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Review on BDO
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xtreme3881
Member UncommonPosts: 14
EDIT: For information for other people. I have 1600 hours in the game and (3) 61's, and two 56's. My mains are Warrior, and Wizard. I have done all content in the game that was available before I left for good with many others. This included node wars in very competitive settings, sieges, whale hunting, scrolls, guild missions up the yin yang, etc. Left with around 4.3 billion in money.
Actual review, not just whining about rootkits for a change, coming right up.
Black Desert Online is a visually stunning and complex MMO with incredible potential but falls completely short of realizing it due to the majority of gameplay elements being designed with microtransactions in mind.
Let's get the good things out of the way:
The game looks really damn great for an MMO, the character editor is easily among the strongest I've seen in any game.
Combat feels responsive, tactical, 'kinetic' for lack of a better word, it mixes a classic cooldown hotkey-sequence stereotypical MMO system with fast and fluid DMC-style action combat, and does so very well.
A huge, rich... partially immersive world, full of lore and happenings all around the player. It's a joy to explore it and there are many beautiful sights to take in, whether you want to, or not... which brings us to the automatic pathfinding:
Easily the most sophisticated system I've seen in any MMO, just place a marker on the world map and press a button, and your character will find the safest route there, with a 99% success rate.
But here's where we're already leaving the "nice things to say" territory...
While the game has some very nifty quality-of-life features, it's lacking entirely in others. There is no "effective" quick-travel system. If you want to get from one end of the map to the other, you will have to run, or ride a horse there. There's a method to get your character from one major city to another, but you'll have to log out of that character and wait regardless.
You can view your items in storage from any point in the world, nifty, but storage is separated for every village and town in the game, expanding that storage for cash is an option, but for each of the five gameworld regions separately.
Character inventory has been doubled down on, not only do you have a limited amount of slots for items, but you also have a weight capacity for each of your characters, a savvy design choice if you plan on selling very expensive inventory and weight limit expansions, for each character separately, of course.
Defeated enemies drop an impressive amount of loot, which is great, but the loot stays locked to you for a very short time, and disappears a short time later, manual looting is very slow, and depending on server load hugely influenced by lag, encouraging you to buy pets, all of which loot for you, and you can equip 4 at once. Incredible!
To cut this short: The game is meticulously designed to maximize the rppu (revenue per paying user), to a point where the community itself will react negatively to people questioning whether or not this game is p2w "pay-to-win".
It's not. It is however designed in a way that paying will increase your enjoyment of it exponentially.
You WILL hit a sort of paywall eventually, no matter which aspect of the game you try to focus on, because each and every aspect is fully built around a p2e, pay to enjoy system. And most paid elements are cleverly priced in such a way that a more expensive option will always feel like a more worthwhile one.
An example: You grew to dislike your characters looks, you can either
A. Buy a 1-time coupon to change it once for 8€
B. Buy a 30 day coupon to have the ability to change it more often for 10€ or
C. Just go for a 30 day premium subscirption for 15€ which offers you a wide range of other benefits, like enabling a dye function for all your gear which includes all the dyes available in the game, which would alternatively also cost 10€ by itself.
The marketing psychology is clearly at work here, trying to leverage as many fallacies as a human could potentially commit, in order to convince you to buy something which has no intrinsic value.
But that's enough of railing on the business model, I just wanted to give potential buyers an insight how far their entrance fee will get them, let's move on to the remaining cons:
One big issue I found is how the game offers close to no social elements. Some even go as far as to say it's a singleplayer game with always-online. And after over a week of play I'm inclined to agree. At no point between level 1 and 56+ will you find the need to join up with another player, that will start once you want to get into very endgame stuff, most guilds won't even let you in unless you're level 56+ and have maxed out your gear.
Only endgame boss hunting lends itself to cooperation, the party system is extremely barebones, and you have to go to extensive effort to synchronize questing together unless you start playing with a friend from level 1.
Which brings us to the last point, which also offers a bit of an explanation to the previous one: The community.
Unless you get accepted into a guild, which will then almost instantly treat you like family, which is nice, most of the players you'll get to interact with are on a level of "toxicity" that rivals overwatch and league of legends.
It gets worse once you get past level 50 and the open-PvP system kicks in. If you dare to as much as get near a popular grindspot you will be attacked and murdered on sight without warning. Sometimes you get a bit of a warning in the form of vigorous insults, and once you're killed by players of a much higher level, you will be further insulted and blamed for making them kill you. (To be fair, that happend only twice each, the rest of the time I had a lovely grind at sausans)
Generally: If you value your time, money and dignity, avoid this game. If you have too much of column A and B, and none of column C, then feel free to make this the new thing that will distract you from committing suicide for a while. Or just invest in a Traveler's Package, play for the 30 days you'll get the included premium service and then quit and never look back. 30 days is more than enough to see everything the game has to offer.
