Curse

Bryant Again · Oct 06, 2009, 04:07 AM // 04:07

I find it interesting that some are complaining about a lack of grind, I will say.

FoxBat · Oct 06, 2009, 04:30 AM // 04:30

I know some people in the MMOverse define grind as killing solely for the purpose of levelup rather than quest completion. But when 90% of quests are "go kill X of this mob", you hunt down and aggro 1 creature and solo it with the same rehearsed skill sequence, rest, repeat, watch yourself do the same thing over and over... people here are going to call it grind.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abedeus

I still haven't heard how long did you play Aion to qualify it as a grind game, though.

If you're bored after half an hour of grinding then it's a grind game. The reason "grind = bad" is because people are getting bored of it. Why should people suffer a game until they get to the "good part"? Why pay to have a second job?

Abedeus · Oct 06, 2009, 12:38 PM // 12:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

If you're bored after half an hour of grinding then it's a grind game. The reason "grind = bad" is because people are getting bored of it. Why should people suffer a game until they get to the "good part"? Why pay to have a second job?

Fair enough. I live by the same rule - I say WoW or Lineage 2 (official) are bad, because I couldn't get past level 10 or level 20 respectively. It was too boring.

But notice that most of the current MMOs (successful ones - WoW, Aion so far, Lineage 2, Runes of Magic and so on) have some grind. Is it really much of a difference - run around from NPC to NPC doing "quests" or grind "kill XX mobs" quests? For me, Aion has pretty fun combat, where you need groups to fight with more than 2 mobs at the same time. Heck, even in groups you can only tank 2, 3, 4 TOPS (with extreme problems most of the time) monsters, because the combat is pretty difficult.

Especially since some of the mobs are not just spank'n'tank, but require cooperation and skill. For instance, there are some arcade mobs, where you must set yourselves in a pattern or a sequence to fight the boss, and during the fight as well. I can't recall which instance it is, but it's pretty fun. Then again, Aion has like 40% pve, 60% pvp, where you can level from 25 to 43-45 in Abyss, the most PvP-focused area(s) I've seen in years.

Then again, some games manage to make grind really fun. Case in point, Diablo 2. It gets boring when you are NOT slaughtering hordes of monsters.

Ganks · Oct 07, 2009, 10:42 AM // 10:42

Lol, this thread is made of fail.

Play a Sandbox MMO and then go off and see if you can still compare everything to WoW.

I could go on and rant about it but it's really not worth it. There used to be 2 types of MMOs, now there is only 1. Give it as many titles as you want, you guys are just playing another version of EverQuest. It's the same system again and again with variables changed because some people really really really like spending money inappropriately.

Usually that is their Mommy's money and not their own. There is some humor in that. Why do you think the marketing department for all of this corporate gaming companies always markets their product to children? That would be the "Nag Factor", it's much easier to get money out of children, or through children, than it is to answer the legitimate concerns of people like me.

One day you will be 25 just like me and they will ignore you too. You'll see.

daraaksii · Oct 07, 2009, 01:08 PM // 13:08

Dunno, got 1 char up to 32 in 5 days and another one to 28 in 3 days.

isitgrindnow?

Abedeus · Oct 07, 2009, 01:28 PM // 13:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by daraaksii

Dunno, got 1 char up to 32 in 5 days and another one to 28 in 3 days.

isitgrindnow?

You won't beat those Koreans (or Chinese, I can't remember) that got to 45 (yeah, I think it were Chinese people) in mere 5 days. Two were playing the same character, but they had no more than 8 hours of sleep/eat/poop between another 8 hours of playing.

Racthoh · Oct 07, 2009, 01:50 PM // 13:50

The problem with Aion is the amount of gold you need just to pay for teleports, binding to obelisks, and flight paths. Especially when your idiot group can't decide where they're going to meet up.

The auction house (I refuse to call it a broker) is also annoying as it lacks the ability to quickly type out the name of an item in the search box. At least in WoW, shift + click then search. Manually typing out every single item I find became extremely tiresome very fast, especially since the game demands you spell everything almost fully and accurately; this means capital letters as well. Or maybe if it functioned like in Runes of Magic, allowing me to click a button to find the selling price for the last 10 of that item that sold. Considering how crucial the auction house function is in an MMO developers really need to stop implementing them so terribly.

Inde · Oct 07, 2009, 02:29 PM // 14:29

You know there are a few things I really like about Aion, I didn't get involved enough with WoW to know if they have this, but how you can type in chat and ctrl+right click for items, locations etc. Makes selling things easy, getting rez's, finding groups and more. And while the Broker is tedious and it does need a better search I don't find it that much of a hassle compared to nothing *cough Guild Wars cough*.

