The "Filthy Casuals" of Aion

[Forgotten-DN]

4 hours ago, HealingSquid-KT said:

Another thing is comparing Aion now to Aion 3.0 is not really a good comparison simply because the game went f2p and it had its largest influx of player base during that period.

It's not a terrible comparison. The argument being made was that all aspects of the game were still relevant at the time and that it was accessible. You had a choice in things to do, whether solo or in group, and you never felt limited in what you could do. Where the point falls flat though is that the level cap at this time period was 60, so naturally everything from 1 to 50 was still relevant, as the gap from 50 to 60 was still extremely small.

The reason casuals are suffering NOW is because the gap from 65 to 75 is no longer incremental, as in previous patches. Becoming an Archdaeva pretty much negates any progress made from 1 to 65 and makes you redo everything under the new system, whereas before you could stay in your old gear and slowly work your way up. Before 5.0, you'd still be relevant even with gear from previous versions. You can't do that now. Worse, because of the massive power gained from Archdaeva skills, you either need to pony up cash or spend time grinding away to 75 to feel remotely competitive with others.

On 12/9/2017 at 4:37 PM, Rinkusan-KT said:

...I believe that your options of having fun as a casual player nowadays is extremely limited...

Yep. I suspect part of the reason is that people now feel COMPELLED to do certain things rather than actually having a choice. You feel COMPELLED to do Luna. You feel COMPELLED to do FoO. You feel COMPELLED to do Kumuki. You feel COMPELLED to do Spire. And this is because they're the only options that actually provide you with decent progress/rewards in the short amount of time you have available to you. Sure there are other options, but they're not nearly as efficient, thus your choices are actually far more narrow now than previous versions.

[Vantheria-DN]

Another thing I haven't seen mentioned is the amount of useless "stuff" in the game from previous patches. For example, if we bother to do the dark blue and/or light blue quests in lower levels, we're awarded with iron coins. Then silver coins. Then gold. We continue to trade them in for the "next" one in the line until we finally end up with a bunch of useless mithril coins. These coins have no purpose unless you like the gear skins you can buy with them. I saw someone on lfg begging for some static aether. I whispered them and told them where they can buy current aether in Pandaemonium, but they replied that they specifically needed the static version for a quest.

Aion needs to update all of these quest rewards to current items. Instead of giving us iron coins, give us ancient coins or petra medals. Then new players can be saving these up to either use or sell once they reach 66. Instead of having the angel's pink quests give us gear that is nowhere near as good as the free level 10 and level 55 gears, have the angel give us fragmented spinel or something else useful that we can be saving up.

[Rinkusan-KT]

11 hours ago, HealingSquid-KT said:

Now that all that is out of the way let me actually tell you why i quoted you for this post. Your whole post was actually directed at New player experience not casual player experience. Many casual players have quit due to reasons i mention above others have quit for other reasons but no matter how you look at this game it is what 8? or maybe 9 years old. Casual players that i know who enter an older games want to know if there are faster ways to level to get to end game. They care not for the first 65 levels if the game actually starts after 66.

I probably should've made my definition of "casual" a bit more clear. When I mentioned casual players in my original post, I was referring to anyone who plays this game for leisure. That means anyone who's racing for the best PvE gear or anyone who takes PvP seriously aren't the people I'm talking about, but I agree that some of my post was directed at new players as well. Both new players AND seasoned players who don't take the game seriously (AKA your casual legionmates) are people who play the game "casually", so I lumped both of them into the same term.

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This goes for all types of cheating.  I really wish i could use names but you can not shame people on the forums so it frustrates me not being able to explain this properly. Long story short a big time NA player got IP banned recently on the EU servers for botting. This is a big reason why WoD community left early 5.0 is this same person was leveling on EU and got banned for using wall hacks to walk through and kill a link gate boss. This got us talking on TS3 and we ended up coming to the conclusion that NCwest does not care about its player base they would rather give us a generic we will look in to it answer then actually do something. Where as people who complain about Gameforge when you hear the stories about the people going from NA to cheat in EU quickly return back to NA because they got banned for doing the same things that got you to your high rank. Then later cemented the fact that people who abused fallen poeta shows that they can do stuff about cheaters they just choose not to altho this happened well after we all quit.

Most cheaters cheat because they are way to competitive they have to have the best faster then everyone and for cheaper then most people. This means if they can not put out enough DPS they use hacks to increase that DPS but consider it to be their own skill which is sad. Note i am not saying you are like this rinku but i just mearly wanted to point it out that cheating is a form of being competitive and the 2 words can often be traded out for one and other.

I absolutely agree; cheating is unfortunately a form of being competitive. I'd love to talk about what I think of the current state of "competitive players", but that would be a bit off-topic. That being said, I think it's important to distinguish between competitive players who take this game "seriously" (AKA critical players who try their hardest to earn that win) and competitive players who take this game "personally" (AKA players who constantly gamble their self-esteem and "online rep" on every win/loss, whether PvE or PvP). 

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Another thing is comparing Aion now to Aion 3.0 is not really a good comparison simply because the game went f2p and it had its largest influx of player base during that period.

