Concerns with in game economy

Azherae wrote: »

I just have no reason to believe that, from where I sit, because you're 'saying things about BDO that might explain it' but that are demonstrably not true enough for that to be the likely reason. In other words, whether you mean to or not, you're 'making up reasons why BDO might feel worse' without (yet) telling me why L2 feels 'okay'/good.

Nah, I'm just wrong. I got the most important (to me) clarification. I should've just worded my question better from the start, instead of constantly going into semi-philosophical weeds.

If you say that according to pure math a +16 is equal to a tet (and not even pen), then BDO's system is leagues beyond L2 in leniency towards the player.

My final question here would be this then. Does BDO make it easier to PEN previously top tiers of gear? Let's take console BDO. Now that they have Orange, is it easier for them to PEN gold (or at least blue) now? Cause L2 usually gave new ways of acquiring better gear and iirc even new ways of getting enchant scrolls, so even OEing became easier with time. So only the bleeding edge and maybe the penultimate tier would remain truly hardcore. Is that the case in BDO?

Hm... reading that response, I realize that I am trying to avoid the specifics in a conversation with someone who explicitly needs them, and wasting your time as a result, so instead:

I have PRI Blue Grade Awakening weapon. With only 3 previous fails (from ANY attempt on ANYTHING) upgrade odds are 10%. Chance of downgrade, nil. I can use items that I can farm about 10 per hour of while ALSO making money otherwise, and try to upgrade this as many times as I want if I can repair it (which is actually not super easy but only if I am being REALLY efficient, I can burn money to do it).

Failing that about... 5-6 times will get me to +16 or so Failstack. My odds of upgrade then are 20%. So if I wanted to upgraded this to "DUO" it'll take me... somewhere between 5 minutes and probably 3 hours, and somewhere between 0 cost and I guess 'the amount I would farm in 45-80 minutes.

Then I have a DUO 'Yellow/Gold Offhand' from a Boss. If I START from that +16 I have a 17% chance of success and otherwise it will go back to PRI and cost me a bit more than the above to DUO again. Maybe... 2x as much (efficiency barely matters for Yellow grade, there's only really one option.

Every time I fail it, I'd have to do some shinanigans to get it back to DUO, but the Failstack goes up and raises the chances. Meanwhile, I could basically still use it so I might not even care. If I fail it enough times, I'll get to a point where I go 'you know what, I'm just gonna save this and bet on some lower numbers.

At some point it will go back to DUO, but I might have built up a 40 or 50 failstack while trying it, which I have in reserve for TRI-ing it. Here's a chart.

So about 30% chance, and I'm just throwing the money at it, and throwing it more, and it's multiplying.

L2 is the same. You throw the money at it, you get the crystals back. BDO you throw the money, you get the failstack and you get to keep the gear.

IF people in BDO really hate 'the throwing of the money', then they will hate it in L2 also, is my reasoning. Each upgrade is a jump of about 9 Attack for the Blue Awakening weapon I mentioned. (which seems like a lot, and it sorta is, but in PRACTICE doesn't change too much until you have a lot of different things in tandem, for reference I recently attempted to PEN my TET mainhand, dropped it to TRI, and I have not cared or noticed since).

The thing I counted in my calculation was simple.

In BDO you try something at a 33% chance, and retry it at a 33% chance, and if you fail both times you end up with a weaker weapon that you can retry a lot with.

In L2 you try something at a 66% chance, and keep going until you fail, and IF you fail, you now have no weapon.

I'll spare you the statistical distrubution graphs. A BDO player's chance of 'going straight from PRI to TET' assuming that they have built enough stacks to have 33% odds DUO and TRI and a measly 11% on the TET attempt, is basically 1%. So if you were the sort of person who just 'never prevented level loss' you'd be 'taking this 1% chance repeatedly' to get your gear to the second highest it could possibly be, but at 11% chance to get to 'reasonable'.

General quickwork indicates that for L2 this 'reasonable', where you had your 11% chance starting from the bottom (yes, this is explicitly NOT doing the same as the BDO start point), is at +8. 5 Successful enchants in a row.

