Originally posted by askdaboss

Originally posted by Meridion

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I still think Aion endgame PVE is not on par in terms of quantity with AAA titles, could be on par with non-AAA titles though. At least this used to be true when I played the game where they did not have that many dungeons end game, not sure about now... I played mostly for PvP though, so it was not a big deal for me. However, as time passed they were introducing more PvE content and little PvP content (gimping/preventing PvP as well), I started raising eyebrows and feeling disappointed (so yes, this was a good game).

I really loved the abyss, however they are pretty much empty since they added the new PvP zone on the ground (another reason why I left).

Aion was definitely polished, I really enjoyed my experience and would recommend the title to anyone. It had its niche of players (agree a lot of them were anime fans, I was not). Still, I maintain my criticism that the title was advertised as a big PvP title but the change of focus towards more and more PvE made them fall in between and never achieve greatness in any of these two areas. Could be just me though, I know lots of people are still content with the game.

 

I personally did not mind the so called grind, I had tons of fun leveling in this game (enough quests and dungeons for me), I think it was fairly quick to level. I played templar from release for about 1.5yrs or so (and then stopped playing), did not bother with an alt (did not make sense in this game indeed).

I have NEVER said Aion combat did not require skills, actually I am pretty much with you here: playing templar involved sword waving in between skills (for auto attack), weapon switching, and about 30+ skills with different timers and combos, and as you said good timing, it was a really fast paced MMO. Probably one of the most enjoyable so far if you make the most of your character (not bash the 3-4 same skills). I was just replying to that other guy who randomly asked about GW2, so sorry about the off-topic confusion.

The opinion I was trying to express is: I think playing Aion now is a bit late (you are missing on the good old days of the abyss PvP which was one of the big things of the game), but it is still a good fun game. And you will probably have more PvE content nowadays, so yeah, if you like it the game will keep you busy.

First off, I wasn't referring to you concerning the combat mechanic but to some guy earlier in the thread. 

That said, I pretty much agree with your points. I consider myself an allround MMORPG lover, raided for hours on end in post-moria, PvE-only LotRO and are at the sime time an nullsec EVE veteran. 

But what really pisses me off is ganking. ANd by ganking I mean getting steamrolled without any chance for making up through skill, cleverness, care or preparation.

And that's what was really making me mad in early Aion. So tbh I welcomed the changes that eased the gank-squad-threshold on the Abyss. Finally, you can actually explore the place and kill some mobs for half an hour without being roflstomped every 5 minutes. Meanwhile, the number of PvE possibilities has steadily increased.

So in my book, it has matured a _lot_ since 2009 and many new features (including things to come) try to alleviate some of the worst balancing issues in the game. I think it is far from too late to join the game. It's just a more rewarding PvE experience now than it was at launch while PvP is still alive and well in  the new AoB zones.

M

EDIT: Oh yea, and no, I still won't play it because it looks like Barbie-dolls-online on crack. That was my main letdown in the first place anyways. But that's a trend, especially MMORPGs seem to go straight for the teen-market, which is unfortunate, since inverse aging has not yet been invented and I'm closing in on 40 now.

to me, if you were a pvp + pve player in wow, and you're looking to play something new but somewhat familiar, you would be doing yourself a disservice not to try aion.

it's really very good and they have "americanized" the grind factor (meaning it's less grindey now than it was @ launch).  I will probably go back once they put the patch in that gives player houses (IIRC that's a future patch soon?  anyone know for sure?).  then choose between rift and aion for my "fantasy MMO" of choice.

Originally posted by itchmon

to me, if you were a pvp + pve player in wow, and you're looking to play something new but somewhat familiar, you would be doing yourself a disservice not to try aion.

 

it's really very good and they have "americanized" the grind factor (meaning it's less grindey now than it was @ launch).  I will probably go back once they put the patch in that gives player houses (IIRC that's a future patch soon?  anyone know for sure?).  then choose between rift and aion for my "fantasy MMO" of choice.

I agree, rift and aion are imo more alike than you'd think at first glance.

I picked up Rift and it was a desastrous bad apple for me. Mainly because - to me - Rift was a mixture of Aions style (clean, styled, puppylike), WoWs mechanics (from metal nodes to skill-relief) and WARs public quests. And the idea of customizable skillsets wasn't new either (hello guildwars multiclasses).

The one thing that makes Aion superior to Rift is flight and combat complexity. In an even fight, skill and timing are a LOT more important in Aion than in RIft...

