[Youtube] Death of a Game: Aion

[The Secret Cow Level]

 

[Aly-DN]

Interesting.

[Jagblade-DN]

I loved his videos on SWG and CoH. I was expecting Aion to come along as well after 6.2.

[zikira-KT]

Good Video,The thing with ncsoft only caring about how it does in korea strike's me as strange when not long ago i read a article about either ncsofts ceo or his wife saying how they wanted to really break into western markets.

This company for a long a time, basically since Aion launched does not listen to western player feedback and adapt the game design for it's region.I played at launch and many times over the years and it just never seems to reach a medium sort of ground with it's development.5.0 was a grindfest new patch is lack of content and fast leveling no middle ground at all.

Enchanting in the game has never been made simple,it either takes too many stone's or we go to breaking gear then back to multiple types of gear yet again.

Gearing shouldn't be a chore,the pvp is what players want on a even footing.Wow pvp has more to offer than Aion and always has.Aion could of been a huge success if they had of removed the grind to accomplish anything in this game,and 1200 players online or whatever is nothing compared to major title's.

i quit at couple months before 6.0 because the game was a boring grindfest,breaking gear and ridiculous gear gaps,even with 6.0 only leveling has changed,gearing is still bad,kinah cant be easily given to Alts,friends or legionmates,nearly everything is untradeable.

As a large supporter financially of aion for well over a year nothing iv'e watched or read in forums would inspire me to come back to this game or tell friends about it.Ncsoft never listens to NA players which is the whole reason it never took of in the western markets.

This company doesn't learn or even really care about playerbase concerns it only care's about the $$$.And yes business is about making money,but there's much better ways than the routes ncwest/korea has taken.

[Morrigan-KT]

What made this game standout back in '09 was its flight system and the robust character customization. With 6.0 they've somehow managed to kill both.

 

Go figure.

[Bryos-DN]

4 minutes ago, Morrigan-KT said:

What made this game standout back in '09 was its flight system and the robust character customization. With 6.0 they've somehow managed to kill both.

Flight as selling point, yet disgusted by every PvPer.

And considering 6.0 did nothing to character customisation....

[Jagblade-DN]

22 minutes ago, Bryos-DN said:

Flight as selling point, yet disgusted by every PvPer.

And considering 6.0 did nothing to character customisation....

I beg to differ on the point of PvPers hating flying, at least at first. At launch it was adored by rangers in the abyss. Melee classes couldn't touch them. Dark days for a gladiator like me. As to what Morrigan is referring to, I believe he means the transformations that turn you into anthropomorphic creatures that have taken the place of all scrolls and the formerly optional candies. No one wants to pay cash to have their character look the same while getting the stat boosts of the transformation. Maybe it's nitpicking, but it's a thing.

[Bryos-DN]

I suppose transformations are a fair point. But, going back to flying, it was probably good at launch because it was new and whatnot. But it doesnt matter how it was at launch, it matters how it was viewed by everyone after it, after years of having it around, no one did it or liked it. If no one does it, no need to keep it.

[Chibiusa-DN]

Typical egocentric virgin guy who thinks the game is death because he is not playing anymore... honey, you are not that important..., so please, stop trying to make Aion Death happen...

[Azzmaria-KT]

Flying mad eAion soemthing Different. I came here just for that. I was bored and looking for a new mmorpg and I saw those images with wings and flying. 

of course one thing was the pictures and another things was playing with a flying model. A lot of bugs and issues related with that annoeyd many players. But still, IMO, is the most distinctive feature in this game. Maybe the best idea could be to move flying to content where those issues are not important. Maybe the wings are not a good idea in a middle of large PvP wars. But yet that could be totally adapted for PvE and solo tasks. 

Customization was important too. WoW with his amazing success has that issue. Graphics there are really old and bad. With totally cartoonish and geometric shapes. Toons that just look so ugly no matter what you try. So few options making to everyone look similar... WoW with some amazing lore and a lot of content and updates, seems to be old and ugly. NCsoft has a huge advantage there. Wings and fancy things. If you take those away... there are a lot of great MMORPGS out there and some of them are really awesome. 

Can´t imagine why in Korea Lineage 1 has a better performance than the others. Even when it is really old. maybe the mechanics are almost perfect. who knows?

