The Soapbox: How to fix Aion.

Gathering:
i would agree with you on gathering, it is such a mindless grind in the game to increase your gathering level, but yet again, in what MMO isn’t it?
So to decrease the amount of mind numbing and almost painful grinding i have to do to get my crafting to a decent level so i can make shit i can wear, a logical answer would to be to get rid of the failure bar. But no,Ncsoft slaps me in the face with a big one.

Crafting: same deal, i’v spent HOURS upon HOURS getting my crafting up to a level where i can make gear that i wear/use. The idea of work orders was a brilliant one, but to accompany it with the failure bar AND with the fact that i have to throw even more kinah to buy the materials to finish all 9 washtubs or whatever is horrible. It really feels like i’m just pissing money away. they should either completely get rid of the failure bar, or make it so only the gather-able and buy-able mats are lost.

Dieing: the whole idea of spending even more money to get your lost exp back, is one of the most annoying things i have to ever experience. I have some where between a bubble and 1/2 of lost exp due to myself dieing. The only reason it hasn’t been filled back up is because i don’t want to spend another hour or two grind more kinah. They should allow us to re-spawn back at where we binded to, but only instead of charging us money, just let us re-spawn and experience the rez sickness for how ever long. It worked in WAR why cant it work in Aion?

Flying: limited flight is the stupidest thing i have ever heard of, where one of the main selling points of the game was that you can fly, and the fact you can only do it in specific areas is just annoying. Plus on top of that they throw a timer on it in thous areas and in the abyss is just fucking stupid.

All of these points, mainly the endless kinah grinding, have driven me to think about canceling my subscription until the bugs are worked out and things are smoothed over.
Plus, the fact that i live in Aus is a big one since i use telstra (lucky me) that usably leaves me with a ping of 500-600 which is trash compared to the ping people get in the US.

I never got the Flight Timer. How is it supposed to be a selling point when even the simple WoW flying mounts are more fun (due to their lack of a timer).

I enjoyed Aion for the month I got with my purchase, but all the hurdles mentioned in this post, all the punishments clearly included to make my levellig process as long as possible, were what made me decide to not renew my subscription past the first month.

I see the same mistakes in countless MMOs, that fail to grasp that part of WoWs suscess is in its lack on punishing players for playing. Sure, grind in WoW is still there in countless other ways, but you are never really punished (excpet perhaps gold for repair costs) and everything you do is a steady progression that keeps moving you forward, there are no fallbacks, no moment where you feel your time has been wasted (except maybe wipe nights in raiding :p). Until Aion sorts its shit out, I guess il stick with WoW.

The economy and hideous money sinks are a big detractor from what could be one of the best games to hit the net in a long time. The ever increasing need to group is a frustration too, if you want to solo for a bit your only real option is to grind mobs, and there are areas you can’t even do that. =) And I play a sorcerer!

PVP is a joke — the only thing you get are gank squads and zergs, that’s it. There’s never anything remotely requiring skill, just superior numbers and who gets off their big nukes first. Rifting is retarded — at least half the time, if not more, any rift is camped by a ton of the opposing faction so you show up, get chain CCd and nuked into oblivion.

Crafting is obtuse, it is only marginally superior to the crafting in FFXI which also destroyed your mats on fails, but it had added factors like time of day, what direction you’re facing, and what stuff you have in your Mog house.

Another irksome thing for me is that manastones destroy ALL the other stones when one fails. Who thought this was a good idea? Sure, have the stone fail once in a while, I can see that sort of — but it shouldn’t take all the rest with it when it goes, that’s assinine.

Soul healing — I’d rather just lose a smaller amount of XP permanently than keep paying the ever escalating fees, my last death was at 34th level and cost me 35K. I haven’t died at 35 yet, but I’m betting it is 40-50K per death. That’s beyond obtuse into the realm of the malicious and foul.

Don’t even bother reading the Suggestion Box on the official forum either, it is nothing but whining and flames and people being assholes to each other. Seriously. It is every bit as obnoxious as the WoW forums, only with more concentrated rabid since there’s less people.

