Black Desert

Kirun · 2025-12-14T04:05:49-0500

Sylas said:
wtf even is crimson desert? I see ads for it and it just looks like BDO to me. I get the same thing from the Eve Frontier ads. It's just Eve?

Are these like single player spin offs of the MMOs or what

When Crimson Desert was first announced back in 2019, it was positioned as an MMO and explicitly marketed as a kind of "spiritual successor" to BDO/BDO 2. Fast forward to now, and it's been completely reworked into a single-player, Soulslike-adjacent experience. The pivot alone says a lot.

Pearl Abyss has a clear pattern at this point: they keep trying to branch out into whatever genre they think will make them the next Blizzard-style mega-studio, instead of doubling down on what they actually excel at. The first big example was Shadow Arena in 2020, which was transparently chasing the PUBG/battle-arena craze that peaked years earlier. Nobody played it. Even when they gave out free keys, peak concurrency barely cracked 5,000 players. When it finally launched on Steam a few months later, peak users were around 900 (yes, nine hundred) and it never recovered before being shut down entirely.

So what lesson did Pearl Abyss take from that failure? Apparently none. Instead of reassessing their strategy, they just went trend-hunting again. Soulslikes blow up after Elden Ring? Great! Let's morph Crimson Desert into that. Five years of development later, it's finally about to ship, and given the history here, it's hard not to expect a buggy, unfocused mess that doesn't fully satisfy anyone.

Then came the Palworld-style monster-collecting survival craze around 2022-2023, and surprise! - Pearl Abyss announces DokeV, their own take on that genre. This has become their trademark move: copy whatever's hot, but release it years after the moment has passed, when the market is already saturated or burned out.

On top of that, they picked up the EVE IP, which has been bleeding money for years. From what's been reported, they've been quietly shopping it around to cut their losses, and now it looks like one of their development studios may be shutting down, very likely the one tied to EVE.

All of this is just depressing, because Black Desert Online still has, by a wide margin, the best combat system any MMO has ever had. It's not even a close comparison. And yet, instead of building intelligently around that strength, Pearl Abyss keeps making one short-sighted decision after another, chasing trends they're always late to and neglecting the one game that actually proves what they're capable of.

riptorn · 2025-12-14T04:08:19-0500

Kirun said:
That also explains why everything announced as "coming soon" past March was so vague. March lines up with Crimson Desert's release, and until they see how that performs, they're clearly unwilling (or unable) to commit to anything meaningful for BDO.

I do agree with many of your points. The work on Olvia and getting new gamers to cron game quicker does give some hope. Also they did tease deadeyes brother.

A streamer also mentioned that last year they said they are moving to quarterly updates, so maybe why nothing past March. But I'm just coping at this point. Been playing this as my main for 4 years so bleh.

JOESAN21 · 2025-12-14T19:40:29-0500

Kirun said:
The Calpheon Ball was a complete letdown, and for the first time I can remember, it actually made me worried about Pearl Abyss’ future. At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if they're in real trouble a year from now. Financially, they're already not in a great spot, and it's obvious that most of their money and development bandwidth has been sunk into Crimson Desert - a game that, realistically, almost nobody cares about outside of existing BDO players.

That also explains why everything announced as "coming soon" past March was so vague. March lines up with Crimson Desert's release, and until they see how that performs, they're clearly unwilling (or unable) to commit to anything meaningful for BDO. If Crimson Desert does well, I fully expect them to siphon even more resources away from BDO to support it - because even "single-player" games get treated like live-service GAAS now. In that scenario, BDO content slows to a crawl. If Crimson Desert flops, that's arguably worse: now Pearl Abyss has to confront an existential question as a studio.

Do they pull a Jagex and accept that BDO is the one thing they're actually good at, refocusing entirely on it? Do they double down and gamble what's left of the coffers on side projects like DokeV? Or do they quietly accept that the momentum and money just isn't there anymore and begin a slow sunset across the board? If it's the latter, I wouldn't be shocked to see a "BDO Classic" hail-mary as one last nostalgia-driven cash grab.

