My thoughts on 6.2 and some system changes that should be considered

[ArmeniaX-KT]

Hello guys

I know that this kind of requests are not resolved immediately, but as Aion lover I must contribute my feedback, and maybe if everyone does, the change will come from administrator side.

I am a returnee player for 6.x, I decided to continue on my characters as i spent alot of $ on different stuff. I really liked 4.8 for Katalam/Danaria and the camps, and with this 6.x and removal of many content I was happy to give this a comeback cause I can give 1-2 hours a day to this wonderful game.

Personally I am a developer, and I know how hard it is to maintain everything going on, and you guys as a company need finances to go on, and I am really happy to go with Prestige Pack or spending $ on game, because I know why it matters alot. I am even for bringing back the subscription model for this game, it would solve many issues with $ and let players just have fun, instead of having stress for p2w stuff on every step.

I did google-ing and found out about the rates of gear enchantment, and this is really ridiculous. I spend more than 100 ancient stones, and 30 legendary ones, and my weapon is still not +15. I will try harder though, but how I am supposed to face old players who got their Ultimate gear? I did the math, and it is almost impossible (0.25%) to go to +15 from +10 with just ancients. With legendaries its 3.5% which is still very low. I am able to farm ancient enchantment stones, but how do I farm legendaries?

I would continue for a month now, but If I can't pass this barrier of getting 1 legendary item, I will have to quit again Right now I can't event think of Ultimate items, I didn't even see a ultimate enchantment stone, and with ancient and legendaries, the rates there are near 0...
The first month EU update went live, they had normal enchantment rates, that can be considered too.

I am adult man, but I love Aion and still find time for it 1-2 hours a day, so infinite grinding is not for me, I am able to pay instead, but I want to see results for it. With current system, it is RNG for paying too.

I would like to hear recommendations or some information which will still keep my hope up for this game I liked for so many years now.

Keep up the nice work guys!!!

[Mirelium-KT]

I agree with you ArmeniaX. The only reason i managed to get one weapon to+15 is due to compensation stones for my old omegas and tempering. And even so, the rates are crazy.  I spent 30 ancient and over 60 legendary pvp enchantments to +15 an Ancient weapon (and I was lucky, I know). I don't even bother talking about Legendary or Ultimate. 

Not to mention that the current kinah shop is not friendly at all. I know people said a lot that Aion is P2W, but in previous patches it had something very special, that a real p2w games doesn't have. The ability of a f2p player to get the same items as a p2w player. Now that's gone. Almost everything on bcm can't be sold on broker. If you have real money to buy enchantment stones and contracts you will use that only for your benefit, and no one else will take advantage of it. 
At least until now, if someone had a few hundred bucks to spend on omegas or whatever, he had the possibility to share his goods with the rest of the server. 

And the saddest part is that the patch itself it's actually pretty good. I would strongly advise Aion team to read the multiple threads on the forum regarding 6.2 feedback, because the talks in the community are pretty negative, and I would like to enjoy this game for many years to come. But as it is now... I doubt i'll be able too. 

[Shirayuki-DN]

I managed to +15 my first piece on my main with no compensation stones, all it took was 40 ancients (lots from quest and genesis crystal xchange) and 3 legendary stones (pvp instance). Maybe i'm a rare case. Meanwhile I +12ed 2 pieces on my alt (just duo clienting camp business), took 130 ancients but I did attempt for 15 on 1 piece and failed it back to 10 so took more stones. I personally think if you guys planned it out better you wouldn't have spent so many legendary stones which is a very rare resource this patch. For me the rule of thumb is to reach +12 ancient gear using only ancient stones. Based on the enchantment rates from +6 - +9, it is 48% pass rate. Its a coin toss so its still imo gud to use ancient. +9 - 10 is only 28% but yolo anyway. Once you reach +10, the reason I don't resort to legendary immediately is because it doesn't drop below 10 and because you have a 10% chance for a +2 proc hence the decision to only use legendary from +12 and onwards.

I however do agree that there should be more ways to get legendary stones this patch besides just siege and pvp instance. Not the cash shop no. I'm not gonna suggest it be on the cash shop since I've always been playing dis game as f2p. Because without more sources, I can only envision myself in full +6 genesis crystal legendary pvp gear and perhaps 1 ultimate +6 in the next couple months even if given 6.5 enchant rates.

