Hello there NCSoft and Congratulations on actively killing the game.
Since the GoD update you didn't take a single right decision towards the game evolution, not to mention rising the population on the servers.
You basically killed the pre-GoD game (which was nearly to it's peak) so you lost a lot of active players because of it. You lost more players when you cut the droprates after. Now you are losing many more, because people can't make any adena. At all.
Some of my friends (2 whole active clans) already left Naia and the official server, because they could barely make some minor development with their chars.
Some other of my friends asked me to join fresh-new here, but after we discussed it, they understood that there is no point of doing it. The game in it's condition right now is completely anti-new-players. Not a single fresh player can develop their character right now. The instances after lvl 100 are insanely hard for ppl with common gear (they need someone with pve or OE gear to carry them through the instance). Also the fresh players can't provide any adena to supply themselves with any of these items.
The fishing was the poor's way to make adena. 1 Fancy rod could barely make 1-1.2b a month. Yet considering it's cost, it turns to be a long way invest.
So you want people to pay their EUR/$ for your product ? Ok, I understand. Any product or service is designed to make profit. But first of all, ask yourselves what do you offer with this product. Because from now on you will offer a product with less people (me and my friends leave this game for good).
I know you don't care since we don't pay real money. I know the ppl who pay real money don't care too, because we are not competition to them. But... you will continue to merge more and more servers in the near feature until none exist.
Hello there NCSoft and Congratulations on actively killing the game.
Since the GoD update you didn't take a single right decision towards the game evolution, not to mention rising the population on the servers.
You basically killed the pre-GoD game (which was nearly to it's peak) so you lost a lot of active players because of it. You lost more players when you cut the droprates after. Now you are losing many more, because people can't make any adena. At all.
Some of my friends (2 whole active clans) already left Naia and the official server, because they could barely make some minor development with their chars.
Some other of my friends asked me to join fresh-new here, but after we discussed it, they understood that there is no point of doing it. The game in it's condition right now is completely anti-new-players. Not a single fresh player can develop their character right now. The instances after lvl 100 are insanely hard for ppl with common gear (they need someone with pve or OE gear to carry them through the instance). Also the fresh players can't provide any adena to supply themselves with any of these items.
The fishing was the poor's way to make adena. 1 Fancy rod could barely make 1-1.2b a month. Yet considering it's cost, it turns to be a long way invest.
So you want people to pay their EUR/$ for your product ? Ok, I understand. Any product or service is designed to make profit. But first of all, ask yourselves what do you offer with this product. Because from now on you will offer a product with less people (me and my friends leave this game for good).
I know you don't care since we don't pay real money. I know the ppl who pay real money don't care too, because we are not competition to them. But... you will continue to merge more and more servers in the near feature until none exist.
This is exactly right.
The fishing nerf needs to be rolled back. There is now zero way for anyone to progress on their characters without a healthy amount of NCCoins. You used to be able to farm mobs, farm non-NCCoin events, or just play and you would gradually progress both in adena and in exp/quests. GoD made great steps to ruin this when it came out, and NC has consistently made it worse over the last few years.
Now you have to sacrifice more and more adena in order to progress in exp or quests, and there is not a single legitimate way to make money -- aside from playing the market, which due to the risk of NCCoins ruining your investment, takes a considerable amount of capital to start with - and is still inherently extremely risky.
If you're going to have the terrible business model of NCCoins, they should be a way to get ahead, not the only way to progress. The barrier to entry is too high for new people and there needs to be an immense change in the product. These new people are needed for the people that actually buy NCCoins to enjoy their play, to have people to play with and around. New people are the sustainability of any game, not the old players. Blizzard understands this, Valve understands this. NC does not. This is within the power of NCWest, not dependent on Korea.
What to do?
Roll back the update that killed fishing today. Not only was the adena reduced, but it was reduced to such a point that you will actually lose money while fishing.
Stop doing Pay to win-only events. Other players matter too - they actually matter equally, because without other players, NCCoin buyers will stop playing also.
Consider what Blizzard did with Diablo III when it removed the Auction House - their primary motivation was that the ability to buy any epic item with real money (the current L2 system) made the game lose its essential replay value. Lineage II NCCoins do exactly this. They need to go. The only way this game is sustainable is through a combination of a subscription fee (such as the prestige pack) and through microtransactions for purely aesthetic items.
Unfortunately, you're correct and this had been going for years. Then came the biggest mistake that NC made, which made it very apparent that there is no future for L2, just money grab - that was when they didn't perma ban the botters, but have em few days off and warned them. This is called double standards and the world has been fighting to prevent such things for ages, yet it exists in 21st century.
2nd and final blow the total turn of the game to p2w, the moment they've introduced items that are impossible to obtain ingame was a clear indication that it's over.
Well it's over for you, soon for many more. I personally don't fish, but I do interact with other players most of the time and from what I see, there are many quitting, just like you, for the same reasons.
After today's nerf, L2 is turning into a graveyard and fast.
Between these over power cloaks, gambling events, and now nerfing the only legit way new or less willing to spend real money players have to gear them selves, the end is near. I bet there will be a red libra where ya can get a 30 day dragon weapon and a +12 dark set so everyone can have equal gear and then a month later the announcement will come out, server ends in 90 days.