Aion (Open Beta, Launch Day Info too!)

[Zetor]

Speaking of death penalties, I remember reading 'you lose abyss (pvp) points when you die' in that thread. Let's combine a pre-BC WOW pvp rank grind with the possibility to LOSE points... what can possibly go wrong? 

Seriously though, I hope they change some of that crap before it hits NA.

[Draegan]

Well the one caveat is that there are alternatives.

In a pvp game, I like how you can lose points.  At least you have something to lose in a competitive situation.  But I've seen people do zergs and die a lot as well so it can't be that detrimental.

They have these portable bind spots so you can die during sieges and get back into the action.  Who knows.  It better not be like WOW's rank system.  That shit was terrible.

[tmp]

Let's combine a pre-BC WOW pvp rank grind with the possibility to LOSE points... what can possibly go wrong? 

You mean, like having the ability to purchase gear tied to performance-based ELO rating that can go up or down depending how well your matches go..?

[Zetor]

Let's combine a pre-BC WOW pvp rank grind with the possibility to LOSE points... what can possibly go wrong? 

You mean, like having the ability to purchase gear tied to performance-based ELO rating that can go up or down depending how well your matches go..?

Just because wow's arena sucks ass [and I've made about 900 posts on this topic :p] doesn't mean Aion's has to, is all I'm saying. PVP point loss + incentive for ganking as a group + very fast-paced '3-shot' combat is not a recipe for Good Times.

[Slyfeind]

What was wrong with Pre-BC PvP? Was it just the gear awards being tied to rank?

[DLRiley]

Draegan you forgotten a fundamental difference between the mmo industry and the rest of the gaming industry, IE every genre you listed, that unlike mmo's the games you listed are FUN. So under the consideration that the current crop of mmo's are noteriously unfun, then it is not unreasonable for people to ask for something different when the current model is simply doesn't work. So while Aion will be a great financial success no doubt been saying that since page 5, but it will also be 3 giant leaps back for the industry in general. Which means we will have twice the amount WAR's, AoC, TR's, and the occasional Darkfall in the future because no one learned anything.

[sam, an eggplant]

I still don't get why a game has to be innovative to be a good game.

Speaking in generalities you're right, innovation is not required. Players don't get "burned out" on first-person shooters, RTS's, adventures, single-player RPGs, and what have you because you don't obsessively play them for months on end. MMOs are different.

Thinking about mechanics like experience debt, whack-a-weasel healing, collecting 15 bear asses, etc, fills me with a powerful ennui, the oppressive tones of a mighty depressing existential dread. I'm like the last indian, watching the white man tear down the mighty sequoias to grind into particle-board entertainment centers with a spot to hold your flat screen TV. In their place, an ikea parking lot. A single solitary tear rolls down my grizzled cheek.

To put it a different way, if the only proven path to success is cloning EQ, that's what everybody will do. At least WoW innovated on top of EQ. Fuck Aion for not even trying that much.

[Draegan]

That just doesn't make sense.  Just because people play MMOGs for a long time, every single MMOG that comes out MUST have innovation and try something new or it's a failure in your eyes?

What about the people who obsessively play COD?  Does that mean TF2 is shit because it's really not anything different?  What about any popular RPG vs. any other?  People have their flavors and pick their own games and still play them religiously.

I don't thing MMOGs are special just because people play them a long time and because of that everyone that comes out has to be super duper special.

What Aion is doing is putting out a product to the marketplace that's polished and delivers on what they promised.  If it's successful, and I think it will be, it will tell the rest of the industry stop putting out buggy shit that sucks because you'll end up bagging groceries with Mark Jacobs.

[Kail]

What was wrong with Pre-BC PvP? Was it just the gear awards being tied to rank?

That, plus the insane grinding required to get rank, plus the lack of alternate gear.  Pre-BC, you were raiding or you were in greens/blues, basically, and if you were raiding, it was all the hardcore 40-man crap.  No heroic five mans, no dailies for cash, no rep epics, no token vendor.  No PvP stats on gear of any kind, either, so you'd better believe that a guy who did battlegrounds all day was at a serious disadvantage to someone who ran Molten Core.

edit: no PvP gear -> no PvP stats on gear

[sam, an eggplant]

WAR wasn't particularly buggy or unpolished. If that's the lesson you took from its failure, we need to talk after class, mister. It just wasn't very much fun. It was at least minimally innovative.

