In-Depth analysis around the enhancing system and money progression - suggestions for a better game

Hello eveyrone. I am a veteran retail player who's got in touch with GameZ for a while now and I must admit I am surprised to see that there is actually a private server of Black Desert with consistent running. The fact that we have a place to enjoy what this game has to offer without the bonds of PearlAbyss is absolutely amazing, so, I'll make a contribution here in order to point some issues that I think that might need balances in order to achieve a more fun place to be, keeping the standards to veterans while also providing consistent and slightly fast progression for newer ones. I believe that the goal of making our home better is above all of us. (Obs. Since I'm not a veteran GameZ player, I will talk exclusively as a newcomer sharing the difficulties in the progression run).

Starting from my personal experience with MMO RPGs, specially with BlackDesert, I would like very much that the DEVs could lay a careful eye upon the following issues that I'm about to spot since they are arguably serious, despite all the great features the server has on it's own (and are fun on it's own way! Like the fast travel, faster mobs respawn and rift bosses, etc. All great for tired players of retail extremeness). The issues are the following, and I will discourse and lay my argument for each of them:

1) The custom enhancing system may have gone a little too far on specific aspects. I'm talking about accessory enhancement. Let's take a look:

When we talk about private Black Desert servers we are talking about huge (I mean really huge) challenges, since the mission of creating new rates while maintaining all of them balanced is quite of a task. And as we know, the proposal of our GameZ's BDO is providing an easier way to climb to PEN gear by various ways, but when we come to enhancing progression, the system binds newplayers quite hardly, because even with the increased drop rates, we are very far to say that accessories in GameZ drop like water from the sky, and even, we cannot say that failstacking is an easy task either.

1.1 Accessory enhancing rates
Here's what we got in retail: fixed Failstack amounts that provides an optimal chance of sucess while not wasting unecessary FSs, we call that in retail "FailStack Softcap". And they are very useful since they provide a solid base or goal to go when enhancing some specific acessory.
BASE to PRI -- 18 fs -- provides 70% chance of success; (note that the low FS here is to stimulate all players to trail the enhancing path and enhancing their own accs)
PRI to DUO -- 40 fs -- provides 50% chance of success; (the big jump from 18 to 40 is intentional, to make the market for DUO+ accessories a real thing, forcing players to take DUO accs seriously with a decently high failstack and making DUO+ accessories really desirable)
DUO to TRI -- 44 fs -- provides 40% chance of success; (small jump from 40 to 44, maintains the TRI category in the "possible" range, making possible for all players to own TRI accs and reaching the first gear softcap of 245 ap)
TRI to TET -- 110 fs -- provides 30% chance of success; (now here things became out of reality, and in retail at least this makes sense since in there things are really meant to be extreme. This colossal jump from 44 to 110 has the intention of really dividing medium players from endgame ones, because the greatest gear softcaps are only reached with TET accessories, like 261+ AP, that's why in retail a full TET accessory build can be considered complete, because satisfatory AP scales have been reached, making people competitive in PVP while also able to grind the endgame areas).
TET to PEN -- x fs -- NO SOFTCAP (PEN rates in retail are made to set something very clearly: PEN accessories are absolute luxury. Owning a PEN accessory in retail is something so hard that only endgame veterans with a taste for impossible missions are up to. Enhancing them is almost impossible. The same 110 Failstacks that gives 30% of success to TET accessories provide only 6% to PEN ones, making this category of item utterly out of discussion for 95% of the players in retail).


