Having immersion issues.. advice?

Trident9259

So I picked up BDO because I could relate to many of its advertised features: open world, sandbox, variety of classes, crafting.. you name it.


I've reached level 20 in a couple of days but I am struggling to get hooked. So much so that today I logged in, and logged out after 5 minutes of just looking around.


I really want to like this game because its the only *newest* AAA MMO, sandbox with an active community. My last MMO was Archeage and despite all its flaws I did enjoy the world and community.


The "grind" doesn't scare me at all I played SWG-Pre-CU and Vanguard so this is a joke of a grind. I'm killing creatures with two blows and levelling up fast.


But it's the world itself that i am not *feeling*. I feel like playing a single player game even though the game is packed. maybe joining a guild might help but I usually wait until higher levels for that so that I might learn a few things on my own.


Any advice on how I might find energy to go forth? I chose the "striker" class which reminded me of SWG TKA but maybe that was my mistake. The combos are all great and all but in 20 levels Ive accumulated like 20 combos half of which I do not know what is special about them the other half I cant even use before the creature is dead anyway..


Thanks. As I say I think I would like this game I just need some encouregement or advice from veteran players.

Sovrath

OptiqueMarquis said:

But it's the world itself that i am not *feeling*. I feel like playing a single player game even though the game is packed. maybe joining a guild might help but I usually wait until higher levels for that so that I might learn a few things on my own.


Any advice on how I might find energy to go forth? I chose the "striker" class which reminded me of SWG TKA but maybe that was my mistake. The combos are all great and all but in 20 levels Ive accumulated like 20 combos half of which I do not know what is special about them the other half I cant even use before the creature is dead anyway..


Thanks. As I say I think I would like this game I just need some encouregement or advice from veteran players.

I'm not sure anyone can help you like the game but here's my take ...

Join a guild

Seriously, that's going to anchor you to the world a bit more.  I would say, join a more pve oriented guild at the start as one that wants to predominantly pvp will most likely not take you unless they are a new guild. Most pvp guilds are looking for players who are 59+ or even 60 with "a certain gear score".

But there are lots of guilds that don't care about this and they are social.

Go out and Explore

Seriously, this is one of the best ways to interact with the world. Don't plan on leveling or making money but pick a direction and see what you find.

I've found several interesting places and even places where I've leveled but never once saw another player. Part of this is that most players want to level in the sweet spots. And, while I understand why they are sweet spots, there are also areas that will suffice just fine. I remember finding a place in the Desert, it's on the map, but no one was there. Sort of a group spot but I was able to get to the bottom just fine and even do a little grinding though the xp per "whatever" wasn't great as it took a bit to kill them. Some sort of prison or some such thing.

Give yourself a reason

Make a little back story for yourself. You don't have to role play or anything, just make up a back story and give your character some motivations and just "keep them in mind" when you go out in the world.

As far as other people ...

As far as other people, you can find groups, especially if you have scrolls to use. But being part of a guild will help you with an actual community. Make sure you join one with decent people.

kitarad

I took a very different approach to this game. I was not in the least bit interested in the PvP but that game that you play with the NPC the amity game intrigued me. I played it a lot. I also wanted to trade so I opened up nodes and began to grow things and take them all over and I would check the prices and grow different things. Not just the usual stuff everyone else grew (sunflowers). So what if it was not optimal but I got to see different crops. I made my own wagons and for them I started breeding horses and rotating them on my wagons and I breed them until I got matching colours and enjoyed that too. It was quite hard to get what I wanted. I would spend ages looking for horses to buy to breed and sell mine too.

The reason I enjoyed the game so much was that the world was so interesting to me. The trading, the crafting and the horse breeding were fun. I built boats to take me further and trade even more and also fish in different places. This game allowed me to expand my playing options. I hardly got very far levelling though but had an absolute blast and an empire of workers.

Mendel

Sovrath said:

OptiqueMarquis said:

But it's the world itself that i am not *feeling*. I feel like playing a single player game even though the game is packed. maybe joining a guild might help but I usually wait until higher levels for that so that I might learn a few things on my own.


Any advice on how I might find energy to go forth? I chose the "striker" class which reminded me of SWG TKA but maybe that was my mistake. The combos are all great and all but in 20 levels Ive accumulated like 20 combos half of which I do not know what is special about them the other half I cant even use before the creature is dead anyway..


Thanks. As I say I think I would like this game I just need some encouregement or advice from veteran players.

I'm not sure anyone can help you like the game but here's my take ...

