Zeperios

Info is in the text. There are RB's and mini-RBs.

Overall this is a beneficial change IMO. Farmers were still dominating RBs just to get free weps. Yes, it will hurt new players, but maybe a system can be re-implemented to limit the runes to lvl 6 or have special runes that can be bought and limit the level that way. I dont feel bad for farmers they have the gear and wont be bad. Some of them, good for them for finding it, but exploited a change that was never announced so they dominated RBs when no one thought runes could be inserted.

@Rizos Come back. Your name is being forsaken with these stabs to the face in slow motion. Bring back the good days of real Rizos' step throughs for back stabs.

Did any of these points even get read by admins? Like I think the population understands that there is tons to work on, but there has been no real change or acknowledgement of change for these systems since they really started. If this is even just a talking point, can an Admin say “we read it and will talk about it”

The troll part is you can get owl from 70 rb’s *sometimes*. I don’t know if it was a glitch or it has some random chance to spawn a “higher level” owl, but I have gotten Strix blessing from 70 daily RB before on level 80 char. The next day it didn’t work but luckily a DK dropped one. Still just weird how that whole system functions.

Run your updater and Core/AQ/Orfen show on map for high level chars. I’m not sure if there is a delay, but they are shown as 82 RB now.

@Koll Thanks for the transparency this patch. Really helps the community see where admins heads are on changes and paths moving forward to change/improve new systems.

I think the coin system has potential for new players as bosses will be up more and they can farm more regularly, but the system probably needs to be improved so that it is competitive with real gear. Mainly since raids don’t drop runes anymore it would make sense to add runes to the reward list that are also only useable on reward weapons and cap the weapon enchant at say +10 or +12. Getting +10 or so is still extremely rare especially without improved scrolls. (By extension the new weps need to be able to have runes applied or else they are useless) Saying that the system is complete shit is missing the point that it will give new players a dedicated way to get gear, the system seems like it needs to get boosted slightly so that the gear is “easy” but capped where established players have no reason to farm it because +6 B armor and +10 wep is not worth it. As corruptor said, it has potential to bring players together and more importantly have RBs alive for players to go form around since it takes new players a lot of effort.

Is there some more game design / decision making information that we can get from you the devs. After reviewing all this and processing the information the change that I find most strange is the upgrade of baium and somewhat Zaken to lvl 4. Baium is already the top boss jewel and very challenging to make. (Server been online for 5 years so over all time there should be ~30 baium 3’s on the server). So if baium 4 is x2 baium 3’s that upgrade is a very small pool. Also since all the lower epics are upgrading to high level epics it somewhat makes sense that they might be on same level as baium and/or Zaken. Also all lower epics have short spawn but if they were only lvl 4’s then their effective time to get final jewel would be doubled which puts them more on par with baium spawn window. Overall change will be new for sure and change the game, just wondering if some more detail on why all jewels will be upgraded since even original post commented on making lower epics worth more again.

Is this an additional spawn timer or just spawn location? So is there timer for interior rex and outside rex or just 6 spawn locations instead of 5?

Sadly 5.5kk means nothing when baium 4 has stats like that. You are about to become Zeus if you have baium 4. The math for farming baium 3 was already depressing, do math for baium 4…..

Quick question, was the massive tuning towards mages because the lvl 4 jewels have more M.def? Mages are about to 1 shot tanks

Can’t wait for the response: “You all complain about so much stuff we can’t fix it all because we don’t have a big staff and have people working big patches.” I don’t know how to even explain in clearer English that the players are asking for the admins to be vocal or transparent. The player base has been giving suggestions, asking what we can do to help, and begging for the server to survive. We get hit with, don’t play so much and don’t complain about a million things, other than that radio silence! I won’t even go into the math of the most recent content that they have put out which tells a different story of play all day all year long for years if you ever want max anakim/Lilith rune and the 1.5 year old FI tali now. People seem to complain that admins don’t do anything, but I think the bigger issue is THEY DONT SAY ANYTHING!! You don’t have to give full plans if it spoils something but how long does it take to respond “We will look into that”, “That is an interesting idea”, “We are already addressing that somehow”. The player base is eating itself alive and you all are just sitting back and watching it implode. I meme’d about the weekly post that was leading up to new patch and how it only last 8 weeks and hoping it would be revitalized to communicate. #ghosted. So let me try one more time, we are asking for admin input and responses. I know this is toxic, but at this point you are just ignoring this server like a girl you are trying to breakup with without saying it.

