Posted by Spooner | 44 Comments

The Soapbox: How to fix Aion.

I’m by no means a game developer and as such, I don’t know what kind of man power or hours will go into these suggestions. I’m pretty damn sure that a lot of people will argue against my ideas and have solid and powerful opinions and that’s welcomed. So here is the summed up list of problems with Aion that can enhance the game altogether.

Mind you, I don’t talk about bots or lag, that’s not a glaring game mechanic flaw – that’s just bullshit 3rd level drama that can be fixed. There are tons of MMOs (World of Warcraft at the forefront) that can lend strategies through history on how to fix the latency and bot problems.

Punishing us for playing is ignorant and stupid.

Gathering: You can either pass or fail at gathering. This doesn’t make sense. I just found a node in the world and you’re going to take away roughly 30 seconds sometimes more of my time to try and pick the item off the ground only to have the chance of it suddenly failing and me getting jack shit. This serves no purpose, punishes the player for playing the game, and is a major liability in most mid-end game areas since PvP and other friendly players stealing your node in mid gather is pretty much a constant threat.

Change it so that as long as you have the appropriate level required to even gather the node, you will always gather from it. Remove the action interface and substitute in the typical fill meter you get when opening a door or collection quest item.

Crafting: You can spend easily upwards of millions of kinah on crafting alone and still even at max level, fail at making an item. When you do fail, you lose every single material in the process. When most of the materials are Orange (ultra-rare) quality items that drop off raid bosses and the likes and even then at an extremely low chance – having a failed craft is simply insulting. The pass/fail mechanic for crafting doesn’t seem so harsh at all until you start to get into the higher range crafts where expenses are extremely high and the payoff is fucking dismal. If anything, only allow non-drop materials to be lost. Keep the fluxes used, the special green or higher quality parts, and lose the aether powder or crystals or other player created parts.

Most if not all high end gear is crafted using epic quality crafted items as their materials. If you think I’m out of bounds with this issue then spend 2 million kinah making plate pants, then another 4 million for the other mats, and lose everything in a few seconds because the little red bar was a millimeter ahead of the blue bar and your crafting skill is maxed out for the game.

Player run economy AND massive NPC money sinks are worthless and not fun.

Yes, everything in the game SHOULD have some modicum of fun factor to it. Why the hell would I pay money and invest time to do something that’s tedious and boring and ultimately stressful and unrewarding?

Dying in the game costs money. If you want your EXP back that is. But if you manage to die at level 29 you’re going to spend at least 12000 kinah per death. Die a few times because of a bad group or whatever, and you’re pretty much fucking broke. Or you can RESPEND the next 5 hours or so grinding out EXP since you can’t redo the big payout quests you used to get the EXP in the first place. See where I’m going with this? Why? Fucking pointless.

Everything costs kinah. 90% of the time I talk to an NPC and it’s not quest related I’m giving him my money. Hell there are even quests out there that ask for up to 50000 kinah. What the hell? How much money are the Korean players making that the inflation was ramped up so high? What the hell are the developers thinking when they set the bar at this level?

I’m not afraid to spend time and earn some cash but when I have to decide to either play the game and quest and group and have fun, or mindlessly grind out money when I’m not even at the level cap; well there’s something wrong there. But that’s the great illusion because there is no choice, you must have tons of cash on hand constantly because the costs at vendors and such scale exponentially as you level. Why? You once again punish the player for playing the game. So you succeeded in leveling to 50? Great now if you want to fly it’s 15000 kinah instead of 8000 and it all started out as only 121.

You can make tons of cash on the Trade Broker (Auction House) but they LIMIT THE AMOUNT OF ITEMS YOU CAN PUT UP FOR SALE. Why? As if the AH isn’t already flooded to fuck all and back even with the cap. Basically this is another hurdle another pointless brick wall in the face of somebody trying to advance in the game.

So the AH window is full, let me use my private store! THAT TOO HAS A CAP EVEN SMALLER NOW ON HOW MANY ITEMS YOU CAN SELL! And now as a very pathetic and amateur solution to their botting problem, private stores have a time limit before they stop working. So again I ask why bother? Why? Why should I give a shit about my private store? I can’t set it up and go AFK because it’ll run down on time and shut off. So my alternative is to pay money to play a game where I literally sit on my ass and do NOTHING in the game.

It’s 92000 kinah to get all your new spells at level 22. It’s 150000 kinah to get your 4th inventory expansion and it’s still just another 9 slots, like the last 3 purchases were; only those cost 1000/30000/80000 respectively.

