sandpants

What Xdem said. Except that L2j has a bad reputation among kids such as V4n Persie. Don't expect anything interesting from L2off and don't waste time on them - play retail instead.

I actually wanted to do that. No troll.

Not in 3 days lol Or 3 weeks. Or 3 months.

Dunno why people get that impression... Chronicle X =/= X balance. Java is highly interchangeable. Nuker/Archer imbalance is a fundamental flaw related to how magical and physical damage is calculated. At high levels and high numbers of matk/patk an increment of patk > matk. Because matk is square rooted. Physical crits are compound. Who ever designed those formulas did not consider the hypothetical increase to infinity. So you get sht like this. Low level mages > low level archers. High level archers > high level mages. Also the stupid standard of 28 buffs. Buffs favor physical and physical crit dmg more than magic. Yet every PvP server insists on having every buff available on a character. Dumb crap. Redo scaling - problem fixed. Just do it smart...

Interesting stuff. Sounds obvious, but not a lot of people pay attention. L2 is the victim of this.

There is no faction server which functions under the same mechanisms as InfiniteL2. There are that share the theme, but that's it. The closest there was was the one MiDnEx made a while ago. I don't think there should be. There were fundamental flaws on InfiniteL2: adena/exp per kill; stereotypical balance - archers end game > mages; small incentive to play support; no incentive to win the event; some minigames are better than others - dodgeball > elimination. Zombies needed low lag, lvling, debuffs, few others that are a long story...

Don't care about rates, as long as I don't spend time PvEing when I could spend it PvPing. I don't like when it's pretty much forced on you. No servers is good now - too many carebear kids crying if you have support, freaking admins make zones with disabled health restore lol! I just like a server where things are the way they are meant to be played - no infinite MP, no infinite heals, no 10 min PvP, no 40 buffs, no +20 gear, -beep- no gear above +10, no raidboss stats, no stacked Crit dmg 24/7 tanks running and hitting people for 4k. Loads of bullsht these days just because people try and be clever and change rates, add buffs, make custom zones, add shitty rebirth skills, custom currency, try to theorycraft elemental system (shit idea to begin with, just a grind mechanic nothing more) , more -beep-ed up sh1t... No one is doing what really matters - incentive for competition and teamplay, no solid meta game. It's all just Oly at the end of the day, then server dies. People in this thread going "Hi5 instant PvP 3k online" - LOL. Emerald.ru is supposedly that, and what's there to do? Nothing. Gank or be ganked. I'm not against instant PvP, or Hi5. But it's just wishful thinking. You don't just open a Hi5 server and guaranteed 3k players appear.

Yes. But this thread will be like I don't like the prospect of increasing levels with future updates. It's what NCsoft did. Sure when it began it was ok, exciting and stuff. But now you really get the picture and realize that it's just an artificial way of keeping you in the game. The "korean RPG" way. I hope you think of more clever ways of player retention. Also, if instead of leaving the skill lvling till 30, making it accessible any time but at a very, very large cost, you give players the choice of investment into 1 skill, or a variety. This allows players to specialize or become a jack of all trades. This allows a particular class to diverge. Ex. A gladiator can specialize to do burst damage by investing heavily into TSS, or spread even between AOE and utility skill to synergize with TSS. Creating an SP spending cap, this would be an interesting choice character build wise. Anywho - worth keeping an eye on.

I have indeed played infinitel2 and do remember War Manager 1v1/2v2/etc They locked it down to particular time slots to prevent feeding. It was max 3 hours per day in 3 installments just so that GMs could babysit it. It became very unpopular quickly. Good luck with your pack anyway.

