheer quantity of time it's going to take enhancing (+failing/downgrading) items to get you near to competitive near levels 58/59. The lifeskills are also something that mostly can be done while afk (+ minimizing the game) and are best done when you've done "actively playing", where instead of closing the game for the night you leave it open gathering/processing/cooking/looping horses.

This is why I continue to play, and I actually enjoy combatting/leveling, but I also do it only in small bursts while doing a lot of passive or afk things in between (a lot of this is also my carpal tunnel pain keeping combat as sporadic limited time sessions). There's plenty of content and enjoyment to be had, especially the more you enjoy everything that's not combat. Me, I like doing mini games (milking cows or catching horses mostly) too and think that the more casually you play, the less the enchantment and level pain will disparage you.

I think I'm with Haemish at this point.  I've made several characters and brought them to Heidel.  Everything is bearable and many things actually very interesting.  Combat amazing. 

Seems very reliant on being with a guild and putting in a lot of time, which would've been perfect for me in 2004.

But here's the thing that stood out:  when someone holds a node or outpost or whatever, they can put whatever picture they want on the banner?  There are several spots with the emblem being a close up of some random dude's face, like the player took a selfie with a cheap cam.  Talk about immersion breaking.  Here I felt like someone broke into my house irl and sat on my couch while I played BDO.

Yeah. Allowing user-generated content to be publicly displayed in these sorts of games is rarely a good idea. On my Tera server there is a guild that has* the Avengers "A" symbol as their guild symbol and you see it flying into Velika which is the most popular of the main cities in the world.

* or had, I haven't been on in a while

Edit: adding quote from previous page

Not sure if this has been done in other MMOs, but it sounds new to me. Definitely not a big thing, just a weird one that if possible makes Black Desert even more unique. Anyway, you can now flirt with NPCs and try to date them. There are 15 that you can ask out, and after some time they will let players know if they wanna go out with you or not.

https://blackdesertonline.com/news/view/1464

It seems to be just another grind, but I like this kind of crap in sandbox MMOs. Hell, they can even break up with you and will send you an ingame email about it. Hah.

/target Crio
/say Sup

Black Desert has been "Remastered". What is clearly the best looking MMORPG ever made (fight me) just became even more gorgeous thanks to some new light processing technologies. They also redid all the environmental sounds to make it feel even more alive and realistic.

In other, older news, BDO is still amazing and immense. Since launch it had four major expansion (all free) with a fifth coming soon. They also added 8 classes bringing the total to 16, and the amount of land and content is huge. Also, a truckload of "catch up" mechanics are in place these days to help new players get to level 56 in a matter of hours if they so desire and provide them with good gear and money.


Remaster trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PuUCEquPTg

Graphics update comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X8bEx3mrao


This game is clearly not for everybody, it just has too many things that are different from all other MMORPGs and it can be overwhelming, but I guess that's why I consider it the best to come out in the last ten years. Best combat ever -by far-, best graphics -by far-, best world. Should any of you ever willing to give it another shot feel free to ask me all sorts of questions. While I still haven'tunderstood everything myself, cause there is just too much, I have put into it a million hours so I might be able to help.

The remastered hasn't really done anything about the ludicrous grinding, rng enhancing, class imbalances or all the bugs that exist. It IS very pretty, making an already gorgeous game even "shinier" (and shiny would be UNDERSTATING), but the power of your machine is directly related to how much "re-mastered" should interest you. The game barely played on some machines, so this really could be better and worse at the same time.

The remaster, to me (as someone still playing this), mostly feels like it's an attempt at glossing over the April/May combat changes that basically drove away the active PVP populations in droves, and to possibly lure some players back. There are barely, BARELY, trickles of information from Korea and the developers (with horrible CS and communication from the publisher), and they continue to make decisions that aren't popular with the players (+ region disparity is really, really giving them a black eye with NA/EU).

I still play this and the remaster actually helped significantly with pop-in and render times, and does actually work reasonably well on my machine. The fps drop was avg around 10-15 for me, from around 50-60, but it spikes way less and seems more stable. I'll drop screenshots if anyone is interested.

Eileen in Velia (img link) (https://i.imgur.com/pSuzupP.png) REFUSES to accept my sincere confessions of love, even after all the potion sales I give her.

Your problems with the game are the problems you have when you have played too much of any game. Of course the Remaster (which by the way has been in the work for more than a year) is just gloss but it's free gloss for something that is already very shiny. Very much less so when you have reached the soft cap of course.


Seriously? I can't think of any meaningful bug at this point. Which ones bother you the most?

Anyway, I roll my eyes a bit at the usual "unpopular decisions blah blah drove away old guard players blah blah".  Black Desert is so much better now than it was when it came out in the West two years ago, which is the reason why I felt like necroing this thread. You just have to remember that it's a Korean MMO and it's not gonna stop being one anytime soon.

