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I have left the game and this is why:
Economy.
That is the #1 biggest reason I left. Ill be honest... I didnt play a toon up to lvl50. My highest toon was lvl35. I did, however, play every class up to atleast lvl 20-25. I loved some of the classes too. Chanter was a lot of fun and my 35 sin was fun too. I actually enjoyed the crafting element of the game. I did not enjoy air harvesting though!! It was way too time consuming compared to ground harvests.
So I say economy because of this: I joined the game with a buddy of mine. We came over from eq2 and have been playing MMOs for a while trying to find a new one. The graphics are great, sound is good, gameplay is fun (once you learn how to pvp) and the quests were interesting enough to me. We both ran into the issue though once we reached 20-25. We needed/wanted to start crafting our own gear. The crafted stuff is actually pretty good if you arent going to be raiding. So we split all crafting professions between the two of us. Now I will say that Tailoring was not too bad but the balance between professions was horrible. The fact that I would have to make about 10 Greatswords just to have a chance to make 1 Noble Greatsword so then I could make a Worthy one is ridiculous!!!! I remember at lvl 30 spending about 700k kinah and making a few weapons for our toons but I had so much waste. Sure I put it on the broker but I didnt get all my money back.
So then I got to thinking.. my god if this is how it is at lvl 30 I cant imagine how it will be at lvl 50! So I read about it... I read about toons spending MILLIONS just to become expert crafters. Now I do understand that it should not be given to you.. but to make that kind of money takes an awefuly great amound of time. It got to the point that I was logging in to do repeatable quests so that I could build up my bank roll in order to craft only to not craft what I needed so then go back out to do repeatables so that I could rebuild up my bank roll........................ yeah I think you get it. Very frustrating!!!
Would I come back to Aion? Absolutely!....if.... they fix the damn economy. The expense for some of the materials is INSANE! Then some of the nice perks you get in the game (rented armor/weapons and morphing) those prices are nuts too. I remember seeing the rented gear when it came out in 1.9... I laughed. At lvl 25 I believe (dont quote me on the lvl) I saw gear you could rent for I think about 300k a piece!!! A piece??? At that lvl you dont make that money that easy.
Now some may argue that money isnt that hard to make. Ok, maybe if I played hours upon hours a day but I just dont have time for that, nor want to do that. Some might also say that you make money easier at lvl 50 and then can spend it for alts. That may be true but my whole point is that I wanted to enjoy my journey to lvl 50 and not rush it just to have more resources available.
Dont anyone dare call me a hater or whatever the damn term is for knocking a game. As I said this game has many good elements. The economy though is very very very bad and breaks it for me. I do believe that us folks in North America might have different gameplay habits then those in Korea. Just a though... :P I hope Aion listens to its players because there are many like me that feel this way.
Ok, any feedback or questions shoot away. If anyone has heard about any changes I would love to know. I check out the Aion website weekly to see.
Comments
Hater....hehehe you're no hater, actually you're one of the few here on thses forums that can enjoy a game and see one thing wrong and write about it in a constructive manner. I have to admit I don't craft much in this game, but I find other stuff in that title hard to understand., like the equipment rental... Why on earth would I do that before hitting lvl50!!!
The only reason I see behind the rental is for people to level up a second toon and using the kinah made from their lvl50 to twink their low lvl toon and go decimate/gank new lower lvl players to the game and earn quickly abyss points.
To me this renting system only allows high lvl players or farmers to stroke their egos and widen the gap between new players and veterans.
It's true. And I'm sure people will tell you that there is easy ways to make kinah in the game at any level, but they won't mention how long it really takes.
At 33 I personally scrounged up enough kinah to get a full Expert set crafted for my Templar (Hey, I even got 2 orange procs!). It ended up costing me just under 11 million (at 33) for the full set and skins. I was one of those thinking that making money was very easy.
Except as I went up in level and the prices starting to go to 4 million and above for items I wanted or needed (looking at you, stigmas pre-stigma vendor!) , I tried doing the same but couldn't. I realized just how much time I was spending gathering/grinding out the kinah for a single item.
