Greedy Goblin
Showing posts with label Random. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Random. Show all posts
Saturday, March 4, 2017
Weekend minipost: Nobel Prize to this guy!
Pure genius: before commenting, one should answer three questions about the factual content of the article, to weed out those who didn't even read (or failed to understand) it.
Friday, March 3, 2017
Great WoW moneymaking guide
Commenters requested
a guide similar to the BDO guide. I provided it:
Because in EVE and BDO you can buy power with currency. You have 120B ISK? Take a titan! You have 1B silver? TET Liverto Sword for you! So people with money buy game currency to buy power. This demand rises the price of game currency. In WoW, you can buy a few auxiliary items (enchants, gems, flasks, repairs). You can't really go whale in WoW. So demand for WoW Gold is low, therefore its price is crap.
While you can be a "business purist" for the sake of it, in the normal case, you must accept the reality of official currency/$ exchange (Token, PLEX, Costume sell). You must also accept the existence of whales who throw stupid amount of money on video games. Nosy just reported that CCP closed its best year financially, despite having the worst year in this decade in terms of players. According to EVE-offline, the characters online is the same as last year, despite free accounts were made available. That gave a peak and since then it's decline. But they don't have to care as money is pouring in like never before from extractors and skins. So you must evaluate the game as whole and if you choose to play, you must weight the currency/hour you can make in game against the currency/$*your_hourly_wage. If I'd play WoW (I don't), I'd probably just throw $15/month on it to have gold for the bills and wouldn't waste time making gold.
- Buy WoW token for $15
- Sell it for 160K gold
Because in EVE and BDO you can buy power with currency. You have 120B ISK? Take a titan! You have 1B silver? TET Liverto Sword for you! So people with money buy game currency to buy power. This demand rises the price of game currency. In WoW, you can buy a few auxiliary items (enchants, gems, flasks, repairs). You can't really go whale in WoW. So demand for WoW Gold is low, therefore its price is crap.
While you can be a "business purist" for the sake of it, in the normal case, you must accept the reality of official currency/$ exchange (Token, PLEX, Costume sell). You must also accept the existence of whales who throw stupid amount of money on video games. Nosy just reported that CCP closed its best year financially, despite having the worst year in this decade in terms of players. According to EVE-offline, the characters online is the same as last year, despite free accounts were made available. That gave a peak and since then it's decline. But they don't have to care as money is pouring in like never before from extractors and skins. So you must evaluate the game as whole and if you choose to play, you must weight the currency/hour you can make in game against the currency/$*your_hourly_wage. If I'd play WoW (I don't), I'd probably just throw $15/month on it to have gold for the bills and wouldn't waste time making gold.
Thursday, March 2, 2017
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
If I buy shards and sell ingot, someone is a moron
My main moneymaking activity in Black Desert Online is buying shards, processing them to ingots and selling them. The profit is around 2M/hour, which is about 1/3-1/4 of what a skilled and geared mobgrinder gets and I'm asleep or at work while doing it.
However it rises a problem: someone is a moron here. It's the one who sells the shards. Let's refresh the relevant part of processing: you grab 5 ores and in 12 seconds (including failed processing) you get 2.5 shards (with high skills). That's about 0.4M/hour profit. Then you grab 10 shards and in 12 seconds you get 2.5 ingots. This is about 3M/hour if you made the shards yourself and 2M/hour if you purchased them, the difference is coming from marketplace tax.
The only way to get shards is processing ores, so anyone making shards is already having the skills and spending time processing. Processing the shards to ingot would take 1/4 as much time and yield much higher profit. Yet people sell their shards, allowing me to buy them, process them and sell them. Obviously if they'd process to ingots themselves, they could have this profit and also keep the tax. Please note that "he has other priorities" doesn't fly here. There are reasons for not processing. But there is absolutely no reason to process ores and not processing the shards. That's just stupid.
I'm very much lost why people are so dumb. But I'm curious how long this practice will last when I finish my big BDO wealth guide and link it from every BDO page I have traffic on. The servers are region wide, so if just a few people learn my tricks, there should be more ingots on the market, to the point of overcrowding. You know, the prices in BDO are in fixed ranges, so oversupply can't drive the prices to the floor, there will always be formal profit on the shard-ingot transaction, but there would be so many ingots that yours wouldn't sell in a week. I'm very curious if I can reach the point where ingots no longer sell, just by posting guides.
However it rises a problem: someone is a moron here. It's the one who sells the shards. Let's refresh the relevant part of processing: you grab 5 ores and in 12 seconds (including failed processing) you get 2.5 shards (with high skills). That's about 0.4M/hour profit. Then you grab 10 shards and in 12 seconds you get 2.5 ingots. This is about 3M/hour if you made the shards yourself and 2M/hour if you purchased them, the difference is coming from marketplace tax.
The only way to get shards is processing ores, so anyone making shards is already having the skills and spending time processing. Processing the shards to ingot would take 1/4 as much time and yield much higher profit. Yet people sell their shards, allowing me to buy them, process them and sell them. Obviously if they'd process to ingots themselves, they could have this profit and also keep the tax. Please note that "he has other priorities" doesn't fly here. There are reasons for not processing. But there is absolutely no reason to process ores and not processing the shards. That's just stupid.
I'm very much lost why people are so dumb. But I'm curious how long this practice will last when I finish my big BDO wealth guide and link it from every BDO page I have traffic on. The servers are region wide, so if just a few people learn my tricks, there should be more ingots on the market, to the point of overcrowding. You know, the prices in BDO are in fixed ranges, so oversupply can't drive the prices to the floor, there will always be formal profit on the shard-ingot transaction, but there would be so many ingots that yours wouldn't sell in a week. I'm very curious if I can reach the point where ingots no longer sell, just by posting guides.
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
BDO wealth: Alchemy to make 30M/hour and your head explode
Warning: there is evidence that GMs collude with exploiters. Maybe it's not the best idea to play this game.
This post is part of the BDO Wealth Guide.
Alchemy is hands down the most profitable profession in BDO. You can reach up to 30M/hour doing it. But unlike everything I've shown here, it's not at all AFK. Actually you spend your time running up and down, juggling with materials and looking up recipes, interrupted only by short crafting sessions.
The reason why alchemy is so crazy profitable is exactly that it needs grinding, brain, pearls and initial investment. Those who are ok with brain and initial investment go cook. Those who are OK with brain and pearls go process. Those who are OK with grinding go Sausans. Very few people are OK with all of it. I did it big time back when I was new to the game, now I only create one item.
Let's see the requirements:
If you are up to the challenge and don't bother spending hours running up and down, moving materials between various places and have a bunch of charts all over your desk, alchemy will make you very rich very fast. Otherwise, stay away! Remember, if you make 150K per crystal, you have to craft and sell 200 per hour to have 30M/hour!
This post is part of the BDO Wealth Guide.
Alchemy is hands down the most profitable profession in BDO. You can reach up to 30M/hour doing it. But unlike everything I've shown here, it's not at all AFK. Actually you spend your time running up and down, juggling with materials and looking up recipes, interrupted only by short crafting sessions.
The reason why alchemy is so crazy profitable is exactly that it needs grinding, brain, pearls and initial investment. Those who are ok with brain and initial investment go cook. Those who are OK with brain and pearls go process. Those who are OK with grinding go Sausans. Very few people are OK with all of it. I did it big time back when I was new to the game, now I only create one item.
Let's see the requirements:
- Brain: most alchemy recipes have 4-5 materials and many of them are alchemy products of more materials which can be also products of alchemy. It is common that one item has a dozen original materials. You must have tables and charts to keep all your production needs tracked, or you end up with a bunch of materials and no way to craft because the marketplace just run off Sheep's blood and you have no stockpile.
- Grind: alchemy products aren't selling in millions a day. Crystals sell a couple hundred a day. Sure, their individual price is high (2-300K per piece), but you can't just craft a thousand AFK and list them. You craft a few, list them, craft something else, craft missing intermediates, drop everything and run to the marketplace when a rare material is listed and so on. Keep in mind that crystals don't stack and you can list 30 items at once. So it's constant juggling with what you craft, where you store it and so on.
