f13.net forums - Gaming: Five Levels is Too Much: Beta Review of Lineage 2

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April 15, 2024, 10:57:23 PM

we're back, baby

Quote from: slog

It should be obvious by now that there isn't a game coming out anytime sooon like that.

Hence, my membership card in the "Whiny Bitches of the Month" club.

No, but there are FUN games coming out. I am playing one of them now. City of Heroes. And WoW is fun from all accounts as well. There is light, and it aint L2. L2 is a backwards trip to pre-eq days. M59 with new graphics would be a better game.

Yes, there is light, and a faint glimmer of hope. It's name is City of Heroes.

I'm as surprised as the rest of you.

Well, SOME of us have been trying to point it out for awhile now Haemish. You know, to lessen the shock and all. Hope you enjoy the game.

yeah if you want a PvE game those could be good alternatives.

I just want a FUN game. PVP is something I had thought was going to be a requirement for a long time, and the lack of it really turned me off to City of Heroes.

I'm pretty sure I was wrong about that, btw.

"Yes, there is light, and a faint glimmer of hope. It's name is City of Heroes.

I'm as surprised as the rest of you."

The hypocrisy out of you Haemish is astounding to say the least. CoH is as big a fucking treadmill as lineage is/was without any endgame or pvp.

And don't give me the quest BS. Because theire quests are no different than any game I have ever played, goto xxx, kil xxx, get reward.

BIG FUCKING DEAL.

I am now sure of the fact you have turned into an assface, limpwrister, who prefers to spend 2 hrs at the character creation screen making gimp hero fag#322.

The only good part of that game is making your character after that its the same old shit exceph in this case the shit does stink.

Fuck this gay site, and the horseshit you guys turned into and are fucking spewing I have better things to do with my time from now on, then see a bunch of veteran mmog'ers get excited about playing superman.

Fucking retard.

Ehhh? Twat's that you say? I cunt hear you.

Here's the thing COH has that Lineage 2 does not have and probably never will have.

It's fun. It's fun to fight, even AI. Had Lineage 2 gotten even that most basic of thing right, I'd be singing its praises from the fucking heavens, mainly because it has PVP.

The core of everything I've ever said about game design has revolved around "make it fun." I prefer PVP, but if the game is fun, it can get a good review from me without it.

In other words, heh.

Quote from: Hawken

Two words- DRAMA QUEEN.

Can you show the doctor where the superhero touched you? Jesus.

Quote from: Hawken

The hypocrisy out of you Haemish is astounding to say the least. CoH is as big a fucking treadmill as lineage is/was without any endgame or pvp.

And don't give me the quest BS. Because theire quests are no different than any game I have ever played, goto xxx, kil xxx, get reward.

BIG FUCKING DEAL.

Are you reading comprehesion impared or something?

How many times and in how many way does it need to be said.

It not the that a fucking treadmill exists which makes a game suck, it's the lack of engaging and FUN gameplay that does. And FUN should happen no matter what level you are. Large level curves are fine if you progress up them naturally as a result of having fun. For examples, see almost every single player crpg ever made.

Haemish says CoH is fun out of the gate and you say "Big fucking deal"? It IS the whole fucking deal you gameplay sadomasochist.

Xilren

Xilren

Quote from: Hawken

cock in mouth

Me love you long time. kkthx

Quote from: Xilren's Twin

Large level curves are fine if you progress up them naturally as a result of having fun.

Isn't this where we are supposed to post UO2 walking-babe?

Feh. I never coudl keep score anyway.

For what it's worth:

Lineage 2 is basically Lineage with pretty 3D atop Unreal. Which means that the first 20 levels are awful, the subsequent 10 are bearable, and after that it becomes reasonably entertaining, but progress is incredibly slow. I soon realised that what made Lineage bearable was that it was already established, and I had access to a bunch of folks who were great to party/chat with and who helped get the first 30 levels out of the way quickly. I was unable to reach level 20 in Lineage 2. After the last wipe, I had no desire to start over.

If you can find a bunch of masochists who are prepared to build up a guild, which then suffers from attrition and has vacancies, and if they are then prepared to twink your character and chat to you while you abuse drugs as it goes through the motions of automated fighting, it could be playable in the future. The Lineage siege system is quite entertaining, large-scale and fairly lag-free if you can get there. However, the price of doing so is way too high.

