In Response to Recent Player Feedback

[Conguero]

We’ve gathered some common feedback, questions, and suggestions we’ve been seeing from players recently, including in response to the Salvation feedback poll conducted in January, and pulled out a couple of overarching topics we’d like to address here. There are obviously several other topics that the community wants to see discussed and we plan to continue to follow up with you. We’re regularly reading and considering your feedback, and appreciate you sharing it with us!

L2 Store Promotions

A common criticism we see from you relates to L2 Store promotions. While the base Lineage II experience is free-to-play, you can choose to speed up character advancement with items purchased on the store. We’re taking steps to improve how events and promotions are rolled out to players, with a more consistent rotation of free in-game events—such as the recent Oriana’s Lucky Draw event—that give players opportunities to obtain powerful items that are ordinarily found more rarely in RNG boxes.

In addition to integrating more free events, we plan to better space out store promotions of new items so as not to overwhelm players who choose to spend. For instance, looking back at the recent three-month lineup of Circlets of Power, Zodiac Agathions, and Ancient Kingdom Cloaks offered on the store, we acknowledge that this an aggressive schedule. Store promotions will continue to be a regular feature of Lineage II, but we want to be more careful to rotate recurring promotions with those that introduce new items. And with free in-game events blended into a more consistent cadence, we feel that it’ll bring balance to the overall promotion schedule.

We’re always evaluating how shop items or upgrade materials are obtained, as well as how players are responding to the latest promotions and events. We of course want these promotions to be successful, and it’s important that you feel justified when investing in any significant character improvement efforts.

EXP Gains

We know some of you are anxious to further your character’s advancement in Lineage II, and something we see commonly is a desire to more easily progress past Lv. 105. Because there isn’t content to support an increased level cap, climbing past 105 is currently designed to be intentionally challenging. Ultimately we want to ensure that dedicated players are able to reach Lv. 105 if they haven’t already, and the Heine Fishing Expedition and bonus EXP Server Setting are frequently enabled to help players accomplish this goal. For those of you who want to climb beyond Lv. 105, that day will come!

There are also a decent number of players who pay attention to the Korean version of the game and have requested the speedy 1–85 alt advancement system that they’ve added. We’re considering ways to bring this to the North American version, but don’t have specific plans to announce at this time.

Keep it Coming!

By no means is this post intended to provide the final word on these subjects, and we hope to continue the dialog with you on additional topics as well. It’s understandable that some changes may feel slow to come, but we also want you to know that we’re committed to continuing to work to do what’s best for the game and its community. With that in mind, we plan to share our Lineage II Roadmap for the remainder of 2018 with you soon.

On a final note, in the near future anyone who has at least one Lv. 85+ character on your account will be emailed a survey that will help us report additional feedback to the development team. You should make sure you’re opted in to receive emails from NCSOFT via your account settings and complete the survey. We’d appreciate it!

Cheers,

The Lineage II Team

[BornInHell]

The problem with L2 store has nothing to do with the schedule of P2W events, but rather with the price/volume/success ratio of each event bundle. If you were to lower prices by 30-50% moderate spenders would have a better chance of getting good gear, meanwhile, big spenders like myself would enjoy a higher volume transactions for the same total.

 

P.S. We hope you guys won't introduce dragon weapon fragments the way Innova did in L2store, but rather just introduce dragon shirts with solely shirt scrolls the way korean and japan did.  

[jaGerX]

The price of the items also wouldnt be a concern if it was less RNG. Innova has brooch gems that can be bought from mammon and purchasing gems from their L2 Store allows players to pay a slightly higher price per gem but select the gems they want. This alone would be a major source of income for NCWest.. Players would be more inclined to buying 100 rubies than a 100 random pack. The return would be greater for you as well. Innova charges ~35 cents for a specific gem box instead of the 20 cents for a random box that it would average out to for the large random pack. The Euro is still currently a stronger currency than the USD as well so it doesnt make much sense.

The 105 wall is also starting to really affect the player base that spends significantly on these p2w items. Zaken players a server that was shut down almost a year ago and was only introduced two years ago has a major player base that is 105. Chronos where we were merged to already had players quitting because they had been 105/105 for a year.

We need things to do, the way the game is going is that people are quitting due to lack of things to do. They cannot progress their character anymore other than the new p2w items that are brought every couple months. So they login to spend money and then sit there and look at it. The only thing to do with it is PvP but that is dying in the game at a drastic rate. I am sure that if you ran stats against the specific items bought out of the store you would see a drop in daily, weekly, monthly rune purchases. And I would bet this is why the cost of the p2w items has been slowly rising. The first brooch gem event in ~2013/2014 was signficantly less for the top pack than the most recent flash sale. It used to be "what can $100 get me" because that was the top pack. Now the top packs are going for $150-200 each event. I am sure this is because your business analytics team found a drop an overall loss and it is likely traced to XP rune sales.

