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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
I see, you assume that without ever having experienced/tested it, a bit unexpected i suppose.
Just out of curiosity, do you believe more people that played lineage 2 hated its over enchant or more people that played BDO hated its over enchant?
I would like to clarify that whenever i speak about Lineage 2 i'm refering to the official server with accuracy unless i state otherwise, Before the implementation of Destruction Enchant Scroll that maintained the same enchant level even on failure(i know very fitting name) in the High Five Version(1 version before 2011 F2P apocalypse) Lineage 2 maintained a consistent ~66% chance , after the implementation of the destruction scrolls diminishing chances were applied.
Private servers are irrelevant in this discussion.
Aren't we all sinners?
Now just hold on because you are becoming defensive/slightly insulting and I am NOT in the mood for that. So let's try again.
I just gave the numbers. I am telling you that statistically, BDO is kinder than L2. BDO players are not going to have a better experience in L2 if the thing they are concerned about is practically the only thing there is to be concerned about, achieving their item without losing progress.
This isn't even my concern. I was trying to 'help' by clarifying to you why there is pushback. If you prefer to 'just believe that everyone who has this opinion just doesn't know the real story/didn't experience it', that's fine, but don't go making it out to be that I just 'felt like it'.
I think I can say with some certainty that I'm not going to like a statistically MORE PUNISHING system better just because of that.
Again. 66% 12 times is 0.6% and I can find no indication that this is easier to 'escape' from dealing with than it is in BDO.
I'm happy to disengage here if we're about to 'argue again' as I'm not interested in doing so at all. If you don't want the 'help' or don't consider what I'm saying 'meaningful'/'helpful', let's just drop it.
But even against that +10, if you had a +3-5 weapon (usually achieved with super rare safe scrolls that didn't destroy the weapon) you were a mere few % lower in overall dps. And obviously, class matchups either leveled out the field even more or even sometimes superseded the difference completely.
From what I've seen/heard in BDO, it seemed as if a single full circle lvl of enchantment over your opponent would almost always make you win the pvp. Did I misunderstand that or is it just "more than one lvl"?
It's a long explanation, technically, short version is that the way BDO's COMBAT works, PvP is decided by relatively small differences in attack values except in Node Wars and such.
BDO's design combat wise is much worse than L2 in certain spaces, and that's just the little I know about. I am reasonably certain that the 'strength' issue is NOT the thing that causes the "no-RNG!!" reaction though, as it is almost always discussed in a vacuum, and most of the players who have complained about it only talk about loss of Progression/unequal Progression pathing.
Basically the whole 'Effort -> RNG = ???' part.
In other words, could there be a chance that people were hating the OE system in BDO because it was one of the main hurdles in their characters progression, while in L2 (even if it's statistically worse) the OE only brought you ever so closer to the absolute ideal of the character rather than a pure requirement for existence?
Imo it's the difference of "I fucking need this" and "Look at the cool thing I've got, dude!". And even if the proper math leans toward the BDO's system, the design of the game obfuscates that advantage. Especially when you consider that most BDO players probably couldn't give fewer fucks about what kind of system a random click-to-move game from 2004 had
My point here is this. I think people would be fine with failed OEs destroying gear, if they knew that they didn't truly need that OE. And that can be done through proper gear balancing layered on top of proper class balancing which stands on a good combat system base.
This is the impression you had? Forgive me, it wasn't my intention.
The numbers you provided lacked in context in my eyes, to be able to straight up say with full confidence "BDO's over enchanting system is kinder than Lineage 2's." and "people would hate Lineage 2 over enchanting more than BDO's because its harder".
It lacks context in time to acquired over-enchanting resources,
and it only considered BDO's methods of dealing with the RNG, and disregards lineage 2 ones,
how important, powerful and impactiful few over enchant levels are or aren't for we to have a better undertanding about the pressure over-enchant could place on players.
I believe those and other aspect of over enchanting and the role it plays in the games systems/designs are also important to defining if a games over enchanting is "kinder" than other or would generate more hatred than the other....
Aren't we all sinners?