Unless you have a guild of amusing people to chat to, the game is simply a mindless grind - for money even more than experience. Lineage had a global chat that was abused in the same way that shout is in Lineage. You turned it off an listened only to guild chat and tells. Give it three months, and if you have friends in Lineage 2 with vacancies in their guild, give it a spin if large-scale PvP is your thing. Otherwise, avoid it.

Quote from: Righ

For what it's worth:

If you can find a bunch of masochists who are prepared to build up a guild, which then suffers from attrition and has vacancies, and if they are then prepared to twink your character and chat to you while you abuse drugs as it goes through the motions of automated fighting, it could be playable in the future. The Lineage siege system is quite entertaining, large-scale and fairly lag-free if you can get there. However, the price of doing so is way too high.

See, here is the problem with PvP, at least my experince with it, in games without leveling. In particular, Shadowbane.

In SB, you can max a character in less than a week. This results in not knowing who you are actually fighting against, since the Guild leader you talked to 5 days ago has since re-rolled twice, and the PK guild has changed names completly and joined your guild with 56 of their alts.

None of the shit happens in Lineage, mainly because Leveling is difficult. So what you end up with is a good end game that has good mechanics and player accountability.

The problem is that current MMORPG game mechanics don't allow any other way to do it.

FWIW, Haemish's "review" of Lineage 2 is getting some more run on the official boards and they're eating it up with a spoon.

http://boards.lineage2.com/tm.asp?m=181135&mpage=1&key=

What am *I* doing over there you ask? Um...

Quote from: Mr_PeaCH

These poor saps don't take Haemish seriously. Personally, if I found out one of my friends got to the endgame in Lineage 2 without severe head trauma I'd invite everyone he knows over to his place for an intervention. Friends don't let friends play shitty MMORPGs.

Quote from: Mr_PeaCH

One or two of those posters had some sense, but lets hope we dont get to much bleed from the L2 site. The majority seems like they could teach the Vault users a thing or two about ignorance.

From the L2 board thread about Haemish's review-

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I found the review to be a drab piece of dung myself...*shrug* I find it funny it took him 4 hours to get level 5...I mean the first time I picked up the game in CB I got to 14 in 4 hours.

Translation-
I am a giant catass! I laugh up my sleeve at those of you with jobs, social lives, and other hobbies! My leveling peen puts yours to shame! I will rule the fake world!!!!

What a fucking tool.

Quote from: WayAbvPar

From the L2 board thread about Haemish's review-

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I found the review to be a drab piece of dung myself...*shrug* I find it funny it took him 4 hours to get level 5...I mean the first time I picked up the game in CB I got to 14 in 4 hours.

HAHA, leveling peen. I like that. dont worry, that guy is going to die in a catlitter fire.

Another gem:

Quote from: Kettle

Omg, thats some writing skills, sadly he is right on many things.

Like, OMG, that's some grasp of english you've got there, LOL.

First off, that's an excellent, honest review of Lineage2. Glad to see an honest review by someone other than a fanboi.

You did, however, forget to mention the fact that the game client does not de-allocate memory (textures) when you walk from one "map" to another, thus causing your game to consume more and more system resources until you start lagging and eventually crash. When you start the game next time, look at the used resources... Somewhere about 300mb I bet. Play for an hour and look at it again. Play for 2 or 4 hours (if you can).

I crahsed 2 times today walking from one city to another. While it was on the other side of the continent, that's still unacceptable. That's with the graphics settings and textures set to the lowest possible settings, and 16 bit instead of 32 bit.

Quote from: Romp

I never said you need to try a game for a few months in case it might be fun, I said you cant JUDGE a game based on a few days or hours gameplay.

Its like watching the first few hours of a movie or reading the first few chapters of a book IMO.

If I go to a restaurant and order a steak, and the waiter brings me back a slab of rancid meat, I'm not going to eat the whole thing in hopes the last bite will be pretty good.

If it looks bad, it most likely is. If something looks bad and you keep telling yourself it's not, and spooning it into your pie hole, you're a fucking idiot.

Looks bad to me.

Well I'm bored stupid leveling, big surprise, world is overrun with foreign bot players, also appears to be a dupe exploit that might or might not have been fixed.

Messing about with a macro tool myself so I can at least watch tv while half a disinterested eye watches the grind continue.

Client is as stable as a rock for me though, even on the highest settings.

