Problems abound with Lineage II, but hope remains
Problems abound with Lineage II, but hope remains
By
Michael Lafferty
The community needs to come together to
help create a thriving atmosphere, not one of dissent
The patch was in and not that old. A friend
logged in later that night and the first thing seen was an open shout-channel
dialogue about how to duplicate items in the latest hack (or patch) of Lineage
II: The Chaotic Chronicles.
Now before we get a horde of mail decrying
this as a hoax, or challenging the veracity of this, I have received the
screenshot of the conversation, complete with the suggested ways to circumvent
the system, so that conversation, in open chat, did indeed happen. And whether
or not the idea of duplicating items using an inventory bug is do-able or not is
immaterial.
You are missing a much bigger picture here.
First, and foremost, this happened in open chat, and may or may not have been
picked up by the game managers. It is against the end-user code of conduct, but
people don’t seem to pay that any heed. Second, and more insidious in the long
run because it will threaten the game’s longevity, is that players are
constantly working to usurp the system and gain items they did not earn through
normal game play.
Lineage II is published by NCsoft and is a
massively multiplayer online game that caters to the more hardcore of MMPers.
Why? Because the game is a grind and a treadmill. Some will tell you that it is
easy to garner everything you need to skill up, or buy that million-adena
equipment, but are relatively short on how they managed to do just that without
shortcuts, or uber-farming, or de-leveling their characters intentionally for
higher drop rates with lower risk.
In many ways, this is not a community of
gamers at all – which is the intent of most MMPs. This is a cutthroat game in
which racism is rampant and consequences for actions seem minor or nonexistent.
Lineage II is on the cusp of being either a
very good game, or a short-lived one.
Visit the game’s forums. There are enough
posts there decrying the Asian style of gaming to choke a unicorn. People are
calling for those players to be banned from the North American server.
Why the intolerance? Well, if you are told, by
people with no “apparent” English skills, “you go” or “USA dog” enough times,
you will start to get a little ticked. When you have kills stolen or
ninja-looted by players who may be or may not be controlled by actual gamers
(more on this in a moment), this can be a source of irritation and frustration.
There was an instance not long ago, and this
is from the same one who sent me those screens of the dup-item bug, where an
upper-level player hit another player in the back with a bleed attack while that
other player was fighting a mob. The player died, dropped gear and it was looted
by the attacking player. Some may find this funny. Some may think that is the
chance you take in a fully-PvP world. Others may call that griefing, which is –
again – against the user code.
The game managers are overworked. Petitions
which used to take less than half-an-hour to be addressed are now finding
themselves in a long list that may take many, many hours to be answered. The
game managers cannot be expected to be everywhere, so much of the policing falls
upon the players. But with seemingly little consequence for actions, it may be
too late.
L2 is supposedly totally against using bots
in-game. Bots are non-player controlled units that are acting upon a pre-set
group of macros keyed in. A player can buy a bot program for L2 on eBay (as well
as in-game currency, at a ridiculous real-world price – thanks to the uber-farmers
who are using this game to either make a living or as a side income), then key
in a set of macros, and go away for a while. The macros will tell that bot
(think robot) to kill, loot, heal, repeat. Not quite that simple, but you get
the idea.
Matthew Eberle, who has done some writing for
GameZone.com, had a solution for this problem (did I mention this is supposed to
be against the end-user agreement?).
Here is what he sent me on that topic:
“In the interest of helping them try to fix
their problems I tried thinking of ways to get rid of the bots. From what I’ve
heard through the grapevine the problem they are having is with ‘attended
macro’ing.’ In the classic “unattended macro’ing” a player turns the macro on
and wanders off. Players in L2 still catch people running macros like that with
the 1 adena on the floor trick. They will lay a stream of single adenas out of
a room and around a corner. The bot will mindlessly pick up the single adena
pieces and end up far from its normal hunting zones.
What people are running now are ‘attended
macros.’ A player will be watching an account (or two or three for all I know)
while a macro runs its little compiler out. Still, the macros are functioning
at a very basic level inside L2. There are a few key commands that I’ve heard
people talk about in designing macros. After watching one of the dreaded ‘oO’
clan run a macro in SoDA for a few hours I think I understand what they are
doing. They have set up a series of commands that run in the following sequence:
1: /Target [mob name]
This command selects the closest instance of a
mob with the right name. A good example is the Misery Skeletons that bot was
farming in SoDA.
