Greetings Adventurers,

This is Jae-hee Kim, the Executive Producer of development for Black Desert Online.

 

We would like to start off with a sincere apology to many Adventurers who may have experienced confusion from abrupt changes to gameplay due to latest class balance adjustments and the introduction of the Renown Score system.

 

Big changes to the game such as these should have been thoroughly discussed with Adventurers before they were implemented. We bear full responsibility for not carefully considering all Adventurers’ voices before making these decisions.



For many of you, the latest update included changes to the game that was sudden and unwelcome. To show our appreciation for your understanding and support, we have prepared the following gifts.



 

We have contemplated our views regarding current problems within the game, our intentions for the future, and the recent concerns that Adventurers raised. Having considered all of these factors, we would like to clarify the following..  





Black Desert Online is an MMORPG that must incorporate and welcome different styles of gameplay.



If we had to pick 4 key words to describe Black Desert Online, it would be - MMORPG, combat, life, and open-world. In retrospect, we admit that we may have been fearful of making radical changes to these key aspects of the game rather than improving on the game’s strengths as we should have.

 

During the 3-year history of Black Desert’s global game service, we have prepared a total of 16 characters, vast new lands to explore like Mediah, Valencia, Kamasylvia, and Drieghan which will be gradually added to the game through continuous updates for each country/region. Although a tremendous amount of development resources were poured into the preparation for future content, the gameplay did not deliver many improvements nor positive changes for the user. Some areas have experienced stalled growth, and some whose gameplay patterns have been simplified and repetitive. We have come to realize that as an MMO, we must provide the widest range of gameplay experiences possible for the individual Adventurer as well as guilds.

Thus far, we have preferred to maintain the overall framework of the game, making small adjustments to it as we provided service. However, we felt that in order to grow and keep the game innovative, it was time to make some fundamental changes to certain aspects of the game that had become stale and repetitive.

 

We know all too well that many Adventurers have experienced frustration over the recent changes, despite our best efforts to address the gameplay issues mentioned above. Due to our failure to consult and consider the feedback of our Adventurers beforehand, we understand that many of you have questioned the future of the game. As such, we would like to take this opportunity to state our intentions for future updates, as well as the general direction of the game’s development in detail.





The balance problems between different classes will be fixed continuously.

 

From PvP gameplay that has deteriorated to reliance on ‘one-hit combos’, the ever-increasing difficulty of character controls, the combat gap between classes that use grapple against those that do not, we sincerely wanted to fix these various problems that existed in the game.

 

To elaborate a bit further, due to the reliance of these ‘one-hit combos’, Adventurers who were targeted were starting to lose interest in PvP combat since they felt increasingly trapped. With the introduction of more awakening skills that were resistant to debuffs, controlling your character became increasingly difficult.  It became harder for rookie adventurers to get accustomed to the game. Without a grappling skill, Adventurers found it hard to counter opponents’ blocks and Super Armor skills depending on class type.

Eventually, we came to the conclusion that keeping the current structure while making minor adjustments were not enough to resolve these issues. So we seek to make improvements to the fundamentals of the game.

In short, the latest balance updates aimed to lessen the gap caused by Grapple, Super Armor, Invincibility, Guard, Moving skills while allowing easier accessibility to skill combos and character control which would allow Adventurers to feel the excitement of combat again..



Although the April 19th update was released with these issues in mind, many of you still felt that the patch lacked balance. Within the next month or so, we intend to reconsider class balance thoroughly in depth. Our goal is to restore balance to the classes and we pledge that we will not jump to quick conclusions and easy solutions. We will come up with a resolution that all Adventurers can live with, and in the process we will carefully listen to the various opinions that our Adventurers have given us all around the world.

 

‘Growth’ - one of the foremost features of an MMORPG, will be improved upon.



‘Growth’ is the fundamental feature of an MMORPG. However, we found that despite many Adventurers playing extensively, they spent months, to even over a year just so that they could increase 1 or 2 APs and that growth had stalled for many more Adventurers.

 

We are contemplating many different solutions such as grind spot balance changes to maximize looting efficiency, double drop rates for accessories, and other ways to encourage growth. Our goal is to allow our adventurers to grow with more ease and interest, through looting or other methods. We also aim to facilitate the process of obtaining equipment beyond the “standard” gears easier than the status quo.

 

The Renown Score system was intended as part of this balance. We wanted to compensate the Adventurers who had overcome the risks of Enhancing gear and spent millions of silver while growing their characters. We also wanted to reduce the instances where adventurers would get killed instantly no matter how good their equipment was due to a slight mistake in PvP. Despite our intentions, the gap in PvP balance has deepened due to the Renown Score system and we sincerely apologize for causing so much concern to our Adventurers.



In the following weeks, the Damage Reduction boost from Renown Score will be adjusted downward and damage inflicted will also be decreased. Further class balance changes will be implemented as well.





Conquest War.. We will make new additions so that they are more fun and enjoyable.



Conquest Wars are the final end content in Black Desert. Since its launch many guilds have challenged themselves to be the winners of their territories and many Adventurers actively participate in it. However, without new challenges to explore, the intensity and excitement of Conquest Wars will gradually be lost.



We will release a new Conquest War that allows smaller guilds to bring down bigger guilds given the right strategy using various siege equipment which will be more enjoyable.

 

However, we would like to resolve the fundamental problems with class balance before we make these changes to Conquest Wars. We will carefully consider how the class balancing is progressing and take in feedback from Adventurers before we jump to this next phase of improvements. Specific schedules will be shared once we have prepared more content in the future.

 

We will improve our internal process to maintain a stable and secure service, and notify major changes in advance.



Black Desert Online, since its grand opening, sought to deliver new content to our adventures as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, with the rushed presentation of the changes and adjustments to the game, some contents lacked in level of completion.

From now on, the development team will perform much more thorough internal testing while also notifying our player base beforehand on large-scale updates or substantial changes to the balance structure.

 

In conclusion, we want to apologize for the confusion and frustration that we’ve caused with the latest update.

In order to develop a much more enjoyable Black Desert Online, we will keep our ears to the ground for feedback from official forums, tickets, in-game chats, as well as external communities.

We sincerely appreciate all of the interest you show towards our game.

Thank you very much.