VKMR: Black Desert Online

[Vibe]

English Alpha should begin this Friday!

Also, found this written about housing and crafting (and some other stuff) in BDO from some forum, since I didn't write anything about it myself:

I don't agree. The game has proven to be quite great. I've been playing with a couple of friends for just over two weeks now and the game has continuously proven to be full of surprises. The trading and economy system is kind of annoying and simple on the surface, but then you realize that it's actually quite complex and entirely based on the playerbase. The housing/property ownership system gives the game a sort of city-builder/strategy game twist, especially with workers thrown in the fray.

True, the ArcheAge trading system was more fun in groups. Working together to transport a friends packs to Fredich was always something fun to do, due to the danger factor. However, housing in ArcheAge was mostly a headache. Between the land-grabs, the early-game land-claim bots/macros, the high prices... I knew plenty of people who quit the game because they couldn't find decent land or could not get a piece of land in an area they liked. Guilds, during the first hours of the game, stressed to capture the best plots as soon as they could. My own guild, which was highly casual in nature, had to join in that land-claim mania (and we were rewarded for it) because we knew we would get ****ed if we didn't get good property locations. Sure, that all relaxed a bit as the game began to die due to Trion's other mishaps. But all that, combined with the lack of decorating options (sure, there was some neat things you could do, but it was mostly "meh" for someone like me who came from Dragon's Prophet, Star Wars Galaxies, and other games with more in-depth house customization) made the housing in ArcheAge a required chore if you wanted to have any type of relevancy or wealth. Plus literally every land-claim area looked like a massive cluster-**** of houses that had no rhyme nor reason.

The housing in Black Desert fixes this, as it has all the housing in Black Desert and you can own any house you want (or your contribution will allow for, anyways). Hundreds of people can own the same house. You can claim literally every piece of property in a city. You can set up most of it to do important things - like allowing your workers to process minerals, build tools, pack crops, etc... and select a few of the houses to act as residencies where you can customize the place very similar to what can be done in the Sims games (minus the ability to actually 'build' and expand the house). Based on your decorating - which factors in a lot of things, such as the rarity of your decoration, whether it matches or is in a set with other decorations, etc... - you get a score and are put on a list that allows others to visit your home.

That makes for one of the best housing systems I've experienced in an MMO to date. It's both instanced and non-instanced. There's no load screens when entering a specific persons version of the home, and you (or the owner) can open the windows of the place and look at other players going about their business if you want.

Crafting is quite interesting. It's a mixture of the house-ownership system and a sort of a-typical manual crafting. For some of the 'big' things like tools, weapons, armors, etc... you'll need to find a house capable of supporting those processes. If you want to make some beer for your workers, you'll have to get a residency and place a cooker in there and brew it yourself. Same with all other foods and alchemy. And you may find that you'll need ingredients that can only be produced from houses to do manual crafting and vice-versa.

It's been incredible watching my own little trade empire grow and evolve. From nothing, to a modest farming operation, to a tool selling operation that makes me hundreds of thousands of silver a day. I've expanded my property ownership in the city I'm based in and I love walking through the town and noticing that one of the buildings I'm passing is one of my warehouses or my mineral processing plant. Often times I'll be adventuring (or, again, walking through the city) and see one of my workers going about the job I've given him. Unfortunately, this often feels like a single player game due to the nature of some of the games systems. But it's still quite fun.

Combat is quite nice, too. It feels like (in my opinion) a more fluid version of Tera's. One of the reasons I couldn't get into Tera was due to some of the tiny nuances in the feel of the combat. So it's been quite nice. And you say there's no reason to group, but I've found plenty of reason to group with my two friends. We often get together and grind. It lets us take on much stronger enemies, pull bigger groups of enemies, and generally speeds up the process a tad while making it a lot more enjoyable because of the company. Later on, though, grouping won't be too enticing. Right now it is during the leveling process. But in the "end" after you've hit a high level, grinding is often just about money generation so I agree that there should be a lot more reason to group in at least the end game. I hear that there might be some sort of 'raid boss' for guilds? That require a decent number of people. But I believe that's only in Korea so far.

I would love ship combat, though. That was absolutely one of my favorite things about ArcheAge (and Darkfall). It's kind of annoying that PVP doesn't feel like much of a thing except for something you do when you want a grind spot someone else has or to partake in the guild siege system. I enjoy more open-world PVP style systems. But, again, it's alright. The rest of the game has managed to suck me in to play ten+ hours a day for about two weeks now (along with my two other friends and a bit of a lesser extent for other members of my guild) so I'm alright with some less-than-spectacular PVP systems.