[Deidara-DN]

I had high hopes for this patch but I’m quickly realizing how much of an issue everything being described here is. I have been playing a consistent 4-5 hours a day since the release of 6.2 and on a good day I’ve gotten 2 or 3 legendary stones. And more often than not they fail.

Now I would have absolutely no issues with this system if everyone was on the same page. If we all had to grind 6 months to see our first ultimate piece, so be it. That’s a challenge, and a lot of us love a good challenge. But we’re not all on the same page. For the first time, ever, a new patch is released and from day 1 there’s deep wallet players running around like supermen among peasants. For the first time, you see players who are able to 1v6 or 1v10 in open world and win. And they’ll keep on winning. Because it’s impossible to bridge that gap on 2 legendary stones a day. 

Whining aside, I’m not terribly concerned with the pvp imbalance because that’s not my priority in the game. I know the NC business model enough to know that I can just wait 6-8 months and the nice things will come raining down from events. Then I’ll consider not Afking all my pvp instances.

But what about the new and returning players? Are we supposed to bash them for not selecting the new server? Or are we supposed to tell old friends that haven’t logged on since 4.5-4.9 that they should just quit again because there’s no real way for them to actually catch up to all the players with the compensation goodies? More than once Ive seen old friends logging in for the first time after a long break and I’m asked for advice on gearing up for PvP in this new patch. And more than once I’ve had to watch their interest instantly fade away because there’s nothing they can physically do (be it grinding or MasterCard) to catch up with existing players and have a fun experience. 

[2s3004E2-DN]

20 minutes ago, Deidara-DN said:

I had high hopes for this patch but I’m quickly realizing how much of an issue everything being described here is. I have been playing a consistent 4-5 hours a day since the release of 6.2 and on a good day I’ve gotten 2 or 3 legendary stones. And more often than not they fail.

Now I would have absolutely no issues with this system if everyone was on the same page. If we all had to grind 6 months to see our first ultimate piece, so be it. That’s a challenge, and a lot of us love a good challenge. But we’re not all on the same page. For the first time, ever, a new patch is released and from day 1 there’s deep wallet players running around like supermen among peasants. For the first time, you see players who are able to 1v6 or 1v10 in open world and win. And they’ll keep on winning. Because it’s impossible to bridge that gap on 2 legendary stones a day. 

Whining aside, I’m not terribly concerned with the pvp imbalance because that’s not my priority in the game. I know the NC business model enough to know that I can just wait 6-8 months and the nice things will come raining down from events. Then I’ll consider not Afking all my pvp instances.

But what about the new and returning players? Are we supposed to bash them for not selecting the new server? Or are we supposed to tell old friends that haven’t logged on since 4.5-4.9 that they should just quit again because there’s no real way for them to actually catch up to all the players with the compensation goodies? More than once Ive seen old friends logging in for the first time after a long break and I’m asked for advice on gearing up for PvP in this new patch. And more than once I’ve had to watch their interest instantly fade away because there’s nothing they can physically do (be it grinding or MasterCard) to catch up with existing players and have a fun experience. 

Your second paragraph is very true. In fact, I just quoted you in another thread:

 

I've never seen such imbalance in 5+ years of playing Aion. I remember yesterday seeing someone claim they received 26k damage with one skill (considering our health pools are about 40k right now). Despite loving pvp myself, I haven't been pvping much. Between the gear disparity and sluggishness from not having a decent transform, the fun in it has evaporated for me.

 

Your last paragraph made me crai. So true. Friends list full of mostly number+letter names. The ones that come back usually disappear after a week or two. And I can't blame them at all.

