Epiquin

Just a thought, if you are so enthusiastic, have you considered something that could substitute PVE? I mean, PVE is necessary - you have plenty of occasions when there isn't enough players in one place to create content (hence why events/sieges are so popular, because more people are involved), so you need some form of a past time. But the majority of PvE content is is AFKable; or people want it to be - because /attack ing mobs is not very engaging. EVE Online has exploration sites for example. You look for the site, and you go through the various obstacles and puzzles, and there are cans (equivalent to chests) which can have rare items. For people who are skilled and fast at exploration it can be quite profitable. I think in general there should be a much lower mob density - so that people who want to mindlessly farm mobs must fight for their spot. This drives conflict and creates war and competition. And if there are few enough mobs then maybe people will just stop concentrating on farm all the time. I understand that game progress has to be had for players to be interested, but IMO if its directly proportional to the amount of hours they spend slashing mobs the server just turns into a NASCAR race. This is bad for everyone, people who are ahead will get bored with little competition and few people who can oppose them,, and those who are behind on levels will just get stomped. I guess the real question is whether competition is a real motivator - it seems like so many people are risk averse and prefer prearranged fights which are "fair". Ironic considering how olympiad randomly places 1 class against another, when they are not equal, and people just accept it. The real issue must be that people just cant think for themselves and would rather have the game do everything for them...

Android PvP is a bit too ambitious. Don't get caught by your own enthusiasm which has a risk of dying. @ Towns - fair enough. Generally that's what happens anyway - people congregate in some area. Naturally it happens whereever the activity is the highest. lvl 40-56s and lvl 70-75s were lvling walls because of the EXP required so people would group up in places with adequate mob, quest levels. Markets naturally arose where the demand for soulshots was. @ Buffs - agree generally. But what are you going to do? Slam 7 buffs into 1? So if someone loses a buff its like losing 7? Spreading the effects as passive makes more sense. @ Classes - IMO classes are archaic and I would move away from them entirely. Having classless system opens up a lot more opportunities. But it might be too ambitious to do alongside developing other features. @ Seems like the larger focus is on a standalone application. Ironically that was the endgoal of L2jserver in the first place - a standalone game based on L2jserver server code with a custom client. But IMO that's just taking it waaaay too far.

It was to put into context the fact that the only reason why anything pre max level exist is because its a relic. The only reason you have B grade gear is because you cannot use S grade at lvl 52. But you don't see many applications of B grade at lvl 76+, unless BW light on a kamael and maybe avadon robe on a mage. I am willing to accept this. But few other players are.

Yeah but L2 isn't a history lesson. Why know where ruins of despair is if we effectively cut it out of the game. There is no content there past lvl 20. Same for anything pre lvl 80. Having all that is useless. This is a well known phenomenon in game design - developers put large amount of time making content pre end game. And all the time it ends up being neglected, because you go through it once and never again. You say you play from C1, how many times you went to ruins of despair after you reached lvl 80? Probably never unless you started from scratch. Thats the trouble with linear progression. If you only go forward something must stay behind. In L2 everything before lvl 80 stays behind.

Yes PvP server for pew pew but what is the mechanism by which players want to fight each other? In my experience the reason why it doesn't work these days is because everyone is risk averse, and outside of olympiad and events wont risk engaging. I can't understand why (pride, cowardice, dumb standards and honor codes, whatever) but if someone goes PK outside of town everyone just calls him a noob. Honestly, remaining pop is pretty carebear.

So as you are preparing for PvP someone who sat for 24/7 keep interfering and wrecking you. Then by the time you get to a state where you can compete the enemy is bored and quits. The typical trend of those servers is prepare for pvp 3-7days then PvP 2 nights then quit. Server dies faster than 1 month. 1CP pot for a 1 kill is peasantry. Why pew pew? Just cos? If there is no reason then why have farm? You already start at lvl 80 why spend hours/days trying to get competitive gear. Doesn't make sense. This is less POV and more preference/opinion that is built on a cliche routine that all the "PvP server" admins have spouted throughout the years. Point of view implies critical evaluation of choices/decisions. There is non of that. Cute fantasy.

