Even though L2 is an MMORPG, there isnt much RPG in L2 servers nowadays, especially not in lowly populated ones for obvious reasons. More often than not, every player makes a crafter, spoiler, buffer, dancer/sws and then they exp their main. When everyone has everything (aka "one man army"), its not RPG at all and I hate this for several reasons, especially on servers with "thousands" of players where roleplaying could actually work. But maybe there is a big player on the field that would like to try this route?

I suppose there are many ways to reach the goal, but so far Ive come up only with limiting character per person to 1, disabling dualbox and in extremely populated servers even disabling offline shops. These precautions will result in a much more lively world (meaning that only living people will be seen in the world), and much more RPG as nobody could have everything in game at once. Dwarves and support chars will become a valuable asset instead of being a must have and so on. The server should have a statistics available to players all the time (even before creating a character), showing the amount, activity and level of all classes so people can create a class which is needed.

If there are problems with supply/demand, GM shops can be temporarily established (only with things the server lacks, which will also be more expensive than normal), GM buffers temporarily available (for high adena price), crafting can be made temporarily easier or certain classes temporarily faster to level up etc. I know its not retail-like, but its still better than one man armies.

Character deletion would be instant to allow max lvl players with all subs and stuff and players who consider their character boring or "fail build" to start all over immediately if they wish. This will result in high replayability, which will help new players find party in low lvl ranges. I also suggest to enable adding overlord and warsmith as subclasses since it doesnt really make much sense anyway and also some people would feel forced to start as one of the above because everything else can be subbed. It will be much better if everyone can play the class they like from the begining instead of being stuck with a boring character that they "must" play because they wont be able to take the class as a sub.

Speaking of subclasses, they are kind of one man armies too, but since you can only play one class at a time, they pose only minimal threat to roleplaying. Removing them would be a big mistake IMO as its a huge amount of content and also somethign that affects several important systems, which would have to be reworked completely otherwise.

About the multibox: There is no effective way to prevent it, so some people will just do it and will have advantage over others. That will piss off the people that don't do it.

About the custom staff: few like custom servers and everyone of them have different opinion what should be custom and what not, so it will end with 50-100 online at best.

With this logic servers may as well stop dealing with bots (like NCSoft *ba dum tss* ). Because botters gonna bot and non botters will be at disadvantage...

Boxes might be harder to detect, but sooner or later the box owner will slip and then they can say goodbye to all of their accounts. GM surveillance is all it takes. Also the mere fact that dualboxing is prohibited will get rid of most boxes, as most people use box simply because its allowed. Besides, server features will be public for everyone to read, so I think most box lovers just wont play such server. Why would they bother, anyway? They will rather go to infinite amount of other servers, more suitable for them.

Anyway, about the other things- Im just putting the idea out there so someone enthusiastic might pick it up and perhaps do it even better than I suggested. But Im convinced nobody would protest against a temporary custom feature to compensate for lack of something at that time.

I like the idea... But there're still some 'loopholes' when even if the dualboxers get caught they can say things like "it's not another computer, it's just my friend (prophet in devotion with no weapon) being afk, GM pls unban my chars... I mean my and my friends char "

You know, stuff like that... And sometimes it really is just a friend afking

Glad someone likes it.

Anyway, bear in mind, that no dualbox is a pretty new thing, I cant remember any server that ever did it. I know some that have like 1 or 2 box maximum and have programs to prevent running multiple clients on one PC etc., but this is a whole other level so there are no tools to handle such things yet. But rest assured that if this idea takes off, in a few years we will have some real quality software and also other ways to counter boxing. And before this all happens, there are still ways to detect a box. As the saying goes, there is no such thing as perfect crime. You always leave a trace. What we need is to make it visible so we can act upon it.

As for the ban appeals; the thing about private servers is that playing there is a privilege, not a right. In other words, staff can ban people for whatever reason they want. Same goes for unbanning people. Nothing forces the staff to unban people because of lame excuses like "it was my friend". If there is no proof of these claims in the logs and if the player cant provide any solid evidence, there is nothing to discuss really. Lastly, as I said, the technology isnt advanced enough to counter boxes entirely and flawlessly for now but it wont ever be advanced enough if this server never begins to exist. Thats why its important not to bury this idea beforehand.

