I have finally had the opportunity to test out the BODs on test center this morning, and since I have a strong interest in BODs I believe I am obligated to provide some feedback. It seems the same BOD reward table is being employed, with the main difference being that you can now claim any reward that is beneath the "classic" reward, and save 0.05% of the points if you do not choose a reward. Same system, but with a few extra features.
Positive Feedback:
*High charge crafting tools are neat
*Crafting loss talismans, also neat. I like that I can work towards a better crafting talisman through BODs, even though the loss prevention property isn't particularly useful at 120 blacksmithing
*Verite and Valorite small BODs can actually be used to get POFs - honestly this is only half a pro for reasons I shall explain later.
*Despite the negative feedback I am about to write, I can still ignore all the new features and just get POFs and copper runics as I have before.
Miscellaneous Feedback:
*I got a BOD for 10x Faerie Fire. It turned out to be worth only 10 points.
*Why bother having mining gloves +1 and +3? I fail to see the point of keeping those.
*Why does the sturdy pickaxe and the sturdy shovel have different point costs?
Now for the negatives. It saddens me to write this because this revamp doesn't really solve the fundamental problems of BODs. A lot of people in the thread are criticizing the .05% bank rate. I understand why this was done. The reason for such a low rate is that the devs do not want players to be grinding out low level BODs -exclusively- to get the big rewards. Example: Val runic = 1200 points. That is equivalent to 240,000 bankable points, meaning you'd have to bank that many points worth of BODs to get a val runic. If I were to bribe up every weapon deed I came across, it would take me 960 20/exc weapon BODs to have enough banked points for a val runic. 360 20/exc weapon BODs to have enough for a single POF. The problem is, whether or not the rate is too low is missing the point, as well as a fundamental problem with BODs.
The fundamental problem is, the actual value of BODs isn't being taken into account. First, let's look at the ores and their rarities (as documented on the Stratics Mining Essay):
Iron ~50%
Dull Copper 11.2%
Shadow Iron 9.8%
Copper 8.4%
Bronze 7.0%
Gold 5.6%
Agapite 4.2%
Verite 2.8%
Valorite 1.0 to 1.4%
So if you were to mine 1,000 ores at random, statistically you should come up with these quantities:
10 - valorite
28- verite
42 - agapite
56 - gold
70 - bronze
84 - copper
98 - shadow iron
112 - dull copper
500 - iron
We can clearly see there is a wide range of values at play here. Valorite is 50x as valuable as iron, because for every 1 valorite ore you get, you will have approximately 50 iron ores. This value is not being taken into account with BODs. Consider: a 20/exc/val BOD is worth 800 points. What is the item being crafted though? If it were a gorget, then I would have to use 200 valorite ingots. If it was a platemail tunic, I would have to use 500 ingots. 200 ingots, 500 ingots, yet the BOD is worth the same number of points. It gets even more insane with LBODs, when you take into account quanties 10, 15 and 20 covering a wide range of resource costs.
Let's look at the ore maps. I had the opportunity to test these out. I started with a gold map (acquired in Trammel). From this, I was able to mine 227 gold ore and 31 granite. That is 448 gold ingots. I got a second gold map, this time in Felucca. I didn't write down the result, but after turning off stone mining I pulled in slightly less than 900 gold ingots. Then I decided to go for the big one, a valorite map. I wanted to see if the valorite map would have more uses than the gold map. It did not, only coming with 213 uses. Let's do the math - that comes out to 852 valorite ingots IF I don't fail the smelt. Why is this a problem? Because the valorite map costs 1150 points. I put together a 20/exc/valorite/plate LBOD for this - it costs me untold hundreds of thousands of gold just to bribe it and the components up, and it costs over 2000 valorite ingots just to fill. So let me get this straight - I spend 2000 valorite ingots so I can mine <1000 valorite ingots in Felucca? But wait, I hear you say, you don't have to redeem a 20/exc/valorite/plate LBOD, you can also redeem a 10/exc/valorite/plate LBOD. Great, but do you know how god damn hard that is to bribe up? I am talking about bribing something up to valorite without the quantity being affected, it's freakin' imposible and excessively expensive. And for what, 800 valorite ingots if I luckily do not fail the smelt? And that's ignoring the fact that a 10/exc/valorite/plate costs 1000 valorite ingots, so we're still losing ingots in the process. Maybe instead you suggest I do a 20/exc/verite/plate. 2000 verite ingots for 800-900 valorite ingots? Doesn't seem worth it to me, considering how difficult it would be to bribe up. NOTE: Bribing anything below maximum values is necessarily difficult, because you an't control what property gets upgraded.
But wait again, I hear you say. You can use bankable points to earn the map over time. Great, well ignoring the fact that that would take forever, let's do the math. I need 230,000 bankable points to get the map. Let's assume I went the weapon BOD route, and managed to come across all dagger BODs, bribing them up to 20/exc. That is 250 points each, at 60 iron ingots a pop. 920 BODs and 55,200 iron ingots later, I can now mine 800-900 val ingots. Remember the ratios above? 1 mined valorite ore for every 50 iron ore and that's assuming the lowest ingot-intensive craftable. Let's say I went the 20/exc/val/ringmail gloves route instead. 200 valorite ingots a pop, 800 points each. 288 BODs and 57,600 valorite ingots later, I can now get a map that will let me mine 800-900 valorite ingots.
Look, the points you earn from BODs should be based on the ingot value of the BOD. 1 iron ingot = 1 point. 1 valorite ingot = 50 points. Adjust the reward costs accordingly. It should not take 2000 valorite ingots to get a val runic hammer. It should not take more than 800-900 valorite ingots to get a valorite mining map.
Suppose we adjusted the costs, but kept the same relative reward table. 2000 valorite ingots earned 100,000 points, the new hypothetical cost for a valorite runic. Iron ingots get 1 point each. Ironically, it would take 100,000 iron ingots worth of small BODs to get a valorite runic, more than the 55,200 iron ingots worth of dagger BODs from the example above.
See, here is the problem. You ask, why would anyone do high-level BODs when they can grind out small ones? I ask: why would anyone want to do higher ingot cost BODs? Why do halberds? Why do platemail tunics? Why do quantity 20 when you can do quantity 10? (remember, 10 adds 10 points, 15 adds 25 points, 20 adds 50 points). The revamp necessarily makes higher level BODs even more useless than they were before. And this is not even mentioning the fact that LBODs are still a huge pain in the butt to fill because you have to have their SBOD components. Please, for the love of god, let me fill LBODs directly without SBODs!
To be honest, I will still use the BOD system as I have before, bribing up gold/agapite small bods to get POFs and copper runics. However at this point I think I will not be bothering with LBODs or any other aspect of the system. The randomness of bribing, the ingot costs, the lack of multiplayer features; it all seems rather arbitrary. Crawling through a labyrinth so I can trade ingots for a reward of lesser value. Why even bother with valorite runics, we have legendary artifacts. Ah well.
Thus completes my rant- er, I mean, feedback.
