Archive for Rant
01.30.10
Posted in Aion, Rant at 7:48 pm by Fedoldinn
Well, it would seem that our little Aion blog has come to an inevitable end.
We began with great enthusiasm for the game during the closed beta days, when Middea introduced Fedoldinn to the game and we spent much time online during the test periods playing. Come launch day, we had pre-ordered two copies and were excitedly awaiting the servers to come up. Early leveling seemed promising, even if it was a repeat of what we’d seen before, and we spent a lot of time online engrossing ourselves in the Aion universe.
It seems like no surprise that level 25 and the Abyss sparked even more enthusiasm for the game. During this time our little blog here had taken off quite well in its original Wordpress.com hosted incarnation, with many hits per day and several successful articles written that were viewed by many people… many more than we’d initially expected considering we wrote for our own enjoyment and to entertain ourselves, clear our own thoughts, or rant on what was bothering us at the time.
Early in our Aion careers, this was next to nothing. As the game progressed and as time wore on, it seemed we were ranting more than we were enjoying the game. Several attempts were made to improve our overall enjoyment, from merging our original small friendly legion with another to experience more of the PvP aspect of the game, to moving back to our friendly legion to try and rekindle the sense of community that we had experienced before, and finally to moving to a more competitive, high end legion on our server to take fortresses and conquer content. In the end, none of these moves provided what we were looking for.
The grind was rough, but not the end of the world for either of us. The small legion provided a sense of community in many aspects; from people logging on and chatting while accomplishing their goals, to getting to know one another better and also to spending time on Ventrilo chatting casually. The high end guild provided a larger player base, the promise of regularly scheduled PvP nights for fortress raids and a supposedly greater chance at finding those ever elusive groups for conquering content while leveling.
The fact remains that none of this was enough. In the smaller legion we were faced with the constant issue of not having enough players in any level range to successfully run smaller group content, as well as the issue of legion management and recruitment which both take a toll on those responsible for them. The high end guild had many players, but it never seemed to be a friendly enough atmosphere to get people to head back to old content, or jump in and join others looking for groups instead of focusing solely on personal goals in game.
Aion holds a lot of promise as a game, and it has many positive aspects about it that most people overlook. There are many areas in which to group up and conquer content if that is your goal, there are also many opportunities to play alone. The game has a nice mix of PvP and PvE which should satisfy many. The grind is rough, not much is handed away for free, and it takes general effort to reach the level cap. However, without even the remote ability to find groups and play with other people, it hasn’t been what either of us is looking for in an MMO. The LFG channel is almost devoid of action, generally you see a few groups for areas that you are either too high or too low to play in. The experience penalties severely decimate the number of players willing to go back and help out, or those willing to accept help from people who are more than a couple levels above them.
Unfortunately, I’ve turned this into a semi-rant about what I found wrong with the game. A less severe experience penalty may help these issues, but its far from a solution considering there just doesn’t seem to be anyone willing to play the game for the sake of having fun and joining others in their conquests. To that end, our accounts have expired and neither of us has logged on much in the past month. Maybe that will change in the future if subsequent patches improve the game content or we decide to give it another try, but I know for me that chance is slim to none.
To those still playing, take care and enjoy the game. To anyone who’s read this blog or follows our writing on Aion, take care and farewell. Best of luck to you in the future.
- Fedoldinn and Middea
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12.14.09
Posted in Aion, Rant at 8:11 pm by Middea
For being a group oriented game in both PvE and PvP aspects, it seems to be surprisingly difficult to actually find a group already. In the early leveling days, groups were everywhere, but as everyone’s levels have gotten more spread out from 30-50, groups that are pugging seem to be very rare. Most people seem to have a set group they run with, as did I for awhile. A set group is pretty wonderful as I’m sure we’re all aware, you know what to expect from everyone, what folks are capable of, and pulls are a fluid and continuous chain, you trust each other.
But what happens when you get behind in levels to your group due to whatever circumstances and are no longer within 2-3 levels of them and you are abandoned? You are forced to resign to wading through the spam that is the LFG channel in the desperate hopes that someone, somewhere, needs you. Even if not for the instance you need/want. And heaven help you if you want to go to the middle deck of SR – the red headed step child deck that almost no one anywhere wants to touch with a ten foot pole.
