f13.net

Creating this to reply to Alluvian about Lineage 2, didn't want to drag the other thread (http://www.f13.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=338&start=35) any further off topic.



I don't know as yet, items will play a large part, hence my creating a dwarf to start with.  To answer the azzrape comment, not my choice of playstyle.

A Human Fighter gets a class change at level 20 to Knight, Warrior or Rogue.  At level 40 those 3 classes get a further class change choice of two further classes.  Heard rumours that another class change at 60 is planned, given that A grade equipment exists it looks like a further 2 class changes will be implemented.  You still get to use the skills you picked up on your earlier classes.  Going to paste the skills available to a Human Fighter if he goes through 1st class change to Knight and 2nd class change to Dark Avenger (Level: 40 - 59).

Number after the skill shows how many times you can increase it at various levels.


Fighter Skills
Luck 1
Armor Mastery 1-5
Relax 1
Weapon Mastery 1-3
Mortal Blow 1-9
Power Shot 1-9
Power Strike 1-9

These Skills In addition for Knight
Expertise Grade D
Heavy Armor Mastery 1-15
Magic Resistance 1-14
Shield Mastery 1-2
Sword Blunt Mastery 1-8
Drain Health 1-13
Majesty 1
Shield Stun 1-15
Ultimate Defense 1
Aggression 1-12
Deflect Arrow 1-2
Divine Heal 1-9
Focus Mind 1

These Skills in addition for Dark Avenger
Expertise Grade C
Heavy Armor Mastery 16-36
Magic Resistance 15-35
Shield Mastery 3-4
Sword Blunt Mastery 9-29
Aggression 13-33
Drain Health 14-37
Hate Aura 1-21
Life Scavenge 1-7
Majesty 2-3
Reflect Damage 1-3
Shield Stun 16-36
Summon Black Panther 1-3
Focus Mind 2-4
Hamstring 1
Iron Will 1-2
Corpse Plague 1
Horror 1
Ultimate Defense 2

But it's still one person tossing an Excel spreadsheet at another. Most MMOG PvP is like this, yes, but others cover that by making it faster or the by-the-minute choices wider. I haven't seen L2 provide either.

How'd L2's opening day go?  Any billing/login server issues?

Fixed.

And of those skills listed only a tiny handful are active skills. Most skills in lineage 2 are passive. Alluvians coments still run true up to level 20 you have at most 3 active skills. As a dwarf to level 20 you have 0 active skills to assist you in wacking foozles.

I think you get one or two more active skills at the next bump up.

To give you something to compare in the newbie tutorial in COH you will have as many active powers and probably more power diversity than you do at level 20 in lineage 2 and very close to the same as you do at level 40 in l2.

Kaid

You took the "In your face!" right out of my mouth.

Although I did get booted from the mapserver after making my second character last night. ...grumble

Heh, it went same as yours, I was in both beta's so both games used the same ncsoft account server, when I activated L2, I had the option to activate COH.

Very smooth release of both games, did they wipe open beta characters in COH?

Aye all true, just wanted to get the skill list out as it does improve somewhat at very high levels.

They wiped the beta account characters last Thursday (4/22), but gave those beta testers the chance to log back in three days ahead of the Launch. On Sunday 4/25, beta testers could roll new characters in their Catass2Justice program. While I didn't get in until that night, word was that there was some warping for the first two hours, but nothing like the wholesale crashing of most other early MMOGs. And then Wednesday pretty much went off without a hitch.

I did predict this'd be a launch to finally dethrone DAoC as "the best launch of an MMOG". So far I think I was right :) But then, if Lineage 2 also launched as well, it's possible that NC Soft just does good launches (since Lineage 1 when it went live also went well... for the 10 people that played it).

See, now you're just being a wiseass. And to that I say, Have fun killing monster_1-500 until you hit level 40 or whatever rediculous level you need for raiding. Right now I can take a group of 8 and go at 40 monsters - this is a week after release.

On top of that, I can see where you're going - you're trying to compare Lineage 2 to City of Heroes. If you remove time, Lineage 2 is to City of Heroes like Pong is to Soul Caliber II.

Could you relist the skills and only list the active combat ones for one weapon choice?  Like rest does not count, sword mastery doest not count.  Listing power shots for multiple weapons does not really count (although I guess you could switch from sword to dagger for it's power shot since you have absolutely nothing else to do in combat).

And items don't really add to combat diversity in my opinion unless they actively have some sort of really interactive proc.  Just having +20% more damage does not make combat more fun.


I just don't understand how you can find any of that PVE combat any FUN.  And if so, you are just doing WORK to get to the fun stuff.  Work and game are antonyms.  They just don't go together.

Combat diversity is great.

A stat-based system for pvp segmented by levels you must treadmill, not so great.

Imo it's like sending the squire out to joust for you instead of getting your old knight ass in the saddle. You can be the best squire in the world and that other knight is going to disembowel you without breaking a sweat.

I will never understand level-based pvp.

Shit, I got caught as a straight man there. Didn't get the sub-text.

Arthur, the big huge difference is that L2 has no business having levels 1-18. It's there as an abject time sink, religiously avoided until someone affects a macroable method. It's like NC Soft forgot everything after EQ Ruins of Kunark. Very little in the way of interesting combat, from both a what-to-fight and a what-to-use angle. They'd have lost players if they wiped out the weeks it took them to get there.

The only thing that L2 and CoH have in common is their publisher. Oh, and I guess that players play only one character. In fact, I see my hate of L2 a strength for NC Soft. Instead of releasing a bunch of blah clones, they have a product line I can admire for success even if I hate the title(s) that got them there. It's why I think they're a company to watch (http://www.grimwell.com/index.php?action=fullnews&id=110).

But L2 has got a very specific playability to it. People will play it for a long time because they have no choice, or because they're part of that unique mentality that likes DAoC without the content and Shadowbane without the fun. In my opinion, of course :)

<3

Er, I asked cos I honestly didn't know the answer, I did wonder if COH launch was so smooth cos as with L2 you didn't have lots of New characters being created and therefore the game world was more balanced.  If they hadn't wiped COH then it would look like an overall policy by NCSoft that other companies would have to consider.

As the answer was they did wipe, then it's not really going to have much impact.

Hey get this Schild my L2 character is a items getter Dwarf, that means I'm going to have to roll up a pvp character too, possibly also Dwarf item maker to make full use of the first so I think your "monster_1-500 until you hit level 40" comment is wildly undervalued.

Dwarf Item Maker and Dwarf Item Getter sound like SUCH FUN CLASSES. Does the game manual have any scratch and sniff catass? Or maybe a little tiny treadmill replica to put on your desk?

(http://www.visit4info.com/sitecontent/LG/fullZZZZZZTVCCL0327115127PIC.jpg)

Hey AP,

Will you be keeping us appraised of the goings on in Lineage 2 for the forseable future?  I'm not trying to be a smartass here (unlike in the 4/30 mmo update thread where I was trying) but as I spent the better part of April in the OB and then, at the last minute, decided I would resist the siren call of open PvP, I'm actually sincerely interested in the shape that Lin2 takes over the first few weeks and months.

My main reason for not sticking it out is actually the zero confidence I have in NCsoft and whoever taking care of the adena-botting and associated duping rumors which promise to ruin the game's economy before it's even begun.  People had reported that clans made up entirely of Chinese 'bots' were positioning themselves to be the true powers on the American servers and would simply sell (for RL$) the guilds which paid them the right to 'own' the castles in the game... meaning if you paid them (and only if you paid them) would they not crush your attempt to claim any castle on your own.  That and I felt they were a bit underhanded in withholding the Chronicle I until June when everyone was assuming that it would come with the box sales Apr 28.

So take that for what it's worth... I'd like to hear about things there from time to time.  And I'm sure others will look forward to it if only to laugh about Lin2 woes compared to teh CoH love.

It's Dwarf Artisan and Dwarf Scavenger, I just made those names up as few know anything about the game.

Time permitting and still being able to post, yup, I'll update you on my slow progress.

Finance moving in this weekend, selling her house, then selling mine and buying a big one.  MArried start of next year and then trying for kids, so all that's going to affect my catass gameplay to some extent.

Was looking for a game that appealed long term on a casual basis, I don't think lineage 2 will be able to maintain the current grind level, I reckon they will have to lower it somewhat as even for what it offers end game it's a bit intense.

I would relist the skills Alluvian but details of what exactly they do is hard to come by as it's all translated, fair to say divide the active skills by 3 unless you switch weapons.

Darniaq, I would agree 1-18 are pointless, still I didn't design it I'm just giving it a go.

