Hello, Lineage 2 EU community. Before I get to the main point of this post, let me give you some input: There's our beloved game - Lineage 2, that is developed by NCsoft Korea. Innova holds the rights to operate the game for several territories (separate license for RU ad EU). The game files arrive encrypted and most of the time we cannot even check what's in them. And even if we could - we have no right to change them (just like computer warranty works - if you fix it yourself, you lose the right to be served). So based on this license we operate the game and NCsoft provides us with updates, fixes, and events. When we get the fix/event/update we perform inner tests and report to the devs about problems, receive fixes and test them again, until there are no "blocking bugs" and only then we usually announce the release date. Sometimes we receive fixes as late as Monday noon, so we cannot be sure if we'll install something until Monday evening. And then there's a maintenance on Tuesdays when we install it on a live server and sometimes even a PTS-proven event can go wrong on a live database. And we're not always sure why. Long story short - most of the things that frustrate us are already reported to the devs and we're just waiting for the fix. Some issues are there for years (i.e. Oly buff manager problem), some are fresh, some are temporary (Kartia problem at Ramona). For some, the devs say "here's your fix", for some "we need more data" and for some "we are not sure what is the reason, we keep working on resolving it" and in some cases " I hope you can imagine yourselves how angry people were when the announced event wasn't installed. That's how at some point the team made a decision not to inform people about changes until they are live. And that is how you usually got (and still get) those late notices about everything. Now...as a player I was always upset about that. I played at Classic where grinding is the main activity, exping is super slow so getting some info in advance could improve our preparation and time distribution. When I became a community manager, that was one of the first questions brought up at the team discussion and then on the forum. As a result of discussions, I started publishing "event previews" like the Valentine's day event preview. I also got great feedback from players on what a good event might be. When I asked about the same thing on Core, the answers were more mixed from "I believe it is better for the player to know what to expect in the near future." to "I want surprises" and "we'll eat you alive anyway", so I wasn't sure if it's good or not. Until @yLogy in Core Clan Leader Council gave me a great reason to do it - equality of information. Some of you know Russian or follow Russian threads, translate their events and can predict what coming up to EU, while other have to wait for this last-minute notification. And the last drop was @MrOurk post: So the first thing we need to agree on is the following: I can start posting event previews, you'll get info earlier, but please make sure you don't take any decision that you might regret if the event gets postponed or canceled. Another thing is....I need your help with communication. I'm blessed by your trust and I receive more and more messages every day with questions, suggestions, bots and spammers reports. On one hand, it's super flattering, on the other, I feel buried under PMs. Half of them have questions that have already been answered somewhere. So I need your help. Please help each other on the forums and in Discord. Forums are slower, but it's easier to track and keep info. Discord is faster, but the searching for info is complicated. Support posts you like with likes. It will show people who give out valuable info the support and knowing they do a good job. Use the motherloving forum search! Our support is overloaded too, you can address tech issues to our tech subforum. If your question relates to changing something in-game for your char (gender, name, lost/deleted items, XP etc) only support service can help you, max response time is 10 days, usually, they reply within 2-3 days. If your question is about payment - only support service can help you. If you've found a bot, please use bot report button if you don't need feedback like "checked, not bot" or "banned, ty", otherwise or for multiple bot reports, please use support service as it's the best way for you and for us to track the reports and checks. Use l2wiki, please, for info about the game ) If you need your thread changed/edited/deleted - please address our forum mods, for example @DeepBlue and @NeoTiger - they are here to keep this Forum nice and clean. Please do so, so I could focus on giving our packed info for lots of people instead of replying to each one of you separately on any of these cases... Please don't get me wrong, I like to talk to you, that's my job =) it's just a way to optimize our time. I also would like to create some "team blog" where I could post plans and supposed changes in an unofficial manner, like "we're waiting for the fix, so update is postponed" or "we've just received this awesome event and are currently testing it" because spreading info on different posts/sources take too much time both from me (posting) and from you (searching). This would be the place to find out about testing progress, planned updates and so on. Now, please share what you think about: 1) What a good event sounds like? 2) Where and in what manner it is most comfortable for you to keep track of what's going on (like a team blog, in an unofficial manner) - here or in Discord 3) What kind of information you think you lack the most. 4) Any other thoughts on the matters mentioned above. P.S. please, keep this clean from "you better fix k95" kind of answers as this is mostly about improving communication between the team and Lineage 2 EU community, not to complain about other things. (and Kartias should be rebalanced tomorrow anyway)
Long story short disparition is not working since 3 years. So a good event for me would include fixing disparition, unbind and in general server delay in all skills.
