+1

I agree with removing crystal breaking. 

Lightstones don't break, and Strikes are still valuable, and there are other uses for lightstones (and processing/exchange byproducts of lightstones). 

Crystals should be similar. 

When I was grinding places like orcs a long time ago, dying meant maybe losing at worst an elkarr or jin viper, both at most 330m silver at the time and both reasonably easy to replace. Even if there were none on market, an order could fill in a couple hours, always - it was truly no problem to replace what was lost. Losing a Jin Viper back then was spicy, not terrible. You'd take a loss like that and not really care, you'd move on, even if you lost 2x vipers you still could just buy them immediately back and the money you earned that very hour would pay for it, and on top of it all, it's unlikely you were dying at orcs more than like once a week if ever anyway unless PvP happened. 

Later, more recently, crystals are becoming much much much more involved to get and more valuable. It is not the same. The risk vs reward we used to enjoy is not the same. 

You know what's funny? My Crypt of Resting Thoughts crystal build costs 133m silver and gives me all the resists and accuracy I care for, and every crystal in it is in big supply and easy to replace. Meanwhile, the build I use for a casual place like star's end costs closer to 10 billion silver.  I got my PEN Debo belt wearing 130m worth of crystals. 

What a joke. The fanciest crystals giving the most power, and I only dare use them in situations where they can't break, because the risk vs reward calculation is so off. There is no motivation for me to risk billions of silver to grind at crypt when I do not need to risk that much, to still get the same reward.

Furthermore, if people are concerned about overgeared players who stay at lower grindspots and compete with newer players... the current crystal system is part of that. Obviously this doesn't stop every player, but it is a decision point and you do see people who COULD grind lethal endgame spots, who choose to relax in easier spots, because it just feels stupid to take off your optimized crystal set and equip a disposable trash crystal set to do harder content. It makes me wonder why I ever bothered to make a good expensive PvE crystal set in the first place, if easy spots are AP capped and hard spots break your crystals, why ever get a Girin? Use it to overkill at normal Thornwood? Risk it like a lunatic at a place where you can die? How about not even have it at all? No, the whole system sucks and this event gave everyone a taste of what life could be in this game if it wasn't a factor. 

Agreed, the punishment for dying in hard content should not be so brutal to scare off people from trying new content. Why release new content if people will not play it, since it is too difficult with less expensive crystals and using expensive (i.e., the right) crystals poses a brutal effort-nulifying threat? Why relase expensive crystals if no one dares to use them for difficult content?

The safe path of repeating old content over and over again (which most players choose), even though there is new content available, is simply annihilating the devs' efforts to make the game fresh and enjoyable. And this goal should have priority over any market segment, such as crystal market. The crystal market is dying anyways, since people take the safe route for fear of breaking crystals.

Well, since there is no incentive to grind for crystallized despair after you get your exalted vell, I guess they should make the exalted fragment have a chance to break on death. There surely isn't any better way to solve it.

:)

Jokes aside, apart from the fact that most crystals are not actively grindable, my point is that if you don't have crystals to grind for, you'll have something else to work on. You don't easily hard cap in BDO.

 What are you referring to here?

This is subjective, as I think a game can be enjoyable and difficult without having to break your legs if you die.  A slap on the face is enough. The incentive to stay alive for me is that dying makes me lose efficiency while grinding, breaks my pace, makes me waste draughts or elixirs, perfumes. And if I ever happen to run out of ellion's tears, walking back to the spot from the node could be a real pain in the ass.

(I'd be okay with PA not bombarding us with tears if it means removing crystal breakage).

Nothing prevents you from punishing yourself the way you see fit. Why do you have to force the same way on us if most of us don't like it?

Please,please, please stop screaming at the crystal market downfall without elaborating further.

I'm going to make a list of reasons why the crystal market shouldn't be a problem:

- Console doesn't have crystal loss and prices are similar to PC (sometimes higher).

I'm going to put a few examples in a separate message after this list of points.

To this day, I haven't witnessed anybody trying to counter this argument.

- Stuff that you have to buy once and not think about ever again doesn't automatically sit at min price in the CM.

