GM Notes [GM Note] Official Black Desert Stream Highlights
Black Desert
2023-11-03 00:00
Official Black Desert Stream Highlights
On Oct 27, future plans and improvement directions were discussed during the official Black Desert stream.
Here's the GM Note to give you a summary of the session.
※ Please note that it includes some content that are not yet added to Black Desert Console.
Asia Node War Championship Improvements and Future Plans
Gourd Bottle of Life Removal
Improvements to Supply Methods of Base Materials for Elixirs/Draughts/Perfumes
Reason for the One-Sided Guild War Declaration Changes
PvP Content Improvements
Monster Zone Silver Profit Improvements
More Ways to Obtain Crystals
Reason for Soft Caps on Monster Zones
Approach to Class Balance Updates
Game Crash Issues
Reason for Not Showing Damage Numbers
Class Improvements
Garmoth’s Heart
Life Content Improvements
Reason Behind Different Weekly Reset Times for Various Content
Content Due for Updates
Asia Node War Championship
Attempting to prepare both the large-scale content, the War of the Roses, alongside the huge Asia Node War Championship event in unison led us to be unprepared to provide a positive experience.
We deeply apologize to the Adventurers who prepared for the championship, those who tuned in, and all the Adventurers out there who love and care about Black Desert.
But we would regret to leave it on this note, so after discussing with the participating guild masters, we decided to switch to a World Node War format which will be held on October 29, 2023 (Sun) alongside the improvements we’ve applied to address the issues.
The championship will be run as follows:
· A Region vs Region Guild Competition consisting of single matches taking place in a total of 4 nodes.
· Two guilds from the same region join up as one team.
· Conditions for Victory: Destroy the two opposing guilds’ forts, or the region with more remaining forts at the end of the Node War wins.
· If both sides have the same number of forts remaining at the end of the war, it will be a draw, and both teams will receive participation rewards.
*The current system allows attacks between guilds of the same region.
*Only Winning Guild(s) will be announced; Winning Regions will not be announced.
The reason we decided to have gear caps was because we were concerned that Adventurers would go for extreme DP builds in order to uphold the region they were representing.We limited the type of gear and buff items because were concerned that if players came equipped with DP-heavy builds, the overall progression of the Championship would be excessively slow-paced and could make the matches less enjoyable for Adventurers to watch.
We hope that you all look forward to the upcoming World Node War Championship. Thank you.
Gourd Bottle of Life
We will be removing the Gourd Bottle of Life and returning the silver equivalent of the remaining items.
We intended the addition of the Gourd Bottle item to be a top-tier potion in the Land of the Morning Light, emphasizing the item’s unique trait, while also alleviating the inflation issues that arose after the addition of Elvia monster zones.
Our hope was that Adventurers would use this item to provide an edge for certain competitive PvP situations. However, it seems that the frustration grew around the Gourd Bottle of Life turning into a necessary item that required a large amount of silver to continuously use. Since it became an essential item that required adjusting fairy settings and caused inconvenience traveling long distances to purchase, it became a source of frustration for many.
Albeit a late decision, in order to reduce the burden on Adventurers who enjoy PvP content and to foster a better PvP experience, we will remove the Gourd Bottle of Life.
Elixir/Draught/Perfume
· First, we’re improving the supply of base materials to make it easier to obtain elixirs, draughts and perfumes.
We’ll prioritize increasing the supply of materials for Truffle Mushrooms, which are used to craft Elixir of Sharp Detection, and the supply of Blue Whale Oil which is used to craft Perfume of Swiftness and Perfume of Courage.
· We will be consolidating both normal and party elixirs.
We are planning on consolidating normal elixirs and party elixirs. Party elixirs were first introduced to reduce the inconvenience of the previous method of using Aal’s Breath to provide party buffs. However, we concluded that the current state only complicated the complexity of elixirs further.
· We want to simplify the concept of elixirs with the following approaches.
We’re particularly concerned with situations when elixirs’ effects are lost when draughts are consumed as well as situations where players feel the need to consume a multitude of elixirs. As a solution, we’re thinking about defining draughts as an advanced version of elixirs. We’re planning on improving their effects and also creating a single elixir that combines all of the effects. We’re also thinking about creating an infinite elixir, which has been requested by our Adventurers. Of course, we want to make sure that the changes to the elixir system wouldn’t negatively impact existing Adventurers who enjoy alchemy, so we’re working on other elixir consumption resources and methods to earn profit. In addition, we’re planning on improving the complexity of food items after we address these complexities regarding elixirs.
One-Sided Guild War Declaration
We recognized how the adjustments to the one-sided guild declaration came as an unwelcome change to some Adventurers, especially for those who enjoy PvP. We acknowledge that we could have offered more clarity about the situation before applying the changes.
Originally, one-sided declarations were used between guilds of similar strength. But given the lifespan of Black Desert, the gap in strength between guilds grew larger and became more of a tool for causing harassment and “griefing” instead.