Try to look at people's weapons and look for a faint blue glow (or a darker one). I think the MC of the video has a +5 bow, so his glow is a step above the faintest possible. This video was taken during, what most L2 players would call, best L2 times. And this is the siege of the biggest castle in the game with the best guilds trying to capture it.
Barely anyone even has the glow itself, so most likely they're at +3 (the safe lvl). And the few who do have a dark blue glow - have weapons of way lower tiers, which are way easier to OE due to their abundance.
To me this is the proof that you didn't need a super OE'd piece to "win the game", let alone survive in it. And I think this is the reason why L2 players might look back fondly on the game's OE system.
L2 in essence was a group experience.
In both cases, yes, people will berate the lack of top end equipment but in Ashes you won't need the top tier of gear if you spend a lot of time in groups.
Bdo is marked with top tier itis because it is effectively a single player grind fest. You did of course need the best gear to fight everywhere and everyone but you could go weeks without a fight if you wanted to avoid one.
L2 was the same except you would only fight one on one if you had no choice. In such a circumstance you would Wang the best of the best but overall it was team dynamics which ruled much like ashes.
I don't mind what you believe here, honestly, I don't feel like I can change your feelings with data because it's too easy to simply dismiss my data as just feelings, whether they be mine or others.
BDO players in my experience (and this is NOT an opinion I hold myself at all) dislike the fact that player A can 'farm for 300 hours' and player B can 'farm for 10' and one of them gets the better gear while the other getst to start over. They don't even have to lose progress (in terms of gear deleveling), mind you, other than money and time.
They can spend much more time and end up with less, so they hate it. Similarly, if you decided 'I'm not going to enchant, I'm just gonna buy it from the people who do', you're just 'giving your time to people who had better luck'. Which causes a reaction that I have ALSO seen in L2 threads while researching this. People are literally just mad that the other person 'is lucky', but you can't claim that they aren't because 'lucky' is the definition of the system.
People in BDO who don't have good gear, farm to get better gear to progress. Then they throw that farming effort into the slot machine to find out if they get to progress or not. Since the RNG also gates supply, they can't always just 'farm forever', but EITHER way they're not getting progression. If they try to do it themselves, they can run out of money, and then restart, without making any progress. Doesn't matter if they are 'sensible enough to just not TRI from their TET whatever.
Non-gamblers hate RNG.
But I know I can't say 'It's not just BDO's design' nor can I bring a psych-statistics paper.
I don't want you to 'believe me', either. At best, I hope that you stop to consider critically if your perception is biased as much as if not more than mine. If we're gonna get back to 'well maybe they just should give it a chance', everyone's time is wasted.
There's nothing much to say, and I probably shouldn't have even engaged this far, for that I'm sorry.
Yeah you're just being weird now.
I didn't consider BDO's methods of dealing with the RNG at all other than 'the items don't get destroyed' and 'failstacks exist'.
I ran raw numbers, and for some reason you're assuming that I didn't, and somehow that will skew things in BDO's favor.
I went through this for hours TWICE because you and NiKr have these perceptions, and at least one of you hasn't seriously played BDO so I don't even know why you talk about it like this.
I have checked all these things in BDO and L2. BDO is still kinder. If you have some reason to believe it isn't, I am glad to hear it, someone to 'check my work' is always appreciated, but so far what you've done is 'challenge my conclusions based on... something'.
You can go research this yourself, if you care to determine a basis for your own beliefs. I'm not asking you to use mine, and I should have stopped way before now.
I was just trying to point out a deeper reason for why people might hate OE destruction, even if they themselves have never played a game with that mechanic present. Like, again, from what I've heard of BDO (and unless I misunderstood, it seems to be at least somewhat true) - I would hate its OE system too, had I not experienced L2's and liked it. Hell, I still dislike its overall design even w/o playing it.
But just as you I also don't have any concrete research into people's psyche when it comes to their opinions on this matter, so it's purely just a feeling that I have looking at the differences between the two games outside of pure math.
And there's obviously the survivor bias in my L2 examples, because anyone who'd be fine with its systems would stay playing and would either come to like it or at least not care about it as much, because it wasn't forced upon them. And in the old days of L2, there was so much alternative choice of mmos that anyone who disliked the system were free to leave.