Actual review, not just whining about rootkits for a change, coming right up.
Black Desert Online is a visually stunning and complex MMO with incredible potential but falls completely short of realizing it due to the majority of gameplay elements being designed with microtransactions in mind.
Let's get the good things out of the way:
The game looks really damn great for an MMO, the character editor is easily among the strongest I've seen in any game.
Combat feels responsive, tactical, 'kinetic' for lack of a better word, it mixes a classic cooldown hotkey-sequence stereotypical MMO system with fast and fluid DMC-style action combat, and does so very well.
A huge, rich... partially immersive world, full of lore and happenings all around the player. It's a joy to explore it and there are many beautiful sights to take in, whether you want to, or not... which brings us to the automatic pathfinding:
Easily the most sophisticated system I've seen in any MMO, just place a marker on the world map and press a button, and your character will find the safest route there, with a 99% success rate.
But here's where we're already leaving the "nice things to say" territory...
While the game has some very nifty quality-of-life features, it's lacking entirely in others. There is no "effective" quick-travel system. If you want to get from one end of the map to the other, you will have to run, or ride a horse there. There's a method to get your character from one major city to another, but you'll have to log out of that character and wait regardless.
You can view your items in storage from any point in the world, nifty, but storage is separated for every village and town in the game, expanding that storage for cash is an option, but for each of the five gameworld regions separately.
Character inventory has been doubled down on, not only do you have a limited amount of slots for items, but you also have a weight capacity for each of your characters, a savvy design choice if you plan on selling very expensive inventory and weight limit expansions, for each character separately, of course.
Defeated enemies drop an impressive amount of loot, which is great, but the loot stays locked to you for a very short time, and disappears a short time later, manual looting is very slow, and depending on server load hugely influenced by lag, encouraging you to buy pets, all of which loot for you, and you can equip 4 at once. Incredible!
To cut this short: The game is meticulously designed to maximize the rppu (revenue per paying user), to a point where the community itself will react negatively to people questioning whether or not this game is p2w "pay-to-win".
It's not. It is however designed in a way that paying will increase your enjoyment of it exponentially.
You WILL hit a sort of paywall eventually, no matter which aspect of the game you try to focus on, because each and every aspect is fully built around a p2e, pay to enjoy system. And most paid elements are cleverly priced in such a way that a more expensive option will always feel like a more worthwhile one.
An example: You grew to dislike your characters looks, you can either
A. Buy a 1-time coupon to change it once for 8€
B. Buy a 30 day coupon to have the ability to change it more often for 10€ or
C. Just go for a 30 day premium subscirption for 15€ which offers you a wide range of other benefits, like enabling a dye function for all your gear which includes all the dyes available in the game, which would alternatively also cost 10€ by itself.
The marketing psychology is clearly at work here, trying to leverage as many fallacies as a human could potentially commit, in order to convince you to buy something which has no intrinsic value.
But that's enough of railing on the business model, I just wanted to give potential buyers an insight how far their entrance fee will get them, let's move on to the remaining cons:
One big issue I found is how the game offers close to no social elements. Some even go as far as to say it's a singleplayer game with always-online. And after over a week of play I'm inclined to agree. At no point between level 1 and 56+ will you find the need to join up with another player, that will start once you want to get into very endgame stuff, most guilds won't even let you in unless you're level 56+ and have maxed out your gear.
Only endgame boss hunting lends itself to cooperation, the party system is extremely barebones, and you have to go to extensive effort to synchronize questing together unless you start playing with a friend from level 1.
Which brings us to the last point, which also offers a bit of an explanation to the previous one: The community.
Unless you get accepted into a guild, which will then almost instantly treat you like family, which is nice, most of the players you'll get to interact with are on a level of "toxicity" that rivals overwatch and league of legends.
It gets worse once you get past level 50 and the open-PvP system kicks in. If you dare to as much as get near a popular grindspot you will be attacked and murdered on sight without warning. Sometimes you get a bit of a warning in the form of vigorous insults, and once you're killed by players of a much higher level, you will be further insulted and blamed for making them kill you. (To be fair, that happend only twice each, the rest of the time I had a lovely grind at sausans)
Generally: If you value your time, money and dignity, avoid this game. If you have too much of column A and B, and none of column C, then feel free to make this the new thing that will distract you from committing suicide for a while. Or just invest in a Traveler's Package, play for the 30 days you'll get the included premium service and then quit and never look back. 30 days is more than enough to see everything the game has to offer.
