NCsoft’s Brian Knox talks about Aion

Q: The Asian market does not seem to mind the grind as much as the North American market does. So when you talk about the globalization of the game, you are talking about a diverse set of gameplay elements. How big of an undertaking was that?

Brian: While grind games were more prevalent in the past, I don’t think they had a lot to choose from. Now they are seeing all games everywhere, they don’t want to sit there and do the same thing over and over again. That’s a misconception. I think that Aion is one of those games that people are starting to realize – especially in Korea – that this is a new breed of game.

And ofc here is the entire interview - www.gamezone.com/news/08_19_08_01_38PM.htm

Well, tbh I actually enjoy games with long grinds.  It means that most people you see with a maxed class usually know what they are doing because it took them so long to reach that level.  Obviously, there are always going to be ppl who, no matter how much time spent playing a class, will always be clueless but it seems that there would be less of them if a long grind is required.  It also gives me more a of a sence of accomplishment, I played AoC for 1 month and had a maxed class, it took me about 9 months in FFXI, maybe longer, it was so long ago.  There just wasn't any satisfaction in getting to max level knowing that anyone who puts in 3-4 weeks of gameplay can accomplish the same thing.

Also I don't know if this has changed recently, but we were told a while back that the grind level would be somewhere between FFXI and WoW. So don't expect an easy ride totally like AoC or WoW, but don't be daunted by it like in L2, FFXI. ;)

Originally posted by Cynthe

Also I don't know if this has changed recently, but we were told a while back that the grind level would be somewhere between FFXI and WoW. So don't expect an easy ride totally like AoC or WoW, but don't be daunted by it like in L2, FFXI. ;)

Ugh... FFXI Is hell to me... and WoW is barely managable, hell it took me forever just to get one character to 70, and im stuck with a bunch of 20 alts (part of the issue is that im an altoholic).

This doesnt bode well for me... :(

Imo, any game released nowadays should have more then 1 option to lvl, for ex.:  grinding and questing.

That is what i expect from AION, who wants to grind grind, who wants to quest quest.

hmm i found that the grind in WoW was even a fair bit for me.. my highest char was 43 n i played for a year but yeah i guess im also an altoholic lol bcoz i kept makin low chars with good items so i would be good in battleground lol, but yeah i think that gettin to max lvl should not be such an easy thing as u want to feel as though all ur work paid off.. but it shouldnt just be grindin, i think a wide range of quests n missions n pvp would be nice instead of just constant killin monsters.. n yeah i think i read sommewhere tht there will be alot of quests n stuff .. im not sure tho coz its been awhile since ive lookd at this game

Originally posted by Khorium

hmm i found that the grind in WoW was even a fair bit for me.. my highest char was 43 n i played for a year but yeah i guess im also an altoholic lol bcoz i kept makin low chars with good items so i would be good in battleground lol, but yeah i think that gettin to max lvl should not be such an easy thing as u want to feel as though all ur work paid off.. but it shouldnt just be grindin, i think a wide range of quests n missions n pvp would be nice instead of just constant killin monsters.. n yeah i think i read sommewhere tht there will be alot of quests n stuff .. im not sure tho coz its been awhile since ive lookd at this game

I really liked the Grind in Lineage II, why? Because if you see somebody from Level 85 you have more Respect for him. WoW is nothing, if you level some hard you have in 2 Weeks a Level 70 whitout dieing in Real Life.

Cheers,
Dawn

Originally posted by DawnJW

I really liked the Grind in Lineage II, why? Because if you see somebody from Level 85 you have more Respect for him. WoW is nothing, if you level some hard you have in 2 Weeks a Level 70 whitout dieing in Real Life.

Cheers,
Dawn

hmm maybe im just bad at this levelling business... lol i just switch between chars too much but yeah i agree that max level shouldnt be too easy to get... ive never played lineage 2 but i heard that its really long... well really i dont mind how long it takes to reach max.. as long as theres enough quests n events to keep it fun

Originally posted by Jabas

Imo, any game released nowadays should have more then 1 option to lvl, for ex.:  grinding and questing.

 

That is what i expect from AION, who wants to grind grind, who wants to quest quest.

 

Yup no fear this is what we're getting

To people who say they have a hard time in WoW even, I have one piece of advice to give you. Do not play the game to level, you will have a crappy time unless this is where you get your fun from.. Some people love to just sit there hack away at mobs and watch the numbers fly by. I used to be like this when I was younger (late teens, early 20's) Now I can't handle that and I need to be entertained via quests and socializing. And I find that if I take time to just have fun and chill out and not worry about my levels I tend to have a better time and the levels actually go by a lot faster. ^_^

Eh, I never concentrated on the leveling, I just switched between the several alts i have alot from my pally main. The worst part in WoW though, is that their is two spots that are essentially "grinds" to me. The push from 35-40 was horrible for me, as was the 50-58. After I hit 70, the game became a huge grind because that was all you could do. You have the 800g crap flying skill, then the absurdly priced 5000g skill, if you want to do anything further, it becomes "grind <insert instance here>" till you get some blues, then grind the next instance and on and on, and it just became stale to me.

