Khallarion

Greetings, As always, I'm back to this thread in order to give a feedback, especially based on the recent drop rate changes. I believe most players were surprised about what NCWest achieved with the Korean HQ, giving us the drops back, helping out players in order to make kinah, thus allowing us to have enough resources in order to build up our characters. Drops, Kinah, Pass Drops that give us kinah are given within end-game instances and group activities such as LUT, BT, alongside Tiak and Dredgion, which helps people farming their kinah naturally, without the help of bots or suspicious activities. World drops also increased, but giving resources for crafting and also skills and stigmas, which helps immensely, but also aren't seem as an easy way to abuse. Fortunately or not, bots will always be present, and people willing to buy kinah as well. Blade & Soul, I believe, had an interesting option where players could trade NCoins for HM Coins, and those for Gold, if I'm not mistaken. Something similar might be used in Aion Classic in order to allow players to buy kinah directly from NCSoft, beyond the NPC caps etc., giving us a reliable kinah resource. Or, since the pass was improved, more manastones could be offered, alongside skins and enchantments stones for those willing to make easy kinah while opening their wallets. Anyways, there're several ways NCSoft could manage the bots, by intelligent drop distribution and offering items players could trade among each other in order to help them out improving their character. Population Unfortunately, even with those improvements, it seems the player population kept at the same amount it was not long ago. Most people checked out what 2.0 could offer and already left the game, giving us the same people in order to play and keep doing end-game activities. Which is fun, especially when a sin kills a commander in one hit while he is doing his medal quests! A small population help out people in order to make friends and get used to the community, in a good or bad way. The usual Elyos vs Asmodians drama in sieges and all the people complaining in the LFG chat. People that hate each other, but still, can't stop playing with and against each other. Less than 500 players that keeps the server alive, somehow. But it was always like that, in other words, people always come back to check out an event or update, then they just leave. If NCSoft want to keep players attention, it's important to give us constant and different types of events, such as, but not limited to double drop, double AP etc. GMs could join the fun sometimes, dressing up as Empyrean Lords, helping out the faction, or just throw a NPC there to help out the faction, such as Veille, Mastarius, Kaisinel or Marchutan. Aura For most people, especially in underdeveloped countries, Aura price is just too high. Comparing the game to modern games and franchises of success, 15USD is just too much for Aion. I just finished building up my Cleric, and was happy with that, till the point I wanted to reroll to another Class, and get unmotivated, since I know I'll need to spend more 3 or 4 months farming Medals and Ap all over again. IF we could at least trade our items, accessories for example, among our characters, it would help immensely, and maybe, would keep people motivated in order to build up different characters, testing out different classes, thus keep the interest in the game. Would definitely help us out the opportunity to keep our progress, not throwing everything away in order to start another character, and get our progress delayed by months. There're ways to keep an influx of new players coming to the game, another way would be improving graphics, investing on streaming and social media etc. Unfortunately, NCSoft never bothered much about that. In the end, the feeling I personally have is; the company offers too little, charge too much, for little joy from the community, but I understand the fault is upon Korean HQ. Conclusion I personally can't keep on the Aura and Pass, and I don't want to waste more time and money farming things I already farmed with one character. Then, it's easier to move to a private server, or just play another game. I believe that's the same feeling that motivated people to leave Classic for private servers. There're so much NCSoft could do, but based on the producer's letter, NCWest is as tied up as we are, as players, so we can't expect lots of changes. I just hope people in NCWest keep up the good work, helping out the player base, supporting us and our interests to the Korean HQ, and maybe showing to them that our audience is indeed totally different, also our goals and marketing approach. Well, you guys already did that, by standing by our side while getting our drops back, and distributing it in an intelligent way, so can't complain about the Staff... only when it doesn't drop from Triroan or SW (jokes). Anyways, Aion was and somehow still is my favorite game, and hope watch its improvement. Hope getting better graphics, more players to play with, cheaper Aura and the opportunity to keep using the same account without the penalties we see, such as not being able to trade items among characters in the same account. I know the game wasn't designed for that, but it requires adaptation, and intelligent ways to catch audience's attention.

Greetings, Due the recent events in Aion Classic, also the new letter released by the staff, I came back in order to update this topic. As always, keep in mind this is just a perspective of a player, based on personal experiences, and the experienced within the game. You might disagree with those, but it's mandatory to keep the expression of your opinion in a civic manner, at least if we want keeping any conversation as something constructive. The News Summarizing, the new trend in Aion is the new unofficial server, since most players and bots are unable to play and make profit out of the game. In other words, new players are struggling to leave their capital city, struggling to buy skills and level up, while bot owners can't make proper profit and sell kinah in order to earn real money. In one thing we must agree, NCSoft is indeed trying to protect their own interests, but at the expense of player's base interests. Then, a new server emerged, with different features, a fee of 5$, lots of skins and costumes, also anti-cheats and ways to prevent people abusing the game by opening two clients, or having multiple accounts in order to trade AP etc. Their site and server is so well-made that would make us thing someone from NCSoft created the server in order to actually do something, since the HQ didn't give much attention to our region. The producer letter actually expressed how NCWest is actually tied to the Korean HQ, and how Korean HQ is just focusing on their interests, at the expense of even NCWest Staff needs. In other words, HQ asks NCWest to apply things that don't fit our region, and then NCWest need to answer why there is such low income in matters of players and Dollars. The Sorrow I'm really sorry to see this happening with NCWest Staff. I mean, it's a company, and everything is based on profit and income, and if a sector of the company doesn't deliver what it's supposed to deliver, then they start cutting expenses, firing people etc. So, more NCWest is tied and unable to handle things at their region, more in risk their own jobs and careers are. I'm glad though NCWest was opened about the issues towards their administration and HQ administration, since it shows they want to work and care about the game and player base, but unfortunately, they are tied to incompetent people at HQ, that somehow are their overseers, but have no idea how to properly deal with Western audience. Luckily, now we have some reference of business model that might work in the West, and also a direct affront to Korean HQ. When everything revolves around money and interest, the best way to improve service is by competition, the same way works within game, where you need to gear up in order to earn more stuff. So it seems that more NCSoft make people and staff angrier, more they turn their head to NCSoft, and as stated in previous texts, more NCSoft get hurt due their own incompetency. The Solution Time will be the solution, not only that, but the so called competition in the market, being such competition based on private servers, or games from different companies. If I was an investor, wise enough to actually bother and play NCSoft games, I would definitely know I shouldn't put my money in such company. It's really sad to see competent staff in NCWest tied and unable to help out their own player base. At least thank you guys for caring about us, and to try to improve the game talking to people from HQ. I really hope those people might understand how Western audience is different from East, and that there're better ways to offer NCSoft services to their player base, being lowering the subscription, offering more items that players need in the Season Pass, or mere skins or events. In the end, what we all need is an environment where players don't feel abused, where people don't abuse game mechanics not only in order to make more AP, but also avoid this Kinah Black Market, where bots spoil the economy. A solution to it all would be making things more accessible to everybody, then nobody would need to waste real money in order to take advantages, but that would be against NCSoft core values, which revolves around exploiting abuses.