It would be like comparing 4.X(when tempering was first introduced) To now and how hard it is to get +5 accessories and +7 or better plumes/bracelets this is because now you do not have the CC hackers supplying entire servers with items like Tempering and Feli for cheap prices.. 

Let me make this point a bit more clear then. My point was NOT that "Aion 3.X is better than Aion 5.X". My point was that "Aion used to have casual-friendly content in Aion 3.X compared to Aion 5.X". The message I was trying to get across was that Aion 5.X has little to no casual-friendly content because of the removed early-game content and competition-centric endgame content. I also highlighted how it's absolutely possible for Aion to be both competitive-friendly and casual-friendly by comparing Aion 3.X to Runescape.

Basically, I was trying to compare the game content rather than the "success" of each patch series.

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I am not trying to be negative so sorry if it reads like that as i did enjoy reading your post and i thought hard on how i was going to give you a counter argument. Infact it got me in-contact with some old guild members that i have not talked to since 5.0 was released so for that i thank you :D. I could go on and on to help people understand what angle i am coming from but honestly i am sure this is going to read fairly poorly anyways but i just had to type it out.

Be as negative as you'd like; as long as it's not destructive criticism, it's 100% welcome here. Thanks for taking the extra time to make a coherent post. After all, I put the disclaimer at the end of my original post for a reason

[Rinkusan-KT]

7 hours ago, Forgotten-DN said:

It's not a terrible comparison. The argument being made was that all aspects of the game were still relevant at the time and that it was accessible. You had a choice in things to do, whether solo or in group, and you never felt limited in what you could do. Where the point falls flat though is that the level cap at this time period was 60, so naturally everything from 1 to 50 was still relevant, as the gap from 50 to 60 was still extremely small.

The reason casuals are suffering NOW is because the gap from 65 to 75 is no longer incremental, as in previous patches. Becoming an Archdaeva pretty much negates any progress made from 1 to 65 and makes you redo everything under the new system, whereas before you could stay in your old gear and slowly work your way up. Before 5.0, you'd still be relevant even with gear from previous versions. You can't do that now. Worse, because of the massive power gained from Archdaeva skills, you either need to pony up cash or spend time grinding away to 75 to feel remotely competitive with others.

I'm glad you brought this up because this was the point I made in my original post that I second-guessed for a while: was old content in 3.X relevant just because the gap between endgame and early-game was smaller back then?

I honestly don't think so, and this is why I brought up Runescape 2006. The gap between early-game and endgame in Runescape (in terms of both grinding and stats) was gigantic, literally over a hundred times bigger than Aion's. But nobody - or at least, very few people - would ever complain about the gap because you had the choice to be competitive enough to grind through that gap and become the next Zezima OR level up at your own leisure and enjoy the OVERWHELMINGLY abundant choices for having fun at every level of every skill.

I believe that rewinding the progression system back to something similar to 3.X OR adding more casual content to endgame is necessary to keep casual players engaged. I think casual players would even be happy if mini-games were added. There's an entire map filled with beautiful scenery and plenty of unused space for mini-games after all: Oriel/Pernon. All that being said, I could be wrong, but I think revamping the pre-archdaeva progression system is something NCWest has the power to do, which is why I advocate this above any other changes.

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you either need to pony up cash or spend time grinding away to 75 to feel remotely competitive with others.

I get that there's still some issues with maintaining competitive status in this game, but keep in mind that this topic isn't about the plight of players trying to be competitive. It's about the players who don't care about competing with others.

 

[Neleth-KT]

After 3.x contents got destroyed by 4.8
Now 5.8 people want 3.x contents back again 

Like I said we hate 5.0 we gotta wait and see what 6.0 will bring to us on 12/20/2017

[Squid]

54 minutes ago, Rinkusan-KT said:

I probably should've made my definition of "casual" a bit more clear. When I mentioned casual players in my original post, I was referring to anyone who plays this game for leisure. That means anyone who's racing for the best PvE gear or anyone who takes PvP seriously aren't the people I'm talking about, but I agree that some of my post was directed at new players as well. Both new players AND seasoned players who don't take the game seriously (AKA your casual legionmates) are people who play the game "casually", so I lumped both of them into the same term.

 

I was probably being to nyerk about the particulars.

54 minutes ago, Rinkusan-KT said:

Let me make this point a bit more clear then. My point was NOT that "Aion 3.X is better than Aion 5.X". My point was that "Aion used to have casual-friendly content in Aion 3.X compared to Aion 5.X". The message I was trying to get across was that Aion 5.X has little to no casual-friendly content because of the removed early-game content and competition-centric endgame content. I also highlighted how it's absolutely possible for Aion to be both competitive-friendly and casual-friendly by comparing Aion 3.X to Runescape.

Basically, I was trying to compare the game content rather than the "success" of each patch series.

