Dear NCsoft, Want to make more Money and not loose your player base?

[Rag-DN]

Disclaimer: This post is written out of love for Aion and it's community. I truly love and still see the potential for the game and I am hoping this post will help guide NCwest from destroying such a beautiful work of art.....

Listen to your player base.... I mean let's be real, launch week we had over 60,000 players. Before the end of the first week you lost over 50% of your playerbase with a large majority complaining about the Candy pay2win. By the time the free trial was done, it went down from 30,000 to under 10,000. Now let's look at some maths....

If you would of corrected the P2W feature from the start, you would of retained more players which meant more subscriptions.... So lets say you kept that original 50% at $15 a month subscription....even if they didn't spend another penny on the game that's over half a mil DOLLARS per month you could of been banking. Instead now you are going to have to cater to the whales to make up that money....the whales have a limit of $1,200 a month they can spend on NCsoft market before their accounts get locked. So at $1,200 a player you would need nearly 500 whales spending that max amount.... we probably don't even have that many whales out there now. 

Now if you listen to the player base and added MORE cosmetic items in the ingame shop for Kunah like we asked (Yes you did add 1 new skin within 1 month... C- for effort but thank you still...)  and kept that original player base, you'd be slaying your quarterly earnings. I mean be honest, review your sales on the Deava Pass, at $30 a month per character...that's insanely high for mostly temporary in-game items, and if the rewards don't get updated, def not worth it next month. A very repeated sentiment in all the community posts is, "I bought it for the first month, but I'm not doing it again, not ontop of the $15 subscription fee and for temporary rewards for ONE CHARACTER on an account."  

Easy fix: Make the Deava pass account wide, and dramatically lower the price. You'll get more subscribers. More subscribers will compensate for the loss of lower the price, PLUS it'll help retain your client base, which means more potential for future gains from these players. Happy players, and more clients = More likely to spend more money in the long run. 

I honestly don't know how much you guys pay attention to the rest of the MMO community, but your P2W candies got you on the front cover of most MMO sites and lead youtubers/streamers listing the launch as "A total disaster and disappointment"  "The fastest death of a MMO ever..." because of including such a pay2win handicap from day 1 and not correcting it.  (Go ahead and just type Aion Classic in google or youtube and you'll see articles and posts about it.)

Before players jump down my throat: I do acknowledge that the candies loose their value as you level up as you will max your kinah limit from world drops once you hit level 50, however, it did give a huge handicap to whale players which made most players very angry and made them think future events/store items would continue to create such issues.

@Kibbelz  If you read just one part of this post, the following is probably the most important.

Tips for moving forward:
 

• Keep the in-game store mostly cosmetic. The players love skins, give us tons to buy.
• Let us buy more pets. Even the auto buff pets are a little OP, but not game breaking, they are the line between Okish p2w and breaking the game OP. Do not progress past this.
• Keep your prices lower. It's been proven and is repeatedly taught in marketing that lower prices are more likely to make more sales then prices that are higher that would make most of your audience 2nd guess if they should be making the purchase.
• Update your Deava pass monthly, make it account wide and lower its price.
• Bundle things together! You could easily get more sales if you bundled the Deava Pass with the Siels Aura for a discounted price.
• If not already in the game, implement the balance buff during Siege. For those that don't know, this buff grants additional HP and PVP stats in Siege areas during siege to the faction that is loosing. The buff grows stronger or weaker depending on successful balancing of the forts.
• Offer XP buff for New/Returning players. Even if it's just a 1 day buff.
• Think about reworking the Ranking system before we get too far into the game. (I'll make a different post about this one)

[Foxy Boxy]

Question, and I mean nothing negative by it.

 

Where are you getting your player numbers from? I've always wondered.

[Coheed]

1 hour ago, Foxy Boxy said:

Question, and I mean nothing negative by it.

 

Where are you getting your player numbers from? I've always wondered.

https://myaion.eu/ ?

[Foxy Boxy]

Thank you for answering that.

[Rag-DN]

1 hour ago, Foxy Boxy said:

Question, and I mean nothing negative by it.

