Adventurers,

We recently managed to sit down with Jack, the Lead Project Manager for Black Desert Console. As a PM, his duties include communicating with third parties, content planning, event planning and Pearl Shop planning. Essentially, Jack and his team are in charge of planning different aspects that go into the day to day running of the game.   

Jack, please Introduce yourself.

Hello. My name is Jack and I’m a senior Project Manager for Black Desert Console. Running a service like Black Desert requires many different departments. Project managers focus on when and how different content comes out, and also the events and rewards that are given. We try to have our finger on the pulse as much as possible, and respond to unexpected events. I’m excited to finally sit down and greet Adventurers and we can talk about some of the things that we are preparing.

Why were certain aspects of the previous roadmap delayed? 

Well the biggest issue we have faced recently is optimization. We received a lot of feedback regarding the issue, and we have been making sure that we can optimize the game before adding new things in. We are very sorry that it has taken so long to get optimization features added into the game, but there is still more optimization to be done. We have already applied 2 optimization updates in the early part of 2020, and we will continue to refine the game experience more. With the amount of optimization being worked on, some of the content in the last roadmap was delayed.

Do you think you were a little too ambitious with the last roadmap? 

Not at all. At the time we released the roadmap in 2019, we thought we would be able to apply all of the content listed. In the 6 months that roadmap applied, many things popped up, other things needed to change and poor performance started to plague the game. This caused a large shift in our roadmap, and we missed out on a few of the things that were on the list.

But the positive is that we managed to get in some of the things that were requested by Adventurers. Altar of Blood and Alchemy Stones were brought into the game far in advance of when they were supposed to release, Dark Rifts and Adventure log were added to the roadmap based on user feedback too. So while we are not over the moon about the missed sections of the roadmap, we still managed to hit many of our targets while adding other things.

So the roadmap right now, was it crafted with more conservative estimates in mind?

It would have been easy for us to release a roadmap with all the content that was finalized. However we want Adventurers to know that we are trying to bring a lot of different aspects of the Black Desert world, and therefore released a roadmap with more of our goals listed.

But one thing that I want people to know is that the content may change depending on the situation. We always want to listen to player feedback to decide any future changes. One thing that we will be working harder towards is making sure that we communicate with users in the event of future delays.

Game Optimization is one of the hottest topics right now. Can you tell us more about performance-related updates? 

We would be lying if we said that the current performance is what people expect from us. We are working tirelessly to provide the experience that many players would expect from Pearl Abyss. We’ve actually had a few performance patches which were promising on paper, but once applied to our test servers we discovered new issues.

January 21st we released a patch which focussed on the way memory processes were handled, and following that we have made changes to various NPC’s across the world, and also the most recent patch which saw around 40% of monsters in game being removed to help performance issues. Each patch is a collaboration of multiple different teams all working together to make sure that the game runs as smoothly as possible.

[Editor’s Note]
To clarify steps taken so far for optimization:  

• Added the ‘Hide Other Adventurers’ option to help optimize World Boss / Field Boss battles
• Unnecessary NPCs and structures removed in order to improve rendering in towns and cities
• Changing the way memory used to free up resources resulting in less client crashes
• Adjusted monster population and respawn rates, which has helped to improve stutters and frame rates in certain grinding zones
  
  

We heard that there is something coming for Black Desert, care to share? 

In a previous interview with Kwang-sam, he mentioned that cross-play was something that we were considering. We are finally ready to talk about cross-play. Cross-play between Xbox and Playstation 4 will soon be a reality. We’re performing the final few touches to the experience, but we will soon be able to see Playstation 4 and Xbox Adventurers get together and explore the world of Black Desert together. Of course, exploring isn’t the only thing that will be happening, as node wars and siege wars will also be cross-platform. We have many different events lined up for cross-play, so we hope that you are all ready to experience it when it comes!

Anything you want to say to users before we close the interview?

We are always grateful to those Adventurers who journey through the world of Black Desert. We are always aiming to provide the best service to you guys, and the Black Desert console team will continue to work hard for you.