Oizo

Server is good and plays extremely smooth for me here in NA (Interlude version). It dies so fast because of the way it is set up with the rank system and enchant system. If it was a more standard system (with maybe added that passive skill tree) it would work much better. Also class balance.

So it seems like this season was very short, I think it must be because the drop rates for enchants among other things was too high. But simultaneously your server (specially IL) reminds me of a server I use to play a while back that's been dead for a while called Infinite L2 and that server would run for years before needing to reset basically, there is clearly a large player base that is interested in playing your server but it needs some Tweeks. First and foremost I think you need to ditch the rank system altogether. To me it inherently limits the playtime of your server, people play for a while until a couple of players reach rank 70 and start quitting and everyone quits. No rank system, you just get adena and rewards through pvp and events so mutate those rewards to be given through pvp (i.e. one could receive a book of divine inspiration after doing x events automatically and you could receive a skill point or Attribute point every x event points). Then you could add some perks that are unlockable at certain PvP Counts. Your interlude server is vastly superior to your Highfive server, mostly in terms of GEODATA and responsiveness, it was a pure fn bliss playing on that interlude server. So I believe that is the server you should run, I would just add Kamael classes to it. Olympiad needs to be olympiad and there needs to be battles between the top tier players to determine which of them is the hero, Olympiad is what usually keeps players that reach the endgame interested for longer. I also think the blessed enchant scrolls need to disappear, normal scrolls only. Start the game with B grade and get enchant weapon B and armor B through pvp and events, let it be that enchant weapon B have the special perk that the enchant rate increases as you acquire pvp points with the weapon. I.e. you enchant the thing to +4 and then +5 has a 60% base chance of success but as you pvp it builds that success rate up to 95% and then 94% for +6 etc and it builds up like a meter and you use up the meter when you do an enchant, I can elaborate on that enchant system if you are interested). A grade purchasable for medium high amount of adena (say around 15k for a weapon and 30k for armor set) and S grade craftable but hard as fuck to get basically. A/S Grade are enchantable regularly, i.e. safe +3 and 60% chance (or so I dont remember) of enchant after that and scrolls are only dropped through pvp and events (i.e. cant be bought in store) same thing with lifestones and boss jewels, boss jewels are only dropped by the boss (baium orfen fritenza etc) and very rare. Basically make things harder to get and when top players enchant their gear, there is a chance they break it, this is what L2 is about imo. That's all, your interlude server was the best server I've played in the last 8 years, I just think it needs stability and I believe you can reach that with those suggestions.

not sure why you deny all my suggestions lmao dude, best of luck with your serv doe

I'm gonna make it simple: -Rework henchman feature as a system where if the event population goes under 15 (or something) it starts generating henchmen that people have registered to be henchmen from their main character on that account. These henchmen reward their owner with like idk 15 or 20% of the gold they earn and can sporadically send key items like BOG or lifestones to your warehouse while they are active. These henchmen will just behave as the henchman you've already programmed, people can log in edit them even buy gear for them and then when they come on at night they are rewarded for their effort on their henchies. Instead of gravitating/being in the party of a specific real player (which is what made people reject the feature in the first place) they gravitate around event objectives and can only be put in parties with other henchmen. -Add Kamael -Work on class balance a bit more throughout the server's lifespan

You're wrong Yamada, the server's population was at its healthiest before henchman. After henchman was implemented the population steadily declined onto 0. Trust me henchman is not a good feature and made people quit. The admin can simply look at the logs of population vs. time and see that the population declined a lot after henchman.

Hopefully the admin addresses issues with bots, otherwise it's gonna decline pretty rapidly.

Idk why admin did this to his own server tbh.. Playing with and against bots is not satisfying at all, if I wanted to play against npc I can play offline tetris. L2 is about playing against players. that henchmen addition was actually catastrophic for this server and the admin doesn't even recognize that lmao Anyways it was fun while it lasted prehenchman and for a few days after henchman.

