Aion (Open Beta, Launch Day Info too!)

[ghost]

Yeah, I think I'm going to hold off on playing this until the official release, lest I go through too much early level content and make it boring for myself right off the bat.  One thing for WOW is that you had several different pathways to take early on which could lend to some replayability. 

I'm glad there aren't any boars.  However, the short bristled Mepigus is a very innovative mob.

[Segoris]

Lag is still my over-riding concern, though. Just stays bad for most of the day. And no latency meter to look sourly upon.

That has been a concern of mine for this beta/preview. I had less lag during Chinese OBT then I do right now. Overall, it isn't game breaking or as bad as it could be, but still just annoying.

As for the exp, I haven't really had it 'feel' grindy yet. I'm playing a spirit master and am only 18, but the big thing was quests. Mob kills sucked for moving that exp bar, but quests did a great job. Just group them up and turn in 5 at a time and levels didn't feel that bad to gain.

I do want to get a new pet bar for the UI though, the default pet bar is the only real problem I'm having with the UI. Gaining abilities to use with a pet is used for all pets, but it takes up hotbar room instead of pet bar room. Also, I'd like to know if I can right click a buff/debuff to remove it from my target....that would be a bit nice.

[amiable]

Yeah, I think I'm going to hold off on playing this until the official release, lest I go through too much early level content and make it boring for myself right off the bat.  One thing for WOW is that you had several different pathways to take early on which could lend to some replayability. 

I'm glad there aren't any boars.  However, the short bristled Mepigus is a very innovative mob.

To be honest I'm having a lot more fun after I hit level 10, the earlier ares do not seem that well done.

[Xanthippe]

And I think experience is tuned to let us level faster in the beta; just what I heard someone grumbling on the betaboards.

If that's so, that will kill the game for me.  As it is, it already seems slow to me.

I leveled a 10 mage (but haven't played since becoming spiritmaster) and am playing a 13 chanter (priest).

[Draegan]

I've never read anything where the exp curve is different in this beta.  I think it's exactly the way it was in C-Aion.

[01101010]

Well I am having fun, but the one overarching thorn in my side is this understanding/theme that <insert class> doesn't get good until lvl 20 or 25 or 30. I like playing but i am getting a bit leery about this topic that keeps popping up.

[Draegan]

The only classes that seems to describe are the two scout classes.

[Hindenburg]

I've never read anything where the exp curve is different in this beta.  I think it's exactly the way it was in C-Aion.

There's some talk in the beta boards that we're testing v1.02, and v1.1 theoretically eases the xp curve.

[Signe]

What?  No boars?  Forget it.

[Draegan]

I've never read anything where the exp curve is different in this beta.  I think it's exactly the way it was in C-Aion.

There's some talk in the beta boards that we're testing v1.02, and v1.1 theoretically eases the xp curve.

I've heard that.  I havn't heard that it gets worse though.

[Phunked]

My problem with watching the PvP is that it seems very zergy. And not just in the co-ordination requried to beat off the zerg type of deal - if I played this it would likely be with a couple of good friends and we'd be looking for the small team work experience, something to replace WoW's current "duel in da box" system (we're all triple bracket gladtiators over multiple seasons, and it's really the same old shit by now). Something like WAR would have been appealing with the ability to combo stuff like the tank knockback abilities with some nasty burst from casters/witch hunters, but WAR happened to have the not fun problem.

That PvP video looked like it had a lot of "fly around spamming heals for a while while your DPS times cooldowns to blow some dude out of the sky, and then repeat". I might be terribly wrong about that, because the UI isn't super informative and I can't read half the text (Korean) but it seems very much WoW-esque zerg, which isn't super fun.

Could someone who has actually played this please prove me wrong so I can get excited again?

[kondratti]

I've never read anything where the exp curve is different in this beta.  I think it's exactly the way it was in C-Aion.

There's some talk in the beta boards that we're testing v1.02, and v1.1 theoretically eases the xp curve.

Miracle Patch will fix it!

[amiable]

Their Beta boards are funny.  Even the WAR nutters were not as rabid as some of these folks.  There are quite a few threads were folks argue that long grinds and forced grouping are terrific because only the "quality" players will stay.   

Seriously though, they need to reduce the grind for the NA market or I predict a WAR/AOC like fall off the subscription cliff after month 2.

[tmp]

Their Beta boards are funny.  Even the WAR nutters were not as rabid as some of these folks.  There are quite a few threads were folks argue that long grinds and forced grouping are terrific because only the "quality" players will stay.   

Sounds like they're getting some Darkfall refugees, then.

