Yesterday, I got the question about whether the "50 WP lucky chest is worth it or not." I was talking to a few people about the game and how I generally advocate going for long term steady gains through preparation and farming instead of spending on small bits of RNG here and there. For example, these enhanced crit stones for a dollar each or so in the anniversary packages.
We were going through the check CP page and I stumbled on a realization that I think everyone knows but doesn't see big picture enough. This is most of the things in the game CPwise that you can obtain. Anything with a red rectangle has RNG involved which means you need more resources than you expect in most cases:
https://preview.redd.it/d6lwy7t4xs561.png?width=1604&format=png&auto=webp&s=26b1471c92577d3d5612427c1c2f488e7d03e4f6
I wanted to call attention to the main offenders: pets and the majority of the right side of this list. The right side is everything that PA wants to sell you. As soon as you open your character page, it's all the shiny stuff that you see. Additionally, it is everything that people pull their hair out over, make "i did it!" posts on reddit over, etc. You can tell this is true because if you ask to see someone's CP, they immediately assume you're talking about their gear page instead of the Check CP list. The right side is everything that PA wants you to pay attention to and the left side is everything that is hidden and keeps you growing steadily enough to keep playing the game successfully.
In an attempt to mathematically evaluate the 50 WP lucky shop, I wanted to find a base value in dollars of what each possible drop was and multiply it by the rate (which is posted) and then compare it to 50 WPs dollar value (40 cents). So I started the math to determine a base of value of each individual product (1 red acc = $20, 1 sushi = $1, etc) but it became so convoluted that the math stopped making sense whenever you change currency values so much. Because of this, it became really hard to mathematically justify when ANY package was worth getting in order to knock RNG stuff out of the way (totem +6 for example).
What it boils down to is this: I couldn't do the math, you might not be able to do the math either, but I guarantee you PA can and has. They wouldn't sell something that they haven't calculated would make them money. This is the casino aspect of it. You should realize that anytime you buy RNG, PA has calculated that RNG to take your money favorably to them. The exception to this is when they want to release something and they need people to catch up so they might do crazy sales, but it's more likely that we get our free stuff from events to help normalize the server's CP.
Additionally, it's no surprise that some items that are heavy in RNG (pets, totems, glyphs, valks 50, sushi, resto, red lightstones, red relics, magic essence) are much much harder to obtain in game than the guaranteed items like stamps, vials, and POG tickets. Those 3 things are easier to obtain, but since they're guaranteed, we want a massive amount of all 3 of those; basically to a point where we would need to whale hard to cap.
So what's the takeaway? This game sucks and PA is full of demons? No. Not at all. This game is by far the highest quality mobile game out there. It's honestly better than most PC MMORPGs right now. But it does mean that if you want to enjoy it, you need to know how to play it. Kind of like drinking responsibly I guess. Here are a few points that help make the game more enjoyable, prevent burnout, and prevent that horrible sinking feeling of buying something and then having it piss away and wishing you could turn back time 15 minutes:
- Do not spend on RNG unless the deal is borderline a guarantee and you never need to really deal with it for a very long time. For example, when totems released, there was a hot deal for 50 totems for 30 dollars which I think most people knew was a horrible deal. That's enough for a +4 I would say. You need about 800-1000 for a +6. This was 20 dollars on black friday to get 1500, getting as close to a sure thing as you can get for that. That was the time to knock totems out. We are currently seeing this now with glyphs. You can do well enough now by getting totem +6, full pen, red relic +0, and full red accessories. That's really all someone needs RNGwise to do okay.
- If you want to spend on something for yourself this Christmas, make sure it is a non-RNG purchase. This translates to 3 things and that's really it: vials (no great vial deals right now btw. black friday was the time for those), POG (500 wp for 10 or 1500 BP for 10), or boss stamps (via hot deal only usually). Don't enhance under 100%. If someone came up to you and said "there's a 98% chance I won't kick you in the balls right now; wanna roll the dice?", you likely would not play that game. Just go to 100%.
- Do all the events, do all the dailies, and do merchantry daily. You can make silver from the resources gain, you make some stamps from merchantry, you can stay on top of your camp, you make stamps from node manager, etc. As long as you play the game, you can get items which will improve your left side. Cart 4 merchantry takes 30 minutes to go through 100k food. Cart 5 takes 15.
