How Can It Change Its Reputation? - Black Desert Online News

SBFord

How Can It Change Its Reputation? - Black Desert Online News

Last week I wrote about exploiting in Black Desert Online and how it’s seemingly rife throughout the game. With the latest expansion pack also delayed due to it, I feel there’s certainly a need for Daum to change the reputation of the game. Not only is it becoming well known for exploiting, but it being a grind is well documented.

Read the full story here

fed79

Haha didn't even last 6 months.

toolak

You cannot fix the cheating and exploiting in this game. THE GAME IS FULL OF CLIENT SIDE CALCULATIONS. I'm suprised that cheats are not more flagrant than they already are. The bypass for this in the original market, Korea, is that players have to input thier personal ID info to play the game. In the rest of the world, all you have to do to do if you get caught cheating is get another copy.

Pagoas

Game looked too PVP-centric and ArcheAgey (the bad side of Archeage) to hook me in... glad you guys are enjoying it, though.

Bloodaxes

The biggest reason they delayed the expansion isn't regarding hacks but more regarding the current servers can't handle all those people fighting next to each other.

Anyone that plays/played the game would know what I'm talking about by simple attempting to fight against a world boss with a lot of people around.

jonp200

Pre=release, I looked at the game and said "probably not for me." Then it released and I said, "I'll give it a go."

There was a lot to like. The game looks amazing and many of the quests and content were interesting and fun but oooh the grind....and the exploits; those are a game-killer always..

I'm back to "Not for me.."

softscent40

I have been playing it since it launched i tried beta got hooked an I'am still playing its a pretty good game grinding doesn't phase me I used to play Lineage 2 ,that grind was awful an took forever to level this game i follow guide to level faster it, no complaints here

spikers14

So asking them to re-code, and then re-think their exploitation policy (which is based off of an exploitable system)? Really? That's your answer? Still wouldn't "save" the reputation of this game.

You might as well ask for for a free gaming computer.

If I were Daum, I would do exactly what they are doing now. Take the money...maybe start working on a new project.

FlyByKnight

"It's in beta"
"It just launched"
"It's only been on for x months"
"It's not even that bad"

brihtwulf

This seems to happen with the Asian MMOs that get ported over for Western play. They focus VERY heavily on grind and often allow massive amounts of exploiting and cheating (because that's isn't seen as that bad of a problem there) and it just doesn't fit what most people here want. There is a rather broad tolerance range for grinding, but there comes a point where you're going to turn off or lose 90% of the available player base when it's excessive. It's just not fun for most people any more.

Albatroes

White Knight quote #12325: "Hackers don't affect my game."

Alverant

I'm going to go in a different direction and say that people are taking their games way too seriously. How did we get to the point where so many people decided it was OK to cheat? Not only that we have vigorous defenders of their games who go into rages and make death threats whenever someone says their game isn't perfect. How many developers and game reviewers quit because of all the hate directed at them? This is the kind of stuff that pushes people away from gaming when we need to be bringing more people and more kinds of people into the hobby.

Video games have been around long enough, it's time to grow up and act like adults.

Lheiah

Sure there will be another Korean grinder out of their mass production mmo factory you can swoon over soon. Guess some lessons are just never learned.

FlyByKnight

Lheiah said:

Sure there will be another Korean grinder out of their mass production mmo factory you can swoon over soon. Guess some lessons are just never learned.

Lost Ark coming soon.

holdenhamlet

I agree with all these points.

One thing, though- it's important to differentiate between hacking and exploiting. I mentioned this in the comments to your last article. BDO's main problem is hacking, which is worse than exploiting, requires 3rd party programs to do it, and is more unusual when it comes to MMOs, mostly because most MMOs don't check things client-side as much as BDO does.

I'm not sure how easy it is to recode the game to make more server side checks, but if they can do it, they should.

All the other suggestions are definitely doable, and should be done.

JudgeUK

How can it change it's reputation?

- change developer
- move content away from client side
- perma-ban anyone who is found to have hacked, no matter if it was for a minute or two
- add meaningful end content
- remove open world pvp

there you go - popcorn ready.

lunawisp

Realise that cooldowns client side don't work.
Reinstate the people banned unjustly by ineffective anti-cheat programs.
Ban the obvious hackers that were reinstated for reasons known only to the devs.
Make the client more stable so that people don't get kicked off randomly.

Alternatively, don't bother because once you've got a reputation, you're not going to shift it.

Wizardry

I know many won't believe it or think i am just stereotyping but in general i can spot a Korean MMO without even knowing it was made by a KR developer,so that alone says they are just too predictable in their game designs and THAT needs to change.

KR games have NO DEPTH in systems,they create very fast shallow designs.In this case BDO ,all they did was create several different key presses,that is just manual memorizing and NOT depth of systems.Look no further than the Ranger/Archer class,NO AMMO ,that is like a HUGE massive LAZY fail on creating what COULD have been depth,example piercing arrows,blunt arrows,fire arrows,Ice arrows,sleep arrows etc etc,instead they have ZERO depth.No only is it a lazy approach to a system,that same singular idea of ammo COULD have also opened up a large crafting base/depth,so yet again they missed the boat.

There is more to gaming than simply dotting down some mobs and a player and allow you to kill them.