Sounds like you married for money?  har!  Seriously though, all the best with that.  And with any luck you won't get the kids too quickly which means you'll have more time for practising.

Cheers

AP. You're playing the fanboi. You've played Lineage 2 enough to know it sucks - but you just want to be contrary. The problem here is you assume all of us are CoH fanbois - when the reality is I'm sure (at least in my case) - CoH, like every other MMO is on thin ice. When the first publish comes out we'll see if that ice cracks or not. If not, good for them - if so, at least the game is fun out of the box. Lineage 2 was elf boobies and shitty gameplay out of the box.

It's one thing to defend a game, but it's another thing to defend a shitty game and not have any good defense.

Thank you for treading where I was reticent to go :)

And AP, I hear ya on the RL stuff. I long ago had to relegate my catassery to slighter manageable chunks. I want long-term repeat play, which in MMOGs means short and long-term goals, but not when parts of those required more than 1 or 2 hours of straight play.

The fact that I can sometimes play 5 hours straight doesn't mean I'm signing up for a Raid two months in advance on an Event Calendar site. I don't want to be bothered that much by it. I accept chunks of game content is forever closed to me, so it's just a matter of gauging if the parts I can access are fun enough to keep me.

L2 couldn't. I'm really not being snide when I say it forgot all advances in MMOG playability since EQ Kunark. It's as if the game were designed entirely in a bubble by a developer that quit SOE in 2000, and joined a monastary right away.

Or, by someone who was only looking to improve L1 graphically. Features are different, but the system bears so much resemblance, their target audience not being me is really not a surprise. I hated L1 in almost exactly the same amount of time played.

What CoH got right is that it's fun right out of the box. Work2Fun is so out-of-date that it's laughable any game still requires it.

Schild, depends really what your defination of fanboi is, I see it as someone who refuses to acknowledge "their" game has faults and always has a good reason why things were designed just so.

If I knew L2 sucked I wouldn't play it, I just don't know if it does yet.  I'm looking for a game I can play as long as I played UO and AC for, L2 has the potential to hold my interest, enjoying it so far but then I'm not expecting a lot from the low end game.

It's a hell of a lot easier than getting started on Darktide in AC1, I know that for a fact.

Really got to get some work done now.

Levels 1-5 have NOTHING.

Then at level 6 you get:


Of these, only the last three are actual skills.  They are all just a normal attack that does more damage and are on timers.  You can only use one of them unless you switch weapons (no real reason not to, you have nothing else to do).  Relax is just a minor variant on sit where you gain more health at the cost of endurance or whatever they call it.

Then at level TWENTY you get a split, but again they are almost all passive, and VERY few differences between knight and rogue for instance.  Following is my recollection and some guesses on the powers.



I think all but the heal in the unknown are actually passive as well, but I am not sure.  Focus mind I believe is the opposite of relax.

And that is expected to last you all the way to 40.  They are arbitrary numbers, but these levels are NOT FAST.  The game was dreadfully painful to play.  I think I drudged on to 12, thinking for sure 10, or 11, or 12 would give me SOME skills.  But nope.  I had all my skills capped by then as well, so there was NO advancement at all for me until 20.  And the game I was 'playing' was anything but fun.

The listing I saw of night was much smaller actually.  Either it was very incomplete or they have added more. I suspect the former.  But this was the official lineage site and it listed something like 3 powers for knight, rogue, and warrior, two of which were the same.  Glad there are more than those three, but unless all those unknowns are dynamic active ways to change the outcome of battle I can't see post 20 combat being any fun either.  VS mob or VS human.

Heh, checkout the Dwarf skills for a real laugh:P  I'm 35% of a level from 20 with class change quest done and I don't even know when I will get the chance to play again.  I haven't even used a combat skill apart from spoil and sweep in 4 weeks of playing.

And a few posts up you said "I am having fun playing".

See, this is why we think you are an escaped mental patient.  Do you get it now?
[joke]
When you look at your back in the mirror, can you read what the patch says?
[/joke]

(tags are for you entirely missing the intent of my azzrape comment and pissing off cevik in the other thread)

Given the setup of skills for dwavers and the utter pain of actually crafting anything with one I can only imagine they were designed to be guild bots. I can see no other reason for the punishing tedious trudge to 20 and their utter vulnerablity to pvp attack throughout their careers.


Kaid

I don't see how the 2 statements are incompatible, the second statement should read as expressing a wish to complete the last part of level 19 and finally have access to the unholy goodness of level 20.

As for the azrape comment, I didn't missunderstand it, I reacted to it and used it as a point of reference when it suited me to do so.  If you make fun of something it's easier to dismiss it, that's why that comment comes up so often when pvp is mentioned.

As for Cevik, he got to call me a fucking moron, he probably feels better for it.

You did however, misunderstand who used it, because it suited you to use it against someone who didn't post it or even agree with it.

And I don't disagree with the line of logic Cevik used to arrive at that point.

You really think just pressing autoattack and then staring at the screen for 19 whole levels was anything approaching fun?  That is where I found the statements incompatible.  It would mean that you thing a pre level 20 dwarf is actually fun to play in L2.

Well it's not just auto attack, using a short spear at the moment so have an area effect ability that can affect up to 3 mobs at once.  Using soulshots which double your damage with the chance for a critical at 4x.

Healing potions are handy, different types of mob drop certain rare items that have a certain market value so there's that to look out for.  Also sweep gives access to extra drops.   It's of some interest to build up a lump of cash and try buying weapons for cheap and selling high, made a bit that way.  I like how tight the money is, it's very very difficult to get enough money to outfit your character.

Skill level 50-99.9 in UO was not fun either but I made GM Miner, Smith, thief, Mace, Sword etc etc on different characters.

I just like a challenge I think.

But it's not a challenge.  It is just time consuming.  You are gaurunteed success if you put in the time.

Sorry but I didn't misunderstand who said it, I reacted to it, you just happened to be the person my reaction was currently aimed at, I made sure the correct author was quoted directly above the quote.

But you did take it entirely out of the context I used it in and attacked someone else using it as ammunition that the forum was somehow calling pvp players assrapers. Which was not at ALL what I was saying.

Agreed, but not in the end game when characters are at the low cap.  The boredom is a challenge though.

"The boredom is a challenge though."  You just shorted out my logic circuits.  I am just going to call you a troll at this point and walk away.

You called us fanbois because we disagreed with one aspect of your rant against CoH, while most (all?) of us fully admitted that there were plenty of other aspects of CoH, which you did not cover, that were faulty.  The aspect that you disliked about CoH was that it was boring to sit and wait for your powers to cycle.

Then you later define fanboi as someone who refuses to acknowledge the negative aspects of "their game".



So do you now see why we think you are a L2 fanboi?  You make up a non-existant problem in CoH to show that it's boring, and boring cannot be tollerated in a game so those of us who disagree are fanbois.  Then you later admit that the part you like about L2 is that it's a challenge because it's boring..

Maybe you are a troll..

The grind is boring, I already agreed the first 18 levels aren't needed in this very thread.  The point is the absolute worst is nearly over for me now, my dwarf gets combat skills at level 20.  How exactly am I trolling I even tried to get off the other thread as soon as I could?  This one is extitled "Avoid" for gods sake.

You used avoid as a 'hook' to get people in here. Now that you acknowledge it, I think the real problem is you're a closet masochist and you don't know it. But, enjoy Lineage 2. If you like it that's all that matters. You're still a putz for liking it though.

For someone who points out that I do not read posts you have some nerve posting that, Gith brought up the cycling issue, I mearly said I had experienced it.  On that thread as on the previous coh thread I have taken part in, I expressed in detail that my major issue is that it is a purely PVE game.

You chose to ignore that fact, argue a point I was not making to a very great extent, insult me at every turn and now seek to dismiss me with the classic "troll".

So be it.

Naw Naw my game is better than yours.

Fucking kids.

I didn't say my game was better. I said your game sucked. That is a fact.

If anyone's trolling it's you, considering I created this thread to get off the COH thread and the first post you make on this specifically refers back to COH.

What can I say? You had me at 'avoid.'

Look it up.

i·ro·ny    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (r-n, r-)
n. pl. i·ro·nies

The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.
A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See Synonyms at wit1.

Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: “Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated” (Richard Kain).
An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity. See Usage Note at ironic.
Dramatic irony.
Socratic irony.

Try the A's.

