A little (but not so little) rant and opinion on the current situation, feel free to take it as it is or just go full-on man-child mode like it's usual on this community:

If there's anything to blame for BDO's decline, it's both the toxicity from certain PvP players (Reds) and the fact that Pearl Abyss seems out of touch with their own game and community. To clarify, when I mention these toxic "PvP players" I'm not referring to the skilled players found in AoS tournaments or those who enjoy PvP in Battle Arena or Red Battlefield, even though those modes are pretty much dead now lol. Nor am I talking about players who seek genuine PvP encounters while grinding in Arsha or the ones that used to be into Nodewars. I'm talking about the average, gear-dependent red players who go around killing less equipped players, disrupting grinding sessions or even lifeskill sessions... or the ones trying to enforce made-up rules like "DFS" and other nonsense.

Combine this with Pearl Abyss's incapability to get in touch with their playerbase and their own game, the lack of communication, and you've got a recipe for disaster. Removing open-world PvP from normal servers and implementing karma changes was the right move to sort of control the toxicity and harassment issues we had in the past, but failing to compensate the players who actually care about PvP is a major reason why the game is in its current state, I'm not a PvP player and even I get it. Additionally, another important topic on the decline of the "Quality of Content" is the lack of meaningful group PvE content, this makes the game feel less like an MMORPG and more like a single-player experience. The last time I felt "rewarded" for grinding with friends was back when Mirumok Ruins was the go-to spot for leveling up. Since then, there hasn't been any real reason to grind with friends, which is killing the social aspect of the game, or at least for me.

It's sad because these issues could be easily fixed. PA could introduce meaningful rewards for players who engage in open-world PvP on dedicated servers, develop party-focused grind spots with gameplay mechanics that require planning and true teamwork, and for the love of god... stop punishing players for grinding with friends. Let's take for example, another game called Elsword. Elsword has a party system where the more people is in your party, the more buffs you receive, such as additional EXP, Attack/casting Speed, Movement Speed (that I see irrelevant on BDO but there's that) and drop-rate bonuses, etc. In Elsword we find that the dungeons that give the most rewards are those that require true planning and composition of classes that work together in harmony to facilitate grinding as well as in-game mechanics knowledge. These are simple ideas that (as far as I consider) could significantly improve the game... yet for some reason... PA, seems unable to implement even basic reworks (at least successfully) in the game, since every single rework done recently has been rejected by the community...

So to make all this more digestible:

1) Add meaningful group PvE content and stop punishing party grinding.
2) Add meaningful PvP content and stop punishing rewards on PvP modes since this only creates more toxicity in the PvP community that already is one of the most toxic...

3) LISTEN-TO-YOUR-COMMUNITY, you don't play the game, we do; you don't know what we want (clearly), we do.

4) Stop trying to re-invent the wheel, there's no need, and to be quite honest, every time PA tries to do this... they always mess it up...do your homework as a devteam, look what positives other MMO's have successfully implemented, and adapt said characteristics to your game and LISTEN TO THE FEEDBACK.

But yeah I guess the TLDR would be:

Fix PvE by adding fun-to-do group content and encourage said group grinding through buffing the rewards instead of punishing players for playing with friends lol. And please... STOP PUNISHING PvP players... there are millions of ways to give both sides of the community what they want without making us kill each other every single patch (by this I mean Forums, Discord, YouTube, and Reddit posts that serve no other purpose to unify the community into hating the game and the DevTeam).

Apologies for the "rant". I just hope the best for this game because it's only fair to wish well to something we all love, even if it's going through a rough patch. Everyone deserves a chance to fix their mistakes, including PA. I hope everyone has a great day and enjoys whatever game brings them happiness right now!

if they add more coop stuff ill quit, i dont want to group, i want to play whenever however i want.

My brother in Ellion then I think what you are looking for is a single player RPG experience. How on earth you pretend that a MMORPG game focused now on PvE, can provide any sort of fun with no group content?
Without group content any PvE oriented MMORPG will always feel empty... You have PvE content in many forms (such as grinding, dungeons, shrine bosses... you also have all the PvP modes, you have lifeskills... "I don't want to group" well then under that logic, that discards, dungeons, nodewars, GvG... pretty much everything that means interacting with other players except OWPvP... like I said, what you are seem to be looking for is called a RPG... like an MMORPG but without other players...

Edit: Also now you got me curious... what "more group content" you are talking about? cuz I can only recall 3 or 4 party grindspots in the whole game... the dungeons and (doing a omega-stretch) Arena of Solare because it's a 3v3 and you can only go in party with randoms at Rankeds and custom party at unranked... oh and guild bosses.

Lol, Grind 20-30hrs a week, from Trolls to Tungy to Highlands, etc., I haven't ran into someone like you're describing in the past 5 years of grinding/lifeskiling.
The people you're talking about don't exist anymore, so Im not sure why people keep talking about them like they're some boogyman waiting to hop out of the shadows on some Tuvala Timmy. Non Arsha OWPvP is beyond dead at this point.
The rest of your points I can agree with.

