Here are some of my opinions on what NCSoft needs to change/add to make Lineage 2 more popular and a better game.
+1 on Server Merges for one... I've been playing on Aria for years, everyday complaining that there is not enough people on. More people on a server means several things... More people = less open exp spots, fun pvp (I understand if you are under-geared/leveled or just do not want to PvP at all but there is many zones on the L2 map to exp/farm where you will not be bothered, even with the high population). More people = more exp groups, nobody likes to exp alone.
I think the main reasons so many people quit the game was the lack of players, good PvP, getting by the enemy too hard, some game mechanics and the HUGE amount of cheating going on in the game. There isn't much NC can do about clans overpowering the server and creating no competition by taking the best players. (Server merges for most servers will create fun tensions between many clans; should be really fun interesting PvP's.. Even if my clan gets by Nova or some top clan of another server, I will still be a very happy player)
I understand NCSoft cannot ban every botter that logs in because then about 90% of the server would be banned and would quit. I also understand that Lineage 2 is a business and NCSoft's goal is to make as much profit as possible. Its tough to repair the damage already made, but I think just randomly banning bots is not the way to go... slowly you will just lose people.
I have two solutions to fix the botting problems
Solution 1: If I tried I could probably take down 40 botters in 1 day, lets be real, everywhere I go I see botters pretty much. GM's need to setup a date for players to read when they are going to start to crack down on the botters hardcore. From then on if you are caught botting the 1st time you get "perma purple" for 1 month. If you are always "flagged" it is nearly impossible to bot and is a scary warning. If they are caught botting again they get banned.
Solution 2: The major problem that made Lineage 2 difficult to succeed has always been the massive GRIND needed to compete. Thus almost everyone made "scripts" or "bots" to grind for them as you all know... Lineage 2 in my opinion still has a good option to fix this problem. What NCSoft needs to do is create a "bot" of their own. The bot will have very basic functions to assist, and kill mobs automatically in a radius. A very simple bot integrated into Lineage 2. For the 10-15% of lineage players that play legit and enjoy it. You could add a function where when you start the "Lineage bot" your exp or patk/matk is reduced by a certain %. There is several ways to make the grind faster to legit exp, but there should be an option for 90% of the server to still have a way around the crazy grind and not to pay the extra fee's of ******** and cheat. If they added this new lineage bot, GM's would really need to convince players that using L2 Walker and other illegal bots will surely get them banned. One thing I love about L2 is how you really have to work at your character to have fun, and get stronger. BUT the 1 year legit grind to have some fun at PvP is what made and still makes people quit. If people could use this "lineage 2 bot" they could get to a high level without giving up their lives. Many people enjoy watching their screen and seeing their character "do work" on its own, which is one reason why so many botters love l2 (it is just one of those things that gives you a good feeling). Lineage 2 will look much more appetizing for the average gamer without losing Lineage 2's excellent style.
I am not sure how dedicated Lineage 2's developers are but if they could get movies inside some basic npc windows, or maybe another option it would really help those players that do not know about so many things. Right now lineage players learn most of their knowledge of the game through word of mouth and trial/error. I actually kind of like that, but it gets ridiculous at times. It would be a cool option to have some in-game movies to explain certain quests/skills and other random things.
I also suggest cutting the price down for both the CD Key and the monthly fee's (30-50% cut). Lineage would gain more players so really the cut in prices will balance out.
Soul Hounds need a nerf. You guys pretty much gave them everything... Decent matk/patk, celestial shield, warp, ud for males, rush skill to get up to enemies, great rspd, steal divinity, Lightning Shock. Now I'm normally not one to complain about class balance; for the most part there is always something you can do to prevent some classes to beating you or w/e. (btw never seen an archer use his high lvl skills ever, kind of odd)
I suggest nerfing Lightning Shock, less land rate/duration, and having steal divinity have a chance to fail, or maybe take 1-9 buffs on a chance.
Territory Wars seemed like a good idea but a few things ruined it. Everyone goes to arena's and the pvp is no fun. The fights should be on the siege fields... I like the idea to get more fame for taking down gates/walls and what not, might be a fun objective for smaller clans. Another thing is players should not get fame for sitting on a siege field dead. Everyone wants to farm fame, and nobody has fun sitting there dead for two hours.
