Well the game is bad, but it's not like it wouldn't be a well know fact among the gamers, that bdo is a p2w korean grinder. Like even people not playing the game knows it, and avoids it for this very reason. If you still invested time despite this well know fact, then you deserve it.

There are only 2 choices in the industry.

Progress limited by daily / week limits.
And there is the RNG.

The first, a subscription and the sale of that subscription is the center of its economy. your possibility of progression per day is voluntarily limited in order to renew your subscription for several months. it is all predatory.

And now Rng,  probability with its infinities and its mid-maxing profit calculation for maximise the maximum of attempt until success. Limited only by player playing time. Where the economic system is going to be aimed at offering services and tools to maximize the number of attempt to success. With these variabilities.

PA with p2w only takes advantage of the natural RMT of a mmorpg. Business is predatory, Trade, Exchange is predatory. if PA have the money today to produce other games, it is by taking advantage of human nature. Like any profitable business.

Both system is predatory cause its alway search you to spend. The game is always centred on it. the game revolves around these mechanics. Video games like absolutely any commercial product exist to generate profit. It can't change.
There is no difference. Regardless of the method the result is the same. The method is simply an appearance. The taste is the same.

I much prefer RNG. Because it is closer to the IRI. For me a good mmo is one that mirrors humans society behaviour. Infinite experience, a lot of surprise, frustration, joy, depress, abuse, cry and most importantly unfairness.


I hate so hard non-rpg base progression or *Protected one* cause.
There is no respect for the time invested. There is no time to invest.
For all the other hours of play that you would have in the day or the week you get pissed off spinning around the dalaran fountain for 5 hours. And even that in the end it becomes worse if the daily progression is too fast. you end up hitting a wall and in the end only playing 3 hours a week because there is only the limited weekly content left.

Your changes that you are proposing are not going to make it a good game.

It's just going to kill what make BDO, BDO.

the changes you ask for will make it more theme park.
The same way Archeage ended up being more and more theme park over time cause of the same type of suggestion.
To make finally the entire progression daily-quest based.

Let people who don't like BDO quit BDO.

BDO must remains and please those who love it as it is.

You can grind for a full 24 hours straight and there won't be any reduction to your exp or loot.  There is no depreciation.  There are no required daily tasks that limit your progression where that is the ONLY means to acquire those things.  If you want to power grind BDO you can all day all night.

Oh PA... You have such a wonderful game here. You've designed so many genuinely innovative and interesting mechanics, you have the best graphics, combat, and lifeskilling system of any MMO on the market... You've created a game that people can get lost in, that people dump thousands of hours of their lives into and that dorks like me write essays about on the forums. And yet here we are, disappointed and sometimes even infuriated by a game that we love, because your aggressive monetization practices are continuing to choke it into the ground.

I don't know if you truly realize how close you are to having the perfect game, or the kind of history you would make if you were willing to push back against these kinds of predatory practices that have been plaguing the gaming world for far too long now. Remove at least some of the greedy monetization, rework the absolute pit of despair that is the enhancement system, and start rewarding people for the time and effort they spend on your game rather than tearing them down when they fail to spend enough money. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that BDO would become the best open-world sandbox MMO in gaming history.

And yet, here we are.

Now let me say, before people jump on me for this- I know PA has stated before that they aren't interested in changing the enhancement system, and won't give a damn about the opinions of one player in one forum thread either. They're making plenty of money off of these systems, so why would they ever bother changing them? I get it. In the end I'm just going to be crying into the abyss here (heh, pun intended), but darn it, I know that the best things in life aren't tied to money, and I simply love this game too much to not at least try to push for change. Maybe it's sad, pathetic even, but I'm one of those people who has been genuinely moved by the positive changes that PA have been making recently, and I do have hope that they care enough about this game to at least consider it. So one more time, for posterity's sake, let's talk about the one thing that's sucking the life out of this game for so many of its players.

Losing Progress On Failure

PA recently acknowledged the negative impact of failure in their March 10, 2021 patch notes, where they talked about the 'emotions wrought by failure' in regards to the Black Spirit's Adventure minigame:

"We're changing the rules of Black Spirit's Adventure. When we first revamped Black Spirit's Adventure, we added a variety of devices in hopes to increase not just the fun factor but its strategic element as well. However, in this process, we realized that we had forgotten a rather important thing - that is, the emotions wrought by failure. The original Black Spirit's Adventure had no real consequence for failing to reach the finish square, but while focusing on revamping the board, we neglected this important part. And so, today's update will remove the "Failed to Finish" option entirely, revamping the board to now allow for anyone to enjoy without fearing to fail."

