Whats right, whats wrong, and messed up perceptions.

[Bittena-DN]

First off, I am NOT an NCSoft defender.  Gaming has been my hobby since 1969, and computer gaming has been my hobby since the late 80's (DOS, CPM, and monochrome monitors with awful resolution.  Really, if you wern't there you missed NOTHING!).   

So, with the title setting the monologue, lets get to it.

Whats Right!

Well it's difficult and it feels just like I remember.  Nice job NCSoft.  Aion classic ticks all the right boxes for me.  I honestly couldn't be happier.   A few annoying bugs here and there.  Noticed one yesterday I think I best post up on quickly.   Not a game killer but annoying none the less. 

Whats not so right!

Of course the 20% of players (or there abouts) that are whales are keeping the the  Gold sellers happy already.  (Boo! Hiss!)  This is because the only place they can legit spend their cash   (and trust me they ARE addicted to spending money!)  is the subscription, a limited amount of Quna items, and an extra $30 per month for max output from the Deava pass system.    And oh fellow players understand this.. "Whales" are what push "Pay to Win"!  They got the money and they strongly influence the game.   And NCSoft is a business so expect some catering to them.  Accept it now and stop complaining about it because your not going to keep it from happening.   I have the advantage of a  35 years plus overview of the hobby, and I owned a gaming store at one point.  Whales paid the rend and covered my paycheck so you bet your ass I catered to them!    Enjoy the "purity" of the game while it lasts because history says its not going to last.  

Messed up perceptions!

Lets see, in the last 48 hours how many times have you heard some player shit talking the game on any of the following subjects?

1.  Players are all ready leaving because its to hard!

2.  Players are already leaving because it's Pay to Win!

3.  Players are already leaving because its not free to play!  

4.  It's not fair some players already have gold gear and are at the level cap!

let me address each of these points...

1.  Yes it hard.  That's what we old Aion players remember.  It's an eastern MMO.. success begets success, Failure crash lands.  If you want easy go play the regular f2p Aion.

2.   Pay to WIn?    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Yea, no not even.. Likely will be eventually but not yet.  Your going to have to accept that there are going to be P2W elements.  Quit your whining and enjoy what you got while it lasts.

3.   Not free to play. yea that's like the point ok?  You  can either have pay to win F2P  to keep the game going, or you can have a subscription model.  Sorry kids, but real world options are NOT free.  Servers, Office space, techs, sysops, office peeps, GM's and customer support do not pay for them selves.  I feel bad for anyone who cannot come up with the $15 per month to pay for their sub.  On the other hand if it's that much trouble to scrape up the cash then frankly they really cannot afford to be playing computer games and they need to go focus on the real world until they can.  Reality sucks, this is why we play computer fantasy MMO's..  HELLO?

4.  Yea, some folks are all ready to end game because they have no life, AND THEY HAVE FAR TO MUCH MONEY.   Literally to the point that they PAY other people to play when they're eating, sleeping etc.    But WINNING in a computer game is the only thing that matters to them in what must be a sad unrewarding lives ok?  Grant them your pity.  They'll always be someone that cheats, or exploits or finds away to end run the rules of the game because they just really have diddly for a moral center and they just have to have something they are perceived as good at.   Mear mortal imitations apply not to them!  They're special. 

     (sigh)  They tend to be a royal pain to deal with out side of computer games also.. Bloody Karens!

...............................................................................................................................................................................................................

So the whole point of this all is the game is what it is.     It's not perfect, it will never be perfect.    Perfection just really isn't a viable option.   It's takes too long to accomplish, and time costs money.    Game companies are in the business to MAKE money faster then they can spend it.   So enjoy what we have.   It's Aion classic.  It's a little quirky, It's difficult.  It's not fair and neither is the life you  lead outside of this game.   Jerks will rise to the top and nice guys will finish last most of the time.  But the 20/80 rule applies.   20% of the successful people will be nice people.  Treasure the moments when you find them, because the other 80% of the time your going to have to dodge turkeys with bad attitudes..  just like the real world.  Shouldn't be a surprise.