 

Where are you getting your player numbers from? I've always wondered.

There are several sites to track player traffic on Aion. A simple Google search tells you, but MyAion is def the best and simplest tool for tracking activity. It's been a while but I think you can actually look at the AWS server info as well if you have an account made with AWS.

[Icham]

they dont care what u saying . 

their biggest whales are chinese bot companies who spend millions millions account fees. 

in kr classic  ratio btw  bots and real players are 9:1. nowadays

 

so you dont have to worry. 

NC can make money anyways, if u dont like p2w system you can just find and play other games.

 

and there is no whales in aion classic NA.

 

go check other NC's game  like lineage m & lineage 2 m in kr. 

 

you can easily find 100s whales who  willing to spend 20 to 50k USD every single month. 

 

those players are real whales.. 

 

the reason why I like this game is player can spend 2 to 3k USD. still can be superior than others.  

way way cheaper than other real p2w games.

 

[Daemonic]

Stop reading after the second sentence lol. 

 

"I mean let's be real, launch week we had over 60,000 players."

 

No it didn't. If your starting your post with a fallacy, I am sure the rest of it is as much of a disaster. 

1 hour ago, Rag-DN said:

There are several sites to track player traffic on Aion. A simple Google search tells you, but MyAion is def the best and simplest tool for tracking activity. It's been a while but I think you can actually look at the AWS server info as well if you have an account made with AWS.

And yet here you are, talking about 60,000 players when the Dev of Myaion litteraly has stated numerous times, that was because of the way they were doing the servers at the start. 

 

There was never 60k players, nor anywhere close. 

 

Also "the candies got you on the front cover of MMO sites" and yet, not a single one of them, knew anything about the candies, and were legitimately claiming "the best gear in game is bought with kinah you get from candies" 

 

Imagine knowing nothing about the game, and posting pure fallacies. Oh wait, your doing the same thing, Hmm. 

[Jagblade-DN]

I'm gonna nyerk in every single thread that allows for the topic because I agree.

GIVE. US. COSMETICS.

The new BCM has been ignored for years after promises that everything from the old BCM would be ported over. Now the Quna shop has launched with virtually nothing and has gotten no real attention in a month. Please do not bring out a skin or two on some sort of asinine weekly or monthly rotation. Do what the Russian Aion service does and just throw everything onto the market (at a reasonable price) and let players buy what they want when they want. NCSoft would make so much money that way.

[Daemonic]

Also starting to get the distinct feeling the people crying about candies work for the Gold Sellers, the Sellers are starting to decline, there is no reason for them, candies exist. 

You can buy gold in WOW, you could buy Kinah without Candies. Litteraly not a Factor. 

 

The only thing the candies did, that GS's wouldn't of, is inflate the Kinah in the Economy, and vendor stuff costs an insane amount so this was good. It's Teleport Money, nothing more. 

Gold sellers would of charged more for less, but the prices would be less for the things everyone complains about, such as Enchant and Manastones. There was never EVER a world, where people with Money were not going to spend it to get ahead, the second you accept that, the happier you will be :). 

[Icham]

17 minutes ago, Icham said:

they dont care what u saying . 

their biggest whales are chinese bot companies who spend millions millions account fees. 

in kr classic  ratio btw  bots and real players are 9:1. nowadays

 

so you dont have to worry. 

NC can make money anyways, if u dont like p2w system you can just find and play other games.

 

and there is no whales in aion classic NA.

 

go check other NC's game  like lineage m & lineage 2 m in kr. 

 

you can easily find 100s whales who  willing to spend 20 to 50k USD every single month. 

 

those players are real whales.. 

 

the reason why I like this game is player can spend 2 to 3k USD. still can be superior than others.  

way way cheaper than other real p2w games.

 

one more thing, NC doesnt care of making money out of this game I mean aion classic NA. 

 

this game is kinda complimentary service for the players  who miss the old aion.

 

 

[Icham]

bots not selling just kinah . haha .

 

in a couple of update, they are selling AP and medals as well when the upper and lower dungeons open. 

so, dont worry about this game. 

