NC Soft Devs,
I have recently returned to Lineage II for a time to enjoy some old school MMO experience. I have to say, aside from blatant pay to win in the cash shop, I have been pleased with my experience. The best Lineage II has to offer has always been at high level and now getting there is much much easier than it ever has been before.
However, one aspect of the leveling process still leaves much to be desired. Questing. I know questing isn't for everyone, but for those who do like it it stands to have some improvement. The new story line is pretty good. Where the problem lies is when you are trying to complete some of the side quests.
First off, the hunting quests that begin at level 61 that go like this:
Collect 50x of (First Mandatory Quest Item)
Collect 1-900x of (Second Optional Quest Item)
If you complete the quest with 900 of the second item, you actually get some really nice experience. However, the drop rate on these items is absolutely dismal. Needing 900 of something already means killing NINE HUNDRED monsters. That is quite a boring and mind numbing grind. Particularly since all of the hunting areas have the monsters spread out a ton (cept for the Ole Mahum training grounds outside Oren.)
Recommend either reducing the number required to max out or making the drop rate 100% on the quest items. To help put this in perspective, each time I have done one of those quests and grinded to just over 100 secondary items, I have earned 5-6 levels just from the experience gained from killing the mobs. At that point I out level the quest and it becomes worthless.
Second, the experience rewarded by most quests is dismal. They ask you to do a rather lot, often grinding on monsters not worth killing due to the horridly low experience they give.
Case in example are the quests from the Adventures' Guide NPCs below level 74. In all cases they send you off to places to collect anywhere from 20-90 quest items for very little reward experience. Compound this with the same problem as above, with atrocious quest item drop rates, and you wind up with a daily repeatable quest that is not worth doing at all.
Right now I just hit 70 on my first subclass. The daily quest is "Hot Spring Water". Collect 40 Hot Springs Water samples and take em back to a warehouse dude in Aden for a measly 9,400,000 (ninety four million) experience points. Considering I need 61,000,000 (sixty one million) experience points to get to level 71, this a very paltry amount. I know from past experience the drop rate on this quest is godawful as well. Then the mobs themselves only give around 50,000 (fifty thousand) experience per kill, have a strong tendency to stun you, you have a quest tailor made to annoy your player base.
Now, if there were MORE quests that gave low xp, yet could be strung together so that they gave reasonable experience overall, it wouldn't be too bad. Fix the drop rate to 100% and it would actually be kinda pleasant way to level up to 85/80 before getting back to the traditional Lineage II experience.
As it is, at level 70, it is better for me to go and grind on mobs either at the far back of the wall of argos, Angels give 150,000 (one hundred fifty thousand) experience per kill on average with no experience boost active, or go to Silent Valley and kill the lesser giants for an average of 100,000 (one hundred thousand) experience per kill. I can kill very fast in Silent Valley which means in the time it takes to me complete one of the Adventures' Guide dailies and get maybe 50% of a level, I can get around 1.5 levels just by straight grinding.
Then there is the fact that experience boosts do not boost the experience from quests at all. Only from hunting monsters. With a boost active, it not only breaks the scale in favor of grinding (which makes your hard work to create better quests pointless), but means you are actually mentally challenged if you do those quests. Only at level 74 are you finally given a quest worth doing since it has you killing things in Silent Valley anyway.
To Summarize:
End of the day, I don't want to see y'alls promising work on questing ruined. Buff the quest item drop rate to 100%. Enable experience boosts to boost experience from quest rewards. Either add more quests for all level ranges under 85 or boost the baseline reward experience a good deal to keep on par with what players can achieve by straight grinding in optimal locations.
Leveling via quests (Feedback from a returnee to the Devs)