To fix this wall it would simply be to apply the patch that Korea has with the new XP tables... Even without the most recent zone additions from Korea we could level to 107 with the zones that we have. Superion and Shadow of the MOther Tree ares meant to deliver good xp till 107. 

Even more concerning is going to be income for clans and players when we finally get the water dragon patch that korea just got. Anakim and Lilith are 110 level raids and we will no longer be able to do those here in NCWest. So why not give us the proper XP table.

The argument for not giving us the Korean XP table the first time was something along the lines of "Korean Lineage 2 received this because there was a lack of hunting zones to progress past 105" but the XP table was never reverted back when they got the new zones which by the way are the zones we have today. The second argument after that was quickly disproven was that you all did not want to dismember the community by creating an even greater gap in levels from the F2P players. Well since that argument it has been just over a year, there have been a years worth of every other month XP boost events and more new zones. With a 7 day 200% XP rune you can get a new toon to 103 within a few days.. If you have people to help you level you can get to 105 in 1 month of XP with boosts and instances. So how is this still an argument that you are bringing to light. The "dedicated player base" as you call it is shrinking because you are not doing anything with the game other than adding items to the store for them to have to purchase to stay on top but then not do anything with. 

What seems very apparent is that the staff running lineage 2 is being repurposed elsewhere and furthering the decline of NCWest. You posted that poll in January and we are now in April and this is our first response. The response also is quiet vague and thanks for your input, changes are coming but sit tight. Its almost as if NCWest is practicing a presidential campaign.

[Argus]

Good evening, 

Good to see this post, I answered to all the questions and shared my suggestions today morning while having my coffee! Many of you already know, I am getting fired up sometimes, because I really love the game. With that said, I really hope we are on the path of Lineage's bright future. 

I will repeat my self again and again, but this is something truly important to many fellow players and I am sure they will agree with me!!! 

We have no Mid to High Tier pve/pve, in my opinion this is the main problem. L2Store prices are too high, many players choose not to spend and simply leave the game. Many of the old players are coming back here and they are not used to the L2Store. I am sure you have all kinds of statistics and numbers about the profit you make etc etc.. but this is not enough. Prices should be lower in order for "Normal Players" to be competitive both in pve and pvp. I believe some promos should be significantly cheaper probably 50% or even 75%, depends on the promo. depends on the promo Pack. This may sound a bit too much, but think logically, we need a strong, active community here, a healthy environment, where people can gear up and have fun while playing. Big spenders will always get top gear, you all know that, I am sure some of them will keep spending the same as now or even more, because of the Casino factor, the lottery factor! A lot of players enjoy playing the casino in L2! 

There are many other changes required, some small some big, but if you desire you can fix the game, because today 05.04.2018, most of the people do not like what they play! 

 

[BurnCycle]

Glad to see this post.

I've noticed that you didn't mention the major plague of our servers right now, the script use ingame. Find it strange that such a big issue is not mentioned in a post like this.

About the L2Store promotions, the biggest issue with this promotions is that they flood the market with items that really don't have a way to remove the excess of it. We do need some sort of item sink, (in korea they have a way to convert all jewelry into items to improve the jewelry, same for consumables, they had the armor upgrade system) to keep l2store promotions interesting.

In the past we had posts like this by the GMs/Devs that ended up doing nothing due to the lack of power of the US NCSoft side. Hope this one is different.

[4Eva]

11 minutes ago, BornInHell said:

The problem with L2 store has nothing to do with the schedule of P2W events, but rather with the price/volume/success ratio of each event bundle. If you were to lower prices by 30-50% moderate spenders would have a better chance of getting good gear, meanwhile, big spenders like myself would enjoy a higher volume transactions for the same total.

 

P.S. We hope you guys won't introduce dragon weapon fragments the way Innova did in L2store, but rather just introduce dragon shirts with solely shirt scrolls the way korean and japan did.  

Like BornInHell, I too spend a good amount in the the L2Store, but understandably, at a certain point, it really feels designed to milk every cent you can from us. We're not forced to buy in, but if we don't buy in, then we get left behind in terms of end game. Obviously we would have higher prices than Innova or KR, duo to economic factors. (More money to spend) However, folks in this game are shelling out in total, I'd imagine well in excess of $20k across chronos alone in JUST in this past jewel/gem 'event', not to mention the cloak events, the circlet event prior, NCWest has generated huge profits from these events, as there just turn it on and go 'events'.