 

if monks  didnt like the temple, monks could leave, not the temple.... 

[Aiden]

Well said. I also believe lowering the price of the Daeva Pass would get them more sales and profit as a result.

Once whales get the equipment they want, sales are going to start dropping.

[Icham]

lkm 

[Rag-DN]

1 hour ago, Jagblade-DN said:

I'm gonna nyerk in every single thread that allows for the topic because I agree.

GIVE. US. COSMETICS.

The new BCM has been ignored for years after promises that everything from the old BCM would be ported over. Now the Quna shop has launched with virtually nothing and has gotten no real attention in a month. Please do not bring out a skin or two on some sort of asinine weekly or monthly rotation. Do what the Russian Aion service does and just throw everything onto the market (at a reasonable price) and let players buy what they want when they want. NCSoft would make so much money that way.

Or they can do like EU/Gameforge did, they did a Prestige style vending machine that has all the skins in it. It's a super cool feature they added that prompted players to want to pay for the prestige pass to earn coins to buy it.

1 hour ago, Daemonic said:

Also starting to get the distinct feeling the people crying about candies work for the Gold Sellers, the Sellers are starting to decline, there is no reason for them, candies exist. 

You can buy gold in WOW, you could buy Kinah without Candies. Litteraly not a Factor. 

 

The only thing the candies did, that GS's wouldn't of, is inflate the Kinah in the Economy, and vendor stuff costs an insane amount so this was good. It's Teleport Money, nothing more. 

Gold sellers would of charged more for less, but the prices would be less for the things everyone complains about, such as Enchant and Manastones. There was never EVER a world, where people with Money were not going to spend it to get ahead, the second you accept that, the happier you will be :). 

Gold sellers are still around, just the Spam filter is somewhat working so your only seeing the ones from P2Pah.  Also maybe you havn't looked at WoW lately, but they lost several MILLION players the last quarter because they implemented the micro transactions for Pay2Win content. Their player base is absolutely outraged about it and leaving in swarms. Their top Streamer even left and took a big chunk of people with him. It's been all over the web lately.  As for the ingame vendors being outrageous, I agree. NCsoft should of done something to gain kinah better then a p2w method, such as increased kinah drops in instances or quests. There literally tons of other options they could of done. Even if they did sell the candies, they should of put a weekly buy limit on them to keep from an endless inflation. Them putting a cap on NPCing certain crafting mats did help a little, but then the candy system completely undid that effort. 

[Zzzzzz]

You should have realized that this is an old school game with a lot of unreasonable stuffs and nobody is going to rework on it.  Most of the players here are from non-classic Aion and new players are less likely to stay for long.

Without candy,  people will just buy stuffs from gold seller and NCsoft will not make anything from them. Marco is legit in this game so they cannot really stop people from afk farming and sell their stuffs to others. On the other hand, no matter how much you spent,  there are always something you cannot buy

 

[Khonsu-DN]

4 hours ago, Daemonic said:

Stop reading after the second sentence lol. 

 

"I mean let's be real, launch week we had over 60,000 players."

 

No it didn't. If your starting your post with a fallacy, I am sure the rest of it is as much of a disaster. 

And yet here you are, talking about 60,000 players when the Dev of Myaion litteraly has stated numerous times, that was because of the way they were doing the servers at the start. 

 

There was never 60k players, nor anywhere close. 

 

Also "the candies got you on the front cover of MMO sites" and yet, not a single one of them, knew anything about the candies, and were legitimately claiming "the best gear in game is bought with kinah you get from candies" 

 

Imagine knowing nothing about the game, and posting pure fallacies. Oh wait, your doing the same thing, Hmm. 

Oh try saying you know nothing about the game statistics and the actual game without saying you know nothing and instead keep blindly defending what is CLEARLY dying already as well as defending the candies. 

1. The "myaion" dev is not an actual dev and just some guy who made an app and a site to monitor stuff. This guy has also given false information in the past and has altered his monitoring on the servers to show larger percentages with lower number populations. Also that myaion wasn't able to properly monitor classic in any shape or form on the first day. It is a known fact that there were over 50k players logging in on day one and yet people keep trying to change that number to some how make the game look less fail. 

