Dear Pearl Abyss,

The world is barren. Less immersive. Unoriginal. The expanse and wonder of Black Desert has been partly lost with this last update (40% of monsters removed from the game). I used to be able to walk out into the world and see it full of life. Now I have to search for the pieces left of it. It feels partly dead.. if not broken. All of this for maybe a 5 FPS (frames per second) better performance/consistency for specific areas.

Please. Help protect my and others investment of time, effort, and love for the game. Revert the change. Restore the monsters back into the world. This game is heavily PvE and just doesn't carry the same essence to PvE like this. Killing monsters does not yield the same benefit anymore due to the lack of monsters spawned that you are able to attack in groups at once (even if the respawn rate is faster, it's less efficient for most areas and AOE abilities, especially end-game like Hystria); it is also in my experience boring and unsatisfying due to the lack of of monsters even if players found a way to make it work as effectively. I understand the motivation may be for the better, but universally changing a product this drastically 10 months after the release of a game is harmful to the integrity of the game/product. The performance improvement is minimal, all at the expense of the good and loved PvE in the game. I believe it was so much fun before, and technically maybe players can make it work killing small packs of pixels... but is this what they signed up for? Is it actually that fun now?

We, the playerbase, are not "test bunnies", lab rats or an experimental audience. We came to your product/game with the expectation of a professionally built product. This is not an alpha, or beta. This is a production release of a game with a known design that has been advertised for years. It is unfair to have people beg to get the game they know and have invested their time into back. A 40% global change is a drastic change to a product.

These types of radical changes can possibly make people uncomfortable with the game/product.. everytime you shake things up people fall through the cracks because they are missing part of it that made it worthwhile for them to play. Many, many people loved the way it was before, and I have spoken with numerous people since the update and the change does not seem beneficial or enjoyable by most if not all. People are greatly concerned, it doesn't seem worth it. Maybe you have a greater vision with the Xbox and PS4 merger to balance performance... but it just isn't worth changing the core of the game for. It was still very functional before. It's a different game with this change.

I can only hope that you revert these monster (npc) spawn changes. I'm assuming as a developer that you are able to restore the Monster (NPC) Respawn data table or startup configuration that you had before the change and reboot the server. It should not require much if any further restoration procedures or patch changes with the mentioned Microsoft certifications since it is all on the backend managed database or startup configuration. I wouldn't be surprised if you guys could get it done within an hour or two. I say this in hopes that you consider restoring the game sooner than later.

I hope this reaches you kindly.

Changes are good. Adjust your rotation, something else will give you more then you had.

No one likes to do different things, I grind faster now. 

34 minutes ago, Doktar said:

Changes are good. Adjust your rotation, something else will give you more then you had.

No one likes to do different things, I grind faster now. 

See that's not possible in every single place such as hystria and aakmans the spawns there are so ridiculous I keep overclearing the rooms in aakmans and in hystria they messed with the elten rotations giving less silver per hour 

11 hours ago, Doktar said:

Changes are good. Adjust your rotation, something else will give you more then you had.

No one likes to do different things, I grind faster now. 

Explain where and what gs you have. 9 out of 10 people I know said that aakman and hystria grind is heavily nerfed and that the trash loot there went down by significant amount. Also, the elites are missing further nerfing areas due to even smaller chance for rare drops. 

Due to lack of time I had no chance to head back aakman after changes but if my somewhat small but steady 4,6k trash per hour drops significantly then it means that the change caused harm instead of improvements. Hystria and aakman is all about pulls and missing mobs increase the time of pulling cause you need pull different mobs further lowering trash per hour yields. 

Basi rota I used to run is nerfed by about 20% of mobs, gahaz route I used now requires entering zones which are natural routes of other players cause a lot of mobs are missing - this is broken. 

It would be smarter for them to delete non-visited rotations rather than brainlessly removing random monsters. I begin to thing they have zero idea of what they are doing.  

PA needs to reverse the changes or increase trash loot values to compensate the loss. 

1 minute ago, Rocketfuel77777 said:

PA needs to reverse the changes or increase trash loot values to compensate the loss. 

I'm afraid they don't. They were quite clear about the 40% mob removal on the stream. 

There are many, MANY ways to earn silver in this game. 

I get why it's annoyed the people who only ever grind mobs for silver, the road to Tet/Pen is expensive as hell. 

My suggestion is to try a Kama zone. They didn't remove any mobs there. 

1 hour ago, Yiazzy said:

I'm afraid they don't. They were quite clear about the 40% mob removal on the stream. 

There are many, MANY ways to earn silver in this game. 

I get why it's annoyed the people who only ever grind mobs for silver, the road to Tet/Pen is expensive as hell. 

My suggestion is to try a Kama zone. They didn't remove any mobs there. 

Big laugh here mate. I don't care about your hidden lifeskill message you are trying to convey. I'm not forcing bot lifeskillers to go miru. This patch is a direct hit into players whose 90% of income comes directly from grind. 

Besides, without caphras, kama is far behind previously mentioned aakman or hystria silver wise. If you have no idea what are you talking about then maybe don't? 

4 hours ago, Yiazzy said:

My suggestion is to try a Kama zone. They didn't remove any mobs there. 

The only mobs not changed were Mirumok and Gyfins. Aside from those, all mobs game wide were reduced. It has absolutely gutted Polly’s, majority of the established rotations are now a waste of time as the distance between packs is so large.

There are hardly any soldiers in Soldier’s Graveyard just as one example for a leveling player. I been around since beta and this is the worst change. They did add more useless NPCs, just walk from Velia to Heidel. 

This change is soo trash I went from filling 17 250 Polly marnies an hour to filling barely 10 in my adjusted rotation trash loot hasn't dropped too much but that not why I'm there. Making a drastic change like this and not even attempting to increase trash drop count, exp given and item drop rate shows how much the they thought about this change.

I don’t worry with trash drops, it’s the decrease in experience and combat skill farming we can do in game that is very grindy. 

On 2/6/2020 at 11:20 AM, Rocketfuel77777 said:

Big laugh here mate. I don't care about your hidden lifeskill message you are trying to convey. I'm not forcing bot lifeskillers to go miru. This patch is a direct hit into players whose 90% of income comes directly from grind. 

Besides, without caphras, kama is far behind previously mentioned aakman or hystria silver wise. If you have no idea what are you talking about then maybe don't? 

How about instead of trying to spark an inflammatory exchange, we just talk about this like the adults we're supposed to be...?

Idk about Caphras because I'm not a pc player. I didn't come from PC, and frankly, I'm of the opinion that any player who did, and is now moaning about missing items on the console version, should just shut up and go back to the pc version they love so much. 

Like I said, they were clear about the change coming. We knew what to expect. But only after it happened was there an uproar. 

Humour me with a question, if you will. How is grinding the same mobs all day every day, even remotely entertaining for you? I mean, don't you get bored? I'm primarily a lifeskiller, and every single night my activity changes. The other night I did Training and Taming. Tonight I'm feeling sailing, fishing, maybe alt levelling. But that could change. Repetition is boring is it not? 

53 minutes ago, Yiazzy said:

How about instead of trying to spark an inflammatory exchange, we just talk about this like the adults we're supposed to be...?

Idk about Caphras because I'm not a pc player. I didn't come from PC, and frankly, I'm of the opinion that any player who did, and is now moaning about missing items on the console version, should just shut up and go back to the pc version they love so much. 

Like I said, they were clear about the change coming. We knew what to expect. But only after it happened was there an uproar. 

Humour me with a question, if you will. How is grinding the same mobs all day every day, even remotely entertaining for you? I mean, don't you get bored? I'm primarily a lifeskiller, and every single night my activity changes. The other night I did Training and Taming. Tonight I'm feeling sailing, fishing, maybe alt levelling. But that could change. Repetition is boring is it not? 

Here’s the thing, I’ve never played PC but I know well enough how good this game can be but it isn’t cause of questionable decisions of developers at PA. 
 

I genuinely hate lifeskilling, bdo has got my attention purely due to its combat system. My busy life allows me to enjoy the game only so much but if I could play more I would happily put some more time towards grind and steady progression it offers. 
 

I’m looking forward to the time when PA removes 40% of gatherable resources. We’ll then see the outcry from all the farm boy simulator lovers and I’ll be the first to laugh. 

22 minutes ago, Rocketfuel77777 said:

I'm looking forward to the time when PA removes 40% of gatherable resources. We’ll then see the outcry from all the farm boy simulator lovers and I’ll be the first to laugh. 

As much as my curiosity is piqued by the outcome of that, I doubt it would ever happen. I don't see how it affects the game's performance, being able to chop at a tree, or mine a rock. Of course, if we're talking terrain generation, it would be a different story. 

But, there are a lot of trees and rocks that you can't gather from. I bet they'd be the ones to get canned. 

With mobs already culled, bear in mind that Hide, Blood and Meat gathering has also technically been nerfed, especially in regards to Troll and Ogre blood. 

And crop nodes would never get removed. Why have farms without crops? ? 

Some people just seem to have their panties in a twist.

Did they really wipe 40% of mobs off the game? if so I am going back to the PC version...

Please let me know, I will also need to cancel my xbox live membership.

29 minutes ago, Fury091014 said:

Did they really wipe 40% of mobs off the game? if so I am going back to the PC version...

Please let me know, I will also need to cancel my xbox live membership.

Yes they have been removed most noticable places are polly and gahaz where they are designed to be high mob count but some of the more useless places like the starting areas in calpheon and serendia had just about no change as someone that loves the grind this change is bullshit cause performance didn't change at all PA doesn't need to cater to older xbox users we all know this game is resource heavy if we did a little research before getting the game and anyone with a S can get a SSD cheapish and have no problem playing.

2 minutes ago, Grimicle said:

Yes they have been removed most noticable places are polly and gahaz where they are designed to be high mob count but some of the more useless places like the starting areas in calpheon and serendia had just about no change as someone that loves the grind this change is bullshit cause performance didn't change at all PA doesn't need to cater to older xbox users we all know this game is resource heavy if we did a little research before getting the game and anyone with a S can get a SSD cheapish and have no problem playing.

 

yeah and for the amount of silver from trash loot is still much lower than the pc version but the mp is high. More mobs are important for grinders like me and many others.

I love it when life skillers tell people to life skill the only reason life skill is profitable is because the majority of players grind monsters for silver now imagine if everyone did hot spot fishing or gathered mats and made boxes. Who are you going to sell your product to? If everyone is doing it why would I buy meals from you or pet food when I'm making my own and how many boxes and fish can you deliver to the imperial traders if everyone is doing it? This is going to affect you life skillers 

2 hours ago, Linxz said:

I love it when life skillers tell people to life skill the only reason life skill is profitable is because the majority of players grind monsters for silver now imagine if everyone did hot spot fishing or gathered mats and made boxes. Who are you going to sell your product to? If everyone is doing it why would I buy meals from you or pet food when I'm making my own and how many boxes and fish can you deliver to the imperial traders if everyone is doing it? This is going to affect you life skillers 

Exactly why I didn't go into life skills with change

12 hours ago, Linxz said:

I love it when life skillers tell people to life skill the only reason life skill is profitable is because the majority of players grind monsters for silver now imagine if everyone did hot spot fishing or gathered mats and made boxes. Who are you going to sell your product to? If everyone is doing it why would I buy meals from you or pet food when I'm making my own and how many boxes and fish can you deliver to the imperial traders if everyone is doing it? This is going to affect you life skillers 

You don't need the CM to make decent money as a lifeskiller. 

There are plenty of methods of making NPC silver via farming/trading/cooking/fishing/horse training.

I can come up with a decent amount of silver on a weekly basis considering i got only 4-5 hours to play each day and no VP for a few weeks now. 

And thats considering lifeskills are scuffed on console i.e no caphras, imperials is only 1/3 cp, getting Alchemy stones super late, no manos, no new imperial system and no SMH/Bartering.

If we had those i would have laughed at any grinders silver/h without breaking a sweat - without selling **** on CM.

6 hours ago, Dr INF3NRO said:

You don't need the CM to make decent money as a lifeskiller. 

There are plenty of methods of making NPC silver via farming/trading/cooking/fishing/horse training.

I can come up with a decent amount of silver on a weekly basis considering i got only 4-5 hours to play each day and no VP for a few weeks now. 

And thats considering lifeskills are scuffed on console i.e no caphras, imperials is only 1/3 cp, getting Alchemy stones super late, no manos, no new imperial system and no SMH/Bartering.

If we had those i would have laughed at any grinders silver/h without breaking a sweat - without selling **** on CM.

Exactly this. Grinders are not the only ones being s@!# on in this version of the game. I've been trying to convey that message to all of the Lifeskiller haters on here. To that  last point, if you hate to lifeskill, fine, you don't have to. Quit trashing us because that's what we choose to do. You sound immature and arrogant. 

Absolutely agree with OP. 

