Aion (Open Beta, Launch Day Info too!)

[01101010]

6.02214179×10^23

Damn you to hell. I paid good money to have that stuff blocked from my memory. All that therapy shot down the tubes.

[Lantyssa]

Why do you hate Chemistry so?

[DLRiley]

You wanna log our stats to compare 

You would only be proving his point.

 556 (2.957  vs     2456 (3.297
10 days, 10 minutes.   vs   26 days, 23 hours and 22 minutes.

[Severian]

his posts really seem to be on the level, from his perspective as a very competitive group-level PvP Korean player.

FIFY

He says different, actually, for PvP.
Although it could be revealing something about the nature of the Aion end game and what behavior it rewards as opposed to something particular to Korean players.

1. For PvP or PvPvE lovers Aion is as good as DAOC, or even more
(I bet on better than daoc on NA at least..Korean just like to farm NPCs, earn gold. don't want to fight much).

Korean users don't like to PvP but farm Abyss Point and want to be Best first.
They aren't pro at Enjoying game but Enjoying grind for Gears to be on top side.
So there's pretty much meaningless NPC farming (for AP) in abyss for straight 10hours in a day.

[Redgiant]

Actually it was a pve encounter that turned into a pvp encounter hence why it took 8 hours. My inclination is that the only thing I do for 8 hours is sleep, work, and school....

I spent almost 8 hours in the first ever AV on my server when it was released. I also got in to a 6 hour clusterfuck 3 way battle at Kazzak one time right after the world raid bosses where released. I imagine it was something like that.

I actually loved those spontaneous battle royales like the outdoor 40+ vs. 40+ WoW bosses, or the DAoC Darkness Falls incoming swarms when it flopped over while your raid was trying to hurry up on Legion and then head towards the Mids or Albs side and meet 'em head on. To me that *is* good PvP, of the unstructured variety (complimented of course by somethign strategic and organized too in the biggere picture sense).

[Draegan]

You wanna log our stats to compare 

You would only be proving his point.

 556 (2.957  vs     2456 (3.297
10 days, 10 minutes.   vs   26 days, 23 hours and 22 minutes.

1.2 hours/day vs. .8 hours/day.  Guess who's winning now?  Oh snap.

[Salesman]

6.02214179×10^23

Hardly Sherlock, try  Maxwell Grant.

[Morfiend]

Actually it was a pve encounter that turned into a pvp encounter hence why it took 8 hours. My inclination is that the only thing I do for 8 hours is sleep, work, and school....

I spent almost 8 hours in the first ever AV on my server when it was released. I also got in to a 6 hour clusterfuck 3 way battle at Kazzak one time right after the world raid bosses where released. I imagine it was something like that.

I actually loved those spontaneous battle royales like the outdoor 40+ vs. 40+ WoW bosses, or the DAoC Darkness Falls incoming swarms when it flopped over while your raid was trying to hurry up on Legion and then head towards the Mids or Albs side and meet 'em head on. To me that *is* good PvP, of the unstructured variety (complimented of course by somethign strategic and organized too in the biggere picture sense).

While I dont think I will be doing something like that for that long again, I totally agree, the unscructured PVP is the most fun to me. I really don't like what WoW has done to PVP by making it sport PVP. I think I had more fun PVPing in WoW before they put in the Honor system and the battle grounds.

[Tarami]

Give people a means to compete and they will compete for fun out of their own free will. It's the fundamental principle on which every sport and FPS-game relies.

I've harped on it before, but MMOs got that all backward by trying to arbite and dictate competition. Players will naturally form leagues, rankings and whatever form of competion they want and to much better results than anything the developer can arrange. Something as simple as letting teams invite eachother to matches would make WoW arenas a powerful community tool rather than a faceless grind.

[Falwell]

Now, end game..

From what little I've scrounged up, it appears the end game revolves around keep / objective taking, open world pvp and a shitty anime fan's social club. That about cover it?

[Draegan]

There are PVE dungeons, raid targets, and fortress takeovers for access to PVE dungeons.  It's your typical diku endgame.

[Falconeer]

From what I gathered it's the usual mix of raidbosses and instances.
The difference being most of that stuff happens in a PvP environment. Or you have to earn points or rights (forts) in PvP to unlock certain PvE instances.

[Segoris]

While I dont think I will be doing something like that for that long again, I totally agree, the unscructured PVP is the most fun to me. I really don't like what WoW has done to PVP by making it sport PVP. I think I had more fun PVPing in WoW before they put in the Honor system and the battle grounds.