Solutions: Give us the option to run back to our corpse from the obelisk for no kinah or EXP cost or resurrect at the bind point for some exp loss and kinah cost upon soul healing. Stop scaling the cost of flights and teleports, that’s pointless. Raise or remove the cap on how much you can put for sale in the AH and do the same for private stores. Why does it cost so much to train in the skills you need as a class to continue playing? Lower the price. Also lower the price or possibly give items or quests to expand your inventory instead of just leaving it as another mindless money sink. That’s LAZY game design.

This is a player controled economy with every single NPC interaction acting as a sever money sink. Money sinks server 2 purposes; to keep players playing to earn back money spent, or to control the amount of money in circulation. Obviously this is a fucking failure in Aion as players need billions of kinah simply to carry out daily class functions.

Flight

The one major selling point that is supposed to make Aion unique from WoW or any other MMO, and it’s a fucking chore. You can’t fly everywhere only in certain places that really serve NO GAMEPLAY PURPOSE as there are no mobs in the air there. Gathering Aether is also fucking pointless. You need aether to fly as per the lore… gathering aether from the sky doesn’t replenish your flight timer. Explain this. What possible fucking purpose does this server. Yes we pay good money and invest hours of time and as developers it is your responsibility to support your decisions. As adults you’re held accountable for your actions.

Even in the abyss where aether is all over and the world is shattered and composed of NOTHING but floating islands. You have flight limits, you can fall and die and lose money and EXP and more. Why? Its insulting. We can fly freely in the entire world of the Abyss and yet you put a limit. How stupid. You play up the fact that you can fight and gather and do everything in the air and it’s a tactical aspect of PvP – no its not. You have extreme limitations so really what it means is that the tactical choice of flight is reserved only for players with billions of money spent on flight potions and scrolls and rare gear.

Solution? Gathering aether should refill your flight meter. In the Abyss the flight meter should only begin to drop as you engage actively in combat as in you’re attacking not running away from an attack. In the normal world there should be a cap on the altitude your character can reach and chalk it up to fatigue and aether concentration being very low.

Environment

There are tons of terrain clipping problems and bugs. If you jump over a log, odds are you’ll see your character glitch a little – replay and rubberband a second – and then maybe land where you expected him to. Why? You can do it in WoW and every other fucking MMO so why is travel in Aion so buggy?

The zones as well are either MASSIVE and require a mount of which there are none, or tiny and cramped with tons of grinding fodder (neutral mobs) and over the top terrain doodads that really serve no artistic purpose either.

Flight paths have a kinah issue that I already discussed, as well there are only 2-3 in most zones and they’re almost never at a MAJOR quest hub. You spend such an astronomical amount of time WASTED in traveling throughout Aion. Gliding helps some but ultimately it too is a lackluster and uninterestingly boring way to travel. I don’t want the hassle, I want a mount or better placed flight points.

Solutions: Place more flight paths. Introduce mounts. Expand on the land mass because as it stands, there’s very little earth to explore with even less reason to go explore it.

I could go on more here about the crippling reliance on consumables, the fact that PvP is broken down to basic zerg vs zerg lag wars where the victor is the side with more Rangers and Sorcerers and more kinah to supply the trillions spent on kisks and potions.

This isn’t so much a dig, hell readers of the site here know that I really like Aion. I was very excited to get into it, to be on the ground floor. But right now I’m immensely disappointed at how NCsoft is handeling the IP. They ruined Tabula Rasa, and now they’re on the slippery slope of ruining Aion.

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Posted by Spooner | 4 Comments

Aion: Flight Primer v2.0!

I did a flight video but it felt lacking. I went ahead and hit the vid again this time with footage from CB5 showing you a little bit of the eye candy during flight and explaining the concept more. Flight in Aion isn’t just for faster travel, it’s pretty much a solid way to PvP and a strategic choice as some attacks close or open up as a result of taking flight.

I mention different wings in the vid as well that affect your flight time. Here’s a chart!

As I said in the video, you’re going to want to break up your PvP group into who’s on the ground and who’s in the air. Casters and healers are more vulnerable in flight as they’re spotted easier, but they have much more mobility and typically ranged DPS is at a major advantage over melee in the air since there aren’t knockdowns. It also pays off to have say an Assassin with high flight speed and average flight time, zip past the enemy front and then stealth up to distract and divert enemy players.

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Posted by Spooner | 6 Comments

Aion: What’s this about Wings?

I’m not much on making guides but I like answering questions. I have been getting quite a few from you guys in the comments section which is awesome, leave more questions. If I can answer better with a video then I’m holding off until i make one, if its something I can shed light on through pictures and text, here is where you’ll get it.