The corrupt file error the game throws??!? that's been happening since launch for some people?? and started last September for me..

Every three to four times I swap characters, or sometimes just for NO REASON after a few hours (even minimized).. The game gives a corrupt file error, forces me to do a FULL FILE SCAN, and downloads ONLY a single zip file. This has been happening to me on and off since last September (more frequent since April), and I even TRIED assisting their feeble CS people with trying to bring a possible fix to Korea (but they want me to buy a whole new pc as tech support, and won't escalate my errors, complaints, and suspicions to Pearl Abyss "until they've completed all their troubleshooting steps").

Their last advice was that it was the speed of my HD and to "upgrade", and even after changing BDO to the OS SSD, there's zero change. It's something with the game's net communication along with how it writes local cache files about your characters/map pathing, but I can only go by my own observances (of paths I cleared reappearing or Alchemy Stone checkboxes refilling themselves after I have done the file check).

I've noticed they fix niggling little bugs, for the most part really quickly, but "the corrupt file error" had been around for this game's entire lifespan, and it's a result of their programming, not anything they'd like to blame on machines. The combat changes also introduced bugs, for the Ranger, Valkyrie, Warrior, and Berzerker classes, that still haven't been addressed, along with some things they did in the interest of balance being the furthest from it (Renown score, I'm looking at u).

I actually LOVE IT because it's a Korean MMO. I'm enjoying it, despite it wanting to close itself every few hours for a 10 minute scan of the game files.  I also am not trying to get to max or "soft cap", instead just happily doing lifeskills, boss fights, and guild hunting, while every once in a while seeking minor gains (in gear or levels).

So, hey there's some other "news" about this game, that some people might not have heard..

Firstly, they've now officially moved the game into Free to Play, announcing a new incentive program; for newly created 7 day trial accounts, that will unlock the game FREE if you can get a character awakened (level 56) during the trial period. This was announced as celebration/commemoration for having 10 million registered users (when I'd guess the NA population is possibly around 30k consistantly). This is their page about the milestone, and the free game requirements>> https://www.blackdesertonline.com/news/view/1888

Also, sort of un-ironically IMO, this week also was the "closing" of the Russian/Croatia version of Black Desert Online published by Gamenet. Pearl Abyss had only a temporary publishing agreement, and was intending to take over publishing themselves (hey, lets buy CCP?) but, in a move that heralds exactly how little caring for customers matters to video game developers like Pearl Abyss, they will reopen the Russia/CiS game servers but WIPED, including the destruction of all customer info, purchases, and earned game content. MMORPG.com article (https://www.mmorpg.com/black-desert-online/news/black-desert-online-russian-player-data-lost-as-pearl-abyss-takes-over-publication-1000050121)

They were non-compliant to the official version is what I've read. A lot of pay2win stuff. Still, can't imagine being a player from those region and being told "we are wiping your progress of three years, sorry not sorry".

Another quasi bunch of BDO news, that is worth mentioning, along with updates on the previous news about the SA/RS Gamenet arrangement and Pearl Abyss. From what news has been released, there is an agreement to migrate character data, but it needs to first be compliant with laws, and it seemed like it was suggested that it might need to be done manually on a case by case basis. It was a russian translated announcement I read from Gamenet, that was vague, suggesting there would be updates, but not happen prior to Dec. That temporary free to play also ended, but there's also news about other versions.

At Twitch Con, and the week prior to it, they did a lot of hype for the Xbox version going to beta along with having a huge presence at Twitch Con with playable versions. There's also news about a Mobile version, that again was shown to limited people, but the Xbox version goes to beta on Nov 8th. They also have been hyping the Archer class and had a playble version at Twitch Con, with some streams showing it.

Kakao games had a large booth with the Xbox and PC versions playable there (with lvl 60 powered characters to see Drieghan on PC), ; along with tournaments (the guild 3v3 was interesting for $10k). The Twitch part of it tho for the most part was cringe, even the couple of streamers who I do know/watch>> it was kind of painful them doing old content (Drieghan) and a half finished Archer class. Honestly, the production values were not up to par for what they were (stream amateurish sound/mod issues + a female host with zero pre knowledge of BDO at all- hired who knows why). IMO Kakao could've done better, and I don't know if this helped or hurt them.

Twitch stream chat was kinda insane, and tragic, especially with them giving free stuff all day long... but I usually watch streams a bunch daily anyway. /shrug

edit to add > Also forgot to add, last week they revamped the UI (so it looks like Mass Effect 2007 imo- so crap compared to a fantasy style it had previous). Still think they don't know what they're doing at Pearl Abyss, and I think this is a huge comedy extra to my gaming. The QQ whining IN GAME is still laugh a minute.
 

