So, I've been playing BDO pretty regularly for about four years, and my main is 289 AP, 369 DP.  At this point advancement means getting off the Capotia accessories and onto others like Tungrad or even Deboreka.  But, I've resisted the BDO casino that would have me suffer through hours of grinding silver or rare drops, or learning some life skilling for silver, only to piss it away on blowing up a TET accessory that could sold for a few billion.  Not into spending 3M on Cron stones from an NPC, and certainly not going to spend real money to convert costumes into Crons.  I could work on FS maybe by spending silver on Hunger of Origins at the CM, but it doesn't seem worth it.

Instead, my grind is to just hit the monster zones that are easy and have a meager earning on silver, and since I'm more or less become a casual player I've start to cut back on my time of actually playing to maybe two hours, if I am not AFK fishing. So, it boils down about 500M silver per day, trying not to burn through Agris and collection scrolls to optimize trash loot.  At that rate a Tungrad accessory could be eight months away, which mean "This is pretty much BDO's end game."

After all the glitz of the immersive landscapes, doing the adventures and journals, maybe a few boss fights, learning a life skill, decorating your apartment flat, horse training for that T10 (and failing), in search of that elusive Vell's Heart or Garmoth's Heart, maping out the way forward, BDO smacking me with a wall at every point it feels like the game has turned into a stale cracker.

I log in to do some daily but uninspiring quests, read the server chat as players spout about liberal and concervative politics, some recalling the gloydays of PVP before 2019, and I'm just thinking WTF?  The guild I'm in is dead, and I don't care to join another one because I've already been through several and this one may as well be home cause they all end up the same it seems.

Then PA announces changes that will only offer more of the same boring sht, grinding with gambling enhancement. Okay, sure.  Sometimes, I'll look at the Pearl Shop and take a liking to a new outfit, think about getting an outfit to play dress-up Barbie with my character.  Buy a Value Pack to keep my Merv Pallet and Customization going.  Give one of my character a make over, start another class and play though another season, but its the samething, and still I'm not sure why I come back day after day to what feels like sitting through the credits after an MCU movie has ended waiting for possibly that post credit scene to show up.

Well seems game won't let you progress too fast, I mean getting pen bs weapons isn't easy like have to spent months grinding or waiting for events to have only few chances to enhance tet weapon to pen then after getting these 3 weapons to pen things goes even worse getting/upgrading accessories.

Now if you can make like 1-2b/h then have to grind for atleast 100h to get a pen weapon from market or accessories then repeat the scheme until you broke up xD or you can buy 3-4 premium costume to get 1 chance for pen cron enhance. 

For example I'm playing for like 1 year with no life skills progress only grinding selling market, I have no pen weapon and got already 10 taps on my main weapon with no success, that makes me feel very bad cause I stack many resources for so long just to fail that many times and now I literally have to do same things and wait for events to get more crons for some 1-3 taps, not talking about how many times i've tried to make my blackstar armor/helm/gloves to DUO not TRI, lost alot of silver there too just to let them PRI cause out of rss/silver. Isn't easy indeed but eats too much time to progress too little in case of success. Increasing the chances will dissapoint/unfair others who spent real money and much more time to get pen gear. For me this enhance system its weird, eating so much crons and you get like nothing per day, very expensive from NPC. Its a long nonsense talk about progression in this game, at some point many gives up realizing that they spent much time and results are dissapointing.

This is just my oppinion, maybe others are more lucky getting one tap to most of enhancements but for me this " unlucky RNG" makes me leave the game in peace at some point, I enjoy grinding but ideea of grinding for 200-300h getting from market a PEN bs weapon and there are 2 others its a NO for me.

you are doing stuff wrong bro, i got tripple bs from 1h/day grind and  free stuff. How about you quit gahaz and come orcs.

My gut just tells me there's something fundamentally wrong with BDO if that is the extent of the end game, pointless grind with no guarantees of improvement.  If I had to guess, BDO probably loses about 80% of their player base with the 20% sticking around over time, just like that audience waiting for that post credit scene, while the rest walk out.  I would also guess active new player drops off appreciably about eight month to about half.

In a way I love the PEN system for gear, because in other MMO's I really hate that gear is "seasonal."  The crap you grind and quest for becomes obsolete because new gear is constantly being added for that dreaded power creep.  Then later character's power and defense get out of wack and they have to do a stupid rebalance.  With BDO that is not so much the case.  I bet I could quit and find that my gear a year from now is still relevant to the game, although the notion of introducing Fallen God weapons is troubling.

Somehow, if PA could introduce a way to progressively advance without the casino approach that can wretch the gut after losing a 60B TET item, or watch your Fallen God go from 120B to 60B in an instant of a falled PEN.  I like Jetina's guaranteed PEN accessory quest line because it offers that route, but it is a hard path to take, don't kid yourself that its easy.  But, I'll take the assurance of something over the extreme odds any day even if it mean I could not sell that item on market.