What do we see from the players on this forum? No direct GM interaction on servers, still outstanding bug fixes from Salvation patch, poor translations throughout the game, 3rd party programs beginning to re-emerge, poor customer support in the form of vague/misleading ticket responses, in-game gold sellers still present; we're certainly not just paying to keep the lights on and the servers powered up, the money seems wasted or re-purposed for other games if its not being used to better THIS game, the game that generated those monies.

Been playing since Interlude, I'll be here til its shutdown for good. Just remember; there's real people playing the game, we're not statistics or investment potential, please see us more as a community and less as dollar signs in the future.

[Oeste]

With that in mind, we plan to share our Lineage II Roadmap for the remainder of 2018 with you soon.

This would be great to see and a huge step in the right direction, however something most be done with the L2 Store & promos urgently, (as in not soon but now!), the lineup is stale and does not match the player base needs in many ways, (just look at the contents of the packages), and the costs are way too high. Fix that asap and you'll see thing starting to improve a bit while you work on the rest.

 

[Infami]

Thank you for taking the time to respond to the community, and I think a better spread of heavy P2W events, to free ones would be huge for the community, but echoing my fellow players above, I hope stronger changes are implemented in the cost structure of events, ESPECIALLY regarding brooch jewels, which sees a disproportionate range of issues compared to every other event item. (Every other event features 3-5 items, with much narrower purpose than the 13? Brooch jewels you get at random, unable to trade until level 5, with disgusting enchant rates). There also hasn’t been a SINGLE shirt event since I came back to the game, and at the higher level game play, missing an entire top end item is crippling (PLEASE don’t put dragon weapons as an event reward). I hope NCWest continues to make positive changes in accessibility to high end gear to drastically improve the competitive process in the game. Lastly, this latest free2win event should include some top end items (imagine being some noob under geared and having a +16 weapon dropped on you, or +18 cloak) would be great, not just low/mid level items.

Thanks

[Wildgrow]

I would not buy anything from l2store until xp table 99-103 lowered. I need free players to play with and there are not much around these days. Hope you did not close shop before finally realize the xp table is too much for working people even with all items in l2store been bought.

[Draecke]

so who did all receive that survey email this week ? was that send to all players that subscribed to newsletter or ?

just curious was in it as I didn't receive it on any of my accounts and I've been hearing a few things but nothing concrete

[Alaesia]

So much text about more or less important thing... But nothing about merge freya and naia. There is also some topics that players want this to happen. So any official statment? What for we have to spend any cent if there is no ppl to fight at all. This game is build to interact with players, but there is not possible when they just dont exist. 

[Syndra]

The XP table is to hard from 99 to 105. We are stuck at level 102 - 103 for years. You should check the insane amount of mobs you have to kill to reach the top level. It's insane and yes this is even with 24\7 macro. Then wondering why players are leaving? Nobody want to spend 10.000 usd to level from 99 to 105 by fishing. They spend 50 euro a month. We have family and montly bills to pay. If you don't accept this, servers go empty. I agree with many posts above. Focus on the many not the few. Many of us have a normal life and just enjoy this wonderfull game. Just remove those walls they are useless and make players exit the game..

[Methodical]

@Conguero I gladly appreciate this statement and im +1 on all of this!

looking forward into materialization of this, in my opinion, lets call it a positive macro-plan.

thnx

 

[DominoD]

Wow, so that survey wasn't a joke. I liked the end where they included answers such as: "I use bot myself, but I wish I didn't have to" ROFL

WP

[Lawman]

Thank you for the response.  It's good to know someone is listening.  However, it astounds me that you did not address illegal use of third party software (pvp scripts, bot programs, etc.).  Scripts are routinely used for pvp and NCSoft does not show the slightest sign of doing anything about it.  Please develop ways of detecting these scripts and perma-ban all who are using them.  This game will not be playable until the dishonest players are eliminated.

[Draecke]

5 hours ago, Conguero said:

On a final note, in the near future anyone who has at least one Lv. 85+ character on your account will be emailed a survey that will help us report additional feedback to the development team. You should make sure you’re opted in to receive emails from NCSOFT via your account settings and complete the survey. We’d appreciate it!

Cheers,

The Lineage II Team

I want to do that survey!!

[Dargor]

Apologies but I'll believe it when I see it. We've been let down way too many times already.