Do you have any idea how much RB farmers do in damage right now? Even if 3 pts of new players were at each boss they would do less than 10% health. This would give RB farmers a chance to go sit at the boss with gate, orcs ready to jump and buffed so all you would do is CoV disco and kill the boss. Good RB killers kill bosses in 45 seconds or less depending on boss sometimes as little as 15 seconds. There would be 0 benefit to new players. It would be more exp for those players to grind SV or GC for those 5 mins of running and buffing to boss than to try and beat RB farmers. The old map of showing on spawn gave best chance to everyone because there was no advantage in knowledge or timing to experienced players. The problem and probably more of the reason the admins changed it is because the map gave actual data to the client that could be used by external programs on when a boss spawned. They banned many people for that, but it was obvious lots of the RB farmers still used a method of this data. We can discuss all we want about RBs, GC, w/e other topic people want to complain about, but leveling or entry gear isnt a huge problem. One of the biggest problems is the availability of epics and price for them. People can complain about RBs on this thread all they want, but people stop playing because they "finish" L2 classic club. There is a soft end to this server where you get to lvl 77,78,79,80 but the next step in progression is pretty much unattainable without donations (+8 armor, lower epics, +14+ B grade) and on all chars in a CP. When you can kill a RB and max get 60kk or grind GC for 1 hour and get 20kk but it takes 4kkk+ for each of the items I listed. You see a wall you cant climb and you stop playing.

Let me put this in a more understandable way since you don’t get it at all. Runes broke the balance of the game (physical damage). Daggers and archers are supposed to have crit advantage over people and therefore bring more damage through crits. Every other physical damage class is way overtuned because of othell. Continuing on Modoys counter to your point: Archers suck pve and pvp Tyrants god at both Titan 81+ god PvE very useful pvp Necros…… need I say more. Hint: give me a con about the class. I’lol die before you give me a real one Daggers: pvp have some of lowest mobility now even though that is meant to be in their class The whole discussion in this post is from people that understand the game and balance to a high level. We aren’t saying there aren’t pros and cons and that balance isn’t a challenge, but highlighting where the balance is DOMINATED by a few classes. Also none of what we are tossing around is even full ideas just something that would be interesting to test and see how the balance of the game reacts to it. Ignore “Star Wars gear”. L2 has always catered to high gear and made you invincible if you are geared. That’s L2. Modoy pointed out how CoP and CC can help balance for non-GG gear people. Last point about dagger is funny though. You are complaining to someone that has played dagger on this server probably in top 5 and I’ve been on server 2 years and know that. You also listed every dagger skill to be used to kill someone when there are salvs and castle blessing scrolls. So you brought a whole char to remove 1 buff and cause a rez. #effective. You can do that every few mins though so just ask your CP to live until then.

Simplification, but kind of true. In pvp CC is more of a defensive buff, in pve it is offensive buff. CC proc in general is a very nice damage boost and gives some nice ability to have higher damage, but in PvE it is required for the areas that are created. However this could give some "balance" to the existing areas in that not having CC would make the areas much harder and require more group play. i'm not a huge fan of removing CC because I like it in pve and felt awesome back in the day interlude (was 84 PP? so some balance there). But it cant be ignored that L2 pre-CC and L2-post CC are wildly different games almost. I think removing CC sort of reverts the game back in patches while still having existing characters and gear, while giving archer a crit pen buff keeps it the same while buffing an archetype. Either way a solution around crits, melee classes, stigma, and caster (mainly necro) strength needs to be evaluated.

