Aion (Open Beta, Launch Day Info too!)

[Nissl]

I'm not saying the Elo system won't produce issues, just that several other things that crippled WAR and AoC are fixed. I guess, although nobody has spelled it out, that you all are arguing for a system with no point loss like WAR's RR system? A ranking ladder that heavily emphasizes time spent and gives fewer rewards for climbing the ladder? I suppose it would produce a less competitive atmosphere. Or maybe you're in favor of repeatable PVP quests to achieve rewards?

[amiable]

I'm not saying the Elo system won't produce issues, just that several other things that crippled WAR and AoC are fixed. I guess, although nobody has spelled it out, that you all are arguing for a system with no point loss like WAR's RR system? A ranking ladder that heavily emphasizes time spent and gives fewer rewards for climbing the ladder? I suppose it would produce a less competitive atmosphere.    

I think what you need to do is ask how that competition will manifest itself in the environment that's created.  While a system without point-loss may be less "competitive" in the sense that you have fuzzier metrics to determine who is the leader, it actually results in substantially more PvP because folks aren't as concerned about protecting their assets (in this case their abyss points).  If you want a system like that then play a game like EvE, where combat is infrequent, brief and involves heavy loss.  This type of game design relies on a lot of folks PvPing pretty much constantly or rapidly becomes very unfun.  That's why some of us are arguing against point loss, it actually discourages PvP and encourages a series of behaviors that are not conducive to large scale open world PvP.

If you want a game that has a ranking component it needs to be predicated on the idea that all players start with a relatively equal footing (for example the Elo system with chess) so in the computer gaming environment it is much more appropriate to apply a ranking system to a FPS where everyone is equally powerful and you can differentiate players based on skill.  In an MMO it really isn't appropriate as skill is only one component of many (time commitment, date of entry, time of play) that contributes to your overall effectiveness.

[Draegan]

So in your mind you'd rather have frequent PVP of low quality vs. infrequent PVP of high quality?  This is under your assumption this point system make people not PVP at all.

You want a PVP system where you can just run around attempt to kill people without thought.  I want a PVP system where if you're not good enough during a fight, you lose, and you also learn.

I'm not sure if this makes me a fanboy.  It's a system I like.  It's a system you don't like.  It's only a flaw in your eyes, not mine.

Idiot. If this system goes live it will reduce the quality and quantity of pvp for everyone because all the pvp kids will be hellbent to protect their rank. Also bet your ass that any player in the world will be unhappy if he gets wafflestomped 8v1 and stood no chance and he loses a bunch of ranking points. Writing on the wall is so goddamn obvious with this thing.

Easy Chuckles.  Relax, go play a different type of game.

[ghost]

I don't think it particularly matters how good the PvP is for a grand majority of folks.  Warcraft has pretty much proven that people want the ability to solo a lot of content.  Scads of people simply get on and level toons by themselves.  I think Warhammer or Aion or whoever needs to make PvP more solo friendly.  How you would do that, I don't know, but zerginess is certainly something I hate about PvP.  Hell, maybe this is why arena is so populated in WOW.  It is single player friendly.

[Draegan]

Then people can stick with Warcraft.  This isn't the end all be all of MMOGs here, nor is it the "Next Big Thing".  It's a well made PVP diku game.  It's not a game changer.

[01101010]

I don't think it particularly matters how good the PvP is for a grand majority of folks.  Warcraft has pretty much proven that people want the ability to solo a lot of content.  Scads of people simply get on and level toons by themselves.  I think Warhammer or Aion or whoever needs to make PvP more solo friendly.  How you would do that, I don't know, but zerginess is certainly something I hate about PvP.  Hell, maybe this is why arena is so populated in WOW.  It is single player friendly.

And yet when I think back on the 2 years Blizzard owes me of my life, the best PvP were those impromptu fights at the crossroads or TM/SS. For some reason it resonates and even comes close to the ridiculous fun I had with Planetside in its humble beginnings. I completely agree with your assessment though - but I can't help but notice a lot of people harken back to the open world pvp fights as the golden age of WoW PvP.
 

