I've tried to put some of my thoughts and concerns I've had with the game into words. I hope it's somewhat hits how I feel about BDO.

I don't think I love BDO anymore. BDO has lost its art.

(that doesn't mean you can no longer have fun with the game!).

I played almost every aspect of this game.

Every grind spot has become braindead easy due to added "mechanics" and tower spots.

Lifeskills were ignored for years and are now family-wide.

Ocean content remains unfinished.

Failstacking has become boring.

--Can you think of anything in the game that is "perfect"?--

For me, there isn't a single thing. Everything feels half-finished, lacks positive direction in game design wise, or feels out of place.

--I also wondered if this was a me-problem?--

Let's look at an analogy: If BDO is a burger, it was like a delicious burger in a run-down, messy shop you would randomly discover in a city and fall in love with. But over time, PA turned it into a fast-food place on the main street. Many people like fast-food burgers, but I was here for the delicious burger, and now I only get fast-food burgers...

--Was it necessary for PA to turn BDO from a niche game into mainstream?--

Looking at Crimson Desert and DokeV, I don't think so! Crimson Desert is a large open-world game akin to Assassin's Creed/RDR2, and DokeV is a Pokémon-like game with Monster Hunter combat vibes. Both target completely different audiences than BDO. PA are already planning to expand the number of their consumers with these two games. So, there was no need for BDO to exclusively focus on newer players at the cost of maintaining older players. 

--Lets look at BDO as art--

In literature and art, you are praised when you create something completely new that requires a high level of skill and experience and creates a deep connection with readers or viewers. In games, however, "we" praise developers when the content is shallow, doesn't require a great deal of time or skill, and appeals to the broadest possible audience.

Mods for Rome 1, Medival 2 or BFME 2 are art. Pre gen 5 MH is art. But BDO? BDO has lost its art.

--AoS--

AoS was the last content I really loved. Awk Witch was never really good in PvP, but I loved playing her. With the pre-DR patch, she was decent enough to compete with other classes due to high constant DPS output and the skill Fissure Wave.

With the DR patch, after years of one-shot meta, everyone finally got tankier, and you rarely died standing up anymore. The patch received a lot of negative feedback since certain classes became 3x tankier while dealing the same damage as everyone else. Instead of adjusting these classes, PA introduced new gear for AoS just two weeks later, which basically reverted the patch and made it even worse than before.

PA finally decided to remove resistance from AoS, which is great news. But after testing it out, Awk Witch feels an order of magnitude worse than almost every other class. This outdated class just doesn't work there. 1 CC and you are dead.

It's all about burst damage, protected/fast CCs, grabs, and mobility now, even more so than it was pre-DR patch. I'm popping off on my Drak a lot more than before these patches, but all I wanted was to enjoy AoS on my Awk Witch...

Note: I've been feeling down because of BDO for quite a while now. I will conitnue to have fun with the game but I realized that I will only suffer if I keep loving BDO. Now BDO is just a tool to get fun for me and no longer art. Have a great day everyone o/

You're not wrong. The game is just a husk of its former self and it feels like every patch, every ball its slowly becoming more bland. Us pvpers have been receiving gut punch after gut punch for months now, and honestly I don't think it'll get better with the foreseeable future with what we see is in the pipeline. I have basically quit playing the game, I don't have a reason to PVE anymore, I despise what new nodewars have become, and AOS is basically my only real reason left to play the game. Unfortunately they had to mess around with this too much as well, and the balance and meta is all over the place, and its ruined it even more. Most of the guildies, and friends I have made over the years, who passionately played this game almost non stop, have been taking long breaks, can barely find the motivation to play or log in. Its a shame to see the game in the state that it is in, but for me, and many others, the lights are about to go out.