And I never disagreed with the PvE issue, I only disagreed with your absurd notion that power cycling is an issue.  Here, read the posts:

http://forums.f13.net/viewtopic.php?p=7253#7253 - You say power cycling is bad.
http://forums.f13.net/viewtopic.php?p=7256#7256 - I mention that power cycling isn't an issue.  My first post in the thread.
http://forums.f13.net/viewtopic.php?p=7294#7294 - You say something along the lines of "yes it is, fanboi!!!1!"
http://forums.f13.net/viewtopic.php?p=7330#7330 - several posts later you mention that you only like PvP, your first mention of it.
http://forums.f13.net/viewtopic.php?p=7337#7337 - Rasix points out the absurdity of liking Lineage II, with only 3 skills for 20 levels when you hate CoH because of it's power cycling.
http://forums.f13.net/viewtopic.php?p=7404#7404 - Sky points out that calling everyone who disagrees with you a fanboi is a personal attack.
http://forums.f13.net/viewtopic.php?p=7415#7415 - You try to call sky at his own game because he said you lacked knowledge about the game.  When Sky said you lacked knowledge, he wasn't attacking you, he was pointing out the same thing I had in several posts above, that power cycling isn't an issue.
http://forums.f13.net/viewtopic.php?p=7419#7419 - I defend Sky.
http://forums.f13.net/viewtopic.php?p=7427#7427 - We get sidetracked at this point and talk about how PvP games should be designed.
http://forums.f13.net/viewtopic.php?p=7461#7461 - You point out that you are confused and that you don't understand what part of your original post I disagreed with.
http://forums.f13.net/viewtopic.php?p=7464#7464 - I point out yet again that power cycling is a non-issue in CoH.

I didn't link all of your original posts, I linked the ones that started this whole conversation, it wasn't until the third post that you mentioned PvP vs. PvE; however, in the first post you mentioned power cycling as an issue.  Everyone in the original CoH thread was discussing power cycling with you, I'm sorry that you were confused, but go back and read the thread, it's clear that is what we were discussing.

Before I played it

http://www.f13.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=4932&highlight=#4932

also refer to the

lineage 2 review by Haemish who I managed to hold a differing opinion to without getting all bent out of shape

http://www.f13.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=162

Unless you count Morphiend, though god knows why you would want to.

The long and short of it is that you were willing to put up with a grueling front end to get to the "good stuff" you feel has promise.

We've all been there. Few of us haven't ground our little hearts out in some game thinking we'd be rewarded. But L2 provides nothing fun before that either. The very first thing DAoC did was create some things to do along the way to RvR, and that compelled EQ to become a much better game than it was. Neither has it perfect, but the fact that they did this so long ok, and thus have affected so many games since, makes me assert what I have.

L2 is EQ four years ago. People quit this entire genre because of the grind, and L2 doesn't change their mind.

Sounds a bit like walking up to someone on the street, and asking them: "Excuse me, could you hit me repeatedly in the shoulder while I long for the day when you eventually stop and the pain goes away?"

A normal person would mutter "madman!" and try and get away from you.

A MMOG company would instead put on a knucklebuster and say "gonna cost ya $14.95".

Other than that, L2 beta lacked content and variety in playstyles while CoH has great variety and content. Both suffer from lag, though.

CoH, even at peak hours is near devoid of lag. Hell, even L2 had very little lag during the beta. The real difference was content. By the time big guild wars happen in Lineage 2, they'll be happening in CoH. Why drink Miller Light when you can have Guinness?

Wow, I feel a strange sense of Deja Vu with this thread. Except this time, its not me arguing with AP about this same basic issue.

I played Lineage 2 Beta for 2 hours.   I spent close to 7 hours playing City of Heroes tonight, after having been in the final 3 day open beta.

I think that says it all, least for me.  Anime Elf Boobies doesn't beat sheer fun, action, and adventure.

As much as I would like to agree, in that Lineage II has completely open PvP, which I think is an excellent idea...you completely lost me with
"The boredom is a challenge though."

There are so many things I liked about L2, that I really, really wanted to like it.  I got pretty excited about it a while ago, so much that I downloaded the Taiwan beta, then the Japanese beta..  And I'll put up with an amount of grinding much greater than most.  But after learning about the absolutely stupendous amounts of SP that need to be earned in order to get your own powers...and then learning that the guild leader must earn millions of SP in order to level up the guild - and no guild member could aid in this, except perhaps by PL'ing the guild leader, who will undoubtedly NEED the PL'ing because they've got to neglect their own combat skills in order to level up the guild...  It was just waay too much for me.  Maybe I'll check back in a few months and hope things are better.

Oh, yeah, and I didn't like the stupid way the Dark Elves run, either.

Right on. Most of us dislike the grind with little to no purpose other than to "get to the good stuff" (which you'll note for Lineage 2 was postponed until June - seiges, flying dragons, etc.), but there are some people who enjoy an MMOG with that model and that's fine. As long as you find the game enjoyable, it is worth your time. I would have loved to play a dwarf at high levels in L2, as well, AP. And god knows I tried. In Korean beta, I tried leveling one and burned out at level 14. In NA beta, I tried an elf caster for a bit and then went back to try a dwarf once more. This time, I burned out at level 7 and that was about 10 hours of play. The reason I burned out? Because I realized that at a play rate of about 10 hours a week, I would not see high levels for over a year, and I felt that it just wasn't worth the money or the time. You're moving along at a fair clip and I hope you can continue to do so because going from 20 to 40 will take you more than twice as long and when you add in a fiance (and I could be wrong here and she may not want any attention from you, but... ) the use of time investment to block content becomes a major annoyance. The only reason I say that to you is that in my experience (when Meg and I moved in together) that is when the ridiculous time commitment really became an issue. But I would definitely like to hear how the game shapes up in the later stages if you stick with it. I'd like to hear how dragon flight works and how the seiges shape up. I'm particularly interested in the seige system.

I actually considered buying this upon release and then last week I talked to a friend who had stuck out the NA beta. He told me how he had been level 25 and went out to do some PvP for a couple hours the night before. He lost 5 levels. Ugh. It will take him longer than 2 hours to regain those levels for sure. Losing that amount of time in PvP kept me from buying the release box. It kept him from buying it, too.

The target audience for Lineage2 is not anyone who posts on this website.  I don't know why that's so hard to comprehend.  It's for hardcore MMORPGers in Hardcore guilds.  

Its not for the casual.

about 50% of Bat country has been playing 8 hours+ days. What is a hardcore guild like? The thought scares me.

Insomniacs with caffeine IVs?

My God, this still isn't fixed? Only the styling of the DE female blunts the abject idiocy of that run animation.


How many games have we heard that excuse for? So often "hardcore" is confused with "players who really don't actually game as much as they simply consume". Totally different.

L2's basic problem is that there is no character variety and the growth through the very limited character abilities is sadistic. XP loss from PvP death, in a market that so proves how unprofitable full PvP is?!

Yes, it works fine in Korea. Good! But they launched the same shit state-side. If they achieve even Shadowbane's numbers, it'd be a minor miracle. SB is so many orders of magnitude more fun, and once the pull of the new shiney wears off towards the end of May (imho, if that needs stating ;) ), people will be leaving. Maybe they won't go back to SB, but L2 won't enjoy the same success that L1 didn't.

It's not a game for the hardcore. You are right in that it's also not a game designed for us, if "us" includes current Western MMOGers. That make "us" weak? Shit. I'd gladly accept that title so I can go off and spend my time and money on something that's fun.

I started to write some stuff here but I'll just tell you guys what I told the #hate crew:  You won't like Lineage, don't bother playing it, it's a game targeted at a very specific demographic.

I don't think Lin2 sucks.  Well, at least I think it doesn't HAVE to suck.  I played the beta for some time and my highest level char was a 15 level dwarf.  It took me forever.  The game has a lot of interesting aspects, especially the guild war bits.  If you can ever get to them.  It was hell leveling in Lin1 and it looks to be pretty much the same deal here.  Some people enjoy this sort of grind... Koreans, for example... or maybe it's true that they play because they have no choice.  There are a lot of EQ players in Korea, too... but, as far as I know, PC bangs buy blocks of accounts for both those games.  I don't think they do that for any others.

I just can't grind like that anymore.  I tried with Lin2 because I really wanted to fiddle with the large scale PvP.  If this game was easier to level and get to the heart of PvP, I would probably give it a decent try.  It doesn't have to be as fast as SB, but, right now, it's way too slow.  My down time was actually longer than my combat in most sessions.