Greetings, First of all, this topic isn't about criticizing the game in a degenerative way, but a topic based on constructive criticism. Even though nowadays many companies avoid even such constructive criticism, thus neglecting important aspects that should be improved. Introduction When Aion was created, it clearly based itself on other MMORPGs, also based itself on a trend; subscription. Thus why most of the game's activities are time-consuming and boring, since you had to keep paying in order to progress in the game. Suffice to say such approach is already dated, to the point Classic faced many changes in order to adapt itself to the taste of modern players. Even though now it's easier to level up, and we gonna experience many changes towards the way campaigns will be completed etc., still the essence keeps the same, or in other words, everything is based on gear progression. Can't expect much of a difference, since the game was designed to work in such fashion, so instead of renewing or being creative, producers just keep repeating the same recipe, not concerned with the taste of their costumers. So in the end, you just keep doing repetitive and boring tasks, that leads you to points and medals accumulation, that will grant you a better gear. This gear doesn't represent your ability in playing the game, on the contrary, it represents how much a gear might carry an unexperienced player, and how indifferent actually is your ability to play. I could notice that when using a mere 40e Abyss gear +10 against PvE player. Issues But how to fix it!? How to use what we already have, but in a way that pleases audience? Well, for that you need to understand that games are made by people and for people, thus you need to understand what your audience seeks, and how they respond psychological to your games. In other and simple words; Aion was created to delay people's progress, since as every game, book, movie or even experiences we might pass through life, it has an end. So you need to delay people's experience in order to generate income, and if you're clever enough, use such income to keep developing new games and content. What we see from NCSoft is a poor management and money investment, since we didn't notice any huge success in the recent years, not based on the time of Lineage or Aion, with the exception of Blade and Soul, which uses highly sexual content to catch the attention of its player base, mainly composed by men (myself included, since as heterosexual, I like boobs). But no, boobs aren't the concern in Aion, actually Aion lacks boobs, or a character design similar to Blade and Soul. This leads you to another huge issue; world design and improvement. Since 2012, if I'm not mistaken, we didn't notice any huge improvement in matters of graphics in Aion. We see retextures of items, old items being used in a different fashion, and maybe some new animations, but nothing especial, or that worth 5 USD or more. Still, showing off those problems wouldn't fix it, since now and as stated before, we need to use what we have in order to fix the issues we previously did. So how to use an old broken world and catch people's attention? How to increase game popularity? Without graphic's improvement, this is very hard, since people are visual animals. If you want to catch people's attention you will need to create another game, but that's not possible. Then, what we can do is focus on the player base we already have. There were some huge improvements in Aion 2.0, but those improvements were applied by a staff that created and developed the game. What happens now, accordingly to my experience as a player, is a staff that has no clue about what to do, neither that understood what was done. It's as if the old staff left a note saying; the game works like that. Then, the new staff just keep repeating the same instructions without understanding what's actually happening. I wonder how such thing is possible, but as someone who already worked in many companies, what I notice is the simple fact most people, businessman, won't use their own services. So the feeling we have, as players, is that staff won't play the game the way we played, or dedicate themselves to play, since it's just a job, nothing more, not a hobby or something made with care and attention. Fixes So we must focus on the player base we already have, so how to please those spoiled kids? Let's give them crows for the double price of Aura and expect them to waste their money, earning 4 times less Ap they earn in a month, if paying an Aura that is half the price... Don't take this personal, please, but you guys need someone capable coordinating your staff. Actually, all the staff should create a character, build a legion and play this damn game for at least 4h a day. Understand something simple; more you try to manipulate or control your audience, less in control you gonna be. Don't try to fool people, especially in the digital modern world. Such practices might work in less developed countries, where the population is ignorant and usually controlled by corrupt governments, but not in the majority of western countries, at least shouldn't, unless people have money to throw away. The positive things that appeared in 2.0 were the easier AP earning, also the daily medal quests. What's even better in Classic 2.0, is the fact that those medal quests are infinite, or in other words, you can farm your medals and your AP, assuring you your gear in the future, even though such gear just represents the contribution based on how long you paid to play. At least people who have the patience, will earn their stuff. But earning the stuff isn't enough, you need to improve it, socket it and so on. This is a huge aspect of the game, which might be positive, or absolutely degenerating. After the loot boxes issues we had a couple of years ago, many companies are obligated to show their success rate, even though numbers are only numbers, and some companies lie to their audience. When it comes to enchanting and socketing, often you fail an item, angrier someone becomes. When you waste more than 30 millions to socket a piece of gear, and fail all manastones, you not only make people waste their time and effort, but also their patience with the game. Such frustrating approach indicates how stupid the company is, taunting a spoiled audience that want everything fast. Someone there was clever though and thought; oh, there's no low level drops, let's sell those then! And it was actually a great idea, since you would offer people what they need, would turn the in-game necessity into profit for the company and also frustrate the ones that need to be frustrated; the bot's owners. If you want to completely remove the bot's owners, and the bots, you just need to sell what players need in the store. So lets redesign the game based on what we have... We need to make income, so lets see what people need and sell those items, since we're the owners of those items. We clearly recognize the fact we don't have many people playing, thus we facilitate the access to some low level content. We might sell skins from low level instances, we might sell items such as stigmas etc., that is a good move. But we don't want our player to get frustrated, so or we increase the success rate of socketing and enchanting, or we sell those old 100% socketing and enchanting things. Not a bad idea to use in the last slot of Abyss Items, or when you're trying to put it +10 or +11. NICE! Let's sell those things to our players! But wait... they're taking too long in order to earn their