Moggie's First Impression

[Moggie]

Hi guys! I started playing a few hours ago. I figured I'd make a quick review/recap of my experience so far. This is part comedy, part constructive criticism, and I know the game's still in its early stages so take it lightheartedly. May contain spoilers for those who have not played the first hour of the game yet.

 

Starting off with character creation. The males look stunning. The females... well, let's just say I'm making "anatomically correct" the phrase of the day for the design team to add to their vocabulary. Now we're in the game. Okay, you're going to see this a lot in here but, BnS, sometimes less is more. After ten minutes of clearing up the interface, I can see! Still can't get my hp bar to go away or at least remove itself from the center of the screen, will make further attempts later. Let's proceed with the story. All right, no jokes about the voice actors. They've taken enough heat already. Skip to first quest completion. They sure are generous with the text popups, some of which even overlap each other. Well, I guess I didn't need to read that anyway...

 

Next cutscene. "I saw something but wait... it's not there anymore?!" clichè. What's this... please take a survey about our game. Really BnS? Breaking the 4th wall? It's been like, 5 minutes. I do like that the characters have their own interactions with each other (when they were dismissed by the master guy). Not sure if that will be a consistent thing throughout the game. "Trusted ally is a traitor" clichè. "Everyone dies but the protagonist just happens to be unharmed" clichè. Cue unnecessarily overdramatic fight scene. Michael Bay would be proud. "Evil laugh" clichè. "Shouldn't we kill that guy?" "Nah, let him train and become strong enough to kill us" clichè. "You are our last hope" clichè. Oh boy, this is gonna be a long night.

 

After some 10-20 minutes, the game mercifully decides to stop railroading me. I'm now returned to the linear progression of moving between point A and B. Let's walk down to the beach and... cue overdramatic character introduction. Okay BnS, again, less is more. We don't need a message pop up every time we do something. That's what the journal is for. Quest instructions refer to using the minimap for guidance into "colored areas" even though I have disabled the minimap. The colored areas do not show up on the M key map. There's waypoint markers over pretty much every destination, you know, in case someone wanted to introduce their 2-year-old to the game. Way too much going on. I'm trying to learn about my new town while there's a war breaking out on the beach. Okay, now I'm certain Michael Bay had something to do with this.

 

Looking in my journal, I see the reward I will get for completing the quest. How did my guy know what he's going to get? Is he psychic? Mysterious disembodied voice lets me know that "I can't do that right now" and that my weapon is damaged. Thanks mysterious disembodied voice, you always have my back. On a good note, the tutorial is actually challenging. Rare to see that in games these days. I had to resort to sneaking behind the tents in the bandit camp to get past them. All those years of Elder Scrolls are finally paying off.

 

Oh, there's "fast travel"... okay fine I won't make a big deal about it, but I will take the opportunity for another "less is more". All right, let's try this thing out and... wait, using our own energy to travel costs money? Who are we paying? Fast forward to next cutscene. Cue creepy village people and clichè attractive female that apparently isn't bothered by any of this. Is this the first time she's ever walked into that town despite living just down the street? Why are they acting so surprised?

 

This was where my adventures ended for now. Again, all of this should be taken with a grain of salt. I'm actually having an incredibly... decent time with the game so far. Will maybe make more recaps later.

[Rawrs]

o way to long xD

[DisasterMaster]

1. tldr

2. You must be new to mmo's

3. No one cares how you feel. Sorry. But wait I'm not. Because I don't care.

[Kounat]

That wall of text.

7.8/10, too many words

 

tl;dr ---> Blade and Soul #1

[RealSalt]

3 minutes ago, Moggie said:

Looking in my journal, I see the reward I will get for completing the quest. How did my guy know what he's going to get? Is he psychic?

...really?

 

Now that's some first class nitpicking.

[Moggie]

Day 2. Continuing at Bamboo Village. The town is very lively.  There's a lot of people but they don't have very much to say. Still, good job BnS. Walking around a bit and... cue generic mmo bank npc. Ok let's take a quest and, quest refers to using the quest tracker, even though I have the quest tracker disabled. Again BnS, this is what the journal is supposed to be for. Mysterious disembodied voice returns to let me know my weapon does not need to be repaired and that my party invite was, in fact, sent. Phew, I was worried that clicking the party invite button was going to do something else besides inviting someone to my party. Thanks mysterious disembodied voice, you always have my back.