1) What a good event sounds like? where you can get pretty good rewards just for killing mobs. something what was with letters, or hearts event where you need make heart from 9 cubes. so in short. no l2store stuff like last time fishing event.. as for me good event would be that one with dragon weapons (that one was really good) or combined some hunting event + dragon weapons.. not like stay afk in town, and win something. cube five event was a disaster where same players win few days in a row.. and on both cubes.. 2) Where and in what manner it is most comfortable for you to keep track of what's going on (like a team blog, in an unofficial manner) - here or in Discord in forum.. like make thread "planned activities for <month> or period for few months". so we can know what need to prepare, and what events come.. what need to prepare 3) What kind of information you think you lack the most. we miss info about what's going on, what the plans etc. now from one of your posts we know that will be: GC, then comes fishing event for core (like last summer or like banana event?), then some kind of attendance event for both (it will be like stay online, and get buff to lvl 24 or so and get reward or like in GoD start in ncwest was event with tersi lights?) and then later, probably 2nd part of may red libra for core.. so ± plans like: April middle-2nd part - GC April 2nd part - fishing for core aka prepare your wallets and mastercards May start - attendance event for core and ramona May middle - red libra
A good Event would be, where "low lvls" could catch up in lvls AND in Gear, since lvl without gear means nothing ... A good Event would be to drop the prices in L2 store , cuz most of the Items are insane High even for ppl living and working in "strong" countrys, i cant even imagine how the ppl from bulgaria/romania or somewhere else outside of the "high income" countrys feel about the l2 store prices ...
Hello Fragola, thank you for your post. First of all, I've been critizing lack of communication from your team a lot in the past and even tho, it's still not perfect, you were great addition to the team so keep up good work. You must understand that for us, customers, it's very important to be informed about upcomming events and changes in advance. As I understand, you have limited options and time to prepare for events / updates. At some point you decided to not inform players at all which is worst thing you could possibly do. Please see below for some questions / suggestions: 1) could you do smaller events like double rates / double instances / lower raid spawns etc. or you are not allowed to do even small changes? This would keep the server more "alive" and motivate players much more to play. 2) would it be possible to test and prepare more events ( even hold on some events for now to have them "in stock" ) and then plan them in advance so everyone know what are plans and can organize their time accordingly? 3) blog is good idea - if you could update it once a week during the maintenance with status of issues, events and updates and keep all the informations in one place, you could then avoid repeating questions and you will have much easier life. 4) I would also suggest you to reconsider prices for the l2store mainly for exp runes / coupons to reenter instances etc as those are too high or atleast instead of 1 week rune change it to 1 week buff ( similiar to dragon buff ) with time consumed only when you are online.
Isn't innova paying the devs for the licensing and the technical support? It's ridiculous that there is such a game breaking bug on this server and it's still not fixed.
Just saying in my post I tried to be as helpfull as I could, I hope that was clear, but there are people who will never understand it and still keep blamming Innova for things they have no control about, I could start talking about how ****** it's in 2017 to get files encrypter to make sure no one knows anything, but no one is going to make reverse engineering on this game, but Koreans I guess, focusing now a bit more on the questions asked: 1 - What a good event sounds like: We all know there are 2 kind of events, free ones and l2store related ones, and that both are really necesary, one being for the users to enjoy and one for the company in order to make money. Let's start with free events. Some of the best events personally for me and that I think most of people were super happy with getting them, are 2 first draco events, as it was fun to farm them and it felt super rewarding, you could catch up fast with people because you could farm lots of them and the market price was really cool, so even newcommers to the server were able to get in no time basic stuff like R/R95/R99 gear or even normal hunter talisman and some low level epics like normal baium / QA to start farming properly. Other events of such kind are in example The Hungry Horse or Allien's Invasion for the same reasons. Events that weren't so good in example was last draco event, where farming it didn't feel usefull at all / rewarding, since it seemed drop of eggs was super nerfed compared to other times (yes I know you get x items / minute per server, but seemed like general amount got decreased heavily from last event). Simplier events that were good also were the lucky ruolette (I can't recall name in english atm), where people hunted mobs and there was a progress bar increasing up to 30-32 with different rewards and randomly in one of those it stops and give reward to someone from server and rest of people get coins to be able to use them, other simple events really good ones are in example the rhapso potions we had for valentine (really usefull to farm stuff like dimensional warp) or attendance event like the one running in RU servers atm. Also double XP is always good from time to time (like 2-3 times per year or even before every major update should do the job) Paid events: usually good paying events are the ones not making too much disbalance in the game but that supply hard to get items a bit easier so everyone can catch up faster, a good example of this is fishing event, you can get xp and some items are easier to get so price drops and even non paying people have easier access to them. We have also needed events to make stuff like brooches or shirts or things like those, it's totally understandable, what it gets out of control and people rage about are things that are too much gamebreaking and it takes a lot of time to get for non paying users, good example of this are tarots that broke game balance too much between top clans farming dragons and people who just clicked 1-2k of them, it didn't feel good at all for those farming and it event made those dragons skippable to most of people, what for to fight for endgame content when you can just click tarots (it also killed big part of mass pvp's for those dragons). Another example is brooches, up until level 5 it was okay