Buff Bartering to be on par with server rates

Greetings,

After doing several rounds of bartering, I came to the conclusion that it's no way near other life skills or activities for making money. This is mostly due to other activities benefiting from enhanced rates across the board, while bartering doesn't. And that's unfortunate because once its novelty of wears and people finish crafting their ship upgrades, it will be largely forgotten.
Thus, I suggest to buff the income you make from bartering by buffing out the prices of the level 5 barter items. You gain money by either selling those level 5 items to the wharf for 5M a piece or trading them for sea coins and using said coins to acquire other resources. I suggest raising the 5M price to 50M, an x10 buff rate. This may seem like a lot but allow me to elaborate on why it may be a good idea.

Why should bartering be buffed?
1. Because it's an interesting system that synergies well with other activities and helps out the economy.
Here's a snippet from a barter window:

To start a bartering chain, you need to use what I'll call a lv0 item. They are miscellaneous goods that range from node production, to gatherable items, to farm and cooking produce. Basically, to reach the level 5 items payout, you need to start with a lot of these lv 0 items. Meaning, you will need to farm, gather, cook, or invest in nodes you otherwise would ignore. This is why the system is so interesting, as it pushes you to build a diversified supply chain.
For instance, in the image above, I'll need to invest in the Southern Cienaga node, a sub-par node which is generally ignored just to get the rough mud crystals. Then I'll need to farm for the spirit leaves using fences and finally I'll need to gather a lot of rough stone. This is a lot a work just to start out a chain, hence one would look for them in the central market and try and buy them directly. This is excellent because it helps out the server economy and opens up new markets. If bartering is a worthwhile activity, there will be always demand for items that are otherwise niche or worthless like star anise, nutmeg and so on.

2. Because other life-skills and activities are buffed

The training lifeskill allows for direct silver generation by selling horses to the imperial market. Selling level 5 items to the wharf is similar in that account, a direct silver generation and not an exchange of silver between players. The buff to mount exp dramatically decreases the time it takes to level up a mount and proportionally dramatically increases the income you make from training. I'm asking for the same treatment for bartering.

Moreover, the current server rates makes bartering worthless as an income generating activity when compared with combat. Any grinding anywhere will be far far more profitable and efficient, be it in high end zones where the drops are precious or very low end zones where the trashloot prices are increased. Again, I'm asking for a similar treatment here, since we already have an antecedent for increased prices.

The conclusion here is that bartering is worth saving since it creates a dynamic supply/demand chain and it's not an outlandish idea considering the rate buffs applied to other activities.

Sounds good, but would it be overpowered and negatively affect the server?
A very honest response would be, I don't know. Without trialing out an increased rate for some time, we won't have a clear picture of its impact. That said, there are arguments to why it will not be broken or exploitable.
1. Barrier to entry
To be able to finish a barter chain in a respectable amount of time, you need at the very least an improved Epheria sailboat or frigate. Meaning, you'd need a frigate or an Epheria sailboat and the materials to enhance them at least once. Just the basic ships will need at least 20 to 25 days of dailies in order to gather the designs needed for their production. Moreover, it's a costly affair as ships need a lot of silver or time invested gathering the resources necessary to craft them. It's not something everybody can do and requires planning and dedication. It's certainly not something a fresh account can do.

2. Expensive Time/Resources investment
Bartering takes time to do as you need to sail from island to island in a chain. It's an active process that's hard to afk since with the current pathfinding, it's very easy for the ship to get stuck on a rock. Moreover, keeping the ship supplied between runs is costly, a full resupply cost between 1 to 2M and you'll need to do it often in a single run. This is without counting the investment on the initial lv 0 items to begin the chain.
Bartering is impossible to automate, consumes a lot of active playtime and needs a constant injection of silver and other resources.

3. Bartering is naturally capped
Even if you're diligent and know what you are doing, it is impossible to barter infinitely. There are 2 hard caps to bartering. Parley and refresh. To reach the level 5 items you need to barter a lot. Each time you do it, you consume Parley. Once it's consumed there's no way of getting more without using a refresh or sacrificing a loot-scroll to make the following voucher.

And even this voucher has a 4 hours cool down.

Moreover, you only have a limited number of level 5 items you can barter for. Once you go through all of them, assuming you have all the prerequisite resources which is not easy, you need to refresh your barter window to unlock new options.


Bartering is finite and its refresh is also finite as you can only do it 4 times per day if you have a value pack, 3 if not. You need to wait 4 hours between each refresh or use 2 counts for an instant refresh. So it's either 4 times while waiting 4 hours each time or 2 times only per day. This is the hard cap that renders it impossible to exploit the system.

In conclusion, Bartering is difficult to start, time and resources intensive as an activity and the game has 2 hard caps for it to prevent exploitation. This why I think it will be safe to trial out an increased price rate for the level 5 items.

Going forward, how can the premium option benefit from it?
In the case bartering is buffed and becomes a worthwhile activity instead of a novelty, the server can include a couple of bonuses to premium membership that are helpful but not too extreme.
- An added 1000 LT to ship carrying capacity, which results in 1 additional barter item being able to be carried. This marginally help speed up the whole process.
- 1 added refresh count, so it becomes 4 with value pack, 5 with with value pack and premium. This helps generates more worthwhile barter options that better match the resources at hand.

TL;DR : Bartering is an interesting system that has the potential to open up new niche markets for all players and synergies well with other lifeskilling activities. It's however dead on arrival as it doesn't benefit from the server rates that other activities have access to. Hence, it should be buffed by increasing the sell price of the level 5 items. There's reason to believe it will not be exploitable or negatively affect the server since the activity is time consuming and naturally capped by the game.

