I brought five new friends to the game last season. 

- I have kept two playing

One nearly rare quit last night. 

- The reason for this? Quests and Menus

This is an action-combat game. We join the game EXPECTING to be ALLOWED to PLAY IT.

- You deny us that.

1. Unskippable "story" . -- This is not gameplay. It is a trap. A trick. Forcing everyone to sit through something that denies them access to their own satisfaction and agency before EVERY EVEN GETTING TO PLAY THE GAME. 

2. After the unskippable "story" scene you are FORCED to do questing. -- This is not gameplay. it is a trap. A trick. Pulling players from location to location. Denying them agency. Permission and allowance to just get into the world. 

- Neither Combat NOR Life Skills is supported with the Season Experience.

- You are FORCED to do "Story" 

- You are DENIED EVEN GEAR because you force Naru gear to be acquired ONLY AFTER many hours of story.

3. You utterly fail to understand that a NEW PLAYER does not in any way remotely understand the menus of Black Desert

a) Alt+1, 2, 3, 4, is not COMMUNICATED to the NEW PLAYER as a means of Communication. Thus, making it impossible for the NEW PLAYER to even understand how to communicate with others.
b) You make no effort at all in explaining to NEW PLAYERS how to WHISPER, what Whisper is (purple text), nor PARTY Chat, nor SERVER Chat. 

c) The "new menu" system is a nightmare.

- It is monochromatic. Gold and Black. It is as uninviting as a tomb stone. 

- The "old" (better) menu is colorful. With images AND colors AND it is in the MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN like saying "Use me, I'm helpful" as opposed to a virus-infection on your computer of cmd prompt from hostile programmer who added in menus to the game as an after thought. 

Just these things drivee players from your game.
I'm not at all done with this post, but I'm going to post this as a introduction to the most significant offenses. 

- These few things are BY FAR the most significant factors driving new players off your game.

- You go out of your way to PREVENT players from PLAYING BLACK DESERT

Stop this. 

Go back to when the game started in Olvia as a SERIOUSLY ENCOURAGED mode.

1. you wake up 

2. you are dizzy and vision dark at the edges

3. you can't remember who you are or how you got there

4. a villager comes over and tries to help you out

5. you're encouraged to pick up a set of naru gear (during season) to help out with pesky beatled and foxes, then imps at the edge of town

6. you are left a set of "objectives" (kill quests further and further out into the world)

- do this until level 61

- season ends

THIS METHOD absolutely ALLOWS people to PLAY your game.

- If you are going to keep forcing people to use this questing system you're doing nothing but harm to Black Desert.

1.

a) When you start the game THEY want PLAY it.

b) YOU do not get to choose how

c) YOU used to understand this

d) YOU used to respect this

2. 

a) YOU do not automatically turn on ALL Quest Types as visible

b) YOU do not automaticallly teach players how to to FIND quests

c) YOU do not auotmatically teach players your User Interface as an ESSENTIAL PRIORITY TO PLAYING BLACK DESERT

For all these reasons players quit. 

Enhancing

- for New Players

Enhancing is pretty significant to New Players. 

- You don't communicate this well... at all.

1) Naru Gear should be as immiedately important to new players as the sling-shot is to Link in Ocarina of Time.

a) It should be IMMEDIATELY provide

2) You should avoid all this crap about the story. ALL OF IT.

3) Instead having Enhancing be a kind of "mystery" that someone in Olvia is "researching"

a) go to the "Black Stone, Academy Researcher <tutorial instructor>

b) the Tutorial Instructor can be interacted with like a Skill Trainer

c) upon talking to the Tutorial Instructor are a series of WORDED TABS. Use actual words please. No symbols. Old menu. Not American Idiocracy film style or Monochrom new menu.

d) The Tabs should appear like to the Skill Menu or Pearl Shop

4. Each Tab inthe Tutorial Instructor's menu should read something like,
a) "Naru Enhancing Tutorial"
b) "Tuvala Enhancing Tutorial"

c) Regular Gear Enhancing Tutorial: Agerian or Reblath

- All of these are videos that are subsectioned into Steps

5. For example
Naru Enhancing - Click with LMB

1. video 1 shows the BUTTONS TO PRESS TO FIND THE BLACK SPIRIT - Comma

- "press , " you say 

2. the video then changes to the Black Spirit Menu view

3. the video goes on to explain the Main Quest Tab, Quest Tab, Exchange Tab, and Enhancing Tab

a) Main Quest Tab should also indicator where EVENTS Tab is.

- you failed to teach this to new players. Many of them missed the Calpheon Ball EVENT TAB as a result, for example.

