Black Desert Online - Mini closed beta review

This game is just so gorgeous. The world is huge and beautiful and it seems they actually put a lot of effort into it.
Black Desert isn't a perfect mmo, but it's unique. If you want your normal raid/dungeon/battleground grinder where you can safely jump around town while waiting for resets then there is just about every other mmo out there for you, Black Desert is not that.
As mentioned earlier Black Desert has a lot of similarities to eve online, it's a bit more casual but there are some features like trade routes that makes open pvp a must for an mmo game. If it wasn't this could just as well had been a singleplayer game. I'm actually surprised that you're not enforced pvp earlier than 45.
 
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Seem interesting, but the forced PvP is a deal breaker for me until addressed. MMO PvP is always so bland anyway. If I want to scratch that itch there's tons of games that do it infinitely better, were player skills is more important than who spent more time grinding gear.

I think you are missing the point of PvP in a MMO specially in a "sandbox" MMO. Its not there to measure your player skill or even give you interesting PvP fights. Its there to creates sense of danger in the world, that is you can be attacked any time. This actually make the world more believable and immersive. Once the sense of danger is added to the world, you behaviour and play pattern changes and it becomes a whole different game.

As NyxVampiria mentions earlier, some features of the game needs PvP. Even crafting of all things benefits from PVP since people can now fight over resources etc. If you can't do that then, crafting either turns into free for all and boring or end up having lots nasty cool down related grind etc.

Of course, too much annoying behaviour like random PKing etc will ruin the game. In most MMO killing people for random reason doesn't have any negative consequence this why you get gang fest, PKing etc. So it remains to be seen how BDO online accomplices this but I think they have good systems in place to avoid random PKing etc.
 
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Bought it last night. The 680m GTX on my laptop can't handle it sadly. I get a playable 30+ fps in ESO but only 8-9 fps in Black Desert. Time to upgrade I guess!
 
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Bought it last night. The 680m GTX on my laptop can't handle it sadly. I get a playable 30+ fps in ESO but only 8-9 fps in Black Desert. Time to upgrade I guess!

You probably have another setup issues (CPU? RAM?), the 680m GTX should be able to handle the game at high/max at 1080p with 40-50fps according to the forums and recommended specs:

The Recommended specs are: (Medium-High Graphic Settings) 64bit Windows 7 , Windows 8 Intel Core i5 6GB RAM GTX 650 / GTX 550 Ti Radeon HD 7770 / Radeon HD 6770
 
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This is a laptop- those look like desktop specs. It's definitely selecting the 680. Not sure what the issue is.
 
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I think you are missing the point of PvP in a MMO specially in a "sandbox" MMO. Its not there to measure your player skill or even give you interesting PvP fights. Its there to creates sense of danger in the world, that is you can be attacked any time. This actually make the world more believable and immersive. Once the sense of danger is added to the world, you behaviour and play pattern changes and it becomes a whole different game.

Gear based PvP that eliminates skill doesn't add danger in any way shape or form in my opinion. It adds pointless annoyance which diminishes enjoyment of the game for me. I'm all for PvP when it adds something to the game. MMOs rarely ever manage that.
 
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Gear based PvP that eliminates skill doesn't add danger in any way shape or form in my opinion. It adds pointless annoyance which diminishes enjoyment of the game for me. I'm all for PvP when it adds something to the game. MMOs rarely ever manage that.

The fight is not "fair" but the danger is still there. Its same as going up against a high "skilled" player. If you know a player is more "skilled" than you, then you lost the fight. How does that eliminates the danger?

On a related note, I don't see why its fine and fair for high skill player to beat a low skill player but not fine for high geared player to beat the low geared player....
 
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The fight is not "fair" but the danger is still there. Its same as going up against a high "skilled" player. If you know a player is more "skilled" than you, then you lost the fight. How does that eliminates the danger?

On a related note, I don't see why its fine and fair for high skill player to beat a low skill player but not fine for high geared player to beat the low geared player….

