Hi there!

I have heard of the amazing combat system and complex character creation, so I find my way to BDO. Regarding this, I was not disappointed. I spend days creating a character which looks like an actress, I like. I love to play with details until everything is perfect. The combat system on the other hand is much fun and well designed. In other games you have to break your fingers to reach all keys and have to lay hundreds of skills on the numbers and different sub-groups. BDO allows you to learn different combinations of a hand full of easy top reach keys to active endless skill combos which looks like a choreography. In fact, no numbers needed but you can still put certain skills on them to activiate them instantly. I play a Mystic and I really love the martial arts. BDO is the first game I played, where there is something like this class. The graphic is on of the best I have every seen in an MMORPG. My character looks gorgeous and really realistic also the world. I was really impressed, as I saw wet sweat running from her skin and that she is soaking wet after a rainfall while the streets are muddy and stones are also wet. I like these love for details, also, that I can see parts of the underwear, where the cloth does not cover it.

But now to the downside in my eyes. I wondered that a game with such a genius and comfortable combat system is so much focused on economy. Someone said, that the whole combat system is actually secondary or a bonus to the economic system. Actually, I imagined something different from the game. A more focus on combat and exploration with economy as equal ranked opportunity. While I explore the map. I quickly came to the impression, that it is created around economy and not exploration. I wandered around to find hidden places, bosses, treasure, caves and dungeons and interesting quests but was disappointed. There was nothing really. Nothing, for which my combat skills would be needed, actually. Instead, I learned more about fishing, trading, cooking and nodes and I asked myself: Why was I supposed to by a Mystic? Actually, I thought I would start within some kind of Shaolin-monestry and learn the philosophy of a Mystic from battle-monks within some kind of class-specific story-arc as introduction before it starts with the main story-arc which on its own ends with free-gameplay and endless quests and smaller story-arcs.

But I learned the skills much too fast. I know, there are people, which want to be high-level as fast as possible and go into raids. But not me. I play MMORPGs because of the feeling of hard work and progression. I do not want to be presented by fast progression, I want to earn it. It cannot be in this regard, that I am Level 27 of 60 (higher is useless) after the first world. I do not have the feeling that I earned it. I should be level 18 of 150 or so, so that I know that there is a long way for me to go (like Black Spirit always stretches), instead of having half the progression already accomplished for nothing after a few weeks of playing.

It is these immersion, I really miss. Why I am an adventurer when there are not real adventures? I am not interested in hiring, feeding and housing workes to farm things for me. I think this fits more to another type of game. I have no problem that such gameplay is included. Do not understand me wrong: I really like it, if a sandbox game offeres more oppourtunities to spend your time with. It is a must-have for such game. But if I want to play a trader, I do not need to be a Mystic as class, which is focused on combat. It does not fit. I want to fight and I want to explore and I want to find things lay hidden and hard to reach besides the known ways. In this regard, the game offeres too little, tto fast in my eyes. I even found some hidden places where I thought: Here has to be a treasure or a tomb somewhere. But it was nothing and it was empty. I know, it is hard to fill an open world in an online game.

And I do not know whether it would work, if these places would be generated randomly as instance. Regarding to that, the maps are much to small for my taste. As I googled the map, my first thought was: Is that some kind of island next to the main continent for the beginners? No, the island IS the whole map. I can imagine that, if the maps would be bigger, the empty space would even be greater. But for a game which relies on economy, I ask myself: Where does the food for the villagers come from? There had to be much greater farms. The cities remind me more of younger settlements or country side villages because they are too small. Take "Velia" for example. A city with a harbour and these castle should be ten times the size. And where do the poeple life, if I can buy nearly all houses with the status "empty house"? The monsteres around Velia are so numerous, they could easily overrun the city and the camp. Regarding scale.

I think it would be better, if all maps would only be an acessable part of a much larger world so you at least get the impression of realism. Or that the economy is more focused on specific economic maps between the regular maps, like coasts, farms or mines, instead of putting them all on one much too small map, which than works more for economy than for exploration, for which combat skills would be needed. As example: Instead of heaving one map of Balenos, Balenos consists of different maps, like one for the city Velia and the harbour, one for the country-side with wide farm lands around the city, one for the coastline with caves and grottoes, one for the mountains with the castle ruin and one for the ruins, forests and passes. So you could stretch the world map more and have a more realistic scale. I also have no problem with instances so that a city is an instance on her own and alows to be much greater (with possibility to be extended), instead of beeing part of the map directly. The transation has to be smooth and imperceptible, but I think there are already many possibilities for design to get the impression of one world, when you in fact move between maps or instances.

