This time, I’m taking a close look at Lineage 2: Revolution, a mobile take on the MMORPG genre. It’s the younger brother of NCSOFT’s Lineage 2, released in 2003. This version was developed by Netmarble and had already grossed more than $600 million when I wrote this article.
L2: Revolution is an example of an IP that originated on “big platforms” and successfully moved into the mobile market.
With this article, I want to answer one question: is the UX in L2: Revolution worth learning from?
Let’s start with the user interface. This is an area where MMORPGs often struggle because of how complex these games are.
User Interface
The first few minutes with Lineage’s interface are overwhelming. The player is hit with a massive in-game UI. Fortunately, there are good parts too. I should also mention that the tutorial limits the interface, so the developers do try to ease players into it.
UI Pillars
A consistent UI is the foundation of great UX, and Lineage makes a real effort here. Buttons, text, icons and backgrounds have their own distinctive look, so we don’t mistake one thing for another.
The separation between backgrounds and interactive elements is clear, and key functionality is appropriately highlighted.
The developers use familiar symbols for icons, making them intuitive for many players. The icon style also helps with clarity, and the font is readable at every size.
Notifications
My personal favourite is the visual notification system. L2: Revolution tells players there’s something of interest in the UI with a red dot: simple and clear. Colour and contrast separate the notification from the background and make it pop. It’s a great combination of simplicity and clarity. Red also carries familiar associations that help draw our attention.
Delight
Once basic user needs are met, designers can move higher in the hierarchy of needs. At the top, we have pleasure. The most memorable interfaces bring a feeling of delight to the people using them. Audio, animation, VFX, art or a combination of these can create that feeling. L2: Revolution has a few moments like this.
The screens for rewards, upgrades, equipment levelling and enchanting have beautiful particles and animations that feel really good. By building strong foundations and polishing these key screens, L2: Revolution creates a satisfying and memorable progression experience.
Level Up
Free shop item
Cognitive Load
MMORPGs rarely have a clear, minimal user interface. L2: Revolution is no different.
The interface is overwhelming, and that remains a problem well into the game. Navigating it is also slow, simply because there are so many menus. Players often feel confused by the amount of information on screen.
The gameplay UI is no different. It’s hard to keep track of changes when there’s so much information. A great notification system and a consistent UI help, but they don’t solve the problem.
Creating habits
Part of the problem with information overload is our limited memory. As developers, we want players to build habits and return to our games. A complex UI with difficult navigation slows that process down.
Players also have to spend a lot of mental effort navigating the UI. That may be less noticeable on consoles and PC, but mobile games are a different beast. Players need to be aware of their surroundings, and sooner or later they get tired of a heavy interface.
One of the biggest benefits of mobile platforms is right there in the name: they’re mobile. Developers shouldn’t forget that.
Positioning
Lineage has two types of exit button at the top of the screen: “back” and “exit”. These try to make navigation easier, but their position forces players to reach to the top of the screen. That might not seem like a big problem, but L2: Revolution has more than 30 submenus. Over time, it makes navigation cumbersome.
Overall, the positioning of UI elements isn’t bad, but some parts could be better. A complex interface needs, at the very least, a great navigation system that lets players move quickly between screens.
Gameplay
Auto-play
My favourite design element in L2: Revolution is auto-hunting.
“Grind” and “MMORPG” are two words often used together. Designers use grind for several reasons, including levelling the playing field and creating a natural progression system: the more you play, the further you advance.
But there are downsides too. Grind can be addictive, and people unfamiliar with MMORPGs may be hesitant to try them because they see the genre as hardcore and time-consuming.
Older MMORPGs often had very steep progression curves. Players could spend as long as four years reaching a high level. Newer generations made the grind lighter and reduced the risk of losing experience or items. Lineage goes further.
The developers made the whole mechanic semi-automatic. You mainly need to pay attention when accepting new quests and collecting rewards. The penalty for dying is tiny, and players quickly learn that it’s OK not to focus all the time. Lineage cleverly combines idle-game mechanics with MMORPG grind to create something light and surprisingly approachable. This improves the experience by letting players enjoy a semi-idle game without giving it their full attention.
Creating a “shop habit”
An interesting practice used by more and more developers is offering free items or other benefits inside the shop. It tries to improve conversion by telling players, “Hey, this shop isn’t so bad. Drop in every now and then.”
It builds a habit through positive reinforcement. This may take longer to establish, but it can work better over time: players are less likely to reject it than a habit built on negative reinforcement.
