Hello,

Disclaimer: this is my second attempt at this topic since PA is expanding on their mistakes since september 2021, the last time i wrote about "end-game" spots being unrewarding in contrast to low-end grinspots, the responses went in all non-topic directions and were wildly out of context. Please understand that i dont call for your favourite new alt-seasonchar 600mil grindspot to be nerfed, its about the issue that theres hardly any reason to push ahead with gear if youre getting less rewards for your time with higher risk and effort. (see this for my 2021 topic: https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/Forum/ForumTopic/Detail?_topicNo=15361&_opinionNo=0)

My Argument is based on Duodecil's spreadsheet which shows highly detailed results of grind-sessions with decent enough sample sizes (hours grinded, see here for grind spot analysis: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R6vcfKavoo85TcY6Xul6GzR8LNiO5IuXH8F5fZwUrSw/edit#gid=36051814)

Especially with the Arena of Solare and gear being equalized in match-made pvp (which is great!), theres little to no reason to push for gearscore any longer. Throughout the majority of the games lifespan, bdo`s grindspot money per hour was based on how far you had progressed your character, which created a vertical gearscore to money-made progression. In mid to late 2021, this fell off completely. Pila Ku with 261ap was outperforming most Elvia grindspots at 281+ ap.

Again, dont get me wrong, im glad that newer players and alts are getting insane silver/hr on crescents and manshaums now, however its robbing veteran players with high gearscore the incentive to play the game and push their gear any further.

Please buff grindspots with high ap/dp requirements to make sense in contrast to low-tier grindspots like crescents and manshaums.

Good Suggestion, it would also reduce the amount of extremely unfair encounters due to high end gear farming in low AP Spots and make PvP in Zones more equal. 

+1

You can make significantly more money at quint hill than that 600m/h you get with season.

While I agree in some parts, this is only true for certain gear ranges. 

If you are above 300 AP with one or two pen blackstars, in the right spots, you are able to make twice as much as a season player can in the Valencia spots, consistently. Especially with the upcoming buffs to Hexe / Quint Hill, it is likely that actual endgame players will reach 2bil/hr in these spots or close to it (I've personally already seen 2bil hrs at Hexe by some players, though this was assisted by the agris coin). Aka, the players with very much higher AP than seasonal are already at a point where their silver / hr can hugely outscale season.

However, between Seasonal gear and around 280/290 AP without blackstar, the progression is indeed pretty stagnant. You can move on to the next best spot, Orcs (and maybe Jade too), after reaching 270ish AP with blackstar or 280 without, and generally make maybe 100mil more than at centaurs. This is rather underwhelming for progress of 20-50bil above season level. 290 AP with blackstar, youre already fine to get started with Ghyfin, Oluns, Hexe, so your progress can accelerate again, though you still generally make 900m-1b per hour at most in these spots. At this point you are likely already around 100bil above season levels so it still doesnt feel great but you can definitely feel the improvement already. 

Between 240-270 AP however, there is no difference at all in the scaling of grinding gains. No spot in this range seriously competes with Centaurs, considering the ease of grind there. Yes, you can get rng carried hours at kratuga or stars end, but generally, the effort is higher for only a rng return, while centaurs is pretty much guaranteed average, and low effort especially for some classes (valk, zerker).

Imo, this is the part that need serious adjustment, and soon. 240 fresh out of season players should not compete with full pen weapon / armor and tet golden acc players at the same spot and making the same income. The income scaling needs to be much more gradual, instead of jumping up when new spots become feasible (also some classes still excel much more in some spots than others, which can lead to bad balance in terms of income if certain spots are the ones making much more money, but that is a different question. I have to say thought that PvE balance between classes is probably at its best as its been in years currently)

Thank you for narrowing the affected gearscore range down, ive had no experience with 700+ gearscore grinding. That is some incentive to push gear further, however most people will be stuck for ungodly amounts of hours in crescents/manshaums/centaurs instead of actually fun spots with fitting gearscore requirements like e.g. stars end or elvia spots to reach this kind of AP/DP.