2. Candies can be used to buy the best gear in the game in several forms. If you don't understand how or why then you know nothing of Aion Classic.

 

[Arhangelos]

8 hours ago, Daemonic said:

Also starting to get the distinct feeling the people crying about candies work for the Gold Sellers, the Sellers are starting to decline, there is no reason for them, candies exist. 

You can buy gold in WOW, you could buy Kinah without Candies. Litteraly not a Factor.

The only thing the candies did, that GS's wouldn't of, is inflate the Kinah in the Economy, and vendor stuff costs an insane amount so this was good. It's Teleport Money, nothing more. 

Gold sellers would of charged more for less, but the prices would be less for the things everyone complains about, such as Enchant and Manastones.

Kinah sellers won't care about it when their bots reach end game and keep spamming end game instances non stop reaching their daily limit of 1m easily. And when a legit player reaches that limit, then his 1m per day will be obsolete. He will either have to log another toon so he can make another 1m, or he will have to rely on someone with 1000 accounts that has 1000 million limit.

8 hours ago, Daemonic said:

There was never EVER a world, where people with Money were not going to spend it to get ahead, the second you accept that, the happier you will be :). 

...the problem is that it is NCWest the one that gives these people the easy legit advantage they are paying for. You can make fun of people disliking this, but you can't make fun of them quitting Classic, jokes on those who stay.

[Sioda]

8 hours ago, Rag-DN said:

Also maybe you havn't looked at WoW lately...Their top Streamer even left and took a big chunk of people with him. 

Asmongold still streams WoW.  He's streaming other games as well, but he still streams WoW.

[Daemonic]

On 7/16/2021 at 5:05 PM, Khonsu-DN said:

Oh try saying you know nothing about the game statistics and the actual game without saying you know nothing and instead keep blindly defending what is CLEARLY dying already as well as defending the candies. 

1. The "myaion" dev is not an actual dev and just some guy who made an app and a site to monitor stuff. This guy has also given false information in the past and has altered his monitoring on the servers to show larger percentages with lower number populations. Also that myaion wasn't able to properly monitor classic in any shape or form on the first day. It is a known fact that there were over 50k players logging in on day one and yet people keep trying to change that number to some how make the game look less fail. 

2. Candies can be used to buy the best gear in the game in several forms. If you don't understand how or why then you know nothing of Aion Classic.

 

There was not 60k players on retail. 

 

The CM even stated the same thing the Myaion dude said, there is no tinfoil hat here dude, you are living in a Fantasy world lol. 

 

"Kinah buys the best gear in game" again, no lol. "You can pay people kinah to Farm AP Runs for you"

And I could buy that same Kinah from Gold Sellers, or pay for the runs with Cash, just like a VERY large portion of the classic players, which also play other PVP MMOs do in those other games, myself included. 

The largest and strongest legions on Seil, and Isph are not even Devote Aion players, they may have played Aion back in the Day, but they are also AA/Tera/BDO/ECT players. Been playing with/against these same people for a decade, if you think for a second they won't RMT with outside means if Need be, you are DEAD WRONG. 

"If NC wouldn't sell Candies I could of been top 5% geared" WRONG. These people were always going to RMT NC is just Smartly the ones making the profit. 

 

Also I am included in that statement. Gratz NC glad to see you are getting the profit to keep the servers on. If you would not of introduced Candies, I 100% as well would of Bought from Gold Sellers, there is NO Universe I was not going to spend 100s (1000s if it lasts long enough) from whoever was prepared to take my money.  It's what I do, it's what they do. We have money, we pay for Entertainment, this is our Entertainment, and we have No qualms paying money to further it. 

 

You non spenders live in a Fantasy world, thinking anything will change if the company doesn't allow it, and your right it will, the entity making the profit will change. 

[Daemonic]

The people making a big stink about candies, would of made a big stink about something else and quit. It's what they do, I seen a redditor say it best. 