- Pearls: due to not stacking, multiple items and high amount of materials, you need lots of storage. That means lots of slot expansions, both for your avatar and your headquarters warehouse. Sure, the latter can be done by renting storehouses from CP (sacrificing AFK income), but character slots are expensive, 1450 pearls for 16 slots. Having a box in your residence is mandatory to save at least the runs to the warehouse. And it's still not enough, you need stables extensions for your various carts holding even more stockpiles.
- Initial investment: Obviously you need a bunch of materials before you start crafting. But that's the smaller part. The big part is skillpoints. The outcome in BDO depends on skillpoints. In Cooking and Processing, you just suck up the smaller profit until you naturally grow up. I mean if you smelt 10K copper ore with bad skills, you lose like 400K/hour and by the time you're done, your skill is acceptable. In alchemy the prices of materials are much higher so you lose millions if your skill is not up. Also the crafted counts are in hundreds and not ten thousands, so it will take lot more time to grow up naturally. You must hit up the Olvia alchemy dailies to get skillpoints. To do that efficiently, have a cart in Olvia with the following contents:
- 1x Magic Crystal of Crimson Flame - Power: simple green crystal. Usually available on the marketplace for 6-8K. When not, the NPC Dora Fonti sells it in Heidel for 30K in infinite number.
- 1x Fruit of Abundance: usually available on the marketplace for 34K. When available, I stack up
- 7x Melted lead shard: can be gained from heating Lead ore and usually available on the marketplace for 1.4K each
- 4x Sheep blood: usually available on the marketplace for 1.1K each. When available, I stack up
- 1x Random gemstone. Practically any gem you find on the market for 6K will do.
If you are up to the challenge and don't bother spending hours running up and down, moving materials between various places and have a bunch of charts all over your desk, alchemy will make you very rich very fast. Otherwise, stay away! Remember, if you make 150K per crystal, you have to craft and sell 200 per hour to have 30M/hour!
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Weekend minipost: the unluckiest guy in BDO
This is why you should shop instead of enchanting yourself:
Thursday, February 23, 2017
BDO Wealth: Processing for profit and speed
Warning: there is evidence that GMs collude with exploiters. Maybe it's not the best idea to play this game.
This post is part of the BDO Wealth Guide.
Processing is one of the main tradeskills in Black Desert Online and one with the highest AFK-earning capacity, providing absurd silver/activity results. I mean you set it up, leave the computer for the night and return to have several millions more.
Before all, a warning: processing is very pearl-intensive activity. If you don't want to spend on the item shop, just forget it. The reason for that is the weight of the materials. If you exceed 100% weight, processing stops. First you need the maid/buttler costume (pearl/costume/Venecil set). It allows you to process from the warehouse, so you don't have to store raw materials on your back. The female costume makes your avatar look like a porn actress, but you can fix it (somewhat) by painting black parts to a light color, white parts to a dark shade of the same color and the ribbon to your hair color:
Secondly you need every weight extension that money or loyalty points can buy. You also need Hercules gear with extra weight gems:
You can process most raw materials (things your workers get). Typically you can chop timber into planks, planks to plywood. You can smelt ore to shards and shards to ingots. You can smelt raw crystals to crystals. You can grind flax, cotton and fleece into thread. The purpose is simple: to increase the value and the value density of the materials:
If your processing skill is high enough, you'll get about 2.5 secondary materials (plank, shard) per processing, using 5 primary materials. You'll also get about 2.5 tertiary materials (plywood, ingot) per processing, using 10 secondaries. One processing step takes about 12 seconds, due to some tries fail. So, using the picture, if you have 1000 iron ore (390K), you can process it into 500 iron shards (650K) in 2400 seconds, so you make 390K per hour by processing. You can also put your 500 shards into one market batch instead of two as the ore. If you process the 500 shards into ingot, you get 125 (1300K) ingots in 600 seconds, so the second step has 3.9M/hour profit !!!, yes that's comparable to grinding mobs and you can do it while totally AFK. Ingots stack by 200 on the market, so you further compressed your material (0.62 stacks).
Of course you must always mind the market, don't process into something that is overfilled and never sell. It's better to sell Ash timber for 300/unit than process 8 units into a 8500 worth of plywood, just so you can watch it lingering on the market forever. Also, you are often better of buying secondaries (shards) to process them to tertiaries (ingots) while selling your primaries (ore), because processing the ores to shards would waste your time from ingot-making. Remember, losing 400K/hour on the ore-shard transaction is acceptable if you spend the time on 4M/hour ingot making. Of course if there are no shard for sale, you must make them yourself.
I made a chart for the various materials, but it's a snapshot. Prices can change a bit (within the set minimum and maximum) but more importantly market overfilling (red boxes) can happen any time. A few people doing mass-processing can overfill markets, this case you must quit that processing and move to creating less profitable, but sellable products:
This post is part of the BDO Wealth Guide.
Processing is one of the main tradeskills in Black Desert Online and one with the highest AFK-earning capacity, providing absurd silver/activity results. I mean you set it up, leave the computer for the night and return to have several millions more.
Before all, a warning: processing is very pearl-intensive activity. If you don't want to spend on the item shop, just forget it. The reason for that is the weight of the materials. If you exceed 100% weight, processing stops. First you need the maid/buttler costume (pearl/costume/Venecil set). It allows you to process from the warehouse, so you don't have to store raw materials on your back. The female costume makes your avatar look like a porn actress, but you can fix it (somewhat) by painting black parts to a light color, white parts to a dark shade of the same color and the ribbon to your hair color:
Secondly you need every weight extension that money or loyalty points can buy. You also need Hercules gear with extra weight gems:
You can process most raw materials (things your workers get). Typically you can chop timber into planks, planks to plywood. You can smelt ore to shards and shards to ingots. You can smelt raw crystals to crystals. You can grind flax, cotton and fleece into thread. The purpose is simple: to increase the value and the value density of the materials:
If your processing skill is high enough, you'll get about 2.5 secondary materials (plank, shard) per processing, using 5 primary materials. You'll also get about 2.5 tertiary materials (plywood, ingot) per processing, using 10 secondaries. One processing step takes about 12 seconds, due to some tries fail. So, using the picture, if you have 1000 iron ore (390K), you can process it into 500 iron shards (650K) in 2400 seconds, so you make 390K per hour by processing. You can also put your 500 shards into one market batch instead of two as the ore. If you process the 500 shards into ingot, you get 125 (1300K) ingots in 600 seconds, so the second step has 3.9M/hour profit !!!, yes that's comparable to grinding mobs and you can do it while totally AFK. Ingots stack by 200 on the market, so you further compressed your material (0.62 stacks).
Of course you must always mind the market, don't process into something that is overfilled and never sell. It's better to sell Ash timber for 300/unit than process 8 units into a 8500 worth of plywood, just so you can watch it lingering on the market forever. Also, you are often better of buying secondaries (shards) to process them to tertiaries (ingots) while selling your primaries (ore), because processing the ores to shards would waste your time from ingot-making. Remember, losing 400K/hour on the ore-shard transaction is acceptable if you spend the time on 4M/hour ingot making. Of course if there are no shard for sale, you must make them yourself.
I made a chart for the various materials, but it's a snapshot. Prices can change a bit (within the set minimum and maximum) but more importantly market overfilling (red boxes) can happen any time. A few people doing mass-processing can overfill markets, this case you must quit that processing and move to creating less profitable, but sellable products:
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
BDO wealth: Secret shop
Warning: there is evidence that GMs collude with exploiters. Maybe it's not the best idea to play this game.
This post is part of the BDO Wealth Guide.
Since cooking, processing and alchemy needs no energy, the energy bar just fills up. You can use it to replace workers but sooner or later all your workers will be yellow at least. You can use the energy to replace them for orange, you get one for about 1000 energy, but that also involves 200 clicking. Hating to see it go wasted, I looked for a way to use it and found the night vendors. These are special shop NPCs that appear only at night at certain locations.
For 50 energy they offer you an item. It's usually a single black stone for a discount. But sometimes you get something nice:
There is another way of spending energy: gathering river water. You just have to stand into the river with a bunch of empty bottles and click on them. Gathering starts and repeats until you run out of energy. Every 20 seconds you get a 2.3K worth of bottle of river water (410K/hour). Later you can thin it with processing into about 2.3 purified water that costs 1.5K each (another 410K/hour). However processing ore into sellable ingots provide 1M/hour, so doing this isn't a too good idea. Always mind the opportunity cost and bring your energy to the secret shop.