CoH, on the other hand, is crazy mad fun and I'm enjoying it immensely.  It's quick and easy, and what ever level you are at the time, you are in the heart of the game.  Of course, CoH has a grind.  For some reason, they've been able to mask the grind with fun stuff to do.  The time seems to fly between levels.  Some of us did a mission last night that took HOURS to complete, but it was wild fun.  Everyone racked up death debt but didn't hesitate to run right back in and give it another go.  Why? It was FUN.

I think the difference between most games and CoH is how seriously you take your character.  In some games you hesitate to put yourself in a situation where you won't succeed.  It just takes too long to keep trying.  If you want to get anywhere, you HAVE to take your character seriously.  In CoH, you throw caution to the wind.  If you feel you've gimped yourself or you don't especially like your character... oh well, I'll just roll another superhero!  It's so much fun to create and develop a character, you don't feel frustrated or angry having to reroll.  It's not terribly easy to gimp yourself, either.  If you make feel you've made a wrong choice regarding powers, it's just not such a big deal.

I don't know how long CoH will stay shiny for me.  I'm looking forward to CoV and getting involved in the story arcs.  Yes, I still want to play some sort of standard fantasy MMOG with interesting skills, uber loot, the magic sword named Johnson and all the trimmings, but I can see keeping CoH around for a long time, too.  I think I can handle two games at once, although I still can't tie a cherry stem with my tongue.

Slog, I really do want to know what the specific demographic is. Seriously. Every year, the genre gets bigger, and has long since become wide enough where two people playing "an MMORPG" can be playing diametrically opposed games.

Technically, someone playing ATITD, L2, EQ, SWG, SB and CoH are all gaming in the same genre. These are different games entirely that all happen to put thousands of people (or in the case of CoH: a bit over a hundred) together in a virtual world. Someone picks up an RTS, RPG or FPS game and they pretty much know what they're getting. Someone tries an MMORPG and they've got Lottery-level chances of liking it.

"Very specific demographic" connotes a smallish niche title like SB. But NC Soft didn't toss in millions of dollars and Garriot's talent for that. Being a sequel to a juggernaut has a cache unto itself, but they took great pains to launch it in the U.S. too.

So what is that demographic, how numerous are they and are we looking at yet another entirely unique offshoot from MMORPGs like Planetside or Eve, a game that only appeals to one type of player that may not enjoy anything else in the same genre?

Population - About 40 servers worldwide and growing.  Server population seems to be about 2000 to 3000 during primetime.

The target audience: Uberguilds.  Why?  The reason my guild is playing are:

-It's not easy to level up a character, so you know who you are fighting (accountability)  It's too hard to reroll, so when Gandorf kills you today, you will be able to hunt him down 2 weeks later.

-Crafting is guild based

-A siege system that actually works

-A Variety of Classes and couter classes it PvP

-32 Free Expansions (Called Chronicles)

Do you mean the instancing of atlas park and zones like that?  If so, please adjust your numbers for the other games as well.  CoH in beta had over 6500 people on one server.  There are no doubt thousands on one server.  Only a few hundred can be in a zone before it will create a copy of itself.  Is this why you downgrade the thousands playing to hundreds?

If so, please do it for EQ as well.  Because if you put 500 or so in a zone not built for it (bazaar is a special zone with it's own machine) and you crash the machine for those zones.  It has been done dozens of time for various events and/or protests.  Rangers repeatedly crashed the machine running crushbone and surrounding zones with about 400 people or so.  Is crashing better than making a split?  Please downgrade EQ to hundreds at once as well.

Same for AC1. Get too many in a city and you get portal stormed out.

SWG becomes worse than a slideshow and everyone disconnects in any largish battles of 50 or so on a side.  The armor and weapon crafting system are the bane of the GCW, too much unique data to transmit for every single damn player because every gun and piece of armor is unique.  SWG can't get more than a few hundred withing the range of your shout either.

So CoH is just as massive multiplayer as any of the other games.  The difference is when gamers push the limits of other games they perform like shit or outright break.  CoH makes copies of itself long before that happens.  I personally think it makes copies too early, but that is just personal preference.

CoH devs said that they expect servers to peak at about 4000-4500 total online population before performance takes a hit. They make this possible by doing a shitload of instancing. Just to get that out of the way.

You know, after my Lineage 2 review, I've had doubts that maybe, just maybe, there IS a fun game in L2 somewhere. After reading this thread, I know there isn't.

Oh sure, someone will bot their entire guild to 40. And maybe, at that point, possibly, the gameplay becomes fun (though with the paucity of active skills, I doubt it).

But AP... boredom is not a challenge; boredom is a BURDEN. Playing a game that you KNOW is going to bore you for unspecified amounts of time is suspect. Paying a monthly fee to be bored for up to 6 months worth of time (which is a figure I've heard bandied about for how long it takes to cap in L2) is assinine.

Sure, I may not play CoH for 6 months total. But you can damn sure bet that 99% of the time I'm playing CoH, I'm having fun right at that very moment.

The difference between hardcore gamers and myself is that I won't accept less than 90% boredom in a game, while they expect it.

Hey! Lookee, there! Something positive came out of this thread, a new sig!

This is kinda what I was getting at.  Your point of view is just so far away from those of us that do play that comprehension of the other side's point of view isn't really possible.

Haemish, the boredom comment was meant more in relation to the first 20 levels playing as a gimped dwarf, it wasn't meant to refer to the game as a whole, though I admit several people have read it that way.

Several people (possibly more than 7) are playing it that way as well.

You played a Dwarf without a guild (or a group of friends) to back you up?  I'm not suprised you had a difficult time.

Holy crap I missed that one. That's amazingly dumb! (imo)

The big nail in the coffin of EQ was that I was tired of losing more experience from deaths than I could make up in my paucity of playing time.

Just....losing 5 LEVELS at level 25!?! Holy crap.

Three cheers for Planetside! ;)

You know, I wouldn't mind a deeper game than the two mmogs I subscribe to (CoH and PS). If only someone could make them as fun as those two games instead of some exercise in masochism. But so far the scorecard reads: deep OR fun, and I'm betting on fun, whether it wins or not. At least I had fun while I was playing.

As I've said before, if the first 20 levels are fucking boring, that's all I will know, because I will not put up with painful boredom in the HOPE that something somewhere MIGHT be fun.

Shit, I did that enough chasing after women I knew would never even let me cop a feel, much less get bizizzy with. I don't like dating, thus one of the multitude of reasons I'm happy about my upcoming nuptials, and I don't play games that don't even show a little leg without a huge amount of time listening to tirades about how its last boyfriend treated it like shit.

I must admit I'm on the same side of the coin as Haemish here. If it isn't fun immediately, it isn't worth my time AND money. My time is money and I value it for that. So when I'm wasting my precious time and money, I better be grinning ear to fucking ear the whole time. But that being said and having played the beta for a bit, I would like to hear player thoughts on what makes Lineage 2 fun. Honestly. Lineage 2 is the first MMOG I did not purchase upon release so I'm trying to decide why I gave it a pass. What do you find most intriguing about it. And I want information based on what you've played thus far, not what is to come. What has been fun about playing a dwarf crafter? Perhaps I missed something or was approaching it all wrong when I tried one as I didn't go very far with it because I felt bored by the mechanics of it. So yeah, I'm interested. I also would like to hear more about the Seige system. I've read bits and pieces here and there and it sounds interesting, but I also read that it won't be patched in until June now? Is that correct or did I misread something? Thanks in advance for the feedback.

I doubt anyone besides me plays Lineage 2 and reads this website.

Arthur_Parker plays it and reads the web site, does he count?

cool, he can answer then.

I read this website, but  usually don't post, and I'm playing Lineage 2 hardcore at the moment. The fun thing about lineage 2 ?  PVP with consequences.
If xp is to easy to gain, loosing xp when dying does not metter. When equipment is hard to get, loosing it is a big thing. You just don't 'go pvp' for the fun of it - you do sieges, or you fight players about other things that count.  Again, because leveling is slow and items are hard to get, good leveling spots and loot provide things to fight for.
Let me tell you about some events of the last two days in Cruma Tower:
We had camped two rooms, pulling 20+ krators and portas into one group then  killing them with wizard AE's and polearm users. Great xp, fun leveling. On sunday, a group moved into one of the rooms, we tried to convince them to leave, but no luck. We tried to 'encourage' them to leave by fighting their mobs, they bashed a few of us a bit trying to get us to fight, but eventually we just gave up and moved on. XP for the rest of the day wasn't optimal.
On monday, we're back in the same two rooms, another group came, and we just didn't want to take it anymore. The usual story: We fight the same mobs for a minute, one of them goes purple a few times. Eventually we all attack back, and after a bit of fighting three of them are dead, none of us died or turned red, and they leave. We haven't been disturbed in those rooms for the rest of the day.