Quote from: Zzyzx

You did, however, forget to mention the fact that the game client does not de-allocate memory (textures) when you walk from one "map" to another, thus causing your game to consume more and more system resources until you start lagging and eventually crash. When you start the game next time, look at the used resources... Somewhere about 300mb I bet. Play for an hour and look at it again. Play for 2 or 4 hours (if you can).

I couldn't stand to play the game for more than 2 hours at a time, so never ran into that.

But let's face it, the only way the review could have rated the game any worse was if it had come alive in my apartment, lit my bed on fire and raped my television.

Your TV really had it coming for wearing such a skimpy case.

In other words, a living personification of Boog?

Boog as the avatar of Lineage 2.

That fits so perfectly.

I thought the game was kind of interesting for the first half hour. After the first 8 hours of play you actually get to attack some real enemies, but you're stopped by someone with the name angellovekiss killing everything in sight.
rang rang you go ok, says the player. Rang means go away, rudely in Mandarin Chinese. There are more chinese money farmers and ebay sellers in the game than actual players playing it.
The game managers (in game support staff) say adena (game money) selling has "zero tolerance" but also that their action to the selling "depends on the severity of the offense."
The point is, NCsoft is getting $15 a month from the Chinese adena sellers just like every other user and they wouldn't want to alienate half their customers by enforcing their rules. A few other things: Korea's server only allows Korean players. Japan's server only allow Japanese players. Taiwan's server only allows Taiwanese players. North American server allows everyone, including the Chines that were banned from all other servers. Oh, and look up what "cao ni ma" means. No swearing allowed says the GMs.
Stay away from this one guys. NCsoft is milking the legit players and the money sellers.

Quote from: cracker_jax

Stay away from this one guys. NCsoft is milking the legit players and the money sellers.

Isn't that like warning someone not to eat dog shit? The mere fact that it's the shit of a dog is enough to keep me (and any half way rational person) from eating it.

Apparently you've spent a lot of time eating dog shit. While I commend you for warning other people about the perils of eating dog shit, I'm still going to laugh at you for eating it in the first place.

I don't want to be friends with people who find Lineage II fun. Shit, I don't want to KNOW people who find LineageII fun.

Quote from: Xilren's Twin

Speaking for myself, what i want is a mmorpg with a much much much shorter power curve where a newbie to a skill isn't ineffectual compared to a master (say a newbie with minimal training is 50% effective vs a masters 90% with only 10 gradients in between)

I think it's in the nature of an RPG to have levels. Shooters don't, but that's a different sort of game. RPG mean levels. If there's no levels, it's a different genre (eg adventure). All well and good if what you want is an MMO Adventure. All of the MMORPGs to date have been so focused on avatar levels because they're RPGs. OK, with that out of the way:

I think people play EQ and the rest in order to get better characters. They WANT to level up. The game tells them "you are a tool unless you are max level" and so the players try to impress the machine. It's a proxy for self-esteem. People that don't get respect in real life can get it in the machine world, just by putting in time. Respect comes from catassing, and any talentless tool can catass their way to some measure of MMO respect.

I play RPGs. Yet I haven't in a long while. After not playing anything for a long time, now I'm playing WoW. I'm asking myself the same questions: why do you grind? The fun bits for me right now are trading items--hunting for rare resources and selling them to other players. The vast majority of quests in WoW just hide the fact that you're grinding; yet they do force you to change the scenery. I get new skills on a regular basis, and that's fun, too.

So looking at my own play: I keep playing to try new things. What if there was no barrier to content? Huh, I'm not sure that there's content that I want access to.

But there's something to testing yourself against (say) the Scarlet Monastery. It's a challenge, and that's fun. Some more fun in the game is coming back to a level that used to be scary hard but now SMACKING DOWN those damn mobs. Yesterday, I was scared by Fleshstalkers. Today, they're fodder. It's a power trip.

So, yeah, the existence of those levels lends context to the game that makes levelling up fun. Being a higher level relative to yesterday is fun. Hence, the goal is to get to a higher level, and the process can usually be interesting at times, sometimes fun, and usually not boring. There's lots of new content to see.

The barrier to content helps ensure that I don't get bored of the game quick. I want to see new content, and I'm not forced to stare at one chunk of content so much that I get bored of it.

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non-equipment dependent (say a max of +/- 5%)

Either 5% is meaningful or it isn't. If it is, then 50-90% might as well be 1-99%. If it isn't, then get rid of equipment altogether.

