Black Desert

I played it a bit tonight. Combat seems lame. Blow through 20-30 goblins at once just spamming the same attack. Health never drops. Never run out of power. Just button mashing.

Everything is pretty and you can fly through quests and dialog. I made a valkyrie and characters look amazing. Gameplay looks great and everything is fluid.

But man it's no elden ring. Combat is just a hollow imitation. There doesn't seem to be much skill involved or any risk or challenge. Just constant button mashing and tearing through wave after wave of impotent enemies. Worth a buck just for the jiggly character creation though. Man them Koreans know how to model knockers.

It seems like a really good game just not the niche I'm looking for. I might try monsters and memories next as it seems like the sort of exploration and combat focused game I like. Not rush rush rush grind grind grind.

Bald Brah said:

It seems like a really good game just not the niche I'm looking for. I might try monsters and memories next as it seems like the sort of exploration and combat focused game I like. Not rush rush rush grind grind grind.

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It's a grind game. You either grind mobs or life skills. PvP use to be a thing, but you have to look for it now. It's not as P2W as it use to be, but if you are impatient to get the best gear then money will flow out of your wallet. If you are very patient then then most pearl items will eventually be given away free during some event or another. But there are some purchases that are almost mandatory that I've never seen given away (campsite, etc).

For me the combat is the best of all mmos. But to be honest most of my time played is afk while my computer trains horses or fishes.

BDO has an amazing amount of deep systems to learn and waste time in. And that keeps me occupied while I wait for the NEXT BIG THING. Which I will play for a few months before getting bored and going back to BDO.

JOESAN21 said:

Unfortunately you’ve hit the nail on the head for new players. bDO didn’t used to be like this. When it stated you could get killed by the <unique> monsters and getting some sort of weapon and armor mattered. The game is huge and has a rich environment with a metric shit ton of quests in every city. You could spend the time to look at the city and do local quests while trying to level and upgrade. There are hundreds of unique quests that if you took your time you could get some cool rewards (the dragon lute for example)

Now it’s a race to 60 as fast as possible. You can do the whole first 50 level naked with a beginner sword and it doesn’t matter. It takes a huge amount of the game away, and really good play only stats at 60-61. However, once you get there, it is actually a lot of fun. The combat style is really reminiscent of vindictive, and having the right crystal set up and having. The right combos for your character will make all the difference. If you give us a chance and take your time, there’s a huge game that’s a lot of fun to play. And like I said combat itself completely changes after about level 55 to 60.
With Tuvaala/blackstar give away be at AP 290-300 quick. The take your time and do the blackstar questline and others. The fights are fun and you can get a lot out of them. At AP 250 go layteen hunting in the desert at night or hunt for Kreator. The fights will be fun and more of a challenge than at 300

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Nobody new would ever join an MMO if you had to spend 50-300+ hours grinding to get to a medium level in empty newbie zones when the game was old as hell. That's just the way it is for any MMO (at least any of the tons of them i've played). Then imagine how many alts people would (not) have if they had to spend 300+ hours slogging through level 1-56 to get some +15 armor and weapons and then another 300 hours to get to 60 and some pri-tri gear.

zombiewizardhawk said:

Nobody new would ever join an MMO if you had to spend 50-300+ hours grinding to get to a medium level in empty newbie zones when the game was old as hell. That's just the way it is for any MMO (at least any of the tons of them i've played). Then imagine how many alts people would (not) have if they had to spend 300+ hours slogging through level 1-56 to get some +15 armor and weapons and then another 300 hours to get to 60 and some pri-tri gear.

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This.

I’ve said it before, but BDO’s biggest failure with seasons is how poorly it sets players up once they’re dumped into the main game. The gear curve is brutal, and the GS you graduate with isn’t anywhere near enough to keep new players engaged. The new TRI Fallen God armor helps, but it’s still just a small patch on a much bigger issue. At this stage, seasons should be graduating players closer to 300 AP / 400 DP baseline. Anything less just shows how out of touch Pearl Abyss is with what keeps players sticking around after season ends.

It's disabled until the next maintenance. Apparently the drop rate was massively fucked up and dropping stuff way too frequently.

You can still grind at the OG Treasure spots to get build up a stockpile of the Paints needed to use the Painting.

JOESAN21 said:

how is the drop rate for them comparably?

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Have you grinded at Atanis spots? Seems to have that rarity.

Seems to have been an underwhelming Calpheon Ball (as expected). Pretty much nothing of value for a player at my GS to come back for, and the new class is basically a total loss for (specifically) due to not having a single skill able to place on the hotbar.

She is a combo specialist as far as I can tell from her kit. She has 3 modes; Basic = normal "non-awakened" stuff where you'll spend most of your time; Light = Requires using 100% BSR to enable a new set of skills, only available for 1 minute; Dark = Requires using 100% BSR to enable a new set of skills. You have to "spec" into either Light or Dark for the BSR to trigger the new set of skills. Dev's mentioned that Light is more PvP oriented, while Dark is more PvE (I think Light will do just fine for grinding though).

I'm kinda disappointed that the game has devolved into nothing more than a Cron chase.

Reddit TLDR:


Video:

Zindan said:

Seems to have been an underwhelming Calpheon Ball (as expected). Pretty much nothing of value for a player at my GS to come back for, and the new class is basically a total loss for (specifically) due to not having a single skill able to place on the hotbar.

She is a combo specialist as far as I can tell from her kit. She has 3 modes; Basic = normal "non-awakened" stuff where you'll spend most of your time; Light = Requires using 100% BSR to enable a new set of skills, only available for 1 minute; Dark = Requires using 100% BSR to enable a new set of skills. You have to "spec" into either Light or Dark for the BSR to trigger the new set of skills. Dev's mentioned that Light is more PvP oriented, while Dark is more PvE (I think Light will do just fine for grinding though).

I'm kinda disappointed that the game has devolved into nothing more than a Cron chase.

Reddit TLDR:


Video:

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You're definitely in the minority not liking the new class, but if you're unable to perform the key inputs and generally play classes you can mostly hotbar I get it.

It wasn't a great ball, but the rewards at least are very good.

Sounds like a lot people dislike that class, on paper, due to the BSR mechanic and its limiting nature. Outside of that, the class is basically S+LMB / S+RMB, with LMB / RMB chains and some space bars. The Dash is really nice though.

Zindan said:

I'm kinda disappointed that the game has devolved into nothing more than a Cron chase.

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Agree 1000%. Think i might go back into hibernation for a while again. It's been so long since Ive had an enhancement success I was hoping the Ball rewards would come through for me, but no go. Im at a wall progress wise, cant go any further unless my weps succeed an enhance for the next Edania boss. Might tinker with the new class but Im just feeling kinda blah at the moment.

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.

Frontier is a MMO

Crimson Desert is entirely single player

Grim1 said:

if you are impatient to get the best gear then money will flow out of your wallet.

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Yes, this isn't like some other p2w games I've played, couple hundred bux get's you maxed out. They are targeting whales ready to drop 100ks.