Concerns with in game economy

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I think BDO proves that even an as purely action game as BDO is can still have power scaling design that fucks the balance completely.

So yes, it is about how the game itself is made, but tab targetness doesn't have as much of an impact as you might think. Your enemy might have a +16 bow, but you have ultimate evasion and he literally can't hit you. Or your enemy might have a +16 magic mace, but you're a tank with a magic mirror and no jewelry, so the mage dies before you just from hitting you. There are ways of winning against someone who has better gear, even in tab games.

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People will always quit. Some people would quit just on principle of a single mechanic that they don't like (Dygz probably being the brightest example of that on this forum). Even if you tell people "yes, there's rng in OEing, but the entire OE path at max lvl will only give 5% power to the player so you REALLY DON'T NEED IT" - people will still be complaining about "muh rng" and "waaaah, those people got lucky and they're now stronger than me".

And if you tie OE progression purely to time - you're literally cutting thousands of people out of that progression path. And if it's not only time, but boss/mob farming as well - you're cutting out probably around 98-99% of players, because only the strongest ones will be able to kill bosses enough times to loot what they need and they'll also have the money to buy out any other item.

I doubt that a super lucky casual player who manages to loot some super rare item would care to keep it if a big rich boi from the strongest guild gives the casual player months-worth of hardcore grinding for that item.

And just as you pointed out, Ashes won't have a single viable weapon or a single set, so if a casual tank loots some mega rare spellbook - I doubt he'd go "oh damn, I'd better rebuild my entire character just to fit this spellbook's gameplay".

TL;DR the rich will always be more powerful. Someone will always leave because of that. It all comes down to how Intrepid design their powerlvl scaling.

@NiKr - BDO does not prove it, because BDO is not a truly action game.

Just figured you should know for general conversations.

The rule: "As an outside observer/reading a decision from BDO Devs before 2020, no matter how bad/dumb it SOUNDS, it's always worse."

If the decision doesn't come straight from Je-seok Hang himself, don't trust it.

And as always, I'll remind that the issue people seem to have with OE RNG is 'losing progress', not 'RNG'. Maybe that's me interpreting the data poorly/with bias, but I still haven't actually full-parsed that thread yet.

Part of your example doesn't make full sense though...

NiKr wrote: »

So yes, it is about how the game itself is made, but tab targetness doesn't have as much of an impact as you might think. Your enemy might have a +16 bow, but you have ultimate evasion and he literally can't hit you.

Sure this is still power scaling/design related, but basically, if you have a +16 weapon and it doesn't hit 'Ultimate Evasion' sets, and those are NOT 'full sets of +15 evasion gear', I doubt that situation would last long.

My point is that you shouldn't consider that part of 'skill', that's part of balance. The Devs are directly controlling who wins there, the player who chooses to make the Evasion build is demonstrating only the skill of 'figuring out which way the Devs made them win' and the complaint will just be on the other side.

Source: BDO. Again.

Azherae wrote: »

NiKr - BDO does not prove it, because BDO is not a truly action game.

Of course it fucking isn't God damn that game.

But you've said before that you, theoretically, can outdodge super high lvl mobs even if you don't have the gear. Doesn't that make it action? Or is pvp way different from pve and there's always at least one ability that will always hit?

Azherae wrote: »

And as always, I'll remind that the issue people seem to have with OE RNG is 'losing progress', not 'RNG'. Maybe that's me interpreting the data poorly/with bias, but I still haven't actually full-parsed that thread yet.

Maybe that is the case, but as James pointed out, L2 returned a pretty big chunk of your progress to you. If OE methods are super expensive and a failed OE just removes all the enchant stages - you've lost progress. And I sure as hell hope Ashes doesn't have a "you failed OE? Oh, don't worry little baby nothing has changed, so just keep OEing".

Azherae wrote: »

Sure this is still power scaling/design related, but basically, if you have a +16 weapon and it doesn't hit 'Ultimate Evasion' sets, and those are NOT 'full sets of +15 evasion gear', I doubt that situation would last long.

