So Opinions?

[Wolvan]

So people...whats the verdict so far?

I obviously haven't been in War for a while, been back playing WoW a little bitg (after account recovery...my accounts got hacked after I had closed them) and playing alot of COD4-MW.

DDO is going online free to pay. Only ever tried that in beta way back when. Going to give it a shot for a bit (since I've started actually playing D&D again in RL!)

I know some people from WoW and DAOC that haven't really been part of Raven's who plan on trying Aion.

Is it really worth it to come over and try? Or should I hold out and see how things go a few months after release?

Wolvan

[Trul]

I dont think I can have an opinion until i PvP/RvR. In order to do that you have to hit around lvl 20 I think. Right now we have a few folks who are 15, 16, 17, and 18, but that is the highest I have seen. Pretty good for a day and a half I guess...

I think RvR will be the deciding factor in this game. Nothing seems broken or too overpowered quite yet. The abilities of the characters, while close to classes in other games, play pretty uniquely. I have only played a templar (tank) and a spiritmaster (pet/caster), so I do not have an opinion on rogues and healers.

Flying is awesome! Its a blast to bypass mobs by flying over them. Or climbing up a hill only to jump off and glide around the area. I think flight will definitely add something new and exciting to MMO-style PvP, sorta like the air force added some excitement to real life war. Swooping in from above dropping down and killing things makes me feel like a super hero.

The guild permissions are buggy as hell though. Gisli has had a hell of a time giving folks access to the guild vault.

[Gisli]

I think that Aion has a lot of potential. But I've only played to about L17 so far. Hope to get into some PvP before the end of open beta.

The PvE is far more challenging than Warhammer or DAOC. That aspect reminds me a lot of the good aspects of EQ in how the fights feel. But so far none of the bad parts of EQ -- leveling hasn't been bad so far, and its reported to get worse at higher levels, but never what I consider really bad.

The crafting system is pretty good, and important to the game.

The jury is out on PvP and RvR... but the reports that we've gotten make it sound good. It might well be more like DAOC than Warhammer. But we don't know for sure.

The one real concern is that it might be heavily affected by gold and loot farmers. But that concern is mainly inherited from other NCSoft games, and the Chinese servers that are run by another company that caters to loot farming. NCSoft claims that this is a major concern for them in the western market. Only time can tell on this.

As for the guild permissions: They are not buggy. They are just unbelievably and embarrassingly limited. I don't understand why.

[Vasan]

As for the guild permissions: They are not buggy. They are just unbelievably and embarrassingly limited. I don't understand why.

My quess is Aion has limited support and development time, as do all online games. However while Warhammer spend way too much time on fringe items such as guild depth, Aion has thrown it's support into class/rvr balance and meaningful content. So bare bones guild system.

That said the game does need better guild structures and, of course, rvr communication tools. But I wouldn't want that at the expense of class/rvr balance and meaningful content! And it always seems as some upgrade comes at the expense of something else.

Yeah the combat is great, like EQ fighting, but fun and with a meaningful yet not overwhelming challenge. Well for most classes, I found the SM to be a bit too powerful in solo play. Let's hope they open beta to more people, if you play it for like a half hour you will know if you will like it or not.

Oh, and I really like the auto loot feature. No more walking and clicking for me!

[Llyweln]

Auto loot? wheres that Vasan? :D
And honestly, from healing perspective.......it sucks. Targeting is horrible, wheres my defensive target! One good thing Wh did was the arrow system.....finding people right now isnt as clear as Ive been spoiled by.

[Gisli]

Llyweln -- I think Aion has good tools to help healers find their target. Once you have someone targeted (easy in group, of course), if you cast, your toon runs towards the target if they are not in range. Much better than arrows, I think. And click targetting can't possibly be worse than Warhammer! I too miss the defensive target. But we have target-of-target. I've not really explored this yet, but I know there are macros posted to help you make good use of ToT.

[Gisli]

Vasan -- Aion legions have 3 levels: Guild leader (one only), centurions, and legionaries. Centurions can be given various abilities, such as access to the legion vault. Legionaries can't even get that!! There is a box in the UI where I should be able to give legionaries access to the vault, but I can't click on it!! I don't think this is a bug since there are other abilities that I am able to give legionaries, and the color is different for those boxes. So I think it is "working as intended". I am just hoping that we get the ability to change those settings when the guild gets to rank 3 (we are rank 2 now, and that didn't give us any new guild controls).