See you in game.  Good luck, good hunting, and know when to duck and run!

And a real shame we can't get more then 20% of the player base to actually READ the forums.  Might just solve an issue or two!  Ha! who am i kidding..

[Ashlayna-DN]

I seriously watched a guy complaining for about 3 hours about the game yesterday.  I logged out to do some other stuff, and logged back in about 10 hours later, and he was still going on, and kept going on for the hour or so I was on.  I'm sincerely starting to believe that they're being paid by the kinah spammers, it's the only real motivation I can see for going on that long.  If I were that unhappy, I'd log out, uninstall, and never look back.

[Telidas]

Thank you. Finally someone with a level-headed assessment. I've been saying this stuff since the start. 

 

Have fun, guys...seriously. It isn't all bad. Most of it is actually good, or at least expected/acceptable. 

[Elpy]

 

3 hours ago, Bittena-DN said:

2.   Pay to WIn?    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Yea, no not even.. Likely will be eventually but not yet.  Your going to have to accept that there are going to be P2W elements.  Quit your whining and enjoy what you got while it lasts.

Likely but no, yes, maybe? What the nyerk are you even trying to say here?

[Elpy]

1 hour ago, Telidas said:

Thank you. Finally someone with a level-headed assessment. I've been saying this stuff since the start. 

 

Have fun, guys...seriously. It isn't all bad. Most of it is actually good, or at least expected/acceptable. 

What level-headed? How is anything he said level headed?

[Bittena-DN]

perception.. is it pay to win?  Yes, but the ways to pay to win are very very VERY limited.    And what ways there are still requires you spend time in game DOING things.   You want real pay to win go look at the current main Aion or even better, Star Trek Online, or any of the FIFA games.   Eventually, inevitably there will be more "Pay 2 Win" crap in Aion Classic.  But for now it's such as small amount it might as well not exist.    SO anyone whining about "pay to win" in my opinion is just looking for an excuse to not play because they really do not want to admit the game is to much of a grind for them or simply to difficult to wrap their brains around.  Anything but admit to the truth of the matter.   The wanna freebie crowd has mostly already moved on... fortunately. 

Not all of 'em.. plenty of whiners out there still 

 

 

[Elpy]

2 minutes ago, Bittena-DN said:

Eventually, inevitably there will be more "Pay 2 Win" crap in Aion Classic.  But for now it's such as small amount it might as well not exist.    SO anyone whining about "pay to win" in my opinion is just looking for an excuse"

 

 

Bravo, so there is pay 2 win and will be more, so people paying less should just suck it up.

That is very encouraging thing to post for anyone returning to Aion, well done, telling people that is excuse, no it is not excuse, that's just nyerked up when you see these kind of responses.

[Bittena-DN]

5 minutes ago, Elpy said:

Bravo, so there is pay 2 win and will be more, so people paying less should just suck it up.

That is very encouraging thing to post for anyone returning to Aion, well done, telling people that is excuse, no it is not excuse, that's just nyerked up when you see these kind of responses.

Dude, you complain to much, and have offered nothing constructive.   And frankly your attitude IS part of the problem.   You want fairy tales, feel good talk and BS?  Go give World of Tanks and World of Warships a go (Both are very much pay 2 win) .  Your happiness is not my responsibility, or NCSoft's.. it's yours, so go make your happiness happen, or don't.  

   As for those "anyone returning to Aion" folks.   They can either figure it out for them selves, or not.  I'm one of 'em, and I am good with where the game is, even if I do miss not having an Aethertech or Gunslinger.  Now, back to the grind!

[Ashlayna-DN]

14 minutes ago, Elpy said:

Bravo, so there is pay 2 win and will be more, so people paying less should just suck it up.

That is very encouraging thing to post for anyone returning to Aion, well done, telling people that is excuse, no it is not excuse, that's just nyerked up when you see these kind of responses.

What's nyerked up is reading the same people, all day, every day, fixing to uninstall.  Some of them have been going on like that for about a week now, in game, and longer here, it would seem.  It really takes away from my experience when I'm watching LFG for something I'm waiting to do to come up, and all I see are the same people whining away, like someone is holding a gun to their head, making them log in.  If they're going to uninstall, do it, and move on.  Attention whoring in game, or on the forums isn't going to solve their problem.

