This list was created by going through a LOT of threads on the feedback forums and putting them in one place. I may have forgotten a few things so let me know YOUR feedback and I’ll probably add to this over time. Also, make sure to vote in the polls so we have clear numbers showing what you guys think. These are my opinions but I would love to know if you guys agree or disagree with them. If we all strongly agree on something then we can show the Devs exactly what we want changed and they may be more inclined to do so.
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I’ve also written reviews, including all the information on each day of alpha, so far, for those that didn’t get to join. Starting with day 1:
Small adjustments and suggestions
Here is a list of everything that, in my personal and honest opinion, needs to be changed slightly or worked on. These aren’t big things which will drastically change the game, but rather small adjustments which shouldn’t be too hard to implement. Most of them are nitpicks.
- Font desperately needs changing – Isn’t clear, hard to read, decimals are almost invisible, and doesn’t support European language accents. Screenshot attached – looks like “67079%”. Color choice for some cut scenes is also a little off putting, fluorescent pink subtitles show up well but doesn’t really match the feel of the game.
- Whispers – Whispers don’t clearly show which message you sent, and which you received. My friend was messing around, so ignore what he says lol, but here is a screenshot. Just putting “To:” and “From:” in front of the name would make things a lot clearer.
- More confirmation boxes – There are a few times that a confirmation box would have been nice. For example, when changing the in-game settings, The reset button is right next to the “Apply” box and causes one of those *head desk* moments when you click it accidentally, and there is no confirmation.
- More character customization – It seems like they worked really hard on character customization but then there aren’t many options and differences for hairstyles. Would be nice if all hairstyles were available for each class along with some new ones such as bald, dreadlocks, etc. Darker skin tones need adding too but I think this is already being worked on. Additionally, “how to create natural brown hair” isn’t clear enough for new players. It shouldn’t take an hour to work out how to get the right color and there shouldn’t need to be guides on it. Some example colors could be placed separately above the “advanced” settings we have now. You click the color you want, the settings will change, you can make easy adjustments. It’s a simple but really helpful add-on. I’m also quite disappointed with the starter clothes. You can completely customize the face, even to look like celebrities, but there is nothing that makes your character unique in the clothes. Everyone looks exactly the same and the only way to change it is through cash shop and RNG dyes. Since it’s B2P I really hope this changes. Just putting in a few “decent/meh” costumes that you can only collect with high level quests or professions would be nice. Just to make you look more unique.
- Walking animation – We have crouching, sitting, leaning (Q) and crawling (Q + SPACE). Why don’t we have a way to just walk?! I know a lot of people want this, particularly role-players. It can’t be that hard to set up and the full stop or comma key doesn’t have a key bind as of yet – hint hint.
- Add a custom pose command – Some people spend hours making poses in character creation but there is no way to use it without going idle and waiting for it to pop up every so often. It would be nice to add this as a button in the social interactions so we can add a custom chat command to it such as “/pose”.
- Wild bosses – In some areas there are wild bosses which are much stronger than the regular ones. They do have a pink or purple name above their head along with “<Violent>” but it’s not really clear and might be confusing for new players to get one shot by a mob and not know why. There is also a slight indication on the mini-map but I don’t think it’s clear enough, you only really notice it if you’ve been told by someone that it exists – screenshot. Maybe add a red glow around them? Even when I knew about them it was hard to spot them in a pack of mobs, I pulled it by accident a few times and died to it. You can only really see the name if you mouse-over the mob and you have to pretty close, usually in aggro range anyway. I don’t find it as much as a problem at higher levels so maybe just a red glow to indicate it’s a wild boss at lower levels, or at least a short quest or pop up to teach you about them. I actually found that the level 30 wild boss was much easier than the level 18 ones (with the same gear). Since level 18 is the first point that are introduced to them I don’t think they should so much harder. Again this isn’t a big thing, I’m just thinking about the new players. I can imagine it being quite frustrating and annoying if you don’t understand what is going on and why you keep dying against the same mobs.
- Ranking list – Not a big or important one but it’s quite hard to pick your name out of the ranking list. I know it says your rank at the top but a visual indication might be nice. Screenshots attached – suggested improvement shown (photoshop skills lol).
Bigger changes
Here are some of the bigger changes that I would like to see for EU/NA. Unfortunately, since these are pretty big changes, I don’t have much hope for these actually being implemented… But it’s worth a shot!
