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FTP Yet?
Tried this game off and on for a few years, admittedly much more off than on. Despite the vast amount of bots, the spotty live community (at least at 50-), repetitive combat, and lack of true class diversity, it is still a far cry from the noobie eater it started out to be. That in itself makes the game appealing to at least start up long enough to look past such (perceived) flaws. Still could do with some polishing I dare to say. Found more than a few great deal of broken quests, translation errors, graphic hiccups, and sparse community.
The overall experience of the game is fine enough, but it is just so; fine. Seems to me this (and perhaps other NC Soft titles) could use an FTP model like many other aging titles for added numbers and micro transaction revenue.
Clever things.
Comments
No, but there are plenty of free servers out there that have a decent population and no bots.
Currently Playing: DAOC Uthgard
Previously Played: UO, DAOC, Shadowbane, AC2, SWG, Horizons, COX, WOW, EQ2, LOTRO, AOC, WAR, Vanguard, Rift, SWTOR, ESO, GW2.
Lineage 2 is doing fine just the way it is. There is no reason at all to make the game free to play. Bottom line is the game is what it is. Either accept it and play or move on to something else.
Think you missed the point. The game itself is an Asian style grind which obviously has a decent level of success. Personally I enjoyed my time for the most part. I'm simply talking about an update to the age old subscription format. Relax and remember it is simply an objective discussion mate. Otherwise you could come off sounding a bit like what is colloquially known as a "fanboi".
Clever things.
No I did not miss the point at all. Why should Lineage 2 go FTP? What makes Lineage 2 the only mmo out there that should go FTP if all you are talking about is an update to the age old subsciption format which nearly all MMOs use?. Why not make EQ 2 FTP? Why not make Darkfall FTP? Why not make Final Fanasy XI FTP?
Lineage 2 is one of the most successfull MMOs ever released and if you look at World Wide numbers you will see that its still doing very well. 6 years old and getting ready to get its next expansion next month. The game is a grind and thats the way we like it. Everything will never be for everybody. I am a Fanboi and openly admit it but I just dont know any other way to say it. The game is what it is. Take it or leave it.
There are actually a lot of MMOs that would benefit from a pay model update. But seeing as this is the Lineage 2 forum, we're limited to talking about Lineage 2. And you either have a low attention span, or you are simply in this thread on some self declare crusade to purge any scrutiny of your beloved title. Otherwise you would see that the aspect of a grind heavy game has no bearing on my suggestion for a pay model change. Rather fond of a heavy grind session after a fashion. Please stop acting as if I'm picking on Lineage 2.
As for the success of this MMO, their quarterly report shows more growth in Lineage 1 than 2. Take it for what you will, but it still stands that they can greatly increase the community's health, and possibly fetch back some of those estimated quarter million accounts on private servers. Now there are any number of possibilities to increase this, FTP being only one. I'm certainly open to suggestions as that is the spirit of this thread.
Clever things.
This thread as a total waste of time. Good luck on you FTP crusade. We will keep playing our game and loving it just the way it is.
You're either a selective reader or a poor one, both of which makes your contribution to the thread worthless. We're here for conjecture and mucking about, nothing more or less. Thank you for taking your finite views elsewhere.
Clever things.
Lineage 1 and 2 still account for the vast majority of NCSofts revenue world wide. It's pretty doubtful they will make anything free to play. As a company they tend to design upfront either P2P and F2P.
They tried F2P in the western market (Dungeon Runners and Xteel) and it was a blood bath failure.
Conversion is a big job as the entire game needs to be revamped. Since a lot of what normally exist in an item shop in a F2P is now in the game, they would need to remove that. You know how MMO players react when a company starts taking stuff out and then charging for it. It's gaming suicide.
Looking at your post...I have to ask...and I mean no insult...but...did you ever make it out of the starter areas? Your "lack of class diversity" comment really is what made me scratch my head...and Spares community? Have you been to a siege? The vast majority of players in L2 are over the level 60 mark and most are subclassed. The good thing is they lightened up the grind to the point that you can hit 60 in about a month of sane play. It is a pretty dull trip though.
Dunno, maybe the game emptied out over the last 2 years.../shrug.
yep might not be big here but like a lot of other title in asia its huge,aion the same!it is surprising to see l2 still doing this good!
i tried to play it but i had lot of issue (graphic)its often the main issue getting an american designed game to work nice in asia or and asian game to work in english speaking country is a nightmare at best of time .there is always small detail forgotten but they have huge impact in the various area of the game.often i just want to say for crying out loud call linux or call microsoft but gees please dont try to fix it your self lol!they ll take 3 to 4 month to crrect an issue that a ms tech will fix in a day!
Someone said lineage 2 is getting another expansion next month, but i can not find any information on it.. ?? did not see it on the main web site either.
Well, I played the game for over 4 years and I have to say that it is one of the most polished asian games out there. Oh sure, when it launched there were some odd issues like "the effect of none has left" where "none" was the name of the debuff but for some reason it didn't register.
but I can't really recall a lot of translatoin errors.
Most of the players are 75 plus with subclasses, some higher with the third class transfer. It's an older population to say the least.
I don't think it requires the polishing you say it does. Oh sure, NC is sloppy and have left issues (such as the tear in the silenos area) go unfixed for a while but all in all the game is pretty polished.
As others have said, lineage and lineage 2 are nc's main titles. They designed these games to be p2p in the west and there are many players who would bristle at having their subscription based game given an item shop. You might notice that item shops don't seem to go well on this forum and certainly not on the L2 forum.
My opinion is that the game needs better development in that the devs just throw whatever they think is neat into the game without really thinking about the game as a whole.
And this is because that's how they work it at NC. At least for this game. There are groups/people working on projects, they suggest them, the head deve thinks "neat" and it's then worked on to be included in the game.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
No insult at all. The vitality system as well as the base quests make gaining 20 and leaving the newbie areas an investment of 30 min or so. I personally only made it to 50, encountering nothing but bots (you can tell by the targeting cycles, running into walls, etc) in the hunting fields with the exception of having my pet hatching ganked. I'll certainly admit that I was never in a castle siege and will certainly be on the look out for that in the future if I ever rescrib.
Perhaps I should state a bit more clearly my meaning by class diversity. I do not count the number of classes so much as the unique play style they offer. It is rather cut and dry, at least for my taste.
That being said, I feel I must restate that I do like this game. I just don't think they can justify a 14.99$ subscription in this competitive market. Of course they ARE still doing well from their annual reports, so perhaps the old adage "stfu and l2p" applies. I'm simply curious if there are other people who felt the same, and what they would do to improve on it.
Clever things.
No this game is rather well refined as far as all that goes. There are still some respawning issues (mobs spawning on buildings, out of reach topographical features), falling through the world and so forth, and a class transfer quest that was rather dodgey (my greatest frustration actually, there was some nerd rage I must admit). However your point of development may perhaps be the answer, at least to myself, as to what it would take to justify the monthly 14.99$. As it stands however, I personally could not justify the fee for a single player experience (joined two clans, both of which were heavily populated by afk merchants and people who never signed on).
Clever things.
Expansion? I've heard about Lineage 3, but apart from content updates, I do not think anything of that nature is in the pipeline.
Clever things.
yeah but I've seen those mobs respawning on buildings such as, ugh - can't remember the name, that area south of giran with the two headed ettin looking things, or other places here and there and for a world so huge, that is pretty minor. should be fixed I'll give you that but you can still find all the mobs you want around the area.
I haven't fallen through the world since C2. I suppose it could happen but that's several years after that I never experienced it.
Again, the developers are just sloppy. There was no reason at all that they should have left that tear in the world in the silenos. I came across it, expressed my shock in clan chat only to get "oh, that's been like that for months".
months!
Blizzard would not have stood for that.
the lineage 2 team is just sloppy.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Afraid the content you're talking about is beyond my scope. Perhaps I've become too demanding, but I would like to see a bit more in the way of group finding methods and the like. But again, I only got to 50. Could very well have missed such devices.
Clever things.
Innocent enough of a question.
In todays day and age you are probably getting a lot of flak because of the trend to go F2P that a lot of old MMOers like myself frankly don't like but hey, who doesn't like stuff for free? I have Runes of Magic installed on my PC.
Bots have always been an issue in L2, IMHO that has to do with the engine/coding...see L2 is made with the Unreal2 engine, a highly mod-able and easy to use engine.
I don't really agree on the class diversity thing but one thing I never liked is lack of class variation within each class. Everyone was basically the same but that is a PvP balance thing. The more divergence, the more difficult it becomes to keep everything in line. If you want a lot of PvP based classes, some with some interesting twist, take a look at DAoC.
At this point I imagine the community mainly consist of the hard core / high level die hard fans and not a whole lot of new blood.
Sovrath, why are you here? I was looking for in VG like an hour ago...
I needed more coffee...it was like 6am my time (meaning I just woke up smart guys, I need my beauty sleep)
A level 50 player is a low level player that has not seen anything this game has to offer. Now the game does not even begin till you get S grade. As for the the upcomming expansion its named Freya which is already out in Korea. It goes live in Japan on May 25th and Taiwan on May 26 so the western community is estimating sometime in June for us.
Here is some of the info we have right now.
http://l2.eogamer.com/wiki/Freya_Sneak_Peek
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SimonLim/20100208/4361/Lineage_2_Freya_Update_Is_Just_a_Beginning_9312.php
Yes, perhaps appealing to the hardcore is what this game is trying to do. As I read in threads past, there was some animosity over the addition of vitality and newbie buffs. While I must admit being largely ignorant of L2 history apart from a 3 month stint in 06, I tend believe that there is a game for everyone, be you hardcore or casual. This game does seem to have a sense of leaning more into the hardcore. Fine enough, I just didn't ever feel there was much of a community to rally behind or talk to. I spent a large amount of my time on Lineage 2 Wiki trying to figure out the acronyms, jargon, and classes, finding a pretty fair amount of obsolete data.
Myself, as stated so many times already, I felt alone in a massive world grinding to hopefully after a few months be able to play with the rest of the community. Just didn't seem like it was a worthwhile investment.
Clever things.
Ha, and it returns to piss and moan with its pushy views. That is a rather elitist view to have really. A game that takes 2-3 months to begin while expecting the player to go it largely alone is alienating new players and somewhat kill the whole MMO part. Isn't the fun of a game in the journey, not just a mad rush to reach max level?
Now perhaps with a more attractive pay model >_>
I kid mostly.
Clever things.
Well you need to remember L2 is an old school game, made when Grind was king.
Richard Garrott had a large influence on L1 (executive designer) and L2 (executive producer) core design and he worked very closely with Raph Koster, the king of grind, when they made UO together which was a game mechanic of pure timesink grind. As we all know Raph went on to make SWG and if you remember, pre-NGE, it was basically SW UO...100% pure grinding hell. So you can easily see the "Koster effect" influence on the design mechanics if you know to look for it (although he was never involved with NCSoft at any point).
Today, the old school thinking about "levels" and progress are changing (unfortunately not fast enough) and todays players really are a lot less tolerant of the old stereotype of standing in a corner killing the same mobs over and over for months before you get to the "good stuff". Which was the norm pre-WoW. BTW, contrary to popular opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the expectation of a game being fun and entertaining beginning, middle and end. Thats why we play games.
Rich sorta got it when they tried Tabula Rasa and he was looking at more action, fast tempo gameplay...I think Rich was a little more mentally agile and flexable then Raph and saw the change in MMO design coming. Luckily Raph never got another chance as his core belief is you need to earn your dues through some sort of punishing grind.
The saving grace of that was originally that it was suppose to build the community / bond friends...but what no one took into account was "what happens as the game ages?" even when you played in 2006, L2 was already 2 years old in the US...by 2007 it had peaked and was in decline.
L2 would have been better off with a skill based system rather then level based.
(edit - so when people bash on the Korean grinder stereotype, remember that we have Rich and Raph to thank for that...all most Asian companies did was copy what worked for their market at the time...something that happened in our market with WoW...and what was working was L2, a game who executive producer was none other then Rich "lord brit" Garroitt)
You need to wake up and stop taking everything a person says as an insult. I am a S Grade Wind Rider on Phoenix server and I my self am nonthing till I get to S80. Its not an elitist view, its what people that play this game have grown to accept. We talk about stuff like this on a daily. You still fail to understand that some people like the game they way it is. The market is overflowing with these quest based get max level in a week games out there if thats what you want. Now you can get to level 61 in a week or 2. Then you can start doing things like Sieges. I am not just talking because I play the game and see people do it all the time. I have a Kameal Soul Breaker thats about to hit S Grade and I have only been playing him for a couple of months as an alt toon to my Wind Rider.
I'm everywhere but nowhere?
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Lineage 2 would work great in a F2P model, it would have many new players for sure and the fact that private servers who basically use a F2P model have been extremely popular. It's still a success as a Subscription model but LOTRO is a success and it's going the Cash shop model as well.
I used to be completely against F2P until I played a bit of Runes of Magic. I became addicted to that game like no other. I didn't have to pay anything and was able to find my way to the top, among the top players in the game in the top instances fighting for the best loot. Once you are fighting for the best loot, there is no reason to pay for the game.
I'm unfortunately sad for Tabula Rasa and looking back it was very similar in vision as the new KOTOR MMO being released. The difference is a larger budget and an IP. Richard Garriot had his ideas right but the game itself was very unorganized.
I've said it once and I'm repeating. The reason private servers of L2 are so popular it's because you don't have to grind. Xp there is multiplied. Peoples that play there like the pvp style, sieges and all that but hate the gigantic amount of grind of the official game. That's why they play there and unless Ncsoft doesn't change the grind than those peoples will never play in it's official servers.