M

Say you ignore the grind to lvl 55.

And also ignore the grind to get pvp armor.

And the grind to get decent weapons and gear because RNG is a fucking bitch and a half and you're stuck doing the same dungeons for months.

And ignore the fact that the only fun pvp mode is limited to only 3 times a day at odd hours.

...then the whole game can still screw you over because if your faction on your server sucks, you will also suck. Most effective way to get pvp armor is through pve, and only if your faction owns certain forts. If your server can't take and hold a fort, gl doing anything.

I played the game up through 2.0 on my glad before I quit, +15'd my bakarma spear, +10'd my 40e armor set... was in a amazing guild that was first in a lot of stuff.  But still, the game made no sense at some levels and just contradicted with itself.

I won't pay $15 a month to do chores ever again.

The reasons for people ignoring Aion is pretty obvious. The game is all about hardcore random number based grind. If you are not lucky you'll spend 1000s of hours of repetive *extremely* boring grind just to see fail over fail - and you have no real hope it ever will change.

I was quitting after I spend nearly 2 billions of kinah on the socketing of a gear set with no success. Then I realized that NcSoft designed a game where RNG rules nearly everything and all you need to be successfull in Aion is having luck. If you don't have luck you are basically completely *nyerked*.

Not to mention the game went Pay to Win today. Now you have to pay an extra year of fees per gear set if you dont want to spend those 1000s of hours.

Aion would have plenty of potential if NcSoft decided to fix the worst issues instead of ripping off their customers with cash shop "fixes", but looking at their actions they (Ncsoft Korea) clearly decide to milk their (NcSoft NA) players as much as they can before they close the doors.

I wouldn't touch this anymore even if they paid me money for playing it.

Originally posted by Meridion

Originally posted by itchmon

to me, if you were a pvp + pve player in wow, and you're looking to play something new but somewhat familiar, you would be doing yourself a disservice not to try aion.

 

it's really very good and they have "americanized" the grind factor (meaning it's less grindey now than it was @ launch).  I will probably go back once they put the patch in that gives player houses (IIRC that's a future patch soon?  anyone know for sure?).  then choose between rift and aion for my "fantasy MMO" of choice.

I agree, rift and aion are imo more alike than you'd think at first glance.

hehe careful... I said this when Rift launched and people got very very angry :P

(...)

"People" will also tell you the game sucks because its incredibly hard to get the best gear. Which is BTW - again - an typical achiever complaint - If you tell them the quickest way to get uber-geared is grinding x for 1000 hours, they'll start today.

If you just hang out with your buddies messing around in PvP, doing some instances now and then and NOT let the gear-obsession get you, you'll do just fine. If you play group-based PvP gear doesn't play that big a role anymore. Times ten for PvP raids. If you start focusing on "I neeeeed eternal gear NOW!!!" you'll burn out extremely fast. I find myself - again - defending Aion while not playing it...

But I'll repeat my former argument: Asian games are usually not meant to be grinded out within 3 months. You will do just fine if you do what's fun for you and accept the fact that you maybe get decent gear in 24 months.

M

the people that complain about "grinding" for grear are the same people that would rather have everything handed to em or would rather play some random pvp arena based game for hours upon hours ..this genra today is soo spoiled oh the reason this game is over looked is because most people "wether they want to admit it or not" dont like the asian grafix compared to something like wow or sw:tor ..people these days either dont have the time nor money to go out and try every mmo that hits the market...they rather stick to their guns and dont try nuttin new..unless its a copy / paste job

I avoid it due to the early reviews pointing out the huge grind that was needed.  I'm not Korean and I have not developed a taste for killing 50,000 mobs to move up one level.  Has the game improved since launch, probably and yes it has less of a grind now from what I have read but I'm into other games now.  If sometime down the road I am looking for a new MMO and nothing is out I have not tried, I may pick up a copy of Aion and try it.

When MMO's launch, they earn a rep that stays for a long time.  Why MMO companies continue to release games with a lack of content (Cryptic) or in a terrible mess (FF14) is beyond me.  AoC was a good game but launched with a severe lack of content after the island, it has never recovered.  If Funcom would have waited 6 to 10 more months and filled in that content , they would have earned a lot more than they have now.  Aion was the same way, you cannot release a game designed for one type of player into a market of a different type with only minor changes.

