the h24 afk activity is -smart- to give to players a feeling of really being bound to another world as it -never stop-. With this i can understand how somes are totaly hooked ( add all sunk cost )

But as a game to play it's very mediocre to have close to no active content to really have fun with

The only thing this game has is fun combat system and pretty graphics.

The PVE content, PVP content is all garbage boring.

Problem is ppl spend money on pearls and dont want to feel they wasted money so continue.

It is a snowball effect and the more they spend the harder it is to quit.

Same can be said about grinding time, people who spent 5-10 hours a day grinding for months become protective of the time spent ..

But most of these people complain about the game to friends in discord all the time.

Really everyone who plays bdo and wants to progress past 600 gear score is semi masochistic.

as you said they are just numbers, those numbers do not represent the ammount of fun i had while doing it, actually most of it i did it out of absolute boredom, why would i want to increase them any further if i dont enjoy doing so??

Not true. Many players have never enjoyed the open world pvp and have never found pk to be fun or to add anything to quell boredom.

The multitasking Combat Lifeskiller

Packs their lifeskill & combat gear, a fence, seed, water, fertilizer, marni stone 

Goes to hunting area.

Sets out fence and crop.

Hunts. Takes short breaks to gather, chop/sap gathers on trees, puliverizes rocks, kill mobs for marni stone, kill beatles and other local animals/insects, does active fishing, kill pests on crops.

Hunts again and for breaks varies up what they feel like doing out of activites.

Sends goods by maid, loads extra on horse.

Puts a worker from city on the garden

One hour.

Then its afk to process, sell trash loot/trade items/marketplace etc.etc.etc. organize crafting by workers

And I didn't even list out any of the other activites I'm doing while doing all that *active* lifeskilling.

Ooops, I was doing combat too to fill up a marni stone, wasn't I?

Never bored

You forgot Farming

Not me. That's the shabby fence (you know the one you get for free?) I put out,  with one crop in it.

Special Fog mushrooms.

When I first learned to hunt, with a sniper rifle at Olivia on the elks..I put that fence and a crop out.

I'd say that the real problem is that the Mob Grinding itself is way too Dynasty-Warriors'esque and not nearly enough like ResidentEvil or DarkSouls or any other PVE RPG's that have complex monster designs, monster abilities, and a bare minimum of Effort put into their A.I. Scripting.

The Vast majority of what I'd call "Challenge" in the core gameplay loop of BDO, is all just Inventory management.  And it's not even interesting management like say, an Attache' Case or comparing drops against eachother like in Diablo & Borderlands.   These matters are only made way worse by the fact that Silver is essentially a meaningless commodity made meaningless by design through the Developers constantly adding other types of Currency to the game for Proprietary content & minigames.  (which also quickly becomes obsolete itself after only 6 months or less)

And most of that inventory management "challenge" simply disappears if you spend enough Real cash on Weight, Weight increasing Pets, and Storage slots / Inventory Slots. ... every single issue with the passiveness of the Lifeskiller content meanwhile is BUILT around reinforcing that over reliance on Cash for Inventory solutions, including needing more storage space for barter Items on Illiya island due to the fact that we are still specifically excluded from buying extra space there with Loyalty

?

BDO is a casino royal, who cares 'bout activities? 

It get's just boring the moment you loose all options to gamble around (no money left to be risky).

The day before the PEN Capotia Necklace went live as a Season Reward i bought 8 Ogres and made 2 times TRI Ogres by oneshotting them with traditional 20, 30 and some ~50+ stacks and loosing them all with a way too high 116 stack :/

I didn't know the PEN comes next day and still didn't care. Ah and the same day i bought a TET Nouver for 1.7 Billion just to blow it up for a PEN attempt. Nearly (2 DUO Basi's blowing up as well) 6 Billion wasted but it's just gambling.

I do neither Life nor Grinding. I get lucky from free stuff and gamble along my way...