Not sure what the point of Aden is..

[Deathcoil]

Hello,

I'm an old player (talking beta, before launch of L2, original Bartz server). You know, the ones that still have our retail L2 disk box and all the memories it instills just looking at it. Like most people I leave and come back when nostalgia bites. And it bites a little harder for people like me, who remember the very first castle sieges. The formation of clans, the fight vs aggressive adena farmers, politics, power plays you name it. The world was a different & far more hostile place then it is today.  Alot of us had a second subscription for a buffer/healer, because party finder didn't exist back then. You would sit at a popular spot and shout your class level in the hopes of finding someone that would leave their party so you could join.

Fast forward a few years, c4 alot of us quit for newer titles. Call it burn out, boredom, but for some reason we always come back sooner or later. The Goddess of Destruction expansion was both the death of the original game & a slap in the face to those of us that grinded ENDLESS hours on top floors of TOI, in the dragonvalley cave donut/heart, who helped support the server with our most important asset, our time. That sense of accomplishment was shot dead when you can literally level to 85 in a day.

Negative points aside, I could understand GoD, it was a needed life vest for a title that was for a lack of better word, "dead".  But it was more of a layer over the original game then a game of itself. Too many useless lower class skills, relics of it's past it tried to bury but could not. It added alot of good things, stuff that should have been there years before.

fast forward some more, classic server.. sadly I cant bring myself to grind like that anymore, it makes me physically sick to start over.

Lets move forward one final time. This new aden server promised a different experience. Fast leveling, simpler designs, streamlining everything. I figured hey, why not give it a fair shot, maybe i'll make some new friends along the way. I sit here today feeling like Aden is just the embodiment of GoD all over again, but its way worse, at least GoD had it's own soul. This auto-leveling thing is just a glorified botting feature. The lack of drops & adena is a real let down. There is no sense of accomplishment leveling up, no new world to explore, no new lore, not even a new voice dialog on any npc. But worse of all, its an MMO where you see tons of people, but interact with no-one. This game server rewards you for not playing, something that is a big no-no.

In short - whatever vision you had for Aden, I don't buy into it. I know sooner rather than later the freebies will dry up and i'll be stuck shelling out cash to have what you basically gave me for free the day before. I'm guessing this is probably the last hurrah for a title that was supposed to have 12 expansions but ended up with alot more. 

Maybe the saddest thing is leaving without a bang, just a whisper in the wind.
 

[JohnnyRico]

This is most likely the end of L2. Aden came out a couple years ago now, back in 2019. EU/RU got their servers in mid/late 2019. Then it finally came here to NA this month.

In terms of "Lineage II", this is it. There is nothing new beyond this in development. Aden will be supported for a few more years to come, and there will be updates to Aden over that course of time. But there is nothing else beyond Aden.

The "Lineage" franchise though, will continue on. LineageW is being unveiled in a couple of days, which you can see here: https://lineagew.plaync.com/coming.

All things come to an end. The story of "Lineage II" will end here.

[Skeith]

A touching story indeed, welcome to the nostalgia players group.

Time goes by and things evolve, games evolve and even you evolved. Like a pokemon. And as the time move forward you cannot do anything but to look at the past and sigh, reviving those memories that made you happy. It's like falling in love with a band! You love how they sound...you love their songs, the lyrics! The feelings! But then the band release a new album and the genre changes. It's not what you used to love. And you have 2 choices. Get stuck in their previous songs and quit listening to their future releases or just understand that the band you love is still there, somewhere, but it had to change. 

You said that urself: "it makes me physically sick to start over". And this is where the game changed.

Now let's for a moment ignore the GOD servers that started really bad, they wanted to improve the game, they wanted to bring some fresh air into the game we loved! And they failed. Ok so, keep this in mind. As the patches moved on they tried to fix their mistakes and classes were split again and started to be back to their "unique original form". The classes started to be more and more fun to play and way more contents getting into the game with new lore! 