In 2016 the head designer for Magic the Gathering gave a GDC talk on the lessons learned in 20 years of designing MtG.  These are pretty universally applicable, and PA runs into them constantly, but never seems to learn any lessons from them.  To steal some examples:

Lesson #1: Fighting against human nature is a losing battle

- This is basically all they do.  Everythings a punishment; never an incentive.  This is most easily observed with how they've tried to handle snipe guilds over the years.  Rather than incentivizing them to do something else (grind boosts during NW time, base funds for not placing, etc.), they try to actively punish them instead.  This fails or ends up actively punishing people trying to participate and both sides of the issue are left unhappy.

Lesson #5: Don't confuse "interesting" with "fun"

- Why do maps in AOS have to do damage?  Why does every new thing have to have some gimmick to it?

Lesson #11: If everyone likes your game but no one loves it, it will fail

- I like Arrowheads version better tbh: A game made for everyone is a game made for no one. They've been trying to make the game more widely accessible and it's actively making the game worse.  The biggest example is stuff like the dec changes most recently.

Lesson #13: Make the fun part also the correct strategy to win

- They mess this up constantly in pvp, I feel like they just don't have anyone in the org that actually enjoys it so they just throw stuff out that ends up going back to lesson 5.

Lesson #15: Design the component for its intended audience

- Going to ranked AOS for this one.  This is a competitive mode where people are meant to show off their skill at the game.  This should be as consistent and balanced as possible, and yet what do we see.  Random map gimmicks, bsr spam, resists, ridiculously balanced classes and/or class mechanics, etc.  They took a system that should have been designed for pvpers to show their skill on a fairly level playing field and made it a circus.  They did the same thing with the new NW system.  NW was designed for objective based pvpers, it's now just a less fun rbf.  It's completely lost its objective aspect and the best way to play it is to basically not.

Lesson #16: Be more afraid of boring your players than challenging them

- This goes to overall design philosophy in general, they've taken the challenge out of a lot of things or just don't put any in to begin with.  There's certainly a balance needed here though, things can't be so hard that a new player would take 8 years to catch up to existing players.

Lesson #17: You don't have to change much to change everything

- Shift the damn meta. We don't need massive reworks every 2 years. We need consistent, meaningful, change.

Lesson #19: Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them

- Stop ignoring our feedback.  Yes, you should probably take our solutions with a grain of salt, but at least listen when we're saying there's a big problem.

True

It's going to be okay

 - Jae

What a joke this game has become. If can only support whats been said before. The only reason my guildies and i havent completely quit is because we like to play AoS together for 1-2 hours every few days. Legit 0 reason to touch the "normal" part of the game anymore. Its boring, offers no challenges and the overall impression you get when traveling thorugh the world is that it feels completely dead. What a great experience (obviously no sarcasm intended)

I think there's something really wrong with people in charge of PA. I don't mean any kind of disrespect here.

But, for some reason, they make a lot of bad decisions.

What surprises me is that game is actually good. Graphics still hold, combat is still amazing, classes are interesting and even the world building got better (yeah, I enjoy Jordine Saga - which surprised me a lot).

BDO has good foundations and is developed well enough to be very good, but someone there at the top is constantly making very bad decisions despite having good game at hand. NW changes, dec changes/griefing, AoS, DR patch, War of the Roses - every change was meant to fix some kind of problem or introduce something new, but each created more issues (or was doa like WoR).

With each patch we see more frustrated veterans, and there's no game without dedicated playerbase. Sadly, there's nothing to be done.

At this point I doubt J. or whoever is in charge will start suddenly making good decisions.

Nice stuff. Do you  have a link to that?

Really wish they'd start listening to feedback, don't want this game to die. I love this game as well as my characters. I would love it more though if they'd listen to player feedback (NA/EU) and made GOOD changes. I understand they can't please everyone, but they don't even try...

This game still has so much potential, and to see it squandered due to poor management...very frustrating! It's sad to think of what this game could have been, they could still save it. If they cared to...

Revamping/overhauling outdated classes would be a good start (lore/story, skills, animations, and effects). Give the older classes (some of which have been played/mained since beta) some love. Make them stand-out and be relevant.

Fixing bugs/glitches/issues players have been complaining about for years.

Give character creation a good overhaul (lighting, textures, and options). This game has been out for 10 years, come on PA!