[Senses]

Hrm, I know I'm bordering on some "should probably stick this in some random warhammer thread," but...would the grind in warhammer have been that bad if the pvp during the grind was actually fun, and......if the end of the road wasn't such a horrible mess?  The truth is, my negative feelings of warhammer were never really about the speed of leveling per se, but the horrible time I was having while leveling.  Everyone agrees t1 was great, t2 was okay, and t3 just hit this wall where everyone either rerolled or quit.  Did the xp curve change at all though?  I think the game just got boring.

[Hindenburg]

would the grind in warhammer have been that bad if the pvp during the grind was actually fun?

Yup.

2009, no reason to have a grind, just redirect the budget to produce end game content, yada yada yada.

[DLRiley]

would the grind in warhammer have been that bad if the pvp during the grind was actually fun?

Yup.

2009, no reason to have a grind, just redirect the budget to produce end game content, yada yada yada.

I second that. Unless you charge nothing, I pay $15 a month plus the initial box price to play the game not the tutorial.

[Lantyssa]

Did the xp curve change at all though?  I think the game just got boring.

The xp curve changed drastically.

Teir 1 - level 11 or 12
Teir 2 - level 19 or 20
Teir 3 - 24 and well into the second half of the Elf pairing.  I was done with all the quests and fighting level 28 and 29 mobs.  I actually had to go back into parts of the first half to pick up quests that weren't yet given because I was too low a level at the time.  The xp curve was way off in Tier 3.

[Xanthippe]

I played a chanter to 16.  I want to like this game more than i like it.  


My complaints:

It's very linear.  It reminds me of Guildwars, the way mobs are shoehorned into areas, do area 1 first, then area 2, then area 3 and so on.

There are too many bottlenecks.  Waiting for spawns, sucky drop rates, running out of quests and having to grind on mobs.  

The last couple of levels fighting mobs feels like hitting a brick wall and taking it down piece by piece.  The pace of getting a mob dead seems slow.  I'd rather kill 3 mobs in the same time for the same xp one gives, for some reason.  

The quest text is ok but there's often too much of it about crap I don't care about.

Yay wings wait wtf how come I can only use them in the starting fort I get to after tutorial zone?

Crafting.  While the crafting system is very cool, the actual crafting mechanism stinks.  Staring at a success bar and a failure bar and hoping the success bar wins.  

Grind seems inevitable.  Not quite enough quests to get me to level 16 without also killing spare mobs here and there.  

Solo pace is way too slow.  Duo pace is fine.  But it's not exactly fun to solo.

Good lord Pandemonium is huge and I run too slow and wtf I can't even use my wings there?

Way too many things to collect for quests, not to mention gathering, and way too few slots in inventory/bank.



What I liked:

Character customization is very well done.  Rivals City of Heroes's.

It's pretty.  Nicely done artwork, cohesive world, well put together.  Armor looks spiffy.

Gathering system.

Auction house seems mostly complete.  Needs some work on searching, but it's functional.

City layout of Pandemonium is nice (I just wish I could move faster there)



I predict I'll play this for a few months.

[Xurtan]

At least if you're running to the opposite side of Pandemonium, you can always use the teleport statues. 

You can buy extra bag/bank space, so I don't see that as a huge issue.

One thing I didn't like about the auction house (No idea if they fixed it since then) is the search is case sensitive. So doing a search for "steel" armor yields nothing, yet "Steel" loads pages.

[tmp]

Yup.

2009, no reason to have a grind, just redirect the budget to produce end game content, yada yada yada.

So basically... fuck levels, everyone starts at the cap?

(that's not green, a honest clarification)

[tmp]

Crafting.  While the crafting system is very cool, the actual crafting mechanism stinks.  Staring at a success bar and a failure bar and hoping the success bar wins.  

I'm probably just easily amused but really liked that success/fail bar race they did with the crafting. The nice thing is, the progress rate/chance for both bars seem to depend on your level of crafting skill vs level required to make an attempt, so as your crafting level improves there's visible change in how fast you finish the task and how much more likely you're to succeed. Same with the gathering.

[UnSub]

Yup.

2009, no reason to have a grind, just redirect the budget to produce end game content, yada yada yada.

So basically... fuck levels, everyone starts at the cap?

(that's not green, a honest clarification)

I think the issue is that if fun is meant to start at the endgame, you probably don't want to force players through the MMO equivalent of the Kokoda Track to get there.

[Ashamanchill]

Nice reference UnSub.  Are you Australian?

[Lum]

Their Beta boards are funny.  Even the WAR nutters were not as rabid as some of these folks.  There are quite a few threads were folks argue that long grinds and forced grouping are terrific because only the "quality" players will stay.   

Sounds like they're getting some Darkfall refugees, then.