gear... Let's double Abyss Points earning though, or at least, increase the earning of those who are frequently losing in PvP activities. The idea is to increase people's rate in earning their gear, so they might have a fair match against seasoned players, because if those players keep being destroyed in every PvP activity, or they will cheat, or they'll simply leave the game, since they're playing in order to have fun, not being bullied by geared players. Wait, we're actually doing it! We have the Tiger's event, which increases the average AP we earn from Dredgion and Tiaks, oh but wait, geared players just rush to the middle, killing every Tiger and spoiling the run of under geared players... But look, we gave them a small piece of 55e Abyss Gear! We showed them the way to go, what to get! Now just need to facilitate its access more. Facilitating access to gear will allow people to fairly compete, not only that, but will motivate people to create alternative characters in order to explore different classes and ways to play the game. This will also increase character population, allowing people to take on different roles, thus filling the need for Templar and Clerics, for example. Suddenly, people will keep playing on different classes, and gonna call their friends to play this old, but fun game called Aion. Let's put those nice enchantment items, or facilitators in the pass, while giving affordable access to PvP gear, then people gonna start buying the pass because it's a necessary thing in order to improve their gear, then bots won't have any choice, but to leave the game, since the company is actually selling and making usage of their own product. It is still pay to win, but at least it's paying to reassuring the improvement of your gear. Alongside those improvements, if you put some nice skins, boobs and improve graphic's quality like what was done with Blade and Soul, you guys gonna revitalize the game. Not only that, but get some pretty girl and boy, and put them as models in order to call people's attention. Get a streamer, or put someone streaming game content that is fun. But wait, don't do it now, do it when the game becomes fun and no frustrating to play. Remember; people are visual animals. People need positive stimuli in order to respond accordingly to expectations. More you frustrate and cripple them, anger they get. And if they get angry, they bite, and if they bite, company gets hurt, and if company gets hurt, we don't have enough income in order to improve and promote the game. So Aion players are like beaten up dogs in the hands of a old and stupid owner that doesn't understand the poor dog just need care and attention in order to protect him and their house.

Greetings, After a week into the new update, I just want to come back to this post and read it again, also share my thoughts about the changes. Gladly, keeping huge text-walls would filter the majority of people, allowing these words to reach the ones that really cares about the current state of the game, or in other words, NCSoft Staff, the ones who keep the game alive. I'm often harsh in my reviews, to the point I might offend someone, but please, don't take this personal. It's a mere psychological strategy in order to generate impact, and carve a mark within the subconsciousness, to the point you would keep doing your normal routine, and what you read in the forums would suddenly pop up in your mind, like that Dredgion/Tiak moment sign. Bots/Hackers/Cheaters Since the last update, playing with other players we hear that abusing some system mechanics aren't as easy as it was before. In other words, it seems Aion is not a fertile soil for others to explore in matters of making real money. If this keep in such fashion, most people who don't respect or care about the game will just leave, leaving the core community that still plays with their friends, and have some appreciation to the game. Also, following the AP gain of several players, it seems it's much harder to make the same amount of AP some players were able to make before the update. In other words, with the weekly reset in AP chambers, even if people would fill up a party with bots in order to get all AP to themselves, still, it's just a run, in a week, not influencing the overall AP gain. So people now are not climbing 200 positions in a single day, even if they trade their relics etc. (At least from what I could notice) Broker wise, it seems harder to get some crafting materials, but it's encouraging people to actually gather materials, rather using bots. The farming bots are the worse, and as stated, it seems NCSoft is properly taking care of them this time. It's a good things, since would prevent people to abuse their privileges, if any, and sell kinah to other players in order to increase their monthly salary as well. Beginner Pass/Store A huge thing was the benefits in the beginner pass, such as the 40e gear, not mentioning the full Anuhart set. That was a smart move from NCSoft, since it's offering what the game has to offer in a convenient way. In other words, you can still play DP and drop your stuff, or you can just toss your credit card number and get it all at once. Doesn't matter, people are aiming Beshmundir stuff now, so nobody cares if you dropped or bought your gear. Still, it doesn't spoil the fun, or break the game, actually eliminates the silly elitism Aion always had, allowing more people to just play and have fun. It encourages players to improve, develop their characters, in a way or another. It's not a pay to win approach, but a pay to follow progress, or a catch up program that you pay for convenience. What surprises me is the good drop rates of Dark Poeta. I myself liked so much this approach, changing the original image of NCSoft marketing approach, that I just bought my accessories and wings. I still have other goals to accomplish, and now I keep watching the store for more interesting and useful things. I'm really glad the staff is helping out new and returning players, and this approach is definitely a success, both in matters of money income, but also in matters of player base cultivation. Tiak/Dredge Groups Might be only the fact people are retuning the game, but now it's hard to get an empty Dredge or Tiak, which is good. We still get super geared groups to fight against, but the new level cap allowed us to train those super strong mobs into super geared pvp parties, just to watch them being smashed and destroyed by level 55 mobs. I never laughed so hard playing Aion. Not only that, but 2.0 update, since past years, was one of the best updates, because it fixed several issues we were having in the first version, also brought completion to different areas of the game, such as crafting. Even though I'm not sure why we can't relinquish our Expert/Master status yet in order to get expert in another profession. Maybe it was a 3.0 update, can't remember. Ah yeah, and gladly, we can now complete our daily quests in Dredgion in an easy fashion. Nobody would deny our prisoners, since now it's just supplies, and the poor shugo slaves delivery it to our hands. Also the key thing in order to access captain bridge avoid unnecessary confrontation and massacre in matters of geared/ungeared groups, which encourages people to keep farming and playing. Promotions/Twitch/Youtube Twitch month, with that werehouse expansion slot was awesome, I honestly didn't expect that. I'm still hopping to see some faces streaming Aion, some staff making jokes and interacting more with us. Aion is an awesome game, aside all the nasty gambling we