Also, I know that gold in WoW is very difficult to come by and while everything costs in Aion I haven't found $$$ to be that much of a problem to collect and get. I've been able to craft, buy armor, teleport, soul heal and more without much of a cash flow problem.

I do have to say that I love love love the 'locate' feature in quests as well.

Abedeus · Oct 07, 2009, 03:27 PM // 15:27

For you guys with Broker problems:

If an item has two or three words in the name, type in only the upper-case letters. For instance, you want to find a Worthy Titanium Greatsword.

Type in:

"W T G" with spaces between the letters, set the level limit between the level you think that item is and press search.

Racthoh - actually, when you don't spend money on crafting and don't care about buying Blue gear (the second-till-best class of items, Orange being the best, world-drop loot), you can easily rank up at least 300-400k by level 22. I'm assuming you play on a popular server or your character's stigmas are dropping pretty often and prices of Stigmas are low. My Templar is level 28 right now (almost 29) and I've got barely 80k, a week ago I had over 350k, but Inescapable Judgment Stigma costed me about 140k at the time of purchase and I had to upgrade my armor a lot to make tanking easier.

...Also, Stigmas costing 300-550k are bad. Because usually you WANT them. A lot.

Smarty · Oct 07, 2009, 03:48 PM // 15:48

Linking of items and locations into chat is a fantastic feature. The unreadability of chat due to lack of opaque background, and quest items not dropping for every group member from one kill, are incredibly bad features.

The queues on the EU servers are frigging ridiculous. I've rerolled on the newest server so I don't have to queue for two hours each time I want to play - so much for getting a CE for the headstart!

However, I did get to try out the Asmo side this time around, and have discovered that Pandaemonium is absolutely gorgeous. I'm completely in love with the place and could spend hours RPing there (if there were any other RPers around on my new server...). Quests seem more interesting and better balanced, with less back and forthing, than the Elyos side.

No sign of any GMs on the Euro side yet. Gold spammers abound although they are very easy to block, fortunately (no stupid 10-player ignore limit here ANet!!!), and ordinary players are freely spamming every channel available due to the way the channel regions work so conversations/sales/lfg's are hard to follow/ignore.

All in all I'm very much enjoying the game but finding several "features" annoying, and am not 100% convinced I'm getting anything over and above the level of service in GW by paying a fee for it. Too early to call it one way or the other, but it's not a 100% definite permanent switch from GW to Aion for me yet.

I really do hope that all the ANet staff playing the game means they'll know which of the good stuff to take from Aion and add to GW2.

Racthoh · Oct 07, 2009, 03:58 PM // 15:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abedeus

"W T G" with spaces between the letters, set the level limit between the level you think that item is and press search.

Okay that is going to help immensely.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abedeus

Racthoh - actually, when you don't spend money on crafting and don't care about buying Blue gear (the second-till-best class of items, Orange being the best, world-drop loot), you can easily rank up at least 300-400k by level 22. I'm assuming you play on a popular server or your character's stigmas are dropping pretty often and prices of Stigmas are low. My Templar is level 28 right now (almost 29) and I've got barely 80k, a week ago I had over 350k, but Inescapable Judgment Stigma costed me about 140k at the time of purchase and I had to upgrade my armor a lot to make tanking easier.

It's the manastones that are expensive. 8k+ for the physical critical rate. I really need to find what the next best alternative is because I can't justify spending that kind of gold on leveling gear. Aside from a pair of 60k pants, a few crafting materials to try dual wielding, I haven't touched the broker. Leveling my Weapon Craft higher than 100 will be expensive though so I've held off for now.

Abedeus · Oct 08, 2009, 12:11 PM // 12:11

Yes, physical crit is expensive. As a Templar with 11 slots with +8 crit, I know it's a lot.

Also, if you want prices for the leveling crafting, someone made some nice calculations.

http://www.aionsource.com/forum/gene...ml#post1485956

http://www.aionsource.com/forum/news...level-50s.html

Jesus Christ. Not as fast as the Chinese, but COME ON.

Faer · Oct 08, 2009, 01:54 PM // 13:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inde

You know there are a few things I really like about Aion, I didn't get involved enough with WoW to know if they have this, but how you can type in chat and ctrl+right click for items, locations etc. Makes selling things easy, getting rez's, finding groups and more. And while the Broker is tedious and it does need a better search I don't find it that much of a hassle compared to nothing *cough Guild Wars cough*.

You can do that stuff in WoW too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inde

Also, I know that gold in WoW is very difficult to come by

Not since TBC came out...