Aion stands out because the game in theory, has taken the best parts of other mmorpgs and aimed to improve on it...one of them is the character ranking system that rises or drops based on pvpve, as everything you do contribute to it and into making your character better, but at the same time there is a limit to how many top-ranked characters there can be so that most of the rest have to rely on skill to keep on rising up.

The graphics are great compared to other existent mmorpgs and hopefully, the programming will be done decently unlike in WAR, so-so graphics demanding more RAM then it should. But overall, all this hype is still based on theory...they do say that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is

Originally posted by Eruiel

Aion stands out because the game in theory, has taken the best parts of other mmorpgs and aimed to improve on it...one of them is the character ranking system that rises or drops based on pvpve, as everything you do contribute to it and into making your character better, but at the same time there is a limit to how many top-ranked characters there can be so that most of the rest have to rely on skill to keep on rising up.

The graphics are great compared to other existent mmorpgs and hopefully, the programming will be done decently unlike in WAR, so-so graphics demanding more RAM then it should. But overall, all this hype is still based on theory...they do say that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is

In therory AoC was suppose to work as well. And many people find that game to be pretty graphics thrown over poop.

Anyone with half a brain could have realized AoC was trash in closed beta.

Originally posted by Calind0r

Anyone with half a brain could have realized AoC was trash in closed beta.

The PvP is apparently shite, but I'll defend AoC on immersion and story factors. This they do well.

In fact it not be a bad idea for them to quit trying to make MMOs and just give us more Longest Journey stories.... What a waste of development. :(

I still like AoC, but only for the graphics and the talent of the writers.

Anyhoo sorry for off topicness.

Originally posted by Cynthe

Originally posted by Calind0r

Anyone with half a brain could have realized AoC was trash in closed beta.

 

The PvP is apparently shite, but I'll defend AoC on immersion and story factors. This they do well.

In fact it not be a bad idea for them to quit trying to make MMOs and just give us more Longest Journey stories.... What a waste of development. :(

I still like AoC, but only for the graphics and the talent of the writers.

Anyhoo sorry for off topicness.

PvP is skill based in AoC, supposedly, like its suppose to be in Aion.

Originally posted by popinjay

 

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Of course, no game can remain the Shiny New Thing for long, so most of those players will move on pretty quickly, when the next big blockbuster comes out.

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Wow was a Shiny New Thing when released and it's still going immensely strong and growing. Plenty players still playing it, even through several IP blockbuster releases of established properties.

...

I really do feel for you and I do hope you find something to play soon. You really sound as if you need a lifesaver with no ships on the horizon. :(
 

A lot of games have been a Shiny New Thing, but many of them have also been something else.  I don't care to follow the crowd on the latest rush to play some hot new game.  Indeed, my capitalization of the concept is intended to be mildly derogatory.

In the case of WoW, the point was easy soloing up to the level cap (which is common today but was less so at the time), making success or failure almost entirely dependent on level, gear, and group/raid size, and heavily polishing the game.  That last one and effectively marketing the game to people who hadn't previously played an MMORPG are the biggest reasons why WoW has been as successful as it has been.

And no, I'm not stuck with no game at all to play.  I firmly believe in never quitting a game to go play some other game.  Rather, quit a game because you want to quit that particular game.

The problem is that if you quit a game with nothing else in mind to play, then you're stuck fishing for a new game to play.  Better to have some other game in mind, and order it when you can see the end of the line coming on the previous game, so you've got the next one in hand when ready to move on.

Indeed, not having some other game in mind can make one hesitant to quit the previous game; I stuck with WoW way too long, and in retrospect, it seems absurd that there have only been three other online games that I played for longer than WoW.

But just having one game in mind as the next one to try can be insufficient.  The next game in mind might turn out to be awful and not last long.  Or it could remove itself entirely, as Tabula Rasa did shortly before I got around to trying it.

