Mate you are 110% right on this. I too am a returning player weeks ago. I got stuck into the game due to some improvements. well lets say UI functional improvements. I started grinding with advice from my friend. Phantasmal Ridge was going well Untiiiiiiiiiiiiil yep they nerfed our dmg. I was saying "what hell" i've never seen L2 change dmg meters like this back in the day well not by this huge margin. I was grinding white colored mobs well 3 or 4 hits and they were dead. Now it takes nearly more than 10 hits on green mobs, 4 to 5 hit with power buffs running for short time. But the majority of the time it's a disgrace. Green colored mobs are now equivalent to dark red mobs ages ago.
After further testing I bought the packs and enchants to boost the dmg on my character. Yep that kinda brought some damage back but not all. And i mean not all maybe half to less than half. I was testing this on 3 accounts and it's surely not something I am doing wrong. They are obviously forcing people to spend real money to buy packs to get their damage back. This is manipulation. Always changing the goals based on real money. I had to hit the brakes and now I am saying i dont care anymore i'm gonna run the game on empty no matter how long it takes and when i run out of gas i will stop.
The developer or GM is not following through with customer complaints to stop this manipulation. It is truly obvious now and it's stupidly ridiculous that this is not L2 anymore but just an online gambling platform. It's created to a level where enjoyment/reward is nullified to force you or your greed ego to get more powerful by spending more and more of real life money whilst they continue to move the goal posts like our current politicians doing with lockdowns.
Be warned, if your looking for enjoyment for your hard and fare efforts this is not the game. They keep saying we have to do something about stopping real life botters for gold. Yeah right but whilst they say they are doing that they are running their real life money making botting from us in the shadows.