One view that I have is that game devs and employees of games have families and have to eat too, so I do not mind spending money on a few cosmetics in the game.  I am not a whale, and I do not believe in play to win.  But, I do resent those who "play for free" vow to never spend a dime in the game, laugh at others who have had a harder luck, while they've "figured out the game to their advantage," then rails against PA for "changing the game they love."

But honestly, I don't know the answer that woud fix this problem, if it even is a problem.  Though, I hope PA can figure it out and make BDO great again.  Maybe it just need quality story and lore content.

Gahaz is fun and underrated!

I wonder why a lot of the mid zones aren't more buffed. It's amazing gaha trash loot is more than aakman. I know aak drops a lot more loot, but you legit... LEGIT make more money in trash loot at gahaz. real real talk. Maybe at a certain point, you don't, but I've started just blowing them up on my nova, and I am running around an empty room most of the time, and I get much less trash loot. If it was like 20, 25,000, it would be OK. Tung earrings are not that great as a rare drop, and scrolls / caphs are FUN but not really amazing, either.

There needs to be like gahaz which is like 600m on arsha ( flex ), get u some -150ap lightstone comboz, then there needs to be like 1 bil stuff which SHOULD be like aakman in the current bdo landscape, or starz or ahibs. Like EZ 1bil not 1bil w/ RNG. Then they need a 2 bil which is like high end stuff, and then A LITTLE MORE, even, for the highest tier.

The problem is it's like... 600m gahaz, maybe 1b or 800 on blood wolves (again w/ -150 gahaz, get dem eyez) and then this blah level of trash ( I hate elvia!!) then it goes to like 300+ ap where you can make a lot of gains. So wack.

If I had to bet on anything the amount of money I could make in 1 hr, I would go to blood wolf arsha. That's depressing! I got the second pot drop and it's like what the heck am I gonna do w/ two pot drops?? IS THERE A TRADE SYSTEM? Great marni stone, I WANT EYES ONLY, N RINGS.

But it's fun to go around and farm diff stuff. I think the key is farming on different classes. Take different classes different places. That should be end game. I am gonna do Jade on Nova soon. SOON. But yea, just have fun. Screw gear progress.

Edit: also don't calc out your silver per hour or you will wanna quit.

Why forsing yourself of doing somthing that you dont like...
There are alot of things to do if you areboard...
And if you wanna be the number one well you have to swipe the credit card tats it...

Nah even using card won't help too much but your life will fail relatively quick. Image that you don't even try tapping fallengod armor, destroying alot of fs 70-100 for PRI then grow up fs 120+ for DUO, also buy tons of memory fragments for repair, just wipe fast 10b for free to not get a DUO armor for beggining, next same strategy to use on gloves helmet boots. Yea you could do fun stuffs other then upgrading and grinding but most of them seems pointless in a progressing game, the only thing that matters here its silver and how much/fast you can make them. Sooner or later everyone wants to progress and not just to waste time.

I have used 150 on duo and it failed.... I reached 170, not to mention the 0.13%?? chance from TET to PEN with 500+ stacks(which if it continously fails you'll see your "profit" being negative ~2 trillion silver).......The problem with grinding is enhancing (the fact that I have RNG on enhancement and it takes years to gather materials for 10 minutes of enhancing only to fail really sucks) but you can always farm an eternity and buy them from the market...if you get the chance because there's also RNG on the market if there are more preorders (200+)

I never drank that influencer kool-aid. BDO was always about the alts. If I had to start a new account 25 characters to 61 full Pen Tuvala would be end game for me. Skills are done at 61, rotation is complete at 61. Anything beyond that is FOMO.

The game is about grinding and trying to get upgrades to be more efficient in grinding. Like a lot of other games. But BDO offers a lot more activities, "life skills" etc.. Ofc for improving equipment, horses, ships etc.

To be honest.. what the heck should they do to leave this type of progression? This is the core of the game. Transmuting the game into some ego shooter or very different game would be stupid.

There cannot be a solution to satisfy people with less time. Life skilling isn`t fishing only. There are a lot of semi-active actions available.

It is much more irritating that PA seems to misunderstand a lowering player base due raising concurrence from other games with a requirement to change the game into some casual player friendly product. An idea like removing lower crystals for "simplifying" the game... killing some relevant source to invest time in alchemy recipes or just getting black stone powder. Casual players with the aim to get to the lead will leave anyways. They are risking to lose the loyal player base, active as well as semi-active ones by only trying this and believing in wrong causes of player base loss. This can speed up the downfall dramatically. BDO wouldn`t be the first game failing because of such decisions. The player base WILL shrink due to the raise of other games comparable, nothing they do can change this. Trying to make it more attractive for new players may even make it worse when this disturbs the effort of the (semi-)active player base.