They added a pretty well-developed Battle Royale mode inside the game.

https://www.blackdesertonline.com/news/view/2252?lang=en

PC combat = some of the best. Insanely fast. Lots of moves. Interesting controls but not interesting in a terrible way.

PVE content = some of the worst, everything bad about korean zone and mob design coupled with zero ai, zero meaningful attacks etc. idk if it magically becomes real pve later but BiiF 10 hours /played? nope. its shit. the worst shit. So much worse than Tera. I'd say even worse than BnS.

The grind = some of the worst. the leveling is super easy. but the gear grind is obviously dick smashing and not in the fun find rare gear way. in the will i win the upgrade lottery way that only appeals to asian gamers for whatever the fuck reason.

PvP = can't tell, looks sort of cool, def a great dueling game. can def outskill people regardless of what earlier posters have said. but its very level/gear advantageous and i can't tell if any of the world pvp is any good and its gated behind a shitton of gear grind.

Its a real mmo. like it feels like one, players everywhere, not too heavily instanced, the hubs feel like they are part of something. it all falls apart in the killing fields of braindead meatsack mobs that respawn instantly but what can you do.

GFX = holy shit. best looking mmo ever for sure right? the character creation is insane. like so overwhelming i had to just use the awesome beauty parlour feature (you can just go through full setups made by others) and then tweak someone else's thing enough so that it felt like my own character.

I got to L37 in like 4 days of not that much play but I don't have time for it and I doubt I'll ever get to the good parts. Oh and I hate crafting. Soooo its a bad fit because this game has a lot of fucking crafting. A lot a lot.

Everything you said is right. And there's more. A lot more stuff you can uncover in the sandbox department. Also true about the grind. That's what Koreans want though so can't blame the devs for making the game them and their people want to play. I actually ground A LOT in this game (got to level 60 and let me tell you that it is fast until 56, then all of a sudden it turns into a nightmare) and had "fun". I can understand the mindless trance you get into that somehow feels good, although I'd never describe it as fun. A great MMORPG in my opinion, a really unique one and deeper than it looks. Too bad that the PvE philosophy underneath it is not for everyone.

Once the game is not fun to play, it goes from amazing to trash. As in, once you stop having fun with the actual combat and pulling off combos, the game becomes shallow and boring.

Pretty much this.  I had a lot of fun in the game, I love the workers and contribution system (if I'm remembering the name right).  

I haven't played for quite a while now though, and haven't seen the 'remastered' changes and the newer areas.  I kinda want to check it out again but have a feeling it will get dick-punchy again pretty quickly.  Also if I remember correctly it was pretty horrible to play without the sub but they do that stupid thing where the sub costs $15 worth of their in game currency but you can only buy it in $10/20 + lots which really annoyed me.

Edit: Also just remembered the fuck stupid rng hell that is the upgrade system for equipment, and the shitty AH and lack of trading.  RNG padding and anti-farming paranoia that punish normal players really piss me off.

This trailer is too stupid not to post it. And well of course I am not gonna waste an occasion, any occasion, to hype up Black Desert. But yes, it just launched on PS4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d80secXh4JE

This game keeps growing. They expanded the crafting system last wednesday, and the sailing system is next probably this coming week. Then this Winter another free land expansion (the seventh), finally about snowy regions.

Where'd those panties go?

Torn jeans over khaki cargo shorts is certainly a distinct look, I GUESS.

Just to let you all know that the mobile version of Black Desert launches worldwide tomorrow. As expected it is technically impressive and beautiful and it looks like it's a real MMORPG as opposed to a gacha of some sort. Servers won't be online until tomorrow but you can already download it for free and create characters and play with their amazing character creator.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pearlabyss.blackdesertm.gl&hl=en

And here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rrIBXJWOuQ

Holy cow this game :awesome_for_real:

I shouldn't have watched streams of this when it first came out in the West as watching all the Wizards grind looked really really boring and didn't show what the combat was really like. I probably would've tried it sooner if I hadn't.

Currently playing a Mystic and having fun punching and kicking things in the face (or back). Feels sort of like a combination of Akira from Virtua Fighter with his shoulder/back slams and a Martial Arts Scrapper/Stalker from City of Heroes with their kicks. I even have a hadouken just for fun, though I don't know how to actually trigger it intentionally. I still can't do combos properly most of the time but even the basic stuff is fun to do.

Too bad this game doesn't have real end-game PvE. Not sure how long I'll be playing because of that.

Tera has/had (haven't played in a while) very good PvE content with real, challenging dungeons and boss encounters and stuff. The low level story "boss" stuff I've fought so far in BDO is a joke compared to even the low level BAMs in Tera in terms of difficulty.

Yeah though it seems like you can use the Marketplace to bypass some/most of that now? I.e. if you can grind/AFK enough Silver you can just buy the stuff you need.

