Greetings Adventurers,

This is the Black Desert Mobile Studio.

CalpheON Ball was an opportunity to look back on 2021 and also share our plans for early 2022.

We were sorry that we could not fully share more questions and answers due to the time schedule during CalpheON Ball. However, we’d like to share the roadmap and summarize the questions answered by Ryan Kang, Head of the Game Design Division (Black Desert Mobile) in this post.

Q. Zoom Adventurer’s Question: Thoughts regarding ‘Server Merge’

Ryan: As I’ve seen several suggestions regarding more competitivity for each server, I also agree that Server Merge is a great idea. During the first half of 2022, we will merge servers for each region and hope to bring more excitement for our Adventurers.

Q. Zoom Adventurer’s Question: Thoughts regarding ‘Region Merge’

Ryan: Due to latency and time zones issues, we believe that this possibility is extremely low as this could become a major disadvantage for some Adventurers living on the total opposite side from the physical location of our server and such. However, we will also consider special events regardless of regional difficulties that allow us to gather and such.

Q. Zoom Adventurer’s Question: Thoughts regarding ‘Siege War Balance’
Ryan: I agree that Guilds with higher CP and defense have the advantage over the Siege War challengers. Please do note that Siege victors are meant for high CP Adventurers as a reward and ‘end content’ regarding achievement. However, I also believe opportunities for Guilds with relatively lower CP should be improved for siege attack/defense and we are planning to adjust the balance of HP for objects and so forth.

Q. Zoom Adventurer’s Question: Thoughts regarding ‘Node War Vitalization’

Ryan: To give further purpose to having Node War, we are planning on updating Atumach Guild content for which Node holdings are essential to participating. In addition, we are also planning on giving more benefits on holding a Node.

Q. Zoom Adventurer’s Question: Thoughts regarding ‘BSM Mode improvement’

Ryan: The Black Spirit Mode was originally designed to give Adventurers loot rewards identical to actual gameplay. However, there were several variables to consider regarding the loot reward distribution based on different CP of our Adventurers. We also noticed that in certain conditions that Black Spirit Mode would compensate Adventurers with more rewards than actual gameplay. As a result, we had to decrease the loot rate for Black Spirit Mode to prevent this issue. I will discuss if we can improve loot rewards from Black Spirit Mode and share with our Adventurers if we can apply this in the future. 

Q. Zoom Adventurer’s Question: Thoughts regarding ‘Transparency for Pearl Shop’ with comparison to KR
Ryan: I agree that transparency regarding the game system and Pearl Shop item rates are essential for the game, and both KR and Global have been practicing this procedure and adding further detailed information of rates gradually. Please note that rates are not just a copy-paste of text for display but need extensive data checks to accurately (and we really mean exact data!) display the exact value of variables and such, but we plan to share rates in the game for transparency in the future as well. Lastly, we’d like to assure our Adventurers that there is no ninja nerfs as some rumors were told out there!

Q. Zoom Adventurer’s Question: Thoughts regarding ‘Restoration with Silver for all enhancements’

Ryan: We are aware that many Adventurers would like to have more silver restoration options for enhancement in the game. However, as a game developer, I also have the responsibility to preserve the hard work and progress Adventurers have made in CP from high enhancements as it would become a huge disappointment and betrayal. However, we are also planning on more events and updates that will supplement aid to your restorations.

Q. Zoom Adventurer’s Question: Thoughts regarding ‘Collaboration with other Anime/Games and etc.’

Ryan: I absolutely love collaborations and look forward to having them myself as well and look forward to having collaborations in the future that we are currently preparing for our Adventurers. If you recall from the past we had a collaboration with Netflix’s Cursed or with Bugatti before and Adventurers showed a lot of interest in these events. However, when we decide to proceed on new collaboration there are two main factors we take into serious consideration (1. Does it fit the world of Black Desert? 2. Are business agreements met accordingly? For example, limited edition product debates for Adventurers is one of those debatable topics).

Q. Zoom Adventurer’s Question: Thoughts regarding ‘Emoji expressions’ in-game

Ryan: I have seen these suggestions for quite a while and apologize that I have not addressed this request. The emoji system is actually quite popular in BDO and I actually have spoken with our developer team. The difficult part is linking the chat system wired to your hardware device while inputting game-built emojis into a system altogether. However, we will give this request a shot and try to apply by separating text and emojis firstly and find an answer to make this development happen hopefully.

Q. Zoom Live Feed Adventurer’s Question: ‘Happy Birthday’ system in BDM

Ryan: This is a new concept and seems like a joyful surprise. The biggest concern for having a birthday system for an Adventurer however does not match with the lore of the Adventurer that has lost his memories in the first place. Yet as Laila has mentioned on 12/14 Ibellab Oasis, I further discussed this possibility with our developers and would like to find a similar concept to share this joy with our Adventurers.

