Fix is simple. Require ID verification to play. I am very confused why this isn't a standard by now. There was ways to verify any european ID in seconds I would assume US has similar systems, if not time to implement it. It would get rid of cheaters, harassment and griefing to a large extent making the online gaming community less toxic.
Be the first company to say "enough is enough" and take the step.
Game looked too PVP-centric and ArcheAgey (the bad side of Archeage) to hook me in... glad you guys are enjoying it, though.
The game has absolutely zero PvP content, and most PvP players have quit because of it. So to call it PvP centric is simply false. IF the game delivered what it promised and advertised, sure, we'd have node wars and castle sieges... But these remain postponed indefinitely because they bought servers which couldn't handle the content. The only thing this game has, is an endless level and gear grind which they increase each content patch. Even semi unique features like hunting they have managed to skip adding to the Western version.
It's a shame, since I was hoping BD would be a game to last for a while. Seems I was wrong, again, so with BD also goes my last attempt to try a Korean port-over.
Its something i am seeing in game, but there are a number of people who seem to think that the game is all about PVP, and wondering why they are in the minority, you can find PVP guilds in BDO make no mistake, but the majority of the content in BDO is PVE orientated, anyone going into this game expecting it to be PVP everywhere, is going to be disappointed. I think this misconception is due to the games early hype, the hype was all about the PVP, or about how sandboxy it is, and it does indeed have a lot of sandbox features, i think people also forget that PVP is not a requirement for a sandbox game, its not a requirement for a themepark game either. BDO is a Sandpark game, a Themepark with a heavy sandbox influence, but from what i have seen of the game so far, and i am level 51 still, the content of the game is mostly PVE, the most PVP i have seen, has been people protecting their 'grind spots'. From the sounds of things, there will be more PVP type content added some time in the future, naval combat etc. So its not like PVP players aren't being catered to, i think for some the problem they are having is because PVP players aren't the only ones being catered to, which is imo a bit myopic at least on the part of players who don't appear to see the wood, for the trees, BDO, is not all about the PVP.
This game has gone down as the worst purchase I have ever made, imho they can redeem themselves by selling the ip to someone more competent in game design and management.
I think it's too late for BDO to "fix it's rep". That boat has sailed.
That doesn't mean the game is "dead", just that it will attract FAR fewer players in future than it would have if it hadn't become known as one of the most hackable MMO's in history. A title it ironically snatched from another Korean OWPVP game, ArcheAge...
Let's hope that BDO's publisher has more robust security in their account management system than the games they publish appear to have...
The core of the game is made for a different gaming culture and the core is something that will never be westernized. If a eastern dev wants a game to be remotely successful in the west for more than just the initial launch, they better design the game from day one with the western audience in mind. Until this happens there is going to be nothing but failure after failure.
Devs should know by now that in the west, if there is a way to circumvent the game to get ahead of everyone else, they will do it.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
BDO seems like it's a deep and rich game at first glance. I mean there's so much to see and to do. You have questing, fishing, horse breeding, crafting, and yes even PvP. The depth of these parts of the game starts to wear thin when you really begin to do them.
Quests are kill x of these and bring back y of those. They hide this by not telling you to kill 10 things, the quest simply asks you to bring back a few of whatever or help clear out this mob or that mob, and it ends up RNG'ing it so that one time it's 5 kills and an update another time you could spend an hour trying to get it (I know this cause I leveled multiple classes)
Fishing is so simple you don't even have to be at the keyboard to do it.
Horse breeding so simple you don't even have to be at the keyboard to do it.
Crafting, I cannot really say anything about as I only ever crafted herbal juices, but it was a game of make 100 of these, then combine those and get 30 of the next tier. I heard people complain that alchemy stones were RNG based and you could spend millions of your silver trying to create one and end up with noithing due to RNG.
PvP, zero reason to ever even participate in any owPvP outside of griefing or holding onto a grinding spot. A crappy battleground to get some crystals to slot into your equipment is the only other PvP option.
Please tell me why these are so innovative?
It's a you problem if you can't see how different and innovative the game is. The main thing the game offers is freedom from dumbass required linear quest hubs. The game world actually feels like a living breathing world...not a quest hub corridor being force fed a "story" (which you should create your own story in virtual worlds). The life skills are all new and presented in a different way. You can log on and have more things to do/pick from than any other MMO I've ever seen. Hopefully some future MMO will implement many of the life skills ideas and world set up. Your combat, craft or linear quest MMO's are all the same...have fun playing those.
