Why Do You Continue Playing?

[Epiquin]

I think this is an important subject, considering how old this game is.

 

MMORPGs have become notorious for being games, that, on the face of it, are just fetch-quests and monster mashing. Character strength disparity due to  levels, gear, "upgrades" and sometimes donations have proliferated at a huge pace until recently the media has been stating that the MMO genre is actually dying.

 

L2 doesn't have much player skill error margins. Usually a fight was won and lostby who failed which debuff, who didn't get the crits necessary to win the DPS exchange, loads of random variables and more.

 

History has demonstrated that "high-rate" PvP servers are difficult to sustain because they have poor player retention. It used to be that there was a demand for a version of L2 that was stripped from the "leveling up/gearing up" ritual and focused solely on combat, as a means to test player skill and inspire sportsmanship (which translated to the popularity of Olympiad and Events). Until somewhat less recently players have been commenting that "there is not much to do on a PvP server". Which is odd, because there isn't much to do in a majority of PvP centric games, but people still play them.

 

To draw a parallel, compare High rate PvP servers to popular shooters. Both offer flexible drop-in / drop-out gameplay where you can join and leave at your leisure. Both offer the majority of the content with no time barriers (such as leveling up / gearing up). The difference is that shooters offer a large margin of error for opponents to exploit - trickery, strategy and skill are rampant. L2 remains a numbers game. In the former case there is always room for personal improvement. In the latter, I think our perception of the game grew and matured to the point where we could easily see who would win. 

 

On low, mid (and to lesser extent high) rate server, politics and drama have dried out with the growing witch-hunt to stamp out all possible ways to grief, spy, scam and steal. Game has become very stale.

 

There have also been different opinions in regards to the format of PvP servers. Some say grind first PvP later is better for "reputation". Others prefer grind as a you PvP (rewards for success).

 

It would appear L2 doesn't have much going for it, because despite the popular attempts at removing "all bad mechanics", little effort was put into adding "good mechanics", which was even met with resistance, since apparently "custom is bad" notion is also very popular. 

 

 

So, if you play, what part of L2 do you find fun?

Social involvement of raiding /attack type raidbosses?

Olympiad? ( Cos playing an MMO solo makes loads of sense :P ).

Do you PK enough or are people as risk averse as a high-school cheerleader laying still in bed out of pity and never fight back?

Edited October 14, 2015 by Epiquin

[MrPro*]

Why i play Lineage 2 :

I fucking love olympiad !
I love to have my mates and join togheter in any server and have plenty of fun and drama ( when we lose a pvp or raid boss ) [ mostly pvp server no custom ]
and of course because it is my first MMO ! 

[*real*savormix]

I don't play Lineage II.

 

Is that a good answer?

[Epiquin]

I don't play Lineage II.

Is that a good answer?

YOUR OPINION IS VERY MUCH APPRECIATED AND WE CARE DEEPLY ABOUT YOUR CONCERNS

 

beep

[ZaNteR]

The only reason i gave up playing was that the community is a bunch of entitled kids nowadays.

 

The game and gameplay still exites me as much as the first day but if you have people crying all the time for the littlest thing then the experience becomes shitty.

[Solomun]

The problem with lineage nowadays....Lets see. In old and good times in lineage, people was farming farming items, to make pvp and get a reputation into server. Nowdays, people, i dont know why, they want to make pvp in order to make items...When they make the items, they say boring server and they leave. Pvp servers getting ruined from community, they all ask the same items with other pvp servers.. The result, all pvp servers are the same (almost) and then people say that none of them has special features....Community and the easyness of creating a server ruined the lineage. Personally, i might play 1-2h per week into skirmish, just for olympiad....

[Epiquin]

.Lets see. In old and good times in lineage, people was farming farming items, to make pvp and get a reputation into server. Nowdays, people, i dont know why, they want to make pvp in order to make items...When they make the items, they say boring server and they leave.

I don't see how these relate.

 

If people have to farm first then PvP later, the risk of them saying the server is boring after they get the items is still there. It's not like farming for 1-2 days or even a week suddenly makes PvP any better. 

It's "Lean" gameplay - you streamline the entry barrier for PvP by removing the typical ritual of having to farm gear.

Other nuances with "farm first PvP later" scheme are:

1) People start at different times. People who start first might establish an opinion that the server/balance/PvP sucks, and start leaving, or badmouthing the server. People who start later, will hear this and lose confidence. The problem here is that the latter might only be in the process of attaining gear and would have lost time grinding for it without actually using it.

2) Grinding is monotonous. If it's a PvP server, it's intuitive to assume that the focus will revolve around fighting other people. Grinding for gear just detracts from this.

3) Enchantment is random and gives people random entry barriers. Someone might take a day to enchant items because they are lucky and someone else ends up doing it for weeks.

 

It sounds like if people complain that they got all the items and there is nothing to do, then they didn't come to PvP, but came to farm. Then the server is probably just not for them.