With BDO it's a bit different. Not only is the game's combat/graphics/artisan/world somewhat unique in the genre (especially when it comes to "better" mmos), but it also came out at the dusk of mmos, so the only choice for most people was either going back to WoW or trying out FF14 (guess there's ESO and GW2 too), both of which are wiiiiildly fucking different from BDO.
So anyone who wanted to play an mmo that wasn't WoW would probably stick to BDO or leave the genre for a while. And those who stuck played it despite its flaws (I think you're one of examples of that), so of course they'd be way harsher towards said flaws, because they were directly ruining the game for them and they didn't have any other real choice.
TL;DR TL will show us the truth, if they go for OEd destruction
I may be over-estimating myself here but bear in mind that I only play BDO and track its progression to study it.
I study the outcomes, the general sentiments I can find, and the developers' responses to those sentiments, which I track.
I do not enjoy BDO. You didn't say I did, but I'm moreso pointing out that I'm not necessarily the same TYPE of person who 'sticks with it despite its flaws' as some others that might. BDO's playerbase is... interesting.
If there are a lot of people out there 'playing BDO solely so that they can learn how to make games better than it', I salute those individuals and look forward to their game releases.
But to go in a direction that might actually be USEFUL if we care...
I don't think you'd hate BDO's system at all other than maybe 'thinking it was too lenient'. Have you watched/encountered much of the concept to be able to say which parts you think you would dislike?
Because I'm obsessive, I've shuffled the scenario down to 'trying to get +17 in L2 vs TET in BDO', starting from 'already owning exactly one +16 item/TRI Item'.
If we assumed that you were just feeling SO unlucky that you didn't want to tap your CURRENT +16 Sword and had to go through the process of 'getting another one to try with', where does L2 'win out' for you personally?
I've had a few +5-7 items on low rate servers, but I couldn't even imagine going for the super high values on a basic rate server, let alone official one where the competition for even a single weapon would be insane (and I'm sure you did the math on how many weapons you'd have to go through in order to get the +16 one).
I posted that video for this exact reason. On a normal L2 server your main way of progressing the character is the gear tiers, because jumping up a single tier is pretty huge (like, 70-80% of people in that video were in T4-5, while the MC was in tier 6). And as I wrote in another post here, any top lvl piece that went above +4-5 could only do that because afaik you could buy "cheap chinese labor" on official servers and later on you had bots (or maybe at the same time, but that's beside the point), and it amounted to thousands and thousands of manhours put into a single weapon that was not useless only because the rest of the guild's top players were already decked out.
So tell me, how many people in BDO go for TET enchantments? I'm sure you have at least a rough estimate across most super high lvl players. Because to me, that kind of thing seems insane and would take either huge RMT or literal years of one guild working just for me (in the L2 equivalent that is).
Then in a way, that brings us to a very 'strange problem' in terms of perception which I couldn't confirm before.
What is your reaction to 'when endgame changes'?
Also I don't even know what you mean by 'low rate servers' vs 'basic rate servers' so let's just use James' Official Server numbers. 66% chance at all times.
If you have 66% chance of tapping to (and I'll reset the number here) +13 and have a +12, but you are NOT willing to risk that +12, you need to make another +12.
Your odds of success starting from an unenchanted item are 2.3%, right?
Or if you prefer to address the other point, would it be fair to say you're only 'okay with OE if not a lot of people are lucky and push really hard'? I figure that's just being inflammatory on my part but that IS one interpretation. Feel free to ignore it.
Everyone goes for pen items and jewellry. There's no reason not to. You can just cron stone it all the way. Hence why people call BDO p2w. Of course, you got cron stones by dismantling costumes which you buy from the shop.
There are a few who would upgrade the red weapons to max tier but that's the sadistic point of the whole endeavour. You could pen your whole gear and be pipped at the final post by a pen red but only by a marginal difference, however, that pen red would beat a pen orange in any encounter.
The advice in guild was not to spend the hundreds of hours to get the pen red because a pen orange would suffice but once you had the pen red then all woes went away and you were the ultimate.
Maybe we're talking about the same thing but I just don't know it?
