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What is the point of "Bind on Equip" and "Bind on Pickup"?
Schmuky
Member
This is a legitimate question. I never understood why this is a thing in games.
Bind on Equip just makes players unable to trade down an item they no longer use. Why? So the market dosen't have a lot of low level items? Why is that a reason? Who does it help? Low level players will be able to find better gear on the market and progress faster while kicking a small amount of gold to the higher levels. Why is this bad?
Bind on Pickup is even worse. This is like i am playing a single player game. "Oh i got this fantastic item for a fighter, but I am an archer so i guess I need to salvage it, yeeey" Who does this help? It just annoys everyone involved.
The only (and I do mean only) reason an item should be bound to a character is if the item is a main quest reward that all players get. There is no need to have them take space in the market place when everyone will get them for free from a main quest.
Any other item should be free to trade even after using it. Can anyone tell me some reasons why they like Bind systems? I am legitimately curious
Bind on Equip just makes players unable to trade down an item they no longer use. Why? So the market dosen't have a lot of low level items? Why is that a reason? Who does it help? Low level players will be able to find better gear on the market and progress faster while kicking a small amount of gold to the higher levels. Why is this bad?
Bind on Pickup is even worse. This is like i am playing a single player game. "Oh i got this fantastic item for a fighter, but I am an archer so i guess I need to salvage it, yeeey" Who does this help? It just annoys everyone involved.
The only (and I do mean only) reason an item should be bound to a character is if the item is a main quest reward that all players get. There is no need to have them take space in the market place when everyone will get them for free from a main quest.
Any other item should be free to trade even after using it. Can anyone tell me some reasons why they like Bind systems? I am legitimately curious
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Their quest hubs and kill 200 boars content are simply indispensable experiences you can not miss as a player.
Most MMO economies run into the issue of inflation really fast and binding items to players is a way to prevent them from getting into circulation in the first place.
If you remove all binding from items then you basically have a pure pay2win game - even if it is even with ingame currency - without binding items you don't have a system that somewhat gives requirements on players to have gear correlating to their achievements
Just grind long enough low lvl materials to get enough currency to buy the best weapon from auction house
Like sure you can make such economy work with durability systems, but that hasn't ever been done successfully afaik
btw - without binding items the only way to play "successfully" the game is to be auction house trader and just gather wealth
― Plato
Hold on though, Inflation is when money is less valuable. But having more low level items in circulation would not cause inflation, because the price of those items will drop, as there are more of them.
And an easy fix is to make salvaging them give some raw materials back. Meaning that crafters might buy them in bulk to salvage and make better gear out of the raw materials.
Why is farming low level materials a bad way to progress? The economy is one of the pillars of an MMO. If someone spend the time to ensure that the market has an abundance of materials, they should be rewarded.
Not only that, but let's not forget that crafted items usually aren't Bind on Pickup, which means they can be sold, and they can be on par with the best in slot items. So your argument is void, because you can already use in game money to buy the best gear
False, you can still run dungeons and get gear from them, but now you are happy no matter what gear you get.
"Oh i dropped an epic bow, but I am a mage. No matter, i can sell this bow for some nice cash and use that cash to buy what I need"
If all players played like you say, there would be no amazing gear in the shop, bc no one is getting them
And an easy fix is to make salvaging them give some raw materials back. Meaning that crafters might buy them in bulk to salvage and make better gear out of the raw materials.
Inflation can happen in 2 ways, either by inflating the money supply or by depressing the demand.
Well it´s more of a long term effect that happens if 1 asset class drops a lot, the other asset class will have to absorb the increased money in circulation.
More items in circulation, bc everything can be traded -> demand drops eventually to abysmal level as in most mmos -> resell value of items drop in the market -> new players can easilly buy items and will soon have a lot of money left to hike up prices of the few items that are in demand.
In bad mmo economies you essentially never want players to be able to access most items easily, because that means they can skip a lot of effort/playtime and soon they can funnel their economic prowess into the few end game items that are still of value.
Well until.... those items hit a point of no demand as well and you end up in hyperinflation of everything.
You can prolongate this process if you force players to get their own items and not reach full equip in 1 day of playing the game.
Edit:
This is also why item sinks (like items with durability) are always a topic when talking about mmo economies and prevention of inflation.
They artificially hike up the demand for items permanently.
Let's take a lvl 10 sword as an example. Let's make it great, so you can use that level 10 sword until you are lvl 15. This sword isn't the basic craft or drop, it needs some rare materials, let's say 4 rare ingots.
Now, if lvl 16 players can put this sword in the market, the following things happen:
-level 10 players can buy this sword and have a useful item for 5 levels
-crafters will not use the rare materials and spam this sword over and over
-lvl 16 players get a bit of money back, maybe 70% of what they payed on it when they bought it.
