Black Desert Online

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sat Mar 05, 2016 2:19 am

I just won a guest pass to this game. Looks fun. Might want to check it out if you are into mmo games.

Thought there was a post about..by me even..but didn't find it.

https://www.blackdesertonline.com/

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Sat Mar 05, 2016 9:34 am

I've been following it for the past year or so. It's Korean and PvP based. I was excited about it at first but those two things make me extremely cautious. There's grind as you would expect. I don't think there's that much PvE content. I think it's intended more as a PvP sandbox, like EVE.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sat Mar 05, 2016 11:09 am

I've got a 7-day trial pass, but am waiting until next weekend to give it a shot (will be on the road most of next week). It looks neat, but I also have huge reservations about the PvP focus.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sat Mar 05, 2016 12:31 pm

If anyone is willing to drop a Guest pass, I would love to give this a try. I have been following it, but I am naturally leery of Korean MMORPG. I look forward to any impressions people want to post. From what I have heard, the combat is a lot more fun than other MMORPGs and there is a bit more of a realistic focus (horses, for example, don't disappear). Some of that sounds intriguing, but if there isn't much PVE content, then I'm probably not made of this game.

Stuie · Post by **Stuie** » Sat Mar 05, 2016 1:23 pm

baelthazar wrote:If anyone is willing to drop a Guest pass, I would love to give this a try. I have been following it, but I am naturally leery of Korean MMORPG. I look forward to any impressions people want to post. From what I have heard, the combat is a lot more fun than other MMORPGs and there is a bit more of a realistic focus (horses, for example, don't disappear). Some of that sounds intriguing, but if there isn't much PVE content, then I'm probably not made of this game.

You've got mail.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sat Mar 05, 2016 2:48 pm

Its a very strange game from what little of the starting area Ive explored. The writing , being from Korea, is so bad at times Im not really sure what Im doing. the story so far makes no sense at all. Right now Im being led around by the hand and the game is almost playing itself.

The character creator is very detailed though and that part was fun. I spent an hour making two characters.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sat Mar 05, 2016 3:35 pm

Stuie wrote:
baelthazar wrote:If anyone is willing to drop a Guest pass, I would love to give this a try. I have been following it, but I am naturally leery of Korean MMORPG. I look forward to any impressions people want to post. From what I have heard, the combat is a lot more fun than other MMORPGs and there is a bit more of a realistic focus (horses, for example, don't disappear). Some of that sounds intriguing, but if there isn't much PVE content, then I'm probably not made of this game.
You've got mail.

You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar!

Sudy · Post by **Sudy** » Sun Mar 06, 2016 12:45 am

Force praised the combat on YouTube. Combat makes or breaks MMOs for me, since you'll be doing so much of it.

And even though I don't care for PvP, I'm very intrigued by the sandbox elements. I really wanted to like Archeage, but it never really took off for me.

But you know what? I'm done paying for launch clients. At least, full AAA price. After TESO I'm just not doing it anymore. It'll have to be WoW2, or something that Mrs. Nym and/or the Overlords are big into. Month to month sub? No problem. But I'm not dropping $60 on a one-month ticket.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sun Mar 06, 2016 12:56 am

I went ahead and took the plunge. Just finishing the DL now...back with some thoughts later.

EDIT: We're not off to a stellar start. After a laughably bad opening cutscene, it dumps me into the game. Problem is, nothing seems to be mapped to any keys...the tutorial is telling me to "push <>" to move (screenshot below). I'm assuming there's supposed to be a specific key in there somewhere. Can't access the options to map any keys, as it won't even recognize the ESC key when I press it (I have to bring up task manager to close the program).

