It's time for a change

[Airashi]

As players of Aion, we have played the game long enough to know what the game needs to thrive. Many of which can be implemented by the NCwest team. 

With the latest banwave, past and present players are utterly confused on the mismanagement and responses from higher ups.

Right now, these current players are on heightened alert and there has been a growing sense of unease within the community as every action that  has been been previously widely accepted, is now questioned. Players are now doubting their  playstyle and rumours are flowing thick and fast which isn't productive for both the company and playerbase. 

The following petition addresses many changes are needed. Personally, the proposals outlined are spot on. Hope common sense prevails in the end. 

https://www.change.org/p/ncsoft-players-outcry-to-ncsoft-corporation-about-ncwest-s-handling-of-na-services?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_30217233_en-US%3A7&recruiter=721437083&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition

 

 

[Easycrow]

Okay so all I want to say is..

I have a really cool stone I can sell you, if you squeeze it hard enough blood will come out of it. It will be good practice for what you're attempting here.

[Bonehunter]

Quote

3.      Consider hiring a development team that focuses on the North American audience.

Quote

4.       Re-view previous patches and events released and learn from player feedback on what works and does not work for the North American audience.

If the petition weren't limited to the North American audience, I might be interested (as I think many others would) in signing it, but since it's limited (from the perspective of the author / creator) I advise everyone from it. I'm not from NA and I play (and I like to pay for the game "Siels Aura only"!). But to impose the will of others on me? that's where the fun ends for me!

[Arhangelos]

I clicked the link and it keeps loading. 5 minutes later still loading the page.

[Aurria]

Agree they NEED change but I truly think if they cared enough it would have happened by now. “The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote." - Ambassador Kosh

[Airashi]

5 hours ago, Easycrow said:

I have a really cool stone I can sell you, if you squeeze it hard enough blood will come out of it. It will be good practice for what you're attempting here.

Yeah I agree with you, but signing a petition only takes up a few mins of your time. Its up to you whether you want to attempt something or stand around doing nothing.

 

A fellow Aion player ( Rag) has given some insights which instils a glimmer of hope : 

"Here you will find a playerbase petition for NCsoft Corp to review and take action about the handling of games that are overseen by NCwest for their NA audience. 

For those that do not know, NCsoft Corp is a Korean based publisher that holds their reputation as a fast growing and lead producer of high quality content MMOs/RPGS. Their Companies core values are set around maintaining a very positive reputation among the markets in which they operate. Their IPs that are overseen by their main offices in KR have repeatedly and dramatically adjusted their marketing strategies and overall game designs to fit their player needs to keep a happy and healthy audience.

In their most recent stock holders meeting they openly said that they want to start to cater to individual regions by adjusting their marketing campaigns and further the customization of their IPs to fit each region specifically. 

I believe that if this petition gets enough traction that NCsoft Corp will review it and take it seriously. The last time a similar petition and signed letter was sent to NCsoft Corp by the NA playerbase there dramatic changes to the NCwest staff and NA games platforms.

(Furthermore), NC Corp in Korea is very concerned about their reputation. If you ever listen to their meetings it's crazy how much they listen to their playerbase. Last time the comunity reached out to NC Corp the comunity manger got replaced."

[Airashi]

4 hours ago, 66sB2F50 said:

If the petition weren't limited to the North American audience, I might be interested (as I think many others would) in signing it, but since it's limited (from the perspective of the author / creator) I advise everyone from it.

I play from Australia and even I know that it is unrealistic and financially unsustainable for NCwest to cater to the Oceanic audience. There was an unofficial oceanic server at launch (Nezeken), that catered to the region  with sieges scheduled on Oceanic timezone. The server died due to server imbalance and lack of population. This wasn't a fault of NCwest; they tried.

Right now, catering to an audience outside of NA won't be financially viable for NCwest. They are a business to make a profit after all.

