Aion 7.7 Dead Game Update!

[Azzmaria-KT]

11 hours ago, Euphoria-DN said:

Something that irks me is all the currency we worked long and hard to acquire like stelluian, genesys crystals, blood marks etc are all useless now. Sure you can morph it and get a 10% tea or a abyssal exp crystal for it but that is a joke. The only decent transmutation reward on these currency items is the 30 exp marks and good luck getting that it seems the system is rigged I did over 200 transmutations on various characters accounts and never scored this once. Its like another 0.01% bad RNG joke.

...

I hvae the same feeling. I tried that many times (not 200, but still many) and never got the 30 marks. That minigame makes you feel like you have 20% chances of each one. They are supposed to be placed in their slots before you choose one. But it is obvious that is just a scam just to make you feel like you have chances. I guess we get the same reward no matter wich slot we choose. 

9 hours ago, Iostcrazyman-KT said:

...

I think PvP in this game is rubbish here in NA for a multitude of reasons that have been named time and time again in the forums. I don't mind it in Korea but only when I am home there and not in the US for 1 reason and thats sub 10ms. PvE in this game I actually enjoy it because its with friends and as far as the other maintenace things I personally don't mind it as it is a time waster and to me I like the grind its somewhat theraputic to turn my brain of and just grind after long days at work. I much rather do instances with friends but I don't mind the grind probably why I still play/afk BDO regularly.

...

It was never a PvP vs PvE fight. We used to have both in the past and worked. 

The times with tiamaranta and the hearts, abyss and a lot of fortress, 3 different dredgions (depending on your lvl), arenas, Sarpan and the PvP on nights. 

All of them provided something we needed. So we had to do most of them. Arenas to get some initial gear, fortress and AP to buy the endgame Abyss gear. And usually more than once cause we needed many sets for dif situations. Yet we had funny and fast PvP in Tia and Sarpan. The camp system in Katalam was a great idea and worked so fine (with a new fast PvP gear). 

On PvE we had so many options, farming tokens and coins to buy gear, playing with others to get a set from some instances, farming mats and crafting one or even doing long quest to get the daevanion gear. Fair machanics more related to skills than luck and gear. Some instances were hard, but you knew what you did wrong. 

But the main issue is they never played so they don´t know how the game worked. They made a lot of damage to the nice things trying to solve issues we never had. 7.7 is the proof they never learn what is ok in Aion and what need to be changed. 

[lBeni-DN]

with each update the game turns garbage without any fun

[Arhangelos]

After 6.x destruction, only 6.5 was actually not that bad because progress was made, pve and pvp were separate, you geared for pvp by doing pvp instances, pve was possible, a cubic instances for cubicles. It almost made sense.

How the hell did they go so wrong in 7.x patch I wonder. It is like they are trying hard to find all the ways that the game won't work.

[Unbuff-DN]

I'm pretty sure Aion is just a side project at this point. 

When there are problems that actually can be solved, but are just ignored, the only reason to do it like this, is because they have better and more profitable games to care about.

Take, for instance, the auto-hunting system. They removed it. That's cool. But what did they give in return? Nothing.

Stats Cubics, Lumiel's Transmutation System, Events and other stuff that REQUIRES the auto-hunting systems in order work properly, are just left aside.

I don't know if who gives the shots is just really d.umb or likes to troll.

And the more updates, the more problems...

I take long breaks from the game, and when I try to return, it's just worse than before. I only try to play 'cause I miss the people I usually play with, but it's hard to see a game that has a great potential get destroyed like this.

[Watain-DN]

They profit in the game but nothing good is done...

nothing is enough for them,to bring something cool to the game...

hosting the game in a rich region like this and still gives zero attention to the game?

makes no sense.

to think this game was one of the best games in the past and look at the game now,wrecked in pieces like a broken private server hosted in a call center lol

morbid updates,boring maps,lack of content,lack of new scenarios to enrich the gaming experience...lack of ideas and lack of creativity by them.

[Thorine-KT]

I can't disagree with any of the reviews here. Aion needs to be bought buy another company that knows how online games should be ran. NC Soft turns every game it touches into rubbish. They took a amazing MMO and made it into a terrible cash grab. I have zero faith in NC Soft. 

[Arhangelos]

7 hours ago, Thorine-KT said:

I can't disagree with any of the reviews here. Aion needs to be bought buy another company that knows how online games should be ran. NC Soft turns every game it touches into rubbish. They took a amazing MMO and made it into a terrible cash grab. I have zero faith in NC Soft. 

