Economy of Gathering Tools

laxie

I have been incredibly puzzled about the production price of gathering tools.

In most games, tools are easily accessible and fairly cheap. The premise is you buy it and then use it to collect resources worth a lot more than what you paid. For example, in GW2, you spend 10 silver on a 50 use pick axe. The resources you gather are worth a fair bit more.

In BDO, the first craftable pick axe has 20 uses and requires around 100 resource units to make. If I was generous with this and said you get 2.5 resources per use, you are still only making 50% of the investment. Let alone any kind of profit. How is this possible?

EponyxDamor

Completely honest, it baffles me as well. I still haven't really figured it out.

goboygo

You don't use your "tool" to harvest resources to make "tools" and try to measure tools  ROI against that, are you out of your mind?  The tools can make you the things you need to be better at in the game, in combat, etc.  You make your millions trading not through harvesting resources.  I think your doing it wrong........

Kefo

What @goboygo said. The raw resources aren't going to make you rich in the game (unless we are talking black stones) but rather it's what you can convert them into that will be the determining factor on ROI.

Svarcanum

Agree with Kefo here. Plus many resources can't even be bought on the AH reliably since they're underpriced. A good example is Rough Stone which is dirt cheap on the AH, but the supply is almost always 0, so you have to get it yourself. 

SpottyGekko

I've not seen any mention of item decay or loss (of major items) in BDO, so I'd assume the high "opportunity cost" of these tools is just another way of slowing down crafting speed a bit and making it more "grindy".

BDOs crafting appears to be generally "grindy", and it's probably a way to slow down the rate at which crafted items enter the game. If there's no way to lose crafted armour, weapons and boats, then making it a long and drawn-out process to make those items stops the game from being saturated in the first few weeks... 

Gdemami

goboygo said:

You don't use your "tool" to harvest resources to make "tools" and try to measure tools  ROI against that, are you out of your mind?  The tools can make you the things you need to be better at in the game, in combat, etc.  You make your millions trading not through harvesting resources.  I think your doing it wrong........

Yeah, tell me about trading with that BDO taxes...

Gdemami

Svarcanum said:

Plus many resources can't even be bought on the AH reliably since they're underpriced. A good example is Rough Stone which is dirt cheap on the AH, but the supply is almost always 0, so you have to get it yourself. 

Yet, I bet even after their first hand experience people won't understand why controlled market cannot work...

Gdemami

SpottyGekko said:

I've not seen any mention of item decay or loss (of major items) in BDO, so I'd assume the high "opportunity cost" of these tools is just another way of slowing down crafting speed a bit and making it more "grindy".

BDOs crafting appears to be generally "grindy", and it's probably a way to slow down the rate at which crafted items enter the game. If there's no way to lose crafted armour, weapons and boats, then making it a long and drawn-out process to make those items stops the game from being saturated in the first few weeks... 

..so it will be saturated in couple more weeks, instead of "first few".

"Broken" system is just broken, it does not really matter when it happens. Same thing applies to gold farmers/RMT, they don't brake economy.

The actual, dangerous problem with this way of thinking is a coupling with power gaps. If you "slow down" the process of gearing up, it will create even larger gap between new and older players.

Wonder why this is such a typical attribute of Korean games...

SpottyGekko

Gdemami said:

SpottyGekko said:

I've not seen any mention of item decay or loss (of major items) in BDO, so I'd assume the high "opportunity cost" of these tools is just another way of slowing down crafting speed a bit and making it more "grindy".

BDOs crafting appears to be generally "grindy", and it's probably a way to slow down the rate at which crafted items enter the game. If there's no way to lose crafted armour, weapons and boats, then making it a long and drawn-out process to make those items stops the game from being saturated in the first few weeks... 

..so it will be saturated in couple more weeks, instead of "first few".

"Broken" system is just broken, it does not really matter when it happens. Same thing applies to gold farmers/RMT, they don't brake economy.

The actual, dangerous problem with this way of thinking is a coupling with power gaps. If you "slow down" the process of gearing up, it will create even larger gap between new and older players.

Wonder why this is such a typical attribute of Korean games...

Indeed, slowing things down only delays the inevitable, it cannot prevent it.

It's almost as if the entire monetization strategy is designed to extract the maximum revenue possible in the first 3 months after launch...

My guess would be that the combination of slowing-things-down and coupling it with power gaps is a traditionally accepted technique to "encourage" players to spend more in the cash shop. In PVP-centric games, falling behind the power curve is usually fatal.

Gdemami

SpottyGekko said:

Indeed, slowing things down only delays the inevitable, it cannot prevent it.

It's almost as if the entire monetization strategy is designed to extract the maximum revenue possible in the first 3 months after launch...

My guess would be that the combination of slowing-things-down and coupling it with power gaps is a traditionally accepted technique to "encourage" players to spend more in the cash shop. In PVP-centric games, falling behind the power curve is usually fatal.

I agree but I do not think this is the case of BDO.

Such model is usually to be found in browser games - they provide large cash shop incentives and open new servers every week or so to diminish the effect of power gaps and start the show all over again. I would say this works effectively for low cost projects only, larger budgets simply need staying/lasting power this model is lacking.

In case of BDO, I would say it is a design intention. PA wants you to engage in crafting, thus they removed any complexity and trading, tailored the experience to be easily accessible to do solo, independently.

Crafting in progression driven game will be always lacking so in a way I agree with the "spirit" of the idea, I just doubt the implementation. One needs to be careful for the edges where being solo crafting friendly becomes solo crafting required - when player doesn't want to engage in crafting but has no other options because defunct market/economy.