Look back at 6.0 from my perspective

[Nalariel]

Hi after I experienced a lot in private classic servers.

If we removed all bad p2w ,RNG from it and make it farmable in open world it's not actually a bad patch at all.
My anti live version was mainly from skins and removed all NPCs that related to skins + horrible shop + too fast leveling going 80 felt so empty. In fact people in classic servers do not care about quests or anything at all they all rushed with exp amulet and level in instances someone crazy enough to make 1-65 in 6 hours some might even crazier but I don't know about that. My thought is exp amulet from shop/premium account and exp you got from instances is what pretty much destroyed Aion classic. We shouldn't rush at all but should enjoying the game along the way (Imagine you ride a train from west to east coast take a couple days and enjoy everything vs use teleport device teleport you from west to east in 3 seconds and said it was so boring). Maybe it was the game design itself and make all contents that before max level useless. So yep NC is pretty much understand this and make everyone level to 80 super easy in 6.0 without know what to do or need gears(Why you need Vertron , Elten , Theo or other maps if you never care for them but rush).

Speed run culture from streamers affected how we play the game greatly. I think if exp amulet or exp event didn't existed but instead boost amulet that increased kinah, AP ,coins from quests would be better options first you don't need super hard leveling like 5.0 did ,make people questing mainly instead rush rush and solo instance for exp. Open world playing is better than instances any day any time.

So decision to delete maps in 6.0 I think it's pretty understandable because it's us players who never care anything but end game content support that decision.
Remove skins,NPCs that related to, make BCM dull is not justify by any means it's just plainly stupid including forcing people pay for normal appearance which I think it's not even 6.0 designers decision.

Unified scrolls(Transform) + variant skills to choose is brilliant idea only bad thing is too much RNG ,it would be ok if everything can farm via quests ,craft and open world like classic era but unfortunately it didn't.

Can live version be fixed ? It can if everything basic stuff can be farm in open world and quests and safe enough not be camp by you opponents.

[Kubei-DN]

Live version is beyond salvation, that's why most players in Korea fled to classic server.

NCSOFT is at fault for enabling this "speed running" to end game and kept adding exp amulets and events, which ultimately made it worse. Had they kept leveling slow and steady and added content to low level areas, it would've been just fine and interesting. Then again, this is a Korean MMORPG, it's about grind rather than anything else.

Because everything relies on RNG, you might grind for months or years and ultimately get nothing, to the point where just playing the game is a chore rather than something enjoyable. PvP being the main (and I use this word loosely) part of endgame in Aion is absolute garbage. I thought previous patches were bad, but holy crap this takes the whole cake and shoves it down its mouth.

Point is, the game shifted focus at the end of 5.8. Yes, we already had those elemental transformations, but at some point we were supposed to unlock the last one (which we never did because 6.0 happened), but rather continue that, NCSOFT probably got a different team or got told to "use that, but make it worse". I'm not aware of any MMORPG right now where the main focus is to delete maps, then re-add them as "new" content.

[Nalariel]

I can't fully blame NCsoft for exp amulets and exp events because even now someone still asking for exp events ,speed run is today culture if they don't add them someone and probably a lot of people going to ask NC why don't they do it don't NC want money for that ? NC did try to encourage people to do low level contents such as giving stuff like gold stigma, manastones from running low level instances but people never care about that they think why they should bothered with doing DP when they can simply afk dred at lv 65. Even a game that has no exp amulets there're people who doing speed run and showing that in stream.

At this point I can't weight between redevelop classic or fix live. Aion charm is always skins,character creation system and combat.
Maybe it's better if we can unlocked all skills much earlier than 65 and level up is nothing but stronger version of same skills and variant effects.

If I develop a game myself I would just make 2 versions of game where standard is with shop that selling exp amulets , p2w stuff and another one that has only cosmetic items.
I believed this will work even on live version now. I bet a lot of players will happy with only cosmetics server despite they might have only white transform lol.

[Arhangelos]

They could still try to fix things, we already had a game retardification in 6.0. They need to do something similar and this time bring back the good things and stop the madness about making every class a canon in dmg.

Right now the game has everything wrong and misses everything right and fun. the wrongs are the exclusive things people have that make them walking machines, the special items like dazzling gemstones, high runestones etc, like they removed the godstones and they re-implemented more godstone-like items  like runes and the imbued weapons and the passive skills from gear.

