Drops are worse after March 1st "Update"

[Lut]

Now nothing is dropping from monsters in the open world. Only gray misc items can drop from mobs. Please fix this with emergency maintenance asap. 

[Gwendel]

I killed around 200 mobs yesterday on a couple of characters, one 34 and one 55, one I used a amulet on and I got a green recipe drop.  On a lvl 55 I did not use a amulet and on a 4 dot mob I got a white manastone.  There were probably 5 elemental stones across all the mobs I killed.

There were NO weapon or armor drops and maybe a couple hundred kinah on the 4 dot mobs.

The legion I am in is made of mostly new to the game players or returning old players.  We start with nothing.  I see people running around panda stuck because they do not have the kinah to use the teleporter to go back to the other maps.  There's plenty of personal shops around begging for help with kinah so they can afford to buy their stigmas.

I am expert in alchemy and have tried making as much kinah as I can using those skills.  It's hard competing with the prices the bots can do and still make kinah to cover my costs and my hours of gathering or grinding for dp to morph.

I honestly think no one at ncsoft usa is playing this game or testing on a test server.  Otherwise they would see it's impossible to have new players here unless they get a helping hand from someone who has millions or billions of kinah spare.  1 lvl 70 enchant stone was nearing 1mil kinah when I looked.  No one wants to take you on instances unless you are +10 and with the fail rate,  getting to plus 10 could cost 100million kinah or more on one piece of armor or weapon,  and that's not including manastone prices.

I do not want a hand out, I do not want freebies.  I just want a game I can play and have a hope of reaching a stage I can join others in playing.

So while NCsoft says the drops are working perfectly, I want to say that for a player trying to make it in the game they most definitely are not working for us.  The code may be doing exactly as it is supposed to do, but something needs to be done to allow real players to play.  Without players playing, the bots will eventually leave and there go those siel's subscriptions as well as all the missing or cancelled subscriptions from the real players who find they can not make it in this game.

Edited March 3, 2023 by Gwendel
clarification

[Adorkable]

I am using an amulet now on double drop and getting barely anything for drops, not even junk drops - and no Kinah at all.
And this is becoming concerning, because every few hours - there are easily 10 minutes of people complaining about this.

• We have many new players joining > and asking why the drop rate is so very bad.
• We have these same new players > getting caught in the big city once they become a Daeva. 

The second issue is that the regular quests do not show - and new players do not realize they must keep running to the NPCs to see if they have quests.
Due to this, they are no able to have enough kinah to get teleport around - once they become a Daeva.

________________

It is nice to see an influx of new players. But the lack of drops and inability to know where to get the quests to help them gain kinah > is driving them out.
Last weekend I had open recruiting for new players, sent them low level potions, running scroll, etc... but most of them left the guild and game due to the issue with being able to obtain Kinah from drops (and again, not seeing the quests w/o running from npc to npc).

I also think that new player seeing the many many new negative comment in the chat - are driving them away.
 

Please consider troubleshooting these issues .. by logging and playing the game and seeing what we see / experiencing what we do.
I am a legacy player from Old AION (2009) and I sincerely want to see this game gain many new players - as well as  retain those who are already playing.

 

[Gwendel]

I made a new character last night.  Other than going into haramel (I did get some drops in there and manastones), I am now lvl 20 and have not had a single drop in open world.  I wanted to see what the new players are experiencing.  I know what lvl 55 new players are experiencing.  The way the game is currently set up with drops will not allow anyone to stay and play this game.  

Rather than destroy the game by driving away all new players they should have active in game GM's banning bots.  But I guess the siel's subscriptions the bots are buying it just too good for them.  Drive the players away and it will eventually drive the bots away too.

https://imgur.com/a/jpmvwXR

11 new SM bots joined the game.  All had siel's.  Later I seen another 8 bots all up there too.

[Vadux]

I had finally decided to come back to Aion and check out classic. It was very short lived. I made it through Poeta and onward to Verteron. Because the normal quests are hidden unless u know who has them or look for them, there is barely any low level kinah. I was bound still in Poeta when I reached Verteron.

After buying skills and 1 row of inventory I was unable to afford to even bind in Verteron for the first step of the campaign there. Thus I thought I'd go out and grind some mobs to get a lil kinah, however nothing dropped. Without me seeing Crab Norris, I was promptly delt with and respawned in Poeta of which I could not even afford to leave.

The way things are established now are terrible, mobs drop nothing or near nothing, and without the ability to toggle "normal quests" you play a game of seek and find to get what little kinah you can. The open world loot to me was part of what made Aion fun, and I did buy Siels, so I feel like that aspect of it for the drops/kinah are a bold lie at this point. 

Starving the bots is a lazy solution to the problem if this is indeed the case with what's done. You are hurting the real players and decimating the economy.