 

I noticed the mouse sometimes becomes visible at the edge of the game window while in windowed mode. Awkward struggle ensues to make the camera face the way I want it to. Let's see, I'm given a vast selection of... 1 response to pick from when talking to people. Good thing I'm here to make these delicate decisions. Invisible walls everywhere. Now I have... another survey? There goes the 4th wall again.

 

All right! I got a quest to repair my weapon and...I can't complete it because my weapon doesn't need to be repaired. Moving on. My psychic abilities continue to prove useful in determining what my reward from each quest will be before I receive them. And what's with the thought bubbles on npcs during conversations? Am I a telepath as well? Let's do this quest which ends at the crematory. Only there's no crematory on the map. Ten minutes later and I found the guy at Foshi Pyers, which actually IS on the map. Round of applause for that guy's ability to give directions.

 

That's all I got for now. Looking forward to playing more. On a non-satirical note, you guys are doing a great job so far. Thank you for working hard to get our servers back up.

[Royton]

It's interesting to see other's perspective. Yeah, for an overdo game it's still pretty good with it's own unique way of doing MMO.

 

4 minutes ago, Moggie said:

Day 2.

Woah there, is this going to be a full length story to 45? lol

 

 

[Moggie]

15 minutes ago, Royton said:

It's interesting to see other's perspective. Yeah, for an overdo game it's still pretty good with it's own unique way of doing MMO.

 

Woah there, is this going to be a full length story to 45? lol

 

 

Not sure yet. I was planning on doing 1 week from my start date, but if there's enough interesting material for me to recap I may do more.

[Bladed05]

gg

[Royton]

Go for it!

Some people do like hearing from others, even if it seems like the majority of people on forums are being sourpuss about it.

[Arcadia]

Dear Diary, Day 23

I logged on and clicked spin. Now I am logging off. See you tomorrow.

[RaikaVernana]

39 minutes ago, Moggie said:

Day 2. Continuing at Bamboo Village. The town is very lively.  There's a lot of people but they don't have very much to say. Still, good job BnS. Walking around a bit and... cue generic mmo bank npc. Ok let's take a quest and, quest refers to using the quest tracker, even though I have the quest tracker disabled. Again BnS, this is what the journal is supposed to be for. Mysterious disembodied voice returns to let me know my weapon does not need to be repaired and that my party invite was, in fact, sent. Phew, I was worried that clicking the party invite button was going to do something else besides inviting someone to my party. Thanks mysterious disembodied voice, you always have my back.

 

I noticed the mouse sometimes becomes visible at the edge of the game window while in windowed mode. Awkward struggle ensues to make the camera face the way I want it to. Let's see, I'm given a vast selection of... 1 response to pick from when talking to people. Good thing I'm here to make these delicate decisions. Invisible walls everywhere. Now I have... another survey? There goes the 4th wall again.

 

All right! I got a quest to repair my weapon and...I can't complete it because my weapon doesn't need to be repaired. Moving on. My psychic abilities continue to prove useful in determining what my reward from each quest will be before I receive them. And what's with the thought bubbles on npcs during conversations? Am I a telepath as well? Let's do this quest which ends at the crematory. Only there's no crematory on the map. Ten minutes later and I found the guy at Foshi Pyers, which actually IS on the map. Round of applause for that guy's ability to give directions.

 

That's all I got for now. Looking forward to playing more. On a non-satirical note, you guys are doing a great job so far. Thank you for working hard to get our servers back up.

 

Lol that diary entries this crickets dont care about that!! is a good thing you look this game but you should sabe that entries for yourself or at least someone who cares

[Moggie]

Hello ladies. Look at your mmo. Now back to BnS. Now back to your mmo. Now back to BnS. Sadly, it isn't BnS. Look down. Back up. Where are you? You're in a cave fighting hordes of monsters. What's in your hand? Back at me. It's a flamethrower. Look again. The flamethrower is now a spear gun. Anything is possible when your mmo is BnS.

 

Day 3. Starting from Foshi Pyers. Got a quest to go to a tomb. Praise Rillifane! Someone actually gave me cardinal directions to my next destination! See, that wasn't so hard, was it? Let's go complete that quest and then talk to a few more people. Telepathic thought bubbles still there. You know, this would have been really helpful back on Heaven's Reach when I was talking to the traitor guy. Where were the thought bubbles then, huh? PEOPLE DIED, BNS! LIVES WERE LOST!