Well I will attempt to answer from my point of view.  L2 is difficult, it's difficult to get started and with exp loss (which I'm not that keen on) and item loss (which I like) it will stay difficult long term.  It's a game in which I get a sense of achievement from increasing in levels, getting new skills and increasing my wealth both in money and items.  

The PVP+ nature of the game makes it unpredictable and that also interests me.  The graphics are very good, the world seems very large at the moment, have just permanently left the Dwarf island, had made trips out from it before but had always returned.  Recently completed the class change quest, which required me to make a trip to the other side of the main island close to Dragon valley, was fun to explore and really brought home the size of the world.

It reminds me very much of early AC Darktide, the struggle to raise enough cash to afford a decent weapon etc, the unexplored areas etc, the randomness of encounters with other players.  The random nature of the loot drops that means virtually every mob you kill has a very small chance of giving a good item, which appeals too.

I'm not currently in a guild and probably won't join one or make one till I'm somewhere in the 35-40 level range.  Guilds are even more time intensive and I just don't have the time at present.  What I’m hoping happens at higher levels is the type of normal daily occurences that Monika has described above, Dwarf island is pretty low population and the battles for resources there have been much more low key.  The Dwarf Coal and Mithril mines are also the largest dungeons I have ever been in, in any game.   Wasn't able to find a indepth L2 review, there's this (http://www.ugo.com/channels/games/features/lineage_2/default.asp) but again it doesn't go into great detail, I haven't experienced enough of the game to properly review it as yet.  The 1st chronicle with a lot of changes has been put back to June.

No, I'm just the same old sweet little Sig I ever was.

So, you mentioned you were nearing level 20, I believe or are past that now. How long would you say, in hours played, did that take? Also, I'm wondering, is XP earned by wandering groups as good as XP earned from sitting static in one spot? I prefer to wander and adventure about, even if the wandering becomes a loop around an area. Is this a feasible way to level at teens and higher levels or is it really only something that occurs in newbie areas where there are large amounts of mobs scattered about? It sounds like a lot of encounters are the old camp static spawn stuff like EQ.

Time played till 20 I'm not sure to be honest, maybe 2 hours a day on average for 4 weeks, sometimes didn't get the chance to play for days.  I also tended to stay in one of two areas of the coal mines doing the weaver and bat quests which give 2400 Adena and 60 SP each time you complete each quest.

I have heard it is possible to level a Dwarf to level 20 in 4-5 hours if you have him equiped with the best non-grade equipment.  A Human can be leveled to 20 in about 2 hours with the same items

I generally roam around now exploring and killing, also need to check what type of mobs it makes sense to kill for a lucky drop, the new skills make a big difference as with an overhit skill I get a exp bonus if using it to finish a mob off.  Having a lot of luck with the level 2 spoil skill now which means most mobs give at least one kind of special drop.  I don't really like downtime and therefore tend to go for easier greens and blues which also helps with the money situation as I really need to upgrade my weapon and armour.

Still in PRX?

Yes. I believe the zone population cap is 150 with new instances spawning when a population reaches 130? I can't recall that second number, but I think it was in the Bat Country forum here where someone posted the info.

CoH has a lot of players. But like all MMOGs, players won't see all of those other players in one place ever. The promise is way way ahead of technology to support it, but it works because it's believable. Say SWG can support 15,000 accounts per server, with 3,000 online at any given time. I theoretically interact with those 3,000 people on the macro economic level. However, to actively game with those people in either competitive or cooperative combat, that number is severely reduced. To, say, 50.

Planetside and Shadowbane are the only games I've played that seem to provide proof that "massive" matters at all. Shadowbane was a shocker to me (http://www.grimwell.com/?action=fullnews&showcomments=1&id=83) too. "Massive" to me is anything more than the 64 player cap a free FPS game can support.

I'm hoping City of Villains will show just how well the CoH engine scales to support realtime combat between 150 participants.


Oh, it's certainly possible. That's why places like this exist. L2 simply sounds like Shadowbane with heavier death penalties: 90% of a character's life is spent fighting PvE at the risk of PvP, because even when they achieve PvP viability, their inevitable losses will require new grinding.

Fun for some, and I thank you for answering my earlier question on who that is.

Them not being me is just academic. The genre is way big enough to support many non-interacting playstyles. Someone may come to MMOGs for L2 and leave MMOGs when they quit L2, and probably not have missed anything because nothing else would be as fun to them. Conversely, I'll spend the entire rest of my life not missing L2 because I know that sort of game is not for me.

But it's for someone, and that contributes to bringing more money to the genre, which means more options for all.

Other than the sparse minutes when you actually fought another living person, not one second of that sounds fun to me in the least.

No, I will never understand the hardcore mentality, nor will I want to.

I can understand why people like it.  The PvP matters because there is a big bonus for controlling the good levelling areas and a big penalty for not controlling them.  That gives everyone the meaningful PvP with consequences they have been asking for.  The long levelling treadmill creates and reinforces communities, and more importantly greatly increases accountability, since the cost for rerolling is enormous.  Finally the looting and xp loss on PvP death gives us more of the long-desired "PvP with consequences."  

What this thread has taught me is that all the people who have been asking for "meaningful, skill based gameplay" on these boards over the years really just want "EQ with more shiney and button mashing."  I have been saying that for years, and I am glad to see CoH/WoW prove me right =)

No, we want gameplay that doesn't punish us for not sitting at the fucking computer for 8 hours at a stretch. We want gameplay that is involving, and doesn't require putting in a motherfucking catheter (sic) so we won't have to take bio breaks away from the precious screen. We want a game that doesn't suck, isn't buggy, and isn't ruled by he who spends the most fucking time.

No PVP game has yet to bring that to us in the MMOG arenea, other than maybe Planetside. And maybe CoH when they add the Villians.

/agree Haemish


Where does skill equal flat out patience? If that's all it was, I'd be selling fully decked out EQ accounts for $2,500 a week and have long since quit my real job.

"Meaningful" means shit. Everyone's game is meaningful to them when they enjoy it. "Skill based"? Since fucking when? I had more abilities as a level 16 Bard in Shadowbane than I'd ever have on any two characters in L2. "Skill" connotes decision making and that connotes having some options at all.

Now, if L2 is just a matter of old-skool UO in that fights are determined by who hit the right button first, then yea, that's skill. But then we're back to patience. The patience needed to accept that you were a pentosecond slower than your opponent and have therefore incurred another hour of treadmilling.

But you know what this thread has taught me? That fanbois are not a dead personality type. That's actually good news. I was afraid there was no way a community like this could ever find a game to enjoy again, partly because the genre developers simply weren't delivering.

So now we have two games with rather strong fan bases (though CoH's is larger). Good. About time we had some diametrically opposing points of view again.

Even if I can't figure out what drugs the other side is on :)

If they told you, they'd have to kill you. Trust me on this. A_P has a gun to my head as I type this. ;)

I wasn't trying to defend L2 in the second paragraph, that was directed at the raving CoH fanbois here, and the WoW fanbois elsewhere.  I just think it is amusing that the people who have been raging against the machine for years about the radical changes that needed to be made in the genre and flamed me to high heaven when I said that all we needed was "EQ with some tweaks" are now fighting with each other to see who can slober the most over EverHeroCraft.

Hell, I wasn't even really defending L2 in the first one, I was just trying to delve into the mind of the hardcore PvPer and point out why I think some of them might like the game.

To be quite honest, I haven't seen a single "CoH fanboi" around these parts, everyone seems to be saying "well, it's fun, it'll eventually be boring, but it's a nice change," hardly fanboi material.  The only fanbois I see are the "U WOULDN'T UNDERSTAND LINEAGE BEACUZ U RN'T UBAR!~!!1!" people..

The only point I was ever trying to make was that most people won't like Lineage for the same reasons that have been discussed  and endlessly debated for the past 3 years.

It's a dead horse topic.

And the point you made was right, but if one side is going to be pointing the fanboi finger, I definitely don't think it should be the side that is making the "you wouldn't understand man" argument.  From what I've seen, almost everyone here that is playing CoH has conceded that it's no where near the perfect game, we all just have had fun playing it for the last few weeks.  

Much like I had fun playing Grand Theft Auto for awhile, then I grew bored and stopped.  I never said GTA was the end all be all of games, I knew it wasn't.  It wasn't revolutionary, it wasn't the greatest game of all time, it was just fun to mug hookers and run over cops.  In CoH it's fun to gather a group of super heros and arrest some bad guys.