already discussed about, the predatory practices and the dated elitism and toxicity. But all those things aren't staff's fault, I mean, it's not the poor GM we need to blame, the guy just get up every morning like us, get his breakfast and run to the office, or get their breakfast in the office, while organizing the weekly meeting etc. All the fault is based on greedy, ignorant people, who see player base as mere numbers, not respecting their intelligence, trying to suck the last penny of their pockets. You know, we see this approach often, in different companies. It's like a modern violation, where criminals disguise themselves with beautiful suits and explore people like slaves. When those companies mix things up and get involved into political business, then it gets uglier and lower than we can imagine. What's fun and sad, is the simple fact that it's just a facet of us all, I mean, the dark side of human personality. Just take the example we had with Blizzard, censoring people, not allowing them to manifest opposite opinion, and how even the US Congress entered into the mess. Doesn't seem much, but there're some vital, some essential values we need to respect in order to keep up Democracy, our values, or the values that makes US and our Western society what it's, or should be. And I'm not even American, but I do understand a country is made of people and values, and that every country made its mistakes, but people are the ones that keep writing the story in their daily lives, being taking care of a restaurant, a marketing or gaming company. So, for those in US and South Korea, as a citizen who values democracy; watch your work, respect it, keep your values within it, then nobody would mess up, manipulate or control your lives. (Aion saves Atreia, lol). Conclusion I feel the game is getting better, toxic people are leaving, because they can't explore others, neither the game. Just people who want to have fun keep playing, and day after day we get to know each other better and better, to the point we remove our sets in arena, just to help each other completing our daily quest. Lot of us don't even care about being "good" in the game, we just play in order to have fun and build up ties with people from different countries. That's the bright said of massive multiplayer games. While countries are making silly wars, based on ambitions and greedy, common people like us are just trying to make our living, GMs as well, since you guys also need to eat (Aion 4.0 joke you guys made in the website at that time). Anyways, everything has the value we give upon it. Aion for me was always a game of overcoming, effort, dedication. Might be only me, now finding the right people to play with, or might be Aion's blessing showing a bright future. But you guys have so much potential, also the game and the company. Don't allow nasty greedy Shulacks take over and sell out everything you guys worked for just for the feeling of "being better" than others, like those stupid Balaurs that just know destruction.

There're ways to play without Aura, even though would require lots of effort, discipline, and even so, you wouldn't be able to compete against pay to win players. But everything depends on your goals, I started playing with Aura until reaching level 38 at the start of Classic, and then as soon my Aura expired, I also stopped playing like the majority of people. After almost an year, I back to the game and tried to level up since I got free Aura from Twitch, and the game was surprisingly more affordable to play in matters of progress and xp, thus I leveled up my character, essence, aether and alchemy. For three days Aura, was a good progress, then I thought would be a good idea try playing without Aura. Got mad when couldn't complete some quests, since I couldn't take quest items from loot, and started to plan ahead my steps. I entered the game before Aura resets, got into a party, and as soon we got into a Dungeon or Dredgion, my aura would reset, allowing me to take items again. This way I could complete the majority of quests I needed and so on, even though was hard to find parties to play with, at the specific time my Aura was active, thus why I had to keep login in and out several times just to check LFG. I kept playing like that for a month before deciding to purchase a full month Aura. Then, after getting my stigmas opened, most of my campaign completed, professions leveled up, and even getting AP Stigmas, I've notice that Aura wasn't that important, unless you want to compete against people. If you just want to have fun doing quests and enjoying the game without any ambition, then it's possible, but very limiting, of course. I found funny to see so many AFK characters, while I had to diligently manage my Aura, then I started thinking how much money people just waste. But I honestly believe it's hard to imagine NCSoft would allow us to buy Aura with in-game money. They're doing a lot by allowing new characters to take 1h Aura every time they reach a specific cap etc. This indeed facilitates the leveling, to the point people started abusing it to create characters in the opposite faction in order to trade AP, or mess up Dredgion parties etc. If NCSoft turn it free to play, or something, it will just increase the abuses and harm the game as a whole, since it was designed to be a subscription based game. They could make free to play events, or give Auras out of promotions, like they're doing in Twitch and so on, three days Aura Free and so on, this wouldn't harm the game, on the opposite, would just encourage more people to back playing the game. Even someone as myself, miser, money grubber as "Nyerk" back to the game after testing it out again, imagine what others would do. What they could do, in order to prevent gold sellers is to allow us to turn Quna into Kinah, like we have in Blade & Soul. But still, I believe Aura is mandatory and beneficial in order to prevent harmful people in the game, people who would just use bots and abuse it, also would facilitate GMs work and so on. I just believe they could decrease the Aura price, since Aion is a dated game, and it's unfair to bill people 15$ a month. Anyways, more you pay-to-win, more inefficient, incompetent and weak you're. I remember a time when players just rushed to the end game, and didn't know how to tank or heal, and most people were complaining about that, so you can't facilitate much either. The ideal would be having a balanced game, where you would need to invest time and money in order to play, but not abusing the audience. If we encourage companies to abuse their player base, or companies to abuse their audience, we would not only encourage players to do the same, but we would deteriorate the social values that bind us together, generating chaos. Most people are weak minded, and would just behave pretty much based on their immediate environment dictations, thus why we must work within some core values. Companies, based on their influence, are shaping the social aspects of our society, and our games are just a reflection of our society, culture, behavior etc. More corruption we have within a company, more inefficient their employees, and easier to manipulate such company in order to satisfy the interest of third parties. That's the main social issue we're facing nowadays, that leads to wars and so on (just watch Aion's lore, a world divided, corrupt governors and gods, everybody waiting for a broken savior who lost its memories and is thrown from a side to another, just to die again and resurrect in Poeta over and over).