[Nissl]

That's why some of us are arguing against point loss, it actually discourages PvP and encourages a series of behaviors that are not conducive to large scale open world PvP.

A couple of points:

- I understand that you need a lot of PVP to make Aion's endgame work, and that point loss will make people more skittish about PVP, reducing PVP quantity. But you also need to keep in mind that for 80% of the server those ratios are going to be along the lines of +3/-1, with PVP items as a point sink to compensate for the fact that PVP is not zero-sum. In fact it is a real complaint that people on opposing factions can make agreements to farm each other up to middle-high ranks. 

- By design, fortress rewards should be substantial enough that for 90-95% of the server it's worth taking a couple deaths in mass PVP to capture one. Also, from what I hear the abyss is laid out so that there are a number of funnels that tend to run groups into each other.

- If there's a point where the system breaks down, it's going to be that PVE is too rewarding relative to PVP for a majority of the population. It sounds like an issue with the current 1.5 test patch. We really won't know until 1.5 launches here in NA, however.

- Warcraft has proven that there's a much bigger market for casual soloable games than games where grouping is generally a good idea. This game allows soloing but promotes grouping heavily and I agree that that will limit its population.

- Arena is heavily populated in WoW because you get the best PVP gear with very little time spent. Now that more items are restricted by ranking and PVE is easy, arena participation has dropped dramatically. I'd like to see an MMO with good solo PVP, but I've never seen an MMO with good 1v1 balance yet except for games with no classes... and then you're back in UO-style PVP land.

[amiable]

So in your mind you'd rather have frequent PVP of low quality vs. infrequent PVP of high quality?  This is under your assumption this point system make people not PVP at all.

"
I don't see how the PvP is of any higher or lower "quality" in the presence of a ranking system that involves loss.  How are you defining quality here?  The way I define quality is by asking: is it fun?  In general a point-loss sytem encourages a number of very "un-fun" behaviours.  Hence you will see less open world fun PvP (and by extension less fun!)

[ghost]

Then people can stick with Warcraft.  This isn't the end all be all of MMOGs here, nor is it the "Next Big Thing".  It's a well made PVP diku game.  It's not a game changer.

A lot of people probably will stick with Warcraft.  Or they will leave for Aion and go back.  I don't really care either way, I'm just opining on why the PvP genre seems to be less popular overall than WOW has managed to become. 

[Checkers]

I don't see how the PvP is of any higher or lower "quality" in the presence of a ranking system that involves loss.  How are you defining quality here?  The way I define quality is by asking: is it fun?  In general a point-loss sytem encourages a number of very "un-fun" behaviours.  Hence you will see less open world fun PvP (and by extension less fun!)

He's justified his stance countless times in this thread, and it basically boils down to this:

It's a system I like.

Obviously, this system is fun for him.   PvP with actual risk is fun for many, many people.  What is so hard to understand about this?  Someone please kill this thread.

[Draegan]

So in your mind you'd rather have frequent PVP of low quality vs. infrequent PVP of high quality?  This is under your assumption this point system make people not PVP at all.

"
I don't see how the PvP is of any higher or lower "quality" in the presence of a ranking system that involves loss.  How are you defining quality here?  The way I define quality is by asking: is it fun?  In general a point-loss sytem encourages a number of very "un-fun" behaviours.  Hence you will see less open world fun PvP (and by extension less fun!)

Here's low quality.  Zerging over and over not caring if you die.  Forget strategy and just keeping throwing your body in there hoping to get a few points.  Doing everything mindlessly.

High quality would be the opposite. 

[amiable]

He's justified his stance countless times in this thread, and it basically boils down to this:

It's a system I like.

Obviously, this system is fun for him.   PvP with actual risk is fun for many, many people.  What is so hard to understand about this?  Someone please kill this thread.

I get that. But because you like something doesn't mean we shouldn't have a discussion why as a design systems with "actual risk" don't really work that well and why it is or is not a poor design decision.