These are my impressions and thoughs from my time in the game so far. Thank you.

The economy is pretty much dead in this game.

You are level 27 with a few days playtime. Go do the main questline, and get to lvl61, and after grinding for thousands of hours, you will see it.

Yes 90% of the map and "content" is pointless, and only there, so they can boast about muh LarGe oPEn WorLd, which is barren and empty for the most part...

You either go and grind mobs in a small area, or grind rocks/meat in a small area. So much vareity, so much fun.

I played many MMORPGs and sandbox-games, including "EVE Online", which is also very economy driven. I will not speculate over the intentions of the publisher. But if you want things to work, you have to create a good foundation. Otherwise you habe a short-lived game. The economy in EVE works, because it produces what I use. Wars have an actual effect on market prizes and whole industries. There are markets, which went bankrupt as new ships were introduced or prizes of minerals skyrocked, as a great war destroyed so many ships, that there was a massive need for new ones. There is an actual market and you can find the same number of possible jobs there, as in flying specific ship-classes and weapons. 

The difference is, that you as character are not settled. You can be an industrialist with no significant combat skills and be succesful and have fun. It simply makes sense to play this way and the universe is huge, empty in the things you could really explore (it is no "Freelancer", where you can explore dangerous nebulars or asteroid belts at random), but filled with the players and their work and stories. They create the stories within these vast space, if you engage in this whole corporation stuff.

This is the way, how one should ground a sandbox-game and than engaging in economy makes sense, where you need nothing else, if you like this gameplay. But BDO is a total different story. The economy makes no real sense, in its own and within such game. If I choose a clear combat class, which vast majority of skills (other than in EVE Online) are combat skills and nothing else, than the game should be focused on combat and exploration. Otherwise you have to make the world much bigger for more possibilities of the players to interact, the economy essentiell for the gameplay, and you do not choose a class, but a character and develop your career in the game by choosing skills you like.

But BDO has such an good combat system, that it is a waste, that the focus of the game is such weak in this regard, in my eyes. If you have an economy here, it should be an essential part of the game and should build around professions, which you choose and train like combat. Their could be a market, where some are good in mining and others in making armors and weapons out of the minerals. But the stuff should be valuable and useful. A player-craftet armor should be unique and individually, depending on the skill, and the profession should be complex enough to invest the time in developping it. Which means, a high skilled fisher can only catch the very rare fishes, which the cook needs for a meal, which gives you seldom and high stats. Only a high-skilled miner is able to bring forth seldom and valueable minerals, which the armor maker needs for its best and high ranked pieces, which others can than buy OR even order directly from him. The alchemist can make portions you cannot by from NPCs and can individually combine and mesaure its effects. A high-skilled alchemist is able of creating portions with high and long lasting unique effects. You could order a specific portion from him or her you need and he or she makes it for you and sets the prize, neither by contract or by market. In this way, you create the economy for an interesting sandbox. All these professions should need the same amount of work needed to train them like combat and not engaging in combat should be as much fun.

Than you could put in more possibilities of combat and exploration on bigger and more diverse maps. Maybe even two continents, islands, demonic dimensions or rifts to other worlds, underground levels with dangerous creatures, underwater levels with sunken civilizations (with diving as profession to explore them), dry deserts where you can find the Hashashin, snowy mountains with monestries where you can learn martial arts skills, thick jungles where you can find ancient ruins and mysteries, magical places where you can find rare materials, paradise islands with hidden treasures and sunken ships, hidden pirate fortresses where you can trade on a black market, illuminate elvish cities, underground dwarf cities, giant mountains ... . You could add regulary with new expansions.

There have been talks of added PvP content this year, stated at the most recent CalpheON Ball this year. BDO economy is a central feature of the game, so are lifeskills and combat. All these systems tie into each other in some way, shape or fashion. Optimally, you'll want to incorporate some lifeskills into your gameplay loop for max efficiency and passive income. Even if you're primarily a monster-grinder / PvPer. All systems are connected in some way.

But I feel you.  With a combat system like this, it's beyond me as well why combat is as limited as it is currently. PvP modes would be a step in the right direction, IMO. 3v3 Arena PvP mode with some objectives sounds fun. Ranked 1v1 AoA sounds fun. 5v5 Capture the Flag or King of the Hill would be fun. Some creative mode (that won't get taken away, like Shadow Arena) would be fun. And this is coming from someone who grinds mobs...a lot. Something to break the monotony would be great, but alas, here we are, putting BDO to tray when we're bored to play other games.  Lost Ark is coming to the West soon. Is my ray of sunshine.

