Gisli
08-19-2009, 12:07 AM
I have now played two CB weekends, and leveled a Cleric up to 17. I have done quite a bit of reading about the game at various forums, as well. Here are my overall impressions.
Brief review: Very promising game, though not for everyone's taste. The only real potential I see for disaster is the possibility of widespread bots/farming (this is by no means a certainty, or even likely -- just a possibility that has not been ruled out despite NCSoft's talking the talk on this issue). On the other hand, there is the possibility (again, not by any means a certainty) that this game will combine challenging PvE with DAOC-quality RvR and a crafting system that you can really sink your teeth into.
Caveats:
* Any game that was done by a company that is even vaguely competent will be "fun" at early levels, and I only played early levels.
* No MMO that I have ever played, even one where I spent a year in Beta, was predictable in how its endgame would actually play out. That's not just me. Nobody seems to be good at predicting endgames before they really get there.
Overall: Especially coming straight from Warhammer (which in my opinion is at the too-easy end of the spectrum in terms of supporting the "casual" player), Aion is far more challenging to play. Not nearly so brutal as EQ, though. (Note that Aion is the direct ideological descendant of the original EQ, an experienced EQ player sees this everywhere.) One (optimistic) way to characterize this game might be: EQ's PvE (bolstered by a DAOC-like or WoW-like quest system) married to DAOC's RvR, with crafting a meld of EQ, WoW, and DAOC crafting.
Classes and Balance: This game has 8 classes. That's it. Every one is a fundamental archetype of fantasy MMOs. Both sides have exactly the same classes. Some people won't like this. Personally, after seven years of playing RvR MMOs where the conversation is dominated by complaints about balance between the sides, I am soooo looking forward to all of that crap not being part of the game. And the nice thing about only having eight classes is that the company cannot afford to let any of them fail. And since there are so few classes, they have the time to spend on making them all good. And since there are relatively few class interactions (and no realm balance issues), its relatively easy to make them all good. I consider the "limited" class choices a welcome tradeoff for the problems of broken classes and bad balance that are the hallmark of DAOC and Warhammer. If there were a sub-par class in Aion, at least it would affect both sides equally. Aion has the same potential for RvR balance disaster that befell Warhammer and WoW, in that there are only two sides. However, Aion has an interesting wrinkle that just might salvage this. There is a third faction, that is all NPC. This third faction is supposed to make life more miserable for the winning side of the moment, which might serve to balance things. We can hope.
Leveling: Despite the clear similarity to EQ in PvE "feel", leveling in Aion is not too grindy if you know what you are doing. At least into the 20's (based in part on my personal experience, and in part from reports of others), you can gain a level in about an hour or two if you are "in the groove." Of course, if you are doing the wrong things, you can easily spend hours and hours essentially getting nowhere. For most people, the key is getting half a group together to do quests, or a full group to do "elites". If you have access to friends, leveling will go quickly and happily. You can solo level, especially if you are a good leveling class, but it will take a bit longer (maybe three or so hours/level in the teens if you are not fouling up a lot). My overall impression is that a reasonably sociable person will have no trouble leveling up in this game. Note that it is easy to overpull when doing PvE in this game! The PvE fights can be quite exciting when you do. :) This is true at all scales, from solo to group, depending on what you are doing.
Moving around: The world is fairly big. You can spend some time getting from one place to another (though nothing near so bad as EQ). There are lots of flight paths and teleporters, though. Player flying looks like it could be a really neat part of the game, not just a silly frill idea. People who are good at this can get a lot out of "gliding" even in "non-flight" areas. Special note: If you are the kind of person who routinely agro's KOS mobs when wandering around in DAOC or Warhammer, your life is going to be especially miserable in Aion. You have to really be on alert when moving cross-country in the PvE zones, or you will pick up a ton of agro. I have no idea whether PvE agro is an issue in the RvR areas or not.