- it really pisses New Players off that none of this is even remotely explained to them

4. The video then goes shows the CURSOR SLOWLY MOVING to Enhance

5. The video director CLICK Enhance in the Black Spirit Menu

6. The Enhance menu appears

7. You SHOW a person, WITH DESCRIPTIONS and Circling of Icons, adding in the NARU GEAR to be Enhanced and then the Beginner Time Filled Black Stones

8. You explain Percent Change

9. You show the player that they can Create a Failstack using the [ + ] option AND PROVIDE THEM WITH STONES ENOUGH TO DO THIS ONCE

10. You explain that you can Skip the Enhancement animation

11. You show them the gear successfully being upgraded.

12. you say, "Next Video: Enhancement Failure and Repairs"

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See the IMPORTANCE of this now?

- Again, do you see now why Story is so incredibly UNIMPORTANT??

ALL OF THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD BE SPENDING TIME WITH NEW PLAYERS ON.

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Enhancement: the Repair Process

The Tutorial Instructor should now have a video that reads, "Enhancement: Failuring to Upgrade and the Repair Process"

1. The player should be given a video where an Enhancement fails.

a) it should be extremely clear that a failure has taken place

2. Now show the player going to Fughar or the Blacksmith to acquire a NEW PLACE OF NARU or TUVALA

a) you auto-default the Blacksmith in Velia to using Tuvala Ore instead 

b) you do NOT explain to NEW PLAYERS in any way what so ever that Tuvala should NOT be used to repair their gear.

- this failure can completely ensure a NEW PLAYER is unable to finish seasonal content MANY SEASONS IN A ROW

3. The Player EXCHANGES Naru AND Tuvala in SEPARATE segments of video. Same video, this is important, but with the ability go to a TAB in the Tutorial Trainer to find NARU Enhancing and Tuvalan Enhancing time-stamp.

4. The player in the video is then shown REPAIRING their gear with the things to click for each step circled and each step IS CLEARLY taken.

5. The NEW PLAYER should now have adquately seen how to Enhance for the first time AND repair it.

Enhancing: Failure as a Benefit ------ part 1

This particular aspect of Enhancing is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO COMMUNICATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- You have never once in all the years of BDO given us any terminology for "the thing that happens when an attempt to Enhance an item fails, but the Enhancement stack-value increases"

^ Do you see how hard that above was to even read????

Enhancing: Failture as a Benefit --------- part 2
~~ You need to... somehow... CLEARLY EXPLAIN that when you "fail" to Enhance something that increases that "Stack"

Two Challenges to Explanations of This:

1. "Stack" = "Advice of Valks" = "Valks Cry"

- except it must be in this order

NEW PLAYERS, you keep forgetting they are NEW, so I keep capitalizing this fact... 

NEW PLAYERS, do NOT at all understand that Stacks are the numerical value being applied, Advice of Valks are Stack "Containers", and "Valks Cry" can EITHER: ... CREATE a Stack OR they may ADD to a Stack. 

- Personally I would chance Valk's Cry into Valk's Inights. I don't cry when I use these. It shouldn't be communicating tragedy.

- Personally I would remove the ability to utilize them without a Stack already present. We can do this with the [+} option and Black Stones

2. Naderr's Band should be Provided IMMEDIATELY. ABSOLUTELY AS SOON AS POSSIBLE to Seasonal Players.

- You make the Enhancing window so primitive that it actually prevents being able to Enhance

a) NEW PLAYERS do not understand that they need an Alt to Enhance back and forth with

b) swapping characters often crashes the game to desktop frequently. 

c) because the game is so unstable when swapping characters crashing to desktop should not be advertised as an intended game feature.

d) due to the presence of issues from A to C provide Naderr's Band as soon as possible

e) further reason for the immediate gift of Naderr's Band is the need to stop PRESENTLY INCONVENIENT STACKS

- NOTE: You failed to educateplayers on how to use the Black Smith to STORE (convert) Stacks into Advice of Valks

3. The Tutorial Instructor should now have a video guiding the player on how to use Naderr's Band

- This step is EXCEEDINGLY IMPORTANT to utilizing Refine Magical Black Stones properly

- you make no effort at all to communicate any of this to the NEW PLAYERS 

4. The Tutorial Instructor should then provide a video on how to purchase and store Stacks using Blacksmith books.

Special Note:
Due to all of this section it would be very nice to be able to just PURGE at Failstack. Effectively, putting it in trash AFTER typing out very definitely, "Yes, I wish to purge my current stored Failstack whose value is +258" so someone doesn't accidentally purge a +258 stack and reset all of their progress for a year. It should also be retreivable within a 24 hour period or even a week; the length of time increasing depending on the size. For instance, for every 1 billion silver presumed lost in the making of the stack add 1 day. Stacks below 50 that are purged cannot be recovered and disappear instantly. 