In your example, knowing someone is more skilled than you is the same as seeing someone in obviously better gear, there is no tension.

The tension is generated from the unknown. "Is this guy more skilled than I am?" That's what gives the impression of danger, that simply doesn't exist when gear score is the primary deciding factor.

The difference between skill and gear, for me, is night and day. A gear advantage can be obtained through buying it, or spending more time grinding it. It can create and uneven playing field, were older people with more commitments demanding their time or money are punished for it. Skill based PvP circumvents the time/money advantage.

To be fair, I can also understand why people don't inherently like that kind of PvP. Everyone likes to be rewarded for their efforts. Skill based PvP doesn't play well in that regard. Also, being punished for having slower reaction times or less understanding of game mechanics can also erode enjoyment.

Black Desert's current PvP setup simply isn't my cup of tea. I'll wait to see if they ever alter it since other aspects seem interesting. Otherwise, I'll just play something else.
 
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In case this helps anyone I did fix this tonight. CPU-Z verified that my integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 was getting all GPU load. This despite having the NVidia 680M card selected in the dropdown in the game launcher and all NVidia control panel settings pointing to the NVidia card. I did a full uninstall of the NVidia drivers and ran Guru3D's driver cleaner in safe mode. Then reinstall and everything worked. No global setting overrides, just a clean fresh install. Ironically, now the launcher has "Intel Graphics HD 4000" as the only card that can be selected but it picks the 680M anyway.

Medium = 50 FPS in town

High Textures / Slightly High Graphics = 37-40 FPS in town
 
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I think you have a dyslexic laptop Todd. ;)
 
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I'm just glad it worked. I'd like to get another ~6 months out of this thing. PC's are cheap compared to gaming laptops. If I can get to November it will be 4 years. Not bad!
 
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In your example, knowing someone is more skilled than you is the same as seeing someone in obviously better gear, there is no tension.

The tension is generated from the unknown. "Is this guy more skilled than I am?" That's what gives the impression of danger, that simply doesn't exist when gear score is the primary deciding factor.

The difference between skill and gear, for me, is night and day. A gear advantage can be obtained through buying it, or spending more time grinding it. It can create and uneven playing field, were older people with more commitments demanding their time or money are punished for it. Skill based PvP circumvents the time/money advantage.

To be fair, I can also understand why people don't inherently like that kind of PvP. Everyone likes to be rewarded for their efforts. Skill based PvP doesn't play well in that regard. Also, being punished for having slower reaction times or less understanding of game mechanics can also erode enjoyment.

Black Desert's current PvP setup simply isn't my cup of tea. I'll wait to see if they ever alter it since other aspects seem interesting. Otherwise, I'll just play something else.

There is no tension in the fight itself but there is still lot of tension in the world. That's what's important to me since it makes the world more real. Lets assume the PvP is skilled based only and we all know that there are always better skilled players than us out there and we can run into them any time and we can get killed so there is still lot of tension.

Let me give a PVE example, say I go to high level zone/dungeon to harvest etc. I know that the mobs there will 1 shot me due to our levels. So there is no tension in the actual fight but there is still lot of tension when you try to avoid these mobs by studying their patrol paths, hide from them etc. It can feel lot more rewarding coming out with harvested materials from this zone than say and an easy zone.

I can understand some people prefer gear based PvP and other skill based PvP. To me one is not inferior or superior to the other. If you are time rich then you prefer gear based PvP and if you are reflex rich then you prefer skilled based PvP. But here is the rub, RPGs never favoured reflex player skill! This is why we always rolled the dice… :)
 
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I snatched a 7 day trial key on MMORPG, but I don' t really fell like installing the game finally. Someone wants it?
 
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I have 2 keys for the full game. If you are willing to level up a character to level 30 in the game, then you can have a free key! It will take about hour or less to get level 30. They are also running double exp for 30 days for new accounts.

If you get level 30, then both of us will get some goodies and you get full game for free :)
 
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It's a very pretty and very terrible asian grinder, so I recommend staying far away if you value your free time :)
 
It's a very pretty and very terrible asian grinder, so I recommend staying far away if you value your free time :)

Yes he is right :)

However it only becomes terrible grinder if you need to be in the "top" league.

I am more than happy to be the middle of the road guy and I find the game very relaxing and enjoyable to play and do my own thing! The game has so many different fully fledged crafting systems unlike most MMOs. The main thing I do is run fishing
and trading empire in the game! You can get your hands dirty and actually do the fishing yourself but I actually automate the actual fishing part but work on the supply chain of getting the fish efficiently and quickly to the market and making millions! What do I do with the millions? I buy the best combat gear there is without killing a single monster! Thats right, even the top end gear is tradable.

Anyway fishing is just one system and there are countless other things you can do like farming etc. As you can see, I haven't even talked about combat yet!

The point I am trying to make is that its interesting MMO (with terrible grind and cash shop) unlike many cookie cutter theme parks you get these days. I have been playing this game on and off for couple of years now only having spent the initial box price so anyone should give this try for free key :)
 
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Yes he is right :)

However it only becomes terrible grinder if you need to be in the "top" league.

I am more than happy to be the middle of the road guy and I find the game very relaxing and enjoyable to play and do my own thing! The game has so many different fully fledged crafting systems unlike most MMOs. The main thing I do is run fishing
and trading empire in the game! You can get your hands dirty and actually do the fishing yourself but I actually automate the actual fishing part but work on the supply chain of getting the fish efficiently and quickly to the market and making millions!

Anyway fishing is just one system and there are countless other things you can do like farming etc. As you can see, I haven't even talked about combat yet!

The point I am trying to make is that its interesting MMO (with terrible grind and cash shop) unlike many cookie cutter theme parks you get these days. I have been playing this game on and off for couple of years now only having spent the initial box price so anyone should give this try for free key :)

I think it's terrible and pointless with zero interesting content. It's got a pretty landscape and a great combat flow - but that's about it.

Everything else is about generating "wealth" for no reason at all.

Sort of like Elite Dangerous and games of that sort.

To each his own :)
 
I think it's terrible and pointless with zero interesting content. It's got a pretty landscape and a great combat flow - but that's about it.

Everything else is about generating "wealth" for no reason at all.

Sort of like Elite Dangerous and games of that sort.

To each his own :)

Yes its sort of sandbox game than anything but I won't say wealth is pointless. I used the fishing wealth to buy best combat gear which then allows me to take part on PvP where gear does matter. So the question then is, whats the point of PvP? :)

Yes this game is not for everyone but anyone who is interested in MMO should try it since its different take on the genre compared to the usual stuff :) Maybe there are other MMO like this but I have not came across them.

Oh, another fun aspect I failed to mention is horse breading! its a game of its own and some of the best mounts are via that system. Why horses matter? There is no fast travel in the game and its HUGE open world so your means of transport matters!
 
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Yes its sort of sandbox game than anything but I won't say wealth is pointless. I used the fishing wealth to buy best combat gear which then allows me to take part on PvP where gear does matter. So the question then is, whats the point of PvP? :)

Yes this game is not for everyone but anyone who is interested in MMO should try it since its different take on the genre compared to the usual stuff :)

Oh, another fun aspect I failed to mention is horse breading! its a game of its own and some of the best mounts are via that system. Why horses matter? There is no fast travel in the game and its HUGE open world so your means of transport matters!

Exactly :)

I should probably add that I usually stay away from games where I need to invent my own reasons for playing.

I tend to prefer unique and distinct content - and especially a well told story to keep me engaged.

BDO would be a great game for me, if it had those things - because I actually like many of the mechanics and the systems.

But I've never been into hollow sandboxes with nothing really interesting to see after a few hours.

But, again, to each his own. I know some people love imagining their own fun.

Personally, I've always been a bit too lazy for that. Well, since I was a little kid, anyway.

These days, I want the developers to provide me with content - or I get bored almost before I begin playing.
 
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