There is a target demographic. You can make a typical low rate server with GFepilogue or interlude or C4 like "EVERYONE" asks for. Will you drag the audience from giant russian servers which have 10k pop min? Or would you think that you can do without them? Cos you can probably count on your fingers the amount of players on MXC that want C4/interlude/Epilogue low/mid rates. Or you can make something new that appeals to the current server hoppers. The previous will simply follow like sheep cos thats what they always do and join the hoppers. The choice is - Stable, but less rewarding VS Gamble, high risk and high reward. Developing on the latter > former. You can observe the former tactic in the advertisement section. I do acknowledge your mentioning of global opinion. It's what essentially kills servers like Aurora and some other unique pieces of work. But their hype is nothing to sneeze about. Unlike the typical low rates, which is just "oh, look, a low rate reminiscent of servers 4-5 years ago. It is 'bound' to have high population and will be very successful" until you realize it won't because of some random details that make you feel uncomfortable. Admit it, many players don't know what they want. If you seriously developed anything you probably felt this way. So instead of doing what they "want" and ask wouldn't it be more productive to put your brains to work and do something that makes sense not just from money PoV? Like the previously mentioned economy system? You don't have to shove it in the players face when you advertise. It just needs to be there and YOU as a dev need to acknowledge that those things genuinely work and make the gameplay tick. That's whats important. Making things work. Not having players be aware that pouches generate demand and make the economy stable and then consider their opinion. Have you ever thought that most people ask for "popular chronicles", just cos? Or some particular biased reason? Not because they KNOW it works (the general idea). You might be right that I don't acknowledge the things you mention. They don't matter. They are a small picture IMO. They ARE significant, but they just have to be overcome or else you will just get stuck making random config changes recompiling to fix some random sht.

LOL. I'm not that stupid. You made no sense though. Keep calm and Make sense. Vague arguments and evidence - "need this and that, need months and months, need like aion (why?)" Some vague reasoning as to why there is nothing to fight for BECAUSE you need to rewrite everything. :you serious?: There were maybe 2-3 respectable faction servers in the last 4 years. There is no definition of faction server that distinctly states that the main idea is to kill each other. It only segregates population onto X sides. Economy is what you (as a dev) make it to be. There is as much to fight for on a faction server as there is on any other server unless you as a dev, again, make it so. Infinitel2 economy (excluding faction specific) was very successful. Pouches from PvP, require for crafting armor/weapons, which are ALWAYS in demand as people enchanted a lot and broke gear. Pouches generate random items from a particular list that allow crafting a variety of gear. Options 1)Sell pouches for lower price. 2)Gamble - attempt to drop particular items from pouches which are higher in demand but at risk of random chance. This will generate more income but can potentially screw you over. 3)Keep pouches for yourself. Horde, buy more pouches with adena from PvP. Craft your own gear. Use or sell gear for higher profit. I knew clan mates that made 100k plus on server economy just from selling/buying. In perspective, a full kill gave 10a. More commonly, you got 3a. There were raid tokens. Small clans would kill basic bosses, sell tokens to bigger clans for so those could kill epic bosses, sell raid jewels to general population if they willed. There were various money sinks (augmentations, enchant chance check, prophecy potions) This is economy. Demand -> Production -> Use -> Demand -> Production -> Use. I played the server for 2 years and nobody complained about the mechanic. State? Maybe. Things become old. All technicalities aside - economy is only bad when there is too much adena. InfiniteL2 never had too much adena. But yeah. You don't need to spend months of coding and testing and making sht like AION for whatever reason. There is nothing to fight for? Yeah, if you make it so. Shards of destiny opened. Was open world - everything could be captured. It was a fresh faction concept. But owned land had no purpose. So there was nothing to fight for. So don't spout sht like there is nothing to fight for and economy is bad because your experience of faction servers is more sour than vinegar.