 

[Foxy Boxy]

5 hours ago, 66sB2F50 said:

If the petition weren't limited to the North American audience, I might be interested (as I think many others would) in signing it, but since it's limited (from the perspective of the author / creator) I advise everyone from it. I'm not from NA and I play (and I like to pay for the game "Siels Aura only"!). But to impose the will of others on me? that's where the fun ends for me!

Please keep in mind that while there is a large player base from Europe that this IS the American version of the game. You are on the American version of the site using the American version of the launcher to play the American version of the game. It's only natural that things would be catered to the market it in. I feel your pain about the Gameforge version in Europe and understand wanting to play on a different markets version of the game, but you have to remember that you aren't the target in this instance. That would be like me, living in the US, complaining about event times in Phantasy Star Online when I played on the Japanese servers, it just doesn't make sense lol.

[Thorine-KT]

Signed and cancelled my sub.  I'll play out the remaining time, but I think I'm done giving money to NCsoft. If things change .... great! I hope many positive changes happen. If things don't change .... Then I haven't wasted anymore money. 

[Easycrow]

1 hour ago, Airashi said:

Yeah I agree with you, but signing a petition only takes up a few mins of your time. Its up to you whether you want to attempt something or stand around doing nothing.

I want to believe you man but yeah, I've seen how this company operates. I'm just glad I cancelled my sub after a month. Enjoying the forums tho, idk probably for nostalgia.

[Rag-DN]

For those that are saying, "I'd sign but I'm from Europe" you have to think of it this way;

 This petition is aimed as a wake up call to NCsoft Corp to move faster on their announced plans and promises to their stockholders to start working on catering to individual regions based on player demands. Since you are playing on the US servers, you would be considered part of the NA audience even though you are not physically located there. Your opinions and input would matter! 

As for many that are saying, "Their a big company and most their sales come from Korea so they don't care about other regions or what we have to say" 

First I would like to quote @Loki when he appeared in-game on DN Asmo server as {QA} Odin, 

Quote

everyone has a voice, and every voice is important. EVERY VOICE

 

I say look at their quarterly earnings reports found here: https://kr.ncsoft.com/en/ir/irArchive/earningsRelease.do

The US market more then DOUBLES more than any other market, with the exception of Korea of course, and is one of the fastest growing markets. NCsoft Corp over the last quarter has seen a 6% growth in total sales, the largest growth last quarter of any MMO/RPG publisher, and they were VERY proud of it mentioning it repeatedly during their last meeting. They truly want to become a respected powerhouse in the gaming industry and expand to further markets. By their 2nd biggest audience speaking out and saying, "Hey things aren't going well for you reputation wise here"  they will have to take notice.

I would like to also point out that this petition directly calls out the communication issues that is well known between the NCwest and NCsoft Corp HQ.

So many times we have been told by the Kibbelz and Loki that they'd love to make some changes but just don't have the tools/staff to do so and trying to communicate these needs are often times "difficult" at best due to the poor communication infrastructure that was left in place for NCwest. 

The goal of this petition is not only to get NCsoft Corp to take a bigger roll in the NA market, but to also get them to work with the NCwest staff so they are not so overwhelmed and unprepared to deal with future issues and concerns that may arise. 

I would also like to point out that if every person that said, "It'll do no good so I'm not going to sign it" had signed it by  now, we'd easily be at over 200+ signatures so far. I have yet to have a single person say they disagree with the petition as a whole. 

One last note: This has the ability to make NCsoft Corp rethink how they handle other games as well as Aion. This can effect how they handle Aion 2 when it finally releases along with Blade & Soul 2 and The Lineage along with all other currently existing IPs they own.

[Amarah-KT]

I love that you guys are really trying to bring change.  It would be ideal to do it hand and hand with our current support staff.  

[Airashi]

25 minutes ago, Amarah-KT said:

It would be ideal to do it hand and hand with our current support staff.  

The support staff are welcome to read the petition. The proposals provides constructive feedback and is not designed to attack them in any way.

