Pithy Opining: Black Desert Cash Shop Gouging

2016-02-19_165623460I didn’t expect this. Log into Black Desert closed beta the second, and 10 minutes later I’m primed for a rant.  RANT METER FULL!! I logged in to the game, made my character, ran through the first 2-3 quests, hit F3, and immediately logged out to rant. In case you’ve missed why this is such a surprise, or simply to refresh on what I think overall about the game, you can check out First ImpressionsPreview 1, and Preview 2.

Why am I on such a full on rant?

One costume for one character costs thirty two dollars.

I love the game. Love it. Love it.

But as it stands, without reconsideration from Daum, I am likely to not play it much, if at all, once the game launches. Hell, I can’t even make myself play right now. I’m a fashion whore. I really am. I want to look pretty. The first thing I do in any game I play is look up the costumes and how to get them. In my single player games I load up fashion mods before I even play the game. I collect fashion looks, and will often choose an inferior statted item if it looks cooler than a superior statted item if there is no cosmetics tab. Heck, I am playing the sorceress entirely because of her looks; the sorceress is by far and away the coolest looking character so far as my tastes go.

But at $32 per costume per character – and that doesn’t even include any dyes! – I’m not going to buy any costumes at all. I’d happily drop more than that if it would outfit all of my characters, but I’m not going to outfit just one. So if the price of a costume for just one makes me cringe, then none of them will get outfits. And how my characters look is actually as important to me as how the game plays, so despite thinking this game is all that and a chocolate shake, I know I will hit a point where I am just so tired of looking at the base armor that I’ll log out. Once that happens, I’m not likely to return. And knowing this, right now my motivation to log in is zero. Why bother when I know I’ll eventually lose interest?

Now let’s discuss dyes. Despite seeing a lot of complaints about the dye system, originally it didn’t bother me at all. You buy a dye pack, and get a random color from it. You can pick completely random dye packs, or random shade packs. Daum has to  make money, so I figured the random dyes was where the money was going to be spent. No big deal so long as I can pick a shade pack. But that’s based upon the assumption that costumes are reasonably priced.

Let’s have a display. Here is a picture of the dyeing window for starter armor that I purchased from the newb town.

2016-02-19_167748957

See those little circles where it says Equipment Part Selection? Those are dye slots. That’s 6 dye slots on just the one piece of armor. You can stand out a great deal with 6 dye slots, so at first blush that’s actually pretty spiffy. I’ve seen people in the same outfits run past looking radically different due to their individual dyeing looks – but now imagine paying $32 for a costume consisting of  5 or 6 pieces, and having to then buy packs of random dyes to fill each dye slot in each piece of a costume. And getting a dye doesn’t open that dye for general use, it’s a one shot consumable item.

And now consider the cherry on top of this rant spawning pricing; I can’t even buy one single outfit with the pearls I get from the Conqueror’s Pack. The Conqueror’s Pack gives me 2,500 pearls. A costume set costs 3,200 pearls. I could squeeze one in if I wanted to skip the weapon portion of the costume; the costume sans weapons costs 2,200 pearls. But I really don’t find $22 for one costume for one character to be any closer to my purchasing price.

What a colossal disappointment. Here’s to hoping they are as responsive to the feedback on this as they have been to feedback thus far.

About Pherephassa 213 Articles
Pherephassa has been creeping around the etherspace long enough to have remorted so often that not even she can recall her original form. She loves sandboxes, challenges, chain mail bikinis and dungeons so large they take weeks, months or even years to fully explore. Currently seeking an MMO home, she can often be found on the side of the road, begging game designers for death penalties and slow leveling curves.