Introduction First of all, thank you for your time reading these words. It's important to mention I'm just a humble player, thus my opinions and suggestions don't necessarily represents the Aion community, even though as a player, some might relate to the following words. Also, the main goal of this topic is to offer positive and constructive suggestions to the game, especially now with the new patch. Predule Without further ado, let's dive into what matters; game quality. NCSoft built its reputation on previous game, in previous years, which was fundamental for Aion. At its release, and even at the release of Classic recently, the success was huge. Taking in consideration Classic is a dated game in matters of engine and graphics, it's astonishing how the community supported and still supports the game. That's something to take in consideration, and from the producer letter, it seems they recognize the importance of their player base, even though within the game, there're some policies or approaches that would indicate the opposite. To explain the "opposite", I would take as an example a game I liked, from a company I'm pretty sure doesn't exist anymore. I used to play Priston Tale 2 before Aion, from Yedang Coorporation. Priston Tale was and still is a success from what I know, and people were really into Priston Tale 2, expecting something bigger and better. Unfortunately, the game didn't last for long, since it already started with a predatory system, and at its end, the predatory system just increased to the point nobody was buying anything, neither playing anymore. Don't need to explain what happened to the game and company, since they just don't exist anymore (even though there're private servers of this game still operating). When we look for a game in order to play, usually we search it in order to have fun, since most people have obligations. Even though there're competitive games in the market, it seems our society is somehow evolving from bestiality to a more organized thing, where competition is slowly giving room to cooperation. If you take huge success in the past, such as StarCraft 2, you gonna see that what keeps the game alive until now are the community, and how community interact with itself; through cooperative games. Lots of people just don't want to compete, since they're already competing in life in order to get marks at school, or at their jobs in order to get a promotion. That's when some huge successes comes in mind, such as Apex or Fortnite etc. Those games have their competitive environment, but they aren't that abusive, since it allows people to actually have fun with their friends. People turn on the computer nowadays, get their friends in discord and start chatting while playing a game, a if they were in a pub or something. We can see it on Twitch, for example, and how our society is adapting itself to the modern age. Companies as well need to adapt, because if not, they will lose audience and income, thus losing profit and influence. Marketing Approach & Business Most companies that don't invest on audience, such as Twtich, Youtube etc., or promote their content on social media, are faded to be forgotten. We're in a time people want to communicate, they want to know who they're dealing with, talking with, playing with, doing business with etc. So, in case of NCWest, it's mandatory that you guys get a pretty face, put some make up on them, and make them interact with the audience. Or get some GMs and put them interacting with the community both within and outside the game. If you guys had it done before the lunch of Classic, I'm pretty sure the success would be much bigger. You guys have the opportunity to change how people see Aion and NCsoft. But that will just happen if you all are willing to make the changes needed. You don't need to wait on Korea Office in order to do something, I mean, of course there're some limitations NCWest would face, but still, you guys have, or should have the personnel and infrastructure to make changes, to be proactive. There're several things I'm sure you guys do behind the scenes, but still, sometimes when we look at Aion and other games, it's just sad... a lame. So much potential lost, and not because of incompetence of the staff, but due lack of attention from the company itself. It's alright paying for a service, it's already paying for costumes, paying for stuff that wouldn't influence the gameplay, but when things start getting pay-to-win, and you star abusing the success rate and drop rate of specific items, then it becomes predatory, like a gambling in a casino. A big company and a company of respect wouldn't need such approach in order to make profit, since their product would be good enough. That's when that previous mentioned company, Yedang Corporation fits in this subject, since Yedang probably didn't have the influence NCSoft did, and was just trying to make quick profit. As I often say, NCSoft usually gets drown themselves into their own greedy. There're different marketing or business approach that would reflect our century much better than old post-war gambling system that tries to suck people's money. That might work in other audiences, such as in Korean, Japan and China, but to the rest of the world, people are culturally different, and they need better adaptation. Here in West, for example, people give more value to the personal relation rather status, titles, or how good they are in abusing of low geared players. Improvements Then here we get to the points suggestions are needed. It's easy to point out issues without solutions, and say to someone else fix it for you. Usually you pay hundreds of people, and they can't come to a solution, because they're simply not capable of that, since they don't either play the game, nor they are putting their heart into it. I mean, it's your company, your job, the way you earn your money, and if you can't do that with love, at least do it right. Not saying your guys, the staff, people who are reading it, aren't doing it right. Just saying that NCSoft as a company lacks proper leaders. They might have bosses and directors, but they're just people paid to do their job, nothing more, they're not leaders who often get engaged into their work, if they were, things would be so much different, at least here in West. There're some easy things to fix that would change the entire game, for example, there's something in the community known as the "raper party". The raper party is a 50e geared group composed of 2 Gladiators, 1 Templar, 2 Cleric and SM. They just take on pretty much everything, not allowing under geared people to even do their quest. When you back home from job, and want to have fun, and get into the raper party, you just turn off the computer or go play another game. NCSoft is losing audience, is losing profit, income when that happens. How to prevent that? Easy, allow us to enter in either Premade parties or Random groups, or allow just PvP geared players to play against PvP geared players. If you want to go further, you might change how the system identify winning and loses, basing things not on Level, but Gear points. For example, a PvE player, the best of them would be considered having 100 PvE points. The same with PvP players, that would have 100 gear