I saw someone bragging about easily making 500k kinah an hour on the forums. That's just great, that means doing that "easy" method it would only take me 9 hours to make enough JUST for that single item (bodyguard was going for 4.4 mil), and if I wanted another item (like Unwavering) it would then only take me another 9 hours.
I was also very excited for 1.9, specifically for the enchanting supplements and flux vendors, since flux prices were insane. Then it came and I realized the flux vendor was selling them for HIGHER than they were on the broker. And the supplement costs vs the increased rate (what was it, 10% increased?) was a joke.
It REALLY killed my desire to even bother making any kinah or get any items at that point, and was just one more stone adding on to the weight that eventually broke this camel's back.
I think they made a huge mistake on the multi proc crafts, What the op describes is unfortunatly the problem with all the forms of weapon crafting in aion. Sadly rather than learn from this, Ncsoft is planning on adding yet another multi proc to crafting for the next grade of weapons in 2.0 coming in sept. So its going to go (given the supposed 20% proc rate, which i find highly suspect). 5 whites = a green, 5 greens =a blue, 5 blues =a gold, and coming soon: 5 golds= an orange. Or to put it another way: 5 whites = a green, 25 whites = a blue, 125 whites = a gold, and coming soon 500 whites = an orange. Its too insane to ever be worthwhile.
Compare it to the armorcrafting and sure, armorcrafting gets pretty exepensive too but at least you dont have to multiproc. They should just use the same method for crafting weapons as they do armor. I would love to be able to resonably be able to hit up a weaponcrafter for weapons, but it isnt economical even from the stance of the buyer to bother with.
OP I quite agree with you on your points. If the crafting system and economy as a whole weren't as harsh I probably could have live through the grind. But just the mere scale of the costs were epic enough to provide a double whammy for me to not enjoy myself at either aspect of the game.
hoi m8 , i have a SML50 and im with you the economy in this game its terriblebad, i spent 3,5 million on stones+85 and mag accuracy for my pants Abyss, and i failed all , worse than that i bought in a last atempt those wonderful piece of cheat supplements and guess what? it fails again , then i got broked and used 35 manastones +60hp to get my gear filled.
As you might know on the end game only gear wins pvp, and pve too, so if u dont have loads of time to invest in this grindfeast badeconomy gaME skip it , this game makes wow a paradise (darn i hate wow).
Sigh, I always have something long typed out and it ends up reseting some how.
I was explaining about my crafting experiences. I played one month of aion, it was very fun, I got to level 32, and learned every craft there was, the highest I got to was with handcrafting which was around 280 I think. The first Time I crafted anything of any significance was a pair of glasses, and they proc'd blue for me(rare) so that was very satisfying to me and I was extreamlly pleased. There wasnt any of them on the auction house either so they were worth quite a bit for the 5k kinah I spent on making the materials for them. I decided to keep them though. I didnt mind the crafting at all in aion, the artisans hall in sanctum(elyos capitol city crafting area) is one of the best gathering areas Iv ever seen in any game. I like it much more then ironforge even, even though its a close one.
I think there could be two differences in what makes aions economy not up to par. Theres the point the op made that crafting costs to much, and the way its implimented is sub par or theres also inflation thats rampid in aions economy where things are priced wrong all the time and only guilds and the likes monopolize everything player made. I think there are possibly maybee more concerns then crafting when it comes to aion and even though crafting makes a big part of the game, for now it could be that the attension needs to go else where. There arnt alot of people that like the game for one in the americas, besides the fact that there are literaly thousands of american private servers. Aions been my favorite game for awhile, since it relersed. and It will be my favorite game for a long while Id venture to guess with what is coming out. MAybee blizzards new mmo will change that but for now, Ill stick with aion.
Trust me, you can never have enough $$ in Aion. I have 2 level 50's on both factions and I could easily blow 100 mil kinah in a night on stuff I need like godstones, manastones, enchantments, etc etc. I farm boiling balaur bloods a lot and they make decent cash thankfully but having money in this game means a lot.