One thing I was surprised about it how janky the whole game is given how long it's been out. Yeah it looks nice but there's just so much in the game that just doesn't look or work quite right. Not sure I'll be able to get used it.

I tried to give it another go, but I have three issues that will not go away:

1) this is by far the worst pve i've ever played in such a high $$$ title, just abysmal, so much worse than BnS which was already pretty bad pve. Now you can understand why it might be hard to make meaningful pve when you give players so much movement/speed/power/flexibility. And BDO is the best mmo rpg combat ever by far. Its insane.

BUT...

2) there is so much pve grinding to do. If you are going to make this crazy combat system, give up on it ever working in pve and not even try to design engaging pve... WHY THE FUCK IS THERE SO MUCH PVE? WHY GOD WHY? Now there may be a way to subsist on nothing but pvp/node/crafting type stuff, god knows there are enough confusing world control, resource systems piled on top of each other everywhere in the game. But the grind just to get to L56 and get to the baseline you can go try pvp level is a lot of stupid sack of shit mob killing and running around. I mean not too many hours invested but its just so unfun and...

3) This is what killed me in BDO on round two. The game is just so full of shit i don't care about. There are so many virtual world systems and they are everywhere, horses, markets, crafting, nodes, you pull up the map and there is just shit all over the place. I just dont have the playtime or the inclination in a game whose only redeemable gameplay is pvp to fuck about with all that other shit.

BDO should be Shadowbane in terms of non-combat game systems and game focus, hell it should at least be Age of Wushu with trade caravans being ganked and protected and whatnot. You should get to L56 in two days, gear should be borderline meaningless and the entire game should be controlling territory and sieging and whatever the fuck else. Instead it pretends its a pve game while having no pve the whole thing makes no sense. Its just infuriating and makes the barriers to understand and learn all the systems and get value from them just not a thing that feels worth doing.

I always thought you could rip out the BDO combat system, put a Star Wars skin on it and make a pretty good Counterstrike PVP like game with Imperials vs. Rebels.

Isn't that already Star Wars Battlefront (I & II)?

Yeah kinda but I like this combat system better.

The only PVP I ever really enjoyed in BDO was their battle royale mode, because it was a level playing field; then they patched it out because everyone was exploiting and I don't know if they ever put it back in. Everything else interacts with the P2W RNG hell that all KMMOs are, with the barrier to entry set so high it was unachievable unless you catassed it or swiped your way to victory. It very much needs some more casual PVP modes which reward entry level PVP gear that's easy to upgrade.

The barrier entry to PvP is simply inhuman if you are alone. I've never seen or even heard of anything like this in any other videogame ever. If you are with a guild it's a different story as there are territory conquest wars of different tiers where even lower geared players can be useful.

As a solo player, there isn't much that can be done other than level up and try a few classes, enjoy the incredible combat and experience the mob melting, see the world, and then get bored and quit.
With an active group/guild it's a different game. Built around infinite progression, and PvP. But it can't be denied, unless you are really captured by the lore and the vistas, there are no reasons to stick around for soloers.

New class coming next week, and this is a video of her "awakening" style which is her second set of skills you get at level 56.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGhgCjMMVuw

I'd like to see another magic class.

Her move set looks a bit sluggish from what I've seen so far on streams on the KR version. But she doesn't have her Awakening skills yet so maybe things will change somewhat with that.

Yup she's slow (at least a low level character) but her attacks do have a nice weighty/chunky feel to them.

Patch notes: https://www.blackdesertonline.com/news/view/3538

I love her. This combat should be bottled and copy/pasted in at least another million games.

I can agree with that.

I wish I can get into Black Desert again. But every time I log in, there is so much to do and the scope of what I know I need to do is way too big. Plus I play solo, so the game is ultimately useless for me.

I never found having too many things to do a problem, it's what makes this game infinitely solo-able, especially with the alts or trying/using different classes.

The combat system in this game is still what I love, and combo'ing in the BDO system to me is way more deep than the PvE available to use it on. Too much to enjoy swapping around and staying undergeared just exploring as a solo person like me, along with the lifeskill, daily assorted sandbox stuff that I like casualing through.

The Guardian is a very nice class, the axe with shield makes her combos really have some impact, along with blocking and decent evade. A mix of Valkyrie and DK, in terms of playstyle to me, with more damage relative to pre-awaken skills than either of those (from what it seems to me). The effects on her attacks glitch out for me sometimes, and it's the one thing I don't happen to like about her. Can't wait to try her awakening when it releases. the videos of it look /drool.

I just noticed the base game appears to be free until March 2 on Steam.

I'm not sure what hooks there are on the deal, just letting folks know the deal.

It's cause their NA/EU 4th Anniversary is coming up and they are trying to juice their numbers before that starts.