Post edited by xtreme3881 on
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Comments
Edit: Since you seem to have skipped that entirely in your thorough "review", let me add that Loyalty is the FREE currency you get for logging on each day, and for hitting certain milestones.
And option D is actually available to solve a lot of the issues you harp on. There are weight increases, inventory increases, bank space increases, etc...
Hell, there's one of the free pet events going on right now. And you get another one for having certain time played.
Of course there are shortcuts to it easier. There always are on MMOs with a cash shop, but it doesn't mean you can't manage without using them.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
I feel the game did have potential but they managed to ruin every single system in the game.
Combat just looks plain silly,not even remotely realistic,just a bunch of ridiculous movements.
It is a ROLE playing game,we are suppose to be able to put ourselves into the role of our character,instead it feels typical of KR games,more geared towards ADD hyper action and spam looking combat.
It is NOT complicated and as i mentioned managed to ruin even the node system by tossing up lines that show up across your screen/map and everything is just a stat system with no real visuals,so ZERO immersion which is another area they managed to ruin everywhere.
IMO if you are just looking or a bunch of NON RPG elements with silly not serious combat,lots of automation and a meaningless character screen,then yeah you might like it,but if you are looking for a serious RPG with serious/plausible systems you will like me,scoff at the game and rate it very low.When comes to customizing your character,the visuals mean almost nothing since gear covers all your body,something lazy devs try to get away with but guess what,those visuals will not hold a weak game together,how many still care about AION,another game that claimed good visuals and character screen.
I should make note that unlike a lot of people,i do allow graphics to sway me in but ONLY if a game is decent enough.Both FFXIV and BDO managed to steer me away even with solid graphics but even that part if over rated because outside of cities i found BDO did nothing to excite me visually.Point being i quit BDO very quickly,i saw all it's systems and knew i would not enjoy the game,FFXIV did at least manage to keep me around for about 5-6 months before realizing i was not going to like the game long term and was not getting any better.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Well considering the fact I have 3 61's I know what I'm talking about. Secondly node wars are garbage at this point. Dsync issues all over the place. Oh then lets add some Steam players. Brilliant idea so there is more lag, dsync issues, stuck turrets, list goes on and on. Oh, and while we are at it lets now add Xbox players later this year! Forget sieges if you want to do that, node wars cant even hold up.
I have posted time in this game I would think I would know what I'm talking about
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
The description about the game being P2E rather than being P2W is accurate, but its not a bad thing, the VIP package that gives the 30 days bonuses to inventory, bank space and weight carried plus a few minor XP bonuses, is basically a subscription option, you don't need it, but the benefits are substantial.
For me, if i am playing a game and enjoying it, then paying a 'sub' is perfectly acceptable, i think TANSTAAFL is a valid concept, nowhere does it say that players should be given everything for free, at some point you have to be prepared to pay for your entertainment, its not a free service that players should feel entitled to, BDO might not be the best game ever, but its cash shop at least is far less exploitative or money hungry imo than a great many others, sure it tempts you to buy nice things, costumes always seem to be in demand, but at least they don't sell you keys to random loot boxes that you are effectively gambling on something worthwhile being inside, something which sadly has infected CS:GO
So after 1600 hours in-game, you decide you don't like it so much you have to post a negative review? What took so long? I have a mere few hundred hours in comparison and haven't played it in months, simply because I got bored with it but I spent very little money in the cash shop in that time. It was mainly on a bit of extra storage space but I got lots more using loyalty points just for logging in each day. I bought a couple of pets for looting but that was quite adequate and they weren't expensive.
From my perspective it's one of the best mmorpgs I've ever played. There's not many others that have kept me entertained for months. Games have to make a profit somewhere and the cash shop in this one is very fair.
@DMKano pretty much nailed it when it comes to the positives and negatives of BDO though IMO.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
1) have to wonder why a person from "Aurora, IL" quotes cash shop prices in Euros.
2) claims to have over 1600 hours in game yet when commenting on the lack of socialization he states, "And after over a week of play I'm inclined to agree."
3) in his "detailed" review claiming to have done it all makes no mention of the games unique crafting or trading elements. Heck not even one mention of AFK fishing.