Heh, was that a honest mistake or a clever insult ? Long, ugly story behind that ...

I never was in PRX, I'm in Combine (www.the-combine.net). Just played as guest with them ( and CoS) for Shadowbane beta, then fought against them later on treachery. After we left shadowbane, we took a long time to decide on the next thing to play - I was in SWG mostly, others played Final Fantasy, we even returned to DAOC for a bit, but this is the game we play fully now.

To answer some other questions: Leveling while wandering around is possible - there are outside areas where mobs are spread far around, and a single person or duo can walk around a long time killing them.
Leveling does slow down later, but it does not get so exponentially harder as in other games. I am 38 now, and been averaging 10-15% xp per hour for a while.

Is soloing still a valid leveling playstyle at that level?  Also you mentioned xp per hour, don't be surprised if Morphiend breaks out in hives and starts jibbering when he sees that.

The fun part of any game is overcoming the obstacles in your way; using the tools you are given and your knowledge about the game in the best possible way.
The obstacles in lineage 2 are harder to overcome then in CoH, and the tools we are given for it are shiny then those in CoH- that does not mean its less fun, it just means it is more difficult. Grouping up to overcome those obstacles together makes it more fun.

There's this sense of wonder I sometimes get when a group works perfectly - I had it in EQ with a good groups, I've had it in shadowbane sometimes, and I can get in lineage2, with the right people. Everybody does their part well, you know what the other people will do without having to say it. Things just work, and mobs are lining up nicely to be killed, and xp and money suddenly flows freely.
At one point when I was tanking, I noticed I stopped looking at my health 2 hours ago, because I totally trusted my healer. This would have been no big thing in a game where death has no meaning, but was wonderfull here.

It depends on the class. Archers can solo the bestl and get even better xp right now, but will get nerfed soon. Casters can solo well, possibly even get incredible xp with AE pulls, but have lots of downtime.
Tanks can solo low level mobs for low less xp, but more cash. Healers need a group after some point, unless they can find undead for their anti-undead nukes.

Ouch. So would you say there are class balance inssues then? I don't like to hear the word "nerf" related to MMOGs, especially not one with a long level grind. I would hate to get an archer to level 38, for example, and then be nerfed and end up needing to reroll or totally change my playstyle. Granted, if the "adjustment" to the class is properly done, then there should not be a problem, but history shows us that nerfs in MMOG tend to end up crippling classes. If anything, they should incrementally beef up the other classes to bring them in line with archers, but that won't happen because developers of level grind MMOGs tend to not like to do anything that might make that grind a slight bit easier. But I am still interested to hear if you see a lot of class balance issues, flavor of the month classes, etc.

Interview that mentions it here (http://www.telefragged.com/interviews/lineage2/) the Archer nerf was made months ago in Korea.  They basically owned at pvp, I can't find the quote right now but I believe they did state at one point they would prefer to bring other classes upwards rather than nerf the top ones down.

Light armour is currently broken too I believe, all the korean's (http://forums.lineagecenter.com/showthread.php?t=730) are wearing heavy even if their class is specialised for evasion (light).

Don't know how true their policy on nerfing is, I just remember reading it, time will tell I guess.

Thanks for the info, A_P. Methinks I will need to wait a few months to see how things pan out.

You're high into the levels of L2 but how high did you seriously get in CoH for that sort of statement? There's complexities in CoH that don't come out during the time we all loved creating new characters and playing them to 8. That's just the fun part. What a character is doesn't come into play until later. Soloing is viable, but grouping is where the game trully is at. Standard MMOG fairre here, not unlike L2.

The goals are different, but the methodologies and mentalities are the same. Sure EQ doesn't have PvP like L2. But EQ's got as many hard-core players as L2 or SB or AC1: Darktide. The tools they have to maintain their hard-coreness are different, but being hard-core at all is just a state of mind.

Maybe Kaid and one other person here has played CoH long enough to know whether CoH rewards hard-core high/end-gaming as it does in other titles. More likely CoH isn't old enough yet though. The level cap is already going to raise above 40 and CoV is going to change the playing field considerably.

It's just that we're comparing "the reason to play" between a game that's been out a week and a game that's been out for six months (state-side notwithstanding). Not that we're not used to that of course :)

What you talk about here can happen in any game.  Just last night I was playing CoH with 4 of my long time guildmates from EQ.  One of them was even just fresh out of the tutorial and sidekicked up to play with us.  Anyway, we got in some ugly situations (once you start getting 5+ in instanced missions they start getting nasty), one of them where we had three bosses, about 5 Liutenants (sp) and maybe 20 or so minions (abominations though that hit like a ton of bricks).  We all just did what we knew we should and walked out without a death.  It was REAL close much of the time, but we managed.  Later on we had FOUR bosses at once and even more others and that got a few of us killed.

The difference is I have NO idea how much exp I made from that.  In fact I turned off the exp messages all together.  We were doing that because it was fun not because we would level.  Hell, I don't even know what level my character is right now to tell you the truth.  And I have no clue how much exp I made last night.  I did level at one point and even forgot to visit a trainer on my way to the next mission.

The difference is really the motivation.  If you stopped gaining any exp in lineage, would you still play?

Coh currently as you go up does have some decent incentives. The enemy ai gets much more diverse as you start encountering some very strange things. The missions get really amazing and elaborate with the big cot dungeons having to be seen to be believed.

The combat which is pretty much the focus of the game gets more and more fun as people start getting all their tricks and start fighting some truly odd creatures.

For very tough very fun fights nothing can beat devouring earth dungeons. It takes a while especially at the higher level ones to figure out what tactics to use against them.

The high level hazard zones can be very wild and impressive. I STRONGLY recommend for those who get level 20 something visit dark astoria and try to walk up to the citizens.

The story arcs get harder with ambush teams doing really wild things. I once got ambushed while I was flying around and is one of the few air to air fights I had in beta.


The main thing is find a group of folks you like to hang with as the combat is so much more enjoyable with a stead group where you can count on them knowing their job.

Kaid

Honest mistake.

I was in COS for a build or 2 in SB and I rememberd you.  I moved to DHL towards the latter half of beta.

I'm up to level 42 in L2. A few positives and negatives from my viewpoint.

Pluses:

Fear. L2 has brought back fear into MMORPGs in a way that I have not experienced since MUD days. Losing hurts; and failure is punished, often quite harshly. This creates a sense of tension, fear and even genuine hate that has been totally absent from MMORPGs for years. A huge plus in my book.

Politics. My guild and I are in an alliance opposed what is generally regarded as the strongest guild on the server. Skirmishing, battles, hiding your reds and seeking out theirs are daily occurrences. Because of the nature of L2, the stakes are always very high. The politics matter, a lot. When a group former allies defected to the enemy, it created the kind of anger, disgust and sense of betrayal you will rarely see in other MMORPGs.

The PvP system. Criticize it all you want, it's working beautifully in my experience. Random noob ganking is almost non-existent, high end battles for cause fairly common. This is just how it should be. Because the stakes are high, it's invariably exciting.

Mixed:

Combat/Skills. At 40+ every class has a vast array of different skills and abilities at one's disposal. The game strikes a decent compromise between class and solo/group flexibility and EQ-style class roles. None of it, however, is visible at low level where combat is absurdly oversimplified, skills and abilities few, and benefits to grouping slim to none.

Class Balance. Judgement withheld till Chronicle. Archers are clearly overpowered atm. Supposedly this is being fixed in the upcoming Chronicle patch.

Content. Judgement withheld till Chronicle. There is enough there for launch I suppose, but I can see it running out soon. Chronicle promises to rectify this. We will see.

Negatives:

Grinding. With the current system, XP and cash are best achieved through non-challenging PvE. This promotes tedium. Not good at all, and no reason it should be this way either.

Time investment. Player skill, game knowledge, cooperative behaivor and simply not dying can dramatically increase leveling speed. But even if you are leveling fast, it still takes a large amount of time, no question about it. If this weren't enough, there is simply not enough game at low levels for casual players.

Buffs. Apparently in a desire to avoid buff bots, buff duration is only 10 min. 40+ healers typically have 4-8 buffs to drop on each party member. The results, as you might expect, are ugly. Even with buff duration to be doubled in Chronicle, buffing is sure to remain pure hell for the buffing classes. The result has been a dramatic lack of high level healers willing to put up with the endless buffing.

Did anybody actually like PRX in SB beta, or was everyone pretty much agreed they were complete cockmonkeys?

Nice post, Malathor.  Please, if you would, continue to appraise us of the development of your character and your guild and L2 life in general in the future.  I'm counting on A_P for some of this too but it will be nice to have different POVs.