This post is part of the BDO Wealth Guide.
Since cooking, processing and alchemy needs no energy, the energy bar just fills up. You can use it to replace workers but sooner or later all your workers will be yellow at least. You can use the energy to replace them for orange, you get one for about 1000 energy, but that also involves 200 clicking. Hating to see it go wasted, I looked for a way to use it and found the night vendors. These are special shop NPCs that appear only at night at certain locations.
For 50 energy they offer you an item. It's usually a single black stone for a discount. But sometimes you get something nice:
There is another way of spending energy: gathering river water. You just have to stand into the river with a bunch of empty bottles and click on them. Gathering starts and repeats until you run out of energy. Every 20 seconds you get a 2.3K worth of bottle of river water (410K/hour). Later you can thin it with processing into about 2.3 purified water that costs 1.5K each (another 410K/hour). However processing ore into sellable ingots provide 1M/hour, so doing this isn't a too good idea. Always mind the opportunity cost and bring your energy to the secret shop.
Monday, February 20, 2017
My blog was much more alive back then
As I'm indexing old posts, I realized that I had 30+ comments despite half as much traffic. Both me and my commenters engaged "trolls" who - often in a primitive manner - defended social thinking.
Today I don't engage them, I just moderate them out. I'm annoyed by them as they repeat the same old crap that was disproved almost a decade ago. No, just because he writes, a friendly social guild will not complete any meaningful content. No, "getting skillz" will definitely not let you rise out of the masses who all believe in "skillz".
Maybe I am wrong with this approach. Maybe I should engage with these people if my goal is to change their thinking. I have to accept that - despite I spent 4 years in EVE - I couldn't weed out the 0.01-ing. It's not a philosophical thing, it's not something pressed by Goons or protected by corrupted devs. It's a simple idiocy coming from lacking any clue about economics. And I failed to exterminate it. I'm pretty sure that if I'd go back to EVE, I'd find the market full of 0.01-ing idiots.
Does moderating every single idiot who says "market is about 24/7 sitting and updating orders" helps? Well, it helps with me feeling better. It probably helps the choir I preach to feel better. After all, seeing these idiots hurts. But does it help the World? Wouldn't it be better if I'd take the time to not only throw a link to them (which they won't read), but answer their retarded arguments the zillionth time?
I start to see that by moderating out idiots, I'm just creating a sterile ghetto for educated/rational people which acts like a closed facebook group. We are happy about being not idiots and make absolutely no difference.
On the other hand I see how much different I was back then. These things were new and I enjoyed debating them. Now they are trivialities. I've argued for them over almost a decade, I've seen all possible counter-arguments and defeated them. It's very unlikely that any 0.01-er could tell me anything that I haven't seen at least 100x.
I admit that I'm frustrated by this lack of progress. I mean my position about 0.01-ing is something obviously true and would greatly increase the income of anyone who listens. If people can't be convinced about that, how could they be convinced about social stuff? On the other hand my high hit count on business tip posts show that many people are interested in them and want to learn. So maybe I'm doing it right and moderating out the idiots was the right call. After all, most readers never commented, just read.
I don't know. The thing is that I enjoyed blogging and playing more back then. Maybe the two were connected and if I find a good game, it will be enjoyable again! Like many of us, I'm hit hard by the gradual "accessible gaming" + pay-to-win changes of games. The question is: can I increase blog quality and enjoyment without the games I write about getting better?
Today I don't engage them, I just moderate them out. I'm annoyed by them as they repeat the same old crap that was disproved almost a decade ago. No, just because he writes, a friendly social guild will not complete any meaningful content. No, "getting skillz" will definitely not let you rise out of the masses who all believe in "skillz".
Maybe I am wrong with this approach. Maybe I should engage with these people if my goal is to change their thinking. I have to accept that - despite I spent 4 years in EVE - I couldn't weed out the 0.01-ing. It's not a philosophical thing, it's not something pressed by Goons or protected by corrupted devs. It's a simple idiocy coming from lacking any clue about economics. And I failed to exterminate it. I'm pretty sure that if I'd go back to EVE, I'd find the market full of 0.01-ing idiots.
Does moderating every single idiot who says "market is about 24/7 sitting and updating orders" helps? Well, it helps with me feeling better. It probably helps the choir I preach to feel better. After all, seeing these idiots hurts. But does it help the World? Wouldn't it be better if I'd take the time to not only throw a link to them (which they won't read), but answer their retarded arguments the zillionth time?
I start to see that by moderating out idiots, I'm just creating a sterile ghetto for educated/rational people which acts like a closed facebook group. We are happy about being not idiots and make absolutely no difference.
On the other hand I see how much different I was back then. These things were new and I enjoyed debating them. Now they are trivialities. I've argued for them over almost a decade, I've seen all possible counter-arguments and defeated them. It's very unlikely that any 0.01-er could tell me anything that I haven't seen at least 100x.
I admit that I'm frustrated by this lack of progress. I mean my position about 0.01-ing is something obviously true and would greatly increase the income of anyone who listens. If people can't be convinced about that, how could they be convinced about social stuff? On the other hand my high hit count on business tip posts show that many people are interested in them and want to learn. So maybe I'm doing it right and moderating out the idiots was the right call. After all, most readers never commented, just read.
I don't know. The thing is that I enjoyed blogging and playing more back then. Maybe the two were connected and if I find a good game, it will be enjoyable again! Like many of us, I'm hit hard by the gradual "accessible gaming" + pay-to-win changes of games. The question is: can I increase blog quality and enjoyment without the games I write about getting better?
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Weekend minipost: ultimate power
I'm indexing old posts and found this gem from 2009. It's just as true as it was back then. And it's still funny.
Friday, February 17, 2017
The only way to raise salaries in capitalism
People are still not getting why it's crucial to deport the illegal immigrants and decrease the number of legal immigrants. Not because they "take the jobs". Most advanced countries have near-perfect employment. The unemployment rate of the US is less than 5%. Also, people aren't just workers, they are also consumers, creating further jobs, so jobs will never run out.
The reason why immigrants must be evicted in a swift, shock-like move is to create worker shortage. The only way salaries rise in capitalism if the workers are in short supply and companies have to lure workers from the competition with higher salary offers. This is happening in Hungary right now as large part of the workforce is working in the UK and Germany, leaving awful lot of empty positions in Hungary. Even low skill jobs like shop shelf packer is in short supply and gets raises all over the sector to keep/lure workforce.
Sure I realize the irony of Hungary's job shortage is due to de-facto immigration to the UK and Germany, but the effect on the British and the German workforce is not my problem. It definitely seems like the British can take care of themselves.
Immigrants are low wage earner population who can be removed without having to give them welfare or have to deal with their protest votes. They are not economically different from other low wage earner populations, but they can be removed without political costs. By doing so the wages of everyone else will rise.
No doubt that employers are all out against Trump, raising the salaries of domestic workers will be paid from their pockets.
The reason why immigrants must be evicted in a swift, shock-like move is to create worker shortage. The only way salaries rise in capitalism if the workers are in short supply and companies have to lure workers from the competition with higher salary offers. This is happening in Hungary right now as large part of the workforce is working in the UK and Germany, leaving awful lot of empty positions in Hungary. Even low skill jobs like shop shelf packer is in short supply and gets raises all over the sector to keep/lure workforce.
Sure I realize the irony of Hungary's job shortage is due to de-facto immigration to the UK and Germany, but the effect on the British and the German workforce is not my problem. It definitely seems like the British can take care of themselves.
Immigrants are low wage earner population who can be removed without having to give them welfare or have to deal with their protest votes. They are not economically different from other low wage earner populations, but they can be removed without political costs. By doing so the wages of everyone else will rise.
No doubt that employers are all out against Trump, raising the salaries of domestic workers will be paid from their pockets.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
BDO wealth: Cooking for little profit and lots of CP
Warning: there is evidence that GMs collude with exploiters. Maybe it's not the best idea to play this game.