I think the way i answered this was more towards my own experience in Aion since release. This i feel will greatly impact what content is considered good early game content for people. Without going in to the history of my Aion experience patch by patch the servers i was on for 2.0-3.0 were all dead early game and the content even on Siel had major issues with finding groups for pre level 50 content. Servers i hopped through were Nezekan > Vaizel > Siel

Again this is my experience with the game Timezone may of had a large impact on whether people found groups or not. That is why i feel its a player base issue not, Not an issue of having not enough content issue. As mid to late 2.X suffered the same issues as Aion is currently suffering. The content is still there you can just skip it if you can not find groups for it which honestly is better then grinding elites for 5 hours like it use to be. 

Lets use a hypothetical here. If say they paid Summit1g(Twitch Streamer) or someone along those lines to play 200 hours you would get a 2000-4000 player influx wanting to either kill summit or play with him.. You would see people running FT some people will run DP others will run Udas. All this low end content that we consider to be useless would be lively again because the new players would not know that it is crap.

Many people that i have introduced to games enjoy the experience like you were saying @Rinkusan-KT that means avoiding forums avoiding guides on how to get to endgame ASAP. 

8 hours ago, Forgotten-DN said:

Yep. I suspect part of the reason is that people now feel COMPELLED to do certain things rather than actually having a choice. You feel COMPELLED to do Luna. You feel COMPELLED to do FoO. You feel COMPELLED to do Kumuki. You feel COMPELLED to do Spire. And this is because they're the only options that actually provide you with decent progress/rewards in the short amount of time you have available to you. Sure there are other options, but they're not nearly as efficient, thus your choices are actually far more narrow now than previous versions.

This is really interesting you say this because i consider Kumuki + Spire the reason i want my legion to come back and try Aion. Especially if gear does not blow up in 5.8 that is going to be an awesome addition to the game having these for the casual community.

[Mempo-KT]

2 minutes ago, HealingSquid-KT said:

This is really interesting you say this because i consider Kumuki + Spire the reason i want my legion to come back and try Aion. Especially if gear does not blow up in 5.8 that is going to be an awesome addition to the game having these for the casual community.

Due note that Accessories will still blow up if they are not the Purified level 80 version, so getting access to +6 is still going to cause people a lot of pain.

[Squid]

5 minutes ago, Mempo-KT said:

Due note that Accessories will still blow up if they are not the Purified level 80 version, so getting access to +6 is still going to cause people a lot of pain.

Ok that is noted :D.

[Ehila-KT]

I wish we had another version of Tia's eye, it was honestly the best thing they ever did in this game. It served as a battleground while keeping it relevant for small to large groups. 

But this isn’t just a comment on that.

 

The single biggest problem in my mind is the +20 skills (and going over the +15-enchanting cap to begin with). 

I have recently returned to this game and have managed to acquire a decent amount of gear in the last month or so. I am hardly casual though, but here are my thoughts.

 

Where are all the people out in the world. The open world content just doesn’t seem that worth it. I can run around illuma or reshanta all day and find nothing but bots (which are good to complete those pvp dallies yo.), now I don’t spend much time out in norsvald, mostly because there is nothing there to do. When I was slightly lower level I would sometimes do the grind quests but as xp has scaled so massively in the last level or 2 it just doesn’t seem worth it at all.

 

I feel like a bully now. I am ether basically immune to someone or I get roflstomped, there doesn’t seem to be an in-between ground.

 

Why do strengthen god stones exist? I remember them adding silence and para resist to gear, now these 4% para stones wtf? One of the biggest complaints about aion pvp has been god stones. 

The next issue I find is the lack of resources, if I want information on where something is found like a skin or where an npc is located it is close to impossible to find online. Since coming back here from wow I have found this to be very annoying. Just basic information on things.

 

Another thing that bothered me is why haven’t heals scaled at all? People now have close to twice the hp they used to but I’m still stuck with healing light healing for 1.3k??? my biggest heal being 4k (ish).

And there being no stat to improve it. Healing boost should be attached to one of the archdeva’ stats.

Because healing boost stones really don’t exist.

 

 

 

[Mempo-KT]

18 minutes ago, Ehila-KT said:

I wish we had another version of Tia's eye, it was honestly the best thing they ever did in this game. It served as a battleground while keeping it relevant for small to large groups. 

Why do strengthen god stones exist? I remember them adding silence and para resist to gear, now these 4% para stones wtf? One of the biggest complaints about aion pvp has been god stones. 

Another thing that bothered me is why haven’t heals scaled at all? People now have close to twice the hp they used to but I’m still stuck with healing light healing for 1.3k??? my biggest heal being 4k (ish).

And there being no stat to improve it. Healing boost should be attached to one of the archdeva’ stats.

Because healing boost stones really don’t exist.

Tia's eye made a return for Korea in 5.8. I'm not sure if it's still there; I think it's a part of a rotating event for them.

Strengthened godstones exist because players should feel a greater need to get 75Aug Spinel armour because of it's innate godstone proc reduction. We also get 1% reduction from archdaeva passives, which is a staple among most player's kits these days. We are getting godstone procced less these days than we have ever before.

Heals are increased mostly through archdaeva creative points. You need to spec into improving skills. You can increase your amount of creative points by leveling or using essence cores.

