Change in how accounts acquire PA points.

as of now the current system to acquire pa points is that every 10 minutes or so 10 of these points will be added into an account that currently has a character logged in.

this creates a, quite honestly, jerky need to leave a character on all the time so pa can be acquired for a few of its uses.

my suggestion would be that accounts should acquire pa points after the payment for a subscription, this way we'll acquire those points directly related to how much time we would be paying for and destroying the current need of letting computers turned on for more than they should be.

i hope this is enough to start a discussion at innova.

thank you.

 

hello,
thank you for your another feedback.

lets see on it in this way - premium account points are a reward for being in game every 10 minutes. do you see the difference? character must be online. this is called 'event' and 'being logged in' is a requirement for it.

if it would be implemented in your way then why should it bother to add points every 10min and simply not add pa points as if it is euro on your account for instant spend?

and naturally in mmorpg - the more effort the better reward.

 

it's not an 'effort'.

we're simply being forced to let our characters online 24/7 because now there are rewards from it, it makes the server literally 'hibernate' into a ghost town where the population becomes filled with 'afk' characters.

does innova seek to have a gradual increase of pa points instead of an immediate? if you wish to mantain such a system i would recommend this:

• increase the amount of pa points acquired per '10' minutes.
• set a limit to how much pa points an account can acquire per day.

alternatively:

• reward players with pa points at server maintenance, but changing the criteria for the above mentioned otherwise we'll still be 'forced' to be online all the time.

or yet:

• reward players with pa points periodically (daily;per maintenance;weekly;monthly) depending on how much 'premium account time' was bought, rewards coming in even amounts through out the subscription time.

why do i see any of those changes as important? because the current pa system does not take into account those that can't leave their pcs on for long(or wouldn't like to) and those with unstable internet that can't leave their characters overnight for example.

 

i agree with maya.

 

guys,

the whole point of the pa points is to reward those people for the amount of time they spend in game - there is no time limit on these points so it isn't like you have 2 weeks to farm as much as you can and then it is gone, this is not an event this is a permanent feature for pa users.

regards.

 

but the pa system does not award only the time spent actively in-game, which literally makes people go to bed with their characters online, you're fully aware of that.

is this part of the system's goals? to award players regardless of them being active or not?

if the decision to implement pa points was taken with this in mind (reward accounts that are online rather than actively playing the game) i would like to state that's a decision i can't understand and would love to hear from the staff the reasoning behind it.

 

hello maya may i ask what is "time spent actively in-game" to you?

 

hmmm... that's a good question.

i suppose i would define it as:

i feel like i could define it better but is this enough to explain my thoughts? in short someone should be in front of their pc with their game's window open, doing whatever the game has to offer.

should i expand more on his explanation?

 

any other mmorpg such as world of warcraft or aion usually let your character automatically go "afk" after a few minutes of no input. so the line between time actively spent in-game and non-active has been drawn already by many other game studios (including ncsoft themselves, developing aion).

in this matter i do agree with maya. at the moment you are rewarding people for letting their character stand afk in some town. there is no effort involved.

 

yes and some of them disconnect your character after a certain amount of time afk, but, most of those games have an auto run feature so people just avoid the afk mode by running against a wall over night so even this "system" isn't a fool proof way to stop people from going afk over night.

and a player here could quite easily decide to sit in aden with a shop and leave their character online overnight in shop mode and that would again bypass anyone's thoughts that they are just leaving their character online to farm pa points without "actively spending time in game" or do you wish to tell everyone that leaving a shop online when they go afk is not fair to you and shouldn't be allowed now also even though this is a feature that the game has to offer?

people will always do whatever they can to maximize the rewards from actions, be it afking in a party whilst you go to work and earning exp from your friends farming during that time or leaving a shop/craft online over night whilst you sleep to earn more adena from sales/crafts just as a couple of examples.

 

which is precisely why i've mentioned limiting the amount of pa points an account can acquire in a single day, that way the majority of players wouldn't be 'forced' to leave their characters online when normally they wouldn't be.

the point of this topic is not to ask for a change in the pa system so afking players don't get benefits, it's to ask for a change where innova doesn't indirectly support this behavior.

 

i understand what you are saying about changing the system to a daily limit and that is something that may be considered (no guarantees), but maya, no one is "forced" to leave their character online, that is completely down to the personal choice of that person. yes it will take longer to gain as many points as a person who has the ability to say logged over night but that is how anything works anymore.

the same way no one is "forced" to pay anything for this game, it is down to the choice of the individual if that person wishes to spend their money to the store or to a pa then so be it, other people who can not afford to do so may feel that it is "unfair" but that is the "advantage" for the person who can versus the person who can't, it happens in real life as much as it does inside any game and it is a part of our generations life.

 

i use the word 'forced' because lineage 2 is a game that has survived this long due to competition, people want to win rather than having a nice community or anything of sorts(in most western servers).

the current system benefits those that are capable of leaving characters online at any given time. the game doesn't have to support this technical advantage, regardless of how things happen outside of this game, there's nothing that binds the pa points acquirement structure to the unfair things that happen everyday.

i would rather see people getting rewarded for what they're doing than what they can do.

just take the phrase above into consideration, even if every pa subscriber but one could leave their characters online at all times i still think changing the system to include that one person should be a priority.

 

right now afking is encouraged and rewarded by pa points. perhaps you do not agree with the use of the word "force", but you are definitely putting afkers on an advantage in a competitive game - meaning that, in order to take part in the competition, you are bound to afk.

in the past events occurred in lineage 2 in which such afk behaviour was also rewarded. this amounted in resistance from the players, as the servers became crowded with non-playing people and resulted in a "afk to win" scenario.

so, because this system is not fool-proof, it is not implemented altogether? let's be clear on this - a combination of a quota together with the non-afk requirement definitely lowers the amount of idling people, there is no way to argue around that.

also, even the discouragement by just enforcing the afk rule is enough to give notable results, as it has proven quite effective in the other mmorps, despite being non fool-proof.

 

please do not put words into another persons mouth, no one said that this is the reason that it is not implemented. i simply pointed out that the system you suggested has big flaws...simply put, if users are so intent to "afk" to farm pa points then they will be intent on avoiding the afk status on such a system anyway so it is not so much of a discouragement as you would like to think it is

 

its kinda good how it is, while you go to sleep you can be in training ground online, while having some mentees. in the morning, you get some good pa points and a good amount of mentee marks...

 

there is limit.. 1hour = 120points / 24hours = 2880 points.

 

you're tackling a single point when it is part of a whole.