There have been a lot of QOL and lots of huge changes to the game. A lot of the changes were positive recently but there are some really bad ones that should get a second look.

Gear Progression in BDO is starting to feel very useless and to be more of a chore.

- Gear gains don't matter in node wars anymore, as everything is mostly capped.

- gear gains also don't matter too much in PVE either, due to PVE Caps.

- For a lot of players ( Not all) the reason to gear up was for PVP. That is completely gone out of the game now with the caps and removal of GVGs basically.

- The gear caps are very low in PVP in general, and no, the option isn't just "raise the caps" The caps are also very hard to balance. Every class functions differently in every tier, due to class to class modifiers/class passives/certain classes functioning differently at higher end and lower end. Having most of the game be capped INCLUDING PVE is just really not healthy for people who wish to push gear. 

I agree that forced PVP is a bad take in any game, that was very abnormal for BDO to do that, however a lot of the PVE playerbase assumed "ARSHA" is a bonafide pvp server.

These days, it really is not. Arsha's 50% drop rate isn't special anymore, as 50~100% drop rates are given out almost every other 3 weeks, as well as old moon scrolls and GM buffs. With the removal of gvgs, arsha did not get more popular. The reason for that is because most people view it as a drop rate server. There isn't an inbetween. It's either, a super dead server, or it instantly becomes a giant zerg fest. Arsha by design, wants you to go grind to make money, where PVP negates it. I'm not asking for one sided GVGs to get turned on, what I'm asking for is that PA needs to consider adding actual PVP Content to the game that rewards its playerbase for pvping. The only reason BDO was grief city is because BDO doesn't have any PVP content, so the only content was for people to grief others, as stupid as that sounds that is the absolute truth to situation. It's mostly PA's fault for not making PVP a rewarding activity where as most other games reward you for PVPINg as much as PVE or lifeskilling.

PVP has become a silver sink, and it should not.

-Elixirs

-Draughts

-The new gourds from LOML are a HUGE Silver sink and have completely invalidated the INF HP pot almost.

-Whale tendons

- Popping a Dekhia Lantern on Arsha is fully inting if a PVP breaks out.

 -No NW/Siege payout is paying you enough for PVP, especially if you are using gourds, which most sweaty pvpers are using including myself.

PVP should be accessible to all kinds of players, not just one group of people. Let seasonals have their cap, and maybe a mid game, and that's really it. Keep everything else uncapped for the most part. And for the uncapped content, it should be catered for both small groups of people and big groups of people. I'm also on the opinion that Nodewar/siege is not enough PVP content for players to enjoy at this point. 1h-3H a day during a certain time window isn't really enough for a lot of players who Enjoy PVP. With the context of how much players spend to just pvp, not only does PVP need to be rewarding, but there needs to be more game modes/content in the game to where if all a player wants to do is PVP, then they should be rewarded and be able to progress through PVP as well. Most other popular MMORPGS offer PVP as a viable route for gear progression, where as BDO is entirely shutting this part of the game off and it's very backwards considering bdo has "The Best combat". Right now most of BDO's "PVP" content is only catering to zerg fests. This doesn't mean take out zerg fest content. It means to also add smaller group content for pvp as well.

Arsha needs to get a rework. Arsha should function entirely different from the regular servers to where it becomes a PVEVP server of some sort, right now it isn't that. There's no organic reason to fight on arsha, and it's just outdated and lazy "Content" at this point. Slapping on PVP on a server when PVP is a silver sink is not the solution.

Other feedback would be appreciated.

They should cut down on the consumables in the game since they don't add any value to the game, just being an annoiance.
But this is unrelated from the rest.

i actually like that there is a lot of consumables. Yeah bit off topic for sure but consumables is a MMO thing xD

I think they should change gear progression like how it worked on Aion.

In Aion they had PVE gear that you got from open world/dungeons & for PVP they made it where you got abyss coins from open world pvp/battle grounds. 

