The problem of Online Games

Hello folks,
I hope everyone is living your dream today, for we live today, not yesterday and certainly not Tomorrow~

We Live Today!

The Problem of most online games such as 'World of Warcraft' or
'Lineage2' is the dilemma of game update and gear upgrade.

After a year or two of playing the same game, same contents
over and over with nothing left to do...players start to get bored
and start looking for ways to find something to do in the game...
They go make alt characters and start going through the same contents
they've already experienced as main..
but this gets boring too after a while...

So, a new game is introduced when the major update comes
and new gears are released, but instead of gaining more people,
most games lose 30-50% of the players...
Why is that?

The reason is simple.
It takes a lot of time and energy(and in case of L2, tones of $$$
if you choose to get them from N-store) to have the end-game-gears;
months..or sometimes years of hard work...but when new update
and new gears come out, all of these become garbage.

Just imagine, you spend 30-40 billion adena for high enchant bloody
or dark weapon and 1 month later, new gears come out and they
become garbage...

I mean...when you work hard and put in your best honest effort to
achieve something, you deserve to be rewarded, not punished.

The game is getting old and people are getting bored looking for
something new...but you can't really release the next upgrade of the game...

This is the dilemma...

So what's the solution?
It's both simple and complicated.
The idea is simple but its implementation is complicated.

Idea = Allow Users to trade in their existing gears for the New gears

Implementation =

Game companies need to find out the exact value of each and every
high enchants in the game and know the value of...for instance
in the case of Lineage2, what +12 bloody bow is worth, what
+7 bloody bow is worth, +7 R99, +4 R99, +12 R95, +7 R95..etc.
and find a way to allow players to trade in those items
for the new updated items(let's say R105) without losing much value.

There should be at least 2 x levels of new and updated gear release.
1st level, the lower one is introduced and +12R99 + Adena =
+12 R105(Low).

and 6 months later 2nd and high level R105 is released but only
in new leveling areas Do-able Only for people who's got
R105(Low) already.
So, people who has already spent their time and energy are
rewarded to move forward months ahead of others,
and +7 R105 Lower should be about the same as +4 R105 higher and
+12 R105(Low) = +7 R105(High).

Believe or not, people who have the ability to get +12 Bloody or Dark R99
will still spend $$$ to get +12 R105(high)

It's complicated, but hey! you gotta work to make money!

Wow was so much grinding for gears...
Get to Max level ---> start grinding the Regular instance to farm
regular gears ----> Start grinding the Heroic instance to farm
Heroic gears ----> start grinding LFR(Looking for Raid) to farm for LFR
gears ---> start grinding Normal mode Raid instances ---->
Start Grinding HEROIC RAID INSTANCES!!! LOL

and What happed when I got all the End-Game-Gears?
Blizzard released the new update and all my gears became worthless...
New released gear I could get from a simple leveling quest(like killing
10 x rabbits) was better than my epic gear which I spent months
to get! LOL!
SO I quit WOW.

Well at least, I didn't have to spend money to play wow except for
$30 subscription a month, so I guess I cannot really QQ.
I suppose I had my glory once upon a time~

But what will happen in L2 if this happens I wonder...

WOW is losing 30% of its players every 6 months whenever they do updates...but they seem to have the ability to lure new young players into
the game to replace the vacuum.

You're delusional, no serious mmo has done that and they certainly have no interest in such system.

The money spent on L2 are total damage and lost.

you got my brain hurt
if you want to sell your property for the same amount money you invested, don't buy that property from non matherial buisness model
because when you build a house you use bricks, and even after earthquake they got value
pixels don't, exept on the black market

I think in my train of thoughts, I skipped a couple of steps and failed to
show you people something...very important.

It's the Value of Time.

What's most important in Life is Time. It's what life is made of...

There is a saying, "Time is Money"

In real world, sadly we are all in the business of selling our time.
Some sell our time cheap...and some sell it expensive.
But...as we grow old and have some money...we suddenly realize...
WE CANNOT buy TIME with Money...
Even if we have billions to spend, we cannot buy one extra day
of our life.

However, in the game of Lineage2...what is so amazing is...
I feel like I can actually buy TIME with Money.
Like...Save months of farming time for gears...
and get everything that I want in 1 day.

Grinding for levels for 1 month with no vitality can be shortened to
3-4 days...even less if I have good friends in clans who are nice enough
to Power Level me...I usually gift them Destiny pack as a present.

I don't know why this can be so bad....

I don't bot or do RMT.
Just N-store...which is totally allowed and greatly promoted by NC.

I don't see shopping at N-store as just spending money.
I see it saving myself Time;

For me TIME = MONEY as well.

But I do agree with some people that N-store prices can be taunting for a lot of people.

Most people who hate N-store hate it without ever using it for the first time...

It's always the first step that's very hard to make...once the first step
is made...there is no stopping.

If I had power to control N-store, I would probably give all accounts
in the server FREE 4,000 N-coins (but make all N-store items non-giftable
to avoid abusing by botters) and lower the prices of all vitality items
by 10 times! - or make them a little different than regular N-coins so people can't
use FreeNcoins to buy store promotion items...but most all other permanent stuff

LOL I am pretty sure by the time people spend 4,000 Free N-coins
most of them will appreciate it.
and yeah, i feel like N-store needs some careful planning and price adjusting too...
I have DD + ISS that I always level together and was planning on
purchasing 2,000N-coins packs(5 x maintenance + 5 x eruption +2scroll vitality) pack in bulk but when I think about it...
2 toons x 2,000Ncoins = 4,000 Ncoins give 5hrs of power leveling.
That's $50 USD for 5 hrs.
If I do that for 10hr a day it's $100 USD
10 days = $1,000 USD.

Well..I am pretty sure spending $1,000 USD in 10 days is NOT good for
anybody...LOL

You don't evaluate pricing --

For Theoretical Purposes:
If something was implemented it would be a more simplistic calculation.

+10R95 Bow --------- + 750M Adena = +5 R99 Bow




When people buy clothing it somehow goes out of style and people want new ones even when it's perfectly functional. It's almost like people are inclined to change and that could be part of the problem ;)



To it's credit, the fact that L2 survived so many years is actually an accomplishment. During those years 100's of major titles where simply shut down.