Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Guild and project plans

While the details are obviously blurred until the sieges and node wars are implemented, much is known about the soon-to-be implemented Valencia update for Black Desert Online. The most important is that one guild can take 2 nodes and a castle. Since BDO is not single shard, that means it's unlikely that there will be enough guilds in a server to compete for all nodes. Everyone and his mother can grab a lower tier node, so until the system is working and we see the political map, it's pointless to organize a guild or announce a project.

If there will be a guild, it will be on Jordine EU, so if you want to participate, you are welcomed to start characters and grow them. But again, I'm making no promises, because I can't see how the political landscape will pan out. If there will be fierce competition for every node, than there is reason to jump in. If half of the nodes are taken by few-men guilds because no one else bothers, not really.

Another, larger problem is that most successful topguilds will have a grinder approach to every problem. The problem with this isn't that it would be hard to defeat them - anyone remembering BoB vs Goons knows how such war would go. Those who take pride in their characters instead of looking at them as tools for the job are no match to anyone with the right approach - even if only the leader has the right approach and the rest of the guild are just a bunch of F1-pushing, clueless socials. The problem is that the grinders are hard-working people, most of them are competitive, so beating them would bring little to my blog. They aren't "evil", they aren't denying meritocracy, just misunderstand it. They aren't the enemies of my ideas. Now, if there would be a Goonswarm-like large social/M&S guild which roflstomp the grinders, beating that guild would definitely be worthy of a project. But I find it unlikely that such event happens on my server or on any of the EU servers where I can play. BDO being multi-shard without dedicated competitive shard is a big problem.

It is possible that there will be no project at all, and I return to my WoW roots: make money in BDO and blog about it, providing useful content to all readers and explain economics and rational thinking, using the posts as example. Having the GRR-Goon project was a great ride, but I'm not sure if it was the optimal way to spread the ideas I want to spread. Sure, Goons are down and they are down to money and the idea of using money and it's great. But reading my blog as I'm organizing reminds me how little actual moneymaking and economics posts I made during those years.

So I'm not making any promises, despite I really hope I can make a project and a guild for it.

I have two questions:
Can anyone link useful info on castle and siege tower building?
Can anyone link useful info on politics, guild disagreements and so on? Any BDO blog would also be great.

8 comments:

Provi Miner said...

As I am sure you know Chibbra has agreed to do the New Jita Market place with the clear intent to use mercs for defense and donate overages to B4R and the Plex for Good charities. Just thought you would like to know what I said when you claimed new jita will break the game is now on track to happen. On a side note that no "new jita" exists tells you that your fears were greatly exaggerated. I know falcon is keeping you out of eve but your "other" reason turned to mist. So all you need is for Falcon to join EA and you are free :)

Hagu said...

I don't BDO, but my understanding is BDO is easier to forecast than most MMOs since one can predict the EU/NA by looking at what has already happened in Asia. Is that true?

Gevlon said...

@Hagu: much of the political landscape is culturally determined. EVE Serenity is very different from TQ.

Unknown said...

Actually, Serenity isnt so different culturally. Behaviors are pretty much the same although the desire to form\join groups might be stronger. What is different are the player numbers. There is a lot more uncontested space so ratting and farming is much easier and consequently done on a more industrial scale.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how BDO alliances will work? The grinder approach works when there is no limit to what one guild can get back from their efforts, but in BDO there is a one castle and two nodes. If a guild has twice the manpower required to hold one castle then it is better off splitting into two. A blob will naturally break up when it gets too big as the ambitious and the smart notice they could get better returns elsewhere.
Of course, if guilds can defend each other (or sabotage attacks) I expect most guilds will become renters, paying membership/protection to an alliance leadership that owns the local blob and can defeat any castle assault or evict any troublemaker.

Anonymous said...

@proviminer"As I am sure you know Chibbra has agreed to do the New Jita Market place with the clear intent to use mercs for defense and donate overages to B4R and the Plex for Good charities."

Well, Chribba has said he has been asked. But the person behind it has pulled a hissy fit at having to answer questions about what wars they intend to fund to drive conflict, or what percentage is actually going to P4G, and how they will select charities, and whether they are still funding neutral service corps.

The person who is bankrolling it is also fairly in the dark about what is happening with it.

So, yeah, not quite as portrayed.

Manserk said...

I'm wondering, I got a 7 day pass, now I'm proposed a list of 'sub servers'? under Jordine does it matter which one you chose if eventually we want to contact you ?

Gevlon said...

@Manserk: Those are "channels". You can move between them freely during gameplay, they are like phases in WoW.