Family Name: Kemphler & Rilma, with data provided by JariWeis

Region: NA

Suggestion: Make it so that it is possible for 2 or more people to loot at every grind spot in the game without creating artificial group spots by creating “Damage Sponges” (the process of buffing monster HP so that multiple people can hit it).

There can be two potential ways to do this:

1) [Preferable] Create a specific, tankier, rotation designed for parties, potentially marked with a <Title>, or have it be a togglable spot with an item similar to Dehkia’s Lantern.

We’ll call it a “Kinship Lantern” going forward. This “Kinship Lantern” has the ability to buff the HP of spawns coming out of a number of “rifts” to certain levels depending on how many lanterns are active; 1 active for base HP, and increasing from there. Fuel for the Dehkia Lantern can be used to fill the “Kinship Lantern”. Note: All members of the party still have to deal damage to receive loot.

Benefits: Party grinding will have its own spot within any given grind zone, letting both Solo and Groups be at any spot in the game that isn’t already a “party” spot.

Detriments: Takes away a rotation or two from the current rotations we have already to create a spot within the grind zone that can support a party. For some spots there might be only a single workable rotation left open for a solo player to take advantage of.

- OR -

2) Apply the change across the entire grind zone without touching the current mob HP.

Benefits: No need to change existing rotations outside of extending to extra packs to compensate for increased damage.

Detriments: The past history of the Development team shows that they will buff Mob HP to compensate for more players hitting a given monster, creating a “Damage Sponge”, and result in a lack of spots to solo grind.

Out of the two proposed options, I feel that creating a “Kinship Lantern” will be the best way to go about this going forward. This will give the development team the ability to tweak a spot to gear appropriate levels while not affecting those that want to play solo. By having this option available to players, it will be possible to make every spot in the game a group grind, if the players desire it to be. Obtaining this item should be fairly simple; it can be a quest that you can do during Season, or given as a potential Season reward.

Ultimately, though, both of these options are a bandaid fix over a much larger problem that has affected the game since it came out of beta, which I will go into more detail on in another post.

Why is this proposed the way it is?

The information here is mostly based around the poll that JariWeis had put out and shared with me.

Over the years, we have seen Black Desert evolve as a game, but devolve as an MMO. To quote what some of the Partners and Content Creators have said over the years, “Black Desert is the best Single-Player MMO out there”. This label that has been added onto Black Desert is misleading, as MMO itself means Massively Multiplayer Online. Black Desert is a MMO without any meaningful group content.

Currently, players wanting to participate in a group grind are corralled into a set number of spots designated for “group grinding” (the most popular of these are Oluns and Turos, especially their Dehkia versions). The other alternative is to be locked into a number of time-gated activities that can be shared among friends (Guild Bosses, Atoraxxion runs, LoML2’s Party Black Shrine). The vast majority of players find time-gated group content an unacceptable alternative to group content.

The vast majority of this game is a single player experience if you have no interest in the set party grind zones we have. There is no requirement to grind spots as a group. You have the luxury to progress on your own at solo grind spots throughout the game. For most players, this is perfectly fine and a completely acceptable situation.

However, for those of us that enjoy grouping with friends, the current situation is, quite frankly, unacceptable. Party-seeking players are currently funneled into ten (10) grind zones, five (5) of which (Waragon Nest, Basilisk Den, Shultz Guard, Altar Imps and Castle Ruins) most players do not go to in the current grind meta due to the Silver gained per hour being severely lacking compared to the other five (5) grind zones. This is not counting the Dehkia versions of each zone, if available. An attempt was made to make party grinding available throughout the game's early gearing by adjusting three spots in Mediah and early Valencia (Waragons, Basilisk Den and Shultz Guard). Unfortunately, these spots were targeted for Seasonal players who now speed through the gear ranges recommended for these three spots, leaving them unused and collecting dust.

Recent patches (July 17 & 25, 2024 specifically) have limited the potential scope of party grinding even further by removing the ability to distribute loot among party members, and removing the ability to set special deals. These two patches have affected the unconventional grinders; couples that don’t want to be shoehorned into specific spots, groups of friends that just want to mess around at any spot in the game, and even players who want to go to the groups spots we have right now.

The later group, specifically, is affected by the change to Special Deals in the patch from July 25th, 2024. Special Deals was considered to be the “great equalizer” for those that wanted to “spread the RNG around”. The vast majority of the group spots we have can have varying numbers of profit depending on what drops per person. For example, the amount of potential silver obtained from Dehkia Oluns can vary at least 800m or more silver depending on if a highly sought after Deboreka Earring drops or not. Before, if groups were going to D-Oluns for only silver, they could set Special Deals and “spread the wealth around”.

This is no longer possible due to these recent changes.

At the end of the day, this proposed suggestion will not make up for the lack of Special Deals, and I feel that anything less than re-implementing the feature will not make up for the void that the removal has left.