[Elpy]

Just now, Bittena-DN said:

Dude, you complain to much, and have offered nothing constructive.   And frankly your attitude IS part of the problem.   You want fairy tales, feel good talk and BS?  Go give World of Tanks and World of Warships a go (Both are very much pay 2 win) .  Your happiness is not my responsibility, or NCSoft's.. it's yours, so go make your happiness happen, or don't.  

   As for those "anyone returning to Aion" folks.   They can either figure it out for them selves, or not.  I'm one of 'em, and I am good with where the game is, even if I do miss not having an Aethertech or Gunslinger.  Now, back to the grind!

I have been doing nothing but constructive dialogue, you can go ahead and reply me why I am wrong as long as you can actually provide decent arguments, which you can't.

And no I don't want fairy tales, I wanted decent pay to play sub, which I didn't get. All I got is people trying to weasel their way around why they pay for candies, just like you do right now.
 

[Rhysia]

16 hours ago, Elpy said:

I have been doing nothing but constructive dialogue, you can go ahead and reply me why I am wrong as long as you can actually provide decent arguments, which you can't.

And no I don't want fairy tales, I wanted decent pay to play sub, which I didn't get. All I got is people trying to weasel their way around why they pay for candies, just like you do right now.
 

And again, no one is forcing you to play.  Uninstalling is a pretty simple process.

[2s65F09]

13 minutes ago, Rhysia said:

And again, no one is forcing you to play.  Uninstalling is a pretty simple process.

+1.

What's so hard about this concept? Why are the same negative, toxic people complaining everywhere and anywhere about the same things? Attempting to deter others to play the game?

If you don't like how Classic is being run, good for you. Don't attempt to ruin it for other people.

[Sioda]

2 hours ago, Rhysia said:

Uninstalling is a pretty simple process.

It isn't. 

The uninstaller doesn't completely remove the game so you have to remove files manually...and the game leaves a process running, so you have to kill that process or restart your PC before you can delete several of those files.

[Gamegenie-KT]

Good to see you again Bittena, been long time.

 

I dunno but these godstones seem different 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

lmao it’s an old screencap a friend gave me today from Kahrun server days

[Fest-DN]

I've shared most of my thoughts elsewhere but I think this thread is a pretty good take on where we stand right now. I think it's super plain to see that people who capitalized on time spent generating  xp/ap are the ones sitting at the top right now. Kinah helps but we're not seeing the medal market instantly bought off the boards after each siege or valuable items inflating beyond reason with perhaps a few notable popular exceptions that will stabilize over time. Bots have already eclipsed the $$$:kinah ratio of candies and it took two weeks. Two weeks. They were always going to be the problem and will doubtlessly inject literal trillions of kinah into the economy as our more scummy peers will enable them to do so. 

We should be seeing greater attention given to banning goldsellers and pushing NC to identify and route out kinah generated by them. I don't like candies but I understand the need to monetize and I find this particular avenue to be worse at first glance than it has shown itself to be. 

[Khonsu-DN]

What's right?

Classic is 90% p2w. There are players running around with +10 or higher gear and fully socketed with expensive manastones not to mention the broker prices are screwed beyond belief in the second week already, especially on the most important manastones. 2-3mil per manastone on week 2? really guys?

What's wrong?

People defending p2w saying "this game isn't p2w I made all my money with crafting (by funding my crafting with candies) so it isn't p2w." Nice try.

People need to start admitting it is for what it is. Classic is a p2w cash grab, it is not classic Aion.

Selling candies that can be sold to other players to bypass the 1 mil kinah vendor limit completely defeats any argument of "not p2w". In addition after some research, many 40+ white items have had their vendor prices reduced by 50% or more. Many quests have had their kinah rewards reduced by 50% or more.

Why did they reduce all these forms of kinah income? So you would buy candies and daeva pass of course. Therefore, Classic is surely p2w.

How does classic not become p2w?

They remove the option of candies being sellable/tradable, restore the original white drop selling prices and restore quest kinah gain, and finally remove the 1 mil kinah cap.

This would end the p2w aspect of Classic.

Messed up perceptions:

The players in so much denial they vehemently attack each and every player who calls Classic p2w.

[5sB1C19-DN]

I accept that classic is p2w and so is retail but l enjoy the parts l can before deciding if it's worth my time to continue. In retail, l played for free yet l got ulti xform and all weapons/dazz gems with no money spent at all but it costed a TON of time to do so.

With classic, you can just buy candy and get loot rights right through the game and buy the broker bare which drives up prices. What part of that is not p2w? You need kinah for EVERYTHING.

You guys can defend classic for what it is but most people generally just want to pay $15 a month and be on an even playing field like everyone else.

[Ashlayna-DN]

12 hours ago, Khonsu-DN said:

What's right?

Classic is 90% p2w. There are players running around with +10 or higher gear and fully socketed with expensive manastones not to mention the broker prices are screwed beyond belief in the second week already, especially on the most important manastones. 2-3mil per manastone on week 2? really guys?

What's wrong?

People defending p2w saying "this game isn't p2w I made all my money with crafting (by funding my crafting with candies) so it isn't p2w." Nice try.

People need to start admitting it is for what it is. Classic is a p2w cash grab, it is not classic Aion.

Selling candies that can be sold to other players to bypass the 1 mil kinah vendor limit completely defeats any argument of "not p2w". In addition after some research, many 40+ white items have had their vendor prices reduced by 50% or more. Many quests have had their kinah rewards reduced by 50% or more.

Why did they reduce all these forms of kinah income? So you would buy candies and daeva pass of course. Therefore, Classic is surely p2w.

How does classic not become p2w?

They remove the option of candies being sellable/tradable, restore the original white drop selling prices and restore quest kinah gain, and finally remove the 1 mil kinah cap.

This would end the p2w aspect of Classic.

Messed up perceptions:

The players in so much denial they vehemently attack each and every player who calls Classic p2w.

So yesterday, I was looking at getting some earrings, since I was using white earrings, and I was fixing to head to the abyss for the first time.  So off to the broker I go, looking to see what I can get.  Well, the earrings I want are 250K a piece.  I could certainly afford them, I'd been grinding for a day and a half, and had just over half a million, but I have Handicrafting.  So, I decided that I was just going to make them myself.  So an hour later, I have one pair of my earrings, I only proc'd one set to Noble, and it only cost me about 70kish to make them.

 

The moral of this story is, I'm not using crafting to get rich, I'm using crafting to save my money for other things.  I love the generalizations thrown out in your post, that imply that the only possible way anyone could have the enhancement stones, or the manastones to socket their gear is through candy.  It's a delusion, of course, as the manastones can be crafted if someone's dedicated to Alchemy, whether they're supplementing with their wallet or not, and higher level rubbish breaks down into higher level enchantment stones.  You know, the way people did it in retail, well before any P2W...  So thanks, I guess, for demonstrating that you are, in fact, part of the problem.  It's not how much money that player over there has that's making me want to log off.  It's the people constantly complaining about it in LFG, to the point where I have to wonder if they're being paid to be that disruptive.

[Ashlayna-DN]

7 hours ago, 5sB1C19-DN said:

I accept that classic is p2w and so is retail but l enjoy the parts l can before deciding if it's worth my time to continue. In retail, l played for free yet l got ulti xform and all weapons/dazz gems with no money spent at all but it costed a TON of time to do so.

With classic, you can just buy candy and get loot rights right through the game and buy the broker bare which drives up prices. What part of that is not p2w? You need kinah for EVERYTHING.

You guys can defend classic for what it is but most people generally just want to pay $15 a month and be on an even playing field like everyone else.