In an attempt to address these issues, we have tried many different updates such as increasing guild war costs and guild base servers, but none of them proved to be sufficient.
In this way, the one-sided guild declaration changes were updated, but we apologize that we failed to communicate with our Adventurers about our reasoning beforehand. We will work to be more transparent with such major updates in the future.
PvP Content Improvements
· We’re currently focusing on improving War of the Roses and also thinking about increasing the number of participants.
First and foremost, we’ll be focusing on polishing War of the Roses. However, even with a maximum of 600 participants, we understand that there are Adventurers who want to participate but are unable to make it into the 3rd faction. Therefore, we’re thinking about ways to allow those who did not make the cut for the 3rd faction to participate.
· We are planning on making improvements so that Adventurers can earn EXP and silver while enjoying existing PvP content.
We are considering changes where just participating in PvP content such as Node Wars, Conquest Wars, Red Battlefield, Arena of Solare and Arsha servers, yields a certain amount of silver profit. However, we don’t want to create a situation where PvP feels forced due to rewards, so we’re considering improving rewards to be more. We will also take measures to prevent inactive players from being able to receive rewards.
· We will be making improvements to existing PvP contents.
We are currently working on making Arena of Solare’s practice mode available at all times. We will announce more details about ranked mode in a later notice.
In order to better reflect a guild’s activity, we’re considering integrating Kill/Death counts in war into a score system. The idea is to introduce a score system where you earn 2 points for kills, and 1 point for deaths. We’re hoping that this will serve as an indicator of how much and how often your guild participates in combat, while also freeing Adventurers from worries about their deaths negatively impacting the guild.
We are preparing to change the Arsha server into an environment where you are expected to fight with everyone and anyone. It will be a form of PvP where, with the exception of your party and platoons, even your guild members and everyone other than yourself becomes a stranger and your enemy. You can freely take down anyone because you will not know or see who they are.
In addition, in order to confirm where a cannonball has landed after firing, we will develop a way to notify you of a hit or miss when using a cannon.
If there are any suggestions for PvP improvements, please share your thoughts in the forums so that we may take them into consideration.
We plan to increase silver profits for certain monster zones. Currently, there are two mechanisms in place that determine the silver profits for monster zones.
One, like the Elvia Orc Camp, yields high loot silver profit but fewer rare drops, while the other, like the earlier Star’s End, yields low loot profit but can drop valuables like the Black Distortion Earring. However, in terms of buffs that boost profits, buffs that affect item drop amount are easy to come by, while buffs that increase item drop rate are harder to obtain.
We want to increase the overall profits for zones that rely on the profit from rare item drops. Specifically, we want to decrease the differences in profit when compared to the current monster zones that rely on loot profit.
Because the profits from Dehkia’s Lantern were immoderately high, we decided to make a downward adjustment.
We plan to apply updates to balance monster zones after making class balance changes.
Crystals
We are considering expanding the available options to obtain rare crystals. With the updates of highly valued crystals and new crystals that are difficult to obtain being made, they have put a lot of pressure on our Adventurers. As we add more ways to obtain them, we expect that this pressure will be alleviated.
Soft Caps
Because there haven’t been new updates to top monster zones, the effort that you put into your gear progression can feel less satisfying with the current soft caps.
With the recent Dekhia’s Lantern update, we made sure to set a high ceiling for the soft caps.
High-level Adventurers are frequently using Dekhia’s Lantern, and with the new monster zones that will soon be added with the additional Ulukita update, they can also anticipate ample profits in these new zones.
Class Balance
Our direction, in terms of PvE, is to decrease the difference in performance between classes as best we can, and in terms of PvP, to emphasize the unique characteristics of each class.
Our primary focus, for PvE, is to prepare adjustments to level out classes which, unlike Woosa, carry more risks and face difficulties with being viable in top monster zones.
First of all, we want to drastically increase damage and health to allow for smoother monster hunting while also making this update quickly without impacting PvP. Nine classes were updated in this week’s Global Lab, and the first round of damage buffs for the remaining classes are planned to be included in the following week’s Global Lab update. However, the following classes with low risk but high damage, or sufficiently low risk, will not be included in these damage adjustments.
For the second round, we plan to work on improving stability and ease of use for all classes. Because this requires a lot of playtesting and adjustments, more time is needed for this update when compared to the first round of adjustments.
For now, we will first update the first round on the Global Lab servers. After the update, we will account for the feedback given in response. Then, we hope to make this update globally for the live servers so that our Adventurers can use these zones without worrying about underperforming compared to other classes.
Next, with PvP, we plan to tailor classes to their respective roles, with some specializing in 1v1s, others in small-scale combat situations such as in Arena of Solare, and others that specialize in large-scale combat such as Ranger and Archer. We plan to reveal this in the Global Lab servers and will consider and reflect the feedback given as best we can.
