There isn't really much anyone can do for you. I did look at your articles, mostly nothingburges for completely niche systems of the game. Take a look at myne if you want to be Measuring critical e-0eens. Measuring life/experience quality in $/hr seems like a really healthy way to live. 

It's ok homie, I've been exactly where you are, just with 4000 hours and $400 of actual hard core progression (to 900b only in accuracy accessories). Nobody wants to feel like they've been duped after such investment, but (imo) you're duped even more when not recognizing the initial dupe in the first place. 

This article will age like fine wine when PA gets caught for the same internal practices as Nexon.

I'm not going to look at yours cause I can already tell you're just a jerk. I'd say measuring life/experience quality in $/hr IS a healthy way to take on hobbies like gaming - especially since it's a cost/hour experience... that experience ranging from poor to great. If the experience is great (which most of BDO has been) and the cost/hour is low, then I'm not getting duped. I made the choice to play this game, spend the money that I have on it, and I'm having fun and that's all that matters. 

I said I wouldn't play without Kam, but I have no trouble running Kam off market. I stated that. I'm life skill. It'd be awful.

You seem like a smart person. I was with you until you started talking about inconvenience having to be natural then PA adding natural inconvenience. 400 dollars is good, though. I enjoy BDO, but my end game is just chilling. I'm not trying to spend a ton of money on a game, even 400 bucks. I think it's sad that you can't get a VP off market barring crazy circumstances, but I'm glad people are hardcore melting to make it easier to get some other stuff. There was a time when I could get VP off market.

I understand what the game wants you to do. I understand it wants you to buy a tent and melt for crons. I understand the design, and in some ways, it's sad that I had to pay what I had to pay, but I've gotten a lot of value (no pun.) If you take your tet bs and start melting, you've been groomed into BDO in one fell swoop.

My goal is to make friends and have fun. It didn't take long to realize I didn't want to invest 1000s of hours grinding mobs, not in this game. Not even to make fedora posts after I quit.

We all, in one way or another, see it for what it is. The question is... what do we do? I got friends who have dumb GS. I have friends who barely play. We can all chat about the game and have fun. There is no FOMO on my part, but I would have played a lot more if a VP didn't need to be bought. Still, I've gotten what I believe is the highest level of fun BDO can offer me.

Lastly, the reason I dislike the comparing sub to a single purchase game is it's like comparing going out to dinner to a gym membership. They are meant to serve different functions.

Chill out, have fun. Don't get played by freemium MMOs.

At some point, there will be a fun game, and I don't mind paying sub per month for a good, engaging game. I know that model is way better than this one.

@ dude, tho, you should be happier about your successes. I'm happy with mine. If you say I don't have any, you're playing yourself.

      You sure are proving that you've got an open mind that can asses information critically.

      If you say so. It's a logical fallacy to convolute quantity and presumed quality into the same thing, but you do you.

      It's exactly people with this opinion that the various skinner box developers at PA (and beyond) get giddy about. Those who don't know and think that having bursts of dopamine is all that matters.

       Are you trying to say that BDO hasn't purposefully designed weight, inventory slot, fairies, pets, mounts, and ultimately the enchanting system to be predatory?

      Did you actually read what that $400 is referring to tho?    

      This is you, accepting the inconveniences created by PA, to solve them by procuring a value pack from one place or the other. You're salty about its availability, instead of its existence in the first place. Do you think anyone would even bother with the VP if it didn't have the tax rate tied to it? Do you think anyone would bother with Kama Blessing if it didnt have drop rate?

      Oh, so you understand the predatory design underlying the main progression in the game, but because you decide not to participate in it, it's OK?

      You can do both while being critical of the company practices and the hostile inconveniences baked into the game. Fun and connection aren't mutually exclusive with trying to improve (or fight for fairness) within the thing you're having fun and connection within.

      Cool, so if your solution is to just have the fun that you want to have and drop out, why are you here defending PA from players who want to have the fun and invest themselves in battling a predatory company with declining practices? You're literally saying "if there was no VP, I'd have more fun" at the same time with saying "Chill homie, it's predatory, no biggie, just dont participate". 

      Except you need to work on your metaphor there a little bit since a single purchase from an MMO or MMORPG game can get you the same experience as a subscription to the same. A gym membership can't get you dinner, yaa'mean?

      Not for BDO and PA though, because that requires either a better Sandbox (ie. good ol' Star Wars Galaxies or Eve), or a better theme park - neither of which they've proven capable of pulling out. 

@dude, there is nothing to be happy about. Everyone that I played with has/is quitting the game since May this year. Community vibes on this forum and beyond have gotten worse. CMs/GMs here, in-game and on support are on life support and are participating at the bare minimum. I will post my final review of this game soon, but the last year was an entirely negative progression for me, with 264 hrs of Ash, 170 of Crypt {pre current buffs} and 130 hrs at dehkia oluns along with a ~thousand in DSR and Thornwood resulting in nothing but fails (314b ground totally in the year, -512b in failing debos and Fg gloves and boots). PA has been giving me signals in multiple ways to get out of their game, and I shall finally oblige.

I play both BDO and XIV. BDO has its own set of unique problems, but so does XIV. As an enjoyer of both, calling XIV a premium MMO or pretending its monetization setup is any better than any f2p kmmo trash is laughable and I want to explain why.