PvP is rendered utterly useless, 6.x patch was pvp based, and everyone could progress, I was 100% f2p and managed to reach the highest rank status by participating in every pvp content. Now pvp is stupid in open world were the most defensive classes do the most dmg and pvp instances are practically useless.

PVE??? Remember the problems with The Eternal Bastion being an exclusive instance for static alliances which gave specific people the ability to over-progress while the rest couldn't keep up? Well now we have every instance in hard mode being a homage to EB.

Lastly we do not have the fun parts of having multiple maps, gathering, crafting, morphing, housing, skins etc.

The whole 7.x is a big mistake and it should have never happened.

[Vinley-KT]

I don't think Live can be salvaged. The damage calculations that they changed to would have to be totally reworked. They'd have to literally again, rework gear and scaling, which is currently insane. Their worst offense was giving the whales a free set of game breaking gear on release of a major change.

Then there's the other problems. Aion use to have the best crafting among any MMO I've played. Sure, some of the crafts were useless and needed some buffs and changes, but the actual implementation of crafting was amazing. When they removed that completely, it literally blew my mind.

The game mechanics have been butchered down to constant button smashing. When I watch current Aion, I no longer see the tamed aggression that made Aion such a high skill cap game; I see two players smashing skill after skill, without weaving, putting out insane damage numbers. Not even sure how it got to that point, but it looks so brainless and easy. Even skills that use to be stationary can be used with auto approach now and extended range. They effectively lowered the skill ceiling of the game across the board.

The P2W is obviously insane. There's too much gear expansion, and because of that there's too much stat bloating. There's no way to stay competitive without spending huge amounts of money. That's because there's too many things to increase stats from. 4.0 was a P2W patch, mostly due to only temperings, which were actually not too bad to achieve because at least you could farm back then. Now? There's like 10 mechanics worse than temperings, and there seems to be no end in sight. When I look at the amount of "buff-able" gear in Aion, I literally see the same predatory bullshit I find in mobile games.

Dropping maps was a smart choice, but only because they had already butchered the early and mid game of Aion. When I first started in 1.5, I had no interest in speed leveling. Some of the best content, hell, some of the best PVP even, was mid game. I never did the twink thing, that was cringe and needed to be addressed early on, but I did pvp, and enjoyed it. Getting level 50 actually cut down a lot of what there was to realistically do. I notice a lot of people that ended up quitting between 1.5 to 1.9 did so because they got bored of end game. It took me a long time, so I never really had the chance to get bored.

Before I quit there was one thing I noticed; there were a LOT of unimaginably bad players. I think a lot of that was due to, like you said, the speed leveling addiction. How can you go from Lv1-80 in  24hrs, in a game this deep and expect to know what you're doing? It took the best players months, years even, to master their class; you're not even giving players the chance to learn with speed leveling culture. I get it, leveling can be boring, but that's mostly because they butchered the early and mid game into useless-ness. When Aion was most popular, people were doing world bosses. I remember having like hundreds of low level people out in the desert killing that stupid giant bird in Morheim. The rewards needed tweaking, but it was fun back then. Community content is the key to any MMO. Hell, I remember back when we use to level off elites in groups instead of instances. That was actually one of my favorite ways to level as instances are often repetitive. I remember running through mist mane with a group killing everything in our path, finding bosses and killing them, it was glorious, and never felt repetitive the way instances do.

I dunno, I've always loved Aion, but what it's turned in to is truly sad, and I'm pretty confident the live version wont be salvaged. Not even sure how big the team working on Live even is anymore, I can't imagine that it gets a lot of development focus due to being on its death bed. What will be interesting to see is how they shift or handle both versions of the game from here on out. The stats are clear, there's 700 people on Live in Korea, and 80,000 on Classic. What's going to get dev time?

[Pharoahra-DN]

Don't worry guys. 8.0 comes out next month in korea with the introduction of Apsuranta and an entirely new fort siege so we can see what new mess of "features" they come up with

[Nalariel]

Hi "button smashing" is so lol 

I understand that someone look at mobile game and said look because mobile game is so casual so we should make our game simplified too so we would sell more like mobile counterpart. But the fact is this assumption is like "hey look at this cryptocurrency it making a ton of money with graphics cards, so if we can't buy graphics cards let's using gaming laptops, gaming consoles, iphone, graphing calculators to mine that instead" wow that's just super genius level (Just satire you know :P)

Casual =/= p2w it never been and never will, it also doesn't mean super hard leveling ,or expecting you can die any moment from you opponent. Casual = can playing while relaxing it never meant to rush to end game at lighting speed that's why I always said we need to separated between pvp and pve ,pvpve should be nothing but optional.
Casual also means instances shouldn't only way to get gears, you don't like being force into a group and people constantly calling you a noob and told you to quit the game because you made a mistake right ? You should be able to farm gears like world drops(broker),coins,craft,instances and those gears shouldn't absurd more dominant than another method or much harder to get.