This post is part of the BDO Wealth Guide.
The #1 material sold on BDO marketplace is Beer. Beer is the most common "fuel" used to make workers running. You can make beer by cooking. To do that, you must have a residence in a town and place cooking utensil in it. Then use it and place the materials:
Here are the products of cooking beer from 3000 potatoes. Please keep in mind that output in BDO is the function of your skill, I'm a top 10 cook, so if you just start, you'll make less, but your skill will increase with work. I simply turned in these collectibles. So I got:
So far I didn't mention the real profit of cooking, the fifth collectible, that can be turned in for contribution points:
I got about a dozen daily quests worth of XP for my beer. Replacing the utensil once in 10 minutes is much less clicks than doing daily quests or even leveling alts for contribution XP. Cooking is flat out the best way to get contribution points. Beer material (corn, wheat, barley, potato, sweet potato) is in large supply from workers (on the marketplace they are permanently missing), so if you can replace utensils or just leave the computer with a Balneos utensil for two hours, your contribution points will just keep rising with minimal effort.
This post is part of the BDO Wealth Guide.
The #1 material sold on BDO marketplace is Beer. Beer is the most common "fuel" used to make workers running. You can make beer by cooking. To do that, you must have a residence in a town and place cooking utensil in it. Then use it and place the materials:
Here are the products of cooking beer from 3000 potatoes. Please keep in mind that output in BDO is the function of your skill, I'm a top 10 cook, so if you just start, you'll make less, but your skill will increase with work. I simply turned in these collectibles. So I got:
- 1546 Beer (including from collectibles)
- 163 Cold draft beer
- 35 milk (from collectibles)
- 45K silver (from collectibles)
- 1x Sugar: 20 silver
- 2x Leavening agent: 20 silver each
- 6x Mineral Water: 30 silver each
- -3000 potatoes (893K opportunity cost)
- 1790 beer (1.98M after tax)
- -35K from silver + milk - materials - utensils
So far I didn't mention the real profit of cooking, the fifth collectible, that can be turned in for contribution points:
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Why PvP is such a big deal?
Tobold reminded me how much it's a dealbreaker for some people that a game is PvP. It's easy to forget, because from an objective standpoint, it's not. In a video game you lead character(s) who battle with other characters. Are these lead by other players or AI is secondary to how challenging they are. Also, remember the grey area: when a player supposed to lead, but he uses a bot instead.
Most of the pre-video games were PvP, simply because it's very hard to create an entertaining AI without computers. There were some "turn the page" adventure books (are these games?) and human dungeon-master driven RPGs. But sports, card games, tabletop games were all PvP. Today most players play with PvE games and PvP became a niche.
Why? "Free for all PvP games are designed specifically for loser jerks who still live in their mother's basement and who need the success experience of PvP griefing in order to feel better about their pathetic existence." - Tobold says. You can laugh on him, but more agree with him than not. What is "PvP-griefing"? Defeating him. This is the core problem. In a PvP encounter, one player will lose. In a PvE encounter the loser is almost always the NPC. Players are so entitled nowadays that they consider it griefing if they don't win.
It's not just about PvP. Computer power increased exponentially over a decade and AI research progressed to the point that chess programs beat human chess masters. Yet NPC opponents got dumber. A typical MMO opponent just stands in one place, oblivious to its surroundings until the brave heroes arrive and AoE them down with their l33t ability of pressing any key.
For my generation, winning and losing was obvious. For today, anything else than winning is unacceptable. Preferably without effort, simply for logging in. There are rewards for simply starting the game. For someone who got used to being called savior of the World for literally just pressing one button, it does feel griefing to lose a round in a game.
If a game has PvP, it has defeat, therefore it has meaningful victory. Sure, it also likely have pay-to-win, but every advantage can be beaten and every rigging can be identified and exploited. However you can't do anything about spoiled brats saying "I pay for this game, so I entitled to win it" because they can just move to the next game which gives them their participation badge. We have to agree that most games will be like that and the same entitled kids will call us griefers just because we want a meaningful win.
Most of the pre-video games were PvP, simply because it's very hard to create an entertaining AI without computers. There were some "turn the page" adventure books (are these games?) and human dungeon-master driven RPGs. But sports, card games, tabletop games were all PvP. Today most players play with PvE games and PvP became a niche.
Why? "Free for all PvP games are designed specifically for loser jerks who still live in their mother's basement and who need the success experience of PvP griefing in order to feel better about their pathetic existence." - Tobold says. You can laugh on him, but more agree with him than not. What is "PvP-griefing"? Defeating him. This is the core problem. In a PvP encounter, one player will lose. In a PvE encounter the loser is almost always the NPC. Players are so entitled nowadays that they consider it griefing if they don't win.
It's not just about PvP. Computer power increased exponentially over a decade and AI research progressed to the point that chess programs beat human chess masters. Yet NPC opponents got dumber. A typical MMO opponent just stands in one place, oblivious to its surroundings until the brave heroes arrive and AoE them down with their l33t ability of pressing any key.
For my generation, winning and losing was obvious. For today, anything else than winning is unacceptable. Preferably without effort, simply for logging in. There are rewards for simply starting the game. For someone who got used to being called savior of the World for literally just pressing one button, it does feel griefing to lose a round in a game.
If a game has PvP, it has defeat, therefore it has meaningful victory. Sure, it also likely have pay-to-win, but every advantage can be beaten and every rigging can be identified and exploited. However you can't do anything about spoiled brats saying "I pay for this game, so I entitled to win it" because they can just move to the next game which gives them their participation badge. We have to agree that most games will be like that and the same entitled kids will call us griefers just because we want a meaningful win.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
BDO Wealth: worker empire
Warning: there is evidence that GMs collude with exploiters. Maybe it's not the best idea to play this game.
This post is part of the BDO Wealth Guide.
This is the detailed description of the best way to get rich in Black Desert Online: having a worker empire. It is long, so most people won't read it. Well, as workers create no silver and selling on the market destroys silver, the silver must come from somewhere and that "somewhere" will be people who don't read it and grind instead.
The workers are essentially a stereotypical mobile game resource gathering implemented into BDO for some reason. You click on the resource and it's collected in real time. How much? About 20M silver worth a day. To harvest it, you need less than 30 minutes of actual "at keyboard" time, but even most of that is not clicking, but waiting for character switch and autopathing from spawn point to storage. There is one catch though: for some bizarre reason, workers only work when you are online. So in order to use them, you must leave your computer running.
Important note: you don't need levels or gear to use this method. You can start using them literally as a new player and earn income thousand times higher than grinding low level mobs. With the income you can buy gear a new player can't dream of and oneshot level-appropriate monsters.
Let's start with the basics: there are nodes on the map that you can activate usince contribution points. Every city and major town is a "free node" that you can connect to nearby nodes. You can do it at the node manager or by using 10 energy if you have "subscription", the Value Pack buff. Then you can connect other nodes to the already connected ones, as long as you have contribution points. After a node is connected, you can connect its "work nodes":
Each town comes with their own separate warehouses and with one worker slot. You can recruit a worker to that slot at the work manager. You can find the work manager using the NPC finder, "worker" button. You can increase your worker slots by the pay-to-win item "[zone] worker lodging" and/or by using contribution points for renting lodging buildings in the town (and in some cases, nearby nodes):
If a resource node is connected to a town (trough any length of connected nodes), you can send the worker to harvest that resource. Then click on the resource and select your worker to harvest it for your warehouse. The worker lives in the town and exist in the game world. He walks out from the warehouse to the node, does the work and walks back like this little goblin from Tarif (town) to Kamasilve (work node):
Pick the resources based on their market value and don't miss on the "excavation" resources which provide rare crafting items. Their locations are: Bernianto farm, Lynch farm ruins, Mansha forest, Rhua tree stub, Glish ruins, Ancient stone chamber. You must pay 35 energy to "find" them and then normally activate. Work happens in cycles. The cycle length depends on the work and travel speed of the worker and the distance of the node from the town. The workers have 4 main stats:
You can improve the secondary stats of workers if they reached level 30. Just select the worst stat and you get a new one randomly:
Workers need "fuel" to work. Several kinds of food serve as fuel, typically beer is used. Refresh them often to top them up. Always have fuel in your backpack:
I currently have 302 Contribution Points. From that, I use the following nodes:
Olvia is the starting zone, yet it's really important, because Velia is horribly lodging-starved, so I staff most of the near-Velia nodes from Olvia.