4) on one hand claims "daring to get near" popular grinding spots will get you insulted and "instantly killed" yet goes on to say it only happened "twice" and the rest of the time had a "lovely grind" at the saurons.
5) after detailing all of the pay for convenience features which only apply to a single character, no mention of what he spent on his "3" high level characters.
There's more but point is it doesn't seem like the OP used much of his own experience.
Truth is, I could write a better review and I've never played the game.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Come back when you remember that in earlier games there was loot you could *only* buy in the cash shop, could never find ingame and which was twice as good as anything you could get ingame.
Those games had, if you put it in BDO terms, VI - VII gear for sale in the cash shop, though you could never enchant that high. THAT is the original definition of P2W, since you could only be competitive by spending real money. Runescape was the first game to do this iirc over a decade ago.
BDO is, no matter how you try to spin it, pay for time, not win. There's more than enough vets which are fully decked out in TET+ gear now. Imagine a new player joining the game.
At best, he could get 100-ish million from the marketplace *per week* from selling costumes. How many billions does a *single* TET or PEN item cost? Never mention a full set. I won't mention that there's currently less than 100 PEN items *in the entire game after over a year of supposedly being P2W*. But i guess you "forgot" about that.
Even with artisan memories, he is limited to the fragments he can get, so 'buying' your enchanting is no guarantee of quick success either, especially given the risk of delevelling the gear and even more so when than player doesn't understand the system yet. But i guess you assume that enchanting has a 100% success rate if you spend money in the cash shop, and fragments have an infinite supply.
Even then, the current TET players are all level 59-60. Unless you can show me how you get to 60 within a week *and* without knowing how to play your class (unless you tell me you can get good at it within a week from scratch?), those whales are extremely limited. They would still have to spend weeks, if not months, grinding for both the skillpoints they need and the simple, basic skill to actually learn how to play the game. But i guess you assume that newbies learn how to play their chosen class within an hour, and will be level 60 with TET+ gear in a matter of days without ever having played the game before.
So no, BDO is not P2W.
The only people who say that it is are *always* people who view BDO as some sort of competition to see who gets full PEN gear first. As if that matters somehow, especially given how BDO is basically a singleplayer MMO anyway.
The most fun ones are those who say that "BDO is p2w because of PvP" and then turn around to say that "PVP is pointless".
Playing: WF
Played: WoW, GW2, L2, WAR, AoC, DnL (2005), GW, LotRO, EQ2, TOR, CoH (RIP), STO, TSW, TERA, EVE, ESO, BDO
Tried: EQ, UO, AO, EnB, TCoS, Fury, Ryzom, EU, DDO, TR, RF, CO, Aion, VG, DN, Vindictus, AA
So apparently op you don't value your time or dignity. It doesn't take leveling several characters to come to any of the conclusions you have made. One character would have sufficed. I"m going to say there's something else going on there and that's diplomatic.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I kind of saw very early this was going to be one of those MMO's you take breaks from. That's where you are. Go play GTA 5 or Fallout 4 for 3 months. I think you will find most of the items you have issue with are manufactured from burn out and bittervet syndrome. Even the ones that are valid are acceptable flaws.
Anyone who plays MMO's needs to give BDO a try because it's fun. And walk away when it isn't.
It's just the usual whinging about the Cash Shop.
How many threads do we need to suffer about the same subject?
By the way, I played BDO for 8 months and I spent a grand total of $25...and only because I was feeling guilty of playing the damn game for free.
Honestly, people should stop moaning about the Cash Shop already and learn how to play the game.
I can condense that for you:
This game is an economy sim with endless AoE mob grinding masquerading as "PvE content" Purdy though.
You know a monetization system is bad if DMKano considers it brilliant.
As far as people saying they enjoy the crafting/trading, that's nice, but it's like if The Witcher 3 was pay to enjoy and someone said, "It doesn't matter, I play Gwent in game all day and love this game!"
No fate but what we make, so make me a ham sandwich please.
I only bought one Costume with real money in 8 months playing this game.
Everything else I bought it on the AH
Here is the list:
15 Costumes
5 Pets
12 Monthly Subscriptions
Plus other shit I can't remember.
BDO is not a Casual game, if you don't have time, don't play it.
The Cash shop is for Casual people who don't have the time but still wants to play it and look good...that's all.
For everybody else who actually has the time to play the game, the Cash Shop is totally irrelevant.
In AA you are actually forced to use the Cash Shop even if you play 24/7, in BDO you don't.
Black stones drop like candy half the time, free pets, and so on.
Well, hey whatever euphemism works.....so long as we aren't "winning" right?