[KallSu-KT]

11 hours ago, Rinkusan-KT said:

When I mentioned casual players in my original post, I was referring to anyone who plays this game for leisure. That means anyone who's racing for the best PvE gear or anyone who takes PvP seriously aren't the people I'm talking about, but I agree that some of my post was directed at new players as well. Both new players AND seasoned players who don't take the game seriously (AKA your casual legionmates) are people who play the game "casually", so I lumped both of them into the same term.

That's indeed what "casual" should mean. It doesn't mean "rookie", it doesn't mean "noob", it doesn't mean "PvE lover" or "PvP hater". It means someone who plays only the contents he/she likes, regardless of the meta or the benefit. They are usually not farmers, but they might also be farmers, if they like some particular quest/arena/dungeon.

But we ended up talking about what's the best patch or how to easily enchant your gear/progress through the game. This is something that casual players are usually not interested in. They don't care if their gear suck, because they don't want to play to be competitive. Most of the friends that I had and quit, they did it because the game simply became boring.

The instances introduced with the 5.0 weren't interesting, and there was no point in repeating every day the old ones pre 65 (also because the few useful loot you could find, became useless with the fledgling gear). The new adma/theo sucked, they were too short, meant only to farm gear easily, no gimmick or cooperation required. And AoE was too gear demanding for them (before the nerf). Putting all the players from 66 to 75 on the same map was probably another mistake, since you couldn't chill around in peace.

The slow leveling up was an issue, but not because it was too long. Because it was too repetitive. It requires to do your dailies every single day. Killing 70 mobs here and 70 there, everyday, it's something that you do only for the reward, it's not entertaining. And almost all the new quests were boring like that. A casual doesn't care if his/her gear is +0 or +15 (as long as he's not completely cut away from most of the contents), so it doesn't matter if it's easier to gain omega or if the gear doesn't break anymore. The game still remains boring for them. Old contents became too useless and not challenging, while the new ones too boring.

[Neleth-KT]

Let me define what's a good instance.

A good instance needs to have these following features.

- Everyone can do it,what's the point of an instance if most players can't do them ? because it requires elite gears or need external programs to communicate look at instances that nyerked up like DLR,DD,AOE(Pre-Nerf),COE,TOE,BOS.FP,DL all required an external program to do the run while 3.0 which I considered the best patch RB,Raksang,AM/EF,Tiamat Stronghold all do able with random no need for a program.

-Instances has a reward for a purpose to run them,Every 3.0 instances has a purpose to run,AM/EF people run for skins,inventory pet and kahrun symbols,RB people running for mounts and RB cleric shield.TS people running for attack speed tome/orb mounts,and skins even 4.0 they still have purpose EB for skins,ap,medals,SSB for skins,DR for skins,IS for gearing,skins still doable with random and basic gears like AC,kahrun even ORB is an instance for everybody got best weapons/armors for everybody even u don't need gears u still can get purple stones

-They starting nyerk up with 5.0 what they gave everyone ? Just nyerking TL and Adma and gears is the worst of all archdaeva gears beyond that ? u need a legion u need a program, AC gears is merely better than TL/adma gears and u can't use them in AoE anymore,look back at 3.0 you can't run AM/EF ? u can't run TS ? u can't run RB it's okay we got alternate way you can farm kahrun first then come back to those instances later and kahrun gears is on par with AM/EF gears and still usable until 4.0.Back to 5.0 what the nyerk we got from TL/Adma ? nothing not even greater supplement.

-Don't be surprise why we don't get new players and aion is dying when everything u did is driving them away.You want aion alive ? Stop professional gaming and start fun gaming instead make it everyone game make people happy not just elites.

I really hope 6.0 will be reverse to 3.0 era if they continue to please pro gamers then I'm outta here I'm not pro I seeking for fun not competitive.

[KallSu-KT]

Sorry for the short distance reply, but I've just received an interesting email from the GF about Tera (that I played time ago):

New (temporary) server opens, with:

- Slower progression up to level 65

- Quicker progression from level 65, e.g. gearing up and earning item XP, tougher challenges

A bit off topic maybe but... do other similar games start to realise that maybe it's not always a good idea to rush the starting levels and to give a massive grind later on? I stopped to play Tera 1 year ago, so I'm not updated on its current condition. But such new exp rates seem curious.

[Nsn-KT]

I've said this since launch and it's been a year or two so I'll say it again: Unless you speak Korean and post this over there, you're talking to a brick wall.

NCWest has absolutely no control over this game. They control the events, that's really it. We get exactly what Korea gets. Fun fact, you can pretend you're playing 6 months in the future by getting a Korean proxy and playing over there.

I actually applaud NCWest a little bit, they see these complaints and try to implement some band-aids in the only fashion they're allowed to do. (Omegas and Temperings from event instances)

 

Anyway it was interesting to bring up OS Runescape. I think the popularity of that game comes from:

• Simple mechanics
• Clear, linear character progression
• Stable economy

Aion has none of that. The game is way too complicated, people are told to do X and Y from their peers but they don't understand why or don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. Market inflation is insane. Gear ceiling is way too high.