My point is that you shouldn't consider that part of 'skill', that's part of balance. The Devs are directly controlling who wins there, the player who chooses to make the Evasion build is demonstrating only the skill of 'figuring out which way the Devs made them win' and the complaint will just be on the other side.

Source: BDO. Again.

This is more about L2's very particular design. I wasn't talking about builds cause L2's gear didn't really have "builds". A few sets of gear gave you a tiiiiny bit of evasion but that's not enough to overcome the accuracy of an archer.

I was talking about this UE


Most of the time, at full buff, archers wouldn't have enough space for accuracy buffs, but their default one would be roughly enough to hit dagger classes. But with this, pretty much 99% of their attacks would miss. I've played on a private server with a shitton of whales with +50 weapons (private server "feature") and quite often dagger classes would be the ones to defeat those kinds of players even w/o a super OEd weapon.

Obviously this wasn't a skill that was available to everyone, but I was just saying that even tab target games have ways of defeating people who appear to be too powerful.

And yes, if we're talking skill-wise, action games would provide even more ways of defeating those players, but if even BDO isn't action enough to prevent this - I dunno what kind of game would. Maybe NW allows lvl1 players to kill max lvl ones (same difference in power lvls)?

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

NiKr - BDO does not prove it, because BDO is not a truly action game.

Of course it fucking isn't God damn that game.

But you've said before that you, theoretically, can outdodge super high lvl mobs even if you don't have the gear. Doesn't that make it action? Or is pvp way different from pve and there's always at least one ability that will always hit?

Azherae wrote: »

And as always, I'll remind that the issue people seem to have with OE RNG is 'losing progress', not 'RNG'. Maybe that's me interpreting the data poorly/with bias, but I still haven't actually full-parsed that thread yet.

Maybe that is the case, but as James pointed out, L2 returned a pretty big chunk of your progress to you. If OE methods are super expensive and a failed OE just removes all the enchant stages - you've lost progress. And I sure as hell hope Ashes doesn't have a "you failed OE? Oh, don't worry little baby nothing has changed, so just keep OEing".

Azherae wrote: »

Sure this is still power scaling/design related, but basically, if you have a +16 weapon and it doesn't hit 'Ultimate Evasion' sets, and those are NOT 'full sets of +15 evasion gear', I doubt that situation would last long.

My point is that you shouldn't consider that part of 'skill', that's part of balance. The Devs are directly controlling who wins there, the player who chooses to make the Evasion build is demonstrating only the skill of 'figuring out which way the Devs made them win' and the complaint will just be on the other side.

Source: BDO. Again.

This is more about L2's very particular design. I wasn't talking about builds cause L2's gear didn't really have "builds". A few sets of gear gave you a tiiiiny bit of evasion but that's not enough to overcome the accuracy of an archer.

I was talking about this UE


Most of the time, at full buff, archers wouldn't have enough space for accuracy buffs, but their default one would be roughly enough to hit dagger classes. But with this, pretty much 99% of their attacks would miss. I've played on a private server with a shitton of whales with +50 weapons (private server "feature") and quite often dagger classes would be the ones to defeat those kinds of players even w/o a super OEd weapon.

Obviously this wasn't a skill that was available to everyone, but I was just saying that even tab target games have ways of defeating people who appear to be too powerful.

And yes, if we're talking skill-wise, action games would provide even more ways of defeating those players, but if even BDO isn't action enough to prevent this - I dunno what kind of game would. Maybe NW allows lvl1 players to kill max lvl ones (same difference in power lvls)?

Oh you meant the actual ability Ultimate Evasion (the FFXI term is no better, 'Perfect Dodge', so I guess it's funny both ways).

Anyways, quick versions...

BDO has melee class abilities that hit a 180+ degree cone 10-15 units in front of them while granting Super Armor. You've probably seen certain posters mention things like this. You can outrange these, but it's almost always an active retreating dodge ability to do so.

Or you could build high Evasion and hope their Accuracy was bad and their giant wave slash just missed you because, y'know. Evasion stat. (note that I personally have no problems with this situation in a lower TTK game, but I'd prefer 'less damage' instead of 'miss' for Abilities).