Lastly weaving shouldn't be a requirement for physical class to do good dps in pve it should be something to more pvp relate.

[Squid]

On 3/13/2021 at 6:39 AM, Pharoahra-DN said:

Don't worry guys. 8.0 comes out next month in korea with the introduction of Apsuranta and an entirely new fort siege so we can see what new mess of "features" they come up with

New siege? They are bringing back kaldor no?

[Squid]

On 3/13/2021 at 10:26 AM, Nalariel-KT said:

Lastly weaving shouldn't be a requirement for physical class to do good dps in pve it should be something to more pvp relate.

It was designed that way since day 1. That is like saying table tennis should not require paddles to play competitively.

[Nalariel]

I understand that but I didn't suggest remove it I only say make it less relevant to pve.

[Squid]

It comes down to subjective opinion, To me a core gameplay mechanic should be relevant in the core gameplay features, To me that is both PvP and PvE so weaving should be relevant in both.

 

6.0 was designed with p2w in mind so fixing the problems in 6.0 does more than just removing major p2w features from the game. Example: The way you obtained skill books was obnoxious and that is being generous. I never heard of any player who went OMG i love the shugo finding feature, It is the best feature this game has ever had. They designed it the way they did so they could sell more event based progression items when they added the books to events.

This is why ultimately it would not be good w/o a total revamp of the entire systems that were implemented in 6.0.

[Nalariel]

Am I understand correctly that you suggesting that in order to fix live we have to destroy every fundamental of 6.0 and so on?

We're talking about the system of it not skins or graphics improvement ofc o_o
I believed MMO got destroyed by p2w, loot boxes severely it's a major problem that needs to be address.

But before p2w took over Aion already slowly declining  with forced PvP, elitism, and complexity of the game itself. So massive p2w post classic is like a nuclear bomb put an end to everything. People paying 100k or 1kk real money for being the best in video game is not something I understand completely but yep like I said before the world runs with satisfaction more than reasons.

[Squid]

Yes, The fundamental design of 6.0 was to use the cash shop so if you believe p2w destroys Aion then the entirety of Aion 6.0 is the embodiment of that p2w mechanic you hate so much.

Every single decision made in 6.0 was made from a cash shop perspective first and never from a game play mechanic. Like i said with the new skill books, Was it designed so that everyone can get their skills? No it was designed so people who are 2 lazy to do something as boring as running through an instance on 100s of alts never got their skill books till they were blessed by an event or they paid for them. 

Same with transformations, How many people cried about not having a legendary contract because they missed that 1 good event? 100s at the time. They did it this way to entice you in to spending more and more rather than having it be a long term goal in the game they made it a goal that you can only get from their blessings(remember we are talking 6.X here so lugbug/renown was not a thing).

I could break down the entirety of 6.0 but i think you get the point. When the cash shop is the first point of interest for developers and the design of the game is around that cash shop rather than the cash shop being around the game then you are going to have problems and that is 6.0 in a nutshell.

[Nalariel]

Do you believing if we took another way ? 5.8 team continues to develop their own version of 6.0 would be better ?

I don't think p2w will be less but  we will have ultimate transformation that's for sure.
I do questioning about not deleting maps because if I remembered correctly upper forts in abyss were disabled and divine fort  already frozen? (not sure)
Most likely they planned to delete most of abyss.

I do believe they planned to extend lv to 80 or 85 but keep hardly leveling as 5.x style maybe even harder. I think original ultimate transform in 5.x supposed to be unlocked by leveling in their 6.0 but because of backslash from hard leveling it got reworked and end up in super RNG P2W instead.

If we don't have  white/green/gold/purple/red transform there's no reason to reworked all combat system too, the rework only done to justified new gears and make old gears from 5.x useless.

I believed they intend to remaster all maps but they never finish it only we saw only Herion perhaps there're remaster of Vertron or Elten somewhere but we never know.(Partial remastered Beluslan is suggested this evidence)

About daevanion skillbooks I couldn't guess if it's a part of original plan or not but I think variant of skills from skillbooks suppose to be unlock by archdeava points same way as 5.x did.