Velia itself only staffs the nodes east of it:
Heidel is my headquarters, receiving all the products from all places. It also has a bunch of nodes, including the very profitable Fleece and Honey farms. The node in the southeast that doesn't look connected is connected trough Kamasilve, Tarif region:
Glish is the smallest region, only a handful of nodes, but one of them is excavation, other is pine, so don't ignore it:
Keplan has some weird long connections, because it only have 1 useful nodes next to it. But it worth making the chains, it's one of my most profitable regions:
Calpheon is hands down the largest network and probably it would be the optimal headquarters:
Trent in the Southwest corner of the map looks like some irrelevant remnant of pre-expansion content. Not in BDO! Most of the materials of the infamous Calpheon Timber Crate come from here. Too bad that its lodging is stretched:
Tarif covers the largest territory and its nodes are paying well. It's plagued by low lodging, so I staff some nodes from Heidel:
I barely use Altinova, because I simply don't have enough CP to cover its nodes in the Valencia continent, despite there are some lucrative ones, but that two I use make black crystal:
Poor Sand Grain Bazaar is in even worse condition. Update: since then I activated its teff farm, but there are still several lucrative nodes on the south I didn't even explore.
The workers deposit their products in their respective towns. How do the products get from these places to Heidel where I sort, process and sell them? Two ways. The simpler is Warehouse transport. Just open the map, select the town and press transport. Then click Send and set the destination along with one available transport method. Then click on the materials until all of them is in the transport window and press Send at the bottom of the transport window. The catch? The stacks are broken up:
So I transport from Olvia, Velia, Tarif, Glish and Altinova (double-transport via Tarif). But from Calpheon, Keplan, Trent and Sand Grain I transport via alt-AFK-transport. This means selecting disconnect from the ESC menu, selecting Transport and picking a town and another character:
The selected character logs in and the old one goes into transport. If you log back to her an hour later, she'll be in the destination, along with her mount. My transport alts have large wagons as mounts, so they drive it to the warehouse, fill it and their backpack with items and use the same AFK travel to get back to Heidel where they dump their stuff to the warehouse. These alts are equipped with the following gear for max weight limit:
How to get workers? You must go to the work manager (NPC finder, "worker") and select contract worker. For 5 energy a worker is suggested to you. If you are starting up and need to hire lots of workers, take every except Naive. But after your nodes are covered, start accepting only blues and above, firing greens. When no greens left, start to fire blues and replace them with yellows. You get a yellow from about 200 energy. You can get extra energy by buying a bed and lying into it. Remember: if you want a Velia worker, you must hire him from Santo Manzi, the Velia manager.
There is also a worker exchange where you can buy and sell worker contracts. It's a fast way to stack up with blue workers and you can get lucky with some higher quality ones. You can also use it to get some money for your no longer needed workers. Since my empire is already near maxed, I can afford to fire lvl 30 yellow workers after all their promotions are used, to hire someone in their place:
This post is part of the BDO Wealth Guide.
This is the detailed description of the best way to get rich in Black Desert Online: having a worker empire. It is long, so most people won't read it. Well, as workers create no silver and selling on the market destroys silver, the silver must come from somewhere and that "somewhere" will be people who don't read it and grind instead.
The workers are essentially a stereotypical mobile game resource gathering implemented into BDO for some reason. You click on the resource and it's collected in real time. How much? About 20M silver worth a day. To harvest it, you need less than 30 minutes of actual "at keyboard" time, but even most of that is not clicking, but waiting for character switch and autopathing from spawn point to storage. There is one catch though: for some bizarre reason, workers only work when you are online. So in order to use them, you must leave your computer running.
Important note: you don't need levels or gear to use this method. You can start using them literally as a new player and earn income thousand times higher than grinding low level mobs. With the income you can buy gear a new player can't dream of and oneshot level-appropriate monsters.
Let's start with the basics: there are nodes on the map that you can activate usince contribution points. Every city and major town is a "free node" that you can connect to nearby nodes. You can do it at the node manager or by using 10 energy if you have "subscription", the Value Pack buff. Then you can connect other nodes to the already connected ones, as long as you have contribution points. After a node is connected, you can connect its "work nodes":
Each town comes with their own separate warehouses and with one worker slot. You can recruit a worker to that slot at the work manager. You can find the work manager using the NPC finder, "worker" button. You can increase your worker slots by the pay-to-win item "[zone] worker lodging" and/or by using contribution points for renting lodging buildings in the town (and in some cases, nearby nodes):
If a resource node is connected to a town (trough any length of connected nodes), you can send the worker to harvest that resource. Then click on the resource and select your worker to harvest it for your warehouse. The worker lives in the town and exist in the game world. He walks out from the warehouse to the node, does the work and walks back like this little goblin from Tarif (town) to Kamasilve (work node):
Pick the resources based on their market value and don't miss on the "excavation" resources which provide rare crafting items. Their locations are: Bernianto farm, Lynch farm ruins, Mansha forest, Rhua tree stub, Glish ruins, Ancient stone chamber. You must pay 35 energy to "find" them and then normally activate. Work happens in cycles. The cycle length depends on the work and travel speed of the worker and the distance of the node from the town. The workers have 4 main stats:
- Work speed: the higher, the faster the work is done
- Walk speed: the higher, the faster the worker reaches the destination. Important if the node is afar.
- Luck: the higher, the more secondary resources you get. For example if you farm chicken meat, you can get eggs.
- Stamina: how many cycles he can do before refreshing. Refreshing must be done manually, by clicking on food item. You obviously can't do it while not at the keyboard.
- Goblins: fast work, fast move, low luck, low stamina
- Humans: moderate work, moderate move, high luck, moderate stamina
- Giants: moderate work, slow move, low luck, high stamina
You can improve the secondary stats of workers if they reached level 30. Just select the worst stat and you get a new one randomly:
Workers need "fuel" to work. Several kinds of food serve as fuel, typically beer is used. Refresh them often to top them up. Always have fuel in your backpack:
I currently have 302 Contribution Points. From that, I use the following nodes:
Olvia is the starting zone, yet it's really important, because Velia is horribly lodging-starved, so I staff most of the near-Velia nodes from Olvia.
Velia itself only staffs the nodes east of it:
Heidel is my headquarters, receiving all the products from all places. It also has a bunch of nodes, including the very profitable Fleece and Honey farms. The node in the southeast that doesn't look connected is connected trough Kamasilve, Tarif region:
Glish is the smallest region, only a handful of nodes, but one of them is excavation, other is pine, so don't ignore it:
Keplan has some weird long connections, because it only have 1 useful nodes next to it. But it worth making the chains, it's one of my most profitable regions:
Calpheon is hands down the largest network and probably it would be the optimal headquarters:
Trent in the Southwest corner of the map looks like some irrelevant remnant of pre-expansion content. Not in BDO! Most of the materials of the infamous Calpheon Timber Crate come from here. Too bad that its lodging is stretched:
Tarif covers the largest territory and its nodes are paying well. It's plagued by low lodging, so I staff some nodes from Heidel:
I barely use Altinova, because I simply don't have enough CP to cover its nodes in the Valencia continent, despite there are some lucrative ones, but that two I use make black crystal:
Poor Sand Grain Bazaar is in even worse condition. Update: since then I activated its teff farm, but there are still several lucrative nodes on the south I didn't even explore.