 

Imagine you are a new player at the moment.

You get +10 lvl50 gear to start off with. You kill everything in 1 hit. After mashing buttons for a few hours, you're probably getting bored, wondering why the game is so easy. You don't understand your own skills at all because you don't need to. Let's say for some stupid reason you stick it out and hit 66.

You are thrown into these instances that are way too hard for you even mechanically, then on top of that you're undergeared. Everyone around you has played the game for 10 years and are literally ten times stronger than you. You're thinking to yourself that you need to invest 10,000 hours to catch up to everyone else simply in terms of understanding the game, PLUS gearing. It's not worth it. There are better games out there.

 

Image you played back in the day and fire the game up again.

Your level65 gear is basically useless. Gear ceiling is insane and you'd have to invest tons of money to be even near the top again. Then you ask yourself, why bother to be at the top? The competitiveness to this game is completely gone. PvP is nothing more than a pissing contest between who gave NCSoft more money. Who wants to play that?

Aion can't get new players or even attract back old players.

 

Honestly, this game was barely competitive back when it was P2P. Think about 2.7; PvP was still largely RNG based exclusively due to godstones, people cheated every PvE instance (stormwing loci, bugging every single boss in both Udases, remember the Padmarashka bug? In what other MMO can you abuse an exploit like that and not get banned?), and 6v6 wasn't even that great because we had (and still have, lol) no ranking/ELO system for dredg.

What WAS good about 2.7 was the gear progression was simple. You get your Arena set, then GBG. You put green manastones in your gear. You enchant your weapon to 10. Even the people who played 15 hours a day had green manastones and a max enchant of 15. You could compete with them with basic arena gear if you had the game knowledge to play your cards right.

1-54 content wasn't nerfed to hell so you actually understood your class to some extent when you hit 55. You could run Udas & BTNM until you were comfortable enough to run BTHM.

 

Anyway Aion is on a slow burn and will slowly burn for the next few years until it's eventual shutdown. It's too much work to fix this game. You basically have to start from scratch. NCSoft is a business, and Aion is not making them much money. Their earnings reports make this loud and clear. From a shareholder's perspective, I'd like to see money put into R&D for a new game, milk the whales in Aion until it's all dried up and use that money to just try again. That's the best ROI for me.

 

Anyway this thread is useless like all other suggestion threads because the closest person who can make any real changes to this game is literally 10,000 miles away for most of us and probably doesn't speak much English. Icing on the cake is that they don't care about non-Koreans. We're too small of a market for them to, and I don't blame them.

[Mempo-KT]

1 minute ago, Nsn-KT said:

Fun fact, you can pretend you're playing 6 months in the future by getting a Korean proxy and playing over there.

Can you? I was under the impression that you needed a Korean SS Number to play....

[Nsn-KT]

1 minute ago, Mempo-KT said:

Can you? I was under the impression that you needed a Korean SS Number to play....

Not that it's really relevant to this thread but there are some Western non-Koreans who play KAION. Even if you figure it out you're going to have 300-400ms ping and have a really hard time without speaking Korean. I was just taking about a quick jab to translation times. Another really non-fun thing about NA Aion is that by the time we get a patch we already know exactly what everything is and what to do because the Koreans had it for 6 months already. There's no exploration, there's no learning boss mechanics.

[Mempo-KT]

Just now, Nsn-KT said:

Not that it's really relevant to this thread but there are some Western non-Koreans who play KAION. Even if you figure it out you're going to have 300-400ms ping and have a really hard time without speaking Korean. I was just taking about a quick jab to translation times. Another really non-fun thing about NA Aion is that by the time we get a patch we already know exactly what everything is and what to do because the Koreans had it for 6 months already. There's no exploration, there's no learning boss mechanics.

Yes, but to make an account you need a unique social security number to do so. If someone doesn't play Aion (and this is the only way), they can use their SS number to create an account and allow someone else to play. 

But I completely agree. The fact that we can figure out the entire game before it ever hits us completely ruins the experience.

I do however think that even though NCWest only controls events, that's all they need to be able to control to fix the game. But instead they give us Nutrients every couple hours (Koreans get +10 Manastone bundles and Felicitous for being logged in at iCafes for 6+ hours on weekends) and expect us to be happy without having a PvP event I think since the Abyss was reopened.

[Nsn-KT]

8 minutes ago, Mempo-KT said:

Yes, but to make an account you need a unique social security number to do so. If someone doesn't play Aion (and this is the only way), they can use their SS number to create an account and allow someone else to play. 

But I completely agree. The fact that we can figure out the entire game before it ever hits us completely ruins the experience.

I do however think that even though NCWest only controls events, that's all they need to be able to control to fix the game. But instead they give us Nutrients every couple hours (Koreans get +10 Manastone bundles and Felicitous for being logged in at iCafes for 6+ hours on weekends) and expect us to be happy without having a PvP event I think since the Abyss was reopened.

It's a completely different monetization scheme over there. If it rained gear here in NA, BCM sales would plummet and so would profits.

It's too late for NA. Once you go F2P (and do it wrong), you can't go back.