BSOE's/QHP/Warrior Potions need to be deleted or increased in price a ton. What I recommend doing is liquidating everyone's current bsoe's/qhp/warrior pots accordingly with adena. BSOE's should cost atleast 1 million adena per (clan hall/fort BSOE's). I would make QHP's much more rare to obtain and thus increasing there price. Most importantly DELETE warrior potions from the olympiad manager. I usually stock up on warrior potions each month just because I have to... Most of the competitive PvP's consist of who has more QHP/Warrior Potions on them. Warrior Potions are stupid cheap, and if you do not want to die... you will not with these (unless u get para'd/stunned or something to prevent you from spamming)
The thing that really makes me want to quit is the programs people use in PvP. I have been in ventrilo with a few major clans; they openly say they are using *****, Ranger, and some other lineage 2 PvP programs. These programs have the power to "evade shadow step/backstabs", "hide/backstab combos" with its features to "step back". They can auto target and auto spam cp pots, oly pots, qhp's, ghp pots. It is like playing a shooter game with people using "head shot programs" to find heads of players and automatically 1 shotting them the second they are in sight. I am not sure how lineage can detect these users. There must be a way to trick the program into sending a different packet normal clients do not make and catching them or maybe some game guard detection of these programs running.
Lineage 2 is a very good game... NCSoft needs to really step up and get these problems fixed and implement all these changes at one time! I don't know NCSoft's budget, and there attention to Lineage 2, but they should really look at their advertising department. It is terrible; like I said Lineage 2 is really a good game, just needs better advertising and a few (should be) simple fixes. If Lineage 2 has money for a major commercial on TV, youtube or even pandora.com it would create so many new customers and even old customers plus would make current L2 players much more active to see the game growing, not a steady death as we are seeing right now.
Here are some of my opinions on what NCSoft needs to change/add to make Lineage 2 more popular and a better game.
+1 on Server Merges for one... I've been playing on Aria for years, everyday complaining that there is not enough people on. More people on a server means several things... More people = less open exp spots, fun pvp (I understand if you are under-geared/leveled or just do not want to PvP at all but there is many zones on the L2 map to exp/farm where you will not be bothered, even with the high population). More people = more exp groups, nobody likes to exp alone.
I think the main reasons so many people quit the game was the lack of players, good PvP, getting by the enemy too hard, some game mechanics and the HUGE amount of cheating going on in the game. There isn't much NC can do about clans overpowering the server and creating no competition by taking the best players. (Server merges for most servers will create fun tensions between many clans; should be really fun interesting PvP's.. Even if my clan gets by Nova or some top clan of another server, I will still be a very happy player)
I understand NCSoft cannot ban every botter that logs in because then about 90% of the server would be banned and would quit. I also understand that Lineage 2 is a business and NCSoft's goal is to make as much profit as possible. Its tough to repair the damage already made, but I think just randomly banning bots is not the way to go... slowly you will just lose people.
I have two solutions to fix the botting problems
Solution 1: If I tried I could probably take down 40 botters in 1 day, lets be real, everywhere I go I see botters pretty much. GM's need to setup a date for players to read when they are going to start to crack down on the botters hardcore. From then on if you are caught botting the 1st time you get "perma purple" for 1 month. If you are always "flagged" it is nearly impossible to bot and is a scary warning. If they are caught botting again they get banned.