Faction server would be a good base. But if it's like a first person shooter with rooms where you drop-in drop-out of matches/fights on demand it will be boring. Twats who say faction server has no challenge are clueless folk who play some dead shitt AngelVSDemons clone for 3 hours where people whine as soon as you duo with a healer. You knowing java is cool but its not enough. The game needs incentive - there is no REASON to play. There is no competition. Competition is why this game is played. Competition can be in many forms. On low rates competition is getting high level first, getting best gear, castles, doing raidbosses. Once this is done only few other forms of competition exist - getting high enchanted gear, artificially extended because of chance of failure, zone control, for whatever that's worth (helping clan mates become better). After that low rates die. On high rates it is reduced to heroes. Cos lvling is pointless. Castles mean nothing cos everything comes cheap and the economy is -beep-ed. To be blunt - there is so much detail that saying yes or no is hard. Yes Faction server is a good IDEA and good BEGINNING. No I am not convinced you can pull it off. There are details regarding - accumulation of currency (method, amount) VS spending to maintain a stable and controlled economy; existence of ingame property that players can own, benefit from and feel the need to acquire and compete over; to follow the previous point - reason for conflict and combat; other ways to lead conflict apart from direct combat (blocking teleportation and rerouting enemies, churning out finances of your enemies, controlling the market, information filtering) so that all can participate in conflict not just people who are good at combat. These are only the main features you would need to consider for a healthy faction server, or else you will end up like GvE wiping every 2 months and eventually like infinitel2 - shut down. Voted yes in hopes you might be inspired. If you have trouble picturing any of this, check out DUST514 and EVE mechanics.

What do you expect? What do you want? C2-C3 back? You want 1000 players in one server? Big clans to go raid epic bosses? Do you know what people have to go through? lvl 1 starting area, grind to level 12 -> RoD to 20+ -> some other farm zone, etc etc. All the time same thing. Grind, spoil, craft, fail, spoil, grind, craft low grade gear for 5 hours of gameplay, then destroy. Are you willing to play on something new? Because when someone creates a unique server everyone flames and says they don't know what L2 is about.lol. All the people that have brains left L2 because it is 1) repetitve 2) Low skill ceiling 3) rock paper scissors balance 4) No incentive. Get item -> forget all problems. There is no constant need of items in general. There is just a single particular goal - get best items. First to get there owns all people who are slower. When more people get same items people leave. To get people to play seriously there have to be changes to fundamental mechanics of the game. Why have lvling? You didnt have enough of lvling in 10 years? Do you need lvl 1-78? Is there a point to doing all the quests again? Why can I just craft top gear enchant it to +6 and forget about getting gear all together? But before that, you cannot do anything at all. If you try to PVP it will suck. Because gear makes a big difference. Unless you are herp derp. Or play a weak class. Which brings to another point. Class balance. You try to change skills - people go "lol noob no retail balance". Make retail balance people say - "Lol balance bad". Welcome to L2 2008-2013. Its not that people have different opinions. It's just people are not open to new things. If someone made something new I bet people wouldn't care what there was 10 years ago. Old game is old. Play same servers if you want. I remember when a friend of mine would play low rates. He would farm daily just to craft all gear, get to lvl 78-80, PvP about 4 hours total throughout a week, quit, move to other server. I was playing Ininitel2 and had PvP 24/7 whilst casually working towards better gear, working in a team with different clans and parties. Don't need C2-C3, interlude, c4, gracia final, low rate, stack sub, rebirth or any that shit to have a good server.

To bad all the effort went onto a gamble hoping that old hardcore players will come back... Wake up. You need one server that is fresh and offers something NEW new not OLD new that can collect a big amount of players from all the small servers. This is literally a few config file changes away from 200 other servers. Why do people choose to ignore the reality and just waste time. You srsly have nothing else to do than setting up copy paste servers?

Loads of logical remarks Fairly concise. But why go with Con dyes in Party and STR/dex in solo? In Parties you have healers, and you are the last target to get attacked. So HP is less useful than having more skill crit chance (armor crush crits+fatalstrike is heavy damage) and some attack speed and speed (despite 2 rushes, l2j has weird path finding and there can be lag when recovering from animations). In solo PvP on the other hand, you want to survive longer... Nevertheless I always go +str on any character that has skills that can crit.