Average loss of items in the process if you start from unenchanted singles every time is by 'definition' 10 items and about 30 'enhancement items'. And just like BDO, you could 'start with that and end up with no progress'

Well, that's about enough, right?

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I just have no reason to believe that, from where I sit, because you're 'saying things about BDO that might explain it' but that are demonstrably not true enough for that to be the likely reason. In other words, whether you mean to or not, you're 'making up reasons why BDO might feel worse' without (yet) telling me why L2 feels 'okay'/good.

Nah, I'm just wrong. I got the most important (to me) clarification. I should've just worded my question better from the start, instead of constantly going into semi-philosophical weeds.

If you say that according to pure math a +16 is equal to a tet (and not even pen), then BDO's system is leagues beyond L2 in leniency towards the player.

My final question here would be this then. Does BDO make it easier to PEN previously top tiers of gear? Let's take console BDO. Now that they have Orange, is it easier for them to PEN gold (or at least blue) now? Cause L2 usually gave new ways of acquiring better gear and iirc even new ways of getting enchant scrolls, so even OEing became easier with time. So only the bleeding edge and maybe the penultimate tier would remain truly hardcore. Is that the case in BDO?

It's moreso that they were 'always easier'. It's more specific, just as I am sure it is in L2, based on 'when gear became available and in what ways'.

BDO also SORTA ditched the OE hardcore-ness years ago, and opened up multiple other paths.

I can't say relative to +16 or similar, I was hoping you'd be able to use the BDO numbers to give context, since that IS a thing I cannot find. I wouldn't know 'how many people would have +16' other than to go by the numbers generally.

The result of that is that all either of us could say certainly is 'whichever game requires less OE for effectiveness is probably nicer'.

Hence my long post giving the BDO example. You can enjoy most BDO content (not necessarily at high efficiency) with TRI Boss gear, and full TET Boss Gear (6 pieces total I believe) was considered 'softcap' for a very long time.

So, hit 1% odds 7 times, except that technically it's a little bit nicer than that because you MIGHT 'hit an 11%, fail, drop to DUO, and then (with some additional investment which I can calculate if you care) manage to get it with 4% odds.

So, whatever the L2 equivalent of 'hitting 1% odds 7 times is', was BDO's 'wow you've made it'.

Azherae wrote: »

Well, that's about enough, right?

Tbh this only confused me more, cause jesus fucking christ that system is convoluted for no good reason. I'm a simple man, I see item I see another item I combine then and see what happens. All these failstacks on other items that are then transfered to your main enhancement in order to increase the chance of success - while I think I understand that system itself, I find it fucking dumb If anything, that would be the most frustrating thing for me.

And if I understood correctly, you can't really have 2 of the same item and just alternate between their enhancement until one reaches your preffered lvl, right? Because that'd be a waste of money, cause failures would reduce durability and you want those kinds of failures cause they build stacks and you need stacks to better your chances. If that is correct then I hate the system even more

But that's beside the point now. I agree that on the larger scale BDO is kinder to players, because if those stats from the steam page are true, and if the math comes down to a "tet = +16 in L2" (which I believe is what you were trying to explain to me) - the fact that BDO had over 300 PENs in a year goes to show that its system provides much better enhancement progression, statistically speaking.

But you didn't answer my question. Do expansions that introduce a new tier of gear make the previous tiers easier to enhance? Or does pretty much nothing change and people just gotta keep grinding the exact same content until they overcome their unluckiness?

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Well, that's about enough, right?

Tbh this only confused me more, cause jesus fucking christ that system is convoluted for no good reason. I'm a simple man, I see item I see another item I combine then and see what happens. All these failstacks on other items that are then transfered to your main enhancement in order to increase the chance of success - while I think I understand that system itself, I find it fucking dumb If anything, that would be the most frustrating thing for me.

And if I understood correctly, you can't really have 2 of the same item and just alternate between their enhancement until one reaches your preffered lvl, right? Because that'd be a waste of money, cause failures would reduce durability and you want those kinds of failures cause they build stacks and you need stacks to better your chances. If that is correct then I hate the system even more

But that's beside the point now. I agree that on the larger scale BDO is kinder to players, because if those stats from the steam page are true, and if the math comes down to a "tet = +16 in L2" (which I believe is what you were trying to explain to me) - the fact that BDO had over 300 PENs in a year goes to show that its system provides much better enhancement progression, statistically speaking.