Seriously, how hard is it to make Evasion and block stats result in 'glancing blows and reduced damage instead', and tie 'cone position' to that? (I'm whining, I know how hard this actually is, it's almost entirely dependent on their Networking solution)

Binary hit/miss in a high speed no-knockdowns game is no fun either. Down with binary RNG of all forms!

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Even so, there's still a big difference.

Yesterday in BDO (probably subconsciously spurred by this forum) I just enchanted everything I have on my Kuno on a whim with minimal backups.

Nuked it all for no real reward, ofc, because that's how I roll. So now I'm at like... 60% of the power level from before, and most of that is from 'stuff they gave me for doing Season stuff' and my PEN Shoes.

But the point is, I could 'on a whim' do that BECAUSE I don't lose the whole item. I 'downgrade'. It wasn't necessarily SMART to do this without backups, but if I wanted to do it WITH backups... I'd need to make the backups. Who has time for that?

My point is (mostly @NiKr) , technically I'm contributing MORE to the degrading of gear supply on the server (or would be, but this is BDO, so I'm actually working around that with barely any effort) because the 'just delevel' makes me MORE WILLING to just go 'eh I can go without 40% of my power for a while, that might even be a little challenging, but if I SUCCEED wow that will be nice, GO DICE ROLL!

But I didn't do it for the Accessories.

Because I can lose those. And they'll just be gone.

That's the psych profile you're dealing with. I'll randomly tap even my mainhand from TET back down to PRI on a whim, but my BELT? Nah, I might LOSE that.

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And Ashes reduced this particular issue with their diminishing returns on CCs. But yeah, getting permastunned was definitely a problem.

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In my experience unless the mage had a shitton of hp - he'd usually die before the tank. Either oneshot with the "magic mirror (proper name is Shield Deflect Magic, cause I forgot it last time) + no jewelry" trick or outskilled with UDs against Enlightenment and other tricks. It would obviously be harder than fighting an equally OEd mage, but was still possible.

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A quick YT search only gives one video from 12 years ago (everything else is past GoD). And in that video he's constantly under some Hero buff and is seemingly fighting people who seem to even have A-grade wearing players among them, which to me indicates a huuuge difference in power even outside of his +16 weapon. There's also the classic rule of pvp moviemakers - show your wins not your losses. Only people who played with him back then would know the % of his wins.

But yes, there was definitely a period where glads could do quite a bit of damage, especially if they had superior OE and superior elemental enchantments. But irrc that was maybe an update or two out of several years of absolute gimpness, and even then the power mainly came from OE, so "normal" glads were still kinda weak.

And I do also hope that Intrepid doesn't let class balance (OEs included) to get quite to those kinds of lvls.

Azherae wrote: »

My point is (mostly NiKr), technically I'm contributing MORE to the degrading of gear supply on the server (or would be, but this is BDO, so I'm actually working around that with barely any effort) because the 'just delevel' makes me MORE WILLING to just go 'eh I can go without 40% of my power for a while, that might even be a little challenging, but if I SUCCEED wow that will be nice, GO DICE ROLL!

But I didn't do it for the Accessories.

Because I can lose those. And they'll just be gone.

That's the psych profile you're dealing with. I'll randomly tap even my mainhand from TET back down to PRI on a whim, but my BELT? Nah, I might LOSE that.

This is where our views probably differ a bit. I want most people to not try and OE their stuff. I want them to think "nah, that's way too risky for me". Because I know that there'll be a few crazy people that go "fuck it, I'm all-in until I get to the max limit".

The majority of players not OEing their stuff would mean more gear at a certain tier. But unless Intrepid decide to counteract that with a heightened mob spawn or rates on needed gatherables - having more people on the same tier of progress means a ton of pressure on the repair requirements of that tier.

The game will have gear decay even outside of OEs, so the server overall will always need mat churn. It's just that you can have it through purely repairs or through "OE your stuff and keep feeding it mats until you reach your goal".

