NCWEST Please take this post seriously

[Bastikan-DN]

Let me preface this post by saying that I've been playing Aion since launch in 2009, some of you may  know me as "Blackie" or "VitaminSB" from Azphel > Zikel > Tiamat.   I have loved and hated the game for almost a decade.  That also means I've seen the ups and downs the game has gone through.  

To keep things short, 6.2 has rekindled my interest in the game as well as many of my friends.  Look, NCSOFT, we are willing to spend money to support the game, but do not destroy the last hope for Aion by being this greedy.  I'm going to post a few suggestions for changes, some urgent, and some minor, that will 100% help Aion stay alive longer and profit YOU more.  For anyone else reading this post, feel free to discuss.

1. Kinah incoming rates are way too low.  Sure, people have saved up billions of kinah before the update, and have the resources to buy all the crafting materials and enchantment stones, etc... But for ANY healthy economy in a game, the INCOMING rate of kinah MUST be equal or higher than the OUTGOING rate of kinah.  Sure, I can make 100m a day farming mobs for manastones, crafting materials, etc... But for the players buying my items on the broker (which has insane tax rates, more on this later), where is their money coming from?  There is NO way of generating money in this game except grinding.  After 3 hours of grinding non-stop, I generated 2.1m from vendor items.  My items are selling on the broker for a good amount, but eventually the people who have saved up a fortune will also run out of money.  

2. Tax rates on the broker are way too high.  A ~12.5% tax rate, while good for taking kinah out of the economy, is not sustainable.  If you want to keep the rates higher than 10%, at least make it so LISTING the item is not so expensive.

3. Transparent Transformation Scrolls CANNOT be sold at $1.00 USD a pop.  The vast majority of players want to look like the character they created and spent money on costumes for.  What is the logic in spending lots of money on making your character look good if you can't look like that?  My suggestion: Sell a permanent Transparent Transformation Scroll for let's say, $10.00 or $15.00, and let us toggle on or off whether we want our scrolls to give us transparent transformations.  I GUARANTEE you 70%, 80% of the players who are serious about Aion will buy that item.  But as it stands, no one is going to buy Transparent Transformation Scrolls at $1.00/4 minutes or $1.00/6 minutes ($15 or $10 PER HOUR).  Doing this will also boost your costume sales on the BCM.

4. Transformation Contracts are unreasonably hard to get.  I paid for prestige and 35 transformation scrolls and got 1 Ancient Transformation out of it.  Based on how hard and rare good transformations are, I rerolled a different toon because I could not use the transformation on my Sorcerer.  My friend paid $50 for 35 and did not get a single Ancient Transformation.  Another friend paid $100 and got the free Ancient + 3 more.  So based on our small sample size, it seems like the chance to get an Ancient transformation is roughly 1 in 35-40.  At the current rate of how these contracts are going for free to play players, they will need to play ON AVERAGE half a year to get an ancient transformation.  That is absurdly poor design as it is absolutely imperative to have a transformation to be able to compete.   Based on my points in #1 and #2, it seems you guys want to create kinah sinks and take money out of the hands of rich players.  Why not make Transformation Contracts cost kinah OR Money?  Depending on different servers' economy, 20-25mil per contract, if you must, limit it to 10 contracts a week.  Players will play your game for longer periods of time to grind kinah to buy these contracts and the servers will maintain healthy populations.  You can still make a ton of money from people who would rather save time and just buy these contracts with RL money.  Look, it just really feels bad seeing people who have been super excited for 6.2 for months quit after a week because they have come to realize that they are utterly useless unless they are willing to spend a ton of money.

5. Enchantment stones are TOO hard to obtain.  I make this point after making a few assumptions: The 10x Ancient PvP Enchantment stones quest on each artifact is a non-weekly, non-repeatable quest.  Also, I have not found a reliable way to obtain more than 2-4 Legendary+ PvP Enchantment stones a day.  Suggestion: Put an NPC in town that sells PvP Enchantment stones for AP.  At the current rates of AP gain, which is about 500k-2million a day depending on sieges, dredge and IDL win/loss, a FAIR price would be say, 100k AP Per Ancient PvP Enchantment stone, 300k AP Per Legendary PvP Enchantment stone, and 800k AP Per Ultimate PvP Enchantment stone.  Sure, some people may have 30, 40million AP saved up, but they also could have had hundreds of Tempering solutions saved up.  This will help dilute AP totals on players who have played a long time but at the same time help them have something to spend AP on.  AP has always had meaning other than a supplemental currency for crafting gear.