This means the error is not in developer design, but in the player's decision.

 

If people want to PvP for reputation, why is farm such an important aspect? Just log onto an instant PvP server, beat everyone and make a "reputation" for yourself.

Think the obvious misinformation here is that simply beating opponents in PvP doesn't make a reputation. If the server focuses on PvP alone then doing something everyone else is doing is not very reputable... Ergo fighting for reputation on a PvP server is just a delusion... More so when the outcome of a fight is determined by all the random crap like crits, debuff success/fail, etc...

Edited October 16, 2015 by Epiquin

[*real*savormix]

all the random crap like crits, debuff success/fail, etc...

AS I mentioned in the other threads, L2 is designed for massive player interactions, e.g. full scale clan wars, castle/fort siege battles, etc. All the random crap does not matter if you die in less than a second when focused (UD and similar things do not matter in these battles, since you simply cannot soak the damage you are getting – though all the recent additions of 30 sec invincibility do help with getting different role chars into useful positions – it was not possible before), so battle tactics actually play a role in victory/loss.

 

The whole grinding part in Lineage II is there to allow solo and other casual players (incl. merchants) to have what to do and the means to make a reputation, for example if they prefer a controlled environment (max party vs party) in player interactions.

 

Unfortunately, for duels (*cough*Olympiad*cough*), having totally unpredictable damage output is a terrible design choice. This means that Olympiad results always were, and still are, purely based on player's luck. Competitive games generally do not allow such huge leeway, even though the random effects seep like poison into more and more "skill" based games (L2 never was one of these, just for the record).

[Epiquin]

AS I mentioned in the other threads, L2 is designed for massive player interactions, e.g. full scale clan wars, castle/fort siege battles, etc. All the random crap does not matter if you die in less than a second when focused (UD and similar things do not matter in these battles, since you simply cannot soak the damage you are getting – though all the recent additions of 30 sec invincibility do help with getting different role chars into useful positions – it was not possible before), so battle tactics actually play a role in victory/loss.

 

The whole grinding part in Lineage II is there to allow solo and other casual players (incl. merchants) to have what to do and the means to make a reputation, for example if they prefer a controlled environment (max party vs party) in player interactions.

I don't understand the point of your statement. Nothing what you said is exactly news.

 

None of this demonstrates that uncertainty is mandatory.

If in mass scale PvP uncertainty is not a deciding factor due to close-to-instant death, then 100% certainty wouldn't be a deciding factor either, for the same reason.

It's just a byproduct of archaic design. Koreans like all the luck jibba jabba and to blame it all on destiny or karma nonsense.

 

On the flip side, it is an easier design. After all, if you went with 100% certainty then who and how decides how long things like stun should last to keep it balanced? Same people who "calculated" how much excess HP a melee class should have in order to compensate them for the lack of range that the kiters get? 

Edited October 16, 2015 by Epiquin

[Madheisen]

I play because Lineage II for me it's like Candy Crush, it wastes my time and makes me even more bored.

[Fortuna]

AS I mentioned in the other threads, L2 is designed for massive player interactions, e.g. full scale clan wars, castle/fort siege battles, etc. All the random crap does not matter if you die in less than a second when focused (UD and similar things do not matter in these battles, since you simply cannot soak the damage you are getting – though all the recent additions of 30 sec invincibility do help with getting different role chars into useful positions – it was not possible before), so battle tactics actually play a role in victory/loss.

 

The whole grinding part in Lineage II is there to allow solo and other casual players (incl. merchants) to have what to do and the means to make a reputation, for example if they prefer a controlled environment (max party vs party) in player interactions.

 

Unfortunately, for duels (*cough*Olympiad*cough*), having totally unpredictable damage output is a terrible design choice. This means that Olympiad results always were, and still are, purely based on player's luck. Competitive games generally do not allow such huge leeway, even though the random effects seep like poison into more and more "skill" based games (L2 never was one of these, just for the record).

 

 

Amen

 

 

I don't understand the point of your statement. Nothing what you said is exactly news.

 

None of this demonstrates that uncertainty is mandatory.

If in mass scale PvP uncertainty is not a deciding factor due to close-to-instant death, then 100% certainty wouldn't be a deciding factor either, for the same reason.

It's just a byproduct of archaic design. Koreans like all the luck jibba jabba and to blame it all on destiny or karma nonsense.

 

On the flip side, it is an easier design. After all, if you went with 100% certainty then who and how decides how long things like stun should last to keep it balanced? Same people who "calculated" how much excess HP a melee class should have in order to compensate them for the lack of range that the kiters get?

 

 

Well, he didn't say that randomness is good, just that it doesn't have as much influence in large scale fights. It does however have a huge impact on small pvps. As he mentioned, it's one of the worst aspects of Olympiad, which at first seemed like a great idea with lots of potential, but turned out to be a flop, because of its poor presentation in the game.

Edited October 17, 2015 by Fortuna