You talk about newcommer trying to kill a rank 70? Well guess what as a newcomer pre-henchman I could do that and thats what I immediately liked about this server. But add 4 rank 30~50 bots to that 70 and as a newcommer even with your army of rank 1 bots aint no way you can take him down now. The server was much more interesting and played a lot better before henchmen. Honestly I used the henchmen myself and its a very meh system it doesn't add anything to your user's experience honestly and it makes pvp more convoluted. Its super achievable to maintain the server running for more than 6months but it HAS to be balanced man they aint made fn 20 classes for nothing lmao, its actually fun to play anything BUT ARCHER / MAGE, archer mage gameplay gets dull very quickly. Anyways I guess we'll have to agree to disagree there and pretend like adding a bunch of NPCs that basically make kill acquisition more complicated is healthy for the server. And if you are really men of science you can look at the logs of the server and check the population trends for 2 weeks before henchmen and untill 2 week after henchmen and tell me that the pop didn't drop suddenly after henchmen was implemented.

... die so quickly. Why? I've played on much less responsive and well made servers that stayed up for much longer seasons. The main reason why is the henchman implementation was not done right. The other main reason is class balance, you're not offering replayability, once someone joins and plays mage for ~100 hours and reaches rank 70 they've kind of seen it all and leave. Additionally with no class balance there is no resistance to people rocketing to the end-game on archer/mage, so it happens much more quickly. When you reload the server I recommend you consider doing this: -Have GMs or dedicated testers who actually play the server and give you unbiased feedback -Class balance, I can't stress how important this feature is in overall gameplay. Archers and mages shooting at other archers/mages gets boring VERY quickly, its really important for melee classes to be mixed in otherwise youre just missing a whole chunk of gameplay/user experience. -Add Kamael, goes with the class balance aspect -Remove or rethink henchman, sincerely no-one enjoyed this feature -Change the rebirth system to not be based on levels but on ranks, reach rank 70 then do a rebirth back to rank 1 and add more work into the rebirth system.

Yo the server did not need help with population it was heavily populated before henchman, more than any server I had seen in years. The population suddenly declined when you implemented henchmen, I'm not telling you this as some angry, greedy player whos mad he cannot farm targets so easily (i play SK lol) I'm telling you as someone who likes your server and wants it to succeed, close to no-one enjoyed the henchman feature.

That sounds like a very articulate point he made there you are right! Honestly I would go through the trouble of videocapping some gameplay and literally showing to you rank 40+ sps can reliably magic crit 1/5--1/6 times but I don't think that would change anything you seem pretty convinced in your opinion that this server should be mage vs. archer so I'm gonna chill.

That's correct the main reason people quit is because they clear to rank 70 rapidly on mage/archer and get bored of mage vs archer pvp and there are no other classes to play (except dagger and dagger is the hardest class so not everyone can play it) . If you could start the server with mage archer and then make a destroyer, a tank, a glad, a WL (I mean a pvp WL for dmg), a berzerker then the player base would stay around muuch longer and even those harstuck mage mains would stay longer cause they would get to pvp against other types of shit than other mages/archer. L2 is like an echosystem man you need as many classes as you can to make it healthy.

I already recommended to reduce the number of bots to 1 but the admin is not interested in any of my suggestions.

The only reason ppl reach rank 70 so fast and eventually quit playing is because it's fucking easy to do on mage/archer as when you play those classes you meet almost no resistance in the close-quarters basically so just playing a few hours a day and staying within the zerg, mages and archers can farm a lot of kills. THere is no resistance basically. No resistance = boring = ppl leaving fast eventhough your server is superior.

That's a very very strange take my friend. Your server would be more enjoyable and would draw even more players if all classes were playable, especially if Kamael was implemented. To say that having more classes be playable would ruin the player experience of most players is kind of absurd. It's all about doing things properly and with the right amount of tweaking, not saying SK should be overpowered but it should be able to survive a mage for more than 3 seconds. I've played L2 for over 15 years lol. And I have seen a lot of servers and your server is amongst the best faction servers in terms of responsiveness and the quality of gameplay but I have never seen a server where only mage archer dagger is viable honestly this is very strange. All admins, even on shitty servers still made some effort to implement class balance and have a vast array of classes available to the players because they seemed to understand that increases the re-playability as well as capturing the whole player base, not just mage players or archer players. I don't know why you are shutting down all of the points I bring up I am genuinely trying to make suggestions that could greatly improve your server. Class variety is super important honestly and if you disagree on this then I don't think we can agree on literally anything related to Lineage 2.