Finally, not including the Dehkia versions of the various grind zones, the last new Group Grind zones we have gotten were with Elvia’s release in 2021. If we include Atoraxxion, which is time-gated, the last time we got meaningful group content was in 2022. I would like to assume that this two year content drought is the reason why a number of players decided to do “unconventional” group grinds at higher gear places such as Underground Gyfin, Darkseeker’s Retreat, and Crypt of Resting Thoughts through the use of Ordered Looting.

This suggestion is proposed to help support those that used to do these unconventional grinds, and perhaps encourage those that would have done an “unconventional” grind but never did due to losing out on loot to look at doing it now that their loot isn’t being cut by at least 50%.

Thank you so much for making this post Rilma. It’s very well thought out and well said. “Black Desert is the best Single-Player MMO” is exactly right, and it should not be that way. 

I would love to see this implemented in light of recent changes that do not look like they will be reversed. 

Prior to the changes, it has always been difficult to do any group grinding content with my friends, and these changes have made it even more difficult for me. There is a severe lack of group grinding areas. Not only does it hinder grinding with friends, but it hinders me teaching and helping new players learn different grind spots. 

Grinding alone is very boring, but when I have someone else to grind with or to teach, it makes me more likely to stay and keep playing the game. When one person in your party keeps getting the good drops, it can be discouraging to others and make them less likely to do the content anymore. When the drops are shared, EVERYONE feels included, and that’s exactly how it should be if that’s how players want it to be. 

Again, thank you for this post, Rilma. I'm happy someone said it and included a solution.

I agree with everything, except for the use of the word "evolve", which implies becoming better.  "Devolve" or "Mutate" or "Dying" is much more appropriate for what is happening to this game.  The game has been competative PvP at its core from the get-go, which is fine for the basic default of the open-world.  Yet they're trying to kill it, without giveing us any way to cooperate in any real manner.  Giving us a simple, non-janky mechanic to let us collaborate rather than compete all the time would be great.  It let's us do it on our terms.  The defeault would be competition, and if we choose, we can have a mechanic to allow us to collab.  This game can become great again.

All PA has to do is put in the work.  Right now, they're trying to coast and ride the wave of player interest that isn't there.

This game is on life-support.  Stop killing the game, PA.  Fix it.  Make it a fun, playable work of art again.  We'll gladly support it with cash.

Peace

My word choice is pretty deliberate; not everything that evolves will evolve for the better.

Jari's post was so big that they need to make another topic, so here's a link to it.

At the end of the day, everyone is entitled to their own opinions when it comes to group content vs solo content. But for those of us that enjoy group content, we should be able to enjoy it anywhere in the open world, and not be restricted to certain places.

Removing special deals for loot? Why? Stupid company, bad leadership, thoughtless changes with no communication

Like removing mounted combat because 'it wasn't equal beween classes' nobody cared you didn't help anyone at all with either of these changes they just hurt the players who used it. What kind of worthless developer makes changes that negatively affect some players and positively affect zero players? 

I feel like you completely missed reading through the second post;

".... At the end of the day, this proposed suggestion will not make up for the lack of Special Deals, and I feel that anything less than re-implementing the feature will not make up for the void that the removal has left. ...."

I agree that removing special deals was asinine and poorly thought out. I have never once said (both on Discord and in this post) that I disagreed with the community sentiments in relation to the removal. Unfortunately, I didn't see a way to propose a way to re-include Special Deals in the party lantern proposal without just flat out re-implementing the feature as we had it before, so I didn't include it in the main post.

You know, I've made two posts by now with this exact idea in mind, though those posts are a little more broad in scope than these.
The intent is the same, though. BDO's open world almost seems like it would be designed for intentional group play, but for some reason the game doesn't allow you to do that.  I've always wondered, "What is the design reasoning for all these solo spots to be solo only?"
I personally could never wrap my head around it, even in the times of open world PVP being alive. Wouldn't it make more sense if we were able to grind areas in parties? Even if you were to make the argument you want pvp - if people are in larger parties, that's literally more people to pvp with - So what's the problem?

Quick Rip from the post I did make for changes I suggest: (Link here)

-Allow players to fight monsters in a party up to 5 players, dropping loot for the top 5 damage contributors.

-When monsters are being engaged by a party, linearly increase their HP by each +25+ HP per each party member beyond 1 player. (+100% Monster HP at 5 players) This is done so monster zones are not entirely steamrolled. May need to be higher or lower depending on zone, but that can be adjusted accordingly.

-When monsters are being engaged by a party, limit the party's monster aggro limit to 15 so that the party cannot pull the entire monster zone at once.

If REALLY necessary, you could limit this system to Marni Realm, but I think the game as a whole needs to change, not to mention that not all areas have Marni realms.

Honestly, Piag, I would be fine with that being the hp scaling for 2+ active lanterns. 

We shouldn't punish the people who are bringing a friend along to attempt a spot, as that was one of the larger percentages of those that would do an unconventional grind.