- Don't fall into this silly trap of thinking PA or whales are the devil just because they are offering something that you don't think is worth the price. That'd be like walking into a grocery store and being pissed off at the store that they offer chocolate milk for $4 and it should be $2. Just don't buy the fucking milk; that offer isn't for you. Only pay attention to the things that fit your personal budget, even if that's $0. Just because an item is offered for a high price doesn't mean that you have to get it to play. Just skip it. Honestly, I don't feel bad at all knowing that my competition will spend hundreds of dollars per week/month because I know that they'll eventually just burn out and I'll win that way.
- Don't treat this game like a casino. You've played RPGs before when you were a kid. They are a long drawn out marathon over time that make you stronger and stronger the more you play them. Play this game like an RPG; not a casino. Don't spend on RNG.
EDIT: Related to this, for anyone who cares, I want to tell you another story.
Before this discussion last night, a guild member of mine asked me to look at their stuff and tell them how best to grow 114 CP in 30 minutes. I saw his black spirit level was 187 and emblem was 21. I did some math since I knew the amount to get to 24 and determined he needed 86 path of glory to get there, pushing him 3 black spirit levels, 3 emblem levels, and getting him enough silver to buy a red off the market and create a pink crystal. Looking at the packages available, he found the Pearls + POG package for 50 dollars, and 3x of the 10 dollar package, and then used the WP on the 50 passes for 2500 WP. This was an 80 dollar solution to his problem to get it immediately. It was guaranteed, but in my opinion expensive to have 90 runs with only 700 WP left over.
I pointed out to him that I recommended a different solution that for 60 dollars, he could have bought 2x Double Daily Pearl II, got half his CP immediately, and then waited 10 days for the other half. This would have saved him 20 dollars and gotten him a whopping 3100 WP left over in value, both of which could have been spent on even more CP if he chose (like the 3k WP event pass and the $20 anniversary chest). I also told him that lacking in 60 CP wasn't going to make him go from 6 hits to kill someone down to 5 hits in Black Sun so effectively the 10 day wait would be identical to having it now.
The moral of the story is a lot of the packages out there are garbage and there might be much more effective means of spending if you even choose to spend. Find them or wait for them to present themselves.
submitted by Tobian to BlackDesertMobile [link] [comments] We were going through the check CP page and I stumbled on a realization that I think everyone knows but doesn't see big picture enough. This is most of the things in the game CPwise that you can obtain. Anything with a red rectangle has RNG involved which means you need more resources than you expect in most cases:
https://preview.redd.it/d6lwy7t4xs561.png?width=1604&format=png&auto=webp&s=26b1471c92577d3d5612427c1c2f488e7d03e4f6
I wanted to call attention to the main offenders: pets and the majority of the right side of this list. The right side is everything that PA wants to sell you. As soon as you open your character page, it's all the shiny stuff that you see. Additionally, it is everything that people pull their hair out over, make "i did it!" posts on reddit over, etc. You can tell this is true because if you ask to see someone's CP, they immediately assume you're talking about their gear page instead of the Check CP list. The right side is everything that PA wants you to pay attention to and the left side is everything that is hidden and keeps you growing steadily enough to keep playing the game successfully.
In an attempt to mathematically evaluate the 50 WP lucky shop, I wanted to find a base value in dollars of what each possible drop was and multiply it by the rate (which is posted) and then compare it to 50 WPs dollar value (40 cents). So I started the math to determine a base of value of each individual product (1 red acc = $20, 1 sushi = $1, etc) but it became so convoluted that the math stopped making sense whenever you change currency values so much. Because of this, it became really hard to mathematically justify when ANY package was worth getting in order to knock RNG stuff out of the way (totem +6 for example).
What it boils down to is this: I couldn't do the math, you might not be able to do the math either, but I guarantee you PA can and has. They wouldn't sell something that they haven't calculated would make them money. This is the casino aspect of it. You should realize that anytime you buy RNG, PA has calculated that RNG to take your money favorably to them. The exception to this is when they want to release something and they need people to catch up so they might do crazy sales, but it's more likely that we get our free stuff from events to help normalize the server's CP.
