So today we are asking the question: Is black desert mobile pay to win? Before we move on to that question, it’s essential to know what that term means to me; first, I don’t believe a game can be paid win without PvP or player versus player.
There may be some outlier cases in PvE games where it’s literally or close to literally impossible to continue progressing without some helpful boosts, a new character, or some exclusive equipable items.
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Black Desert Mobile PvP
With that being said, black desert mobile does, in fact, have PvP. It’s not a big focus of the game, and the game itself doesn’t seem to take PvP too seriously either as its reward system isn’t very fleshed out right now.
You really only have to win five battles per day to get the base rewards, and since instant quitting isn’t punished, you can find five people to beat pretty fast. Besides that matchmaking seems to be non-existent one match and playing against a level forty with a thousand less CP than me and the next I’m fighting a max level which could one-shot me.
Even so, there is a leaderboard and if you take PvP seriously or want to be at a certain rank then, of course, the pale in nature or lack thereof should be considered
Black Pearls and Pearls
One thing to note in black desert mobile they have two main premium currencies pearls and black pearls, which are the free ones you can accumulate over time, whereas you can only get regular pearls with cash.
I’d like to start with what I call the four levels of pay to win or rather the four types of free games with in-game purchases to start we have level 1 which in my experience is very rare for a mobile game but more common on free PC and console games like Apex Legends. That’s cosmetic only this obviously has almost no pay to an element outside of maybe being able to blend in slightly better to the environment.
Cosmetic Items
Black Desert Mobile does have cosmetic items for sale that do things but changed the look of your character, but it does not fall into this category.
Convenience Only Purchases
At level 2, we have convenience only purchases, which isn’t that common either, but again is present in black desert mobile; you can pay an offline farm for double the duration. Pay for two more pets, which will pick up items, pay to appear at the boss’s location in a boss rush instead of having to go through the minions every time, inventory spots, and weight capacity. Though it should be noted, you can also get some inventory space and weight capacity with black pearls, just not as much.
I like this model the most because it doesn’t give a massive competitive advantage to the ones who choose to buy it. At least for me, it’s more interesting than just cosmetics, so if I enjoy a game and want to support the developers, this is my usual go-to purchase again black desert mobile does offer convenience purchases. Still, it does not fall into this category either.
Progression Purchases
At level 3, we have progression purchases; this is by far the most common type of in-game purchase for mobile games usually, these are items which make your character stronger but are available for free just at a slower pace.
In black desert mobiles case, that’s mainly black stones used to enhance a character’s gear. There are tons of different progress related items you can purchase skill books crystals entries to content etc. Again all freely available in the wild, but you won’t get them nearly as fast. This can quickly get into pay2win territory since, depending on the game, there is almost limitless potential for growth.
In games like black desert mobile where new servers will pop up regularly, it may not be as a big of a problem until servers get merged, or there’s crossover content. Speaking of crossover content, I’m pretty sure PvP is cross-server at least ravenous arena as you do get a server tie while queueing up black desert mobile has everything in the first three levels. However, it still doesn’t fall into any category yet.
Exclusive Stats For Real Money
The final category is level 4, and at least in my current understanding, it does fall into this category level 4 is exclusive stats for cash. Stats you can’t get anywhere else, so even once you reach that maxed status, the ones who purchased these stats will have an advantage.
In Black Desert mobile, they have outfits you do get a free outfit near the beginning of the game that gives you a +5 attack. But the rest of the outfits are pearl purchasable only, and while they give you the same stats as a free one, you can fuse two outfits together for a chance to get between 16 and 25 of those stats.
Practically impossible without cash unless there are more free outfits on the way. I say practically since it’s technically possible to buy an outfit from the market for an absurd amount of silver(similar to the PC version at the start, but now it’s possible due to the central market). If there’s ever even someone selling one, and you’re lucky enough to be fast enough to snipe it.
Outfit Weapons
In addition to that, there are outfit weapons that give an additional 16 to 25 of those stats. At level 53 I haven’t gotten a free outfit weapon, so I’m currently assuming I won’t get one. If you’re not aiming for the competitive top, it’s not that big of a deal.
I’m sure those stats won’t make a massive difference in general gameplay, but at the top when you fight a guy an equal gear with the same skill, he will win due to that small stat bump you don’t have and practically can’t get without dropping a pretty high amount of cash.
The costumes cost nine hundred and sixty pearls, and the cheapest you can get that is $27, and according to their wording, you only have a chance at the seasonal outfit with the better stats. If you fail to get the seasonal outfit, you need to spend another $27 to try again, and even if you do get a seasonal outfit, it could give you sixteen of each stat instead of twenty-five.
At that point, you need to spend another $27 to try again, but this time, you have a 0% chance to get a seasonal outfit since using a seasonal outfit infusion will never result in a seasonal outfit, so there’s another $27.
That’s at least my understanding of the system; obviously, I’d instead not support the system by trying it out if there will be or are ways to at least slowly get free outfits, then there’s no problem with this.
To get a really good seasonal would take a while, but that’s a goal I could get behind blindly throwing hundreds of dollars of the screen for this slight competitive advantage you need at endgame though, that’s pretty sucky. So yes, black desert mobile is pay2win.
I can justify the first three levels in most games, but level four is a lot harder; it’s not massive stats. Still, I believe it will play a part in who’s victorious, which is, unfortunately, the pure definition of pay to win even with all that said I’m still enjoying black desert mobile. I don’t plan to be super competitive anyway. Perhaps there will be outfit opportunities in the future, or there are now that I’m not aware of.
I’ve come to realize that you can, in fact, get costumes later into the game from your camp here. You can see the possibility of crafting outfits and weapons. It’s still locked for me, and even when it wouldn’t be, it would be a massive grind just to get one costume, let alone an excellent seasonal. Still, it does not seem to require real-world currency, and that’s the main thing.
Conclusion
So with that current information, I’m slightly less inclined to call it straight pay to win, but it’s still in the dark gray area pets more than one is something that seemed to be unobtainable without money.
I’ve heard from my friend get that back in the Korean server they had somewhat frequent events where you could obtain pets this is yet to happen on the soft launch servers though so we’ll see about that pets may not directly give you stats but while farming you’re picking up a lot more stuff that you’d otherwise miss.
Which can directly give you stats it’s just everything they pick up can be picked up by you too it’s just, of course, you’ll get less so I would say pets actually is sort of fall into the progression system level 3 perhaps and those you really can’t get without pearls.
At least not yet, but yeah, after learning the fact you can actually get costumes out of your camp eventually even though it takes an incredible amount of resources and silver, it’s hard to give a super concrete answer.
But on a scale of not pay2win to pay to win, it’s definitely closer to pay to win.