I agree with the new server idea that Kano mentioned above. I don't think they will do it though. PA doesn't seem very determined to fix things.
Unfortunately with all the hacking, I'll just go back to not playing MMO's until another MMO with a bit of freedom is released.
It's a you problem if you can't see how different and innovative the game is. The main thing the game offers is freedom from dumbass required linear quest hubs. The game world actually feels like a living breathing world...not a quest hub corridor being force fed a "story" (which you should create your own story in virtual worlds). The life skills are all new and presented in a different way. You can log on and have more things to do/pick from than any other MMO I've ever seen. Hopefully some future MMO will implement many of the life skills ideas and world set up. Your combat, craft or linear quest MMO's are all the same...have fun playing those.
I agree with the new server idea that Kano mentioned above. I don't think they will do it though. PA doesn't seem very determined to fix things.
Unfortunately with all the hacking, I'll just go back to not playing MMO's until another MMO with a bit of freedom is released.
I used to think this way as well and a month ago would have been a white knight for the game too.
Freedom of quest hubs..except it has those so nope.
Life skills are not new or innovative, it's just another feature to grind out.
Log in and do more than any other mmorpg, like what exactly? You find an area that has mobs, then you go in a circle for hours on end killing the same mobs over and over until your brain turns to oatmeal and you can't figure out how bad the game really is.
BDO has a large open world feeling (when the pop in isn't killing it) and really fun combat, that's it that's all. You can keep lying to yourself and others but it won't change the facts.
Some of those themepark mmo's you look down upon are more entertaining than BDO in ways.
The exploits need to be resolved but I don't think the grind part will. Lots of players have hailed it for it's constant grinding. The players who hate other MMORPG's because they are to "easy", (read: is not a second job). That is, players who have all he time in the world to play games or only play a single game every day after work. They hate WoW because evil casuals and muh challenge, etc.
The guild I am in is very active in this game and we do not have anyone hacking because we will kick them and report them, but we run into other guilds that are speed hacking all the time and it's gotten so bad the we dont even do any bosses because you cant get any loot with all the hackers there. Then you have the PVP which is the main focus of our guild but then you run into a guild that is full of speed hacker and no matter how good you are your going to lose. So yeah they need to get this under control some how or it will kill this game.
And about the grind.... yeah it is but then again so are all the other MMO's it is the nature of a MMO so what is everyone bitching about?
First - If they really want to change their image, Fully remove all negative XP gains. Currently NA/EU Do not recieve as much EXP per kill as the Asian and Russian servers. The game was not designed to be this damn grindy yet they made it such. Now I know we get more XP from quests, but who gives a shit, with Gender/Class locked characters, grinding should be the easy mode for any play style.
Second - they need to remove the +hp/+mp issues with leveling, Make it a static number, or remove it. Health and mana should always be the one constant between naked characters. ( OF the same class)
Third - Ban all Hackers past and present for good.
Fourth - Publicly Shame the hackers. I want Character names, family names and Guilds/Friends all listed.
fifth - Allow some form of trading between characters within a guild. Now im not saying free trading, but say I have 200 x item and my buddy needs it for crafting. Allow me to directly sell to him at the lowest price without going through the Market place. Allow a guild to help each other and still use the Market prices to control it.
sixth - Ban Anyone Spamming chat channels with any type of RMT. First Ban is a week, second 6 months, 3rd Permanent.
Seventh - Lower RNG outside of Enhancements. Crafting isn't meant to break the bank especially if you have a higher skill then the item your making etc.
Thats all I can think up for now.
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.
That will never happen as long as we keep using the internet anonymously. Koreans figured this out a long time ago. If we want a healthy internet (and online gaming) with normal human relations going on, we need to use real life ID.
Fix is simple. Require ID verification to play. I am very confused why this isn't a standard by now. There was ways to verify any european ID in seconds I would assume US has similar systems, if not time to implement it. It would get rid of cheaters, harassment and griefing to a large extent making the online gaming community less toxic.
Be the first company to say "enough is enough" and take the step.
I'm assuming the strict information privacy laws in a few European countries likely make that a difficult step to implement.
DAUM, Pearl Abyss and BDO deserve to drown in their sinking ship. I thought it was bad enough that AA had blatant cheating going on and apparently Korean game developers learn nothing from their counterparts mistakes. Both AA and BDO will get no sympathy from me simply because of how they handled cheaters. Mostly BDO, when it takes weeks just to get 1 obvious hacker banned and than it's not even permanent.
They totally mishandled this problem.