Same. Although I loved the honor system right before battle grounds were put in. Sadly, that only lasted about 2 weeks. The server I was on had the Plaguelands running 5v5s and of course Hillsbrad was the zerg fest like every other server.

[Segoris]

Or you have to earn points or rights (forts) in PvP to unlock certain PvE instances.

Did anyone find more info on this? I understand that if someone takes the keep then they gain entrance to that keep's dungeon. But is it zoned like Darkness Falls is in DAoC, so the new people entering and old people who were in there before the control switched could fight it out in the instance? Or is it like every other instance and each group gets their own?

[Draegan]

I'm pretty sure it's instanced for individual groups.  Could be wrong though.

[Zetor]

WARNING: MMORPG Forum link
A little insight from the Korean server on endgame PVP.

Terrific thread.
I wonder a little about how much he might be trying to sell the game since he admits he's into NCSoft stock and trying to gauge NA interest, but his posts really seem to be on the level, from his perspective as a very competitive group-level PvP player.

Yeah, the poster seems really sincere... and even though he is invested into the game, he makes a lot of offhand remarks that are worrying. Stuff like gear dependency, the need to farm gear to compete in pvp, massive potential class balance issues (short-cooldown long duration cc with only one class able to dispel them, among others), etc... for that reason, it's worthwhile reading for anyone on the fence. :p

(and I doubt they'd change those things for the NA version)

[Falconeer]

he makes a lot of offhand remarks that are worrying. Stuff like...
 

... like real money for the better equipment. He specifically says that he didn't go for a gear dependant class as he knew he couldn't afford the real money investement, and had hs rich friend cover the role.
That happened in Lineage 2 too. Basically to get and especially enchant the best weapons was so hard (impossible) that the only viable way was to buy them with real money (buy game currency with real money).
To read shit like that carried over to Aion really worries me.

[Severian]

But not carried over to NA Aion. Different model here (monthly sub).

massive potential class balance issues

He went into class comparisons in depth in a number of different posts, and I reached the opposite conclusion. That there were FOTM classes/tactics which the players were able to adjust for due to robust customization and tactical options built into the system, for example that assassins were lockdown-autokill gods in 1on1 PvP until people utilized resist gear and suddenly the problem went away for all but newbs. Not to mention NA getting the benefit of a mature 1.5 and all the tweaks already made along the way.

But your other points hold. Especially for people who will approach the game as competitively as he has.

[Falconeer]

But not carried over to NA Aion. Different model here (monthly sub).

You got it wrong. The system is the same.
In Lineage 2 to get the best weapons and armours you needed lots of in-game money, same to enchant them. Those money are, usually, not reasonably achievable with normal means. That "pushes" people to buy them from chinese farmers.

Since Lineage 2 had close to no-loot and Aion seems totally different when it comes to itemzation, I would have said that shit could not happen here. The posts from that player seems to indicate the opposite.

Here:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/2906225#2906225

and a dps spiking classes who can spend Real Money to buy expensive stuffs.
What i heard many time was NC Soft's game needed very expensive weapon's quality for dps class.
So i decided to play cleric(I'm not rich) and mate for Chanter,Cleric and rich mate for Ranger.

 

[Falconeer]

More:

Q. What mechanics in kor server really helped to mitigate the botting problem? I heard the mechanic that forces players to log-in through aion website really helped, is that true?

A. No, website etc never worked still tons of bots are in game. I and most korean
just don't care about it much i think. Since it's needed and bots cant own that huge wealth.
You'll see Aion's economy is big as much as United States and harsh as much as desert.
If there's no bots to farm some grind required stuffs(some Harvest, craft resources from mob)
everything will be fucking expensive.
NOTE : I DON'T CARE MUCH ABOUT BOTS AND ABUSING/HACKS, AND HAVE NO INTEREST ABOUT WHAT/HOW MUCH ARE THEY DOING EXACTLY.
SO STOP ASKING ABOUT IT.
SINCE IT EXIST IN EVERY GAME AND IT WASN'T ANY PROBLEM TO JOY GAME FOR ME.

So basically, thanks the bot farmers?

See, the funny thing is that I like Aion and I'll play it. But no point in denying/covering this shit.

[Draegan]

Thats kind of a news at eleven kinda thing for me.

[Falconeer]

"Don't roll a Gladiator if you can't afford to pay tons to the hordes of goldarming bots" doesn't exactly happen in every MMORPG.