NCSoft made the game, you are talking about NCWest the publisher of NA aion.

[Kinks-DN]

I really miss this game, and haven't been able to find anything close to match it really.
I wish so much they would fix this game, with full zones, reasonable to get gear, pvp arenas back,
and my goodness do I miss Tia eye pvp and upper abyss even, too, so so much.

It's hard to believe its been years that we've been begging for positive change and they just don't care,
I wonder why? Lack of investment? Did all the devs quit? I wish there was a reasonable answer.

Like a few others touched on in the thread already-
most of us who played before and who could be playing now, have cash to spend on games, heck, BDO got me good loll
But I don't see any value in doing that here at all. 
And I want to, I want to support Aion  =\

[Arctic]

Just chiming in on this thread since I had not yet. Thanks for the feedback - I'll make sure that the wealth of it in here makes its way to the leads so they can look it over. There are items in here that the team here (at NCWEST) could adjust directly, so I expect we'll look into what's possible.

I also hope that some of the recent changes we've been making have been a positive influence. If there are particular things from the Feedback Updates that were notably appreciated, that would be great to know. Perhaps it's worth it's own post to inquire on this...

[Zakovss]

@Kibbelz Please tell me if you are considering to enable autohunt since this patch was made for it or at least giving us more tools to get some necessary items like cubics (One solution can be the old cubic instance or make drop of cubics stacked like 2,3 and max 5) or marks of experience (autohunt can use experience extractor)

[Malloc-KT]

13 hours ago, Kibbelz said:

I also hope that some of the recent changes we've been making have been a positive influence. If there are particular things from the Feedback Updates that were notably appreciated, that would be great to know. Perhaps it's worth it's own post to inquire on this...

Well I think you have already tried to address the community issues in the past through a post collecting feedback and to be honest it was promising. It has been a very long time since someone actually cared about the state of the game and the community. 

 

However, personally  that the feedback was gathered but never heard. Gap is only becoming wider instead of closing.

Allow me to address couple of points below and conclude with 7.7 as I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

1.Monetizing

We all appreciate that a game has to be funded and therefore the BCM is necessary and we occasionally or even regularly support it. People are always keen to spend on things that make them happy but I don't think it should or can replace the in game experience. Monetizing is fine as long as it is done in a measured way without raising paywalls. Most successful games have used their shops to boost players that are behind or even satisfy other visual needs e.g. skins.  A very good example of how this has been treated not in a very balanced but kind of acceptable way is the glyphs. Which you can still obtain after 5 weeks of lugbug quests (assuming the fragments will remain). But think about having to do this for 5 weeks and you still get a random glyph with useless stats ?!?!? But even if you buy it form BCM it is still an RNG related piece kind of a gamble isnt it? It feels even more like a amble given that you have to pay for it!

2.Rewards & Events

It is quite mad that for couple of months now since I came back at least the game is more rewarding when afking instead of playing it. I am going back to the recent events

i. stormwing egg , a very good event great rewards loads of afking

ii. 11th anniversary, extremely rewarding if you are lucky loads of afking as well  

iii. Halloween event, probably the best event of the year activity rose, rewards wre not RNG but the players could choose 

iv. balauera crafts (dont recall the name) way too much rng, ridiculous event , great idea to use the etiums etc 

v. Autumn festival, lol.

vi. current event, not even worth mentioning it , I much rather play mario cart.

vii. The Vault, also very good but could have been better if the rewards were at least account shareable

In general I think that the restriction to trade items at least within the account especially event related items is not very good. Basically you put off ppl from actually doing the event and especially when the events are the only hope to fill the gap.

3.Player base management

Always the big question. Why you guys are not doing anything about ppl using 3rd party software to change the ingame functionality like no animation etc ? There are at least 2 tools I know that can detect that why dont you just try it out yourself to prove their reliability and then accept evidence form them to deal with the hackers. Trust me if you star accepting evidence you will be able to manage the community al ot better and everyone would be happy to check and report that to you cause at least that would give people the reassurance that if they work their ass of to get gear and skills they could compete with the best in a fair way. The same ppl the were coming up as hackers in my AiDPS metter 5 years ago are still coming up and you continue turn a blind eye.

