Aion (Open Beta, Launch Day Info too!)

[Venkman]

Anyone know if there's a statute of limitations on those 20%xp boost consumables you got if you pre-ordered? I got five, and each has an hour timer. I have been holding onto them pending the inevitable. Even if that bar graph is off by as much as 80%, the point still stands that this isn't WoW where you level up on questing alone.

So it's going to be WaR tier 3 all over again. Fuck I hope not.

I was thinking more DAoC, where it was still something new in the genre to have a whole half of your level requirement be completable via quest

Back in my day, we did corpse runs naked, just to get our crap back before it despawned. And this without any talk of getting XP back, at all.

But no. We didn't like it

Yes, I did.

So you were the type of person that intended to go to bed at midnight but instead ended up doing CR attempts until 2am instead and enjoyed it? I imagine then you liked the extra feeling of "risk" in a world that you thought had better cammaraderie because everyone banded together in the face of the common enemies of game mechanic and net latency?

[Draegan]

I'm saving my 20% boosts for higher level grinding.  Finally hit 29 last night.  Didn't get to play much since Thursday.

[Falconeer]

Don't know about the collector consumables, but rested xp is in. 20% bonus. Yay!

Me, my gladiator just got "aerial lock", a skill with such a beautiful audio/visual effect that the combat, instead of degrading into a boring grind, is evolving into a colourful dance for the eyes. I don't know if it's just gladiator but I really think that with the visuals, the colours and the sounds, they seriously did all they could to ease the grind by coating it with ear/eye-candy. It would be hard to say that I have fun by pressing the same keys combinations for hours, but for some reason my chars attacks never get old.

[Venkman]

How do you get rested XP? Log in a town?

[Draegan]

How do you get rested XP? Log in a town?

It automatically accumulates when you're not online.  Where you log off doesn't matter.  You will see a buff on your buff bar when you have it.

[Xanthippe]

They are dynamic from the perspective that NC Soft can lower them once the initial glut is over.  Also, all zones past Altgard (20+) only have one channel since that's when pvp starts.

I went to the other zone - Brusthonin?  Something like that - that a quest sent me to, and there are two channels there.  No rifts there or what?  I wasn't there long enough to find out, I just discovered it before I logged.

So, will we never run into the other side in zones with more than one channel? 

[Venkman]

How do you get rested XP? Log in a town?

It automatically accumulates when you're not online.  Where you log off doesn't matter.  You will see a buff on your buff bar when you have it.

Oh interesting, ok. I'll hafta look for it. That always been in the game or did they just patch it in?

[Falconeer]

They are dynamic from the perspective that NC Soft can lower them once the initial glut is over.  Also, all zones past Altgard (20+) only have one channel since that's when pvp starts.

I went to the other zone - Brusthonin?  Something like that - that a quest sent me to, and there are two channels there.  No rifts there or what?  I wasn't there long enough to find out, I just discovered it before I logged.

So, will we never run into the other side in zones with more than one channel? 

Exactly. Apparently there's always a PvP enabled zone, and a pure PvE (carebear, haha) one. The PvE (Bursthonin) zone has more channels and no rifts . The PvP (Morheim) has only channel and rifts for PvP. I heard it works the same at higher levels. 

[Threash]

At level 23 quests are giving me from 35k to 120k exp, that's with 2 mil to level.  That's a huge chunk of exp just for a bit of running around.

[Draegan]

You have to pay attention to the quests though.  For some reason some give 20k (2 mob kills worth) and some give 300k.  Just cherry pick the good ones, do those, and then grind for a little bit.

Also if you're in your 20s, mobs in the Abyss are worth the most experience, Morheim just behind, and Brunstonin (or however it's spelled) are worth the least.  The more risk the more xp.

[Ard]

They are dynamic from the perspective that NC Soft can lower them once the initial glut is over.  Also, all zones past Altgard (20+) only have one channel since that's when pvp starts.

I went to the other zone - Brusthonin?  Something like that - that a quest sent me to, and there are two channels there.  No rifts there or what?  I wasn't there long enough to find out, I just discovered it before I logged.

So, will we never run into the other side in zones with more than one channel? 

Exactly. Apparently there's always a PvP enabled zone, and a pure PvE (carebear, haha) one. The PvE (Bursthonin) zone has more channels and no rifts . The PvP (Morheim) has only channel and rifts for PvP. I heard it works the same at higher levels. 

Yeah, sorry for the bad info, I found this out after I posted it.  I was under the impression that there were only pvp zones past 20.

[Morfiend]

What Aion badly needs is a low level rift area or something. For a game that is billing its self as a PVP game, the amount of time you have to play before you can PVP is horrible.

[Hawkbit]

What Aion badly needs is a low level rift area or something. For a game that is billing its self as a PVP game, the amount of time you have to play before you can PVP is horrible.

#1 reason I didn't buy it. 

[Brogarn]

What Aion badly needs is a low level rift area or something. For a game that is billing its self as a PVP game, the amount of time you have to play before you can PVP is horrible.