At the moment, I'm playing Wizard101, which is pretty good, but also pretty short, so it's not going to last long.  Even with Dragonspyre coming out soon, I'll probably be out of content within a few months.  After that, The Chronicles of Spellborn is the only imminent release I've found that looks likely to be something I'd really like.  I'll go back to Guild Wars at some point, but I'd rather wait about another year on that; getting ten characters to Legendary Guardian is quite enough of one game for a while.

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Is there any way to have a quote box for more than one person in a single reply, rather than making separate quote boxes?  Failing that, I'll just use horizontal lines.

Eruiel said:

"Aion stands out because the game in theory, has taken the best parts of other mmorpgs and aimed to improve on it."

But that's kind of my point.  Most games try to do that at least in theory.  The problem is that one cannot abstractly improve on previous games in some generic sense.  You can only make particular changes that some people would recognize as improvements.

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A couple people mention the AI as being something good.  The usual aggro system has long annoyed me, as it struck me more as mobs trying to go through the motions of pretending to fight and then die, rather than actually trying to kill you.

So there's plenty of room to improve on AI of previous games.  How does Aion propose to do so?  I realize this is a complicated question, but I'd appreciate a link to something explaining Aion's AI system and what NCsoft hopes could make it something special.

The cool thing about pvp is that the other players really are trying to kill you, not trying to get manipulated into doing something stupid. Unfortunately, it usually leads to whoever is higher level, has better gear, and/or has more players on their side in the battle winning.

Someone mentioned that Aion was supposed to have pvp be rather skill-based.  Is that as in, the skill of the human sitting behind the computer, or merely the more complicated level grinding in which you level a bunch of different attributes independently that people often refer to as "skill-based"?

And does the game cap how strong you can become somehow, to prevent level, gear, and numbers from dominating?  Most of what I've read seems to say no, which would make the pvp quite far from being skill-based.  When people try to claim that it's not that unbalancing, they usually mean that it's actually quite bad.

Let's try to focus on why people quit games first.

Most of the players will use "boredom" as the main reason to quit a game, meaning, the game failed to entertain them.

Some others quit games because of certain features and because the game isn't working as intended by the devs, sometimes, devs add way too many features, and by doing that, they are separating the population into different fields, and sometimes, those features slap each other.

Some people quit games because they didn't know how to anticipate what was coming by reading what devs explained, looking at the whole picture is quite complicated, trying to find out how things work before seeing them working is quite complicated, that leads to dissapointment usually.

Many people quit cause of bugs and lack of polish.

Some others also quit cause they don't know what to do once they've achieved everything or almost everything.

External factors such as community and balance issues would come last.

Now, what does Aion have to make people stay after buying the game?

Aion has the ingredients to be an entertaining game, it has a developed PvE system, the combat has potential and is a step further into the same old concept, which means it's easy to get into, but also has a luck factor and makes you stay active while using your skills. Aion has that addictive factor many new games have been missing.

Aion's features work nicely with each other, for example, some people would come here and ask for an arena rewards system and what not, what they wouldn't see is that they'd be killing the world pvp slowly by dividing the pvp population. As it is right now, the game design is thought out and features mesh properly.

The game at its current status is hella polished, the servers perform incredibly, the massive fights are as massive as they can be, the range of computers working with those graphics is incredibly high considering the quality, things like that are basic for a game to start well.

The endgame? Right now it's about getting higher in PvP ranks in order to use it as an advantage against people, and about sieges, adding Raids and instances to the mix. Your typical endgame pre-expansion. By the time it releases here, it will most likely have the 5 levels of endgame content missing on the Korean release also.

The community and external factors are impossible to foresee, so I won't bother.

In short, players think their reasons to play games are quite shallow, but in the end it's always about packages, they think that certain feature in their previous game was awesome, but they wouldn't have been playing if the entire package didn't work out. Aion has a nice package of features to start with, and that, sure is different, considering the turds we've been receiving lately from the MMO industry.

If that isn't a reason to at least try the game out, then there's no real reason, cause the rest will be niche stuff that some people like and others dont.

If you want us to tell you what will you like in this game, then start saying what did you like in previous games. You already know the basics are there, now tell us your personal likings.