All-in-all, I guess it's about preference. And about the version of the game you're playing. Russia I would give an 8 out of 10, because the grind is a bit too brutal. Though I actually like the sense of progression it gives... just it sucks having to kill about a thousand enemies per level, while spending hundreds of thousands on potions because HP regeneration is non-existent in most cases. I haven't played KR, but I've heard it's a lot more casual than what we're experiencing in Russia. I'm personally hoping that the NA version will be tweaked to be a bit of a middle group, with more leaning towards the Russian grind and perhaps some open-world PVP with meaning. Who knows, though. Perhaps we'll get to see with this upcoming alpha test.

[Gatsby]

I will wait for eu version, the b2p it's good for me, but i wanna see what the in game shop sells before taking any decision.

[Vibe]

Btw there's a couple of ways to secure an Alpha key: https://www.reddit.com/r/blackdesertonline/comments/3or4tz/first_hints_at_how_to_get_an_alpha_invitation/

Alpha Schedule (servers live time):

08:00 / 20:00 CEST (26th October / 1st November)
12:00 / 24:00 EDT (26th October / 1st November)
07:00 / 19:00 PDT (26th October / 1st November)

[Radament]

We discovered that travelling on the sea is locked for now in OB RU , RIP the Pirate Dream .
if anyone want to join our "multicultural" guild (we got all types of people , french , russians , milfs etc) he's welcome , just send a tell to NewMeta or Loreleine and you are in.

[Vibe]

Explains a bit about housing, housing purposes (crafting/production) and workers

[Vibe]

Since I'm playing EU Alpha now, I'll give an update to my first impressions from RU:

(click to show/hide)

Mind you I haven't tried any crafting, trading, PvP or any other side activities (like horse taming/breeding, etc) other than pure leveling, so here's my few impressions of the game:

- there's a lot of different attacks/combos your class can do, which is nice
- however, I feel like there's no "weight" behind these attacks, I might as well spam the primary (left mouse) attack and achieve the same thing
- potions have a 2 sec cooldown, which makes them spammable (very old skool asian mmo style)
- couple that with not so difficult monsters, it makes the PvE kinda bland
- graphics and animations are great (it's an asian game after all)
- however, everything is so flashy, your whole character flashes, enemies flash, skills flash, literally everything fucking flashes. It's very heavy on the eyes, no joke. And this is AFTER I disabled all those screen shakes (that you see in some videos) that make you nauseous

So after like 12 levels I put this on hold until EU/NA version is out. I'll test it more then, for now it didn't hype me enough to keep playing RU. Maybe I'm just hard to please these days, dunno. Daum (devs and publishers for EU/NA) said they realize western version will require changes, and they're already showing that by making the game buy2play - the only question here remains whether the cash shop will be purely cosmetic/convenience or pay2win like in KR/RU...
Also, they apparently skimmed a lot of PvP in KR/RU. Apparently karma system makes open world PvP useless and not worth it, you can't rob people doing trades, etc. Basically PvP outside guild wars is dead. Which is a damn shame because the PvP could be great if you could rob trading caravans (like in ArcheAge) or fight for resources.