- Night time – We want the old, darker night time back. Simple as that. I know Korea didn’t like it but we did. It gives a real purpose to lanterns, and PvP would be so fun in the dark. Additional sounds such as Wolves howling and owls hooting would be cool. Mobs should be harder at night time too. Right now there is no noticeable difference. Night time should be exciting and only for the bravest of adventurers. A time where illegal trading happens and you’re genuinely scared that you might be ambushed, sneaking about as quiet and stealth-like in complete darkness to stay hidden. Example video here and how it is now for comparison. Vote in the poll here to voice your opinion.
- Split Auction Houses – Splitting auction houses is much better with 1 server and many channels. In my opinion they should be split by region (Serendia, Balenos, Calpheon, Mediah, Valencia), or split further by each town. This has been suggested many times on Reddit as well. Some people also argue that the pricing limitations should be more flexible or completely removed. The currently limitations just make it feel like we don’t have control over the world we are in. I’d much rather prefer to have the limitations adjusted so we can control our economy.
- PvP Flagging – There has been SO MANY posts with feedback for PvP and Karma but right now I think the first step is to do something with the flagging system. Some people have suggested various ways to go about this one. For example: “Player A flags on player B, Player B decided to fight so they hit Player A and now he also flags in result of hitting Player A and neither are punished in terms of karma. This is how it was in OBT start which created healthy and dynamic PVP in terms of fighting for a farm spot, or just PVP in general.” I think that almost everyone wants it to work in a different way to the next person. All I can really say is that it NEEDS to change and I’m sure that if they do decide to make the change, they will work out the best way to do it. The most popular way seems to be the old CBT/L2 system.
- Pots – You can spam them way too much. It makes PvE too easy and can be quite annoying in PvP too. The cooldowns should be increased and possibly even add an animation to the pots so that they cannot be used while CC’d.
- Housing/Crafting – I’d like to see SOME open world housing to create more life and sense of economy and belonging to the game. Even if this was considered for the upcoming zones or content (in Korea) I would be happy. There would need to be a lot of thought put into it to balance it out and prevent bots, but it could be great. Right now the whole housing and crafting system is very socially closed off. There is no reason to spend gold on decorating and building a nice looking home. Crafting itself feels too much like a mobile game. What happened to being able to craft the items ourselves and level different professions such as a blacksmith or tailor? The shop system described in the following quote was also a really social and unique selling point for the game: “At the initial stage of Black Desert all the houses were open world, they predicted to have 2000+ houses in the whole world, and all those houses were open world. That meant, the first person to buy the house, would be the only one who could own it. The house would be open world, therefore if you leave your door open, anyone could visit your house, you could even make a spare key for your friends. The houses would be bought by an auction house, the one who bid the most money would get the house but, since it was open world houses, you had limited time to keep your purchase. You would be able to keep the house 1 to 3 months max (they were not very specific, they were still discussing the time limit). With the houses you would be able to invest your money, because you ware able to convert them to a shop. e.g., make your house a blacksmith shop, therefore people would be able to come to your house, pay you and they would be able to craft their items.”
New changes in EU/NA Alpha
This is my opinion on things that have been changed specifically for alpha and why I am happy with them, or why they need to be changed further. These changes are compared to KR, RU does have some of these changes as well.
- Vigor/Energy – Talking in global chat costs 1 Vigor. I’m personally really happy about this. It stops the same people spamming the chat, whether that’s with arguments between guilds about PvP, or bots attempting to sell gold/accounts. I’m not as happy about basic crafting taking up Vigor. We should be able to craft our own pots without it draining our Vigor completely. People have different opinions on this one so I’m going to leave it at that. I did see a poll on the forums though “Should Vigor Points be consumed during processing activities?” and the results at the time were 14 for yes and 44 for no. Here is another poll with an additional option.
- Karma/PvP – Karma has been adjusted and is now similar to in RU. One hit is -10k Karma and a kill is -60k. The amount of mobs you need to grind to restore your Karma doesn’t seem to have been changed. It might need tweaking a bit more yet, lots of people have their opinions on this one too. I can’t really make a clear judgement until it’s fully tested at level 50+. All I will say, is that just like PvP flagging, if they do decide to make the change, they will work out the best way to do it.