Point being levels used to be important. They were valuable because they defined a lot of things, primarily gear that you could use. This determined where you would farm, and what players opponents you would compete with. With the addition of more levels, previous levels are devalued. Its exactly the same principle as in the case of bad economy when you have too much of everything, you no longer need anything. To counteract the devaluement, strict levels turned into band of levels (0-20, 20-40, 40-56, etc). Adding levels is meaningless if it doesn't hold value. That's why I am saying reduce levels drastically, add more value to them, and make their achievement significant. But more importantly not permanent. Permanency leads to a singularity of need - top level that never goes down? Never need to farm/exp again. If you don't need to farm and exp there is no need to secure farm spot. If there is no need to secure farm spot there is no reason to go out of town. Top gear? Never need to craft, enchant. This encourages rejection of game features - players abandon certain game mechanics because they no longer need to be involved with them. And for sure I would advise not to have many currencies. Many currencies do not make good economy. Economy will depend entirely on which currency is hardest to get, and every other currency will be oversaturated same as adena. if you want to make good economy measure how quickly a currency is gained compared to how quickly the items that are bought for currency are lost and hence demanded. From this it is obvious why at start of the server no currency is oversaturated - everyone needs top gear. After some time only new players need top gear. After more time nobody needs new gear. if you want to keep armor/weapons permanent and excluded from loss, my only advice to make good economy is focus on potions and consumables like talismans. TL;DR The general problem that needs to be addressed is rejection of game features. Adding more levels doesn't fix this, only makes it worse.

In general yeah, would be quite useful for most people. Though considering how trivial trading is on most servers maybe not.

Whats the point of increasing levels, but make them easier? You don't feel there is a rather obvious creep? It's a short term relief. People have something to achieve but the goal is trivial and the path to the goal holds no significant gameplay consequences. So why bother? Also why add more items? Albeit the bonuses are negligible. This makes the game more completionist focused. Don't see the point at all. Would rather go the opposite way - decrease levels instead of increase. Make death meaningful. Reduce numbers to a more manageable scale (no more dealing with 40k PAtk).

Base chance is high (70? or something), but anything short of +28 skills is going to fail a lot. Low matk, low INT modifier and a level penalty to boot will have your skills fail a lot. Also, nothing will happen if you simply land those debuffs. Enemy has to be attacked by normal attacks.

Yeah I forgot about the passive...

Depends. If you primarily heal, stack WIT and Acumen SA. The heal isn't trivial, get restoration to +time and impact to +power. Pre cast restoration on party members - you have 45s to heal them without needing to cast 2 skills. Just make sure you update restoration. This is the mistake most judicators make - instead of holding restoration on target they cast restoration when they need to heal. 2 skills to heal and restoration is slower. If you hold restoration then healing is very quick. 50% HP back in <1s. If you plan to debuff stack INT. They cast slower but if you land Weak Constitution, Oblivion and/or Innervation on a healer it can be game over provided you trigger the debuffs.

It's magical. Your lack of Int and MAtk makes them tough to land. Since they are not 3rd class you need to enchant them to a very high, depending on what server you play. If you fight lvl 85 chars you'd need +28-30 skills. Chance route helps exponentially because it increases chance and level. Landing debuffs isn't enough. To activate effect the target must be hit with normal attacks. Best used in archer/titan/tank parties. I used to use magical swords for debuffing then dual swords for trigger.

You are a scholar, hero and king. All the internets to you and may your children overpopulate the Earth.