points. Those players would never face each other in PvP activities, since they wouldn't have the recommended sets or specifications in order to do that. So if you want to go Fortress Siege and EARN ABYSS POINTS, you would need a soft cap of gear points. For example, a Rank 1 Soldier could kill a 1 Star Officer and earn points, but a 1 Star Officer would get half of its points by killing a Solder 1. Now, if both tried to kill a player without PvP status, then they wouldn't earn anything at all, neither the one killed, neither the one who killed. This way, you would not only stop abuses, but also would increase the difficulty of geared players to achieve more points, rather encouraging nyerk parties. Clerics Another things I believe it's important to mention is how Aion was designed based on a competitive and toxic mentality. People or parties would get more points based on the amount of damage or kills they had. But and the Cleric, who are often healing and support their party? They would get 5x less Abyss Points and a couple of Silver Medals, while other people would take 40k Abyss Points and 5 Gold Medals. If you guys want to improve the community and the game, it's important to know what's your focus; competition or cooperation. Few would be able to compete, but majority would be able to cooperate, thus increasing the income, the profit, more Siel Aura, more Daeva Pass etc. More you frustrate people nowadays, easier to lose them. In other times, that might have worked on weak minded individuals, and even nowadays it might work upon some psychologically fragile people, who take the game and depositing their frustration, abusing weaker players. But majority will just search another hobby or game to play and waste their money. This might be cultural, and we see on some drama and series how Asian social relations are ages behind modern society by the way they treat women etc. and other topics that would rather not touch here (I'm half Asian, I know what I'm saying because I saw how my grandfather treated my grandmother etc., so it's not racism). So, the same way people base their characters on Damage/Second, base the earnings on Healing/Second. There're some good Clerics out there that I know, that are always supporting their parties, but didn't get what they deserve. You need to have good friends and a good Legion in order to be supported and even carried before you get your stuff done. Then we enter into another issue; how under geared players suffer in order to get their sets, especially PvP sets, since geared parties would just accept geared players, and under geared players would take months in order to get their sets, especially earning 4x less of what geared players won. In the end, the way the game works, works pretty much like the government of a corrupt country who abuses its population, where just a few sit in their chairs, with tons of medals that means anything at all, clapping and smiling, thinking they're something, when in reality everybody just hate them, but aren't fool enough to express that directly. That's how people feel when someone get Governor for years, just stacking AP, not giving the opportunity to others achieve their goals. So, in the end, NCSoft is supporting nyerk parties and corrupt governors. Conclusion Sarcastic jokes aside, it's at the hand of the Staff and Company to change the game environment. When you encourage competition rater cooperation, you're not only influencing the game, but how people behave, and how people would bring such behaviors into society. Something the community was talking about was related to hacking. Someone said; "everybody does, so I'm doing". Then, the other person said; "just because others shoot someone, would you stab them, then"? When we see people abusing their power within Tiak or Dredgion, we're just watching deep inside their inner personality. This would explain why, at war, so many people nyerk, abuse, torture others. When NCSoft allows people to abuse their power within game, it's influencing their character, thus harming society in several ways, or different types of individuals in different societies. That's why I'm so against the business approach the company has, not necessarily against the game, the community or even the staff. There're ways to make things competitive in a good way, would just require more effort, more time and investment. I believe you guys are doing your best, and this producer letter meant a lot for some of us here in the community. I really hope at the time of the release of AION 2, not Classic 2.0, we might have a beautiful, positive and constructive game, that encourages people being better to their friends and community.

Since there's a topic about the theme I want to discuss, I'll use that instead of opening a new thread or something, even though I would like to elaborate a more in-depth text. When we look Aion's market approach, we see different attempts in order to earn as much profit as possible. That's not the problem, but how you do that. In other words, and as expressed before here in this Forum by myself, Aion was designed to be a subscription game, which means you would pay for its service over the course of the months and years. The problem is the simple fact the majority of multiplayer games, or mmos, weren't built to survive ten years, since was somehow a "new concept". As a company, what you want to do is getting as much as profit with the resources you already invested. Then, game's quality starts to decrease, since you start just reshaping pre-existing stuff, or in other words, using materials you already have (meshes and textures) in order to create new maps, instances etc. That's a common issue, but hard to predict, since we didn't have enough experience to know the side-effects. But instead of doing something, lots of companies, big companies, kept the poor job of keeping using old textures and meshes to the point their games look really dated, old and horrendous. This shows lack of consideration to their own product, and worse, to their player base. Also, a company have its employees to pay, bill and taxes. Lots of the income a game generates goes directly to those expenditures. There's little room for new investments and ideas to become reality, unless you plan ahead, what didn't happen to Aion. Thus why now, they released the same dated game, as a new one, expecting people to buy it, and what's funny, it worked, due the nostalgic effect Aion had at the time of its lunch, but then it somehow collapsed, due the simple fact people get disappointed to the game, and even worse, disappointed to themselves by investing on such a dated game. Of course, most of us are ten years older now, so if you stared playing it with 12 years, now you're with 22, and as someone with 22 years, you already earned some experience, you might have entered University and studied about different subjects, you started your career etc. Now, the company, due its greed, broke the initial image the game had, and now, if they plan to release a new game, an Aion 2.0 so to speak, they must do a tremendous effort to not offend anyone, creating an entire new game. For example, imagine if they release Aion 2.0, but they just use new textures to maps and characters that already exist. So you gonna play