Returning player, need guidance

[5s99A67-DN]

Hi everyone, 

Thanks for taking the time to view my post. I am an old Aion player played since closed beta back in 09 I believe. I was looking at getting back into the game and was wondering if it was worth the time investment. Has the game gone pay to win? Is their still a strong player base that play and support the game? Looking over the website it looks like the game recently got some new content so that is reassuring. Has the game gone P2W at all? 

 

On a side note I am super noob, what is a decent class to play for pvp and pve? I was thinking of templar or ranger. 

[Arhangelos]

5 hours ago, 5s99A67-DN said:

I was looking at getting back into the game and was wondering

1) if it was worth the time investment.
2) Has the game gone pay to win?
3) Is their still a strong player base that play and support the game?
4) Looking over the website it looks like the game recently got some new content so that is reassuring.
5) Has the game gone P2W at all?

On a side note I am super noob, what is a decent class to play for pvp and pve? I was thinking of templar or ranger. 

1) It is always a good time to start at any given point, like we had an amazing event the last 3 months or so, we will have more soon. As long as you log in and take advantage of the current situation and event, you slowly build your character strong.
2) Yes it has, there were recent events that allowed people to p2w to get ultimate transforms by luck and legendary transforms directly.
3) Not as much as pre 6.0, but since the game is still here, it has enough players to sustain
4) We just got 7.5 so yes, this is also a big update shock to most of us, it implemented a ton of new things that still confuse us a little bit. It is also very pve oriented heavy.
5) Look at 2, same question

A fully geared templar is like a melee sorcerer with heavy armor and ultimate defenses, he has the ability to kill all classes, is still a solid tank, can heal himself and it is regarded one of the rather strong classes at the moment, as long of course you are end game geared, with +15 stigmas and +15 daevanions (like all classes need to be)

[5s99A67-DN]

13 hours ago, Arhangelos-KT said:

1) It is always a good time to start at any given point, like we had an amazing event the last 3 months or so, we will have more soon. As long as you log in and take advantage of the current situation and event, you slowly build your character strong.
2) Yes it has, there were recent events that allowed people to p2w to get ultimate transforms by luck and legendary transforms directly.
3) Not as much as pre 6.0, but since the game is still here, it has enough players to sustain
4) We just got 7.5 so yes, this is also a big update shock to most of us, it implemented a ton of new things that still confuse us a little bit. It is also very pve oriented heavy.
5) Look at 2, same question

A fully geared templar is like a melee sorcerer with heavy armor and ultimate defenses, he has the ability to kill all classes, is still a solid tank, can heal himself and it is regarded one of the rather strong classes at the moment, as long of course you are end game geared, with +15 stigmas and +15 daevanions (like all classes need to be)

Ayyy! Thanks so much for the reply. It is sad to see this game is losing its player base and I noticed there are only 2 servers now! That is never a good sign. Hopefully NcSoft starts marketing the game more. The game just got a big expansion and it isn't talked about too much. My friend is going to re-download the game and we going to start fresh. 

They made the same mistake with their moba game, MxM it was a really good game but due to poor marketing they lost the game in less then a year. 

 

[Arhangelos]

7 minutes ago, 5s99A67-DN said:

Ayyy! Thanks so much for the reply. It is sad to see this game is losing its player base and I noticed there are only 2 servers now! That is never a good sign. Hopefully NcSoft starts marketing the game more. The game just got a big expansion and it isn't talked about too much. My friend is going to re-download the game and we going to start fresh. 

They made the same mistake with their moba game, MxM it was a really good game but due to poor marketing they lost the game in less then a year.

Plenty of reasons why this game is dying. It is not about adveritising, after all the game already had a ton of players and they left.

• The forced pvp aspect made a lot of people quit, especially the average players that never managed to reach end game gear and had no other option other than dying continuously to the dedicated or p2w players.
• RNG was a reason many people also quit, there are people who spend more because of RNG, and those who simply quit because of RNG. The game many times lacked the ability to plan your progress and always had an RNG filter midway. So when someone was found in a bad cycle of RNG fails, there was nothing he could do, so he would either try more or quit.
• Class imbalance and class changes that keep rotating the OP classes vs the useless classes also played a role. people got sick of having classes that could kill everyone and classes that struggled.
• Mmorpgs are farming game sos naturally they take time to build your character, but when things get either way too hard or impossible, people find a wall in front of them.

The key here is that the hardcore players always were here and will most likely always be. It is the average players that can't play the game or do not enjoy it enough to keep logging. Especially those who do not dedicate to playing one game, they usually play other games too, so they end up splitting their gaming time between many games which makes their mmoprg progress even slower (mmorpgs are farming games). When an mmorpg starts getting boring, they find the other games more fun so they stop entering.

