[Feedback] Why I'm not renewing my sub

[Aaabatery]

Hi all! First, I love Aion. It was the third MMO I played after Ragnarök and Cabal Online. For me it's still one of the best MMOs ever made despite its age. It's beautiful, the combat is good, the skills and instances are good. The only bad thing is that you can get PvP gear with PvE.

I was so excited when I saw Aion Classic. Some memory lanes were lit again and I was expecting to revive many a good memory despite my age. I knew I couldn't play as much as in my youth, I have a family, a job, etc. But I jumped into it for the last two months, and unfortunately I'm not going to sub or play anymore. I felt I should provide some feedback since I still want the game to improve and maybe become a little bit like it was in my memories.

 

1. First and foremost: LOW POPULATION. 
   
   As much as people will blame it on players, NCW did a very poor job managing the servers and the populations. We all knew that imbalances are a problem since 2009 if no action is taken. Lodas and Berdin amulets are not solutions, we all know they don't bring people. NCW could have made the 1:1.2 rule since the begining, and load balance the servers so that we would not have one server with 30% population and other with 7%. And in faction imbalances it's even worse. We all know that the game is not fun for anyone, be in the upperdog or underdog factions: one has no challenges and other has too much challenge. I don't think the situation can improve by itself. It took years back in 2009 to the balance come from players (like almost one year for old Asmo dominated Azphel become balanced) and I don't think we'll have years of classic to reach that balance.
   
   I'm most a PvE player and this reflects directly in what I seek when playing Aion: good groups to run instances to improve my character. Solo content becomes repetitive and boring. Waiting 2 hours for a DC or Adma group is not fun. Sometimes the LFG chat is silent for more than half an hour. Empty places even in Elysea, I could do spy quests for hours w/o seeing a single soul. Only place that seen to have action is upper abyss, when you get jumped by 3-4 players while trying to kill a guard. Not fun at all.
    
2. ABUSIVE PRICING AND PAY TO WIN
   
   Aion Classic subscription IS overpriced. It's the price of an AAA game every month for a 12 year old game. A good one, but don't get me wrong, there are more good games that are way cheaper. Besides that there's the feeling you need to pay EXTRA for daeva pass. PER CHARACTER. This is too much. I'm in a 3rd world country, every dollar here is 5.23 reais (today's quotation) so it's too much. But it gets worse: you made the PAY TO WIN model come to NA. Candies, crowns and coins that you can pay real money to get IS P2W. The whales have a huge gap to normal players. It's not a question of keeping up with the Joneses,  but when you are running a Betoni's and get jumped by people with full +15 30e that paid their way instead of playing the game is not fun.
    
3. LACK OF CONNECTION FROM NC WEST TO PLAYERBASE
   
   NCW is just too distant. Players have communicated the issues and their desires and it's clear  that NCW doesn't care. NCW team are not Aion players, they were not Aion plays in the past, so they are totally out of touch. See SR bans. See how much time it took for AP traders getting addressed. See the broken events. Everything fall in deaf ears and blind eyes.
    
4. LACK OF NEW CONTENT
   
   NCW decision to delay 1.5 and 1.7 is just making things worse. We know this is a huge step in keeping the game fun and alive, by giving players more chase items and goals, and access to AP that some desperately need. NCW decision to delay is beyond my comprehension.
    
5. HACKERS
   
   Boy oh boy! This is one of the most hated things for me. We all know who they are. We all submitted videos. We all know what hacks they use: radar hacks that find anyone anywhere, even in the abyss. Animation hacks, speed hacks, some even openly admit using hacks and still nothing. It's frustrating and infuriating when the same player/group of players kill you in 5 different locations knowing exactly where you are right after you resurrect to kill you with DP uptime all the time and still shout "5/5" is really not fun.
   
   So far even after the AP traders banwave I still see the hackers are still in the game. The same ones.
    
6. BOTTERS
   
   I got admit the botting situation has improved. It seen that many botters were also AP traders, because yesterday all the bots that ran in Brusthonin since the game launch were not there. But it took so long for NCW to address the situation. The in-game reporting tool is useless. The e-mails to report are useless. And don't start with "the bots keep economy alive, provide cheap stuff in broker blah blah blah". Just no. Players keep an economy alive. And we don't have players.