L2 was super slow in its gear tier rollout and even slower in your acquisition of it. So when you've spent the last few months getting full T5 and you have several more months ahead of you for T6, the game would probably add T7 by the time you get full T6 (well, if you're a normal player and not the top of the top). So your "endgame" is kinda always ahead of you. And due to you being just a cog in the guild machine, even if you are the top of the top who get to wear the newest tier the fastest - you're still just a fraction of your guild's and party's power, and you will still have to wait quiiite a long time before you get the full tier. Because bosses give random items and you might be super unlucky and not get a full set for a long time, even if your guild is the only one farming the boss.
So if BDO has something similar, where instead of new tier of gear people just get a new tier of enchantment to go through - then I guess I'd be way more lenient towards BDO's system. Rate refers to the values of drop rates, money loot values, mats drop chances and quantities, that kind of stuff. The lower the rate the longer you'd be acquiring anything in the game. And basic rate is the x1 of the official servers. "Low" would be x3-5. Again, this is obviously my L2 bias, but I wouldn't be looking at the math of it all. I'd be just looking at the time I'd probably need to spend in order to farm enough stuff to get another +12 weapon (or money to buy one from someone else).
If I wanted to go for that +13, I'd just continue playing the game normally w/o even considering the results. I'd just be farming money/mats/etc, crafting the weapons, getting the scrolls and combining them until I'd get another +12. Maybe my gambling nature is just buried so damn deep that I don't notice it consciously, but L2 OEing wasn't ever a "gamble" for me - it was just time spent.
I guess the closest thing to a gamble that's close to what BDO does in L2 was the crafting process, because L2's recipes had a 40% chance to fail the craft, so you could've spent weeks grinding the game to craft a piece from the higher tier and then you fail. Though I guess that's still worse than BDO's "keep the item, lose the enchant lvl (or whichever system it is, the main thing being the item remains)".
I guess the life of an L2 player was just buried under so many lvls of rng that no one cared about a bit of unforced OEing
I thiiink you're saying that most people don't bother OEing the highest tier of gear, but ultimately you should because it's truly the best?
Ok I will actually address all of this, but I'm a little busy (just cooking, actually).
Overall, know that yes, this is how BDO works. I did learn enough about L2 to factor that as well. In the meantime, have a thread from 2018 complaining about P2W being added. It contains some nice Pre-P2W stats that will almost certainly be in line with your perspectives.
I'm happy to talk about this now because it's honestly a time investment for 'both of us'. This topic will DEFINITELY come up again in these forums, and it will save future time (probably at a more critical feedback point) if we are on the same page with this. And I'm always glad to learn more L2 stuff.
Sure, weird.
You did not had "failstacks" in your "BDO's over-enchanting is kinder than Lineage 2's" and "People would hate L2 over enchant more than BDO's" statements, my bad for this assumption, still not convinced about the phrases as the other factors of over enchanting weren't provided and we didin't even tapped into things like "P2W might have influenced BDOs over-enchanting hatred and skew peoples opinions of how bad it is which isn't the case for Lineage 2".
About the assumption of believing that you never played Lineage 2 seriously and don't have the Lineage 2 knowledge regarding the other factors that may or may not lead someone to believe "BDO's over-enchanting is kinder than Lineage 2's" or "People would hate L2 over enchant more than BDO's", sorry but i find it very hard to believe anyone to have researched that deep and accurately enough into such an old game with such few information resources as most detailed official english ones are long gone and as the majority would either be in Russian or Korean especially for the older versions... Still you might have and i simply didn't know even if i find it extremely unlikely.
I can certainly say that my BDO Basis isn't as solid as yours, but maybe your Lineage 2 basis requires improvements? Atleast to reach that absolute statement whatever such "kindness" or "hatred" may be interpreted as, so even if you asked....
Stopping is probably the best idea, carrying on seems pointless right now
As the Over Enchanting thread is long gone and future might give answers to that with Ashes,TL.or even AA2.
Aren't we all sinners?
Ok then, how long ago did the Pen lvl of enchantment became even available to the players? The post seems to imply that it was years even back in 2018. Since 2018 has there been a new lvl beyond that?