Here's a lil extra for you guys to see how pay2win KR shop is

- I'm slowly getting the hang of the combat system. Some stuff is still confusing due to no explanations or just weird translation - but I googled and found out what different types of attack do, for example down attack type does extra damage when the enemy is knocked down, air attack when the enemy is launched into air, etc... (still trying to figure out what down smash and air smash is). Some attacks make the enemy face the other way so you can get in back attacks (that deal extra damage).
So the combat system is definitely not simple, and I can see PvP have A LOT of depth with combos and chaining correct attacks together. Overall a very fast paced action combat system that doesn't feel like it roots your character to the ground when you attack (aka TERA). Enjoying it a lot. However for PvE:
- I'm currently level 17 and some mobs hit very hard - some bosses have special moves that you need to dodge or you'll be consuming a fuckton of pots. But, I feel like short cooldowns (2 sec or something) on healing potions kills all difficulty, which is a real shame. The mobs don't feel like they have much AI, but you still have to dodge and use defensive moves here and there to not get killed (or with potions, not lose health so fast).
- Absolutely love the design of villages/towns. They're gorgeous and feel awesome to traverse through. Everything feels alive, with NPCs and players going about their way, conversing, doing their stuff.
- In addition to figuring out you can remove the screen shaking, I now found out you can also remove the character/mob body flashing in combat, which made the game less visually frustrating for me (was one of my complaints from RU beta)
- I love how they've done housing in this game - while it is technically instanced, there's no loading whatsoever when entering houses - you simply select which house you want to visit when you're at the door and it'll load the interior instantly. This comes with it's advantages as well - housing is limitless, meaning that a single house/flat can be purchased by everyone, so it's not first come first serve.
- Housing is not without it's meaning as well - it can be used as additional storage, crafting workshops, homes for your workers, etc
- Quests are primarily for gaining contribution points and not for exp/leveling - contribution points are in turn used for unlocking nodes (to send your workers to to gather materials) and purchasing houses
- There's quite a few minigames hidden in the game as well - for example balancing a horse or driving a wheelbarrow
- There's also a lot of other features that i'll briefly mention: for example running to increase your stamina or carrying heavy load to increase your strength, leveling your horse/horse stats/gear, horse taming/breeding, different types of ground mean different movement speed, monsters become stronger but give more exp after 22:00.  Rain has a visual effect on your character and I think it also reduces your damage. Being damaged has a visual effect on your character (you're covered in blood). Possibly a whole lot more of other features that you don't see in your typical MMO, but help make this game more interesting.
- Horses/donkeys are not just an item that you use in your inventory to make them magically appear out of nowhere - they're living things with their own health, level, stamina, gear and inventory. There's actions you can perform on a horse to restore their stamina. Horses turn at their own rate, not instantly. When you dismount your horse stays where you left it - this means you can't just "despawn" your horse and walk away - you'll have to go fetch it.
- I've tried to do a bit of trading as well - basically you purchase a good in one town and transport it to another - both trade goods and player auction house are localized - which means each town has it's own! If you want to sell your stuff somewhere else, you have to transport it (I don't know for certain if you can use workers to transport stuff from town to town). Your inventory has a slot and weight limit, so you can use a horse or a carriage to transport more. To profit from Trading goods you have to have two towns connected - which means you need to invest contribution points to connecting nodes between these two towns.
- Haven't tried any PvP yet
- A lot of NPCs are more complex - they have their own interests and provide certain knowledge - knowledge is used in conversations with these NPCs to gain like a reputation with them (called amenity). With higher amenity with certain NPCs you get something extra - either a new quest, or more options in their shop.

[Radament]

with a tweak to pot cooldowns and a rework to karma system , pvp should be perfect imho.

[Gatsby]

I don't care about pve but is the pots spam present in pvp also? cos that's not whay i'm looking for.

[Vibe]

I don't care about pve but is the pots spam present in pvp also? cos that's not whay i'm looking for.

Yeah apparently it is, which is a huge turn off

[Vibe]

Closed beta for EU/NA starts 12th of December. There's preorder packs available for Black Desert now.

They are making the following changes to western version:

Improved balance of character classes
Improved weather cycles, including darker and occasionally stormy nights and lanterns that can be purchased from NPCs to help players in the dark
Newly enabled features such as the much requested walking mode and more
Adjustment of HP Potions to improve the PvP challenges

This makes me more optimistic, it seems they're listening to community requests. I'm glad they're adjusting potions, I'm just hoping it's going to be a significant enough adjustment. Anyway, not getting excited until I seee what's in the cash shop, but they keep saying it'll be convenience only in Q&As.

[Gravoth_iii]

Closed beta for EU/NA starts 12th of December. There's preorder packs available for Black Desert now.

They are making the following changes to western version:

This makes me more optimistic, it seems they're listening to community requests. I'm glad they're adjusting potions, I'm just hoping it's going to be a significant enough adjustment. Anyway, not getting excited until I seee what's in the cash shop, but they keep saying it'll be convenience only in Q&As.

Can i sign up for it somewhere?

[Vibe]

Can i sign up for it somewhere?

Only through preorder, as far as I know.

https://www.blackdesertonline.com/preorder/?trcode=WHE001

[Vibe]

with a tweak to pot cooldowns and a rework to karma system , pvp should be perfect imho.

Our wishes are coming true one by one...