Why NCsoft took those initial numbers as a failure and continued to focus just in Korea? Maybe the initial population for their games is not so impresive, but looked as a nice start in a new market. By adapting their titles to have 2 different models (one for each side), maybe the success could be complete. 

It is obvious that NCSoft can not try to compete in the same areas than before. BDO and other new games have amazing graphics. Aion, B&S and other titles are in some way outdated on that area. Yet they can make a huge difference in the mechanics. B&S with that oriental desings, and Aion with the wings are different. Also NCsoft can take profit of a much bigger experience on what succeded on occidental markets and what did not. Losing against smaller companies in western markets has no logic. 

[Kubei-DN]

To define the death of a video game is often subjective. Aion in itself isn't "dead" as its population is fairly high across all regions, what is, however, the often brought content that can be pretty dead. You know, if Aion had updated its graphic engine, it would revitalize its potential to be fantastic again.

[Forgotten-DN]

I don't agree with his argument that the game's engine is one of the reasons for Aion's population decline. It's certainly archaic and can be clunky at times, but the game had a high enough population at launch to prove that it wasn't a significant hurdle to overcome. The graphical enhancements made over subsequent updates keeps the game mostly on par with other MMOs today. Oftentimes, when reading returning player's comments about why they came back to the game, they cite the game's beauty and game play as their reasons for returning. He also seems to ignore the fact that there are plenty of older MMOs that look or perform worse than Aion, but have significantly higher populations, e.g.: Guild Wars, Lineage2, Runescape, World of Warcraft, to name a few. Server and client lag can only be partly attributed to the engine, as computer specs and server location play a greater role in how the game performs. I also haven't seen many complaints about siege performance as reason for leaving the game. Siege mechanics and saltiness on the other hand...

Lack of innovation I agree with. The game hasn't been innovating for several years, rather it has just been recycling old mechanics and slapping additional gates over it each time.

11 hours ago, zikira-KT said:

This company for a long a time, basically since Aion launched does not listen to western player feedback and adapt the game design for it's region.I played at launch and many times over the years and it just never seems to reach a medium sort of ground with it's development.

This really nails it for me. Aion devs seem to have a problem with moderation or finding balance in their updates. The game is always TOO much of something. Aion at launch was too grindy with limited content. They let twinks get out of hand and then tried to clamp down on them with, but went overboard with rift buffs. Aion 3.0 was fantastic for PvE and in general was very fair in terms of grind and reward, but it shut out PvPers by giving them only one map, which was just a loop that was uninspired and didn't make for engaging combat. Dropping Kahrun's Will for a few hours a day meant only certain regions could enjoy open world PvP without disrupting their daily life. Aion 4.0 was probably the closest they came to a Goldilocks patch, but even then, the sheer amount of content ended up making some players feel overwhelmed with having to keep up with endless sieging. Aion 5.0 wouldn't have been as terrible if they hadn't made the grind so intense and put a limit on the P2W aspects of the patch, such as putting a ceiling on enchants or limiting the power of minions. Aion 6.0 is still too new to pass too much judgment, but cutting a ton of old content, limiting the player driven economy, and overall enchantment nerfs seem pretty overboard.

Something he didn't touch upon is that NCWest in general doesn't seem to care too much about the community, and this is a HUGE reason for the game's decline. I understand that NCWest can't do much about the game itself, but what about the things that they COULD handle, which contribute greatly to player quality of life? Since launch, they let bots, cheaters, and gold spammers run rampant. They didn't monitor server transfers during the first server merge, which led to faction imbalances that were felt for years and only addressed when players took it upon themselves to re-roll. How many people left the game for those reasons alone? They off-shored support, making it difficult to resolve any issues that came up during game play. They're super stingy when handling issues they're responsible for (e.g.: Evergale canyon glitch = you get ONE bundle or even the most recent translation glitch, resulting in people spending on the wrong Genesis items). You're handing out DIGITAL items, it literally costs you NOTHING to compensate people since support is already being paid for their time and the assets are already in game.

All they had to do was keep a small team of people acting on player concerns (GMs in game banning bots, gold spammers, cheaters, a dedicated representative relaying concerns back to the development team), and the game's population wouldn't have dropped as much as it has. But when players feel they're being ignored either by NCKorea or NCWest, can you really blame them for leaving?

