Shirene-DN

EU Classic finally has a release date: April 12th. https://en.aion.gameforge.com/website/news/general/classicGetReady_27032023/

What NA players? this server is like 65% europeans, 15% hispanics, 10% americans, 10% asian/others. (from the 20% non-bots).

What next patch? server has a few weeks left at most.

I played retail ever since the 2009 betas before the game even launched, up to 7.3. So yes, I do know, it was a million times better than this garbage.

They never answer here, after 6 weeks with world drops broken and complete silence.. there's your answer, don't give any more of your money to this company.

how is that related to bots

EU never had these hoardes of bots.

You should either way, drops issue way more important.

I just know certain game code that you don't.

The power to change things lies in you people: stop giving this company your money.

Void what?

It's not.

Yep, exactly what I said, so these tests are kinda meaningless, but just to test. If I repeat that with Attack +5 for example.. no way.

Ok, for the sake of testing I tried 200 cheap white stones (4K each): Success: 126 (63.00%) Failures: 74 (37.00%) Managed to fully socket a 5-slot eternal 8 times: 1 -> 8 stones 2 -> 28 stones 3 -> 36 stones < --- "luck reset" pattern 4 -> 8 stones 5 -> 14 stones 6 -> 36 stones < --- "luck reset" pattern 7 -> 12 stones 8 -> 25 stones then used the last 33 stones and managed once to socket 4 < --- "luck reset" pattern If these were good stones at the current price of 2.5M that's 417.5M to socket your (just 1 set) PVE armor, a fused weapon and shield (assuming there are even 200 stones in the broker, which isn't the case since very long) This also assumes the success rate is the same with all types of stones, which from experience in 14 years of Aion, I know is not. Anyway very small (tedious) sample, and there are many other hidden factors involved, nothing in Aion is a simple RNG % (have you noticed for example, if you don't play for a while and come back to the game, or you bring someone new to an instance, drop rates seem to be amazing for a few hours/days, then back to shit). There is also a "luck" depletion factor by time/zone/items, i.e if nobody is socketing a certain type of manastones, your own chance will be much higher than otherwise.

Yeah

Those numbers are correct only if you assume their 60%/70% chance to socket is really a RNG generator, but it's not, there are many other multiple hidden factors. Stones needed on average after socketing 1 million pieces: 6-slot gold: 25 5-slot eternal: 29 6-slot eternal: 51 But now tell me how many times you've really managed to socket a gold abyss piece with just 25 stones.

They don't have the right to sell a product or service and not deliver it after you pay it.

When you run BT 200 times and still barely drop any of your parts.. loot/right buying is the only option left. NC is to blame with the ridiculous drop rates we have on classic.

They did in retail, lower chance to socket but you didn't lose the socketed stones, much lower frustration. They didn't bring most of the good retail fixes over to classic, and the situation is much further exacerbated here with the loss of world drops, bots, low population, lower drop rate than retail.

I didn't even get those

Where's the compensation for a month (and going) of no drops?

Legion of bots afk in sanctum warehouse for hours, really annoying.