[K9]

6.02214179×10^23

Very nice.

[tazelbain]

>I DON'T CARE MUCH ABOUT BOTS AND ABUSING/HACKS

I DON"T CARE MUCH ABOUT THE LABOR CAMP YOU CALL A GAME

[Draegan]

"Don't roll a Gladiator if you can't afford to pay tons to the hordes of goldarming bots" doesn't exactly happen in every MMORPG.

 

Like you said, that's for getting +10 to everything you are wearing.  It gives you something to work on while you're pvping in the end game.  I'm assuming they made sure everything was +10 the second they hit 50.  I took it as he has the mindset of the biggest poopsocker ever.  So while he gave good insight on how the game is played, his methods an and everything was extreme.  Hopefully I'm not wrong.

Of course if it turns into something like that it'll suck.

[tmp]

I'm assuming they made sure everything was +10 the second they hit 50.  I took it as he has the mindset of the biggest poopsocker ever.  So while he gave good insight on how the game is played, his methods an and everything was extreme.

Skimming through that thread it doesn't seem as much his mindset but rather the mindset of korean players he appears to quite despise -- which is to grind/buy lot of e-gold to then upgrade the weapons to insane numbers so one can then brag in chat about length of their e-peen while grinding foozles for more gold.

[Draegan]

Only thing I was happy to get out of that thread was class balance, CC, and class descriptions at level 50.  Over at Aionsource you just get a bunch of mouth breathers talking about how OP a class is at level 17.

[Morfiend]

I read the first few pages of that thread, and skimmed more, but what I didnt see talked about was death penalty, for PVE or PVP.

[Draegan]

Morfiend, I responded to your PM a few days late, not sure if you noticed.

Anyway, the penalty for a PVP death is the loss of Abyss points (I think) which is currency for PVP gear.  For PVE is simply respawning back at your last bind spot, exp debt (which you can cure for a fee) and a debuff that slows you for 30-60 seconds.

I don't know, but I don't think, there is an exp debt for PVP.

[Hindenburg]

exp debt (which you can cure for a fee) and a debuff that slows you for 30-60 seconds.

 

[DLRiley]

Exp based death penalty 

[LK]

I am fine with an XP debt system that:

• Doesn't de-level you.
• Reduces the amount of experience you gain.
• Slowly works itself off when you log out such that your next session you should be free and clear (8 hours).

If Final Fantasy XI had such a system I'd still be playing that game.

[sam, an eggplant]

Aion doesn't just stagnate, and it doesn't just avoid innovation. It actively regresses the state of the MMO genre in every way but eye candy. I sincerely hope it's a miserable failure in the west.

[Nebu]

Aion doesn't just stagnate, and it doesn't just avoid innovation. It actively regresses the state of the MMO genre in every way but eye candy. I sincerely hope it's a miserable failure in the west.

Aion will succeed in the short term for two reasons:

1) It's pretty

2) There's nothing else to play besides WoW.

Any kind of a pvp game will attract the players that felt betrayed by WAR and AoC.  From box sales, this could be as many as 1 million disenfranchised gamers. 

[Draegan]

exp debt (which you can cure for a fee) and a debuff that slows you for 30-60 seconds.

 

Well at level 15ish it was worth about 4-5 mob kills at most.  It's barely anything unless you die 10x in a row for being stupid.  Even if you cure it, the cost is worth the cost of a quest reward, if not less.  In fact, I think the cost of getting rid of your exp debt is akin to the cost of WOW's repair bill.  Aion's armor can't be damaged as far as I know.

It's nothing like EQ.  When questing with a ranger I was died a few times and paying the fee and going off didn't hinder my play what so ever.  You can't delevel, so max level PVE deaths mean nothing other than a 60s debuff.

Sam:  You're dumb.  What Aion is doing is showing that if you put forward a game that's polished and well made it's actually successful and not a one hit wonder like WOW.  This should help the genre quite a bit.  

I still don't get why a game has to be innovative to be a good game.  I don't see anyone screaming at FPS games or Civilization-style games, or RTS games because they don't do SOMETHING NEW each time they come out with a new one.  A new MMOG isn't a wonderful amazing thing, it's just another game being released into the marketplace.  MMOG teams are not responsible for changing the genre and creating something new, they're responsible for making a game that works and is fun to the intended audience.  (It's also amazing that so many fail at this)

Edit:
That or sam is just trolling the thread.