Aion - The Tower of Eternity

[thenix]

Originally Posted by Inconsiderable

SM is fun and easy to level.

Thanks for answering my question. I think I've settled on playing an SM to start out. Any other tips you can give a newbie to the game, or is this game your generic "kill things, level up, get gold, get loot" game, with a dash of pvp?

[possible]

Originally Posted by Hardcore

Anyone else have trouble finding rank 8s to kill?

Seems like there are less Rank 8s than Rank 7s. If someone is going to move down in rank, they most likely will move past Rank 8 pretty fast. It's either they are Rank 9 and just starting in the Abyss or Rank 7 or lower because Rank 8 lasts a whole 1 hour maybe.

I had 78 kills yesterday and only one was a Rank 8.

PS: Fire Temple is HUGE.

If you kill anything above rank 8, you still get the credit for it. I don't know how you're having trouble on rank 8's. Rank 4 is when we couldn't find anyone, still at 8/10 right now.

[Skrigg]

Originally Posted by possible

If you kill anything above rank 8, you still get the credit for it. I don't know how you're having trouble on rank 8's. Rank 4 is when we couldn't find anyone, still at 8/10 right now.

Im on rank 3's now, funny thing was I actually killed one on my way to turn in the rank 4 quest, only rank 3 I've seen personally. Bad part is the reward for rank 3's is just 3 self rez crystals.

[Vandyn]

I guess what I'm curious about is with the way the end game is, does anyone that's currently playing see themselves playing this long term? It sounds like one of those types of games that you enjoy the hell out of for 3 months and then you just burn out at the end.

[Talos]

Possibly, but hell, it's been years since I've played any mmo besides WoW for more than 2 weeks, let alone 3 months. I'll take what I can get.

[Rica86]

Had my first run in with trying out a legion last night. Lasted all of 20 minutes >.> I've never been huge on accepting random invites from tells, but the recruiter seemed decent from the convo I had with him, so I figured what the hell. I join and the chat is full of WoW bashing (not that I really care, but the bashing is just as annoying as the cock sucking if you do it all the time). I then ask what games most people were playing before this then, and apparently the GL came from WC3 and went on like a 10 min spat about how he wished that he could control full raids in MMO's, because then he'd totally own like it was WC3 heroes because he was "the uber with awesome apm".

Sigh... I liked havin a cloak too. Do you need more than one person to start a legion here? I might just make a joke one until I feel like really looking for one. Though if anyone on Azphel/Asmo is in a decent leveling/company guild, I'd be more than willing to join up as long as chat isn't full of morons.

[Geaux]

people are starting to point out the biggest flaw i see in AION. the pacing 1-18/20 is fine, but once you get to 21-22 it really feels like its slowing down. you push to 25 b/c you hear about the PVP but what happens in 2-3 months when there are hundreds of bored 50's roaming the Abyss and your lvl 25 is useless? tell people to push to 40?

all PVP games eat at their own populations but will AION be able to replace it with new blood when they will be expected to grind to the 40's before the "fun"?

[Xantium]

After 2-3 months in the abyss you won't be lvl 25

[AladainAF]

Originally Posted by Geaux

people are starting to point out the biggest flaw i see in AION. the pacing 1-18/20 is fine, but once you get to 21-22 it really feels like its slowing down. you push to 25 b/c you hear about the PVP but what happens in 2-3 months when there are hundreds of bored 50's roaming the Abyss and your lvl 25 is useless? tell people to push to 40?

all PVP games eat at their own populations but will AION be able to replace it with new blood when they will be expected to grind to the 40's before the "fun"?

I don't think thats a flaw at all. I think its glorious.

Weed out people who want insta-gratification and leave those who really want to hammer out the game.

Sure, you'll end up with a smaller playerbase, but it will be much more enjoyable.

[possible]

There's also the option of going further in Morheim/Beluslan and just skipping the Abyss if you're too terrible.

[Nino]

Got to level 13 and I can't find many redeeming things this game has to offer. Maybe there is more later, but I do not have the patience to sit through the bad writing and boring game play. To me, this game feels like a step back in advancing the genre. With a decent sized budget, I was disappointed with the lack of attention given to sound. There is no randomization of attack and impact sounds, and the music generally does not support the visuals. Perhaps I'm just getting old, but this game is not for me.

[Inconsiderable]

Originally Posted by Nino

Got to level 13 and I can't find many redeeming things this game has to offer. Maybe there is more later, but I do not have the patience to sit through the bad writing and boring game play. To me, this game feels like a step back in advancing the genre. With a decent sized budget, I was disappointed with the lack of attention given to sound. There is no randomization of attack and impact sounds, and the music generally does not support the visuals. Perhaps I'm just getting old, but this game is not for me.

Levels 1-20 are tutorial. Thats why it takes you a day or two to get past it. At 20 the game really starts with your first spy mission and rifts

Originally Posted by Drajakur

On the one hand, Aion epitomizes what I think is basically wrong with MMOs nowadays.

I never understood that part either. Why do I start in a cyberpunk game and have to kill rats with a knife for 10 hours so I can buy and use a gun to shoot mutants? Why would anyone think this newbie stage is fun?!
In Aion I think its okay, you are not gimped or anything.. you simply learn the game before it really starts.

Originally Posted by Geaux

people are starting to point out the biggest flaw i see in AION. the pacing 1-18/20 is fine, but once you get to 21-22 it really feels like its slowing down. you push to 25 b/c you hear about the PVP but what happens in 2-3 months when there are hundreds of bored 50's roaming the Abyss and your lvl 25 is useless? tell people to push to 40?

all PVP games eat at their own populations but will AION be able to replace it with new blood when they will be expected to grind to the 40's before the "fun"?