Classic servers tried to get players to join back using their nostalgia. But statistics are talking loud: they failed yet again. Why? Cause Classic had nothing of classic. 
At the very start on EU servers you had a 100% nostalgia feeling with those 'hardcore' settings and p2p. Paying for each one of the accounts, slow XP with ur pt, crafting and spoiling! And let's not forget the NA start! Daaaam the crowd! 

And now one last step. Essence or, for the new guys, Aden. And alternative server where you can see the "what if" of the GOD. What would happen if we were not going to get awakening at 85? Well, we're gonna figure it out! But...we probably wont.

Cause all the 3 projects were doomed and are doomed to fail as they share 1, disruptive, mechanics: p2w abuse. 

Now, do you remember when i early told ya "They wanted to bring fresh air into the game, but failed"? Ok so this is it, all over again, for all their projects. And i'm not talking about NCWest eh, they are publishers. I mean the NCKorea. The reason why they turned the game into a legit afk-to-play is cause as you said, people is no longer willing to spend months grinding to get 1 level. This, is an helpfull feature. There's no longer a gap (at least on XP) between legits and not. 
Problem is they are making you pay a lot to allow you to even XP, as you can see on Aden servers. You said there's no drops nor adena. I can tell you that you are wrong. I'm dropping tons of C/B armors and i dropped so far 3 weapons C myself. I managed to get 1 full plate set and 1 divine robe set from full drops + several no-set boots/gloves/helms. Also an Avadon leather armor. As for the adenas, so far i farmed probably over 30kk adenas (but i wasted them on items so rip). 

This is it, sadly. The reason why you can't see the point of this game anymore is cause you're looking from the wrong point.
Auto hunt to help you level up and farm while you do other stuffs. A game where you gotta spend lots of moneys to keep XPing and gearing up to get on top. A game where you can do anything on your own, no time to waste with parties. 
This is the goal of the Aden version. F2P but P2P. Later on the P2P will turn into heavy P2W. 
Look at the Awakening servers: P2W is so insane that classes are perfectly balanced now. They all oneshot each others. 

[Firesnake]

I got the same feeling as Deathcoil. I did play Aden from day 1 and until today I literaly dropped 1 Dgr Boots.  In this game is no future for players who want to play for free. No chance of grinding (without Shaya you run out of shots, spirit ore, zen). Its turned from beautiful MMO world to a moneymaking machine for NCSoft. This way the player numbers will keep falling, and when you finaly decide to let people play freely, just to have someone on the server, there will be no one to give you another chance for this P2W.

[muash]

1 hour ago, Firesnake said:

I got the same feeling as Deathcoil. I did play Aden from day 1 and until today I literaly dropped 1 Dgr Boots.  In this game is no future for players who want to play for free. No chance of grinding (without Shaya you run out of shots, spirit ore, zen). Its turned from beautiful MMO world to a moneymaking machine for NCSoft. This way the player numbers will keep falling, and when you finaly decide to let people play freely, just to have someone on the server, there will be no one to give you another chance for this P2W.

no future for LAZY ppl who want to play for free, cuz u can make farmers ( u can log 10 acc ), and farm adena... 

[Firesnake]

3 minutes ago, muash said:

no future for LAZY ppl who want to play for free, cuz u can make farmers ( u can log 10 acc ), and farm adena... 

I just wanna play 1 char for fun. I don't have 150$/month to spend on a game, I rather spend it on my children. If this makes me a lazy person then so be it. Iam a casual player and don't support bot farms.

[xAplaGF]

The only thing you do on this server is : Put your char to xp place - talk to npc and go to next spot just to xp.... no money ofc , no drops ofc .

JUST XP IN 1 SPOT  WITH ALL SERVER THERE...... 

We cant use macro to make a party, we cant take buffs we must spend all our money to spirit ore to do self buffs... HAHAHAHA

p2w .. pay 2 win -

[Shalille]

I'm an original launch player also , returned to try this out. A lot of mechanics are new to me, such as the auto hunt, self buffs , and healers with nukes.

 

I've found stuff to enjoy just progressing at my pace and the "nostalgia hit" each time I re-discover  an old hunting area has been great.

As an ex-healer class, I may be getting more value from the self buff/auto hunting system that other players, as its been fun to solo hunt in my old grouping spots as I rediscover them.