The best example for this is BIS PvE lightstones. But also lifeskill lighstones and PvP crystals. Maybe we could also include cups.

- Almost every BIS Crystal is not properly grindable.

You can't log in the game saying "today I'm gonna grind 10 hours at spot x and sell all the Rebellious Crystals I drop", cause there are no spots where you can grind that crystal.

This contributes to keep the crystals "rare", pricey and low in stock, in a similar way that Blade and Strike lightstones are.

- Following the point above, it is only logical that the low supply and high price of BIS crystals in the central market is regulated primarily by the fact that they are hard to get and limited by bottleneck items, not by people breaking them and having to rebuy them.

If this wasn't true, actual grindable BIS crystals would not have the low price value they have now.

I'm talking about Corrupted (Probably every single player in the game currently has a couple of these in their build), Elkarrs or Dark red fang which cost respectively 20, 60 and 150 mil on EU.

- Since BIS crystals can't be consistently grinded, you won't be consistently selling them on the central market.

They are an insignificant percentage of the money you make. No one is relying on crystals as a main source of income.

So even if the market ends up taking a hit...who cares?

- Only PA knows how many crystals get broken and replaced on a daily basis.

Whoever is against the change is probably convinced people enjoy pain so much they constantly grind in spots where they die regularly, mantaining the crystal market alive by themselves. I find it very unlikely.

I'm more of the opinion that people generally stay away from spots they can die at, to avoid losing billions of silver in crystals, while confining themselves to spots they're overgeared for where they can make similar amounts of money with no risks.

But hey, who am I to say. Only PA can give us the data.

- Lastly, PA can always come up with a way to fix the problem if and when it presents itself, as they did with magical shards and lightstone shards.

Prices are updated to 22/08/2023 20:00 UTC:

Dark red fang - Valor:

All these replies trying to counter the "Crystal Market will crash" argument, but in reality the only question is to ask will the quality of the game increase with the removal of the possibility of breaking crystals? 

Answer: Yes.

If you don't agree, I'd love to hear how you think the overall game quality would decrease because crystals don't break. If you're argument is that the crystal market will crash, please explain how that makes the overall playerbase game quality net negative. 

I for one came to post my support for no more crystals breaking.

Here are my main concerns and I believe it is possible to reach a middle ground if permanance is not up for discussion.

It is a huge risk vs reward that is not worth it to engage with a system in your game for new players and casual players.
I do not want to use my life skilling crystals because of the fear of losing something that are irreplacable, despite doing mundane tasks.
Another great point is human error, I do not want to micro manage my crystals with the current UI to do it, if it was easier perhaps I would be willing to concede on human error, but as of right now it is to easy to forget to change crystals thus not worth the risk. Also, it is annoying to switch them, maybe it is a lack of knowledge of my part.

The first point alone should be enough to consider a middle ground at the very least. Here are some ideas:

Crystal Protection buff during bosses(esp since nightmare verions can be a literal nightmare for blind/new players like me)
Crystal Protection Scrolls - Buff that encourages people to use their good crystals, this does come with a risk of pissing people off because of the human error reason above. Please consider the request to make the crystal swapping easier or possible to do on a mount ( I may be naive here so please forgive me if I miss a good reason for not being able to know why you shouldn't be able to swap on a mount or perhaps it is a UI/Game limiation, if so I understand)

I do not know how they work very well in PVP(if you go Outlaw you risk your crystals, I do understand that and that is ok), so I will not comment on something I know little about.

With the cost of crystals being 5b and also hard to get, this is a no brainer. Make crystals protected!

It gets rid of feeding people to mobs, frees up customer support so they dont have to constantly restore crystals and addresses connection issue losses, which are the worst. It's a net positive for the game.

No, even for an outlaw, this penalty is too much AND a dedicated outlaw will not use expensive crystals. 

Meanwhile, an one time "outlaw-by-mistake" may lose a huge amount of money. 

That's why permanent losses are not the best way to deal with excessive behavior : in BDO, the biggest offender is not necessarily the one who gets the highest penalty, he can stay on the spot even if he gets killed (jail time would be better) and in general, such loss hinders both pve and pvp.