4.Updates and Patches

How is it even possible to loose the lead form releasing patches against GF ? Like you guys were 6 months ahead and now you are 1 month behind , not to mention that the patches that reach the NA servers are not even quality checked... Do you even log in this game?

 

All the above set the mood for generally playing the game and then the latest patch comes and reinforces the RNG. Farm non stop in a map you cant leave even to buy shards or pots to acquire souls that will give you a random piece for any class and that is if you are lucky to not get materials. Like yes ok we accept that this gear is slightly better and we should farm for it and it should not be that easy to get but come on this is slavery. In other words you force us to farm non stop to eventually gamble and get horrible drops. 

 

Which of the above would make you wanna play this game?

 

Not going to mention that the only thing makes this game better than others is the pvp which atm is not existent cause of hacks,rewards,gaps and finally the extremely low population (even if that is linked to the afk events) 

 

 Any game has to be enjoyable and rewarding while you play it not just because you are logged into it.

 

[Squid]

2 hours ago, Malloc-KT said:

2.Rewards & Events

It is quite mad that for couple of months now since I came back at least the game is more rewarding when afking instead of playing it. I am going back to the recent events

i. stormwing egg , a very good event great rewards loads of afking

ii. 11th anniversary, extremely rewarding if you are lucky loads of afking as well  

iii. Halloween event, probably the best event of the year activity rose, rewards wre not RNG but the players could choose 

iv. balauera crafts (dont recall the name) way too much rng, ridiculous event , great idea to use the etiums etc 

v. Autumn festival, lol.

vi. current event, not even worth mentioning it , I much rather play mario cart.

vii. The Vault, also very good but could have been better if the rewards were at least account shareable

In general I think that the restriction to trade items at least within the account especially event related items is not very good. Basically you put off ppl from actually doing the event and especially when the events are the only hope to fill the gap.

How to 101: Guide to keeping players reliant on developers or publishers for gains.

 

It genuinely mind boggles me how people still do not even understand that despite being praised for amazing events they keep giving out garbage events w/o at the very least attaching 400% XP events to them...

They are not ignoring you they are giving you just enough of a fix to keep you logging in just-incase an event is good. You have to have bad experiences to have good experiences.

[Vantheria-DN]

17 hours ago, Kibbelz said:

If there are particular things from the Feedback Updates that were notably appreciated, that would be great to know. Perhaps it's worth it's own post to inquire on this...

I didn't see a new post about this, so I thought I'd comment here. I went back and looked at the listing that you made (below) and thought deeply about the changes that have occurred. Here are my hopefully polite, objective opinions.

RNG: Honestly, I have not seen any change about this. I do not know what all goes into correcting rng rates, I will be honest. However, if it were as easy as just changing the number on a code, I'd say all rng needs to be decreased by about 25%.

Stigma stones: The Halloween event allowed players to easily achieve +12 stigmas which was fantastic for so many new/returning players. Even for those of us who already have advanced stigmas, it was wonderful because we could make a little kinah off the stigmas, allowing us to retune our gear and buy other things. I see good attempts here from your team.

Transformations: Some changes have been made to potentially get ultimate xforms into paying players' hands, but I haven't seen much change for free players. I would recommend continuing to make legendary transformations easily available in events, so that free players can continue attempting combines.

Cubic system: The recent patch's Lumiel's Transmutation has helped a bit with cubics, but not enough for new/returning players. They are still severely at a disadvantage. I'd recommend increasing the drop rate on open world mobs.

Events: While looking at the current event, it would be easy to say events are in a terrible state; however, that is untrue. The Halloween event was quite good for all players. I can tell that some efforts are being made to make events more useful to players. This current event is obviously a miss, but I'm hopeful about future events.

Hacking/cheating: No changes have been made. I don't expect any changes to be made (sad). I don't think any of us know/understand why NCsoft has never, in many years, punished cheaters, but I believe we are mostly apathetic to it now. It is what it is.

Hard currency costs: I don't recall what exactly this is about from that thread a few months ago. Was it the high kinah costs of things such as retuning? If so, I haven't seen any changes, and it would certainly be nice to have costs of things reduced -- even if it's just by 15%.

Runes/gemstones: The current patch allows crafting of these items, which is fantastic on paper, BUT the implementation was poor because the materials needed to craft them are a large amount, but are also not that common. Additionally, there is that dreadful rng again in regards to getting a GOOD runestone/gemstone. We could spend our materials and just get crap. If the amount of materials needed cannot be reduced and/or drop rate not increased, then I'd recommend putting these items in events. To clarify, we do NOT need common runestones such as Item Drop Rate, but rather Greater/Prime runestones and those with the rarer skills, such as Increased Recovery. Similarly, we do NOT need common gemstones, but rather Shining/Dazzling and those with the rarer skills.

