Black Desert Online (BDO) is the perfect example of what happens when you pick up a good developer and combine it with a lousy editor. The developer will of course want to solve the problems inherent in her game, however the publisher, who by the power of money is going to have the final say, will make an effort so that things are not to the liking of the players, but follow their own commercial interests.
That being said. All problems (minus one) of the BDO can be summarized in only 2 things:
A: Ignore completely the entire base of players in their requests and suggestions to improve the experience and in return offer solutions that will always be thought for one way or another, favor the store In-Game.
B: That the updates of contents, events, etc., are always created thinking about the In-Game store and how to favor it.
A veteran BDO player; or one who can afford to spend money on the game; or one who completely ignores the drawbacks of the game, would argue that BDO is not a Pay to Win game and that everything on offer is fair to the consumer. The problem with these arguments is that the editor has been clever enough to find a flaw in what is or is not considered "Pay to Win" and thus avoid bad reviews according to your store.
Basically what they have done is to create a system in which the player always feels "rushed" to get things done by frustrating the player by not doing it or simply taking too long to do it. They have even been clever enough to create a progression curve that is dramatically accentuated at the advanced levels and not before, thus ensuring that players take a long time to discover some of the disadvantages and have already invested a significant amount of hours to seriously consider whether to leave the game or move on.
It seems that I am plunging the game into misery, but I want to make it clear as I said at the beginning that BDO is not a bad game, but they have just had very, very bad luck with the editor that they got.
To begin with, I want to emphasize that this is the first Korean game that I see as having criteria in conceptual art. Korean games are always characterized by having a global image that emphasizes the beautiful, but never thinks about whether that is credible or not. The problem ends with scenarios that are always beautiful from afar, but which at close quarters lack all personality or are terribly simplified. In BDO there is a great job studying the detail and why of things and everything is done with meaning and credibility, resulting in a game that is both beautiful and credible. It has the huge blot on a graphic level, of course, of an exaggerated popping that is very annoying and that unfortunately have not bothered to fix since the launch.
At a playable level there are 2 things in which it stands out enormously. The first is that it has the best combat system ever seen in an MMORPG, using a command system instead of the classic skill bar, as well as classic games or the great Dragon's Dogma, ironically demonstrating that old commands work better than the standardized skill system used in almost every MMORPG. The second is undoubtedly its elaborate trading system, which in turn is related to housing and crafts. You have to build, travel, trade and even hire people to work in your business. And finally it would also be interesting to comment on things like that it is a 100% open world game without any load screen, horse breeding, the elaborate open world PvP or character editor. Come on, it has a lot of things that can attract the attention of the players and not one or two premises as it is usually already usual.
But let's get back to the problems. And I don't mean the boring story or the repetitive and typical missions of all grindeo MMOs. It's why the publisher keeps this remarkable game from being anything but decent and almost mediocre.
To begin with, I would like to highlight the issue of appearances. It's not about renting or selling them for a gold price; it's about that they have made a lot of effort not to give the player just options to differentiate their characters from each other in the equipment they carry and in return if you want to have a unique character, almost all your visual options are in the store and editing a single character completely costs you the whopping 40 euros.
This may not seem too serious considering that it doesn't affect the gameplay, but I just want to make clear the ways in which they strive to frustrate the player so that he always knows that the store is there and is useful.
The second unpleasant part is pets. They've created a drop system that you have to bend down to take toooodo anything on the ground little thing by little thing. But why do something so uncomfortable? Well, because the pets they use to automatically pick that up are paid, as simple as that. They are useful, you will end up getting nervous after many hours collecting and collecting and you will have to buy them.
The third part comes with the team's dreadful enchantment system. Enchanting equipment has an error rate from certain levels, and to top it all off every time you want to charm more will be more expensive and fail many more times to achieve it, making you get the most charming a single item is an epic full of pain and tears. Of course you can avoid the horrible loss of durability that comes with charming equipment by using a paid item in the store. Items that sell to top it off in droplets and just like clothes will cost you a fortune out of your pocket.
The real problem in this whole story is the number one reason why people can get desperate playing this game: PvP.
It has to be made clear that the PvP of this game is not balanced, the equipment is everything and it makes a huge difference and only those few chosen ones who have spent an exaggerated amount of hours making a fuss or those who have spent a small fortune making sure that their items are delighted will be able to enjoy themselves. Also, while many people wouldn't even bother to kill you at a higher team level than you, the game is designed to annoy players in the farmeo zones, so the easiest solution is always to kill those in your farmeo zone and make it easy for you. If we mix this with the big contour behind the 50th, I can assure you that the publisher is very good at making people desperate to bite their nails thinking about spending money in the store.
But the worst and most annoying thing is not this, but the fact that it is not a Free to Play game. They have to pay for it and treat the players as if they were little more than lab rats. And I can assure you that if it wasn't for the disgusting way in which the editor treats her players; Players who have already repeatedly made massive desertions after seeing all their complaints ignored. Ironically, if they had listened to these players and changed the most unpleasant things, they would have secured a player base that would now be much bigger. She's still in good health because the developer works a lot of hard work and never stops removing new content. But how long will it last?
Thank you for taking the time to read my review and I hope it will be useful :).