6. AP gain in PvP need to be increased.  What is the real point of having siege give 600k AP, dredge give 380k AP for a win, etc... when in PvP I get 1-3k for a solo kill on a player?  I would at least double the AP gain in PvP to be in line with points made in #5.  This would still mean I need to PvP constantly and play the game for many hours to get 1 or 2 PvP Enchantment stones.  Isn't the point of the game to play it?  What burnt me out from Aion in the first place was all these dailies and weeklies that must be done, and then you have nothing to do afterwards.  World PvPing to grind for PvP Enchantment stones would be a GREAT addition to stimulate the health, population, and activity of the servers.

7. Damage values are very weird.  I understand being under geared.  But the difference between a few pieces of gear is the difference between doing 50 damage or 10,000 damage is very confusing and counter-intuitive.  I don't have any suggestions for this point, but would like some discussion with how you guys have been experiencing this.  Sometimes someone who has better gear can tank 20 players and in some cases, kill them all.  You could never have done this back in the golden days of Aion.  Sure, there's power creep and such, which is completely fine.  But you have to draw a line between making a player a GOD and creating a balanced and competitive environment.  We, the players, want to compete with our skill, not our wallets.  This is a topic for a whole other discussion but I just wanted to bring it up to see what others think.

NCWEST, you should really take some lessons from the cash shops of very successful games like Path of Exile, Dota 2, etc...  I'm not suggesting turning the cash shop into a purely cosmetic and quality of life shop.  But really take a step back and think this:  Would YOU buy this item from the cash shop?  Cater to the playerbase, not your wallets, and your wallets will indirectly get fat.  If you can do a few or all of these suggestions, the game will be exponentially more fun.

[Squid]

1 hour ago, Gensb-DN said:

 

1. Kinah incoming rates are way too low. Answer: Sigh... This is 100% the issue with the mentality of players and issues in MMORPGs. Players are so use to being richer and richer and richer till there becomes a point when they are so rich they buy out all the low level items and list them for 10x the price. If a game takes more money out then there is incoming that is a positive thing for a game to have. We are all so use to just being filthy rich in every game we play. Do i think the kinah rates are a little bit to low? Yes however i genuinely believe that kinah sinks will help the overall game as a whole not make it worse. The people that will suffer are the ones who do not even play and sit in town all day.

2. Tax rates on the broker are way too high. Answer: I totally agree.

3. Transparent Transformation Scrolls CANNOT be sold at $1.00 USD a pop.  Answer: Players not buying this will result in the fastest course of action against such a bad decision by NCwest. If you continue to buy them then your contributing to the problem. The fact that people are buying them and they are probably a top seller this means they will probably never remove them or even lower the price.

4. Transformation Contracts are unreasonably hard to get.  Answer: Now that they got the cash grab adding a reasonable way for people to obtain yellow transformations with out RNG would be a great idea. My suggestion would be add 1 yellow transformation to the prestige pack(re-triggers every 30 days). This is a reasonable way to obtain 1 yellow per month while not gutting the company. This would allow them to leave the current Transformation contracts in as a RNG boxs while giving the people who can not afford to spend more then subscription fee a way to slower over time produce some results with out having to rely on events.

5. Enchantment stones are TOO hard to obtain. Answer:   We can all use more enchantment stones dunno if i say its not high enough as it is the first week and enhancement materials have always been a bottle neck. Would be good to have a reliable way to obtain purple PvP stones. We all know red PvP stones are going to be added to the cash shop at some point. At the end of the day 

6. AP gain in PvP need to be increased.  Answer:  Yea good enough can not complain.

7. Damage values are very weird. Answer: Agreed. I feel its hard to really know what the difference is. You did mention back in the golden days of Aion but even during 3.X a fully geared PvPer could tank 20 players with a healer who had MR socketed. Its all about the gear and always has been.

My response is inside.