As for the rest of those games, while certainly some get sucked in, very few put in 20-40 hours a week like a job. That level of investment is common in MMOs. I don't claim to speak for anyone else, but I am totally burnt out on bear ass collection. I am perfectly content to go cold turkey on bear asses for the rest of my natural life. I never want to see, hear, taste, or smell another bear ass ever again.

Bear asses live on... in my nightmares.

[Hindenburg]

every single MMOG that comes out MUST have innovation and try something new or it's a failure in your eyes?

No, but it would be awful nice of them to realize that death is it's own punishment.

[waffel]

Aion is going to be the first MMO for people. Hell, a lot of people. They know nothing of 'innovation' or that what they're doing is boring as piss since they've never played anything like it. Aion to them will be like your first MMO. Not everyone is as bitter as the 'MMO Veterans' that have seen the diku shit done to death.

[Draegan]

WAR wasn't particularly buggy or unpolished.

 

I don't really need to keep arguing with you do I?

No, but it would be awful nice of them to realize that death is it's own punishment.

I don't see the difference between WoW and Aion's death penalty.

Also: What waffel said.  I got bored with RTS's a long time ago, I don't rant how they genre is still full of the same old shit.  But I was new to the genre?  Man Starcraft2 looks awesome!!!

[sam, an eggplant]

No, you're free to go. Sin no more.

[Hindenburg]

I don't see the difference between WoW and Aion's death penalty.

I don't see why it should mimic one of WoW's obvious mistakes.

[Morfiend]

OH LOOK over there!!!!

Its a Nit.

 

[Draegan]

I don't see the difference between WoW and Aion's death penalty.

I don't see why it should mimic one of WoW's obvious mistakes.

I'll feed you.  What should happen when one's character is defeated?

[Hindenburg]

Spawn at rez pad.

[01101010]

Well at least Aion has been out for a bit overseas so its somewhat polished and somewhat balanced. I always appreciated FFXI for being out a year before I started playing. Of course that was my first true dive into the MMORPG genre so I was not aware of how a UI was supposed to work. Of course it was a port. All that aside, the game should be in better shape just for the fact its been out for almost a year now.

[Falconeer]

Exactly, by looking at the feature list of pre-launch WoW, what was so INNOVATIVE everyone couldn't stop droling over it?

It seems easy to confuse "done right" or "worth billions" with "innovative". As Draegan tried to explain many times, not everything has to be "innovative" to be "worth billions", or to just be "fun".

[tmp]

Exactly, by looking at the feature list of pre-launch WoW, what was so INNOVATIVE everyone couldn't stop droling over it?

They did a shift from "get a group and grind mobs for xp to level" model to "follow a string of quests that tell you what mobs to grind" model. It was the game giving player list of objective to fullfill, rather than the player sitting in sandbox and going "right, what do i do today?"

There was actually quite a bit of doubt expressed before WoW launch how they couldn't possible provide enough quests in the game to cover the whole levelling experience, because it was just something not done until then.

[Rendakor]

To be fair tmp, WoW didn't have enough quests at launch to get to 60. Numerous times in the 40s and 50s I found myself with only red quests and had to grind out a level or two for them to be doable.

I don't see the difference between WoW and Aion's death penalty.

Did I miss the patch where WoW added experience debt?

[sam, an eggplant]

The leveling was also much faster, easier, and infinitely more player-friendly. WoW was the first player-friendly MMO. Also I would argue that WoW's customizable interface is an enormous innovation that often isn't properly acknowledged.

[tmp]

Ahh fair enough, i only got to l.20 or so in WoW open beta and didn't play it after. So if there wasn't enough quest coverage later i wouldn't know... pretty sure i recall reading that was their "idea for WoW" though, the quests all the way thing.

[Draegan]

To be fair tmp, WoW didn't have enough quests at launch to get to 60. Numerous times in the 40s and 50s I found myself with only red quests and had to grind out a level or two for them to be doable.

I don't see the difference between WoW and Aion's death penalty.

Did I miss the patch where WoW added experience debt?

OK I'll spell it out to you since you didn't see my previous post.

When you die in WOW you incur 10% damage to your equipment.  Now calculate the cost of that repair.  What do you get?  The approximate value of the cost to buy back your debt. 

[DLRiley]

EXP > Gold. Not that hard to understand...

[Morfiend]

EXP > Gold. Not that hard to understand...