Join a guild

Seriously, that's going to anchor you to the world a bit more.  I would say, join a more pve oriented guild at the start as one that wants to predominantly pvp will most likely not take you unless they are a new guild. Most pvp guilds are looking for players who are 59+ or even 60 with "a certain gear score".

But there are lots of guilds that don't care about this and they are social.

Go out and Explore

Seriously, this is one of the best ways to interact with the world. Don't plan on leveling or making money but pick a direction and see what you find.

I've found several interesting places and even places where I've leveled but never once saw another player. Part of this is that most players want to level in the sweet spots. And, while I understand why they are sweet spots, there are also areas that will suffice just fine. I remember finding a place in the Desert, it's on the map, but no one was there. Sort of a group spot but I was able to get to the bottom just fine and even do a little grinding though the xp per "whatever" wasn't great as it took a bit to kill them. Some sort of prison or some such thing.

Give yourself a reason

Make a little back story for yourself. You don't have to role play or anything, just make up a back story and give your character some motivations and just "keep them in mind" when you go out in the world.

As far as other people ...

As far as other people, you can find groups, especially if you have scrolls to use. But being part of a guild will help you with an actual community. Make sure you join one with decent people.

Great suggestions.

In addition, it may help to identify exactly what elements of the game you don't feel contribute to your enjoyment.  It might be the combat mechanics, an interface, world design or any of a thousand other things.  If you can understand why the game doesn't feel right down to a specific cause, you can possibly avoid it by finding alternative ways to do something within the game.

yucklawyers

It's a pretty shallow game once you get past the facebook type games. It's also not a sandbox game. Lord knows how that ever started, probably lying advertising. It's actually more of a themepark than WOW with it's total lack of player economy.

My advice would be to join a guild also. Feck all to do except grind otherwise.

KayAndroid

I had the same problem when I started playing about a month ago (I play solo too), and although it might not sound like very helpful advice... I would say to just play more!

I know you mentioned that you don't know what to do with all of your skills/combos, and learning that stuff is where a lot of the fun is! Assuming you really like the Striker class.

And as others have said, there's a lot of fun in the other systems in the game as well. No one really knows everything there is to know in Black Desert, and that's part of the fun too.

I agree that the writing in BDO is pretty vague though/// The opening cutscene doesn't do much to explain the world, and the main storyline is kind of strange.

F2Plague

The entire game is played while afk. Where is the immersion? lol

Sephiroso

KayAndroid said:

 The opening cutscene doesn't do much to explain the world, and the main storyline is kind of strange.

To say the main storyline is strange is putting it lightly. There's some spirit that we supposedly made a pact with in the past but never explains why we made this pact, we also used to be really powerful but the pact made us lose all our memories/skills and the spirit wants us to help it get stronger, also looks evil as fuck and gets us to do all kinda fucked up shit.

What the fuck did we gain from making the pact with the spirit? Just seems like a whole lot of downsides with no ups. Not to mention, a whole lotta identical spirits take over peoples bodies if they're not strong enough so this spirit is just a parasite and if we werent as strong as we were, it'd take over our body in a heartbeat if it could.

Phry

I've been playing for over a year, i am not sure there is a 'main storyline' though the game is pretty much in tutorial mode until level 50 or so, getting to level 20 should take you less than an hour as initially the game throws levels at you like confetti, this doesn't really slow down until at least level 40, as for Strykers, and Mystics they are a melee class, like the Tamer they have a lot of attacks to keep track of and if it seems your just pressing random keys and killing things, thats because it mostly is
IMO you would have been better off starting with Wizard or Witch, or maybe even Warrior or Ranger as the controls are far more intuitive and less 'press everything' to attack, though honestly the combat in the game doesn't get challenging until at least level 56, at least in terms of PVE, for PVP you will need a combined score of at least 400 for AP/DP before a PVP Guild will even let you join, though the rewards for doing so from Node Wars etc are considerable. 
The first 50 levels are really just to teach you how to play your class, introduce you to crafting, nodes and of course to show you where you can grind exp for levels as Quests, black spirit or otherwise tend to give you specific rewards and/or contrib xp, as its Combat xp that you need to level up and gain combat skill points you can only do that by killing mobs, repeatedly, it also introduces you to the basics of life skills, the black spirit can tell you who to go do quests for to unlock certain processing skills and also cooking, fishing, alchemy, trading etc. You don't need to do all of them but you do need to at least do some of them, particularly gathering and processing. Level 20 though, thats something you pass in the first hour of gameplay while your still heavily into the early part of the tutorial.