- Player to Player Trading – Player to Player Trading has been implemented, but still has a lot of restrictions. You can just about give some pots to your friends, and that’s as far as you can go. I understand the decision to remove Player to Player Trading. I understand that it is a very drastic but effective way of dealing with gold sellers and bots. However, I feel that the positives outweigh the negatives of this decision. You can see in the results of the survey above, that 63% of players wanted trading to be completely unrestricted. I’m sure there are plenty of ways to give more freedom to trading, whilst keeping the game as bot free as possible. It is in no way a polished idea, but here is a quick suggestion I came up with in about 10 minutes. It seemed that people were backing me up too. I’m not showing you this because it’s 100% the best way to fix trading, but to prove that there is always something to try before going for the most drastic option.
My opinion on other Topics
The following topics are basic on information from the Paris Games Week Interview.
- Pre-purchase/Founder Packs – Since it’s a B2P game model I don’t quite understand what the big issue is with this. I just hope that the prices aren’t too high since I’ll definitely be getting one and don’t want to have to take out a loan (I’m a poor student ;_;).
- Classes at Launch – Discussion thread. I understand that a lot of people are quite upset with the decision to include the following 6 classes: Warrior, Ranger, Sorceress, Beserker, Valkyrie, Wizard/Witch. I’m quite disappointed that we weren’t given a better reason other than “the other classes having too much Asian flair for a Western audience”. Perhaps adding another class, or swapping one out for the Tamer class would keep more people happy. The Beserker class, for example is a less popular class and isn’t really a “Western” looking character either. You can see in this poll that Beserker is the least popular, and Tamer is the most popular. Since it’s B2P you could also argue that we should start with most classes. However, I’m not going to complain too much about this one because no matter what classes they decide to launch with, someone is going to be upset that, the class they want to play, isn’t included. Hopefully it won’t take too long to implement the rest of the classes, in the mean time, try another class and get all of the contribution points quests and things like that out of the way, there isn’t much more I can say.
- RP/PvE/PvP Servers – As a PvP player, it isn’t really my place to say “don’t include RP/PvE only servers”. However, I am a little worried about this one because we have no idea how big the population is going to be. I would rather we have 1 populated server for everyone, than 2/3 empty ones (with the mega-server setup). You’re always going to get griefers on RP and PvE servers so is it really worth splitting up the community? Like I said, it isn’t my place, but I just want to make sure it’s definitely the best option for everyone. There is already a poll for this, please vote.
- PvE raids – As stated in the interview, “they’re evaluating the possibility of adding PvE raids, but once again they will check the community’s interest first”. Personally, I could live with or without them. I guess I’m more tilted to the side of wanting them, I know that there are a lot of people who agree, and a lot of people who will disagree. It would be nice to see the approach and hear about some ideas before saying “YES we want them, or NO we don’t”. If they are implemented I expect some twist on them that you can only expect from Black Desert, something that makes them different from the typical MMO. Just please no queue system!
Final Thoughts and some positive stuff
I would also like to say that this game has changed a lot from what we originally thought it would be. Here is a good write up of all the changes from the initial stages up to now.
http://black-desert.com/articles/black-desert-how-we-were-expect-it-to-be-and-how-it-is-now/
I think the main reason these changes were made was due to Korea being a lot more casual lately with MMOs. It’s 18+ in KR and most people have work, causing them to only be able to play for a small number of hours. Due to this they changed the game completely, ignored or rethought all of their unique ideas and selling points, to keep the majority of players happy. When the majority wanted a casual game.
I just want to make it very clear that we are completely different from the Korean market and I’m sure I’m not the only one who wants the game that was promised to us years ago, the game that PA actually wanted to create.
Don’t get me wrong. I love this game more than anything and it’s slowly taking over my life more and more. I just want to make sure it is the best it can be. I’m very excited and very happy with the team so far. Of course there are some issues but they came from KOREA, not from changes particularly made for NA/EU. All you’ve have done so far is listen to us and make steps in the right directions so I have lots of hope. 😀 Pat on the back to the team, you’re doing a great job. Even with PGW on this week you’ve managed to stay more active on the forums than most other publishers. I highly doubt that loads of big changes like these are going to happen just for us, but I hope these suggestions and ideas will at least inspire someone.
My final suggestion is that DAUM needs to make a survey covering these points or anything they can genuinely make adjustments to!
