"Drastic Measure" – Black Desert Online [Ninja PvP]

Channel:

All Luck No Skillz

Subscribers:

2,240

Published on October 7, 2019 3:41:52 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnf4Ebj77qw

Game:

Black Desert Online (2014)

Duration: 4:01

17,105 views

223

"Desperate times call for desperate measures" - Hippocrates


Imagine if there was a first person shooter that allowed people with better computers to fire their guns faster. Or if there was a MOBA that tied your hero's damage per second to how high your frame rate was. Or maybe even a fighting game that decreased your chosen character's start up/active/recovery frames when you had a more powerful graphics card. It would be absurd to allow players to casually change game mechanics like that. Yet, this is exactly what Pearl Abyss has allowed to happen on BDO even as of this video.

It's not just about running the game smoother or reducing input lag. Having higher frame rate directly affect the game's mechanics, and allow all of your skills to animate faster when you land a hit. For example, at 60 frames per second (fps), my Katana Shower animates in 2.03s. However, at 180fps, it animates in just 1.2s. This means that not only can you combo someone to death in a shorter period of time, but every skill also becomes much safer to use. If a skill was to fully animate in 1.2s instead of 2.03s, it would nearly halve the window of opportunity an opponent have to punish that skill - not to mention accounting for desync on top of it. And this is a benefit that gets applied to every single skill. Sure, higher frame rate isn't going to make anyone win the game automatically, but it would definitely be a disadvantage to play without it.

Problem is, no one told me this when I first started PvPing. So I went right ahead and dialed my graphics up to Remastered - because hey, I was still getting 90fps, and the last game I played was only 60fps, so it actually felt like an upgrade. But now knowing that fps can affect skill animation speed, this was a fatal mistake in retrospect. While 90fps is better than 60fps, there is nevertheless a noticeable difference between 90fps and 180fps. So I was still at a disadvantage any time I fought someone with higher fps.

So you might be thinking, "just lower my graphics until I get higher fps", right? Not so simple. You see, I have already been using Remastered graphics close to a year at this point, and my first few videos featured Remastered graphics too. So it would be a significant downgrade both to my gaming experience, as well as my videos, if I were to start dropping my graphics down. Even "Very High" was noticeably different; Remastered was a complete overhaul of BDO's graphics. Plus, there is also the nagging feeling that I shouldn't *have to* drop my graphics down. In any other game, as long as the gameplay is smooth, any advantages gained by more fps would only be minimal at best. You would not be able to actually affect the game's mechanics outside of straight up cheating. This was truly a first world problem unique to BDO.

So of course, I had to resolve this problem in the most logical way possible - by upgrading my graphics card to a RTX 2080 Ti for $1,700 CAD... In all honesty, nobody really wins here. I would've been perfectly fine with just 90fps, if it wasn't because it had a real impact on the game's mechanics. I'm sure Pearl Abyss would've preferred I put the money I spent on the graphics card towards buying Pearls instead. To top it all off, I doubt this upgrade would even be noticeable on my videos either, because YouTube only supports videos up to a maximum of 60fps. Yet, if I wanted to keep the quality of my videos the same, without suffering ingame disadvantages, I have no other choice. You know what they say, drastic times call for Drastic Measures!

This video will feature fights both from the time when I was still using a GTX 1070 Ti, and from after I've upgraded to a RTX 2080 Ti. Overall, getting the upgrade did revolutionize my BDO experience. The game is smoother in large scale PvP now, and the faster animation makes the combat more fun than before. So while I wouldn't say it's necessarily a bad investment, I do think that it is an investment I shouldn't have needed to make. Perhaps one day, Pearl Abyss will finally fix this problem, and allow me to be confident that I'm not missing out on anything by staying in Remastered. Or maybe I'll eventually be forced to drop my graphics setting anyway, in order to hit the ultimate 300fps which even a RTX 2080 Ti cannot achieve on Remastered. Or maybe nothing will happen, and this will remain the status quo for the remainder of BDO's lifespan. Only time will tell.


But until then, I hope you enjoy this video!


Music:
Armin van Buuren & Luke Bond feat. KARRA - Revolution

Character:
CollegeTuition - Lv. 62 Ninja - Family AllLuckNoSkill

Gear:
https://imgur.com/wKV2Rl8
576 GS
273 AP / 273 AAP / 303 DP

Other Statistics