because at some point people could make level 3-4 or even 5 if a bit lucky, even levels 6 alone would be okay at some point, but when the brooch rhapsody stuff came (you need 3-6 jewels of level 6) it broke too much the game balance. We understand Innova is a company and can't host servers for free, more than obvious, but you don't seem as a company to realize stuff like brooch rhapsody or tarots drove away tooo much people (from mass pvp's of 250v250 and people pvpeing everywhere), to hardly getting pvp on sieges, because for new players it takes tooooooo much time to be able to compete in items iwth top stacked people, and we know items is 80% in this server, back in time top people were running in r99 gear that was obtainable ingame easily and now everything even ingame is way harder to get, driving away too many people, but that is another discussion Store events to avoid at any cost: Brooch rhapsody part from brooches (that you won't remove anyways), 7signs SA's, Jewelry of the gods and few others like those 2) Where and in what manner it is most comfortable for you to keep track of what's going on (like a team blog, in an unofficial manner) - here or in Discord: Personally for me I think an official post from Innova in forums is way easier, since I personally don't even have Discord installed, same goes for a lot of people, a team blog like RU forums are getting should be more than enough but I understand it's a lot of job and effort to do it, so aybe even an official post in forum would be more than enough with news on what's going on inside the company related to game, something like what's going on with the update taking too much, if there's maybe some event comming up etc, things like those should do the job for sure. 3) What kind of information you think you lack the most. Overall information with upcoming l2store events or updates, specially updates. The current update going on at the moment (GC that RU got and we didn't) there's a lot of people getting more and more angry because it's getting delayed, just simply give an oficcial note on why it's happening like that, like workflow from Korea is really slow and it takes them ages to fix stuff we reported time ago, or we're waiting for some extra patches that RU got to include them with update (14 people Mesaya instead of 21, 10 raids for Exalted 4 instead of 15 or need to have 35 alive people in CC before clicking inside dragons), we know those stuff takes time, but at least say officially update or event or w/e got delayed because of certain problem so people can see it's not even your fault, that would be good for you also Also something I'm missing that I saw sometimes from RU servers is discussion from part of staff and players on how to improve something AKA feedback (this post if the perfect example) , I understand this can be either too useless or frustrating to see for the staff PoV since it might bring a lot of negative comments, but it's something make the users understand they are being heard (which is always nice), and it will give feedback to the company for free to check what people might like or not (there are unlimited amount of opinions, but in some things everyone agree in some limits), maybe even if the feedback is good enough you could go with those suggestions to Korean team to see if they can implement it, a good example of this is an user from NCWest forums who suggested Neutron (their Assistant Producer, who can talk with Korean developers), that because of RMT farming people, making 15 raids for exalted 4 might be too hard and 10 should be good enough since you can farm them from instanced bosses but the list include hard ones, and actually they heard the guy, gave the feedback to Koreans and they changed it for all overseas territories, that feels so good when good feedback is sent, reviewed and if it's usefull to be implemented. Another example is the discussion on Russian forum about Dimensional sieges where a lot of users suggested to let all clans participate there even if they didn't get castle in normal servers to make it more fun and more pvp. Or even it could be suggestions on how to make new users to stick to game by make catching up mechanics way easier, or how to promote mass pvps or things like those , a lot could come out of this discussions I guess. 4) Any other thoughts on the matters mentioned above. Just filter usefull feedback, maybe change the way some things are working and people will be more willing to stay in server, and happier customers means more paying customers, which is going to bring more cash for Innova, usually such initiatives like in this post makes us normal players feel more usefull and that from time to time we're being heard, so keep up the good job you're doing Fragola Fast edit: To include in point 4, I think usually updating things done after maintenance thread with everything done in the maintenance would be cool because a lot of ninja patches / nerfs come that we check about when we get into game and test intensively
1) What a good event sounds like? Let's be realistic: Pay2Win will always remain, you guys gotta make some money too else all this wouldn't be possible. Imo. what is always nice is to have events (even if only l2store discounts) more frequently. I know most big ingame events are done & decided by Korean devs and idk how much of a decision you guys have, but more frequent events are always nice (brooch discounts, casket discounts, exp items discounts etc.). 2) Where and in what manner it is most comfortable for you to keep track of what's going on (like a team blog, in an unofficial manner) - here or in Discord Most definitely "Team Blog" or just forum. You are right to not be able to post on every source. It is better to have 1 source which we all know we can and should check for information. I personally find Discord bad in it's overall layout and information overview is a bit lacking. 3) What kind of information you think you lack the most. Just status updates. Let's take current update situation: What is the worst you can do? Stay silent. Just tell us whats going on and what to expect. You can even give ETAs if all goes well, else just post-pone after with a proper reason. Blame Koreans all you can, not like they will be hurt We're 5 weeks behind RU update (idk how much exactly changes between our updates but just try to stick both together somehow idk; it's nice to see information from there but esp. Player Test and other information are only in russian which kinda goes against information equality and you can't possibly translate all. Just tell us what is going on, what is being done and how long it'll take approximately. I know its not so easy but just dont say silent. 4) Any other thoughts on the matters mentioned above. -
4) Any other thoughts on the matters mentioned above. Keep your motivation high enough to handle the permanent anger of this community. You'll need it.