[Lantyssa]

I, for one, am not entirely against point-loss.  My concern is the magnitude, and how it affects people's behavior.

How is the Elo system implemented?  1 vs 1 it's straight forward if we ignore class balance.  Where we get into problems is with groups.  In a 2 vs 1 are they summed?  Is there weighting for two people being able to put out more damage/healing than in a single 1 vs 1?  Does the system look at this weighted Elo group ranking then split the victory/loss between characters?  Does being grouped or ungrouped change things?  What about in mass battles where you have lots of ungrouped players and people switching targets?  How does attrition change the numbers in mid-fight?

It just seems a lot of complication to be able to say "this is awesome" without seeing how it works in practice, with real players.  Asian tests are not a good indicator since play styles between Asia, the US, and Europe vary widely.

[amiable]

Here's low quality.  Zerging over and over not caring if you die.  Forget strategy and just keeping throwing your body in there hoping to get a few points.  Doing everything mindlessly.

High quality would be the opposite. 

So, hiding in a cave avoiding all PvP unless you are 100% sure you are going to win is higher quality?

I think both characterizaitons are specious.  What folks want from open world PvP is usually small, fun random group conflicts, I would argue that a system without point loss is more conducive toward that goal.

[Draegan]

You're looking at this in a micro way where you should look at it in a macro fashion.

First, losing points when you die isn't very risky in the grand scheme of things when you have and have had games where you lose everything.

Secondly, you have to look at how points are gained, how they are lost as a whole throughout the system.  You're just focusing on, "You die, you lose points, this sucks!"  However you may be ignoring that you can gain points in a few different ways via PVE and PVP.  Even at that point a PVP death isn't so traumatic.  You're not losing hours of work unless your competing at the very high levels.

Third you must consider that Abyss Points are not the end all be all of character progression in Aion.  There are many other avenues of gear acquisition whether it's raids, dungeons or crafting.

In the end, this isn't a major point of contention.  There are plenty of other things to do without worrying about how many Abyss Points you have.  It's not necessarily a focus that you constantly have to be thinking about unless you want it to be so.

You have a to narrow minded view on this game and how the system is set up.

Now if you want to have a generic discussion where we can armchair design PVP gain/loss systems in a game that doesn't exist and design the system in a vacuum then I think there are other threads/subforums for that.

So, hiding in a cave avoiding all PvP unless you are 100% sure you are going to win is higher quality?

I think both characterizaitons are specious.  What folks want from open world PvP is usually small, fun random group conflicts, I would argue that a system without point loss is more conducive toward that goal.

I can argue that a non-point loss system will encourage people to congregate to one area and just zerg each other over and over farming points until you get enough.  Whereas a point loss system will make sure people travel in numbers, protect themselves and their mates which would probably lead to group vs. group battle.  Which to me is what I'd like to see, and you seem to agree with that.

As for hiding in a cave, if you want to do that sure.  I think most people are going to out and about in groups trying to find people to fight, and run away when they're over matched.  The fun is chasing those people down when they run, or catching them off guard.  The thrill of the hunt so-to-speak.

[Koyasha]

So, hiding in a cave avoiding all PvP unless you are 100% sure you are going to win is higher quality?

Yeah, basically.

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

His point about quality is exactly my point too.  I want people not to engage everything that moves, I want them to judge exactly what to try to attack, when, and have to take strategy and tactics into account so they don't lose something.  Removing all penalty from losing gives incentives to mindlessly zerg anything, on the chance that you might kill someone before you die, because you lose nothing from dying, which is pretty much exactly how most pvp in no-loss games works.

[Falconeer]

I can't believe you are all still talking about this. So many points have been made and it's now obvious enough that no one is interested in changing their minds, definitely not before the game is out.