Levels 42 and up are a plethora of group quests but not many solo quests, I have literally 27 group quests in my quest log at the moment at 43. Grinding solo is a dangerous activity with all the Elyos gank squads running through Beluslan. So what’s a cleric to do? Suck it up and grind alone, running to new grind spots each time the 4+ Elyos wreck you whilst locking you down? Troll LFG while crafting? I have tried many combos of these basic ways of passing the time in game, and it’s been over a week since I have found a group to run anything at all, from Fortress guard grinding, Steel Rake, Alquima, to anything at all. Heck, I’d even go to Mist Mane again if anyone would take me.
What’s to happen with the alts in the future, or players late to the game… If it’s already this difficult to find a pug group, and grouping is pretty much needed to effectively level at certain levels due to a lack of solo questing options, at least for players like me who refuse to grind for hours on faceless mobs, what’s a solo player to do?
I feel like a panhandler. Instead of beer, I just want exp.
Anyone else having issues finding a group to go anywhere?
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10.30.09
Posted in Aion, Fortress, Rant at 5:27 pm by Middea
Rather than taking over the comments section over at Flying Bishounen on the post about 1.5.1 incoming patch details, going to make a new post.
Fortress sieges at the present moment are definitely zergs. What makes them zergs? Well, if you break it down, a zerg is a large force that overwhelms whatever they are attacking by way of large numbers rather than strategy and/or gear. A zerg does not require skill, just a massive force that cannot be turned away.
Currently in the patch notes:
You now receive contribution decorations as reward for successfully defending a fortress under the control of your Legion.
This is different than live. On live, you receive nothing from defending a fortress from enemy capture. Or, do you? My argument is that you do receive something from defending. Owning a fortress gives all players of that faction access to the dungeon.
This is important to remember because access to the fortresses gives ALL members of the faction that owns it access to the dungeon inside. The fortress dungeons give access to AP without the opposing faction’s interference. You can get medals, icons, seals, crowns, etc from the chests which are worth even more AP upon turn in. More on the fortress amenities can be found on the Powerwiki.
Currently on Lumiel’s Asmodian side, small legions and pugs coordinate with each other and some of the bigger legions in /joinchannel fortress to defend and attack fortresses. We band together to form a zerg and most times we are successful in what we’re attacking/defending/preventing Elyos from gaining.
It is however, notably harder to muster forces to defend fortresses. A few legions that actually capture the fortresses do not appear to even bother showing up to defend their own fortresses at all. Why not? It’s not as profitable for them, they get no medals for defending, so why spend the kinah to keep it out of the opposing factions hands?
Keeping the easy AP from the opposing faction is worth defending in my humble opinion. Not bothering to even show up to support that while you have almost all members on? But showing up en mass to regain it? Even just picking off stragglers or something would help the puggers/smaller legions that are defending it for their chance at medals/icons/easyish AP.
A zerg does require participation and attendance to work. If this part of the patch goes through, I don’t see the pugs/smaller legions working together to defend a fortress for a legion that never bothered to help them get easier AP/exp early on via the fortress dungeons.
I personally wouldn’t want to help a legion that right now likes to win trade the lower abyss fortresses. Yes, you don’t get anything by way of medals for defending at the moment, but you do help your entire level 30+ faction by allowing access to the fortress dungeons.
I don’t know that the patch changes for rewarding the owning faction are necessary but I bet that the rewards will help encourage the owners to show up and help defend.
What are your thoughts on fortresses/ownership?
- Would you help defend for a legion that participates currently in win trading?
- Do you participate in fortress defense?
- Are you part of a larger legion that captures fortresses but doesn’t defend them?
- Do you see the value in owning a fortress and what all it provides in terms of access/options for your entire faction?
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09.30.09
Posted in Aion, Rant at 11:02 am by Fedoldinn
I’m going to try and keep this short, for your sake. However, as much as I’m enjoying Aion at the moment (and I do think it’s a great game), I really despise the NCSoft Launcher.