 

#

 

Theres probably more productive methods of progressing, but I've found to work for me is to burn the free daily sayas/buffs in a HIIT active play session @ 690xp/300adena,  then switch to a lower intensity style for the rest of the day @200xp/90adena. (longer unattended sessions at lower costs/lower risk)

There seems to be a science to picking the best locations to auto-farm at. Considering if your hunting with no boost its XP100%/Adena 5%/Loot10% .

With sayas will , its  XP200%/Adena30%/Loot100% so you may want to focus on the strengths of that buff, (which I think is the loot drop raised from 90% penalty to 0% penalty)

When your running with sayas grace its XP300-500%/Adena100%Loot100% , so the main bonus is the Xp rush (esp if you use gusts/storms) and higher adena drop. But Sayas grace doesnt seem to have any loot drop advantage over sayas will.

(I also found that it seems you can save your gusts/storms for when you proc the "sayas will maintained" freebies for 1-4 hrs and use them without draining the 100% extra grace (as it drains no grace) but you still get the 200-300% bonus.)

PPl have been saying nothing drops, but I have seen about the same drop rates as the original game, I see players getting b weapons worth several mil drop in the rooms right beside me, and have gotten a few armor and jewelry drops myself. 

(It feels almost like the old days where a party hunts in a prime location for a few hrs and gets a drop worth 100k-10mil,  which gets sold and the adena shared out. Only this time you solo auto hunt that party. Go to work/sleep for  hrs, and come back later to find the drops waiting in your bag.)

 

#

 

I hope the game will open up to more grouping for content  at the higher lvls, but I have not seen many using the LFG tool currently.

[iCnx]

7 hours ago, JohnnyRico said:

This is most likely the end of L2. Aden came out a couple years ago now, back in 2019. EU/RU got their servers in mid/late 2019. Then it finally came here to NA this month.

In terms of "Lineage II", this is it. There is nothing new beyond this in development. Aden will be supported for a few more years to come, and there will be updates to Aden over that course of time. But there is nothing else beyond Aden.

The "Lineage" franchise though, will continue on. LineageW is being unveiled in a couple of days, which you can see here: https://lineagew.plaync.com/coming.

All things come to an end. The story of "Lineage II" will end here.

this is where ( i believe) you are wrong, the L2 keeps on progressing, its the liver servers, what most of us remember has evolved, we are in the 4th out of 6 dragons from the Lore and L2 has at least 7-10 years more.

Classic and Aden are just remakes for people wanting something to resemble what used to be a good game.

[Brimstone]

9 hours ago, Deathcoil said:

Hello,

I'm an old player (talking beta, before launch of L2, original Bartz server). You know, the ones that still have our retail L2 disk box and all the memories it instills just looking at it. Like most people I leave and come back when nostalgia bites. And it bites a little harder for people like me, who remember the very first castle sieges. The formation of clans, the fight vs aggressive adena farmers, politics, power plays you name it. The world was a different & far more hostile place then it is today.  Alot of us had a second subscription for a buffer/healer, because party finder didn't exist back then. You would sit at a popular spot and shout your class level in the hopes of finding someone that would leave their party so you could join.

Fast forward a few years, c4 alot of us quit for newer titles. Call it burn out, boredom, but for some reason we always come back sooner or later. The Goddess of Destruction expansion was both the death of the original game & a slap in the face to those of us that grinded ENDLESS hours on top floors of TOI, in the dragonvalley cave donut/heart, who helped support the server with our most important asset, our time. That sense of accomplishment was shot dead when you can literally level to 85 in a day.

Negative points aside, I could understand GoD, it was a needed life vest for a title that was for a lack of better word, "dead".  But it was more of a layer over the original game then a game of itself. Too many useless lower class skills, relics of it's past it tried to bury but could not. It added alot of good things, stuff that should have been there years before.

fast forward some more, classic server.. sadly I cant bring myself to grind like that anymore, it makes me physically sick to start over.

