Monthly Archives: March 2016

Black Desert Online: Cash Shop Equanimity

Black Desert Online’s cash shop is rather pricey which is the one complaint I personally have with it. The 3$ reduction between CBT2 and launch doesn’t deserve a weak smile, 29$ for a cosmetic costume in a game that offers very little variety in armor styles is tough. I don’t quite understand it either: assuming I am not the average MMO customer, Daum could make a lot more money by lowering prices by 50% and have more than double the people grab one or two costumes instead. But that’s a question for the economists and all those who have real insight into spending behavior in Korea versus Europe or North America.

Other than that, BDO’s cash shop served for many an outcry selling a ghillie suit and lucky underpants which are supposedly very pay-to-win in an endgame that never comes (no level cap?). Sorry, doesn’t interest me in the slightest. And Eri is very angry at herself for buying pets and inventory space because that made a company that’s delivered a beautiful and huge game a couple of extra bucks after “only being buy-to-play”. If it’s any consolation, I too have bought a few things in the cash shop when I really didn’t have to. I’m not sorry, I am enjoying my time with them. Why is spending a few bucks in a game you enjoy a question of moral guilt? Hellou.

The whole thing is starting to wear me down too because basically, not even f2p or b2p MMOs are supposed to have cash shops anymore nowadays. Screw the effort, size and maintenance of a game that’s run 24/7 across four continents. Fallout 4 can costs 70$ but god forbid an MMO that costs half that box price has a cash shop with few useful items! Where are we getting this notion from that MMOs must be financially self-sufficient for years without any subscription or shop? Where did PA or Daum make a statement that the game isn’t gonna make another dime after you bought the box? If there’s any false advertisement going on, I am not aware of it.

What do you mean I shouldn’t have bought this armor?

They can’t even sell cosmetics in shops anymore. Cosmetics are after all content to somebody (I love outfits okay)! So are pets and other conveniences, no matter if they could be acquired by other means if people did the research or had a bit of patience towards their “sandbox progression”. Okay, pets are off-limits in BDO the way most other things aren’t. Inventory space can be expanded another 30 slots just by playing the game and then there’s a whole list of things you can do via storage expansion and alts once you actually figure out how it all works. It’s fiddly yes but it also serves the underlying “realism” of the game that dictates towns should have individual storage or that characters can’t binge-craft for hours for example.

Only, we don’t want to figure out how it all works. We’re used to WoW convenience levels and always getting the best of everything and every MMO that comes out must start there. No thanks! I don’t want another themepark epic-lol-wins MMO like WoW. I don’t need the best pet, I don’t need to purple everything. Yeah, the weight limit annoys the shit out of me – I’ll see about that. Maybe I should just get a cart, you can actually do that. Almost every problem has a solution further down the road in Black Desert. And the exceptions aren’t real problems for me, either.

What are they gonna sell if they can’t sell cosmetics or dyes, can’t sell inventory or weight limit increases, can’t sell extra character slots (because they actually too matter in the game)? They can’t very well sell uber-potions and they can’t sell anything that’s already easily available ingame. And to their credit: there are no lottery-box-for-epics shenanigans going on in BDO’s cash shop, whereby someone could potentially burn endless cash on an illusion of greatness. I would rather it stayed that way.

And don’t get me started on subscription MMOs now because WoW and FFXIV too sell “content” by above definition in their cash shops on top of charging monthly.

……

Okay, that was a bit more than equanimity maybe! I keep finding myself in the same position for years when it comes to MMO payment models but truly, Black Desert offends me not. At the end of the day I decide what I consider good bang for the buck in a game and in the business of fun, no one’s defining any price tags but yourself.

Black Desert Online as a PvEr? Round Two: YES you should play!

Two weeks ago I asked the pressing question of whether Black Desert Online is actually a game for PvErs out there, including information we had on how PvP flagging works in the game and how it affects the later gameplay experience. I did make it clear in my post that when talking about PvE, I am referring to that established definition of “player versus environment” the way we’ve come to use it thanks to MMOs such as WoW, Rift, GW2 and many others. That means player versus quests, player versus dungeons, player versus raids and all associated and preconceived progression. Black Desert Online has little of that, plenty of quests and dailies aside; what it does have however is an incredible sandbox appeal, so much that it very well may be the game many jaded MMO veterenas, on both sides of the spectrum, have been craving.

Now here’s the important bit of news that requires this update: as it turns out, some of the previous information regarding PvP was in fact wrong. It’s frustrating how hard it is to find much corroborated information for the NA/EU installments of the game but basically, PvP is a little different for us at the present time, as was finally confirmed to me ingame by guild mates who are way past level 50:

PvP on NA/EU servers starts at level 45 (not 50)
While becoming eligible is still non-consensual, this does in fact not extend to any lowlevel alts (also goes for the Russian version of BDO)

In lieu of any contrary news or things planned for the game, this in itself is pretty huge if we understand how BDO works. The game is all about your different characters working together, sharing whatever progress you make but having separate energy pools to invest in various undertakings, such as resource gathering or crafting. The great news about this: you don’t have to level past 45 to access any of Black Desert’s huge non-combat content. If you opt to be a crafter, gatherer, trader, breeder, house decorator, farmer or candlestick maker – you can do it! Most of the quests related to these activities yield no life/skill EXP, only kill quests do; 50 hours in, I am still only level 21 because I started crafting and thus my character has basically been stagnant while I keep progressing in other ways.