[mixa]

2 hours ago, Draecke said:

I want to do that survey!!

I've got mail to one of my boxes lol. It's a 102 Iss, old account.

Also, the player base is dying, all servers are nearly dead. Dunno how anything written here has anything in common with the situation on the servers and the years of non-addressed problems.

Good try, but there donkey is dead.

[ElpySlayer]

8 hours ago, Conguero said:

EXP Gains

 the Heine Fishing Expedition and bonus EXP Server Setting are frequently enabled to help players accomplish this goal. For those of you who want to climb beyond Lv. 105, that day will come!

 

 

& this right here is the problem. a "Fishing Event" should never be a major way for people to lvl up. Instances should also not be "the best ways" to lvl up.

To me, L2 is c1-c4 days. lvlup by going out, killing mobs, do quests, kill open world raids....etc. That is what L2 is & should of stayed. & those should be the best ways to xp. "& get drops"

It is just sad that it is not that way anymore.

I want to play L2, not a fishing simulator.

[Irlumir]

@Conguero  Thanks for some Hope.

But i can not belive you dodge the main problem of all .. ..... ADENA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

XP is fine, it is obvious that there is no more content over 105. for now...... and to get there it isnt that hard.  But the adena farming in every update get more and more bad.  Even raids drop little to nothing................

Can not believe it... honestly......   or the way to farm something will be from the free events????????

Lineage 2 use to have a really rich farm background, with classes specialized on that, and places to hunt drops ....................whathever

[Jackl]

Quote

Even raids drop little to nothing.

This is a greater problem than the previous post mentions. Why? Because I belong to an alliance that does Major boss raids every week. I sit for an hour to help them get in, and then immediately leave CC if not the instance to never even get close to the boss even once. Why? Because unless ALL contributors have stacked Drop runes, and Prestige packs raids give absolute garbage. So everyone drops out, and the kill party stays to slay the boss in 15 seconds.

We almost kicked an older player from the clan who returned to L2 recently when he hit Valakas on spawn. All the people hoping for .01% fragment drops lost their minds when they saw it. But how was he supposed to know? Last time he played 100-400 people dog piled dragons and prayed it was enough to kill it.

I repeat. This game once featured amazing raid content as one of it's main attractions. Now even majority of those who win the ClickWar to confront these bosses will be unable to actually FIGHT them. How is this remotely smart game design?

Edit: Even field raids are a shadow of their former glory. Often killed by a single stacked visa card character. Most don't even bother to check if they're up. If by some graces they get 7-21 people together and kill the raid they get 5-200 mil for their troubles? Pretty rough.

[FoToMoTo]

Nice to see you finaly write this topic, thank you. And answer us please what about hero coins we acumulate so far? Any plan to reset limited items or add some extra?

[sharkman]

wtb red libra next wed

[Dr00py]

17 hours ago, Conguero said:

 

L2 Store Promotions

A common criticism we see from you relates to L2 Store promotions. While the base Lineage II experience is free-to-play, you can choose to speed up character advancement with items purchased on the store. We’re taking steps to improve how events and promotions are rolled out to players, with a more consistent rotation of free in-game events—such as the recent Oriana’s Lucky Draw event—that give players opportunities to obtain powerful items that are ordinarily found more rarely in RNG boxes.

 

 

L2 store does not speed up character this days, L2 store MAKE the character this days thats the problem. After 100 there is no way too make AF or Altar instance with mid grade gear, or farm any open field area. You can play hours per day make all instance you can or farm and at the end of day your profit is 1kk, good luck buying a bloody set for 100+ instance that cost 60B. The only way is to go L2 store or quit, and you know where ppl go when you have shutdown 3 servers the last 2 years. The promo are so expencive that  ppl dont even try to buy or make any item with 0,0005% chance, and you only left with few top donators playing the events. 
Because of gear lack the XP is also hard, and fishing event is not the solution for sure. As for raids the only solution is to make them can be killed only in party of 14 ppl, thoese days only few solo players kill them and they are from top clans to protect them. 
Hope to see big changes soon in the game i love and dont make me quit .

[BmD]

19 hours ago, Conguero said:

you can choose to speed up character advancement with items purchased on the store.

This is what you get when the ones supposed to run a game didn't ever played that game.

Can someone please say to this dude we need at least 1.000 $ to log in and be kicked from a gludio istance?

Idk in every private server i could log in with one grand they will drop a dragon weapon stage 3 and give it to me asap.

My answer to this is

you can erase my stripped toons

Congratz to the ones who picked up those 2 greater jewels in aden wh.