150

This is a letter to NCWest management, even though it will never reach them, I felt the need to write this. Your Aion Classic is a shamble and bound to fail. I don't know how much of your staff knows anything about the game at all, my guess is.. close to 0. This is obvious by various replies from your support team, like they didn't even know about Inggi/Gelk "safe" areas and their replies on the subject in a ticket further suggest they know the bare minimum, about anything at all (their reply was that it was necessary for the opposite faction to enter the main cities in order to conquer them, and they replied this after "further checking"). I assume your support team has a few guidelines to follow and standard/common issues they are using as generic solutions. Citing NCSoft's (KOREA) team/executives, they are "tired" of supporting western publishers and the amount of work it gives them in billable hours necessary to help them in any little area. As a veteran player who has played pretty much consistently since the 2009 betas up to 7.3, and having been in NA classic for a while, these are my thoughts on some key areas. 0. Classic with all the bad, none of the good from years of retail fixes Over the years retail did many modifications to core systems that were extremally flawed and caused people to give up and abandon the game. You relaunched classic without any of all these necessary changes, why? - Manastones: changed so that you don't lose socketed stones upon failure to socket - +1/2/3 chance upon enchanting - Chance to receive a few stones when disenchanting your enchanted gear, not just 1 - Batch socketing of stones, instead of 1 by 1 - Automatic skill acquisition - Stigma NPC/shards modification - Low level abyss gear stored in account wh to be enjoyed by alts - Flarestorm key, at some point in 2.x they made it so that you don't lose it after being used - Different levels of AP stigmas that you can't even resell to recover some AP - Arena tickets not going into special cube 1. Low level stigmas Back in the beginning we needed a ~long time to level up to 50, it gave us time to run instances and eventually drop stigmas that are -mandatory- in order to access our advanced skill trees which, without them, you can pretty much just sit idle in Sanctum cause there is very little else you can do in any meaningful way. Sorcerers can't either DPS nor PVP, Clerics can't either heal nor DPS, Templars can't even pull mobs, you get it. These stigmas are not a premium/plus, they are NECESSARY to actually play the game at all. No cleric will be invited to BT without it. No clerics = no groups. Your changes in 2.5 did nothing, these are still almost impossible to get unless you create another 10 low level chars and -try- your luck farming them for weeks or months, I don't think that's how you are supposed to play the game. Cleric healing stigma: without this they can't heal high-end instances. Cleric dps stigma: without this they can't DPS Sorc DPS stigma: without this sorcerers can't dps Sorc PVP stigma: without this, sorc can't effectively pvp etc. 2. Drop rates Even before the 2.5 mess this was a problem. Now it's just completely out of proportion. How can you still not fix this a month later? The server was already bleeding players, now it's just completely ridiculous. New players can barely even make it out of Poeta because nothing drops, and buying skillbooks is just out of the question, 10+ players just beg around for some kinah to even be able to teleport or get some skills. Instance drops are also horrible, I've run 60 debil rushes (low udas) with 0 eternal drops, how is this 2x drop? it wasn't like this back in retail. I really don't get the point of making drops so scarce, it's not like you get some gear upgrades and be done with it for the rest or your Aion life, this gear most often provides a very little bonus over lesser ones, and after a while new gear arrives that makes them obsolete, but in the current state of the game we reach that point without even 1/4th the gear we should have been using to properly participate in anything, almost everything is a struggle for most of the playerbase unless they play various characters and 10-15 hours a day to somewhat scale up a bit. Let me show you a comparison of the broker between back in retail 2011-2013. These are real screenshots I took directly in the game in a retail NA server in those years. Old retail (left) vs Classic (right): Doing level 1-9 in Poeta, in retail I had full bags even before reaching the end. Classic? Those few armor items are just the default you get, not even drops. Broker: even MB 25s are impossible Even MB 23 don't exist anymore or magic acc. Godstones back in retail: (now 200M, the one on sale sometimes) 3. Manastones and enchants This further expands on point 2. These are NECESSARY to play, they are not a super premium. Without properly socketing and enchanting your gear you are just a much lesser version of your character. Again, giving players better, or much better/cheaper access to these, does not break the game or cancel progression. New gear comes after a short period which makes your previous set(s) obsolete. What people are forced to do instead is hold onto old gear because it's just impossible to work on the new one (what's even the point to struggle or work for something better when you know it's just gonna be worse). 4. Worthless season and event stuff Most of the rewards from default pass and events are just worthless, are you aware of that? All these [Event] manastones, shards, pots, they are so few and consumed so quickly that they are actually a burden on your already extremely limited inventory, people just delete them. [Event] (untradeable) manastones, same issue. You get many stones that are worthless for your class -> delete. EVEN if you would get 10-20 of them, still pointless, do you realize you need like 50-200 stones just to socket -1 piece- of gear? What's the point of these? And these 2-3 potions or scrolls from default pass? same issue, maybe if they were normal tradeable ones they could be a -little- addition, but back to the limited inventory issue: they are just a burden and we delete them. 5. Quna prices/wardrobe Your prices for skins are ridiculous. $15-20 for a skin, and then you need another $10 for a slot to register it.. ??!! How does this make any sense to your financial department, the people who decide on these prices? It's like you are paying $300 for a pizza irl, there is absolutely no value. Unlock all the wardrobe slots for free, add more skins, sell them for $1-2, then maybe people will buy a lot. But $30-40 for 1 skin? there is no value in this, so people don't buy. If you have $50 a month to spend in the game but get almost nothing from it, you don't spend them. Your greed ends up with making $0 revenue from the majority of your customers due to these poor decisions. 6. Useless instances What's the point of all these new useless instance? nobody is doing them, they are pointless. - 3-ppl instance in Inggi: you get maybe 1-2K AP and a few useless level 30 instance balaur mats, so they remain in the mobs. - Empyrean crucible: no usable rewards - Solo crucible: no usable reward, just a little kinah from selling the supplements - Unyielding BT: nobody can do it due to the issues mentioned previously (nobody can gear up to even try this) - Padma: only few groups can manage this, and the reward? nothing. 1/30 times = 1 useless balaur mat. What's the point? You know how many people are doing most of these instances? I will tell you: 0 7. AP trading/AP instances Why do we have only 1 dredgion per day? it used to be 3 in retail. Why 1 ESO per week? 1 upper fort per week? You know who is doing these instances? the old veteran players who either purchased kinah online or sold a lot of drops over the run of classic (to players who bought the kinah). They are paying other players to join them and give up their share of AP relics so that it may be even slightly worth it to go. Upper fort: average of 60K AP for a full group = 10K AP per week and player if not sold. ESO: 5K-30K AP per player/week, depends if you duo or go full group. You know in how long new players can ever obtain a full set of abyss gear, stigmas, etc etc etc like this? I will tell you: never in a million years, they save up for the next set instead. The only players who will manage to stay high up in the ranks to transform etc are those old veterans who are either buying the AP or AP-traded it in the beginning. Top asmo player in the ranks has 28 million AP, you think this is obtainable through legit means over the course of classic? No, it's not, never. 8. Inventory space/special cube Further expanding on and related to the previous issues, inventory space is a major burden. Why are arena tickets not stored in the special cube as it was changed in retail? Why can't we unlock more slots? We had a lot more in retail over the years. People play with various sets of gear, specially clerics, armors, weapons, accessories .. another struggle to even make room for drops when you run some instance. Even the instance drops are mostly useless, those HP/MP potions, grey items and many others, people don't loot them. You check the corpse first to loot only the few pennies of kinah, this is just stupid. 9. Bots The hoards of bots running around unbanned.. this is just so ridiculous, it baffles my mind that this is happening in an official server, people are speechless about this. Is it worth it making this extra quick money from their Siel sub over being able instead to keep the game running for years in a healthy server? Bots have in big part destroyed the server economy even before the 2.5 disaster, people quit over this, your customers quit over this, and your revenue as a business in the long run will suffer over this. People know you are not taking any action, they even run bots on their main chars, they even threaten you and tell you to go kill other bots, people even tell you they will farm X drop for you on their bot, there is no fear at all to get banned. There is no way you can't have 1 staff member go through the game on a daily basis banning these offenders, there is absolutely no excuse or technical hurdle to fix this situation, other than your wrong view over the financials of the company. Making a quick $ ends up losing you a lot of extra $ over the long run, this is basic business. ~