| ID: |
14 |
| Name: |
Xruptor |
| Date/Time: |
12/02/09 9:39:12 AM |
| Message: |
Alrighty I did say I was going to make a long response so here it is!
First thanks Avanger for sharing all that information about the game. I was surprised at the majority of the stuff you mentioned, the rest I already knew about from my regular sources I visit daily.
SOLO: One of the biggest gripes about AION was the lack of content that game had when it shipped. You've mentioned the challenges involved with trying to level up your toon. If I was a new player and I had to face these issues I would get A) Frustrated and B) Bored really quickly. The fact that everything turns into a massive grindfest is a huge concern that needs to be resolved in the game. You've mentioned that at a certain point in the leveling career it takes a lot of effort especially at lvl 20's to get anywhere. I find it very amusing that the creators put enough content just to hook the person into playing and then the rest of the game they completely forgot about. The Abyss is nothing but a massive gankfest, EVERY site I goes to complains about it. The amount of time wasted and ganked in the Abyss to level is practically eye bleeding. Tons of folks have complained on the grouped ganking that occurs. Yes they have put measures to try to prevent it but people will do it regardless. YOU CAN level outside in the PVE areas but it just throws you into a mindless grindfest that was SUPPOSED to be remedied by the Abyss. Instead, according to some forums I visit (I love somethingawful.com) folks plow their way in the PVE area because they can't do progress at all in the Abyss. This is a huge flaw and something that the game creators have to go back and look at again. When it comes to soloing, I had thought originally that this game was supposed to be a top priority group MMORPG. Boy did you prove me wrong! Not only did you say you can solo mobs in this game with certain classes (due to unbalancing) but some mobs that are extremely hard don't really reward anything. So why be in a group at all? If I was a player I would eventually say 'to hell with it' and just grind mobs that I can solo myself for smaller xp. Not only would I not waste my time with the party mob kills, but it prevents me from getting myself killed repeatedly.
XP LOSS: Holy shit, I knew about the xp loss; but I didn't know it was as terrible as you mentioned. XP Loss in games should have gone the way of the do-do. It was found that just way too many people hated the concept as casuals didn't like seeing their hard work lost for a game they wanted to enjoy. Hell I remember when EverQuest first introduced it and EVERYONE hated it. The only reason people put up with it was because EQ was one of the first games of it's time. Later if you noticed, other MMORPGS learned from the mistake and removed XP loss entirely. It didn't make the game fun and you would THINK that other game creators would have learned from this. To date the only game that I know that has a xp loss of this magnitude is FFXI online. You can actually de-level two or three times in a raid fight. After every raid you have to go back and grind back the xp. WHY in gods name would this put this crap in a recently released game (western market) that is supposed to be PVP? GEEZE you would think they would have learned something from the previous MMO's (yes I know you've mentioned this).
CLASS BALANCE: For a game that has been out for as long as AION has been, you would THINK they would have worked on class balancing a bit more? I knew things were bad as majority of the sites I visited mentioned an imbalance in the classes. A great bunk of them mention the Over Powered Cleric class. The class that can repeatedly heal himself and deal damage to you and you will never be able to kill them. Apparently this is the one class that can kill pretty much every other class in the game. Considering the issues with CC and no diminishing returns, this game suffers from what I call 'lazy programming'. That is, the creators didn't devote enough time into adding diminishing returns to spells that THEY KNEW would get abused. I wouldn't be surprised that right now the entire game is made up of mostly CC Classes (am I right Avanger?). Why would anyone want to play a non CC class when they can constantly CC on another and kill them? This falls under non-gimped and gimped classes. No one (unless they like a challenge) would play a gimped class if they knew the frustration and lack of kills they would make in PVP. The fact that creators didn't spend time to review their code and spells, demonstrates that they don't really care about their playerbase or their game period. Would they have cared about their game they would have put a little more time in balancing out the CC issues. The melee classes are suffering and just like in Warhammer Online (originally this has been fixed with the last 3 patches) range classes reign supreme. There is absolutely no reason to play a melee class. The only reason is because your guild needs a tank so they force someone to level one.
CLASS VS SOLO: The fact that some classes can solo where others can't is a huge flaw. Granted there is a fine line between challenging solobility with a class, and the inability to solo period. Yes some classes should have a harder time of soloing because of nature of their class. Yet, the fact that in this game some classes can kill things that are several if not a retarded amount of levels above them is terrible. Tanks should be able to kill things just as high as the other classes without getting hit as hard. Granted they shouldn't do as much damage BUT they still should be able to tackle on higher level mobs just the same. I heard the Sorc class is absolutely ridiculous when it comes to soloing mobs at higher levels. Since there is a stupid about of CC, I can see why this is a problem. Again, I attribute this to the laziness of the creators of the game and it's programmers.
CLIENT CRASHES: A game that has been out for nearly a year and a half SHOULD have had these crash problems addressed. Why in gods name did they release a game if the customer base cant participate in the end battles (which is what the damn game was made for?). Also the fact that they restricted to the programming of the client to a 32bit system is ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY LUDICROUS AND PLAIN STUPID on the part of the programmers. In a world where 64bit is pretty much becoming dominate, there is NO REASON to program a 32bit client. They should have done a 64bit client that has WOWACE64 compatibility with 32bit systems. That way they had both their asses covered. I don't understand why they went this route? Did they not understand that memory restrictions on 32bit systems? OF COURSE they are going to get memory leak crashes on their damn client. My god it's freaking common sense in the programming world. I'm just going to shut up now because this portion of my response just irks me.