That's the thing WAR did right. PvP from level 1 and level up in PvP. We don't need to rehash the multitude of things they did wrong, though.

[Falconeer]

Characters don't have enough skills in the first 10 levels to make it even remotely interesting, that's why PvP in tier 1 would be absolutely pointless. I spent some time in the arena myself at 22 and it was just starting to make sense (but not so much yet).

[Koyasha]

I've never really understood the appeal of pvping at low levels in these games.  At least not while the games follow the (admittedly retarded) mechanic of giving you maybe three abilities at level 1, and having you slowly earn more so you're in your 20's (or about equivalent amount of time, depending on the game) before you have a reasonable amount of abilities.  If I started at level 1 with enough abilities to feel like pvp is more than marginally in my control, ok.  But when I have basically one attack, and that's it?  It means that I walk up to my enemy, push my one button, then maybe run around trying to hit them or trying to avoid them hitting me.  And press my one button again when it's ready.

Everyone seems to love the idea of scenarios in Warhammer at low levels for some reason, but I found them frustrating because there were so few abilities to actually use in battle, I didn't feel like I had as much input into the results of the fight as I should.

So you were the type of person that intended to go to bed at midnight but instead ended up doing CR attempts until 2am instead and enjoyed it? I imagine then you liked the extra feeling of "risk" in a world that you thought had better cammaraderie because everyone banded together in the face of the common enemies of game mechanic and net latency?

More like 'sun's up, but that late-night guild finally broke Fear for us, get your loot fast and gate!' than 2 AM, but yeah.  I liked that.  Or just having your corpse down in the fungi room in sebilis after a bad pull or something, and needing to find a necromancer to summon it back up.  And it was less game mechanics and net latency and more 'that other guild that'll take the mob if we wipe and might train us anyway just to make sure we do, so don't fuck up'.

I'm long past done wishing we could bring those days back, since it'll never happen, but I would be dishonest if I didn't say I liked them then and I miss them now.

[tazelbain]

If your fucking game is PvP, I want to fucking PvP.  I just am not going to run round in circles to get permission to pvp.  But I am fine that Aion doesn't want my money.  If I wanted a Korean grinder, there are plenty of free games to play.

[Morfiend]

Characters don't have enough skills in the first 10 levels to make it even remotely interesting, that's why PvP in tier 1 would be absolutely pointless. I spent some time in the arena myself at 22 and it was just starting to make sense (but not so much yet).

You didnt really have shit for skills in WAR until you got to just the end of T1, but it was still fun to PVP at level 4. I would have fun just chasing after people with autoattack on, as long as it got me some exp and a break from wack a mole. Currently you can start having PVP at what? Level 25? Thats got to be like 15+ hours played at least.

As stated above, thats the one thing WAR really got right was the low level PVP.

[Ashamanchill]

I'm going to go along with those wishing for pvp right out the gate, not so much for myself, I don't mind the pve grind, but my RL friends are getting fucking restless. We are 23-24 now, and have had exactly two pvp experiences not counting duels. One, we found a lone sucker who made it through the rift and ganked him with a squad of like ten, and two, those cool spy quests where we were teleported to Asmodae and killed right quick, to be teleported back to our home oblesk.

[Nebu]

If your fucking game is PvP, I want to fucking PvP.  I just am not going to run round in circles to get permission to pvp.  But I am fine that Aion doesn't want my money.

I have to agree.  The days of gating pvp content should be over.  WAR demonstrated that low level pvp is not only possible, but it's also fun and popular.  I'm really getting sick of "You must be this tall" entry to pvp whether it be a level or gear roadblock.  

If your game gates pvp content it's an admission that you're just a pve game with a pvp add-on.  

Characters don't have enough skills in the first 10 levels to make it even remotely interesting, that's why PvP in tier 1 would be absolutely pointless. I spent some time in the arena myself at 22 and it was just starting to make sense (but not so much yet).

I'm not sure I understand the concept of gating skills either.  When I start a game at level 1 I want a full hotbar.  Giving me 3 skills just to level in 10 mins and get more skills seems pretty pointless.  If you want me to learn to use all of my abilities, that's easily accomplished with quests or through scripted encounters.

[tmp]

What Aion badly needs is a low level rift area or something. For a game that is billing its self as a PVP game, the amount of time you have to play before you can PVP is horrible.

Doesn't PvP open at l.20 or something? People were hitting that on 2nd day of pre-order play, not exactly "horrible", i think.

[Shatter]

Well if getting to 25 to PvP isnt enough of a kick in the ass, even when you hit 25 you still dont go to the abyss you have to do a quest to get in

[Shatter]

What Aion badly needs is a low level rift area or something. For a game that is billing its self as a PVP game, the amount of time you have to play before you can PVP is horrible.

Doesn't PvP open at l.20 or something? People were hitting that on 2nd day of pre-order play, not exactly "horrible", i think.

