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Black desert online at a glance

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Black desert online at a glance Empty Black desert online at a glance

Post by Cabe Sun Feb 21, 2016 11:05 pm

Black Desert Online, a review at a glance.
So I was so lucky as to get into closed beta, and before I get into the nit and grit, here's a Tl;Dr for comparison.

                  Archeage | Black Desert
Classes       :   X     |
Exploration  :   X     |
Movement   :         |      X
Combat       :         |      X
Mat grinding:         |      X
Housing      :         |      X
Trade system:         |      X
Land capture:         |      X
Unique      :   X     |
Naval       :   X     |


This should give you a rough idea (From my POV) of what to expect from Black Desert. While lacking in class variation, it isn't to say that the classes aren't
bad per-say, rather that Archeage does it better. The same can be said for the remaining marks both ways. Some things not noted (as they don't truly affect gameplay) are
graphics and lore. Black desert has graphics worthy of a single player game, but thus far has not wowed me with lore, which is actually quite in depth in Archeage. Now it's
time to break down those marks so that you can make your own opinions without needing to buy it yourselves.

1: Classes
First thing I would like to get out of the way is that classes are gender locked, but oppisite equivalents should be released later down the road, with minor game-
-play changes (The Valkyrie / Warrior and Witch / Wizard are already opposite equivalents). You are also age-locked on the wizard, the Beserker must be a giant and the Ranger
must be an elf. As I've only had time enough to try 2 classes, I will give a generalzation on playstyle, as well as any restrictions.

(M)Warrior  : Sword and shield, most abilities focus on sheer damage. Good compromise between survivability and offense.
(F)Valkyrie : Sword and shield, abilities very from offensive and self heals. Appears to the the tank class, though there doesn't seem much needing tanking at this point in time.
(M)Beserker : Dual axes, abilities focus on sheer damage and devastation. Slower than warrior, but hits a lot harder for it. Must be a giant.
(F)Ranger   : Bow and dagger, abilites primarily focus on bow abilities, though a few melee abilities allow them to engage directly if needed. Must be an elf.
(F)Sorceress: Ranged and melee magic. A good all rounded class for those looking to hit them at any range. From chat, sounds like one of the release metas.
(F)Tamer    : Short swords, melee magic, and summonable shade-beast. Early abilities focus on damage from the caster, and later unlocks the beast and possibly a transformation?
(F)Witch    : Slower magic attacks, but high-damage AOEs and sheer damage matched by sheer lack of armor from what I've heard.
(M)Wizard   : Same as the Witch. Age locked to very, very old.

Restrictions aside, the actual character design process feels very intuitive and in depth, with almost everything being re-positionable, from hair position to arm
size, etc.This may be the reason for so many restrictions (to limit the number of different character models that would need loading, and thus load time overall for server
and client). I have personally played both the Valkyrie and Ranger, as they were the closest to my AA playstyle. Both were a lot of fun, and each class gets a unique set of
highly detailed costumes on the marketplace.

2: Exploration
While the world is enormous, and I have only scratched the surface, I must give Archeage high marks for trumping them here. Without gliders, cars, and an apparent lack of water
activity, it is difficult to get around. That said, the wagon, parquor system, and current selection of ships are enticing (more on these later). I'm not saying there isn't a
lot to explore, as there is a ton of terrain to cover for each kingdom, but Archeage has decidely done better in my opinion.

3: Movement
Speaking of getting places, nothing is more important than deciding how to get there. As in all MMOs, you start off with the good ol' heel-toe express. What makes BDO
stand out is it's auto-pathing system, which with a press of a button, with path to the quest objective and auto-run your character there. This also works on mounts, and most
likely on ships. Aside from that, you have the means of transportation, which so far includes the donkey, horse, and horse drawn carts. I've seen video of war elephants and other
crazy things, but I am unsure if that will be in our release. Weight plays a large part in this, simmilar to the elder scroll series. Every item, down to the coins you carry,
adds to your weight. Should you gain too much, you'll recieve a notification and slow down considerably. The final thing that will affect movement is your stance. Combat ready
will slow you down, while sheathed will allow for your fastest travel. Parquor is as simple as press space near anything you can reasonably climb over, and you'll scale it. It's
pretty suprising where you can get like that without falling face first off a cliff.

4:Combat
Now onto the meat of the MMO, combat. The system cannot be fairly compared to Archeage, as it is totally different in play, but I still feel that it is superior in
execution. The style is 'Flinch' , meaning that all attacks are evadeable by your own merit. All combat skills can be used by combining keys (Ie: Shift + Left mouse button)
with a 10 slot skill bar for any skill too complex and consumables. The fighting is very fluid, alternating between dealing damage and evading (Default being shift and direction)
, and with the in game aim assist hitting a moving AI should be easy enough. The Pve seems very easy as of yet, due mostly to the low levels of aggression the mobs are displaying. They
don't dodge effectively, but can deal a fair bit of damage if you don't dodge yourself. One of the unique parts of the PVE is that you will not see thier proper health bar until
you kill enough of them to gain knowledge, ranging from c-ish to A+ , and the top rank S. The better the rank, the more accurate the HP bar and the damage you take / resist.
If you get a bad rank, you must unlearn it to attempt again, at a small gold cost. Lastly, it appears that you cannot learn every skill on the tree, so be careful where you invest.

