Ok let's say I've been grinding for 30 minutes, some shitter comes along and grinds on top of me. No message about DFS, no message how long, no communication at all, just shitter being a shitter. Now my response is send a dec (if I'm able to since I'm in a NW guild which means I can't dec them if they don't also own a node or at least have an outgoing dec up) or flag up and kill them. If I can dec them, no issue, I can PvP them as long as they stick around to grief me. If I can't dec them then my only recourse is to flag and kill or try to kill them. If they are anywhere close to my GS I could get in a situation where I go negative and they kill me causing me to loose billions of silver. Now not only am I out the time of my grind, but also billions in sometimes next to impossible to replace crystals. The griefer loses nothing on death other than if they used a draught which is basically pennies. 

You're telling me that scenario is perfectly OK to you? Because that exact scenario is why I not only made a red alt years ago, and why I also try to avoid the highly contested areas like Orcs rots 12 and 1+2. The Karma system is ridiculously punishing and only for the aggressor. Red players are massively hamstrung with not being able to use anything more than cheap or vendor crystals, pointless to try and use lightstones, and if you don't have crystals in your gear and you get fed to mobs your gear downgrades. Those are insane prices to pay (and that's not eve half the trouble of being red), which is why Reds are basically extinct these days. That and the gear a lot of people have now makes it that much harder to exist as a Red player.

I haven't been able to play as much for the past half a year or so and my gameplay has been comprised mainly of solo grinding.  Haven't participated in a healthy GvG war in ages.  Node warring for me has been highly sporadic, depending on my IRL schedule.  Basically, my gameplay has been mostly solo-player for a while.  You'd think these changes would be beneficial to a player who plays like this.  But as someone who's been passionate about BDO -- and who is still (at least for now) passionate about BDO -- these changes are, IMO, over-the-top and game-identity changing.  It's not looking good and a grim cloud hangs over my 7 year veteran head reading about these drastic and ill-forseen changes.

Hopefully, PA's decision to cater to casual players, new players, anti-social players, and PvP-phobic players in this way helps their bottom line, because I'm pretty sure they've been hurting financially.  At least before the slew of new-blood that started playing very recently.  Maybe PA is drunk off this recent influx of new players and are acting under the influence, IDK.  I can relate, I've made stupid decisions when I was drunk off my A too before.  So I really hope they know what they're doing and wish them the best of luck in keeping BDO one of the last remaining "good" MMO's. 

I doubt it, but I'm not a game dev.  My heart breaks for this game.  I would like PA to take more effort and more time in deliberating how to address issues for the NA/EU market, if possible.  Take more targeted approaches to these problems instead of blanketed band-aids such as this.  I believe in you, but if you're drunk off the recent influx of new players and have blurry vision, I really have no hope at all.  Let's see how things pan out. 

That being said, Ashes of Creation waiting room.  My heart breaks for Black Desert Online.

I wonder, what part of the game gets the most updates, is it flower picking/running in circles, or PvP? Because we can sometimes get weekly PvP balance changes. We've had numerous NW/Siege overhauls and changes. They didn't even introduce Mastery into the game until amost 2020 and when it was released it was half baked at best, and still some Mastery is just pointless. The new Boss rush system you can only do 5 bosses for rewards a week and no new grind zones with an entire new giant zone. PvE in this game is literally running in circles and has about as much depth as a puddle after a light rain. Not to mention the questing experience in this game is easily the worst I've ever seen in the many MMOs I've seen. OSRS has infinitely more character and proper game development in their quests than BDO.

99.99% of new players I've read posts from are strictly PvE focused.  Which makes sense, they lack skill, they come from other MMO's that have PvE servers, they're undergeared, and likely aren't used to a sandbox-oriented game such as BDO.  What I'm thinking is PA is drunk off of the recent influx of new blood that recently came in.

They see their game is booming with these types of players, so they're taking steps to cater to their mindset, even risking game-identity and their vision of the game (sandbox oriented, PvX, open world MMORPG) in the process.  With these changes, they are changing the open world to, virtually, a solo-player instanced PvE grinder where people avoid each other and its just sad.

Sad that the devs are failing to take targeted approaches to specific problems and are doing blanketed band-aids such as this.  Their vision has seemingly been blurried by the recent influx of new players.  Whatever helps their bottom-line, they'd have to do, I guess.  For better or for worse.  It just sucks they couldn't come up with something better and more targeted, at least for the NA/EU market.  I'm sure there's better ways to address new player concerns.  Ways that cater to their wishes, but simultaneously, keep the spirit of BDO's unique Open World experience, unique player-to-player interactions, and unique "BDO drama" alive.  But IDK.  Maybe it's too hard for PA to figure out.  Path of least resistance.  Whatever helps the bottom-line.  That's probably how they're seeing it.

So what would you do with a grind spot that has no marni's realm and is a contested spot? You Dec but the guild won't Dec back and you'd rather not go red on your family. You could switch servers even though you were there first. Who's to say someone isn't already grinding on that other server either. I guess you can grind on top of each other and get less loot instead. I want you to come back to this thread if these changes go through and still make the same argument. It isn't a problem now but if these changes get pushed it'll be a problem when you got 5 people grinding on 1 rotation with no way to get rid of them. 1 sided decs were the only way to circumvent this.

If someone comes to grief, you have regular channel swap, marni realm, home servers, personal guild protection, and harassment being against TOS and reportable/bannable. What are people doing to circumvent these solutions such that these announced changes are necessary? I fail to see a reason a person couldnt solve the griefing issue themselves with the tools currently available. If actually necessary, I think the marni changes + channel cooldown would be enough, scrap the rest. Maybe even only one or the other.

If they somehow find you after marni + channel changes, and try not to go red because youre on protection, they will have to just outgrind you. Which is still perfectly possible AFTER these changes. So what's being fixed?

Absolutely nothing dishonest with my comment. You can still open world pvp any time you want. It is up to you if you want to go red or not and there are ways for you to have the pvp without going red. The problem is that you do not want to play on arsha because you do NOT WANT TO PVP, you only want to own your own private grind zone.

First off if you strip naked to run into someone else's rotation you are a disgusting person. Second IF i were grinding in an area and you did that to me I would just ignore you and continue killing mobs. If I could not outgrind you then I would do what I have always done and move to another location, change server or swap to another alt and do something else. Oh or I could go into marni realm.

Read my reply to another forum user above. It has happened to me many many times in the past and that is how I dealt with it.

So your response to someone trying to take what is yours is burry your head in the sand or run away, cool. You seem like a fun person.