Aion is not out in places where we can get statistics you will consider, so everything is generic hearsay. Points have been made, now they need to hit the road to be proven. But why is it so important to those whom the game is clearly not aimed for to keep posting their rage? I hate Ricky Martin, or Eros Ramazzotti, or even John Cronensburg but I'm not wasting time writing rage posts everytime they publish a new single trying to convince everyone their music is badly written.

What the fuck is your problem? What's this holy war about good and bad design? Who the fuck care about your idea of good design when that is not working for everyone anyway? What good is your design if many think it is actually bad, and are not buying it?

Amiable, I can't believe you are still interested in this debate without a testdrive, or that you really think I am in love with Aion. I can't believe you misread my posts so much, must be my poor English. Or maybe I overestimated you, but I called you names cause you voluntarily chose to ignore my tone and depict me like a clueless happy poster. If you can picture me as a rabid fanboi despite my moderation, then I can call you anything, and I am sincerely sorry for that. At some point your posts talk for you, and you are the one still posting like crazy trying to prove anyone wrong.

To DLTrolley and his minions, good job recruiting for Fail Army.

[Numtini]

I can't believe you are all still talking about this.

There's nothing else to talk about. This or Champions is our future. And CO is under NDA and no sign of that dropping.

Seriously, there is a huge drought of MMOs right now.

[amiable]

Amiable, I can't believe you are still interested in this debate without a testdrive, or that you really think I am in love with Aion. I can't believe you misread my posts so much, must be my poor English. Or maybe I overestimated you, but I called you names cause you voluntarily chose to ignore my tone and depict me like a clueless happy poster. If you can picture me as a rabid fanboi despite my moderation, then I can call you anything, and I am sincerely sorry for that. At some point your posts talk for you, and you are the one still posting like crazy trying to prove anyone wrong.

So what?  Have I offended your e-honour or something?  For God's sake man stop calling people names and taking things personally.  Why do you care if I think you are a clueless fanboy or the second coming of Robot Jesus?  I am just a random dude on the internet trying to have a conversation about a game (which I have test driven by the way and I am planning on playing).  We are all passionate about gaming or we wouldn't be frequenting a gaming websites in general, and this one in particular.

How about this: if I offended you I am very sorry.  For what it is worth I do not think you are a rabid fanboy or in love with Aion.  I do disagree with you rather intensely on how the system they have set up will play out, but I will suspend further judgement until I actually play the game.

Can we hug it out now?

[Hoax]

I can't believe you are all still talking about this. So many points have been made and it's now obvious enough that no one is interested in changing their minds,

Nobody has made a point worth shit since I started reading this thread. At least not on the pvp ranking systems are great and they are double great if you penalize people for losing side. I'll ask again, quote a post where somebody made a decent point about why its important to have pvp ranks and why if your going to have them its better for the quality/quantity/type of pvp encounter to have people lose rank if they are defeated.


From this page of people thinking they are making good points, I assure you, they aren't:

His point about quality is exactly my point too.  I want people not to engage everything that moves, I want them to judge exactly what to try to attack, when, and have to take strategy and tactics into account so they don't lose something.  Removing all penalty from losing gives incentives to mindlessly zerg anything, on the chance that you might kill someone before you die, because you lose nothing from dying, which is pretty much exactly how most pvp in no-loss games works.

So if I say making people lose a ton of abyss points when they are ganked is stupid and will only reduce the risks people are willing to take and therefore the amount of random encounter combat that means I'm REALLY saying we need to have WoW's 0 penalty on death you kill a guy and he comes back and attacks you before you've even regained your hp/mp from fighting him.  

I, for one, am not entirely against point-loss.  My concern is the magnitude, and how it affects people's behavior.

How is the Elo system implemented?  1 vs 1 it's straight forward if we ignore class balance.  Where we get into problems is with groups.  In a 2 vs 1 are they summed?  Is there weighting for two people being able to put out more damage/healing than in a single 1 vs 1?  Does the system look at this weighted Elo group ranking then split the victory/loss between characters?  Does being grouped or ungrouped change things?  What about in mass battles where you have lots of ungrouped players and people switching targets?  How does attrition change the numbers in mid-fight?

