N/A

Malevelon,

I'll start this off with a bit of a rant. I spent most of today trying to convert a stack of 50k copper ores into ingots. It has taken me bloody hours to do. Even with 1100 heating mastery, 3178 LT, seafood cron meal, verdure draught, mass processing stone and the clang clang LS combo. And I've got to say it was one of the most painful things I have ever done in a video game. Absolute dog-water. 10/10 do not want to touch again. All because processing is this awkward semi-afk experience, that forces me to micro-manage it because of character weight limits. I wouldn't mind mass processing taking 8+ hours' on large stacks, if it was fully afk and could be setup to overnight like fishing. But its not. Shuffling stacks of 10k resources at a time every 15 minutes or so isn't fun or engaging. And it's not even a profitable waste of time. Not when my current grind spots are an easy 1.5bill+/hr. Not when my 10.5k stack of ingots from 50k ores (that took months for multiple nodes to collect) only sells for 325,000,000 silver. Whenever it finally sells. End rant.

So, I came up with a few suggestions that could improve the processing experience in modern BDO, and bring it more inline with the sate of other life skills:

- LT should always matter when I am in the open world grinding/hunting/gathering. LT should not matter when I am stationary in my residence. My first suggestion would be to consider removing LT restrictions when a player is processing from their residence. I can't see this happening but i can dream :')

- Alchemy and cooking both have dedicated appliances that can be used to improve their respective craft. My second suggestion is to add a Processing appliance/furnace/forge that can be installed in a residence. If PA doesn't want to mess with LT restrictions, maybe they could give the appliance its own separate storage with a 10,000LT weight limit (higher grade forge appliances could have improved weight limits). So we can load it up with ore and then leave our char to afk process the 10,000LT stack over night with our characters' efficiency. As processing ore with workers in the current state of BDO is laughably slow, inefficient and a waste of a good worker that can be doing better things. Not to mention the minimal input of sourcing and supplying black stone powder and beer is still too much input for the dysmal ingot returns you get using workers.

- Alternatively, the forge/furnace could streamline mass processing. Perhaps instead of 1 minute procs, the appliance could have a 6 second proc for mass processing? Or maybe it could skip stages of processing and just go straight from ore - ingot?

- PA could even expand upon the life skill and give it a face lift to make it feel like relative content again. Beyond just melting the odd accessory or making some blackstone variant. Processing/manufacturing could be morphed into a new Blacksmithing life skill. Where players can craft our own end game gear/weapons/items/ship/wagon parts etc. With better efficiency than NPC blacksmiths' or worker shops, once you've reached the relevant skill level and or mastery. 

- If none of those improvements are appealing. Perhaps the mass processing fail proc could be removed entirely. light stone combos, gear and consumables with stats dedicated to reducing the failure chance of procs; will now add a time reduction % towards the mass processing proc. Similar to cooking/alchemy.  

These are just a few ideas' off the top of my head that would have made my negative experience with processing today a whole lot more postive. What do you guys think? Is it time PA gave processing a touch up?

Just add an item/change the existing system so that the processed items end up back in storage. It only makes sense in every possible way you think about it.

This. I do like some of the things you mentioned OP, could certainly improve the lifeskill. 

Also, to OP, comparing afk processing to grinding isn't accurate. Processing is afk, so it's money you make while not having to be at your computer. A more accurate comparison is to fishing, the staple lazy person afk thing to do, or maybe horse training. You are correct that processing can't be set up for over nights, one of those unfortunate things about it. Processing is a little P2W, you need weight and really the outfit to consider doing it at all. Next, your point about 50k ores only being 325m when processed, after taking months to collect, is more an issue with your worker empire. For instance, I pull ~10k copper ore a day and I am not even super efficient with my workers. Not to mention the plethora of other resources gathered. Last, 1100 mastery is pretty low. Just getting to 1500 will increase output by like 60%.

processed items back in storage please