The workers deposit their products in their respective towns. How do the products get from these places to Heidel where I sort, process and sell them? Two ways. The simpler is Warehouse transport. Just open the map, select the town and press transport. Then click Send and set the destination along with one available transport method. Then click on the materials until all of them is in the transport window and press Send at the bottom of the transport window. The catch? The stacks are broken up:
So I transport from Olvia, Velia, Tarif, Glish and Altinova (double-transport via Tarif). But from Calpheon, Keplan, Trent and Sand Grain I transport via alt-AFK-transport. This means selecting disconnect from the ESC menu, selecting Transport and picking a town and another character:
The selected character logs in and the old one goes into transport. If you log back to her an hour later, she'll be in the destination, along with her mount. My transport alts have large wagons as mounts, so they drive it to the warehouse, fill it and their backpack with items and use the same AFK travel to get back to Heidel where they dump their stuff to the warehouse. These alts are equipped with the following gear for max weight limit:
How to get workers? You must go to the work manager (NPC finder, "worker") and select contract worker. For 5 energy a worker is suggested to you. If you are starting up and need to hire lots of workers, take every except Naive. But after your nodes are covered, start accepting only blues and above, firing greens. When no greens left, start to fire blues and replace them with yellows. You get a yellow from about 200 energy. You can get extra energy by buying a bed and lying into it. Remember: if you want a Velia worker, you must hire him from Santo Manzi, the Velia manager.
There is also a worker exchange where you can buy and sell worker contracts. It's a fast way to stack up with blue workers and you can get lucky with some higher quality ones. You can also use it to get some money for your no longer needed workers. Since my empire is already near maxed, I can afford to fire lvl 30 yellow workers after all their promotions are used, to hire someone in their place:
Monday, February 13, 2017
BDO wealth: the market system
Warning: there is evidence that GMs collude with exploiters. Maybe it's not the best idea to play this game.
This post is part of the BDO Wealth Guide.
Unless you want to spend hours actively grinding mobs for their silver, you will have to use the market to liquidate your products. Also, everything is available on the market, including high-end gear:
I got my full TET gear in August (now it's obviously outdated). I strongly recommend selling your drops and black stones and let others suffer with the upgrade system and just buy the gear you want. Only upgrade yourself if the item you want is totally unavailable.
I've returned only to write a comprehensive guide. I didn't even set my hotkeys and skills after they were reseted some time while I was away as I'm not planning to kill a single mob while climb back to the Wealth toplist.
The first and most important thing is that you must have a "subscription", by buying the monthly "Value pack". It has several effects, but the most important is the market tax reduction:
The second thing is the fixed price system.
Selling time is crucial, because you only have 30 market orders and can't increase that even with pay-to-win. Ergo if every item takes one day to sell, you sell 30 items per day, which isn't much. You can increase the value of items by cooking or processing them first, but the main point is to either increase the speed of sales by cutting the price or when it's impossible, just sell the item to an NPC to prevent clogging the marketplace.
In Europe (and probably many other locales) the markets are linked, so if you list something in Velia, one can buy it in Altinova. You can also collect the gold at any marketplaces, but you can only cancel orders where they are listed.
This post is part of the BDO Wealth Guide.
Unless you want to spend hours actively grinding mobs for their silver, you will have to use the market to liquidate your products. Also, everything is available on the market, including high-end gear:
I got my full TET gear in August (now it's obviously outdated). I strongly recommend selling your drops and black stones and let others suffer with the upgrade system and just buy the gear you want. Only upgrade yourself if the item you want is totally unavailable.
I've returned only to write a comprehensive guide. I didn't even set my hotkeys and skills after they were reseted some time while I was away as I'm not planning to kill a single mob while climb back to the Wealth toplist.
The first and most important thing is that you must have a "subscription", by buying the monthly "Value pack". It has several effects, but the most important is the market tax reduction:
The second thing is the fixed price system.
Selling time is crucial, because you only have 30 market orders and can't increase that even with pay-to-win. Ergo if every item takes one day to sell, you sell 30 items per day, which isn't much. You can increase the value of items by cooking or processing them first, but the main point is to either increase the speed of sales by cutting the price or when it's impossible, just sell the item to an NPC to prevent clogging the marketplace.
In Europe (and probably many other locales) the markets are linked, so if you list something in Velia, one can buy it in Altinova. You can also collect the gold at any marketplaces, but you can only cancel orders where they are listed.
Friday, February 10, 2017
Social goals and asocial methods and the next game
The conclusion of my yesterday post was " I want a game with a socially relevant goal that can be reached by other means than clicking faster." This is contradicting my blog motto: "being anti-social in a social game to get a heap of pixel gold or because real life is more fun without morons and slackers".
The solution is that "being" is not a good term at all. What are you? There is a library full of philosophy about that. Let's evade this question and use the term "acting" or "performing", because that is clearly visible and measurable. I believe that if you act a-socially, you progress faster towards your goal than if you act socially.. "Socially" is pretty obvious: caring about the emotions and well-being of others. A-sociality doesn't mean causing negative emotions that is often the goal of psychopaths. A griefer very much care about the emotions and well-being of others, just his goal is not love and respect but fear and anger. The a-social approach considers others objects and use them accordingly. It doesn't mean abuse, just like you "give" fuel to your car and don't smash it with a hammer, you should give money to the shop and don't vandalize it. The laws of our countries are objectively existing, so is the jail for those who abuse others.
A game is a simulation, that allows both experimenting and easy way to present your results. Unlike in real life, failure has little consequence, the worst possible outcome is losing all the time you spent with the game. Also, other players can easily relate to your situation, my pixel dragon kill is exactly the same as yours.
From the above comes "in a game you achieve your goals easier if you act a-socially and you can use it to prove your point to others". This is true for any goal. Without trying, I guarantee you that you get higher in WoW pet battles if you just read guides and do pet battles alone instead of joining a "fun" guild that has "pet battles" in its description. But no one would give a damn, because who cares about WoW pet battles. For blogging, social people must care, and this can only achieved if the goal is socially relevant.
"Socially relevant" is something like "socials talk about it", "those who have it consider it e-peen", "incites envy in socials". Having high rating in League of Legends is such thing for LoL players. They all insist that they are platinum smurfs and those who are really platinum look down on those who are not. In old WoW epic gear was something like that. Only the best had it and those who didn't have it envied it and cried to Blizzard to no end.
So the next game must be something that has a socially relevant goal. It needs significant playerbase (if no one plays the game, nothing in it can be relevant) and the (majority of the) playerbase must focus on a goal. This is true for most e-sports like Starcraft, however there is no place for a-sociality or sociality in a completely twitch game, so nothing for me to see. Most games suggested to me were either low population or "you do whatever you want and no one cares".
Yes, I cry some more about EVE, because it was perfect on paper. Socials cared a lot about their ships exploding and their precious empire evicted while it was easy to get ahead with trading instead of social grouping. If only the devs wouldn't intervene for their buddies...
Anyway, I hope the above makes it clear what I want to achieve as a blogger and what kind of game would serve that. Please think about the games you suggested from this perspective: does it have goals that makes other players care?
The solution is that "being" is not a good term at all. What are you? There is a library full of philosophy about that. Let's evade this question and use the term "acting" or "performing", because that is clearly visible and measurable. I believe that if you act a-socially, you progress faster towards your goal than if you act socially.. "Socially" is pretty obvious: caring about the emotions and well-being of others. A-sociality doesn't mean causing negative emotions that is often the goal of psychopaths. A griefer very much care about the emotions and well-being of others, just his goal is not love and respect but fear and anger. The a-social approach considers others objects and use them accordingly. It doesn't mean abuse, just like you "give" fuel to your car and don't smash it with a hammer, you should give money to the shop and don't vandalize it. The laws of our countries are objectively existing, so is the jail for those who abuse others.
A game is a simulation, that allows both experimenting and easy way to present your results. Unlike in real life, failure has little consequence, the worst possible outcome is losing all the time you spent with the game. Also, other players can easily relate to your situation, my pixel dragon kill is exactly the same as yours.
From the above comes "in a game you achieve your goals easier if you act a-socially and you can use it to prove your point to others". This is true for any goal. Without trying, I guarantee you that you get higher in WoW pet battles if you just read guides and do pet battles alone instead of joining a "fun" guild that has "pet battles" in its description. But no one would give a damn, because who cares about WoW pet battles. For blogging, social people must care, and this can only achieved if the goal is socially relevant.
"Socially relevant" is something like "socials talk about it", "those who have it consider it e-peen", "incites envy in socials". Having high rating in League of Legends is such thing for LoL players. They all insist that they are platinum smurfs and those who are really platinum look down on those who are not. In old WoW epic gear was something like that. Only the best had it and those who didn't have it envied it and cried to Blizzard to no end.
