The point is that in order for you to buy those PEN accessories or PEN blackstar weapon/armors or even dead-god, you'll have to shell out at leat 100billion or so per piece.  

This means you'll either make BDO a JOB by grinding your life away for months to get 1 piece of gear or you will almost assuredly P2W your way to this gear content, which validates the original complaint.

Quoted: "281 AP was good 2-3 years ago. If you're not 300ap+ you're behind."

That's pretty bad sorry to say for a player that is playing this game for 5 years ugh.

I'm already close to this (AP wise, working on DP now) and I've been at it for about a year, which also includes multiple characters I've played on season with full PEN Tuvala gear (armors, weapons, accessories).

I get your point that it is much easier now to get gear that allows a player to participate in "end game" content.

But I have to say, you are still going to struggle with TRUE END GAME, which means you are going to try for FULL PEN accessories or even a PEN blackstar weapon/armor, not to mention ugh, dead god.  This means that this game is pretty much a dead-end for you if you even want to be somewhat be competitive or "stand a chance" against geared people like this.

Congratz on your gearing to be close to this already :) 

I think you are forgetting though that 5 years ago, gearing was a lot more brutal. It has certainly gotten easier in the last few years with the availability to buy pretty much everything on the Central Market, not to mention free caphras, cron stones, fail stacks and artisans. Not to mention Season and all that brings with it. 

If having Fallen God, PEN Boss Helm & Boss Gloves + caphras, (sadly my Urugon's refuse to PEN currently), full TET accesories (one is a Disto) two TET Blackstar Weapons & a PEN Kutum is bad after 5 years of playing - then why is it that I can grind in all endgame spots in the game except Crypt? And I enjoy these spots, a lot! :D 

I don't partake in PVP so have no experiance to offer on that front, but as for those 5 years I have not been gearing 24/7. In that time I've maxed house fame, got almost all lifeskills Master (again, this used to be harder), leveled to 64, awoken multiple Dream horses, almost finished 30k quests (which I intend to use the 300fs reward on PEN Blackstar), and much, much more.

I am not trying to flex or anything, simply explain why I disagree with your opinion that my progress is 'bad'. I also like to enhance my PEN's myself, so rng is also a factor in how quickly one player progresses compared to another. 

My original point to the now deleted post was sure, you can P2W yourself up there if you want to, but there are people who don't and that is totally viable too. 

This level of gear allows to access more than 95% of grind areas comfortably, therefore it hardly constitues entry level tier of gear.

Depends on what you consider "entry level" 

If all you care about is PVE, you might be right. But PvP? I dont know that I'd even call this entry level...

281ap 347dp is entry level?!?!?!?

Do you play BDO? Obviously with a complete no nothing post like that you have zero idea were entry level starts and were end game begins. @628 gs they are well within the top 10% of all players and almost in the top 1% and i am guessing that is just caphras.

At that GS they can do just about all end game content except ash forest and crypt, Oluns is more of learning mechanics than ap/dp.

PvP and GvG that gear is substantial enough for especially ap wise with the exception of players that are above 375+DP you may have to 2nd combo.

You clowns that continue to spit venom on players is getting old, players that are veterans of 4 or 5 years played a game that is much different from its current version. BOTH whales AND F2P have a much more significant advantage now to making faster gains then we did when we 1st started. In specific the new central market was a complete game changer anyone playing on the old market system may as well have restarted after 2019 becouse buying anything befor this was not happening LIKE spending 1.4 billion on a preoder for base uragons, getting a tri ogre ring was the cost of current TETs let alone getting a TET accessory were only for those in siege guilds were they never taxed your payouts beyond 500mil.

Its so easy for you people to forget what it was like Pre 2019 in BDO especially if you never experienced it, the quality of life improvments and catch up mechanics within BDO are 10000% better than anything we had back in the day so making ignorant comments how its sad and took 4 or 5 years for a F2P player is at a 628 GS is astounding in my book especially when a majority of those gains most likly came after 2020 when people such as myself included could actually purchase soft cap and above accessories on the market. The only thing you people know is BDO in its current version and have zero clue what it took to get here.

its basically handout gear offense wise at this point of the game :/ defensive wise its tet blackstar (not even obsidian) + pri fallen

noone can say this costs much considering how much money u can make these days via various ingame activities.

Oh really now?

Well to all new adventures out there, it's interesting how I have managed to hit 281ap / 347dp in my almost 5 years of playing now without any need to buy P2W items. The amount of crons and artisans you get given out for free now is a massive help so there really is no need to buy them in my opinion. Just save up all your free failstacks, crons, artisans and try and enhance OR sell everything and just buy your gear off the market which is entierely realistic nowadays. 

If I can do this, anyone else can too!

Not so impossible to overcome now is it ;)

If the Dev's only cared about making money, then why did I see such a passionate performance at the recent Calpheon Ball? Surely if they only cared about milking people dry, there would be no community interaction at all, all new areas would be paid for expansions and the cash shop would be even more expensive......oh let's throw in a monthly subscription to play also! :)