(updated 8-12-2006) Long time ago, in prelude, it was a decent leveling simulator. Simple, with many things missing and quite a few simply broken, but it was considered as beta. And for a beta it wasn't bad game. So theoretically it should get better. Has it ? Not really. So let's start. Remark: following stuff is not, by any means, complete list of all the mess put in L2. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First broken core parts of the game: spoils, drops, crafting. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An example, back in the old days (note that C3+ drops and spoils are worse): top D blunt weapon. You need tons of raw materials, and of course recipe and heads. Unfortunately, heads only drop (note: in C3+ noone bothers with D/C crafts, more about it later) with estimated ratio: 1/1000 - 1/4000 (as of C5, thanks to l2wh) from lvl40+ mobs and recipes at 1/2000 - 1/10000 from lvl35 and lvl40+ mobs. A player would have to spend lvl30 - lvl48 brutally deleveling 10+ levels FEW times to hope to acquire the recipe and necessary materials for a simple stupid D grade weapon - and it would take weeks to months, depending on one's luck. Not only that - both recipes and heads were available only as drops - sorry scavengers/bounty hunters - no love for you. That top D blunt is just a tip of the iceberg of drop/spoil problems in L2 - a small example. Be it materials, recipes or key-parts - on every level - distribution across mobs (from the perspective of mob type and its level), probability of getting it, quantity - the drops and spoils are A CRUEL JOKE. Even worse now - in C3+ - the only realistic way to obtain certain recipes - is to run bot group 24/7 for many weeks. And it still requires hell of a luck. Better equipment - C grade - for lvl40+ players, was virtually nonexistent - for pretty much the same reason. How did our precious, insightful NC designers handled the problem ? They added NPC shop for essential C grade equipment (in C1). Everything D grade, except top items, was already available in shops (with a few not really necessary exceptions) - what's already a nerf. So you could pretty much be set up to lvl 50+ without even bothering to craft anything. Instead of creating a logical environment for healthy economy and giving a reason to play both BH and WS professions, so the crafting would thrive, they just threw D and C equipment into NPC shops. And left the sole reasons of unability to craft and provide new equipment - COMPLETELY UNFIXED. But that was just the beginning, it got far worse later. Let's move to C2. For some retarded reason, NC decided to kick small people hard. First they introduced a recipe book. Normally a good idea - after all - the whole crafting process was rather tragic in pre-C2 times. But here's a catch - every crafter get only 50 slots in the recipe book - of which significant part must be wasted for materials / soulshots and sometimes higher grade arrow recipes. Can you remove your precious recipe back to inventory slot ? Of course not - you can only destroy it completely, to free the slot (never forget how tragic drops / spoils are in this game). In one swift move NC destroyed the fun of being a flexible crafter - what in D and C realm was destroyed by npc shops, in B+ realm was destroyed by the artificial limit. Good luck finding someone crafting something less popular at let's say, 60%. Really, good luck. But that's not all - NC also added craft shops, effectively turning once proud profession (that required trust, and socializing) into mindless click-on-me automatons. DWARVES enjoyed becoming trustworthy crafters - how hard is that to get, NC ? So what about BHs - were they spared ? Not really - they got spoil sharing. Which in well designed and adjusted game would be welcome addition (assuming PROPER spoil tables were present, appropriate bonuses per party member that improve spoils). But as we already know, L2 is a far cry from such a game. But the really brutal BH nerf in C2 was manor - as we already covered, drops and spoils ARE A CRUEL JOKE. Thus the economy was kinda dried. BH couldn't really do or help much. So did NC fix THAT CRUEL JOKE ? Of course not - they added so called manor - where any lvl 30 reroll is far better material gatherer than lvl 70+ BH (actually any lvl BH). GENIUS NC. Why make the class responsible for gathering, able to actually gather something decently withing reasonable timeframe (so you have less 24/7 bot groups doing it) ? Better turn its only special skill public domain. CONGRATULATIONS. Summary of C2 - what had been broken remained broken. And C2 features further increased the problems. Now let's move to C3. In the process of neverending nerfing of crafters - NC soft added mammon blacksmith (luxury shop v2.0). Recipe books, BH nerfs and A CRUEL JOKE we mentioned previously led to one