Crafting: Crafting is meaningful in this game. You will be able to make some of the best gear. Not the absolute very best gear, but pretty good gear. Very much like DAOC after spellcrafting, in that sense. Crafting is at least somewhat challenging in this game. Making things requires materials. For any recipe, some of those materials are bought from merchant, and some are found in the environment (like EQ or WoW). So there is very much a materials economy. All players can gather all things (there are two gathering skills, ground-based items, and air-based items). Word to the wise (if you care about such things): Be diligent about keeping your gathering skills up as you progress in levels! Crafting really good items requires getting "crits" so it is a little like DAOC masterpieces. There are six crafting skills. Alchemy makes potions (healing, etc, as you might expect). Cooking makes food/drink that act as buffs. This is modestly significant. Armor crafting and sewing are like armor smithing and tailoring in DAOC -- between them, they make most of the armor. Weaponsmithing makes most weapons. Handycrafting is a catchall, it makes bows, staffs (for chanters), jewelry/accessories (toons have a lot of jewelry/accessory slots), and a few other odds and ends. You can have two of the six skills at max level, and the other four to moderately high level if you so choose.
Economy: Kinah. Its gonna be on your mind. You always want more kinah (that's the coin of the realm in this game). Your guild needs kinah to make the guild stronger, too. Don't be alarmed by the huge numbers that you see being thrown around, though (numbers in the millions). One kinah is like one copper in DAOC or Warhammer. It just doesn't get converted into any bigger denominations, so the numbers quickly get huge. You need Kinah to move around, just like in Warhammer. At low levels, this is intimidating. However, it could well be that at high level it is a meaningless cost, unlike Warhammer where enough zone switches and healer charges can bankrupt people who never want to spend time raising cash.
Guilds: Guilds are limited in the number of toons they can contain. Initially only 30 toons, then 60 toons after (typically) a couple of days. The level for 90 toons can probably be reached in a week or two. Not sure how hard it is to get to the top rank that holds 120 toons. Guild controls are primitive in the 1.0 version used in CB. I don't know if the 1.5 launch version significantly improves on this. For example, there is a single guild leader, and beyond this there are exactly TWO other ranks (which can be assigned permissions as the guild leader chooses). One interesting wrinkle: At level 3, the guild gets to upload an image for its guild emblem.
OK, from here I have to be speculative, since I didn't experience it myself. But I have read a lot.
Dungeons: I understand there are lots of instanced dungeons at higher levels. I don't know much about them. Many are tied in to the RvR forts (see below).
Leveling and PvP: When you hit around 20 or so, you tend to be in zones that the enemy can penetrate with "rifts". But its not a real open PvP area, and there are constraints on ganking of lowbies. Once you get to about 25-30, you then are leveling in the Abyss. This is going to be a lot like if you had to do all of your leveling in the DAOC frontier. Or like leveling on a WoW PvP server. Personally, I did a lot of leveling in the DAOC frontier, and I did level on a WoW PvP server, and none of that bothered me a lot. Others won't like it. Once again, it pays to have friends. This is a MMO after all, which in my opinion means that social skills should be rewarded.
Massive RvR: For many of us, this is the ultimate question. How is the RvR? Are there massive battles? By all accounts, YES! There are a certain number of forts to fight over, and a lot of incentive to take/own them. What's more, those forts are not always available for attack. I don't know much details, but there are public announcements when a fort comes open for assault. I think that tends to be a mechanic that works to draw both attackers and defenders to the fort. So there are often massive battles. And one of the truly good features of this game is that even massive battles are LAG FREE!! [* Note: A significant minority of people are encountering horrible lag problems in the CBs, caused by some sort of issue with the path between the player's computer and NCSoft's server. If you are one of those unfortunates, then all bets are off. There may be workarounds, though. And hopefully it will get resolved before launch. *]
Small-scale RvR: But what if you like 1v1 or 6v6 RvR? I don't know for sure. And I've not read a lot about this. But I think there are good prospects here. The abyss is pretty big, so unlike the RvR lakes of Warhammer, there is room to roam around. There is chance to gank PvE'ers, and to counter-gank the gankers (much like DAOC frontiers). And there are always going to be people moving to the fortresses that can be blocked off. So -- pure speculation on my part -- I am hopeful this will work out well for the small scale fans.