I'll be with PA, at least until BDO is officially shut down. I do love this game for what it is, and currently, is the best open world sandbox out today, imo. But they can, and should, do more....since lots of new mmo's are coming out soon.

I hope PA is ready to wow us more than they ever have, now is their chance to win our hearts, once again!!!

BDO is like a pile of poo wraped in golden foil.

You see bdo looks good... but everything else is bad.

Yeah it had potential.... but PA is not competent enough to capitalize on it, and even if they could, it's already too late. At this point it would take enourmous affort to do drastic changes, and the game has like what? 3-5years at max, it would be stupid to invest effort into a soon to maintance project, when they can just allocate their effort into a new game.

And that's exactly what they do with Crimson Desert..

I am here just to comment on the title.

Anyone saying that BDO has the "best" combat, clearly never played a lot of games in his life.

1 : Grab has no counter play.

2 : SA block VS no grab classes = unbalanced and should have never existed.

2 : Stealth in an open world PvP game with no pet alert system or CC escape is broken. Worth mentioning that you die in 1,5 seconds and there is nothing you can do once you get CC'ed from a surprise attack.

3 : Camo makes the PvP joke. Not worth to go deep into this.

4 : RNG resistances.

5 : Forward guard and block has a % of health, which leads to the most geared person to win the fight. Even if you are more skilled than your opponent and you use your protections properly, he can just burn threw them faster and you are going to get CC'ed first, unlike BnS where block has infinity durability.

6 : FPS abuse to make x3 times more damage with the same skill.

1: Incorrect, you can learn to time your I frames and movements to bait out grabs.

2A: Agreed, SA/Block combos are stupid and should be removed.

2B: Stealth is on 2 classes, and they actually not that hard to deal with.

2C: Get more DP and you won't die in 1.5 seconds even when CCed.  This is an AP monkey problem more than a CC problem.

3: Agreed, Ghillie suits need to have something added to the top of the HP bar, if it's Enemy Player, or even Unknown Player in Red or blue it would be enough.  As stands, it's the only actual P2W aspect of the game.

4:  Agreed, most of the community is against resist stacking for PvP.

5A:  Disagree gear should matter for PvP, so the HP thing is a good thing.  Also it takes what 2 seconds to fully recover block, chain a couple of I frames/SA together and you're back at 100% block, unless you are massively gear checked or an AP monkey (see 2C)

5B:  If block was infinite it would be the same problem as 2A where people have SA/Block, only it would be on every class as long as you can keep FG to the other player.

6A:  They've tried fixing it, doing so last time broke a ton of things and was hot fixed back to the way it was inside of 24 hours.  This is an engine problem not a PA problem, there are many many games that do this exact same thing and it's a problem.  One of the ways to fix it is to institute lockstep, which creates rubberbanding on the player's side any time you lag, making the game feal bad.

6B:  As for 3x damage with the same skill, that is incorrect, The damage is the same, it just goes off faster and is not 3x.  There is no mesurable speed difference in skills between 60 and 150 FPS, You need to achieve a 300 FPS to get a 50% reduction in animation speed, and a 600 FPS to get a 75% reduction animation speed which requires $5,000-$10,000 in GUP, Monitor, and processor to make use of, you also need a ping fast enough to utilize the animation speed increase.  Also you don't need to turn the graphics down that far unless you are playing on a Toaster, so get a better computer/monitor setup.

You could be right. The problem which I see is, that MMOs never can reach their potential due to mechanical limitations. Because you need to have one world, which offers all players the same experience at the same time. In fact, you would need to build a whole planet, instead of one map. As I said: the combat system of BDO is much better, than what the game makes out of it. To take these element together with the character creator and put it into a full action adventure open world would open the potential within a more concrete frame, without these limitations. It sounds logical to create "Crimson Desert". Maybe this was even part of the contract: Pearl Abyss bought the right for the mechanics under the requierment to run the game further on the market. 

I am a big fan of MMOS, but I never played one, which offered what I would like to have. They were all superficial and wide spread, instead of deep and precise in an endless varity of possibilities. In fact, there is no real sandbox so far, because for the function of a digital second life, you must not be limited by what the developers or technicial limitations bring in, but this is inevitable the case. Every game has a strong moment and the rest is weak, while most of the worlds are boring and empty, because the developer had to create it - the player cannot. With an action adeventure they can solve this problem. I think it is because of the high costs of maintaining something like that. Although, I would definately pay to play it, if I get what I am searching for. I do not need free to play.