1. good event would be the event like 2x xp (for whole server, and most likely for party farmers), solo events like carots and etc are bad because some clases can run with 300 speed others cant, some clases can stun and etc to steal the "loot" and its bad again those farm events would be good for party drops only (dont know if its technicaly possible or not) and maybe in some locations with lower chance(with some testing to make it +- similar amount of event items for solo and for party) we understand that some clases are ment to solo like dreadnought but some clases like iss/healer/tank cant do anything alone and they are left outside 2.here in forum is better choice than discord, not everyone want to download discord and etc, and besides there you would need to scroll a lot until u find info u are seeking, when here u can use search (or atleast ctrl+F in open thread) 3. the most important info is "WHEN".. and why we are left outside alone.. we understand that updates come from nc.. but it was you "inovva" who decided to open new server and postpone our update and everything else for month++ (it was said ~month, 3weeks passed and no info (no patchnotes, no estimated release date, no nothing) and would be awesome if its like in NC west, there is thread made at every months end (for next month) with info like here: http://boards.lineage2.com/showthread.php?t=292023&highlight=march+preview even can name those threads for a month like they do, and for all would be much easier to search info also if dont have info for whole month u can make thread with info for 1-2weeks and keep updating it when u get something new, and once there is 2-3 days left for new month open new thread with another months info
Who is in control of l2store and making changes there? why it's so cheap to buy "Ultimate Jewelry Box (x50)" and in free play is limited by the energy of destruction that you need 5 and every day you get 3? and it's so easy to waste 100euro for 250 but impossible to obtain from free play while you also need them for PVP armors, weapons? it's clearly saying if you want to obtain this level pay for it? all server know when it comes to free play events you give them nothing unless it's pay2win. Why don't you make the fishing event with such rewards with simple bait huh? wait, I got it you don't like to give free stuff for free unless people pay for it and you looking for ways to make people more participate in l2store than into the game. That's the reason you have no people your server rates are nerfed in farm even EXP table is wrong no opportunities to grow for new people you are sinking ship soon you will have to merge core with ramona to have at least 1 server with low population. The greediness will kill your business and server is more efficient to have 5k people and have less l2store and still earn more from it and in same way make fun in game because of competition than making no game no people just feed l2store and eliminate all free play players that were buying at least pa account if you don't realise that then god help you with core and ramona future because in past Lilith has fallen.
Great Feedback Fragola. I lll try to give my views on the questions: 1) What a good event sounds like? - Good event is INTERACTIVE. That means you do stuff in game and get rewarded. Thusforth - an event like Heine Fishing event is absolute garbage in that you sit AFK fishing and your character is stuck there. - Good event is balanced between L2store/and activity within game. We dont have that many bots here - so I think we could raise the amount of world drops for event items. 2) Where and in what manner it is most comfortable for you to keep track of what's going on (like a team blog, in an unofficial manner) - here or in Discord - Monthly Previews on forums. Would be great to know a month before hand what happens next month. This thread can then be shared in Discord - Facebook - Twitter - Front page of L2eu site. 3) What kind of information you think you lack the most. - Events, updates - Roadmap for future. - Maybe a "wall-of-shame" for botters/cheaters who get banned. A total amount of banned accounts would have element of bot-prevention as well 4) Any other thoughts on the matters mentioned above. - Please dont put too many L2store items in Ramona. People who started there are doing hard work to succeed there, and I think, the sooner the cash shop items like Tarot and Boxes are brought there, the server will start taking serious damage; people might just goto play their super-geared characters elsewhere. In short: the longer you can post-pone the cash shop elements from Ramona - the better. WE NEED a servers that each offer something unique; not servers that are all basically similar in every aspect. Thats just me - but I hope it helps^_^ Cudez
kinda agree with aboriginal, less and less ppl play on core and it's obvious; i was looking at how sad the aden market looks like, used to be so crowded you could barely move without activating lower detail, now i run on max details through market place; very hard for new players to catch up and play the good content on this server, unless you either buy tons of l2 store or simply buy adena from outside providers; however, who is stupid enough to do that on a dying server? there's simply no motivation to play, no fun; there's no real marketing for core, soon merge will be the only option to keep this going;
First of all, please make this game playable for more players. Comparing to any other games your version of Lineage 2 is most expensive game i ever played in my life and you call it "Free to Play"...
