1:1 Trading Is Important In MMOs

I’ve been playing a lot of Black Desert Online recently and, as you may know, there are a huge number of trading restrictions in place to prevent gold sellers. When I first got into the game I was convinced it would fine. There’s an auction house so I could buy whatever I’m having issues obtaining otherwise. For the most part this works out, but I still miss 1:1 trading.

I miss the collaborative aspect of collectively putting together large projects with friends, guildmates, and others in general. In Black Desert Online, every player can be their own “mercantile empire,” as one user put it, but the result of that design decision is that every major project ends up becoming a large amount of tedium and/or waiting on timers to expire. There is no option to work together with others, which is a feature I find near-essential for any game that wants to be a sandbox.

[singlepic id=50278 w=600 h=338 float=none]

Let’s say you have to make 50 Birch Plywood to build a Fishing Boat. You are either out chopping the literal thousands of logs you need to create said Birch Plywood or waiting for your workers to do it for you. You could buy it all on the market, but that’s an expensive investment for a single ingredient in a larger project. If there weren’t any trading restrictions, everyone who wanted to use the boat to go fishing could contribute. Instead, a single person is stuck bearing the entirety of the workload.

In the case of Black Desert Online, specifically, this becomes a bit of a non-issue as you progress, as you get more workers and level them up; workers ultimately becoming more efficient and replace the need for outside help. But that’s not always the case. Certain items can only be obtained as secondary drops as a result of a worker gathering at the single node that the items drop from. This becomes a tedious wait for timers to expire and silent prayers that you get the items you need.

[singlepic id=50277 w=600 h=338 float=none]

When you are out grinding in Black Desert Online all types of gear drop. The game is not going to stop and say “okay, your class uses a shortsword so we won’t give you this bow as a drop,” like MapleStory Reboot does. The developers figured that most players would either auction it off or use it on an alt since the game has account-wide storage. But what if a friend needs that bow to repair max durability on their weapon? You would have to sell it for the lowest price on the auction house and hope that someone else doesn’t snipe it.

The problem is exacerbated towards the endgame when you are trying to farm hard to get items like Witch’s Earrings and, even if you don’t need it, the only way to pass it off to a friend is to put it on the auction house for literal millions of silver. I strongly dislike like this system and I am clearly not alone as there is a Change.org petition set up in hopes of changing a similar system that is in place in Tree of Savior.

By far the worst trading mechanic in Black Desert Online, however, is the mechanic in place to fight gold sellers who are using potions—one of the game’s few tradables—to sell gold. Daum made all traded potions untradeable and unsellable. This has a few consequences. Should someone you’re grouped with offer to trade you potions when you’re low on them, you can’t trade leftover potions back. If you need to pawn off potions on a friend temporarily in order to reduce the staggering amount of weight they take up you can’t get those potions back. Furthermore, because traded potions are technically different, in that they’re untradeable, they take up a separate slot in your inventory. If you’re a class that requires both HP and MP potions you have a full four slots taken up by potions.

[singlepic id=50279 w=600 h=338 float=none]

As with anything you learn to work around the mechanics and you get used to doing things differently than you would in other games. I’ve learned to work around them for the most part, but these examples still remind me of how much I detest not being able to trade items freely. Unfortunately, due to the fact that both Black Desert Online and Tree of Savior have systems like this in place—and what’s more, they appear to actually be succeeding in fighting gold sellers—I have a feeling we will be seeing them again in future titles.