Been a member of this site for 8 years now (and a 43 year old gamer), i've seen games hyped all the way to release and then... well u know the end.
My first impressions during the first hours was "well another one...."
Having now reached lvl40 after a 20 day period i realized that i am hooked.
This is truly a masterpiece for MY likings.
This is NOT a PVP grindfest.
This is NOT a linear WoW clone.
This is NOT a gear showoff.
This is a real immersive experience of a HUGE world of thousand things to do and a thousand roads to choose.
I've already quit from my first guild cause they've expected me to grind myself to 50 in 3 days so that we can
destroy the other guild which they've destroyed the affiliated guild which........
Oh ! thank god these kind of players are not going to last long in this game.
If you plan on investing on this game only to treat it like a combat arena, then luckily for us
you're gonna ragequit soon.
Yes there is a cash shop but if you will not invest in anything else but killing then you'll find yourself
visiting it pretty often.
You want a Pet ? buy it, but make sure you have the resources to feed it.
You want to be a fisherman ? fine, but make sure your fish are fresh when you deliver.
You need to farm,fish,fight,PVP,explore,socialize,read,invent,invest.......and a thousand things more.
I'm having a middle age crisis with this game and i'm fully enjoying it.
Now i need to go harvest potatoes, gather water, distill it, harvest sugar and go to my house to make some beer.
Cheers !!!!
"Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom. (Death)”
― Terry Pratchett,
Comments
The game is fun, but too many people are overselling the features. Yeah it has a good baseline for a potentially great game, but until we start to offer constructive criticism instead of squashing it we'll never see this game improve. Most of the features in the game are incredibly shallow at the moment.
Yap that's what makes this game so special
Can be a pain when theres packs of 20 npcs standing around though :P
Now if talking to an NPC just gave you a conversation and nothing more (reward-wise), then it's a matter of choice by the player and they are going to actually read the content being said. Right now it's just one of many ways to *improve* your character.
A better choice would have been to make the responses from the NPCs more random... as in, they don't tell you the same thing each day or week... maybe they offer you a quest one time but not another... tell you a tale one time but not another... sell you something one time but not another. This actually makes you come back to talk to them over time and not just once as you pass through the area. Instead of just giving people new stuff in a new area with content updates, they should give you a reason to return to the areas you have left... which is a major downfall in replayability in most games... the do it once mentality.
So in essence, talking to an NPC might do nothing at all for you, it might do something, no rhyme or reason to it, which makes it more alive and less linear.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
Hopefully BDO and BnS won't go the way of ArcheAge, but in both communities there is a fear of it. And it's not unjustified.
The OP mimmicks my own experiences, and it is puzzling. BDO is more than the sum of its parts. The story is atrocious, and yet it still manages to be so immersive.
I completely lose myself in the world.
Most likely the first players reaching the soft cap level will quit BDO because they drunk a very fine wine as if it was a bottle of water.
I am having a blast playing BDO and I am only here typing instead of playing because there is a huge expansion coming today and servers are down.
The game looks stunning. It has alot to do, but it's more like a simulation game than a roleplaying game. All the roleplaying parts really suck. So yeah, it's not a bad game..But the roleplaying parts (quests, bosses, raids, lore etc) is really....really bad. If you like an advanced crafting game with some action combat on the side, with a beautiful seemless world..This is the game for you.
If you, like me..Like the roleplaying part of having well written quests/lore/dialogue and loads of customisation options, then The Elder Scrolls Online is probably a better game for you.
For example something like fishing is a process of
A leads to B then C
And sometimes you get an activity that is A leads to B or C.
But in depth and true sandbox decisions comes from
Starting at A or possibly à ( a different starting point entirely) can open up B.C.D and B and D can lead to F or G and sometimes J. Or C can lead you to D then F.
Trying to explain that complexity doesn't exist in BDO after your A and B process.
You have quantity not quality.
And worst part of it all. The immersion breaker that breaks it all. Your own character isn't even a sandbox. It's not even a theme park. It's a template. I feel so bad saying this but FF14 characters are more sandbox than BDO.
I'm older than the OP and feel the same way.
Spent a whole day actively fishing at one point while chatting on world chat.
Enjoy the amity system, the horse taming, the cooking, most of the quests, the worker system, the node system, the inability to fast travel, the combat, the fact I got an easter egg filled chandelier for my dingy house in Velia.
I have 5 toons, none of them have cracked L25 yet and I'm in no rush to do so. But will play at every opportunity.
My biggest issue is working out which toon to play each time I log in. The serker for some CP and bash crash fun, the wizard for some fishing, taming or nukage PvE, the tamer for some beer making or farming, the ranger for some mindless pve or the sorcerer (who may disappear if the blader shows up soon).
Playing: Darkfall New Dawn (and planning to play Fallout 76)
Favourite games have included: UO, Lineage2, Darkfall, Lotro, Baldur's Gate, SSX, FF7 and yes the original Wizardry on an Apple IIe
I bought a pet but I bought enough pearls to gift one to my bf too. Surprise, surprise, apparently some gold seller shmugs used the gifting option to RMT and Daum disabled it but people like me were caught off guard I just wanted to send him a pet, which he can't trade even if he wanted to
Hope they turn it back on soon.
Other than that it's an amazing game. It's refreshing to play something different. Sure it's not perfect, translations are laughably bad, UI is bad but underneath all that, there's a game. A game I've been playing for couple of weeks and enjoying every second of it.
And for an altoholic like me I LOVE IT that having an alt isn't punishing. Actually it's recommended to have alts *_* Already have valky/ranger/tamer *_* I have a sorc too but she's not as fun as the others but i'll probably get there too soon
You cannot pay real money to increase rankings. You cannot convert cash into game currency in BDO, so you will have to play the game to progress.
Finally a new MMORPG home for me. Still stuck at lvl 22 after three weeks and don't even plan to lvl up soon. So much to do lol.
Have to say though, this game actively rewards multiple characters, as so much is shared between characters, including inventory space, that it helps with crafting, gathering, all sorts of things.
Now, i am not saying that BDO is like SWG, but, i can honestly say that i haven't been this involved in an MMO since SWG, so much so that i've not had time to play other games, pretty much at all, and hands down, Wizards are awesome, fiddly at first, and it does take time to master the combo's but totally worth it.
Not a fan of the gender and age locking, but, i can deal with it, because the game really is that good
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Energy is limited resource so you cannot do what you want based on a shallow game design.
You cannot trade
Market price ranges are pre-determined and you cannot sell for what you want.
Aside from energy I like the other two ideas, but I think it does not fit a sandbox because of that.
Unless BDO is the second WoW, B2P box sales are very soon going to drop off sharply (if they haven't already).
The cash shop offerings WILL have to be expanded to maintain the revenue flow. And that will not be achieved via adding a few more high-priced optional costumes. The standard fare will inevitably appear, i.e. consumables that need to be bought on an ongoing basis.
Pearl Abyss obviously cares very much about the money they make off of BDO. Otherwise they would not enforce an IP block on regions where the publishing rights have not been sold (even though the chances of selling those rights in Africa are vanishingly small). If they're that eager to make money, it's highly likely that they will not accept the revenue stream drying-up after the initial B2P sale in the NA/EU region.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED