Should you play Black Desert in 2022
Should you play Black Desert in 2022 and is it too late to start as a new player?
Black Desert is a fully open world sandbox MMORPG with story, side quests, life skills, bosses and some of the best combat in the MMORPG genre.
Black Desert has one of the best life skilling, gathering, and crafting systems in any MMORPG and undeniably some of the best combat.
But with all its perks it has one of the steepest learning curves, grindiest endgames and brutal RNG progression systems.
I’ve tried to get into BDO on a couple of occasions, and never really got into it. I loved the combat but always felt overwhelmed by the systems, the huge world and the 100s of items they throw at you.
But since I last played they’ve added a ton of new content, and remastered graphics.
And created something amazing for new players, and seasonal servers, and I’ve been having so much fun.
In this review I’m going to cover how the following:
New Player Experience
Is Black Desert Dead?
Why you should play Black Desert in 2022:
Why Not To Play Black Desert in 2022:
Is Black Desert Pay To Win?
Conclusion
New Player Experience:
The best thing for new players is the new seasonal servers.
The way these season servers work is they not only give you a ton more xp and faster levelling, but they also almost spoon-feed you seasonal gear and the items you need to progress it up through the ranks.
They give you a starter set of gear, and you earn items to rank it up. then you can trade it up for a better set, and upgrade it again. then when you’re at max level and you’re ready to graduate from the season, you can trade-in and switch to boss level endgame gear.
As a new player, it was so helpful, to have this tutorial and training, rather than just throwing you out into the world. The current season runs till July, so if you’re looking to try a new class this is a great boost, or if you want to into Black desert as a new player I highly recommend this.
Is Black Desert Dead?
Is Black Desert Online Dead. Is it a barren wasteland of dead MMORPGs?
Most MMORPGs skyrocket in player count on release, and then quickly fall as they run out of content and the developers put the game on life support, so let’s check out BDO because nobody wants to invest their time into a dying or dead game.
One trend I usually trust the most is steam figures as even though people can play it outside of steam, the trends should be similar
But is holding real steady with 30k active players, on just the steam platform. Just know this is not one of the big MMORPGs. Compare to something like FFXIV which has millions of active players, this is more of a niche hardcore grindy MMO.
Why should you play Black Desert in 2022:
The Combat:
The one thing almost everyone can agree on, is the combat. The combat in this game looks like a cinematic trailer. you can just turn your UI off, turn on the remaster graphics and watch this
for hours! The combat feels impactful, fun and engaging, and it’s one of the reasons people can grind for hours.
On top of that, there are tons of classes each with different builds and evolved builds. combos etc.
one thing you hear a lot of veterans say is they have issues with the game, but the combat is too good to quit.
The Life Skills:
The next best thing about this game is the life skills systems:
I’ve yet to even scratch the surface on this, there are 11 life skills in the game and each one is crazy in-depth, with its own gear and equipment, levels and rankings, economies, crafting, minigames, and so many of the systems interlink its wild.
You can get into horse breeding, where you buy and train horses, try to get high tier horses eventually leading to dream horses, that skill links to trading where you can take a couple of horses, attach a wagon and ferry goods between cities. And other skill can feed into that as you trade and sell your goods.
Some skills I haven’t even gotten around to trying properly like sailing or hunting, but I can honestly say I would play this game just for the life skilling.
On top of all of this the game is fully open-world, if you have a dream horse you can fly from one city down to the next, and there is a worker system where you can invest your points into nodes on the map and hire workers This makes the map feel alive, you can hire a worker in the port of Velia, say you hire a goblin, send him to work at the neighbouring farm, and then as you’re travelling back there in the future, you might see him hauling your potatoes back to the city for you and this all feeds directly into the life skills. I could make a whole series on this but I’ll stop here.
The Character Creator:
I have to mention the character creator it’s amazing, you can adjust and drag pretty much any part of the face and body. There is a beauty album too where you can see some of the coolest community creations and steal/edit them for yourself. I mentioned as well there are remastered graphics, which makes your characters look stunning!!
Overall if you’re creative this is 10/10
Alts:
The game runs a family system and so much stuff is linked to your family, your max energy, contribution, storage, gold, workers, invested nods, and quest log. It feels so nice to have such an alt friendly system. You can make a new character get it to the soft level cap and say, I just wanna use this person as a farmer/cook, or make one and use them as a sailor. Overall how alt friendly this game is really surprised me.
Why Not To Play Black Desert in 2022:
But if everything was sunshine and roses, this game would be as big as FFXIV or WoW and I’ll be honest there are some big issues with it, that it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t talk about.
RNG upgrade system:
In every single MMO there is an element of RNG, you play a theme park MMO like FFXIV and you’re hoping every week that your loot drops, there are super low % drops on mounts and pets etc, but nothing as painful as in BDO
Basically, your gears start out standard, you can upgrade it to +1 all the way to +15, and then into the superior levels like a duo, tri, and all the way pen which is the max. And every time you upgrade in these superior levels, it takes resources to upgrade, and the % chance of upgrading goes lower and lower.
To the point where you can have a 5% chance of something upgrading and the kicker if it doesn’t upgrade it downgrades. And all of these systems just feel super punishing, it’s pure RNG, it’s a rush and exciting when you get those epic moments, but when something fails and you lose the materials and downgrade it feels so bad.
Grinding:
The next big issue with BDO is grinding, I for one am a big fan of grinding, switch your brain off, farm our rotation and just chill out. But the reality is you’re spending hundreds of hours doing the same thing and for the majority of people that’s boring.
There is no level cap in the game the last time I checked, so you can comfortable level to around 58-60, with the new expansion that came out recently you can probably get to 50 in half a day. But then it exponentially increases, to the point where you’re grinding for hours for 10% of a level.
Is Black Desert Pay To Win?:
Yes.
Yes, it is.
Without trying to define pay to win, in my opinion, it 100% is.
What are you winning, I don’t know what you’re winning, but whatever it is, you can pay for it.
Everything I’ve mentioned in this video has small annoyances, that can be completely removed with your credit card.
With life skilling, you can buy p2w outfits that increase your ability, scrolls to increase exp gain, energy potions, buffs and more.
Gear enhancing, you can drop thousands here. Or just purchase a bunch of outfits on the pearl store and sell them on the marketplace and buy your bis weapons.
Every roadblock issue in this game if can’t be solved, it can be made better on the cash store, and that makes the game pay for convenience 100% and pay to win in my opinion.
However, the game is getting better.
It throws a ridiculous amount of items at you now, from money, upgrade materials, cosmetics, loyalty points that can be spent on the store, and all the things I’ve mentioned like potions, buffs, inventory expansions, and life skill boosts. Everything gets thrown at you in so many different ways, as a casual player, I honestly think your inventory will be full of buffs and convenience items at all times that you won’t need in the store.
So can you pay to win, yes
Do you need to? that depends if you want to be the no1 of something on your server and keep up with the whales, or if you just want to have fun.
Conclusion:
Is Black desert worth playing in 2022?
Yes, it 100% is worth playing. I would say as a new player, don’t be put off by the cash store, or the intimating new player experience. The game becomes so much simpler after a couple of days and the game holds your hand more now and the cash shop isn’t really necessary unless you want to make this game your second job, or go pro.
Do be wary of the heavy grinds and RNG systems, both of those things are integral to all parts of the game, if you hate random systems, they’re everywhere, if you hate grinds, it’s basically the endgame.
if you can get over that, this game is one of the most alive worlds, the most visually stunning MMORPG out there, with one of the most fun and engaging combat systems.
Thank you all for reading and consider checking out the full review view below: