Black Desert P2W in 2023: The truth. You've been lied to.

[Music] yo what is up guys I'm bringing you a brand new video and welcome to my topic of Black Desert online and pay to win those you guys that are unfamiliar with me and to ensure you that I'm not a random MMO reviewer on the internet who has an ignorant take my background in this game is that I have played BDO for six years in North America and I'm currently in the top 10 richest geared players in the game so I have a very veterans perspective of this game but also last month I completed a 55-day journey where I took a brand new account with nothing on it and I got it to the top six percent of all geared players in this game which is 700 gear score all in preparation for this video to give you guys a real take on the state of Black Desert 2023 and how the cash shop has helped or hindered my experience in the game as a new player and how it affects me as a veteran player let me first start by saying that video has a notorious reputation for being a pay to win game but as it stands I simply think that it is untrue and the rest of the tone of this video is going to be explaining why I think things have changed but before you go running off into the comments I encourage you guys to watch this whole video because I acknowledge that most rumors are derived from a place of Truth at one point or another and I'm going to explain that things have simply just changed over time 10 10. yeah Manos no way I'm done I'm done dude I'm just I'm done yes oh he's he's trying to kill me oh God get it [Music] it's definitely an amazing game and the action combat is just unprecedented within the last two years Black Desert has improved a lot and all these old pay to win videos are almost entirely outdated that you could watch on YouTube right now if you don't care about video's reputation and history of its pay to win and kind of where it came from then feel free to skip to the next section but I feel like this section is important to tell you guys the direction the game is going in terms of its monetization that'll hopefully make you guys feel a little bit more comfortable with the direction prilibus is taking the game so in the past BDO had a very bad reputation for being paid to win it was seen as a very incredibly prohibitive game for a new player who doesn't want to spend money so three years ago I actually think that this reputation was completely Justified but now it is just simply wrong as a new player in the past you were constantly faced with six main issues that essentially forced you to pay money to enjoy this game and they ended up fixing all of these issues the first one is silver when you collect silver in the game which is the primary currency from killing monsters it had a weight and you have a limited number of weight in your character which basically forced you to buy additional weight unless you wanted to stop grinding every three minutes it was really insane and now silver has no weight at all second hats are required to pick up loot automatically in this game and the game made zero effort back then to really give you any for free use to get maybe one and you you can have up to five and they can be leveled up in tears so you were expected to spend easily a hundred dollars to get decent pets third your inventory management was also really bad at grind spots because items did not stack in convenient Little Boxes causing you to run out of inventory space which would cost another sixty dollars fourth Maids which allows you to move items from storages remotely were super scarcely given out they used to give you one for playing for like ten thousand hours and that was about it and they have a 20 minute cooldown and they sell them for twelve dollars each if the contribution points to invest in the auto collection of resources through the worker system used to matter a lot and you felt inclined to purchase more storage slots in towns because you needed your CP for those workers instead of being able to invest it into more storage spaces in the towns and it was forty five dollars per town for Max slots and finally that tagging system used to not exist and if you wanted to try a new class you felt inclined to pay a hundred dollars for weapon exchange coupons and all these issues were deliberately placed to make you spend money if you add it all up to have a good new player experience you are expected to spend at least three hundred dollars to get past all these inconvenience inconvenient things and now they have fixed a lot of those problems I personally attribute a lot of these bad practices to bdo's Old publisher cacao games Pearl Abyss was a small company when BDO first released in 2016 and they sought the help of a publisher to publish in North America and Europe and as of 2021 that contract is over and since then we've seen incredible steps taken to revert all that damage that was done to the game and I'm hoping that this video is going to remove the last bit of that damage which is the old player perspective you probably have friends that have told you about the Pay to Win of BDO but that two-year-old opinion is ancient news at this point Pearl and this has addressed every single one of these issues mentioned and created a great new player experience silver has no weight anymore making it way easier to manage your inventory they've also lowered a lot of the weight of items that drop at grind spots making weight effectively not required on my new account I purchased no weight and I was not bothered at all going all the way to 700 years score pets are now given to you quite abundantly within the first days of playing you obtain eight pets just by doing the season questline up to madaya and claiming login rewards Inventory management is not an issue green grade items drop in stackable boxes now Maids are frequently given through player through attendance and codes and logging in regularly and a few quests and the season pass and on my 700 gear score account that was 55 days old I have 27 mates like they give them out quite frequently and as for the contribution points in worker system like that's not as relevant anymore so therefore you can invest your contribution in buying actual storage through your efforts in the game rather than spending money which is amazing and with the new Magnus storage being accessible from everywhere which they added in October it makes storage space super trivial because you can use storage from all over instead of just one area and as for re-rolling coupons like that are no longer required for the hundred dollars because you can duplicate your gear for a small silver fee which is earned in game and it takes a couple hours of effort to try a new class removing that 100 cost completely so it they've fixed all of those primary six reasons that the game was so prohibitive in the past so after all these improvements where are we at with pay to win and BDO my 700 gear score account that I leveled up from practically nothing and 55 days cost me a total of 60 dollars as a new player with plenty of pearls left over and I honestly did not feel hindered by additional pay to win at all I think that if you want all the luxuries that this game has to offer in its cash shop sixty dollars will get you every permanent Luxury Plus it'll cover you for six months of value pack which is essentially kind of like the game subscription fee which after the six month is over May cost you between 10 and 15 dollars per month if you want to continue to get the most convenient optimal gameplay as a low spending player if you wanted to not pay to win at all though I do have a video that gives tips and tricks on playing fully free and I will link that in the description but I will say that sixty dollars gets you the three most important things in Black Desert which is the remote campsite the napart campsite which lets you buy potions and repair remotely Celestial horse whistle where you can call your horse from anywhere and then number three is having a value pack active at all times but they do give you enough value pack benefit for the first three months without having to worry about it as a brand new player and you know through the Magnus and stuff like that but it is kind of a hassle not being able to get around the additional Marketplace tax of not having it which is why it seems pretty essential to me also as a new player for the first two months they offer you a two for one Pearl pack and that is sixty dollars which gets you 120 worth of pearls there's also a 50 discount coupon after day 19 of logging in as a new player that you can use on probably what would be your biggest purchase which is the NAT Park campsite so if you do end up liking video upon starting the game it is kind of recommended within the first couple of months you decide to spend that sixty dollars if you can see it as a game that's going to be a long term game for you so to go from feeling hindered by almost everything anywhere you step in the game and spending at least three hundred dollars to get you started in the game down to playing the game for free is it a real option and to get all the conveniences of essentially my six year account I felt very very uh well taken care of with sixty dollars on my brand new account is quite a huge leap in a great direction for the game now I can hear you saying Choice what about credit card whales won't they be at a huge advantage and just kill you in this open world PVP game and the answer is pay to win in BDO is exceptionally prohibitive to the point where very few players actually do it and your chances of running into a player that is paid to win is insanely low not only that but there is no gear that you can't obtain as a free-to-play player making it far more common that if you're getting your butt kicked in PvP it's from somebody who actually played the game and earned their gear and it is running into a Pay to Win player 999 out of a thousand times if you are weaker than another player it's because they've played more than you not because they have spent more than you that is how insignificant the Pay to Win is in Black Desert I legitimately don't even think about it and I think the majority of players don't think about pay to win at all but if people do pay to win it actually benefits you as a free-to-play player and everybody that I know that plays BDO loves when people people pay to win because the standard way that people pay to win is by selling costumes on the market these costumes can be exchanged for kronstones and that protects your gear from downgrading when you're enhancing at a significant price decrease compared to alternative ways to get these Crown Stones so whales will buy a costume of the Pearl shop they'll sell it to you for silver and then you use those crowns to protect your upgrades it's a win-win and pay to win players are also limited to selling 35 costumes per week but this number is actually as low as five per week if you have not played the game enough to get your family Fame higher using data from bdo's Marketplace API we can actually tell how many people pay to win on a week-to-week basis using data from this last week which this last week is bdo's seventh year anniversary for North America it is probably the best sales you'll ever see on costumes so there is a high influx of sales right now on the marketplace and there were roughly 11 000 costume sales if we make the assumption that the source of these costumes are from the whales that max out their 35 sale limit that means 300 people paid to win this week in video out of such a large population game 300 is a drop in the bucket and that is why it is so uncommon to run into pay to win players now obviously this is an incorrect assumption because it's unlikely that everybody Maxes their sale limits so it's more likely that you know maybe a few thousand players have sold some costumes but very few people actually sell 35 per week and 11 000 costumes is a super small amount for such a populated game and by the way North America is the region with the most costume sales of any region and it's not even close it is by far the biggest whale region and it's still only 11 000 costumes the next closest region is EU Who Sold 12K costumes in a two-week time period during the seventh anniversary due to the sheer prohibitiveness of pay to win in this game most people that play videos spend the sixty dollars to get set up with the common conveniences like the tent Horse flute and value packs and running into swiping players is so incredibly rare that it simply just doesn't even matter BDO is not some mobile game where you spend a few hundred dollars and become so incredibly strong compared to a non-spender that just doesn't exist this is an extreme example but I think it's going to get the point across very well I have played BDO on my main account as a low spender I practically do not spend money on this game anymore if Elon Musk started playing BDO right now and instead of buying Twitter he spent 44 billion dollars swiping in Black Desert online I would beat him in PvP 999 times out of a thousand because your individual skill level in this game in PvP is so much more important than how much money you have spent on the game with the initial effort to get your gear in this game a 700 gear score player can kill a 730 gear score whale if they are the more skilled player even if you don't want to get gear in Black Desert and you don't want to grind and earn your gear which is the way that most people get geared in this game 75 percent of node Wars which are you know group activity group PVP is capped and 66 percent of all sieges two out of three sieges are gear capped and Arena of Solaire which is the ranked PVP game mode is 100 gear capped where your money and your pay to win and your effort you put in the game really holds no value so in summary old predatory monetization of this game gave it a really bad reputation and within the last two years perlabeth has done a really good job in writing these rungs the game has plenty of ways to pay for conveniences there's certainly No Lack of options in the cash shop but these things will not prohibit you from reaching endgame incredibly quickly if you simply just put time into the game so I appreciate you guys very much for watching I hope that this has provided you with some great Insight on the state of BDO and if you did enjoy be sure to subscribe where only a couple of hundred people away from 20 000 subscribers and I will see you guys all in the next video peace [Music]

Channel: Im Choice

Views: 128,957

Keywords: berserker, black desert, preawakening, awakening, zerker, black desert online, im_choice, choice bdo, BDO, zerk

Id: 0t5Kh24CxDU

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 31 2023