So the next game must be something that has a socially relevant goal. It needs significant playerbase (if no one plays the game, nothing in it can be relevant) and the (majority of the) playerbase must focus on a goal. This is true for most e-sports like Starcraft, however there is no place for a-sociality or sociality in a completely twitch game, so nothing for me to see. Most games suggested to me were either low population or "you do whatever you want and no one cares".
Yes, I cry some more about EVE, because it was perfect on paper. Socials cared a lot about their ships exploding and their precious empire evicted while it was easy to get ahead with trading instead of social grouping. If only the devs wouldn't intervene for their buddies...
Anyway, I hope the above makes it clear what I want to achieve as a blogger and what kind of game would serve that. Please think about the games you suggested from this perspective: does it have goals that makes other players care?
Thursday, February 9, 2017
EVE is a PvP game and BDO is not
I left BDO and do not intend to return. My current miniproject is only to refresh my outdated but still very high hit count BDO moneymaking pages. But why do I find BDO lacking? Formally EVE and BDO are very similar and I loved EVE and would still be playing if the devs wouldn't have horses in the race. In both games you get gear (ships, modules) from the marketplace for the currency you gain from any means (farming, trading, piracy). Then you use your gear to fight for ownership of territories.
So if I liked EVE, I must like BDO and play the PvP endgame enthusiastically. I don't. The reason is that in EVE territory ownership is relevant, while in BDO it's vanity. If your alliance owns a region, only you can dock and use the various benefits the upgrades provide. A ratter or miner in a good region makes much better money than someone doing the same thing in an NPC owned or lowsec system. Also, you can use your power to seriously harm the activities of other groups, just think of the highsec miner gankers or the countless goonies losing their ships to Marmite during my first year of Grr. EVE PvP is relevant. Those who have PvP power own lucrative resources and can force their will on lesser players, even without in-game benefit. Socials love that, therefore any method that increases their PvP power interests them. I gained my fame/infame by hunting the "undefeatable" Goons, proving that they are far from undefeatable. It annoyed them to no end, leading to my outcasting from EVE by their buddy Falcon.
BDO PvP on the other hand is vanity. Every "region" is owned by someone, but no one cares. I have no idea who the hell "owns" the places where I make my money. When I went to check it, I found that no one! Out of the 5 territories, only 3 are occupied, as no one bothers to take the rest:
Ownership gives neither exclusivity, nor relevant benefits. Sure there are monetary rewards, but nothing that would match simple solo activity. Also, there are no personal losses from PvP, so having PvP power gives no power over other players. If you gank someone he just says "meh" and moves to another channel (server phase). Compare it to EVE where the newbie learns - at the cost of big part of his assets - on day one not to go to lowsec where the dangerous pirates live unless you want to cross blades with them. Everyone knows that you can't just walk into someone else's land and do as you please. Hell, you can't even walk to your own land and do as you please as hunters are out there looking for an easy mining or ratting ship kill.
Without personal gains and losses, there is no personal point to PvP. Sure, guild leaders can brag how l33t they are, but no one cares. I have no idea who leads the top guilds, nor I have any idea about the names of these guilds. Can anyone in EVE not know of Goons, PL, TEST, NC. and Mittani, Grath, Vince, Progod?! All the countless hours of grinding and organizing gave no "real" e-peen to the BDO leaders. I mean they aren't even envied/respected by socials. They are ignored. No one could ignore the Mittani. You could of course fight him. But if he said "Burn Jita", then something happened. Maybe that something was just me trolling them in a million EHP Ark, but still, I had to change my gameplay if I didn't want them to succeed in their plans. They affected me, they mattered to me.
EVE is a PvP game to its core and it has so much potential. Too bad that it's unplayable due to dev corruption. But BDO is a simple PvE grinding game without proper PvE endgame like WoW, replaced by a make-believe PvP that has no impact on anyone who doesn't want to be impacted. Now BDO could be changed to a meaningful PvP game, like dead has a chance to drop one of their items the killers can loot and you have a significant buff grinding or gathering in a territory owned by your guild. But then BDO would be a different game and most of their current players would leave, unlikely to be replaced by enough PvP-ers.
Which leads us to something fundamental: for a game to be competitive, there must be something that is socially relevant. It doesn't matter if you personally find it stupid, what matters is that the majority of the players find it a source of pride for having and source of envy for not having. Top gear was such in WoW until every Arthasdklol started to get legendaries. From there it could be dismissed "lol I'll have better from emblems next patch". Territory ownership is relevant in EVE. High ranking is relevant in LoL. But there isn't anything like that in BDO or WoT.
I wrote many-many criteria for my next project, because I didn't know what I was looking for. I know now: I want a game with a socially relevant goal that can be reached by other means than clicking faster.
So if I liked EVE, I must like BDO and play the PvP endgame enthusiastically. I don't. The reason is that in EVE territory ownership is relevant, while in BDO it's vanity. If your alliance owns a region, only you can dock and use the various benefits the upgrades provide. A ratter or miner in a good region makes much better money than someone doing the same thing in an NPC owned or lowsec system. Also, you can use your power to seriously harm the activities of other groups, just think of the highsec miner gankers or the countless goonies losing their ships to Marmite during my first year of Grr. EVE PvP is relevant. Those who have PvP power own lucrative resources and can force their will on lesser players, even without in-game benefit. Socials love that, therefore any method that increases their PvP power interests them. I gained my fame/infame by hunting the "undefeatable" Goons, proving that they are far from undefeatable. It annoyed them to no end, leading to my outcasting from EVE by their buddy Falcon.
BDO PvP on the other hand is vanity. Every "region" is owned by someone, but no one cares. I have no idea who the hell "owns" the places where I make my money. When I went to check it, I found that no one! Out of the 5 territories, only 3 are occupied, as no one bothers to take the rest:
Ownership gives neither exclusivity, nor relevant benefits. Sure there are monetary rewards, but nothing that would match simple solo activity. Also, there are no personal losses from PvP, so having PvP power gives no power over other players. If you gank someone he just says "meh" and moves to another channel (server phase). Compare it to EVE where the newbie learns - at the cost of big part of his assets - on day one not to go to lowsec where the dangerous pirates live unless you want to cross blades with them. Everyone knows that you can't just walk into someone else's land and do as you please. Hell, you can't even walk to your own land and do as you please as hunters are out there looking for an easy mining or ratting ship kill.
Without personal gains and losses, there is no personal point to PvP. Sure, guild leaders can brag how l33t they are, but no one cares. I have no idea who leads the top guilds, nor I have any idea about the names of these guilds. Can anyone in EVE not know of Goons, PL, TEST, NC. and Mittani, Grath, Vince, Progod?! All the countless hours of grinding and organizing gave no "real" e-peen to the BDO leaders. I mean they aren't even envied/respected by socials. They are ignored. No one could ignore the Mittani. You could of course fight him. But if he said "Burn Jita", then something happened. Maybe that something was just me trolling them in a million EHP Ark, but still, I had to change my gameplay if I didn't want them to succeed in their plans. They affected me, they mattered to me.
EVE is a PvP game to its core and it has so much potential. Too bad that it's unplayable due to dev corruption. But BDO is a simple PvE grinding game without proper PvE endgame like WoW, replaced by a make-believe PvP that has no impact on anyone who doesn't want to be impacted. Now BDO could be changed to a meaningful PvP game, like dead has a chance to drop one of their items the killers can loot and you have a significant buff grinding or gathering in a territory owned by your guild. But then BDO would be a different game and most of their current players would leave, unlikely to be replaced by enough PvP-ers.
Which leads us to something fundamental: for a game to be competitive, there must be something that is socially relevant. It doesn't matter if you personally find it stupid, what matters is that the majority of the players find it a source of pride for having and source of envy for not having. Top gear was such in WoW until every Arthasdklol started to get legendaries. From there it could be dismissed "lol I'll have better from emblems next patch". Territory ownership is relevant in EVE. High ranking is relevant in LoL. But there isn't anything like that in BDO or WoT.
I wrote many-many criteria for my next project, because I didn't know what I was looking for. I know now: I want a game with a socially relevant goal that can be reached by other means than clicking faster.