Abyss Points: Like DAOC and Warhammer, one gains points for kills of enemies and various other "RvR-related" activities. These are called Abyss Points (APs) in Aion. You gain Abyss points when you kill enemies, take forts, and also you gain some for killing the 3rd faction of NPCs. So you could say that you get some APs for PvE (within the RvR zone). One special feature of Aion is that you lose APs when you die in the Abyss. What you get for killing an enemy depends on the AP level of the enemy (modified by your relative AP level), and what you lose depends on your AP level. There is a lot of talk about stalling out on AP gain, net losses, etc. But it looks to me like in fact the typical person who groups/zergs around, and is net neutral on kills to deaths (factoring in group size, zerg size, etc) in the usual way, will certainly make a net profit of APs. I don't think the AP-loss death mechanic will really harm the typical player on average, other than to make people not want to be suicidal.
AP rewards: For most people most of the time, what you get from APs is a different mechanic from DAOC/Warhammer where your RPs define your RvR Rank, and from that define your RvR bonus abilities/stats. Instead, in Aion, your APs are a form of currency with which you can buy equipment. Yes, your APs also define a "realm rank". But when/if you spend your APs to buy top-end gear, your rank disappears with your APs. However, your rank does not itself confer any abilities, it is merely a status symbol. So people will tend to cycle through ranks. EXCEPT... there is a second mechanic in play that only affects people at the very high end of the AP scale. On each server, there is a fixed number of people who qualify for the highest ranks. There is a minimum number of APs to qualify, and then the fixed number of people with the highest APs get the rank. The lowest such rank has a maximum of 1000 people on the server, up to the top rank which is the ONE person with the highest APs. Having one of these top-end ranks gives you extraordinary abilities. For something like 10 minutes, on something like a one-hour cooldown timer, you can effectively become god like. People at these ranks will, when the ability is on, solo whole groups or even whole warbands. But don't feel too envious of them. People at that rank are getting almost nothing for killing most enemy players, and losing huge amounts of APs if they die. And they are expending APs just to proc the god-like power, so they have to kill several groups just to make up for the proc cost. It might lend a lot of spice to the game. Of course, such a person will cycle back to low rank if they choose to buy gear with their APs, like everyone else.
Mods and Macros: This game does not support any sort of modding or 3rd-party addon. In fact, NCSoft goes out of its way to control the possibility of this. Perhaps too far, with GameGuard. This tends to restrict what can be changed about the UI (very different from WoW, DAOC, and Warhammer). However, there is a rich in-game macro system. I don't know much about how that works, but there is already a cottage industry of people posting useful macros on the websites.
Farmers and Botters: This is the big fear that many have, since the game is made by the makers of Lineage/Lineage 2, which has a bad reputation. I find that some games are more susceptible to abuse than others due to their design. Here are some observations about Aion.
* I don't know if there are bottleneck NPCs that can be controlled by farmers. Like, say, artifact NPCs in DAOC. I didn't encounter any, but I didn't get to high enough level for it to matter.
* In the CB version (the 1.0 version of the game), there is a clear potential for bot farming of materials. One could park a bot at a materials static spawn point, and write a macro to periodically pick the material. A live player could easily come along and mess that up, of course. But its still a potential problem. It would be nice if they have fixed it in later versions (making the spawn points move around would pretty much take care of it). I have no idea if they did.
* There are buffer classes. And the buffs are timered with no range. An obvious opportunity for buffbots. But then, a buffer can easily buff lots of people. So it might well develop like the EQ community where you ask for (or pay for) buffs as you travel around and encounter people.
* Since kinah is a pervasive issue for players, kinah sellers (for real-life cash) are likely to be a fact of life. They certainly are in Asia. But then, they are a fact of life in Warhammer (even though cash is fairly meaningless there) and WoW. I think that this issue is the single greatest threat for ruining the game.