Inggison and Gelkmaros maps again, with the same lore etc., just with better graphics and so on, like lots of companies are doing nowadays with their old games; releasing the same content slightly improved. This will destroy the game's and company's image forever, and stain their reputation, and nobody wants that. But that's not even the point I want to dive deep into. The main issue and the more realistic issue we have now is the way company makes money. You know the Balaurs are a very stupid race, greedy, destructive and so on. They try to enslave and destroy everything they can't control, thus they're brutes, ignorant, not better than animals with some degree of intelligence. They're killing people and sapiens, they don't see those beings as resources, useful resources. Like in Tiak, they just get Daevas and put them in concentration camps, or bases, where they conduct experiments and so on. The Balaurs are like a virus, consuming and destroying Atreia. Now if you see how NCSoft is dealing with their player base, it's pretty much like Balaurs and their concentration camps, and nobody wants to live in a concentration camp. Now the point I want to touch exactly; to turn the game into something fun that everybody might take advantage of, both players and NCSoft. So, you must understand which are the main resources in the game, also the main goal in the game. You might think majority of people want to PvP all day, but that's limited, a limited idea based on a single type of player, thus you transform the game, or adapt the game to satisfy just a small fraction of players. This way you would think that enchantments stones and manastones are a good idea to put in the pass, since everybody wants that, and can make Kinah out of that. Doing that, you're just turning the game into a more competitive environment, limiting even more the player base, also the real money income to the company. Then, you can't keep the game balanced, because geared players won't accept new players, and those new players are unable to run a content properly in order to get geared and compete. Then you're limiting more and more the players that actually play the game... No wonders why now Aion is a major failure, because NCSoft is behaving like the Balaurs. NCSoft doesn't have new resources, and want to exploit their own world, thus like a virus, consuming it and its inhabitants. This way you'll never call more people to our games, since we live in a new era, with different values. The environment is so competitive in Korea, for example, that Korean players come to US servers in order to achieve the goals they were unable to achieve in their home country server, and worse, they try to do that by exploiting the system. Want to fix that? Then focus on lore, allow people to dive into the game story. Allow people to understand and play different classes. Keep up the grind level system, but allows player to actually progress, doing their own dungeons and instances, giving their time in order to read and get into the game. Like was done in 4.0 where you could run the solo version of a instance, in order to watch the cinematics and so on. Invest on such single player environment and allow people spend the time they need in order to get into the game, thus keep up the subscription mode. Not only that, but after players reach end game, at least double the earning of those who would lose PvP activities, since frustration would only lead them to leave the game, also limit the amount of Ap and Medals people earn through sieges, so nobody will abuse the system, trading Ap and medals. It's fine if someone wants to have more than one account, and play in different factions in order to explore the world. It's even better, since it gives a sense that more players are actually playing the game, even though it's just an illusion, since it's just one player with more accounts, and not a real income, where different players are playing at the same time, thus increasing the general income (that's manipulation of statistics only that might please a boss). Of course, someone would have to play a subscription per account, but still, they wouldn't be able to invest in more things, not the major player base at least. So you must keep other players attention, some would focus on PvP, while others would focus on Role Playing, and others Craft and Gathering. This way you have different types of players, and you would encourage different types of games, attracting more players to the game, allowing them to invest in different things. I just wish this was made before, since now the player base is just too limited, also the activities and worse, those activities are exploited in order to allow geared players to get more geared, or even worse, make real money out of in-game activities like discussed in the AFK Dredgion topic. Still, there're ways to fix things, but would need NCSoft, as a whole to figure out better ways to do that, I'm, as a player, just pointing out thing based on my own experience, playing NCSoft games for more than a year. Now, the best way to make profit, so close to Assault on Balaurea, is to limit medals income, and putting them into the Daeva Pass. This way people would stop exploiting the Fortress and Abyss, and NCSoft would allow new players to jump direct in action, also would make profit out of them as a matter of convenience, since you would pay for convenience. You won't sell Platinum medals just now, nonono nerk, you need to make money, money!! Ops, sorry Shugo took over the keyboard. But yeah, you would need to give players Silver or Gold medals, so they would waste their bought medals in the fountain, thus increasing NCWSoft profit, that if you want to play dirty, but people aren't stupid, and wouldn't use their bought medals for that... I gues... hope... whatever. So this way you have an equilibrated game, where people take time to level up, learn the game, learn the lore, gear up naturally, but in a controlled pace, so they pay for their playtime, pretty much the way the game was designed. You can't change it, its base mechanics, the way it was intended to work, since you can easily destroy the game like Aion 5.0. No, just keep what's good, let the game flow, control the rewards in a manner people won't make fun of NCSoft, selling important things for real money and so on. It's NCSoft game, you guys must show who's the boss. This way you would encourage new people, allowing them to compete, and even if they lose, for Aion's sake, increases the pointes we get by losing for at least half of the winners. You can do nothing with just AP, since you can't trade it, but you can do a lot with medal, since they're tradable. If you make bought medals tradable and earned medals untradeable, then NCSoft would monopolize its market. Then you can control the pace of the game the way you want, not allowing others to exploit things and get advantage of other players. Not only that, but if you guys still want to invest in Classic, you guys need to balance every class, focus on different ways for each class to earn rewards and so on... you can't depend everything on damage, and as a Cleric, I the struggle. That's it, I'm really trying to do my best in order to see this game alive. Hope this suggestions might be useful in the future.

