Stuff from WAR I'd like to see in Aion

[Xhunt3r]

Open parties and Alliance would be the 2 features from War I wouldn't mind seeing in Aion...

[Dazzler]

I agree with pretty much everything.

The titles might be a problem as titles in Aion gives stat boosts (which is something I don't personally like) so it kinda prevents there being any fun titles because people won't use them. I'd rather have a system where once you do the thing to get the title, you get a trinket of some sort you can equip, the trinket would have the titles bonus on it, and you could display whatever title you liked.

I thought the PQ's from WaR were also an excellent feature, kinda like mini open world instances which could tell a story and be very cinematic... although the pq inf grind, and random bad assignment kinda snuffed them out.

And the Tome of Knowledge. That was also pretty impressive.

[teriyaki]

Originally Posted by Five-Magics

so your saying running off the cliff and dieing so you can spawn back at camp so you dont have to run as far to get to the next ob is risk taking?

Yeah, that's an abuse but one that I can live with and it doesn't annoy me in the least. Imo there is no difference between a "recall scroll" and jumping off a cliff.

If some dorks jumping off cliffs is the price for better teamplay and group spirit, less zerging and ganking, more fair fights and more common PvP in general etc etc etc then I'm perfectly willing to pay it.

[niuniu]

Originally Posted by Aleria

I'm surprised you left out one of the best features, the double target system. You can have a friendly and a hostile target at the same time, making life much easier for healers in assisting with spikes, CC or seeing what is the enemy casting.

Yeah this was one of WAR's best features imo.

[teriyaki]

Originally Posted by niuniu

Yeah this was one of WAR's best features imo.

Yeah, definitely! I'll put it up there in an /edit. Thanks for reminding me!

[romple]

I don't get the titles/trophies part.

Aion has titles, and they're actually functional buffs.

WAR went so overboard with titles. In LOTRO you got them from actually accomplishing things, even if it was just finishing deeds or whatever. In DAoC (for most of the game) titles were just your realm rank. They were a status/rank symbol. It was nice. In WoW there's very few titles and most of them are fairly hard to get, or require a long achievement (like the seasonal events).

I have literally hundreds of titles in WAR and, like anything else, saturation causes a degradation of value. Even if you have a hard to get title, most people probably wouldn't differentiate it from the other thousands of titles out there. So please keep WAR's overabundance of silly, meaningless titles in WAR land.

Trophies... wow... I have so many, and while some of them are fairly cool, they're all too tiny to notice. You think in the middle of a battle you're going to notice a tiny little dagger attached to someone's back (wtf, why would you put a dagger on your back? What happens if you sit down, fall down, etc...? SMRT).

I think Aion's ridiculously sexy armor sets are more than enough to show off. Aesthetic items would be nice to have if you can actually see them... but it was obvious, like a lot of other things in WAR, it was just another good concept poorly executed.

[Bluucandi]

Originally Posted by Cocidius

I agree with all but five. That was one of the big reasons WAR was a zergfest.

No...

Zergs happen often because a mass of people just happen to all have the same agenda and naturally, they form up to work out that agenda collectively. WAR was a zergfest because of the VP campaign, the ultimate objective - seizing fortresses and cities, and the need to farm keeps to gain Ward Gear. The Fortress and Cities sieges were not something you could achieve with a 6 man.

Important note: DAoC had zergfests too but it had a penalty at death.

[esloan]

Add in the dual targeting system and I agree with all but one.

NO OPEN PARTIES!!

In theory Open parties sound great. But they kill the community. People join and leave with nary a word. No one talks half the time. They just join, follow the crowd until they need to leave and then go. The WAR community felt so disconnected some of the time because of the Open Party system.

[Fleiva]

Im not playing this game without death penalties.

[Cocidius]

Originally Posted by teriyaki

Nah, I don't think so... Zergfest was caused by there not being multiple objectives that had to be taken at the same time. Now when a faction pushes to lock the zone zerging is the surest way to loose it. A multi-pointed force that coordinates will always win over a zerg except when the battlefield is a chokepoint or single objective.

Imo individual penalties actually promote zerging because then players have an additional motivation to seek safety in numbers. No death penalties actually encourages risk taking. From my mmo experience the larger the death penalties, the larger the reason to zerg and gank people when you're sure they cannot defend themselves etc etc etc.

Oh and imo death penalties in OPEN world PvP are inherently unfair because open world PvP is inherently unbalanced on a tactical level, unlike instanced arenas and battlegrounds. You shouldn't be punished excessively (beyond having to respawn) just because 10 more guys joined the mofo you were "dueling" with.

1. Yes, there were multiple objectives; usually 6+ per zone. And zerging worked for locking a zone down be because all the other side did was zerg, too. Not to mention that there were often multiple zergs... you assume there is only a single metazerg rather the the groups of ~50 that so often roved our server well apart from each other.

2. Less incentive for death means less throwing oneself mindlessly at an objective until you whittle it down. You make it seem like people didn't die in zergs; they did, after doing a little damage to Y or X objective player, rezzed, and threw themself back into the zerg to whittle a little bit more. And numbers do not make a zerg. Individual penalties encourage tactical thinking. Risk-taking is not as glorious as you make it out to be; your definition seems to fit my definition of the typical zerg who dies over and over pointlessly. If you play tactically, you can take those same "risks," but because things are planned and factors considered, your purpose is actually meaningful and, if things go according to plan, you won't die. You can accomplish a lot more than your typical zerg "risk taker" if you take those same risks and actually plan for them and overcome them instead of a pointless death.

3. They may be unbalanced on a numbers level, but never on a tactical level. And it's your own fault if you're caught unawares and without allies.