In my opinion, it is useless overhead we are incurring each time we wish to load our favorite game. You could argue that it does keep your NCSoft games up to date and it is able to repair corrupt game files, but I think these two don’t nearly make up for the shortcomings of this annoying little program. First, most games these days do a check for updates when you launch them or, in the case of MMOs, when you log on to the game servers. Second, although a repair shouldn’t be necessary, it would be easy enough to incorporate this into a standalone program that users can run as needed.
The launcher itself seems to be the cause of many of my issues lately. I can’t count how many times in the last week it has thought that Aion was not up to date (when it was) or that it encountered an error the last time it was run. Both of these have made it necessary to choose to force the game to play without checking for updates or repairing, since I know damn well that nothing is wrong with it.
Aion has crashed on me on occasion, but I don’t find it bothers me as much as the fact that when you log off or get disconnected from the game servers, you end up back at the launcher and have to reload the game in order to log back on. The game takes a considerable amount of time to load, and if it was already loaded why do I need to head back to this annoying little program to reload it and make sure everything is just peachy before I can play again?
I’m happy that NCSoft decided to remove GameGuard from the Aion release (for now anyway, we’ll see about that later on), but I really don’t like their launcher. I don’t own any other NCSoft games*, and I don’t really understand the purpose of this program other than to annoy me each time I want to play Aion. Why should I have to load a program before I can load my game? Especially if it provides no added value to the experience?
* As an aside, I may have once described in great detail how much I disliked Guild Wars and it’s expansions to the developers and NCSoft PR folks at E3 one year.
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09.13.09
Posted in Aion, Legion, Rant, WoW at 8:02 pm by Fedoldinn
Well, to say the least, the excitement for Aion is still here, but it definitely has faded somewhat for me. I’m a bit confused lately regarding how much time I can realistically dedicate to gaming at this point in my life and into the future, as well as what it is that I want out of the gaming experience.
Do I want to play another MMORPG? After World of Warcraft, my answer was initially a definite “yes” with a few stipulations regarding the game. Aion, to say the least, was that game initially. It excited me, it made me want to play another RPG, but more than that, it made me want to experience the online community surrounding such a game once again. I wanted to be a part of another guild, I wanted to help my online friends out as best as I could with my considerably messed up work schedule (I could never join a raiding guild for example, I simply can’t predict when I work and when I don’t) and I wanted to help contribute to the bigger picture, even if it was more of a behind-the-scenes kind of role than I have been used to in the past.
So, the logical question to ask is, what has changed?
Well, after a few months of being out of the MMO scene, I’ve come to realize a few things. First, the past community I was a part of is still around in a relative sense. Some of us hang out in IRC and chat about our lives or random topics daily, which at least means that some of the friendships formed within that community are still active even without the guild being active as it once was. This fact doesn’t have much bearing on joining a new legion in Aion, however, it does mean that I’m still active to an extent in an online community, even without a game behind it to keep us playing together.
The second realization, and a fairly significant factor in my decision to play Aion, is that the time requirements for an MMORPG are extremely large for the most part. After adjusting to my new schedule with very little gaming involved at the moment, I’ve been debating whether or not I will have much time to play each day. Basically, I’ve been counting approximately how many hours I would be able to spend in game daily, and my conclusion is that I won’t be able to dedicate as much time to Aion now as I once did to WoW. This may be for many reasons, but read on for the reasons I’ve come up with so far.
When I played WoW, I probably played too much. At the time, I was used to coming home from work or school, grabbing a meal as fast as possible, and logging into the game in order to help organize our guild to raid. On off nights, I did the same more or less, but I organized smaller groups to raid 10 mans, or helped organize premade PvP groups, or otherwise logged on to run instances, farm, chat, or help out where I could. Basically, what it boils down to is this: when I got home, I was dedicating 100% of my time to the guild and game in one sense or another. I really enjoyed the community I played with, and it would be hard to say that I wouldn’t do it again in retrospect. This is simply the way it was for me. Now, I have other important aspects of my life outside of the game that would prevent me from being this active, and I foresee the next few months being fairly busy as I work through these and plan for the future.