[Sachibi-DN]

1 hour ago, Gensb-DN said:

 

3. Transparent Transformation Scrolls CANNOT be sold at $1.00 USD a pop.  The vast majority of players want to look like the character they created and spent money on costumes for.  What is the logic in spending lots of money on making your character look good if you can't look like that?  My suggestion: Sell a permanent Transparent Transformation Scroll for let's say, $10.00 or $15.00, and let us toggle on or off whether we want our scrolls to give us transparent transformations.  I GUARANTEE you 70%, 80% of the players who are serious about Aion will buy that item.  But as it stands, no one is going to buy Transparent Transformation Scrolls at $1.00/4 minutes or $1.00/6 minutes ($15 or $10 PER HOUR).  Doing this will also boost your costume sales on the BCM.

 

I don't want to be rude. but, I feel as if GMs here in Aion forums answer and close thread for not take a conversation with us the players. I really feel as they throw us the 6.2 update and forgot us as always in all my years playing. 

I remember the frustrating days on kahrun with a loooooooong time in a dead faction. more than a year I think. with no a single merge. bored and exhausted asking for it until they did. but came in the worst update of Aion as was 5.0 

I don't know when it's happen. but in some point of my long years playing it's turned really sad. 

I wanna enjoy the game again as before. I met my husband here in Aion. this game means so much for me. 

I made a post about the transparent scroll. it's obvious that no one likes the way they are forcing us to buy them for see our characters. I got an answer not so much convincing. I feel probably will make a change with this in 1 year more when most players get bored. 

sadly I have to agree with u. I stop playing on 5.x, I came excited about 6.2 cuz I hate fight with my wallet on the game, that's why I'm not playing lineage 2. I faced just 1 thing that I really don't like it. and noticed many others players too. I came to forums to discuss it in a nice way with other players and GMs,  as they are doing pleasantly on lineage 2 classic forums. but players here in Aion forums has no answer about this. and when I made a post, was closed witha vague answer. 

well... I just come to forums to check if they will do something about this. if not, I don't feel sure to back in a game were never read the players. 

[2s3004E2-DN]

1. Good point. It seems guides to making kinah in 6.2 (like sywo's) are based on making kinah off of selling items to other players via broker. We're not getting significant amounts of kinah off mobs anymore and actually have to worry about every teleport we make, and every scroll and potion we consume (not made any better by the fact you lose your transforms if you die in pvp, and it's usually poorer players who are dying in pvp). We've already seen posts by new/returning players who have been stranded in some region or another because they had no kinah to teleport. So I would like to see more kinah sources (where those sources are not other players).

2. Agree. And the consensus in many threads seems to be that the broker fee is bs.

3. Good idea. However..our appearance was taken away from us. I don't think we should be paying to have it back. We should be paying to deviate from the default character appearance; we shouldn't be paying for our toons to appear in their original forms.

4. Yeah it seems getting high grade contracts is super rare:

Myself, I've opened around 7 or so contracts and only gotten whites/normal grade so far except for 1 green/greater grade transform (which gave me attack speed and physical stats on a cleric trololol). I'm up for the idea of being able to pay for contracts with kinah or money (besides the weekly limited one in Gold Sand Traders). I also think we should all get a free ancient level contract of our choice (as someone suggested in another thread) so that we can at least get close to our old move/attack/cast speeds. The quick and fluid combat was a core aspect of Aion and removing it by default makes the current Aion..well, not Aion anymore. Removing it lowered the skillcap (in terms of reaction time and weaving at least), p2w can win even easier (they move/attack/cast much faster than the rest of us), and slow-mo combat certainly isn't exciting.

5. Besides stones being hard to obtain, enchanting rates are also broken and should be adjusted.

6. This has been a problem for a long time. But I agree. Kills while solo pvping should reward more than group activities, which takes less skill. And likewise, group activities should reward more than alliance+ level stuff like siege.

7. 10000% agree. Delessa spoke some truth about this in the following thread (page 17):

 

Some additional truth from LFG:

 

As for my personal experience so far, it's been in line with what you guys are saying. Getting hit by enemies for 10x more damage per skill/auto than I'm hitting them for. And they're moving/attacking/casting faster too.

I laugh when players with godmode exchange gear complain about getting zerged. What do you expect them to do? Fight you 1v1?