In XIV, you pay a certain amount for the base game that can range from 30 dollars on sale to 50. You also pay 15 a month to log in at all. And you pay ~30 dollars for an expansion every two years. The game also has a cash shop with 35 dollar mounts, 25 dollar costumes, and 7 dollar emotes that can either no longer be obtained in game, or were simply never obtainable in game. They also have a separate merch store where you can buy physical merch (such as a 400 dollar figurine) that gives you in game rewards as well like exclusive emotes. They also receive content updates once every 4 months. In between these dry periods, nothing is happening, but you're still paying your sub fee. The community is full of people who believe this is fine, because they enjoy being able to play other games. Copium is off the charts as people struggle to claim that a buy to play subscription game also has a cash shop just as expensive as the one in BDO. The community also has a lot of people who are not okay with this at all, but they're not as visible because you can't post on their official forums if you aren't paying a subscription. So once you're fed up and stop paying your sub, you're blocked from accessing the forums and talking about the game. Compare that to these forums; I haven't logged on in months, but I can still come here to talk. A premium MMO wouldn't have so many avenues to squeeze money out of a player without at least giving back monthly. A premium MMO would also value player feedback even after that player has left. XIV does neither of these things.

I purchased BDO when it first released. If I wanted to, right now, without having given PA a dime in six months, I could log in and play the game without dropping a cent. Every time they've introduced new content, I've been able to simply access it for free. I set a value pack preorder every time I quit, and when I come back I have one waiting for me in the marketplace. I've legit never spent money on this game's only attempt at a monthly sub. I either get lucky through the market, or they just hand me one for coming back after being gone a long time, or there's some event/promo code that just dumps one in my lap. I'm not saying the system is perfect, but again, I play both, and I've spent more on XIV's monthly sub than I ever have on the optional one for BDO. The cash shop in BDO is gross, but considering the cost of the base game nowadays is what, ten dollars? It's whatever to me. I haven't given them money in ages. The biggest issue BDO has going for it is that all there is to do is GRIND, and for *what*. The VP system isn't perfect, and my method of free VPs isn't sustainable; eventually I'd run out of free ones to use. But it's simply not equivalent to a monthly sub. In XIV, when my monthly sub runs out, I get *booted from the game until I pay 15 dollars again*. In BDO when my VP expires, I lose some buffs. 

But it's hilarious to me to hear someone comparing BDO's monetization in 2024 to XIV, when imo XIV's monetization is absolutely disgusting because you have Square Enix triple dipping on a high b2p base price model+monthly sub model+expensive cash shop model and then for all that money, they drip feeds their players a few hours of content 3 times a year. Oh, and you know how when we have downtime that's unexpected or runs over, and PA will mail us compensation stuff via the in-game mail service? Like, I've legit logged in for the first time in 5 months and gotten compensation-for-downtime mail for downtimes I wasn't even here for. Well In XIV, where you're *paying for your playtime* they'll just take the game down a whole day for maintenance and not even refund the time on your account. Or sometimes the server/datacenter you're playing on crashes and there's a 1k+ queue to relog; no compensation there either. And the players defend all this like they're in a cult. You can also leave this game for years, as I have, and when you come back you'll still have all your stuff; if I quit XIV for 46 days, I'll lose my in game house which I've spent millions of in-game currency furnishing; they do this to keep people paying their sub even when there's nothing worth subbing for. The game also has no anticheat (good tbh) and is overrun with bots that the company does nothing about, probably because each of those bots is paying a sub (bad tbh).

Just saying, grass always seems greener. Both games have issues. The MMO genre in general is kind of in a disgusting spot at the moment and for a long time XIV only appeared to be winning because it was "good enough" while Blizzard was stealing employee breastmilk and everything else in the genre was on fire. As someone who plays both and enjoys certain elements of both, I wouldn't call either game a premium game. I think both games were made with a lot of love at first but are now very flawed games run by very greedy people trying to make money after a lot of very talented people jumped ship. If BDO hadn't been so greedy back when it released, a LOT more XIV players would be willing to try it out btw; but whenever I tell my bored friends in XIV (waiting 4 months for a few hours of content will do that) that BDO isn't as bad about the pets/weights/etc. bs that it was on launch, they just have bad memories of the early days and refuse to come back. BDO blew it, but XIV is pretty disgusting too. Imagine charging a monthly mandatory fee and not even delivering monthly content. Even bdo gets regular events. In XIV the players make their own events and it involves standing in some guy's player house spamming a repeatable dance emote while sexting other players until the new expansion drops.  I'm laughing my ass off hearing people call XIV a "premium" MMO in this thread. The word "premium" is putting in some work in this thread, that's all I'm gonna say.

Oh, and because it needs to be said, I don't think BDO is worth paying a monthly sub for either. This game is clearly in a terrible state right now. But at least with this game, if I wanted to just log in and see how things were doing, I could do that much for free. 

I think OP's point was more to these three subscription choices are more expensive than another MMO with a subscription model that guarantees content (that is more than just a new class) sooner than every 6 months. Doesn't matter if it's not needed, that you can buy them off of the market. It's still grossly overpriced and the value is minimal.

PA should really consolidate the three buff packs, make it $20 and call it a day.

I think they don't even need to do that, it works. 

If I had to pay 320€ to play the game, I wouldn't be here tbh. 

PA drowns you with free subs since they took over, and there exists the loyalty value pack. I didn't spend a single cent on them since 2 years. 

There are actually p2w items, like sailor slots, Farmer, Cooking and Processing outfits which are a must have if you want to do lifeskilling without griefing yourself

440$ is optional not obligation, also you can customize this price, if you think than you dont need buff or only 1 buff

324$/year or 12$/month is the price ticket to play in ff14 and the dlc is not free

so with black desert i can log any time play my character 10 minutes, quit the game for 3 months, log again 5 minutes and that it

in ff14 if i want to play my character 5 minutes and not back before 5 months it will cost me 12$, so for 5 minutes i must pay 12$

Good riddance.