It just seems a lot of complication to be able to say "this is awesome" without seeing how it works in practice, with real players.  Asian tests are not a good indicator since play styles between Asia, the US, and Europe vary widely.

Yeah I wouldn't know because the only response I can get is some retard spew from Falconeer and/or Draegan

PvP with actual risk is fun for many, many people.

This ranking system doesn't do much to add to risk it just creates an environment and a community where protecting and farming rank will lead to harmful player behavior and shitty overall combat quality for everybody because thats what fucking pvp ranking systems have always done in MMOs.  Hence why its such a fucking retarded system and anybody who has been around the MMO scene or hell online gaming in general for the last decade shouldn't need to have this spelled out.

Also, from what I hear the abyss is laid out so that there are a number of funnels that tend to run groups into each other.

The only thing mentioned in the last 20 pages of this thread where supposedly the merits of Aion have been spelled out time and again that sounds like a positive design decision for pvp.

[Draegan]

That's a lot of effort for saying nothing.  Bravo?

[DLRiley]

I find it puzzling that people care about the ranking system that much as it's roughly only for epeen.

Doesn't the ranking system grant its top players god mode?

I didn't know pointing out shitty design decisions makes you a troll? I guess the game has to be launched first, prove its failure by wasting the money of millions of subscribers, and then...wait I'll be to busy laughing by then. Hell we wouldn't be having this discussion if the people screaming about "how much of a troll you are" when you point out obvious dead horse issues, weren't acting like Aion was their first mmo. It feels like the darkfall forums in the vault and wha.

[Vash]

I, for one, am not entirely against point-loss.  My concern is the magnitude, and how it affects people's behavior.

How is the Elo system implemented?  1 vs 1 it's straight forward if we ignore class balance.  Where we get into problems is with groups.  In a 2 vs 1 are they summed?  Is there weighting for two people being able to put out more damage/healing than in a single 1 vs 1?  Does the system look at this weighted Elo group ranking then split the victory/loss between characters?  Does being grouped or ungrouped change things?  What about in mass battles where you have lots of ungrouped players and people switching targets?  How does attrition change the numbers in mid-fight?

It just seems a lot of complication to be able to say "this is awesome" without seeing how it works in practice, with real players.  Asian tests are not a good indicator since play styles between Asia, the US, and Europe vary widely.

Yeah I wouldn't know because the only response I can get is some retard spew from Falconeer and/or Draegan

 






All in the last 8 pages..... most of it 6-8 pages ago before everyone gave up and decided to troll each other to death.

[01101010]

I find it puzzling that people care about the ranking system that much as it's roughly only for epeen.

Doesn't the ranking system grant its top players god mode?

i see what Hoax is getting at with hatchet-like precision - however, we are assuming that once a person gets to a high enough rank, losing the rank becomes all important and outweighs any fun to had at that rank killing other people on the server (read: playing the PvP game). Assuming rank is the goal and not the fight itself, then I can fully concur with Hoax. It doesn't change my mind about the game or the fun i will have with it, but I can respect the view point.

At the same time, you don't build a quarter mile race car with your race winnings only to cage it up in a garage for fear of losing...you take that out on the street and collect as many doors as you can till you get beat. Same principle CAN be applied here if I assume the community here will be of the ilk to want to flaunt their rank and test their abilities and min/max their new shiny armor and enchants and stones and kitchen sinks. Add in the incentives at the top as DLR points out and I think that would be enough to keep people in the field of play rather than collecting a trophy toon to walk around town with. It might get to that point when people begin to bore of the game, but imho it won't do that IF NCSoft can keep things fresh with updates and expansions.

There is a lot to hypothesize about in this game and we have models for MMOs right now to go on, but it boils down to actual playing and testing whether we were right or wrong. And to that end, you can claim to be a Nostradamus of new MMOs till the next one.

[Simond]

But what does this have to do with Shadowbane?

[Checkers]

PvP with actual risk is fun for many, many people.

