I'll try to write this post from an unbiased PoV, but I'll be honest. It's incredibly hard to. 


Currently in this game Griefers hold far too much power in PvE spots. I'm sure everyone has experienced this before on both sides and unless something is done about it, the community is going to continue to fester and rapidly grow in toxicity. 

Just so you guys understand what I mean, I'll write down a few examples from both sides of being the one grinding and being the one coming to the grind spot


As the grinder: You're grinding a highly contested spot, it took you 60 minutes to find this open rotation where no one was actively grinding when 15mins into your lootscroll you see a random white dot circling your rotation. Without saying anything to you whatsoever they start killing the mobs in the rotation you're doing, effectively ruining your rotation and wasting what little time you have to play the game. 

So you go to them and ask to DFS. No response,
You then try to dec their guild. "Guild is not ready for war"

At this point you have a few choices.
You can continue to grind and effectively waste your time and effeciency,
Go red and try to kill them(risking your gear outright DOWNGRADING 
or just leave the rotation completely and spend another hour looking for another open rotation.
Or, you can risk getting in trouble for feeding them to mobs with a grab alt character.

As the "spot intruder" 
So you just got pushed out of your old rotation by what may have been a bot, may have been an annoying player abusing the "not ready for war" guild system in the game

You swap to another server and there's someone already on every rotation in the spot you want to grind, so you go up to one and ask how long they're going to be here for.
"idk, couple hrs"
So you ask them nicely to DFS
"No thanks"

So your next obvious option is to dec their guild and pvp them that way in order to have access to the extremely limited resources in the game, right? 

"guild is not ready for war"

Well then. Messed up situation right? please refer to the first list of options you have to deal with this kind of person, because they're the exact same. 





Now here's the most common answer I see to this problem coming from the same players who abuse the "not deccable guild" mechanic

"Why do you think people should be forced to dfs on rotations, you don't own the rotation!"

Of course, NO ONE  owns the rotation, that INCLUDES YOU.

With how insanely finite the best resources for wealth in this game are when it comes to PvE, no one should be able to use a "guild not deccable" system to completely negate the need for open world PvP in order to freely have access to the best money making spots in the game.  If you want to grind the most contested spots in the game, you should have to fight for it. You should not be untouchable.

The karma system is EXTREMELY outdated. Back when everyone was running around in PRI grunil, having a downgrading system in the game was whatever. But now, you risk losing 50-100Billion silver items in open world PvP.



So here's my suggestion that will fix everyones problem.







GET RID OF THE GEAR DOWNGRADING SYSTEM FOR GOING RED


INTRODUCE FULLY INSTANCED OPTIONS FOR EVERY GRIND SPOT IN THE GAME


REMOVE THE SAFETY FEATURE OF "GUILD NOT READY FOR WAR" (even though if this is removed, the griefers will just go guildless and do the same thing. So I guess just get rid of the gear downgrading punishment for going red.) 


Many people don't have a ton of time to play the game, but with that being said they still want to have a chance to gring the most contested spots in the game. Which should be fully doable, but currently every single high end spot is filled with these "guild not ready for war" griefers.

And there's no answer to it currently.



I'm down to discuss this in the comments, if you have an opinion coming from any side of this.

Here's my take, this dfs crap is far too toxic and your solution is just ramping up the toxicity

When you're free to flag or fight anyone, it just become a GS race of whoever whale the most, and it's just unfun to fight something u can't win at all

Here's a better solution options

1. Copy system of BDO mobile, where the "spot" is just a single pack, where the respawn is really fast and u don't need to claim half an area to grind.  No DFS, no spot contest, just go PVE as you want

2. Reward partying up. Party of 2 clearing same rotation makes loot go to 50% to both player. Party of 3 clearing same rotation makes loot go 33% to everyone, or some sort of stuff like that, so everyone got the exact same loot whether in party or solo instead of fighting over loot. This way, party of 2 clearing 1 rotation or solo clearing the same rotation is the exact same money outcome, with the party of 2 clearing double the speed but maybe bigger rotation, basically same money/hr

100% agree with this, in my opinion aboslutely every grind spot in the game should be scalable from 1 to 5 party members. Not only would it improve the duel for spot dilemma. But it would make the game a social game, its an mmo after all, but the only time you interact with other player out in the open world is when someone wants to duel for spot or comes to greif. Unless you're at a grind spot that isnt't that great money wise. 

PA could really hit the nail on the head with such a change, remember the friends we made a long time ago at spots like Sausan or Pirates? Remember the FUN pvp that came out of those grind spots. PVP around spots these days is mostly spiteful pvp that is caused by lack of cooperation between players. 

Edit: Oh and also just going to mention, with the new item collection gauge system, quickly grouping up with someone not worrying about how long they got left on a lootscroll just fit hand in glove with being able to group grind any grind spot.

While I agree PA should reward partying up, these two solutions would not solve anything. 

