The ocean content in this game is simply beautiful but in the current environment you would have to be an idiot to go through that painfully LONG Carrack grind to make the small profits that bartering has to offer when grinding has been revamped. I don't care that it's "semi-afk" because "semi-afk" processing is currently killing it in profits as is "semi-afk" farming.

Is it safe to assume that BDO is getting close to end of life and the devs have decided to wipe their hands of the ocean content? Seems like such a waste if so but after looking at the Carrack grind vs the benefits of bartering it seems like a trade skill for suckers that don't want to make silver efficiently. If anything the Carrack grind needs to be brought back down to earth so that people who have jobs can do it in 2 weeks or so. 

Even if bartering was buffed to generate 1 bil silver per hour I don't think that grind is worth it. At least with other grinds in this game (Labreska Helmet) you're making massive silver while you grind the embers but with the sea monster dailies you have to navigate an un-fun painful slow current system to spend time killing sea monsters that really don't drop anything beneficial. You're spending hours a day grinding horribly placed daily quests just to get 1 item that you need 45 of for an end result that doesn't even beat out 1 hour at some beginner grinding spot like Poly's forest.

What's the deal? I would think a complete revamp is in order but I have not seen anything announced yet. I miss seeing players boats lined up in Velia but I have not seen a single one in months.

Agreed. The ocean offers great possibilities but it takes way too long to even get a decent return for it. Bartering is fun but way too bad nowadays, especially if you don't have a carrack yet.

It's similar to the desert. A nice idea but neglected later on.

Why do I and many many others dislike the ocean:

We get introduced to water in the most terrible way and it is by swimming by yourself or that wooden piece or garbage or sometimes the fishing boat that expires in the middle of what you planned to do, so the game makes sure we dislike the water from the start (IMO).

BDO is a fast-paced game, we have zoomer classes that are faster than t9 horses and horses are often so fast some ppl struggle to load terrain. The ocean is completely opposite to the degree that it (personally) is infuriating to move on sea!

         True i myself dont have a Carack (like many others as well) because its pretty

boring, yields no silver and after you have it all you get is a  "faster" ship to do

what exactly? I have the improved frigate thingy next step would be carack.

If you get past the snail space by deciding to just Alt Tab the horrendous auto path gives you the rest.

Minimum boat speed and desync I think are the two most annoying things in ocean content right now. I won't bother talking about desync since we all have "desync dumpster" tatoo'd somewhere on our body like some kind of battle scar but the speed... Good lord the speed.... Under no circumstances should the boat come to a stand-still. There is zero joy when you're forced to crawl your way from one end of the ocean to another, only to come back at the same crawl because the weather changed. This is obscene.

They tried I think fixing the desync issue but managed to cause a huge disaster so they had to revert it back according to one of the calpheon balls or whatever it was. Some event. Anyway, it's not an easy fix and I understand, network stuff is hard, MMORPGs are hard, everything about building a game at this scale is intense and without a doubt hard. There's no arguing there... But some things are quite simple to fix like the minimum speed of a boat. For the love of all is right, please.... Please make it a priority to fix boat speed! I avoid ocean content like the plague despite having a carrack.

In my opinion that would be the greatest QoL improvement to ocean content yet.

(although removing one or two rocks between Velia and Port Epheria is a close 2nd in QoL improvement since everyone gets stuck there)

Speed: Near the beginning of the O'dyllita main quest you are sent to the wharf and told to either "take a boat from Grandiha, or follow the path east from Talibahr's Rope".  I use a cog stationed there for that.  And this time around - 300 headwinds the whole way, even hugging the coast.  Plus 20 head current.  Since when do winds reach 300 anywhere near land?  I've noticed a similar worsening of numbers elsewhere in the ocean.  And as noted above, the winds and currents tend to arrange themsleves against you more and more, in unrealistic ways.  It's like there is some sort of drift in game data somwhere.  Or is this intentionally trying to get people off the water?  At this rate there will be locations where you cannot move at all - in any direction - and boats just become static objects.

Used to have to go to the far northeast to see 300+ winds and heavy currents.  Now they're everywhere.

Not long ago I tried one of the ocean side quests that start in Shakatu, the one that says to use a raft to get to some island (it may give you one).  Immediate standstill not far out of the port.

IMO biggest detriment that turns people away is it Ocean content is slow and tedious to get anywhere or to do anything with it.  
Land you need to get across the continent hop on a horse, most stuff is a relatively short break before you are right at it doing something again. 

Seas it takes too long to get there, there isn't anything dynamic with the combat system.  

Oh and say you want to do some land content but your logged out at Oquila.  Whelp you are stuck sailing back for heavy amount of time just to get back to the continent... then traveling by horse. It basically locks you into either focusing only on sailing or land because of that. 

This is only going to get worse with the new continent.  Stabled your horse in the starter continent.  Too bad, either log in an alt and transport (if you can), or buy a new horse. 

Sure sea trade is not good income in comparison to grinding, processing, etc. And again it is slow and tedious. 

There is nothing dynamic about ocean travel or content.  It is slow, boring, and anoying.  Dedicated sea players will hate this, but that is why there are so few willing to do it. 

Yeah it's a slow buggy mess, and also totally disconnected from the rest of the game. There is a extremely small minority who enjoys it but most avoids it like plague for a good reason.

I guess you can say that in the vast open ocean, there's nothing to sea there.

I'll sea my self out.

Ok that's enough puns for today. By the way, the biggest part of active ocean content is in the pearl shop. :P

Head currents and wind should both be handled by sailors (since there are stats associated with those things, right?). Also, no. The carrack is not fast. Or, to be more accurate, it doesn't feel  fast, because of its size and because nothing on it makes you feel like you're breezing through the waves. Bigger isn't always better and emptier isn't either.

They fixed... kinda, the drops in the ocean, bringing them slightly above the value you'd get from grinding Marie Cave, trash wise. Just that, the costs to grind the latter are nearly 0, whereas the ones required to spin in place (due to 50 strength currents) at Lekrashan are quite... high.

Maybe "Having ocean content" was a checkbox they really wanted to tick and then forgot all about it. Or maybe they hate sailing as much as most of the players do and, as such, they're just afk fishing in Velia, theory-crafting about what could make the ocean content: "a bigger boat! let's... make an rng based bigger boat!"

For me (and laugh if you must), my biggest complaint is that coming into port (ANY port) requires you to "abandon ship" by jumping into the water and swimming for the docks, after you get yourself unstuck from whatever object you swam into. Sometimes you can make the jump to shore, but mostly you're getting wet. It's just not right. I love that you can click the ship icon to teleport ONTO your boat. So why can't we teleport to the warf manager??? Just my random thought for the day.