Title: Improve/change open world PvP system
Family Name: Rudelaris

Region (NA/EU): EU

Aion had a system structured around (ow)pvp. But it was working poorly. The reason was not the system, but, as usual, the players. Kill-trading comes to mind. You know, like how some players in BDO were ranking up in AoS? Yeah, that kind of stuff. If there's a reward for doing something, people will exploit the life out of it, if given half a chance.

If you'd give rewards for hunting down red players, people will make alts to be hunted down for rewards. If you'd tier the rewards based on... some stats (like Aion used to have, rankings and all), people will work a bit more before going back to exploiting this new source of goodies. 

As mentioned in a few Balls, rewarding players for staying red is out of the question (for now, at least), so there would be very little incentive for reds to play as such, other than the above mentioned kill-trading thingie.

While there are some tensions between the different regions of the BDO world, I don't see how those can be turned into a faction based conflict, in a fun way that can be supported well by the game's engine.  Maybe some abyssal pocket later that could function as GW2's EB, where you can enlist as a random soldier and fight in the hopes for some random benefits for the winning region(s) you joined with - maybe tax cuts, maybe energy regen, maybe item drop chance? I don't know. But that would definitely not add more meaning to karma... It would only be another, larger, RBF that would, this time, encompass the entire world.

I agree that the open world can feel boring and dead.  There's so many reasons for this.  But I feel the main reason is how spread out players are from one another these days.  Things like Marni's Realm and so many viable grind spots to choose from spread out players and thins out the population over a large area, thus greatly impacting meaningful interactions with others by reducing the time spent having to interact.

They shafted the Bounty System on GLabs.  I am not sure the exact reason why, but it wasn't good, so I'm glad they ditched it.  I would love to see a funtional and non-exploitable Bounty System in BDO, however.  This has potential to breathe so much life into the game.  But the main thing is that it is non-exploitable.  There's been posts talking about this in the past, IMO, the Bounty System shouldn't reward silver or things of monetary value.  At most, maybe exclusive outfit or a cool badge you can wear next to your name-plate to signify you're a Bounty Hunter, but no silver rewards.  I am not sure if this is a priority of the devs as they seem hellbent on PVE, even if it kills the open world and the MMORPG aspect of having meaningful interactions with others in the open world.  They are good at keeping us apart and solo grinding our own rotation, though!  Pretty soon, BDO will be renamed to Diablo: Immortal lol. /s

My hope is the devs can work on the open world aspects of the game, but keep in mind, there are players these days that are anti-social, and are highly vocal / highly averse to PVP.

I dont understand how peoples worst fear when it comes to introducing fun, meaningful and rewarding mechanics that have to do with PvP is that it will be "exploitable" - nobody is complaining that you can do other things in the game for an unlimited amount of time to gain unlimited amounts of silver and even to this day 90% afk grinding at stars end pillars is still possible and you lot are concerned with people going out of their way to create red alts to "kill trade" in a system that does not even exist yet so you cant possibly know how it would work.

PvP interested players would be happy if they could even make as little as 2-300m in an hour of actively playing PvP, if "exploiting the system" would net players that go out of their way to constantly "kill trade for hours" 4-500m it would still be not even in the same realm of monetary gain as grinding an hour of centaurs which is a entry level grindspot. Also please keep in mind that actively participating in PvP also costs ALOT of silver to begin with in the form of consumables like combat elixirs, draughts, perfumes, whale potions and elixirs etc. that you lose every single death and will have to re-invest again.

It is not surprising that Pearl Abyss doesnt do meaningful changes and doesnt introduce new gameplay systems and mechanics that could be incredibly fun if tons of people that likely are not even interested in those gameplay loops go ahead and try to find reasons as to why it is oh so terrible with very little actual thought and without actual testing.