"There MMO is to try new MMOs and flame them and leave, then stay on the forums/reddit for months crying about it, they were never going to actually play the game, complaining about games, IS their MMO"

 

That is 100% the case. Because the harsh reality needs to be faced 

"P2W" is a Non factor, no one that sits on these forums and complains about P2W was ever going to be relevant anyway, and those same "whales" were going to whale no matter what. 

 

Life is Pay to Win, get over it. 

[Arhangelos]

4 hours ago, Daemonic said:

Life is Pay to Win, get over it stop playing the game

I think the people mention this for the reasons they quit the game. In this sense we can all happily accept the slow death of Classic that will eventually come. If xx amount of people stop playing due to candies then the candies are a good reason to argue.

Yes, if candies didn't exist, something else could be blamed, but candies are not accidental. They are implemented by the company itself. If people were happy with p2w tactics from the company itself, then retail would have never ended in this situation and most people wouldn't beg for classic AND subscription.

Candies and kinah sellers are both problem and both irrelevant to each other. Candies shouldn't have existed, and kinah sellers/botters should have been addressed. NCWest went wrong on both of these actual problems.

In the end of the day, it is what it is, people will complain, they will quit, classic will end up with 1 server and that is for sure, and the whales that spend real money will once again outplay themselves and lose money in a game they killed.

--

I myself made a few alt accounts to buy candies for 80k and resell for 100k making 200k per account because why not! But once my subscription ends in a week or so, I won't renew and most likely will stop playing. And it is not only the candies, I was never over-hyped for classic and now that I tried it I am going to skip wasting time on a game they already decided to ruin so what is the point.

[Daemonic]

9 hours ago, Arhangelos-KT said:

I think the people mention this for the reasons they quit the game. In this sense we can all happily accept the slow death of Classic that will eventually come. If xx amount of people stop playing due to candies then the candies are a good reason to argue.

Yes, if candies didn't exist, something else could be blamed, but candies are not accidental. They are implemented by the company itself. If people were happy with p2w tactics from the company itself, then retail would have never ended in this situation and most people wouldn't beg for classic AND subscription.

Candies and kinah sellers are both problem and both irrelevant to each other. Candies shouldn't have existed, and kinah sellers/botters should have been addressed. NCWest went wrong on both of these actual problems.

In the end of the day, it is what it is, people will complain, they will quit, classic will end up with 1 server and that is for sure, and the whales that spend real money will once again outplay themselves and lose money in a game they killed.

--

I myself made a few alt accounts to buy candies for 80k and resell for 100k making 200k per account because why not! But once my subscription ends in a week or so, I won't renew and most likely will stop playing. And it is not only the candies, I was never over-hyped for classic and now that I tried it I am going to skip wasting time on a game they already decided to ruin so what is the point.

The problem with Candies and Kinah Sellers being two separate issues are not really the same. 

Not all Kinah Sellers are loud, or Bots. I know, everyone always says "well good game company will stop RMT" they never do, because they just can't, they may catch a few less savvy buyers, and the loud Sellers but thats all. 

At the end of the day, it comes down to P2W is just reality in today's world. Whether the game embraces it or not, if you want to dwell on it, and make your own experience a bad one is a personal choice. No game has ever stopped the Bots, and Sellers, so why would this one be any diffrent? The best way to reduce them, is to sell Gold/Kinah whatever your self. 

 

As to people leaving and the game Dying, sure it will, but not because of Candies or Kinah Sellers. More so because of the actual gameplay and content, and bugs. 

Everyone I know has pretty much already quit, it wasn't because of Candies or Kinah. It was because the lack of polish, it's a 2009 game, so I am not knocking the polish myself, but the glitchy combat, clunky air combat, constantly getting stuck in Environments, extremely grindy leveling, Bad PVE, blatant hacks, and already declining base are more so factors. 

I am not sure if I will continue myself, I have a 3m sub, and have spent quite alot of money, my will to continue has also been drained by above and my friends leaving flat out. On top of yesterday's Asmos big brain move of taking the forts, driving everyone to MM and Lephs which are now insanely crowded, which was the last straw for a large number of my friends as we are 38-40. 