[Vantheria-DN]

8 hours ago, Gensb-DN said:

Sell a permanent Transparent Transformation Scroll for let's say, $10.00 or $15.00, and let us toggle on or off whether we want our scrolls to give us transparent transformations.

+10000000

[Forgotten-DN]

8 hours ago, Gensb-DN said:

3. Transparent Transformation Scrolls CANNOT be sold at $1.00 USD a pop.  The vast majority of players want to look like the character they created and spent money on costumes for.  What is the logic in spending lots of money on making your character look good if you can't look like that?  My suggestion: Sell a permanent Transparent Transformation Scroll for let's say, $10.00 or $15.00, and let us toggle on or off whether we want our scrolls to give us transparent transformations.  I GUARANTEE you 70%, 80% of the players who are serious about Aion will buy that item.  But as it stands, no one is going to buy Transparent Transformation Scrolls at $1.00/4 minutes or $1.00/6 minutes ($15 or $10 PER HOUR).  Doing this will also boost your costume sales on the BCM.

I like most of your suggestions, but can we stop for a moment and NOT reward bad behavior? You've been playing since 2009. Remember the first Halloween event they had? They sent out surveys with transformations candies with no bonus stats that lasted a few minutes. Since then, transforms have gained more and more significance in game, but for 9 years we've been able to see our toons as we configured them and only transforming when going into specific instances or of our own volition by popping candies. So after 9 years, they want to upend the system and make transforms the focal point of everything, and you want to pay them to go back to how things were for the previous 9 years? I can understand wanting to support NC by giving them money, but not like this...

[KallSu-KT]

To say the truth, I already saw a lot of people with the fennec in 5.8, even afk (despite the cost of the transformation). It's not that transformations became suddenly the horror with the 6.2. When people did instances in 5.8, they already used them. And in town, you can remove it, it's not that you are forced to live with them forever.

[Shirayuki-DN]

@KallSu-KT Totally agree with you. I'm not saying that people complaining on forums about having to pay to look at your character are wrong in any way, in fact they are doing us all a huge favour. But when you start see-ing like 5 posts full of rants and rants going on and on and on about the issue, it starts becoming extremely annoying.

[1s2B708F-KT]

51 minutes ago, Shirayuki-DN said:

@KallSu-KT Totally agree with you. I'm not saying that people complaining on forums about having to pay to look at your character are wrong in any way, in fact they are doing us all a huge favour. But when you start see-ing like 5 posts full of rants and rants going on and on and on about the issue, it starts becoming extremely annoying.

You know what's extremely annoying to most people? Not being able to see the character the designed unless they constantly give NCScam money. The posts are common because people hate it and want their voices heard. 

[Shirayuki-DN]

So you've never used candies? Yea I understand you guys want your voices heard but is there not already a post like this one? I believe the right way to go about doing things is to suggest something to ncscam to improve the situation not just go about voicing out boo hoo we can't see our toons and not give any constructive suggestion like in this post.

[Forthyn]

Thank you for your post.

[Kailor-DN]

I gave them suggestions - make invisible transforms the default, pay to see them or, replace transforms with class based pots and scrolls in the various grades for the same price/drop rate.

As for Kinah, broker fees and tax are INSANE. New characters can't even afford to list an item if they happen to get a good brokerable item before level 30 or so, then you loose a good 20% of the value of the item just to fees and taxes. So, you have to carry the stuff, filling the small inventory you can't afford to expand. You can't sell stuff, can't trade it so, every couple of quests, you recall to get to your warehouse, then have to fly or teleport back to where you are questing. Time comes to move to a new zone, you can't, you're broke, can't afford the teleport, can't sell anything to get the kinah for the teleport and, can't get it off other characters on your account. You're stuck there and, yeah, grind for junk drops to sell, except you have no inventory space to pick it up because you can't networking sell anything! Only choices, quit or delete character and start over. Tons choose quit until it's fixed.

[Bastikan-DN]

3 hours ago, Shirayuki-DN said:

So you've never used candies? Yea I understand you guys want your voices heard but is there not already a post like this one? I believe the right way to go about doing things is to suggest something to ncscam to improve the situation not just go about voicing out boo hoo we can't see our toons and not give any constructive suggestion like in this post.