This ranking system doesn't do much to add to risk it just creates an environment and a community where protecting and farming rank will lead to harmful player behavior and shitty overall combat quality for everybody because thats what fucking pvp ranking systems have always done in MMOs.  Hence why its such a fucking retarded system and anybody who has been around the MMO scene or hell online gaming in general for the last decade shouldn't need to have this spelled out.

I don't actually give a shit about the ranking system.  I don't think Draegan or Falconeer or most of the people you're nerdraging over care much about it either.

[Draegan]

I find it puzzling that people care about the ranking system that much as it's roughly only for epeen.

Doesn't the ranking system grant its top players god mode?

The ability people that people reference with god mode was nerfed pretty heavily.  Still is a pretty good buff though.  2 hour cooldown for a 10 min duration and costs a hefty amount of AP to use, which I think is around 5k or so.  You'd be hard pressed to gain the AP cost back during it's duration unless you use it to defeat other high ranking people.

[Hoax]

At the same time, you don't build a quarter mile race car with your race winnings only to cage it up in a garage for fear of losing...you take that out on the street and collect as many doors as you can till you get beat. Same principle CAN be applied here if I assume the community here will be of the ilk to want to flaunt their rank and test their abilities and min/max their new shiny armor and enchants and stones and kitchen sinks. Add in the incentives at the top as DLR points out and I think that would be enough to keep people in the field of play rather than collecting a trophy toon to walk around town with. It might get to that point when people begin to bore of the game, but imho it won't do that IF NCSoft can keep things fresh with updates and expansions.

No no no, you got the 1/4 mile race car analogy all wrong.  You don't build a quarter mile racecar, invest a shitton of time and effort into it then go race somebody with a faster car winner gets the pinkslip just for the challeng the glory and to briefly show off your new toy.


@Vash:  Thanks for the info, still sounds like a bad idea and I really dont think server ranks work well with a western audience but I appreciate you taking the time to dig those up for me.

[tmp]

No no no, you got the 1/4 mile race car analogy all wrong.  You don't build a quarter mile racecar, invest a shitton of time and effort into it then go race somebody with a faster car winner gets the pinkslip just for the challeng the glory and to briefly show off your new toy.

I don't think this version of the analogy got that anywhere near right, either.

[DLRiley]

So in your mind you'd rather have frequent PVP of low quality vs. infrequent PVP of high quality?  This is under your assumption this point system make people not PVP at all.

"
I don't see how the PvP is of any higher or lower "quality" in the presence of a ranking system that involves loss.  How are you defining quality here?  The way I define quality is by asking: is it fun?  In general a point-loss sytem encourages a number of very "un-fun" behaviours.  Hence you will see less open world fun PvP (and by extension less fun!)

Here's low quality.  Zerging over and over not caring if you die.  Forget strategy and just keeping throwing your body in there hoping to get a few points.  Doing everything mindlessly.

High quality would be the opposite.  

I don't think mobbing so you can win is high quality. If you rightly associate high quality with strategic depth, then a game where tanking has a viable role in pvp is pretty shallow. If you associate high quality with organization, then your missing half the equation if your understanding of organization is skewed. How much "skill" is involved in say a raid, the sheer logistics of it is daunting, getting 40 people on vent who shut up and be their on a particular time is a work of art considering that 90% of the WoW playerbase can never hope to attain that level of organization. But the actual combat itself is hardly strategic, hardly requiring anyone to perform their A game let alone their C game to actually get the raid done. Aion world pvp sounds closer to that pendulum, where the sheer logistics involved in fielding x amount of players consistently is a challenge, but the actual combat, by what I can tell doesn't have huge gaps between noob and expert. Again I don't consider being steamed rolled by a guild who can get 120 people online at once a high quality.

