Hey everyone! I was wondering if anybody here have played Black Desert Online. It seems great, reviews are good, etc. But as there is really no way to try out the game (besides super super limited guest passes), I was wondering if anybody here has tried the game and has any opinion on it. Thanks!

 

Very grindy. Good if you enjoy PVP, which is the end game. I'm maining a fisher atm while I wait for the ninja to be released.

 

I don't mind grind, but what exactly does very grindy mean? (Like how long does it take to get to max level?)

 

Go to new area, encounter new enemies. Kill x amount of subtype of new enemies, report back. Kill x amount of new subtype of enemies, report back. Kill x amount of...you get the idea. It's not a game you play for the quests or the PVE content. On the quest side, since it's a port from a Korean/Russian game, the quest dialogue is incredibly generic and ofttimes lacks any context to the cut scene you just saw.

Once you hit level 45 you join the ranks of the PVP, and are able to kill and be killed by other players. There's a karma system to discourage rampant player killing. If you join a Guild your guild can declare war on another in order to fight without suffering negative karma effects.

I'm level 36 after about two weeks of play. I haven't been combat leveling; mostly just afk fishing (which boils down to passive leveling at a reduced rate). There's a soft combat level cap of 55, but I don't think there's a hard cap. Haven't seen/heard of anyone over 60. A level 53 will get absolutely rolled by a level 56 though, where a level 55 will be more even.

I'm mostly playing because a mate is keen on it, but even then he's leveling life skills over combat while he waits for the blader class. So really he's playing Horse Breeding Simulator 2016 while I'm playing Fishing Simulator 2016.

In several ways it's kinda like Runescape cranked up to 11.

 

Grinding your way to soft-cap is one way to play the game, sure. It might even be the right thing to do if you absolutely need to play PvP at the top. It's what most people do once they start playing the game - they fall into the old and repetitive MMO mechanics that have been crammed down our throats for the past decade. Quest don't give much XP, mobs respawn quickly, and there's no real directive and story to pursue, so it's somewhat understandable that people follow that train of thought.

That's means missing out on most of the things the game has to offer, though. And these people are bypassing and missing an utterly amazing game.

I've been playing for about 2 weeks and have just reached level 40 yesterday. This is the first MMO which made me not care about my level. THERE IS SO MUCH SHIT TO DO. Seriously, you can discover a new topic or mechanic and spend the next few days getting into it, learning what it's about, how to enter into a field, how to advance your skill, how to make money with it. The sheer number of mechanically deep and complex occupations this game offers is fucking incredible. And that's on top of the fun and competitive combat, huge and detailed world and amazing graphics (with issues).

Just one example: The last patch introduced something called an Alchemy Stone. I was aware that Alchemy existed, hadn't even looked it up though. Brewing potions, right?

Wrong. Well, I looked up how to get into Alchemy. For that I'd basically have to reorganize half of my crew of Worker NPCs, potentially lose quite a bit of regular income and resource gain, set up several new production chains for gathering and processing the select resources, figure out which of my characters would be actively contributing to that production chain, and so on and so forth.

On top of that I would have to see how to make money or generally benefit from leveling Alchemy. Do I just gather stuff and sell it? Process it once and sell that? Or store everything until I can create a highly resource and time-intensive product that I can sell or use myself?

Did you know that you can tame horses in this game? Or that you can go whale hunting with a guild? Hey, you can tend to your own crop farm. Then harvest that regularly and use it in a cooking recipe. Or do you want to breed the crops to create higher quality seeds?

Oh hey, if you gather enough wood and reorganize your Workers you can build a wagon. With a wagon you can transport goods from one or several cities to others and sell them while you yourself are semi-afk. That levels your trading, which grants you access to more goods with a higher profit margin. Which means you can build a bigger and better wagon. With fancy decorations and in glowing colors.

Did you know that you can use your tamed horses to pull that exact wagon and level up the horses this way?

By the way, horses can learn how to drift.

And once in a while you can turn off your UI and just go exploring this beautiful world full of hidden nooks and crannies.