When is the playing field ever "even"?  I've run instances for years w/out ever getting a drop to sell the loot rights on, letting alone getting the gear I was looking for.  I've failed enchantments that "should have" succeeded, and I can't tell you how many manastones I've lost since the 2nd closed beta.  I can, however, count the number of times I got the manastones on the first try.  The disparity in luck is more than enough to dictate that there's never going to be a "level playing field".  If it wasn't candy, there would be lots of "but they can't possibly beat me in PvP w/out hacking" threads.  I mean, there were lots of them before retail ever went F2P, what would be different here?  In GW 2, there are people that insist that bag space is P2W, or purely cosmetic armor sets.  I suppose that would be next on the list here too, right?  Despite the fact that you can unlock lots of bag space with kinah, that you can earn just playing the game.  It's not like people didn't do it well before the retail version ever went F2P, right?

 

Or is the counter going to run something like "well, they must have bought the kinah through a gold seller"?  I mean, you make one statement in this post that's inaccurate at best, because despite your claim, you cannot purchase abyss gear with kinah, and you cannot, currently, purchase the means to get it with kinah either, or is there an AP page that I've missed looking at what's for sale in the store?  This whole premise is based around "but that's the only way you can do it", when we all know that that's not exactly true, right?

[Alvie]

You can purchase items which increase AP.  eg. the Flying Daeva wings give you and extra 45sec flight time, which is a significant advantage in Abyss combat, hence more AP.

Also, things like Greater running scrolls and Greater recovery serum, and title card from the Daeva Pass can assist in PvP, hence more AP.

It all adds up.

[Ashlayna-DN]

Just now, Alvie said:

You can purchase items which increase AP.  eg. the Flying Daeva wings give you and extra 45sec flight time, which is a significant advantage in Abyss combat, hence more AP.

Also, things like Greater running scrolls and Greater recovery serum, and title card from the Daeva Pass can assist in PvP, hence more AP.

It all adds up.

Hmm, extra flight time increases AP.  Yeah, no.  Someone just said something that's not true, right?  Some of the titles you get from just playing the game are better for certain classes than the title cards, and one of the title cards is available for the extreme P2W price of "paying your sub".  If we're going to start claiming the sub is P2W, we might as well start closing down a lot of MMOs, right?  Greater Running Scrolls, and potions can all be crafted, or even better, awarded as quest rewards.  So crafting and questing are now also P2W?  You see, things that are readily obtainable in game aren't P2W.  Things that aren't is a pretty solid requirement for it, or, things like selling end game gear in the cash shop.

 

When they remove the extraction tools from the General Store, and start selling them on the Cash Shop, you let me know.  When the only way to obtain scrolls and potions are to buy them from the Cash Shop, you let me know.  The same for wings, sets are available in game, when that ceases to be the case, you let me know.  Another thing you can let me know:  When you start killing everyone you fight because you have 45 seconds more flight time.

[Alvie]

1 minute ago, Ashlayna-DN said:

...

 

When they remove the extraction tools from the General Store, and start selling them on the Cash Shop, you let me know.  When the only way to obtain scrolls and potions are to buy them from the Cash Shop, you let me know.  The same for wings, sets are available in game, when that ceases to be the case, you let me know.  Another thing you can let me know:  When you start killing everyone you fight because you have 45 seconds more flight time.

You miss the point entirely, and go off on a rant.

It's all about relative advantage, not absolute advantage. Think before typing.

[Ashlayna-DN]

5 minutes ago, Alvie said:

You miss the point entirely, and go off on a rant.

It's all about relative advantage, not absolute advantage. Think before typing.

Ok, so I'm kicking sixty dead in the butt, should there be an age limit, so that nobody has that relative advantage of better reflexes?  But it's not really a rant, it's a statement of fact.  Rappelz, the only way to successfully enchant your gear to end game levels is to get out your wallet, because the items that keep the gear from breaking, thus rendering it unusable, comes from the cash shop.  The iem that can repair the gear after it breaks?  You may have guessed it, but it also comes from the cash shop.  Is there an item that won't allow me to lose my manastones on a fail?  Is there an item that won't let me lose any enchant successes?  If the answer to these is no, then we're miles away from P2W.  The term has a meaning, and it's getting more and more watered down as time goes on, to the point where cosmetic items in GW 2 are considered both P2W and predatory.