Drop on Death

[FatHips]

18 hours ago, Zaaka said:

I agree. Where is the fun in being stunned by players while fighting mobs for only for them to pick up your hard earned gear. People quit the game if they are unlucky. If I want to play the roulette with my time and money I'll go to a casino. Penalty on death (exp) is ok but it's not ok to gamble with your +10 weapon you just put all your adena into. Especially, when people just grief eachother to exploit the system and have mobs kill you to drop the gear. 

Go do the same to them, or get friends to, that creates a lot of political conflict within the game, that's why it was so awesome.  If you never participated in it back in the day I can understand where you are coming from, though.

 

A potentially interesting compromise could be that purples drop on mob/raid death.  This would make raiding much more interesting as well as protect "innocents" from extreme griefing.  Thoughts @Juji ?

[TrOLLw]

23 minutes ago, FatHips said:

in my opinion, drop on death or loop macros had to go, having both together creates a huge problem of legit botting, as well as making real botting harder to identify.

They chose the easier of the two options - removing loop was the "softer" choice than drop on death, I am pretty sure they knew they had to do at least one of them to keep a healthy server.  Just looking at it from NC's perspective.

Did they ever introduce instanced dungeons and rifts into Classic? Please say no.  That's like taking away everything from an open world MMO.

[Drakkon]

13 minutes ago, TrOLLw said:

Did they ever introduce instanced dungeons and rifts into Classic? Please say no.  That's like taking away everything from an open world MMO.

No they didn't

[TrOLLw]

I found this article and seems somewhat enlightening to the issues of Auto macros.

 

Quote

The First Era: Russians

When Skelth launched, thousands upon thousands of players were competing for the top spot. Clans of all types formed. We had EU clans, Brasilian clans, Spanish clans, North American clans, Ukrainian clans, Bulgarian clans, and Russian clans. If fact, the power and politics on the server was so distributed that there were roughly 20 clans that were all considered "Factor" clans.

Concurrent users during this time was roughly 5000

However, this period did not last long. Russian clans committed time, money, and drivers to take over the server. By (ab)using the driver system, one CP of 9 characters would have 13++ live people playing. This was the Russian way. To exp non stop until you got ahead of everyone, and then dominate. Two Russian clans stuck out as major factors during this time: MadPro and Elders. These two clans sought to lock down exp spots, lock down epic bosses, and lock down quest areas. This stranglehold and style of play really took a toll on the player base of skelth. No other clan could compete with the Russian forces. Between the grind and unsurmountable odds of being the Russian clans, players began to quit en masse.

Concurrent users during this time fell to 3000, and then 2000, and continued dwindling.

The Dark Ages

Skelth went into a dark dark time. With the server getting less and less active, Elders quit; Leaving only MadPro as the reigning kings of Skelth. By this point, MadPro had even controlled most of the real money trading going on in the server. MadPro's intent was to suck Skelth dry and then move on back to Gran Kain. The player base fell drastically. People thought Innova would close or merge the server with a Russian one. Even an Innova GM put up a poll to see if they should make transfers available to a Russian server to end Skelth.

Concurrent users during this time was around 450.

The Second Era: Rise of the Wallet

In Skelth's darkest days, a few heroes stepped up to the plate. They weren't the kind of heroes any server would want, but they were the kind of heroes needed to make Skelth survive. Some european players in the Apex and United clans began pouring tons of real life money into the server. They sought to buy up all the Elders and MadPro characters for sale. The idea was to prevent the Russians from ever getting a foot hold in the server again. Slowly they began amassing an arsenal of level 70+ Damage Dealers to siege the MadPro castles. Slowly, MadPro began to crack. One-by-one the MadPro castles fell and the real clans were able to take them. Eventually MadPro decided the effort was no longer worth the reward, and they quit to go play on Gran Kain.

Apex and United had won! For the first time since the start of the server, the top clans weren't Russian. With MadPro gone, Apex and United began to compete with each other and fight each other. Everything seemed balanced.

However, another problem arose: Real-Money-Trading. Soon the Heroes of Apex and United became the Villians of the server. High and mighty individuals who had thrown far too much money into the server. New players that had began to flock back to the server had never experienced the MadPro era, and as a result, they resented these RMT Kings.