This is pretty hard to solve atm.

The gear progression is pretty janky with how seasons work because after you get your PEN tuvala gear, you can move to spots such as Crescent, Centaurs or Road Sulfur mine and make anywhere from 300 to 600m silver an hour. Even more if you stack buffs such as yellows/agris.

You'll then spend a LONG time grinding these areas because the next step up requires a lot more AP/DP to do. The next spots you will progress to requires tens of billions of silver investment and barely provides better silver. Most naga spots will give you the same amount if not worse for more effort, except maybe orcs.

This means you'll make the same silver for a long time while not really feeling a ton of gear progression.

So how do you fix it? you could buff the income of Serendia Elvia spots aswell as other spots such as Sycraia, but then they'll end up at the same income as the high end spots where you need 670-700+ gs for and you have the exact same problem.

If you do the same for those spots, you end up with way too much silver in the game. If you just nerf the lower level spots in terms of income to solve this problem, you'll make it feel like shit for everyone at that stage that suddenly makes a lot less silver now.

Solution to that problem would be putting more unique rewards such as treasure items or costumes like Orzeca one behind end game spots. Giving them more money will increase prices of gear and make catching up harder which is opposite to what PA should be doing if they don't want the game to die copmletely.

IDK if you played during Mediah / pre-Mediah times.  But back then, there was huge incentive to progress gear for grind spots.  Not only to farm mobs more efficiently -- but also because PVP encounters were very, very possible in those days.  Almost guaranteed in main rotations.  Especially compared to today's "anti-PVP, anti-social" attitudes in BDO.

For anyone who doesn't know how BDO was (be it good or bad), there weren't many good grind spots, like there is now.  There were TWO grind spots that people wanted = Pirate Island or Sausan Garrison.  Elric's and Soldier's Grave were ok, but it was Sausan's and Pirate's players geared up to go.  These spots netted the most silver and combat EXP per hour and were highly contested.  Being that they were highly contested, obviously, you wanted to gear up to defend yourself or fight when the moment struck.  I have so many fond memories of those times -- memories of being completely demolished, forced to run, tuck tail, and/or grind a less profitable rotation as well as victorious memories of triumph, meeting new people, banding together with friends for epic GVG's, and seeing the fruits of my effort pay off by being better in PVP scenarios.  These things added so much incentive and meaning to gear up.

I found so much meaning in gearing up in those days.  Compared to now, I really don't care since I hardly see anyone competing for spots.  Even on Arsha, no one really wants to kick you out at Hexe, just PVP encounters.  So I think what PA needs to do is freaking release Battle of Thornwood Forest PvEvP mode, DO NOT make it gear-capped and make it rewarding.  Make something more hardcore, forget the lowbies for once, and make Battle of Thornwood Castle GOOD for vets.

Gotta agree there, Sausans are still some of my favourite BDO memories. So much fun, and there always was this sense of danger, of always being ready to defend or attack at the drop of a hat. Never had this much incentive to gear up as when it was Valencia Nags / Fogans with basically 2-5 DFS per hour routine. I got my butt handed to me more than once. But it made me improve, learn the tricks of the trade, and enjoy my interactions, both negative and positive. It was memorable. Now, grinding my daily hour in Marni, i forget about it as soon as it happened because nothing is happening. Arsha is a zerg fest, there is no PvP there unless youre one of the big guilds that can bring a platoon.

The biggest annoyance is having to push yourself for months just to see any kind of progress but sometimes that progress gets erased when you fail your enhancement. RIP

People did ask to do something else than grinding mindlessly in circles for months and they gave us Magnus and before that their take on dungeons. Are we asking the wrong things or do the devs have a different opinion on what "fun" means? It would be nice to have raids or something where we can all do something collectively with our nice gear but I'm afraid to ask anything radically "different" lol