If you think the lvl grind in wow is bad, you really shouldn't be touching MMOs in general. You picked the wrong genre to even be looking at.

You guys go realy far away from the topic. I posted this because of the people who said that Aion is going to be the next korean grinder.

Originally posted by Rio_Aion

Well, tbh I actually enjoy games with long grinds.  It means that most people you see with a maxed class usually know what they are doing because it took them so long to reach that level.  Obviously, there are always going to be ppl who, no matter how much time spent playing a class, will always be clueless but it seems that there would be less of them if a long grind is required.  It also gives me more a of a sence of accomplishment, I played AoC for 1 month and had a maxed class, it took me about 9 months in FFXI, maybe longer, it was so long ago.  There just wasn't any satisfaction in getting to max level knowing that anyone who puts in 3-4 weeks of gameplay can accomplish the same thing.

There are far more interesting and fun ways to promote that feeling of achievement beyond GRINDING. To me, it is the lowest common denominator in gaming and utterly boring.

It is possible to create an immersive and interesting experience that takes dedication and time without going into mindless robot grind mode.

These other developers who churn out low quality MMOs just use it because they know there are dumb enough people who will grind and pay for item malls.

This is North America. Item mall = fail when contrasted to monthly sub fees. I am looking forward to Aion. As for those who want  an ongoing online MMO type game to be forever free, they should seriously take a look at their finances and weigh whether or not they should be investing hours into video games.

Awesome the ageless topic of grinding in MMOs. I guess i'm kind of an old school player when it comes to MMOs most of the earlier ones and the games i have played the most did have a serious grind in them and it took a long time to get anywhere. I did give WoW a try and i baffled by the fact that i got to lvl 46 in under a week with not devoting my life to the game. I guess when you come from games like L2 and ffxi this can happen. I would hope that Aion is what someone mentioned earlier that Aion is going to be about in the middle of WoW and ffxi. It's kind of funny though because those games are like apples and oranges as far as im concerned in the grinding aspect. What took me a year to max out in ffxi would have taken about a month in WoW if i kept playing. So from this i take it that in Aion i will be able to hit max lvl between 1 month and a year lol. I hope its more like 3-4 months cause to be honest im tired of the mindless grind. I loved both L2 and ffxi but to be able to draw me to a new game i need to be able to get all that endgame goodness in a decent amount of time or ill just go back to playing ffxi most likely.

What really drew to me to Aion though was not how fast would be able to lvl. But i really miss PvP and from what ive gathered there is going to be some great PvE in this game as well with it's PvPvE style. Hopfully it holds up its bargain and we can all enjoy a great new game whenever they decide to release it. 

it takes less than 2 months to hit lvl 75 in FFXI now. Did it in a little more than a month last time.

Originally posted by Khorium

Originally posted by DawnJW

I really liked the Grind in Lineage II, why? Because if you see somebody from Level 85 you have more Respect for him. WoW is nothing, if you level some hard you have in 2 Weeks a Level 70 whitout dieing in Real Life.

Cheers,
Dawn

 

hmm maybe im just bad at this levelling business... lol i just switch between chars too much but yeah i agree that max level shouldnt be too easy to get... ive never played lineage 2 but i heard that its really long... well really i dont mind how long it takes to reach max.. as long as theres enough quests n events to keep it fun

Yes, loved the Castle Sieges and the Olympiad. That was my PvP Endgame Content.

Cheers,
Dawn

Originally posted by kaishi00

it takes less than 2 months to hit lvl 75 in FFXI now. Did it in a little more than a month last time.

Lol yeah im am completely aware of this but you forget when i started the game was brand new and it wasn't as easy to lvl as it is now. I actually got my third 75 done in about 6 weeks while still doing some other stuff at the time. The difference you ask? I had the gil, i had the knowledge, i had a lvl 75 and many 75 friends to help me get threw AF. On top of that the i didnt have to mess with the lvl cap quests. Anyone that's played ffxi since NA release know that unless you had all the time in the world that first 75 can take a really long time. I even know people that have just made 75 after playing for over 3 years. Could they have done this faster? Oh yeah but did they? No they sure didnt.

To be honest, I think it's a good thing that this game knows who its target audience is and is sticking to them.

To me, it seems, the biggest reason games are failing left and right lately is because they try to be all things to all people and end up failing everyone in the attempt.

