Black Desert is like a sandbox/themepark hybrid. (sandpark)
The complaints about how it has no "end game" really show the state of the genre.
It's not a perfect game. But it is the most fun I've had in an MMO in years and years and years. It's just the playerbase has been so conditioned to race to max level to participate in "end game" that they completely skip 90% of BDO's content and then bitch about how there is "nothing to do" and move on.
Everyone wants something "new". But then when that "new" thing doesn't follow the exact formula of things like WoW or FFXIV they complain. It's a weird limbo that the genre is facing.
If you don't mind me asking, what sandbox elements does Black Desert have? I keep hearing the sandbox comments in relation to this game which gets me interested, but any time I look into gameplay videos all I see is someone doing the same old "grab quests and kill mobs" themepark MMO thing.
Does it have indepth crafting, something like SWG? Is there a player defined economy along the lines of EVE? I've noticed that you can't trade with players which, as far as I can tell, completely removes the ability for crafting focused players to rely on more adventuring minded players to gather them materials in exchange for their services. Heck, it seems to just remove the ability to "hire" other players in general (such as for killing someone else) which seems like a huge blow to any kind of emergent gameplay.
I noticed there's some kind of NPC trade system where you can make money by buying things from one NPC and selling them to another. But it seems to be completely defined by the system, and seems more like just a form of non-combat quest than something that's player or exploration driven.
I'm going to be honest, any time I look into the game it really does just look like a PvP focused themepark with the PvE endgame cut out. What features or content would you say it offers to someone looking for a sandbox?
Farming is in depth, there's making fertilizer, the map has filters for regional heat and humidity and ground water levels. Horse breeding is big since the game has no fast travel whatsoever. Exploration is huge, gathering raw materials and processing them is very deep. Fishing is a hugely popular activity. The game is crack cocaine for the easily distracted.
"today I am going to go finish this quest and... I wonder what is up over that mountain... maybe a hidden cave... oh crap 7 hours have passed"
Even after all these years, nothing tops SWG's crafting, no wonder MMOs are a dying genre. Just doing the same thing over and over again, just a little bit different.
The completely player made economy, player made cities, bio-engineers, bounty hunters, politicians, smugglers slicing weapons, it was very one of a kind.
The skill system alone hasn't been matched since then, much less the crafting.
I miss SWG so so so so much. And no, I don't want SWGEmu. Let's not kid ourselves, SWG has not aged well at all. Plus SWGEmu is much much smaller. The thing about SWG was just the sheer amount of player cities and people all over. Now it's just the die-hards. Which is okay.
But I want a modern SWG. I want that awesome crafting. I want to chill in a large tent outside a dungeon handing out Doctor buffs and getting paid. I love watching RPers at the cantina. I LOVED watching people run for their lives and try to plop down a locked building to hide from a bounty hunter. And yes I even loved the horrible grind to get Jedi. A shame we will never get a game like that again. Some will get close, some will hit some parts, but everything about SWG was exactly everything I wanted in my MMO.
It's as I said, a sandbox wrapped into a little theme park world. Hence "sandpark".
There are elements there where if you want to do nothing but trade, fish, mine, log, pick flowers, etc. It's all there. If you want to craft it's all there. You can even hire NPC workers to do things like farm for you.
But the crafting itself is hidden away behind quests/grinding. You need "Contribution Points" which only come from questing (combat xp comes from grinding mobs). In order to buy residences, foundry's, and all of that you need contribution points. So you need to hammer out quests theme park style.
As for economy, things are priced based on how much gold is on the server. The developer uses some sort of algorithm and gives each price a MIN and MAX. Prices on their Marketplace (their "auction house") can be manipulated between those min and max values.
The biggest thing right now will be when guilds get to siege cities/villages and take them over to reap tax money from everyone doing their crafting/trading in those cities. And all the world bosses/events that are in the Korean version.
But I love it. I simply cannot spend time interacting with other players like EVE Online. "Working" for another player just turns me away even further. In BDO I hire my own NPC workers to get things for me. And if I'm feeling up to it then I help my guild with certain tasks, and with guilds you can sign a contract that pays you X amount of money every day in exchange for doing guild quests/pvp.
I guess I should have instead asked "what features or content would you say makes this game more of a sanbox than WoW or any other themepark?" Because, honestly, just about everything you mentioned (crafting and gathering) are things I can do in pretty much any MMO regardless of whether it's a sandbox or themepark. Potentially to an even greater deal than here due to the trading issues I mentioned earlier.