Anyway, yeah, agree with what you posted — ESPECIALLY the flight thing re: aether nodes, if aether = flight, and we’re gathering aether then it would follow that our flight timer should rejuvenate too, maybe not 1:1 time gathering to time in flight, but SOMETHING, I think my Aether is 142 and likely to stay there a while, after all, when I get to 199 I have to buy greater aether gathering for like 117K if it is similar to greater extract vitality…

This is a prime example of the drivel that gets posted to the Aion forums, thanks Mavoc for illustrating my point for me!

‘Go back to WoW!’ is tired, trite, and ignorant. I’m really really tired of seeing every Aion fanboi fall back on this kneejerk (with the emphasis on Jerk) response.

I really enjoy Aion for the most part, but it is far from perfect, and a lot of the stuff in system really does seem to be punishment. Should death be avoided? Hell yes! They just need to moderate the costs, the entire economy is ridiculous. We’re not asking for the penalties to be eliminated, just that they be reduced.

But of course it is all or nothing, there’s never room to compromise, fanbois of any fandom see things as black and white, there’s no such thing as a shade of grey.

Well, every single solution given by Spooner is pointing to the WoW game mechanics instead of improving the current aion mechanics: 100% nodes, mounts, 100% on crafts, running to corpse.

I mean come on.

If I pick an apple from a tree, will my hunger go away? no. Why should my flight time come back. It doesn’t make sense.

All this comes from the fact that everyone wants everything, and they want it now.

I really hope they don’t give in to all this QQing.

Hope someone from NC soft reads your website Spoon. I know that WOW devs do. You have some great ideas here. I liked the idea of flying timer not decresing when not in combat , when gathering aether.
In MHO this game is heavry grind game. They tried to cover it and substitute some aspects of the game so it does not look like grinding, but for me its obvious grind. WOW does is better at hiding grinding, basically making you want to grind, not making you HAVE to grind.
My char is called Mitak and i am lvl 28 on Perento EU. I am not playing for 2 weeks already as its just boring…i just bought borderlands and dragon age, meaning i will not play Aion for at least another 1-2 months. I am giving the game 2 months to change a lot of things…hope it manages. If not, i will just go back to wow.
I am not pissed at Aion anymore, i was when i liked the game. Now i am tottaly calm as are a lot of other people-calm as in indifferent. Dissapointed and tired.

Anyway, good topic Spoon, as always!

“Maybe I’ve matured as a gamer, maybe I’ve just gotten over the heavy grinds – but I’m not digging right now the feeling that no matter what I do in the game it won’t affect diddly shit besides my EXP bar and that bar takes longer to fill by the minute.”

Can’t agree more.

I totally agree with your point of view Spooner. The simple fact also is that the amount of bots and goldsellers in the game is directly linked to the massive demand for kinah the game’s design implies . It is very similar to Lineage 2 with regard to that .

Once you reach lvl 25 the game also comes to a grinding ( pun intended ) halt . You can’t quest in Abyss due to the constant ganking – folks actually camping known quest hubs – and choices to level elsewhere are sparse . You make the effort to level to 25 – the ultimate goal being acces to Abyss- only to find out you have to leave again ASAP .

The game oozes potential , it looks great, playing it is intuitive, classes are well – designed ( in short it could be one of the best MMO’s ever ) but it’s all let down by the intense grind and kinah-dependency.The solutions you offer would indeed help to solve many of the issues .

I can’t say I agree with all points here, I am tired of having everything handed to me, and I want to have a challenge in more parts of the game. (PS: I am listening to a Podcast as I write and my brain is blanking out once in a while, to explain why I might seem incoherent.)

Gathering for me, is fine. I like that I have a chance of failure. The best way to skill and gather more efficiently is to raise you level on the nodes you have gotten ‘past’. Because I have 240 skill doesn’t mean I need to start gathering the 240 nodes. It is far better to keep gathering the 230 node until 271 (41 levels above node stops giving XP/Skill), then move to the 240 and get 281, etc. The higher your skill are in relation to the node, the faster it gathers and you literally have no chance of failure (it’s very rare).