And if I should ever in fact require one higher level character, I can always use my “main” for that sort of adventure and switch to my alts for the rest. Right now, they are located in different towns and already assisting me a great deal. This is a big point about BDO, to conquer the world for yourself, decide where to make temporary or longterm homes and how to make best use of your different characters.

The game has no level cap either which to me proves it’s not about a set progression or reaching certain levels to unlock content. You can truly make your own adventure and if you ever need to venture anywhere with a level 45+ toon, wear the ghillie suit from the store and you’ll be next to invisible to other players (or just switch server channel if there’s any PvP, problem solved). For the amount of content BDO offers while not requiring any subscription, I am more than happy to put up with that.

The cities are madness

Yes, you should play in this sandbox!

After a considerable learning curve, I finally start feeling like I am “getting” into the flow of things (and there’s more and more guides for everything else). Now to be clear, I am still scratching the surface of BDO but I’ve finally managed to establish some resource nodes, I am training workers who bring back goods of my choosing every hour, I am gathering EVERYTHING I want to, I am crafting to the most satisfying animations and I am riding from place to place for hours because there ain’t any shortcuts. I tamed a wild horse two days ago and felt spectacular. Oh and fishing, just because my alt does that on her own when I go /afk. All of this is going on without obnoxious gold seller messages or botters due to the way PA handle the economy and regulate your ability to binge-craft, farm, fish as well as trade and sell goods.

The world of Black Desert is mind-blowingly beautiful in a Witcher 3 kind of way. More importantly, in this MMO the world truly is the player – you are not, you are just a lowly peasant that gets to do things in it. I could tell you about Calpheon city (Eri has done) and how ridiculously gorgeous, lively and huge it is, easily the most beautiful and largest city ever in MMORPGdom. The scale, the authenticity of how its crafted, the busy streets, they will break your heart. And yet none of it is the highlight of the game; there are so many regions, so many towns and hubs and little things, with individual economies and resources for you to engage with, I could go on for hours! Don’t get me started on the different funky fantasy races you encounter as you go along, I should probably dedicate a next post just to them

Cooking, brewing, drying, grinding, shaking, thinning…

I also got a new home in Velia now and am completely over the moon by the way Pearl Abyss have solved player housing. The fact that you own different, physically existing houses all over the world that let you phase in to perfection, is nothing short of a stellar job. Fancy a small hut by the river? A three-story apartment building with a cellar? A windmill with a fireplace? You can have it – you can have them all to do all sorts of useful things. Or you can just decorate to your heart’s content, open the windows and watch the view outside. In the Korean version of the game, there’s even big-style automated farming via NPCs and personal shop vendors. Every time I cross one of my own workers during my travels, it puts a wide smile on my face because they too actually “exist”.

I don’t know what I’ll be doing in two weeks time or three months from now. All I know is that I’ll still be playing Black Desert Online and doing 19347262094 things that have absolutely nothing to do with combat (and that require no cooperation other than from your own alts if that matters to you). I may build a cart for my horse and start trading for reals. Maybe I’ll get into making my own furniture or clothes. Or I’ll learn how to sail, build a boat and sail away forever, to make a new camp somewhere else.

Did I mention Black Desert Online has tents and campfires to pitch in the deep black of night? Yep.

If you’re at all into any of the things I have described above, just do yourself a favor and play this. (I have one 7 day guest pass for the first person who’d like one)

About that Black Desert Online Learning Curve

Five days into Black Desert Online, including some beta testing and headstart, my current state of mind is best described with this picture:

HALP! (click to enlarge crazyness)

I still don’t know what the fuck I am doing. And that is probably a good thing too, given how I generally find new MMORPGs too easy, too repetitive and too been there done that. Really, BDO is doing a lot of stuff its own way; I can’t say how effective or worthwhile it all is yet, but between node and worker management, haggling and raising amity with NPCs, one million gazillion crafty things and sub-menus for every possible resource, horse breeding, AFK-fishing, shipyards and feeding pets while looking to unlock the perfect residence, I have my hands full and then some. That Black Desert Online learning curve is no joke even for seasoned players.

Sandbox musings

While browsing the official Black Desert Online forums, I chanced upon this provocatively named youtube rant by WoW raider Kungen – ye, that dude that ran/runs Nihilum and raided with Ensidia for a time. I honestly never payed much attention to WoW’s 1% although there was a time when I statistically would have belonged among that group, albeit much further down the ladder from our Scandinavian overlords. In the few interviews I ever read back in wow.com’s time, most of them seemed aloof and not in touch with anything.

Anywho, after several minutes of WoW tirade Kungen goes over to waxing lyrical about BDO, its great sandbox premise and horizontal endgame “progression”. I confess, I found the video rather entertaining for all the ways he hits and misses various points related to his general WoW malaise. He is quite obviously incapable of relating to what constitutes the majority of WoW’s non-hardcore player base. Where there’s only “easy peasy mythics” left for him in today’s endgame, other players would argue that the game has added a lot of non-raiding related content over the years, from achievements to pet battles and the garrison. That doesn’t interest Kungen because raiding was the greatest in vanilla and after that, the game gradually went to shits. Here’s where I agree with him: WoW took a big turn for the worse after the conclusion of the Arthas arch in WotLK; I too am a Cataclysm-unsubscriber. And I hate flying mounts in WoW, they rank right after achievements for me.

The rest is mildly amusing, given how this hardcore player fails to realize how his playstyle adds to his own detriment in MMOs. He probably level 50+ during the BDO beta too or something, so I wonder how long the enthusiasm is gonna last. But hey, it’s nice that even the “WoW elite” (…) can appreciate Black Desert Online for doing things a bit differently.