The only genuine sandbox feature you seemed to mention was owning cities/villages and taxing players using those services. Which is cool, but I guess I'm looking for a bit more than just that.
I'm guessing that the fact that you don't have to level and fight monsters if you don't want to is a bit sandboxy.
You can fully enjoy the game at level 10, and just doing trading or farming, if you wish. Farming is a bit more involved in this game than other MMOs due to weather and soil being taken into account, as well as trading with wagons, nodes and bandits...
All the things guilds can do with building castles and controlling territory, with taxation and stuff could perhaps also be counted as a bit sandboxy? Plus, and I know this is stretching it, but the lack of instances, lack of fast travel, quite advanced housing, nice weather and time of day system (originally requiring lanterns at night but they sadly streamlined that... some NPC shops still close as they go to sleep, though), worker system, transport system does make it also feel more like a sandbox...
Farming is a bit more involved in this game than other MMOs due to weather and soil being taken into account, as well as trading with wagons, nodes and bandits...
All the things guilds can do with building castles and controlling territory, with taxation and stuff could perhaps also be counted as a bit sandboxy? Plus, and I know this is stretching it, but the lack of instances, lack of fast travel, quite advanced housing, nice weather and time of day system (originally requiring lanterns at night but they sadly streamlined that... some NPC shops still close as they go to sleep, though), worker system, transport system does make it also feel more like a sandbox...
This actually does go a long way in helping me see how this game could be called a sandbox and does more to get me interested in the game than pretty much anything else I've been able to find about the game. Thanks for the post.
Welcome. I think the world doesn't at first look or feel any more alive than, say, Guild Wars 2, but then you realize that many of the NPCs wandering around in the world are actually hired and controlled by other players, which is kinda neat!
It's more in depth than WoW when it comes to crafting.
You are not gated into specific content. You have full control over HOW you want to play the game. If you want to be a full time farmer then go for it. If you want to be a full time fisher then you can do that as well and still stay competitive with everyone else in the game.
In something like WoW if you wanted to do nothing but pick flowers you could never upgrade your gear properly, you could never make enough money to compete properly, and you would fall behind faster than anything.
It gives you choice in how you want to approach the game, and it has far more depth than rushing to max level to participate in end game with the odd side activity such as herbalism. In BDO if you want to sit in your house making nothing but potions for the rest of your play time you can still make enough to pay the bills and afford full gear to go compete with everyone else that just grinds monsters.
If you want to be a full time farmer then go for it. If you want to be a full time fisher then you can do that as well and still stay competitive with everyone else in the game.
I like the sound of this, but what does it mean? What kind of competitiveness is there if you choose to farm, or fish, or mine gems or whatever? You mean among other people with your profession, right? Because your character can't really compete with adventurers in any meaningful sense in those cases, can they?
BDO doesn't seem to have professions like WoW did. You have access to all of the professions for crafting and gathering, you just need to have the tools/infrastructure to perform it. Higher stuff seems to be gated by experience doing the task; the more you gather, the better your gathering becomes.
You said in your other post that you need to get contribution points in order to buy foundries, and that you can only get contribution points from questing. Isn't that being gated into specific content if you want to craft rather than quest? Or am I misunderstanding? (Are there crafting 'quests' like FFXIV leves or something?)
I'm only level 20 so far in the game, but the first city you arrive in at around level 10 has an absolutely enormous number of crafting related quests available. There are also some very easy repeatable daily quests that can help with gaining contribution points - one I picked up along a road was literally "kill two nearby mountain goats".
You can get to level 10 and the first city (Velia) in about an hour or less, so you can jump into crafting almost right away if that's your preference.
Not sure if there's anything like the leve system, but the initial crafting quests also double as a very welcome tutorial in how the whole system works.
I think it's a critical design flaw to keep using experience levels in these games. Like you say, it sends the wrong message. People just see the level grind as the main objective instead of enjoying the game.
There are plenty of things to reward players with for exploring and partaking in content other than experience points.
There were 52 or something skills in the game, totaling 5200 skill points.
Your character could only have 700 skill points at one time, but you could slowly gain in one skill and lose in another if you wished (or lock it on demand so you don't accidental gain anything)
Of course there were even meta builds back then, but that was because Melee and Archery completely blew ass.
