Greedy Goblin

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Moron investment in large

When I started blogging about in-game moneymaking, I was pretty naive. I assumed that people who don't make money are simply uninformed, maybe young and as they see my results, they'll learn my methods and while doing so, get some rudimentary ideas how real World business works. Of course the truth is that most of them are morons and slackers who actively avoid learning anything. Slackers just stay poor and claim "i play 4 fun". In EVE this has a huge cult, centered around frigate PvP which - in their myths - is awesome fun, instead of just "I can't afford any better". Morons on the other hand either grind their money or adopt completely stupid methods (like 0.01-ing) and openly preach their ridiculous ideas. I made peace with the fact that most people - even if exposed to obvious evidence - choose to do it the wrong way. But today I saw something outlandishly moronic and must share.

In the latest Black Desert Online patch, energy usage will be removed from processing, where you process raw timber into planks or ore into melted shard and so on. This is dumb if you ask me. The energy usage had two effects: at first made people choose between processing and doing other actions (gathering, cooking, investing energy into grinding nodes). Processing was a profession in itself with its masters who learned the skill to decrease energy usage. Secondly it stopped people from processing all day, leaving place for less skilled processers. After the patch players with low processing skills are better off selling their timber to an Artisan and buying planks back as he can make so much more planks from the same timber that it is worth paying the tax twice. A new player will have to level processing at loss.

Skilled processers are in large numbers (Artisan 1 is enough to be on the Cooking toplist, Professional 7 for Alchemy, but for Processing, you need Artisan 4). Lots of processers with no limit on how much they can work means that processed materials won't be much more expensive than raw materials. Since the 33% sales tax is still here, no processer can compete with processing my own timber. So processing will go from "best thing to do with your energy" to "well, if you have enough AFK time, do it for a few silvers". Not the best time to invest into it, right? Well, tell this to those who bought all of the raw materials out:

Let's add the fixed price ranges of BDO to make a perfect storm of moronism. A plank (melted shard) process needs 5 timber (ore) and an artisan processer can get 2.5 planks from one run. So the equilibrium price - assuming processing is free - is that the plank costs 2x more than the timber. Currently - with processing costing energy - it costs 4x more. The price ranges are fixed around these numbers. So when all these Einsteins dump their "free" planks after the patch, they'll be forced to sell for 3-4x higher than the timber as that will be the range minimum. There will be tens of thousands of planks listed on the range minimum with no one buying as they can just buy the timber for 1/3 price and process themselves! Oh, did I forgot that people stockpiled stupid amount of timber and ore because they expected this change or some other and didn't vendor them like I did (and they were right). So it's not like there will be shortage of timber after the patch.

Let's summarize the business plan of Moron Investment LDT:
  1. Spend awful lot of liquid money to buy ore/timber on max price when everyone has awful lot stockpiled already
  2. Spend days processing it
  3. List it on an artificially high forced price while there is a cheaper alternative for prospective buyers
  4. Profit???
What did I do?

I used to sell them for half as much to vendors, so I'm happy. It is possible that I could get more for them in a few days, while the "fool's gold rush" is still on. But I rather take safe moderate over risky many. With this sale I finally have a safety blanket:

I think a big bunch of morons will soon learn that if you are doing something that every Tom, Dick and Harriett can, you can only expect minimal wage. You need to sit on a limited resource or have skills that makes you a limited resource to command premium. Being able to leave the computer running on processing screen isn't that limited.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think what you're missing here is "crates". For example with wood, at artisan level, you make about 2,5 planks processing 5 timbers and then 2,5 hardwoods processing 10 planks (so about 2 timbers per plank and 4 planks per hardwood), so 1 hardwood takes about 8 timbers (at artisan level) which is about the numbers I get when processing thousands of timbers. Then you can craft a calpheon hardwood crate with 1 blackpowder (2k silver at marketplace) and 15 hardwoods, so about 120 timbers at 200s each so 24000 silvers, for a total cost of about 26000 silvers each crate. Those crates can already be sold for about 100k each near AltiNova thanks to the distance bonus. With Valencia they should be sold for even more (120 or 130k silvers). So we are talking of nearly 100k profit per crate which are crafted by workers. There was a limit to their profit due to the energy cost of processing the wood, but without it the only limit to your profit is the quantity of wood that you can get.

Gevlon said...

I don't think so. At this moment you can buy planks for about 500-800 and this was always the case. You need 15*4 = 60 planks for a crate, so 30-40K. While copping planks took energy, most of the energy was used in chopping the Timber. Yet people didn't buy them en masse, probably because you need to assign workers to make the crates and then run around the World. So I don't think that decreasing material costs from 35K to 24K will suddenly make them trade en masse.

Anonymous said...