IMO the point of every game should be to have fun with it.Isnt that what its all about?Having fun?If for example the PvP fights of Aion is fun and make me happy,then that is its point.

The point of a game is to have fun. 

The ways Aion intends to accomplish this are:

PvPvE - a method of creating realm-based PvP that doesn't suffer from the general flaws of population imbalance.  They are promising keeps that have influence on the game, and elite mobs in the PvP zone to bring in players and generally add risk-reward to PvP

Interesting combat - they've worked on refining combat mechanics, feedback has been generally positive.  From flying on down, they're promising more involved combat than most MMOs.

Interesting zones worth exploring - between flying and the effort they've put into the zones, this is a world that they want you to explore.

PvE - They're angling for rewarding group content with a high challenge level

Stigmas and character customization - they're trying to make unique characters while leaving open the abilities of the class.  Instead of essentially taking away class abilities, they offer new abilities that you can learn to make your character unique.

This is an interesting premise, I would like to see it in action. 

I cant believe that this is another one of these people saying that if a game is not innovative or different then whats the point in playing it. There is only one reason why people play any type of game whether it be FPS, MMO, Stratagy or Sports and that reason is to have a fun and enjoyable time. That is the reason why we want AION. It looks like it will be that game that will be fun and a game that we will actually enjoy playing.

Improvement works if the game stays on the right track and doesn't suddenly take a turn for the worse, WoW abandoning its old ranking system was a example of that. You had a handful of top ranked people with the best possible gear, that's not overpowered or exaggerated...but instead of a ranking system that meant for most of the player base to rely on skill and not gear(since equal rank gear was the same), WoW chose to have players rely on itemization, which in my op was a bad judgement call since it basically meant that anyone with enough time on their hands can eventually leech off some pvp equipment and newly arrived people wont stand a chance not because of skill but because they lack gear

Hopefully Aion adopts a simllar ranking system and promotes skill over gear rather than the contrary, and improve from it...fun is when you are sure you beat that player with your skills rather then because you had more time to farm gear then him

Nobody can accurately point out if this game will indeed stand out from the rest, we hope it does since many before it promised so much but in the end failed so badly to deliver what was promised

Aion has a interesting slant, but does not seem to be a groundbreaker for MMO innovation. Innovation does not always work, look at the problems with AoC and WAR. If it does the MMO job well its worth a look.

But one thing it really does lack over existing MMO’s is time to bed in, I would not play at launch, give it a month for the hype to fade and then take a look.

Originally posted by Eruiel

Improvement works if the game stays on the right track and doesn't suddenly take a turn for the worse, WoW abandoning its old ranking system was a example of that. You had a handful of top ranked people with the best possible gear, that's not overpowered or exaggerated...but instead of a ranking system that meant for most of the player base to rely on skill and not gear(since equal rank gear was the same), WoW chose to have players rely on itemization, which in my op was a bad judgement call since it basically meant that anyone with enough time on their hands can eventually leech off some pvp equipment and newly arrived people wont stand a chance not because of skill but because they lack gear

Hopefully Aion adopts a simllar ranking system and promotes skill over gear rather than the contrary, and improve from it...fun is when you are sure you beat that player with your skills rather then because you had more time to farm gear then him

Nobody can accurately point out if this game will indeed stand out from the rest, we hope it does since many before it promised so much but in the end failed so badly to deliver what was promised

Actually the old ranking system heavily favored people with excess time on their hands.  The system heavily rewarded time spent, to the point where virtually all of the max rank PvPers had 40+ (and often 60+ or 80+) hours a week spent on battlegrounds.  Skill was virtually unrewarded in any real sense.

I really hope Aion does nothing like the old WoW system.

Originally posted by Ephimero

Now, what does Aion have to make people stay after buying the game?

Aion has the ingredients to be an entertaining game, it has a developed PvE system, the combat has potential and is a step further into the same old concept, which means it's easy to get into, but also has a luck factor and makes you stay active while using your skills. Aion has that addictive factor many new games have been missing.