That actually sounds more like Lineage 2 players, who were very pleased with their hardcore-ness.

[Morfiend]

I didnt see anything about upping the exp needed to level, or making leveling longer, but I did see they are planning on putting in rested exp for launch.

[Morfiend]

So, what we have been playing was Aion 1.0, we are going to release at 1.5, which means there are 3 major patches between what we played and what happens at release. Not sure how 1.0 to 1.5 = 3 patches, but *shrug*.

Here are the patch notes, translated from Korean so a little hard to read some of them. Some really major stuff in there.

http://www.aionsource.com/forum/gene...ate-1-1-a.html
http://www.aionsource.com/forum/gene...ate-1-2-a.html
http://www.aionsource.com/forum/gene...ow-balaur.html

[UnSub]

Nice reference UnSub.  Are you Australian?

Yep. I couldn't think of a US equivalent.

[amiable]

That actually sounds more like Lineage 2 players, who were very pleased with their hardcore-ness.

...and their 10k NA subs.

What cracks me up is that game after game comes out with a much more difficult leveling experience than WoW and fails utterly, yet not a single designer/producer seems to think to themselves: "huh, maybe if we make leveling experience EASIER, like the market leader, we may do better...".  My only guess is the folks who make these decisions do not actually play MMORPG's.

[Falconeer]

WoW wasn't faster than, say, Age of Conan when it launched back in 2004.

The more content you have the easier your XP curve can get without fear of running out of things to do and places to see. No new game, according to the golden silly rules of dikuing, should ever let you reach the cap too soon (Level cap = cancel sub). Now of course that doesn't apply to MMORPGs that have been released 5 years ago.

Rule of the thumb, speed up leveling with every new expansion.

[Hindenburg]

WoW wasn't faster than, say, Age of Conan when it launched back in 2004.

Wasn't that MJ's mantra about WAR's leveling speed? 

[Draegan]

My problem with watching the PvP is that it seems very zergy. And not just in the co-ordination requried to beat off the zerg type of deal - if I played this it would likely be with a couple of good friends and we'd be looking for the small team work experience, something to replace WoW's current "duel in da box" system (we're all triple bracket gladtiators over multiple seasons, and it's really the same old shit by now). Something like WAR would have been appealing with the ability to combo stuff like the tank knockback abilities with some nasty burst from casters/witch hunters, but WAR happened to have the not fun problem.

That PvP video looked like it had a lot of "fly around spamming heals for a while while your DPS times cooldowns to blow some dude out of the sky, and then repeat". I might be terribly wrong about that, because the UI isn't super informative and I can't read half the text (Korean) but it seems very much WoW-esque zerg, which isn't super fun.

Could someone who has actually played this please prove me wrong so I can get excited again?

Well that video was 1 group vs. a whole zerg, I'm not sure if that helps you or not.

[tmp]

I think the issue is that if fun is meant to start at the endgame, you probably don't want to force players through the MMO equivalent of the Kokoda Track to get there.

Not sure if it's actually meant to be this way though. More of a case of players' usual tendency to optimize way to the pellet and write off anything standing in the way as nothing but annoyance?

I mean, mechanics-wise there isn't any real difference between doing over and over the same daily quests at level cap and doing pretty much the same quests while gaining levels. Or doing instance at level 70 and doing another instance at l.80 (especially if l.70 was the 'endgame' not that long ago) ... yet only one of these is claimed to be fun.

[Falconeer]

WoW wasn't faster than, say, Age of Conan when it launched back in 2004.

Wasn't that MJ's mantra about WAR's leveling speed?  

You have a point: should a company release a game now, 2009, with the same identical leveling speed and amounts of content of 2004's WoW it would be certainly perceived as overly and undeniably grindy.

[amiable]

I think the issue is that if fun is meant to start at the endgame, you probably don't want to force players through the MMO equivalent of the Kokoda Track to get there.

Not sure if it's actually meant to be this way though. More of a case of players' usual tendency to optimize way to the pellet and write off anything standing in the way as nothing but annoyance?

I mean, mechanics-wise there isn't any real difference between doing over and over the same daily quests at level cap and doing pretty much the same quests while gaining levels. Or doing instance at level 70 and doing another instance at l.80 (especially if l.70 was the 'endgame' not that long ago) ... yet only one of these is claimed to be fun.

Well if the game focus is PvP, forcing folks to spend hundreds of hours collecting bear asses to get to the fun part of the game is pretty counter-productive.  Also the quests are godawful "kill 20 of the smae mob of a slightly higher level you saw in the last zone" type.  There are no escort quests, and very few chains that involve anything other than killing a different type of mob.

If you could PvP from levle 10 this wouldn't be a problem but as is... Ugh.