Looks like a may have a corrupted install. Certainly not thrilled about deleting then re-downloading 30+ GB file, but that might be my only option.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sun Mar 06, 2016 2:21 am

I cant find the keys it wants either.I just use the menus to travel and such. T puts you out of combat. I hate that you cant remap the keys. After finding that out and it being setup for WASD I no longer have an interest in buying the game when it releases. Im a arrows user.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sun Mar 06, 2016 2:22 am

After a couple restarts, I finally got it to work. I'm not sure a game could make a worse first impression than this one. The UI is awful and completely unintuitive, half the quest descriptions are in broken Engrish that leave me wondering what the hell I'm supposed to do, the music is annoying, the voice work is terrible, it looks like shit outside of the detailed character models, I can't even figure out what server I'm supposedly on (there's no indication that I have a toon created in a specific server. I basically just clicked them at random until one finally popped up my toon.), there's little to no explanation of combat, I had the same tutorial video pop up four times and couldn't close it, etc, etc.

The first couple hours feel for all the world like a low-budget F2P MMO. Hoping it gets better soon...otherwise I just threw $50 in the trash.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sun Mar 06, 2016 2:25 am

If I has spent money on it I would feel it was thrown out the window. I also noticed that server thing...Dude wheres my characters?

Reemul · Post by **Reemul** » Sun Mar 06, 2016 6:27 am

I had the <> issue, easy to solve it's to do with a preload client and then upgrading, you need to delete the folders in the documents folder for BDO and that fixes it.

I havent played too much, couple of characters to level 10 but it seems nice enough, not too many problems with the stuff above though.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sun Mar 06, 2016 1:03 pm

After doing some research, I finally figured out the server thing. There's actually only three main servers for NA: Uno, Orwen, and Edan. However, each of these servers has 9 separate "channels" that you can join when you log on. Your toon is created on one of three the main servers, then can be played in any of the sub-channels on that server.

Of course, the game never actually explains any of this. It just dumps what looks to be a huge list of server names at you and lets you guess as to why your toon is showing up when you log into some and not into others.

I'm hoping last night's reaction was a case of me simply being overtired and cranky. Going to give it another shot this afternoon and see if it fares any better.

Semaj · Post by **Semaj** » Sun Mar 06, 2016 1:26 pm

I have a few friends who swear by this game.

One got me a 7 day guest pass and I have a level 20ish running around.

The quests setup is rather interesting. A lot more different than I am used to, but is more or less made for you to spam the r button to add them.

Combat is comboriffic. Like I think one of my main combos is A+lmb, D+lmb, S+lmb, Shift+rmb then lmb+rmb... I forget exactly, I usually use some combination of a +lmb, S+lmb, shift+rmb, q, d+lmb, shift+lmb... but you get the idea. A lot of the skills have multiple ways to use (like shift and E, or the 1 button). There are a lot of different combos and it's led to me rarely using health pots and only dying once, when I picked up a sack of grain for a quest and immediately got set upon by 2 goblins of varying degrees of mean, and I was now super slow and couldn't figure out the button to drop the sack and fight back while being stuck in a building, and in the game buildings are super dark, so I got stuck next to the stairs in a corner while being unable to drop the sack (r, i figured it out the second time I picked it up). I even had one moment when an entire area of a camp, about 7 goblins spawned while I was fighting a very tough one and for the most part came out just fine by comboing and kiting.

There is a very large section of posts seemingly set up for how great pvp is, so I imagine that's where a lot of the joy for certain people comes from (my friends being in that group).

I was just reading up and it says grinding mobs out is quicker than questing, which is nice, it means I don't need to run through every quest thinking if I miss one I'll fall behind the xp curve for the area and have to go back and grind. So I'll try and grind out some mobs and see how much quicker/slower it is before my 7 days expires.

Also, the game is buggy, it's not as bad as some releases, but there are notable problems. My biggest issue so far is quests appear on your map for you, it has an auto-run-to function which can be wonderful. Sometimes you end up getting stuck on a spot and you'll see 2 other people there and know their pathing is shoddy. Other times quests appear in one area, you go there and there is 1 mob there for that quest and in a completely different are is a ton of those exact mobs.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sun Mar 06, 2016 1:37 pm

Theres farming areas. Farming as in a place filled with a ton of the same enemy and you just kill kill kill for a bunch of exp. One such place is called catfish. Im not sure where it is but if you google it or look for it on YouTube (where I saw the video) you can find it.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sun Mar 06, 2016 6:35 pm

