Hi there, havnt posted here for a long time.

The Law Enforcer, most of you hate or love it, and many even say it breaks the game.
I have to say, from my point of view, after playing for some weeks again and looking back at all the years of playing neocron: Your right, in its current state it does break some part of Neocron, and I'm not talking about stuff like bashing people in P2 or ganking, it breaks something even more important, something that made neocron unique in the first place.

I'm talking about the way people play as a community, currently you see only a few people without LEs, and those without LEs are mostly people with friend in clans or just pvp maniacs, the rest is running around LE'd.

Now lets talk about the pro and contra of the current LE, after that ill get to what it used to be and its impact on the community itself.

The current LE gives you, as a runner, the following advantages:
  1. You cant get killed by other runners
  2. You don't drop anything should you die



The disadvantages are:
  1. You cant kill other runners
  2. You cant hack belts
  3. You cant join a clan



Basically currently, unless you got friend in a clan and want to join them, there is no reason to pull out your LE until your Capped (Or even WoC'd) and fully equipped to join the PvP fun, if you pull it earlier, your just fragmeat for those ganking/pvp maniacs.
This has destroyed one of the most unique features that Neocron ever had, the only other game i know which has a similar feature is EVE Online.

What feature you might ask?
Well, the LE used to have a XP Penalty, pulling your LE allowed you to level faster while being at risk to be killed by other runners.
You might say "Oh great feature, making us low level characters and PvE players leveling even slower.", well that wasn't the point of this, i guess the originally intended reason for this was to reward players who risk something, or compensate for the leveling time lost by dieing, i don't know what really was the intention KK had in mind, but i know its impact on the community, I've experienced it myself and seen it countless times happening.
In the old days, when you began your journey in neocron, there was a high chance that you meet a non LE'd player who would tell you about the XP Penalty of the LE, encouraging you to remove it. Many players did remove it, and entered the great part of neocron: Binding people.

When you removed your LE back then, you died a lot thanks to other players, you might even ask for help, and if you did, most of the time someone helped you defeating the ganker, be it just for the fun of a fight, or to protect newer players, whatever was the reason, there was a person who helped you, in this big digital world full of people you don't know, this could, and did quiet often, to some talk about the game itself, or even lead to a friendship, later even maybe a clan invite. The reason for this was simple, the person or persons who did help you are the first ones you might know that you could consider as friendly, people who you can talk to, ask questions, or even for help again, making him/her/them your first attachment figure inside the game, basically makes you meet people who not only just level at the same spot as you do.
If the persons helping you where already in a clan, there was a high chance that those people introduce you to their clan, explaining the advantages of being in a clan. Sometimes this whole process even led to the forming of clans out of now where, just from people who meet ingame.

This forming of bounds, was one of the most unique features of neocron in my opinion, and made me love the game since the first day, because it also happened to me, being ganked by higher level chars and asking for help, soon after that i was in a clan, not alone anymore, and that is where the real fun started.
That is what the LEs XP Penalty really did, and for those pure PvE players it didnt make a great difference, as they got used to the xp penalty from the beginning, for the rest of us it made a great difference.


And today, after many years of being gone, i miss this part of neocron, I'm basically alone right now, none of my old clanmates or friends play neocron again, and i only know those few traders i talked to, the crazy dude at plaza chilling there with me while i poke people, or the ones who i helped at getting started in this great game. All those clan, the mean nothing to me, as i don't know anyone of them, only those jerks from a CA Clan ask for a TL115 poke home visit in the middle of the night who didn't even tip a single nc, and those guys whining about the LE every night in the help channel.

So long story short, there should be a XP gain difference between LE'd and none LE'd players again.
Note i say difference, not penalty, as we cant just simple put in back the penalty again, that would just alienate the PvE players and low levels.
But we should increase the XP gain for non LE'd players.

This would bring the following advantages:
  1. Encourages players to remove their LE to level faster.
  2. Reduce the grind for those who primarily want to play PvP and those who don't like xp grinding at all. (Remember, many of us already grinded hundreds of hours in the old days to cap your multiple chars, we know nearly every inch of neocron, remember how many people where online at the double xp weekend?)
  3. Increase the amount of none WoC'd PvP players. (Ill get to WoC and the stupid equipment gap it created in another post)
  4. The most important one, it might bring back Neocrons best features, something no other MMO achieved as good as Neocron did, bringing people together.



For the PvE only players and lone wolves, nothing would change, they still get the XP they used to.


Thanks for reading this.

Kind regards,
FullMetalFox
(Some maybe remember me as "Greyfox" from Mars)