What makes this especially frustrating is that I'm still enjoying the game. I've finally gotten into the Edania weekly bosses and there's still moment-to-moment fun to be had. But the long-term outlook feels grim and this Ball took a massive wind out of my sails. This is the first Ball I can remember where they didn't even tease a new region or major landmass. The only genuinely new thing shown was a new class (which is really just a reworked Warrior, let's be honest). Everything else was either rehashed content, recycled areas, or long-overdue streamlining of existing systems - which, to be clear, needed to happen and is a smart move if they're trying to attract new players.

Still, the presentation felt less like a vision for the future and more like a live reading of Global Labs patch notes. And that's not what you want from a flagship event that's supposed to reassure the player base that the game and the studio behind it actually has a direction.

Yeah I’m with you, I feel the direction for the game is gone. I love the game and still play even with my reduced time. BDO has perfected things that we could only hope for playing UO, AC, etc. but the Cron stone grind is ruining it.
Everything is CRONS, you get silver for crons, you get new outfits for crons, if you do anything in the game that isn’t grinding, you are losing crons, the lore has been dead due to if you have limited time, you have to grind.
Then ythere is rng. The rng is asinine in this game. I’m trying to get the Nol for my Valor. To get a map piece is rng, what piece you get is rng, you need 8 pieces , when you finally get a map the location is rng,”, and when you finally get that chest the contents are rng……now repeat for minimum 80 maps …I’ve got two map pieces and two compass pieces and haven’t seen anything in months

This game has such potential still, there is nothing on the horizon that could touch it if the doubled down and added group content, real dungeons, and reduced the rng— I’d even go subscription based if they did that (like games used to)
But with guys like BlueSquadron pushing pay to play, it ain’t gonna happen. Way too many whales still dormant change

Heck remember whe they do the costume design contest? Have not seen anything like that since

rad · 2025-12-15T04:12:14-0500

Kirun said:
When Crimson Desert was first announced back in 2019, it was positioned as an MMO and explicitly marketed as a kind of "spiritual successor" to BDO/BDO 2. Fast forward to now, and it's been completely reworked into a single-player, Soulslike-adjacent experience. The pivot alone says a lot.

Pearl Abyss has a clear pattern at this point: they keep trying to branch out into whatever genre they think will make them the next Blizzard-style mega-studio, instead of doubling down on what they actually excel at. The first big example was Shadow Arena in 2020, which was transparently chasing the PUBG/battle-arena craze that peaked years earlier. Nobody played it. Even when they gave out free keys, peak concurrency barely cracked 5,000 players. When it finally launched on Steam a few months later, peak users were around 900 (yes, nine hundred) and it never recovered before being shut down entirely.

So what lesson did Pearl Abyss take from that failure? Apparently none. Instead of reassessing their strategy, they just went trend-hunting again. Soulslikes blow up after Elden Ring? Great! Let's morph Crimson Desert into that. Five years of development later, it's finally about to ship, and given the history here, it's hard not to expect a buggy, unfocused mess that doesn't fully satisfy anyone.

Then came the Palworld-style monster-collecting survival craze around 2022-2023, and surprise! - Pearl Abyss announces DokeV, their own take on that genre. This has become their trademark move: copy whatever's hot, but release it years after the moment has passed, when the market is already saturated or burned out.

On top of that, they picked up the EVE IP, which has been bleeding money for years. From what's been reported, they've been quietly shopping it around to cut their losses, and now it looks like one of their development studios may be shutting down, very likely the one tied to EVE.

All of this is just depressing, because Black Desert Online still has, by a wide margin, the best combat system any MMO has ever had. It's not even a close comparison. And yet, instead of building intelligently around that strength, Pearl Abyss keeps making one short-sighted decision after another, chasing trends they're always late to and neglecting the one game that actually proves what they're capable of.

It really is the best combat system of all the MMOs I've played over the years and it's not even close. Shame it's cloaked in an abysmal treadmill that once noticed it's nearly impossible to ignore. The mudflation is off the charts and once you drill down into the economy it saps any will to login.

Kirun · 2025-12-15T12:08:37-0500

riptorn said:
I do agree with many of your points. The work on Olvia and getting new gamers to cron game quicker does give some hope. Also they did tease deadeyes brother.

The new-player experience overhaul so they don't have to dig through 400 different websites and YouTube videos is something BDO has needed for at least four years, probably longer. All of that is genuinely good, and anything that lowers the barrier to entry and brings in new blood is objectively healthy for the game's long-term sustainability.

