I've gotten the opportunity to listen to yet another ball, and continue to get infuriated with what has been going on. It's clear that the leadership is flopping around without a sense of direction or understanding of the community and its driving people away. Every time a ball comes around, it makes me sick to my stomach to know everything that I have been doing has been devalued to the point where you could care less about people's effort.

You need to immediately do the following:

STOP:

GIVING FREE THINGS AWAY - Do you not understand that when you give FREE STUFF AWAY, you deincentivize people to come on. Why work to get anything you need when you realize PA is just going to give it to you for free later. I have a buddy who literally only comes on to get his free stuff and catches up then leaves the game. It doesn't take a smart person to realize when you give away everything, why would anyone play the game and work for it. Additionally, you piss people off who actively worked hard for what they got just to have it mean nothing. Everytime a ball comes out, the markets crash and the value of what you have is worthless because PA's out there giving away the house to everyone.

RELEASING CLASSES WHILE THE OTHERS ARE BROKEN - You're probably not aware, YOU CURRENTLY HAVE PLENTY OF BROKEN CLASSES RIGHT NOW IN THE GAME. You cannot balance the classes you currently have, why continue to add classes that are going to reshape how things are. The reason why you cant fix anything is because you continue to have to catch up. We see the gloal labs and the updates are a joke. You're wasting development time on fixing "parts of land around the ocean" when it literally effects NO ONE.

MAKING EMPTY PROMISES - There are changes and things you said you were going to bring back from the PREVIOUS BALL you still have not done, and thats par for the course. Over 50% of the things that you promised to do you have not done. One thing you are quick to act on is anything that makes you money, so theres that.

MAKING USELESS / DUMB PVP CHANGES - NO ONE ASKED FOR ELEPHANT BUFFS. IF ANYTHING, THATS EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT WE WANT. IT NEEDS REMOVED / NERFED. NO ONE ASKED FOR FLAME TOWER CHANGES EITHER. Just who are you listening to???

SCAMMING PLAYERS - Giving away free PEN Blackstars and T10's is just the ultimate insult to any player who purchased outfits for cron stones. You're LITERALLY scamming the playerbase. I actively encourage NO ONE to buy anything from the pearl shop especially anything that gives cron stones because PA's incentive is to get you to buy the outfits for cron stones, have you use those stones to tap what you need just to GIVE IT AWAY FOR FREE TO RANDOM PEOPLE A FEW MONTHS LATER.

START:

LISTENING TO THE COMMUNITY (OTHER THAN JUST STREAMERS) - WE HAVE A VOICE AS WELL. OUR VOICES MATTER. Sometimes more than just streamers. Sometimes they are out of touch and make opinions that just are not consistant with the actual playerbase. 

MAKING CHANGES BASED AROUND GROUP CONTENT - This is a MMO. We have been asking for group grind zones forever, not single spots around a tower where you need to buy stuff to make fuel to make your money back grinding there.

FOCUS ON INNOVATIVE CHANGES TO GRINDING / PVP - The LoML Bosses are nice but it doesn't take much to think of creative things. 10-20 Man bosses, 10-20 man dungeon instances, 5 MAN GRIND ZONES, PVP ZONES DURING NIGHT TIME, ETC. You can literally go to different games that do it right, and copy their stuff. These things are not hard to come up with.

RETURNING PVP TO WHAT IT WAS - We've given you a chance to prove you could fix it, and you couldn't. Return the game mode to what it was. Return guild dec's, return the PVP Node wars, And Don't mess with sieges. When we say we want move ways to PVP, and to make money off of it, it doesn't mean SHORTEN THE TIME of PVP. LESS PVP DOESNT EQUAL MORE PVP.

FIXING DR/EVASION - The new accessores you brought out were nice but it makes classes that benefit from evasion and DR BROKEN AS HELL. You cannot do any damage to anyone, and the classes that benefit from those highly can wear a lot of it and dish out a lot of damage. Game is unbalanced, and broken in this aspect. The problem with the game was the amount of AP in the first place. Classes with evasion could wear a lot of evasion, benefit from DR and still do a ton of damage. The problem with the game was the damage in the game, and all you did was give out more damage. We need dev's that play this game active and understand what they are doing.

I've never really realized how far down the quality and the content of the game could go. We now live in an era where the people who took years to upgrade, perhaps pay for, and obtain gear, are neutered and equalized by a new people who started the game a month early. Pearl Abyss doesn't appreciate your time, your effort, your money or your value.