What we got in GameZ is an attempt to facilitate the access of a PEN accessory to all players, and is genuinely a very good idea for a private server. But there is one problem that popped on the other end of the table, and it seems more like the difficulty chart of retail was inverted here, almost as if the PRI accessories were more luxurious than PEN ones, and that's the critical situation that's making progression so hard while also "crippling" the Central Market. In our GameZ version, since we have no failstack softcap for acessories, we open a very wide range of possibilities for players to enhance them, that means that a player could literally push all levels of upgrade enhancing to a max with 100+ failstacks and would achieve good results, and that is actually true, but as I said it opens another wide wound. While in retail the extreme difficulty was in the specific success chances (in proportion to the amount of failstacks needed), in gamez the same retail difficulty was adopted but in other place, the difficulty of obtaining PRI to TRI accessories ingame scared away all players really hard, forcing everyone to simply buy PEN ones, since the price is relatively accessible. But, in Black Desert, when players are discouraged to use the enhancing feature, a very critical bleeding starts on the central market. By the game's logic, buying something on central market should never be more viable than going through the labour of crafting your own. That is a very basic principle of economics, "if it's easier to buy food than making your own, soon no one will be making food at all and we all starve to death".

Concluding, I have noticed a lot of players feeling burnt in the server due to this issue, since if affects the Market directly (boss armor and weaponry, along with accessories are the very heart of BD's market). And is truly a veridic problem that needs urgent attention and correction. Here is my suggestions to turn the accessory enhancing system more attractive to all, and thus healing the Central Market prices and making enconomy flows:

a) GameZ's BDO could have a softcap for accessories, maintaining the enhancing at fixed proportions would make the enhancing very solid source of income to all, specially for grinders or people in general who's not into lifeskilling.
b) Raise the success chance of PRI to TRI grades: As I said, if more people are trying to enhance their own accessories instead of throwing into the market every base one they get, more people get their own TET/PEN stuff as well as make the market for base accessories flow a lot more, heating the game's economy.

2) Mechanical silver making
In every MMO, we got substantially two sources of money: mechanical and interactive.
Since interactive money refers to all source of income a player can obtain trading some sort of virtual currency with other players, mechanical money making refers to all the money one can make without relying on other player's personal ingame currency, that means, all forms of money making that doesn't rely on trading or using the central market, like questing, grinding, NPC negotiations, etc. In Black Desert the most common form of mechanical money making is by selling monsters "trash items" to an NPC, and is truly the mark of one's effort and time invested into the game. Since GameZ counts with it's own custom rates that intend to make the game easier than the infinite grinding of the retail, it would be logic to reward players time and effort in grinding in an increased way, at least on what refers to mechanical money making.

2.1 The problem: When mechanical money grinding isn't enhanced along with other custom features, like market prices, experience rates, or whatever, very little is changed from retail since the market can't be an only reliable source of silver progression, Because if the market for somewhat enters in crisis, all players suffer from it unnecessarily. Furthermore, if a private server player needs to stay the same amount of hours in grinding to obtain the same amount of mechanical money of a retail player, we failed in providing a different experience to BDO lovers who doesn't want to devote all their life to a virtual game.

2.2 The solution: How to stimulate players to stay more in the game without being afk pearl grinding and thus making the game and the market itself heats? Simple, offering a reason for players to grind: money. I suggest alterations specific in the trash loot from all monsters in the game, and that can occur in various manners, which I'll list:
Option A) Placing custom base prices for all trash loot in the game, for example, 3.600 silver worth of Pila Ku trash turned into 18.000 silver worth trash (5x the price, could be even more since and all other GameZ rates are 10x). This is the more straight forward approach, but the cons are losing the game identity of prices and also offering a big labour from the DEVs to edit so many codes;
Option B) Simply increasing the amount of trash dropped from monsters, just as Fever of Agris does for a limited amount. For example, if Pila Ku mobs drop an avarage of 2 pieces, make them drop an avarage of 10 to 14 pieces (5x the amount, could be even more since and all other GameZ rates are 10x). The cons here are the increased weight to player's inventory, but this can be solved/simply by setting alltrash loots to zero, or even providing a feature to transport all the trash to the nearest city storage without a limit to the number and without a cooldown like maids have.
Option C) Adding a custom NPC to all capital cities that will buy the trash loot for a custom price rate.