You know where I'm going with this. PA, if you can acknowledge this kind of harmful experience in this context, can you acknowledge it in gear progression, where it is exponentially worse? I want to make it clear that in this case it's not even about the prospect of failure - failure is a necessary mechanic in any form of progression - it's more about the fact that you are actively destroying player progress on failure. I get the idea that 'failure pushes one to try harder,' but there's no world in which punishing players for a failure caused by a single RNG roll can ever lead to a positive experience. Having TETs fall down to TRI, or accessories poof into thin air is the most needlessly punishing, disheartening thing I've ever experienced in any game, period, and cushioning the experience with cash shop items labeled as 'convenience' is absolutely predatory.

This mechanic has caused countless players to quit this game. Not just temporarily, but permanently. I can't even begin to name the number of friends I have who have tried the game, loved it, and then instantly lost their enjoyment once they hit the wall that is gear progression. It's just that painful, really. And it doesn't matter that you can just 'buy your gear off the marketplace with enough money' - the game actively teaches new players that they must enhance their gear through the main storyline and season progression, slowly easing them into it until they are suddenly faced with the prospect of failing and losing their progress. They are introduced to this disheartening mechanic right away, and by the time most of them could reach the point where they're able to start making enough money to buy the pieces they need, the damage has already been done.

This is a terrible impression to leave people with, and has severely impacted the rest of the gaming community's opinions of this game to the point where most of them will never give BDO another chance, or will never even try it in the first place. I don't want to believe that this is what you want for your game, not after all of the positive changes you've been trying to make. So please, if you truly care about the future of BDO, if you want it to be a longstanding MMO that retains a steady and healthy playerbase for many years to come, I hope you will genuinely consider removing this mechanic from the game. Keep everything else about enhancement the same, pad it with even more grind and convenience items if you have to, but please stop needlessly punishing your players and feeding off of their failure.

Sincerely,

     A hopeful BDO player

I have played CalOnline, Silkroad and countless other korean grinders and not one of them I remember as cancer level as BDO "progression" system is.

Well if you run out of your argis and lootscrolls you - in fact - get less loot, hence there is a slight time limitation.

If you speak about gathering, then that's limited by energy, bartering by parley.

Yeah you can get convenience items for that.

And bdo isn't that much time limited true. You can grind 24/7 and while it won't be the most efficient, you can do it.

Yes, it can be distorted or buried in semantics, but that only leads to worthless discussions.

The proper context for a "Time Gated" game is things like

3 dungeon tickets per day.

20% Exp Rates after 2 hours.

Important daily obtainable once per day.

There are certainly games that are designed this way.  Which you can essentially only progress for a limited time each day.  Bringing the true meaning of Time Gated.

Luckily BDO's structure is generally not that way.  The bartering system is probably one of the closest activties to it.  A good test for this is to see, can you play just the weekend and keep up with a player that plays 2 hours a day.  The answer is pretty much YES because it's not time gated.  You can apply whatever hours are needed to catch up.

Oh PA... You have such a wonderful game here. You've designed so many genuinely innovative and interesting mechanics, you have the best graphics, combat, and lifeskilling system of any MMO on the market... You've created a game that people can get lost in, that people dump thousands of hours of their lives into and that dorks like me write essays about on the forums. And yet here we are, disappointed and sometimes even infuriated by a game that we love, because your aggressive monetization practices are continuing to choke it into the ground.

I don't know if you truly realize how close you are to having the perfect game, or the kind of history you would make if you were willing to push back against these kinds of predatory practices that have been plaguing the gaming world for far too long now. Remove at least some of the greedy monetization, rework the absolute pit of despair that is the enhancement system, and start rewarding people for the time and effort they spend on your game rather than tearing them down when they fail to spend enough money. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that BDO would become the best open-world sandbox MMO in gaming history.

And yet, here we are.

Now let me say, before people jump on me for this- I know PA has stated before that they aren't interested in changing the enhancement system, and won't give a damn about the opinions of one player in one forum thread either. They're making plenty of money off of these systems, so why would they ever bother changing them? I get it. In the end I'm just going to be crying into the abyss here (heh, pun intended), but darn it, I know that the best things in life aren't tied to money, and I simply love this game too much to not at least try to push for change. Maybe it's sad, pathetic even, but I'm one of those people who has been genuinely moved by the positive changes that PA have been making recently, and I do have hope that they care enough about this game to at least consider it. So one more time, for posterity's sake, let's talk about the one thing that's sucking the life out of this game for so many of its players.