While I agree nothing has been ideal here, I don't see where this is about sympathy or any other emotion. I'd guess the issues with banning stems from spending, if a large portion of those spending are also a large portion of those cheating, you have yourself a dilemma as a business. Integrity of the product over viability of the business and ongoing expenditure. That's a tough spot to be in for any service. Both effect income, meaning both effect survival.
Taking the emotional angle out of it (due to wasted money) it's really not that hard to see there's no real ideal outcome here.
Tough situation for sure. I think from a PR perspective they mishandled it. At the very least they should ban someone hacking for at least a month not a day. They can make each offense more severe. After repeated warnings and bans this person then could be permanently banned. Just seems more rational to me. This way it allows the offender to correct his/hers behaviors and somewhat keeps the community happy.
I agree with you it is tough call because the person cheating is the person spending. Very few businesses survive the long term without some form of integrity. I think the game is good enough to survive without the whale-cheaters in the long run.
unless end game pvp is all you worry about in this game the hacks won't bother you. as many have said there are alot of revolutionary systems in this game, on par with swg, that makes the grind and pve questing fun and barely noticable. And why does every game have to taylor itself for western audiences. That's part of what ruined archage besidesa the cash grab. this is daums first published game stateside and i think they have an amazing future
What I can't seem to wrap my head around is why everyone involved took a look at all the client side information with no checks and said, "Nah, players won't try to take advantage of that."
Apparently there is no hacking problem in Korea at all, and they have the same client-side checks we do.
Partly it's because you need to register with the equivilant of your SSN. But the other part of it is apparently Russia and the West are a bunch of hacking/exploiting scumbag losers.
I've played on a number of games most Americans have never heard of that were from South Korea, or a nearby Asian country and had a lot of Korean gamers. My experience is the exact opposite. They are the most cheating arrogant A-holes on the internet without exception. It's also not uncommon for one or more to sit in newbie entry no fight areas and use cheats to kill the newbs as they spawn.
Now I'll admit, we didn't have a discussion where they stated their nationality, but their names were in the korean fonts, they were korean names, and they spoke to each other and taunted everyone else in korean.
On the other hand, Malaysian, Thai, and Myanmar tend to be pleasant and friendly.
By the way, haven't you heard of the numerous scandals in the professional gaming in Korea with the rampant cheating that's been caught?
It's sad to stereotype an entire country, and there must be a reason for it, but it's a pattern I've seen so many times I can't ignore it.
I doubt that their reputation will ever get better. I read this article and it reminded me of another game I used to play that was fun until the hacks and bots took over. Almost all of the fair players have left due to the developers slow implementation of anti cheats and lax punishments for the violators. All the developers of that game is doing is milking it for all they can before the inevitable shutdown. It would be a shame if BDO goes the same route but is has been done before and will happen again unfortunately.
unless end game pvp is all you worry about in this game the hacks won't bother you. as many have said there are alot of revolutionary systems in this game, on par with swg, that makes the grind and pve questing fun and barely noticable. And why does every game have to taylor itself for western audiences. That's part of what ruined archage besidesa the cash grab. this is daums first published game stateside and i think they have an amazing future
SWG's sandbox systems mainly had to do with player interaction. BDO's sandbox systems are mostly solo and can be done with little to no player interaction whatsoever. You can't build your own town or sing and dance to other players to give them significant longer-term boosts in BDO.
What's ironic about the exploits in BDO is that their so-called anti-cheat software was blocking me from playing the game. And it turned out to be caused by a text file I keep on my desktop filled with Linux commands that I use occasionally for work.
I keep repeating: Friends don't let friends Korean MMO.
At least BDO is fundamentally a good new innovative MMO.
Can you say the same about recent western MMOs such as Wildstar, ESO, GW2? Or say, any western MMO since WoW?
Hacking sucks but it can be mitigated. You can't mitigate bad.
ESO and GW2 are definitively way more innovative than BDO.
Hell BDO is not even in their category, and it's not a bad MMO, it was just never going to reach such a high quality. Yes people all around the internet were making BDO seem like it's the next thing, but we all knew better. So I'm not really sorry that it's dying already, it was about time you people fell on the ground.
Add it to that pile of shit where Wildstar is going by the end of the year.
Hacking isn't the problem - it's the complete lack of progression or activity at the soft cap. The entirety of a game's staying power cannot be summed up by "reroll or grind."
Comments
Be the first company to say "enough is enough" and take the step.
I think this misconception is due to the games early hype, the hype was all about the PVP, or about how sandboxy it is, and it does indeed have a lot of sandbox features, i think people also forget that PVP is not a requirement for a sandbox game, its not a requirement for a themepark game either.