Well folks, here is my contribution. Although my suggestions don't have any sort of authority, I strongly believe that all the problems I mentioned are real, faced by players every day in our game community. I hope the DEVs may identify all our difficulties within the game, because what new players are experiencing are almost retail like challenges that we definitely would not want to face, because what is the point of playing a private server to suffer just like in retail?
I humbly expect the DEVs to take care of these issues, because I was finally hyped to find a place where I could enjoy the best RPG I ever played without the enslaving bonds of a comPAny just eager to drain it's comunity money and life away.
I put myself entirely in disposition to any sort of conversation about approaches to make our beloved private server a better game, because that's what I believe to be number one priority of all people here.
Discord Contact: Khazui [Morthar_IHS]#3017

Thank you all have a nice time.

(Sorry for English inconsistencies, not my native language)

 

I agree with what he says about money and I find it extremely logical. The game should not cut the money, it should close this problem by making it difficult to raise the money. It will be seen that Gamezbd will have what they want if the players enjoy the game more. High Level Mediah Beasts Paying Between 2-3K are Unacceptable and Not Enjoyable.

 

100% agree

Here's a new players take from myself

Loved the start, feel like I got going nice and fast.
Hit a brick wall once I started to get half way through my PEN grind and totally lost all motivation. As a newer player, actually grinding mobs is a waste of time.
I could push through and keep going but it just doesn't feel rewarding at all. (and by rewarding I mean making realistic profit)
It could be much better at late late game, but the problem is the halfway point between being new and getting to PEN/accessories. It's a part of the natural (majority of players) progression here on this server yet the distance between here and there for new players is huuuuuuge.

I love grinding, that's why I love chilling killing things on BDO. But jeeeeeeeeeez it feels like I just can't make the loot/gear/trash I need to catch up or even keep up with the vets. I want to keep playing here and I want to keep donating, but I'm bored, tired and loosing motivation. So many good things are in place here but the economy and path to progression (specifically for new players) is quite a tough one.

From what I can see, this isn't uncommon and it sounds like this is actually a common point where newer players actually quit. So if there is an issue with new player retention; doesn't this worsen the economy being made up of elite veteran players?

To conclude, me, my partner AND my friend have all stopped playing here since we started about 2 weeks ago. It's not that we're afraid of the grind, or entitled - it's just an issue with 'engagement', It felt like we couldn't engage with the wider community/economy - making money through crafting didn't see realistic to achieve our goals, making money through grinding didn't seem realistic (hello - why are pets even locked behind pearls here? They are essential for looting but they are gated behind pearls just like the toxic system on retail. They are not progression, they are a fake system created to milk customers. I donate for the added buffs, I wont donate for trash-collecting pets and their upgrades.), what is viable, is just leaving your PC on overnight for a week and converting pearls and horses to silver.....

Sorry, but I don't play a game to watch it tick. I'm not advocating removing AFK systems for players with less time - but I absolutely feel frustrated when I am rewarded less for active participation/engagement than walking away from my PC for 48 hours.

Something needs to change in my (most likely unqualified) opinion. I can't speak for what the game experience is like for veteran players, but I know from my own and my friends experience, it's not a good situation for new players at all.

 

Your pearls are for free... so nothing in pearlshop is gated. and kolka and his team dont rewrite code in the game. they only add some stuff from lab and kr server, thats it.
Srsly, there are other things that need attention. But pets: haha what a joke.

I myself am an active grinder.
I can easily do 250mil+ on lower spots.

You can essentially be at 245ap with around 280dp in less than 4 hrs. And once you reach that ap/dp level, you can easily grind your silver.

A new player has the season option, has the oasis gear option, can become 64 in less than 4 hrs (capotia accessories) etc pp.
And even VP here is worlds bether than on retail. It just adds 1000weight to your char, so you only need to build up some inventory slots.
Also coming back to pets: you can do the ingame quests for the 3 pets so you have a base to build up on.

 

Hello there newcomer to GamezBD, I find your enthusiams about making changes quite refreshing, although I do have to point out that the Server- and Client-GamezBD-code, is written from scratch which is why they can continue running this project without much interference, in fact it is a known fact that the GamezBD-code was stolen and used on pretty much ALL other Private-Servers out there.

