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Steparu's very indepth review of closed beta 2 (+lots of cool info!!)
Pigozz
Member UncommonPosts: 886
Ok followers probably seen all of steparus videos
But here are all of his reviews hes made about the last beta + the most interesting parts of each review imho
http://steparu.com/reviews/mmorpg/1546-black-desert-online-2nd-beta-review-in-progress-part-1
Most interesting and most innovative:
"Out of all the MMORPG's I have played in my lifetime, Black Desert Online hands down has the best real time weather system. Surrounded by complete darkness at night depending on the area you're in and once you throw in a thunderstorm, then you're pretty much blind until lightning strikes. See the reference video below for more details. What makes the weather so special in this game? The world adapts to it! For example, when it's raining you will see puddles of water here and there. Characters clothes become drenched with water, buildings, tents, and stuff look wet. I'd love to see some snow in the future!"
+ the horse taming minigame!
Part 2:
http://steparu.com/previews/mmorpg/1548-black-desert-online-2nd-beta-review-in-progress-part-2
Completely different aproach to quests!:
Completion of certain quests will grant a player more skill points. This results your character not having enough points to learn or enhance your skills. Quests will also build your relationship with NPC's around that area. After you have accumulated enough relationship points, you can obtain equipment from the NPC as a reward. You also miss out on the whole lore and story of the game, hidden quests, NPC node system, buying houses (requires contribution points), hire carriages for product trading and more. The more points you have the bigger and better house you can purchase.
Complex action combat
Black Desert Online is an Action MMMORPG and the amount of skills it offer is just right, not too many skills to play around with and not so little to get bored with. Skills flow through each other that it looks like I am pressing one skill at a time, but in reality I am executing a series of key strokes one after the other. I've listed a sample combo and some of the commands below.
Part 3 (this one also covers experienced bugs and nitpicking - if the haters are interested :P )
http://steparu.com/reviews/mmorpg/1550-black-desert-online-2nd-beta-review-in-progress-part-3
This one contains one of the most amazing details in MMO (or any RPG - tis is actually the firt time ive seen something similar!!!)
Thats right! Your armor gets rugged and muded as you use it(until you repair it I think)! Srsly how cool is that!
Plus thres no weapon/gear lvl restriction - Thats right, if you have the money (from trading/other alt for example) you can get the best gear basicaly immediately
And contribution points and map knowledge are acount bound not character bound - makes things less grindy for altaholics
Part 4 (mostly about siege, PvP, and final thoughts)
http://steparu.com/reviews/mmorpg/1552-black-desert-online-2nd-beta-review-in-progress-part-4-finale
About boss AI - steparu understands why the world bosses need to be easier in this game
I am sure they will add larger and harder bosses later on. You also have to keep in mind that this is an Open PvP game. If a boss were to hit extremely hard, then trolls can just farm players that fight world bosses. Actually, there were one to two troll guilds in beta who had pure red names with full PK Karma doing this. Pearl Abyss will need to figure out a nice balance between the two. A small group of players can easily gank a guild that spent an hour or long fighting the future and real challenging world bosses found in the higher level areas of the game. No healers in this game and the death penalties in account, other players can loot your items and gear when you die, see my previous reviews for more details. Most players will compare raid difficulty without thinking about the other aspects of the game..
Ok guys I hope I brought you something to read and heres a little bonus - one guy semi-translated what warrior skills and their enhancements do:
I think I actually spent way more time reading and theorycrafting about MMOs than playing them
Comments
Thanks for the links and info. More hyped for this every day.
People need to tell everyone about this game. It will encourage western publishers to pick it up and make it available sooner!
Depends on the texture I guess
All I know is that there are blood splatters on surrounding objects when fighting
I think I actually spent way more time reading and theorycrafting about MMOs than playing them
Would love an answer as well...
Personally love those weather/gritty armor effects, definitely adds presence to players looking to spend most of their time in an MMO world.
"Armor rusting" has been done before, I think the most recent example would be Vindictus.
Also the no gear restrictions thing is going to create the exact same issue that every other mmo suffers from. Money = Power, which in short, time spent out of game, will benefit your progression far more than time spent in game.
The loss of items on dead is almost nonexistent
You lose a few enchantment stones and experience and thats it and only in the case if youre a PKer (I might be mistaken, but just slightly)
Russian players already asked for more harsh punishment when you're a PKer
About the levels, the "soft cap" is lvl 50, but you can be even lvl 999, it just take exponentially longer to lvl up and there are no new skills (just more skill points and the ability to reenchant your skills sacrificing half the EXP of that lvl) - but dont just ask, read the review, it has all the info you asked for :S
I think I actually spent way more time reading and theorycrafting about MMOs than playing them
it does
U do lose alot regardless of ur positive karma. Gems/Crystals with special abilities, enchantment stones (u lose one or more pluses inserted into ur weapon/armor parts). That hurts. Those enchantment stones (black stones) r the most expensive resource. Enemy that killed u can loot them.
With negative karma, along with increased degradation rate, u start losing items from ur inventory.
I really hope they don't westernize it more than adjusting some XP values, if at all.
A game has a certain identity, not just in its art and design but also on its gameplay. Changing it in any way means changing the identity of the game.
I always have to think back to a big argument on an Unreal Tournament map site - One creator kept remaking Quake (1!!!) maps for UT, which were of course hilariously bad for UT's gameplay, not to mention bad looking because of the old textures. However, the guy kept claiming that he wanted to play Quake and shouldn't be criticized for 'bringing Quake to UT', not accepting any criticism.
The thing is - Why go through all this trouble to make UT into Quake when you can simply play Quake instead?
The same goes for MMO's, especially westernizing Asian ones. Simply putting an overlay of what a random publisher thinks of as 'Western gameplay' over an Asian mmo will only change the game to something it's not, begging the question of why to actually get it over here in the first place as it's not the game people apparently wanted.
I hope i'm making sense here. I just hope we don't get what looks like a pretty good MMO being butchered by some marketing idiot's wish to 'be the next WoW', because that *will* kill the game off.
Playing: WF
Played: WoW, GW2, L2, WAR, AoC, DnL (2005), GW, LotRO, EQ2, TOR, CoH (RIP), STO, TSW, TERA, EVE, ESO, BDO
Tried: EQ, UO, AO, EnB, TCoS, Fury, Ryzom, EU, DDO, TR, RF, CO, Aion, VG, DN, Vindictus, AA
Another Asian master piece !
cant wait to try this one !
Game looks nice especially from graphics/physics perspective, action combat system, mounting system, parkour.
But one thing im worried about is - Open world pvp?
Which means maxed levels will be coming to noobs areas, and just gank them to death, and force them to quit the game within the first few days of playing?
Which gonna hit the population down, and this is the worst scenario that could happen - best example of that is age of wushu...