The drive to acquire equipment is driven by the effect that equipment has. If the reward is meaningless, people won't pursue the goal. It's like getting to 65 in EQ without ever killing anything. There'll be a couple people who do it, but who cares about them? They're catasses. If equipment has such little effect, only the catasses will have good equipment. Why waste dev time on those four players? Put those dev dollars into creating fun, instead.

If that 5% equipment change is signifigant though, then the 50%-90% difference from noob to expert is very signifigant--in which case the design might as well be as it currently is.

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skill based (instead of class) game with a large breath of potential skills (rather than only a few skill which have massive ladders to climb like say eq)

I think the reason why skill based games don't do well is that Joe Moron hates being gimped. Joe Moron wants someone to hold his hand. Joe Moron wants someone to tell him "do this." Joe Moron is the guy in the general channel asking for spoilers to EVERY SINGLE QUEST. Joe Moron is 95% of the paying audience.

No offense to anyone on this board, but no developer wants your money.

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I want advancement to mean less about make your stats go up then accomplishing something in the world (be it minor things like titles and fame to land and property ownership)

If everybody accomplishes something in the world, then what have you accomplished that the other 9,999 subscribers on this shard haven't?

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intestesting tradeskills (that are active, not click and watch progress bar)

I want this, too. I think it is very possible. I think it requires an economy, and I'm worried about the Joe Moron implications of an economy. Joe Moron really hates losing that rare robe he spent a week saving up for. This problem warrants further investigation. It's actually the game-design problem I'm currently spending my free time thinking about.

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engaging combat that is slower paced to allow some strategy (again, this means a wide variety of skills and abilities that have counters rather than the rock paper sissors of tank beats ranged support beats mage beats tank; think Magic the gathering type duels with much more limited card pools)

I want this, too. Designing such a system is difficult. Card collection as a basic mechanic did not work well with a ton of other design goals. (btw I've worked as a dev on a couple MMOs.) MtG-like combat, though, is something I think could work. My first pass taught me that the important bit is reacting to your opponent. I haven't had time to implement a second pass, since that would have to be on my own.

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in a non static world that can respond to both player actions over time but also can have shard divergence and geogrphic diversity and relevance

Again, if the other 9,999 subscribers on your shard are also having an impact on the game, what exactly is it that you are doing? Is having the game world responding to you meaningful to you if no-one else notices or cares about what you did?

There's this quest in Arathi Highlands (WoW) wherein I convince this disenchanted Orc that life really is worth living. It's kinda pointless when I realize that the next person to do the quest is going to talk to the same despairing Orc that I did, even though the quest told ME that *I* cured his depression. And then I realize that there's already been a thousand people who have done the quest in front of me, and a thousand more behind me. And that's just on this one shard.

What could I hope to impact that would be the case of a GM-run event where five people get rewarded and 9,995 do not?

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Equipment can take examples from SB and diablo for random yet still desirable equipment produced via tradeskill that wans't imbalancing, and does wear out. I want instanced adventure zones of well written content that allow for more of a true dnd module feel (i.e. you have a set of goals but multiple ways to acheive such) rather than the random blandness of AO missions or SWG's points of interest.

Agreed and agreed.

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I want characters to be able to create content be it quest creation or even mini zone ownership (i.e. your guild might own a mine that they need to defend from npc invasion or enemy players if pvp is part of the world).

This can help, but 95% of the audience creates shitty modules. NWN is a good example. With a small community, it's easy to police quality. In a mass-market game, Joe Moron rules. Sadly, the bad NWN designers were arrogant enough to think that their shit didn't stink.

Player-created content can answer some volume-of-content problems. I agree that it should be persued.

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I want a live team that does nothing but dynamically add content beyond spawn uber mobs and kill newbies. I want lots of props and shineys that aren't inherently imbalancing (see UO). I want a magic system which allows lots of abilties unrelated to combat (instead of just flame bolt 1, flame bolt 2, buff, debuff mez and summon). In terms of base game systems, what i want is closer to Gurps than D&D, though a shared world of linked NWN module ares and common connectors comes closer to acheiving my wants than most mmorpgs on the market. Top it off with a robust guild and communication package decent graphics and an engine that allows for easy and graceful addition of content and change to the gameworld and you're on to something.

And I want a pony. :-p

U FUCKING POSERS AND UR DAMN PONIES ROT IN HELL NOOB U NO NOTH1NG OF GAME DESIGN

k i feel better now thx.

