On August 27th 2021, the second late night talk with Pearl Abyss was broadcast live on the official Twitch channel and Youtube. If you would like to watch the broadcast you can find the links below. This coverage is a rough translation of the topics discussed, including Character reboot and balance, feedback forums and, ocean content, and much more.
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/blackdesertkr
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IccmTN9PfAE
Feedback Forums
There are plans to add official feedback forums/bulletin boards to improve feedback and communication. There will be options to vote on the suggestions and leave additional comments. GMs will also be able to mark feedback posts, and if a post is marked by a GM it means they have seen your post. GMs can also show the progress of a suggestion and additional filter functions will be added to sort suggestions by their progression.
♦ Feedback Forums
Class Reboot
Warrior and Ranger will be the first two classes to receive the rework. The character reboot will not just be a simple stat adjustment and will pay attention to the class damage, range, accuracy, etc. Flow skills will be improved and simplified. New skills will be added as needed or unused skills may be changed.
In PVP, one of the focus points for Warrior is to improve the engage and disengage by adding new skills and adjusting the current cooldown times. The main focus for Warrior though is PVE, and they mentioned that Warriors use both awakening and preawakening which causes fatigue when grinding. However, if you only use awakening it feels too lackluster, so the plans are to improve cooldowns and AoEs in awakening. The skill Flow: Reckless Blow will have the cooldown reduced by 1 second and the charging part of the skill will be removed to help it flow better. In addition, a new awakening-only skill will be added for Warrior.
For each class, in both succession and awakening, they are going to focus on the characters weaknesses as seen by the players.
Rebooted classes will be released on Global Lab in the order of original release. However, all class reworks will be coming to live servers at the same time after being completed on Global Lab.
Warrior Rework Video:
Ranger Rework Video:
Barrier to Entry
There are many small changes planned to improve the experience for new players and lower the overall barrier to entry:
- Adding a function to help organize your inventory and show players which items to keep and not throw away
- Adding an automatic horse riding function. The idea for this function is that you will use it at the stable and it will automatically take you to your destination (similar to sky balloons).
- Adding the ability to get an additional pet from the Serendia questline, bringing a total of 5 free pets after completing the Mediah questline.
- Adding more variation in life skill equipment. For example: you can fish with basic functions without needing a fishing rod, or you can butcher animals without a butcher knife. Another example is that you can go to the water and you might find a fishing rod. The downside to this is that you may not get as many or as high quality fish, etc.
- Enhancing tutorials
- Improved UI that clearly shows you which grinding areas are recommended for your current gear
- Improved silver profit and EXP gain in Valencia areas (Desert Nagas, Desert Fogan, etc.)
- Allowing players to graduate early so they can make progress quicker and gain the rewards quicker. Improve the overall enhancement rate of Tuvala in the next season and allow players to change ALL Tuvala gear to boss equipment (once per family). Pearl Abyss found that a lot of players struggled moving from TET to PEN equipment, they are looking for another way to enhance or add 100% force enhancement, but they do not want to use the caphras method. The idea is to add this as a reward in the season pass or graduation rewards.
- The 50% potion weight patch seems to not be enough. Therefore, the infinite potions will no longer be seen as a treasure and players can create a smaller/weaker version of the potion using only one piece. As well, a pity system will be added so that you can collect pieces to exchange (like the Orzeca costume). For players who already have the potions, we are preparing a special title and have plans to make the potions still feel special such as an “Ancient” item.
Ocean Content
Unfortunately, the main focus is Node War and Siege as well as the character reboots. This means that any major ocean content is still delayed for now but is planned afterwards. During the wait, convenience patches will be added for bartering, sea monster hunting and other ocean content. Pearl Abyss is asking for players to send a lot of feedback and suggestions and assures that there will be a lot of patches for QoL ocean content while the character reboot is in progress.
Character Appearance
When this suggestion was sent the team at Pearl Abyss was shocked and would like to thank players for the feedback as well as apologize.
Some of the feedback spoke about “ugly characters” and new face presets are being prepared to fix this. More choices will be added for eyelashes, eyebrows, makeup, etc. and the skins will be improved (like in the Dark Knight skin fix). For the body shaping issues, work is currently in progress to fix the “turtle neck” body shape.
In the case of Wizard, unfortunately it will take at least 8 months to fix everything that is wrong, so changes will be added little by little. For Berserkers, the curved back is a racial characteristic for the class and we would like to keep this for now. The body shape fixes for Ranger are currently in progress.
For the dye system, a RGB colour table is being prepared so that you can easily select the exact colours you want. However, for skin colours there will be some limitations in the variety of colours you can select.
Hairstyles are also a problem because they affect the optimization and it is not easy to adjust them or develop them. Whilst rebooting the classes, we will add new or updated haristyles one by one.
♦ Ranger Shoulder “Turtle neck” fix
QoL Updates
Convenience updates have been a focus for the last month and will continue as more feedback is sent. Some of the upcoming convenience patches include:
- Improved skill window UI (image example below)
- Terrain conditions make it difficult for the campsite to look natural when placed in certain areas. The idea at the moment is to add a foundation or second floor to the campsite so that it can be placed in more areas without looking unnatural.
- Improving the balance of lower level grinding areas
- Adding a privacy mode
- The item drop increase scroll update (ON/OFF function) requires more work. It will be added to Global Lab as soon as it is done.
Siege Pre-Season
A lot of feedback was recieved during the preseason for siege wars. There are several changes planned which will be implemented across 4 weeks, starting next week. The 2nd pre-season will be officially broadcast and more feedback will be collected.
Planned changes:
- Sieges will no longer be liberated. A points system will be implemented based on the remaining health of the fort, remaining building structures, guild kills, etc. The guild with the highest points will be the winners of the siege and will own the castle, rewards have been adjusted for this scenario. Guilds will still get rewards based on their points score during the siege if the siege ends this way (more information can be found in the Global Lab patch notes released today)
- Castle owners will be able to participate in Node Wars (for example, if a guild owns Mediah they will be able to participate in node wars in other regions except Mediah).
Late Night Talks with J
After this broadcast, lead developer “J” would like to focus on overhauling the existing content. He is proud that Black Desert has been in service for 7 years now, but feels that this means there is a lot to work on and improve. He compared his approach to a “racehorse” because he gets obsessed over new things and does not give his full attention to older content. He hopes to communicate regularily through the new feedback bulletin and give more information in the patch notes.