Phry

Sephiroso said:

KayAndroid said:

 The opening cutscene doesn't do much to explain the world, and the main storyline is kind of strange.

To say the main storyline is strange is putting it lightly. There's some spirit that we supposedly made a pact with in the past but never explains why we made this pact, we also used to be really powerful but the pact made us lose all our memories/skills and the spirit wants us to help it get stronger, also looks evil as fuck and gets us to do all kinda fucked up shit.

What the fuck did we gain from making the pact with the spirit? Just seems like a whole lot of downsides with no ups. Not to mention, a whole lotta identical spirits take over peoples bodies if they're not strong enough so this spirit is just a parasite and if we werent as strong as we were, it'd take over our body in a heartbeat if it could.

It does seem like the Black Spirit is looking to take you over, and perhaps that is the case, eventually things do come to a head and you have to deal with it, but that is close to the end of the games tutorial mode, yeah, he says he's making you stronger and that you made some kind of deal with him which involved him taking your memories, but you can see with every milestone that the one getting stronger, might actually be the Black Spirit

Albatroes

Well OP, I believe you said you went to BDO to try a newer AAA but you were formerly enjoying Archeage even though it had its flaws, so if you're not enjoying BDO the same in a natural way as you did Archeage and you said you can tolerate Archeage, why not just stick with Archeage? If we're comparing BDO and AA based on just their design, I'd say AA is superior given that you can do quite a bit more than you can in BDO. From the outside looking in with regard to BDO, it feels more automated, so you're not gonna be stealing someone's trees etc but you can see the workers you hire in the world doing what they are supposed to on occasion.

Kyleran

DMKano said:

OptiqueMarquis said:

So I picked up BDO because I could relate to many of its advertised features: open world, sandbox, variety of classes, crafting.. you name it.


I've reached level 20 in a couple of days but I am struggling to get hooked. So much so that today I logged in, and logged out after 5 minutes of just looking around.


I really want to like this game because its the only *newest* AAA MMO, sandbox with an active community. My last MMO was Archeage and despite all its flaws I did enjoy the world and community.


The "grind" doesn't scare me at all I played SWG-Pre-CU and Vanguard so this is a joke of a grind. I'm killing creatures with two blows and levelling up fast.


But it's the world itself that i am not *feeling*. I feel like playing a single player game even though the game is packed. maybe joining a guild might help but I usually wait until higher levels for that so that I might learn a few things on my own.


Any advice on how I might find energy to go forth? I chose the "striker" class which reminded me of SWG TKA but maybe that was my mistake. The combos are all great and all but in 20 levels Ive accumulated like 20 combos half of which I do not know what is special about them the other half I cant even use before the creature is dead anyway..


Thanks. As I say I think I would like this game I just need some encouregement or advice from veteran players.

- Have fun - this is the most important point, so many players in BDO become bitter toxic miscreants after realizing that they've spend a fortune on the game - and they won't leave because they are like "I've spend 1000s of dollars on this game, I hate it but I invested too much" - DON'T BE THAT PERSON

Sounds like my relationship with EVE, just resubbed on 3 accounts for 3 months.... because it was such a deal...... $19.99 for 3 months.

TEKK3N

There are few things you can do:

1) Go to Options and turn off all unnecessary GUI bits that clutter the screen including the notification messages (Market, Wars and so on). The game will look much better and you will feel more in tune with the environment and the game world.

2) BDO is not your typical Asian game. Combat is just a part of the game.
Get involved with side activities like Gathering, Production, Husbandry, Fishing, Treasure Hunting, Hunting.
BDO has an original take on it, particularly Production (Hire workers to Produce goods)
This is a big part of the game, for me the biggest. It will immerse you in the world

3) Connected to Number 2, do all the quest, particularly the Crafting, Gathering ones.
Forget leveling by just killing mobs, just do as many quest as you can as they give you good rewards (including more Inventory space). Take your time and enjoy the ride, there is no point in leveling fast as there is no end game to rush to.

4) For PvP, join a Guild. while for PvE it is not necessary, if you really into PvP you need to join a Guild.

5) Explore.
Yep BDO world is gorgeous and big.
Buy a Camel and explore the Desert.
Build a boat and sail the seas.

Basically sit down, stop grinding mobs and enjoy BDO other activities.
That's the only way you can really appreciate this game, otherwise it's just like any other Asian game.