L2 had the "decay churn" in the form of 60% recipes, while BDO has it in the form of endless OEing on weapons/armor. And in this context I'm curious as to how many people in BDO have PEN accessories. Is it only uberwhales? Is it the crazies? Is there even anyone? Cause BDO has a younger generation of players, this would tell me whether the majority's attitude towards L2-like OE mechanics is the same or not.

@NiKr there would be no way to know for certain, all I can tell you is...

"The game keeps adding guaranteed methods of getting such gear, even for gear that is definitely not necessary to do this for which could be left alone."

I do have a semi-anecdotal datapoint though, related to the Belgium thing I mentioned prior.

There was a discussion on an official BDO stream that was the culmination of a community issue.

EU Players don't Enchant Accessories. They also enchant gear much less.

To the point where they were going to make some modifications to the EU server (instead they released an easier source of accessories through actual content, and improved the number of Free Logins that just give you gear).

The reason for this is that EU players are 'trained' by their culture, etc, apparently, to calculate odds on things like that in games. It's 'well known enough' how predatory lootboxes are, that it makes people look harder at even RNG systems that don't involve RL cash (or only involve it indirectly).

Basically, Western Europeans apparently didn't like the odds of Enchanting so they didn't do it. The result was that the server supply of high-enchant gear for other people to buy dried up almost entirely.

Note, this has NOTHING to do with the supply of 'stuff you can enchant with'. In fact, it turned out (as explained/alluded to on a later stream) that most of the people who wanted this 'fixed' didn't actually want an increase in supply of accessories at all. They just wanted OTHER people to do the enchanting so they could buy the items, because they didn't want to take the risk of doing it themselves.

Everyone knows that Enchanting is just playing the lottery for someone else, once you have your pieces, so EU apparently just didn't do it. This also changed their farming habits, because they wouldn't farm in areas where the money would come from Accessories dropped.

Their server culture was apparently entirely different because they have such a different response to RNG enchanting, and I can't say with certainty how different OTHER than 'the fact that the Community Leads acknowledged the issue and said that the Devs were seriously looking into solutions' and then AGAIN when the 'solutions' were implemented, basically saying 'ok we realize that your issue was not supply, it's just the culture, we'll look into different solutions'.

Since THEN the changes have been 'just give people more free accessories and put the best ones in only the top level areas' and 'make them drops from instanced bosses that spawn per Family'.

You can decide what that 'means' to you. I found it interesting back then. Their trajectory hasn't changed much since.

Latest update to the game?

"Cloud Accessories". New, free Almost-BiS accessories with easy enhancement options.

Accessories in BDO are almost 50% of your character power, depending on how you calculate a certain thing.

I can't find the data on 'number of players with PEN accessories' apparently. I feel like another official stream had this data a year or more ago but I unfortunately have the 'benefit' of most people I talked to about this stuff before Ashes 'also tracking it' or 'just trusting me and not asking for source' so I would just remember the trends.

Honestly I'm going right back to that as soon as TL drops. No offense to you (especially since you ALSO don't generally 'ask for the receipts') but that sort of thing just ends up feeling silly when you're as arrogant as I am.

A good 'hubris check' I suppose.

Azherae wrote: »

"The game keeps adding guaranteed methods of getting such gear, even for gear that is definitely not necessary to do this for which could be left alone."

So kinda what L2 did and kinda what I suggested for AoC's gear progression over the years. Add newer stuff that's hard to get, but make the older stuff easier to get and/or upgrade higher.

Azherae wrote: »

You can decide what that 'means' to you. I found it interesting back then. Their trajectory hasn't changed much since.

I sadly couldn't play on the EU servers back in L2's heydays, but that video I posted from a siege was on EU servers, and my argument with that video was "see, people don't OE as much", so what's more likely is just that EU people have always been this way and it's the other cultures that like to gamble more. Koreans seem to be way closer to CIS people, cause we both love our OEd gear that we poured our time/money into. Dunno about the US, but what Neurath said seems to imply that they're the more gambling type too.

So w/o any concrete info it does seem that general trends haven't changed all that much. And the recent popularity of gacha games and lootboxes (within general masses that is) does seem to imply that majority isn't necessarily super opposed to RNG, and it's mainly the hardcore gamers who see through all that bullshit (and apparently EU is full of those people ).