Aion's features work nicely with each other, for example, some people would come here and ask for an arena rewards system and what not, what they wouldn't see is that they'd be killing the world pvp slowly by dividing the pvp population. As it is right now, the game design is thought out and features mesh properly.

The game at its current status is hella polished, the servers perform incredibly, the massive fights are as massive as they can be, the range of computers working with those graphics is incredibly high considering the quality, things like that are basic for a game to start well.

The problem is that that whole description is so vague and subjective that it could be said of most of the games on this site's gamelist and be no less true than they are of Aion.

You could note that that doesn't apply to your description of Aion's endgame, but endgames to MMORPGs are almost invariably awful, to the degree that a game with no endgame at all has an above average endgame.  The odds that Aion would break that trend without trying anything radical are zilch.

Shajarat said:

PvPvE - a method of creating realm-based PvP that doesn't suffer from the general flaws of population imbalance.

I'm all in favor of realm-based PvP that doesn't suffer from population issues, whether one side outnumbering the other, or too few players around at all, gameplay varying widely by time of day as populations fluctuate, or the various other such problems that plague many games.

But the question is, how do you fix those problems?  Merely observing that it would be nice if the problems were fixed isn't going to get it done.

Shajarat said:

Interesting combat - they've worked on refining combat mechanics, feedback has been generally positive. From flying on down, they're promising more involved combat than most MMOs.

Interesting zones worth exploring - between flying and the effort they've put into the zones, this is a world that they want you to explore.

PvE - They're angling for rewarding group content with a high challenge level

Stigmas and character customization - they're trying to make unique characters while leaving open the abilities of the class. Instead of essentially taking away class abilities, they offer new abilities that you can learn to make your character unique.

As before, these are things that most games try to do.  If what you're after is a game that tries to do those things, you've got dozens of choices from among games already released, without having to wait for a new game.  

Can you name a single game with combat that didn't try to make combat interesting?  The hard part is not determining that combat should be interesting.  The hard part is making it so that combat is, in fact, interesting.

Once again, the question is how does Aion try to make combat interesting?  Flying is commonly cited, but I mentioned that in the original post to this thread.  Combat that involves flying could mean too many radically different things to be a meaningful description without elaboration.

I think your first two comments can be answered together.

I think the higher level areas/end game for Aion is in the Abyss so all players at that level will be there in order to progress.  That would take care of the imbalencing issues as far as faction population is concerned.

Also, the term PvPvE seems justified in Aion since there is an NPC faction that are active, not just random field mobs waiting to be killed.  How that faction is integrated into the game I'm not sure.

Concerning the combat system I only know of a few differences.  You get additional abilities while flying than you do on the ground.  Second is abilities that are triggered and third is a "DP" meter (the green bar on the UI) that once filled unlocks high-powered signature moves. 

The point of this game for me is it combines a proven format with a few extras and packages it in a great art style.  That said if it doesn't have smooth gameplay and a good storyline I will not last long.  From all of the reports I've heard so far though I'm not worried about that.

Other games might have the same base mechanics but thats just a base.  What you build off of it makes a huge difference in my opinion.

Originally posted by Deron_Barak

I think your first two comments can be answered together.

I think the higher level areas/end game for Aion is in the Abyss so all players at that level will be there in order to progress.  That would take care of the imbalencing issues as far as faction population is concerned.

Also, the term PvPvE seems justified in Aion since there is an NPC faction that are active, not just random field mobs waiting to be killed.  How that faction is integrated into the game I'm not sure.

Concerning the combat system I only know of a few differences.  You get additional abilities while flying than you do on the ground.  Second is abilities that are triggered and third is a "DP" meter (the green bar on the UI) that once filled unlocks high-powered signature moves. 

The point of this game for me is it combines a proven format with a few extras and packages it in a great art style.  That said if it doesn't have smooth gameplay and a good storyline I will not last long.  From all of the reports I've heard so far though I'm not worried about that.

Other games might have the same base mechanics but thats just a base.  What you build off of it makes a huge difference in my opinion.

Only if you are a PvE story line fanatic or thats what you paly MMOs for. For the person that plays for the people, game play, and character development this isn't enough.

