General Discussion

Originally posted by wolferey 

Well, yeah, but that's taking it slightly out of context. What I mean is, with almost no chance of getting drops (unless, like I said, your extreamly lucky), an absolute minimum of adena drops and a player market where items now cost 50-200mill++ adena, and now faster leveling up to those levels, only those who were there from the beginning (the now rich people) are those who can survive the game.

If you were to start up L2 now, for the first time, you'd practically get the door slammed in your face. Its like having a job that requires you to have a jetplane bought with your own money, and the daily pay is a dollar, if you get what I'm saying ;p

It's supposed to be a game, with a high focus on PvP, especially mass PvP like fortress and castle sieges, clan-against-clan and alliance-against-alliance PvP, with a grind-based PvE and large-scale raids, and instead you get a money-grind game, because the costs behind leveling up (gear, jewelry, accessories and especially SS/SPS) and pvp (atleast before, when you had the chance to loose your equipped weapon.. and the costs of siege golems, cp/hp pots etc.) far outweights everything else.

It was hard before, how the hell will leveling faster help the new ones now? You'd have to go from 1 to 60 back to 20 up to 60 back to 30 up to 60 back to 40 up to 60 back to 40 - 60 - 40 - 60 etc. just to afford stuff, so basicly, ur back to the same speed it took you to get from 1 - 60 again :p

Either you're forgetting the fact or you just don't know, that they have already put C-grade gear into the NPC shops and will be putting B-grade gear in there in the upcoming update. Sets that used to cost 15+ mil, will now cost just a few hundred thousand from the NPC. The cheaper gear will also lead to cheaper crystal prices for C and B grade, which will lead to cheaper SS/SPS. Through this, clan oath armor and shadow weapons, the cost of leveling to A-grade is significantly reduced, allowing players to save more money.

Will the ability to level to A-grade quickly affect the market? I'm sure it will, because there will be more demand for A and S grade gear. However, I don't think it's going to be as disastrous as you seem to be saying it will be. The new players can devote the time to making money just like the old players have.

Originally posted by KoSPr0

And Wolf  isn't that how life is anyways?  If the poor can get rich just like that, there wouldn't be poor and rich.

Yes, real life is like that, too. But the dynamic is different.

In real life, you can get wealthy by being a talented author, painter, or architect, just to offer some examples. You can live very comfortably by staying in school and studying hard to be a scientist, doctor, lawyer, or some other high-powered profession populated by motivated, intelligent individuals.

Of course, you can also get lucky with who you know, or the opportunities you have.

In MMORPGs (unless you count SL), there's none of this. You wait for mobs to pop, kill them, and hope to get something rare to sell; or, mine gold (or whatever) for countless hours. In essence, everyone is a janitor or prospector; the only path to wealth is tedious work and complete dumb luck.

Or buying money out-of-game, naturally.

this is indeed good news, i may very well resub again :P. but the question remains will the money u make scale well to the now improved xp rate? given how much stuff cost. i remember a damascus sword went from 60 mill to around 150 mill+ thats why i was gimped I couldnt afford it only the doom armor. I was stuff with a +4 SLS grade C sword, not entirely bad but still a bit gimped.

being forced to dual box just to make ends meet is a pain. lets hope overall the improvements are made to other parts of the game to scale well into the new fandangle xp rate. this is of course good news for L2 cause despite its grind i always loved the community of the game, but the economy was unbearable. thats what turned me off it felt more like work than fun. here's hoping....

Seems like a bad buisness move to me, to take their biggest money maker, and try to candy-coat it to make it another guild wars (which BTW doesn't even bring in 1/10th of the money that lin2 does). Its going to piss off their asian market, which is where they make all their money, and will still fail to make a significant dent in the over-crowded US market.... and once all the new people hit 62+ and have to start grinding, they'll most likly all quit, along with the current small niche they have in the market now, who will proably quit now or shortly after gracia, since NC is just handing out the levels they all spend months/years building. I honnestly don't know wtf NC soft is thinking.

