Response to Producer's Letter

[Rag-DN]

 

Quote

"Our takeaway from this research is that auto-hunting has a profound effect on player communities by causing a substantial shift towards solo play."

  So we didn't get the auto-hunting feature because they don't want ppl to focus on solo play??? Well while I admire that sentiment if they truly didn't want to push players to solo play they should re-vamp the reward systems for siege cause everyone knows you get better credit going solo if you are geared then if you go with a group. Same thing goes for farming XP, you get more faster XP solo then in a group. Same for farming kinah, you don't share the loot, therefore it's more beneficial to solo instances....

I agree that NCsoft should focus on community, but with the majority of mechanics in the game at the moment, it feels like the only way to to really become successful is to be selfish or a solo player for the most part.  

[Ruld-DN]

Heck even our event right now is solo player orientated. You can only loot one event quest item per player, not for the entire group. The kill quests are solo kills only, not group or alliance friendly.  They could easily fix lots of these things, example increase the group unity benefits for XP/AP. Go back to everyone in an instance gets a loot box. Make it so GP is only given to members of groups/alliance/league or give a bonus GP for being grouped up.

[Shiftie-DN]

at least they giving us some reasoning behind the decision, which is kind of something, but then they go copy/paste events from elsewhere that you need auto-hunt function to do.... 

[Nalariel]

Ok Michael first get some shit together o_o

First your letter is nothing but bullshit it's like nothing you have in your mind to tell encourage players to playing this game anymore.
What you should do is announcement closure of servers then relaunch Aion 3.x or 4.6 whatever you want and refund people who spend ncoin on Aion 10% what they had spent in their history.You can sell things like 100% manastone socketing,EXP boost,Skins,No soul sickness items when dead but never tempering solution or omega.

I'm sorry for people who paid or paying so much for your +15 stuff and ultimate transform but your fancy stuff is not going to help you get easy kill on someone anymore because all normal people left only whales against whales now.I believed everyone can see what waiting at the end.You win in an empty world where nobody left.

For finance reason your sale is even lower than 5.8(The turning point where Aion went full p2w) now and much lower than 3.x and 4.6 era.
All p2w don't work anymore and your whales going to save your game theory is proven that they're shit.

If this situation doesn't convince NCsoft and current players to accept then nothing will.Your brains got radiation poisoned and turn you into feral deveas that lost ability to reason with.

With love Michael do something right once.

[Ele-DN]

Yeah, like joining a pug group for certain instances and rolling for one item, and most of the time not getting anything in multiple runs. Not counting statics, but no one does anything past pfhm first boss and almost no pugs for aoa nm because 99% of the community doesn't have any of the requirements because of how low the supply of important resources are. 

stigmas

cubics 

enchantment stones

and for new clerics/healers, KT accs are rubbish. and the worst part is having 1 kinah retuning for nothing to retune except bursting accessories and thats literally only for statics. 7.7 comes with accessories with the SAME defense and attacks as current KT accs but can retune and by then we (certain classes) would need to spend unnecessary shit ton of  resources because of how stupid the system is for new gear. Group game play? no, not when pure dps classes are rolling for these classes where the current accs aren't even fit for them(healers).

[Taz-KT]

no $$$$$$$$ to make with auto hunting this is the real reason . 

[MechEagIe-DN]

 

Imagine telling us you care and all you do is put p2w stuff....

Imagine releasing the worst event ever done in 11 years and saying I hope you guys enjoy it ...

Imagine making an event where everyone just steals the loot from each other and saying you care about the community...

Imagine releasing an event that features the usage of auto-hunt functions and saying that you don't want that feature in your game...

Imagine telling your player base that you're going to release new transformations, but nobody cares about it because you guys only sell it from your store...

Imagine telling people you care about their feed back and the next move you do is put their feed back on your store but not in the game...

Imagine lying non stop to people who put food on your table...

You guys should be forced to play the game so maybe you will know what you're doing to us ...

That should be your punishment !!! Shame on you !@Kibbelz @Loki

 

[Squid]

Was a funny read.

[DoomKat-KT]

Philosophically this is an interest read.  However, it seems that some of the consequences of withholding the autohunt system were not thought through as they relate to drop rates.  For example, farming for cubicles in open world would be viable with an autohunt system for most people, but is not without that system.  To omit a system as fundamental as autohunt has many impacts on game balance that should be addressed (such as the impact on Titan Coin farming).  Curious to know if open world hunting and drop rates was re-considered generally, and if Titan Coins were an aberration or the general rules.  Since it does not seem as though cubicle drop rates have improved since the patch, my assumption is that they, like Titan Coins, were not considered when omitting the autohunt system.

[Skybuff-KT]

Omitting the auto hunt system was the right move. The problem with the game community is within the players. Players that run pass a dungeon without waiting for the rest of the group or dismissing a new player that gets lost. Players that don't bother to be polite in game, don't bother helping others with questions and only complain about how the are not getting what they want, when they want. Luckily not everyone is like that and there are some great people I encountered in game.