2: Attack the target.
Again, fairly simple: if you have a target,
hit it.
3: Pick up nearby objects.
This is how the bots get stuck around corners
with the 1adena trick.
By themselves this isn’t all that helpful. The
developers cannot break any of these commands without causing a great deal of
headache for everyone involved. I don’t understand all the internal components
of L2 work together. I’d guess, though, that if it is something the players
have access to it is an integral part of the game’s design. There is something
that I think could be helpful to the developers at NCsoft as they try and get
rid of the problem. And it is very simple…
Anyone running a macro should be spamming out
those three commands hundreds of times per minute.
Even if they are using ‘attended macros’ and
can respond when a GM tries talking to them it should be obvious which players
are using the macros if the developers could log every command sequence that the
clients are sending to the NCsoft server.
Note that I’m making a few assumptions: I am
assuming that the macros are run from within the existing L2 framework using 3rd
party software to ‘fake’ the keyboard input to L2. I am also assuming that the
players have not completely decompiled the L2 client to write a sophisticated AI
package that has limited decision making ability, like knowing to use a heal or
life draining skill because their health dropped below 80%. The less
sophisticated version (that I’m expecting people to be using) would be taking
one shot of healing / draining every 30 seconds, like clockwork. My last
assumption is that the servers for L2 are capable of tracking the number and
type of commands entered by a client user. If they can’t track the usage,
trying to catch macro’ers with this approach won’t work.
Still, if my assumptions are valid this might
be a way for them to track down the bots and macro'ers that are giving L2 such a
problem.”
Bots are one of L2’s problems; community is
another. The economy drives the uber-farming, and encourages bots. When you see
a level 12 player with a million-adena weapon, you have to wonder how they got
it, if they earned it themselves.
Now the word is that some of these problems
will be addressed with the June patch, which is known as Chronicle 1. This patch
is supposed to do more than merely update the game in the short time it has been
around. This NA patch is supposed to bring the game more in line with the Korean
version, which has been live since late September of 2003. A lot of players are
waiting and hoping that this patch does fix a lot of problems. If it does not,
the world of L2 may be a lot less populated.
Lineage II is a beautiful game. It has some
terrific ideas. It will attract some players who have never played an MMP
before. But those players may quickly find a game they do not like that much,
and may judge the entire MMP market by it – which is unfair. There will be
players who say “good, they have no business being here anyway.” Wrong again. No
new players, no income and a stagnant game will die on the vine. New players, or
n00bs, should be welcomed, not ridiculed.
The other thing that may happen – and if you
have read forums, you will see this attitude expressed time and again – is that
a poor experience in Lineage II may turn fans against the publisher. “I’ll never
play another NCsoft game again,” is an opinion I have heard expressed. That is
really unfair to NCsoft.
Lineage II may not be your brand of game, but
to judge an entire company on one poor experience is shortsighted – especially
with titles like Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, and Guild Wars coming out. And then
there is City of Heroes. A writer for the Associated Press did a comparison of
CoH and L2. The first he liked, the second he did not care much for. Even one of
the forum admins dismissed his comments as “carebear.” Excuse me? That writer’s
opinion is ever bit as valid as those who dismissed it. The forum admin,
DhevrinNC, did apologize, but the initial words were there. For those who
haven’t played CoH, that game is about community. Rarely do you find rude
people, KSers (mostly because the game is built to give the original attacker
the experience and drops even if someone else ‘helps’ kill the foe), or
anti-social behavior. Comparing the gameplay of CoH and L2 is like comparing
apples and oranges. They are different types of games, but appeal to players who
like to socialize in an MMP. After all, these are massively multiplayer games –
which does not mean single-player gaming. It’s not your world alone, learn to
share.
And so we come to the crux of the matter: With
summer here, more gamers will be available during the days because school is
out. Lineage II will have to pull it together, address the problems, or learn to
trim back and accept what it has and admit what it will and will not change.
It’s really that simple – fess up, and let players know. Don’t promise what you
cannot deliver. Other games have tried that, and other games have gone dark
because of it.
For More Product Information
Lineage II: The Chaotic Chronicle (PC)
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