That being said I do hope that my comments and observations (entirely a personal opinion), about your contribution to our forum, doesn't make you feel as if I am being mean towards you.

My first question is simple...You say that you are a Veteran-BDO-player, that you used to play on the "retail"-server. I just wanted to point out here, that GamezBD runs pretty much exactly like the NA/EU-retail-server. So my question is:
How long have you been playing at the (unknown) "retail"-server, and how long have you been playing on GamezBD, for you to make this "In-depth analysis"?

Because as far as I know, the drop rates a much lower on the NA/EU-retail-server, like around 10 times lower, also that it is based on a RANDOM phenomenon (although computer-RNG aren't actually truly random), which means that you would have to gather a pile of information of at least 10.000 drops, before you can make an educated GUESS about the drop-rates.

Here I am a bit confused. You talk about a "soft-cap" for enhancing, but as far as I know there is no specific number on "retail"-BDO that ALWAYS succeeds, so a "soft-cap" isn't really a thing right?
You are also talking -again- about a system based entirely on a RNG (RANDOM Number Generator), which means that you can sometimes get an enhancement success with 2-5% and sometimes fail with 92-95%.
It is a very personal experience kinda thing, some players constantly complain about how bad the system is, but the thing is; Pearl-Abyss is the creator and ultimately the ones responsible for the way the game works. True that GamezBD COULD change everything in the game, but then it wouldn't be Black Desert Online anymore.

So, the question will always be, do you as a player want to play BDO, or something else that is easier and faster to play?

I COULD NOT AGREE MORE! This is absolutely what I have been going on about, for -pretty much- ever...The prices on the Central Market are so terribly screwed up, that most items aren't worth crafting at all, because just selling the individual materials will make you 50%+ profit.

Well, the thing here is; GamezBD DOES have increased Rates in general, and there are players who claim to go from start to Full PEN gear and maximum level in just about two weeks. So it is certainly because GamezBD is much better than NA/EU-retail-BDO. The problem however, is -once again- how the game itself was designed, which is up to Pearl-Abyss. Basically if you like the game, then you like the game, if you don't...

Just wanted to point out one thing here as well, because as far as I can see you do not bring up Life-Skills at all, in all this "In-Depth-Analysis", you have not said anything at all about generating silver through Life-Skills. Why is that?

Yeah, I have a similar thread to this, but I tried to add some examples, and a way to do it: http://forum.gameznetwork.com/threads/grey-trash-loot-reworking.234823/

Hello there RazorBey, I am sorry if this seems irritating to you, but I am having trouble following what you said here: "...it should close this problem by making it difficult to raise the money", because you say in the previous line, that "the game should not cut the money". These two statements are in conflict, I think you meant that "they should NOT make it more difficult"?

Hello there mangobird, I am a bit surprised at this, because you mention it yourself: "From what I can see, this isn't uncommon and it sounds like this is actually a common point where newer players actually quit."
So, you Do know about the inherent difficulties in the game-mechanics, that the BDO-game is just VERY "long-game-like".
What I do not quite understand, is why you would say that "grinding mobs is a waste of time" when there are So many threads and websearches that say the opposite, especially here on GamezBD where the drop rates are so much higher?

"It felt like we couldn't engage with the wider community/economy..." I am sorry to hear, but I do have to ask, what exactly did you expect after only 2 weeks of playing the game here on GamezBD?
What did you do to engage with the community, like did you join a Guild and make some in-game acquintances?
Yes, it is indeed a Huge problem that the Central Market STILL doesn't work, to the point where crafting is basically left off the table, again with the exception of a few items that pretty much ALL players make and sell.
Training Horses is an invaluable option, especially for those players who are grown-ups, and have a real-life to tend to, you know work, family, friends, and so on. They simply do not have more than a couple of hours a week to spend on a mere computer game, so having an optional income that can make about 1/4-1/3 amount of silver as an Active players can make while grinding, is one of the things about this game that makes it so amazingly good.
Which brings me -again- to the most important part of this whole playing games in general; Play the games that you like, because playing a computer game, gives you no rewards in real-life at all, you are in fact just wasting your limited life-time.
So, more than anything, make sure that you are using your time wisely, play When you Want to, and remember to enjoy the time you spend online.

