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By TheDarknessFear · Posted
People and their problems mate, don't worry! Attitude isn't the only problem in this situation. I sense more issues, but what can you do? -
Here is the source code for the interface from client p520 (with comments next to Korean debug logs) https://www.mediafire.com/file/bhiom1h8m62zqep/interface_p520.zip/file If anyone wants the source for another client, drop a comment with your discord and I will add you. -
Well old L2 players have kids in theres days and youngsters sometimes playing too, but main community 30+ you right 👍 -
By gertrudeparker · Posted
This is so amazing. Thanks for sharing it. -
I recently found a facebook group of Greek Lineage 2 players, which gave me insight on what players really want from a server and why they can't find it nowadays. We've all seen players praise the "old era" and how old servers were better, while nowadays they can't find a "decent" server to play. Most 30+ years old players, are hoping from server to server, staying for two weaks, not getting the thrill they used to get and move to the next one. After that, they blame the GM corruption, the superdonators, the setup, the money hungry admins, the auto-farm, adrenaline, the fakebots and god knows what else. Then two days later, they proceed to post screenshots they surprisingly kept from twenty years ago, from a "great" server they played in their youth with friends and clan and proceed to ponder on why the old days cant come back due to todays servers being terrible. Now here's a hard truth. The screenshots don't agree on a single or a dozen of "great" servers from the past. The screenshots the players so religiously kept as holy artifacts for so many years in their hard-drive, are from a variety of servers. Stable, moneygrabs, lowrates, highrates, customs, vanillas, bot-protected, bot-allowed and generally any type of server you can imagine. What this tells us is three things: 1) Players DID have fun. The would not keep these screenshots for so many years if they didnt think them a precious proof of the fun they had when they were young. 2) It was never the server. I've seen screenshots of players playing in lowly populated, crappy, full of exploits code servers, but they had the greatest time of their life. 3) They can't find the fun today. But the servers have gotten better, not worse, quality has gone up in general even if there are more servers. So we end up with hundreds of veterans telling stories in a facebook group while waiting for the next great server to kick that itch in them, which usually never arrives. Why, I told to myself. How can these players boast that 15 years ago, they stayed at antharas lair bridge for 12 hours straight hunting Pitans, to get 3% of EXP and then come boast about it ? Why spamming clicks and F1 for 12 hours was fun then and not fun today ? I believe the answer is challenge and validation. The 15 years old did something that for his age and standards and his small view of the world was challenging. And there were people around, in his party, or in his clan to validate it. The community knows, it knows that it happened cause his friends can validate it, his clan could see it. The community today is gone though, the old friends scattered and who validates it ? A screenshot. A screenshot that says that "it happened" and a screenshot that shows the team standing right there, with our hero, a proof that people saw it. So the players exist. But we just can't seem to get them to spend the three hours of free time they have after tucking the kids in bed, in our server. We can't seem to give them the enjoyment they were having 15 years ago, which they proudly post daily in facebook and reading other player stories for three hours in facebook instead of playing the game. They will donate though. But that pricy donation of their hard earned money doesnt keep them online. They still crawl back to facebook or hop on to another server that opened last week. I believe we are in uncharted waters. Its the first time in history, we are dealing with the veteran MMO adult who is no more at his gaming prime, and no game theory or game psychologist has cracked this riddle. A couple of scientific papers believe that the 15 years old brain was still learning, still underdeveloped and memories made during development are the ones that stick, the ones that produce the more dopamine. It does have some value I believe. They also claim that a teenager or young man who has not yet explored and understood the vastness of the world, is going to get hooked easier in a vast open world game that craves for his exploration and discovery. They do seem valid points. And if they are taken for granded, they can explain perfectly why veterans can't find that old lost joy again in any server they try nowadays. It's not the servers that changed, its them. They have gone through adulthood and you only go through this only once. So if these theories stand 100%, then the situation is irreversible, nothing can happen. But are these theories correct ? I did believe so for long. But then I joined another facebook group. One with adult greek men discussing their military years (it's mandatory in Greece to enlist to the military). And they were telling stories and posting screenshots from military exercises, the friends they made there, a cold night patrol of the biggest military camps, riding on a Leopard II tank and many more. Now ... where have I seen this familiar behavior, did I tell to myself ? Well, in Lineage 2 facebook group. So the scientific claim is invalidated. If the 20+ years old can find the same amusement in a 2 hour EXP and adena grind, the same way he found amusement on a 3 hour boring sleepless patrol at military and have the patience to screenshot them both and keep them for so many years, then the theory is wrong. And keep in mind, the 30+ years old player, doesn't want to grind for 3 hours again at Pitan Bridge, thus auto-farm. Neither does he want to go to the army again. The brain has not aged, it has not lost its hunger for something memorable, it simply won't want to repeat something that is challening no more and won't want to repeat it if there's noone around to validate that it happened. What we are missing in modern Lineage 2 is twofold then: A challenging environment and a community to validate it. This challenge can't be time-oriented. It would be unfair. The 30+ years old has no time to spend grinding for hours to gain the recognition as a teenager can do. Besides this challenge has been eaten alive by bots. Getting 3% of EXP on a winter night, is something a bot can do, it proves no achievement, it deserves no validation. Years ago, not having spent 12 hours grinding but having the time to do it, was the challenge. And your friend who was with you in that party helping wtih the buffs and the heals, was the one that can prove it happened. With his words then, with his presence in your screenshot nowadays. Yet what server owners have failed to do consistently nowadays is find challenges for 30+ years old servers. They keep providing a product made for the millenial teenager who now has transformed to someone else. And what's hilarious is they find pride in it, pride in giving players a lowrate vanilla, hard-farming server. This quest is gone guys, done. The modern player has done this hundreds of times, he has proven to everyone but most importantly to HIMSELF, that he can do it. This is no challenge anymore, this is a chore. So how do we challenge the modern adult time-limited player ? I really dont know. Had I known, I'd make a server. I made one for myself. I filled it with many advanced custom features, with a full alive AI / LLM fake player population that makes clans, wars, pvp, team activities. But it didnt work. I played it, nothing felt as it should. But I have some principles I believe must stand in order for this to be achievable: The player must be challenged, period. The game must be difficult, not through repetition though. The challenge nowadays is not the teenager being able to play for 12 hours, skipping school, hidding it from mom, in order to get his "first money", his 3% EXP, his 100.000 Adena and his first doom plate armor. The adult has done this countless of times, with his job, his salary, his newly bought car. Others should be there to see it and talk about it. It's not enough to buy a great car if you dont have relatives talking about it, or putting your girlfriend in it, or driving it for others to see, or going to a trip with it. We must find a way to make people talk about it. Same way people talk about DVP twenty years after that dramatic story. Maybe we need to reward the spread of social info, who knows. What all the veteran screenshots say is that "here I was, here I did it, here they saw it", my friends, my party, my clan, the enemies. And since they saw it, it happened, its socially proofed. I hope I did not bore you and that this serves as a prelude to more creative people who can crack the riddle of the modern Lineage 2 veteran, who's still around, still talking, still hungry to fight. Cause it's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight, but somewhere in this past decade, we turned him into a kitty with no might.
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