Choices, Choices, Choices

[Lawman]

The "hardcores" seem to spend more time calling people crybabies and suggesting they leave than making their case.  But they do have a case.  While I often don't agree with it, it's worth making.  And a large part of their case involves choices.

Lineage 2 is, and has always been about choices.  31 well-differentiated classes.  Do I want a PVP class like daggers or a PVE class like crafters?  Solo class like destroyer or party class like tank or support class like healers/buffers?  Next, how do I want to play?  Do I want to party, solo or box?  Create none, one or two buffer/healer boxes?  A spoiler for income?  A crafter to do my own crafting?  Buy shots, craft them, or don't use them?  Fight for top grinding spots or look for spots I can have all to myself?  Fight higher level mobs that take more time to kill or lower level mobs for fast killing?  Raid Bosses?  Join a clan?  Start one? What kind of a clan do I want?  Small and friendly?  Large and aggressive?  PVP or PVE? Aim for hero or just relax and enjoy the game?  The choices are endless.

Why is this important to the hardcores?  Because most changes that make the game easier, more streamlined and more efficient reduce the number of choices.  For example, before free teleports humans had to decide whether to save time and teleport to Gludin or save money and take the boat.  Now they just teleport for free.  Once there, we were always faced with the same choice of paying or running.  Most of us ran, because we could not afford to teleport.  Or we'd find the cheapest compromise.  We'd teleport part way from Gludin to Gludio, run a few steps then soe to Gludio.  We'd teleport from Giran to Dragon's or Hardin's, then run a bit, killing mobs along the way to pay for the teleport, then soe to Oren or Hunter's.  Free teleports eliminate all of these choices.

Or, consider the free NG armor and weapon and D grade armor.  In the old days we had to make hard choices.  Try to get the weapons and armor we needed to drop?  Play the market and see if we can pick them up cheap from another player?  Try to save enough adena to buy from the NPCs?  Look for reds to kill & hope they drop something good.  Train bots or even regular players to kill them and get their drops?  Buy the low level D grade from the store or save up for the best gear available at the level? Now, at NG and D levels, anyway, there are no real choices.  Just level up, do the obvious quests, and the weapon and armor are all yours.

Of course, some changes introduce whole new choices.  Under the old subscription based system you really only had 2 choices.  Work to get ahead, or cheat (bots, scripts, RMTs, account sharing) to get ahead.  Well, that and how many accounts you wanted to pay for. Now we get to choose whether to play for free, with all of its disadvantages or spend money to get ahead.  How much money?  Legally or illegally?  On what?

Generally, though, quality of life improvements mean fewer choices,  Hardcore players want as many choices as possible because they believe they can make the better choices and get ahead by out-choosing and out-playing other players.  As I said, I disagree with them on many points, but they are right that all of the choices Lineage 2 provides are a large part of what makes the game so great.  We shouldn't lose sight of that as we argue for changes.

[Vlademere]

Well said, I couldn't agree more.

However, your words are falling on deaf ears. The complainers want this game to suit their specific needs. They don't care if the server falls apart in 6 months because that is how they've always played lineage 2 - hopping from one illegal server to the next grinding it into the ground with changes until the player base moves onto the next hype.

Since there is a lot of hype around L2 NA Classic there is a massive amount of illegal server players who never touched retail Lineage 2.

They will go away eventually. We just need to be patient.

[LightRider]

This is a great post.

Basically there needs to be a greater balance of quality of life changes and what makes Lineage 2 the hardcore experience veterans enjoyed in the past.

I hope @Juji takes this post into consideration when addressing future changes.

Thanks for this post @Lawman.

[Peridot]

7 minutes ago, Vlademere said:

Well said, I couldn't agree more.

However, your words are falling on deaf ears. The complainers want this game to suit their specific needs. They don't care if the server falls apart in 6 months because that is how they've always played lineage 2 - hopping from one illegal server to the next grinding it into the ground with changes until the player base moves onto the next hype.