[Kenshiro]

lets share it on all aion group

[Bonehunter]

21 hours ago, Foxy Boxy said:

Please keep in mind that while there is a large player base from Europe that this IS the American version of the game. You are on the American version of the site using the American version of the launcher to play the American version of the game. It's only natural that things would be catered to the market it in. I feel your pain about the Gameforge version in Europe and understand wanting to play on a different markets version of the game, but you have to remember that you aren't the target in this instance. That would be like me, living in the US, complaining about event times in Phantasy Star Online when I played on the Japanese servers, it just doesn't make sense lol.

Well, I wouldn't make such big sayings if the players from other parts of the world (outside of America) don't play anymore, you can shut down the servers right away! And that's the whole point if you don't understand that, you just want to damage the game! It is fact that it was designed (no IP restrictions) that these players from all over the world play the classic in NA. NC (in my opinion) wanted it that way! Don't harm the classic (like others are already doing ingame) but argue that these players stay, otherwise NC can really close both servers!

[Foxy Boxy]

3 hours ago, 66sB2F50 said:

Well, I wouldn't make such big sayings if the players from other parts of the world (outside of America) don't play anymore, you can shut down the servers right away! And that's the whole point if you don't understand that, you just want to damage the game! It is fact that it was designed (no IP restrictions) that these players from all over the world play the classic in NA. NC (in my opinion) wanted it that way! Don't harm the classic (like others are already doing ingame) but argue that these players stay, otherwise NC can really close both servers!

I get the feeling you don't understand what I said at all. I'm not going to explain it again.

[Airashi]

On 8/8/2021 at 8:48 PM, 66sB2F50 said:

Well, I wouldn't make such big sayings if the players from other parts of the world (outside of America) don't play anymore, you can shut down the servers right away! And that's the whole point if you don't understand that, you just want to damage the game! It is fact that it was designed (no IP restrictions) that these players from all over the world play the classic in NA. NC (in my opinion) wanted it that way! Don't harm the classic (like others are already doing ingame) but argue that these players stay, otherwise NC can really close both servers!

I can't make sense of all this..

[2s95144]

On 8/7/2021 at 2:52 AM, Airashi said:

As players of Aion, we have played the game long enough to know what the game needs to thrive. Many of which can be implemented by the NCwest team. 

With the latest banwave, past and present players are utterly confused on the mismanagement and responses from higher ups.

Right now, these current players are on heightened alert and there has been a growing sense of unease within the community as every action that  has been been previously widely accepted, is now questioned. Players are now doubting their  playstyle and rumours are flowing thick and fast which isn't productive for both the company and playerbase. 

The following petition addresses many changes are needed. Personally, the proposals outlined are spot on. Hope common sense prevails in the end. 

https://www.change.org/p/ncsoft-players-outcry-to-ncsoft-corporation-about-ncwest-s-handling-of-na-services?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_30217233_en-US%3A7&recruiter=721437083&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition

 

 

Just to make it clear - These players were clearly exploiting a repeatable quest anyone could see was intended to be done daily. Exploiters should be banned. The other concerns are certainly warranted, and I agree, the direction of NA Aion needs to track significantly differently than it already has.

[Rag-DN]

Update: We have surpassed 100+ Signatures. 

Here are some of the player comments on the petition:

 

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"It would be fantastic for some attention to be brought to the multitude of issues presented by NCSoft West"

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"My hopes were always positive, bt last 2 years of active playing AION Live took all the good from me. I won´t support a game that´s managed by people, that has no clue what is going on and act like things did not happened."

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"NSOFT has no respect for this community sending stupid basics rewards and adding useless events hoping it will fix all?, the game has some issues in many branches just mentioning game play and staff support, no mention they re removing basic stuff and bringing it again but for ncoins.... , i don't mind to support the game but is it really necessary? i mean we have something cool and free  stuff to do so they notice it and then they  remove it just to put it again but now you must spend money to be able to do the same.... WTF NScams!. Game is barely active with few community which is hoping  the game will be better but inst happening. Merge is just a temporal solution but the fact of game isn't getting new players and also current players are quitting the results will be the same before the merge an empty server.I would like to write down a card from the community to AION staff demanding a better treatment asking to the staff a specific amount of requests to improve our experience no matter if we playing class"

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"The way they manage things, they might as well rename to nctrash."