 

Market on gamez is shattered in pieces due to the lack of silver, we are experiencing MASSIVE price drops on pretty much every single item, and there are many reasons why this is happening.

We need more silver in game, there are less people playing than retail and market is smaller, people not buying stuff and people that have no silver to do so contributes to down the prices. People earning less money than they do on retail is the reason why people are leaving this server and numbers shrank over past year. Not only that, but the increased difficulty of mobs also contributes to this, making grind much more difficult than it is on retail, makes playing it unrewarding in comparison as you have to put way more effort into doing your rotation than you do on retail, and you also need a higher AP. A lot of people struggle to farm end game spots because of it and consider leaving too, because why should they play it, when even with 20 lvl caphras gear they barely make it out?

Mobs are harder to kill, but also they have increased range of aggroing the player, and all that combined with unlimited number of monsters aggro makes it significantly more difficult to grind than on retail.
More difficult grind + no caphras selling + players need to buy cron stones for silver = less silver on market

Kolka have to remove the changes done to mobs hp/dp/ap and bring retail values back to the game, also bring back selling caphras as it was a stable form of income for majority of players and i know many people left the game because of this change. A player was able to sell caphras 300k each to the npc, it may seem to not be a big deal, but its 360 mil of silver of income for everyone with premium account each single day. Multiply it by the number of people playing currently and you will have a massive number that we no longer have on the market. Its the amount of silver that is equivalent of selling trash daily at end game spots, its a shit ton of silver we and our server lost. Just think about it, in 30 days of saving silver from caphras you were able to buy a pen accessory item, and its gone now, and so is a lot of players too.

 

That is the very feeling from a grinder that I'm trying to point. Grinding is fun in BDO, but forcing you to grind extensively transforms this fun activity into literal torture, and that was something that really made retail unbearable, and is quite sad seeing the same thing on a private server with high rates.

Yes, I talk about softcap for accessory enhancing, but you somehow understood wrong if your got softcap as a rate that "always succeeds". Softcap for enhancing is a specific amount of failstacks that is considered optimum for trying a rng enhance, and is a mechanic designed to stablish common standards to accessory upgrade (https://grumpygreen.cricket/bdo-failstack-chart/), and combined to the success chances (of retail at least, 70,50,40,30%) makes accessory enhancing a great benefit to players, and the lack of softcap in GameZ fails to provide that benefit or incentive, as I pointed. Considering that, softcap really is a thing

I really appreciate you adding my suggestion to your own topic. We could really have more custom features to GameZBD, in fact, I think we really must have, since the unbalances we all are talking about here comes exactly from the perception that some things are missing in the private GameZ version, one of them, as I stated, is the critical lack of custom mechanical money making in our Pserver. Having custom market prices, custom drop rates, custom enhancing mechanics, necessarily demands also custom source of money incomes, the interactive money income GameZ got just right, increasing the chance of rare drops, thus, heating the central market, but, when they forgot to also increase the mechanical money income (aka, trash loot), players became vitally dependent of market economy, and, as we see our CM breaking, we also see players breaking. I really would like to see this issue taken care of, since is a logical simple thing that (in my opinion, of which I'm quite confident) would greatly (greatly) solve the major part of problems GameZBD actually has. Adding a NPC to buy trash loot for custom prices, for example, would be a simple feature able to heal and balance the enitre game.

I'd love to see this server succeeding, I myself have already been inviting a good numbers of old retail fellas to come in here, but I don't want them to have similar hard progression experiences to retail. I really hope this matters receive proper analysis from the Staff.

 

AP and DP brackets aren't helpful to try and bring attention to in terms of 'ease'. Yes the 'floor' (or starting point) has been raised here on this server, but the 'ceiling' has also been raised much higher. It's essentially the same 'range' in retail.