But you didn't answer my question. Do expansions that introduce a new tier of gear make the previous tiers easier to enhance? Or does pretty much nothing change and people just gotta keep grinding the exact same content until they overcome their unluckiness?

We're down to the quick answer parts again!

(Yes their system is convoluted, there's dozens of videos with people explaining their own personal enhancing STYLES).

And I accept that you hate it, because it is very convoluted.

"Two of the same item and alternate" is the correct way. The issue is 'getting two', which is exactly where we are in the L2 side, and why I have to ask in that way.

If you have 1 +12, and you want to 'have two so you can try to enhance', you have to be able to build another +12, and I don't know of any shortcut, right?

BDO's method of making things easier is the usual 'BDO levels' of dumb. They either outright GIVE you failstacks/enhancement materials, or, if you IGNORE all that explicitly, they increase the amount of money per hour you make grinding but do NOT increase the cost of the items that prevent the gear from develing.

When people talk about 'PEN Attempts' that's what they are referring to. It's about... 880,000,000 silver for one attempt on a Yellow Grade item even if you buy those things from NPC. (this has never changed ON CONSOLE that I know of)

What changes in the GAME is 'silver per hour'. So as the game expands more and more, you get more and more of it (they literally just increase the silver droprate from mobs in the same areas).

So 'yes', because lower GRADES of item have a lower cost in the item in question (Cron Stones).

tl;dr grind 22 hours, try once, no delevel, odds of success stay the exact same, Orange gear might require 40 hours for the same deal, or they'll raise the 'average silver per hour' to 66 million and then the Yellow will only take 13 hours while the Orange now takes 20-22, blah blah.

Azherae wrote: »

Hence my long post giving the BDO example. You can enjoy most BDO content (not necessarily at high efficiency) with TRI Boss gear, and full TET Boss Gear (6 pieces total I believe) was considered 'softcap' for a very long time.

So, hit 1% odds 7 times, except that technically it's a little bit nicer than that because you MIGHT 'hit an 11%, fail, drop to DUO, and then (with some additional investment which I can calculate if you care) manage to get it with 4% odds.

So, whatever the L2 equivalent of 'hitting 1% odds 7 times is', was BDO's 'wow you've made it'.

See and this is my point kinda. In L2 those "1% odds" is just crafting the new gear tier. You don't need to OE your gear at all to play REALLY comfortably, as I explained with the video I posted. So pretty much all of your grind comes down to just crafting the latest and best.

That latest and best at first comes through bosses only and then with future expansions gives more ways to acquire (quests and plain mob drops usually). So with each expansion you'd have a much easier time getting a set of gear that was the best in the last expansion (or at least getting the penultimate one much easier).

And distribution of newest best gear is obviously super limited, so it takes time to spread out. And I don't remember how BDO's world bosses distribute loot. Like, the gold tier is boss tier, right? So for a normal player, how long would it take to get a full set of that gear, w/o the OE?

If it's super fast, then the OE itself just equalizes with L2's gear acquisition, but with better chances. If you're a totally random player on a 5k L2 server and you're not in a strong guild, the newest drop from a boss would have an "illusory chance" of going to you of, well, 1/5k In other words - it fucking wouldn't go to you. And no one would sell it to you. And you would most likely not get it until it becomes acquirable through other means or you somehow join a guild that has the ability to farm that boss and you somehow run up the guild's ranks and get yourself into a party that's about to get the next loot. But the chances of those are pretty small, unless you're a super hardcore player who'd be valued by the guild.

Azherae wrote: »

So 'yes', because lower GRADES of item have a lower cost in the item in question (Cron Stones).

tl;dr grind 22 hours, try once, no delevel, odds of success stay the exact same, Orange gear might require 40 hours for the same deal, or they'll raise the 'average silver per hour' to 66 million and then the Yellow will only take 13 hours while the Orange now takes 20-22, blah blah.