With new players arriving, some members of MadPro sought to come back and work as mercenaries for hire. Both the leaders of United and Apex promised they would not use MadPro services to ensure they could never gain a foothold again. However, less than two weeks later, the leader of Apex made a deal with MadPro. In order to compete, United also made a deal with MadPro. MadPro was now siphoning money from both sides of the server.

Concurrent players during this era rose to 1100

The Third Era: Rise of the Real Clans & The Five Armies

While Apex and United were incredibly powerful. They both had a fatal flaw; Most of the characters they purchased were damage dealers. Apex and United had an excess of high level damage dealers, but a lack of live support characters.

As real CPs and real clans began to catch up to them, a new fact is coming to light. A real clan with live support and fully-manned CPs will always beat a group of bought damage dealers.

DreamTeam (on United's Side) and Spectre (on Apex's Side) are the up and coming powerhouses on the server. Both clans have 3 or 4 CPs stocked with live support players.

Beneath DreamTeam and Spectre, there is another group of live and active players slowly rising up. These are known as the five armies; Five small clans that are fight amongst themselves and leave United/DreamTeam and Apex/Spectre alone. These include Imperials, IsForce, AxxisShadow, LaMafia, and StrokingPandas.

In addition to the five armies are two mid-sized clans that are too strong for the five armies, but too weak for United/DreamTeam & Apex/Spectre. These two clans are Eternity and Revenge.

DreamTeam, Spectre, Eternity, Revenge, IsForce, AxxisShadow, LaMafia, StrokingPandas, and Imperials are the future of the server. Over the next 6 months, a shift will occur where the pendulum swings away from DD-heavy powerhouse clans to tight knit active clans with live support.

Currently the daily active players is around 1500

This is the best time to start playing on Skelth. Level up to 40 and try to join one of the the Five Armies clans, in the mid 40s you'll be able to participate in a large and active server, filled with PvP, Drama, and War.

 

[beleaua]

afaik there is no counter for ru/eu servers like this one http://l2.laby.fr/status/

[Bangkok]

Please bring back drop on death. Keep classic, classic!!!

[Allmight911]

Are you kidding me? GM's did you even think this through? Item drop is what made Lineage 2 a legendary game. You take a risk all or nothing. Those carebears who can't handle it can go play WoW. Lineage 2 is not for the faint of heart. Please reverse this decision and allow item dropping to mobs. I can assure you that the majority of the community will agree with me. Get your act together....seriously we want "Classic Lineage 2" back.

[TRIBUNAL]

You need to return drops on death to original classic settings.

I played open beta to 2013. I haven't played normal L2 and wont.

I was strongly considering playing classic and spending the big cash as pvp'ers do much more so than care-bears.

Gear drops is what made early L2 what it was. It drove hatred between players which in turn drove PvP and politics on the server (Seighardt)

Taking this out a major component of what made L2 great, though we may not have realized it at the time.

L2 removed much of what drove PvP to appease the care-bears and in the end that's all they were left with, that's why the game died.

Without passion, L2 is nothing and without hardship there can be no passion.

Care-bears complain more than anyone else which is why games are driven in this direction, now we complain, bring back gear drops!

[Tetsuos]

No drop on death please.... 
Whilst i understand the view point of those wanting it, the XP penalty is harsh enough.

I think, like with loop macros, Developers made the right choice here.

[Rodah]

3 minutes ago, Tetsuos said:

No drop on death please.... 
Whilst i understand the view point of those wanting it, the XP penalty is harsh enough.

I think, like with loop macros, Developers made the right choice here.

This!

With no brez and no healer with 100% (for a long time anyway) pking someone will be plenty hardcore enough.  In fact, I'm kinda surprised you are in favor of this FatHips.  Greifing of this type is the kinda of thing which can lead to players quitting. 

[Jackl]

Drop on death was one of the few mechanics that actually gave players some recourse against botters. Anyone who was here for the original servers doesn't put much stock in NCwest and their enforcement.

 

Griefing is going to happen regardless of status of drop on death. This is L2. I imagine the first few days Talking Island will be a literal meatgrinder. Alot of players used to having areas to themselves are in for a rude awakening.