And on the aspect of pets - you can go ahead and say that it's 'free', but ultimately it once again boils down to AFK material etc. As a lower-tier player, it's more efficient to simply AFK the pearls for pets BUT NOT actually use them! Instead it's better to literally sell them on the market board.
So sure I mean, that's fine if you disagree with me, I never wanted to give the impression that I'm somehow all-knowledgeable about the game - I'm simply not. I'm just expressing the perspective of a newer player.

I mean, I wish I knew how to get 250 mil per hour on just trashing mobs but I haven't been as successful so far.

As newer players myself and my friends we're just put off by the efficiency of AFK activities. Newer players are rewarded more for AFKing, because it's really much more efficient than playing. I can grind for an hour for up to 200+ mil, or I can just collect pearls all day and make about 500mil doing nothing. Honestly it's roughly equitable to how much I'd make grinding - except I'm not burnt out from focusing one group of mobs all day.

Though I do respect your opinion Lumoz. I can see why it might sound like a load of ol' shite coming from a newer player.

 

Make me out of my mistake. If I'm wrong.
Are you complaining because you can't progress quickly,
and compete with other players in the PVP arena?
If so, I have bad news.
The players interested in such content are exactly 223 people.
Data from a while ago, NA servers.
Total players - 1748.
You can draw conclusions yourself.

Because if you have problems with too high requirements for quests,
and the mobs are too strong.
Then forgive me, you don't know how to use tools,
or you don't know the mechanics of BDO.

 

You wont make 500 mil a day with pearls, almost nobody buys pearl stuff besides cheap timed buffs and you are way better of saving pearl for artisan memories to exchange them for caphras to push caphras lvl up on pen gear. Selling blessing of kamasylve with pearls you get during 24 h long afk session will only give you 250 mil a day, when using the pearls for caphras gives you the equivalent of 540 mil, so twice as much.
Selling pearl shop items is massive waste of time and only increase the time you need to catch up, as pen gear is not really enough to compete with others on this server, you also needs caphras levels on armor and weapons.

 

Once again, I really do hope that you can bear with my personal opinions and questions, do know that I am not trying to be a prick towards any of you, I am mainly curious.

Hello again McConnel, I can see that you have added a few things to your overall complaint, since the last time.
I still completely Agree with you on the fact that the Central Market is in shambles, BUT it is completely up to the GamezBD player population to keep the CM in check. Basically means that it is because of the players, who might be too young, or ignorant, or just without any patience at all, that they Keep placing items for sale at the minimum amount of Silver (yeah it keeps confusing me that you say Money when you mean Silver the in-game currency). So in All fairness, it is NOT GamezBD fault that the market is in shambles, but as you pointed out; "Lack of players", however it is Also due to: Lack of game devotion*, general game knowledge, as well as a basic understanding of how economics work on a larger scale than; "How can I get some Silver right now?"

I do have a few questions though;

1. Where did you hear about the drop in players from last year? (says you joined oct.21.2020)
2. You say that Grinding is MUCH more difficult than on Retail (I suppose you mean NA/EU), but yet you also state that we get unlimited aggroing and increased range for it, so my question is how does that make it Much harder? OR is it ONLY at the very "end-game-areas", that this might be considered a problem? If so then why not make the tiny effort that makes this game really worth playing, and form a Party with other players that have similar problems, I mean this game was designed for Partying up, otherwise it wouldn't be a MMORPG, right?
3. Lastly I would like to know what you mean when you say: "no caphras selling" and "players need to buy cron stones for silver"? Do you mean that the Caphras Stones (that ANYone can exchange to with Artisan Memory that you can buy with Free Pearls) on the Central Market aren't being bought, because that seems perfectly straightforwards, when everyone can get them for themselves? How exactly do players buy Cron Stones for silver, when you cannot trade Cron Stones?