Originally posted by Talonsin

I avoid it due to the early reviews pointing out the huge grind that was needed.  I'm not Korean and I have not developed a taste for killing 50,000 mobs to move up one level.  Has the game improved since launch, probably and yes it has less of a grind now from what I have read but I'm into other games now.  If sometime down the road I am looking for a new MMO and nothing is out I have not tried, I may pick up a copy of Aion and try it.

 

When MMO's launch, they earn a rep that stays for a long time.  Why MMO companies continue to release games with a lack of content (Cryptic) or in a terrible mess (FF14) is beyond me.  AoC was a good game but launched with a severe lack of content after the island, it has never recovered.  If Funcom would have waited 6 to 10 more months and filled in that content , they would have earned a lot more than they have now.  Aion was the same way, you cannot release a game designed for one type of player into a market of a different type with only minor changes.

you can market that type of game to a type of player..they just failed to do so..prolly cuz they were afraid that no1 would get into their game..this is where alot of mmo's fail..they follow the same quest rail as everyone else..looking to cash in the quick buck of theampark mmo's and not focusing on their own unique ways

Originally posted by Talonsin

I avoid it due to the early reviews pointing out the huge grind that was needed.  I'm not Korean and I have not developed a taste for killing 50,000 mobs to move up one level.  Has the game improved since launch, probably and yes it has less of a grind now from what I have read but I'm into other games now.  If sometime down the road I am looking for a new MMO and nothing is out I have not tried, I may pick up a copy of Aion and try it.

 

When MMO's launch, they earn a rep that stays for a long time.  Why MMO companies continue to release games with a lack of content (Cryptic) or in a terrible mess (FF14) is beyond me.  AoC was a good game but launched with a severe lack of content after the island, it has never recovered.  If Funcom would have waited 6 to 10 more months and filled in that content , they would have earned a lot more than they have now.  Aion was the same way, you cannot release a game designed for one type of player into a market of a different type with only minor changes.

Pfh, they marketed Aion to their peer players alright. It's a misconception that EU/NA-release Aion was a failure. The game got hyped like hell back when it released and treated like the next PvP revelation.... But in contrast to real failures like Warhammer or STO Aion retained lots and lots of players, the servers are crowded and there's been only the initial server merges after the hypewave died down.

You make it sound like its in line with bugfests and horrible f2p grinders. It's not, sure, its a f*cking asian game, it ought to be grindy. But its got all the features of an asian AAA title, gets updated regularly and is _very_ thriving. It's just not for everyone, i know dead sure it's not for me, but it's a fine game.

And AoC is a really bad example since the game DID recover after RotG and AoC:U's freemium model.

You either have not checked back on these games or consider everything that didn't hammer WoW off the ivory tower a failure.

M

1. Aion is not dead or ignored. Its initial hype has went down. Plus a lot of initial players were L2 veterans that were looking for L3, yet found L2 meets WoW, and believe me you can't make a player that loved L2 and all its depth to play WoW in all its shallowness .

2. In asian MMOs is the future, so it's time to get used to it. Western publishers have offered nothing really new or interesting lately, or at least of some quality so as to stand out. And no, I am not Korean, or Asian, I am European.

3. Infinite grinding is  bad, boring and blant. As infinite questing is. Personally neither bothers me, if it's fun.

So Aion has now found its audience. It doesn't do bad, actually, for what it offers. There had been more sofisticated games out there that were completely ignored.

today opens Vindictus ÔB to europe, and its a very nice game (free), with nice combat system, and aion offers more or less nothing trhough the last 2 years (i was playing 1 year with breaks), so the question is?

does AION have enough value or fun to be pay to play?

My answer its nope as WoW or Rift have not enough stuff to be payed

Originally posted by manny702

Well i always see alot of post of peeps asking what game's to play or if they should play rift or WoW wtf why dnt people see aion? I mean ive been playing the game for only like 3 weeks and am level 31 and am having a blast of a time best game in my opnion i love the gear the wings the skills the people even the mobs lmfao i jsut love the game i go to bed sometimes still thinking am playing in the game still lol so why dnt people give aion a try? Is it because how NCSOFT screwed it up at launch? Or is it because some people find it boring i just want the opnions of why u dnt like aion or what gives u the turn off for this game? Just curious to now other people's opnion's.

The game had an exagerrated launch population because the game claimed it was something it wasn't.