Early on I had money issues as well and everything on Broker seemed retarded but once I hit 50 and started doing the coin quest with plans to sell off platinum coins during my fenris grind things kinda changed a bit. White weapon drops vendor for like 700-800k and armor drops which dropped quite often went for 400-500k a pop
I also have a 449 weapon / 449 armorsmith and 449 Cook & Alchemist alt
I've probably made over 100mil just crafting weapons and armor yea the rates are horrible but when you gather / farm your own mats its 100% profit and time wasted if you fail .. At 35 the white fails actually vendor for more than the mats would cost if you purchased them on broker so your making a bit of money there even by buying them.
Armor is by far the easiest and quickest form of income when you start making the 35 expert armor ( Gold procs happen quite frequently for me at least )
Cooking is easy money making cippo aether jelly and crit pickles .. takes a few hours of farming each day but the profit you make is decent and fast
Alchemy also easy money making batches of potions / serums Although i feel that I wasted time getting this to 449 right now i look forward to 2.0 where there are going to be new designs for scrolls / potions that from the looks of things are pretty sweet
Aion is a money sink game and it takes a long time and lots of effort to actually start making tons of cash unless you get extremely lucky with drops , I would recommend not leveling crafts until 40-45 due to costs but I also know a few 30+ ppl that paid their way through leveling thanks to cooking and tailoring and getting lucky with good procs , Still wouldn't bother with it unless you have a lot of spare kinah and nothing to spend it on.
If you gather the mats yourself, it is still a loss when you fail to proc the craft.
The issue with Aion's economy is that more often than not, the final non proc roduct costs a lot less than the materials it takes to produce them. Couple this with the highly priced vendor materials, you're never going to make your money back (don't even think about making a profit), unless you are extremely lucky.
So, when you fail the proc, you lose the money you could have made by selling the raw materials.
The crafting would be fine if the crafts are a good investment (most aren't), to warrant the high cost, or, if the vendor materials didn't form a large portion of the item's final production cost.
The worst thing about Aion's crafting, however, is the time investment. After getting all the money and materials for the craft, you then spend 2 hours making ingots, turning ingots into parts, then turning parts into a small chance to get the first tier of a 3 tier craft, which can still completely fail if you're not 10 skill points over the craft level.
Since we're talking about the economy, I was wondering: do they stll have the private "shops" spamming and smothering some areas? It drove me nuts how there would be 180 people standing there with their bots saying, "Buy the uber sword for 20 kinah, right now only!" X 1000000.
In beta we suggested they set up a store only area that is not right in your face. It was silly how they would cover the social /natural gathering areas. It cheapened the visuals of the given area and made it look ike a low end Korean item mall game when those people on stools were all over.
Before people get defensive, I actually enjoyed my beta testing experience as well as some of the character creation. I just couldn't really get into it after level 30 but it seemed alright.
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I dont get it. It seems to me that one of teh complaints is that crafting is too in depth, too much effort and takes too many resources. But isnt that what ppl b*tch about that was changed from starwars galaxies?
Personally i think a good economy in a game takes time. Stuff will find accepted prices and start to fall into standards. Aion is a great game. Combat is fun, the flying aspect is unique. I personally plan to take advantage of the come back weekend!
Loved the crafting in SWG pre NGE...hated the crafting in Aion, half the reason I left Aion was because of the crafting. The random failures in crafting in Aion coupled with the PITA it was to get the rare components made the crafting into some kind of torturous metagame that I hated. Crafting felt like more of a long, drawn out boring grind than the actual leveling.
In-depth? There's nothing in-depth about gathering x amount of materials to craft y. The multiprocs are basically recipes that clearly state you need to have crafted this other weapon first. This, to me, is no different than, in say, WoW, were you need to craft x large plates for z armor.
What's a pain in the ass in Aion is that the crafting is solely based on RNG. You only have a set % chance (what was it, 10?) to actually craft what you probably want. For most of items of most of the profession, the non-proc crafts don't sell for anywhere near the crafting cost and tend to be on par with the free quest rewards.
This turns the crafting into nothing but a money and time sink. Having to recollect your materials for the high level crafting items can cost either millions of the in-game currency, or hours of gathering. Do all that just for another attempt at the same % chance to actually get what you want.
There is no "in-depth." This is just painful, painful gambling.
I found nothing wrong with the economie.. i quit cuz of blood stains and ur end game gear being based on RNG.. But hey, thats just me :P
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