BDO is a Sandpark game, a Themepark with a heavy sandbox influence, but from what i have seen of the game so far, and i am level 51 still, the content of the game is mostly PVE, the most PVP i have seen, has been people protecting their 'grind spots'.
From the sounds of things, there will be more PVP type content added some time in the future, naval combat etc. So its not like PVP players aren't being catered to, i think for some the problem they are having is because PVP players aren't the only ones being catered to, which is imo a bit myopic at least on the part of players who don't appear to see the wood, for the trees, BDO, is not all about the PVP.
That doesn't mean the game is "dead", just that it will attract FAR fewer players in future than it would have if it hadn't become known as one of the most hackable MMO's in history. A title it ironically snatched from another Korean OWPVP game, ArcheAge...
Let's hope that BDO's publisher has more robust security in their account management system than the games they publish appear to have...
Devs should know by now that in the west, if there is a way to circumvent the game to get ahead of everyone else, they will do it.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
It's a you problem if you can't see how different and innovative the game is. The main thing the game offers is freedom from dumbass required linear quest hubs. The game world actually feels like a living breathing world...not a quest hub corridor being force fed a "story" (which you should create your own story in virtual worlds). The life skills are all new and presented in a different way. You can log on and have more things to do/pick from than any other MMO I've ever seen. Hopefully some future MMO will implement many of the life skills ideas and world set up. Your combat, craft or linear quest MMO's are all the same...have fun playing those.
I agree with the new server idea that Kano mentioned above. I don't think they will do it though. PA doesn't seem very determined to fix things.
Unfortunately with all the hacking, I'll just go back to not playing MMO's until another MMO with a bit of freedom is released.
Freedom of quest hubs..except it has those so nope.
Life skills are not new or innovative, it's just another feature to grind out.
Log in and do more than any other mmorpg, like what exactly? You find an area that has mobs, then you go in a circle for hours on end killing the same mobs over and over until your brain turns to oatmeal and you can't figure out how bad the game really is.
BDO has a large open world feeling (when the pop in isn't killing it) and really fun combat, that's it that's all. You can keep lying to yourself and others but it won't change the facts.
Some of those themepark mmo's you look down upon are more entertaining than BDO in ways.
And about the grind.... yeah it is but then again so are all the other MMO's it is the nature of a MMO so what is everyone bitching about?
Second - they need to remove the +hp/+mp issues with leveling, Make it a static number, or remove it. Health and mana should always be the one constant between naked characters. ( OF the same class)
Third - Ban all Hackers past and present for good.
Fourth - Publicly Shame the hackers. I want Character names, family names and Guilds/Friends all listed.
fifth - Allow some form of trading between characters within a guild. Now im not saying free trading, but say I have 200 x item and my buddy needs it for crafting. Allow me to directly sell to him at the lowest price without going through the Market place. Allow a guild to help each other and still use the Market prices to control it.
sixth - Ban Anyone Spamming chat channels with any type of RMT. First Ban is a week, second 6 months, 3rd Permanent.
Seventh - Lower RNG outside of Enhancements. Crafting isn't meant to break the bank especially if you have a higher skill then the item your making etc.
Thats all I can think up for now.
I agree with you it is tough call because the person cheating is the person spending. Very few businesses survive the long term without some form of integrity. I think the game is good enough to survive without the whale-cheaters in the long run.
so say we all
I've played on a number of games most Americans have never heard of that were from South Korea, or a nearby Asian country and had a lot of Korean gamers. My experience is the exact opposite. They are the most cheating arrogant A-holes on the internet without exception. It's also not uncommon for one or more to sit in newbie entry no fight areas and use cheats to kill the newbs as they spawn.
Now I'll admit, we didn't have a discussion where they stated their nationality, but their names were in the korean fonts, they were korean names, and they spoke to each other and taunted everyone else in korean.
On the other hand, Malaysian, Thai, and Myanmar tend to be pleasant and friendly.
By the way, haven't you heard of the numerous scandals in the professional gaming in Korea with the rampant cheating that's been caught?
It's sad to stereotype an entire country, and there must be a reason for it, but it's a pattern I've seen so many times I can't ignore it.
Lost my mind, now trying to lose yours...
Hell BDO is not even in their category, and it's not a bad MMO, it was just never going to reach such a high quality. Yes people all around the internet were making BDO seem like it's the next thing, but we all knew better. So I'm not really sorry that it's dying already, it was about time you people fell on the ground.
Add it to that pile of shit where Wildstar is going by the end of the year.