People did trade them en masse (i made a few hundred millions casually myself), yet there wasn't enough energy to process all the timber collected by the workers (energy is needed for everything like alchemy, cooking, ... and you can make a better profit with those professions), this problem is now gone (and the crafting and transport is a fake problem, you can have something like 7 or 8 goblin workers crafting wood crates all day in calpheon and send everything with the auto wagon/boat which would cut only an irrelevant part of the profit, and then park an alt in Valencia to sell fast. Actually the crate empire was vastly used on EU/NA server but people used sunflowers crate because they don't require processing to be crafted but the profit is lower, now that plywood isn't limited by energy anymore some of them are switching to it. The wood crate empire is being used a lot on KR server however. I'm a bit surprised of your argumentation though, since when do you oppose "i don't think so" to numbers and facts (even with your numbers, 80k profit per crate with 250 crates crafted each day, about 2min to sell 40 to the npc, no taxes, that doesn't look bad to me). What's your next step, saying other people's way to make money is bad because you want to "play 4 fun" ?

Gevlon said...

I only believe in market. If something is so straightforward, need only NPC interaction, yet people didn't do it, it must have costs that you forgot to mention or ignore (my time is free!) Some obvious problems:
- Moving via auto-vagon/boat costs 2K if the nodes are connected (contribution point investment), otherwise 6K, not so irrelevant part. Also enough storage space in both cities to collect (more contribution points of cash shop).
- "7-8 goblins crafting wood crates" meaning 7-8 goblins not doing something else (it's called opportunity cost)

You never needed to process timber, you could buy planks and process that (saving 80% of the energy). Yet people didn't do it, otherwise there wouldn't be cheap planks lying in the marketplace.

Anonymous said...

Ok let's take your points one by one. First of all, I'll say it again people were doing it before this patch, they were doing it with sunflowers crates, you can find plenty of money making guide that explain it, plenty of posts on reddit or the official forum about that, why were they doing sunflowers we'll see about that later. Moving, you have to connect the nodes to sell the crates to npc so 2k on a 80k profit, not that much. Storage, crates stacks, you can have thousands in a single bank slot, no need for contribution or pearls here sorry. Finally the workers, of course there are opportunity cost, you could put that worker on an iron node for 400 ore/day and get 80k silver a day (at 200s/ore) or make him craft 25 crates at 80k profit each day (there are better nodes I admit, but how many nodes can compete with those kind of profit and even then those nodes take contrib points to get connected to the city), with 300 contribution points you have lots of options in your hands.
Now for the planks and why people were previously doing sunflowers. Again let's look at numbers. If you want to craft 250 plywood crates each day you need 3750 plywood (15*250), even taking into account artisan level processing that would take 1500 crafts, probably around 1100 or 1200 energy with free procs each day at the moment. And that's only if you could find the 15000 planks needed on the marketplace which is very unlikely (there's often only a few dozens planks of each wood, I looked right now and only 2 kind of planks can be found in good quantity) Can you remind us how much energy you have ? So no in NA/EU using this method wasn't possible because you couldn't craft enough crates to make it worthwile. So people used sunflowers crates which could be crafted without energy so they could use energy to level alchemy/cooking/gathering/...
But of course there are lots of opportunity costs with this method, there are with every method you can use in this game, the only good question is which one provide the better final profit. This method was impossible due to energy requirement, it is now only limited by wood stock which is why some people probably hoarded hundred of thousands of timbers waiting for this patch. The fact is YOU called morons the people who hoarded timbers or ore (you can do the same with ingots) without actually doing any research or thinking, usually you would have provided a good analysis covering the subject pros and cons, but this one is just lazy work, based on your only impression and no numbers or facts, a quite usual way of thinking by the infamous M&S you despite so much.

Gevlon said...

Jesus. Your knowledge of economy is way too little to make up a believable story, so I try to explain why is it nonsense as simple as possible.

The "plan" you made up is a trivial, baseline activity that needs no interaction with other players, taking any risks or special skills. Every Tom, Dick and Harriett can do it. Yet, the baseline people didn't do it, they did grinding. So probably everyone is too dumb to read up a simple guide and follow it, just you were a genius. Or... your plan has serious loopholes that I couldn't be assed to reproduce just to point out for Anonymous.

Either way, piss off with your nonsense!

Anonymous said...

Hm personnal attacks for only response ? I triggered the social in you i guess
Like I said a lot of people did this plan (I didn't I stopped the game a few weeks ago), i was just trying to bring some informations about why some people did. I explained with facts and numbers why it wasn't possible before this patch but apparently facts and numbers don't interest you anymore. Guess calling everyone stupid without any reason is a lot easier.
I won't even bother to respond on my lack of knowledge, I find your ad hominem attacks quite amusing coming from who you pretend to be :)

Gevlon said...

You are clearly a troll. The "plan" you "explained" is flat out nonsense. If it was working, then LITERALLY EVERYONE would have 2-300M and a black stone would sell for 10M. No one should be grinding Sausans, no one should be crafting, no one should be doing ANYTHING but this. You are preaching a Perpetuum mobile here and expect me to bite. I won't. Get lost already!

