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Whats the big hype on this game?
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,387
in Aika
Whats the big hype for this game?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
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I don't know really but I think it's due to the PvP aspect of it, especially the massive battles.
The PvP mainly as I understand. Very team based, and quite a few large fights occur often it seems.
The pran system is also neat assuming you don't mind having a loli follow you around.
I suppose for the Pran system..
I've recently gotten into this game after ditching any subscription games I had. After testing out just about all the top f2p mmos, I can say Aika is arguably the best out there. There isn't a f2p that compares with graphics, Aika actually has better graphics than a lot of b2p or p2p mmos. The character models are detailed and dynamic. Also the higher level gear looks absolutely superb. The pvp in Aika is phenomenal. There is constantly world pvp going on in the manner of nation vs. nation (5 nations total). Then there are instanced Castle Sieges, Arena (100 vs. 100) and then some other type of battleground. A lot of the 'instanced' pvp like castle sieges are 1000 vs. 1000. There are 6 classes, each with 2 secondary professions that are available at level 51. You can obtain a mount at 40. The leveling isn't bad either, I got to 20 in a couple of days. The max level is 60. You do just about all your leveling through quests and repeatable quests. Although if you feel like grinding, this game works perfectly with that. Mobs respawn very quickly, and you don't need to run around a whole lot to grind efficiently.
The item shop is not ground breaking in any way. There is no gear from the item shop, and most things are cosmetic only. The best things from the item shop, like premium mounts, are only temporary. If you did want to spend some gpotatoes in the shop you can always go to gpotato.com and earn free gpotatoes.
I love the crafting. It's similar in some ways to other korean mmos, but it still has it's own flavor. You don't need a crafting 'skill' to be a certain level to craft something, you just have to have the matts.
If you're looking for a good pvp f2p, you shouldn't still be reading this, go download!!
i just have to say its not worth ditching any p2p games after you find out their cash shop and prices... and how corrupt it is...
what the above posted said about cash shop is wrong.. they have those stones that upgrade your weapon to higher + and there is so much difference that in the end +10 is twice as good as a +5
those stones cost redicilous money and don't even guarantee an enchantment.. you might spend 10+ stones upgrading it from +7 to +8
and talking about mounts... check out this link http://www.onrpg.com/boards/152710.html
You say it's not worth ditching your current p2p because the cash shop mounts are op? So just because it's labeled 'free to play' you can't fork out any money like you do for subscription games? I love subscription games, and I don't see Aika as f2p, instead it's a game worth investing money into.
Also those 'stones' you are talking about only help with reinforcing, they aren't the only way to reinforce weapons. In fact ALL the cash shop stones are 'enriched' stones that make it so a failed upgrade doesn't destroy or down-level your weapon. You STILL NEED the main materials (rubicine and pellurite) which are BY FAR the hardest materials to get for upgrading weapons and armor. You CANNOT buy those from the cash shop, only the 'enriched' rubicine or pellurite, which only help with upgrading. In fact, these cash shops items only help you with failure. They do not provide an increased chance to upgrade your weapon/ armor.
Oh and the premium mounts are basically for those players used to a subscription. They just keep paying to ride their mounts, and the slight buffs the premium mounts give are negligible. I actually don't think that's a bad idea since the mounts and the 'mount licenses' (used to further your time allowed to use the premium mount) are actually quite cheap. But not quite worth my money. I'd rather use money on the crafting consumable (stones) or something.
I heard that it is supposed to be the Asian DAOC.
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
There's really no need to upgrade your equipment in this game unless all you plan to do are 1 vs 1 battles. In the massive PvP battles, an organized group can easily take down an unorganized group regardless of their equipment. Also, newer high level equipment just makes the existing equipment obsolete so one really shouldn't be upgrading anything unless they already have the highest currently available equipment such as the Abyss series. Even then, there's no great incentive to upgrade.
For the high difficulty dungeons, strategy and working well with the group counts much more than how much the equipment is upgraded or any mount stones.
This game is sort of fun to pass the time but once you get to the higher levels, you may encounter a lot of drama. It's a perpetual war afterall and there are strong feelings everywhere. Some people love that aspect of the game and that is what hooks them in but I'm more laid back and don't particularily like it (and hence why I haven't logged in this past month).
You are right about upgrading. Kinda pointless unless you do it to higher level gear. But you will get lower ranks of rubicine and pellurite while leveling, so might as well use those on lewer level gear, unless you want to refine them to higher ranks.
Have you seen what upgrading can do though? Once you get past like +5 or 6, the stats start soaring!! Even at lower levels. You can take a level 32 weapon, get it to +7 or 8, and then use that weapon all the way to like 44 or 50. So I wouldn't say there isn't a need for upgrading your equipment, specially at higher levels, cause it does make a considerable difference. But you're right, most of the pvp in this game is on such a mass scale, that it doesn't really matter how much damage you are doing.