Gave it another concerted effort this afternoon. Honestly, I haven't played a game this ridiculously obtuse and unintuitive in a long time. A couple examples, off the top of my head:

- I try to sell what I assume is vendor trash to a vendor, and get a message stating "You could make more selling this on the marketplace". Great...now where's the marketplace? No idea, no indication, nothing in game that gives any guideance.
- An NPC gives me two quests that require energy (the game's currency for doing quests, actions, etc.) to accept. It was "Kill X Imps" and "Kill X Other Mob". I accept the quests...and there's nothing in my quest log. No map markers (like there's been for every other quest so far). Nothing that gives any indication that I took the quests, other than the fact my energy is now halved. I'm not even 100% what it is I'm supposed to kill, and have no idea where to look.
- I get a quest telling me to "activate X nodes". No explanation what a node is, how to find one, or how to activate it. I find a node marker on the main map and go there. It tells me I must "link to the previous node to access this one". What previous node? How do I link it?
- There's some sort of conversation mini-game where you drag portraits from other NPC's onto a map and (I assume) it unlocks additional conversation options for the currently engaged NPC. There is literally no explanation about this. None. So far, I've tried dragging multiple portraits and nothing happens. Hell if I know what I'm supposed to do.

The only saving grace is that the combat (what little I can piece together) does seem rather fun. It reminds me a lot of FF XIV when it was first released. You can tell there's probably a decent game in there somewhere, but good luck figuring it out. I'm spending more time googling how to do things than I am actually playing, and I certainly don't have the patience for that bullshittery.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Sun Mar 06, 2016 7:13 pm

Yup, combat is cool, game is terrible.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sun Mar 06, 2016 8:38 pm

So I came across this video which walks you through the process of creating beer. Looks cool, right?

NOTHING that he said in that video - from activating the nodes, to setting up the farms, to hiring the workers, to gaining the Contribution Points, to the actual crafting - none of it is explained anywhere in the game. The only way to find out how to do stuff is to watch videos, look at Wiki's, ask questions on the official Reddit, etc. I'm sure there's gamers out there for whom that sort of exploration and discovery is appealing...I am not one of them.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Mon Mar 07, 2016 9:56 am

coopasonic wrote:Yup, combat is cool, game is terrible.

I played another hour or so yesterday and I am going to back off on my "game is terrible" statement. Let's change it to "presentation is terrible."

I started playing with the conversation/amity system yesterday and it's kind of interesting.

Westlin · Post by **Westlin** » Thu Jun 02, 2016 12:18 pm

Well how many of you guys play on Edan? I never have ran into an official "Octopus overlords" Guild yet. Is there one?

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Thu Jun 02, 2016 12:55 pm

Maybe it was because it was beta but I just didn't have fun with this game.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Fri Jun 03, 2016 3:44 pm

It'll be interesting to see what happens with this game. It's a Korean grind fest MMO and a fairly obtuse one at that so I wonder if their "buy to play" pricing model is going to work out for them here in the west. I can't believe that they've sold very many copies so far based on word of mouth. The first 20 hours of any MMO is pretty critical and this is not a strength of this game. Maybe if they add more polish and some initial hand holding for new players it'll do better. They really need something like the first 20 hours in Conan for it to do well in NA, IMO. I kind of want to try it, but the more I read, the less I want to try it. I suspect F2P is it's future.

Malacheye · Post by **Malacheye** » Thu Aug 25, 2016 11:27 pm

Been playing a 7 day pass given to me by a friend. Learning curve is steep and it seems like a few server disconnect issues. Game is VERY deep. After 8 hrs, ive just scratched the surface. Anyone playing this game?

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Thu Aug 25, 2016 11:37 pm

I never went back. It just didn't jive with me....the silly little smoke monster friend was the worst then the crazy amount of weak one hit enemies to kill combined with bad controls.

Stuie · Post by **Stuie** » Fri Aug 26, 2016 6:53 am

Malacheye wrote:Been playing a 7 day pass given to me by a friend. Learning curve is steep and it seems like a few server disconnect issues. Game is VERY deep. After 8 hrs, ive just scratched the surface. Anyone playing this game?