I DO hope something changes in the near future. But this is too much for me to keep paying, so I'll speak with my wallet. For all those who still play, pay and love the game, it's ok, and I hope everybody finds fun and entertainment. I just don't see it for myself in the near future without NCW taking action.

[Lacuna]

I also stopped playing, there no reason for me to keep going on Isra server, if they won't merge the server I'm not coming back.

[Inactive]

PvP is almost impossible to find unless you want to get zerged. There are no objectives in the pvp zones spreading people out.

[MXJ]

9 hours ago, Aaabatery said:

1. LOW POPULATION. 
    
2. ABUSIVE PRICING AND PAY TO WIN
   
   Aion Classic subscription IS overpriced.
    
3. LACK OF CONNECTION FROM NC WEST TO PLAYERBASE
   
   See how much time it took for AP traders getting addressed. Everything fall in deaf ears and blind eyes.
    
4. LACK OF NEW CONTENT
    
5. HACKERS
    
6. BOTTERS

1. "There aren't enough people right now because people are taking a break until 1.5, so... I'm quitting so there will be less players, and more people will be likely to feel the same way"

2. I feel your pain living in a country where the exchange rate is ass, but $15 (or $12) is not even close to overpriced for a subscription in 2021. Subscription prices for the most part have not increased despite the ever rising inflation. These companies could realistically be charging double what they are based on the diminished spending power the dollar has compared to 10 years ago, and even that wouldn't be "overpriced."

3.a.Companies will never be transparent, because there will always be a group of people that hates what you're saying and their voices always echo the loudest. You're not going to say "Wow this game is great, I love it" to millions of people on the internet, but you are going to say "This is the worst game I've ever played, and they need to fix A, B, C, X, Y and Z"

3.b. Also, I think it's funny how people are now talking about it being a bad thing that they took so long to ban AP traders (to do a proper investigation) ... after complaining about how quick the SR ban wave happened. Do you want them to take their time and investigate, or do you want them to shoot first and ask questions later? So hypocritical. 

4. This one is fair, but it's honestly the players' faults. It shouldn't take 3 months to hit level 50 even for the most casual of players. People gave up the moment they noticed that one faction had more players than the other, and a lot of them rerolled as well. 

5. Refer to 3.b.

[Bip]

1 hour ago, MXJ said:

3.b. Also, I think it's funny how people are now talking about it being a bad thing that they took so long to ban AP traders (to do a proper investigation) ... after complaining about how quick the SR ban wave happened. Do you want them to take their time and investigate, or do you want them to shoot first and ask questions later? So hypocritical. 

Problem is... they didn't ban people yet as others have mentioned. hahahahahaha Will see if it happens nc-soon-ish but I honestly doubt it.

[MXJ]

1 hour ago, Bip said:

Problem is... they didn't ban people yet as others have mentioned. hahahahahaha Will see if it happens nc-soon-ish but I honestly doubt it.

Even if that were true and they didn't ban a single player for AP trading, they still took the steps of removing any illegally obtained items or AP from the accounts. While I stand firmly in the camp of "Permaban anyone who AP trades even a single kill" there are those who are adamant in their defense of banless punishments.

As I said in another thread, anything short of a permaban is not even a punishment, because unlike someone spending 30 years in prison and losing their freedoms for those 30 years, the player who AP trades and faces a 7 day ban doesn't actually lose anything for those 7 days. They can still login another account. They can still go play another game. The only way to make them feel the same loss for their malicious actions are to take everything from them and force them to start anew. 

That being said, we will never have a resolution where every single player agrees. While I am strongly for permabans I can still understand the reasoning people use to defend less harsh punishments, and I can accept something lesser as long as it is consistently applied to anyone who commits these offenses.

The problems only begin when Sally who only pays her $15 sub gets perma'd for obtaining 10,000 AP, but Joe only gets his 1.5 million AP worth of items removed because he spent $5K on the game so they consider him more important. As long as this does not happen I'm fine with any action taken against AP traders that prevents them from gaining an advantage. 

Still, none of this means that players are not being hypocrites in flipping stances. If you complained about NCSoft rushing SR bans, and are now complaining about them dragging their feet on AP trading bans you are the biggest problem with this game, because your boundless negativity will send more players running than anything else ever will. 

[Lurona]

I only played the 2 free weeks and left. If it was f2p I would probably still log, but I can't justify paying a subscription for this game at the direction it took from 1st day.