So maybe it will do better than original but less p2w ? maybe not if it was like I imagined I'm ok as long as they doing something with afk luna maybe instant give up for lesser rewards no exp from instances and more quests based to level instead exping from mobs or instance mobs.

Ah well that was so fun to type 

[Squid]

5.X was the era of aion that brought around these 6.0 changes so no, Not for me. If the continuation of 5.8 trend had of continued in to 6.0 they would of just had the game in the state it is in now but sooner. At least there was the potential hype with 6.0 being decent because there was change.

[Nalariel]

That's very much possible that people who have yet experienced our 6.0 will reacted very negatively against continuing of 5.8 as original developers has plan.

Let's  go back in time to the diverse point of totally destruction 4.8
Let's say we move up to 5.0 with all maps there I can foreseen that some people will not go new maps at all all but pretty much leveling from BM camps in Katalam/Danaria they giving greatly exp and not much work(It's pretty much same as people leveling in BT to 65 in 4.x). BM giving money by selling supplements also AP what not to like ?

With everything tradable in broker, it there any point to do instances yourself ? Luna instances and FoO probably not existed too because people got another way to get exp and money in same time.
I see the destruction of maps in 4.8 nothing more trying to force everyone in one map whatever you want to pvp or pve you have to do both and that's backslash greatly(The plan was to sell more p2w because people need it if they want to survive)

So I think the worst thing about 5.0 is not hard leveling but rather forcing people in one map doing pvpve.

I'll talk about abyss a bit I dislike abyss greatly not because ability to fly but because abyss is so depressing it's just void and barren I didn't say it suppose to be paradise but abyss is just a floating death land with no sight of life even hope. We're talking about the game not real life or realistic we come for our enjoyment but abyss giving everything opposite you hoped for.

I hope time limit bosses and everything related to time limit will get removed or not reintroduce  but rather give extra rewards if you do it quick instead.

[Arhangelos]

1 hour ago, Nalariel-KT said:

I'll talk about abyss a bit I dislike abyss greatly not because ability to fly but because abyss is so depressing it's just void and barren I didn't say it suppose to be paradise but abyss is just a floating death land with no sight of life even hope. We're talking about the game not real life or realistic we come for our enjoyment but abyss giving everything opposite you hoped for.

I am sure the aesthetics of a single map don't play that huge of a role for people quitting etc, but I agree 100% on this part by mere aesthetics. The abyss seemed like an unfriendly necessity that lacked any charm.

You can make dark places with a lot of charisma, like gothic style, dark steampunk style, hellish style, vampiric style etc. Plenty of people could appreciate that look.

The abyss though was nothing but a dark gray floating mass of rock, nothing to catch the eye, it was as stale as it could be for a map and it was also in 3D since we could fly everywhere so we could get a glimpse of every ugliness it could offer. It was a place where you had to go to do very important stuff at some patches and then out of nowhere, an overgeared assassin or an archer would come from nowhere in hide, kill you and then go back in hide thinking they are great pvpers adding more insult to the existence of the map. It was also the very first shared map we gotand when they started bringing more shared maps, I disliked the game even more.

I have absolutely not a single good memory of the abyss.

[Nalariel]

I'll talking about dark map like starting map of asmo , I forgot the name I'm sorry but asmo starting town is completely beautiful even more than poeta counterpart dark but mystery and so charming. It could be something like that. Do I think we need to remove all volcano, desert and make it all green ? ofc not o_o I think because bad things existed make us appreciated good things without bad things we will never understand the beauty of good things.

Abyss do not need to be heaven, it needs to show even life(Trees,Flowers) can existing in even an extreme place like abyss. Completely desert place like Theomobos also bad it can have some more green and water but still desert.

[Arhangelos]

1 hour ago, Nalariel-KT said:

I'll talking about dark map like starting map of asmo , I forgot the name I'm sorry but asmo starting town is completely beautiful even more than poeta counterpart dark but mystery and so charming. It could be something like that. Do I think we need to remove all volcano, desert and make it all green ? ofc not o_o I think because bad things existed make us appreciated good things without bad things we will never understand the beauty of good things.

Abyss do not need to be heaven, it needs to show even life(Trees,Flowers) can existing in even an extreme place like abyss. Completely desert place like Theomobos also bad it can have some more green and water but still desert.

My all time favorite (probably due to nostalgia) is the Dark Elf Village from Lineage II. A destroyed underground city with gothic blue mood and a big Shillen statue in the middle that drain lighting from air.