[Mirelium-KT]

4 hours ago, Shirayuki-DN said:

I managed to +15 my first piece on my main with no compensation stones, all it took was 40 ancients (lots from quest and genesis crystal xchange) and 3 legendary stones (pvp instance). Maybe i'm a rare case. Meanwhile I +12ed 2 pieces on my alt (just duo clienting camp business), took 130 ancients but I did attempt for 15 on 1 piece and failed it back to 10 so took more stones. I personally think if you guys planned it out better you wouldn't have spent so many legendary stones which is a very rare resource this patch. For me the rule of thumb is to reach +12 ancient gear using only ancient stones. Based on the enchantment rates from +6 - +9, it is 48% pass rate. Its a coin toss so its still imo gud to use ancient. +9 - 10 is only 28% but yolo anyway. Once you reach +10, the reason I don't resort to legendary immediately is because it doesn't drop below 10 and because you have a 10% chance for a +2 proc hence the decision to only use legendary from +12 and onwards.

I however do agree that there should be more ways to get legendary stones this patch besides just siege and pvp instance. Not the cash shop no. I'm not gonna suggest it be on the cash shop since I've always been playing dis game as f2p. Because without more sources, I can only envision myself in full +6 genesis crystal legendary pvp gear and perhaps 1 ultimate +6 in the next couple months even if given 6.5 enchant rates.

Well i did try on my PvE gear to use more ancient enchantment stones then legendary, and the outcome was not that great. I should however say this, I don't have a big problem with the rates, it's not that different of how it used to be in let's say 3.x patch, where you were burning through enchantment stones like crazy, but the scarcity of the stones. 

And the stones are already in the cash shop, they have been from day 1. And i really don't have a problem with that. Aion is a business after all, and in order for us to enjoy the game they need to make profits. As i said earlier, the problem is that a f2p player like yourself will never have access to them, because everything is untradable and unavailable to be sold on broker.  

My reserves are mostly regarding new players or returning players. How are they going to enjoy this patch. Veteran players have already legendary gear at least. With the scarcity of stones and the proc rates, I really am concerned that many of those who decided to return will not be around too much due to this unbalances.

[Shirayuki-DN]

Opps, for my case I meant pvp gear. I really don't see the point in enchanting pve gear to a high + cause as some sources already mentioned, you can do fm/bos with +5 ancient pve gear (not lakrum gear but those u get from genesis crystal/coe/mirash), i'm not very sure about the + on legendary gear for the bare minimum to do primeth but I think its +5 as well. Imo the problem for pve gear enchanting only comes when you get ur full set of ultimate end game gear and your trying to get +15.

Pvp stones do not exist in the cash shop currently if i'm not wrong and I hope it stays that way if the stones are unbrokerable.

[Shirayuki-DN]

To add on, I would rather have scarcity than major imbalance in pvp besides the already existing compensation gear imbalance.

I think basically what ncsoft has to address is the unbrokerable nature of most items, like just make more stuff brokerable. On day 1 of logging in, I was already having a mental breakdown of how to even make kinah in this patch besides craft mats/cubics and npcing items in general because most of the stuff is unbrokerable.

As for new and returning players on older servers, that I'm not entirely sure, since theres even a problem with having enough kinah to unlock warehouse and inven slots which are basic needs. No idea how the guys on ereshkigal are managing it. Seems like they are doing well on the other post in forum.

[2s3004E2-DN]

11 hours ago, Shirayuki-DN said:

To add on, I would rather have scarcity than major imbalance in pvp besides the already existing compensation gear imbalance.

I think basically what ncsoft has to address is the unbrokerable nature of most items, like just make more stuff brokerable. On day 1 of logging in, I was already having a mental breakdown of how to even make kinah in this patch besides craft mats/cubics and npcing items in general because most of the stuff is unbrokerable.

As for new and returning players on older servers, that I'm not entirely sure, since theres even a problem with having enough kinah to unlock warehouse and inven slots which are basic needs. No idea how the guys on ereshkigal are managing it. Seems like they are doing well on the other post in forum.

"No idea how the guys on ereshkigal are managing it."

I wanna know the secret too.

[Kailor-DN]

Only way I manage it is sell all I can, even if it only sells for 1 kinah and, that included transformation pots, you get about 10-15 per hour on average, it isn't much but, it might be that teleport you need. That and clear areas, don't just kill what you have to, if you can target it, kill it, sell all drops. All you need is the quest given gear to level up, sell everything else. Warehouse only what can be brokered, if the fees go down, that stuff might be worth brokering later. Should have about 2 mil by level 60 with two inventory expansions done.