Spooner, can you explain how the flight works in Aion a little better? Why are some wings white and others black?

Ok well let’s break down this question so I can be sure not to miss anything. Also be sure to check out this video I made about flight, I’ll be making another more detailed one very soon.

How does flight work?

Regardless of your faction, at level 9 you will be put on a quest where you will ascend to a daeva. Daevas are all the player characters, they’re immortal and pretty much live to fight the enemy and bring peace and power to your race. They also have wings.

You start off with only 60 seconds of flight available to you with a 2 minute recharge time. In other words, when you start to glide or take flight, your green bar will run out after 60 seconds and from zero will take two full minutes to reach it’s maximum level again. That green bar is your aether level. I already explained that aether is pretty much what makes the world go round. It fuels flight, magic, just about everything.

In the Abyss there will be aether rings that will recharge your aether very quickly so flying in that massive PvP area is much less restricted. There is also a 10 second cooldown in between using your wings. Example: you jump off a cliff and glide, you stop gliding and start free falling because you’re a twit. You won’t be able to bust out your wings to save yourself until the 10 seconds have expired.

Where can I fly?

At first you’ll see flight is limited in the starter zones and areas. When the Tower of eternity shattered, it left these massive chunks of itself scattered all over the world. Its only around those ruins that you can fly at first. This restriction is pretty much a leveling mechanic so players won’t be able to easily bypass content and hit areas that are way too high for them to handle. In the higher level zones you’ll notice that you can fly in many more areas and some PvE content is only accessible through flight.

Flight isn’t just for transportation, it’s the core of strategic combat in the game. There are flightpaths in the game which you do not have to go learn like in WoW. They cost some kinah (currency in Aion) to use like you’d expect but are fucking fast. It makes me laugh because in WoW, you can be on a flight for a long time because it’s scenic as hell and kind of annoying; in Aion, they’re just as scenic and beautiful and yet 10x faster. Also you’re carried by some ghostbird thing, looks badass.

Flight in the Abyss is virtually unlimited. You can go the abyss at level 25 and there’s plenty of content to help you level, PvP, and then some to the cap (currently 50) and beyond. Like I said your aether still runs out in the Abyss, but there are aether rings you can fly through or hover in to recharge on the go.

What’s gliding?

Flight is supposed to be a strategic element for combat since some class abilities only open up while you’re in flight. Its not a boring mount. If you find yourself in an area where you can’t fly, you can still “glide”. Also you can glide pretty much anywhere.

The game has a thermodynamics system in the engine that identifies where pockets of hot air would be (geysers, edges of water, etc) and you can catch a boost while gliding. Gliding’s easy man, just jump and while in the air press jump again. I typically just hold both mouse buttons to keep my direction going while gliding and just as you’re about to land I tap the W or S key respectively to catch a little gust and hopefully make the glide last longer. Gliding also depletes your flight bar (aether) half as fast as normal flight does, this is important.

The effectiveness of this is based on your environment, if you’re going down hill you can expect to ride longer, but once you hit ground your wings go away. You do move faster while gliding then you do whilst running, so gliding is typically used to escape aggro or completely bypass pissed of mobs. You can also toggle in and out of gliding from flight by tapping your jump button. I said earlier this was important, see when you’re in flight your aether is running out; quick swapping into a glide will still keep you moving (although slightly descending) but run your meter dry much slower. Hitting the ground while gliding and still in flight won’t land your feet but return you to normal flight.

Can I upgrade my wings? Get more time?

• You get your first set of basic wings at level 9 through that ascension quest I mentioned earlier.
• Your level 30 wings are purchased from a vendor for roughly 775k kinah. The vendor can be found in Sanctum for the Elyos and Pandaemonium for the Asmodians.
• If you have bought the CE of Aion you get a better set of level 30 wings for free!
• The level 40 wings are purchased from the SAME vendor as the level 30 ones for about 9.6M kinah.
• The level 50 wings are a quest reward. Its classified as a campaign quest so upon hitting 50 it should pop into your quest log automatically.

You equip new wings like you would any other type of gear and they’re all interchangeable. Each set does something different such as adding more flight time and in the case of the Lv 50 wings, they have less flight time but add a lot of health so it’s more of a PvP thing.

• Level 10 – One minute of flight (60 seconds).
  Level 30 – +30 Seconds of flight time (90 seconds total).
  Level 30CE – +40 Seconds of flight time (100 seconds total).
  Level 40 – +60 Seconds of flight time (120 seconds total).
  Level 50 – +35 Seconds +120 HP (95 seconds total).

There are also other things that add to flight time such as potions and certain equipment, even titles.

What do the higher level wings look like?

Like this:

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