 

 

[Nalariel]

I listening to the song of your video is iconic and not forgettable like abyss I could write a lore for a place like abyss.

Below lower abyss lower than Terminal there's a village where both exiled elyos/asmo choose to runaway from their homes to escape endless war it was found by elyos/asmo soldiers who fought in a battle like a week and no result they decided to escaped together from their governments and their families and friends decided to settle together with them.

In this village they will offering a special broker where you can sell items from your side to asmo/elyos counterpart if your side is dominating you will gain up to 20% more profit from selling items to your opposite side but if your side don't have forts your profit will minus up to 20% as well. The idea is try to balance out population of the server.
And selling only your exclusive faction items to enemy faction stuff like abyss/craft skins.

The village is not a safe zone but if guards saw you attacking someone they will attack you.(they strong like shugo guards in Danaria)
The building and cultures should be mixed between elyos/asmo there're some balaurs in the village too but elyos/asmo kinda racism against them.

Well isn't it interesting place ?
This place should be completely optional(not campaign quest) and NPCs won't talk and let you use the function unless you do a series of quests.

[Asmodir-DN]

Actually I miss the Sarpan/tiamarant maps. You could choose if you wanna just pve or just pvp. And i didnt mind katalam/danaria because it was balance between mass pvp areas and safe zones and pvevp areas.... But what i get from NCSOFT is that they like to play God and destroy lands at will. If is not removing maps, its put them all endgame for ppl rush on leveling (this is the Lineage2 method).

I dont think that live will be salvaged. For that they would need to recreate everything, and they dont have stamina and will for it. They just want cash shop.

[Wrathchild-KT]

This thread has all the reasons I went to WoW Shadowlands. Leveling was so entertaining , lots of cinematics and different mechanics.

The most important thing is once you hit 60 the game doesn’t feel like you have to “work” instead of have fun with it.

To gear up you can do WHATEVER content you like WHENEVER you want and there’s NO RNG for upgrading gear.

But hey, WoW is not f2p... yeah, it’s not, but +10 gems/runes aren’t either and subscription is half of the price of a prestige.

I’ll still log on Aion to do dailies and Siege because I still hope classic will come and they will have to shut down this BS 7.x and give compensation to classic players.

[Vinley-KT]

2 hours ago, Wrathchild-KT said:

I’ll still log on Aion to do dailies and Siege because I still hope classic will come and they will have to shut down this BS 7.x and give compensation to classic players.

Does it make me a bad person if I literally want to see the game shut down... lol?
 

I've had my character since 1.5, played since beta. Devoted a lot of time and money... But honestly nothing would make me happier than seeing it get the end it deserves. Would be icing on the cake if Classic is what delivered that end, too.

[Nalariel]

It would be a big lie if I say I never felt or wanted Aion live to be destroyed

I did feel that at some point and even now some part of me still got that feeling but I also have a feeling that people who like live shouldn't be force to play classic against their wills ,for me this act is pretty much same act as when NC forced me to pvp when I just want to pve in peace. I wish they would launch classic but also keep live one up as long as possible if they going to close live I want NC to compensate those people who invested in live too.

If they going to redevelop Aion 3.0 I kinda want them to integrated some content from 4.0 such as katalam map as an optional map to farm starter pvp gears maybe we will redesign tiamaruntra too or just destroy ?  I don't know I think it's ugly or maybe it could be redesign as another full pvp map and make sarpan only one sole pve map.

Save bard,gunner and AT for 4.0 maybe just redesign AT too would be nice lol.
Oh well wait and see 

[Arhangelos]

10 hours ago, Wrathchild-KT said:

But hey, WoW is not f2p...

Every non f2p game is actually cheaper to play and more enjoyable, this is a universal truth.

In EU you are free to login but  you can hardly play the game for free since everything is limited. You need a gold pack which gives unlocks basic features of the game and gives a ton of additional benefits... and it costs 5 euros (or about 6$). Of course Aion EU is not anything better just because of pay to play, but at least they have more active GMs and their servers are in much better standing because here someone can have 500 account bots, but in EU those 500 account bots would have to pay for gold pack if they even wanted to trade their money.

Every game that has a subscription tends to be better, even better those that are 100% pay to play, because most of the costs of running the game are covered by that fee and they usually do not have brutal p2w tactics but just stores for cosmetics etc which people are actually willing to pay money for instead of wasting real money to get enchants so they can fail more.

I did play WoW in the past but I will never be able to accept the crude cartoon graphics. The game looks like the designers made everything in MS Paint with a palette of 16 colours.