[Falconeer]

On paper WoW wasn't innovative at all. Quests weren't even close to the sheer number of quests available in EQ2 (released 2 weeks earlier), so what WoW really brought to the table was solo play in a M(assively)M(ultiplayer)ORPG, and we are all happy about it. But WoW at launch was a user friendlier version of 5 years old EverQuest, and it pretty much still is.
Now, Aion builds on that (as WoW built on EQ) and introduces flying combat and evolves PvP with instanced and competitive dungeons and a third NPC faction which actively goes after the players... but no, it's a regression, it's meh, it's teh suck.

I am not saying that Aion is innovative. Just pointing out how irrilevant the point is. Some products are aimed to experiment and evolve, some are aimed at satisfying the existing customer base for that kind of product. Pretending for a second to belong to the second group, I think Aion does a GREAT job in satisfying my conservative mmo gaming needs, while still introducing a few innovations here and there that further evolve the complexity of the genre.

[Rendakor]

Ah, sorry Draegan I did miss that. Do you buy your debt off at the graveyard (or whatever)? Or do you have to go back to town to do so? If you can just pay it off at the graveyard that's no biggy, but if you have to do so in specific, non-respawn, locations it is an added timesink. To elaborate, when you die in WoW your armor takes damage but you are not immediately gimped if you do not repair.

And I wouldn't call WoW's interface customizable; out of the box it is not. Moddable seems a more appropriate term. You cannot in game move around basic, simple things. Until I learned about addons, this was EXTREMELY frustrating after coming from CoH and EQ2 where you can move/resize anything.

[Falconeer]

You pay your exp dept back at any respawn point. So it's the same that repairing your armour, with the difference that if, for any reson, you can't afford it, it won't hinder your adventuring as a broken armour would.

Stop thinking it's about losing exp. It's just a money sink, less intrusive than the WoW one if possible.

[Rendakor]

I'd rather adventure with broken gear (weapons aside) than XP debt. YMMV.

[Koyasha]

Losing exp that you pay to get back - since you can't, as far as I know, lose a level in Aion - is less burdensome than having your gear break because you lose 0% effectiveness from your previous state.  Therefore, if you're broke like a lot of people I've adventured with are in WoW for some reason, and can't really afford to buy back your exp right at that moment, it doesn't mean you have to either stop adventuring or borrow money from your friends.

Furthermore, you also don't need to visit the soul healer in order to regain full combat effectiveness, like you need to go repair in order to regain full effectiveness if any of your items breaks in WoW.  The cost of soul healer can be put off indefinitely in Aion, something you can pay whenever you feel like it, and is not required in order to continue playing.  In WoW, you HAVE to repair your stuff if you want to continue playing, there's no putting it off.  So, as far as a penalty-free death penalty goes, Aion actually has a less immediate effect on you than WoW.

[Falconeer]

I am afraid English is failing me today cause you can't really mean what you wrote. There's no experience debt. There's an experience ransom.

When you die, the system takes some of your XP away from you and hold it as a ransom. Whenever you pay for it, you get it back in full. So if you head back to adventure with the "debt", and you exp some more, eventually when you pay (say 1 minute or 1 month later?) you will get the missing exp anyway. As long as you pay for it, it'll immediately go away as the debt/ransom never existed. It's not a half-xp crippling kind of debt like the original EQ2 one, it's like holding some of your XP as a ransom you have to pay to have it back.

The armor damage on the other hand is the same thing: you can delay the payment as much as you want but you WILL HAVE to pay it, there's no going around it, as you have to pay the ransom to have your equip durability back.

So the difference is subjective, what is more annoying if I decide to DELAY the payment?
Sounds like a no brainer to me: would you prefer to go back to the fray with a broken piece of equip that leaves you naked/unarmed, or with a tad of exp missing from your exp bar? They are the same, as you know you get your stuff back upon payment, but the first can be more crippling for your adventuring as you could not be able to kill shit unless you get your temporary broken equip back to working condition. Same is not true for temporary missing exp.


EDIT: What Koyasha said.

[Pax]

Experience loss is the most horrible, frustrating and demoralizing kind of death penalty ever invented, especially in games that basically revolve around leveling up and leveling up some more in order to make any progress.

So how does the ransom work? Do you lose, say, 250 exp if you die, or do you lose a couple % on your progress bar? What gets paid back then, the 250 exp or the %?
If it's the former, how do 250 exp translate to your progress if you claim them 10 levels later?

I just can't wrap my brain around how forcing such negative time sinks on players can make people suck at their game of choice less.

[Falconeer]

Can you read? There is no time sink. Just money sink.
You get what you lost when you died.

If it's the former, how do 250 exp translate to your progress if you claim them 10 levels later?

You have issues.