And there's my answer. So yeah, in its own convoluted dumb way, BDO is still kinder to players than L2 was

We have not received permission from JamesSunderland to share the quoted post.

On S grades or just for fun on a C grade? Cause if they pushed S, or god forbid S80+ - then they're cheaters, RMTers and I hate them

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Hence my long post giving the BDO example. You can enjoy most BDO content (not necessarily at high efficiency) with TRI Boss gear, and full TET Boss Gear (6 pieces total I believe) was considered 'softcap' for a very long time.

So, hit 1% odds 7 times, except that technically it's a little bit nicer than that because you MIGHT 'hit an 11%, fail, drop to DUO, and then (with some additional investment which I can calculate if you care) manage to get it with 4% odds.

So, whatever the L2 equivalent of 'hitting 1% odds 7 times is', was BDO's 'wow you've made it'.

See and this is my point kinda. In L2 those "1% odds" is just crafting the new gear tier. You don't need to OE your gear at all to play REALLY comfortably, as I explained with the video I posted. So pretty much all of your grind comes down to just crafting the latest and best.

That latest and best at first comes through bosses only and then with future expansions gives more ways to acquire (quests and plain mob drops usually). So with each expansion you'd have a much easier time getting a set of gear that was the best in the last expansion (or at least getting the penultimate one much easier).

And distribution of newest best gear is obviously super limited, so it takes time to spread out. And I don't remember how BDO's world bosses distribute loot. Like, the gold tier is boss tier, right? So for a normal player, how long would it take to get a full set of that gear, w/o the OE?

If it's super fast, then the OE itself just equalizes with L2's gear acquisition, but with better chances. If you're a totally random player on a 5k L2 server and you're not in a strong guild, the newest drop from a boss would have an "illusory chance" of going to you of, well, 1/5k In other words - it fucking wouldn't go to you. And no one would sell it to you. And you would most likely not get it until it becomes acquirable through other means or you somehow join a guild that has the ability to farm that boss and you somehow run up the guild's ranks and get yourself into a party that's about to get the next loot. But the chances of those are pretty small, unless you're a super hardcore player who'd be valued by the guild.

Hm... I can tell you that I have enough Boss gear that I could start 'wasting it' on repairing other boss gear for some (there are times when this is efficient, and times when it is not, BDO is CONVOLUTED economically).

But I also go all out on Bosses so I can get into the 'upper tiers' of droprate when I do (the method of doing this is even more convoluted). Usually, a successful kill drops 0-2 of the item for everyone on the server and there are 16 or so servers where they spawn (I don't actually even know if the Droprate Tiers are shared across servers, don't hurt your head on BDO nonsense).

But this is also RNG, so... for some people, it's 'I tapped the boss a couple times and got it lol' and for others...

The Pity Trade is set at 100 items and a 'random' normally will get 1 or 2 of those items from a kill, so 50-70 kills to get the item as a one time quest, so you would just have to fight each boss 70 times even if super unlucky.

On average, 300 boss kills, I guess, so 2-600 days (more convoluted, don't ask)

Azherae wrote: »

On average, 300 boss kills, I guess, so 2-600 days (more convoluted, don't ask)

Hmm, and does this gear tier gate you from getting Orange? Or can you get blue to a PEN and then go farm for Orange?

I'm just trying to figure out who's really worse and this post has made it much harder. 20 potential months for a full set of gear is definitely quite slower than L2, considering that L2 updates ~every 6 months, so by the 3rd update that particular tier of gear would be real fucking old and easily acquirable. Hell, you'd probably be getting higher tiers already at that point.

And all of that in BDO w/o even the OEing said gear, which seems to be the main gate to content. Hmmmm

We have not received permission from JamesSunderland to share the quoted post.

Thank you, data extended, clarity (in some spaces) achieved.

As is often the case with us, we are not talking about the same thing. But that's fine in this case because Ashes OE system 'can't be understood' at this time except to 'assume it will be like L2' right down to the SoulShots.

I believe we disagree on 'the fundamental principle of why people hate OE' and always have, and will always continue to. So rather than continue to say anything about 'easier or harder', 'kinder' or similar from my end, I'll go back to a more sensible point.

