Really wanted to like this but it's just so uninteresting. Was bored to tears during the the beginning, black smoke thing mechanic felt ridiculous. Don't know how to describe it but it just feels messy. Character creator is really nice though, a shame all the cool costumes are locked behind real money.
All in all, It's insane that after so many years passed, none of the current mmo's manage to capture the feeling of DaoC, EQ 2, Asheron's Call 2 and early WoW, had so much fun back then. Even Guild Wars was nice but nothing after that came to touching those experiences for me.
Give it another chance mate. Your experiences mirror mine, and a lot of others. The game feels so obtuse, complicated, random and unhinged in the beginning that it is immensely off putting.
It takes a real stab at wanting to understand this game. It doesn't operate on many of the same parameters you know from other games, and it's not trying to recapture the feel of DAOC, EQ2, AC2 or Early WoW. But I can tell you- If you do get over the hurdle and begin to understand how the game operates and why it does, it is immensely rewarding.
But that is not to say that the game is not frustrating. Technical and gameplay issues both are a major problem, with more than several being potential dealbreakers.
But a lot of people are embracing this game because, it's very different, it's very very good at what it does, and because it's a really fun game once you understand it.
The major problem is that the games introduction does it best to set you up to quit.
This game doesn't have a real end game or purpose. There are no raids or dungeons or the like.
It's more like a personal never ending Dynasty Warriors/Soul Calibur/Harvest Moon/Ultima Online MMO/Action/Survival hybrid. Instead of having you run the same dungeons/raids/quests until you quit, you simply slay monsters. It's exactly the same framework, and it's exactly as meaningful /meaningless as any other MMO. It's just boxed and served differently.
The "black smoke thing" you mentioned is a quite interesting contraption and it ends up being a lot less annoying later. It basically serves as a bread crumb delivery machine. If you're new and don't know how, what and where, you can do its quests. It' guides you around the world, it feeds you some good gear, some inventory expansion and other things. But you can ignore it if you want to.
The game has a very deep and complex combat system with a lot of depth, that will take many hundreds of hours to get good at. It rewards people who don't put the skills on the hotbar with more damage, and hidden quick activations. The game has animation cancels, combos, and a really good synergy of blocks, grabs, CCs and more. This is the first time we've seen a 100% action MMO that is not stilted or watered down because of it.
At the same time, this is also a crafting and empire building game for people who hate that. In the game, it's called "passive income" and "worker empire" and essentially, just as important as levelling, so is your energy level and your contribution level. Energy is raised by interacting with everything in the game world and it highly rewards exploration. Contribution is driven by particpating in the quest. Getting more contribution allows for a lot of strategic planning, buying of estates, buying workers.
Essentially, while you're out fighting, you have an army of people taking care of getting resources for you. You use them to buy stables, crafting houses, storage, and you can do all sorts of things with it.
A lot of people miss out on it, thinking this is just some blade and soul esque thing where the end game is just getting a high combat level. But that will leave your character compromised in lots of ways.
Like GW2, it's very much a game about defining your own goals. Some people spend 200 hours on getting the supplies to build a durable little fishing ship. Others go for buying an entire town, others focus all their efforts on better combat gears, others on better crafting gears. Nothing is soulbound, nothing is gear dependent. You can equip a lvl 1 with end game top of the line armor. The game is balls-to-the-walls different from anything else. It's not a themepark and it's not really a sandbox. It's just its completely own thing, and it really requires one to approach it as something that is not comparable to the games you've played in the past.
You will not get that out of it. It doesn't feel like a MMO in that sense. But then again it feels like more of a MMO than so many other MMOs for its other aspects. The way towns have isolated economies, the way the world is insanely huge with no loading screens and completely seamless. The way death is meaningful and exciting. And while the story is shit, and translation pathethic, the world gives a wonderlust that is immense.
It's really really freaking cool, but it's so disruptive because it will literally require you to sit down and watch youtube guides to how to understand nodes, workers, trade, crafting, processing, enchanting, failstatacking, horses, hidden stats, alt characters, energy, karma, and so on.
Instead of treating this game like something where you expect to get out of it what you normally would from a MMORPG with a guild that does end game instanced repeatable scenarios of various sizes and difficulties, see it more as if it was an online MMO fighting game that allowed you to just move around in that space and do some cool side stuff.
In BDO you're often working on your own. and everyone has different goals. For a lot of people lvl 56 is the goal. Get their awakening and then after that they will just play to manage their passive income, improving their gear and have fun. The benefits to level up your character really stops at lvl 57, maybe 58 has a few improvements but its "ehh" compared to the insane time investment.
You're not gonna be on a equal footing in pvp. You're not gonna stand up to the hardcore grinders. the game is just a uneven chaotic mass of ideas that become amazing, when you do what you want to do. The game doesn't hook you in or tell you to do this. It's a game about currency. Money is everything, and you have people who are crafting 100% who are making a fortune and buying the best gear in the game.
It's less like a MMORPG, and more like a hobby project. like you'll build your characters over years. tiny inch by inch. The game rewards casual play through afk-ing, where you can auto fish, or increase your characters stamina or strength by auto pathing around to increase their finesse or load limit. So it's very much a game of becoming what you make of it.
But it's not some WoW thing where you get a instant gratification thing with a participation trophy for failing and being mediocre. The world feels alive and dangerous because death is more fierce. The world feels more real because you cannot just summon a horse out of your ass or teleport your to whatever city you want whenever you want. Everything has weight, and these logistics that are annoying turn into strategic gameplay you have to deal with.
The game is also highly dramatic, and gives rise to betrayal. You can use npc spys to look up a player who has wronged you and hunt them down, you can kill others peoples mounts, you can try and flip the market for effect for your own advantage, you can be a community sensation by failing spectacularly in the enchanting process.
For so many of us who just cannot give a shit anymore about these low-effort, low-risk MMORPGs where death is meaningless, and where everything has to be so fucking fair to satisfy, which just makes the game completely unsurprising and uninteresting and undramatic, BDO is a breathe of fresh air.
It has a tons of things about it, mechanically, and technically and design wise where I tell it to go fuck itself. But the game is genuinely fanatastic. It's a massive massive disruptive game in a sea of stagnation.
Try and see this video by Fevir; It explains why people often either hate it or love it.
What makes Black Desert Special?
I know so many people including myself who came around to the game once they understood the poorly explained mechanics and systems. Don't let that throw you off. Not all great things are immediately accessable and rewarding. This game needs to warm you up first. The game is auto pilot in the beginning as the mobs don't really pose a challenge.
It doesn't show its true colors until later.