(Psst. If your gathering skill is high enough you gain access to new, rare and hidden metals that can only be mined manually if you manage to find them - or so I've been told. Might be profitable.)

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This was me rambling about this game. Seriously, if you are tired of the usual MMO formula and want something new, refreshing and open, this game might just blow your mind.

 

Bought it, played it for ~30 hours, regretted it. It just didn't click with me.

It's a Korean grinder. There is a soft cap to your level, after which it takes extreme amounts of xp to level up, but no hard cap. Kinda like paragons in D3? Nolifers will have a major advantage. The game is ALL about grinding. Quests rarely award combat xp, just mob kills do. Everybody levels up by finding a spot and grinding there for a while.

There is an insane amount of things to do and management content. I've heard of players who've put in ~100 hours and aren't even at the soft cap level yet (there were people hitting it in one day). Managing your workers, farming, crafting, caravans and supply chains, gathering and crafting professions, there's just an insane amount of stuff like that. There's a resource called stamina that you use for all non-combat actions, replenishes as you spend time logged in. Horse breeding, crafting boats, crafting houses, almost crazy amount of life and trade skills... imagine classic Runescape. But harder and a lot more obscure systems.

Aesthetics... the graphics are fine, though there is an extreme amount of pop-in. But there are two major problems. One, the classes are gender and age and somewhat appearance locked. As in your wizard is going to be a wrinkly, old dude and your archer is gonna be a cute elven woman. If you care about how your character looks, this is a problem. I couldn't find a class/appearance combo that I liked. Second, ALL THE GEAR LOOKS LIKE PEASANT GEAR. I checked. There are usually 4-5 variations of what they look like, but they all look like extremely basic and simple low level stuff. The only cool looking outfits are the cash shop ones. Which are expensive. 25€ for an entire outfit, and it was on sale.

Combat mechanics are... fine? But they're tied to keyboard combos. Like LMB+F -> RMB + SHIFT -> LMB + E -> S + SHIFT, stuff like that. I personally didn't like it. You can drag some but not all skills to your usual hotkey bar. Cash shop pets auto-loot for you, there is no area loot, manually looting every single one of your kills wastes a lot of time.

There is no endgame pve. No dungeons. No raids. It's just your skills, level grind and open world pvp. Guild wars over grinding spots are interesting, but there is class (and level and gear) imbalance.

TLDR; a Koran grinder with tempting cash shop and too much shit to do.

 

Not gonna lie, it sounds like you described Harvest Moon: MMO edition.

Think I'm gonna pass on this game. The character creator was pretty fun though.

 

As a Runescape player with a maxed account gotten from over 3000 hours of grinding this kind of triggers me.

 

Does anybody who bought this have a trial pass for me to try it?

 

How is the PVP in this game?

Also, seen much of an RP community?

 

The pvp is pretty good, if a bit imbalanced. But not a lot of lore to RP off of.

 

Interesting. How is the chat mechanics for RP?

Also, define imbalanced? FOTM is? lol

 

I bought this on the weekend and have put a good few hours in so far. It's a beautiful game with a great combat system.


I have tried Wizard and Ranger, both are fun but Wizard definitely has the Edge. There is a strong focus on movement, at lower levels it does not really matter because you will kill the enemies before they even reach you- Now that I am around level 17 I die in 3-4 melee attacks.

There is a hotbar, which you can bind any spell to, but it should only be used for a few + potions/food etc. Your bread and butter spells are all used through combos, which can be any combination of WSAD + QFE + LMB+RMB + Shift. It feels closer to a fighting game with progression than a traditional MMO.


Crafting is extremely complex, I'm still only getting the hang of how it works now. The game can be quite overwhelming at times, I struggled to learn how to use workers for example, but I have finally managed to set up my skilled goblin on a honey farm.

From what I understand there is a 14 day refund period- As long as you do give away your guest pass.

If you are looking for something different and don't mind reading wikia pages on how to do things then it's worth an afternoon to try and see if you enjoy it.