Ok bear with me on this one i do have a point somewhere in here and i guess it goes back to the whole makeup / design of the game...
I know sniffer / 3rd party programs are against the EULA so i have a question, if no one used a sniffer program and put together the information (like on stratics) how would we actually know what mob drops what?
I know it could be said that the idea might of been that players shared their findings and the information would get published that way but i kinda think with how poor the drop rates are that this would never of happened to anywhere near the extent it is at
I know this is a completely rhetorical question but it got me thinking "what on earth were the developers doing when they designed it like this?"
Can you imagine having to put together some of those lovely A grade weapons, first you'd have to randomly hunt for the correct creature to get the recipe (of course you'd have to know where you could get it from) then not to mention the blades that would need to be farmed and all the materials you'd have to work out where they come from. I know a lot of basic mats could be mannored so that would answer that part.
I guess my point would be where would this game have gotten without the sniffer programs that have helped out the community so well? Especially as they are considered against the EULA.
If i'm way off base with this then please make the picture clear for me as my opinions aren't fixed in stone.
The 3rd Party Programs have to **** gameguard to access L2. Sniffer is a 3rd party program because to record that info, it has to be in the game. The EULA actually is based towards bot programs, but programs such as a sniffer happen to fall in that category. This gives NCSoft a reason to ban accounts and keep everyone and thier dog from being lvl 80 already and from every chinese company in the world from making more money than NCSoft :P
Actually,there was a guide made by PRIMA back in C1 with all the info (quests/mobs (lvls/drops/%chance of each drop)/ mats/parts (mobs where those parts/recs dropped and at what rate)....
Since then many things have changed but basicaly drops have stayed the same....Only mobs u can't actually see any info in f.e. stratics (which is THE most usefull and as far as I can tell legit site) are the new ones...
But as u said...there r other sites who have updated info on those as well,and guess how they come up to them.... (surely not by asking every registered user to them to write down what they got as a drop and of what mob)
Hmm interesting regarding the Prima guide with that info. Still makes the mind boggle.
Wasn't around at the beginning of L2 so i have no idea what it was like for people then, will be trying Aion when it's released so i guess i can experience a similarity of some sorts.
I guess my point would be where would this game have gotten without the sniffer programs that have helped out the community so well? Especially as they are considered against the EULA.
Without the information provided by sniffer programs it would be almost impossible to farm specific materials to craft equipment. The ability for an individual, or an alliance to discover what mobs drop what materials is very limited.
The sad thing is that it would be straight forward for NCSoft to publish a simple text list of drops and their frequency. It would be huge, but there are many people who could build applications to search that list.
Why don't they do this? It is hard to say, because NCSoft does not even discuss these issues with the players.
Well I have been playing since beginning and have used Prima guide a lot. After it became outdated I was looking at chineese and korean websites for more information. Babelfish translation came in handy. Then something even better happened from an American programmer. Seriously without detailed info on drops I wouldn't even be playing this game.
NCsoft probably doesn't make the database available so that it adds a little uknown factor to the game and allows the community to work with their own databases. Or perhaps posting the drops isn't conveniant enough.
Well...if I add all that to one of my previous (conspiracy theory) posts,the answer fits perfectly...
NC Soft (Korea that would be,and not the "US-based-to-get-a-grip-of-a-"better"-market" branch) doesn't want the players to know where to look for specific mats,so to use their own "auto-toons" and get more money from the long list of out of game buyers...
sigh!!!....this conspiracy theory of mine can still not get me to quit this game.....dam!!!!I love this game :(
The 3rd Party Programs have to **** gameguard to access L2. Sniffer is a 3rd party program because to record that info, it has to be in the game. The EULA actually is based towards bot programs, but programs such as a sniffer happen to fall in that category. This gives NCSoft a reason to ban accounts and keep everyone and thier dog from being lvl 80 already and from every chinese company in the world from making more money than NCSoft :P
Kinda offtopic, but a sniffer doesn't "****" gameguard. It intercepts incoming packets from the NIC and determines what the information is to put into a TXT file.
There would be some really rich people. If you took the time to find out what dropped / spoiled the mats to craft specific items then you deserve to be rich. I think that this is the reason the drops are how they are.
Here is how I see it. The top items for each grade are supposed to be rare / near impossible to get. I think everyone tries to rush through this game. High lvls and top gear are supposed to mean something, but they dont. You can become a hero in 6 months or less (look at Franz... heroes after 6 months of being opened).
Well...if I add all that to one of my previous (conspiracy theory) posts,the answer fits perfectly...
NC Soft (Korea that would be,and not the "US-based-to-get-a-grip-of-a-"better"-market" branch) doesn't want the players to know where to look for specific mats,so to use their own "auto-toons" and get more money from the long list of out of game buyers...
just linking that site makes you wonder how much money they pay for the web designers and what is needed for them to update ours in English or even better lets just bring them here.
Well...if I add all that to one of my previous (conspiracy theory) posts,the answer fits perfectly...
NC Soft (Korea that would be,and not the "US-based-to-get-a-grip-of-a-"better"-market" branch) doesn't want the players to know where to look for specific mats,so to use their own "auto-toons" and get more money from the long list of out of game buyers...
Well...on that page,all I could see was where each mob is and its hp/mp...couldn't find what it drops though and at what rate....
Maybe I didn't look hard enough....but...that's the part of I was refering to...if they DO have those stats in there...it stills shows of what they think of the non Korean player base imo...
The Prima guide was my nightly reading material for a long time.
No idea why it was discontinued. Only thing that pops to mind would be because of all of the non-official servers around who could match C1 drops etc.
It was discontinued mainly because there was no money in it. Everyone was stealing from various sites after a pdf version was sold. There was a chat/board/site (I dunno) about an update and people could post comments. After a tentative schedule was place for the update someone posted asking to be informed on where he/she could get a free copy. The update never came.
If there were no drop lists. bot programs etc.. the game would work like it was supposed to.
Nobody but the select few would get the top grade stuff for each grade.
Scavengers/Bounty hunters would be explorers/gatheres. The class would rock and make alot of money. (Some people really enjoy this play style).
But sadly, the chineese farmers have always been there. Even back in the beta. I was playing Orc and any attempt to kill the bears in orc area resulted in "NO KILL BEAR!!" and if you keept going, red players showed up.
As you see we have no official word/answer and we are the poor ralatives of the NCsoft Korean site. Lets hope we get some nice website with information and all before more ppl stop playing this nice game.
The Prima guide was my nightly reading material for a long time.
No idea why it was discontinued. Only thing that pops to mind would be because of all of the non-official servers around who could match C1 drops etc.
when the guide came out, the source code was stolen. ever since then, devs have been trying to change enough of the base code to call it a new game. hence, Chaotic Throne.