Q. Zoom Live Feed Adventurer’s Question: ‘Detailed Customization like BDO’ system in BDM

Ryan: Although we agree that extensive customization update to BDM would be awesome we also have to approach updates regarding this cautiously due to two main aspects: mobile device performance and limited screen space. As developer, we need to ensure that all Adventurers can access the game from various devices. However, we will still probe into this topic and consider adding features step by step and make them happen when it’s actualized.

Q. Zoom Live Feed Adventurer’s Question: ‘Automatic Black Spirit Mode after disconnection’

Ryan: Since Black Desert Mobile is a mobile game, there are various conditions to consider. For example, the game may stop running when you answer a call or switch the screen to a different application for a while. Due to these various disconnecting conditions, it’s quite difficult to set the timing of auto Black Spirit Mode. We are working to implement an auto Black Spirit Mode to the game but I’m afraid it’s not planned to happen in near future. I’m sorry about this, but we will try our best to bring this feature to the game.

Q: Wizard when?

Ryan: As many Adventurers are aware, Wizard is currently available in Black Desert PC. We are currently working to bring Wizard to Black Desert Mobile. If things go smoothly, we can expect to see Wizard next year – probably during the first half of 2022.

Q: If you can change classes from one character to another class, what about all the outfits they have on that character?  

Ryan: Many Adventurers were asking for a feature that enables Professional Outfits to be exchangeable to another class. We have prepared an item called “Professional Outfit Exchange Coupon” for CalpheON Ball. I’m assuming all Adventurers have received one by now. We will continuously work to make the class change process more convenient. 

Q: Town Hall 9 When?

Ryan: Frankly speaking, the developers have discussed this issue for quite a long time. Developers agreed that Town Hall Level 9 should not be just unlocking more levels for the buildings in the Camp. We want Town Hall Level 9 to provide a wider variety of game experiences for our Adventurers. I can’t say Town Hall Level 9 will be available in near future, but it is surely being discussed.

Q: Do you have any plans to have other tournaments besides the Ramoness Tournament? Guild Tournament or 1v1 Class Tournament?

Ryan: First of all, I’d like to point out that “Watch Mode” is necessary in order to broadcast the tournament and witness who has won the match. So in order to create a guild tournament or a 1 vs 1 tournament – such as Karkea Arena, we need to develop a “Watch Mode” system for these features. The plan to develop Watch Mode for other arenas is currently under review.

Q: Please increase places to obtain more Edana Coins as well as Shadow Knot.

Ryan: We’re planning on updating a new Great Desert region that provides more Edana Coins very soon! Regarding Shadow Knots, we are planning on updating Chaos Rift II and Kamaylve regions for better loot rewards as well.

Q: Please create a lower CP Siege War for Adventurers.

Ryan: As we’ve addressed this question from our Zoom Adventurer already, I would like to mention again that we are focusing on providing more purpose for Node War and introducing new guild content that will address this suggestion.

Q: Matching for Battle of the Sun is unfair, please share your feedback:

Ryan: Regarding Battle of the Sun, we are aware that many Adventurers have expressed concerns regarding win rates being unequal for teams and did extensive research on this for a long time as well. Our first goal was to make sure that the win rate was an equal 50:50, and to make this happen we divided teams into half according to equal CP distribution for each team. However, this method was not efficient in equal win rates as the CP gap between Adventurers was the biggest variant that proved that our calculation for team matching was not satisfactory. So next, we decided the double the pool of Adventurers and divide them into high and low CP pools and make a more competitive environment for our Adventurers, but also showed a flaw. For example, a team pool would match #1,#3,#,5, and #7 CP against #2,#4,#6,#8 which caused the first team to have an advantage over the other. To solve this issue we added some further mechanics to balance out the win rates for each team. For example, we changed the match system so that the top CP Adventurer and lowest CP Adventurer would be a team together and such. This series of updates lead to balancing CP gaps for each team to be less than 1% and closed the win rate gap for overall Adventurers to 50% flat. I am aware some Adventurers share straight win losses from Battle of the Sun but we are currently satisfied with the macro win rates we have for now. However, we will continue to look into this content and strive to find improvements as well.

Q: Please make a 3,2,1 Start Timer for all PVP related content:

Ryan: While I replied to this answer with a sure yes during the stream, I do have to apologize regarding the fact that applying the timer will be difficult currently due to a few reasons.
We have been aware that some Adventurers were able to start before the loading of another Adventurer, but this has actually been fixed to ensure both Adventurers load completely to the match. In fact, we also considered inputting a timer to arena on the test server but this actually resulted in further problems and issues, unfortunately. In addition, we believe many Adventurers felt that Karkea Arena did not have enough HP to fully enjoy the content as it is and promise to improve Karkea HP balance to provide a better experience for our Adventurers. 

We hope you enjoyed the summary and roadmap we shared with you today! Please note that we are also planning on answering questions that were not addressed unfortunately due to time constraints during Calpheon Ball after organizing and translating them accordingly as soon as we are available!

We thank you again for the passion and love for Black Desert Mobile and promise to strive to serve our Adventurers with a joyful game experience as vowed since our first day of launch.

Black Desert Mobile Studio