5:Material aquisition
Now the bit where we farm. The system is pretty straightforward, requiring you to purchase the correct tools for the job, and finding the materials. Current jobs include
Gardening, logging (every tree in game), mining, skinning, butchering, and gathering. Most of these can be done out in the wilds, but thanks to the node system (later), most of
that won't need to be messed with if you maintain it. You don't need to worry about labor, as most actions don't require it (while world chat oddly takes 1 point per post).
Your labor pools increases as you level, and regens 1 point / 3 mins.

6: Nodes
Every city , farm, quarry or strategic point is a 'node', connected either to another node or a city. By visiting the local node manager, you can invest 'contribution points'
to 'own' the area partially, and allowing the usage of the areas special farms for hirable NPC workers. You must chain nodes outward from a city if the desired node is not
directly connected to one. This plays a large role in trading (next) and will also provide a benefit for any actions taken around there, mainly being xp and loot increase.
Contribution points are a static number that can be spent on nodes and housing, and can be reclaimed at any time by uninvesting in a node or house. The pool will increase as
you level, simmilarly to the energy pool.

7: Housing
Almost every building not used by Npcs is up for grabs, and multiple people can own the same house. It's uninstanced in the sense that there is no loading screen between the outside
world and the house, but by selecting the desired owner, you could see the same house 7 different ways. This blows Archeage's system out of the water, and cost next to nothing
to do. Houses can also be turned to industrial purposes or increasing your warehouse for that town, though you can only enter player housing. The decoration system is top down and allows
a freedom close to what Archeage had while sacraficing sheer precision for a more intuitive control. Additionally the wall and floor material can be changed to truly give that homey feel.

8: Trade
So now that you have some money from killing things and got your questing donkey, you probably want to set off to found your own silk road eh? Excelent! The first step is to decide which
two points you wish to travel between and connect all the intermediate nodes. If you try to sell to an unconnected trader, you will suffer a -%30 price drop, likely meaning you will
lose money. Once you are finished connecting nodes, head to the starting towns trade manager, and buy specialties from them. You can carry as many as you wish (up to your weight limit), but
if you, and not your mount, is carrying it, you will be unable to mount. The donkey has a 5 slot inventory accessable via interaction menu, capable of holding most lighter goods. Once your
Mount / cart is loaded, you just need to set the auto-pathing and allow the game to do the run for you! But mind the map, as occasionally red markers will warn of high bandit activity, and
should you pass through, several high level mobs will spawn, intent on killing you. So far I have been able to just allow my donkey to carry me out while I sip pots to keep alive, but I found
out the hard way that at mid level I was no match for even one of them. You can check the values at any city on the go for 1 energy, and for a specific specialty at all cities, you can check
the trade manager who sells the item. This can reveal shorter routes that will ultimately yield more profit, given the percentages. Lastly, you can play a minigame with the trade in manager to
increase your payout for all packs, at the cost of 5 energy a try. People crawl, Doneys plod on at a walk, and carts / wagons more or less fly down the roads for a guesstimate at speeds.

9:Land Capture
For our final segment of this post for now, the endgame for Pvp. Guilds can contest other guilds for node ownership (Seperate from node investment) on a regular timer, though the timer
is unknown to me at the moment. Node ownership (not investment) is locked until the region's castle is claimed by a guild. Nodes offer various benefits from extra worker payout to a regular
income tax, while the castle offers a large lump sum of tax from all the local nodes. Castles will also be contestable on a regular basis, but aren't as customizable and seem to have limited
angles of attack from what videos I've seen (No one in beta has yet owned, let alone contested a castle, so no experience here). That said, it is much more manageable than
Archeage's easy-mode tower defence and gate hiding. The objectives required to take nodes and castles is unclear, so any help would be appreciated.

-I remain-
Cabe, of Karma

Cabe

Posts : 3
Join date : 2016-01-21

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Black desert online at a glance Empty Re: Black desert online at a glance

Post by Heart Mon Mar 07, 2016 3:14 pm

That's some glance Cabe :O
Heart
Heart

Posts : 14
Join date : 2016-02-13
Location : Happyrock, Australia

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Black desert online at a glance Empty Re: Black desert online at a glance

Post by Neferata Wed Mar 23, 2016 7:18 am

I'm currently on Uno with beanpod, vichius (cant spell his name) and their other rl friend. Made a new toon on edan, was reading that its the "main" sever, seems to be more populated and more pvp focused.

The nice thing about BDO is you purchase it and play, no monthly fee, no pay to win, just play the game at your leisure.

The game is very similar design to AA, some learning curves like how to set up nodes to do trade runs and crafting. The quest lines for crafting are very useful.

My account name is Lahmia so feel free to look me up, you have to be online to friend though.

The channel doesn't matter atm, we are playing on Serendia 1, the channels are instances of the same server to prevent player overload at release, whole crap a company that actually thought of a solution to this problem. The channels will be deleted eventually at it will just be the 3 servers. You can use any channel on a server for your toon, so if your just playing for an hour you can jsut log into the least busy one. I usually only log into Serendia 1 though.

Like AA you can be part of a Clan (family) and a guild. I haven't bothered to find a guild yet, i figured if enough people from karma want to try the game we may form one, or all join the same.

ps. don't worry im not leaving AA yet, still have 80 days on my account. after that though i'll have to make a choice.

Neferata

Posts : 13
Join date : 2016-01-28
Age : 42
Location : Canada

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