Personally I never liked the caster archer in L2. Just play a mage. I agree that first option is the easiest, but IMO probably least satisfying and still leaves archers to be plvl’d by a melee and is a physical mage (aka no healing or vamp). The second option is nice but provides so much barrier to take CC out of the game. That is like a whole year long rebalance just to remove that 1 skill. That is why I gave the comment of providing some “crit penetration”. If bow mastery ignored the crit reduction buffs that would give the effect of removing CC and CoP to them while not having to rebalance everything and balance the physical class that doesn’t benefit much from CC. I think if this is done there would need to be minor rebalance of skills that can crit because a skill should not: crit from range and ignore crit reduction while daggers are in the thick of a fight. So remove crit from double shot, lethal and death sting. Increase powers a bit to compensate for no crits but emphasizes archers trying to get crits from auto attacks to do large dmg. This would be interesting and fun to play again, but DA, summoner, and necro balance would be better. All of it would be amazing to allow for various CPs in pvp. What a dream right?

This is more of a question and @MoDoy suggestions are way more balancing for the server than this, but is there a way to balance stigma for archers too? Stigma now helps pretty much every class except archers. I ask it as a question because I think just adding “- bow resistance” will make skills hit too hard vs making archers auto attacks hit for a reasonable amount of damage. It doesn’t seem that archer parties are completely useless in pvp (they just obviously aren’t the best and in a server this old why not just play the best). The crit dmg buff last year gave a boost for sure but I think the major difference is that to run a GOOD pve let alone pvp archer party you need all of the archer types so even in pve it’s a large party to compare to similar dmg from 1 melee. I think giving a range counter crit would bring back old school archers of getting crit 1 shot and with othell would be too strong, but stigma could be a help or some other way to encourage archer auto attacks which would also help farming. Last idea to maybe help archers, but would pretty much only affect pvp sadly is; the crit dmg passive give some penetration through crit reduction (CC, COP). Again though, the above suggestions around summoners, necro and DA I think are way more balancing even compared to allowing a revitalized CP configuration.

Follow on, pet has UD to keep it alive. Now pet UD is just used to get a few more hits before resummon.

@Kse Any intentions of restarting this weekly post? 1) It is encouraging to have devs/admins active on forum. 2)You may be reading what people are writing about, but communicating what the dev team is seeing/working on is encouraging for the population and or just posting fun posts like this. I hinted at this in another post, but thought maybe the Community Club weekly post could be a fun spot to put like a Top Bug Hit List. Ones that are biggest priority and/or need help in replication the most from server population. Anyway hope it comes back, if not 8 weeks was a good run.

Instead of looking for medusa change, what if admins reworked a bit of the DE and specfically BD skills. I think everyone can pretty much agree that dance of protection is almost a completely useless skill. What if protection kept (or not) reflect dmg reduction and added some debuff resistance. Plays into the skill name a bit and somewhat the idea behind the dance. This comes with large mass PvP implications bc if it is too strong then you will be required to dance it, and since dance slots are limited caster parties are buffed because they use less disco then melee. Or even better adding it to defense motion. But protection dance can get reworked as it is a pretty much a useless skill. Next, BD as a melee dmg dealer is a joke in late stages of L2. They are meant to be a bard and provide extra dmg to other classes, everyone knows this and Sano echoed it recently in your posts. Great should not be a large base dmg dealer themselves, OK. This also means that their dances are not that useful in olympiad because their stats are no where competitive to other classes and gear doesnt scale as well on them. What BD's do have is amazing caster dances and those scale very well with gear and base stats. So, what if DE casts were scaled so that DE's could more effectively use these skills in oly. Freezing strike now - slows, pretty long cast time, not much dmg Freezing strike change idea - keep slow, more dmg or scale with BD dances, lower cast time???? The skill cant be too strong or else BD's will be like another caster in a caster party. They may run out of MP in mass pvp so maybe that is the balance, but freezing strike can get a buff to help BD be more of a caster type debuffer in oly. Poison blade dance - hard skill to tune besides another level of it since it is melee but it is a decent skill. If possible going through medusa could be a cool/interesting buff. Poison and/or Sting - I think 1 of these needs to be redone for 82. Probably makes more sense to do poison bc its castable, but might make SK significantly stronger. Don't flame me Rizos I know you want bleed and sting at 82. THESE COULD BE GREAT THINGS FOR PLAYERS TO TEST ON THE TEST SERVER FOR FUTURE PATCHES ADMINS!!!!!! Last: Drain HP - so many other classes have base heals in oly which is amplified by runes (iss and/or aeore). The other differences between the other classes is that heals are typically done LoS and obviously self cast, so the player healing is safe. All DE's have is slow cast, fairly low dmg, small leach cast. This is another nuke that could be scaled with BD dances to make them relevant as a dmg dealer and give some sustain. I think this could be a fairly "easy" implemented and balance change. It is easy to estimate how much healing other classes can do in a given time with given MP. Use those values to balance a health differential on DE's offensive skill. You do XX dmg to the opponent (dmg to opponent is not as valuable as self healing) and you need to return XX health on yourself for characters in equivalent gear. The DE archetype is supposed to be more offensive and damage focused which is great, but that doesnt mean in a private server where balances are done to help improve game stability that the archetype cant evolve over time to still be offensive but have some utility with it. @darksinger Let me know what think of some of these ideas and how do you think BD could end up doing in oly with some of these changes?