Dem lel people that are like "HEY I REMEMBER WHEN THE GAME WAS POPULAR AND HAD LOADS OF PLAYERS AND IT WAS FUN TO PLAY BECAUSE THIS GAME WAS DESIGNED TO BE PLAYED BY LOADS OF PLAYERS TO SIMULATE A VARIETY OF SOCIAL STANDARDS AND MOTIONS - THAT MUST HAVE BEEN THE BEST CHRONICLE, WHY DID DEVS MAKE UPDATES OMG". Funny guys. I started playing since C4. For raw potential - H5 for me. Excitement factor? CT1 and 1.5 hellbound. It was like New NEW. New race, new items, new locations with interesting places to find, see, explore. New concepts. Sure it wasn't so balanced or good but it was great.

There is a new starter pack you can earn if you are a new player or make a new account. http://www.gamecoach.tv/en/register/blacklight-retribution You create an account there and you should get a couple of Premade items, weapon parts, gear items. It's a generous offer if you are new!

Dafuq? DDOS before live?? Some people have to much time on their hands... And thats coming from me!

So, what of this is new?

Nope. Cos it's still not original. Not because you propose to add in LoL elements, but because most of that is just one form or the other of what has been added to server years ago. To make a fresh server you need loads of rework. Now, at this point, everyone replies "I KNOW LOL, I CAN DO IT!". Well 'kay. Go ahead. Just know that adding custom items, new level system, quests, skills is not rework. L2 was about virtual-social interaction, drama, politics, economy. Combat was driven by these ambitions. I don't want high rate with 99kkk adena and full S grade for clicking 1 button. I just don't want to level up 90 numbers before I can get to the "actual game".

Has to be saved server side per account. That way you can login on another computer with their local client and still have YOUR controls.

Could you at least pop in and tell us if you are alive Midnex?

Logic. Beta isn't early access or a demo.

Ok. To put it blunt - L2 is old here. There is that part about having access to an easily configurable source code that is also why EU servers suck, but you cannot deny that L2 is simply more popular in RU than EU. I bet my left ball that if you or I ever looked at the source RU servers use and L2j, you and I would only find similarities. A capable dev would perhaps show some appraisal, but for you and me it would make no difference. To conclude: + Files - empty argument. Drop it. Are you a dev? If yes, I'll take your word. Maybe. If I cared. + Homemade servers - give it time, it's cancer after all. Will hit RU community like a brick. Will be fun to watch. + Budget - It's first and foremost a business. Which isn't profitable here. Like a said, its not RU vs EU. They are one and the same, just in different phases. EU is just past it's glory stage. Way past. Cos its been a long time. Stuff doesn't last forever. RF online is officially shut down in korea. But I believe someone picked up the right for in Europe.

xD Still think there is something to discover? This game launched 2003, was it not? When did 4game open Russian L2 servers? Something like several years ago. My point is, you can watch a good good movie once, twice, thrice, but eventually, you just realize it is drawn out. You become sick of it. And even if you love it with passion, you just want to barf if you watch it again. That's why EU servers have low population - we outplayed the game long ago, the entirety of EU community is a only a fraction of any of those servers. I'm sick and tired of seeing the same old thing I just stopped bothering; there is no "true" essence of L2 - people who say there is are lying to themselves. Just lunatics who want to go back to 2003. Which is why EU server will continue to suck, cos no one will take up arms to do something interesting. And by interesting I don't mean a 20000$ spent on configuring a 10x server with a flashy website with all quests and locs and drops and formulas. That's not interesting. I also don't see a point to divide and compare EU and RU servers. It's not like all RU servers are strictly good. It's just that you don't see the bad ones. Come back 3 years later, will be same story as it is here. All it is is just people using an open source made to be easily configurable, and other people who do stuff on their own. It's not EU vs RU. EDIT: Agree with Yarobi. Another thing - trying to make better servers than Russians in EU environment is stupid. It's like bringing Anime full scale to America - its gonna be butchered and pissed on. Instead - have your own thing.