XP rate: I see you all are making attempts to get us more XP. You're giving us XP boosts fairly often. This is good. Sadly, we need XP marks to buy EVERYTHING now since the other currencies are gone. Honestly, a full-time 100% XP boost is basically necessary. Barring that, we should be getting XP boosts with every single event.

Minions: I haven't seen any changes here. Loki (or you? can't remember) hinted at a future S rank minion event. Hopefully, that is a well-implemented event. Some people, such as myself, have 2 or 3 S rank minions. This is not fair to new/returning players who do not even have a single A rank minion! A rank minions are very hard to come by now. They used to drop from world bosses, but now the only way, aside from events, is a small chance from random path in Minium Vault, or terrible rng from Cute Minion Contracts wherein you can open 20 of those and not get a single A rank minion. I'd recommend making A rank minions more common in events as well as decreasing the rng needed to successfully combine 4 A rank minions into 1 S rank minion. And/or, I'd recommend changing the S rank minion to be selectable upon successful combine. It is maddening to fail several combines, use up all your restore tokens, and then finally get lucky enough to get an S rank minion, but have it be a heal boost, magic-based Viola when you're a gladiator.

Balance: Was this about class balance or gear gap? I can't remember. If class balance, not anything you all can do about that since patches come from Korea. Although honestly, I don't feel like anyone is TOO overpowered or TOO underpowered now, except perhaps sorcerers defensively in pvp (although they are very good in pve). If it was about the ever-widening gap between players' gear, stigmas, Daevanion skills, gemstones, runestones, etc, then I think all of the other items on the list kind of address those things individually. But I will say that the gap is not closing, sadly.

Broker/trade: Was this about the taxes on the broker? If so, no changes seen. I'd decrease those taxes though because it only hurts new/returning players who barely have any kinah.

Communication/transparency: Although you have been a bit MIA in recent weeks, I will objectively say that there have been positive changes here. This past year, we have received much more communication than we have in the past 4 years. Please continue to visit with us on the forums even though I am sure it is upsetting for you very often as people will unfairly personally target you and Loki. The two of you seem to be the only people who care about us, and we need you.  I hope you will not take to heart some of the cruel comments that come your way about you, specifically, rather than the state of things.

Content removal: Again, not positive what this was about. Auto-hunting is an opinion-based thing. Personally, I don't want it and am glad we don't have it. BUT, other things that relied upon it should be reviewed. Cubics, event quests that require killing 700 mobs, etc.

Enchantment: I have not seen any changes here, and we do need them desperately. Ultimate pvp enchantment stones are non-existent currently. We cannot currently morph them, and they do not exist in any gameplay-based capacity except having level 9 renown to buy tickets. This is not an acceptable amount of stones we can receive. There is new pvp gear this patch, but people have to spend 50+ legendary enchantment stones to get an ULTIMATE piece of gear to +15. Why are we still getting ancient enchantment stones when there is no ancient gear? We should be getting legendary enchantment stones at the very minimum. Likewise, ultimate pve enchantment stones barely exist. There is a small chance for these to drop on the 2 weekly hard mode instance quests, and if you have Prestige, you can get 1 from IDD and 2 from VT if you are lucky enough to form a VT group (most people aren't). That's all. Let me be very clear: ultimate enchantment stones are way, way too rare considering that all gear is of the ultimate class.

Kinah: I won't go into too much detail as this is kind of touched upon in several other places. Basically, giving us 500k or 1 mil kinah in an event is a slap in the face when it costs 500k for one single retune attempt (something that ends up costing us about 50 mil kinah on average for 1 piece of gear).

Pay to win: I have seen some attempts to get free events alongside p2w events, so that is good. The Halloween event, and of course Stormwing event, were very good for free and p2w players alike. Yes, some of us are privileged enough to pay for things and continue supporting the game monetarily (and we should not be ridiculed for doing so as it keeps this shrinking game open for a little longer), but not everyone can pay for things and should not be made to feel like they are second class.

Prestige: Great change -- putting platinum cubics here. I would recommend reviewing the loot table on the daily gold chest. I got 1 ancient alcemium yesterday, and that is not even a material that is currently used. Overall, just please take a look at any Prestige-related rewards and ensure they are actually used in the current patch. I would also recommend adding a passive 100% XP buff at all times to Prestige users.