Lets move forward one final time. This new aden server promised a different experience. Fast leveling, simpler designs, streamlining everything. I figured hey, why not give it a fair shot, maybe i'll make some new friends along the way. I sit here today feeling like Aden is just the embodiment of GoD all over again, but its way worse, at least GoD had it's own soul. This auto-leveling thing is just a glorified botting feature. The lack of drops & adena is a real let down. There is no sense of accomplishment leveling up, no new world to explore, no new lore, not even a new voice dialog on any npc. But worse of all, its an MMO where you see tons of people, but interact with no-one. This game server rewards you for not playing, something that is a big no-no.

In short - whatever vision you had for Aden, I don't buy into it. I know sooner rather than later the freebies will dry up and i'll be stuck shelling out cash to have what you basically gave me for free the day before. I'm guessing this is probably the last hurrah for a title that was supposed to have 12 expansions but ended up with alot more. 

Maybe the saddest thing is leaving without a bang, just a whisper in the wind.
 

Great post.

[Babiske]

I haven't played L2 for years, many years, and I came to see what it was all about today. 
And the truth is that it reminded me a lot when I started in C1 where everything was very complicated.
It brought back good memories. 
The only thing that modifies so far is some more quests so that the game is not monotonous and that 
the drop is more interesting. greeting!

[Oldjohn]

Awesome post.

 The truth is :

- We are addicted to this game and we can't let go no matter how bad it has become.

- We are always expecting that some way, somehow, we can revive that golden era.

- Over these years no other game was released with the same mechanic's, they're usually WoW clones.

 

     And we will never let go, tbh I don't mind the auto-farm, they have never dealt with botting along the years, never! And old players like me, we're already married with children and full of duties, it is impossible to be late night eternal grinding/logged on.

   But I'm not playing Aden, I've played Essence and I know how P2W this is, I knew they would never listen to the community, the purpose here is to smash your wallet with a big heavy hammer.

    My guess is that Lineage don't deserve NCSOFT , wish that another company have had the ideia.

     Well, we can't change the past, at least we have good memories to remember.

[1Peri1]

I feel all this. beta player myself. I quit 4-5 years ago. I couldn't compete with P2W. Everyone I knew basically quit for the same reasons. it was fun, Friday nights for raids and xping with your friends and laughing in vent. I miss it hard. I am giving Aden a chance,but I see the gimmicks too.

[FatherFortuitous]

Is it normal to make it to level 58 without getting a single item (weapon, armor, accessory) drop and only getting 3 - 6 adena per mob kill? At this rate I'll be level 70 and still not able to afford D grade items. What am I missing?

[Shalille]

15 minutes ago, FatherFortuitous said:

Is it normal to make it to level 58 without getting a single item (weapon, armor, accessory) drop and only getting 3 - 6 adena per mob kill? At this rate I'll be level 70 and still not able to afford D grade items. What am I missing?

If you dont have a version of the sayas buff active you get 95% penalty to adena drop, and 90% penalty to item drop,  as per patch notes: https://www.lineage2.com/news/aden-launch-patch-notes

 

####

.

.

On the other hand, without Sayha’s Grace while monster hunting, the Adena drop rate is affected and item drop probability is affected.
 

Sayha’s Grace Buffs	XP/SP Bonus Effect	Adena Drop Quantity	Item Drop Chance Penalty
Sayha’s Grace – OFF	No Bonus	5%	10%
Sayha’s Will (Limited Sayha), Sayha’s Grace - OFF	200%	30%	None
Sayha’s Grace - ON	300%	100%	None

[FatherFortuitous]

5 minutes ago, Shalille said:

If you dont have a version of the sayas buff active you get 95% penalty to adena drop, and 90% penalty to item drop,  as per patch notes: https://www.lineage2.com/news/aden-launch-patch-notes

 

####

.

.

On the other hand, without Sayha’s Grace while monster hunting, the Adena drop rate is affected and item drop probability is affected.
 

Sayha’s Grace Buffs	XP/SP Bonus Effect	Adena Drop Quantity	Item Drop Chance Penalty
Sayha’s Grace – OFF	No Bonus	5%	10%
Sayha’s Will (Limited Sayha), Sayha’s Grace - OFF	200%	30%	None
Sayha’s Grace - ON	300%	100%	None

Thanks!!!