Saying there is no incentive to upgrade is going too far. EVERYONE has their stuff upgraded. And once you get to +3 and beyond on your weapon, it starts glowing. It starts at a blue glow, and then goes through a spectrum, from blue to yellow to orange, to red and then purple. So you can tell how high someone has their weapon enchanted just from looking at it. And even if you have your starter level 50 gear, it's still good to upgrade it so that it performs as well as the next tier of gear you're aiming to obtain.
^^ This
This SgtFrog is about as accurate as you can get Aika. I played it a few months before going back to wow, but in the time I did play it, it really reminded me of DAoC a lot.
It has some very decent graphics, and the grind is minimal, I went to level 35 without grinding anything, well I did all the quest and most were kill / collection quest, but that is pretty much industry standard now (not that I think that is how it should be just saying).
At the very least it is better than DAoC in that regard, back in the day DAoC was grind to level only.
The PVP is very much DAoCesqe though. The factions actually have realm pride, and the battles though zergish at times, offer a pretty intense pvp battle.
Anyway, Aika isn't a bad game at all, well worth digging into, if even just to tide you over for something else.
What about advancement? Specifically, what is the pvp reward advancement system like? Skills, stats, gear, combo of all?
PvP grants you honor points and war medals, both of which can be exchanged for items. Honor points is mostly exchanged for equipment (ithe better the equipment, the more it takes) and health/mana potions that refills more than the normal ones. War medals can be turned in for character experience I think, which helps in leveling.
if its something like DAOC then i am downloading it as i type! i really cant wait to get into it
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Make sure you download the one for your region otherwise you'll run into a lot of grief.
I will give the game another shot...I was in the CB for Gpotato but only gave the game an hour or two.
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
Dont let the hype level fool ya, this game isnt for everyone.
The version I played was the NA only AIKA and I had a couple of level capped characters among mid level alts. Leveling isnt hard and the PvP in this game mostly consists of zergfests or ninja raids.
But what IS wrong with this game is the fact that the game engine is one outdated POS. There was a game breaking glitch where you can multicast skills(AOEs for that matter) back to back without cooldowns and all this is WITHOUT the use of any 3rd party hacks. It is simply because the engine doesnt handle skill cooldowns when an action is taken out of its fixed parameters, like a combination of strafing and casting a skill might result in your skill not getting cast / getting cast once / getting cast multiple times. With a little bit of practice, the latter ends up happening more often than the rest. Before I quit playing this joke, I posted a thread concerning this glitch with a very rudimentary info on why/how it must be happening on their forums, but the impotent mods cleaned my post up for "discussing exploits" and threw a ban on my account. Funny part was that it was technical C++ framework, like 95% of the gaming population wouldnt even have been able to guess how to work this exploit reading my post and the other 5% already knew what was wrong with the system without me telling it out loud.
In a game where massive skill spams decide the outcomes of wars, having a FAIL engine that doesnt know when to cap skill cooldowns is just EPIC FAIL. Im not one to throw those words around, hardly still in CAPS, but this is just a steaming pile of BS wrapped up with a fancy gift wrapper soaked in cologne and hidden in plain sight.
Also, to the western world, the concept of a "PRAN" or daughter or whatever might seem innovative and all, but keep in mind this game is constructed in a region where "Lolicons" make up a huge chunk of the resident population. Lolicon when westernized into english, plainly spells out Pedophile. Next time you look at your "teenaged female pet" and think about the disgusting concept behind its creation, you might think twice about naming it as your daughter in real life, like those few misinformed people.
Finally, as a FYI, I test out skill and point distribution efficiency on my characters in any game by combating mobs without equipping on any armour or weapons, so as to not scale the damage / defense by item refinements. And what did I notice here? The Priest class (who is ironically...? a teenaged girl) is modelled to be wearing a provocative translucent brassiere. Through which her nipples show up prominently. This was the point where I purged the game from my system, since it was proven beyond doubt for me that this game definitely wasnt made for the likes of me, but for a very select niche group of - Internet Pedophiles.
If you wanna play this for the broken game mechanics, then I guess you need to play a better game.
But if you wanna play this only for the "PRAN" factor...among other things, then you are a serious **** up in life who needs help ASAP.
The underwear of the Cleric/Saint class for NA-Aika was changed awhile ago such that she is no longer wearing anything translucent or revealing. Of course, some players complained about her granny underwear and probably went over to Global Aika which still has the type of underwear you're talking about.
I haven't played in a month and a half but still like to read the politics on the official forums.
If you looking as precisely at your game characters as sexual objects, it rather prove you are playing MMO games for strange reasons (i read about some 18+ MMO game, when you stripping female characters during battle, but Aika is not on that path). Prans are just character helpers in form of young child, why should anyone think another? Cause on some asian cultures there are people with lolicon fetish? So what, you are prohibited of just like look (well, those wings placed on pran's butt are little strange) or behavior (dancing with bear is cute ;p ) of pran without being accused of some kind of pedophile?