thing - tons of equipment became virtually uncraftable and unavailable - particulary top D/C weapons. Did NC fix the problems causing this (after all, one would thought - even a dumb monkey should be able to comprehend simple logical chains after a year) ? Of course not. Mammon blacksmith is an NPC shop where you can exchange and upgrade any D/C weapon you would want. Way to make crafters even more useful and needed. Funny thing is - in C2 after introduction of recipe book, some morons on offical boards suggested "specializing". For anyone that ever played a crafter it was obiovus, that specializing is just another word for self-gimping in the environment like L2. But what was left to do anyway - some dwarves decided to specialize in top D and C weapons in the end. Oh how happy they were, when mammon blacksmith showed in C3 providing unlimited amount of weapons just for small cash, particulary top D and C ones. At the same time - drops and spoils became even worse. Yes, you read correctly. NC decided that they are too good and logical, so they nerfed them into something that ISN'T EVEN A CRUEL JOKE. It's true that there were materials available after C2 - due to manor exploiting with few simple tricks. Poor nerfed BHs didn't have anything to do with it. So they became even more worthless. Funny thing is - many things are not available through manor - certain materials, recipes, key-parts. l2wh project, for example, after like 3/4 of C3, reported THREE lance recipe and ONE keshanberk recipe drops. With est. probability 1/17k and 1/30k. Recipes as such - just a normal B weapons after all - go for 10m - 30m in C3+, and if not for the 24/7 botted pro-farming, they simply wouldn't exist. So next time before you train bots, think twice about what you're doing. Another beautiful C3 nerf - A grade quests (and in C4 - S grade quests). They are designed for bots, and only for bots, as getting one recipe that you actually need requires a party 24/7 hunting for weeks in the same place (oh, such a varied, interesting and challenging game, right ?). Of course you still have to succeed the retarded idea of 60% (70% in case of jewelery) craft. But that's not the real issues here, there real issue is - WHY THE HELL DID YOU PUT BOUNTHY HUNTER CLASS AT ALL IN THE GAME ? They are supposed to be the ulitmate gatherers. High level BH should be the only character able to obtain the recipes, and only through spoil. If the spoils are quest enabled - fine, as long as they make sense (and quests don't make any sense in L2). C3 added one more nerf to both BH ans WS classes - raid bosses. That actually have acceptable chance of dropping some equipment on death. Which due to everything explained above, became the major way of getting higher level equipment. EQ reloaded ? Besides chronicle fuckups, there're other things worth mentioning: - which "designer" in Korea invented, that it would be fun to use recipes as CRAFTING COMPONENTS ? Seriously, do you throw cookbook into soup when you do it ? Do you morons, even think when you design the game ? Maybe you have some internal competition "how do make this game more tedious and illogical ?" and those that win get some salary bonuses ? - who invented that it's fun to force people to use 60% success recipes on A and S equipment - especially after C1's 80% and 60% fiasco ? Of course the only source of the key parts and recipes are bots - we all know that. But even with their support, it takes really stunning (weeks/months for one item per group) amount of time to get anything. - due to the fact that this game is ultimately gear dependent - a lot, and I mean it - a lot of the equipment (and thus recipes, not mentioning that most of the made items are available in shops) won't even be considered to be used, ever. I have yet to see a player that would gimp himself to use other equipment than the best possible of his current class. More about equipment variety in later section. What did C4 bring to the table ? Fishing ! What is fishing ? Another ultra boring activity with ridiculous level of diminishing returns. Stay in one place, press 2 keys repeatedly, for many days so you can get some materials and, after processing (through crafting with ridiculous mp cost) get "proofs of catching a fish". tens of thousands of those can be used to tiny-boost your inventory/wh/recipe slots. After all, it would be so difficult to remake all those broken systems, instead of adding another mindless grind. More about fishing in the next paragraph. Fishing is best (and in practice - the only way) served botted. Sadly. And finally C5. Life orbs ! Originally quoted as another dwarf nerf. RBs might drop some items, that can be exchanged for weapons and items. At least NC outdid itself in ridiculousy once again, and it remained useless, so no practical nerf this time. In practice you need to kill like 250 raid bosses to be able to exchange for one item. Even pro-farmers can't cope with that. Dear NC Korea - do you realise, that you do absolutely everything to keep L2 dependent on pro-farming ? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Next broken core part of the game: storage and inventory "system" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To put it simply - this is the worst system I've ever seen. You can't really make it worse, even if you tried really hard (although NC managed to do so - by introducing "recipe" "books", see previous paragraph). I guess, in NC Korea - civilization inventions like: drawers, file cabinets, wall cupboards, breifcases, folders, etc. - things like that don't exist. I guess every NC Korea employee in its house, has one big bowl, where one stores everything starting with fresh food and ending with dirty socks - as this is in short the "system" they implemented in L2 and has yet to improve in any way. Of course when they run out of space, I guess they make new children and use them as mules. In short: - no sorting / categorizing - no sections / subsections - ridiculously limited space (100, 120 for a dwarf) - in case of cwh - even more ridiculously limited space (200 slots for even as much as 100+ people in C5) - unstackable enchant scrolls, books and and few other things At the same time, the game features around 600 recipes (a bit less in enabled state atm), a bit less amount of key-parts, shots, arrows, materials and incredible amount of junk called quest items. C4 introduced another grind layer to the game called fishing. In the crazy korean logic, the fishing can be used to improve that utterely limited space (don't ask me who and why invented it), by about 48 slots. Of course fishing in L2, like every feature of this boring game, is fun for 15 minutes (to few days in more crazy cases), then it's either ignored or botted. Maximum possible boosts are still laughable, considering all the needs. And it doesn't solve other limitations. Oh btw, you fish in the following way: you look at a red bar on the screens for hours. If it moves, you press F1. If it doesn't move, you press F2. Enjoy ! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Next broken core part of the game: trading system ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Actually, prviate stores are not that bad idea - they promote trade activity, socializing, etc.. Unfortunately, similary to storage and inventory "system" - they couldn't have been implemented in a worse way. First and foremost - how can any self respecting developer force people to stay online 24/7 with cpu/memory hungry client (not mentioning GG junk) if they want to trade something ? Yes, you guessed right - there's no ability to logoff while you leave your shop - you either find a 24/7 computer able to run an overbloated client with a small afk shop, or you're out of luck. Or you just use one of the bots (each of major ones have free version just for such purpose) like most people do. But, you still need 24/7 working computer. It's kinda sad that bot programmers seem to listen to non-botting players more than game devs. Besides that: - why are there no no-shop areas (stairs, narrow passages, etc.) ? Trillion tims players have asked about it. - why can't you simply place your personal stall governed by npc ? Identical in function to current private shops - so besides OBVIOUS NEED TO BE ABLE TO LOG OFF, you can go around your business as usual. Stall would have varying price depending on time and its capabilities. With OBVIOUS limitations. - who invented assine limits on how much stuff you can buy sell ? (3/4 or 4/5 if dwarf). Seriously dear NC - way to go to cripple trading, way to go. Remark: that broing fishing mentioned previously can boost increase shop slots by 3. - why no ability to both buy and sell at the same time ? Crippling continued. - why no ability to link to wh/cwh ? (with OBVIOUS limitations). And again crippling continued. Guess what NC - people in other world areas than NC Korea do: sleep, work, have social life, use computers for SOMETHING ELSE than playing your stupid game. Get it to your limited heads. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Equipment variety, distribution, SAs, bonuses ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another logic pearl by NCKorea. Normally one would thought, that NG A+S D > B+A+S NG+D > everything else Genius. But so logical right ? Levels in which average player spends AT MOST few days in L2, have more equipment in total, that end-game A and S grade COMBINED, where the players spent the major part of their life in game. S grade is an example of ultimate laziness - just ONE item of each type - one heavy armor, one light armor, etc.... Not mentioning useless bonuses, compared to A. There's a reason why majority of players stay in A. Could somebody in NC explain WHY ? To make everyone of higher level look like clone of each other ? To create TOTAL JUNK whose purpose is in 80% - 90% to take space in SQL tables and in dat/utx/ukx files ? To lie to players that there are many recipes to craft, when noone with IQ above 20 would even bother with them ? Next stupidity - 4 - 6 levels of equipment stats through a single grade (only NG/D/C though). What for ? In game where everyone aims at the top item for obvious reasons - why create another sublayer of completely ignored junk ? Next problem - SAs. Seriously, half of them are moronic to say the least. Particulary Light SA - pay equivalnet of millions of adena to make your weapon weigh less... In my whole L2 "carrer" I have yet to see a single person that would put this worthless crap (along few other ones) on the weapon. And imagine putting such feature on S grade weapon - lvl13 crystal, after slaying Antharas. Hefty fee. And a lighter weapon ! Wooooow The other thing regarding SAs - why make them idiotically more difficult and expensive to obtain on higher levels ? It's damn SA ffs. Where did ideology that player at lvl 75 must have it idiotically more difficult to obtain than lvl 40 player come from ? C5 changed a bit - up to lvl10 crystals are available in npc shop. Gotta love how NC fixes stuff. Instead of making it worthwile, just put it in a NPC shop. Next problem - set bonuses - some indeed good, some less than illogical. Also some sets are more like .. half sets (like brigandine, elven mithril, etc.). Why haven't you make more grades (like every 10 levels for instance - so people have a reason to look into weaker equipment) ? Why not only one stats per equipment within certain grade (but large variety of it) ? Why doesn't higher level equipment have more variety than lower level equipment ? Example: NG: 0 - 1 option of equipment + noob quest items F: 15 - 2 options E: 25 - 2 options D: 35 - 3 options C: 45 - 3 options B: 55 - 4 options A: 65 - 4 options S: 75 - 5 options Makes more sense, doesn't it ? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7 signs ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NCKorea designers have very strange understanding of word "competition". They also have a lot of guts to throw 15 almost identical (by architecture, composition and textures), boring, small dungeons to the game, popualte them with some monsters (often using old meshes/textures) and call that content, but that's different subject. Either way, here's how the word "competition" is understood by NC designers: - you can participate on both sides, at the sametime (just keep one alt on the other side) - there're no risks of whatsoever with turning stones in, as you can turn them in during ... reward period (it was so absurdly illogical to me, that I had to be told about it) - the whole big fuss is essentially about being able to use 2 npc shops and some extra goods/teleports at priests. In the end, all servers very quickly defaulted to one side that always win. For obvious reasons. And those dungeons (small, rectangular) became the botters' hunting grounds of choice. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AoE/BB nerf in C4+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As most players know, the actual gameplay in L2 is beyond boring. For example to get to lvl76, you need almost 1 billion exp points. It's funnier later though - lvl80 to 80.99 costs approx. 7 billion exp points itself. How do you get them ? By pressing the same combination of Fx keys, preferably 24/7 for months (umm, I'm sorry - by botting and partying pro-farmers). It's like if developers really wanted to say "Hey players, we really do suck completely at providing interesting, challenging gamepley, so we will just throw boring exp-based grind, brainwash you that you achieve something, and make sure you waste tons of time before you can matter in anything remotely resembling fun in this game". A "feature" called subclassing that allows you to regrind the same boring stuff from 40 to 75 is THE feature after all, right ? What an amazing content ! Either way, there's one thing that can keep pve in L2 somewhat fun, to some point (as it gets boring like everything else) - AoE. But as with everything remotely resembling fun in this game - NC nerfs it. Good L2 is boring L2 ! So what our beloved graphical junk called C4 brought in AoE department: - global aoe cap for everything that can hit/influence more than one mob, while not being regular attack (20 mobs top). - polearm weapons rendered useless (regardless if you have skills or not) for levels 1 - 39 (1-19 they have 30% of the full arc, 20-39 assuming you have skills - 60% of the full arc) - polearms working in the same way as previously only for 2nd job+pole skills At the same time all summons don't fall into aoe cap (from game engine's perspective, summon are just another mob, and NC devs are lazy after all). BigBoom was once a nice addition (C3) and allowed useless WSes to level in a bit better way. Aggro transfer destroyed it quite a bit in C4. At least it remained a good tool for powerleveling. But C5 destroyed it as well. After all, players must bore themselves to death with grind. Also, all summons' costs were raised significantly in C5. Dunno why, maybe to make summoners not use them. Or reroll. NC's logic is as always unknown. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leveling ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Make up your mind - either L2 is pvp game, or pve game. This type of leveling/money curve in supposedly pvpgame has no place. At level 75, few deaths at the siege (or one outside) equal to leveling lvl 1-40 exp pool, and often worse. At lvl79 and lvl80 there're no words for that. The only thing that this type of leveling encourages (after pvp especially) is botting, PL services or partying with pro-farmers. And besides farming, the 2nd main reason why people bot. For a reference, exp charts: http://www.l2wh.com/tools/xp.php NA customers hate the grind. Europeans hate the grind. KOREANS HATE THE GRIND. Japanese hate the grind. Chinese hate the grind. How hard is that to understand ? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PvP ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, PvP is so unbalanced and poorly implemented that one could write a decent-sized book about it. But let's list few most important things - both pre-C4 and new "features" of C4, without going into deeper details. - poorly implemented coloring system. People deflagging during the fight, certain skills available far too late (after opponent flags). THERE WERE tens of excellent suggestions posted over last 2 years how to improve it - make it more logical, more fair, fixing mentioned problems (changing deflagging rules, implementing flaggin by order-issue, not by succesful hit, and more). - no way to lock force-attack; funny thing - feature like that was available in pre-C3 times. But NC "fixed" it. That's literally the answer I got from their "support" team. I didn't know if to laugh or cry. Even in C5, you still have to hold a key to attack someone. - nuker classes becoming more and more overpowered chronicle by chronicle (acumen, set bonues, acumen SA, tattoos (w/o melee limits), buffs, certain changes and nerfs - like C4's zerk buff) - physical ranged DD classed becoming more and more overpowered, although not as much as in case of nuker classes - melee classes fading away - warlords, TKs - virtually non-existing - C4: force attack in 2-way clan wars. AoE skills not working in 2-way wars on non flagged opponents. Clan Wars turned into purple gank fights - beyond stupid exp cost on death. It's fine when you're 40. Not so fine when you're 7x (also check previous section) - S bow with foucs. In incoming C6 (Interlude) also A bow. - many classes - like prophets, SEs - effectively turned into personal buffbots and played as such C5 turned L2 even into bigger pile of crap, balnace wise. Archers critting people for 10k damage, eating whole cp and majority of hp. Enjoy L2. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- misc stuff + summary ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - teleport costs making no sense (and much less in C5, also on logical level - for example gludio->dion and dion->giran is 3x cheaper than gludio->giran; I guess NC devs see too many exp curves everywhere) - boring, mass made, fedex + kill quests; compared to time required - utterely worthless (regarding worthlessness - with special consideration of quests designed for bots (check earlier section about crafting)) - botting and pro-farming required by the game to survive - rootkit-like so called GameGuard, installing 2 drivers and system service, literally raping windows and causing tons of problems with a lot of software (in particular: everything based on .NET framework, x86-64 windows, panda antivirus, kerio firewall, certain norton utilities, ability to run L2 under linux, ProcessGuard, PrevX, and many, many more) To learn more, I suggest to read all the stuff here: http://soltys.ziu.info/l2.html Maybe one day NC will learn what it means to: - design a game - properly implement it - maintain a game - manage a community - provide a professional customer support - properly use PTS - LISTEN TO PLAYERS (bugs, suggestions) - make interesting, logical in-game events Because so far, NC has no clue about either of those things. And years have yet to change a thing. Despite 2 years of players voicing their concerns along with good solutions. It's also stunning, that a game with so great visual and musical setting is at the same time so broken on every other level.