Even if each pack was it's own rotation, the spot would still be extremely contested because that means even more people would go there. Imagine how many top tier guilds there are in BDO, then imagine how many of their players would want access to the top contested spot in the game. It would be the exact same as it is now but instead of it being a dfs, it's an entire guild zerging a server to take it over for it's resources. effectively leaving no one EXCEPT the highest end of players to be able to compete for it.

Secondly, no one in their right mind would ever split their loot 50/50 when they could make much more just grinding solo. That's a large reason as to why party spots right now aren't worth doing. If you made 50% less trash and items per hour at a place like orcs, people would be better off grinding stars end. The ONLY way a party sytem would work in this game is if it gave players more trash loot than they would've received by doing said grind spot alone. This is why to this day people still grind olun valley for reasons other than the outfit. 


Also, I disagree. DFS is the least toxic option to dealing with a spot grievance. It gives both the defending player an opportunity to either keep the spot or leave the spot peacefully and not get griefed, and it gives the approaching player a chance to claim a spot for themselves.

BDO is an open world PvP game whether you like it or not, Although it seems like the devs can't decide on whether they want to keep it that way or not. And quite frankly with how the game is built right now I DO NOT THINK it should be considered an open world pvp game, they're much better off just releasing single isntanced grind spots for every grind zone. That way no one has to contest anyone else, because with the way the game is currently, the only way to contest someone for their rotation is by feeding them to mobs and making them lose crystals until they leave. Which is horrible.





NO PLAYER IN THE GAME SHOULD BE ABLE TO ABUSE A SYSTEM CAUSED BY LACK OF FORESIGHT WITHIN THE GAME TO GAIN PERMENANT CONTROL OVER THE HIGHEST CONTESTED GRIND SPOTS IN THE GAME. HAVING THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE THEM LEAVE BE TO GO RED AND RISK LOSING GEAR, OR BE TOXIC AND RISK GETTING BANNED.

I think removing the punishment for flagging is not the way to go, but maybe adjusting it is...

Im a higher geared player... Im grinding for my pot piece... lower geared *cough* assmunch comes into my rotation, ignores me compeltely and starts killing, not a word is spoken from this person so i flag and kill once as a warning... said ass comes back over and over... guild is undeccable... said Ass karma bombs me and i have no option but to stop when im about to go red because i dont want to go red from negative karma... so what are my options? Ass knows he can just keep coming back and screw me over so i have to go find another rot on another server... How is this fair to the person  defending the rot?

The problem here is simple: 
Due to gear descrepancy and Karma penalties relating directly to that, karma bombing is a thing, take off all your good gear and let the flagged person kill you a couple of times and they're red... or be a noob player with low gear and you can just have a fieldday pissing off all the higher geared people
Adjust the penalty for flagging to not be gear related

2nd issue is the "Guild is not ready for war" bullshit. If they're in a guild, they should be deccable, there should be no discrepancies whether you own a node or whatever the rules are.
If the greifers dont want to be decced, then they go guildless and take the hit of missing out on the advantages of being in a guild

Its not a full solution, none of what we are discussing is... but seriously, the undeccable guild thing really does need to go though... its a system that is definately getting abused, and while we're at it, can we remove the 15 minute timer for a war dec to go through!? Its not fun sitting there watching the greifer and wasting your buffs while you wait 15! minutes for a dec to go through

They are not splitting the loot as two will kill twice as many as one.

Your 3 suggestions are terrible.

Guilds not ready for wars mechanic prevents abuse from the few large, active and organised guilds to bully out the rest of the playerbase out of the grind spots.

Getting rid of gear downgrading would effectively allow top geared players to bully out everyone else out of grind spots without any consequences.

Instancing grind spots makes no sense given the 2 previous suggestions of yours, it wouldn't be needed at all since the top 5% of the playerbase would effectively owns grind spots.

That's not how that works. That'd only work assuming both players are the exact same person and mimic each other 100% with the same gear. 

What on earth are you even saying?

1.) the top guilds already bully out the rest of the playerbase, they don't care about going red when it's 6 of them c20 feeding you to mobs. They do not care about the "undeccable guild" feature. If they want to bully you they will bully you.

Also, if you don't have the gear required to compete at the highest most contested spots in the game, then you need to go somewhere where you CAN compete. You SHOULD NOT be able to abuse an in-game oversight to permenantly lay claim to the highest tier of money making in the game. Completely avoiding any form of contesting.

AND IF THAT IS WHERE PA WANTS TO TAKE THE GAME  Then remove the need to contest at all by adding single player instances to every grind zone. That way you don't have to worry about low geared players (that shouldn't be there anyways) abusing a mechanic that (you say) is needed within the game to grief high end players out of making money where it's most competative. 

2.) Gear downgrading is an extremely outdated system that doesn't make any sense whatsoever in the current climate. When you're losing an item worth over 100 billion silver from dying, that does not make sense. 

3.) Instancing grind spots would cause 5% of the playerbase to own grind spots....??? what????

You do know what a single instance is correct?

Git gud if you cant hold your spot then its your problem