 

This is an interesting video series that many people here may find interesting: 

 

 

[Rinkusan-KT]

50 minutes ago, Nsn-KT said:

I've said this since launch and it's been a year or two so I'll say it again: Unless you speak Korean and post this over there, you're talking to a brick wall.

NCWest has absolutely no control over this game. They control the events, that's really it. We get exactly what Korea gets. Fun fact, you can pretend you're playing 6 months in the future by getting a Korean proxy and playing over there.

I actually applaud NCWest a little bit, they see these complaints and try to implement some band-aids in the only fashion they're allowed to do. (Omegas and Temperings from event instances)

 

Anyway it was interesting to bring up OS Runescape. I think the popularity of that game comes from:

• Simple mechanics
• Clear, linear character progression
• Stable economy

Aion has none of that. The game is way too complicated, people are told to do X and Y from their peers but they don't understand why or don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. Market inflation is insane. Gear ceiling is way too high.

I agree with the appeal of Runescape's simple mechanics since it was easy for casual players to learn it AND easy for competitive players to take it to the next level (via prayer flashing, gear switching, special attacks, etc.), and I also agree that the game had a much clearer character progression system. I don't agree with the stable economy being an appealing factor because way even back in 2006 when the game was at its peak, there was no grand exchange. People sold their items via word of mouth, and there wasn't even a broker system, so the economy wasn't all that stable.

As high as the gear ceiling is in Aion, the gear ceiling in Runescape was many times higher.

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Imagine you are a new player at the moment.

You get +10 lvl50 gear to start off with. You kill everything in 1 hit. After mashing buttons for a few hours, you're probably getting bored, wondering why the game is so easy. You don't understand your own skills at all because you don't need to. Let's say for some stupid reason you stick it out and hit 66.

You are thrown into these instances that are way too hard for you even mechanically, then on top of that you're undergeared. Everyone around you has played the game for 10 years and are literally ten times stronger than you. You're thinking to yourself that you need to invest 10,000 hours to catch up to everyone else simply in terms of understanding the game, PLUS gearing. It's not worth it. There are better games out there.

Image you played back in the day and fire the game up again.

Your level65 gear is basically useless. Gear ceiling is insane and you'd have to invest tons of money to be even near the top again. Then you ask yourself, why bother to be at the top? The competitiveness to this game is completely gone. PvP is nothing more than a pissing contest between who gave NCSoft more money. Who wants to play that?

Aion can't get new players or even attract back old players.

I'm noticing a pattern of some people in this thread falling into the trap of talking about the plight of competitive players and newbies trying to be competitive. This thread is about the players who choose NOT to be competitive at all.

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Anyway Aion is on a slow burn and will slowly burn for the next few years until it's eventual shutdown. It's too much work to fix this game. You basically have to start from scratch. NCSoft is a business, and Aion is not making them much money. Their earnings reports make this loud and clear. From a shareholder's perspective, I'd like to see money put into R&D for a new game, milk the whales in Aion until it's all dried up and use that money to just try again. That's the best ROI for me.

 

Anyway this thread is useless like all other suggestion threads because the closest person who can make any real changes to this game is literally 10,000 miles away for most of us and probably doesn't speak much English. Icing on the cake is that they don't care about non-Koreans. We're too small of a market for them to, and I don't blame them.

I'm under the impression that GM's have some power. After all, Aion over in EU has a whole daily quest system that Korea doesn't have. Is NCWest not capable of implementing some of its own minor changes?

[Nsn-KT]

4 minutes ago, Rinkusan-KT said:

I agree with the appeal of Runescape's simple mechanics since it was easy for casual players to learn it AND easy for competitive players to take it to the next level (via prayer flashing, gear switching, special attacks, etc.), and I also agree that the game had a much clearer character progression system. I don't agree with the stable economy being an appealing factor because way even back in 2006 when the game was at its peak, there was no grand exchange. People sold their items via word of mouth, and there wasn't even a broker system, so the economy wasn't all that stable.

As high as the gear ceiling is in Aion, the gear ceiling in Runescape was many times higher.

I'm noticing a pattern of some people in this thread falling into the trap of talking about the plight of competitive players and newbies trying to be competitive. This thread is about the players who choose NOT to be competitive at all.

I'm under the impression that GM's have some power. After all, Aion over in EU has a whole daily quest system that Korea doesn't have. Is NCWest not capable of implementing some of its own minor changes?

Gear ceiling in OSRS is much lower than you think. BiS gear in OSRS is only a little bit better than very easily attainable gear (think fighter torso vs BCP). I agree there are exceptions like the twisted bow though. To equate this back to Aion, imagine if all lvl41+ gear in OSRS was literally 1000x more expensive than it is now. Imagine playing that game.

The economy was annoying to use at times, yes, but very stable. In terms of RWT, at no point was there a dramatic spike in GP per real dollar for example. It was very steady.

NCSoft licensed its product over to Gameforge for EU. I am sure that contract gave Gameforge the ability to customize the game more for their region without the need for NC Korea's approval.

