The same goes for crafting. Here’s the best example I can think of. Let’s say you are trying to craft a 199 item for an alt you are leveling and your skill is capped at 199. You also want the proc’d version of said item so you went in prepared to craft it multiple times. You have risk vs. reward factor working against you which is as intended. Obviously the sensible thing to do is level up your crafting so you don’t fail the craft. Even those 9 skill levels will make a huge difference, although I prefer to be 30 skill levels over what I’m attempting to craft.

Now when we get to 399 yes it gets to be even more risk vs. reward. Also working as intended. You are crafting level 50 items. Best of the best. So we’ll talk about expert crafting. You can get the expert crafting up to 449 as everyone knows I’m sure. Now expert quest is incredibly expensive and highly luck based yeah I’ll have to agree. But also you are opening up a huge money making opportunity with it as well so intended. Plus you completely offset the risk vs. reward of making 399 skill level items and open yourself up to the amazing golds that are soulbound upon craft.

I’m pretty sure you haven’t reached level 50. Neither have I so I don’t mean to talk down. My main is only level 40 after 2 months play (not shabby I guess)but I can see the future of my crafting. I personally went expert food because it was too darn easy to pass up. Mostly gathered everything for it myself which was awesome.

Also have my alchemy sitting at 399 for when I reach 449 with cooking. I’ll think about giving expert alchemy a go . That’s a strong combo for a sorc if you ask me. Already came in handy, made bloody flame book and it proc’d first try and of course I make all my own potions which lessens the costs. As far as life potions go I can gather ‘em myself but I pop mana too often so I end up buying those off AH. My alt has 399 tailoring and going to 399 handicrafting, sitting at 300 right now. Double xp weekends rock for crafting. Two times as fast and half the kinah spent.

I too am coming from WoW but played grindier MMO’s beforehand. I still keep my WoW account active and do my daily heroic and weekly raids but Aion is an incredible game with a lot of potential. There is a lot to do but if you don’t have a lot of time don’t think about playing competitively. This game is a grind centric game. It’s not nearly as bad as other games I’ve played but it’s not for everyone. If you can get passed that there really is a lot of fun to be had.

I do think that they need to work on abyss flying. That is my main issue with the game. PvP abyss flying really should be the bread and butter but it’s not as awesome as I thought. My thoughts are if you are engaged in PvP while flying STOP THE TIMER PLEASE. Even though I carry major wind serum potions you can get caught in a situation that someone engages with you, you don’t have a lot of flight time left and the potion timer isn’t ready yet. I don’t want to fall out of the sky to my demise. That is just lame.

Simply stopping the timer so you can defend myself would solve the problem. Yes landing is the obvious solution at the moment but it’s the wrong one. The person that keeps flight wins period. I’ve seen this myself personally. What chance does a melee have against me when they have no flight time left and are resorted to landing? None. Stun, turn ‘em into a tree heavy nuke. If they’re still alive root ‘em. Aether hold, magic fist. Even if they had a chance in all of that to regain flight and pop a potion they’re still going to stay in stun lock and losing flight has crippled them enough to make it near impossible to win. I don’t even see how 1.9 is going to fix this issue with the new skills to counter stun unless they fix flight.

All I can say about the soul healing situation is you really shouldn’t be dying to enviroment except in the rare situation that it’s a player error, lag or something unforeseen. In a party you really shouldn’t die unless you do something wrong or of course the tank isn’t keeping aggro/the group wipes.

In that case yeah we gotta suck it up and pay the fee which does suck and is overly expensive. I would say out of 10 deaths 8 were caused by PvP. More on the PvE side when lag is the factor. Even spamming 7 can’t save me from that sometimes haha . My big tip for this is pick the mobs you grind carefully. There are plenty of areas that have mobs that don’t aggro at all or pick an area that has aggro mobs that aren’t densely populated. If you have to grind areas that have a dense population of aggro mobs stay near the outskirts or entrance so you can pull them back a little and work that area. In general those areas are better duo’d or done in a party setting anyway, especially if you want to get deep into them. You’ll be worrying about spawns way too much so unless you have excellent crowd control forget it.

The game isn’t perfect and could really use some work for a western crowd I shall agree. I think it’s an excellent game however and has a lot of potential. If it lives up to that and builds on what there is in a year it could be a really amazing game. Again my major complaint is abyss PvP is kinda fail. A lot of PvP goes on through rifting which is irritating to me. I want to fly and fight. I can fight on the ground in any number of games. I want to PvP in the sky.

I just ordered Aion, and it’s downloading now. My boyfriend says he will have no part of it, as he already pulled all his hair out playing another korean game a decade ago. I’m fairly ambivalent about the prospect of playing a ‘frustrating to advance’ game myself. Many gamers seem to measure gameplay ‘fun’ based on how far they progressed in how many minutes. Myself I measure gameplay fun in terms of an entertaining way to spend my time, regardless of progress. Yes I do like progress, but it is entirely secondary. It is after all a ‘game’ and it’s purpose is to entertain, not to hand me imaginary money on a silver platter.

Really, the time spent and the difficulty, are both being compared to WoW as a yardstick. How long *should* it take to accomplish xyz, or get such-n-such loot, or level up? Compared to what? well it’s all more or less being compared to WoW. If there were no precedent set, no ’status quo’ which makes us feel like “this is taking too long” then how would we come to that conclusion? I think it is a fair sentiment to say that games are WAY too extensively compared to WoW, and then criticized alternatively for either not being enough like wow or being too much like wow.

I am sorely disappointed to hear about the limitations of flying though. I understand them conceptually, but it sounds to me, based on most of what’s been said here, as though the limitations are overbearing, and that will affect the aforementioned ‘experience of gameplay’ I mentioned earlier as being so important to me. Perhaps they could change it so that it only eats up the timer bar in combat or only when you move (not while hovering) something like that. I dunno, I have yet to see for myself if it is really an issue, but I would very much like to spend a fair amount of time flying, what transcendent demigod wouldn’t?

- And this is why the Kinah sellers are rolling in dough.

I couldn’t agree with you more on the actual penalties set in the game, as far as Kinah and death. I absolutely hate games where the death penalty is either xp lost or an astronomical amount of money lost. I have lost so many levels due to bad groups in CoH, the last thing I’d want to do is repeat that. After a while, it becomes a chore and uninteresting.

An have to love the aspect of trying to quest while getting ganged up on by three to four players at once.

Seems like they took a game like 9 dragons an did an upgrade with graphics.

So far i do not see a reason or point to stay with the game even though i will give it some more time since i paid three months advanced.

At moment i see many reasons why i would not renew if they do not fix.

on a side note im not impressed by the 1.51 notes, the idea of having a ‘magic word’ that you have to input when gathering aether sounds appalling. Sure it will (in theory) kill the gather bots, but having to input a word, while in air, while trying to farm a node before you can continue just makes aether farming that much harder/time consuming than it already is.

or buy kinah more than once Ive felt like the game wants me to