It does seem rather sudden like the influx of NA/EU players to RU servers made them worry about a missed opportunity. the funny thing Basically JP/RU/KR with the english patch is pretty much as good as or better than an Alpha would be as far as translations are concerned. Game with patch is 100% playable and for anything you can't figure out there is google and youtube. My main concern is that they don't just slap the equivalent of one of these english patches on their 1.0 client and call it a day and pass it off as B2P. This is my biggest concern about the NA version. BDO is a very grindy game with mechanics that can be bad or good depending how you look at it. Which I expect all to be changed for B2P or there is no point not to play another F2P version.
Things that need/should change
1> EXP/SKILL Grind, while not that bad is a tad bit harsh. Needs to change, while the combat skills are fun the mind numbing camp rotation of a few premiere grinding spots and basically KS'ing and all the hosility and anti-social behavior that goes along with it makes it very tiring when you repeat infinitely. The whole game is a grind so if you remove it there will be nothing left, but all I'm saying is make it so you move out of area A to area B a bit sooner so you don't stink up the place and make more enemies than levels with KS wars between fellow players and bots.
2> Item drop rate needs to be increased, especially weapon stones. weapon stones are the uprade process in this game there are no dungeons or many if any 100% item drops from named NPCs. Any armor or weapon that is top tier you can equip at level 1 and the only way to progress is to +1 those up to 15. which leads to
#3 3> Enchant success rates need to be increased and less harsh, B2P should not be about spending money in a cash shop to buy blackstones or enchant success increasers.
4> Items such as pets that pick up loot for you like in your favorite diablo clone, should not be cash shop items in B2P
5> Trade, trade needs to be allowed between people at least between guild mates
6> Auction house, auction house is a cluster. You can't set prices below or above a certain value. The most sought after item blackstones max out at 300k and they sell out as soon as it's posted up for sale, it's the most annoying whackamole ebay sniping mini game you will ever play in your entire life. It's very off puting and needs to change somehow. You'll swear it's some kind of bot instabuying stones but it's players from this entire megaserver with muti-channels buying them out at the same time and there's only 1 or more stones if your lucky available to purchase for everyone. Plus there is a captcha when you bid/buyout so if you type slow you loose. This shit more than anything needs to change as you will go nuts when you need 100 stones to enchant a weapon or whatever. and you are lucky to buy 1 in 30 minutes of insanity refreshing the auction house. You could go grind for a drop for 2-3 hours and be more productive in getting a stone.
7> New classes, these should be in the NA B2P with latest patch/fixes. If NA releases same as RU with only 4 classes that is BS, why bother playing in NA with all the above garbage to deal with anyway? If nothing else changes this is the only thing that will justify paying to play period.
So yeah Daum hopefully you read this as this is above is a what true localization to suit regional players needs and tastes looks like. Otherwise NA will flop as a B2P and everyone will flock to other F2P servers, or just play something else anyway as the endgame is basically guildwars(who cares?) or GTFO once you +15 everything. ^ you can say PVP is a good endgame but with potion spamming and severe penalties for PK'ing all you have left is oh look my guild stomped yours lololol u suck...okay that's nice.
Comments
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
Within 5 days the dude had almost +15 in everything (Whales Rejoice)
Unless this is changed lots are gonna be unhappy.......... I assume as far as I know this is still in the NA version also.....
Its hard to think of a mmo released/or added in recent year's that doesn't have a way to turn cash into in-game currency... be it big sub games like wow, b2p like gw2 or the many many f2p... its become the market normal and the market has largely accepted it, so we will continue to see it in many more future release.
Guess im one of the ones that have adapted to the change and don't let it ruin mmos for me.
It just kinda sucks for those of us that don't have tons of money to spend in the store...... It just worries me that once you hit 50 it's basically pvp or gvg whatever supposedly the game is light on pve at max level atm so to see people 5 days in at +15 is worrisome.
Also what people are not telling here is... +15 is only the start mark for gear.. the real goal is +16-20 were the RNG fail system comes into play. The stat creep in those ranges are huge... i had full +16 set before i stopped playing KR and i still died really fast.. potion spam plays no part in sieges they are useless lol. Fail trying for +17 weapon twice (goes down to +15 then need to get +16 again to try for +17) and quit and decided to leave that grind for when EU comes .
This is the thing I am most concerned about.
A game like GW2 works because there is little gear-gap in pvp, so the focus is more on the actual combat, getting more skillful in combat, teamwork etc. Massive gear gaps promote a very different type of play style, attract a different crowd, and are prone to p2w flavored monetization.
It will take a lot of thought to convert a f2p model which basically encourages players to "pay to win", into a successful b2p title. I have little faith that they will be able to successfully pull it off, but I can still see its going to be a fun game until you hit that wall.
I'm not sure what game you're thinking of that doesn't have mostly solo crafting and trading. When I crafted and traded in Archeage it was completely solo. Not only that but it was boring as hell and non-rewarding unless you dedicated your life to it.
I've read about people spending an entire year trying to craft an item and ending up basically where they started at because of the horrid RNG system. No thanks.
As for instanced housing, well it seemed like a good idea in AA to have non-instanced housing but really it was all gobbled up the first day and it left most people without land, excluding them from a big part of the game.
The best trade objective WAS based on PVP (the Isle), but that was just owned by whoever had a house on the island because the entire owner's guild could just teleport there whenever they wanted and gank anybody trying to do large turn-ins.
Also from what I've read the endgame is almost completely based on PVP. You fight to own nodes and gain tax income, similar to Archeage. It also seems like there are many more nodes to obtain rather than castles in AA, meaning more guilds can actually participate in that part of the game.
The only pvp part it's missing is the random ganking, but that was never fun to me.
Overall it seems to me that BDO will be less about belonging to an exclusive zerg guild and more about letting everyone enjoy all the aspects of the game. This is a definite positive for me. Others may disagree.
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
As for group turn-ins, well to me that's not really crafting, it's more tied to the PVP part of the game.
As for the 1 item you require to make stuff from other crafts, it's something I guess but it doesn't do much for me in terms of immersion.
The things you describe are mostly like someone else described in his experience with BDO- he didn't want to level cooking so he bought food off cooks. He sold boats to people that didn't want to level that craft.
The only real difference is the dangerous turn-ins, but you can avoid those altogether if you wanted to.
Now, which one of you will adorn me today?
You see it is the whole mentality with pvp that always bothers me,it is such a NEGATIVE atmosphere on gaming in general.I enjoyed a lot of pvp in my days but in arena style where i could just come and go from server to server.That way if i run into jerks,asshats i can just leave again and go elsewhere to find a good game.You can't do that in mmorpg's,you are stuck and bound to those same players everyday and it ruins your gaming experience.
Why developers can't figure this obvious problem out is beyond me,maybe they really don't care,after all it is just a business of selling games,they don't care about the actual people playing them.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
1) PvP nuff said.
2) I don't really want to see Weapon stones dropping like rain. Kills point of auction house.
3) Game has to generate funds from somewhere. You can only churn out costumes so fast.
4) See 3.
5) No thanks. People may hate it but it is one of best ways to nip RMT in the bud.
6) No thanks. I'd rather not have to deal with super inflated auction house prices.
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.