Warhammer was downright silly in the excessive level of effort they went to put a GUI onto functionality that was a step backward from DAOC. That is, the GUI for Warhammer was prettier, but the functionality the GUI was covering over was weaker than DAOC. In contrast, Aion has almost no functionality in its guild controls, and its guild control interface isn't so great either. Honestly, it wouldn't take a competent programmer long at all to give more ranks and more control over setting their permissions. Given how much polish that the vast majority of Aion has, I can only conclude that it is somehow cultural that they don't consider it important to have good controls for legion ranks.

[Erishum]

So we have a Guild Leader Rank, Guild member rank then a guild trainee rank with the permissions accordingly?

[Vasan]

Auto loot? wheres that Vasan? :D
And honestly, from healing perspective.......it sucks. Targeting is horrible, wheres my defensive target! One good thing Wh did was the arrow system.....finding people right now isnt as clear as Ive been spoiled by.

Pickup loot, starts off on four on the task bar.

Walks you over to the dead mob, opens the loot tab, places loot in your inventory, closes loot tab.

And yes it seems the game might me suited more for cleric healing, and not rapid chanter back and forth melee/healing. But we will see.

We really cannot know how complex or difficult the guild code is, or if the person who worked on it is still there. While I agree they should have put a little more in guild during development (prehaps they ran out of time?) it's hard to tell if it's a quick fix they are ignoring, or a big deal that might require a over haul.

Unrelated, I am still amused the warhammer people tooks months and months to do such very simple adjustments, like across the board ae nurfs. Really wonder what they were spending their time on. Here on Aion it's pretty clear, they spent (and are spending) time on class balance, same-class diversity, and playable content.

[Jealousy]

As for healing and DPS'ing at the same time as a cleric, you have to make a macro that switches your target to the target's target, casts your heal, then switches back. As for healing the rest of the group, it's back to the "good old/bad days" of clicking on their frame or hitting F2-F6 and hitting your heal hotkey.

[Llyweln]

http://www.aionarmory.com/guide.aspx?id=13
cleric macros i found :D havent tested yet though.
And honestly Ive not grouped much lol.

[Fhuul]

Auto loot? wheres that Vasan? :D
And honestly, from healing perspective.......it sucks. Targeting is horrible, wheres my defensive target! One good thing Wh did was the arrow system.....finding people right now isnt as clear as Ive been spoiled by.

You can use the "Brand" feature to put nifty icons over folks to keep better track of them in the fray, and setup a hotkey to target whoever/whatever has that "brand". Still not as good as WAR in terms of defensive/offensive targeting, but I'm slowly getting used to it.

[Vasan]

You can use the "Brand" feature to put nifty icons over folks to keep better track of them in the fray, and setup a hotkey to target whoever/whatever has that "brand". Still not as good as WAR in terms of defensive/offensive targeting, but I'm slowly getting used to it.

Brand system sounds great, much like L, haven't spent alot of time grouping and using the various macro stuffs.

You know certain people need tons of healing, they need to be branded!

[Warseth]

I am certainly enjoying the very polished feel of the game (network excluded). I like the model details of our avatars. I like the city layout for our faction. I like the environment modeling and textures. Combat poses and mechanics are cool. It is for me a little of Lineage 2 +Vanguard+Eq2 .... I have no complaints. Minus how rough low level is. I am used to more of a forgiving low level experience...nope...Not here... OFF TO THE WOLVES YOU RAVENDOGS.... So yah getting torn up and being very agro cautious is something you need to keep in mind soon as you reach a red dot area on radar (red dot=agro mobs). It's too early to judge. Far too soon. So far the road looks fun....so I am looking forward to digging in on launch.

[Fhuul]

Brand system sounds great, much like L, haven't spent alot of time grouping and using the various macro stuffs.

You know certain people need tons of healing, they need to be branded!

It's like the old raid icons from WoW, or the addons you could use in WAR.

Put a Shield over the tank, an arrow over the main assist, a skull over the current "kill" target, a Zzz over the target you want slept, so on and so on. Lots of opportunity to visually organize things for your groups, without having to rely on third party addons like "calling" or "groupicons".