If people hate OE because of BDO, then all one would have to do is offer them something that would make them not have the same problem as BDO causes.

For me personally, though, the only thing that can improve BDO's system if insisting on OE as a generality is to do exactly what they did.

Offer guaranteed path alternatives that then make the item character/family bound.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

On average, 300 boss kills, I guess, so 2-600 days (more convoluted, don't ask)

Hmm, and does this gear tier gate you from getting Orange? Or can you get blue to a PEN and then go farm for Orange?

I'm just trying to figure out who's really worse and this post has made it much harder. 20 potential months for a full set of gear is definitely quite slower than L2, considering that L2 updates ~every 6 months, so by the 3rd update that particular tier of gear would be real fucking old and easily acquirable. Hell, you'd probably be getting higher tiers already at that point.

And all of that in BDO w/o even the OEing said gear, which seems to be the main gate to content. Hmmmm

Right because BDO is terrible.

Like, mind-numbingly terrible. I would never ask anyone else to even try to understand it.

And since James has clarified that the 'point of contention', the 'math', is NOT really the question here, then sure.

I have no doubt that L2 is an overall better experience WHILE doing your OE. But I was only talking about the OE itself, which is 'fair to do' in only ONE way.

"Can you remove a specific aspect from BDO's OE that will make people happy and that aspect NOT be the RNG part?"

Because BDO doesn't have item destruction on regular gear anyway, right? It's almost apples and oranges. But overall Ashes is offering to 'Be like BDO' and the point you make sometimes comes off as "It should be MOSTLY like BDO but gear should ALSO be destroyed".

Which works, but only in the sense that 'more people stay weaker for longer and lose progress more randomly'.

Azherae wrote: »

Which works, but only in the sense that 'more people stay weaker for longer and lose progress more randomly'.

I definitely want the former, but willing to forgo the latter if the former is upheld

I think I linked this thread to you before, but I'll do it again just in case. https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/52447/a-suggestion-for-crafting-decay-enchanting-system#latest

Just yet another of my suggestions trying to find a compromise between different systems, while trying to uphold the other systems.

I'm going to bed now so just as a final message, I definitely agree that BDO's OEing system is kinder to players, that both systems are definitely bad if you dislike gambling and that BDO is so damn awefuly designed And I'm sure that L2's design isn't much better, but I'm too biased towards it to fully admit its faults gn

@Azherae I thought of another semi-relevant point. While it's true that it's better for the player in BDO to enhance their stuff, L2's +16 (if you have the resources to get to it) provide you with a much much much better experience gameplay-wise, while BDO's TET seems like just the next best thing but not the ultimate best thing.

As James pointed out above, even lower super OEd gear tiers would be equal in strength to mid-high OEd top tier gear, on top of them being cheaper to use because their soulshots are way cheaper.

It's just that L2's OEing always puts a strain on the crafting process of the whole server, while obviously BDO's approach is just "go farm enhancement items or p2w", so there's no strain on anything outside of mob respawns (I'd assume channels deal with that somewhat) which lets the game to have a yet another insanely rare stage of upgrade.

So this kinda goes back to the "you want bdo, but with OE destruction on top" comment. I prefer a crafting system that doesn't stop producing stuff and it seems like BDO's does (? correct me if I'm wrong or if this doesn't even apply). So if Intrepid finds a way to perpetuate item production w/o rng OE destruction - I'll be fine with that. Durability loss seems like it might do that, though that would obviously have to be tested and tuned properly.

NiKr wrote: »

@Azherae I thought of another semi-relevant point. While it's true that it's better for the player in BDO to enhance their stuff, L2's +16 (if you have the resources to get to it) provide you with a much much much better experience gameplay-wise, while BDO's TET seems like just the next best thing but not the ultimate best thing.

As James pointed out above, even lower super OEd gear tiers would be equal in strength to mid-high OEd top tier gear, on top of them being cheaper to use because their soulshots are way cheaper.

It's just that L2's OEing always puts a strain on the crafting process of the whole server, while obviously BDO's approach is just "go farm enhancement items or p2w", so there's no strain on anything outside of mob respawns (I'd assume channels deal with that somewhat) which lets the game to have a yet another insanely rare stage of upgrade.

