TI Content and Balance

[Zeperios 24]

I want to take a moment to discuss Talking Island.

1) New content - While TI is getting some "new" patches there hasn't been any notable new content to the TI server since the release of Hellbound. The Goddard areas while they have a point and an item to grind, in the context of the TI server are not significant. The "mini boss jewel" that comes from Varka/Ketra is almost a just a cool item or PvE item with very little reason to grind the area. There are so many orfens, zakens, and even antharas earrings on the server due to time that this Researcher's earring has very little room to be used.

There is even a problem with Hellbound as S grade is not viable or will not be viable this decade. Problem a) S grade armor resists are terrible and no variability. If you were heavy armor you have root/sleep resist which besides killing healers is not helpful. Light armor has no resists at all, and robe has the best resistance in it being stun, but its hard to compete when it has no +% cast speed of MJ or BWL. Problem b) is that +6 and +8 set bonuses are SOOOOO strong. I don't even think most classes would wear S grade even if they could pick the resist type they had on the armor because the +6 and +8 set bonuses are too impactful. The problem of +6 and +8 sets leads us to the next bigger problem....

2) Item progression - In the "glory" days of TI there was lot of items and lots of item progression into and through B grade with little to no A grade being used. Overtime that obviously changed and preference moved to A grade as it became more available. But, for A grade to be viable it has to be as enchanted as B grade (eg +6/+8 armors, at least +10 top A = +16 B). The slower progression of A grade and probably non-existent progression of S grade is due to 2 factors.... item drops and IMPROVED ENCHANTS. B grade improved enchants dropped from DK's, but there were MANY more RBs that spawned 65 RBs and they also drop from Epics (Baium/Zaken). RBs also dropped numerous full B grade items that could endlessly be used to enchant. A grade is not so lucky in either way, the item drops themselves are rarer and so are improved enchants. This is not to say high level loot shouldn't be more rare, but over time in TI it has sort of crashed the market as RBs don't drop B grade anymore and there is less and less A grade available as every item is attempted to be over enchanted to catch up. This is exacerbated for S grade where there are NO improved enchants and crafting rate is 30%. So now where there are +16 A grade weps to have a S grade weapon be viable it needs to be +13 which has to be naturally enchanted to that level.

One thing the admins have hinted at with the most recent update and UI change is the idea to add elements to the game and this is where I want to yell a big "BE CAREFUL". If you add elements to the game there is a massive incentive to have as many sets of gear possible in order to counter other people's elements. In our server life where for the whole life of the server the idea has been enchant as many pieces as high + as you can, to then come in and say that you need duplicate sets (realistically +8 A as B grade doesn't drop consistently anywhere) this is a MAJOR problem.

 

Combination of 1 & 2 - There were some comments on the Dion discord recently about "new server", problems with classic's progression, etc.   I have thought and discussed with a variety of people on why L2 is fun and the conclusion I have come to is there is nearly an infinite scaling progression, but it feels obtainable. If you want to get stronger, you work harder and over-enchant an even better piece of gear. You go grind and get to the top level and learn a skill that no one else has. You win PvP and you drop more epics for your clan. Etc. There are still numerous people that play Gracia Final Lineage 2, and watching the number of people play that version had me think that there was always something to do there too. Getting 20 sets of armor from S grade to S-80 with all different types of elements, getting 6 different weapons with different SA's, and enchanting as much as possible, using lifestones to Augment hunt. There was actually a TON of endgame content.

I think the people that play Gracia Final are playing an inferior version of the game, and while TI has gotten some "custom" or merged content throughout L2. The balance and playstyle of this server is SOOO fun, there is just the missing puzzle piece of content for late game, top parties to continue to strive for. Most top parties get +8 armor, +16 weps, epics, you name it and have nothing left to grind for. You might say "well no one has Lilith 10 let alone on every character", and that is very true but there was a part of the description of infinite power that was important...."feels obtainable". The ONLY item to not have been created in TI's history is still light years away. As to the writer's knowledge the highest rune on TI is only lvl 7 which is 1/8 of the runes to get a lvl 10 with perfect success from 7-10.