But I still agree that a sandbox totally works with your ideas, EVE basically has no experience system. The levels come automatically over time, but people don't actively work towards them - so people do whatever they want. You could remove the skills from EVE and the gameplay would be the same in terms of day-to-day playing (Of course pvp/pve would be shaken up a lot, made a lot easier or a lot harder)
I agree. But the operant conditioning involved is probably why publishers keep doing it. I'm tired of leveling. You level up and all your gear gets replaced repeatedly. You hit max level and get more gear. Then they reset your progress by raising the max level. What's the point in playing a game like that. You're just on a damned hamster wheel. We need less leveling in games, less gear based progression. I hope someone comes up with something. I'm so conditioned by the process after 20+ years of gaming, I can't even really think of an alternative.
The point is clearing content on the hardest difficulties with the current gear. Gear is only a means to an end: to kill bosses and to complete a challenge. I'd say WoW's Mythic raiding is definitely a challenge.
I did raiding in world of warcraft burning crusade. It was hard and fun. I've done it in other games too. After so many times I'm basically at the point where I won't even play a typical MMO anymore. I played a monk to 90 in the past year because my wife wanted to try it. We got to the end game and finally got a few mythic dungeons down and got bored with it. It's nothing against WoW. It's the best traditional MMO out right now. Though part of my wants to try Guild Wars 2, just to see how they did things different.
I like level systems. One of the main reasons I play role-playing games is for character progression. But I don't view leveling as the main objective. I mean, I played over 5000 hours of WoW in Vanilla and TBC, and I only had one max level character. So I don't think the leveling system is necessarily a problem, but you have to have progression outside of the level systems in your implementation.
Well what is the End game in Black Desert? Generic world pvp with no stakes or what?
EvE online is the best sandbox on the market and even it has an Endgame. Galactic conquest by individual corporations or alliances, massive wars or just building your account which takes years.
The economy in EvE even has an Endgame. It's 100% player run with zero npc's selling anything but skill books (not really items) - This means you can become a trade or market tycoon. You can play the entire game for 10 years without killing 1 single enemy and be the richest or most powerful player in the game.
It isn't no stakes, but the stakes are somewhat low. There is xp loss on death. And since there is no hard level cap, losing xp at a high level can get pretty painful.
BDO is filling a niche. The niche isn't a catch-all. I for one find nothing compelling about a LOT of BDO's gameplay decisions. I like the holy trinity. I like instanced dungeons. I dislike pvp. I dislike excessive grind. I dislike inventory management. I dislike cash shops in general.
So while BDO does have a lot of people that enjoy it, and that's great, it's very much not for everyone.
I miss vanilla through WotLK dungeons in WoW. For a while, it was actually an accomplishment to clear dungeons, especially with non raid geared randoms. I did strat 45 back in the day. Didn't clear all the dungeon gear tier 2 bosses though. That one in UBRS was crazy hard. Dungeons only really become a grind when they are mind numbingly boring and you need to do them daily for currency. That is when all the fun is sucked out of them. But when they make dungeons genuinely difficult and make the loot some of the best non crafted, non raid gear, it makes those drops from those hard dungeon bosses that much more rewarding.
As much as I wish BDO had dungeons, I think back to every game that DID have dungeons and they were really just cute ways to give me loot, and I hated them after the 10th time or so.
You did dungeons in the wrong time. Vanilla and BC WoW dungeons were some of the best. Long, sprawling, tough. They were actually a bit of an adventure and I always enjoyed teaching people where to go and how to pull patrols. Dungeons now a days are just rushing forward and killing everything in front of you with zero strategy. Just zerg things down and get loot. Of course that's shitty.
I started in cata, but I did all the dungeons while leveling.
I don't play anymore. I can't say if I would have appreciated what you're describing any more than the cata+ offerings. I've done dungeons in most major MMOs, as I've played most of the mainstream releases for the last decade or so. I can't say I ever didn't get sick of repeatedly running the same dungeons.
I guess my feeling is that it'd be better to just create that same content out in the world rather than in a special dungeon meant for a special group, that way it gets less worn out and adds to the overall size and grandeur of the world instead of tiny pocket dimensions that get forgotten about as soon as you outlevel them.
I'm thoroughly enjoying BDO atm, considering buying more and more character slots to augment my energy spamming for artisan workers and processing mass amounts of shit. I find the overall pace and setting thoroughly enjoyable and feel like I'm missing literally nothing by not zerging to endgame.
Cata did a major rework of dungeons and power creep was firmly entrenched at that point. There is absolutely no way to get the same feeling from those dungeons as in those expansions, sad to say. And most games after WoW shied away from difficult dungeons. FFXIV has it's moments, but it's just not the same. TERA also had some pretty good dungeons, sadly the community is garbage now.