Unfortunately, especially in the Asia market there is the common business strategy to develop a game, run it for a few years and than sell it to another publisher, which invests in maintaining it for some more years, but need not to spend money for development. Therefore these games have a short live span of up to 5 years. EVE Online with more than 10 years has also its rotten structures beneeth its mechanics and also WoW is very old and unable to fit the higher standards. These games cannot reformed drastically and therefore they made new ones instead. Or the companies fail in it, like CCP.

Therefore it could be more attractive for a publisher to make open world action adventures and extend them with new worlds from time to time, instead of having a MMO running with all the necessary maintenance and limitations. Although many specializes in service games but keep it within a calculated time frames. So, you bring out a base game and some extensions over the years and than the game is bought and played, while you minimize costs and maximize profit out of it. Adding a multiplayer is also cheaper than a MMO. Than you bring the next game with another setting and so on. Therefore, you here more about companies like Bethesda oder Ubisoft, because they can develop themselfs, offerings and technologies. They even create own engines.

Eventually, Fantasy-MMOs will die out some day, when the technical limitations cannot be solved with new innovations. And new innovations only come with investments and they only come when you can make calculatable profit out of it. Until than, we have to live with the situation, I think. Space-Sandboxes on the other hand offer a bigger world map with a much larger scale, so it is not necessary to handle massiv amounts of player experiences, concentratet at one small location. In EVE Online you have a strategic view on planets, where you have industry. You cannot land there, but you can transport the goods with your own ship. So they have different levels, where they abstract information from the world to concentrate on one aspect more. And look what Chris Roberts alone tries to do with his game to fill this whole world. It is a nearly impossible task to create an immersive sandbox world and than keep it state-of-the-art. You do better, if you create a fictional world as lore and than make different games out of it within different locations you can design in detail.

Maehwa has the I-frame on Dash and Dash is 90% of the times in cooldown. So there is no counter play.

I was talking about open world PvP, not 1 v 1 duel. He can go in stealth mode > CC you out from nowhere. The pet alert skill is useless because it only works if the other player has negative karma, or if he is a member on a guild you are currently in war with.

You die with 1 combo even if you wear full PEN armor. So 90% of the playerbase dies in 2 seconds.

Gear should matter in the damage you deal via Super Armor trading and normal hits. Block should have always been frontal only. 360o block should have never existed in a "good" PvP game.

Some classes got stronger block than others (thrash balance is everywhere in this game).

Infinity frontal block durability would make the game more e-sport like, because the higher skilled player would have to CC the opponent from the back, instead of pressing 1 skill and burning the whole shield down + CC'ing the opponent.

Also 360o SA block should have never existed in the first place to prevent this from happening.

Also the animations are "almost" NON existent and there is no way to see what your opponent is up to do next and counter play it.

You have to guess what he is going to press next, by knowing his class skills protected rotations.

To give you an example about the animations : In Blade n Soul you can see your opponent's animation when he is comming up for a CC or any attack and if you press perfect block at the perfect time (like Dark Souls parry) you can stun your opponent. In BDO you can't even track your opponent's animations, they just disappear > reappear 24/7 and throwing attacks at you.

This is why BDO is far from a good PvP game.

It's decent at best.

Even a dead game like Kurtzpel (on it's release state) had better combat than BDO :[ >.<

It's sad watching people that played only 1/2 MMO games saying "this game has the best combat ever". . .

Literally fought a 293/348 Ninja Yesterday I have 277/376 , he wasn't 1 comboing me, he was getting close, but not 1 comboing me.  I also have an HP build which puts me at 4.8k health as a Ranger.  I however was 1 comboing him off of every grab or KD.  I don't know his total HP but it was around 3900 based on HP bar stacking.  Yes he was stealth engaging, yes he was grabbing into a down smash for an extended combo.  This went on for about 15 minutes at Arsha Cadry's.  So your claim that Stealth grab = death is BS.

As for the Infinite block, sorry but I fought a 301 evasion sorc, the only time I got KDed was when my block broke she couldn't get behind my FG, I don't have 360 block as a ranger obviously, and if there wasn't the ability to destroy my block, all I have to do is S block, straif, and spin my camrea to block all the damage that is incoming.  Again I have 376 DP with 4.8k HP which makes my block last a lot longer.  Infinite block would actually make everyone have 360 SA because the 120 degree FG makes you immune.

Also the animations are "almost" NON existent and there is no way to see what your opponent is up to do next and counter play it.

You have to guess what he is going to press next, by knowing his class skills protected rotations.

Having the ability to predict what your opponent is going to do instead of just reacting to visual queues makes BDO a more skill based PvP game than Blade n Soul based on  your description.  The necessity of knowing everything about your opponent's class makes BDO a better PvP game than BnS or Dark Souls.