Actually, levels and RPG's are NOT in any way dependent on each other. You do NOT have to have levels to make an RPG. It's thinking like that which has forced the crutch of levels onto the MMOG market.

Sure, you do have to have some from of numerical comparison for the game engine to determine success/failure/competition, but again, this is not exclusively D&D style levels. An MMOG Adventure is really probably where I've been talking about making improvements in the game.

MMOG's now, even the best of them, are about the levels and little else. Even my favorite, City of Heroes, is about the levels. The levels are used to gate content, and if the content is fun all along the way (instead of being boring for half the levels, then it suddenly gets interesting), the levels don't matter much. But what we've seen in most MMOG's, especially the shitty ones like L2, the majority of the content we'll see along the way is stupefyingly boring. Maddeningly boring. Aagin, it's all about the journey, and if the journey's not fun, it doesn't matter how fast or slow the leveling curve is, the game will suck and you will do what you can to avoid the unfun part. See Shadowbane's PVE or Lineage 2's.

Adventure games are about the story and the steps you take to reveal that story. If that approach could be translated to an MMOG, and I don't mean like Uru, it could create a good, casual game.

Or it could be like Uru.

The fact that you think RPG = levels made me skip the rest of your observations. I am sure they were even more stupid than your initial one.

I think the 'crutch' that the MMOG market has grabbed is that people love the sense of accomplishment that comes from being a higher level. I don't see why that's a bad thing. I loved the bits in Halo where I could jump in a tank and mow down those pesky blue alien punks, and this was nothing but a level-based power trip. I think the joy that some here feel playing CoH isn't because CoH has "more than levels" so much as that it doesn't suck in the insane ways that L2 does.

Quote from: Soulflame

The fact that you think RPG = levels made me skip the rest of your observations.

I'm tempted to say that Soulflame thinks "levels cause brain damage," which I seriously disagree with. Please clarify.

Both Haemish and Soulflame bring up a point that I had forgotten: there are two types of CRPGs. The kind with levels, and the Ultima IV kind where one plays a role. I failed to make that distinction. Yet here's my point: if 99% of games called CRPGs have levels, would having levels be considered an essential part of being an RPG? There are diceless and levelless tabletop, LARP, and "living-room" role-playing games, but is it mentally economical to lump these two groups together? Sadly the latter group is more deserving of the name, yet the former has laid claim to it through extensive use.

That's where I come from. What use is it to rail against a society that has made levels an essential de facto component of RPGs? I think "RPG" is the title given to a game with levels.

Levels work. They segregate content. The current MMO business model requires that people have something to do for a very long time, and levels are a proven way to support that. The people on the WoW beta boards asking for the removal of corpse runs (which are insanely cheap! omg!) like levels. They are bar-pushing pellet-monkeys of the lowest, basest order. Yet they've got power in numbers; the conditioned response audience makes a game like WoW possible. They're the reason why ATITD has three ugly player models to choose from.

So what's wrong with levels qua levels? It's what's built around the levels that is important. L2 abuses levels. I think EQ is all about collecting, treadmills, and levels, and I hate it for that. WoW and CoH have something else in the game other than a mindless treadmill (yet I still wish they had more). I strongly agree that the game is about the journey, and if the journey's not fun it doesn't matter what else is in the game.

I have this picture of an MMO where 90% of the quests are fun, different, and creative. I'd play that. I think WoW is taking the first step towards that goal by making quests the heart of the game (note that combat is still the core mechanic). Playing WoW tugs at my conscience, however, because 90% of the quests are kill and collection quests.

I'm starting to get frustrated with that. Either I grind so that I can play with my friends, or I do the fun stuff and get stuck grouping with randoms. Are levels the cause? If we got rid of levels completely, would something else core to the game break? If not, would more than thirteen people play the result?

Nope. Puzzle Pirates and ATITD don't have levels. They don't have the biggest player bases either, but they work and are fun. Fun to someone that is.

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I loved the bits in Halo where I could jump in a tank and mow down those pesky blue alien punks, and this was nothing but a level-based power trip.

I never got Master Chief past 18th level. You rock.

People who gain a sense of accomplishment from enduring the repetetive levelling treadmills that are the major mmorpgs need some counseling, imo.

If I want to get a sense of accomplishment, I'll clean out my garage, not sit in front of a computer monitor for weeks on end to the detriment of my life. Games are to be fun, and that's it. If it's not fun, it's not a game.

But hey, as long as people are broken, others will capitalize on it.