I will add more to this as I think of it.
Brief review: Very promising game, though not for everyone's taste. The only real potential I see for disaster is the possibility of widespread bots/farming (this is by no means a certainty, or even likely -- just a possibility that has not been ruled out despite NCSoft's talking the talk on this issue). On the other hand, there is the possibility (again, not by any means a certainty) that this game will combine challenging PvE with DAOC-quality RvR and a crafting system that you can really sink your teeth into.
Caveats:
* Any game that was done by a company that is even vaguely competent will be "fun" at early levels, and I only played early levels.
* No MMO that I have ever played, even one where I spent a year in Beta, was predictable in how its endgame would actually play out. That's not just me. Nobody seems to be good at predicting endgames before they really get there.
Overall: Especially coming straight from Warhammer (which in my opinion is at the too-easy end of the spectrum in terms of supporting the "casual" player), Aion is far more challenging to play. Not nearly so brutal as EQ, though. (Note that Aion is the direct ideological descendant of the original EQ, an experienced EQ player sees this everywhere.) One (optimistic) way to characterize this game might be: EQ's PvE (bolstered by a DAOC-like or WoW-like quest system) married to DAOC's RvR, with crafting a meld of EQ, WoW, and DAOC crafting.
Classes and Balance: This game has 8 classes. That's it. Every one is a fundamental archetype of fantasy MMOs. Both sides have exactly the same classes. Some people won't like this. Personally, after seven years of playing RvR MMOs where the conversation is dominated by complaints about balance between the sides, I am soooo looking forward to all of that crap not being part of the game. And the nice thing about only having eight classes is that the company cannot afford to let any of them fail. And since there are so few classes, they have the time to spend on making them all good. And since there are relatively few class interactions (and no realm balance issues), its relatively easy to make them all good. I consider the "limited" class choices a welcome tradeoff for the problems of broken classes and bad balance that are the hallmark of DAOC and Warhammer. If there were a sub-par class in Aion, at least it would affect both sides equally. Aion has the same potential for RvR balance disaster that befell Warhammer and WoW, in that there are only two sides. However, Aion has an interesting wrinkle that just might salvage this. There is a third faction, that is all NPC. This third faction is supposed to make life more miserable for the winning side of the moment, which might serve to balance things. We can hope.
Leveling: Despite the clear similarity to EQ in PvE "feel", leveling in Aion is not too grindy if you know what you are doing. At least into the 20's (based in part on my personal experience, and in part from reports of others), you can gain a level in about an hour or two if you are "in the groove." Of course, if you are doing the wrong things, you can easily spend hours and hours essentially getting nowhere. For most people, the key is getting half a group together to do quests, or a full group to do "elites". If you have access to friends, leveling will go quickly and happily. You can solo level, especially if you are a good leveling class, but it will take a bit longer (maybe three or so hours/level in the teens if you are not fouling up a lot). My overall impression is that a reasonably sociable person will have no trouble leveling up in this game. Note that it is easy to overpull when doing PvE in this game! The PvE fights can be quite exciting when you do. :) This is true at all scales, from solo to group, depending on what you are doing.
Moving around: The world is fairly big. You can spend some time getting from one place to another (though nothing near so bad as EQ). There are lots of flight paths and teleporters, though. Player flying looks like it could be a really neat part of the game, not just a silly frill idea. People who are good at this can get a lot out of "gliding" even in "non-flight" areas. Special note: If you are the kind of person who routinely agro's KOS mobs when wandering around in DAOC or Warhammer, your life is going to be especially miserable in Aion. You have to really be on alert when moving cross-country in the PvE zones, or you will pick up a ton of agro. I have no idea whether PvE agro is an issue in the RvR areas or not.