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"Deseo que todo mejore"  Loosely translated =  "I hope that everything gets better"

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"The way they manage things, they might as well rename to nctrash."

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"NC West is true NCFail, every ticket not matter what is it about, gets generic answer, often it isn't even fitting to the reported problem. Also Since forever NCWest been known for protecting cheaters who been spending a lot of money on item shop - they never got banned not matter how much evidence been delivered to our support.Every player suggestion has been ignored and as response we would get things that are complete oposite to our suggestions. Toppics on forums that aren't convinient either get locked or deleted w/o further explanation.Most of the time players have feeling that we are for the company not customers but enemy they wanna get rid of. There is only 1 rule "shut up, deal with it and give us all your money". When someone mention NC Soft, we picture great games and terrible customer service"

There obviously are other comments left on the petition but they are less then SFW or professional sounding so I left those out for now...but they still demonstrate the frustration of the playerbase.

[Rag-DN]

Just want to update that this Petition has just shy of 1k views now. Just think if half the people that didn't sign it because they don't think NCsoft would do anything about the current situation actually signed it....

[MXJ]

I chose not to sign, because I've been on the other side of the curtain before. I've seen the data that these companies use to make decisions, and I've seen the "Reddit knows balance" issues that always come to the forefront of the conversation.

If you don't know what I'm talking about I'm referring to when Reddit (or another message board) has a topic get to the "front page" that the player base agrees with, but goes directly against everything that the observable data tells you. For example, in a MOBA when a certain character is "super overpowered" to players, but only has a 38% win rate.

There are two immediately available examples of this in the petition: "Provide more tailored in-game markets for the NA audience" and "Learn from player feedback what works for the NA audience." Data shows that the battle pass is the most successful payment model in the west in recent history, but many of the people signing this would see it removed given the choice.

Players in general have a terribly skewed concept of game balance, because it is always biased to their own preferences. Most people are incapable of looking at a situation objectively. A player dies to an SM and SM is disgustingly overpowered, but if they kill the SM it's a garbage class. 

Same concept applies to other aspects of the game as well. Subscriptions are just cash grabs until a more invasive monetization method (like a P2W cash shop) is added, and then subscriptions are the best thing in the world. "The cash shop should only be skins, and I'd definitely spend money on the game if it was skins" but then a game comes out with nothing but skins and people don't spend a dime on the game.

Controversial fact: A company has to be profitable, or they can't continue to deliver you your product. 

Then there's the part where half of the "petition" is just, frankly, biased BS.

Unprofessional responses from support? 90% of what they send you is copy and paste. Telling you they stand by their decision is not unprofessional. Being unprofessional is telling you you're an idiot, or making it personal.

Failure to show customer appreciation? What do you expect? Hand-holding and telling you you're special?

Lack of timely responses? Maybe if you didn't submit 12 tickets for the same issue you wouldn't have to wait days.

Unstable servers? I'll admit I hadn't played Aion for a few years before Classic launched in June, but we've had exactly one incident so far with Classic where the servers "went down" unexpectedly and it was because they were getting DDoS'd. Every time I check my ping it's a stable 20-25. You living further from the servers and having fluctuating ping doesn't mean the servers are unstable, it means your connection to the servers is unstable. Call your ISP.
 

[Rag-DN]

1 hour ago, MXJ said:

Then there's the part where half of the "petition" is just, frankly, biased BS.

Unprofessional responses from support? 90% of what they send you is copy and paste. Telling you they stand by their decision is not unprofessional. Being unprofessional is telling you you're an idiot, or making it personal.

Failure to show customer appreciation? What do you expect? Hand-holding and telling you you're special?