As for priests - looks like someone had too much time to look as closely on character underwear (which is normally hidden under gear, so unless you strip your character from gear you cannot see those brassiere). Priests are adult female character, so what strange for female having breasts or wearing little sexier underwear? If we want pure genderless characters, why is the point of choosing gender?
I have a pretty hard time understanding the score this game has on here (7.5 atm), it's not exactly a bad game, but not a good one either, guessing people just really like the large scale pvp?
Overall the game itself feels pretty old, or just really far from finished, if it were Alpha or earilier I would understand, but it's not.
The gfx themself are alright, but everything else is just horrible. Things like the text used above mobs, the environments and their lack of collision detection, clunky controls/movement/animations, undependable skill useage, and it also has one of the worst UI's i've seen, which also doesn't work propperly when windows are opened over top of it (want to click and drag to sell something? oh oops, it just grabbed and dragged my active quest list from behind that instead), it's all pretty inexcuseble.
The game doesn't even run very well, it's like there are constant latency issues from the server or something, since everything is fine and running perfectly smooth until you start walking, once you do it stutters/chugs along quite a bit.
..and before someone says It, it's not my internet or system, and it did the exact same thing with min settings or max.
I honestly don't know how gpotatoe can be successfully selling CS items when the game is in such a sorry condition, but i'll admit the game does have some promise, and i'll likely play it for another day or two, if only they would finish making it instead of selling it, it could be a pretty enjoyable game and deserve that 7+ rating.
I'd say it is far from finish and requires quite a bit of polish (and debugging) to make things go smoothly. The bugs were actually worst a few months back when open beta began. I remember falling through the floor a few times at the Hold dungeon and having the water effect show up when there isn't any water nearby. The phantom water effect was fixed rather quickly but I'm not sure about the Hold (as I haven't revisited again).
I'm not currently playing it but may revisit it in a few months to see how far polishing and debugging it has come. I'm hoping that the controls are better that the spell casting exploits are fixed.
The publishers are selling the cash items because the game is "good enough" to be played. Players are buying those items because it brings them value in their PvP and dungeon exploration. The makers and the sellers are 2 different identities though as gPotato only publishes the game and it's up to the developers in Korea to fix the bugs.
Firkrag, you quit a game because your lady character was wearing a thong basically?
I bet you're one of those westeners who would be happy to let your children play Gears of War, Unreal Tournament, etc. Yet not let them play, Conan for example simply because it has bear breasts in it. I'm sick of this mentality over media to be honest. How is extreme violence acceptable, whilst a little bit of an arse showing is not?
Just remember that one day, your kid is going to be f***ing the opposite sex, not chainsawing people in half (I hope!).
Just think about what you're saying for a second.
EDIT: I think I should point out that I don't play the game. I played untill lv.18 way back in the beginning of open beta, for about a week?
_________
Currently playing: Black Desert Korea (Waiting for EU)
Always hating on instances in MMOs! Open worlds, open PvP, territory control and housing please. More persistence, more fun.
The beta left a great impression on myself and most everyone that played it. But after that it fell apart pretty damn fast with the "devloping" of it, how they handled the servers, how they ignored all the malasian players spamming/lagging it, etc., etc.
You can keep listing "little things" that just became way to infuriating that had almost nothing to do with the game making MANY people quit it being flat out sick and tired of it all..
It sounds kind of Xenophobic, but it really was a very stupid idea to try and make it "global", caused nothing but pain and chaos to everyone.. Even with that sorted out (was it for that matter?) still doesn't change all the things they did wrong with the game.
When I quit it was with to many people to give numbers, from <b>GIANT</b> clans to many other players. But before that we all enjoyed the CBT quite a bit and was the main reason we kept playing it and dealt with all the MASSIVE ammounts of crap from them and the game for so long before giving up on it..
Well, the first thing that I like about this game is the Pran system. I mean they are soooo cute! That alone is reason enough to play Aika.
Secondly, and more importantly and seriously, is the PVP. I find the relic wars extremely exciting. People from their nations really fight hard during raids and defend their relics. This makes the game more exciting.
Also, the community is GREAT! I still don't have a guild since I'm not looking for a guild even if I'm level 22 already. But, I can survive without the guild. Why? Because there are people who are willing to help. If I need a party in Ursula dungeon for example, there are people who will accompany me without waiting too long. When I once asked for help to fight a boss, two people came running to help me. One of them was even in a town which is far from my location but he still came. THAT's what you call a dynamic community.
Played: Runescape, Adventure Quest
Currently playing: Aika Global, Atlantica Online
Waiting for: Cardmon Hero, Dynasty Warriors Online
Yeah, Aika Global is really fun to play. The pran system is cute. I can't wait for my pran to evolve.
)
The relic raids are awesome. Players use different strategies and skill to get the relics of different nations and those who are being raided try their best to stop those invaders. Really awesome to participate.
The guild I'm in is really helpful but at runs at the dungeon I still get help from different guilds from the nation I'm in.