[MUQALI25]

DEVS srsly you should set some changes to this design... if this is a copy and paste of l2 essence, its just another waste of time... a game shold be made to enjoy play it not to just waste time on it.

[Majks1989]

I start to play and i just dont really have this feel that i play this game all is 24/7 Autofarm this have nothing more with play lineage2. Put your Char on Spot and go away, this cost so many Energy when you just put your PC/Gamingnotebook hole day and night on AFK. I dont see anypoint of playing Official Servers.

[Micas]

Aden focus on players aged between 30 to 50, who have 1) stable incomes / willing to pay and 2) busy at work / don't have time but still miss the good old vibe they had 15+ years ago, thus the auto play mode for when they're at work and when they come home, they do pvp, raids...

For F2P, Aden is a harsh environment (in term of adena & item) compared to Classic/Live. We can't ask for F2P and being lazy at the same time but still, it should be made for F2P gamers somehow survivable to become sandbags for P2P, P2W gamers later on :)))

 

[Oestemnet]

The real problem with Aden is expectations: On one hand, the expectation of becoming top player in the server while investing nothing, a completely free to play experience, like if NC was a non-profit organization. On the other hand NC expects pure profit, they want to milk the cow to the bones, no matter if this kills the cow.

Somehow there's got to be a medium, if a balance was struck where F2P players could truly play to a level where the game would be enjoyable or even if the investment needed was a reasonable to get an decent in-game living wage that would allow them to participate in all the game mechanics while still giving the P2P (pay to play - not pay to win) players a reasonable edge that would be perhaps NC's biggest win, and it can be done, not tampering with the in game mechanics but actually dealing with the in-game economy, some things that could be done: improve the adena/drops drop rates and create a less steep tier system, reduce some basic consumption item prices (soulshots, basic HP pots, spirit ore), start by doing that and then well see if more in depth actions are needed. I want L2 to live forever, 20 years from now I want to still be able to play it, make it so please.

[Robb916]

Same back story, played L2 from launch up to around c4 ( first started playing Lineage in 1998 so bit further back than most I know). 

Came here for the same reason. I saw the ad with the Death Knight and thought "man that could be fun again".  While there are a lot of new things going on here and I really like the aden weapon that cannot break.  The adena penalties are just too much.  I've only been around long enough to get through on login calendar and 2 days and was still learning all the Sayha's levels and the effect they have.  With Sayha's will, I wasn't able to hunt and break even. Seems to me that this would be a mistake, while I understand the extra bonus for the higher level grace buff. I would think you would at least want players advancing with Sayha's will active.  Would have thought  you would want the f2p to just go over break even, Sayha's will to have some what like an old classic L2 advancement , and finally Sayha's Grace would give a substantial advantage. 

Item drops are quite good. I bought the subscription and the first night it was quite a shock to wake up with 3 items in the bag (hasn't worked sense, somehow I ended up double charged and when they refunded one it seems like it killed all the bonuses). 

I like most came back in for the "oh man I remember this place",  to participate in some end level raids  and eventually a castle siege.  I'm probably going to give it until end of October (want to try one more month with the sub to see if that did happen), and hopefully this early level grind will be over. But if it stays how its been so far, I don't see going much beyond that. 

 

[lelu]

Great posts from all here.  I've been playing since before time (started on Gustin).  I log onto every new server type hoping there was going to be some resemblance of the game we all started on, and soon find that their promises of a "classic" experience were a total lie.  The only thing classic was the grind.  The skipping levels is stupid.  It takes away from the money that you 'would' have made and just gives you the xp/sp.  This game will dry up shortly after the "whales"  beach themselves beyond repair with credit card debt and they'll have nowhere near the income that they had at start, when the players spending ludicrous amounts of real world money can't pay it anymore.  They have to realize that the majority of players can't compete financially (I have no delusions of grandeur thinking that I could come close to being on a level playing field with someone dumping thousands or tens of thousands of dollars into a make believe character).  NC killed the most important part of the game, which is the gaming community.  You get more interaction in the forums that you do ingame, and that's sad.  Just for poops and giggles, I decided to walk from Gludin to Aden.  Was sad to see that the only spots on the maps with mobs were the parts where L2 tells you to level.  The rest of the world is absolutely dead.  Reminded me of when a server came up from maintenance and was waiting on the mob script to start firing up.  I can see why they made "f2p" and then added things like the vitality system so they could still make some money.  But the greed got the best of them because they saw how much people were willing to spend to level quickly (gotta love this generations "give me everything now" mentality) and they made it so you can barely level (while making no money because they nerfed the percentages into oblivion).  I totally agree that a game should not be 100% f2p, but come on.  

