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Lineage 2: Interview with Davidson and Han
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
Recently, Community Manager Laura Genender had the chance to ask a number of questions to Jae-Hyuk Han, the Lead Game Designer for Lineage 2 and Adan Davidson, the Producer of Lineage 2 in North America and Europe.
MMORPG.com:
How do you feel about Hero capabilities? Do you think they are overpowered, underpowered, or just right?Jae-Hyuk Han:
I think it is just right. Skills and weapons for Heroes are privileges that "common" people cannot have. Hero weapons will remain as one of the best features in the game in the future.
Click here to read the whole interview here.
You can also view our exclusive screenshots here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
And that Dark Elf has some sick armor
When someone comes onto a Battlefield 2142 server and uses hacks, yeah it sucks, but the game will be reset in 30 minutes anyway. In L2, the cheaters just keep acumulating power, as they have done for 3 years now. When NC Austin bans a character that does nothing. People work together in L2 to cheat it. If one gets baned, the group of cheaters has accumulated many resources to come back from it. Simply bot up a new toon, and gear it using the ill gotten gains. Bottom line: L2 punishes anyone that plays legit, and hands extreme rewards to anyone who cheats.
IMO L2 is the best game ever made (I have been gaming for 20 years, and yeah i actually believe this!). But NC Austin has proven entirely ineffective in dealing with the cheating issues over a 3 year period. And now, nearly everyone but the cheaters have quit the game on the American servers. Massive, colossal, failure.
Pro's:
- Only real open PvP MMO.
- Extremely well designed, it has no peer. (unchecked cheating has undermined the design)
- True persistent world, (mostly) non-instanced.
- Best graphics in any MMO, past/present/foreseeable future.
- A real challenge, this game is hard, you will need years to master it.
- Free updates twice a year. Great updates to balance and new areas are consistently well done.
Con's:
- Cheating is the smartest way to advance.
- "Anti-cheating" tactics by NCAustin have been subverted by GM's being paid off by players.
- Economy requires you to ebay eventually, unless you bot.
- Worst community, everyone is an asshole, including me.
- Fairly high system requirements, getting worse every time they update the game.
- The game is too hard, nearly everyone that starts... quits within 3 weeks.
- Desolate newbie areas. A new player finds a 15 to 1 bot to human ratio.
Conclusion:
The best MMO available. Wow, thats -_-ing sad.
They're not the most efficient team in the business, but they're not as corrupt as some people would claim. GMSilver is a total badass.
~Greatness~
Currently Playing:
Nothing
Good interview though
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Tried: WoW, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Everquest, WWII Online, Planetside
Beta: Lotro, Tabula Rasa, WAR.
I have to disagree with some of these points. I've been playing since OB, gotten two characters to 70+, plus multiple other alts between 40 and 65. And in all this time, I've never once botted or purchased in-game assets with real life money. It is more than possible to play this game without botting or ebaying. I will also mention that I've been in some of the biggest pvp clans/allies on the server too, before anyone says you have to ebay in order to really be competitive. And I am not a hardcore, 5+ hours a day player either, so it's not just that I've poured my life into the game, because I haven't.
I would also disagree about the community being full of assholes. I am actually quite sweet.
But seriously, the community is the #1 reason that people stick with this game. Long after you're sick of the grind, you keep playing because of the friends you've made. In fact, I recently had about 4 friends who quit the game over a year ago to play WoW, return to L2. What was their reason for coming back? The people.
I have to disagree with some of these points. I've been playing since OB, gotten two characters to 70+, plus multiple other alts between 40 and 65. And in all this time, I've never once botted or purchased in-game assets with real life money. It is more than possible to play this game without botting or ebaying. I will also mention that I've been in some of the biggest pvp clans/allies on the server too, before anyone says you have to ebay in order to really be competitive. And I am not a hardcore, 5+ hours a day player either, so it's not just that I've poured my life into the game, because I haven't.
I would also disagree about the community being full of assholes. I am actually quite sweet.
But seriously, the community is the #1 reason that people stick with this game. Long after you're sick of the grind, you keep playing because of the friends you've made. In fact, I recently had about 4 friends who quit the game over a year ago to play WoW, return to L2. What was their reason for coming back? The people.
I agree with you Listof,
Does L2 have problems? Sure it does. Worse community? Not by a long shot. WoW and GW hold that rank. I played for a long time and honestly it was one of the best MMO community experiences I ever had. Do people buy currency and bot? Yup. I don't think anyone will argue that point. But do people in WoW buy currecy? Yuppers. You can buy currency on any one of those 200+ servers on either side, how do you think its getting there, magic?