Skins/Cosmetics: I have not seen any change here, and I wish I would! It is my speculation that you all pay for a certain amount of store spaces on the BCM. That is perfectly acceptable! However, skins/items that people do not use/want could be removed and replaced with items that we DO want. For example, if you check your purchase records, I guarantee no one is buying the Snake costumes. Those should be removed and replaced with other rarer skins. I'd recommend checking purchase records over the past 12 months and remove anything from the store that has not been purchased at least 15 times in that entire 12 months. Additionally, there are several Motion cards which are much rarer than they should be. We have not seen Dragon's Set Motion or Red's Basket for Granny Motion is literal years.

Daevanion Essences: I am seeing these in events, and that is good. Please continue to make them readily available as they are very necessary. Additionally, if possible, I'd recommend reducing the cost in the Abyssal Splinter NPC store to 300 instead of 400.

Extendable Weapons: These have not become more available despite our pleas. There was talk of adding them to a future event. Hopefully, that occurs soon.

PVP/PVE: Not sure what this was about. Regarding pve, there is a really great thread regarding the balance of pve instances, started by @Rag-DN, which I will link below. Regarding pvp, it's in the saddest state I have ever seen in it my (mere) 4.5 years of playing Aion. Pvp instances are completely dead because they are not rewarding. Giving 98k AP and 1 battlefield coin is not worth the trouble. I would add legendary pvp enchantment stones as well as 500k AP as rewards to ALL pvp instances. This will not help the massive gear gap that exists, but it is something.
 

 

Renown: The percentage of renown lost every Monday needs to be drastically decreased at the lower levels, full stop. There are several other threads with numbers explaining why.

Siege schedules: You all quickly fixed the siege schedule mistake, so thank you for that. I think most people are much happier with these changes. On a related note, non-Prestige players are still receiving Stellium (an unused currency) from altar sieges. Please fix this.

Arena: I do not participate in arenas, so I won't comment here.

Armor class restrictions: I am a huge, HUGE "skin person." Despite that, I do not feel this should have any sort of priority whatsoever amongst all of the other issues.

Mounts: I have seen your team add mounts to events, such as the current event, but temporary mounts (and items, in general) are useless. I don't want to sound glib, but they are truly useless. If we have to work toward a mount in an event, it needs to be permanent.

World bosses: I have not seen any changes here. I wish that the Demaha world bosses were server-specific, but I don't see that being changed since they are, in fact, in Demaha. So I'm not sure what you all can really do about this. For Anomos, I'd increase his HP by about 100% so that he does not die in 1 minute. For the world bosses in Gelkmaros/Inggison, I'd recommend increasing the quantity of loot on the bosses.

[Jagblade-DN]

On 12/4/2020 at 10:32 AM, Vantheria-DN said:

I didn't see a new post about this, so I thought I'd comment here. I went back and looked at the listing that you made (below) and thought deeply about the changes that have occurred. Here are my hopefully polite, objective opinions.

*Snip*

Content removal: Again, not positive what this was about. Auto-hunting is an opinion-based thing. Personally, I don't want it and am glad we don't have it. BUT, other things that relied upon it should be reviewed. Cubics, event quests that require killing 700 mobs, etc.

 

 

Content Removal refers to how 6.0 cut literally more than half of the content from the game including maps, skills, skins, crafting professions, quests, titles, features, etc. Some other were removed before this, some have been removed after. The idea was to eventually begin re-adding some of this stuff back in if at all possible.

I know on my main character I have a lot of items and titles that simply cannot be obtained anymore. Some of them cannot even be worn or used anymore because of 6.0 further restricting what certain classes can use.

[Arhangelos]

On 12/4/2020 at 5:32 PM, Vantheria-DN said:

Broker/trade: Was this about the taxes on the broker? If so, no changes seen. I'd decrease those taxes though because it only hurts new/returning players who barely have any kinah.

Broker fees since 6.0 are awful.

All they have to do about this is at least make the listing fee very small, because in a dead game listing something and never selling it is a bummer. We used to have it like this in the whole 5.8 time where things were even tradeable.

The selling fee is kinda high but at least when something sells you got your profit. The lsiting fee needs to get like 0.5% of the amount you try to sell for and it is still a lot unless you sell the item.