Alas, I could see for myself all too clearly the things you labled in the Pluses and I really, really *really* wanted to like this game.  But it is the negatives and the outright timesink (moreso than the low level tedium) that were my undoing.

IIRC, there were definitely reasons we started pronouncing it 'Pricks'.

You can't have one without  the other.

Knew a few of them in AC1, shared Dryreach with them for a while and then had one as a Patron for a short while (before they quit AC1 obviously), didn't know many of them but I had no troubles, hardcore anti at that time.  Almost joined them in DAoC but they went Merlin and I finally settled on Galahad.

So L2 has added fear, anger, betray, disgust, and hate of other people back to mmorgps.  No wonder I didn't like it; I was actually looking for fun.  You do realize that you come off sounding like a sado-masochist describing a real good dominatrix there?  :-p

Just out of curiosity, about how much time would you say you spend in one of those negative emotional states compared to a fun state such as the thrill of victory?  Yes, that is a serious question.  I'm wondering how fragile that balance is between fun ("harsh punishment for losing makes winning sweeter") vs frustration ("ok, i've lost too much so now it's just continuing pain").  People talk about CoH losing people in a few month due to burning out the content; I could just as easily see people leaving L2 due to burning out of the dark side of humanity emotions.  I enjoy tension filled games like SS2 as well, but not every day for months.

Just keep a journal and you could write a book called "Fear and Loathing in L2, my story".  

Xilren

Wait, there's copious amounts of drug use in L2?  Fuck I'm in.. screw you CoH fanbois..

hehe... I did a stint in UO with The Professionals.  A short stint... I didn't much care for them or the direction the game was heading at that point.  I do like a few people in PRX, though... just not enough to give that organisation a thumb's up.  The weenie butts far out number the decent people.

Anyway... I'm with cevik.  Give me enough reefer and I'll have fun playing just about anything.  The Sims, anyone?

AC1 Version (http://sw.virtues.net/Schatt_history/history.html)

The screenshots work if you grab the jpg shortcut and remove the small from the end of the filename.

E.g 1st screenshot

http://sw.virtues.net/Schatt_history/history-Dateien/Young_Schattenkind_small.jpeg
becomes

http://sw.virtues.net/Schatt_history/history-Dateien/Young_Schattenkind.jpeg

Fairly interesting/disturbing reading, depending on your point of view.

Hmm, 3 hits of acid and The Sims Online might be a fun game..

3 hits of acid and staring at the keyboard is a fun game.

If I were given lvl 75 and 10 billion adena now, I might go explore all areas once, do some sieges, pvp some - then quit the game. Of course.
I've been to that point in DAOC and SWG  - all leveled out, earning more money or farming more equipment isnt that fun either. All you can do now is RvR, and thats turns out into the same old stuff after a while, and gets boring - unless you tread the realm levels as your new goal to leveling up.

Maybe you are right, and the games we play are just are not fun enough, just do not provide enough content, to be long-term entertaining without the leveling curve. I don't really care.
I want a game that is played for months or years, a game with its own history and community - not some short-time entertainment.

Heh, no problem - I wasn't so sure sometimes which guild I was in during Beta myself. Was the best time of shadowbane for me, the fights with CoS against everybody during beta.

There are some fantastic text MUDs that do that far better than any graphical MMOG to date and for free. ;)

But seriously, this is where the niche comes into play or perhaps where the rift between MMOGs needs to grow. Companies need to keep making games for people like Monika, A_P and Slog who want to spend years getting to the very top. And they need to make games for people like myself who don't want an MMOG as a hobby, but as a brief, fun escape every now and then. NCSoft did a good job of releasing both at the same time. And I will admit that while I would really love to be able to play Lineage 2, it is totally out of the realm of possibility for me because of time commitment (what takes Monika 3 months would translate to 3 years of play at my time investment rate). It's a shame, too, BUT there are other MMOGs out there that cater to my playstyle.

Alas, the days of being able to enjoy playing every MMOG that comes out are long gone.

Now that surprised me.  So you, for one, are not leveling to get to the sieging or the pvp that you think will be fun, you are just leveling to level?  I don't get that mentality at all.  It is like you are just looking for a way to waste time.  Which would normally lead me to believe you really need a girlfriend, but AP at least is engaged so that does not fit for him at least.  Then again AP might not share this opinion.

My real question though was not if you hit the cap, but if the exp stopped flowing RIGHT NOW, at the level you currently are, would you keep playing?  And for L2 we should assume that in this fantasy land you would not longer delevel upon death.  Is the game for the game sake alone interesting?  Is PvP interesting, or would the fact that others will always be higher level than you and win without a challenge drive you nuts?


I would still be playing CoH for probably about a month at least at the state I am right now (only level 12 at the moment).

Apparently, some Koreans feel the same.

http://forums.lineagecenter.com/showthread.php?t=1125

No, that isn't the same thing.  That would still take him YEARS to get to anything interesting in the game.  It would just mean the catasses level slightly slower.

What Soukyen would want is a 5x experience server so he can actually see the content withing a standard human being's lifetime.

I'd switch to a 5x xp server in a heartbeat.

Me, too. Alluvian is right. I have other leisure time activities, but I do still love MMOGs and virtual worlds and really enjoy seeing the creative talent that can bring these things to us.

And Malathor. Thanks for that link! Just to reference the content of it:



Now THAT is a really cool thing. It'd be even better if they had lowered that to 20 hours a week, but hey, beggars can't be choosers. I have one question because NCSoft may have earned themselves another Lineage 2 subscriber... Is this a server that I'll be able to access as a North American player?

Levels of Separation Part 1 (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1080167307&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&)

Levels of Separation Part 2 (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1081551008&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&)

If you remember those articles, the friend I was talking about actually likes to level. Without the levels, he doesn't see a point to the game. He is also happily married for many years now, but no kids. Some people really do just like the treadmill.

If this game had no sieging or pvp, I would not be playing it - I skipped final fantasy and horizons because of that. And leveling without an end goal is not fun either - thats why I quit SWG. Jedi leveling was slow, maybe slower then lineage - and at the end I couldn't even do anything fun because permadath after 3 deaths means its all for nothing.

I would prefer a game where there's something new to go explore each day, some new exciting war to fight each day against players or monsters, a story unfolding constantly that you could participate in. I very much like the idea of 'leveling through questing' that WoW has, I even like their rest system. But does WoW have enough content for more then 3 weeks ?

There's simply no company providing my dream game right now, so I'll do with lineage 2. Inbetween the pvp and the sieges, the boss mob raids and quests, there's allways leveling to do, so I expect the game won't get boring fast.




Uhm, if xp stopped right now, obviously the game would be broken, and I would stop playing soon. PvP so far was interesting, and I don't mind higher level people being stronger then me right now - if I can catch up. Thats my point really - the whole game only makes sense with the leveling included. The game is, like most other mmorpg's, build around the leveling.

I actually would like switching to a server thats 5 times faster - 5 times experience, 5 times the loot, 5 times the death penalty. But that problably would require bringing out the new chronicles 5 times as fast, and thats just not possible.

It's a korean only thing right now I think. I do not like the idea that much, the rest system of WoW seems more fun. But its close to what I would consider the optimal system for shadowbane: A time-limited server, up only 4 hours per day during prime time. You'll be allways on when your city is in trouble.

That's where I come from - I played a Mud called Genesis for 5 years. A small game, never more then 100 players at once online, but with some interesting features that somehow never made it into MMORPG's. You only knew people's names if  they got introduced to you - otherwise they'd be a 'red-eyed green-skinned goblin' to you. You could not remember everybody, the number of people depended on your int. The biggest thing though is that there is not a single number in the game, except for money. All combat and stat information is described verbally - very fun.

Nice. I'll have to take a peek at that sometime if it's still around. I've encountered a few others with the introduction system, but not with the full removal of numbers.

And thanks for the reply on the server question. I checked the NA site and watched the server status and realized there weren't 27 servers for NA so server #28 couldn't possibly be available to us. Darnit. But maybe it'll make its way to NA. I like that idea of 4 hours per day, but one man's prime time is another man's bed time. I guess you would then have to go with geographical location of server to determine prime time. I'm on East Coast and I hit the sack early... like 10 pm because I get up early in the morning so prime time for me is 6-10. I still like that idea though.



You and the rest of us. That is our utopian dream.



Perhaps we're not so different in our playstyles as I first thought, but then again, it comes down to time played. Would you like to play on a 5x server that was time limited with your 4 hour per day prime time idea or a capped 30 hour week anytime even?