Solution 2: The major problem that made Lineage 2 difficult to succeed has always been the massive GRIND needed to compete. Thus almost everyone made "scripts" or "bots" to grind for them as you all know... Lineage 2 in my opinion still has a good option to fix this problem. What NCSoft needs to do is create a "bot" of their own. The bot will have very basic functions to assist, and kill mobs automatically in a radius. A very simple bot integrated into Lineage 2. For the 10-15% of lineage players that play legit and enjoy it. You could add a function where when you start the "Lineage bot" your exp or patk/matk is reduced by a certain %. There is several ways to make the grind faster to legit exp, but there should be an option for 90% of the server to still have a way around the crazy grind and not to pay the extra fee's of ******** and cheat. If they added this new lineage bot, GM's would really need to convince players that using L2 Walker and other illegal bots will surely get them banned. One thing I love about L2 is how you really have to work at your character to have fun, and get stronger. BUT the 1 year legit grind to have some fun at PvP is what made and still makes people quit. If people could use this "lineage 2 bot" they could get to a high level without giving up their lives. Many people enjoy watching their screen and seeing their character "do work" on its own, which is one reason why so many botters love l2 (it is just one of those things that gives you a good feeling). Lineage 2 will look much more appetizing for the average gamer without losing Lineage 2's excellent style.
I am not sure how dedicated Lineage 2's developers are but if they could get movies inside some basic npc windows, or maybe another option it would really help those players that do not know about so many things. Right now lineage players learn most of their knowledge of the game through word of mouth and trial/error. I actually kind of like that, but it gets ridiculous at times. It would be a cool option to have some in-game movies to explain certain quests/skills and other random things.
I also suggest cutting the price down for both the CD Key and the monthly fee's (30-50% cut). Lineage would gain more players so really the cut in prices will balance out.
Soul Hounds need a nerf. You guys pretty much gave them everything... Decent matk/patk, celestial shield, warp, ud for males, rush skill to get up to enemies, great rspd, steal divinity, Lightning Shock. Now I'm normally not one to complain about class balance; for the most part there is always something you can do to prevent some classes to beating you or w/e. (btw never seen an archer use his high lvl skills ever, kind of odd)
I suggest nerfing Lightning Shock, less land rate/duration, and having steal divinity have a chance to fail, or maybe take 1-9 buffs on a chance.
Territory Wars seemed like a good idea but a few things ruined it. Everyone goes to arena's and the pvp is no fun. The fights should be on the siege fields... I like the idea to get more fame for taking down gates/walls and what not, might be a fun objective for smaller clans. Another thing is players should not get fame for sitting on a siege field dead. Everyone wants to farm fame, and nobody has fun sitting there dead for two hours.
BSOE's/QHP/Warrior Potions need to be deleted or increased in price a ton. What I recommend doing is liquidating everyone's current bsoe's/qhp/warrior pots accordingly with adena. BSOE's should cost atleast 1 million adena per (clan hall/fort BSOE's). I would make QHP's much more rare to obtain and thus increasing there price. Most importantly DELETE warrior potions from the olympiad manager. I usually stock up on warrior potions each month just because I have to... Most of the competitive PvP's consist of who has more QHP/Warrior Potions on them. Warrior Potions are stupid cheap, and if you do not want to die... you will not with these (unless u get para'd/stunned or something to prevent you from spamming)
The thing that really makes me want to quit is the programs people use in PvP. I have been in ventrilo with a few major clans; they openly say they are using *****, Ranger, and some other lineage 2 PvP programs. These programs have the power to "evade shadow step/backstabs", "hide/backstab combos" with its features to "step back". They can auto target and auto spam cp pots, oly pots, qhp's, ghp pots. It is like playing a shooter game with people using "head shot programs" to find heads of players and automatically 1 shotting them the second they are in sight. I am not sure how lineage can detect these users. There must be a way to trick the program into sending a different packet normal clients do not make and catching them or maybe some game guard detection of these programs running.
Lineage 2 is a very good game... NCSoft needs to really step up and get these problems fixed and implement all these changes at one time! I don't know NCSoft's budget, and there attention to Lineage 2, but they should really look at their advertising department. It is terrible; like I said Lineage 2 is really a good game, just needs better advertising and a few (should be) simple fixes. If Lineage 2 has money for a major commercial on TV, youtube or even pandora.com it would create so many new customers and even old customers plus would make current L2 players much more active to see the game growing, not a steady death as we are seeing right now.
+1 it's a decent idea except for the 1 month of being flagged. It would be better to have the account suspended for 3 days and deleveled 1-10 levels (make it random deleveling to add in a bit of fun/suspense like the sin eater removes PKs - but the deleveling shouldn't make the toon loose the grade expertiste) for the first infraction.