Originally posted by x_rast_x

To be honest, I think it's a good thing that this game knows who its target audience is and is sticking to them.

To me, it seems, the biggest reason games are failing left and right lately is because they try to be all things to all people and end up failing everyone in the attempt.

I think I will save this qoute and paste it on every thread on this site.  ha ha!

Well said! 

Originally posted by k11keeper

Originally posted by kaishi00

it takes less than 2 months to hit lvl 75 in FFXI now. Did it in a little more than a month last time.

 

Lol yeah im am completely aware of this but you forget when i started the game was brand new and it wasn't as easy to lvl as it is now. I actually got my third 75 done in about 6 weeks while still doing some other stuff at the time. The difference you ask? I had the gil, i had the knowledge, i had a lvl 75 and many 75 friends to help me get threw AF. On top of that the i didnt have to mess with the lvl cap quests. Anyone that's played ffxi since NA release know that unless you had all the time in the world that first 75 can take a really long time. I even know people that have just made 75 after playing for over 3 years. Could they have done this faster? Oh yeah but did they? No they sure didnt.

I played at Japanese release, I know how it was like in the beginning. They did make it easier now and it's not because you know what to do now as compared to back then, they made stuff like the drop rate for stupid quests faster, maybe even less exp per level.

---

Originally posted by x_rast_x
To be honest, I think it's a good thing that this game knows who its target audience is and is sticking to them.
To me, it seems, the biggest reason games are failing left and right lately is because they try to be all things to all people and end up failing everyone in the attempt.

---

Yeah I agree 100%. Aion is definitely not for me, but I can at least know that for sure, and save myself the money.

They're building a game that they think has appeal, and does have appeal to a certain segment of players and are sticking to it. More developers should go this route, instead of trying to please all of the people all of the time.

I'm just glad they know what they're doing.

Originally posted by levsix

There are far more interesting and fun ways to promote that feeling of achievement beyond GRINDING. To me, it is the lowest common denominator in gaming and utterly boring.

It is possible to create an immersive and interesting experience that takes dedication and time without going into mindless robot grind mode.

 Personally, I enjoy some grinding as long as it has a purpose other than just leveling.  I like to be able to choose what mobs to kill, based on what they drop, or if by killing 400 of them I will get a skill increase.  This was one thing I think lotro got right.  If you were tired of questing and just wanted to do some mindless grinding you could work on your deeds. You get loot, money, possibly crafting items, and you can improve your character at the same time.  On the other hand, you could do L2 grind and kill, kill, kill, and hope you get one of those one in a million good drops, and little driblets of Xp. (unless you had your buff-bot running)

The grind, if anything is a MASSIVE deterrant for games to me, especially MMORPGs. Please, don't make a game that I may as well write a macro to play. The idea that grinding is a sign of worthy acheivement is the idea that because you've flipped burgers for 10 years, you deserve to be a regional manager of your burger chain. NOT everyone who can flip burgers should be promoted, in fact, most of them are incompitant.

This makes just as much sense when applied to MMORPGs; not everyone who can spam "attack 1, attack 6, attack 2" should reach maximum level. This does not create a dignified, skill based system. MMORPGs should reward creativity, inginuity, and adaptability well before long hours in front of the monitor.

Having a grind to get to max level deters me because it means that no matter how well I understand gameplay and strategy, someone with 5 more hours a week to devote to playing will be my superior. We see it in WoW with the grind for gear, which is the primary determining factor in the arena and in raids (why else would all the LFMs be looking for "geared *insert class here*s" and all people seeking arena partners to have a resilience minimum?).

Games should not be about how long you play for, they should be about how well you understand how to play them, potentially as a result of playing them for some time. Some people learn faster than others, and they should be rewarded for it. Being good at chess doesn't require that you play a million games. Similarly, people who play a million games of chess can still be terrible chess players.

Well it's like with all games .. what can the designers invent to make you play on?

Grinding for either levelling or (gold for) getting better equipment, it's always something to keep you busy for days, weeks, months ..

I agree that a true challenge would be a skill-based thing, not a time-invest thing. A game where true skill, mastery of a class and its build would be the ultimate accomplishment, now THAT would be something!

On the other hand, it would discourage a lot of people while the players who would accomplish everything would have nothing to do anymore. Not something a dev would want for his game.

So actually I'm somewhere in between. To have like 3 max level characters (like I had in WoW) to be able to fulfill more than 1 role would be nice to start with.

But I would make a reachable level cap and try to invent multiple targets for a max level character.
1. The best gear for gold
2. The best gear from bosses
3. The best PvP rating
4. Good looking stuff with no extra stats (like in Guildwars)
5. All kind of titles just for who would like it
6. Challenges like described above - only skill is important
7. Housing and stuff
8. All kinds of funny collectables

And on and on.