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
BDO Wealth: which professions made people rich
This post is part of the BDO Wealth Guide.
I conducted a very rudimentary research on wealth gain in BDO. I simply screenshotted the wealth toplist along with the various profession toplists and checked for names appearing in both. Please note that the toplists are dumb: instead of showing the results of the server (there is one EU server), they show the results of your active channel (there are 20+) and only for the online players. I have no idea why. Still, it gives us an impression:
I conducted a very rudimentary research on wealth gain in BDO. I simply screenshotted the wealth toplist along with the various profession toplists and checked for names appearing in both. Please note that the toplists are dumb: instead of showing the results of the server (there is one EU server), they show the results of your active channel (there are 20+) and only for the online players. I have no idea why. Still, it gives us an impression:
- Growth is actually level gained which very strongly correlate with monsters killed. So these are simple grinders killing monsters day and night. Unless you bot, you have to constantly be at the keyboard.
- Gathering is moving around the World to find mines, herbs, skins, trees and other collectible materials. This is also an active profession, you have to move manually and find the items, though the number of keys pressed is much lower.
- Alchemy is a crafting profession, but most craftables don't stack, so you have to craft short batches and then manually list them as singles in the marketplace. I used alchemy back then and found it way too grindy.
- Hunting is about half as popular among the top wealth players as the very active professions. While it is active, the most lucrative game is whales that needs just one player to control the boat while other just auto-shoot.
- Trade is moving specialty items (either purchased or crafted) to distant locations where NPCs take them. The activity is typically 10 mins wait and few key pressed then 10 mins wait and few key pressed ... for hours. It's best for players who are near their computers but don't want to press many keys. I did this extensively and it pays well (my trader is another character, that's why I'm not on the toplist).
- Fishing needs you to move to a fishing spot and go AFK. This allows hour long AFK periods, but as you are in the World, you can be ganked or attacked by monsters, so some supervision is needed.
- Cooking needs you just to stand by the cooking utensil for about an hour AFK and then move to the next utensil. When finished, you must move to the marketplace to sell.
- Farming needs active clicking on your farm, and then you can forget it for a day. It's the least popular activity.
- Processing is the most AFK activity and it's very popular. It needs you to start a batch standing next to the warehouse and go AFK for several hours. You can sell the products right there at the Warehouse.
- Training needs you to sit on a horse or cart and set a loop and go AFK for several hours. As horse market is small, only few people can make profit of it.
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Can a PvE MMO be other than WoW and BDO?
World of Warcraft has pet battles, AoE looting, instant quests, open world dynamic quests, scaling instances, mobile-phone managed real time quests and many other features that were missing from original WoW and were copied from other games. None of them is integral to WoW, not like you couldn't play WoW without them or their removal would completely change WoW. Why is it matter? Because it guarantees that WoW will remain the most popular PvE MMO and will push every other MMO into the 100-200K subscriber (paying player) range. If some developer would make an MMO with groundbreaking new features, Blizzard would quickly implement them all into the next WoW patch.
How can other MMO exist then if not by being better? Graphics and lore are marginal things, players openly talk about "content", "mobs", "grinding" and other terms that show that they are completely not immersed into the fantasy settings, they are farming gear to keep up or get ahead of the Joneses.
Black Desert Online is pretty popular and not showing collapse like other MMOs. Why? Because its core feature is different from WoW and it cannot be copied into WoW without completely changing it. Gear in BDO can be traded between players. WoW could copy it with a few clicks, but they don't and won't, because it would turn the game upside down. You can - and I did - get top gear without killing top level monsters in BDO, while in WoW you must farm your gear yourself and just some supplement items can be gained from other players.
There is a third field: PvP-MMOs, where meaningful items can be taken from other players (as opposed to vanity PvP where only the time spent PvPing is lost when you lose). EVE is the most relevant player of this field. Again, WoW could implement this with a few clicks, but they will never do because it would seriously outrage the playerbase.
There are possible other niches, but the point is that if an MMO doesn't have a feature that WoW refuses to have, that game will be inferior to WoW and will wither and die.
This is important because it locks out practically every PvE MMO which aren't called WoW or BDO.
How can other MMO exist then if not by being better? Graphics and lore are marginal things, players openly talk about "content", "mobs", "grinding" and other terms that show that they are completely not immersed into the fantasy settings, they are farming gear to keep up or get ahead of the Joneses.
Black Desert Online is pretty popular and not showing collapse like other MMOs. Why? Because its core feature is different from WoW and it cannot be copied into WoW without completely changing it. Gear in BDO can be traded between players. WoW could copy it with a few clicks, but they don't and won't, because it would turn the game upside down. You can - and I did - get top gear without killing top level monsters in BDO, while in WoW you must farm your gear yourself and just some supplement items can be gained from other players.
There is a third field: PvP-MMOs, where meaningful items can be taken from other players (as opposed to vanity PvP where only the time spent PvPing is lost when you lose). EVE is the most relevant player of this field. Again, WoW could implement this with a few clicks, but they will never do because it would seriously outrage the playerbase.
There are possible other niches, but the point is that if an MMO doesn't have a feature that WoW refuses to have, that game will be inferior to WoW and will wither and die.
This is important because it locks out practically every PvE MMO which aren't called WoW or BDO.
Monday, February 6, 2017
The next game part 2
As I've said, I'm not interested in another "X is rigged" project, I want to accept the game as it is and run an interesting, positive project. Practically every game, even so rigged as LoL or WoT are good for the first part, practically the only exception is EVE where the rigging is personalized, the devs aren't for "bad players" or "paying players" but for their particular business partners/friends.
But "can accept as a black box" doesn't mean an interesting project. The game must have some playerbase (sorry 1000 players games), must have some form of persistence (the ranking persists in LoL and your tanks persist in WoT) and the players must have some goal they aim for but which not all of will them reach (LoL has high ranks but WoT doesn't have such common goal).
Also, the game must have some form of "metagame" or "strategy". If the game has no such layer, than it's an already solved puzzle, maybe practice needed. For example in Counterstrike you must aim properly and know the map. These are hard to do, but simple to understand. In card games the proper sites has the proper decks and the way of playing them, from that point a bot can - and in Hearthstone often do - reach top play.
Finally, the game must be released instead of alpha, pre-order, open beta, early access or whatever excuse for being unplayable. Pirate servers are off for the same reason. Same for games where the server is player run. With this respect I made a list of the games offered to me:
Finding the new game is exhausting. But I want a good project.
But "can accept as a black box" doesn't mean an interesting project. The game must have some playerbase (sorry 1000 players games), must have some form of persistence (the ranking persists in LoL and your tanks persist in WoT) and the players must have some goal they aim for but which not all of will them reach (LoL has high ranks but WoT doesn't have such common goal).
Also, the game must have some form of "metagame" or "strategy". If the game has no such layer, than it's an already solved puzzle, maybe practice needed. For example in Counterstrike you must aim properly and know the map. These are hard to do, but simple to understand. In card games the proper sites has the proper decks and the way of playing them, from that point a bot can - and in Hearthstone often do - reach top play.
Finally, the game must be released instead of alpha, pre-order, open beta, early access or whatever excuse for being unplayable. Pirate servers are off for the same reason. Same for games where the server is player run. With this respect I made a list of the games offered to me:
- Archeage: very low playerbase
- Final Fantasy 14: not yet evaluated
- Elder Scrolls Online: not yet evaluated
- DOTA2: not yet evaluated
- Heroes of the Storm: not yet evaluated
- SMITE: not yet evaluated
- Magic the Gathering: no strategy layer
- Hearthstone: no strategy layer
- Dual Universe: still in crowdfunding
- Albion Online: still beta
- Mortal Online: very low playerbase
- Guild Wars 2: not yet evaluated
- SWTOR: not yet evaluated
- Overwatch: not yet evaluated
- Path of Exile: no strategy layer
- Ultima Online: very low playerbase
- Elite Dangerous: very low playerbase
- Infestation the new Z: not yet evaluated
- Blood Bowl 2: very low playerbase
- Offworld Trading Company: very low playerbase
- War Thunder: not yet evaluated
- Tale in the Desert: very low playerbase
- Dofus: not yet evaluated
Finding the new game is exhausting. But I want a good project.
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