Because at those kinds of rates full pen would imply smth like a +10 T6 weapon with +6 T6 full set and a full set of Epic Jewelry in L2, if my non-existent math is anywhere near correct
But if the pen has been the highest "tier of gear" for several years (and might still be), then BDO is unbelievably slow in its endgame progress.
So at this point I'd ask you the same question, in context of BDO: "when does the endgame change and what's the reaction?" Depending on the answer L2 might be way laxer with its system in the very long run
But as my further discussion with Azherae has pointed out, it's mainly about time spent on the road to those values. So, James, if you forgo the pure math part of this (cause L2 is literally more cruel cause it fucking burns your shit), I think you could provide good information to the bigger discussion here. My knowledge of the official servers is super limited, so I can only really suppose and make very vague assumptions based on third-hand information, while you literally played the game as it should've been played and can give proper info.
So, starting from step 1.
BDO gear also goes up in 'tiers'. So 'PEN' of Green or Blue gear is comparable but weaker than PEN of Yellow/Gold (Boss Drop) or Orange gear.
Endgame changes when they add a new area that has a 'Gear Score' requirement that matches or exceeds the current top players (about 4% of them, according to their data, because they specifically and explicitly LIMITED this progression on Console until enough people reach the spot).
Let's take the famous one that I have the most experience with. There is an area where people expected you to have 'TET' of a specific Yellow/Goldoffhand weapon for your class. If you don't have it, you can still fight, but you are inefficient by comparison so people WITH it will try to kill you just to get you out of their way (if they can, because THEM having it does not guarantee that they can kill you).
This area was added as PART of an expansion. That expansion definitely had other zones and content, so it's not like you had to be at that level to play the game or even enjoy some new content.
Some people don't even have access to this weapon at +15, far less at TET. The issue being twofold.
1. The game offers more and more over time for the higher levels to do, which means they have no reason to ever 'fall back'.
2. The Enchanting system is not appealing to people who already have the gear, so they don't often 'use their money and power to generate new strong weapons for the server'.
Because it's gambling. It's gambling 'for other people' in a weird way. You'd do it, sure. But why would someone like me 'gamble for other people'? The item is going to cost about the same amount no matter how much it costs ME to make it (this is proven by the cost of lower grade accessories which DO fluctuate within the main range).
If I am lucky I profit, if I'm unlucky, I don't profit. But at least in BDO, I can sell the 'leftover item' at a loss if I really need some of my money back. I don't know what the L2 equivalent of this is.
tl;dr in BDO if you want to go to Farming Spot A, you need "OE'd High Grade Gear". Otherwise you 'repeat the same content without progression until you are lucky'.
That's the part people hate, and that you don't hate.
Repeat the same content without progression until you are lucky.
EDIT: I do know of AN equivalent to selling the item in L2, the crystals you get, which I believe were expensive. I need more data from you on those, since I don't want to assume.
Yeah, imo BDO is waaaay worse than L2 was. It's way slower moving (or maybe I'm still missing some info), but it's slow movement is enforced by a super shitty OE progression system.
How long does it take to get full orange gear? Can normal players even get it or do they need pens of previous tiers to even attempt acquisition of orange? Yeah, crystals were quite valuable relative to their own tiers, because you'd use them to craft the cornerstone of all consumables in L2 and pretty much any gear in that tier. From most of the servers I played on, the crystals you'd get from a low value OE fail (+4-7) you'd recoup maybe 50-60% of the item's cost? Iirc? I think James could provide a much better number if he remembers, cause official servers had better markets.
Good, we're definitely on the same page now, which is why I needed to understand something from you. First point is that 'PEN' is literally the ultimate thing. You're not aiming for that if you are playing 'casually', you want what BDO players call 'Softcap'. You can ignore EXACTLY what that is, I can just tell you that it's not THAT hard to reach it.
You said you wouldn't do the math in L2. That's the difference. If you 'didn't do the math in BDO' I can't think of a reason you'd be upset at any point. You'd just do what I do.
"Oh I have enough money/random resources to try to upgrade this weapon... Ok I'll do it. Aww it downgraded. Ok well it's much easier to get it back up to where it was anyway, so I'll do that."