Additionally, there has been some feedback about Berserker’s Beast Mode having a toggle option. However, the toggle option is not possible due to technical limitations. Still, we are considering an approach with a separate version of the skill that doesn’t change his appearance in Beast Mode.
We have half of our development team working on looking into these issues, and each time a cause for disconnection and crashing issues is identified, we prioritize these fixes. That being said, we are aware that there continue to be crashes in many situations such as when players do specific actions, or sometimes even while not doing anything at all.
We deeply understand that stability issues are a critical matter. So, when we discover causes, we will work to quickly address these problems as soon as possible, and apply additional maintenance patches when needed.
We do not plan on adding damage numbers. We feel that high-level monster zones and better item drops are sufficient motivators for growth/progression. We highly value due process, and do not wish for Black Desert to be measured by metrics such as DPS (damage-per-second). Rather than that, we want to be a game that progresses in its desired direction.
We are considering implementing an additional method to obtain Garmoth’s Heart as well as an increase of its maximum price. Increasing the maximum price can be implemented relatively quickly, but as for the latter, we will need some time to for implementation in consideration of balance. We will also decrease the difficulty of the Garmoth’s Heart quest. We will provide specific details as soon as we can about which parts will decrease in difficulty through a Global Lab update.
We plan to remove the long tail part from the Shell Belle outfit.
For the classes that have weapons which protrude outside of the outfit, we are exploring development work to provide an option to conceal the weapon. However, we cannot give concrete confirmation on whether it will be possible to provide this option.
Converting short capes to long capes would require changing the whole body structure of the character which alone would take at least a year of development, and thus is very difficult to change.
Another thing that is very difficult for us to do is to offer a cross-legged sitting position. It’s impossible to fix on a character that’s wearing a short skirt because the position would clip through the outfit, which is why we have the current animation of sitting on a cushion.
For the time being, we will refrain from adding embellishments such as feathers and chains to outfits.
We plan to continuously make improvements to life content. Because there are many aspects to prioritize in terms of development, improvements to content such as Liana's Tool Bag and other such things are quite pushed back in terms of priority. But we are working on it, and we will share information about this topic in the near future.
We understand the complexity of having different reset times/days, so we'd like to share our intentions behind these differing times.
Quests reset on Thursdays so that you can enjoy them right after the weekly maintenance update. For the Black Shrine, we intended for players to login to use two weeks’ worth of attempts over one weekend. The Pearl Shop purchase limit, Marni’s Realm, Agris Fever, and other resets are spread out over different days and times for convenience and/or to lessen the load on the server.
Quests reset on Thursdays so that you can enjoy them right after the weekly maintenance update. For the Black Shrine, we intended for players to login to use two weeks’ worth of attempts over one weekend. The Pearl Shop purchase limit, Marni’s Realm, Agris Fever, and other resets are spread out over different days and times for convenience and/or to lessen the load on the server.
We are making preparations to remove all quest items that are left over from events/quests that have ended.
To make it easier to find items related to Contribution, we will add “[Contribution]” in front of the name so that you can easily locate it in the search bar.
To make it easier to find items related to Contribution, we will add “[Contribution]” in front of the name so that you can easily locate it in the search bar.
· Dark Rift
We'll be reducing the number of Dark Rift bosses from 12 to 6, while maintaining the overall scale of the rewards. The Dark Rift bosses in Mediah and the desert will be removed. And we will make it so that Mythical Feathers are obtainable from the Dark Rifts.
· Yar & Old Moon Grand Prix
Similar to Arena of Solare’s matchmaking system, a similar system will be added to Yar and the Old Moon Grand Prix. However, seeing as how people are enjoying Yar more, Yar will be updated ahead of the Old Moon Grand Prix content.
· Daily Quest: Awakened Boss Summon Scrolls
We are going to change it from a quest format to a Challenge Reward so that you can claim many scrolls at once.
· Lakiaro
We will buff the rewards so that players are encouraged to have fun with the Lakiaro minigame again.
· Adventure Logs
We are aware that Adventure Logs have a rather high barrier of entry and are considering an approach to simplify them.
· Red Battlefield
Keeping in mind the rewards, EXP, the balance between factions, and the geographical elements, we plan to revamp Red Battlefield to make it more active.
· Black Stones
We are considering ways to simplify the many kinds of Black Stone items. The first thing we are considering is to do this by combining the Armor and Weapon Black Stones into one kind. After that, we are thinking about more ways to simplify this further.
· Ocean Content
Along with revamped improvements such as disembarking, Level 1 improvements, etc., we also plan to introduce new sea monsters as we revealed during Heidel Ball. We will do our best to make improvements to ocean content including adding sailing crew presets and such and share these updates with our Adventurers through the Global Lab servers.
· Altar of Blood
While we do plan on a revamp eventually, the Altar of Blood is later in terms of priority than the other aspects introduced, so it is difficult to offer a set date for this content.
· Field Bosses
We will make updates to field bosses so that they share HP across all servers, much like the World Boss appearance system. Field boss rewards will also receive a slight buff.
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