Yes I agree with the argument that - Its too expensive to catch up if you start as new player... Even my buddy who is geared to teeth has sayd that "the new player start expense and catch up is so steep now that he dont see any point/motivation for new players to even start at Core". He sayd this cause he was worried that the game eventually stops getting new players. Thats not far from truth... When a new player sees the gear-level of server and adds-up the cost for those -> its thousands of Euros. Who wants to stare a few thousand bill in day in a "f2p" game - if I may ask. Imo private server players created the p2w since they werent willing to pay for L2 maintenance/development bills back in days when the official version was still a subscrition game. Now they pay the bill like all of us - with a LOT BIGGER price tag. sad:/ In top of this we take the current President of N**** who - as L2West producer - made the decisions about turning L2 into "f2p". No wonder she is the President of N***T nowadays when they see that the game actually makes alot more money without them having to care for the players; nor develope the game. Just make it a "whale-game" and the money is there :/ Nevertheless - They just opened up Ramona. Its not hard to do catch up in there if you really hate the "immediate" 1k euro bill. Or even better - there is Classic that costs 2euros for first month per account and has no cash shop at all.
Long story short. 1) 3 weeks after RU updated to GC, Core still dont have it and there is not even patchnotes 2) Fragola such super player on Classic that have 200h+ and 10 lvl sowhat you can know about players needs? 3) need communication? No we need information from yuo to start any conversation.. 3a) looking at your activity on Ramona server compare to Core server seems you dont even care abour core, i will not be surpsied if ramona will get GC/Fishing/Libra soon and core 1-2 weeks later. 4) what event will be cool? Any, just to have any. 5) Cry less, work harder 6) if we find a bot means you dont make yor work properly. Bot raport? Sorry but you dont pay me for searching bots. You got payment for that. I will not do your job. Its your duty to keep server bot-less. We just want see progress in that, atm you just counting that we will find bot and serv this bot on gold plate under your nose. No its not work like that.. Just GZ you had time to make A4 cry post, insteed of prepear EN language patchnotes or any info about Events/update progress... When you will get in your brain that we are not mad becouse we didnt get update/event in this moment. We do not gettign even info/status. Example (dates can not match with real one, event names are just example aswell) 1 march - RU servers got GC 8 March - RU got Fishing 15 March - Ru got libra 1 march - Core nothing 8 march - Core nothing 15 march - Core nothing 22 march - Core nothing 29 march - Fragola making cry topic that ppl are mad. So y why ppl are mad, need to solve that mistery scooby doo !
+1 Aboriginal There are some means to make adena but you have to have already 20-30b in equipment to do that somewhat effectively. However there is no path to get to 20-30b mark for new players without buying the store which is pretty stupid. All the changes to drops/farm zones/raids in the past 2.5 years affected only new player base, anyone who was stacked before and is now could then and still can farm everything without a problem while new players cant event do 88/93 raids. You focused so much on leveling boost that you can reach 99 in a week with a few hundred mil in a pocket and paulina set based on false argument that new players should have a chance to catch up in level which is stupid and in fact you should focus on letting new players to at least have a chance to get half the gear stacked people have through ingame means not l2 store.
what makes u think that an old player wont be able to farm the w.e new zone with amazing drop rates like 88/93 raids ? there are many ways to make adena but ofc u need to work hard same as other ppl ig or out of it nothing is for free
good event? the one, the ru server have/had.. the log-in event. u log in for like 30min for a day and u got something. everyone can have some stuff, not OP sh**. u could change the rewards (or not) and make a perma event from that. or any kind of event where everyone have the same chance to got something. so not a *** event like that cube event. the good part was in that event, u could buy 30day weapon/armor for boxes or even for the lowbies.