Even the NODES idea that so many thought was great was again a LAZY design,nothing more than a stat,automated stats to boot.There is soooo much more that could have been done with that idea and in the game world ,NOT just in some statistical make believe stat sheet.

So if i did not make it clear enough,BDO like all KR games needs to put some quality into their game,some DEPTH in systems.

Quizzical

Changing the code base so that the old hacks no longer work and will instead just get you banned is the entire game. Anything shy of that is useless marketing junk.

Mardukk

Vinterkrig said:

My wife was playing, so I used her trial... played for most of the week and got to level 32. She had been playing since release (forget how long in that was) and was still grinding nightly. The PVE grind in the game ruins all the other aspects of it (for me ) and I decided to not buy the game, a few weeks later she had gotten sick of the overwhelming grind and the disparity between people a few levels higher than herself and quit herself. 

Frankly, I'm a bit burnt out by leveling in these games, it's a time sink that takes away from all the other aspects of the game in my opinion.

Why did you try to frantically level then?  Do one of the 900 other things to do in the game beside grind mobs.

The game is revolutionary in many aspects.  It's a shame it is all going to be for nothing, due to the easy client side hacks.  You would think PA would be super aggressive about a fix...but they aren't.  Sigh.

Lokero

I completely agree with publicizing things. "Name and Shame" is fantastic and should be in every game, as is the way Blizzard declares their banhammer swings.

I also believe we should bring back public executions... but, anyway... I digress.

Either one of two things is happening behind the doors right now:

1) They actually are frantically trying to re-code all that client-side hackable stuff. This would be quite a tedious thing to do, one would assume.

2) They've realized what a lost cause it is, and have chosen to cover their ears and hope for the best.

Obviously, #1 seems like the only choice a smart developer could make, but it also seems like an improbability. Re-coding your game's design structure this late in the game seems rather unlikely.

It's just a sad example of "Too little; too late". I'd say the main developers should just put the focus back on the Korean version and abandon this one, but haven't most of these new Western ports already failed spectacularly in Korea?

JudgeUK

Wizardry said:

I know many won't believe it or think i am just stereotyping but in general i can spot a Korean MMO without even knowing it was made by a KR developer,so that alone says they are just too predictable in their game designs and THAT needs to change.

KR games have NO DEPTH in systems,they create very fast shallow designs.In this case BDO ,all they did was create several different key presses,that is just manual memorizing and NOT depth of systems.Look no further than the Ranger/Archer class,NO AMMO ,that is like a HUGE massive LAZY fail on creating what COULD have been depth,example piercing arrows,blunt arrows,fire arrows,Ice arrows,sleep arrows etc etc,instead they have ZERO depth.No only is it a lazy approach to a system,that same singular idea of ammo COULD have also opened up a large crafting base/depth,so yet again they missed the boat.

There is more to gaming than simply dotting down some mobs and a player and allow you to kill them.

Even the NODES idea that so many thought was great was again a LAZY design,nothing more than a stat,automated stats to boot.There is soooo much more that could have been done with that idea and in the game world ,NOT just in some statistical make believe stat sheet.

So if i did not make it clear enough,BDO like all KR games needs to put some quality into their game,some DEPTH in systems.

The issue here is that this and other similar games are made for a playerbase with apparently different tastes.

By the way, I completely agree with your post.
It just highlights that this game, like several others, has just been ported over here with limited thought to the actual preferences of a western playerbase.
Unfortunately this leads to the perception that this raft of imports are nothing more than short term cash grabs.

Deltois

Ah the entertainment. Like we didn t see this mess a mile away or anything.

Rockard

It's not happening.
Too far into the development cycle and after release.
At least that's what previous experience shows us.
These are fundamental design issues.Developers are much more aware of their games than players.They knew very well their weaknesses and limitations with regards to hacking and preventing it,and they chose to develop the game that way and/or anyway.

This game will probably become a AA no2.
It will milk players for as much time and money as possible,and after it loses a lot of it's players,then it will rely mostly on the loyal to death whales to make money on.

Forgrimm

You never get a 2nd chance to make a 1st impression, and once you've earned a bad reputation it's almost impossible to change it. They should have thought about these things before releasing it.

Alomar

Bloodaxes said:

The biggest reason they delayed the expansion isn't regarding hacks but more regarding the current servers can't handle all those people fighting next to each other.

Anyone that plays/played the game would know what I'm talking about by simple attempting to fight against a world boss with a lot of people around.

While I'm not a huge fan of the game, though I am still playing it atm. I've heard this argument several times and find it to be quite untrue. While there was channel lag for the bottom couple channels for a while till they switched where they were hosted, there is not typical server lag in these situations. I go to Kzarka 5-6 times a week and have minimum lag with anywhere from 80-120+ people on the screen each time.

I've also partaken in 3 of the largest pvp battles to date on the Edan server and found very little lag. A month and a half ago I was in a 300-325 total fight consisting of 7 guilds and the fight lasted over 2 hours. No performance decreasing lag to speak of, it was great uninterrupted pvp. Around a month ago I was also in a 300-400 player fight at the Mediah castle that consisted of 9 guilds. The fight lasted 3 hours and once again no server lag that hindered pvp to speak of.

Don't get me wrong the game's got a ton of faults, and that's why I've been playing much more casually for the past several weeks. Yet, when it comes to actual lag I get very little. Bear in mind all of this was with medium - max settings.