[5s99A67-DN]

1 minute ago, Arhangelos-KT said:

Plenty of reasons why this game is dying. It is not about adveritising, after all the game already had a ton of players and they left.

• The forced pvp aspect made a lot of people quit, especially the average players that never managed to reach end game gear.
• RNG was a reason many people also quit, there are people who spend more because of RNG, and those who simply quit because of RNG. The game many times lacked the ability to plan your progress and always had an RNG filter midway. So when someone was found in a bad cycle of RNG fails, there was nothing he could do, so he would either try more or quit.
• Class imbalance and class changes that keep rotating the OP classes vs the useless classes also played a role. people got sick of having classes that could kill everyone and classes that struggled.

The key here is that the hardcore players always were here and will most likely always be. It is the average players that can't play the game or do not enjoy it enough to keep logging. Especially those who do not dedicate to playing one game, they usually play other games too, so they end up splitting their gaming time between many games which makes their mmoprg progress even slower (mmorpgs are farming games). When an mmorpg starts getting boring, they find the other games more fun so they stop entering.

That is not reassuring. Why don't they listen to the player base? The same thing is happening with Blade and Soul. They are rolling out loot box after loot box and making the gaming experience less enjoyable and not as rewarding. 

[Arhangelos]

36 minutes ago, 5s99A67-DN said:

That is not reassuring. Why don't they listen to the player base? The same thing is happening with Blade and Soul. They are rolling out loot box after loot box and making the gaming experience less enjoyable and not as rewarding. 

The main reason is we are a western market, this game is made for the Korean market, those players apparently enjoy hard grinding and plenty of hours of play per day. Whatever we get is because it worked for the Korean market, they still have a ton of players there and whatever they like, we also get.

But you do have a point here, the mechanics, the broken classes, the content etc are all identical, BUT the p2w tactics is always prone to regional things. The BCM market we have is totally irrelevant to the EU market. So our publisher is also to be blamed for this. Another issue with the p2w in NA is the USA economy and the salaries, in USA someone that gets 3000$ per month is regarded extremely poor... that is 100$ per day! NA though has a ton of Latin America player base and others from Europe, Canada and Australia. Many of the countries that people play from (like Europe) have much lower salaries next to USA so for example in my country a daily salary of 25 euros (about 28$) is regarded OK, while in USA 100$ per day is regarded very low! Imagine a USA player paying for prestige is like paying nothing, when someone from a poor country like Brazil has to pay for prestige, it is like a salary of a few days, so p2w in NA has a totally different effect on the player base, because the majority of it comes from outside USA.

[5s99A67-DN]

5 hours ago, Arhangelos-KT said:

The main reason is we are a western market, this game is made for the Korean market, those players apparently enjoy hard grinding and plenty of hours of play per day. Whatever we get is because it worked for the Korean market, they still have a ton of players there and whatever they like, we also get.

But you do have a point here, the mechanics, the broken classes, the content etc are all identical, BUT the p2w tactics is always prone to regional things. The BCM market we have is totally irrelevant to the EU market. So our publisher is also to be blamed for this. Another issue with the p2w in NA is the USA economy and the salaries, in USA someone that gets 3000$ per month is regarded extremely poor... that is 100$ per day! NA though has a ton of Latin America player base and others from Europe, Canada and Australia. Many of the countries that people play from (like Europe) have much lower salaries next to USA so for example in my country a daily salary of 25 euros (about 28$) is regarded OK, while in USA 100$ per day is regarded very low! Imagine a USA player paying for prestige is like paying nothing, when someone from a poor country like Brazil has to pay for prestige, it is like a salary of a few days, so p2w in NA has a totally different effect on the player base, because the majority of it comes from outside USA.

3000 USD a month is not considered poor at all, in fact that is considered a good income. I understand where you are coming from each country has a different perspective on money. 

[Arhangelos]

10 hours ago, 5s99A67-DN said:

3000 USD a month is not considered poor at all, in fact that is considered a good income. I understand where you are coming from each country has a different perspective on money. 

I got my data from the internet from lower and basic salaries.

In my country if you make 500 euros per month is regarded the lowest and there are people who live with this (like 550$ per month), a salary of 1000 euros is regarded good to be able to live. 1500 euros is regarded a rather good salary and anything above that is very very good.

But you already got my point. People from Latin America have extremely low economies. What people in USA call a daily salary, some others call it weekly or even monthly. So this is why NA servers got empty very soon since they are based in USA.

Eu has a similar problem but not that much because the servers are either English (based on Great Britain), French (based on France) or German (based on Germany). These countries also have the highest salaries in Europe.