chamofleur

locally-sourced gridanian potato.

  • she/her

ffxiv / misc. games / whatever i feel like talking about. all opinions are my own!!!


icon credit: yokotate_ju @ twitter

banner credit: thanhuki @ twitter



i generally tend to post quite a lot about ffxiv, but i did say i was going to write something up about black desert a while ago...so i guess i might as well while i'm waiting for the midnight hunt train in xiv. as a warning, this miiiight get long, so i'll put it under a "read more" once it starts getting lengthy.

anyway, i started playing about a year and a half ago, and i simultaneously love and hate this game. i actually tried it back in 2015...?-ish when it was in beta and people were testing the character creator. i did not like it. the myriad options were overwhelming. the aesthetic was not for me.

HOWEVER, all of that changed when i was bored one day and decided to try it again in 2021, and they had added...a playable potato race, the shai. if your MMO has a cute potato race, i will probably at least try it. i've been playing MMOs since i was 10 and i'm tired of being a busty lady in a battle bikini (no offense to those ladies!! you're doing great!!). i would much rather be tiny and cute and decently clothed while destroying gods or whatever. so at first i'd made my shai looked like my xiv character, but i was like, "no, that's boring," so i gave her her own identity as someone who was just as overwhelmed and curious and confused as i was exploring the bdo world. thus, little mugi's adventures began in earnest.

so i guess i'll talk about the cool things and the not-so-cool things. we'll get the not-so-cool things out of the way first.


things that suck

  • it's a free-ish...to play korean MMO. which means there is going to be a cash shop and pay-to-win/gacha mechanics, all of which are...bad. extremely bad. a lot of the key mechanics in this game, such as upgrading your gear, work on a "failstack" system. if you want to upgrade your gear to a REASONABLE level, you either have to be insanely rich (with in-game silver and/or real life money) or extremely lucky, as your chances of upgrading gear to the highest level can begin as low as .03 percent!!! if you don't have special items, any failure will cause your gear to level down!

  • it's extremely punishing for "free to play" players, though there are alternatives for new players that are a bit friendlier...if you're willing to grind for them. this is only the tip of the RNG iceberg. i am extremely casual because i was like "yeah fuck that" very early on, so most of the actual money i have put in this game is just into fashion and making it so i can keep my outfits dyed in their nice cute colors... you can't fight bandits if you don't look cute, though i think i would probably cringe if i had to look back and see how much i've spent on outfits alone.

  • despite the world of BDO being incredibly lore-rich, the majority of the main scenario doesn't present it to you in a natural way, and if you want to look up more detailed lore, you sometimes have to dig very deep in your "knowledge" records. it was really hard to keep up with everything for this reason--the main scenario will drop these names and terms like you should know them, but their explanations are meager at best, and the writing quality is also inconsistent/not well-localized. recent updates like the mountain of eternal winter have actually improved this quite a bit, and the devs say they're planning on revamping a lot of the older main scenario content to be more accessible (and voiced!) for new players. i think it has potential to keep improving if they continue to put the same amount of effort into new scenario quests. the voices and voice direction of eternal winter and the magnus questlines were both pretty impressive too!

  • it's a PVP-focused game, and the community is...not XIV's community, to be sure. after a certain level you CAN get attacked by random folks who feel like being rude...as i have learned the hard way. that being said, though, these encounters have been pretty rare, and you never lose anything from PVP-related deaths if you didn't start the fight. (except a bit of EXP? i can't remember.)

  • gender-locked classes........ need i say more??

things that i think are cool

  • the battle system is much more action-packed than XIV's, and you move around and do combos and fight in a much more dynamic way. the shai class uses a huge boomerang (which they can SKATEBOARD on!!!) and a hidden music talent, and shais are actually PvE monsters so mowing through mobs of bandits never fails to be satisfying. shais also have the simplest/most beginner-friendly skillset, so i adapted to it pretty quickly. if you like more in-depth combos and action moves, though, there are plenty of other classes to try, each with their own movement styles and quirks. i've dabbled in a few of them, and i still like shai best, but nova and drakania (slightly slower/heavier classes with more focused damage) were pretty cool too.

  • this game is a huge immersive open-world experience. your mileage may vary, obviously, but there's no teleporting. no instant travel. only horses to get you from one place to the next...which i honestly really loved. the bdo world never runs out of new places to find, and it's really relaxing just running around and watching environments go by. if you have the graphical power to do so, i recommend the game in remastered mode. it's such a lovely experience!! also, since it's open world, it IS a "see that mountain? you can go there!" sort of game. you can sail on the open ocean or journey across the desert and get EXTREMELY lost because there is NO map when you're in those areas, but that is also part of the experience.

  • the character creation is, as mentioned before, extremely detailed, to the point where it can get overwhelming! i have managed to at least master the art of making cute shai characters, and while my other main shai (who is mugi's big sister) uses the same face as mugi, they have completely different personalities and expressions, which is very cool and i love them both!!! i remember back when blade and soul's character creation was a big deal during its early KR beta days, but this eclipses even BnS's level... it's crazy to see how far character creation has come!!

  • instanced housing. i have five houses across the black desert world. i did not need to log in at 3:00 AM to buy a plot of land. it's a nice change of pace from xiv's, though the level of housing customization isn't as great unless (surprise, surprise) you pay real money for fancier furniture.

there is a lot more but this post is already long

i did not even begin to get into the crafting and gathering, which is equally interesting (at least in the gathering department. crafting was a bit meh for me in this game since it's a bit hands-off.) but there's LOTS of lifeskills and other ways to spend your time in-game, for better or for worse.

if any of this sounds interesting to you and you're like, "my graphics card is powerful and i have enough self-control to play bdo without geting sucked into stupid gacha weapon upgrade bs," then by all means, give it a shot! explore the big open world! maybe you too can be a potato with a giant boomerang!!

i think there's a season coming up, which is a great way for new players to level their characters, get decent gear, and get used to the game. there's a free trial and then it's like 9.99 but if you find yourself getting easily sucked into bad cash shop mechanics, i DO NOT recommend it. keep playing xiv if you play xiv. it's much safer and the community is much bigger and much more welcoming.

anyway sorry this got so long... it's nice to get a different MMO perspective, and this is usually my "break" game during XIV patch lulls, though twitter is obviously not conducive to posts of this length!!

if you actually read all of this, wow!!! thank you so much!! i hope you're having a good day, and if you happen to jump into BDO, mugi (or her sister chai) would love to say hello!!


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