Lack of timely responses? Maybe if you didn't submit 12 tickets for the same issue you wouldn't have to wait days.

Unstable servers? I'll admit I hadn't played Aion for a few years before Classic launched in June, but we've had exactly one incident so far with Classic where the servers "went down" unexpectedly and it was because they were getting DDoS'd. Every time I check my ping it's a stable 20-25. You living further from the servers and having fluctuating ping doesn't mean the servers are unstable, it means your connection to the servers is unstable. Call your ISP.
 

I understand where you are coming from and seeing things from the business side of things, however I have also worked in senior customer service industry for years as well for both Public and Private sectors and I can assure you, if my staff or myself acted like NCwest in some instances, none of us would of kept our jobs. (Not saying NCwest employees should loose their jobs, but saying it is unacceptable) The point of any business should be to be profitable and successful, but as retail has clearly showed over the years NCwest is not effective in doing so. Yes they are still making great profits, however their customer base is dwindling so much that the remaining whales that play that NCwest has been living off of have grown bored and many of them are or already have left the game. NCwest should feel concerned about the dwindling customer base and should want to do everything within their power to try to keep as many customers as possible while also appealing to their heavy spenders.


Let me try to address and explain deeper on some of these issues you listed above, as you clearly stated you havn't played the last few years so you might be unaware of issues that we have been facing:

Unprofessional responses from support?
A recent example of this would be there were multiple threads were created where many players were inquiring about why their accounts were labeled as Banned although they received no emails from NCsoft on the subject and they couldn't login to the Support page to submit tickets to ask about the matter. These threads would just instantly get locked and/or deleted with no reply given to the community from NCwest. On one of these threads that called out the NCwest staff for acting so poorly and asking what was going on, the thread was Locked with the final post on it being from @Loki Posting just a gif of a walking stick dancing. No explanation, no communication, just a troll response. The thread has since been deleted but screen shots and video of the thread were saved among community members. This is not the only time such poor decorum has been displayed by the NCwest staff.

Failure to show customer appreciation?

This one is pretty open ended in several ways. They could show appreciation simply by replying to certain concerns the players raise even if they themselves do not have control over the situations or a solution to offer at the time. Also it should be noted that over in Korea they have had, on multiple occasions, customer appreciation events along with Thank you posts from the dev team. I'm  personally not asking them to hand hold us or anything of that nature, but I am asking that they put in better effort to show that player concerns are being heard and addressed when possible and necessary .

Lack of timely responses? Maybe if you didn't submit 12 tickets for the same issue you wouldn't have to wait days.
 This one I can attest to personally on several occasions... I do not spam NCsoft with multiple tickets as I like to try to condense issues down to single responses to avoid confusion. HOWEVER, there have been multiple instances where I did not even receive a response from a GM staff members for over 72 hours so the ticket system automatically CLOSED my ticket even though it was never even seen or replied to from NCwest. This is such a known issue that now when you go to fill out a ticket that they even have a disclaimer stating that this can happen and encourage you to re-submit tickets that have not been replied to. In the past when the Aion support team was overwhelmed from support tickets they use to be able to pull staff from Lineage II to help with more basic issues to ensure a timely response, I don't know why they stopped doing this.

Unstable servers?

  Up until 2 weeks ago the servers would lag for almost an entire hour during the daily reset time (From 10 am CST to 11am CST). During this time hundreds would flock to the Aion Classic discord, reddit, and forums to complain that mass glitches were occuring, players couldn't login to game, or the in-game content was not playable due to the lag and glitches. This went on for almost a solid month with no reply from NCwest even acknowledging the issue until after 3 weeks of it happening. Similar issues have existed on retail on and off non-stop for the last few years. (Ask a lot of players how "fun" it was when they swapped to AWS hosts. Even I ended up stopping for a few weeks to let them sort out the ping/connection issues from that).