What NC is basically doing is luring the people who used to play during beta/C1/C2 and LOVED it...now they're more financially stable with less time to play due to family/work/obligations and making them pay an obscene amount of money more (was 13 dollars/mo when I started) for a game that is 90% AFK hunting.  Fits into their schedule, right?  From a sane person, sounds  more like predatory behavior on NC's part.

[AliceInWunderland]

Old Kain Player here myself (6/2004).

So I am reading these posts and the nostalgia lasts for a little while. 

Interesting stuff as of now: Blazing Swamp is dead like it was in C2, but at least there are skins on the terrain now.

But I digress.

The real interesting mechanic is the magic lamp - it's a way to take some of the sting out of the grind. However, diminishing returns make themselves known in the 60's making leveling a bit of a chore when it comes to the lamp. It's really great at lower levels - but you'll ALL see the diminishing returns eventually. But I typically only use the lamp recharge in Transcendent Dungeons - by the time I am done with 1 run in the high 60's, I have 8-10 lamp attempts. This is how you can get through problematic spots on the hunting journey - but again, even these rewards diminish and don't give the same "umph" at let's say level 50 compared to 65.

I'm willing to try some stuff out in the store, etc., to see how this experience plays out.

The adena nerf is interesting - though I suspect farmers will just price in the L2Coin/Store expenses to have solo farming teams operate. It's an interesting switch of expenses - forcing people to have "skin in the game." Before, you'd pay a subscription, you get access to the game and all its content, no resource nerfs, etc. Your upfront cost was buying the game (Old L2), plus $15 a month,  and with GoD, there was none. But the changes in how adena flows in and out of the system will prevent the kind of adena inflation that has destroyed previous incarnations of this game. Now, in order to be "profitable," one would have to price in the cost of maintaining Sayha just to earn said adena. 

How this translates into growing a player base, I do not know. This system reminds me of those people who go to college for the first time, take economics, and later realize it was a "weed-out" class to filter out those who just were not prepared. This seems similar and I would not be surprised if the churn rate is as such it's no longer profitable to even run these servers.

INTERESTING NOTE: Windows 11 will natively run Android Apps. No BlueStacks. Try Lineage 2 Revolution - F2P and P2W, but the reward structures are more in line with what one should expect if they're spending money.

We as a community have to demand that NCSoft NA tweak and change things so the server "works" versus having 200 people who seem to have no cares about disposable income. You see, these sorts of folks don't help the game - they destroy it. Why? Because this IS a competitive game by nature - always someone to be better than (unless you're a hero). Now it may be a solo heavy game, but raids and castle sieges, cannot be done solo (you can try - tell me how long you live). Games were meant to be played by 2 or more people. Escaping the social aspect of online play is a sort of non-sequitur. Why not just install it on our systems and just play solo with no one else around? 

I don't know - we shall see how things play out. I imagine for the 90% that are playing right now - and this is a guess - I bet most would uninstall right now if they were told they had to spend $25-50 a week minimum to have any sense of consistent forward progress. This game in its current form is limiting what people can do and not quite delivering enough of an incentive to even want to spend more. Yes, I am sure NCSoft is upset at all the farming companies that made millions off of their IP and they saw a very small fraction of that. But, L2R? In 2019, it had already been out a year, but had earned more revenue in that year than all of Lineage 2 Classic and Live combined since they both went live. We're talking over $100M in one year's time.

Think about that.

RIP War System.