Nope - I play 40-50 hours or so a week, if I can - the 30 hour limit wouldn't do for me.  It's not the leveling that forces me to do it, I just like playing a lot, I used to spend similar times in SWG, DAOC or Shadowbane.
I do not really like the prime-time limitation server, that would never work for my guild. Its just the only way I can see a game with shadowbanes siege system working, and the 30-hour limit reminded me of that idea I had long ago when I quit SB.

The 5x server probably would not work for lineage 2 right now - we'd be all over level 60 now, bored with the content and without things to do until chronicle 1 comes. Couple it with a rest system like WoW suggests, and it might work.

Monika, not to get personal or anything, but how in hell do you get 40-50 hours a week of playtime? Do you work from home, work part-time or just not sleep? I mean, I work 40 hours a week (really closer to 37 or so, but counting driving times it's about that), and only get about 6-7 hours of sleep a night (which really isn't enough most days) except on weekends. Assuming 8 hours of sleep on Friday and Saturday nights, work and sleep take up about 86 hours out of the 186 hours. Let's take two hours each day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. That's 100 hours. Which leaves around 86 hours total for the rest of the week. Note, I've put nothing about the time I might spend watching a movie, spending time with my woman, visiting family, or anything else.

I don't understand how you can free up that much time for a game.

Why would this sell you on the game?  Your problem as I understood it was that it was taking YOU too long to level.  That YOU didn't have time for it.  All this server would do is keep the others slightly closer to you in level, but they will still outlevel you if you cant play exactly 30 hours a week every week.  This server would change your game not at all, just the game of those around you.  It would still be just as slow and ponderous in terms of leveling.

In a PVP game, changing the game of those around you IS changing your game as well. If they can't outlevel you too much, the power differential is kept fairly flat.

But the game is still boring as fuck till at LEAST level 40.

Yea, I second what alluvian said. Maybe, MAYBE, if the relax server came with a blowjob and dessert it would be worth playing. But it doesn't, it just comes with a boring, shitty, game where everyone looks the same and has the same skills for the first half of their characters life, and then an endgame that will take massive guilds to make worthwhile. Egad, it sounds more stupid the more I think about it.

EDIT: Plurality is hard.

Quoted you, but in response to both you and Alluvian. You're right Alluvian, the limited playtime server would not do away with the level grind and the lack of a decent combat gameplay model.

As to the massive guilds comment, I believe the largest a guild can be is 40 players and that's only after a guild has been leveled. This is not massive. I've seen DAoC guilds with upwards of 300 characters. I believe that they limit guild size for a few reasons. One is to force alliances and thereby give more weak points for possible PvP conflict. The other could be to limit seige size, although I imagine seiges will consist more of Alliance vs. Alliance than Guild vs. Guild.

That's even worse. Maybe not for Koreans, but for Americans? I'd trust another guilds combat ability about as much as I'd trust someone I didn't know with a gun. Seriously. This idea, no good can come of it.

Heh, it's not like a guild size of 40 will limit the uber guilds one bit.  They'll just have multiple guilds allied together.   If anything it'll relegate smaller guilds to kissing ass in order to survive (based on SB experience).

I have no idea though how Asians deal with guild politics, I mostly just blew them up with trapped chests in UO.  But I'm assuming the servers are NA only or am I mistaken.

No, I think she meant she's leveling as a by-product of the game. We all leveled for the sake of leveling once or twice. We know the game is going to end or get boring eventually yet we play anyway. Living for the moment and what not. The key is though: what are you shooting for and how fast are you getting there?

The goal doesn't need to be level X. It can be PvP+ or Epic or Raid or über business owner, whatever. Those are more abstract than the singular value. Three things contribute to the mental here:

• Pace of experiences
• Amount of abilities at any given time
• The amount of abilities left to achieve[/list:u]
  A level 1 character in any game wants to hit level 1+(something) to actually have some abilities.
  
  L2 doesn't grant anything useful again for something like 20 to 25 hours of gameplay. That's a long fucking time to do the same damned thing over and over and over. But obviously some people don't mind that because to them the pace of experiences is fast enough (or ignorable enough with guildchat, questing or other meta-concepts).
  
  CoH has players with fully fleshed out characters by then. Beyond it's simply more options for players to choose, from a vast pool of options and ways to customize them.
  
  I chose these two games because they represent the absolute extremes of what a game requires of a player. L2 is all about dedicated singular focused gaming. EQ with a freakin' gun. CoH is as close to an FPS game as can be gotten and still be about dice roles. But it'll likely ultimately lack in the deep deep friendship/trust/distrust some find really compelling in uber guild driven large political games.
  
  Slog said it many pages ago: it's not for the casual. Good. Just as long as it's not for enough casual players that those players continue flocking in vast quantities to casual games so the devs continue getting revenue to make even better casual ones :)
  
  Super ultra hardcore MMOGs are not the bread-and-butter of the genre. They fill a need within though, which is always good.

Man, lot's of Lineage II corpses around here...guess this one will do.  :awesome_for_real:

Lineage II goes F2P (http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11/01/ncsoft-releases-brief-lineage-ii-f2p-trailer/)

The most interesting things about L2 were already free.  The pictures of the naked Elves and the poster on the back of Howard's door on Big Bang Theory.

There's some circumstantial evidence that NCsoft shut down Lineage in the West following RIFT's launch, so perhaps it isn't surprising that L2 is going F2P as well. But it's a big step for NCsoft West to make on one of their legacy games (and one that still makes huge money in South Korea).

Lin2 actually didn't do that well in Korea (comparitively speaking, anyway) - NCsoft's big titles there are Aion and Lin1.

(btw I'm not at NCsoft any more, ignore the title)

Are you making Facebook games now? I hear all the coolest devs make Facebook games nowadays.

Well then, that explains why this looks more like Lin1!

http://www.betacake.net/2011/11/08/lineage-eternal-twilight-resistance-new-lineage-title-by-ncsoft/

Get ready to bot!

Lineage Eternal looks like Diablo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCdbdsFgNGI

You know, I didn't want to say that based off the photos posted above, but it looks to PLAY like D3 too, which is very odd.  This just became interesting.

Okay, the Drag and Circle functions just blew my mind.  

EDIT: 
After viewing the trailer, a new thread needs established for this game.  This looks to be the ARPG many of us have been waiting for.  Classes:  Knight, Mage, Spirit Archer.  The Necromancer fight looks impossibly awesome.

I almost made one for it but I was uncertain whether in pc gaming or this forum.  It says mmorpg in the subs but this really just looks like a diablo grouped party game.

Although it looks to have 'raids' too, I saw 6-8 on screen at once in the boss fight.

I'm liking the look of this a lot.  Interestingly, the one thing that really stood out in stark comparison to other Lineage games was that it wasn't 'tits tits tits' throughout. 

Which also interestingly was literally the only thing that made the game playable. As a MMO many people would want to play it was a failure. As an elf lingerie collection game it's top notch. And I'm absolutely serious about that. If they had done away with the shit grind, shit gameplay, added WASD movement, and just made a game where you explored and collected elf panties they would have had way more subs. I'd still be subbed,

I second that. Elf Panties Online would've done much better.

I'm messing around with this... It looked better on screenshots.

The leveling seems pretty fast and intended to be so. There are NPCs to give you free buffs, the quests give massive XP, and they've got a web front end to give you a single quest path (supposedly customised) with regular gifts of timed character boosts. They really want you to the end-game. The new server is packed with kill-stealing (quest progression is based on last hit it seems), speed levelling veterans.

At the same time it does the regular poor job of telling you what you are leveling towards. The NPC interface is very basic text boxes and the explanations are all in Lineage 2 speak. If you're going to grind through dull content, repetitive combat and "you should have bought a booster" mana recovery it needs to put emphasis on the end-game goal. I can't even tell if there is non-clan PvP in the game. Is there anything in the game actually worth seeing if you aren't willing to sacrifice your life to the game?

Also click to move / target and pathfinding that can't navigate small terrain obstructions is pretty dodgy. Not really sure why they'd use this.

Ok why did this lapse buried in a thread warning people to avoid when the topic should have been made months ago? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCdbdsFgNGI Check out the mouse drag moves.

Lineage Eternal looks pretty damn cool and the game systems it's innovating should at least be discussed by more than a handful of lineage 2 fans. :)

And ya I probably should have made a new topic instead of necroing this one but didnt want to repeat all the links.

Randomly came across this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABcBFGK5B4w) video showing the Lineage Eternal classes (I didn't see it posted here).  Didn't know if I should post a new topic or not since people were discussing it here.