To answer your question, no, NCWest is indeed not capable of implementing their own minor changes without NC Korea's approval. If you think I'm lying, there's a reason why this game is 99.99999% identical to Korea's version. Even if NCWest was too lazy to do any level of customization, it would of at least accidentally happened to some degree by now.

 

Your complaint at its' core is that, unlike OSRS, if you spend an hour or two playing Aion after work, when you log off you don't feel like your character is any stronger and you didn't necessarily have any fun. I understand, and it's true.

[Rinkusan-KT]

2 hours ago, Nsn-KT said:

Gear ceiling in OSRS is much lower than you think. BiS gear in OSRS is only a little bit better than very easily attainable gear (think fighter torso vs BCP). I agree there are exceptions like the twisted bow though. To equate this back to Aion, imagine if all lvl41+ gear in OSRS was literally 1000x more expensive than it is now. Imagine playing that game.

I don't know; I remember grinding way harder back then for competitive gear than in Aion. I remember needing a full dharock set, a full verac set, an armadyl godsword, full bandos, full armadyl, ruby/diamond bolts, a dragon defender, etc. Compare that to Aion where you can farm and enchant a full 75ap set or a full apollon set in about a month or less.

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To answer your question, no, NCWest is indeed not capable of implementing their own minor changes without NC Korea's approval. If you think I'm lying, there's a reason why this game is 99.99999% identical to Korea's version. Even if NCWest was too lazy to do any level of customization, it would of at least accidentally happened to some degree by now.

Well, that's unfortunate then. I guess I'll just have to hope that some English-fluent Korean player read this thread and decided to pass on the argument over to Korea.  
 

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Your complaint at its' core is that, unlike OSRS, if you spend an hour or two playing Aion after work, when you log off you don't feel like your character is any stronger and you didn't necessarily have any fun. I understand, and it's true.

That's actually not my argument, although I agree that for many casual players, that's true. My original post is NOT about "the plight of casual players trying to become stronger" in Aion. My post is about "the plight of casual players who have nothing fun to do in the game EXCEPT get stronger by joining competitive players in the gear/skill race".

In Runescape, you could grind mobs for hours, farm God Wars to get top-end gear, merchant your way to billions, and become the next Zezima. OR... you could grind mobs at your own pace, do fun quests and minigames, or cut yew trees for cash that you were going to spend on your construction level and player-owned house. In Aion 3.X, you could grind for hours per day to get to lvl 60, farm instances for gear/kinah, learn your class and your match-ups, and become the next ShingXiao. OR... you could grind mobs at your own pace (since the exp gap each level was big enough for people to actually stay at that level for a while), explore/PvP on a couple of maps via rifting, do a bunch of quests (aside from the "kill X mobs" quests, there were plenty of interesting ones like the campaigns, quests that required you to explore the opposite faction's map, quests that summoned hidden world bosses, etc.), and play around with your studio/house (fun leisurely content that wasn't outdated at this point in time).

In Aion 5.X, you could grind for hours per day to get to lvl 75, farm the same instances for gear/kinah, learn your class and your match-ups, and become the next [insert competitive player here]. OR... you could... afk... maybe zerg PvP near the illuma/norsvold base if that's your cup of tea... maybe play around with outdated house content. None of these alternatives seem particularly fun compared to the examples I mentioned in the previous paragraph. This is the core of my complaint: this game is unfriendly to both casual players early-game (because of the rushed and deleted early-game content, a problem that Runescape and Aion 3.X did NOT have) and casual players end-game (because of the reasons I explained in this paragraph).

[Ashlayna-DN]

Here are the things that had me scratching my head after a 3 year hiatus from the game:

No abyss before lvl 48.  This was particularly jarring, since I had toons that lived there for lowbie PvP, if they weren't chasing rifters in Morheim/Beluslan, or rifting.

Speaking of:  Rifting, max levels going to Morheim?  You know, the camp idea was a decent one, but didn't need to be set up for capped toons.  It would have been more fun for all involved if it had stayed at the 3.x levels.  I know I popped in for a brief visit once in that three years, and had my 3x assassin chased all the way to Kellan's Cabin by two purple Elyos, whom I then killed on my chanter.  But the response to the purple Elyos in Morheim was "Cya later".  They have completely destroyed the 25-49ish game, in order to cater to what, high levels?  AP may have gone the way of the Dodo for high level players, but it would sure be nice to be able to earn it on lowbies, who may actually need it for whatever gear they can get, or to level a legion.

Another thing I noticed today was a C Dredge that didn't pop the entire time it was open.  Now, it could be time of day, it was noon on a Tuesday, CST, but with all the people in chat, I was sort of surprised, but not really, since the focus is now on 70-75, including legion recruitment spam, that I've seen to date, so far.  These things hurt new/returning players as much as anything else.  Taking away the opportunity to learn to play a class in PvP, for those that were interested, as a prime example, and then these players are dumped into the mix at 66 with experienced PvPers, and get blown up, even if they're not fighting hackers.