Since there is a lot of hype around L2 NA Classic there is a massive amount of illegal server players who never touched retail Lineage 2.

They will go away eventually. We just need to be patient.

This... I had two frustrated attempts to join a clan/CP due this kind of "private" server players. Just one week each to be witness of their emo-quit-slam-the-door.

[SumTingWong]

Hey, I love QoL changes.  I wouldn't mind a global gatekeeper, myself.  Shadow weapons would be nice as well. 

 

[Devoid]

14 minutes ago, SumTingWong said:

Hey, I love QoL changes.  I wouldn't mind a global gatekeeper, myself.  Shadow weapons would be nice as well.

Well, Fafurion will overhaul the teleport system. Unsure if the same goes for Secret of the Empire. On the other hand, if changing classes at 20/40 is going to be a simple click of a button (no quests), perhaps the 2-part tp system is coming here (edit: to classic) as well?

[Lawman]

Thanks for your replies.  The worst argument I've heard from the hardcores is "it's supposed to be hard."  Well, okay, but to what purpose?  When we talk about whether a change is good or bad the issue is never simply "will it make the game harder?".  The issue is, what about the change which is making the game harder (or easier) will make the game more interesting, more challenging, in short, more fun.  There are lots of hard things to do in the real world.  Few people do many of them just because they are really hard.  This is a game.  When the higher (or lower) difficulty makes the game more fun, do it.  We'll never all agree on every point, but the discussion should focus on fun, not just difficulty.  

[Starsong]

Veterans? I think some people were left with a vague memory of Lineage 2 as it was and expect it to be like the 1st time they played it. I call bullcrap on some aspects though, i remember the 1st time i played L2 and wanted an archer, i was puzzled even that i have to make a fighter and farm with a sword/dagger until i can afford a bow and learn skills to be efficient with it, or that elves (as expected from my gaming experience) weren't the highest damage archers around. Nevertheless i didn't know many mechanics such as OMFG double damage with SS but later on discovered poverty (from SS usage, SS for bow wasn't x1 like now) and ended up ~28 with Forest Bow and struggling. Thus the hardcore experience for me was actually myself being a noob, not the game being "hardcore".

Then i was enlightened by a god (rich dwarf ofc), he taught me the ways of "adenes" and no longer was i a noob (arguably still), rerolled the archer (too expensive of a class with SS consumption) and never worried about ports, money, consumables (lol swiftness + alacrity at expiration) and still got full "top luxury" C grades at 41 (crafted).

Nevertheless, admitted or not, every Lineage 2 server in it's own from NCSoft is "retail 1x rates" because "1x" is the baseline reference of the server itself by which you calculate bonuses (party xp, runes, additional boosts etc.), referring to base drop tables as more than 1x is only practiced on nonNC servers.

Advertised "Classic 1.5 with 3.0 QoL" then switching around that "it's hardcore experience" then "it's F2P so nerfed" and afterwards "investigating" nobody can deny (unless trolling) that it's a bleep move to get people who believe "classic experience" means Prelude or whatever chronicle they're drooling off + people who know what Classic 1.5 is and expect Innova or w/e. In short: ambiguous expectations fed with beautiful lies.

Nice post btw OP.

[Vlademere]

31 minutes ago, Lawman said:

Thanks for your replies.  The worst argument I've heard from the hardcores is "it's supposed to be hard."  Well, okay, but to what purpose?  When we talk about whether a change is good or bad the issue is never simply "will it make the game harder?".  The issue is, what about the change which is making the game harder (or easier) will make the game more interesting, more challenging, in short, more fun.  There are lots of hard things to do in the real world.  Few people do many of them just because they are really hard.  This is a game.  When the higher (or lower) difficulty makes the game more fun, do it.  We'll never all agree on every point, but the discussion should focus on fun, not just difficulty.  

Well said again.

I hope that a difficult game translates to a long-lived experience.