Originally posted by Quizzical

The problem is that that whole description is so vague and subjective that it could be said of most of the games on this site's gamelist and be no less true than they are of Aion.

You're asking US what's the point of this game, expect subjectivity.

There's no way to say objectivily that certain feature-set is perfect for everyone, because there are always exceptions.

I could go ahead and tell you what I like of Aion, but then you'd come back telling me that X game has done it before, that every game attempts to do it, or that it's subjective, so, what's the point really?

Try to be a bit less shallow, look at the whole picture, you have all the features listed, use your experience from previous MMORPGs to put those features together and find out if you would at least be interested in trying out such a game. It's all about feature sets, sets being the keyword there, no game can play like Aion, cause no game had the same features set.

You could note that that doesn't apply to your description of Aion's endgame, but endgames to MMORPGs are almost invariably awful, to the degree that a game with no endgame at all has an above average endgame.  The odds that Aion would break that trend without trying anything radical are zilch.

That's your opinion. In my opinion, endgame can be the best stage of a game if done properly. These kind of games lead you through a path the whole time untill you're done with your personal progression, once you have all the gear you want and the max level, games should have tools for community interaction. Aion has those tools already.

If the world and Realm vs realm situation is changing constantly, there's always a reason to play, to try and reach the maxium control, to help your friends, to become even better...Endgame guilds in WoW try to compete in order to see who kills X boss before, endgame guilds in L2 try to fight for heros and castles, endgame guilds in GW fight for complete domination on the tournaments, it keeps players entertained since there's always a reason to log in and play.

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Shajarat said:

PvPvE - a method of creating realm-based PvP that doesn't suffer from the general flaws of population imbalance.

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I'm all in favor of realm-based PvP that doesn't suffer from population issues, whether one side outnumbering the other, or too few players around at all, gameplay varying widely by time of day as populations fluctuate, or the various other such problems that plague many games.

But the question is, how do you fix those problems?  Merely observing that it would be nice if the problems were fixed isn't going to get it done.

The Balaur is conditionated by the server's status, if a side controls 80% of the fortresses in certain server, they'll hit them harder than if the odds were a bit more even, by hitting them harder, I mean that they will show up for sieges against them, and the draconic carrier (their ship) will be around their zones hunting people down. Balaurs could pick a side in a faction vs faction fight and kill only 1 side, Balaurs can also claim fortresses for themselves, so even if your servers rivals suck, you'll always have someone attacking your fortresses and RvR control points.

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Shajarat said:

Interesting combat - they've worked on refining combat mechanics, feedback has been generally positive. From flying on down, they're promising more involved combat than most MMOs.

Interesting zones worth exploring - between flying and the effort they've put into the zones, this is a world that they want you to explore.

PvE - They're angling for rewarding group content with a high challenge level

Stigmas and character customization - they're trying to make unique characters while leaving open the abilities of the class. Instead of essentially taking away class abilities, they offer new abilities that you can learn to make your character unique.

---

As before, these are things that most games try to do.  If what you're after is a game that tries to do those things, you've got dozens of choices from among games already released, without having to wait for a new game.  

Can you name a single game with combat that didn't try to make combat interesting?  The hard part is not determining that combat should be interesting.  The hard part is making it so that combat is, in fact, interesting.

Once again, the question is how does Aion try to make combat interesting?  Flying is commonly cited, but I mentioned that in the original post to this thread.  Combat that involves flying could mean too many radically different things to be a meaningful description without elaboration.

 Elaboration of flying combat? Well, you click page up and you pop up your wings, while flying, some of your stats are boosted, and some of your skills are impossible to trigger, you have 1 minute before your wings wear off so you have to use it wisely. Some classes have advantage against flying targets, some others have a hard time against them, it adds a 3rd dimension to the character's control, which remarks a bit more player's skill.

Flying is mainly adding another dimensions to combat and strategy, a guild could decide to attack them from the air in order to surprise them instead of attacking them from the front, flight can also be used in order to lure people out of the floor so rushing can be possible. There are a lot of applications to flight, look up for youtube Aion videos and think how would you use flight in your advantage.