Visiting the shop teaches players that they don’t need to be afraid of it, which increases the chance of conversion. Positive reinforcement can work better because it doesn’t create negative feelings.
“Away from keyboard” bonus
Another clever use of positive reinforcement is rewarding players for being offline. The “Recess Reward” mechanic adds bonus points for every minute spent offline, up to a limit. Players can then return and choose one of three rewards. It’s a recurring feature, so we can collect it every day.
It’s a nice mechanic that uses positive reinforcement to encourage breaks. Taking a break benefits both players and developers. From a UX perspective, it’s part of empathetic design: it slows progression and helps reduce player burnout.
Players can experience burnout just as professional athletes can. That can affect both their wellbeing and retention. We should remember the responsibility that comes with designing these experiences.
Progression curve
Progression in L2: Revolution depends heavily on player efficiency. At the time of writing, efficient play could get you to level 100 in a month without spending money, and the level cap on EU servers was 180. The whole loop can be seen as a game of resources.
What I like about Lineage’s progression curve is that it’s light enough for players to enjoy levelling up every day. Progress unlocks new features, keeping players engaged and giving them a sense of achievement. It rewards commitment without punishing players as much as a typical exponential progression curve.
On its own, this progression loop offers a nice experience. But it has downsides too, as we’ll see next.
Core loop to hell
Lineage 2: Revolution also has a dark side: its core gameplay loop.
Clearing all available activities takes more than an hour a day. Each activity gives a reward, and completing several activities can earn another. It’s an intensive loop and a form of Skinner box.
The worst part is how tightly it holds players, keeping them playing at high intensity for long stretches and leaving them exhausted at the end.
This intensity comes from a fixed-ratio reward schedule: rewards arrive after a set number of actions. One characteristic of this approach is that activity increases as the reward gets closer. L2: Revolution has several quests running in parallel, so the intensity can stay high for a long time. We’re always nearing some reward.
Reinforced by the mechanics I discussed earlier, this loop creates very addictive gameplay. Because the intensity is so high, players can quickly burn out. Exploiting people for our own purposes doesn’t benefit our audience or their experience.
Cooperation and social experience
One element the Lineage developers haven’t explored enough is cooperation.
MMORPGs are all about social interaction: joining a clan, fighting wars, getting to know people and bonding through adventures.
In L2: Revolution, playing with others is cumbersome for several reasons. Most quests are designed for one player. If you want to complete them with a friend, you need to start and finish each one together. Otherwise, you end up in different regions, killing different monsters and unable to share experience or support each other.
Most activities focus on solo play, with only a few built around teamwork. Social interaction is a key part of retention. People naturally want to form groups, and making that difficult only hurts our games.
Monetisation
Monetisation is a hot topic among players, who often associate it with developers using tricks to bait them into spending money. It’s also a vital part of free-to-play games: developers need a way to earn money. Unfortunately, L2: Revolution doesn’t do much to improve the reputation of F2P monetisation.
Aggressive monetisation
Many companies embrace aggressive monetisation mechanics, consciously or otherwise. But the effects on long-term retention and loyalty can be negative and hard to measure. Let’s look at an example.
Using the rough split discussed here—around 5% of players paying and 95% never making an in-app purchase—developers often use a few familiar techniques to push players towards spending:
Difficulty gates: sudden increases in difficulty, common in match-three games.
Excessive pop-ups with offers and discounts.
These techniques work against familiar UX principles. They create negative emotions that players can remove by spending money: negative reinforcement. That approach hurts the experience, and Lineage uses it in several places.
Gating can force players to abandon the game if they aren’t willing to pay. Even if most of the audience never spends money, that doesn’t make them unimportant.
Paying players want to enjoy the game with friends, compete and show their achievements to others. What happens if they lose that audience? They may stop playing or paying.
These two groups are closely connected. One can’t sustain the game without the other.
I think this makes it clear why aggressive monetisation is a shortsighted approach. A lack of empathy for players drives these mechanics. Let’s not lose that empathy.
Shop
The shop is the main place where players spend money, and Lineage’s shop is overwhelming. It has more than 100 items across over 15 categories, including discounts, special offers and free daily items. With so many choices, players can struggle to compare options and decide what to buy. This is “choice overload”.
It doesn’t improve the experience or satisfaction of buying. Instead, it connects the purchase with anxiety and panic.
Thirteen main shop categories, with more hidden inside them. You could fit a grocery store in this shop.
You can find the final part of this article here.