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

"The game keeps adding guaranteed methods of getting such gear, even for gear that is definitely not necessary to do this for which could be left alone."

So kinda what L2 did and kinda what I suggested for AoC's gear progression over the years. Add newer stuff that's hard to get, but make the older stuff easier to get and/or upgrade higher.

Azherae wrote: »

You can decide what that 'means' to you. I found it interesting back then. Their trajectory hasn't changed much since.

I sadly couldn't play on the EU servers back in L2's heydays, but that video I posted from a siege was on EU servers, and my argument with that video was "see, people don't OE as much", so what's more likely is just that EU people have always been this way and it's the other cultures that like to gamble more. Koreans seem to be way closer to CIS people, cause we both love our OEd gear that we poured our time/money into. Dunno about the US, but what Neurath said seems to imply that they're the more gambling type too.

So w/o any concrete info it does seem that general trends haven't changed all that much. And the recent popularity of gacha games and lootboxes (within general masses that is) does seem to imply that majority isn't necessarily super opposed to RNG, and it's mainly the hardcore gamers who see through all that bullshit (and apparently EU is full of those people ).

As I said, no way to know. I currently believe personally that the culture matters. I didn't read Neurath's post before now, but it checks with the data and trends I have from the years of tracking Console BDO.

The EU thing, I'm almost certain is literally just culture. The Community Leads themselves basically said so.

To the effect of:
"The Devs can't do anything about EU stuff because it's just the way EU players are, if you want stuff just enchant it yourself."

Also, to be clear, and the reason I am suspicious of your conclusion, is that they don't usually add new stuff that is 'harder to get'. They add Easier or 'Just given to you'. Sometimes this is 'baseline' for the usual reason, but quite often, it's not (or it is establishing a new baseline).

I'm not really concerned if Ashes does this, since this stuff is always, in some way, beneficial to the rich/ahead players anyway. Even if you give me 'free stuff', if I'm ahead, I figure out a way to profit off it, since it means that at SOME point I can do less work in one place.

The issue, if anything, is churn/nicheness. If RNG OE is important to the feeling of a game and 'having it become more niche' is worth doing that, then great, go for it. I'll definitely be happy to watch and track the outcomes.

One of the main draws that BDO has, though, which matters a lot and honestly I often forget about... is that FOR a PvE player, it's a VERY PvE game. You just ignore PvP situations 90% of the time. I think Dygz was noting that he basically never got attacked.

I get attacked about... once or twice a month now, if that. Depending on where I am, I ignore it. OWPvP in BDO is 'not a thing' for most people.

I think that's what I'm trying to get at here? The 'hey just don't OE too high, it's fine' people are ALSO likely to 'just not interact with some of the core principles of Ashes', in my opinion, if the subset of people who ARE interacting with it and succeeding are also 'winning'. Resulting in a gameplay type, combined with the Corruption rules and ability to attack people while they are doing their PvE, that seems unhelpful. That's what people often bring up in these threads when they are complaining about 'just losing to someone because they got better RNG'. It's not even that it is demotivating, it's that it can, for some, make the experience itself 'empty'.

tl;dr Ashes sounds to me like it is trying to be too overall competitive to be compatible with RNG OE Item Destruction and not be an even more niche game.

But recent decisions seem to be funneling the 'competitive' parts of it into particular spaces, so maybe not.

Azherae wrote: »

Also, to be clear, and the reason I am suspicious of your conclusion, is that they don't usually add new stuff that is 'harder to get'. They add Easier or 'Just given to you'. Sometimes this is 'baseline' for the usual reason, but quite often, it's not (or it is establishing a new baseline).

Are the new Red items easy to get? You said that orange stuff could take months, so I assumed that Red would be at roughly the same point if not harder, cause it's supposed to be even better.

Azherae wrote: »

tl;dr Ashes sounds to me like it is trying to be too overall competitive to be compatible with RNG OE Item Destruction and not be an even more niche game.

But recent decisions seem to be funneling the 'competitive' parts of it into particular spaces, so maybe not.