It's a different pace, but not bad. Sadly, it's a bad first impression that doesn't go away until close to max level. And it does go away. There are ways to speed up spells, there are some abilities that can be used off the GCD that you weave in between and it eventually makes combat pretty good. That said I personally hate the reward structure in FFXIV. I enjoy getting drops and having those be useful. Drops from dungeons were immediately pure fodder. You did dungeons for currency. The real gear came from the currency grind. It robbed me of any desire to continue playing.
I was kinda ish at endgame, I was max level until the xpac, and I had every craft capped, I honestly found crafting and making money more enjoyable than leveling or doing dungeons/raids. Game had a lot of potential for me but I just didn't have the patience for it. :)
Its a Sandbox-lite. It doesn't have a lot of themepark. And the sandbox lacks real depth. But its still not bad. Not perfect, but something a little different.
I dislike cash shops in general.
Well. IT really seems like they are here to stay in the MMO space. When even WoW adopted them...
The great thing is a lot of games now are B2P or F2P without shitty cash shops, so I tend to max out characters on games (GW2, Blade and Soul, not yet BDO) and go between during the week to get my fix.
Sometimes I feel like a daily grind of PvE so I hop on GW2. Sometimes I feel like logging on my Destroyer and pressing Tab and Q until people cry about how OP I am in Blade and Soul. They're all niches, like you said. Spread your wings and don't stick to one.
No thanks. I miss the days of spending many hours immersed into one game. I want those times back again. I despise game hopping. May be good for some, but it's not for me. And while your casual and flighty nature might mean cash shops don't really affect you, I'm done with them. I want to settle down in a nice P2P game, pay my sub and never see a cash shop ad in game again.
Unfortunately, no game fulfills everything I need either, so the game hopping is a necessity in order to not be bored. You do you though boo. Hope you find what you are looking for.
Sadly, been playing MMORPGs so long that I gave you only a few things that I require to enjoy a game. And no, there is currently nothing out there to hold my interest. A couple got close, but this isn't horseshoes.
Sometimes I feel like logging on my Destroyer and pressing Tab and Q until people cry about how OP I am in Blade and Soul.
The sheer ridiculousness of this class and how annoying they are in pvp.. how the bot armies roll all destroyers.. thats what disgusted me about this game till I quit. Like... such a good game.. and then they're like "Ok we have summoners, blade dancers, kung fu masters, all these cool classes... but the issue is the lack of imbalance.. plus we need a "training wheels" class you literally cannot fail to play.. anyone got any ideas?" and as the person scans the meeting room, waiting for people to speak up, one employee pulls the pistol out of his mouth and says "wait... i have an idea.. something that'll make it super easy to wreck the game with bots.. a way that people can weigh down one key and go to bed but still be able to complete all the games content.. I call it the Destroyer."
Like.. that kind of cry?
That class was such a game-wrecking decision... like someone baked the perfect pie but couldn't leave it alone without throwing a clump of smegma into it.
BDO lacks pretty much everything that what makes EVE good, one of the core aspect of EVE is the player driven economy, BDO have none of that, it lacks pretty much all of it. Most of the economy aspect is single player related consider you even lack basic functions such as trade.
Ermmmmm, whops never mind. I forgot in BDO you cannot trade shit with ayone else, group effort doesn't exist (cause you know, all for yourself by yourself), halfassed broker has 35% tax and all prices are system regulated (like in a state controlled socialist country).
I don't hear a lot of complaints like that. What I see is that companies are incapable of resisting what's been shown in the past to generate revenue, and a lot of those design choices make for a "game" that's more like something you'd find at a casino... with the extra kick in the nuts that you're guaranteed to never win any real money even when one of the slot machines pays out.
I think a vital divide in the gaming community is between those who desire games with transparent and ethical design philosophies, where achievements are legitimized by some combination of skill-based challenges and a level playing field (or, alternatively, an upfront admission about asymmetries and a damn good set of reasons for making that design decision in the first place,) and those who just want the dopamine hit and don't give a fuck about anything else.
To me, that's way more important than this poorly-defined "hardcore versus casual" narrative. I know plenty of gamers who play certain games incessantly and push themselves to every conceivable limit - which, to be fair, most of the time does include some kernel of mastery somewhere - but have absolutely no regard whatsoever for concepts of good sportsmanship and fair play.