- this is all because NEW PLAYERS NEED to be able to Enhance NOW. Not after going through your crap menus and ten-thousand things to remove a single accidental +1 Valk's Cry click. 

Falsches Forum 

Enhancing: Failure as a benefit --------- part 3

- It is ONLY NOW possible to truly even BEGIN to explain to NEW PLAYERS how to use Enhancement FAILURES to their benefit...

1. The Tutorial Instructor should now show a video on Enhancing that demonstrates Failure.

2. The video should circle that the Stack has "increased". 

- seriously, this action needs a word. name it something. anything. that single thing make so much of this post even necessary to type out. being unable to communicate something that clearly is a thing without a word takes paragraphs every time... 
3. It should then be explained that as the  Stack Value increases (that 'thing' again) the chance of the Enhancement, which is then circled in the video, also increases. 

And that's it. You've not got a working tutorial for players to be able to get into the game with.

THIS ought to be the way Seasonal stuff works. 

- HELP your NEW PLAYERS with instructions that are definitely easy to find, re-viewable, videos. 

Regarding "Story"

- Instead of the current method where we are FORCED into it every single time we make a new character... 

Have the following story branch options:

Method 1: 

Mystery Investigation
a) You start out with the original method. 

b) You wake in Olvia
c) You have no idea who you are, where you are, or anything

d) You start assisting around the town in little activities that slowly lead you out into the wider world

e) Activities center around Combat and Exploration, or Life Skills and Exploration. Few or no interactions with the game menus besides how to Enhance and Chat.

Method 2: Quest Intensive Introduction
The forced, unskippable content opening, at the Ancient Stone Chamber leading to Velia which causes people to rage quit the game because you are denying the ability for THEM to PLAY how THEY want WITH THE TIME THEY HAVE.

- Some people only have an hour to game. You are denying them even that with this method. It's utterly assinine to do this to people if you expect that it will endear them to you.  Trust me, it isn't.

This should method should be EXPLICITY ONLY for players who WANT a Quest Focused, slow crawl, introduction to the game with little to not combat and few opertunities to advance their character in ways of their choosing. 

Method 3:
Permit the "Veteran" Experience of the Duvencrune option to be available to new players. Clearly indicating this is a time-jump in the story and that NEW PLAYERS should seek out the main story via Method 2 ... at some point (OF THEIR CHOOSING).

Again... people don't appreciate being FORCED to do something. Method 2 is a terrible idea and should be abandoned as soon as possible.

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If you take away nothing else from this post you desperately need a Tutorial Video NPC.

- Possibly even having the Black Spirit BE that very npc. 

Likewise, you need to VASTLY reduce the New Player Experience having anything to do with the menu systems in this game. It should be a minimum, slowly growing knowledge of it, introduction system that does NOT prevent them from getting into Combat or Life Skills (their preference) WITH THE TIME THAT THEY HAVE TO PLAY nor FORCING the NEW PLAYER to play the game so aggressively on your terms. People want to log into a game THEY CHOOSE to BUY and PLAY IT. Not struggle through a maze of poorly communicated menus that MIGHT lead to them ... eventually... acquiring some gear.

Sumary of the above paragraph: 

It is better that a NEW PLAYER starts the game OFF SEASON rather than ON currently.

- Unless something changes I really think Seasonal is structured in such a way that it does serious harm to player retention.

Please Note: The gear system is great. Really well done from how confusing it was when Seasonal first came out.

--- It's just so much about the game interface is poorly communicated
--- Likewise, essential gear like NARU is BLOCKED FROM ACCESS in such a way that NEW AND Veteran Players are equally forced to participate with quests continuously rather than their own efforts and decisions having any impact on THEIR TIME AND EFFORTS

--- this latter most aspect means players feel THEIR TIME is not respected and THEIR ambitions are NOT SUPPORTED in Black Desert Online. This is entirely the opposite of how the game actually is when NOT using Seasonal Characters. Without Seasonal Characters a player can use the drops they find, choose to play the game entirely from Combat or Life Skills and go Exploring. They advance rapidly and at a steady pace. With Season Characters they advance ONLY if they CAN FIGURE OUT a HUGE HUGE HUGE amount of non-sensenical menus and interfaces which you as developers make zero effort to communicate. Again... desperately you need a Tutorial Instructor with videos. 

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