Granted the game was pvp forced in most scenarios. 

How they kinda balanced it was if the dec'd out pvprs wanted to find most people they had to go to high level pve zones keep in mind the pve gear made u way tankier against pve monsters so pvp gear made u a lot squishier. 

PVP is what caused players to be motivated to grind more than they otherwise would.  Noone is making gearing up a priority for the "excitement" of grinding at Ulukita one day.

That passion and fun is gone from the game.  Part of the MMO Experience was the interacting with people who wanted your spot or if you wanted theirs. This is all removed with the latest updates.  If we have a 5 minute server hop and a private grind server every other hour the least Pearl Abyss can do is let us keep the Guild War Declarations!  if someone is being harassed they can server hop or go to marni server!

I would find it impossible to believe that the griefing and toxicity has not multiplied with the DEC's removed. Many players natural instinct has been to grief instead which ruins fun for players more than PVP ever would.

As Shakybay already stated, if they want players on Arsha you need more incentive than a 50% drop rate.  If they want Arsha to be  a "PVP server" there should be incentives to get people to want to go there when they can just grind over people instead and grief for regular drop rate.   Maybe a monthly reset server-wide kill rank, a currency earned for every kill that you can trade for a rare pvp only cosmetic?   all its good for now is when you need a rare drop or ingredient for a cup.

Sadly, I dont expect anythig to be done.  I think they will just keep this a PVE game with all the old players turning red or into griefers as they slowly lose interest and find other things to do for fun outside of BDO

Honestly, at this point PA themselves have no real clue what they want this game to be or to become. They probably would want max profit somehow but the rest? This is why this game looks more and more like a confusing wannabe Swiss Army knife which promises to do it all but actually underperforms at everything except combat. 

The question is if the solo and PVE focused non player-driven backlash that occurred in the mmorpg scene after the mid-2000s is still today's state of the art. I personally don't think so, looking at the recent successes of more innovative, more interaction-focused titles. 

Uncapped contnt like RBF is not fun when u have to fight against full def striker with finished gear, when you with 710 GS can't kill him and he can kill u on one combo. Same story with DR zerker I have 281/43X ninja succ with evasion build (1309 evasion) lack of dmg against eva and DR builds, really often be one combo-ed by ranger, sages, DKs. I spent hundreds of hours on my gear progression and still can't fight against hard capped eva/DR players. Why you are suprised that pvp is dead if only 2% of community have fun durning matches?

in the most part I agree but BDO simply has lost its way where PvP/GvG is concerned.

There is no true PvP content in this game anymore, having come from Dark Age of Camelot which to me was the best PvP/GvG/Seige War game ever built.

99% of the people still playing it do so for the PvP content alone, battle grounds ranked only by level, Hell most of the players do not even go to level cap anymore, they gear up for molvik which is a lvl 29 battle ground. then you turn off XP gain and stay there. Or they Siege in Realm on there mains night after night.

Crafting your own gear to give you an edge on your oponent but in the end it does come down to skill and your team mates.

There is none of that in BDO but they could with a few simple tweeks, Instance Cron Castle for example (other old castles are available), make it like Tuvala gear which is PvP specific. To Enhance it you need to do battle grounds for the enhancment stones. Ranking systems done on points to give you special gear/buffs and skills specific to your class.

None of it can be used outside of PvP as you would die to a normal mob instantly. But the reward is in PvP is that you can compete.

They are absolutly going in the right direction for PVE but the progression side takes months if not years for some, people don't have that kind of time anymore. But you could gear up a PvP toon in a month and still be playing years later for the same content.

Different character/class, Higher ranking, the chance to get your team holding Cron Castle from all challengers. 

DAoC has been going strong for 22 years, doesnt look great anymore but no one playing it cares, its so much fun standing on the top of a keep which you have just won against 2 other realms/teams.

But I doubt any of that will happen, so we are stuck with what we have. but hey we can live in hope...right!!!