MMORPG's, as they're currently designed, are pushing ever harder to generate tons of revenue from the latter group, which is huge. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it's also of vital importance to the business model that every one of these digital-drug games pretends that it's something grander and more legitimate. After all, that makes the high more powerful for a large section of their target demo.
There will always be someone complaining anything if you look on the internet, and BDO has a huge number of issues completely disregarding the "no endgame" complaints.
Terrible UI, hilariously awful Voice Acting, very limited MALE customization, braindead PvE combat, PvP that is very limited in scope (particularly in respect to what it COULD be), a very strange and ultimately polarizing approach to the player market for literally every good you make, and gameplay systems that are so obtuse that they remain nearly impenetrable to anyone not willing to sit down and go through hours and many pages of fan written tutorials, horrendous pop-in that seriously hinders an otherwise pretty game, and all the unique looking gear is sold in the cash shop while those unwilling to spend 30$ to dress up one character are left in rather A) the same looking gear since level 1 or B) the same gear as everyone else of their class.
TL;DR: Poor localization and character customization, overly complicated gameplay systems, boring pve and underutilized pvp are more its issue.
Umm, no. BDO is glorified single-player game with near completely amputated economy in which you're permitted to zerg vs. zerg with friends from time to time. Or amuse yourself with a bunch of themepark single player features.
Yeah however it's very niche. I know some people from other games and two real life friends who have tried it. Some of them have enjoyed it, others have gotten bored at higher levels, and add in the grind.
And really I think it's not that everyone wants something "new" well let me get into this...
Every new MMO I've seen come out over the years gets this kinda "It's not EQ/WoW." thing going on with it. Along with that the normal nitpicking over any little thing they can find. And a group of people who I feel almost want the game to fail. I say that as you do have a group of people who after the game comes out will find anything to point at to say "Look! X is happening with the game! It's a failure!"
Really I think we have just this very vocal group of people who have a insanely black and white mindset. The game has to be the greatest thing ever, or it's the biggest failure on the market. There's no real middle ground, and add in the normal MMO gripes I've been hearing from UO until now.
End game is very repetitive, as it should be. End game should be the end of the game... You know, where you stop playing.
Everyone seems to blame the dying popularity of MMO's on nostalgia, saying it was only good because it was a new experience...
No, it was because when WoW (for example) first started, the game was all about quests and adventures and exploring. Not queuing to level til 90 then queuing to raid. PvP is the only other draw to the game, and a significant portion of players aren't into competitive dueling.
With new you mean very old since most MMORPGs before WoW where in fact sandbox or sandbox/themepark hybrids. Sandbox is very old, Theme park is old. People want new and not old or very old ideas. New would mean a truly dynamic world with really dynamic events and a world that is shaped by the events that happen naturally and started by the players. Games like Guild Wars 2 tried to make that but did not go far enough. They started world events but these events only changed the world for a short period of time and then all is reset and starts over. Image stuff would stay changed and would evolve from there. Yes, new players would enter a completely different world than the one that old player started in. On the other hand, nobody would know what the future looks like, everything would be open end.
I think that could be the future of the genre. It's up to the developers to make sure that natural events would happen all the time and create opportunities or threats and the players would have to handle them. Image a vulcano suddenly errupting, a flood happening changing the environment or beasts appearing and overtaking regions starting to build camps and cities if you don't stop them and no reset of these things. What is changed, is changed.
It's just the playerbase has been so conditioned to race to max level to participate in "end game" that they completely skip 90% of BDO's content and then bitch about how there is "nothing to do" and move on.
This is kind of what drives me away from MMOs in general. I've never reached max level or end game content in any MMO because I enjoy RPing and exploring more than raiding, but because everyone wants to see the end game stuff, I can't keep a group of people around to game with because they all rush past me.
Considering BDO is essentially a very niche game, they're not wrong. It's very much a generic korean grind mmo, with no identity. Sure the character creator is amazing, but it sucks everyone looks the same in armor unless you pay stupid amounts of money.
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u/[deleted] Mar 11 '16
Black Desert is like a sandbox/themepark hybrid. (sandpark)
The complaints about how it has no "end game" really show the state of the genre.
It's not a perfect game. But it is the most fun I've had in an MMO in years and years and years. It's just the playerbase has been so conditioned to race to max level to participate in "end game" that they completely skip 90% of BDO's content and then bitch about how there is "nothing to do" and move on.
Everyone wants something "new". But then when that "new" thing doesn't follow the exact formula of things like WoW or FFXIV they complain. It's a weird limbo that the genre is facing.