Well made points, but if you evaluate your statement it seems that uppercut is not what is OP but it is fear. Based on the original comment by Lykra about uppercut it is understood that fear is being resisted now on lvl 82 targets (they dont need epics to resist). The 82 lvl CC that titans get can be interrupted by LoS and played around because it is slow which is the initial argument. So while titans push to 81/82 they get a new CC but if they fight targets at similar level to them they are actually getting less effective.

All true. Different points than what are being complained about and I'm discussing besides me saying bleed does do too much dmg before. Just trying to point out other classes / skills / situations that are as bad or worse than what people are complaining about uppercut and rush bleed dmg. Rizos doesn't want to get crit by uppercut for 4k from a character that has to run a yul weapon to keep up with bishop on 2/3 oly maps and a skill that has ~1.2 second cast animation (after haste and zerk) that is cancelled by LoS. This skill is broken in Super Smash too.

#kappa https://www.youtube.com/c/EncubeREAL/videos Top tier streamer but you might not have heard of him. I think he plays a class that bleeds for 105/s vs 134/s and might even activate through walls, LoS, and at range.....??? I heard he might have couple skills that hit for 2k dmg base let a lone crits, hit from LoS by almost like 2nd character, and have short CD. I think he has like some cat friend too that can do almost similar if not more damage. Just to warn you this streamer is best player on the server he plays on though so take it with a grain of salt.