Well, what about casual play then? Although I fully realize I can come and play Aion more casually than I have other games before it, I still realize that even casual play requires a rather significant time investment. It will take all of us a fairly long time to reach the level cap, which means a lot of time spent questing and grinding on the way there. I considered this, and came up with the following realization. One hour a day is not enough to jump into a game like Aion; you simply won’t get too much accomplished in that short of a period of time, and it is almost guaranteed that I will want to continue for a bit longer in order to make some more progress. A minimum of roughly two hours spent to the cause is a bit more ideal, yet factoring two hours a day into my schedule, I’ve realized that some days I will be able to play that much but other days I simply won’t.
The real dilemma here, is that I really do like what I’ve seen so far of Aion. The few closed beta events that I had the opportunity to play in were extremely fun, and I don’t normally enjoy playing any games at all before they’re released. I like to see the final content that’s been tested and balanced; playing beta content that isn’t finalized, is limited in some way, or isn’t balanced usually doesn’t interest me at all. This was not the case for Aion. The beta content made me more interested in the game than I was before. Considering that the betas had level restrictions and I never had the chance to even check out the Abyss or much of the PvP aspect of the game, I’d say that there is a lot to still look forward to.
As I’ve stated previously, the questing and leveling experience in Aion feels like less of a grind than it did in previous role playing games I’ve played. I had fun with the process, and I actually do look forward to spending time doing this again. That in itself may be a good reason to make the purchase even if I don’t have the time to experience much of the end game content. With visually stunning, interesting, and most importantly fun environments to check out, there is a lot to do and look forward to in the leveling process alone in this game. Given a limited amount of play time each week, this process may take longer for me than for others, but at least I know I will enjoy it while I’m doing it. Aside from the quests, I also look forward to grouping up while leveling with others on the server to conquer some of the content, like the elite areas found scattered around the world. We had quite a bit of fun for hours on end in the same small area in the closed beta doing just this.
Of course, there is also the PvE, PvP, and PvPvE aspects of the game to look forward to also. Exploring the Abyss and random world events and encounters with the Elyos (we’ll be Asmodian) should provide for interesting learning opportunities in a new game where the classes and their abilities, strengths and weaknesses aren’t well known to me. Finally, when I do reach the level cap at some point, I know I will have other end game content to check out when I have the time to do so. I’ve always really enjoyed grouping up with other players to conquer content, so dungeons and raids will definitely be of interest to me.
My conclusion about whether Aion is worth my monthly subscription fee at the moment is still entirely up in the air. Casual play still requires a fairly significant time investment, and at that rate I won’t really get to enjoy as much of the game as I would like to. MMORPGs simply aren’t designed to be the type of game you can jump into and play for a short while, and then leave behind for a bit when you get busy and don’t have much time. They’re designed to create epic worlds that will keep you in game for a long periods of time. On the other hand, given my reduced time schedule and slower leveling process, I may be able to actually enjoy some of the content the game’s designers have provided for players instead of simply rushing through it to reach the level cap and focus on the end game as I’ve always done in the past.
I guess the real debate here is whether or not I can play Aion (or any MMORPG for that matter) and enjoy it in a similar manner to other types of games that you can jump in and out at your own leisure, without concerns about in game goals. Examples of these are multiplayer FPS games. I’ve had some fun playing Day of Defeat and Natural Selection again over the past little while, and those are the types of games I can jump into when I have time with a group of friends and play for a bit. Most importantly, I can leave those games behind at times when I get busy and have other things to do quite easily.
What are your thoughts on the topic? Can you play Aion casually? If so, is it worth the monthly subscription fee, as well as the game purchase, to play an MMORPG for a maximum of 10 hours a week? Let me know what you think.
As an aside, although I definitely don’t regret the amount of time I spent playing WoW in the past for many reasons (the friendships I made during this time are important to me, and I know for a fact that at least one of them will definitely last a lifetime), at this point in time that kind of dedication is something I cannot give to a game. I have other priorities that need to be taken care of when I’m off work, and I’d like to spend my time relaxing a bit more and doing other things as well.
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