[teriyaki]

Originally Posted by Cocidius

1. Yes, there were multiple objectives; usually 6+ per zone. And zerging worked for locking a zone down be because all the other side did was zerg, too. Not to mention that there were often multiple zergs... you assume there is only a single metazerg rather the the groups of ~50 that so often roved our server well apart from each other.

2. Less incentive for death means less throwing oneself mindlessly at an objective until you whittle it down. You make it seem like people didn't die in zergs; they did, after doing a little damage to Y or X objective player, rezzed, and threw themself back into the zerg to whittle a little bit more. And numbers do not make a zerg. Individual penalties encourage tactical thinking. Risk-taking is not as glorious as you make it out to be; your definition seems to fit my definition of the typical zerg who dies over and over pointlessly. If you play tactically, you can take those same "risks," but because things are planned and factors considered, your purpose is actually meaningful and, if things go according to plan, you won't die. You can accomplish a lot more than your typical zerg "risk taker" if you take those same risks and actually plan for them and overcome them instead of a pointless death.

3. They may be unbalanced on a numbers level, but never on a tactical level. And it's your own fault if you're caught unawares and without allies.

Not really going to argue over this point anymore.. maybe in a different thread?

[Telal]

Originally Posted by teriyaki

1. Open groups.

- While a cool option, I can see a lot of "premade" groups just keeping their group closed, so in the long term, i do not see how much use there is for a system like this, but I also see no harm in doing it.

Originally Posted by teriyaki

2. Guild banners.

- This is a neat idea.

Originally Posted by teriyaki

3. Trophies and silly inconsequential titles.

- As long as it stays fluff, and doesn't add titles that boost stats like the current title system i'm 100% ok with this also.

Originally Posted by teriyaki

4. Guild Alliances

- Kinda of neat, DAoC had this, where you could have x number of guilds in an alliance channel.

Originally Posted by teriyaki

5. No individual death penalties.

- I do not agree with group death penalties in anyway, shape or form. Keep it single person. If you need to have a better group, then it is your responsibility to find the better group.

Originally Posted by teriyaki

6. Very fast mana regeneration.

- There is a fine line between too slow and way too fast, I think Aion is at a good spot with the regen abilities, considering how fast regen is while "resting".

Originally Posted by teriyaki

7. Double targeting.

- I am 1000% against this, as it makes the job of us healers easier, I don't want easy healing, if I did, i'd go to a game where healing is easy. The current system makes us think as healers, where the double target system does not.

[Starliner]

Though WAR had some good ideas; I think it would be a safe bet to say that the game was overlooked during the development of Aion due to how terrible it was in general.

Let Aion be Aion - However, I do like the Open Group Concept, I played a few myself when I was trying WAR. I think it could work very well in Aion.

Also - Death Penalties are a good thing. Losing Abyss points is fair. PvP in a group, play your role and you will do fine. Without death penalties, this game will turn into quake so quickly it isn't even funny.

Many reasons as to why WAR was a horrible game. No death penalties is one of them.

[Kinley]

Originally Posted by esloan

Add in the dual targeting system and I agree with all but one.

NO OPEN PARTIES!!

In theory Open parties sound great. But they kill the community. People join and leave with nary a word. No one talks half the time. They just join, follow the crowd until they need to leave and then go. The WAR community felt so disconnected some of the time because of the Open Party system.

I 100% agree with this, the biggest issue me and my friends noted upon our first few weeks in WAR was the lack of chat/community. Even when they implemented the region channel, chat was sparse and you often felt as though the other players were little more than NPC minions similar to those found in GW.

I hated the open party system and had it perma-disabled. I can't count the amount of times I'd be questing with a RL friend or guild mate and have some random person pop into my group, only not to say a single word. Eerie thought knowing that someone had been watching over my chat for only god knows how long.

For PVP reasons, I could see it working but again, it does promote a lack of communcation and that was a large fundamental flaw in WAR - it just felt empty even if you were amongst a group of people.

[teriyaki]

Originally Posted by Kinley

I 100% agree with this, the biggest issue me and my friends noted upon our first few weeks in WAR was the lack of chat/community. Even when they implemented the region channel, chat was sparse and you often felt as though the other players were little more than NPC minions similar to those found in GW.

I hated the open party system and had it perma-disabled. I can't count the amount of times I'd be questing with a RL friend or guild mate and have some random person pop into my group, only not to say a single word. Eerie thought knowing that someone had been watching over my chat for only god knows how long.

For PVP reasons, I could see it working but again, it does promote a lack of communcation and that was a large fundamental flaw in WAR - it just felt empty even if you were amongst a group of people.

In defence of open groups...

For me today it would be completely unthinkable to play WITHOUT open groups and warbands. When I learn there's action going on somewhere I open that old window and see what warbands are around. I can see if there are people that I know in there and I can join with a simple click. No fuss, no spamming the /general channel, no damn lfg-ing... Just click, see who's around and click to join. If I had to go back to "/1 lfg orvr".... "/1 hello lfg orvr..." "/tell hey is there some rvr going on?" "/tell hey why aren't you responding?" "/tell (answer) because i'm up to my armpits in destros and can't waste time typing!!!!" "/tell will you inv me?" .... silence .... silence... "/1 lfg orvr...." ... in short I'd just scream. Open groups are great.

The chat channel fiasco was due to other factors, the first and foremost being that it was extremely badly designed UI. You'd get spammed with all kinds of completely pointless game notifications all the time it was a total pain to go back-scrolling walls of text just to see if someone spoke. And besides the game was new, everybody wanting to explore on their own and finally it's really a fast paced game so no time to chitchat while you're actually doing something. Open groups are DEFINITELY not the reason for chat silence at the launch of WAR and I have no idea why people put these in connection.