Thats just my 2c, see ya in the next most likely. 

[Arhangelos]

49 minutes ago, Daemonic said:

The problem with Candies and Kinah Sellers being two separate issues are not really the same. 

Not all Kinah Sellers are loud, or Bots. I know, everyone always says "well good game company will stop RMT" they never do, because they just can't, they may catch a few less savvy buyers, and the loud Sellers but thats all. 

At the end of the day, it comes down to P2W is just reality in today's world. Whether the game embraces it or not, if you want to dwell on it, and make your own experience a bad one is a personal choice. No game has ever stopped the Bots, and Sellers, so why would this one be any diffrent? The best way to reduce them, is to sell Gold/Kinah whatever your self. 

 

As to people leaving and the game Dying, sure it will, but not because of Candies or Kinah Sellers. More so because of the actual gameplay and content, and bugs. 

Everyone I know has pretty much already quit, it wasn't because of Candies or Kinah. It was because the lack of polish, it's a 2009 game, so I am not knocking the polish myself, but the glitchy combat, clunky air combat, constantly getting stuck in Environments, extremely grindy leveling, Bad PVE, blatant hacks, and already declining base are more so factors. 

I am not sure if I will continue myself, I have a 3m sub, and have spent quite alot of money, my will to continue has also been drained by above and my friends leaving flat out. On top of yesterday's Asmos big brain move of taking the forts, driving everyone to MM and Lephs which are now insanely crowded, which was the last straw for a large number of my friends as we are 38-40. 

Thats just my 2c, see ya in the next most likely. 

Exactly, the truth is the quality of gaming with the old game mechanics sucks. Nobody wanted classic because we have one pouch for quest items and normal items together, or because they will run with 6 speed on green boots and their flight time will deplete in every 2nd node gathered. Everyone wanted to have a more full mmorpg.

But we couldn't expect them to refly the old aion with the necessities of the newer games. I log both in retail and classic and when I log in retail I simply feel so much better, running at fast speed, having as much flight time as I want etc.

Maps+professions+gathering+skins... these are the things that could have saved retail.

[Jagblade-DN]

2 hours ago, Arhangelos-KT said:

Exactly, the truth is the quality of gaming with the old game mechanics sucks. Nobody wanted classic because we have one pouch for quest items and normal items together, or because they will run with 6 speed on green boots and their flight time will deplete in every 2nd node gathered. Everyone wanted to have a more full mmorpg.

But we couldn't expect them to refly the old aion with the necessities of the newer games. I log both in retail and classic and when I log in retail I simply feel so much better, running at fast speed, having as much flight time as I want etc.

Maps+professions+gathering+skins... these are the things that could have saved retail.

Honestly? This. I don't care much for MMO PvP, I don't have the time to dedicate to that gear grind. I just wanted the things you've said.

All I wanted were the old maps, old quests, old lore, old items / skins and old professions back. I don't care of the maps are dead or if it's not an efficient way to day things. Just give me the option and I'm content. Honestly, I was hoping classic would be all of these things BUT with some major QoL upgrades from more modern patches. The rose tinted goggles have fallen off very, very quickly.

[UnforgivingOG]

On 7/16/2021 at 3:28 PM, Icham said:

they dont care what u saying . 

their biggest whales are chinese bot companies who spend millions millions account fees. 

in kr classic  ratio btw  bots and real players are 9:1. nowadays

 

so you dont have to worry. 

NC can make money anyways, if u dont like p2w system you can just find and play other games.

 

and there is no whales in aion classic NA.

 

go check other NC's game  like lineage m & lineage 2 m in kr. 

 

you can easily find 100s whales who  willing to spend 20 to 50k USD every single month. 

 

those players are real whales.. 

 

the reason why I like this game is player can spend 2 to 3k USD. still can be superior than others.  

way way cheaper than other real p2w games.

 

This is true. NCSoft doesnt care and thats why they didnt release the real Aion Classic. They are still making the same exact mistakes that killed Aion last time. They  didnt learn from their previous mistakes. This version will fail also, I am waiting for the next game again, I love this game. I just wish they quit screwing it up.