[MXJ]

36 minutes ago, Rag-DN said:

 The point of any business should be to be profitable and successful, but as retail has clearly showed over the years NCwest is not effective in doing so. 

Which they stated with classic they will be taking a different path. In other words, they recognize their failure and will look to remedy it the second time around.

36 minutes ago, Rag-DN said:

NCwest should feel concerned about the dwindling customer base and should want to do everything within their power to try to keep as many customers as possible while also appealing to their heavy spenders.

These two things are mutually exclusive. You cannot appeal to someone who wants to dump $10,000 on a game to buy a piece of equipment without completely alienating anyone who does not spend money.

Also, retention doesn't work (most of the time.) Players who have problems with the game will have problems with the game in 6 months, a year, 5 years, 10 years. Unhappy players make unhappy players. There will always be a reason to complain, which is why so many developers completely ignore complaints and appeal to the people making them the most money. 

Frankly, the only hope NCSoft has with Aion is that people give Aion 2 a shot. NCSoft knows this, which is why it is no longer a mobile-exclusive title.

36 minutes ago, Rag-DN said:

These threads would just instantly get locked and/or deleted with no reply given to the community from NCwest. On one of these threads that called out the NCwest staff for acting so poorly and asking what was going on, the thread was Locked with the final post on it being from @Loki Posting just a gif of a walking stick dancing. No explanation, no communication, just a troll response.

It is against the terms of service (that everyone agreed to) to discuss exploits, hacking, cheating, or their bans, etc. on the forums. Upholding a rule is not unprofessional. Posting a stickbug is, but frankly in that position where dozens of people were knowingly breaking the rules I'd probably do the same. 

36 minutes ago, Rag-DN said:

They could show appreciation simply by replying to certain concerns the players raise even if they themselves do not have control over the situations or a solution to offer at the time.

I used to believe in open communication between dev and player, until I saw the old League of Legends forums that have since been removed. Players have an entitlement that they feel they are owed the game of their dreams. "I've played your game for 10 years, you should be catering to me not someone who started playing a month ago who spends 10x as much as I do." 

Death threats, insults, attacks. They were a daily occurrence. Anonymity gives people a spine, so until people can learn how to at least act civilized they don't deserve open lines of communication. If that means customers feel unappreciated then they should reflect on the way they treat people. The customer is not always right. In fact, the customer is usually wrong. A part of support's job is to let them know that without making them feel stupid.

36 minutes ago, Rag-DN said:

there have been multiple instances where I did not even receive a response from a GM staff members for over 72 hours so the ticket system automatically CLOSED my ticket even though it was never even seen or replied to from NCwest. This is such a known issue that now when you go to fill out a ticket that they even have a disclaimer stating that this can happen.

But in the end that all goes back to players flooding the queue in the first place. NCSoft can at least work through the huge log of requests if each player submits a single request, because there are a finite number of players. 

Since returning for Classic I've submitted 3 tickets. Two before this ban wave, one after. The two before were both fully resolved within less than an hour (responses were minutes after I sent the tickets) and the third took 3 days just to get a copy and paste response. I've attached an image of the first ticket, which was resolved in 4 minutes. NCSoft can have very quick responses, when players aren't sabotaging their ability to do so. 

44 minutes ago, Rag-DN said:

 Up until 2 weeks ago the servers would lag for almost an entire hour during the daily reset time

Then I must have been experiencing something completely different from everyone else. The only thing that was "broken" during that time for me was my ability to pick up new items, and it was only ever for a few minutes. My ping never spiked, I didn't have delays going from zone to zone or any of the other issues associated with server lag. It was literally just the inventory that had issues for up to 10 minutes. I'll concede this one because maybe people who live further than 20 ping from the server actually had much bigger issues that I don't know about.

That being said it's still pretty telling that players are trying to make NCSoft accountable for their own actions. People aren't going into meetings like "Haha, let's keep everything a secret from players so they'll get angry that we don't share information with them." They do what they do because anything else would just be more fuel to the ever-burning fire.

[MXJ]