Hello, I’d like to share some constructive feedback about the direction of Black Desert’s endgame content. That is after playing BDO for 10 years...

Over the past major updates, especially with Land of the Morning Light, Ulukita, and the newer Etan Island/Edana regions, BDO’s design has shifted noticeably toward instanced, boss-centric, and single-target challenges, and away from the traditional open-world roaming monster zones that many players still enjoy.

Recent Examples of This Trend

Land of the Morning Light

Ulukita

Contains some grind spots, but higher-end progression there is centered around:

-- Summoned elites,

-- Single-target challenges,

-- Mechanics-based solo encounters.

Much less focus on large monster packs or rotation-based grinding.

Etan Island / Edana Region

-- Beautiful environments but lack traditional roaming mobs.

-- Progression relies again on instanced challenges, bosses, or triggered encounters, not natural open-world monster groups.

-- The world looks impressive, yet feels less “alive” because there are few (or no) organic grind areas.

Mountain of Eternal Winter

-- Same problem, Large beautiful areas and no reason to go there

Other Instanced or Encounter-Based Systems

-- Black Shrine

-- Boss Blitz

-- Magnus

-- Atoraxxion

-- Seasonal dungeons and story arenas

These are high-quality designs, but they continue the move toward instanced, controlled environments rather than sandbox-style open-world combat.

What Many Players Miss

A lot of the original “BDO soul” came from:

-- exploring huge new regions,

-- finding new roaming monster zones,

-- learning rotations,

-- fighting through large, alive monster ecosystems,

-- and feeling immersed in an open world full of enemies.

When new regions such as LoML, Ulukita’s upper areas, or Etan Island arrive with few or no classic grind spots, the world can feel less dynamic, despite being visually beautiful.

Suggestion

It would be greatly appreciated if future regions included open-world grind zones with:

-- roaming monster groups,

-- rotation-style gameplay,

-- and the classic sandbox feel that helped define early BDO.

Many players enjoy instanced content, but an equal number still value open-world grinding as the heart of Black Desert’s identity.

Supporting both playstyles would help preserve the variety and soul of the game.

Thank you for reading this feedback.

Personally, I've hated all the instanced stuff.

A living open world is the best.  That's what made BDO great, and what keeps it tolerable.

One of my favorite things about the Xenoblade games is that in all of the lands, they are very much like a typical ecosystem... The organisms roam around and they range from very low level to extremely high level mobs. There are more of the low level ones and fewer of the high level ones of course. Some of them aggro towards you no matter what while others could care less about you unless you provoke them. It's funny cause you'll be in the middle of a fight with a bunch of over-sized mosquito-like mobs and this big primate-type mob named "Immovable Gonzalez" coincidentally walks into your hit range and then you have a high-level pissed off gorilla to run or die from.

Yeah, I wish all regions had low level and high level mobs.  That would encourage players to be in all regions at all times, increasing the living feel of the game.

People cried wolf few years ago and PA did exactly what players wanted. We had dangerous open world where you had to join guild, and sometimes needed help of other players to fight off enemy guild/red players. We had guild decs that made a lot of drama, but also kept everyone engaged.

Players didn't like it, and PA listened to these players. So PA made the game safe, simple and with instances. No guild decs, much less reds, no pirates, no risks and everything is safe exactly like certain demographic wanted. This is also literally what many people said would happen, and it did happen. Everything's boring, bland, empty and without risk. Now let's play along, enjoy marni, keep on fishing and wait for Savior™ of the BDO to save us all.

BnS had a cool feature that you and other people had to kill an area boss (open world) to get points so you could buy outfit/pieces, etc, from that local. I'd love to see an inspired cool idea like that on BDO. Sadly PA never listen to the players even for basic stuff.