 

I hope you guys realize that this game is free. You don't have to buy anything from the BC store.  Giving the producers a hard time will not fix your frustrations. Take it easy and enjoy the game content, otherwise why are you playing it? This is for everyone including me.

[Ukanomitama-KT]

Reading this as someone who just came back recently from right at the launch of 5.0 this is kind of hilarious lol. Auto Hunting isn't what's stopping people from playing together. What's stopping them is meaningful group content. Siege's are better off going alone I never see the league functionality used like it was back in the day. There seem to be virtually no instances outside of SL/ESO/PF/IDD run in a loop and those require no more than 6 people. It's not like the days where you needed 12 people to go run IS and they had to be somewhat coorindated. 

Keeping auto-hunt out of the game is fine and all so long as you actually design the game and content to be around group play which in its current state it is not. 

[Arhangelos]

Auto hunting is turning every server into a bot fest. Real players can't even find mobs to do their routines, they are forced to also auto hunt and leave hoping when they come back their char finished the grinding successfully.

Also the vast majority of people now auto hunt with 3rd party software which is more capable and thus do a better job than the ingame. So unless you are wiling to turn yourself into a real illegal bot, don't wish for the autohunt system because you won't even be able to kill a single mob.

[Vantheria-DN]

I'm glad we don't have the auto-hunting feature. I agree with the points that Gideon brought up in his Producer's Letter regarding it.

BUT.

That doesn't mean there aren't a vast amount of things which can still be improved upon.

[Weevie-KT]

most of these complains about p2w can be resolve by removing the RNG or increase it significantly.  It really break your spirit when you spent months of hard work (playing a game = work) only to failed and all your resources destroyed.  It makes the game less enjoyable.  All these endgame features (skills, s minions..) are only attainable through p2w.

 

We are playing a party of 6 full Sov + katalam accessories and get rolled by a single ulti transform cleric and it really affect your ability to enjoy the game

[Hallo-DN]

if you want us to do more ''group play''  how about increasing the rng rate for instances and stuff?

[Taz-KT]

funny to read you care about aion healt when in NA only 2 servers left LOL more P2W 

[Shainygirl-DN]

"Lastly, I'd like to thank all the players that have taken their time to leave us feedback on the forums. We've been able to make some improvements thus far and are continuing to review your feedback to improve the game. We'll have another update for you soon, so in the meantime, make sure to share your thoughts with us."

 

Good, OK. I am not seduced by auto-hunting but (in my case) the lag is increasing with each update and occurs only with Aion. And I'm saying that I am obligated to do everything solo for that reason. It really is frustrating because with the last update if an Elyo passes by my side my player stays still and if it is an asmo I literally appear dead before I can do something. I repeat it only happens to me with Aion. With games from Pearl Abyss, Bethesda, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Rockstar, Capcom, the Souls, Witcher, Warframe, etc, etc, it does not happen, whether online, cooperative or alone. I've been with Aion for 4 or 5 years now with the hope that it will improve. Every time it gets worse. I could never really enjoy PvP without lag or ping less than 350. For this reason I can't think of doing something as a team. I'm not even interested in the +9, +12, + 15, final contract, dark talon or anything else. The only thing I can do is Luna and kill mobs in a remote area where there is no one or at times when there are few people. With all due respect, BDO, which is a faster game than Aion and remastered, with excellent graphic quality, I have good FPS, low ping and no lag. I am the last of a group of friends who started at the end of 4.x and early 5.x. If you really read this I hope you find a way to fix it. I don't know how many this happens to, I guess I'm not the only one. Thank you and happy 11 years.

[Lapis-DN]

On 23/09/2020 at 8:16 AM, DoomKat-KT said:

Philosophically this is an interest read.  However, it seems that some of the consequences of withholding the autohunt system were not thought through as they relate to drop rates.  For example, farming for cubicles in open world would be viable with an autohunt system for most people, but is not without that system.  To omit a system as fundamental as autohunt has many impacts on game balance that should be addressed (such as the impact on Titan Coin farming).  Curious to know if open world hunting and drop rates was re-considered generally, and if Titan Coins were an aberration or the general rules.  Since it does not seem as though cubicle drop rates have improved since the patch, my assumption is that they, like Titan Coins, were not considered when omitting the autohunt system.

agree with that!
If you want to disable a function intended to farm things that became essential to character progress like cubics (and its the only way to farm it for now) at least add more ways to get it because no one will be killing 7000 monsters in gelkmaros to get 2 event points and 50 completely random cubics

[Calista-DN]

There was so much spin in that letter it gave me vertigo.

Really - do you honestly think that disabling auto-hunt at this point would  have "a profound effect on player communities by causing a substantial shift towards solo play"? 