[Morrigan-KT]

13 hours ago, Bryos-DN said:

Flight as selling point, yet disgusted by every PvPer.

And considering 6.0 did nothing to character customisation....

Well you know...

Its just that...the whole concept of having the character I've spent countless hours fine tuning and getting its appearance just right on, (not to mention literally having spent $100's of RL cash on), having its default appearance hidden behind some sort of annoying grind/pay wall scheme...tends to irk me.

I mean, I thought SWTOR hiding its hotbars behind a paywall was bad...this forced on furry costume annoyance takes the nickle and dime greed cake for sure.

Never, (during the 14+ years I've played MMO's), did I ever expect that someday, I'd be forced to grind just so that I could actually see my own characters default appearance. Thats just...insane.

Hope this blows up in NCsoft's face, cause the last thing we need is for other companies to follow suit. Copy cat industry after all.

[XXZ-DN]

he play aion? ...ok

[zikira-KT]

11 hours ago, Azzmaria-KT said:

Quote

This is true about wow it is cartoonish yet look at the game's success,even with sub decline's it is by far a market leader.Sure it's pay2play but it has so much too offer for every type of player style from the casual to hardcore.Aion unfortunately has too many issues it's gearing process is too difficult there are too many types of gear,pvp the core of this game is not well designed.

Instanced pvp from dredge to arenas should be how players progress,instances should award either gear or the materials too upgrade them,there should be no cooldowns on things like arena's they should be 24/7 and have a ranking system and rewards based on wins.

I love aion customisation it is awesome,that said there's much more too a Mmo than how good a character looks.Decent character gear progression,Alt friendls,not grind locked are major factors that either draw or turn players away from a game.

In my last reply to aion support i put it as bluntly as i could,i will support any company financially but 5.0 was a joke why spend hundreds or even thousands trying to gear multiple chars just to see gear explode.Sure gear doesnt explode this patch but it's just as stupid trying to obtain it but in a different way.

These few last gripes are why i quit spending.

Minions in pvp was a cashgrab and did utterly nothing to enhance pvp.

Kinah now untradeable via account warehouse just makes the game completely Alt unfriendly.

Too many gear types,this is totally not needed release one type of gear for pve and pvp abd let people work towards it.

People should of realised that in 5.0 till 6.0 ncsoft didnt really change anything they just added more pay2get ahead events such as tempering,stigma and even leveling buffs were a cashgrab tactic.Id rather pay 20 bucks a month for real progression than the mess aion has become 6.0 didnt fix anything just made the game worse on many levels.

Customization was important too. WoW with his amazing success has that issue. Graphics there are really old and bad. With totally cartoonish and geometric shapes. Toons that just look so ugly no matter what you try. So few options making to everyone look similar... WoW with some amazing lore and a lot of content and updates, seems to be old and ugly. NCsoft has a huge advantage there. Wings and fancy things. If you take those away... there are a lot of great MMORPGS out there and some of them are really awesome. 


 

 

[Jigen-DN]

I'm playing Aion since 2013, this is the only (first) online game I played in years because of having no internet infrastructure in our area, I stopped for a while in 2015 because of that same reason (lags) and just came back in 5.8 grind my gears and stopped playing again last April. I played other MMOs - D3, BDO, Terra, it was good, no pressures on game time schedules (I'm from asia so NA aion times are woking hours mostly) especially D3. I do try it again this 6.0 and kind of love this update in-spite of what others are saying and the bad RNG's we got on enchanting, at least we go back to the times that we need to actually farm the gears again and not just pay kinah for it.

 

So my question is, how far is this game have fate like MxM? Can NCsoft shut it down anytime they realize they are not getting paid enough in NA?

[Aly-DN]

1 hour ago, Jigen-DN said:

*snip*

So my question is, how far is this game have fate like MxM? Can NCsoft shut it down anytime they realize they are not getting paid enough in NA?

This was addressed. As long as Aion is more than paying its way in Korea, NA is going to be keeping the doors open. Aion will actually shut down when it is no longer making money in Korea. This is also why NCSoft didn't address many of the issues that the NA/EU market had with the game. (i.e. the grindiness, the RNG in everything, poor optimization, etc.) While NCSoft said they wanted to break into the NA/EU markets, they were making most of their money in Korea so what the Korean players like or dislike or simply tolerate will get attention and what we want or need will be secondary. It's all about the money.