Thank you!

 

Hi !
I agree with that well maid post ; I'd say that just like every part of bdo is different and boosted comparing retail and gamezbd this new lifeskill option should be equaly valuable in terms of time and boost just like Hunting or any other lifeskilling activity are boosted. Also this lifeskill cost more time; commitment ; it's an elaborated lifeskill compared to other more basic cooking / Hunting. Those are the reasons why I think it should be boosted as well and considerably considering the efforts it takes to go in that specific way.
-Max

 

@Kolka @Carl

+1 Like i sayed to @Kolka yesterday on discord, with all bonus on on mobs' farm this activity give very much more money compare to barter because there isn't any kind of bonus on Barter.
For the moment some people do barter but i assume it is only to get new ships then it will be a nonsense to do barter if you dont change something with it.

 

Yeah good idea

 

Agreed with everything you said, but let's start in 15kk not 50. And there's nv5 items that costs 10kk, those could be 25kk.
Also, remember that every barter refresh replaces your parley points back again to 1.000.000.

I know it's beyond impossible, never seen them editing anything than xp rates and drop chances. But let's hope. That way they could even sell more carracks for 150$.

 

There are a lot of people using it right now because it's new and the only way to access new ships and ship gear. There will be less people using it in the upcoming weeks and moths as they finish upgrading their ships. I don't think it will survive more then three months, which is the timeframe of a getting a carrack.
Moreover, training horses is a full afk way of silver grind and is directly buffed because horse exp is buffed here. They get to level 30 faster than retail, sell faster and hence make silver faster than retail. Bartering doesn't remotely compare to it. You can fully train a T7/T8 horse under 24 hours and then imperial it for 150/350M while with bartering it's a struggle reach the 20/24M after a full chain that requires hours of sailing. It's absurd that an afk activity is better than a semi afk one, and that's why I stated it will be largely forgotten after some time.

 

I agree, bartering currently feels like a considerable loss of productivity without interest beyond the carrack grind. As OP explained, it is undertuned compared to the other activities (in terms of revenue).
I can't see myself or anyone actually do this activity in the long run.

I'd argue that even the parley bonus (from premium and from mastery) is irrelevant for most players.

 

I agree with lots of the above. Bartering needs a decent buff. Wether it is buying a big ship in the store or making one ingame. Thats the first investment you have to do to barter propperly. Next to that Bartering is a reall time consuming actiivty. Looking at the possible profit or gains from it at this point it's not worth it. There are so many other activities that earn more in the same time. Even afk fishing can get you more money then bartering if you look at the invested time. There has to be a better reward for bartering so its equal to other activities.

 

I like the idea of vendor value of T5 barter items to be increased.
Regular T5 trade items are only 5mil, and Margoria T5 trade items are 10mil.
But it take very long to go out to Margoria barter NPC (Incomplete ship, Lantinia's combat raft, Shipwrecked Cargo Ship, etc) that 10mil doesnt make it feel very worth for the amount you'll spend in rations and time getting out there...

Other than that... everything seems pretty good in my opinion.

 

@Kolka @Carl

Sailling in Margoria for barter is semi-afk ?
Gathering all the mats for barter is semi-afk ?
Set up the way to barter is semi-afk ?
And I don't count the time it takes to craft carrack. Just at the daily level, it takes at least 60 days provided you do them every day and it is not done in 5 minutes. Navigating is very long.

It is an activity that requires a big investment in money as well as time.

Honestly you should try this activity and you will see that it has nothing to do with a semi AFK activity.

We must not forget that we are on a private server and that the market is systematically empty for the raw materials necessary for bartering. So we have to harvest and craft everything.

To that you add the price of the rations and the time that takes all of all the activity necessary to barter and you will see that something is wrong with the barter.

Today if there are a few people who barter it is only because it is a new activity on the server and because some want new boats. After which no one will barter any more.

Furthermore, we are not asking to increase the skill of the trade but the amount of money we should earn in comparison to other activity

 

JUst to say that like a lot of player i stoped bartering... It's not worth the time we need to do this activity if you dont buff it ...

 

Yeah... Me too... I was doing it like everyone else, to build a carrack and see if we could take some money out of this, but since carrack is available at web shop and barter being not that profitable it's a big meh.

Edit: I just wanted to add that Barter isn't that afk... If you AFK while doing it you probably gonna be killed and have your ship destroyed, wich mean you'll lost every barter item you had in your ship.

 

This isn't actually true, it is more like around 36+ hours for T7 horses, and 72+ hours for T8 horses, but it does vary due to skill gear, training skill, and costume. These are based on 4-horse wagon experiences, might be a lot faster if you are leveling one horse at a time.

 

Yes of course, because the most salient thing in this thread is a breakdown about horse training speed... please. Well, not that it matters anyway, I've personally given up on this splendid waste of time that's bartering. But to play the captain obvious one last time, yes, I am referring to single horse training with limited gear, ie, the outfits you get as a reward and with pearls coupled with a riding crop. Jump on a single T7 and trace a loop, you'll be level 30 in under 24 hours. Imperial deliver it for at least 130M and that's it, with minimal setup and time investment you've blown away any semblance of profit bartering can give. That is not a hyperbole.

 

Hi !
The discussion aims at baterring ; could we get back to the point itself ? Bartering is useless compared to any other activity. The Community just want a boost to balance bartering. What we would like to hear is that it will be Worth our time. Maybe it will remain less worthy than other lifeskill activity but will be better than what it is for now.
Thank you for reading me
best.