You can rift at 20, even sooner I think(dont quote me on that), but Abyss PvP isnt until you get 25

[DLRiley]

What Aion badly needs is a low level rift area or something. For a game that is billing its self as a PVP game, the amount of time you have to play before you can PVP is horrible.

Doesn't PvP open at l.20 or something? People were hitting that on 2nd day of pre-order play, not exactly "horrible", i think.

Woot. Lets play 30 hours straight. Pvp is just around the corner folks.

[tmp]

Woot. Lets play 30 hours straight. Pvp is just around the corner folks.

What's 30 hours of boring grind for people who can routinely pull the stupid o'clock operations so they can sit and shoot internet spacestations for 8+ hours with no human interference?

Hardcore PvP, yo

[DLRiley]

Doesn't EvE have 250,000 pve'ers 

[tmp]

It does, but you can replace internet spacestations with internet castle gates or city stones or whatever the local flavour is where applicable... which is in pretty much anything that has territory control component going beyond "that flag on a hill in instanced 15 min match"

[DLRiley]

But didn't WAR fail horrible when it expected its players to do that?

[tmp]

Well, we could start with question what PvP MMO didn't fail horribly to begin with.

But that's a bit beyond the point. Point would be, not only was PvE up to now pretty standard component of these "PvP" MMO games, but frequently the players themselves would choose long stretches of pure PvE gameplay over that PvP they claim to crave so much. And so it's rather easy to dismiss complaints about pre-requisite of a few hours of PvE before one is allowed to move beyond consensual 1v1s. Or in another way -- if a player can't stand few hours of PvE sandbox now, how will they cope with constant presence of it later in the game? After all Aion doesn't bill itself as pure PvP game, they try to make it a point they're a different "PvPvE" setup.

[Checkers]

I'm enjoying Aion more than I expected to, but the thought of rerolling terrifies me.  I'm already completely sick of the starting zones.  I agree that PvP needs to be introduced earlier into the game as well.  I'm level 26 and the most pvp I've seen is getting AFK ganked out in the middle of the Eltnen desert.  I'd like to be in the Abyss but the starting areas are so crammed with players it's pointless trying to level there.

[Falconeer]

Anyway,

Conan had PvP from level 5, and it was awesome, but pretty much all of you went OMG GANKSQUAD RAPEZZ RAGENERDQUIT. So many of you just liked Warhammer (or VERY SAFE arena PvP). Fine.

[Secundo]

What a fucking grind.. Should have known better.

Next!

[Venkman]

It's not an all or nothing thing here. All Aion needs to do for the PvPers is have Rifts in the 10-20 bracket and prevent players from the 20+ game from coming in. Right now, all Rift zones are accessible by all players who feel like running. Still not sure why that is. And been meaning to ask actually: some level 38er shows up to a level 20-30 zone: are they going to wtfsteamroll everyone? Or is there a comfortable difference between soft cap and hard cap on skills?

Reason I say level 10 is three fold:

• You can hit that in 3 hours. Most of us hear have waited longer than that for a raid to start.
  
• You can fly.
• You've made your sub-class choice and have enough abilities to at least not be a one-trick pony

Same deal as level-bracketed WoW BGs though: you don't show up at the earliest chance. You wait towards the middle or end of that bracket.

This is a heavily Westernized Eastern game though, and beyond the aesthetic, there's still vestiges of the grind-as-pride mentality that goes into the Lineages of the world. But it's not like we're playing launch day WAR or AoC here either. More like we joined WoW 8 months into development where a lot of the usual wtfbroken stuff is not.

But yea, for a game that bills itself as PvP with flying, you're doing neither early enough.

[Morfiend]

Personally, I think they should have Rifts that open up in to the Abyss starting at level 10. Let people rift in early and have like some kind of PVP area in there. Maybe a single capture point that while owned gives you whole faction (in that zone) a exp bonus of 10% or something.

I mean all the mechanics are there, just stop holding out on us.

What game has introduced low level PVP and NOT had it been a huge success? (the PVP I mean, not the game). I am thinking of Thid in DAoC, WAR T1 BGs and even T1 RVR. AoC was fun also.

It just feels to me like they really took EQ1 and went the other direction than WoW. WoW seems to attempted to make everything more accessible and remove all the things that where a pain. Aion seems to do this a little bit, but like it has been stated, there is quite a huge element of "grind = h4rdc0re". I also dont like thety way they have shifted EXP to the mobs. When I do a quest, most of the time the majority of the EXP seems to come from actually killing the mobs than completing the quest, which leads to the feeling that completing a quest in the most optimal fashion actually is less optimal.

I really want to play the Abyss end game, and thats the only reason I am sticking with the game for now, but if it gets to grindy where I am not having fun, I will vote with my wallet.

[DLRiley]

Anyway,

Conan had PvP from level 5, and it was awesome, but pretty much all of you went OMG GANKSQUAD RAPEZZ RAGENERDQUIT. So many of you just liked Warhammer (or VERY SAFE arena PvP). Fine.

I think Falconeer is forgetting that AoC was "OMG GANKSQUAD RAPEZZ". This is just too easy.