Yes, back when our (casual plebs) understanding and awareness of what it took to make a server was in its early infancy. Back when we didn't know fundamental things like client or server side. As L2j knowledge base became more populated and accessible to the public, curious, but not proficient in programming, people started going through it and disseminating. We came to a reasonable, practical conclusion that if you say "I've made a server with a unique custom - safe +3 and max +50" you are really just full of **** and done nothing to address the growing issues in gameplay which are the result of L2s flawed design. Likely because you (not you personally, consider context) prolly think everything in L2 is fine and NCsoft did everything right. Which is ignorant. L2 gameplay is poorly scalable with rates - demonstrated by huge inflation of currency due to lack of loss for any (if not all) activities. Literally the only continuous loss in typical L2 server is potions. Which hold trivial market share power because every admin makes them cost in practical terms 1a. Remaining L2 community demands the game to be akin to the olympics with a heavy sportsmanship aspects - everything is meant to be fair and conflict should be reduced to people with different colour names fight each other because the game said so. No griefing allowed (because internet tears are tsunamis) and spontaneous combat out of town is frowned upon. The result is that on majority of servers people sit inside town waiting for event or olympiad and only go outside of farm currency. These are really just a small fraction (like 2 out of 1000) of the issues that could be addressed. Instead we get typical +3 safe hurr durr servers with adverts that are wall of texts of server config copy pasta. Things only really die when they stagnate. People take death for granted as if it were a natural phenomenon. Death is only the result of stagnation of progress. Even in real life something dies only because its heart stop beating, even with age cells deteriorate. Address the deterioration or substitute it with progress and you overcome death. Sounds philosophical and medically inapplicable in real life, but when you look at Java/C++, think hard about whats possible, and then see servers with their "unique rebirth" and "unique NPC models" it really makes you think how much we lost. I hence have no sympathy for people who cannot cope with these demands. Really, some things are prolly the bare minimum (DM event) unless you have a really good reason not to have it (concentrate server PvP to be out of principles, rather than Counter Strike/Quake like).

Don't like the roleplaying tryhardness of religion. Don't like quests either, but thats personal. I get where this is going though, and its a good idea. However, if it's openworld faction server - it will die very quickly. This was shown by Shards Of Destiny faction PvP server a while back. The reason is that to reliably continue fighting over particular object requires strong players logistics - establishing spawns for your faction, delegating protection, organising, etc. Majority of players are so casual that this will never hold. Instead a small few will play well and beat everyone LONG TERM. This will make the game very agonising for a lot of people and demotivate them from getting out of town. It also encourages avoiding direct confrontation, because objectives can be carried out without having to engage with other players, like when your enemy is occupied with another objective, so far far away that they won't even bother coming after you because it will be too late, or when your enemy sleeps. The advantage of events in L2RvB was seen very well with put in contrast to this method - events offered a quick, easy, drop-in/drop-out method of getting into a fight, and bailing if shit got bad without ever feeling guilty. You could argue that some few people would dominate just as in L2SoD; the thing with events is that success is short term. If its open-world then people will be too spread out. You'd need what? 4k people outside of town to actually run into a player every 2000 ingame units or something. You would need a way for players to find other players very easy. Also, giving out special rewards for killing nonfaction players or players on the path of achieving faction status is bad - it will promote older players hunting newer players and when your server reaches critical mass of new players (eventually they stop coming), players will make alts that they will kill. Not only is this exploitable, it also diverges from the focus of the game - capturing towns, etc and instead shifts the focus to farming currency/rewards (see Planetside 2). Overall, I can see the advantage of moving away from explicit "Press this button to become Red, press the other to become Blue" method of faction selection. Making it depend on your ingame decisions makes the transition more fluid. But beyond that I don't see that much new, never mind stuff that won't be broken. @client - why you care about what new stuff is in postIL? If you think you don't enough about it - remove it. Attributes aren't even a good feature anyway. Use newer clients for more assets/models/animations.

What do you Find the remainder of the answer in another thread, thank you.

And now I'm depressed.