New update: Valencia Part II - New PK Criminal System

1) New PK system applied to Valencia
- Karma penalties significantly reduced
- No weapon enchant degrading or gem loss on death
- EXP loss still applies
- 'Prison camp' system: red tendency players will be confined to prison camps. Jail time increases based on the amount of people you've killed. However, it is possible to use the stealth system to sneak past prison guards and escape early.
- Players with positive karma can earn 'Seals of the Bounty Hunter' by slaying red tendency players.

2) 2 New town hubs
- Arehaja village & Mui Kun
- Mui Kun is the outlaw town. Positive karma players will get attacked by guards; negative karma players won't!
- Mui Kun has it's own set of daily quests with rewards that apply to negative karma players.

3) Valencia trade reform
- Trading in Valencia will be more beneficial.
- Increased sales benefit from trading to/from Valencia City compared to other parts of the world
- Of course, beware red tendency players from raiding your trade wagons as they are no longer heavily penalised for doing so.

4) New desert resources
- 'Black Water' can be harvested by guilds building new extractors in the desert. Black Water is expected to be a highly beneficial resource in the future. References to sailing boats and 'trains' that will benefit from Black Water. (Personal interpretation: 'Black Water' could easily be a reference to 'Black Liquid' aka oil. This 'trains' reference is giving me There Will Be Blood flashbacks haha).
- Guilds will need to keep an eye on their extractors, and they will require maintenance (eg. damage from sandstorms).
- Warring guilds can raid and destroy other guilds' extractors. Protect them!

5) New dungeons
- Akuman Ruins & Histria Ruins
- Akuman dungeon is tied to the mystery of the ancient civilisation protectors.
- Histria dungeon is tied to/is a continuation of the lore established in the Hasra dungeon in Media.
- Histria is of an 'overwhelming' scale compared to Hasra dungeon.
- New rare and unique item drops from the new dungeons
- Entering the dungeons requires 'a sense of adventure and luck'. Randomised dungeon entrance location (think Nuber world dragon spawns). Traveling with other adventurers is advised so that the party can spread out and locate the 'swirling sands' that mark the dungeon entrance more efficiently.
- Difficult mobs populate the dungeons, advised to enter as a party or a guild.

6) New elite desert monsters & goblin bandits
- Difficulty tuned where it's advisable to bring friends to tackle them.
- Goblin bandits will appear in the desert. Loot them for a chance at earning bandit loot (rare artifacts, or even bullion). You can catch them using taming ropes (lol). Sugar lumps do nothing (lol).

7) Annex functionality comes online
- All those annexes marked on the world map in Valencia will have their functionality unlocked.
- You can buy a ticket to access annex servcies, which include unique daily quests, and NPC merchants.
- You can also use your annex access to tame baby elephants - unlocking elephants for personal use(?) like horses and donkeys.
- New knowledge to be gained by visiting all the various annexes.

8) Update launch in December 2015 (I believe this is KR only for now). Not all updates may make it into the first release, as they will be released sequentially over a period of time (speculation: weekly updates will constantly introduce the elements outlined above).


This makes me excited. It seems they're finally putting some meaning into open world PvP besides Guild vs Guild and resource wars, and reducing penalties for being a PKer. This is starting to remind me of ArcheAge PvP a bit, which is a good thing. Traders doing trade runs for profit, criminals trying to ambush them. Absolutely love the idea of prison camps and being able to escape them, as well as an outlaw town.

[SeQuel]

This makes me excited. It seems they're finally putting some meaning into open world PvP besides Guild vs Guild and resource wars, and reducing penalties for being a PKer. This is starting to remind me of ArcheAge PvP a bit, which is a good thing. Traders doing trade runs for profit, criminals trying to ambush them. Absolutely love the idea of prison camps and being able to escape them, as well as an outlaw town.

NOW you're peeking my interests. I really enjoyed Archeages outlaw system of how you could steal peoples shit, unfortunate the game outside of that was shit. My co-worker is buying the 100$ preorder thing and said he'd give me a guest pass.

[Vibe]

NOW you're peeking my interests. I really enjoyed Archeages outlaw system of how you could steal peoples shit, unfortunate the game outside of that was shit. My co-worker is buying the 100$ preorder thing and said he'd give me a guest pass.

Yes, and this (coupled with previous patches meant for west) confirms two things:
- they're listening
- something is finally happening to endgame, which is where the game severly lacks

Oh also this

CLOSED BETA SIGNUP:
https://www.blackdesertonline.com/events/cbt1/ApplyForm.html