People have been talking about "the death of aion" since 2010. I actually wrote a post right after the infamous "4 weeks of free transfers" after the first mergers that lasted exactly 1 week because the staff rubber stamped every transfer people put in for which just further imbalanced already imbalanced servers. Anyone else that was playing at that time remembers how we were basically held hostage on completely dysfunctional servers for months. And yet here were are years later. This video could more accurately be called "How did we get here?". How did Aion, which was supposed to be the big break through into the NA/EU markets for NCSoft, become what we have today.

I thought it was well done.

[The Secret Cow Level]

There is another thread on this topic:

 

[Yortus-KT]

The idiots who say that the game is not dead, do they really play it? There's always an idiot defending shit.

[Gwin-DN]

I can not say that the game will die and I can not say otherwise, but I can say that there is a trend and the trend is that the game will lose several customers.

I can not make predictions. I'm not a psychic, but I think a merger of servers is possible in a few months.

[Jerrik-KT]

Flying should be all or nothing.  What's the point of having wings if you can't fly anywhere but in empty cities...oh wait, there aren't any cities left.  In Wow, you could fly on your mounts and still experience PvP.  Course if you fell to far you died, but that was half the fun.  Who could get the the first attack in....

[Lyricss-DN]

11 hours ago, Jerrik-KT said:

Flying should be all or nothing.  What's the point of having wings if you can't fly anywhere but in empty cities...oh wait, there aren't any cities left.  In Wow, you could fly on your mounts and still experience PvP.  Course if you fell to far you died, but that was half the fun.  Who could get the the first attack in....

The thing is? what does makes one a daeva? what does the story of this game says? the thing that qualify us as daevas is the ascension to a winged being. So why do we have wings if we can't fly? Now you can't fly anymore, they took away the only place that we had and we were sure that we could fly there: Reshanta. I came back to see the new changes last week, and before that I was away from the game for almost 2 years, thats a huge difference, not having reshanta to fly anymore, when, before I leave, There were so many things and weeklies to do in reshanta, besides all the sieges. So they just decided that we daevas, should die. They took away our wings purpose and made it seem like any other accessory.

How many maps has Aion destroyed through all these years? One thing that was told in this video was true. This was the first game that instead of adding new content to the game, they decided to delete some of the content they already had. Tiamaranta, Katalam, Danaria, Reshanta (Abyss), Sarpan, levinshor...So many other maps gone.They now created 2 servers, Katalam and Danaria, and whoever is joining the game right now has no idea what those names represent to the game.

This "Free-to-play" system is shit. It is like he just said, it is like trying to suck your players dry. This game system where you can only play certain istances limited time per week, or either pay for a instance boost that you can't buy with in game money anymore due to its cost and how much money you can make in the game. Makes you not have much to do. Fewer regions, fewer instances, more limitation. You have to pay more and more or you achieve nothing. 
I've been playing Guild Wars 2 and I love the way they care about their player base. They actually listen to people. They know what the players want and make their way to deliver it to us. We spend money in the game but we spend for things that are meaningful for us, not for things that soon, in the new update, they won't be relevant anymore. we buy the expansions but they are worth it to pay for it. If you buy cosmetics, you can use them and you can keep them, it wont get destroyed if you change anything in your build/gear. They show respect for the money we invest in the game and it is what most of us who are willing to spend money in a game want.

[1s173E48-KT]

Everyone is entitled to their opinion.  The game isn't perfect, but it's been solid for over 9 years.  There is no game, nor will there ever be a game, that completely satisfies everyone.  They are video games, you either have fun playing them or you don't.

Population wise?  Please, give this argument a rest.  Asmo-KT Lakrum siege on Christmas day was a full league plus, over 200 players just on our side.  Over a league last night for the Anomos spawn, on both factions.  Evergale pops almost immediately.  If you are outgunned by uber geared long tenured players that have compensated gear, just shout out in LFG and you'll get backup almost immediately.  There is a gear cap now, so once they hit it, they are no longer progressing while you are inching closer and closer each day.