MONEY SINKS/ BOTS/ RMTS/ SUPPORT: What I cant stand is a game that has made no strives to work out issues with it's customers and botters. It's almost like they are being paid by the RMT's to have bots and advertisements in their game. According to the forums I visit, as of right now, they have made practically no strive in fixing the botting issues and RMT's issues plaguing the game. This not only shows a totally lack of respect for it's customer base, but demonstrates once again the complete and utter laziness of the creators. Money sinks are okay in games if done properly and with many tools available for players to fill those gaps. However, right now in AION it seems that the entire game is nothing but one huge Money Sink. This is not only a flaw but it's darn right not fun. It should be addressed and alternative methods for making money be implemented.
NEWS AND FEEDBACK: One word, 'Engrish'... that is all.
COMBAT: When I played beta, I can tell you now that the COMBO system is fun for only 3 or 4 battles. Then it becomes repetitive and boring. The fact that you have to continuously do these combos to get any effect at all on the mobs is boring. If they introduced more combo's with alternative results it may be fun, but right now it's like they force you to use them. The combat arrow system in AOC was fun, until you realized later in that you got finger aches from doing them so much. In the end people got macros or keyboards that performed the macro'ed moves for them. This is the same issue that plagues the combat system in Aion. It's just implemented poorly.
I HATE, I HATE, I HATE @#^&%@#^&%@#^&%# The repeating spell casting speech. The last thing I want is for my character to constantly say the SAME ^%@# word every ^%#$ time I cast a spell. Not only is that annoying as ^%$#@, but it makes me want to kick someone off a cliff. When I was leveling a cleric, I had to actually turn off the sound. Let me explain something to you, I'm an audiophile. Tamotha knows this, Ando knows this, hell even Anoxic knows this. I have very sensitive ears and I like hearing crisp quality music and sound. It usually takes me weeks to fine tune the sound system on a computer. I also buy the most expensive sound card and system possible. Like I said I like having music and sound on in the games I play. The fact that I had to turn off the sound for Aion is a huge sign that they need to work on their damn options panel and remove the &^@#@# speech for spell casting.
AIR COMBAT: Stupid controls, stupid fighting, completely unbalanced. That is all....
RAID AND PVE CONTENT: I can't believe they made the raid bosses sometimes not drop anything at all! Are they totally insane? Why would groups want to work together to take down a raid boss that may take them hours only not to get anything at the end? Did they completely forget to itemize the boss? Where they just plain lazy? (<-- I pick this one) Maybe, they wanted to be douchebags and make people waste their time. I heard that boss fights in this game is nothing more of a joke because either A) The boss fight is programmed to be ludicrous B) The class imbalances make the raid boss boring as hell. I read on some forums that there are bosses that are programmed so insanely that it has multiple moves that kill you in one shot. Why make a boss that incredible hard when it may not drop anything at all? Seriously this game needs to go back into development. I'm very disappointed they didn't put more time into their raid content. The Abyss is nice but once in awhile people do want to raid. The fact that they haven't spend time on this and practically everything else in the game, shows the lack of appreciation for their product.
CRAFTING AND PRIVATE SHOPS: I would say a lot about this subject but I won't. Suffice to say I thought their crafting system was okay. Mind you most crafting in games are supposed to be a time consuming task, but the fact that their crit rates are rare is okay from a market point of view. If everyone could crit as often as they want then there would be no demand on the market. I understand this and that is the whole point of crafting. It's supposed to be something that the player wants to work on and level. You get a sense of accomplishment from leveling up a crafting ability. Now I do have an issue with materials required and the ridiculous amount of time it takes to craft something. Not only was it was done poorly, but it's soooooo painfully obvious they did it to be a time sink. Crafting to go watch a movie is something that is wrong. It should be revised a bit and the timing's lessened. I don't like private shops; plain and simple. I don't like having to go from person to person to look in their inventory for items. When you can easily walk into an area with hundreds of people with private shops, it's just a huge waste of time having to search one by one. I like auction houses! Not only is everything located in one centralized location, but you don't have to waste time looking for the best valued stuff. Private shops will always be nothing but a korean MMO garbage for me. I don't like them and I never will... they are just a huge time-sink in terms of locating something you need. Especially when you just purchased something from a private shop only to find the exact thing cheaper on someone WHOM JUST logged in and setup shop. Auction Houses ftw 
PVP: I've looked at your explanation, reviewed some sites, watched some video's and looked at some pictures. All I can say is that this game not only does NOT have good PVP, but it surely does not have the BEST pvp in the MMO market. People who say otherwise are kidding themselves. The aerial combat sucks, the class balance sucks, the xp loss sucks, and the gankfesting sucks. Many wrongs do not make a right. This game will probably fall under a niche like WAR and AOC. It will die down and just have a few peeps that remain to fill the niche. (Currently the game is losing tons and tons of subscribers as the hype is finally dying down.) I knew this was going to happen, it was only a matter of time. When WOW: Cataclysm comes out, expect AION to face even more subscriber loss. People by nature return to WOW regardless if they want to or not, sometimes for a few weeks and sometimes for a few months, but in the end they return (especially for an expansion).
I think I've gone over the majority of what you have said. These are my opinions and although it doesn't reflect the majority of people; I feel it's pretty darn close.
P.S: "1950's chick"
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