 

Personally I'm tired of other games I've played because they have become stale. So every few years I move to another. They don't always have to be completely different just new in look, storyline, people, economy, strategy, anything else to pass time. Heck I've gone through EQ2 to L2 to WoW and i still play the always enjoyable Ragnarok. All those games are very similar in one way or another. So the reason I, and I asume others change games is simply for a fresh start and a new feel every now and again. I also go back and start all over on those same old games time and again just to have a bit of the old fun i used to with them.

Aion looks like a game I would like therefore I will play it. Worse case scenario I go back to another.

Originally posted by xpiher

Originally posted by Deron_Barak

I think your first two comments can be answered together.

I think the higher level areas/end game for Aion is in the Abyss so all players at that level will be there in order to progress.  That would take care of the imbalencing issues as far as faction population is concerned.

Also, the term PvPvE seems justified in Aion since there is an NPC faction that are active, not just random field mobs waiting to be killed.  How that faction is integrated into the game I'm not sure.

Concerning the combat system I only know of a few differences.  You get additional abilities while flying than you do on the ground.  Second is abilities that are triggered and third is a "DP" meter (the green bar on the UI) that once filled unlocks high-powered signature moves. 

The point of this game for me is it combines a proven format with a few extras and packages it in a great art style.  That said if it doesn't have smooth gameplay and a good storyline I will not last long.  From all of the reports I've heard so far though I'm not worried about that.

Other games might have the same base mechanics but thats just a base.  What you build off of it makes a huge difference in my opinion.

 

Only if you are a PvE story line fanatic or thats what you paly MMOs for. For the person that plays for the people, game play, and character development this isn't enough.

You're right, just having a good storyline isn't enough and I mentioned other things in my post like gameplay.  Even then the style of gameplay, no matter how good, might not be the type others are looking for.
 

As far as the people and character development I won't know how the general tone of the community is until I actually play Aion.  The Stigma system seems interesting from a character development standpoint though and I'll look forward to checking that out.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Ephimero

Now, what does Aion have to make people stay after buying the game?

Aion has the ingredients to be an entertaining game, it has a developed PvE system, the combat has potential and is a step further into the same old concept, which means it's easy to get into, but also has a luck factor and makes you stay active while using your skills. Aion has that addictive factor many new games have been missing.

Aion's features work nicely with each other, for example, some people would come here and ask for an arena rewards system and what not, what they wouldn't see is that they'd be killing the world pvp slowly by dividing the pvp population. As it is right now, the game design is thought out and features mesh properly.

The game at its current status is hella polished, the servers perform incredibly, the massive fights are as massive as they can be, the range of computers working with those graphics is incredibly high considering the quality, things like that are basic for a game to start well.

 

The problem is that that whole description is so vague and subjective that it could be said of most of the games on this site's gamelist and be no less true than they are of Aion.

You could note that that doesn't apply to your description of Aion's endgame, but endgames to MMORPGs are almost invariably awful, to the degree that a game with no endgame at all has an above average endgame.  The odds that Aion would break that trend without trying anything radical are zilch.

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Why, Mr. Quizzical do you need to be so patronising in your comments? I've read many responses where people try to give clear and helpful answers and you shoot down their responses.

Clearly many answers will be vague when people have not actually played the game, and you can't seriously complain because responses are subjective -really? What exactly do you expect on a forum.

Large scale PvP with minimum lag and good reliability would be enough for me. That single point is enough to make me want to try the game. I also like the graphical style.

Still, I'm happy to try every Shiny New Thing because it's fun to try new games and then stick with the one(s) you like. (I'm still playing FFXI). There's no limit to just one game, you can actually play (or try) more than one you know.

Since you seem so dismissive of people's comments you might be well advised to try each game yourself, after all it's probably the only way to be sure that you don't miss a game which appeals to you. Furthermore, if you hate endgames so much you should relish the opportunity to move on to new games as soon as you've reached max level.