Or if you were near the top and it ISN'T easier to get it back up, you just bump down one level of content OR use more potions or buffs or accept a slight hit to performance.
None of this is weird to BDO players.
Remember where we started though, because it's important.
"BDO gave people a bad impression of OE."
And me going 'Nah it probably wasn't BDO, because BDO's OE is easy and forgiving'.
It's the 'technical methodology' of the OE itself that I'm addressing, not 'how high it can get you for content' exactly. The only reason that is coming up is because you want to know about a specific emotion response.
So, in BDO, you would 'Attempt TRI gear, with on average 25% odds of success that you built up by working on OTHER gear'. If you fail, you lose... about 4-5 attack or 4-6 defense, until you get it back up. You go out and do the content again.
What is your reaction to THAT?
I mean, my instinctual reaction is that I would be making a pyramid of items to upgrade rather than downgrading what I have. But considering that BDO doesn't burn gear, I'd just have 2 of the same item and would just boost them both up until I reach the peak. So at no point would I need to go back to a previous stage in my progress. This is why I don't necessarily call this a gamble.
Obviously this kind of approach takes more time, but when it comes to OE I'm used to taking more time rather than "risking it".
I dunno if this metaphor is as good as I think it could be but here it is. Read it in the context of those who are trying to push their character's progress across several years of playing the game.
L2 is you walking on a treadmill amongst other people on treadmills. No one is getting "ahead" of each other, but everyone is moving. Some might be running, some might be walking. At every certain distance completed, everyone picks up pace a bit. The run is pretty much endless, but everyone will cover most of the distance sooner or later.
BDO is a mountain. There's a definite peak, which is the goal. The lower part of the mountain is fairly easily traversed, but the higher you go the harder the climb becomes. There's a few plateaus along the way up, but any road up around them could send you tumbling back below the plateau. And near the peak of the mountain is pretty much a sheer cliff that you can only scale upwards instead of walking, so barely anyone manages to do it. Maybe at some point in the distant future everyone will come up to the top, but I'd assume most people will just break and stop.
Both games have p2w, but in L2 it comes in the form of just slowing down your pace at a higher distance covered, while in BDO it seems to be a fucking helicopter to the top (a very expensive one). In L2 you're still walking a treadmill, in BDO you're literally "better" than everyone else.
Does this make sense? If it does, then I'd say this is my reason for why I still kinda agree that BDO made the OE system feel worse for those who might've not cared as much about the gambling nature of it (obviously gamble haters would hate both games). The feeling of unfairness just seems to be felt much more in BDO.
The game does, consistently, add new gear to OE in the same way, and you progress through this.
I keep using 'PEN' because it's the highest, but even that took a bit to be added, and they are still adding new gear. Console only recently got 'Orange'. I am not sure we even have 'Red' yet.
They pace this EXPLICITLY based on the treadmill, and release new content relative to this.
Remember my point. I'm not saying "BDO players hate RNG progression and OE'. James is saying that. I'm the one saying 'nah, BDO doesn't feel that bad, it feels like a normal OE style game, so most people either hate ALL OE or they have played some other game that makes them hate it'.
Maybe 'people who got BDO's experience hated it and left and then came and complained here'. That is basically the direction we can take your perspective to. "BDO felt worse than L2 would feel to those people" (again, IF you were supporting James' perspective here)
I just have no reason to believe that, from where I sit, because you're 'saying things about BDO that might explain it' but that are demonstrably not true enough for that to be the likely reason. In other words, whether you mean to or not, you're 'making up reasons why BDO might feel worse' without (yet) telling me why L2 feels 'okay'/good.
If you say that according to pure math a +16 is equal to a tet (and not even pen), then BDO's system is leagues beyond L2 in leniency towards the player.
My final question here would be this then. Does BDO make it easier to PEN previously top tiers of gear? Let's take console BDO. Now that they have Orange, is it easier for them to PEN gold (or at least blue) now? Cause L2 usually gave new ways of acquiring better gear and iirc even new ways of getting enchant scrolls, so even OEing became easier with time. So only the bleeding edge and maybe the penultimate tier would remain truly hardcore. Is that the case in BDO?