I played L2 for about a year. Yeah its tough, yes, the economy is hard, yes the grind is hard...but its not about reaching endgame and doing raids or battlegrounds, yes higher level but you don't need to be level cap to do anything.
L2 is a very misunderstood game in the western market. One thing you can see is its continued growth over the last few years. When I started playing they had something like 65k subs last year, now they are up around 105-110k. That says alot right there.
Anyway, like any other MMO, its a matter of taste. L2 will continue to improve and grow. You guys who hate it will still hate it here for whatever stereotyped reason.
I've always wanted to try this game, but I don't like open pvp. Now if they had pve or pve + limited pvp, I would give it a try.
And cheaters? Yeah, any time you have a virtual environment that is competitive there will be cheaters. I haven't played a single competitive online game where there wasn't cheaters. The wierd thing is, when you talk to a cheater, some of them will say, yeah i cheat, and others will type up a page explaining and rationalizing in depth how cheating is not cheating at all.
The answer for the war against botters / 3rd party users.
They only ban people who don't pay them for the program / non farmers, as you see farmers run around constantly and when they announce the mass ban of people , its never farmers, its allways real players with walker , never a farmer, funny enough, and hwo can you tell that you might ask me.
Check the Adena prices when they announce that they have banned 100.000 users like he says now, like shit they have , adena prices still as cheap as ½ year ago, maybe 5 dollars more expensive for 100m adena.
Christ , Davidson , go hang your self.
List of SOE lies
They're not the most efficient team in the business, but they're not as corrupt as some people would claim. GMSilver is a total badass.
I was glad to see the topic of bots copme up,but i can tell you as a 2x player of this game,he is a lier.Although WOW has the lagest quantity of cheats and RMT sales ,this game has the most obvious cheating i have ever seen.The bots and cheating going on is so out in the open for even a noob to notice,there is no way in hell this guy is is telling the truth.I have seen several articles on real life threats and beatings based on this game over in asian communities.The bots literally run in and out of the cities,back n forth to the farming spots.Players are using cheats to run multiple clients,so they can have healers to aid there hacked out PVP.This game should have been buried a long time ago,but i think koreans take this game very seriously over there and alot of them are making there life/living offf rmt sales of this game.
Although there was nothing wrong with this interview,id like to see ALOT more intensity brought into the interviews and force out the topic of CHEATING onto a much higher level.Although this game is basically a korean community ,it's games like these that bring out the many cheat programs that soon become a part of north americanized games.If this guy that was interviwed truly has a heart for his product and game ,he would be much animated about the cheating in this game,as is he just came across as a sheer out lier.
I might also add,that i was pleasantly surprised to see others posting under this topic about cheating,because frankly i didnt think many cared about the cheating in this game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Now the best thing about this article is they introducted new light onto new information about the future, including a new race.
Some people posting here said they wanted to try L2 but didn't like the concept of open PvP. I can say from my experience, if you don't want PvP, it's very easy to avoid. You can join clans whom are not focused primarily on PvP and aren't at war with half the server. You can level up in the Dimensional Rift where you have no fear of anyone killing you. There are also enough high level dungeons and zones that it is rare you'll need to fight someone over an exp spot. If you like the game and are not into PvP it's still something you should try out because the PvP system in Lineage 2 is very well done, especially after recent changes.
They're not the most efficient team in the business, but they're not as corrupt as some people would claim. GMSilver is a total badass.
Well about your friends.
I had the same problem since i had 1 account banned, but i had a few friends who could speak the farmer language, they made a nice tighty email to NCsoft about it was a whole misunderstanding and bla bla , wupti within a week of getting in touch with the right CSR handling the case, unbanned.
Even tho my SWS was caught using L2Walker.
List of SOE lies
Compared to WoW gold farming, "hackers", botters are just as many, but just not as obvious. Like someone else stated it, if you play in a virtual enviroment you will have cheaters. Sly cheaters usually don't get caught. Get over it and realize it. If you can't stand the thought of your competition cheating, don't play multiplayer games, even ones in real life.
Now after saying that, yep L2 does have serious problems. But, when I play other MMO's I feel the game design on those aren't as good, even if they claim to be better. L2's largest downfall in my opinion is the required amount of time needed to level and get gear, this time should seriously be cut practically in half, so people can get to the "goodies" of the game. Maybe play a few characters and still be competitive and to close the gap between the cheaters and the "non-cheaters".
Can't beat the art of L2. Can't be the epic size of sieges and boss raids. The seamless world. And of course what made me choose L2 in the first place, free expansion packs!
Best game, and was the most popular in the world before WoW. I don't play wow because I don't like the graphics, the large amounts of instances, the community (although there is sometimes a gem in the rubble), plus I don't want to be with the "masses" and join the new "online sensation" known as The World of Warcraft.
I'm not sure if they're still there, but in Bartz we had a huge alliance of adena farmers mostly comprised of nukers that would systematically take down pretty much every raid boss whenever it spawned. Doing so allowed them to take the drops, sell them off at a retarded price only to sell the earnings over ebay, ige, etc. to the players (in some cases I would bet to the very person who bought the item from them in the first place) and it would just go around in a circle. They were pretty much the enemy of everyone and it wouldn't do much of anything to try and hinder their routine. Even if you win the battle, it doesn't amount to much in the war, because they just keep doing what they were doing. Yes, this hurt the economy bad, but it wasn't just them. The people who bought the adena from them are just as responsible as they are for supplying it IMO. Some would probably argue that it's the only way to keep pace with everyone else, but if there weren't such a huge demand for it, don't you think the economy wold be a bit more stable? Ya, I don't think there is gonna be any way to tell now, and botting, buying game currency online, etc will probably never go away, I'm just pissed to see such a great game reduced to this because most of my friends are gone now which is the ultimate reason why I don't play anymore. When your friends leave, there isn't much reason to stay either, at least for me.
They're not the most efficient team in the business, but they're not as corrupt as some people would claim. GMSilver is a total badass.
Well about your friends.
I had the same problem since i had 1 account banned, but i had a few friends who could speak the farmer language, they made a nice tighty email to NCsoft about it was a whole misunderstanding and bla bla , wupti within a week of getting in touch with the right CSR handling the case, unbanned.
Even tho my SWS was caught using L2Walker. Mm, I was (half) joking about the bribes. It depends on the circumstance of your ban, whether they've had problems with you in the past, and other factors, I'd imagine. I know several people who were banned and unbanned in Chronicle 3. More recently, I knew someone who drove all the way to the Austin, TX NCSoft HQ to ask to have his account unbanned (a tactic that worked for several people in C3), and he was turned down.
I think they got a lot more serious about preserving the community in C5, and even if the farmer bots who make their living by cheating are unbeatable, I think they have made GREAT strides in stopping players from botting to gain their levels, and the community is doing a lot better because of it.
They have a long way to go, but as someone who played from Open Beta they have made huge improvements in the community and the cheating situation in the past few months.
I played Lineage 2 from OB all the way till the beggining of Chron 3, coming back every Chron to see how it was.. and made some "just to mess around" characters in private servers. I am not coming back t Lineage 2 and I think this is just another stupid update to a game that needs to face that it failed (WoW even wtfpwned it in Korea) and the developers need to go back and start from scratch.
MMOs are games you have to invest time on, no question about, but to invest your soul and real life? After Lineage 2 I went over to WoW and I am not leaving it anytime soon. The developers have to realise that grindfest games are not going to survive, people will get tired. World of warcraft is heading the right direction with this expansion, lowering their insatnces from 40 mans to 25 mans and their 20 mans to 10 mans, making their 5 man dungeons half their pre TBC size and reputation earning ALOT easier. This appeals to both, hardcore gamers that want to farm the game, and casual players that can be included in the entire game. A casual player can be in a casual guild that wont progress as fast as a noarmal raid farming guild, but they will progress, really fast this time, now that they dont need 20 to go do the easy raid and then 40 to go do the hard raid. My brother was in a guild that could barally complete the 20 players needed for Zul Gurub on an ocational night, TBC gets released, now they have a 10 man Karazhan group farming the place, and a second group almost finishing it.. My guild that farmed MC and BWL and AQ40 is very well progressed, but gear wise, you went into a 40 man, invesetd 4 hours and 5 people came out with new gear, with these new 10 mans we can throw in 4 different groups, giving 20 people the ability to progress, this is one of Lineage 2's failures, its such a grindfest that even the master grinders (koreans) gave up on the game.
Second failure, cheaters. NCSoft can throw all this useless crap on (GameGuard) to stop cheaters and it will fail because they arent fixing the core problem behind it, the sheer dificulty in aquiring gear as a casual player and the penalty of losing that said gear. Again, in WoW, you have the ocational people that buy gold but all they get out of it is mounts and maby some gear that will be worthless in 2 weeks (once they reach top level and all the gear is Bind on Pick Up) and sometimes Pots. In Lineage 2, if you arent in an alliance that can defend you in the top leveling zones, plus that you can farm the top leveling dungeons in, you wont get gear. Its as simple as that. What does a casual player do? They buy tons and tons of adena, go around aden and seek the help from farmers to provide those said items.
Third failure, customization. Everybody in Lineage 2 looks exactly the freaking same. It's boring. There can be three or four different C,B,A,S grade sets, but its always one that everybody wants (sometimes people experiment with another) and you always needed to have the ENTIRE set in order for it to mean something or for it to work. This problem also goes along with the cheaters problems. You get to 61, you want A grade, you have 4 of the set pieces required for A grade but you still cant wear those pieces until you have all the required parts. So a 61 in full B grade can totally harras a 61 that needs just one more piece of A grade to complete set. Pathetic. There are no variations of weapons for different people and enchanting via crystals (again another way your local farmer friend loves to help) just adds a miniscule difference, because in the end, everybody has the exact same enchant.
Fourth Failure, content. The game is shallow. Simple as that. It needs alot more content to back it up. They have been fixing this every since Chron 4 but the game is still sticking to its, just farm farm farm and grind grind grind roots that get boring and shove everyone away. Where are the reputation rewards? The different quests that actully give meaning for you to go out and kill something, get a reward, or something. Mounts.. why do only castel leaders get one of the things people since Open Beta have been wanting, which are the Wyvrns?! The dragons were fun and popular for about 2 weeks into chron 2 then they were just a.. meh.. have different mounts, have more things to do, more things you can try to achieve.
Fifth failure, PvP. This is an open PvP game, it is the backbone to Lineage 2, it always talks about its amazing PvP.. where? I was part of Siegharth, the self proclaimed PvP server in North America. The Karma system is a joke, nobody wants to fight unless a group forms or whatnot, and you cant openlly kill anybody because the penalty of it is just o huge (losing gear) It's stupid to the extent that WoW has alot more of an open PvP than Lineage 2. Granted you cant kill alliance but you can go around any area above level 20 and kill as many opposite faction players as you desire, and you see them all the time, so you can world pvp as much as your heart desires, with no penalty. Lineage 2's PvP is crap talking, thats all it is, and thats all they do. talk talk talk talk and line hop. We're this immense PvP? Why cant we attack different towns? clan halls? something that you can raid that cant be once every two weeks for 2 hours. I havent had as much PvP fun as invading Orgrimmar and killing Thrall. It was just an invasion, nobody in horde knew about it. That's fun. Castle sieges i did have alot of fun in, and they are a highlight, but Lineage 2 needed alot more than those once every two week events. Add something more than retarded arenas or colliseums. WoW has the battlegrounds, which make WoW PvE servers have alot more PvP than Lineage and their open PvP servers. It's pathetic really.
Sixth Failure, Dependancy on buffs. Seriously, buffs made and broke the game. If you dont have buffs, you dont PvP, you suck at leveling, you just dont do anything. No buffs = you suck. WoW has buffs, but the buffs it has arent so overpowerd, and the game doesnt depend on them. Granted, in a raid situation, buffs are mandatory or else you arent going anywhere, but that's a good reason and a need to have alot of buffs, but to fight anyone at anytime, or just to grind.. that brings us back to cheaters again. When people need to have a second account to have a bot following them around buffing, you know you failed and your game has failed. Oh and Soul Shots.. rofl
Seventh failure, no more noobies. The game needs people to be attracted to the game and have people constantly coming and buying your game. WoW does a good job in this by having very low level insatnces and group quests that give players of low levels the chance to group with other players, find guilds, and make friends. The game will feel alot more attractive and they will keep progressing. Lineage 2 gives you a nice welcome with it taking you a loooooong time to reach level 20 in order to have something else besides one stupid attack, and then its off to the mega grind. People get turned off as soon as they reach 20 and find out, its the same exact BS. Oh and watch out with those PKers, they take away that EXP that took you a long time to get. Taking away EXP after a death is ridiculous.
And well, those are my main beefs with the game. Now after saying all that, Lineage 2 has been my fav MMO and I love it. If NCSoft releases Lineage 3, I will be one of the first in line for OB and maby a spot in closed beta as well, i just hope they fix the game. Now I dont want a WoW copy either, i used WoW as a reference only because WoW and Lineage 2 are the only MMOs I have played for more than 2 years each. NCSoft needs to grab its strengths, which are the ability to make incredible graphics. Lineage has graphics that dont compare to any other MMO and they are far superior. The use of Soul Shots is also awsome, especially when they hit and the sounds. My gf looked at me play a private server of Lineage 2 and she was like, how can you like WoW more than this, this looks alot better and much cooler. She's right, the look of it is alot better. The spells are awsome, the attacks are great. NCSoft also succeeds in music, the music for this game is also top notch. The PvP does need a little more skilled added to it though, as of right now, PvP requires no skill at all. Point and shoot, point and shoot. Just fix this a bit.
i already know what it says without reading it. Yea we ar NCsoft know are game has gone to shit and we are working on L3 so we can get rid of this once great game that has got so bad that our players are resroting to playing WoW
In other stuff, i think L2 needs more armors, new items, but what really needs? fix some big bugs
WHAT A SHAME, a truly game that have all that bug bugs around... and seems that nobody cares about it
i hope that all bugs and this in spacial finish on these cronicle chapters, and the new one have all fixed please do something right!!!!!!!
i was try all kind of MMO and in the end Lineage 2 is the best of all of them, yeah much better than that shit called WoW i hate that shit bad grafics, bad characters.... all about that game is a shit i dunno why is the most popular game, i think is cos the stategic game was the best ( i agree on this) but world of W sucks
In conclution: lineage 2= best game and wow (its not the worst but it coldnt be the best
Lindrea, you are obviously not a hardcore player and therefore not the target audience of L2. But you've got WoW, so there's no problem in that. Game developers are allowed to tailor their games to a specific audiences, just like television shows have target audiences and advertisers develop their commercial spots to attract a certain group of people. (I say you're not a hardcore player based off of several comments you made, maybe you consider yourself one, but I don't.)
I won't go through your post point by point because it was really long and I don't feel like doing that. But here are just a few things, in no particular order:
You talked about pvp and the penalties (loss of xp on death and chance to loose gear.) First, most people are in clan wars and own clan halls, which considerably lessons the sting of dying in pvp. Yeah, at level 77 it hurts like heck, but not below level 72. The 1% you loose (or less with the xp return you get from going back to your clan hall at death) can be regained in about 10-20 minutes of killing mobs. Big whoop. Plus, you can't drop gear when you die anymore. They changed that this chronicle. So fight all you want, you're not going to loose your gear (unless you have more than 5 PKs, that is.) And they even added scrolls that you take during sieges so you don't loose any xp when you die on a siege field. And in the next expansion, they're changing the death penalty relative to your level. Loosing 4% at level 40 in no way compares to loosing 4% at level 79. So they will change it to make it more comparable.
Also, you mentioned not being able to use equipment without having a full set. That's completely untrue. You can use any equipment you want, without having a full set. It's not going to gimp you as much as you act like it will. Anyway, most people keep their B-grade set until they have accumulated most of their A-grade set. When they are ready to buy/craft that last piece, they sell their old set of equipment to fund the purchase.
And customization? I've played other games with 100x the customization, but none have been as aesthetically pleasing as L2. In most games, the graphics suck and all the customization in the world can't make up for that fact. In other games, you can customize everything about your character and the graphics are good, but the camera is stuck behind the character or in 1st person, and you never see your character's front, so what does it matter?
i understand and i am a hardcore gamer. I was one of the first 75's in Siegharth (prolly top 10 sometimes its hard to tell since u cant see other people's levels) But doing crummy hit fixes like adding scrolls and what not doesnt help that much. I understand that the game is geared towards to a different audience than other games, im not asking for a WoW impersonator.. hell, the exp grind would't be much of a hassle, if that wasnt all there was to do. Heros? Seven Signs Competition? Nobles? its all a bunch of crap. Add some real content. The only reason the grind got annoying was because ok.. here i am, 6 hours in the middle of the night in 11th floor ToI, oh yes.. fun fun.. I got my set done everything is good, now what.. *cricket chirps*
That;'s really my beef with it, the game is way too shallow. And the game does need alot of customization, maby it has changed since Chron 3 from last time i played, but everybody looked the freaking same. Yeah I saw a Zubei wearing Silver Ranger once in a blue moon, we all got a huge crack out of it too. And I wore a half B grade half A grade set once.. a Spellsinger in C grade my own level could wtfpwn me.
I love the world this game was based under, I was a WoW basher when it released and an L2 lover, but the game got annoying after every sorry NCSoft attempt at making this fun. Adding a bunch of dungeons that look exactly the same, trying to fix the karma system by giving you 5 free PKs and a way to take em off through quest (its supposed to be open, let there be a free for all in killing and make some lowbie areas peace zones where u cant fight or something to prevent griefing) . Im just pissed to see them not fixing core problems with the game instead just adding crap after crap. I'll keep my hopes up for Lineage 3
Lineage is a really nice looking game with many nice options, but there is too much to fix. to me a rollplay game shoud have a nice storry and many nice quests.you should be able to lvl and make xp without killing mobs all the time.It's a little sad that all the dungeons are the same with different mobs. i played lineage 2 for about a half year and i am bored. till the endgame it's nothing but killing mobs.
what about some npc's with nice new quests to lvl without getting bored?