I've been playing.

Things I like:
- Best combat in an MMO in my opinion. Positioning, attack type, weapons, use of buffs... everything matters. I've had a few truly epic battles that felt way beyond anything I've experience in other MMOs (most of which are just click fests with no need to move).
- There's some grinding, but never what I consider an excessive amount.
- Beautiful graphics.
- There's so much to do - I haven't even learned trading, or purchased a house, or hired workers, or gotten much into crafting...

Things that are meh:
- The black spirit was really annoying in the beginning, probably up into the 20/30 level range. Now it's just a nuisance.
- The "dialog" ranges from bad to confusing, not that the story really matters much.
- The story doesn't matter much.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Fri Aug 26, 2016 2:33 pm

I'm tempted to go back and give this another look and see if they've improved anything. Curious how viable it is to play through without getting into all the trading/crafting/worker assignment stuff and just focus on combat. Maybe avoiding getting sidetracked with a ton of "stuff" will make it more enjoyable.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Mon Sep 24, 2018 11:14 am

I started playing this again last week because I had finished Tomb Raider (twice) and was waiting for Spider-Man to arrive. Over the weekend I played more BDO than Spider-Man. I'm enjoying Spider_man but BDO is just clicking for me now. I only got to level 15 before and all the systems just confused me. Over the weekend I got to level 49 (open world PvP starts at 50) and had lots of fun questing and killing. Lots of killing. Massive killing.

Fun fact, you get a daily allowance that starts at 300k silver per day... I noticed I had a couple emails with attachments for this daily allowance. They each gave me a hundred million silver. For the record that is a LOT of money. I mean yeah it would only buy you one end game kind of item, but it would fully kit you out in good pre-boss gear. Did I mention that (non-harvesting) gear doesn't have any level or skill requirements?

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Fri Aug 26, 2016 2:33 pm I'm tempted to go back and give this another look and see if they've improved anything. Curious how viable it is to play through without getting into all the trading/crafting/worker assignment stuff and just focus on combat. Maybe avoiding getting sidetracked with a ton of "stuff" will make it more enjoyable.

For the record workers, nodes and life skills can be completely ignored in the game right up through and beyond the end game. You can make plenty of money from wholesale slaughter. There are a couple places they get you in the micro-transaction sense. Inventory space and pets. Inventory space is obvious. There are quests you can do to expand it, but there is never enough. Pets is another story. When you kill enemies as fast as you do in this game, the lack of any ability to pick up loot from all nearby corpses is barbaric. Pets are the answer to this. You can have 4 or 5 (not sure on max) pets out at once following you around and picking up loot for you. You want more pets because they have cool-down timers on picking up loot. You can reduce the timer but then they run out of food faster and you have to feed them. You can get two pets for free but after that it's cash money. Or at least that's what it seems like.

The most annoying thing about the game is travel. Your money has weight so you leave large quantities of it in storage. The marketplace uses money from storage, but I think it only uses what is in storage in your current region. Oh, yeah, your storage isn't connected. Different areas have different storage. Where did I leave those stones I needed? Let's check every city! (I think you can look at storage remotely so it isn't completely awful)

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sat Feb 29, 2020 10:16 pm

Decided against my better memories to install this since I got it free. Right from the start it is a POS to me. Cant even create an account. I was in beta and when I try to start the game it wants me to create a new account. No option to sign in to an existing one. So I enter my info. NOPE. Says email already exists. Well of course it does I was in beta. I try my 2nd email. Nope same thing. I dont know why both emails are there but with no way to actually simply sign in it just exits the startup. So no way to play unless I find more emails lol. Stupid shit.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sat Feb 29, 2020 10:27 pm

I revisited BDO a couple weeks ago when they released a new class.

It still looks great, combat is still kinda fun, and everything else about the game is an undecipherable mess. Lasted two days before giving up in frustration, yet again.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sat Feb 29, 2020 10:52 pm

Ive never seen another MMO wheres theres 1000s of enemies standing around in piles as far as you can see waiting on you to mow through.