Crafting: Crafting is meaningful in this game. You will be able to make some of the best gear. Not the absolute very best gear, but pretty good gear. Very much like DAOC after spellcrafting, in that sense. Crafting is at least somewhat challenging in this game. Making things requires materials. For any recipe, some of those materials are bought from merchant, and some are found in the environment (like EQ or WoW). So there is very much a materials economy. All players can gather all things (there are two gathering skills, ground-based items, and air-based items). Word to the wise (if you care about such things): Be diligent about keeping your gathering skills up as you progress in levels! Crafting really good items requires getting "crits" so it is a little like DAOC masterpieces. There are six crafting skills. Alchemy makes potions (healing, etc, as you might expect). Cooking makes food/drink that act as buffs. This is modestly significant. Armor crafting and sewing are like armor smithing and tailoring in DAOC -- between them, they make most of the armor. Weaponsmithing makes most weapons. Handycrafting is a catchall, it makes bows, staffs (for chanters), jewelry/accessories (toons have a lot of jewelry/accessory slots), and a few other odds and ends. You can have two of the six skills at max level, and the other four to moderately high level if you so choose.
Economy: Kinah. Its gonna be on your mind. You always want more kinah (that's the coin of the realm in this game). Your guild needs kinah to make the guild stronger, too. Don't be alarmed by the huge numbers that you see being thrown around, though (numbers in the millions). One kinah is like one copper in DAOC or Warhammer. It just doesn't get converted into any bigger denominations, so the numbers quickly get huge. You need Kinah to move around, just like in Warhammer. At low levels, this is intimidating. However, it could well be that at high level it is a meaningless cost, unlike Warhammer where enough zone switches and healer charges can bankrupt people who never want to spend time raising cash.
Guilds: Guilds are limited in the number of toons they can contain. Initially only 30 toons, then 60 toons after (typically) a couple of days. The level for 90 toons can probably be reached in a week or two. Not sure how hard it is to get to the top rank that holds 120 toons. Guild controls are primitive in the 1.0 version used in CB. I don't know if the 1.5 launch version significantly improves on this. For example, there is a single guild leader, and beyond this there are exactly TWO other ranks (which can be assigned permissions as the guild leader chooses). One interesting wrinkle: At level 3, the guild gets to upload an image for its guild emblem.
OK, from here I have to be speculative, since I didn't experience it myself. But I have read a lot.
Dungeons: I understand there are lots of instanced dungeons at higher levels. I don't know much about them. Many are tied in to the RvR forts (see below).
Leveling and PvP: When you hit around 20 or so, you tend to be in zones that the enemy can penetrate with "rifts". But its not a real open PvP area, and there are constraints on ganking of lowbies. Once you get to about 25-30, you then are leveling in the Abyss. This is going to be a lot like if you had to do all of your leveling in the DAOC frontier. Or like leveling on a WoW PvP server. Personally, I did a lot of leveling in the DAOC frontier, and I did level on a WoW PvP server, and none of that bothered me a lot. Others won't like it. Once again, it pays to have friends. This is a MMO after all, which in my opinion means that social skills should be rewarded.
Massive RvR: For many of us, this is the ultimate question. How is the RvR? Are there massive battles? By all accounts, YES! There are a certain number of forts to fight over, and a lot of incentive to take/own them. What's more, those forts are not always available for attack. I don't know much details, but there are public announcements when a fort comes open for assault. I think that tends to be a mechanic that works to draw both attackers and defenders to the fort. So there are often massive battles. And one of the truly good features of this game is that even massive battles are LAG FREE!! [* Note: A significant minority of people are encountering horrible lag problems in the CBs, caused by some sort of issue with the path between the player's computer and NCSoft's server. If you are one of those unfortunates, then all bets are off. There may be workarounds, though. And hopefully it will get resolved before launch. *]
Small-scale RvR: But what if you like 1v1 or 6v6 RvR? I don't know for sure. And I've not read a lot about this. But I think there are good prospects here. The abyss is pretty big, so unlike the RvR lakes of Warhammer, there is room to roam around. There is chance to gank PvE'ers, and to counter-gank the gankers (much like DAOC frontiers). And there are always going to be people moving to the fortresses that can be blocked off. So -- pure speculation on my part -- I am hopeful this will work out well for the small scale fans.