Nice post.  They are out of ideas, out of touch, and out of concern for loyal veteran players who are proven money makers.  Instead, they focus on fickle, disloyal players, seeking to placate them AT THE EXPENSE of current players.  They invested so much effort into converting tuvala for new players, yet nothing to improve progression for veterans.  Waxed nostalgic about the good old days of open world PvP with lots of verbiage then NOTHING to bring back open world PvP while curbing bullying.  All their attempts to funnel us into PvP instances have failed, and they STILL haven't reverted the mode war changes.  AGAIN, they changed PvP to placate new players who spend nothing at the expense of loyal, profitable customers.  This was the last straw for many players.  Some will hang on for a short while.  I think the new PvP modes will be dead on arrival.  We don't want scripted PvP!

You don't understand how difficult game design is.  You have to comprehend very complex concepts such as gathering in the game increases your ability slowly over time and thus yields rewards.  The numbers are process involved in such an activity is nearly impossible thus an alternative system was put in place.

Instead of adding value to playing the game a neat little system called Crontent was chosen instead.  This way you could extend your masteries to 3,000 not by doing the actual activities, but via rng enchanting.

But wait there is more!!!!

We copy pasted the DEX system from other items into our new crontent items.  We dearly hope you enjoy this new crontent.  If you want to hear the rest of the speach you can just ask a chat bot to fill in the thank you salutation yourself.

i like the free stuff as a pvp player that get 0 rewarded from the game.

if you want to work, then go out and actually work, this is a videogame.

The problem is not so much that there is too much free stuff, it is more that it is excessively hard to reach endgame. Without the free stuff it takes hundreds/thousands of hours to reach endgame. Removing the free stuff will only work out well if gameplay activities are made much more rewarding. Party black shrine is a step is the right direction, but the most rewarding option for that (hard mode) is not very accessible to most players.

I can't wait for them to give that new horse away for free next year! 

Wrong:  There is large player base that would easily be willing to spend 5x the amount of time getting to end game if it was worth doing.

-- Group grinding

-- Micro daily progression

-- More challenging areas

-- Long term value in equipment (stabilzed, not devalued, given away or just out dated)

-- Progression in multiple forms (Alternative advancement, levels that matter, end game skill points)

Current end game is trash and designed to annoy you into gambling:

Playing even 5+ hours for a single low end chance to upgrade is absolute garbage and everyone knows it, including PA.

It is hard to make content that remains engaging for hundreds of hours. It's easy to require people to do spend that amount of time on content to reach endgame though. Making skillpoints matter, and levels matter and be realistic to achive would be excellent.

Because of the increasing costs and (relatively) static gains, people hit a wall and give up on progression for a while. Them PA gives something away to lure them back, and the cycle repeats.

The solution is to balance the progression loop so that it's appealing to players rather than alienating to them. Making it so that you can only progress in a realistic amount of time if you get lucky gambling or spend a lot of money is alienating to players.

That is correct, but the business model does not condone that.  That is a game you play to enjoy.  That is not what BDO and PA are about.  The game is required to be PAID Content.  Any value to the customer is just empty marketing words.  You know blah blah blah we value blah blah.  Even though everything we do is literally opposing everything we say.

The solution in theory is actually easy.  Just sink these ships all of them.  Bury them in the desert like Archaege.  Cut off their funding and let them be forgotten relics.  The problem is the community just isn't smart enough or willing to do that.  Thus, we have to deal with the problems the whales are creating.

However, now is one of the best opportunities in years to make a real difference.  Drop these ZERO's and get with the HERO game that spent the last decade providing actual content to their customers.  Show the industry, the genre, that quality matters to you.  In fact there are a few games you can support that honor that.  Do your part.

The old "they need money" doesn't matter.  They don't have any obligation or right to exist.  Bad companies should go bankrupt because of their business practices.  Reward those that treat their customers with respect and avoid ones which don't.

Get a fucking job, get out of your basement, and realize you are chasing diminsihing returns.

If I want to body build it doesnt take me months to see results, I see results the next week, I see results the next 1 month. 
If I want to learn Roller skating, I see results end of a training session. 

This idea of wanting a challenge that only a select brain damaged group of people strive for, just because their life's offer balance/not offer but still do it anyway, is just sad. 


The concept you chase is literally like you are doing high repititions of low weight, and expect to lift heavier weight when you have never touched it. Little trickles of progress is shit progress.