I think the point here is that transformations are MANDATORY, whereas candies were not.  Also, did I not provide a suggestion/alternative to each of my complaints in my post?  

[2s3004E2-DN]

5 minutes ago, Gensb-DN said:

I think the point here is that transformations are MANDATORY, whereas candies were not.  Also, did I not provide a suggestion/alternative to each of my complaints in my post?  

Dude, transforms aren't mandatory. I thought that as long as your speed is greater than 0 you can get to where you want to go???

-sarcasm off-

I don't know why people here are comparing transforms with candies. Guys..Transforms replaced SCROLLS not candies.

[Kaerd-KT]

7 minutes ago, Gensb-DN said:

I think the point here is that transformations are MANDATORY, whereas candies were not.  Also, did I not provide a suggestion/alternative to each of my complaints in my post?  

Completely agree. The whole candy argument is flawed because you could use scrolls at that point to get the important stats boosted (i.e. attack/cast speed and run speed). With those scrolls GONE, the only option is transformations, in effect making them mandatory. I keep seeing people ask, did you not use candies? NO! There was no reason to because scrolls were good enough that if you didn't want to look at an ugly furry instead of the character you spent time and money on, you DID NOT HAVE TO. That choice is gone with the departure of scolls, hence the backlash against the current way transparent transform scrolls can be acquired. 

[Shirayuki-DN]

3 hours ago, Gensb-DN said:

I think the point here is that transformations are MANDATORY, whereas candies were not.  Also, did I not provide a suggestion/alternative to each of my complaints in my post?  

Yo and did you in ur sudden rage get blinded by the fact i said

 

7 hours ago, Shirayuki-DN said:

Yea I understand you guys want your voices heard but is there not already a post like this one?

Do you see it now? Good.

And yea yea i've read all the yada yada abt how xforms r necessary whereas candies r not no nid to go caps on me. Let me add another point then, ur telling me when ur actually doing stuff like pve/pvp and zoomed out that ur noticing at all how ur toons look?

[Delessa-DN]

1) Koreans all bot, we can't; so there's that

2) Agreed, it's absurd

3) STOP BUYING SCROLLS! DO NOT BUY THEM!

4) Agreed, it's ridiculous.

5) Agreed, refer to point 1, bots.

6) AP is useless, you can't do anything with it.

7) I mentioned this in another topic, gear vs no gear is god mode vs faceroll.
 

@2s3004E2-DN

That image isn't quite accurate. 2* could kill mythic easily. Level 80 AP was a bit more tricky but even then 2* could deal with it depending on class. 75 AP weapons were more than able to destroy level 80 AP. So I'd actually say:

4.8: 1:1

5.0: 1:1

5.8: 1.5:1

6.2: 10000000:1 (yea I'm exaggerating but you get the point)

[2s3004E2-DN]

@Delessa-DN

Yeah I know it wasn't 100% accurate.

Point remains though that gear has only mattered more with time and that being undergeared in the current patch is worse than being undergeared in previous patches.

[Illumishinel-DN]

On ‎10‎/‎29‎/‎2018 at 10:28 PM, Gensb-DN said:

5. Enchantment stones are TOO hard to obtain.  I make this point after making a few assumptions: The 10x Ancient PvP Enchantment stones quest on each artifact is a non-weekly, non-repeatable quest.  Also, I have not found a reliable way to obtain more than 2-4 Legendary+ PvP Enchantment stones a day.  Suggestion: Put an NPC in town that sells PvP Enchantment stones for AP.  At the current rates of AP gain, which is about 500k-2million a day depending on sieges, dredge and IDL win/loss, a FAIR price would be say, 100k AP Per Ancient PvP Enchantment stone, 300k AP Per Legendary PvP Enchantment stone, and 800k AP Per Ultimate PvP Enchantment stone.  Sure, some people may have 30, 40million AP saved up, but they also could have had hundreds of Tempering solutions saved up.  This will help dilute AP totals on players who have played a long time but at the same time help them have something to spend AP on.  AP has always had meaning other than a supplemental currency for crafting gear.

The truth has been spoken, enchantment stones are way too hard to get and their success rate is way too low