So this kinda goes back to the "you want bdo, but with OE destruction on top" comment. I prefer a crafting system that doesn't stop producing stuff and it seems like BDO's does (? correct me if I'm wrong or if this doesn't even apply). So if Intrepid finds a way to perpetuate item production w/o rng OE destruction - I'll be fine with that. Durability loss seems like it might do that, though that would obviously have to be tested and tuned properly.

Agreed.

BDO used to have the form of this where it actually involved crafting if you had TET gear, but moved away from that because their boss drops are instant.

I was going to go 'I shouldn't derail about this' but then I realized the topic of the thread, so I absolutely SHOULD, especially since we are this far in.

BDO's economy for a person who wants the game to involve player driven economic behaviour, is definitionally bad.

1. Trading is impossible so everything goes through the Central Market
2. The Central Market prices are 'fixed' and their ranges to be manually adjusted by the devs when they are doing one of their 'update the game, overhaul the economy!' updates.(this doesn't always happen)
3. Gearwise, players create minimal items of value, and generally these are created at a loss if sold to other players (they moved away from this over the years basically)
4. The production pipelines are all messed up, and your best bet of making money through crafting/markets is to 'figure out where the devs controlling the economy made the last error/forgot to update something' and profit from their slip-up.
5. All the items that grant 'specializations' in Crafting that matter in BDO are actually 'cheap' relative to the changes they make to increase 'silver per hour' so true specialization is difficult (but hey at least those are exactly OE RNG to make so they're very limited)
6. The enhancement items are actually the 'real drop' from gathering, basically they constantly incentivize the player to gather 'just about anything' and have the gear enhancement items drop randomly while doing so, and THAT is where your profit gathering comes from.

So basically, BDO does not do 'Crafting'. per se. It does 'Life Skilling', which is probably why you hear the term used that way.

If I log on now, the gameplay loop will be:

"Go to a spot with some wild cattle and oneshot them in the hundreds to gather 600 Beef to make Pet Food for my pets only (inefficient to sell it)"
"Afk ride to another city to pick up 100 fish that are auto-gathered for me by a Worker (other Pet Food ingredient)"
"Stop to log to my Boss Alt to smack a boss a few times and hope I get a weapon box today."
"Log back to main character."
"Go cook that up in 3-4 minutes into around 260 Pet Food (lasts at least a week!) because I have 'TET' Cooking Speed gear"
"Cook up some ridiculous amount of Fruit Pudding with the excess stuff my workers gather and Milk/Milk Products which are great because they are the easiest/fastest way to rapidly burn through 'Energy' for profit."
"Go sell those Fruit Pudding to an NPC for silver"
"Check if the gear I left auto-crafting in the city finished so I can do some upgrades/failstacking on my helmet"
(this is a loss to craft, to make a subpar helmet, which I just like, and I gotta do SOMETHING I enjoy in this game at some point or I'll go crazy)
"Afk auto-ride around poking stuff while figuring out how to 'RP' a reason why I have received today's piles of Login Rewards and RNG-Box login rewards."
"Go get all the stuff off my Farm which has become harvestable because of me passing enough time with all the other stuff."

None of this is crafting anymore except me 'losing money to simulate a functional economy WITH Crafting' (the helmet).
I could choose to lose money on Alchemy instead, but they haven't fixed that yet and I don't feel like making the product on the chain that is profitable. No specific reason, the act of doing so is about equal to making the thing I like making. I just like to IMAGINE that BDO has niches and stuff.

Mine is just 'not Dev Approved' at the moment so I'm not interacting with it. They might never fix it, but that's fine, they do that sometimes. It'll just become 'part of the game' for that specific thing to be unprofitable and you 'have to do something else to profit'.

The part to pay attention to though, is that BDO's overall system, if they didn't make the Boss Drop instant, as Ashes doesn't intend to do, would work the way 'Green Gear' in BDO does, which DOES cause gear creation (the subpar helmet).