[Vasan]

I am having lots of flashbacks to people hitting mezed mobs over and over again right now.

[Fhuul]

Xusia on vent:

"Who. Hit. The. Sheep?"

[Trul]

Xusia = Stalin

[Llyweln]

Theres a hotkey for it already made.....I know cause I changed the key to something else :D (targets target one)
Double check the hotkey setup thats there.

Had a little more luck today......when I stopped trying to dps stuff, and just healed ;)

[Vasan]

Had a little more luck today......when I stopped trying to dps stuff, and just healed ;)


Hence why I worry about chanters, if you don't dps and heal, you kinda are missing the point with that class due to their crappy heals and non stacking regens. If that's hard due to lack of defensive target, than mrgh!

[Fhuul]

L2P!

/flee!

[aishrod]

Had a few groups so far, hit level 20 myself last night- Guild rank 2.

So you have the Guild leader rank, Guild officer ( they have invite permissions), and guild member rank.... thats it. I did hear they are working on adding more for guilds though in one of their interviews, much like guild housing.

As for healing/targetting. This game does have target of target, and you can click back and forth. It also has an amazing macro system, you can make a macro to target and heal anyone in the party and then target your mob again. I too however miss the defensive/offensive that started in VG.

So far I have yet to run outa quests, I have about 15 of them in my journal all 19+ and I even dropped about 5-6 quests and didn't do all of the group quests.

Spent about 3 hours yesterday "ruling" the arena with 2 other guild members... we had other guildies and randoms going against us, it was a blast. Also did some PVP (not much) through one of the quests that ports you to the elyos area and had some fun there but seeing as how we were all 18-20 it was kinda hard to do much so we ended up leaving after about 30 mins heh.

All in all I have had a lot of fun in the game thus far.

[Drakhon]

Based on my (admittedly limited) experience, NCSoft games tend to have very limited guild controls. My hypothesis is that it simply is not a major concern for Asian players but I haven't played any non-NCSoft Asian MMOs, so I don't have any confirmation (at least to the extent that such evidence would offer) on this. Perhaps others with more experience can support/debunk my hypothesis.

Given the greater focus on the western market for Aion, this is something we could possibly get improved over time by providing our feedback.

I'm saddened that they removed the pile-of-shit-with-colorful-bits Brand in this version.

Also, I have decided I need to bring back the LOOT THE HOUND!! macro.

[Rayhort]

It took years to get any sort of decent guild system in Lineage and that game was all about guilds so I would expect it to be a while for us to get them in Aion. I've never understood why devs don't look at what they had to do in their old games but they never do. They always end up having to figure it out all over again.

As for other Asian MMOs most barley have guilds let alone any sort of permission system. Most guilds over there are made up of people who physically play together (like in the same room) so things like guild bank permissions or invite permissions really don't matter. If anyone is messing with guild stuff you can just go slap them.


Also, I have decided I need to bring back the LOOT THE HOUND!! macro.

Agreed, apparently it isn't just devs.

[Llyweln]

And its not so much l2p Daf :P
This game doesnt have the automatic ingame controls that most are used too. Its just relearning a new ui that isnt very customizable.

Does anyone know if the ui' will be customizable on release? I noticed in the options ui part it shows choice tween aion ui and aion ui atm. Maybe later it will let us customize down the road.

[Gisli]

I think that what we see right now is what they plan to launch with (aside from bug fixes). I'd be pretty worried if they devoted resources right now to anything other than bug fixes and yelling at ISPs to fix their connections. Not that there is a lot of bugs that need fixing, but there sure is a lot of yelling that they need to do. :)

[Isak]

They do have the two hud options, if you don't like the default with the giant portrait and map at the bottom, they have something a little more minimal with the hud top option. That should give you a more WoW/WAR UI look.

[Drakhon]

No customization beyond what you see now for launch. They haven't ruled out addons as a future possibility, though.

[Warseth]

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/fileinfo.php?id=10745 im unable to read it yet due to net blockage....is this some details on aion Ui?

[Isak]

Nope, just a WoW interface heavily based on the Aion UI.

[Draknar]

Having a good enough time with it right now that I think I'll probably end up buying it. Now I just need to decide gladiator or assassin :confused: