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Laura "Taera" Genender
Community Manager
MMORPG.com
Comments
Well, since I live in Europe I'm going to miss this but maybe one of you heroes can relay this for me...
I loved my time in L2 but it could have been more if these 3 things were addressed.
The grind requirments are just outright stupid. Its not "hardcore" its just bad design.
Trying to figure out how to afford gear isn't fun, its a chore, its like work only you get to pay for it.
Allowing dozens of bots to run around for days and weeks in the starter towns (among other places) just sends the message that ...well........there is no one home watching the farm and no one cares.
This game could have been one of the more successful games out there had they got their act together with it. Mathmatical, time based barriers to play do not entertain or add depth...they just prevent. There is no confidence in the higher end gameplay that it is able to keep everyone engaged for a prolonged period of time so the solution is to bar it.
I quit because gameplay just got flat out boring. Grinding on mobs for hundreds of hours is dull. Sitting in shop mode is just stupid, add some damn vendors or something so I don't have to dedicate my account to do an automated chore when I would rather...play the damn game. (shock and dismay I'm sure)
QFT
L2 is in a vicious circle and hopefully some day the ebb and flow will reverse without forcing NC to shut it down.
Here is my breakdown of the past and future of L2:
- The root of the problem: L2's economy is brutal. Stupid, retarded, idiotic, what-in-gods-name-were-they-thinking-when-they-dreamed-up-this-shit brutal.
- Players want to PVE and PVP and not spend nine tenths of their L2 career with an AFK shop open in Giran. They want to buy adena with RL money.
- Enter farmers. Thousands of farmer accounts are created specifically for collecting adena and selling it to real players for RL money. The demand is overwhelming and they are hugely successful. Even more farmers flock to L2 as a full time job.
- Over time, real players become disenchanted (and sometimes disgruntled) for a long list of reasons, and subs start to die off. Farmers keep plugging away while adena prices go down. Farmer subs increasingly outweigh real player subs day by day.
(this is where NAL2 is right now)
As far as i know there are three things that happen next:
1. Adena becomes as an alternative to RL currency and "players" use L2 strictly for financial reasons. No one plays L2 for fun. From what i've read, this is what goes on in Korea right now. L2 is no longer a game, it is like a virtual wall street. This will not happen in NAL2 because L2 simply isn't widespread enough in the western world.
2. Real players die out but adena doesn't catch on as a real currency. Farmers have no one to sell/trade adena to, their sales plummet, they go out of business, L2 takes a shit. This is what will happen to NAL2.
3. NCsoft intervenes with a huge overhaul of the economy and a complete reversal in their philisophy towards how the game should be played. Equipment/consumables/etc becomes affordable; farmers die out because no one buys adena anymore; old/new players are lured in by the prospect of actually participating in what makes L2 fun; and the game would become healthy, arguably for the first time ever.
Of course #3 could only be possible if NC knows profit will be made.
BTW you could argue that private servers provide an alternative similar to #3, but private servers suffer from other (and imo far worse) problems but i will save that rant for another time.
In order to support that supposition you would have to turn to more casual games to show that the easier it is to get money and equipment the less RMT there is.
But when looking at such games you find that there is just as much RMT. WoW and Guildwars (and even LOTRO for that matter) are games where money and euipment are pretty easy to come by. Heck, in GW you need so little equipment to be competitive that you NEVER need to buy anything from a player.
And yet, you can go on the net and find sites that sell for all these games.
The only way to get rid of pro farmers and rmt is to make a game that doesn't rely on any money or equipment or make it so that players just can't trade with each other. Have a very controlled economy.
Most players would not want that. Even legit players. I personally wouldn't mind but I'm sure I'm in the minority.
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
In order to support that supposition you would have to turn to more casual games to show that the easier it is to get money and equipment the less RMT there is.
But when looking at such games you find that there is just as much RMT. WoW and Guildwars (and even LOTRO for that matter) are games where money and euipment are pretty easy to come by. Heck, in GW you need so little equipment to be competitive that you NEVER need to buy anything from a player.
And yet, you can go on the net and find sites that sell for all these games.
The only way to get rid of pro farmers and rmt is to make a game that doesn't rely on any money or equipment or make it so that players just can't trade with each other. Have a very controlled economy.
Most players would not want that. Even legit players. I personally wouldn't mind but I'm sure I'm in the minority.
Yeah, I've said those same things myself in the past. I just thought it was stinky the devs didn't even want to address it, even in a token way...and then yammered on about pie for almost half the interview.............