Abyss Points: Like DAOC and Warhammer, one gains points for kills of enemies and various other "RvR-related" activities. These are called Abyss Points (APs) in Aion. You gain Abyss points when you kill enemies, take forts, and also you gain some for killing the 3rd faction of NPCs. So you could say that you get some APs for PvE (within the RvR zone). One special feature of Aion is that you lose APs when you die in the Abyss. What you get for killing an enemy depends on the AP level of the enemy (modified by your relative AP level), and what you lose depends on your AP level. There is a lot of talk about stalling out on AP gain, net losses, etc. But it looks to me like in fact the typical person who groups/zergs around, and is net neutral on kills to deaths (factoring in group size, zerg size, etc) in the usual way, will certainly make a net profit of APs. I don't think the AP-loss death mechanic will really harm the typical player on average, other than to make people not want to be suicidal.
AP rewards: For most people most of the time, what you get from APs is a different mechanic from DAOC/Warhammer where your RPs define your RvR Rank, and from that define your RvR bonus abilities/stats. Instead, in Aion, your APs are a form of currency with which you can buy equipment. Yes, your APs also define a "realm rank". But when/if you spend your APs to buy top-end gear, your rank disappears with your APs. However, your rank does not itself confer any abilities, it is merely a status symbol. So people will tend to cycle through ranks. EXCEPT... there is a second mechanic in play that only affects people at the very high end of the AP scale. On each server, there is a fixed number of people who qualify for the highest ranks. There is a minimum number of APs to qualify, and then the fixed number of people with the highest APs get the rank. The lowest such rank has a maximum of 1000 people on the server, up to the top rank which is the ONE person with the highest APs. Having one of these top-end ranks gives you extraordinary abilities. For something like 10 minutes, on something like a one-hour cooldown timer, you can effectively become god like. People at these ranks will, when the ability is on, solo whole groups or even whole warbands. But don't feel too envious of them. People at that rank are getting almost nothing for killing most enemy players, and losing huge amounts of APs if they die. And they are expending APs just to proc the god-like power, so they have to kill several groups just to make up for the proc cost. It might lend a lot of spice to the game. Of course, such a person will cycle back to low rank if they choose to buy gear with their APs, like everyone else.
Mods and Macros: This game does not support any sort of modding or 3rd-party addon. In fact, NCSoft goes out of its way to control the possibility of this. Perhaps too far, with GameGuard. This tends to restrict what can be changed about the UI (very different from WoW, DAOC, and Warhammer). However, there is a rich in-game macro system. I don't know much about how that works, but there is already a cottage industry of people posting useful macros on the websites.
Farmers and Botters: This is the big fear that many have, since the game is made by the makers of Lineage/Lineage 2, which has a bad reputation. I find that some games are more susceptible to abuse than others due to their design. Here are some observations about Aion.
* I don't know if there are bottleneck NPCs that can be controlled by farmers. Like, say, artifact NPCs in DAOC. I didn't encounter any, but I didn't get to high enough level for it to matter.
* In the CB version (the 1.0 version of the game), there is a clear potential for bot farming of materials. One could park a bot at a materials static spawn point, and write a macro to periodically pick the material. A live player could easily come along and mess that up, of course. But its still a potential problem. It would be nice if they have fixed it in later versions (making the spawn points move around would pretty much take care of it). I have no idea if they did.
* There are buffer classes. And the buffs are timered with no range. An obvious opportunity for buffbots. But then, a buffer can easily buff lots of people. So it might well develop like the EQ community where you ask for (or pay for) buffs as you travel around and encounter people.
* Since kinah is a pervasive issue for players, kinah sellers (for real-life cash) are likely to be a fact of life. They certainly are in Asia. But then, they are a fact of life in Warhammer (even though cash is fairly meaningless there) and WoW. I think that this issue is the single greatest threat for ruining the game.
I will add more to this as I think of it.