About the only thing that's really held my interest was deciding that, after playing Asmo since pre-select, I'd roll an Elyos to see how the other side lives.  I plan to play to at least 66, but after that, I'm not sure what I'll do, but it's probably not going to be what I did the first time around, and play for years.  My sub was still active when this game went F2P, but I'm not sure I'll be keeping that kind of trend going once I sate my curiosity on the Archdaeva line for Elyos.  I used to love to siege, but that seems to have gone the way of the dodo as well, since the Balaur now automatically take all fortresses, instead of actual sieges, where we're either attacking or defending a contested area.  I noticed that all of that was gone in Gelk too, the other day.  It makes the early game really boring for someone that knows what it used to be like.

[Aly-DN]

@Ashlayna-DN All valid points, though you could have summed all that up in one sentence. "Twinking is no longer a thing." Problem is that you aren't going to find a whole hell of a lot of people that think that's a bad thing. If you want to twink, don't play Aion. 

Sieges aren't terrible because the Balaur auto take the fort. Sieges are terrible because you can't join them with a premade group or alliance. Other than that, 200+ vs 200+ sieges can bring massive amounts of siege PvP and strategy involving kisk placement and artifact uses and which faction is actually listening to their leads. So much better than the every-man-for-themselves contribution race that we used to have. 

Lol@Gelk/Inggi sieges. 

Oh.. and psst. There is absolutely no difference between a level 66 with no experience getting slaughtered by a 75 and a level 42 in quest gear getting slaughtered by a level 40 twink in +15 gold abyss. The loser loses nothing from either encounter, so don't try to make it sound like your twinking backside somehow helped people learn their class.

[Ashlayna-DN]

3 hours ago, Aly-DN said:

@Ashlayna-DN All valid points, though you could have summed all that up in one sentence. "Tweaking is no longer a thing." Problem is that you aren't going to find a whole hell of a lot of people that think that's a bad thing. If you want to tweak, don't play Aion. 

Sieges aren't terrible because the Balaur auto take the fort. Sieges are terrible because you can't join them with a premade group or alliance. Other than that, 200+ vs 200+ sieges can bring massive amounts of siege PvP and strategy involving kisk placement and artifact uses and which faction is actually listening to their leads. So much better than the every-man-for-themselves contribution race that we used to have. 

Lol@Gelk/Inggi sieges. 

Oh.. and psst. There is absolutely no difference between a level 66 with no experience getting slaughtered by a 75 and a level 42 in quest gear getting slaughtered by a level 40 tweak in +15 gold abyss. The loser loses nothing from either encounter, so don't try to make it sound like your tweaking backside somehow helped people learn their class.

...and way to miss the entire point?  While I do have a couple of toons that were indeed dedicated to lowbie PvP, I have no problem just leveling them up.  However, I don't see how opening a rift to capped toons to go to Morheim/Eltnen was better than "tweaks"?  I even listed an example of how it wasn't.  I broke the cardinal rule about kisk killing on those two purples that chased my 'sin, I killed it after I killed them with my chanter.  If a couple of 50+, at the time, toons didn't have anything better to do than harass lowbies, they needed to be sent home.  There is a difference between being attacked by a 3x and a 5x while you're trying to level, especially when you're 3x yourself.  However, that's exactly what they set up when they removed level caps from rifts.  That was more the point than your rant against "tweaks".

[Aly-DN]

Your entire post was about "low level" content. Sad news.. Aion has passed you by, Twink Boy.

First, let's take the Fast Track Server. That server has zero PvP. No rifts. No contact at all with characters of the opposite race. Bye-bye, 'low level' PvP.. which was just another name for two shotting those that haven't even the possibility of fighting back.. something you later in your post decry has horrible when a geared level 75 does it to a quest geared level 66. Hypocrisy? Sure! Why not?! Let's have an extra large scoop. Since the Fast Track Server was created to give players a safe environment to level and learn their classes, those server low level areas were totally empty. So the devs added the guards (that drop relics and ap potions) and opened the rifts to max level characters. Those areas were re-purposed into now useable areas. Hooray for the devs! Taa-daa! Why the rifts were and should have been opened to all levels in a nutshell.

The second big draw of the Fast Track Servers (aside from safety from e-peen) is that while leveling there you get double xp! Another hooray for the devs! Since Aion is a game that is focused on end-game content (though now instead of just being max level content, it is arch-dava - 66 to 75 - content), leveling is now so much easier and faster. That means that playing the game as intended, players don't really have time for B or C Dredg as they end up blowing past those levels. Anyone choosing to hang out around B level dredg level has only themselves to blame for long long queue times. Arch-daeva PvP instances pop a whole lot quicker, as they should.

 

P.S. Yes. This is an anti-twink rant. Though in my defense that you brought up all tweak issues in a thread that is speaking about the plight of the "casual" player just burns my bacon. Twinks are not casual players. Twinks were, back in the day, the bane of casual players. You had to be pretty hard-core to push past the constant gank-fest that existed prior to the arrival of the Fast Track Server. Twinks have driven away far far far more causal players from Aion than any other single thing since Aion went live. So I say.. Good riddance, Twinks. Put on your big boy panties, level up and come play with the adults.