My concern is why this is happening now. BDO is effectively Pearl Abyss’ only consistently positive revenue stream, and it's hard not to see this push as a way to stabilize cash flow and stop the bleeding while they try to finish(or salvage)side projects like Crimson Desert and DokeV.

What really sets off alarm bells is the context of the Calpheon Ball itself. Historically, Calpheon Ball is where they tease major new content for the coming year - new regions, big systems, headline features, etc. Heidel Ball usually follows up with QoL improvements, fan service, maybe a new class, and a progress check on everything teased at Calpheon. That's been the formula for basically the entire life of the game.

This is the first time they've broken that pattern entirely. No meaningful teases. No new regions. No long-term vision laid out. Just silence on anything beyond the near term. And that deviation from their own established playbook is what makes this whole thing feel far more worrying than reassuring.

JOESAN21 said:
This game has such potential still, there is nothing on the horizon that could touch it if the doubled down and added group content, real dungeons, and reduced the rng— I’d even go subscription based if they did that (like games used to)

They're adding group grind spots soon, and while I'm not personally a huge fan of them, I'm still glad they exist. The dungeon content, on the other hand, is awful in my opinion.

BDO's dungeons rely almost entirely on boss fights packed with gimmicky mechanics that are extremely easy to fail unless you already have extensive prior knowledge. On top of that, the combat system (great as it is) is held back by an engine that suffers from severe desync issues. There's nothing more frustrating than getting "hit from behind" halfway across the arena and instantly one-shot because the server thinks the boss is standing somewhere completely different than what you're seeing.

Pearl Abyss tried to introduce Soulslike-style boss design without having an engine capable of supporting the level of precision that kind of gameplay demands. Instead of readable mechanics and iterative learning, you get cheap one-shots. That's literally their entire boss design. Run around an arena jousting the boss until he does his "one-shot" mechanic, while you pray to fucking god you rolled one of the few classes that can i-frame all fucking day or have insanely protected skills. If you didn't and have stam issues? Well, GG. Even Elden Ring is smart enough to avoid that in most cases, because mechanics like that don't teach the player anything. There's no sense of progression, no opportunity to improve through repetition, just instant death.

When you layer unreliable netcode on top of that, it gets even worse. You can execute everything perfectly on your screen and still fail because the server disagrees with reality. Elden Ring works because it's a tight, mostly single-player experience that doesn't have to contend with constant synchronization, latency, and other players.

rad said:
It really is the best combat system of all the MMOs I've played over the years and it's not even close. Shame it's cloaked in an abysmal treadmill that once noticed it's nearly impossible to ignore. The mudflation is off the charts and once you drill down into the economy it saps any will to login.

Agris essence pretty much solved all of the "endless treadmill" issues I had with the game. Do some of the pity chances need to be reduced on certain things like Kharazad accessories, Fallen God Armor, etc.? Sure, but at least you can constantly make incremental progress and even if you get turbo-fucked on RNG, you WILL get your upgrade eventually through the pity system.

JOESAN21 · 2025-12-15T14:11:36-0500

Kirun said:
BDO's dungeons rely almost entirely on boss fights packed with gimmicky mechanics that are extremely easy to fail unless you already have extensive prior knowledge. On top of that, the combat system (great as it is) is held back by an engine that suffers from severe desync issues. There's nothing more frustrating than getting "hit from behind" halfway across the arena and instantly one-shot because the server thinks the boss is standing somewhere completely different than what you're seeing.

man you said that and I cant help but think of Pit of the Undying. I really wanted to like that content, it seemed really interesting and fighting multiple mini bosses sounded good....but the mechanics drove me nutty. Had the same problem where I would hit the combo right, but still die after how many minutes to trying to beat said boss. I like the idea, but the "unkillable insta shot" mechanic wasnt fun to try to beat. Just memorizing. I dont know if its rose colored glasses but I think Vindictus did the bosses better with still a fun combat system.

Yeah I'm reading the Ball notes again and nothing really of substance. It a shame. I was thinking about BDOs progression and just look at the difference between Sycraia lower runes which has a great dungeon atmosphere and Honglim base which is basically just a pole in the ground and the monsters spawn out of thin air. No effort put into that or Dekiha compared to the early areas (I'm thinking of one, not even sure it has a name, but it was by the Ents, had Fragments of Zarka and knights etc....was a totally cool ambiance which they did nothing with

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