While I miss Tiamaranta the the Eye (thank God they are coming back), it was an intelligent move to stage end game on one map and quit spreading everyone out so much.  There is never a lack of PvP in Lakrum.  Camps are still contested and fun and even getting to the Bastion of Souls portal is challenging at times.  Arenas pop quickly and so does Dredge (most of the time).

Population isn't a problem.  There are other problems, but as long as there is an effort to keep moving forward in some form or fashion, I'll always be a player in Aion.  They aren't perfect, but 6.2 was progression, and 6.5 & 7.0 appear to be as well.  

It's a game.  If you've spent hundreds and thousands on the game ... you would have spent that money on movies, booze, dating, extravagance, etc; anyway ... it's a leisure time and hobby based expenditure.  It's gone no matter what you spend it on.  In fact, the gaming expenditures, it can be argued, last a lot longer.  Maybe your enchantments don't work all the time, but you can buy snazzy outfits, mounts and all kinds of things for the same leisure time money you'd be spending on something else anyway, and it will give you months of entertainment in a game.

 

 

 

[Rapier-DN]

2 hours ago, 1s173E48-KT said:

Everyone is entitled to their opinion.  The game isn't perfect, but it's been solid for over 9 years.  There is no game, nor will there ever be a game, that completely satisfies everyone.  They are video games, you either have fun playing them or you don't.

Population wise?  Please, give this argument a rest.  Asmo-KT Lakrum siege on Christmas day was a full league plus, over 200 players just on our side.  Over a league last night for the Anomos spawn, on both factions.  Evergale pops almost immediately.  If you are outgunned by uber geared long tenured players that have compensated gear, just shout out in LFG and you'll get backup almost immediately.  There is a gear cap now, so once they hit it, they are no longer progressing while you are inching closer and closer each day.

While I miss Tiamaranta the the Eye (thank God they are coming back), it was an intelligent move to stage end game on one map and quit spreading everyone out so much.  There is never a lack of PvP in Lakrum.  Camps are still contested and fun and even getting to the Bastion of Souls portal is challenging at times.  Arenas pop quickly and so does Dredge (most of the time).

Population isn't a problem.  There are other problems, but as long as there is an effort to keep moving forward in some form or fashion, I'll always be a player in Aion.  They aren't perfect, but 6.2 was progression, and 6.5 & 7.0 appear to be as well.  

It's a game.  If you've spent hundreds and thousands on the game ... you would have spent that money on movies, booze, dating, extravagance, etc; anyway ... it's a leisure time and hobby based expenditure.  It's gone no matter what you spend it on.  In fact, the gaming expenditures, it can be argued, last a lot longer.  Maybe your enchantments don't work all the time, but you can buy snazzy outfits, mounts and all kinds of things for the same leisure time money you'd be spending on something else anyway, and it will give you months of entertainment in a game.

 

 

 

People won't give the population argument "a rest" because it clearly is not healthy, nor has the game been "solid" for the past  9 years- w've had some very good patches, some not so good patches, and some bad ones- and this qualifies as one that was very badly handled here. 

Even your argument about progression isn't valid for many people- they don't even see themselves inching along. Some of them would be satisfied with that- but they see them selves falling so far behind, or even worse- by the time they make any progress- 7.0 will hit and it will all be for nothing.

Finally, arguing that spending thousands on a game , which is literally empty pixels that could vanish, and saying that it as endurable as perhaps something that someone could also take pleasure in like- 

- adding a swimming pool

- renovating their home

- investing their money

Just a few off the top of my head- which they could enjoy for years. By no means am I telling anyone how to spend their money, but spending it on a game is literally the equivalent of drinking it away-  you end up flushing both of them  away. 

[Raiuken-KT]

I think they need to redesign the game then. Make everyone turn back into a human, and take away their wings if they can't use them to fly anywhere. Forget this game, not wasting one more second of my life on it. Gonna go play WoTLK world of warcraft private server, that game is lit, server capped with 12000 people online, you know why? Because old school WoW is a good game and does everything right. NCSoft should take notes. If you take just one zone from WoW, it's bigger than all the maps in Aion put together. That's what an MMO is supposed to be like, a huge, fantastic world to explore, everywhere you turn there is something interesting to see. What is Aion now? A couple of leveling maps, then everyone is jammed into one small zone. Is this even an MMORPG anymore, or just some mobo game now?