Before the patch it was just as possible as now, just in smaller numbers, as you should blow ALL your energy on this magic plan or on the Sunflower alternative.

Anonymous said...

'...it worth paying the tax twice...'
->
'...it IS worth paying the tax twice...'

Anonymous said...

So your argument is that this method (again not mine, i don't plan to use it, i don't even play the game) is wrong because everyone don't use it ? Let me quote someone : "the truth is that most of them are morons and slackers who actively avoid learning anything". I'll let you find who said that, but you know how easy it was to get millions of gold in Wow and yet most players were broke.
The most you could get each day with this "plan" would be about 250*80k so about 20millions silver. nothing to be ashamed of but nothing so spectacular like what you are implying. And right now before the patch you would have to cut that in 4 (300 energy per day seems a good average for someone playing a bit of the economy game) so 5million/day. If you think that BDO economy would collapse with such a small amount you clearly don't know anything about the game. Actually grinding Sausan can net you 2-3 millions per hour.
I didn't describe some kind of miracle "plan" like you are trying to put words in my mouth. I simply proved you wrong on the fact that people who invested in mass timbers will be able to cash out some nice money after the next patch.
Maybe you should start acting like a goblin and accept the fact that you simply were wrong (happens to everyone even the bests) instead of trying to personnal attacking me for not agreeing with you.
And for your information, yes there are on the servers quite a few people with 200-300+ millions in the game.

Gevlon said...

I currently have 130M cash. That gives me A wealth rank, meaning that 80-90% of the players have less. The main problem why I have trouble believing any of it is that the plan is trivial like daily quests. Doesn't need any kind of thinking, planning, skills, character skills or anything. A bot could do it. Yet the objective fact is that most people don't do it, otherwise the server wealth would be growing 20M/day and my wealth would be average in a week.

I will test it, but I already know what will I find: it works but has some hidden catch that makes people don't do it.

seanas said...

I make Calpheon wooden boxes as well - I posted some weeks ago that I made (then, with lower processing skill) about 3k profit per energy invested. With Prof 9 processing now, I'm over the magic Prof 5 mark where wood procs bigger crafting crits, so I make much better profit - but even now, I make about 8-9 boxes per night, for approx 150 energy, and 120k sale price in Altinova. I only have one worker (and one workbench) set to making boxes; I could connect a second but there's not much point as my one worker is often enough out of work.

But even with unlimited energy, I can only make about 12-14 boxes per day, as I'm limited by the amount of Fir my workers can gather (I have large stocks of Cedar and Birch). It's going to cost me 9 CP to connect a 2nd Fir node - and even then, as I don't have Trent connected, the tripled transport costs will measurably eat into my profits. It's 15 CP to connect Trent *and* a Fir node, and as I'm over the CP soft cap, that's not an option - nor an option after tomorrow, as I'll be connecting Valencia cities as a matter of priority.

So I don't believe people talking about 7-8 goblins - I don't even know where 7 or 8 workbenches are, and shifting all that wood around can eat into profits very quickly. The limiting factor is the amount of timber you can get your hands on - I could use the energy freed from processing to gather the extra Fir, but I'd rather invest that energy into Alchemy. So there's good money in Calpheon wood boxes, but the supply of timber is a very real limiting factor.

By the by: I don't understand why people trade Trent-Altinova, instead of Epheria-Altinova. Trent has 4% more distance bonus, but requires 3x transportation, where Epheria requires only 1 transportation. 2k per box from Epheria or 6k per bos from Trent +4% distance bonus? There's better profit from Epheria.

Anonymous said...

Well it actually takes quite some time letting your character afk processing (that kind of numbers would take hours of processing and you can't carry 15000 timbers on you, so you have to be able to empty and restock your inventory now and then, and while your character is processing you are not ,according to the majority of players, "playing the game", you are not leveling, not pvping, not gaining any power beside money.
And then to be able to set up the whole "operation" you need to have a good amount of contribution point (if selling the crates in valentia we are talking a minimum of 150 cp for the workers+buildings+connecting nodes). You would be surprised to see how most players have very few cp, most of the 55's in my guild had less than 100 when i left, they were too busy farming sausans all day to do dailys, and it was much easier than trying to plan a good trading route, to min-max your cp use, ...
Why are you surprised that most players in mmorpg don't even try to be rich, you showed many times in eve online how to get billions each day, yet you saw yourself that most players were dirt poor and prefered missioning for 100mill/h. You saw the same thing in Wow, most players were poor and spend their time doing dailys for 10g when anyone could make dozens of k each day playing a bit of the AH. Why do you think the players in a korean mostly grinding game would be so much "smarter" ? Why , when one guy disagree with one of your post, do you suddenly stop believing in what you are trying to proove for 3 or 4 years ?

Gevlon said...

At first, I'm sorry for being dismissive. I was pretty upset with the game in general (see today's post), but than I simply shouldn't have replied without even giving it a thought. I see now your point, it's a one-time patch money with collected (and purchased) timber and not a magic income source continuously.