Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Black Desert suggestion

Making a suggestion for a game is hard, because most things that annoy you are there for a reason and your "simple" suggestion would break the game somewhere. I fully realize how important it is for BDO to prevent goldselling, therefore there are no ways for players to transfer wealth or exchange items between each other outside of the anonymous marketplace using fixed price ranges.

However there is an obvious wish for rich players to utilize their wealth for group purposes. It's really annoying that you can't give anything of help to a newbie friend or a guildmate who has the skills but lacks the gear. It's equally annoying that you can't do anything with your billions but hoard it (or waste it on PEN attempts, just so you may gain +0.2% more AP). So I formulated a suggestion that allows wealth transfer without being usable for goldselling.

The feature is gear renting. Someone with more money than he needs can rent out his gear by putting it to a guild interface. From there, the guild leaders can assign that gear to a member in need. However the gear is rent and not given. It has "property of X" on it, the recipient can't enchant, sell or destroy it, he can only
  • Use it
  • Return it to the guild
  • Insert or remove crystals (the owner can only donate without crystals and crystals break upon returning)
  • Paint it
  • Repair durability (not max durability)
The gear is returned to the guildbank if the guild leader requests it or if the recipient leaves the guild. The gear is returned to the owner if he requests it or if he leaves the guild.

The guild-only requirement greatly decreases goldselling abuse: to get gear, the buyer and the seller must be in the same guild, remain in the guild and the transfer must be supported by the guild leadership. Of course the rent gear is returned and further renting is banned for players punished by GMs. Goldbuyers want to own in-game wealth not rent it just to lose it any moment.


Official forum link.

9 comments:

Lorelei Ierendi said...

If I rent my gear out, and leave the guild (then I get it back). How quickly does it come back? The next time the recipient logs out/in? Or does it ping back to me when the wearer is in the middle of a quest - leaving him naked.

So I could use my immense wealth to get multiple sets of gear and then offer the ones I do not need to the guild for members.

Other than having guild members with better gear... do I gain anything from this?

Gevlon said...

@Lorelei: I guess there should be a return period with a countdown.

What do you gain from being a geared PvP-er? Wins in PvP. It doesn't matter if you wear the gear yourself or not, your guild wins.

Tithian said...

@Lorelei

It would be a good way of boosting your ranks for things that are on a schedule, like node wars. Serious PvP guilds could have goblins (or enchanting masochists) securing gear, and the recruitement would happen strictly on skill tested in the FFA arenas, rather than the usual '400 AP/DP' requirements.

The timer on the item could be fairly short, say 1 day, and it really wouldn;t remove incentives for people to farm their own gear for PvE use or whatever.

I like it. It would also be a good sink for hoarded silvers, as more people would be inclined to risk enchanting stuff they don't really need as their own gear is 'complete'.

Anonymous said...

Why does there need to be a wealth transfer system? Let the hyper-rich play their gold/industry games and buy BiS gear in peace. The 2% can buy power only for themselves. They cannot provide welfares to their friends and developers do not need to balance around their distorting impact. Devs can aim to set activity rewards at a fun level for the majority of the game-base. They do not need worry about hyper-rich players dominating the game or continually introducing of new cash-sinks to tax the mega-wealthy. Misbalanced activity have minimal contagion on other aspects of the game and once fixed have little long-term impact beyond that of inflating the participants' bank balance. Preventing wealth transfer makes game balance much easier to achieve.
Most people want their actions to be the most important driver of their progress, not that of their guild industrialist. BDO keeps players in their own boxes. Players can choose their own fun based in its merits. They aren't priced out of an activity by a distant mega-wealthy player.

Unknown said...

I had this exact same idea for Diablo 3, shortly after the release of RoS, where they remove the auction houses and essentially stopped players trading directly in an attempt to kill RMT. I still wanted to give gear to my wife who didn't enjoy the grind as much as I did.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/2wkdd4/suggestion_loaning_gear/

Wasn't well received :-(

Lorelei Ierendi said...

@Gevlon
is the BDO community such that this idea would be used?

And are wins in PVP so very important? I would have thought that any guild that really cares about such things would have/attract the members that have already/can grind the gear... Why would a super-rich want to take a guild of more casual players and support them (if they are not family / friends)?

Smokeman said...

"So I formulated a suggestion that allows wealth transfer without being usable for goldselling."

Build a guild around a web site that allows guild members to "donate" to the site. Completely unrelated, of course... guildies get access to the guild loaners.

Where have I heard this song before?

The only sane design is to wall off the gold hoarders from the "normal" players, or make it really hard to hoard wealth in the first place. Anything else produces market forces that will ultimately result in RMT and it's associated game disruption. I'm all for the concept of a "free market economy" in online games, but it has been shown decisively that it will eventually turn into an RMT fest or a money laundering scheme.

Gevlon said...

@Smokeman: BDO has 100 guild member limit and somewhat serious PvP guilds are near that. Serious PvP guilds are there plus heavy attendance requirements. So you can't just have a strong guild that takes RMT buyers as every buyer takes a slot from a member.

Sure, you can have a buyers+sellers guild, but that will be a lolguild with nothing at its name.

Smokeman said...

Gevlon:

Make lots of 100 person guilds. Put them all over. Make them all at night and call them the "Moon Squad." As their spiritual leader, you would need a clever, third person name... like "The Timmani."

Who cares if it's a lolguild? Your target is people that can't be bothered to either farm or craft to get gear. Or just wanna dick with people trying to farm or craft gear. And in that vein, why would a serious PvP guild need you? They have attendance requirements for a reason, you have to grind to prove that you're worthy.

Market forces. If in game currency matters, the game will eventually become an RMT fest or a money laundering scheme. I don't like it either? But this is how the Human race rolls.