Actually 20-30 is also fine. Hell, even up to 40 it is fine. The real pain are the last levels and the lack of quest-xp. Means there are quests... but too few with not enough xp. Grinding is more efficient than most quests. If there would be enough quests to keep you busy it wouldnt be a problem. Personally I'd say DOUBLE all quest experience and work on doubling the quests. Or at least make gathering skill increase faster so you can do all quests instead of half of them.
Btw, I did grind 360 Golden Lephra Insignias, which translates into 21.600 two and four star non-elite mobs killed for some trade-drops-vs-items quests. The items were awesome and I had no other quests left. TWENTY-ONE-THOUSAND mobs. Thats one fucking hell of a grind. I spend days looking at the same canyon walls. Thats fucking retarded.

Originally Posted by Senen

It depends on your focus I say Hp's all the way I play a cleric myself. I did full magic boost during beta and the kill speed diffrence is a wash. The les I have to heal myself the longer I'm able to kill. Not to mention if you plan on pvping at any point prior to 40 your going to want all the survivability as a healer you can get. Even doing the Elite dungeons like FT or the over world elite grind spots. If your hit as a cleric with low hps your going to get killed pretty easy. I've stacked pure Hp's and at lvl 32 I have almost 4300 hp's and I'm not in anything I would consider amazing gear wise. This game can't be looked at from a pure PVE perspective unless you some how entend to avoid PVP zones. From my experience in a decent PVP grp I'm not nuking very often if anything I lay on the occasional DoT/Root to stop runners, the rest of my Mana is conserved for keeping the grp going.

I am a pve hater. I hate crafting, I hate grinding, I hate long leveling times, I hate anything that isnt challenging and god I do love any kind of pvp with ffa pvp being best and death penalties being the holy grail. So I tend to think that MY focus is "pvp".
So some points on your theories:

1) "The les I have to heal myself the longer I'm able to kill"
Wrong. Dealing less damage means you have to heal yourself more often, because the mob lives longer. Also your hot and instant heal will cover any damage you take in the fight and one 3 second heal after the fight restores you to 100% anyway. If you start chainhealing yourself because mobs deal too much damage youre doing it wrong... wrong spot or very outdated equipment.

And yes, the magic damage + staff damage boost over hp + mace is quite impressive. If ALL of your gear, every single slot and item is geared towards it. Getting "some items" is useless. Putting 2 evasion runes somewhere means you wasted 2 slots somewhere. You need to specialize to make a difference with most attributes.

2) Yes, the hp gear makes a difference in PvP survival -- but so does damage gear. Personally I never had trouble surviving as cleric. Well.. as long as it was actually possible. And in group pvp you have a second healer keeping you alive. But at the same time I am not a useless heal/dispel bot. If I burst something... it hurts. Alot. Hadoken does 1200 dmg in pvp, Earths Wrath 1100 and so on. Word of Destructiong is 750 a tick in pvp! Today we unloaded (2v16 or so) Word of Destruction and that spiritmaster 4k dp skill. I think it was 9 kills and all of them fleeing before they got the situation under control again.

In small scale PvP you dont win battles by healing your buddy. You win by killing the other side. Cleric has already a fuckton of survival skills, fuck those additional hp. Being able to burst people down is far more important. One example:
Today we did a SM + Cleric vs SM + Cleric, all involved being around level 40 and the asmodian cleric was really skillful I have to admit. We had several clashes and he showed some nice moves and always escaped. Finally we did land on some small floating island, those two followed us... their SM feared me.. then silenced me. I cancel silence with pot, heal myself and its time for us to strike back. My buddy fears their cleric. Guess what, he didnt survive the fear because we blasted him into oblivion. All his hitpoint gear and useless shield (without manastones every player will have more accuracy than you have block, sad story) didnt really help him. He didnt deal enough damage to finish me off. I did deal more than make sure hes dead. I bet his spirit master buddy was also HP geared, while mine was mostly magic boost, too.

This changes at 50 in group pvp, but not while leveling. Also in large scale pvp hitpoints are far better. But I dont like zergy pvp and rarely take part in the pointless, skillless meat grinder situations between two npc spots (classic SS vs TM situations).

Originally Posted by Skrigg

Im on rank 3's now, funny thing was I actually killed one on my way to turn in the rank 4 quest, only rank 3 I've seen personally. Bad part is the reward for rank 3's is just 3 self rez crystals.

Level? I did the rank 4 quest some time ago but there was no followup.

[Sythrak]

Originally Posted by Draegan

Yeah but not raids.

Re: Fortress Sieging.
Depends on how much of a zerg fest it becomes or avoids.

There are raids, just not in the instanced WoW sense. There's tons of overworld raid bosses in both Asmo and Elyos side. Either can rift over to fight over them. I *think* there's an instanced raid zone, but don't quote me on it. I don't know for sure just heard rumors.

[Vinen]

Originally Posted by Nino

Got to level 13 and I can't find many redeeming things this game has to offer. Maybe there is more later, but I do not have the patience to sit through the bad writing and boring game play. To me, this game feels like a step back in advancing the genre. With a decent sized budget, I was disappointed with the lack of attention given to sound. There is no randomization of attack and impact sounds, and the music generally does not support the visuals. Perhaps I'm just getting old, but this game is not for me.

oddly, I think it's this step back that many of us wanted.

[Skrigg]

Originally Posted by Inconsiderable

Level? I did the rank 4 quest some time ago but there was no followup.

35, got it from the same person that gives the rank 4.