NickAragua · Post by **NickAragua** » Sat Feb 29, 2020 11:40 pm

Daehawk wrote: ↑Sat Feb 29, 2020 10:16 pm Decided against my better memories to install this since I got it free. Right from the start it is a POS to me.

Yeah, that's basically how this went for me. I installed it, fired it up. Ok, character creator is kinda neat, lots of available classes. Pick one. Random nonsense JRPG-style cutscene is followed by awful UI and incomprehensible gameplay. I lasted about ten minutes before exiting and hitting the uninstall button.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sun Mar 01, 2020 12:49 am

I find that I actually enjoy the mobile version of BDO much better. It's a pretty standard auto-questing Korean MMO grind (which won't be everyone's cup o tea), but it looks nearly as good as the PC version and is surprisingly fun to play, mostly because it strips out all the ridiculous complexity of the PC version.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Fri Mar 05, 2021 11:23 am

coopasonic wrote: ↑Mon Sep 24, 2018 11:14 am I started playing this again last week because I had finished Tomb Raider (twice) and was waiting for Spider-Man to arrive. Over the weekend I played more BDO than Spider-Man. I'm enjoying Spider_man but BDO is just clicking for me now. I only got to level 15 before and all the systems just confused me. Over the weekend I got to level 49 (open world PvP starts at 50) and had lots of fun questing and killing. Lots of killing. Massive killing.

I started playing this again and the super amusing thing is it's as a break from Spider-Man: Miles Morales. For whatever reason spider-man makes me want to play BDO. That last time I got a character to 52, 4 levels shy of the "Awakening" quest line that evolves the combat. This time I started a brand new character because I had no idea what to do with the old one. The new character is now level 56 after less than a week. I am trying to finish out the season, but it's starting to get a bit grindy so we'll see.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Fri Mar 05, 2021 11:56 am

About once every 6 months, I get the urge to revisit BDO in the hopes that this will be the time it actually clicks and makes a lick of sense.

It never does.

Also, if anyone is interested in trying this on console, my advice is...don't. It's a completely unplayable mess on PS4. Buggy as hell, with frame rate that is typically down in the single digits.

Baroquen · Post by **Baroquen** » Fri Mar 05, 2021 3:24 pm

It's funny - I just tried BDO again, because I migrated my account or whatever. So I fired it up again to give it a try. And, after being bombarded by items and login bonuses and such, it was so confusing - I was right back out again. Very overwhelming when compared to my dropping back into FFXIV or LOTRO. Not sure I'll every buckle down and figure it out. Just don't have the patience to navigate it these days. Still a pretty game though.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Fri Mar 05, 2021 3:36 pm

I tried going back to LOTRO and it is just hideous. I couldn't do it.

I've never done FFXIV but the way jobs/classes work in that just confuses me like BDO confuses you I guess. A lot of stuff in BDO can just be ignored for a really long time. I'm starting to get to the part where I need to pay attention again.

I should probably just go back to ESO, but I kind of like the action combat in BDO. It's a lot more active than most MMOs.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:09 pm

coopasonic wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 3:36 pm I've never done FFXIV but the way jobs/classes work in that just confuses me like BDO confuses you I guess.

Whatever weapon you equip determines your class. Bow = Bard, Axe = Warrior, Staff = White Mage, etc. Keeps you from having to roll alts because one character can be any class.

There, fixed.

Sudy · Post by **Sudy** » Fri Mar 05, 2021 11:01 pm

I never got further than about 10 minutes into this one either. Spent hours creating a character and researching my class. And then just didn't find the gameplay accessible. I'd like to give it another go at some point, but it can be such a challenge to figure out the systems in a game like this.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Fri Mar 05, 2021 11:46 pm

I can go back to SWTOR and STO easy anytime. But trying to enjoy ESO seems beyond me. I think my biggest trouble is I want to play the DLC classes and feel Im missing something as Ive done all the normal ones...so I end up not bothering.