Mirei-KT

There is also a craftable box of transformation contracts (normal, 62 types) that seems to give between 2~5 when opened. I haven't seen the singular contract option mentioned in that table yet.

It's a bit of a mixed bag to me. It breaks with the very concept of event instances (doable by anyone due to equalized gear/stats). While I agree with the idea of awarding keys proportional to gear, it feels weird to just leave the fresh 76s out of the equation here. Especially when we just had "that" survey and, y'know, the point of the 6.0 update was to make the game appealing to newer players to begin with? It would have made more sense to attach a daily quest that gives players a 1-day gear set (or at least some purple pieces) so anyone can get the minimum needed to make the thing relatively worthwhile. The starter gear (Lakrum) is a no-go, and even full CoE is not a guarantee to anything beyond the final boss based on your class, ultimately making the whole thing kinda pointless.

https://aion.plaync.com/board/hotissue/view?articleId=836949 Images in the link, you're encouraged to run it through a translator as well. I've written a small tl;dr summary below.

It seems to be a cross-server region, yes. It's probably safe to think of it as a temporary new Panesterra with the Tia Eye event treatment.

Cyan and co. are busy preparing for tomorrow's Blade&Soul content stream, cut them some slack. The Aion staff got re-allocated to NC's flagship title for the West and now essentially has to manage 2 games at once, in case you had missed this.

If you seriously thought or expected they were going to play Santa and just hand out a Legendary contract to anyone but the 1% top whales you need to go get yourself checked. Maintaining the gap as much as possible is the main form of income here, why would they kill their business? Last event was good, you could get ~3 or more random ancient contracts if you flower farmed it up, so now you get a mediocre event again. And probably another two or three after. Such is Aion life.

2 days capping an alt on EK has earned me more than 6+ months of regular play on KT. I get the intention of wanting to help out the new/returning players stuck on EK, but let's be fair. The majority that was still playing ~2 weeks after EK opened were alts of KT/DN mains, and it's mainly this group that will stand to benefit. Not a very well thought-out decision if you ask me.

Same issue on the Asmodian side. Seems to be recent, maybe something broke after the latest patch.

More like Aion2 (mobile) is coming. 6.0 is here as the transit or "bridge" between PC (now) and mobage (future). It sucks but we've got to accept NCSoft decided to follow in Blizzard's footsteps. It's all about the mobile market now: less effort, wider audiences, and more profits. PC titles are either killed off (Wildstar, MxM) or kept around for a bit longer to try and entice players for the mobile versions. After many years and lately many disappointments I've made up the balance myself, and realized it is time to move on after 4.8, 5.0, and now 6.2. For some trivia, check "Games" on NCWest's website here. There used to be like 6 titles. Now there are just three left, of which one already has a mobile version and the other two were announced recently.

And here I was thinking Aethertechs and Gunners were immersion breaking back in in 4-0-4.5.

I think the main problem here is that the gaps between the new gear grades are immense. People in ulti exchange gear can afk in the middle of a fight against 15+ of your average players, add up a transformation and they are literal godmode. New players and those who didn't (or couldn't) invest in exchange gear ahead of time alike are introduced to an increasingly hostile endgame environment - the first groups have already begun to camp bases and raid the beginner areas to grief others and delay their progression. Yes, it's supposed to be hard. But I think a lot of players would have more peace with the current enchantment rates if the gaps between the new gear grades weren't so obvious and thrown in your face all the time. Being facerolled over and over without even being able to put a dent in such people is a factor that is going to demotivate a lot of players, putting the current enchant rates aside.

Seconding this, especially seems to happen if you glide into the windstream while on a mount (but also if you just glide into it naturally).

No one said anything about needing 100% legendary +15 gear, neither did I write "things were so much better back then". What I wrote is that previous versions of Aion offered players alternative (and by extension guaranteed) means to progress as opposed to being at the full mercy of RNG. Less twisting of words, more actual reading. The bare minimum for PF seems to be about half legendary gear +5 from what I hear and see. Even that can be an endless venue in a 100% rng based progression system. Unless you are now going to tell me you can finish it within a decent amount of time with a full ancient party. But those are just additives. If giving an opinion and providing a suggestion for improvement equals "searching for excuses" to you we have nothing left to discuss.

Gear being untradeable is fine. It being somewhat of a grind is fine too. But to me, gearing up being 100% RNG is not. We are in a new patch, but most of us are running old content (which we already farmed into oblivion during 5.x) because actual new content such as PF and (in 6.5) Senekta is locked behind an RNG wall. People who know their class, can do BoS/FM blindfolded and are ready to move on in every other way can't - simply because they weren't lucky. That just doesn't seem right. 3.0 had the Kahrun Eternal Set (tokens) as an alternative to having to sit in EF/AM for months. In 3.5 we got TS, which also was RNG but was still do-able because there were multiple bosses (=multiple chances) and you got 1 entry per day. 4.x had ancient coins. In other words, there actually were (alternative) means to progress. But right now there are none. Crafting isn't a viable option due to the current proc rates/material costs. You do your 8 runs in FM/BoS, pray to Aion you get through the double-layered RNG on the 2-3 drops that will be usable for you, and then afk until next week. Even adding something like a guaranteed 1 token drop to the BoS/FM final boss and creating an NPC where people can exchange these for Voidsoul at a certain rate would do. That way you'd have at least one guaranteed item and some progress after 7~8 runs. They can, but the people they take along cannot. I should have re-worded that.

Lore/immersion wise it'd have to be 2.X. For convenience, gameplay and entertainment value 3.0/4.0. Everything from 4.8 onwards is a botched experiment; random, panic-driven attempts to keep Aion afloat amidst the rise of the mobage and the decline of MMOs - with every move showing just how much they had lost touch with their own game. And thus we arrive in the present, where we are playing a placeholder to buy them time until A2 is done.