The constant feelings of loss and dissapointment as a veteran lifeskiller for this husk of a once enjoyable game have led me to create this post.   I've lost all interest former activities like gathering/farming/alchemy due to recent changes that have negatively impacted me.

There are many things that we have lost but first I want to talk about what simplification has done to the diversity of markets.  When there are many different items that are needed to be collected and sold in a games ecosystem, there will be supply and demand bottlenecks that can be exploited by players who enjoy grinding/gathering/crafting items and selling their wares on the market.  Just like it often is for killing monsters, the diverse activities for lifeskilling and ability to capitalize on trends in the market for maximum profits is a large part of what makes crafting/lifeskilling interesting! 

The simplification that has happened to lifeskilling greatly diminishes all that and should never have happened.   Profitability of gathering alchemy and farming has tanked due to these and other changes.  Fruits, for example, which used to have tens of thousands of pre-orders can now be bought for less than half the price and alchemy profits have followed suit in large part due to "farmers sacks" and "archaeologist sack" which automatically produce resources that were previously produced only through gathering/farming in addition to the unifying of mats with simplifiction.  With simplification, now everyone is generating and trying to sell much of the same materials.   Do you really want a game where there is only one spot to gather stone or meat/blood ect with all other locations being inferior because all the materials are the same?  Do we want a game world where you aren't compelled to go out and gathering anything or explore the world because almost everything can be now be generated while afk though alchemy and workers?  

Here I will list the activity and what change has harmed it

Chopping Trees - Materials produced with workers while afk

Gathering Truffles  - Material produced with alchemy while afk

Gathering Rare gems - Materials produced with workers while afk

Gathering/Farming Fruits - Materials produced with workers while afk

Gathering Remnants of burnt spirit - Materials produced with alchemy while afk

Alchemy - Decreased demand from increased elixir duration, simplification of mats, and increase in supply of mats

Specialization in lifeskilling - ruined by Life/Vital Crystal simplification

Meat/blood simplification are next on the chopping block.

I used to gather truffles every morning across the world of Black Desert, as well as the rare gem nodes along my route, and greatly enjoyed it.  It was 1.4b+ profit an hour if you did not include the time it took to create the detection elixirs, but now the profits are less than half of that.  I understand the need for simplification but lifeskilling is the wrong area for that and doing more harm than good.  We need more complexity if anything.  What is more is that some people who stocked up on the cheap mats when they weren't worth anything became filthy rich.  It would have been great to see those unused mats go into new elixirs instead of disrupting markets and ruining profits with simplification.

I really hope there is something good for lifeskilling in Calpheon ball because this game sucks now.

Sounds like gatekeeping. The simplification was long overdue, it makes lifeskilling more accessible to everyone, less inventory clutter. I hope they also consolidate meats and bloods as originally promised. The changes to lifeskill tools were also positive and made gathering easier for everyone. 

Can you explain how does simplification that I mentioned make it more accessable, exactly?  What was holding you back before?  You still have access to the same materials, but now they are worth less because they are all the same and there is overabundance.

I didn't say anything about lifeskill tools, which was a convienience change and has nothing to do with this post.

Upvoted JUST because you're NOT alone!

I absolutely agree. While simplification e.g. of black stones was a good thing, the whole alchemy fruits/essences simplification just made alchemy more dull. I admit, I never did much alchemy before, because it's unbalanced, the resulting products often being a lot less valuable than the ingredients used to craft them. That imbalance hasn't changed (much) but now it's also boring. As a result I don't do any more alchemy at all.

That's the problem with simplifying lifeskills/crafting: variety is what makes it interesting, else everything is just interchangeable and dull.

So I guess, we can just say goodbye to cooking as well, when meat/blood etc gets simplified next?

They are all generally outdated
I see more bigger problems in
Trading that never served any purpose..
Active fishing is not profitable and has been the same since the game came out

I don't see that much of a problem
Processing has always been very afk
Farming you just have to go there from time to time but it's also been the same since the game came out.
Training is also more afk than anything else, catching horses is very repetitive and boring.
Gathering is not as bad as people say because in general, doing 800M/h with 2k mastery I even think is fair.
Hunting is not something I do very often, but from what I know it is profitable and many people enjoy doing it.

Bartering and sailing I just don't do it, I don't know.

In the case of cooking and alchemy...
The problem is not just in simplifying items..
The decrease in pvp over the years also had a big influence and in the current context it is not easy.
For those who don't know "the pure" PVP player and Lifeskill player always go hand in hand. Whether they want it or not, they both need each other. If pvp is weak this will also impact lifeskill.

(Let's also be honest, you don't want to do 2b/h in semi-afk professions, it wouldn't be fair)

So... nowadays you either do it because you like it or you go do something else in the game or you simply stop playing it.

And if you stop playing. Value pack are less sold because only lifeskillers are required to have it! With the optional secret book of Oldmoon and blessing of kamasylve. 

Now it's only up to PA to see if it really wants to lose both types of players.. 

Sure they went too far. Unifying traces and fruits was unneeded, tanked markets and made alchemy pretty generic. But things like sacks and truffle seeds allowed everyone to get those mats instead of depending on people like you. And that's what you are really mad at is the truffle thing cuz you've complained about that multiple times.

You probably had an army of alts each parked in caves and swapped channels all day gathering truffles and knowing the respawn time would prevent others from casually doing that. This forced everyone to depend on players like you to get detection pots and at max price of course and gated behind rng from the 100k buy orders. Now everyone can get seeds if they do alchemy so changes like that were good as was unifying crystals so I didn't need a barter set a gathering set etc etc.