That ship sailed a long time ago in Aion, after private trades, crafting,  incentives for smaller or medium legions and meaningful sieges were killed. Aion is hardly an MMO any more,  while there are some group activities there are other games out there that do a far better job at promoting community activities, whether by crafting, or building projects, or infinitely more flexible  group PVE options.

Really, unless you actually invest the time to play the game you're going to see unrealistic decisions, like players needing cubics that they can't require in-game without investing an inordinate amount of time - and that's a fairly simplistic example.

[Squid]

 

Quote

I wanted to take some time to address some feedback we've heard, as well as a 10,000 foot view of things to come.

Am i meant to see is a player drought in the view of things to come.

 

[Lapis-DN]

4 hours ago, Calista-DN said:

There was so much spin in that letter it gave me vertigo.

Really - do you honestly think that disabling auto-hunt at this point would  have "a profound effect on player communities by causing a substantial shift towards solo play"? 

That ship sailed a long time ago in Aion, after private trades, crafting,  incentives for smaller or medium legions and meaningful sieges were killed. Aion is hardly an MMO any more,  while there are some group activities there are other games out there that do a far better job at promoting community activities, whether by crafting, or building projects, or infinitely more flexible  group PVE options.

Really, unless you actually invest the time to play the game you're going to see unrealistic decisions, like players needing cubics that they can't require in-game without investing an inordinate amount of time - and that's a fairly simplistic example.

Like FF14 who survives in a pay to play model AND you have to buy every patch/expansion that comes out. Yet they have numerous servers and a massive number of players

[Arhangelos]

When they disable a feature they have to make sure the affected changes will have to be reverted (like the fact they did listen and made the titan coin drops back to pre 7.5).

There is a ton of things they need to change every time they nerf or remove a thing.

Their problem with dying servers is that the game has extremely low rates on everything and then an event will be out handing it all to you for free. And that all paying goodies are either too expensive or too obsolete.

GF can survive solely on their gold pack, you cannot play without it, it is impossible. Their version is free to login, not free to play. I like how totally free our side is, BUT prestige needs a revamp, they did a revamp lately but that was lowering some prices and that was it.

The benefits are not that important (unless you care about GP).

 

[Calista-DN]

3 hours ago, Lapis-DN said:

Like FF14 who survives in a pay to play model AND you have to buy every patch/expansion that comes out. Yet they have numerous servers and a massive number of players

Somewhat incorrect - FFXIV has a massive amount of content- up to the Stormblood expansion - that is free. That means up to level 60 - cap is 80.

Once you decide to pay, then you can get an incredible amount of content. If you optionally want to buy a  vanity item - let's say a mount (multiple permanent ones are easily available  in-game)- well look- it's reasonably priced, permanent- AND available to all "jobs" - where a job is a class - and you can easily play multiple classes on one character.

[Squid]

8 hours ago, Lapis-DN said:

Like FF14 who survives in a pay to play model AND you have to buy every patch/expansion that comes out. Yet they have numerous servers and a massive number of players

FF14 got carried by its name till it became popular. The early content for the game was stinking hot garbage. Lets also not forget it originally failed on its first launch. There is no doubt they are making great content today but the reality is the game got carried. Much like ESO. If you play ESO you will realize the game runs very smilar to how bless online did yet despite this players put up with ESO but did not with bless why? Name. People who love ESO want to be in a living breathing ESO world and they do not care how it performs.

[Arhangelos]

1 hour ago, HealingSquid-KT said:

FF14 got carried by its name till it became popular. The early content for the game was stinking hot garbage. Lets also not forget it originally failed on its first launch. There is no doubt they are making great content today but the reality is the game got carried. Much like ESO. If you play ESO you will realize the game runs very smilar to how bless online did yet despite this players put up with ESO but did not with bless why? Name. People who love ESO want to be in a living breathing ESO world and they do not care how it performs.

Dare I say same thing with WoW at least in the old days, it had it brilliant days and plenty of pve content but it also had very boring days and many times almost zero pvp.

Blizzard die-hard fans hear "Warcraft" and they jizz their pants though, so the game was a recipe for success because of the Blizzard ecosystem. People even praised it for the look, the awful cartoon look that I never got used to until I finally quit it after a couple of years of playing it.

I have no clue where WoW stands now, but when I started playing it (moving from Lineage II) I asked my friend who introduced me into WoW, when is the siege taking place, and he said there are no sieges... and I couldn't believe the game was just aimless questing with gathering, crafting, selling and potential pvp if you stumbled across the enemy faction (as long as you didn't play in a pve dedicated server lol) while being super populated with a ton of servers.

WoW was killing Lineage and Aion in amount of players just because of Blizzard's die hard fans. And they managed this by having quite a few titles that were successful, and they also made sur they would keep the lore consistent and make gatherings. They even had cosplay conventions and prizes.