Change Daeva Pass Rewards

[Lovestone]

No one cares about Pastel Orange Dye - Take out the HP +85 and Put in Magic Resist +12 from the Trainees Manastone box - Make the stigma shards tradeable - as a matter of fact, make all the scrolls tradeable - tired of having 2 sets in inventory - Make some pretty clothing - okay this month was nice but man, get some better designers. 

[Khallarion]

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.