Which means that from MY side, all you have to do to achieve the 'correct outcome' in BDO is 'do what Ashes already says to do'. Quite literally that's it. If you wanted BDO to keep CRAFTING going, you would just 'make it possible to craft Boss Gear or Boss Gear REPAIR items out of the boss' pity drops'.

But they decided people don't like crafting/relying on crafters so instead you can just trade the Pity Drops to an NPC for Generic Repair Item that happens to be most effective on Boss Gear but applies to literally all gear in the game if you want.

BDO ditched crafting long ago, because it philosophically changed from 'MMO' to 'Single Player adventure game with Guild/Node wars'. But I say ALL this to say, BDO's systems are annoying/terrible because they are usually INTENTIONALLY 1 or 2 steps away from good, and they took those steps away ON PURPOSE.

It's a perfect model for studying 'how to ruin the MMO part of an MMO, having started with an actual MMO'.

Azherae wrote: »

It's a perfect model for studying 'how to ruin the MMO part of an MMO, having started with an actual MMO'.

Yeah, it definitely sounds atrocious In a way I'm still happy that the game didn't hook me strongly enough back when it was releasing. While I'm sure that I'd enjoy quite a few parts of it, experiencing yet another mmo ruined by its devs would've been devastating for me and I don't think I've heard about BDO private servers (though I haven't really looked into it), so I'm not sure if I could repeat the L2's cycle with BDO.

I hope we hear more about crafting in ashes (the more system scale, rather than "well, you can hit a piece of metal instead of just hitting a button"). Pretty much the entire economy will revolve around it, so that information would be highly appreciated. And I want it for selfish reasons too, cause I wanna be a crafter

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

It's a perfect model for studying 'how to ruin the MMO part of an MMO, having started with an actual MMO'.

Yeah, it definitely sounds atrocious In a way I'm still happy that the game didn't hook me strongly enough back when it was releasing. While I'm sure that I'd enjoy quite a few parts of it, experiencing yet another mmo ruined by its devs would've been devastating for me and I don't think I've heard about BDO private servers (though I haven't really looked into it), so I'm not sure if I could repeat the L2's cycle with BDO.

I hope we hear more about crafting in ashes (the more system scale, rather than "well, you can hit a piece of metal instead of just hitting a button"). Pretty much the entire economy will revolve around it, so that information would be highly appreciated. And I want it for selfish reasons too, cause I wanna be a crafter

Following briefly on from the useful part of all that then, let's discuss that helmet and see how you feel about it.

I am literally now in the city, looking at these 5 completed Zereth Helms (unenchanted base).

I have in my inventory a +12 Zereth Helmet (think... +5 or so equivalent, BDO Safe Enchant on armor goes up to +5 and the +6 is at L2 odds or better).

Just a moment ago it was at +10, I tried to enhance it a few times from near-full max durability (90 of 100) and I got... 2 successes (back to back, at 13% odds and 11% odds respectively, go me) and 10 failures, each of which cost 5 durability.

I now need 6 unenchanted base Zereth Helms to repair this to 100% durability. (there's another method to get 5x more with a single helm from a different item). If this game had actual crafting in it, I'd have 'asked you to make me 6 Helms' (or more) so I could keep trying to enhance this helmet.

There are currently 19 on the Market. If it wasn't a loss to make these (at the MOMENT it might actually not be, but it usually is) someone out there would be getting to actually play the crafting part of this game (if there was one).

Translate to Ashes. To me this is sufficient. I want to keep TRYING my enhancements, so I need more helmets. In this sense it is what you are used to. If I get it to the point where it loses enhancement levels too, then I continue to need items for as long as I keep trying.

I already have a TET Zereth Helmet. I'm doing this so I have a SECOND, so that I can poke at PEN Zereth. Every time I do that, I will EITHER:

Lose 1 level, then have to raise it back to TET, using more of 'your' Zereth Helmets'.

OR:

Spend the 'no delevels' items, so that I don't have to worry about that, but still need more Zereth Helmets.

In both cases, you are crafting, and I am buying.

Azherae wrote: »

In both cases, you are crafting, and I am buying.

Yep, to me that sounds pretty much perfect. So as long as this interaction can be upheld, while somehow removing that rng part of the equation that seems to be feeding this interaction - I think the biggest amount of people would be satisfied. And if the enhancement method is tied to the system too - even better. Iirc that's already planned to be the case in Ashes, so as long as they deliver on that - we good.