Additionally, it's no surprise that some items that are heavy in RNG (pets, totems, glyphs, valks 50, sushi, resto, red lightstones, red relics, magic essence) are much much harder to obtain in game than the guaranteed items like stamps, vials, and POG tickets. Those 3 things are easier to obtain, but since they're guaranteed, we want a massive amount of all 3 of those; basically to a point where we would need to whale hard to cap.
So what's the takeaway? This game sucks and PA is full of demons? No. Not at all. This game is by far the highest quality mobile game out there. It's honestly better than most PC MMORPGs right now. But it does mean that if you want to enjoy it, you need to know how to play it. Kind of like drinking responsibly I guess. Here are a few points that help make the game more enjoyable, prevent burnout, and prevent that horrible sinking feeling of buying something and then having it piss away and wishing you could turn back time 15 minutes:
- Do not spend on RNG unless the deal is borderline a guarantee and you never need to really deal with it for a very long time. For example, when totems released, there was a hot deal for 50 totems for 30 dollars which I think most people knew was a horrible deal. That's enough for a +4 I would say. You need about 800-1000 for a +6. This was 20 dollars on black friday to get 1500, getting as close to a sure thing as you can get for that. That was the time to knock totems out. We are currently seeing this now with glyphs. You can do well enough now by getting totem +6, full pen, red relic +0, and full red accessories. That's really all someone needs RNGwise to do okay.
- If you want to spend on something for yourself this Christmas, make sure it is a non-RNG purchase. This translates to 3 things and that's really it: vials (no great vial deals right now btw. black friday was the time for those), POG (500 wp for 10 or 1500 BP for 10), or boss stamps (via hot deal only usually). Don't enhance under 100%. If someone came up to you and said "there's a 98% chance I won't kick you in the balls right now; wanna roll the dice?", you likely would not play that game. Just go to 100%.
- Do all the events, do all the dailies, and do merchantry daily. You can make silver from the resources gain, you make some stamps from merchantry, you can stay on top of your camp, you make stamps from node manager, etc. As long as you play the game, you can get items which will improve your left side. Cart 4 merchantry takes 30 minutes to go through 100k food. Cart 5 takes 15.
- Don't fall into this silly trap of thinking PA or whales are the devil just because they are offering something that you don't think is worth the price. That'd be like walking into a grocery store and being pissed off at the store that they offer chocolate milk for $4 and it should be $2. Just don't buy the fucking milk; that offer isn't for you. Only pay attention to the things that fit your personal budget, even if that's $0. Just because an item is offered for a high price doesn't mean that you have to get it to play. Just skip it. Honestly, I don't feel bad at all knowing that my competition will spend hundreds of dollars per week/month because I know that they'll eventually just burn out and I'll win that way.
- Don't treat this game like a casino. You've played RPGs before when you were a kid. They are a long drawn out marathon over time that make you stronger and stronger the more you play them. Play this game like an RPG; not a casino. Don't spend on RNG.
EDIT: Related to this, for anyone who cares, I want to tell you another story.
Before this discussion last night, a guild member of mine asked me to look at their stuff and tell them how best to grow 114 CP in 30 minutes. I saw his black spirit level was 187 and emblem was 21. I did some math since I knew the amount to get to 24 and determined he needed 86 path of glory to get there, pushing him 3 black spirit levels, 3 emblem levels, and getting him enough silver to buy a red off the market and create a pink crystal. Looking at the packages available, he found the Pearls + POG package for 50 dollars, and 3x of the 10 dollar package, and then used the WP on the 50 passes for 2500 WP. This was an 80 dollar solution to his problem to get it immediately. It was guaranteed, but in my opinion expensive to have 90 runs with only 700 WP left over.
I pointed out to him that I recommended a different solution that for 60 dollars, he could have bought 2x Double Daily Pearl II, got half his CP immediately, and then waited 10 days for the other half. This would have saved him 20 dollars and gotten him a whopping 3100 WP left over in value, both of which could have been spent on even more CP if he chose (like the 3k WP event pass and the $20 anniversary chest). I also told him that lacking in 60 CP wasn't going to make him go from 6 hits to kill someone down to 5 hits in Black Sun so effectively the 10 day wait would be identical to having it now.
The moral of the story is a lot of the packages out there are garbage and there might be much more effective means of spending if you even choose to spend. Find them or wait for them to present themselves.