Crafting, same deal here. Sure it costs money, just the raising of the caps cost you well over a million. But this again doesn’t really mean it is a issue. I doubt it is ‘intended’ that you skill you craft to cap within the first 30 levels. Sure, you perhaps _could_ do that, but it’s not financially viable to do so. Craft a little at a time, and as you get higher and higher levels, kinah is earned far more easily. Within around 2-3hrs of questing and grinding I am typically earning near half a million kinah. The market is also currently not stable, as we are mostly leveling up with a ‘few’ having reached the upper level. When we have quite a few more in the upper levels, there will be more drops that appears on the market. This will lower prices eventually, and make it cheaper to make the product. We as crafters decide to some extent what we want to charge for our time invested. Sure, the consumers might not agree and actually pay the cost we want, but some people are undercutting far too much at a time. From extremes 1 million (it costs you 980k (in the current market) to make (when you buy the materials) in example) to 981k – just to sell fast and earn 1k kinah (or 981k if they have gathered all materials – wich is smart). I’m getting a bit off track here, I personally love that I have a chance of failure. It might seem weird, but I find it more rewarding if there is a risk involved. I have hated how easy it is to both skill up and craft in some other games like WoW. Here I have a risk involved, but that’s not the only good thing, you have an even lower chance of creating a high quality version of alot of the items. So you got risk versus reward and a little chance for an even greater reward. I like this system myself, I can understand that others don’t having gotten used to games like WoW. But I hope they do not change this. Perhaps one change as you write, it wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t lose all the items used, but there is a chance on losing the different mats involved in secondary rolls for each item.

Kinah can seem like a pain to earn. But personally I feel it’s fine. I haven’t really had much issues with struggeling to pay my soul heals, to teleport and fly between flight paths. I’ve done alot of crafting, I have paid for all my skills up until Lv.42, I have had my fair share of deaths (being a tank I usually end up dead first), and I teleport and use flight paths often. I haven’t bought much manastones, food (make my own) and potions (make my own) and so on forth. Like I wrote above, from having played near 2-3hrs questing, I typically have earned 500k kinah. If I am lucky I can also have made a few million depending on what dropped. The way I feel it has been, is that it scales the cost for death and such decently in the ability to earn kinah. Inventory costs you a bit as you get more and more expansions, like with crafting, I don’t think it’s needed to get yourself Lv.5 expansions right away. I have upgraded slightly, and done the quest to get one row in the cube (and will use the item from Veteran Rewards later) – I have no issues with my space as I run around. I vendor often, it hasn’t been an issue, and I know that since I nearly seem to double the amount of kinah I can make per level every 10 levels, it feels more wise to me to max out my cube at a later time.

So in a response on how the fee scales with levels, your income also scales. To me at very least, it evens out.

I’ll agree on flight though. They advertise it as something really special and what sets it aside from alot of other games in the genre. Sure, it in some ways does, but I too got a bit disappointed at how little flight there actually were in the game. Sure, we can glide, but I don’t really see that as flight combat, although it is fun to jump of high cliffs and glide down to the next quest area, it does save me time, that’s for sure. I remember seeing interviews where they talked about how important it would be to decide on flying or staying on ground when in combat due to bonuses triggered from being in the air and abilities on the counter-side being disabled in flight. It sounded far more interesting than it really is. I can understand from having read and taken care to read the lore why you can’t flight endlessly in the Abyss though. Sure, there’s alot of Aether there, but it’s spread out too thinly for it to sustain constant flight and you get tired. The NPC when you get Abyss unlocked talks about this to you when you answer the questions. Again, although I wish I could have some areas with unlimited flight and some ways to fly more in every zone, at least a little bit hovering over the ground for periods of time to take advantage of these different flight bonuses etc. and to create a tactical diversity. It doesn’t bother me too much though, it adds more thinking and you can greatly increase both flight time and speed through equipment, manastones and some titles. I’ll definately have a bit of HP in my PvP set, but I’ll pump all I can into getting the best flight time/speed gear and manastoning them as well.