Could be that NCSoft sees the vast success of WoW, which has a very quick leveling curve.  Then AoC comes out with another "soft" leveling curve and gets 700k sold at launch.  They probably figured this means that the gamer public really doesn't want hardcore grind leveling anymore.  I would guess it's due to the fact that those back in 1999 with EQ1 are older now with families and can't spend several hours in front of a PC grinding away.

I never tried L2 myself, I heard horror stories about the agonizing leveling and rampant ganking from a few friends who used to play.  I'd consider giving it a try with a trial after this goes live though.

I played the Gracia update on the public test server, and it is extremely noob friendly. Having played L2 since OB I have mixed emotions over this. I will be happy to see new players in the game, some old friends come back and so on but at the same time I am a bit pissed that new players can reach end game content as fast as the vitality system allows. From my experience on the Public Test Server I can tell you that players can go from lvl 1 to 20 in 1 hours time, from 1 to 68 in just 5 days.  Drop rates pretty much stayed the same but there are now alot more quests for items and better paying money quests, not to mention that every Item from no grade to top c grade is now in the shops and at such a low price every single dwarf in lineage 2 is screaming bloody murder. should new players decide to buy standard items instead of the normal ones we are so familiar with. They can get a complete top C grade armor set for under 200k top c grade jewls for under 100k and a top c grade weapon for under 100k

so while drop rates for adena and items have not changed it no longer matters since everything from no grade starter gear to top c grade gear is so cheap. B grade Items are now sold in the lux shop, and since SLS is so low priced you can crush the SLS (both single and dualed SLS)  for the C and B crystals to buy B grade Weapons and Armors. Players can even make A grade weapons at a low price by just picking up and Dualing the Kesh from the lux shop.

Teleports are free for all players under lvl 40, noob buffs can be obtained from lvl 6 to lvl 61 just by visiting the noobie guides. new players can visit the noobie guide for a starter weapon at lvl 6 thats actually pretty good. they can go to kamel village to do a quest for decent starter armor, do another quest for soul shots and spirit shots. Vets who probably remember all to well of having mobs trained on them no longer need to worry about that since it wont be possible to do anymore. Raid bosses drop more complete items now. are once again easier to do and have the extra effect of raising your vitality points - dont ask me how killing a raid boss is considered rest, lol ncsoft -  For those who like to craft, this ones for you. now when ever you craft an item you have the chance at getting more then 1 in return, or possibly even a rare version of that item. So IMO the dwarves that are crying about cheap D,C and B grade need to get real. They are going to get filthy rich crafting A and S grades.

The character classes that appear to be on top in Gracia are

mages (any race any kind) up to 10x magic crits.

Dagger Classes (any race) damn near impossible to hit them now that evasion got such a big boost and each time you miss you get stunned, target cancelled ect. depending on the race of the dagger.

Bishops (human healer) not only do they have the best heals and Rez in game but they now have a nuke too. combined with thier existing skills it makes them pretty damn tough at end game.

Some tend to think of archers as having suffered a nasty nerf, maybe for the play styles of those people this is true. However I can say that at high lvl and attacking from a 1400 range the archers are going to 1 shot most of thier targets. the only hope anyone has against them at that range is to zerg them and hope that they target the person next to you instead of you. once you get to close range the archers damage is reduced to almost nothing unless of course that archer is smart enough to carry a dagger and use UE

The one archer class that suffers the least in Gracia is the Phantom Ranger, they do insane damage from a distance and now just as insane damage upclose if they switch to dagger. Skills like Sting and Bleed and poison are giving a  gigantic boost and the PR has all of those along with HEX and Power Break, your best bet against a PR who knows how to play thier class is to just hope they dont see you, or get your archer buddies to take them out for you.

yes this new update, brings alot of refreshing change into lineage2, lvling is a little more easier, getting items also up to B grade, and even A, many changes for pvp that i find really interesting.

i have been playing lineage2 since the open beta, and still think l2 is the best PVP mmorpg in the market, if you can find a good clan with end game objectifs

Yeah me and my wife quit it a yr or 2 ago due to the grind at low lvls (before 2nd job change).

This update might bring us back :)

Any ideas on when the update will be live?