For some, it might be hard not to understand, but to accept others might recognize what's obvious. Due to this fact, let's explain how Aion always worked, and how people always took advantage of the system, at least, since it became free to play. I say after free to play, because before you actually had to pay subscription, thus the whole idea of factions and so on were actually something interesting to play with, since hardly ever someone would bother to have two or more accounts in order to play, and not only that, but in Korea, if I'm not mistaken, some games are attached to you ID. Important to mention the game was developed in another age, more than ten years ago, and developers also forgot that people could communicate out of it. So after all this introduction, let's explain how the game was idealized. The main idea NCSoft, as a company had, was to use subscription method as their main income. This we can easily understand since World of Warcraft was very popular and this kind of method was profitable. Thus, Aion was created entirely based on time-consuming activities that would make you waste your subscription time. That's why we could see so many quests that would ask you to take an item from a corner of the map and deliver it to the other corner of the other half of the world. Not only that, but in your journey, you would also encounter some challenges, like crossing a PvP area, while delivering this same quest. Not mentioning leveling was so boring, they had to change in in Classic, now after more than ten years. I won't lie to you, this is absolutely boring, but the time-consuming activities also make us create bounds to the game, since we stay so many hours or days in the same area, that we start to associate our mental states to such areas, thus developing out memories and associating those memories to our past, thus triggering the nostalgia Classic had upon us, calling back so many player. People don't understand that, but that's pretty much the reason everybody back to the game, and no new players, of this generation, dive too deep in Aion anymore. So we're all veteran players not only in Aion, but we also played other games and expanded our understanding about how things work in the world. After you leveled up, then you need more time consuming activities, and those activities were both related to PvE and PvP. PvE wise, you would need to run dungeons, but those dungeons would work only in group, not only that, but the loot would be based on a competitive method that even while in group, you would still compete among your friends. That might be cultural I don't know, but it's a toxic mentality that encourages a toxic behavior, so people would always fight over something, like animals would for territory, thus decreasing the changes of earning something, and also, increasing the time you spent in the game. Then, the predatory system started to show its claws, but there're people smart than that, that look for ways to achieve their goals. Those people created Legions or played with their family or close friends, where they would feet a character with items, so this character would help another character and so on. This is known as "static group", a group that won't change its composition, thus would be easier to achieve things. Not only that, but some players who played in the Korean version came to US, or US/EU players who played in Korea brought with them knowledge of the game, thus developing the firs legions. Those first legions knew each corner of the map, also each boss on map and its drops, not only that, but the drop rate, the frequency of the rate and so on. Then, they started to monopolize those bosses and items, getting super strong, also super rich, selling the loot at the broker and so on. They also understood how sieges worked, and how to bring the "static mentality" upon those sieges, forming groups that would conquer ta fortress at ease, thus earning lots of Kinah and medals, since the leaders of a guild would receive, as a reward from the game, tons of Kinah and Medals. Then, now they monopolize not only PvE items, but also Qina and Medals, sharing those among their close friends. Then, they could easily gear up in a matters of two or three months, monopolizing everything in the game. And what they would do with those spoils? Sell of course, in order to make more and more money, not only that, but some clever people knew they could make profit out of the game in the real world, then a black market of Kinah and so on appeared. That's really something easy to understand, and something we see in real life, where people take advantage of others, or advantage of those who are willing to spend real money. So as you can see, NCSoft, encouraging such competitive environment just paved a road of headaches, because now they would need to deal with the Kinah sellers, account sellers and so on. Not only that, but people wanted to play Aion, thus creating private servers. Then, we had the free to play method in order to minimize all those issues, which actually didn't work, and was the game's doom. Not a doom necessarily speaking, but since the whole idea was based on subscription methods, having a free to play game, where you could create multiple accounts, just opened a huge breach for exploits. People then, including myself, created another account, a free account, and started playing in both factions. I did that for a simple reason; i couldn't have my kills in abyss, due the hyper geared people, so I had to kill my own Asmodian in order to get 5 Silver Medals and about 1k AP. Misery in comparison to what Legions make each siege, but I was interested in Radiant Ops Wings, and was an useful way to help me out, since I always played alone. But if I did that, you can imagine what other players would do in order to take huge advantages, not only that but also legions and so on. Then, even before people were able to trade fortress among factions, now they don't even need to bother anymore, they would just create characters in the opposite faction and trade fortress among themselves, increasing their income and profit. So we could see people holding abyss ranks eternally, trading AP, Fortress and getting fed in Dredgion, AP instances and so on. At this point, the game became a cloud fiesta, where anything matters nothing anymore, since everything is based on cheating and exploiting. Nowadays, what we see in Tiak and Dredtion is just a fraction of what it was. No wonder why they developed this Siel's Aura stuff, and back tot he subscription mode. As we can see, it dealt with the large numbers of Kinah sellers and people who want to take huge advantage of the game, but still, we are people, veteran players, and we know how to exploit things, humans are good in doing that. Nobody would openly talk about it, they want their status, they want to feel their endeavors means something, or worse, they want to sell this idea to people, pretty much like NCSoft sells a game where we can have fun, and waste our money while doing that. So nowadays, we have old players playing like before, trading stuff among their friends, holding ranks in an unfair method, thinking this means something, or that they're good players, or have some advantage in the game. The ones who actually take advantage are those who turn in-game stuff into real money. I personally never cared about that, but there're lots of people in underdevelopment countries that can make a living out of that, not in Aion anymore thought. This is a huge social issue that transcends the in-game environment. So yes, there're people playing in both factions, there're players feeding their alternative toons, in the other factions. There're players helping each other out in the arena in order to get their daily kills for quest and so on. This turned out the game is so broken, that doesn't matter anymore. I personally play because I like the story, the character creation, the world design and the idea of building your character based on your own efforts. That's why I came back to Aion, but I understand it's a grindy game that wants to suck the last penny of you, based on time consuming activities, because the company didn't use the money properly before, in order to create another Aion game, so they're trying to do that now, taking our money the fastest way possible, but missing the fact huge amounts of real money were stolen from NCSoft due their own greed. If you want to change that, it's very, very simple. Remove medals from fortress siege, or limit the amount of medals and AP you earn, thus sell those in the Season Pass. Or if you don't want to completely destroy the game, at least double the points of those who lose something, and also give them medals to allow them to compete against geared people. Aion isn't a matter of skill, but a matter of wasting money and how much geared you are, since you will never kill a full 50e +15 without PvP gear, even if the guy is AFK (exaggeration here). Anyways, welcome to Aion, and I just hope someone notices how NCSoft does their job poorly. As I always say, the staff are people just like us, they have their demands and are doing their best. If the company wants to improve their games, they must pay for it, for competent people in order to improve their games, since nobody would waste the time I'm wasting sharing all those details that a huge multinational company should have known already. In the end, don't take the game, the companies or even people too serious, just play your game and have fun, you have nothing to prove to anyone.

Doing that we gonna play against super geared people, or super geared premades. Even so, those people have their alts playing as Elyos, feeding their Asmos in order to get more AP. Most people already know the Legions and people who often do that. The worse part is the simple fact NCSoft doesn't care or even bother. I nerver had issues with the support team, respect and appreciate their help, but it seems there're sectors of NC West that doesn't care about the game. If you see all the AP traders, cheaters and abusers, and nobody does anything. People holding and swapping fortress between factions, trading AP in sieges etc. Queueing alts in order to feed their main toon, as previously expressed. Nobody care, and I don't know how super geared people don't get bored. In the end, there's no skill, just credit card battle, where you can't even compete. They say to share suggestion, but they won't take any, since they would have to change the entire game.