I think this update is absolutely terrible. I understand what the devs are trying to do but they've absolutely destroyed the game imo. I understand catering to the performance side of the game, I personally have an xbox one x and yes I have frame drops lag etc. but its not to the point to where it absolutely destroys the game for me, its totally tolerable and not that serious. just from looking in server and world chats a lot of people still use the og xbox to run this game (theres the problem). if this change is something that they're going to keep to cater to half the population who have performance issues due to old xbox and isn't in end game grind zones such as aakman & hystria they need to increase drop rates per mobs, and/or revert hystria and aakman back the way it was (90% of bdo population arnt even grinding there yet) so it can be back on par with the other end game zones ( trees & gyfins) in which they didn't even touch. I may just be rambling and what I just typed might not make sense. long story short this update is straight a** and something needs to be done about it. all im saying is if this change doesn't get reverted im putting my striker on a plane flying him to korea and leg dropping your building.

before to long there gonna remove lifeskilling too. which leaves us with 0 mobs 0 landscape and a baron land for us to play horse simulator on, and the only way to make gains or silver will be to swipe our cards in the pearl shop to sell in the CM.

7 hours ago, Twix said:

I think this update is absolutely terrible. I understand what the devs are trying to do but they've absolutely destroyed the game imo. I understand catering to the performance side of the game, I personally have an xbox one x and yes I have frame drops lag etc. but its not to the point to where it absolutely destroys the game for me, its totally tolerable and not that serious. just from looking in server and world chats a lot of people still use the og xbox to run this game (theres the problem). if this change is something that they're going to keep to cater to half the population who have performance issues due to old xbox and isn't in end game grind zones such as aakman & hystria they need to increase drop rates per mobs, and/or revert hystria and aakman back the way it was (90% of bdo population arnt even grinding there yet) so it can be back on par with the other end game zones ( trees & gyfins) in which they didn't even touch. I may just be rambling and what I just typed might not make sense. long story short this update is straight a** and something needs to be done about it. all im saying is if this change doesn't get reverted im putting my striker on a plane flying him to korea and leg dropping your building.

Agreed. Reaching softcap is the entry point for all these better grind spots like aakman or hystria which to me is literally a reward for hard work I put since launch to get there so the last patch was literally a slap in the face. 

I too am seeing what seems to be longer lasting lag spikes. Before the update, the lag was only but a mere stutter here and there. Now it seems to last for multiple seconds and has yielded a few ghildmates death with the loss of expensive crystals. I have since stopped grinding in Hystria because of the lackluster attention to detail in this area with this update. I know there were mentioning of "finding" new rotations, but Hystria is a delicate "room based" grinding environment and when all but two rooms are useful now, the loot has severely suffered and most of all of our guild that grinds there have given up. Aakman has a few rooms which have improved while others are useless. It seems for Hystria, tons of mobs were left in the hallways leading up to useful rooms but some of the rooms were completely obliterated on entire sides, removing the ability to grind in a circular motion. Also, without a "movement" class such as a lahn or a musa the grind here is much more painful to endure and so therefore classes such as Sorc, Mystic are having a really rough time getting the same amount of loot and are pretty much finding the grind not worth it. I am going back to AFK lifeskilling and sadness because I had finally got the AP to effectively grind in hystria and didn't want to have to return to Mirumuk with the rest of the population of BDO. Even with less mobs in the game the lag is even more intense, and now with less to gain from putting up with it. And thus, the will to grind has been flattened.

Sorry for all the length but I have tried to grind there and so have many of us in Arsha. 

I loved this game and the grind but my goals have been pulled even further from myself.

Please Revert this garbage monster reduction  patch. Tested hysteria on different rotations for 10 hours. On average it’s 15% reduction in trash loot per hour. And I tried every different way to pull mobs together.

if anything , reduce pixels by 35% once combat starts with mobs. I really don’t need all the sparkly effects.

This honestly hasn't made anything better and I'm on PS4 pro if players were struggling in pve before it had to be there net also the stuttering they need to stop looking at band-aid fixes and figure out a way to tone down the skill effects and graphical detail on everything and look at the graphic capabilities of the cards in these systems my old r9 290x handles this game easy because it's a PC and can tone down graphical settings where here we are locked into we need this not crappy half thought out solutions 

I completely agree before the update there was little stutter here and there but they were tolerable without bothering me but now I'm having complete lockups and crashes now. It completely angers me that the one update they said would help with performance did the opposite it shows that any drastic change goes untested and is not thought through this sort of change shouldn't have come in without any testing on a actual test server that's not empty. Really wish they announced what they are doing to right their wrong.

I had no problems before the mob nerf. Also quit BDX and back to playing BDO on pc.

Thanks Pearl Abyss, for ruining your game!

Also stopped my xbox live gold.

As a veteran player on pc, you have to have constant mobs and tons of them. For people who grind, which are the majority.

Also your game is far behind on trash loot prices, while the market place armor is too highly priced to match any way of farming silver to make enough to afford a pen set of boss armor.