100% agree. Entry into the server is steep. Here are some of my thoughts on other variations of what you said @Rizos so admins could determine which process is easier. 1) make daily Strix quest give some number of buff scrolls (2 hrs of total time or more?) that only last 1 week or 3 days (allow not everyday farming but encourages constant logging in), but the buff scrolls are better than beer even. Make them include full buff and disco at that level (or just full) that way there is no need for PA and trying to manage that for new players. Make buff scroll stop at 75+ daily so top level players do not get and is time based scroll so expires and cant stock up at lvl 70 and rush to lvl 80 with no box. 2) Increase level for free armor again. Had moon quest, have C grade now. Don't stop as Rizos said, but maybe easier is give Top A time limited gear. Top A is at least good +++ of B gear but has draw back of not having amazing +6 and +8 set bonus. Time limted +6 or +8 sets sound hard to code too . (Event): Exactly as he said. The balance of the event items can be done in the time. Make the duration the balance, so if event is 2 weeks, jewels only last 1 week so there are weeks in a month that wont have full free epics in oly. Gives people that have them real advantage still, gives new players boost and chance to fight on some weeks. (DI zone) also agree. Took a good amount of the money motivation of DI out now, maybe tune gem A towards higher areas and increase exp in DI so it is entry into GC??? Leave gem A to drop there, but maybe reduce chance in DI, add to FI, and increase heine. Gives new players chance to get money with Gem A and B weapon keys but gives solid exp location like LoA used to be. Needs some thinking on how to tune, but it is an area that is there. Could maybe even increase exp x2 or something and make monster level much lower so it is no use to existing players to get exp there. (new player exp) L2 is best played in group, but unless you are bringing full CP it is hard for new player to keep getting decent exp above lvl 75/76. Most CPs are not open for all roles and pretty much want Bd/SwS bc they are boring class and hard to keep people playing them. So it is fairly important to allow new players to keep getting decent exp until they are minorly relevant and/or find a CP to play with. But right now it is quite a hard to stop of exp and requires finding a CP very soon after hitting lvl 76 which is low lvl for most CP. Lastly, driving is always a thing so can say just play char inside CP, but we play MMO's partially bc we like OUR characters. So there is more importance on lvling their own character. So maybe even SV needs exp boost to help players keep grinding exp at ok pace. (new player gear) The difference between entry players and top players is probably 1000+ hrs of time in game. That is fine and hardcore players should have advantage, but advantage is nuclear bomb vs pellet gun. Top A "can" fill that hole slightly, but if time limited gear is introduced there is still Mount Everest in front of you to get real +10++ B grade weapon and +6/+8 armor. Another major problem with A grade now, is 75 DKs specifically. A grade could have been tuned like Rizos said to have low enchant drop rate and easier base weapon farming so there was way for players to get real Top A weapon; however, 75 DKs drop enchants and improved enchants at rates that top players would abuse if A grade was made easier to craft/drop. (S grade) It sounds like from patch that this will be last A grade patch which makes it sound like S or S80 is around the corner. Great!!!!!!!. Echoing Rizos make it so base weapons are easier and enchants require farming. Gives newer players way to be 50-60% as powerful as top players without being irrelevant forever. The bigger topic of next gear set and if possible should be implemented sooner for A grade too; OVERENCHANT BONUSES!!!!. Even if S grade armor comes out, there is almost no reason to move into S armor rather than stay in +10/+8 sets for top players. The set bonuses on A and maybe S armor needs to be edited to have some of overenchant bonus and/or edited to be good for the classes that use the armor set. Admins, We know you don't have infinite time and resources to do these things. So I think this is where communication from you towards the community needs to be increased. You have a large number of players that play this game regularly and in large quantities of hours. Make a list of things that players can help with: coming up with ideas, replicating bugs on test server, coding for those that know how. Make it similar to bot report and/or quest logging done recently, if you help admins with work you get a bonus. This is also good for newbies because they can get some of these rewards that full CPs might think will take away from group play. But, the players need information on what they can do to make the server better instead of just waiting around for new content from you. Finally, We all know this server needs money and PA system alone is decent source; but if some of these changes are going to be introduced it will reduce the income of the server for people buying CoL to sell for adena to buy gear. Ok, so lets unbox this. If new players wont pay for PA until deep into game, and wont donate large amounts to get gear to be relevant you will lose money. But if a lot of people join the server is good for the server too. So maybe think of new way to do the auction on website and/or make new gear only tradeable on auction and require "Auction Tokens". Auction tokens can be bought with Euro and for existing players they can use in-game adena to buy auction tokens (maybe at worse rate than euro? to encourage money to server?????) This gets very hard to make a specific set of items only tradeable on auction, but obviously you still need to make money and is better to "tax" all players a little money then to require 1 new player drop 1000's of euro's to join server and keep afloat. Old MMO's had monthly subscriptions, we have PA. You need the constant money, but it needs to change that all players contribute small amount vs new players drop 1000 euro and top players just buy all COL and never pay for life. Community please roast this section and come up with better ideas, but this server is living off the back of new players that I guess we assume are born in Dubai and have whole country's worth of money. We need something to split burden of server cost, reward players that farm a lot, but not require new players to pay for server.