We need more information to make proper conclusions then.

xD I just don't know what to say. Really.

There is no point in discussing what proportion appreciates innovation when the majority of said innovation is at the top of the failure scale and downright reeks of it. It's like a gaydar. People see it from a mile away. Hence they do not give it a chance. Plenty of highly customised servers used to spring about, but the customisations were so over done and learning everything from scratch especially when its some ghetto wannabe excuse for an improvement is daunting. What I am saying is - do something new, but put effort into keeping it dead simple and smart. Make sure that players are welcomed to these changes. If you do changes on the scale of NCSofts siege revamps, you are bound to make mistakes and fuck something over and nobody would be convinced to join this. But if you keep small, then maybe if not convince people you might fool them.

Arguably not true. If you do the same thing (which everyone has, not just for L2, but MMORPGs in general) and you do not innovate, obviously there is nothing to be impressed about. There are countless games with the holy trinity tank/dps/support classes. Its been done and done. Anything you do here is just fine tuning and this is where developers and companies dig their own grave thinking that this is what will attract attention. But making a new game isn't strictly unimpressive. In either way, the problem in the case of L2 is that the majority are reluctant to learn new things. Which is understandable - when someone who tries to make something new puts in over complicated systems - nobody would. You can be the best dev in the world but at the end of the day you don't have the "NCsoft" label on your face. Ergo, your design choices are not trusted. That doesn't mean you can't make simple innovative things which to the casual eye look trivial but in reality have large impact. You avoid the criticism from people who have no clue what they are talking about, and you gain players because the former don't open their stinking mouths and shit talk your server into the ground. To conclude - everyone knows you are great java dev, MiDnEx, but you are not making a smart choice here. If all you want is to show off - cool. But from what is observed in the video is really just practice level stuff. Like I said - not enough can be seen from the video to make other conclusions; we don't really know what is done and what it's benefits are beyond the different models and animations.

That's just arbitrary. Im not talking about gaming as a whole. Talking about the features/changes you make, specifically, what problems you address. The Division is planning to have a classless system. I've suggested this for L2 before TD was even announced. The practical benefits of a classless system is that a player is not punished for their choice if the developer fucks up and takes 6 months to roll a new expansion where the class is "rebalanced". We know from our historical experience that "balance" is relative and typically biased to a single person's perspective and POV. TD is also planning to allow players switch skills on demand. There is UI navigation acting as interference, preventing the possibility of "having all skills". But the practical benefit of the system is that you can adapt your character to a particular situation, and frequently you are not bound by linear decisions, i.e. you can approach the mentioned particular situation in many ways. You also don't rely on particular char setups to fill in the blanks of support, tank, DD, etc roles. If someone is missing you switch your skillset to compensate. I have plenty more examples from a ton of games. Because even if I don't play a lot of games I keep track of them and learned to appreciate the features they offer. The fundamental principle is appraisal of doing something. As in, not doing something for the sakes of doing it, but addressing a problem. From the video shown, no problem solving is demonstrated. L2 has a history of classes having a ton of filler skills. The ones that do seemingly the same thing but have different animations and numbers. Your video shows that still remains. See, when I saw party joining through [?] on your faction server I could appraise it - it was very useful and solved the inconvenience problem. You didn't have to advertise your party in some random location HTML, people looking for parties didn't have to got through a list of parties. It was displayed in the most common location ingame - the freaking chat window. Something as intricate as that was exceedingly clever. The video just shows different models and animations. If you wanted to prove another point, it is not obvious what it was from the video.

Midnex always tried to do something original. But few things really ended up original. (Joining party through [?] was useful). In practical terms, what does this achieve? Ok, you changed some skills, they look different, etc. But at the core its still the same - select target, press a skill, receive bacon. Classes are a crux. They used to be a defining feature of an MMO back when harsh choices with consequences was cool, aka back when MMORPGs were something more than a park walk.

Doesn't depend on chronicle.