I, for the life of me, couldn't remember why I think that L2's armor had 55% chance to successfully OE, but I found this graph which I think is truthful.


So, if all gear in BDO has the same chances - it's even better than L2. I know we're past this, but it was bugging my damn mind and I decided to just provide some additional data, if you ever need it.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

In both cases, you are crafting, and I am buying.

Yep, to me that sounds pretty much perfect. So as long as this interaction can be upheld, while somehow removing that rng part of the equation that seems to be feeding this interaction - I think the biggest amount of people would be satisfied. And if the enhancement method is tied to the system too - even better. Iirc that's already planned to be the case in Ashes, so as long as they deliver on that - we good.

For clarity, I don't actually care about the RNG being removed (this is why I was suspicious that people cared about OE Item destruction because of the BDO system specifically other than maybe 'imagining BDO but with destruction).

I definitely don't like it and many subparts are annoying, but those subparts are actually very easy to work past, games just never DO that because... reasons.

Guaranteed Enhancement for certain tiers of gear in BDO is possible. It normally takes out a 30% durability chunk (3 more Helmets plz) and about 5x the required enhancement items.

BDO doesn't fix their broken parts because the broken parts are now 'part of the game's structure', no matter how hard the Lead Designer works to fix them, someone, probably in corporate, always negates what he does within 2 updates. It's painful to watch, as I've said.

We just need to make sure Ashes doesn't let its 'unnecessary broken parts' get entrenched into core systems, and I am sure Intrepid is counting on us for exactly that.

So if it's me deciding, and you say "I think we need the RNG or something similar so that the demand doesn't eventually dry up", definitely keeping the RNG. I'll just assume for now that you are okay with what Ashes currently proposes (relative to what I've discussed from the BDO side). Durability loss with new item requirement.

I personally hope it isn't so simplistic, but I want to see what they come up with, without building up any biases towards 'my own approaches'.

Azherae wrote: »

So if it's me deciding, and you say "I think we need the RNG or something similar so that the demand doesn't eventually dry up", definitely keeping the RNG. I'll just assume for now that you are okay with what Ashes currently proposes (relative to what I've discussed from the BDO side). Durability loss with new item requirement.

I personally hope it isn't so simplistic, but I want to see what they come up with, without building up any biases towards 'my own approaches'.

Yep, that's my current stance as well and pretty much the realization I came to by the end of my thread suggesting a different crafting/enchantment system.

I'll be even more fine with the currently planned system if they manage to keep the inflow of mats on the lower side of the spectrum. I'm sure that a ton of people will complain, but that's a whole other discussion for a whole other day.

NiKr wrote: »

I, for the life of me, couldn't remember why I think that L2's armor had 55% chance to successfully OE, but I found this graph with I think it truthful.


So, if all gear in BDO has the same chances - it's even better than L2. I know we're past this, but it was bugging my damn mind and I decided to just provide some additional data, if you ever need it.

It's complicated as usual. Probably not worth addressing in general, and since I believe James was always saying that things were better before, this is meaningful only as it pertains to one question which I will direct at @JamesSunderland specifically.

Why on earth would they have changed the flat 66% to all this? Should I assume this would be 'at a point where they had an item to prevent the item being destroyed'?

This is also what I found, and ALSO that they didn't add 'item delevel', the Scroll was just difficult to get. But that is a thing I cannot confirm fully without you, I believe you said.

@NiKr , basically this looks ALMOST like:

"BDO copied L2's numbers for certain things." / "L2 changed to BDO numbers." / "The Secret Cabal of MMOligarchs that control our fates decided that this is what we get now."

I'm betting on the third, those guys are scary.

EDIT: To clarify, as you probably saw from the chart, BDO numbers look like the 'Armor Upgrade' numbers from this table, generally, though all in all, they make you 'learn the precise values for each grade of gear and in some cases type'.

Azherae wrote: »

I'm betting on the third, those guys are scary.

Yeah, I'm almost sure it's the third. Especially when it comes to all korean games