 

Cue generic mmo kill quota quest. Moving on. Let's get this lady her stolen dress. 20 minutes later. Here ya go ma'am! "I don't have any money, is there some other way I can repay you?". I feel like I've seen this scenario in a video somewhere. Now we're going to a beach area to free some caged people. Wow, there sure are a lot of enemies here, and they must know we're here after we start causing a commotion. "Hey uh, should we like, all go attack him at once?" "Nah, let's just send a few men at a time so he can easily defeat us" clichè.

 

Oh, there's achievements... *sigh* disappointed in you, BnS. Okay let's learn about socketing and...it takes money for me to pull the gem out of my own item. Again, who are we paying? Moving on. Oh no, the bamboo uniform makes me hostile to the Blackram... so pretty much exactly the same as it was before then? Going into nearby dungeon. Magical portal appears after defeating the boss that takes me to the dungeon entrance. Why would their portal activate for me? It's THEIR lair. On another note, if these guys have the technology for such teleportation, why would they need to resort to petty crime?

 

Ending this session at the Char Coalition *badum tss*. See you guys next time.

[Setzaroth]

Don't worry, for everyone with a brain who criticizes this game, Black Desert is about to start its second closed beta.

[Moggie]

Day 4. Continuing from the Char Coalition camp. Did anyone else catch the King of the Hill reference in this place? Okay time to gather some quests. "If you do this favor for me, I'll tell you where to find this guy. Here's his name and location. Oops! Well, can you still do the quest for me anyway?" All right, let's go kill this Galusu guy! Great he's dead and... quest hasn't progressed. Okay let's kill him again I guess... there we go. Quest complete. Next. Guy gives task which requires clean hands to traveler that has been on the road and fighting, and will most likely not have clean hands, yet doesn't feel the need to mention this.

 

Fast forward to next town. Fighting a scorpion and... it laid eggs. So it was pregnant? Are giant scorpions a common thing around here? Good job on the boss fight design, though. It's actually very fun, although I can't kill it yet. Will leave it for another day. Okay let's gather some materials for this girl and... apparently I just helped an arsonist. Yay for heroics. Let's go talk to this Master Cho guy. Did he just make a Pulp Fiction reference? Doing some more quests in town. Quest instructs me to move to an icon on the map. Icon not actually on map.

 

Okay let's take off our weapon for a bit to save durability. "You cannot attack without a weapon equipped". I don't think BnS understands the concept of Kung Fu Master. "Ancient evil sealed away is now being released" clichè. Overdramatic prophecy clichè. "You have passed the test by... fighting". So basically what I've been doing since the beginning of the game.

 

All right, time to start pulling my weight around here. Let's get a job. I sign on with these farmer people and, hey, the location for me to gather samples is amazingly specific. Why can't the journal be like that? Something else I haven't mentioned yet is the economy. I'm really liking the scarcity of things. It's a refreshing break from most f2p's where my wallet and inventory are full in the first 5 minutes. I hope this continues to be a thing throughout the game.

 

Ending here for now. As always, looking forward to playing more.

[Moggie]

Day 5. This is going to be a quick one. I've hit a point where I'm not sure what to do next for the main quest, even after hours of searching. The yellow waypoint has even disappeared entirely from the world map. Not sure if I hit the end of the content already but I doubt it as I'm only level 17. This is very cool though. I always like seeing a game that makes me use my brain. Day spent mostly ordering things from some guilds around Jadestone Village. It's like Cookie Clicker with ninjas! Figured out how weapon upgrading works and mine is now stage 7. Waiting for more weapons from the blacksmith guild to upgrade further. I have a few side quests but they all have enemies much too strong for me at the moment.

 

That's all I have for now. More tomorrow!

[Moggie]

Day 6. Another short one. Pretty much the same thing as yesterday except I figured out what I was supposed to do. Few things I think BnS could work on...

 

Not everyone uses the quest tracker. I've been playing since Friday, and just now realized that I've been getting letters ONLY viewable on the quest tracker. I had around 4 of them just sitting there. It makes much more sense to have them appear in the mailbox or journal. So after more than 5 hours of wandering back and forth from Jadestone to Bamboo village trying to find out who I need to talk to, I figured it out, and only because for some reason when I entered Cinderlands out of boredom, I got a message specifically telling me to open my quest log, which I still thought was referring to the journal at the time, so I spent another 10 minutes clicking every possible thing in the journal before opening the tracker.

 

Not everyone wants to be part of the faction wars. I felt kind of railroaded when, after doing my best to AVOID the faction wars the entire game up until now, I was forced to join one anyway to proceed.

 

Again, I know this is still the early stages of the game, so take these as suggestions, and not complaints. That's all I have for now.