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Still one Starting City, or?
Hi!
I remember a while ago, Before one of their large updates, mostly each race had their own starting city and questline to follow in the beginning. I like this because it, together with the way how each piece of armor looks unuque to each race, and unique classes to each one of them , just seemed so damn cool to me.
Now, after that particular update (sorry cant remember whats it called now), in MY humble opinion - 2 bad things have happened.
1-The faction-based starting cities were gone (or maybe they weren't? But I couldn't choose them anymore).
2-All the unique classes that each race/faction previously had - had been boiled down to sort of ''cookie-cutter and common'' classes= the same for every race.
Which kinda really disappointed me in the developers of the game. But in a more recent update, I Heard they RE-ADDED class diversification into the game again, and some things like that etc. So I was wondering, do we get our starting cities and quests back, as well? Thx for any possible answers.
Comments
No more beginning in the race starter cities. Now every character starts off in the new Talking Island Village. I liked the old way much better but as the game has grown alot older the starting cities became ghost towns because it was just not enough new players joining the game to keep them active. This is why the just made everybody now start in one city to make it seem more alive.
As for the classes they have broken them back into 36 classes but they are still not nearly as unique as they use to be. Each update will further make the classes more unique but really its just too late. With Goddess Of Destruction the game took a wrong turn. It totally destroyed what made Lineage 2 special. Lineage 2 will never be like it use to be. I still play casual but really I am just waiting for whats next like ArcheAge, Bless or Black Deserts.
I saw a thread, translated from the official Korean forums, where it seems like NC is looking to possibly bring back some of the old/original starting areas.
There was a poll asking people about what they didn't like in the current game. Basically, the response to the whole Awakened thing has been overwhelmingly negative; I believe the results of that poll were around 80% against Awakened..
Many of the changes made with GoD weren't well liked, either. Among them, the removal of the original starting areas. I don't know why they did that. I mean, okay.. I know why they did it.. to create a more "active" starting area for all players (which was a questionable decision on its own, given how laggy the game is to begin with.. I remember New Talking Island Village being pretty much a slide-show when GoD first launched and for some weeks after). But at the same time it took away a lot of what gave each race its own identity and sense of culture, and the game is less for it, in my opinion.
They made a lot of changes to L2 that, in my opinion, weren't needed. All they had to do was find ways to streamline and improve the aspects that were already there, and introduce new content/mechanics to complement them. But then, there seems to be this trend among game developers that when their game finds a nice, steady core playerbase (aka niche), they decide "Okay, let's completely change the game up, so we can appeal to a wider playerbase!", and in pretty much every case I can think of, it's backfired and a large portion of the player base hated it and/or its long-term effect on the gameplay (CU/NGE for SWG, Trials of Atlantis for DAoC, Abyssea/Adoulin for FFXI, Shadowlands for AO, GoD for L2).
As an analogy, it really reminds me of being in an xp group in FFXI, or even L2 where your party finally hits a nice smooth flow. The xp is coming in steadily, there's little or no down-time and it's a like a well-oiled machine.Then someone decides, "Hey, let's go somewhere else and fight harder mobs... so we can get more xp!". Folks are against the idea, but the party lead and a couple people think it's a good idea... so off you go. You find a spot.. pull the first mob.. people start dropping, the down-time increases and xp actually slows down. The flow is gone. Then people get frustrated and start dropping party... next thing you know... /disband.
I wish game developers and their publishers would stop "looking for better xp spots" in an already well-established game. I wish they'd learn to recognize when they've got a "good thing", and that a "good thing" is a steady, dedicated player base who stick with your game, month after month because of the game it is. Changing the gameplay up to something it isn't not only alienates those who loved your game for what it was, but also fails to bring in the players it was intended to... often because they're already invested in a game that caters to that playstyle, so why would they switch over?
Anyway.. I hope NCSoft can turn L2 around enough to bring it back to what it was... not all the way back. Certainly a lot about the game wasn't great back then (I played from Beta and Prelude on up), and some of what they've done since has improved it. They've just changed too much of what made L2 the unique world and experience it was to so many people.
I'd love to start a new character in DEV again. I loved starting in that area.... those crazy imps laughing at you while you're killing them, or the sound of the keltirs in the fields outside. Great times.