This post is going to be mostly about visuals because I think BDO's gameplay still holds up for the most part, at least at a core level, and that my own personal issues with it are generally in relation to some mechanics and other design decisions that I feel could be addressed more easily than a visual overhaul.

Basically, I've been feeling lately like BDO is really starting to show it's age visually. I've been wondering if Pearl Abyss has any intention to maintain BDO in such a way that it's still at the forefront of visuals within the genre where it had maintained it's place for quite some time. While I don't pay much attention to upcoming MMO news anymore, I do know that there are some on the horizon. I know people have gotten their hands on Throne and Liberty which from what I've heard is pretty disappointing, so PA doesn't really have to worry about that as far as I can tell. Chrono Odyssey did look like a potential competitor from what little I saw though, and I'm kinda hoping that PA has plans to keep BDO competitive as well. I know it's quite a big thing to ask, and that it would take a tremendous amount of work, but it would be really awesome to see BDO get a huge visual overhaul of most of the game. Some NPCs especially are really hard to look at, and a lot of the animations outside of combat animations for player characters look really bad, even ones in newer and updated story cutscenes. The lighting system looks quite rough at times too, and personally I'd really like to see the game moved to a new or updated engine too if it would mean less harsh pop-in with the environemnt, and a higher quality distant LOD. There's also just in gneneral a major lack of implementation of newer graphical options and settings, even down to us still having only the 1.0 version of FSR. I honestly even feel like the player character models and textures are starting to look dated too, and I've just kinda been hoping that the renders we see for promotional material are higher quality assets that they're saving for a huge visual update/overhaul.

BDO still does a lot of things better than other games in the genre, and I've enjoyed the majority of the time I've put into the game. I guess I just worry about investing myself further if there's no intent from PA to keep the game competitive. I know we're getting a fairly big update soon, I just still can't help but worry about how much time is left before something else possibly comes along and tries to compete for the same audience, but with something newer and shinier. Is there anyone else who feels this way? Do you think PA has any intent to prepare or address a situation like this to keep BDO in the MMO race?

I wish people would say what they disagree with or dislike instead of just quietly downvoting. Just to clarify too, I think the game looks alright currently, it's just a thought I've been having every now and then about things going forward and how long it can last if everything stays the same while new games continue to come out. Naturally, there's other things I'd like to see as far as content goes too, but I haven't been as worried about that given that they are trying something new with Land of the Morning Light's boss fights. I know pretty graphics aren't the only thing that matters with a game too, and that stylization can carry low poly and low res assets, but I think BDO leans a little too into semi-realism to have the benefit of stylization making the visuals more timeless.

I dunno, go ahead and downvote me more I guess. I guess I was just hoping to see other people's thoughts and maybe see some hints that PA is considering something like this. Even FFXIV is working on some form of visual update for their next expansion, and BDO did do the Remastered update in the past, so that has made me a bit more optimistic about the possibility of something similar in the future.

You're kinda clueless. BDO have only one positive and that is it's graphics, everything else, and especially the gameplay is trash and should be improved if they want to be relevant.

Dude sorry, but you should play other games every now and then. OP is right, game IS showing its age visually compared to to current gen titles (except for indie stuff) and great visuals used to be one of the major selling points of the game. 

When I see tiny heads and bopping and popping blurry textures everywhere it reassures me my decision to "play" this absolutely convoluted mess only afk (it's anyways just cause of the investment made this far and no other mmorpg to take the place yet) . RIP. 

Yeah the feet texture are ugly

What do you mean by gameplay is trash ? Grindy ? Well then you can say the same about every other MMO. MMO are grindy and repetetive only form of "grind" change in each game. In this game you kill milion of monsters in FFXIV you do same raids and dungeons, in Lost Ark you do hundreds same raids on your 7/8 characters every week. 

BDO by far worst gameplay i've ever seen in any game technically wise, everyone was laughing about about F76 was effected by FPS, but for BDO exploiting FPS=DPS is called an skill, just like exploiting mouse movent or hotbar skills or extending iframes. On top of that they rapidly removing  core of any MMORGP = progression so vet players simple leaving game as its have no content. And i'm not even going to talk about "amazing" hidden class balance stats that force you to play FOTM class or be trash.

The engine is indeed very faulty gampelay wise for the reasons mentionned above : FPS = DPS (that also induces desynchs because the servers can't keep up), faulty hitboxes, mouse mouvement that allows stuff that was never intended, etc.

But no, the game won't have any engine update  in my opinion. The only thing they did with the remastering was slapping Silicon Studios' lighting post processing middleware on the game, Yebis.

From what we know, Peal Abyss is already struggling hard to finish their second inhouse engine, Blackspace, which is one of the reasons of Crimson Desert report. Said engine is already outdated on the graphical front and will be totally obliterated by UE 5 on relase, be it on the rendering side, the optimisation, or more importantly on the back office, support, documentation and functionnality side. There's a reason why almost every new development has switched to this solution, even the crowdfunded ones.

yeah, dont change a working recipe and the game yould be fine until in 2030

you can alway improve the game with unreal engine 5 or 6 after 2025

sorry i respect tab and target, but i enjoy more current black desert gameplay

also graphic is not guarantee it will working, we have few nice graphic mmorpg, but their characters still look bad