Losing Progress On Failure

PA recently acknowledged the negative impact of failure in their March 10, 2021 patch notes, where they talked about the 'emotions wrought by failure' in regards to the Black Spirit's Adventure minigame:

"We're changing the rules of Black Spirit's Adventure. When we first revamped Black Spirit's Adventure, we added a variety of devices in hopes to increase not just the fun factor but its strategic element as well. However, in this process, we realized that we had forgotten a rather important thing - that is, the emotions wrought by failure. The original Black Spirit's Adventure had no real consequence for failing to reach the finish square, but while focusing on revamping the board, we neglected this important part. And so, today's update will remove the "Failed to Finish" option entirely, revamping the board to now allow for anyone to enjoy without fearing to fail."

You know where I'm going with this. PA, if you can acknowledge this kind of harmful experience in this context, can you acknowledge it in gear progression, where it is exponentially worse? I want to make it clear that in this case it's not even about the prospect of failure - failure is a necessary mechanic in any form of progression - it's more about the fact that you are actively destroying player progress on failure. I get the idea that 'failure pushes one to try harder,' but there's no world in which punishing players for a failure caused by a single RNG roll can ever lead to a positive experience. Having TETs fall down to TRI, or accessories poof into thin air is the most needlessly punishing, disheartening thing I've ever experienced in any game, period, and cushioning the experience with cash shop items labeled as 'convenience' is absolutely predatory.

This mechanic has caused countless players to quit this game. Not just temporarily, but permanently. I can't even begin to name the number of friends I have who have tried the game, loved it, and then instantly lost their enjoyment once they hit the wall that is gear progression. It's just that painful, really. And it doesn't matter that you can just 'buy your gear off the marketplace with enough money' - the game actively teaches new players that they must enhance their gear through the main storyline and season progression, slowly easing them into it until they are suddenly faced with the prospect of failing and losing their progress. They are introduced to this disheartening mechanic right away, and by the time most of them could reach the point where they're able to start making enough money to buy the pieces they need, the damage has already been done.

This is a terrible impression to leave people with, and has severely impacted the rest of the gaming community's opinions of this game to the point where most of them will never give BDO another chance, or will never even try it in the first place. I don't want to believe that this is what you want for your game, not after all of the positive changes you've been trying to make. So please, if you truly care about the future of BDO, if you want it to be a longstanding MMO that retains a steady and healthy playerbase for many years to come, I hope you will genuinely consider removing this mechanic from the game. Keep everything else about enhancement the same, pad it with even more grind and convenience items if you have to, but please stop needlessly punishing your players and feeding off of their failure.

Sincerely,

     A hopeful BDO player

Even if I have my counter-arguments to this post, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this.  Genuinely.  You presented your case in the best way possible, so thanks for this post, Desymoo.  This is well written and well-presented, that even if I personally disagree, I appreciate your post and respect your concern.  I will start with my counter-argument:

1) Central Market has made it easier than ever to progress in gear.  Unlike before, PEN items, TET accessories of all types, and other highly sought after items like Garmoth's Heart are almost always in-stock and available for purchase.  So, instead of trudging your way through RNG, instead of hoping that one day you'll get a lucky Vell's Heart drop, we are now able to purchase these highly valuable items using nothing but silver (in other words, the fruits of gameplay).

2) Because of the CM, this allows players to completely bypass the enhancement system and bypass the need to get lucky with a super rare drop, like Vell's Heart.  Only thing not available on CM are Treasure Items, which, we should know the reason why it's not (supposed to be this uber rare thing that's super hard to get).

3) If enhancing, there are META ways of doing.  An example of this, for armor and weapons, is to only enhance on a second set and wear the piece that's at the highest enhancement level you have on your person.  Doing it this way means you will never degrade your gear score.  The game doesn't tell you how to do this though, so I can see how many players can fall into the trap of going yolo on main gear...I once was in the same boat as you...

I used to be so frustrated with this game's enhancement system.  To the point of quitting the game multiple times due to enhancement failure.  Imagine going from full TRI everything back in 2018-2019, and blowing everything up to PRI and Asula accessories.  Yup.  That was me.  After making my return, though, Central Market was introduced and allowed me to buy gains.  I am about 4 years in BDO....and I have not enhanced a single PEN myself (sadface).  Sucks, but hey --- I have the stats (and a 200+ FS).  Currently 650-ish gear score, 302 awakened AP using a TET Revived Lunar Necklace.  It took me about 2 years to finally figure things out in BDO, how to make progress without going insane over RNG, and now that I've found "my thing" in BDO, gains are coming in at a 100% success rate.  OFC, I gamble here and there, but I find it fun to gamble "responsibly" (IE: Not blowing your entire bank on one 30% success rate enhancement...learned this the hard way lol).  It's very possible, especially if I can do it.  But I understand your concern and can see how it is harmful.  All I'm saying is there are ways around that (without egregious P2W), if it interests you!

GL HF :)