Overall, I don’t really agree with the factors you write in this blog entry being what makes the game not fun, for me. It does make it less fun for you as I understand, but for me, it has no bearing on my ‘love’ for the game. I can agree to some parts, but in the big picture, I like it how things are. There’s risks involved, you must think more (not that it requires high intelligence or a degree, but there’s some tactical choices to be had) and take more care. I also think Aion has done well (in my case) to keep me entertained while I am leveling. There’s raid bosses out in the world for several levels, there’s one at Lv.38 (wich can be done from Lv.35 at least if not sooner) and there’s one in the early 40′s. There’s alot of group bosses too that starts from early 20′s. There is grinding involved, but I have so much fun since I tend to do the more grindy bits with my legion friends and randoms I have gotten to know while leveling through grouping and such. When you fool around joking and have fun while you are performing mundane tasks, time flies faster and the levels do as well.

I’m just glad I got to experience Aion before they add the 300% increase in XP on some quests. I’ll be fine with it after that too, but I liked the challenge I’ve had to Lv.50. There’s no way I can imagine myself leveling to cap like I did in WoW and AoC, within 6 RL consecutive days (and the level caps there were 80, not 50). I like that I finally find a little challenge behind the game again. Although it’s not a difficulty challenge per say, you need to invest some time before you reach the current level cap. I’ll take my time and enjoy the ride. If I get tired, I’ll log off and do something else until I feel like playing again. I don’t see the big rush.

Wow, I just realised I shall never listen to a Podcast and write a response – or anything at all for that matter – ever again in the future. That was one big mess of bad grammar and poorly written text. Hopefully it is possible to decrypt my meaning.

@Mavoc: The phrase ‘Someone needs to go back to WoW’ is often used on the various forums in a harsher way — thus perceived as an attack. The fanbois that post using that particular ‘argument’ are generally rabid asshats who should be banned from contact with…well…anyone. =) Apology accepted and in return I offer my own for my reaction to the post.

@Decurio: Yeah, your post was very ‘stream of consciousness’ but you raised some good points and offered some constructive suggestions. I wasn’t aware of the 41 point difference thing. So…you’ve reached max level?

I agree with Decurio.

I said what I said because of the feeling, I have, that everyone’s solution to problems is “in WoW”. Especially when all I’m trying to do is forget about WoW.

PS: I am very interested in knowing what more specifically:

“6. Added description “A hidden effect(s) is activated when you equip the complete set” at the bottom of the tooltip of the item that has a hidden set effect.”

means. Does it mean there are equipment like I had in FFXI, with unseen bonus stats? Take in example the Lv.35+ (I think that was when you could start those grind quests in MMV) Silver Mane ‘set’. It has no bonuses but the NPC refers to it as a set. The typical sets has bonuses that you get from having more pieces visible at the bottom, greyed out – I don’t see those as hidden. But then again, this could be a bad translation from the Korean patch notes. It will be interesting to see what happens once the patch is live here for us and out of testing over in Korea – I am guessing by then I should have the full set and can look for attributes being boosted.

Only 1%?? Go for 25% at least…you gotta think big to be big!

I kinda like the fact that enchatments can fail. i remember Kalonine where at lvl50 u cold have you +12 enchantment fail and you wold lose not only the enchatments but the wepon or armor wold break to and you wold end up with nothing
I just think it brings some Exitment factor to pimping up you wepons and armor.
Not like in WoW where it was easy to get a great wepon with great enchantments.

Sorry about my english but i am from portugal

“This game makes me feel like i am doing the second job for kinahs .”

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

its not to often i see the same botter for more than a day, though they are often replaced by similar ones quickly, like roaches. According to tamat they are “We’re banning thousands of bot accounts every day and will continue to do so.” though i find that hard to believe (thousands per day means within a few weeks they have banned the population of the game several times over)

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.

You guys are making me feel like deliting my acount. Is it realy that bad?

@ Headhunter i am not sure what level you are but yes it is.

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

It’s originally a Korean game… I could have predicted pretty much ALL of these masochistic experiences based purely on this fact alone. Koreans (and I am stereotyping a bit) tend to love extreme difficulty and high stakes loss. They are, more or less, the worlds most ‘hard core’ gamers (assuming you measure hardness by way of willingness to suffer through difficulty). You know that ‘hard core’ mode which is playable in some games? The one which causes a single mistake to cost you *everything* and drive you insane with frustration? That’s made for Koreans or people who were Korean in a past life. I mean in some gaming circles really excessive and punishing grinding is actually often called a “Korean Grind” whether it comes from Korea or not.

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?