Aion pulled a bit of a bait and switch at launch by calling itself a PvPvE game . This left many with the impression that while there was a healthy PvP component in the Abyss and select zones it was possible to play PvE to level and then the option of electing to go to PvP areas was present.

This was completely true up to about lvl 24 and again close to max level.

Then you got ganked... Alot.

Lowbie Epic grade PvP gear was easily the match of max level gear and anything better than green quest gear was hard to acquire as drop rates sucked after level 24.

Likewise the game is an Asian MMO that relied on grinding basically which left those little lambs that didn't want to PvP constantly in the open world waiting to get ganked.

For a PvP MMO, I think it's an awesome addition and once folks realized that this is what it actually was the game's real subscriber numbers showed.

The forum posts back then were quite funny though...

Month 1: "This game is awesome !!!"

Month 2: "This game is awesome but I am getting ganked alot I didn't realize it was a PvP only game. What can I do?" /Reply "It's not a PvP game, it's a PvPvE game...Hold Still"

Month 3: "Getting frustrated with this game as can't progress as everytime I go to grind or farm for next level I get ganked and have to start over"  /Reply " Cry More.. Umm where are you going next? I'm trying to get enough marks to get my gold boots"

Month 4: "Hey!! Where'd everybody go?"

Aion, at this point, pretty much has the number of subscribers it is going to ever have. I'd imagine it's current number of subscribers is in keeping with games like Lineage and Shadowfall as most PvP only games tend to share the same subscriber base. Had AionWest represented itself and the game clearly at launch it never would have had the launch numbers it did.

Originally posted by HorActi

1. Aion is not dead or ignored. Its initial hype has went down. Plus a lot of initial players were L2 veterans that were looking for L3, yet found L2 meets WoW, and believe me you can't make a player that loved L2 and all its depth to play WoW in all its shallowness .

2. In asian MMOs is the future, so it's time to get used to it. Western publishers have offered nothing really new or interesting lately, or at least of some quality so as to stand out. And no, I am not Korean, or Asian, I am European.

3. Infinite grinding is  bad, boring and blant. As infinite questing is. Personally neither bothers me, if it's fun.

So Aion has now found its audience. It doesn't do bad, actually, for what it offers. There had been more sofisticated games out there that were completely ignored.

I don't see any similarities in between Aion and Lineage 2. They are totally different games. Lineage 2 was a sandbox type open pvp grinder where Aion is a themepark faction rng grinder.

And yes, I loved Lineage 2. It wasn't a game where a lot of things were restricted thus you had the freedom of choice. You were unlucky with enchanting? You played the market and just bought an already enchanted item. In AIon on the other hand you are totally nyerked, all that soul bound crap mixed with the many annoying cooldowns mean you will need many months to get good stuff when you are not lucky.

For the record: I enjoyed the grind in Lineage 2 since it was open world, there always was pvp and such. In Aion you spend all the grind time in boring instances which giant cooldowns. It was a lot easier to level and get gear in lineage 2 since it wasn't all luck and you had multiple ways to reach your target.

Maybe because in its first month there was a million gold spammers, /3 channel you couldn't even see the people lfg due to so many spammers. 

Yup again more gold sellers ruin games .

Originally posted by Akais

 

Had AionWest represented itself and the game clearly at launch it never would have had the launch numbers it did.

That pretty much matches my understanding also.  When it launched I was tied up with work and unable to play.  Many of my ex-WoW guildies dropped their WoW subs and went to Aion expecting a very strong PVE game.  Most were back in WoW by a few months later.

I still want to play it sometime.  The character art has the reputation for being some of the best in it's style.

Originally posted by Meridion

You either have not checked back on these games or consider everything that didn't hammer WoW off the ivory tower a failure.

M

 

So, your saying that Aion and AoC have both ramped back up to near launch day subscription numbers?  Do you have any REAL evidence to back that up or should I just take everything you write on the internet as fact?

Coming back to topic question - 

I don't think that it's the case of people ignoring Aion. It is Aion that ignores people. All they want is no life grinders that are happy with doing repetable stuff all over again for the price of nice and shiny piece of gear that don't mind paying extra charge to overcome already flawed system.

It might sound bitter and exagerated, but in fact it's pretty close to that...

Aion.. or narcissist online.. has about the coolest character creation of anything out there and the artwork is top rate. That’s what keeps people playing it.. Looking totally cool just sells.

Only dvd in all my years of mmo’s that I folded in half till it snapped and tossed in the bin.