I never said the problem is encountering them in-game, I mean they are the issue in other ways other than just hunting PvE'rs and Lifeskillers... the problem is said small sector of the community (the PvP'ers) is their purely toxic and controversial mindset and opinions (which is still the loudest and most toxic sector of the community...even tho they are a minority now). Red players exist, denying it is simply delusional...  in waaay smaller numbers and less frequency of finding in-game, sure, but every time PA announces a change, they are the first to jump in the comments section to cry and post toxic and chaotic comments... and they aren't just a few...

Just take a look every time there's a patch note, being it live-server or global-labs, you will find hundreds if not thousands of comments saying things like "Ok this makes it, the game is dead now" or "Wow I can't wait to play a real game when T&L comes out" or the classic "omg PA is jus killing my game babysitting all those carebears" and all those comments that provide zero valid and/or valuable feedback and only exist to generate controversy and toxicity. The same thing happens in the comments sections on YouTube videos... Streams Chats, and of course... on Reddit it is the daily bread to read some specimen crying bitterly about the "current situation and decline and imminent death of the game"... Meanwhile the game shows an average daily population of 28k concurrent players in the game client and 15k concurrent players at the Steam Launcher... while games like New World show an average of 4k concurrent players and we all know at least half of that numer are bots... That's what I mean when I say PvP'ers are the most toxic part of this community posting all those rage and hate-fueled comments about the game dying...when clearly it's healthy. I have NEVER Taylor Swift EVER saw a PvE'r or Lifeskiller post such hate-fueled comments about anything at all, it always comes from a PvP'er and or a Red Player... ALWAYS... So yeah, sorry if I didn't explain myself properly, I also should mention that English isn't my main language so there's that too... Have a wonderful day~

I agree with the frustrations, but a few people spamming chat with racist, toxic, homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic walls of grief texts are not helping the cause 

Two of them spammed world chat last night 

I don't think I understand this statement?

I agree with you about the toxicity of a few pro pvp players.  While I understand their frustration, the toxicity of the few don't help the cause

Ahh gotcha, sorry for asking it's just that english isn't my main language and sometimes it's hard to me to fully get the real meaning of some stuff. Completely agree with you tho, generating conflict and drama about anything will hardly help to it's grow or improvement. And this is exactly what the PvP community is doing about this or any other topic. And unfortunately to all of us (specially to them) it'd look like the vast majority of the PvP community is conformed by the average manchild that simply can't take criticism and or feedback... hell, they can't even take different opinions, they feel that they are the bearers of absolute truth, and anyone that thinks differently is just a... well... you know how it goes.

And the funny thing is, I get insulted constantly for being the chill PvE dude that enjoys chilling and doing instanced PvP casually (like AoS) and defending the OWPvP changes that were very much needed. TBH, I fully believe that the true PvP players are completely ok with said changes, what they don't like is the lack of alternatives to have dynamic, organic and fun PvP game mode alternatives where they can enjoy PvP without conflicting PvE players.

Let's be real, the only ones who get mad, toxic and call this game "dead" and write all those doom-posts are the average Reds that have that... (I'll call it "ego" to not get reported lol) size complex, the classic: -"hahaha so fun to kill ppl 250GS under me while they grind, makes me feel very strong and good at the game"-. 

On the other hand, players that ACTUALLY do PvP and are good at it... dude I can only feel so bad for them, because I 100% get that PvP is one of the core aspects of this game, and not getting content that can fully exploit it's potential is kinda dissapointing. But I can guarantee every single player that there are ways to keep both sides of this community happy, it wouldn't be the first game that offers an hybrid PvP and PvE content successfully.

Hell... I'd even say at this point: "PA for the love of god wake up, undo all those polemic guild changes, just get rid of open world PvP and develop alternatives for PvP players to have more ways to have fun and enjoy the game too". Because I think I can speak for quite some PvE players when I say: We don't mind if they revert Guild War changes, we don't mind if they revert Node War changes, we don't mind anything that can improve PvP'rs time and experience in the game... we just don't want to be forced into said content, we don't want to get ganked while doing lifeskills, we don't want to get ganked while full buff rotation while grinding... and before the average Negative Karma player comes to reply "b.b.b.b.but that hardly happens anymore since OWPvP in this game is dead" Yeah... it hardly happens now THANKS TO THOSE CHANGES. So yeah... I really think that 50% of the current situation is to be blamed on toxic PvP'rs and the other half is to blamed on PA, that simply wasn't capable of adressing the issues in the best way possible... And lastly, I just want to stress this enough for everyone that isn't happy with the state of the game: BEING TOXIC WON'T HELP YOUR CAUSE.

Sorry for the long reply, and once again, I hope y'all have a wonderful day and remember to try and enjoy it~