 

So I have pointed out a lot of problems and no solutions, so let me offer some solutions that I think might work and hopefully that gives some ideas to the admins on how/what they might finally implement.

 

1) Make lifestones more common to drop from Hellbound or any new area. Make it so lifestones become a currency on the server for people to hunt for unique augments.

2) Either add S-80 or the similar mechanics to S-80 where when you unseal you pick the specialty of the gear. Apply this to S grade so there are a wider variety of resists (stun, poison/bleed, root/sleep, para).

3) Make S grade enchants drop chance higher. I think adding improved enchants from the beginning was a problem, but there is no undoing the past; you can only grow into the future. Allow players to grind and make an investment to transition to S grade if they get lucky and get a high + S grade item.

4) We have a material problem as well. There are a couple materials that are severely limited in order to push new levels of gear that do not not reliably from high level content (mold hardener, mold glue, thread, mithril ore). To make S grade you need lots of these materials, but if we just increase drop rate we will result in HUGE volumes of A grade. I think this needs more review or more custom materials for S grade crafts???

5) Add B grade drops back to low level raids. Give something for newer or less dominant players to go farm and make money on. There is a HUGE chasm of gear between freebie gear through raids (+6 armor and weps no runes) and obtaining A grade as almost all the B grade has been over-enchanted and gone at this point.

6) In new content add something that has impact that can be farmed and has a reason to control the farming zone. It pulls people out of town, makes natural pvp occur, and makes people play on mains rather than on boxes in non-war clans.

[archa 15]

I have already left this server for more than 3months,I still insist that TI is the best server in the history,but something hanpped made this server not so popular as it was.Such like aucation,rb loots.

The biggest problem with this club is that the server is so fragile,any 'BIG' change would kill this server.because only few people playing here,if one update made 10%ppl feel unhappy,it would be  really a big problem for now.The suggestion you talked about S grade sounds good but it would make '10%' pll feel unhappy,the server can no longer withstand any experiment.

ESPECIALLY when gm decided to add something new items in this server,such like lilith/anakim runes,these runes already changed all oly games.anakim/lilith runes

should only be avable outside oly.

All I suggested is dont make the gap between top players and normal players become bigger and bigger.the researcher's earring is a good item which wont break the balance,but the epics/+16 weapons/82books/+8 parts in the aucation broken the balance.

I noticed that GM tried to fix some mistakes,but all they did just like try to use another 10mistaks to fix 1mistake.When players complain about epics/lilith so hard to farm,they believe higher rate would help.Why they think so?they dont know it would only help winning side get more epics and runes?They said more items would help the market,but we all know nobody want to sell baium/zaken/runes on market unless they decide to quit.I controlled almost all epics/lilith/anakim,yeah,sometimes I would like to sell some AQ rings,I got adena,I went to buy IEWA,I became stronger.How could it help the balance?

[archa 15]

They want to help newbies but almost all changes helped winning side much more than normal players,and I believe thats the biggest problem on the server now.

[Lykra 9]

I’m curious at this point why we don’t either add ability to put runes on the Coin of Knowledge weapons or add back raid boss drops for lower level raids. It feels like there is an absolutely massive gap in the ability to gear a new character. Your options are either… use shadow gear that’s max +6 bonus and no runes or save billions of adena to buy A grade armor/weapons. I think you could also remove the shadow gear limitation of +6 bonus. Just allow full bonuses (making +10 with regular scrolls is close to impossible).

The concern previously seemed to be that people were farming the shadow weapons as an alternative to top A/S grade, but there are strong enough weapons on the server now that lower level gear CANNOT displace it.

It would also be nice to be able to pursue things like +8 and +10 B grade armor sets. The market is so dead because C/B grade don’t even exist hardly anymore.

A nice quality of life improvement would be to make Researcher Earring lv. 10 tradeable to help invigorate market…

Also make some harder-to-obtain items useful, namely, Sailren Claw and Bracelet of Duty Fragment.

[Lykra 9]

I will add, aside from a few small quality of life improvements, I do think the server is in quite a good spot.

Perhaps a Dion “ladder” and TI “non-ladder” system where Dion is merged into TI at regular intervals could help reinvigorate the population.