By that number in comparison to the zerg and die, at least by nature of the low risk/minimum reward/who cares, you can insure constant action and activity. Activity being important due to, I don't know...open world pvp actually requiring a large number of people already participating to be remotely successful. Low frequency of activity for the trade off of "quality" engagements bores the fuck out of people unless given something else to do...wait you don't have something else to do because your end game pve is tied to actually controlling the pvp. But how do you insure the pve zones constantly switch off and on without a large number of players, quality or not, banging on the system? A small playerbase allows small groups of people to be relatively large in influence and control the flow of the game, and thus making the general populace quite eventually.

[Draegan]

Are you comparing WOW's raid game from 5 years ago to Aion group PVP?

In any video game it takes more "skill" or "ability" to do well in PVP than in PVE encounters.

[tmp]

Low frequency of activity for the trade off of "quality" engagements bores the fuck out of people unless given something else to do...wait you don't have something else to do because your end game pve is tied to actually controlling the pvp. But how do you insure the pve zones constantly switch off and on without a large number of players, quality or not, banging on the system?

I'm possibly misreading it but there doesn't seem to be a requirement to 'control the PvP' in order to be able to do other things (which i guess mean the PvE) -- the zones don't switch off or on, they're permanently available. There's hot spots in the zones which can be controlled by players and offer advantages when owned, but these are additional rather than the only source of content.

PvE 'raid' list, only one of the l.50 dungeons (Dredgion) is specifically mentioned as PvPvE content, rest is apparently pure PvE with no interference. Doesn't seem to say anything about controlling the PvP as requirement... whatever that even means?

[DLRiley]

And arguable the degree of said skill has varied from game to game. Very few mmo's have the strategic depth to actually say there is a large gap between the skills in pvp and pve. The gap exist in an mmo but that is mostly due to the AI being dumber than 99% of the playerbase. If players were to consider the class balance, whether the game was properly balanced for any sort of moderately competitive teamplay, and even then be required to properly use voice chat in order to greatly increase the odds of succeeding against players who don't communicating...then you have a very large difference between the skills needed for pve and pvp. But since again, I haven't seen the mmo to even make it past the class balance stage, I doubt a pvp'er claiming leet skillz from playing mmo's has much to boast about.

As far as me comparing WoW raid game to Aion's pvp, I'm not making a direct comparison, just a very specific analogy. But if you really want to make a comparison, if your a failure in WoW raid game your only choice is to get better at the game, if your a failure at Aion's group pvp, you can simply add more players to your group.

To my understanding end game dungeons are restricted if your side doesn't control the keeps. Probably wrong and need to do more reading if so, not a lot of end game info about the game, especially on the pve end. At some point apparently the bulk of best rewards will be found in the abyss.

[Senses]

To my understanding end game dungeons are restricted if your side doesn't control the keeps. Probably wrong and need to do more reading if so, not a lot of end game info about the game, especially on the pve end.

This point alone is why the last 3 pages is so ridiculous.  You and several others are coming here not to get enlightened on what you clearly have absolutely no clue about, but constantly spout assertions on what you "think" is the state of end game pvp in Aion even though you clearly don't have a clue.  This is why you are trolls.  Either come with an opinion based on fact, or go start your own thread cleverly titled "What would make PvP really neat for DLRiley in the next big PvP game."  About the only thing I have learned from most of you is that you were extremely butt hurt over the original WoW pvp ranking system.

[tmp]

To my understanding end game dungeons are restricted if your side doesn't control the keeps. Probably wrong and need to do more reading if so, not a lot of end game info about the game, especially on the pve end. At some point apparently the bulk of best rewards will be found in the abyss.

Yup, the info is pretty scarce. I could only find this article (too lazy to try a proper search so maybe there's some more out there) and it seems that the keeps in Abyss provide some extra PvE hunting/farming ground for the guild who owns them, but this to my understanding is just in addition to what the zones themselves have to offer in term of NPC spawns and such, and which is available to anyone (but with risk of being attacked by another player)  The PvE dungeons aren't mentioned in this article so it'd be logical to presume they're not part of the control system. Though there is some link between these two, as apparently siege weapons which help to take over the keeps drop from high-end dungeon bosses.