At this point I don't even fucking know. Plans for corruption balancing seem to be really punishing, while more opt-in pvp areas are added (even if one of them is permanent). To me that feels like Steven saw the exact issues you explained and decided to change the design to help out those pvers to enjoy the game more.

And with the majority of people hating rng, especially on the context of lost progress - I'm almost sure that Intrepid will go down a gentler route of OEing.

I'm also fairly sure that this majority will only become bigger with time, because once Alpha2 comes online there's gonna be a shitton of new people seeing the game, hearing people like Asmon pushing the "comfortable" design, and will definitely start yelling at Intrepid to change things for the easier/more-pve-friendly. And at this point my pessimism is just hoping that owpvp won't become fully opt-in

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Also, to be clear, and the reason I am suspicious of your conclusion, is that they don't usually add new stuff that is 'harder to get'. They add Easier or 'Just given to you'. Sometimes this is 'baseline' for the usual reason, but quite often, it's not (or it is establishing a new baseline).

Are the new Red items easy to get? You said that orange stuff could take months, so I assumed that Red would be at roughly the same point if not harder, cause it's supposed to be even better.

Azherae wrote: »

tl;dr Ashes sounds to me like it is trying to be too overall competitive to be compatible with RNG OE Item Destruction and not be an even more niche game.

But recent decisions seem to be funneling the 'competitive' parts of it into particular spaces, so maybe not.

At this point I don't even fucking know. Plans for corruption balancing seem to be really punishing, while more opt-in pvp areas are added (even if one of them is permanent). To me that feels like Steven saw the exact issues you explained and decided to change the design to help out those pvers to enjoy the game more.

And with the majority of people hating rng, especially on the context of lost progress - I'm almost sure that Intrepid will go down a gentler route of OEing.

I'm also fairly sure that this majority will only become bigger with time, because once Alpha2 comes online there's gonna be a shitton of new people seeing the game, hearing people like Asmon pushing the "comfortable" design, and will definitely start yelling at Intrepid to change things for the easier/more-pve-friendly. And at this point my pessimism is just hoping that owpvp won't become fully opt-in

It's moreso that BDO shifted to a style of obtaining gear that suits PvE players and has a more limited Enhancement Item.

The best way to explain it is that almost all gear is now easier to get by playing the game more in a natural way instead of OE, and BDO is such a 'give people free stuff for logging in' game that I literally can't keep up with all the stuff I get, playing as a casual observer.

I get more loot for logging into that game than I have ever got in ANY game.

There's loot for logging in, more loot for logging in 30 minutes later (you can also PLAY for 30 minutes but I'm on Console so why do that?) and more for another 30 minutes later but that's literally 'playing an RNG dice roll board game for no reason to see if you get cool stuff'.

Which brings us back to the reminder of 'BDO is PROBABLY not the main reason people hate RNG OE'/'if it's the reason, people are going to be quite upset if Item Destruction OE is added'.

OE RNG causes feelings of 'emptiness' for me, idk what it is like for other people. It is an 'empty' part of the game. I'd have joined that 'no Enhance' army on EU servers, especially if everyone 'collectively agreed to just not do it'.

But then people eventually ask for more alternate fun content with guaranteed rewards so they can have progression (that majority you speak of). The thing is, games seem to be able to provide this. So I end up going 'hey can we just have proper content instead of the Destruction part of OE?'

MMOs these days are WEIRD. The main thing is that right now, I see Ashes as not 'the savior of the Genre' but 'just another weird mishmash of conflicting ideas'. I'm sure TL will be too and the only reason I don't know that yet is that they didn't reveal it all.

Yeah, a lot of gaming is super weird these days. Indie games seem to be doing the best, but it's almost impossible to make a really good indie mmo that would survive for long w/o some egregious mechanic to ruin it.

I'm kinda interested in Palia, purely because it's trying to go directly opposite of where most mmos go. I guess the latest WoW update kinda went there too, judging by Dygz' comments, but from what I've heard the update itself wasn't that popular (though there's like 10 different reasons for that).

And I'm definitely waiting to see what Riot will do, cause they're known to "perfect" a genre, on top of being the most fair to their players.