Just one last thing, I cannot possibly tell you how to play this game, but Black Desert Online was designed as a Hybrid-game, meaning that the whole purpose of the game is; Not just PvP (as many mainstream believers will say), nor is it just a PvE-Questing game, nor is it a Life-Skilling game only. It is in FACT; ALL three of those rolled into one.
Therefore it is meant to be played with Everything that is available in the game, to generate enjoyment as well as as variation and ultimately for players to earn Silver (in-game-currency) in many varied ways.
Which brings me to the most obvious mistake that mainstreamers make while playing on GamezBD, namely to exchange Artisans Memory for Caphras Stones Only to sell them to a NPC for the mere sum of around 300.000 Silver per stone. It is one of the worse ways to "make silver" in this wonderful GamezBD-game-version, and now I am going to tell you why:

1. Trading was increased to around 400 million Silver per day of income. That means ONLY doing Trading, which can easily be done Semi-AFK, you can make more than the "mainstream-way" of selling Caphras Stones.
2. Life-Skilling can make you in Only Blackstone Shards (Not counting ALL the other materials and Trading Items you gain) around 200-400 million Silver in a couple of hours, that is hours compared to the mainstream idea of spending a whole day doing nothing AFKing, then selling the exchanged Pearls for just about 300 million.
3. Finally, the MOST profitable way to AFK, is to Train Horses, breed them, level them up to 30, convert them into Courser Horses (using Pearls with Horse-Skill Tokens), and selling them to the Imperial NPC. In just about 1,5 days you can earn about 2 or 4 times 130 million Silver for T7s, and around 320 million Silver for T8s.

So in truth there is NOTHING wrong with how to make silver on GamezBD, and while I do agree with you that the small changes that GamezBD has made to monsters might indeed make it really hard for players -with relatively low gear- to go solo at the highest difficulty areas, yet it stands to reason that there has to be some form of end-game content that is REALLY difficult, and that is a good way to promote Partying, well in my opinion (most likely the staff's too).

*See Merriam-Webster-Dictionary definition 2a: "the act of dedicating something to a cause, enterprise, or activity : the act of devoting the devotion of a great deal of time and energy" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/devotion)

How can this be true, when most players state that you can make around 300-350 million? Is it counting Premium Pearls rate?

Well it is obvious to me that you have never experienced torture in your entire life then, and I know that you are going to say that it is just an expression, but to people who have endured actual torture it is an insane insult. Sorry about that, but just had to point it out, language is not always something you can just throw around, didn't mean to put You in particular "on the spot", just wanted to make sure that you knew what that sentence can do to some people.

Now for the actual comment as you can see above: "...the game Black Desert Online was designed as a Hybrid-game, meaning that the whole purpose of the game is; Not just PvP (as many mainstream believers will say), nor is it just a PvE-Questing game, nor is it a Life-Skilling game only. It is in FACT; ALL three of those rolled into one."
This means that Grinding is NOT the Only way to make Silver, and that it is not meant for players to stop enjoying themselves, however it is meant to teach players to be patient and to pace themselves while playing a computer game. The game will still be there tomorrow, and next week, also it is NOT a race. There is NO grand reward for trying to get to highest gear as fast as possible, because you will just be stuck with little or nothing to do then, other than the same routine as plauge all other MMORPGs end-game.

Just want to know if you understand percentages and the meaning of randomness, I am really not trying to be patronizing or talking down to you, because it just feels as if you want to believe that as long as you have more than 50% then it should succeed every time? But I really hope that you know that is just not how it works, and that you cannot possibly make a grand generalizing statement based on anything less than 10.000 or more tries, Even then it will STILL be random when you try again next time.

Alright, if you NEED Pets to automatically pick up loot for your Entire Character Family, then only an ignorant player wouldn't get Pets, you will have to agree with me on this, because anything else is either just a lie, or irrational.
No, there is NO scenario where a player can earn more Silver while AFKing, than a player can earn while actively playing the game, so please do not spread lies and rumors on our forum, that is part of the forum rules. Just to point it out for you; "I can grind for an hour for up to 200+ mil, or I can just collect pearls all day and make about 500mil doing nothing." this is a quote you have just made, and in it you yourself say that you can earn more per hour than you could if you AFK'ed a whole day, that is 24 hours.