Actually there was a 1 box per player server not too long ago, it was called "l2plusone" or something. That was about 2 years ago. It didn't gather a whole lot of people, but started with a solid playerbase, too bad the admin didn't have plans to support the project long term. Too bad because such servers gather interesting people (mostly ages 25-30 even 50 )

Well yeah, but one box is something different than no box. Anyway, now that you talk about it, I even remember the server. But I joined it when it was already dead, so I dont know how it was before, sadly.

I played in this server, it was "no box" and the whole forum was crying about many people using boxes. I saw many people return to town to get buffs form their box there. Buffers staying in town afk, how can you prove they are boxes? you must be 100% sure before ban someone. And you need to watch over lets say 1000-1500 players. Or how will you deal with box shops in town, they just stay there like all others.

And it's not like preventing bots. A bot is easy to spot and determine as bot.

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rpg needs to get thier shit together... cmon opening dream gracia server, and after month combining it with h5... in what universe that is smart? at least leave gracia standalone and let ppl who hate h5 crappy features, enjoy gracia, eglobal showed that ppl love gracia, whole month server was dreamland, sadly cause of a bit op donation and rpg coming soon, server started to fade. hope dex will not do same mistake.

now about ontopic, i agree with box removals 100%. cant tell how much game would improve in pure nostalgic features. there would be tons of support class players, when u need to farm solo or 2 3 party memebers, u need to find supports , that would open new possibilities to find new friends, parties and clans . now when i see russian servers , all i see one dude exping solo with 3 4 boxes following him from behind, bd sws wc even prp or se, it is joke.... there could be 3 4 real players playing if not those stupid boxes... classes like ol, prp, would be wanted again like in c3 c4 c5 c6 times when ppl played for fun, not to rush lvl and have more box than others....

Hmm, and here I was thinking it was pretty neat idea I mean this way they can keep the server very active for much longer, right?

But considering your name I understand you'd prefer if the merge with H5 wouldn't happen

By the way, how difficult would it be to make a program that would detect online classes, and would spawn/despawn GM NPCs according to the amount?

For example when the ratio of buffers and other classes is 1/20, then the program will automatically spawn a GM buffer which will sell buffs for adena and if there are less than X crafters in game, a GM crafter will spawn, crafting stuff for adena if you provide recipe. Then when there is enough of these classes, the program will despawn these NPCs.

But I guess a GM can do that just as well looking at the statistics and then spawning/despawning when needed. Still curious how hard it would be to make it automatical tho.

Also I have another question, how to make something like this and prevent people from abusing it aka "lets not create any support classes etc. because system will spawn those anyway"? Ive been thinking about really high adena price for the services and/or or maybe some kind of cooldown, like you can get one buff round per 2 hours or something. Same would go for crafting at NPC, highly expensive and cooldown 1 craft per X hours per player. The buffers have to give only very basic buffs like newbie guide (e.g. haste lvl 1, wind walk, shield, acumen 1-2 etc.).

Of course all this stuff can be left out, but I suppose many players would leave of frustration instead of working as a team/rerolling as a support etc.

Ad 1 - I don't think that needs to be a special program to be honest. On some servers there're even some public statistics about char distribution, so admins would check it from time to time and if the number of support character drops, they'd simply spawn the GM buffer.

Though I always prefered the idea of the 'upgraded limitless newbie buffer' for these kind of servers. Instead of giving basic top level defense-only buffs for low level characters, it would also hit you up with some level 1 offensive buffs like might 1, focus 1 etc. (not all of them obviously) and they'd be available for all levels... Though PP would still probably need some slight rework to make them more valuable

As for the first thing, youre thinking in a large horizon. I mean, youre probably thinking about days. What Im thinking of is doing all this in real time. Too many buffers leave suddenly? Spawn NPC right away. They suddenly come back one minute later? Despawn right away.

As for the actual buffs, I agree with might and maybe some more low lvl buffs as I always considered might the very basic buff and never understood why newbie buffers didnt give it. Anyway, maybe players should be allow to choose 2 offensive and 2 defensive low lvl buffs or something like that.

obvious.... for me h5 is crap. gracia is so fun, now playing in eglobal and if not ppl leaving cause of rpg, i would stay there for a long time


btw there is many servers who do not let have box, only 1 main, its not hard to do

Wow, please provide examples. Id be more than happy to check them out. Didnt know there were so many of them. Hard to find.