So we have a small money sink of 30% of the cost, and with each cycle, the price of the sword drops, as none are taken out (so far) from the economy and there will still be crafters that make them.
Now let's add a salvage system. Salvaging this sword will give back 2 rare ingots. If those ingots can then be used to make a lvl 20 sword, it might be worth it for the crafters to buy level 10 one just to salvage, making an item sink as well.
However, the level 20 sword takes 18 ingots, so the miners out there aren't out of a job.
Use this logic for every level of item.
If an item, no matter the level, has uses beyond just its combat combat capabilities, with the salvage, suddenly it becomes important to everyone.
I want to emphases that an MMO like Ashes that has, for all intents and purposes, limitless raw materials, needs both a money sink and an item sink. Otherwise inflation will take over in a crazy way.
Money sink are pretty easy. Housing, freeholds, taxes, etc etc etc. That one, is easy.
Item sinks are a bit difficult. A durability system is good in theory (items degrade over time) but bad in practice, as most of the time you will repair an item, not let it be destroyed, which actually makes durability a money sink (either it being a gold payment to repair, or needing to buy items to repair)
So, the example with the ingots give a reason to destroy items. A proper one. A satisfying one. Not just "i outleveled the item, cannot use it anymore and don't have storage for it".
So, that's what we need to come up with. What reason would be good enough for us as player to intentionally destroy our items rather than sell them?
On this we can come up with crazy stuff. Just from the top of my mind, in order to craft a epic piece of gear you need the "essence" of 5 rare pieces of gear that you get from salvaging. Whatever, something like this.
So, if there is a reason to destroy rather than sell or, even better, have it be a choice ("Do i salvage this for whatever i get it or is better to sell for some coin?"), there is no need for any Bind on Equip or Pickup mechanic.
I am very set on this btw, i really, really, really hate the binding mechanic. So I want to see if we can come up with better solutions that the devs might consider.
Feel free to put your ideas as well here
For bind on pick up it's a way to make sure the character was there, did the deed or participate in it. Rarer items, certain quest items, that sort of things. It prevent people to easily buy their way to the reward.
They're just design choices and there are other options. I remember the original EverQuest had a quest in which you received XPs each time you gave a Crushbone Belts to an NPC. The belts could be traded and many players either bought them or sold them. Easy XPs if you had the money. Easy money when you were a low level character. But if we want crafting professions to have long time value, gear have to exit the economy at some point.
For durability to be an effective item sink, the item need to lose durability every time it is repaired. Effectively putting a finite number of time it can be repaired. A very skilled crafter doing the repair, new materials and such could minimize this in part, but never completely. Once depleted, the item become a simple wall hanger or house decoration item.
I don't believe they are going that far but hopefully they embrace the "everything can be sold" concept. I'd also like it if it was possible to break any item into components for crafting, which would take things out of circulation... That low level sword might be trash to you but it can be dismantled into some metal scrap that you can include as reinforcement for a breastplate.
I am not a fan of any sort of equipment binding, I actually hate it, but sadly I learned to accept it. My favorite MMORPGs did not have any sort of equipment binding, OSRS comes to mind. I enjoy being free in MMOs, including no equipment binding, and even though I understand there are drawbacks, it's still worth it IMO.
While it was a while ago is a very good answer from them. I am hoping they stay true to the course they originally set.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Gear_binding
There may be some gear binding (BoE or BoP) but it will be an exception rather than the rule, as this doesn't facilitate the objectives for the economy.[1]
^This.^
BoP creates some exclusivity in running different types of content within an MMORPG.
Some players like dungeons, other players like end game raiding ... still other players enjoy PvP.
Which does have side effects as others in the thread have pointed out already:
- Forced into a playstyle you don't enjoy just to get gear,
- Mindlessly running content until the gear set is complete,
- No option for resale if you don't need the gear and another player does.
Exactly. Without doing something to get the gear people could just grind money and then buy stuff or they could buy in game money with real money which hurts the game economy. In Eve Online you had ships that got destroyed and so players had to make new ships and the economy balanced itself fine. In this game gear is not destroyed so eventually you can save up your money and buy stuff. I don't like bind on pickup, but I see why they do it. From a role play perspective you wouldn't trade gear because your armor would be you own armor designed to fit you and you would use it as long as it was usable. Perhaps if you found a better weapon you might trade it out.
I would like a player crafted system in this game where you can make high end items with time that are almost as good as raid items. I think Steve mentioned that one person might mine the best ore, a second person might craft the armor, and a third person might enchant it. I think he said that no one person would be able to do everything, and you would need the community to craft items. Remember this is still an alpha. Let's wait till we get to Beta 2 and see how the game progresses. Let's also try to give constructive feedback and ideas to the developers to make this the most robust MMO ever.