 

Yeah i agree completely.

The rates are 10 times better but at the end of the day, rare drops are based on RNG, there's no point in having accessories prices cut down so severely if you don't drop them consistently. At that point in time you're making less money than on retail.

To answer your question about enhancing, it was decided that pri, duo and tri enhancing rates would be lowered due to the supply being higher than the demand. You might not feel it as you're starting the game but you will notice how helpful it is later when you have to grind 10b+ for an acessory.

As for AFK money, it's not real, the supply is way higher than the demand at the moment, especially on caphra.
The issue is player's motivation to play the game: grinding is nothing speciall and usually you earn less /h than you do on retail with the same gear.
As for the RBF rewards, most of the people over 289AP will agree they're worthless. A main end-game fun mode rewarding low-mid-game rewards isn't nice

Caphra progression is also an issue when you are behind other players. you need 110.000 caphras to c20 your gear. Until you invest those 60b in caphras (let's say 40b if you AFK for artisans too), have fun getting one shotted trough the desynced PvP.

 

Bit of a necro but yeyeye came to offer a nice ez solution tbh

Y'all are observant ^^ I 100% agree with what mango said about the "gear range", basically difference between end game players and softcap imo, retail offers a smoother transition as well lmao. Everyone talking about it too lel glad I'm not the only one pointing the shit out.

1- Easy fix tbh, all you'd need to do is sell failstacks lmao make the shit expensive (like 50fs 300m, 60fs 400m, 70fs 600m, 80fs 1b+) because that puts a pretty great silver sink in place so players with big money can use it up and go get their gambling fix while people who ain't rollin in billions don't buy the shit because it's not worth it for em. Das part 1
2- Then all you need to do is put the ability to sell items to vendor at the marketplace price (ex, vendor price for a crescent ring is like 260k silver? trash . Not that a crescent won't sell but you'd be able to vendor it ideally 50-75% of the min price, which is prolly like 15m currently. would be sick asf for the entire market.)

Why? It lets players make money from anywhere they want to grind regardless of how bad the spot is, and they have more freedom since their gameplay isn't stifled by the deadness of the market. It also puts a silver sink so that the new vendor silver doesn't inflate the economy and ruin everything lmao . It'll also make the server more unique, like instead of just being a halfassed retail clone with better rates, you give people that otherwise would say "eh retail's easy enough" (because it is, I'm pushing 580 barely even playing) to think "oh that's really interesting, I kinda want to try that out". Cuz shit, hell with retail p2w if people could actually have fun on gamez.

Devs don't care tho, they never did, they gettin that ez foreign money doing this from Russia lmao (trust me, they're banking no matter what) so they have no reason to care whether players have fun or not unfortunately. Retail these days is a god damn cakewalk compared to the old days when all you could do was party grind sausans for 10m/hr lmfao, now I watch anime tiddie jiggle on monitor 2 while gathering wolf meat and making 150m/hr (170 technically since I cook with it) like who even needs a private server at this point? That's the problem here, retail got easier and gamez got harder, it's just sad and pointless especially as they continue to nerf and ignore players. Like good luck with pen blackstar, I made 2 on like 70 and 85fs, now all of a sudden it's 0.2%/fs? kekw new players may never hit 700, by the time you do you would have hit 600 on retail lmao. To each his own, but at 580 retail you can PvP 98% of the server lmao gamez you literally need 700 or ur shitting, balance is worse (gg archer, but on retail archer is just a PvE femboy that I farm ez lmao) and the lag is a joke LOL the server needs something unique about it or it will continue to stagnate . Like why Star's End more money on retail lmao get a distortion earring and come up 280m, when I gave up gamez the shit cost 100m. Trash loot worth the god damn same lmao like fuck. Remember silver has a higher value on retail too so lmao gamezbd officially is more grindy than retail is. Gather twice a day and make 400m game too ez

Ty4comin to Owari's TED talk, love yuh all and good luck with whatever you choose to do ~