[Translation] Aion = Hardcore? [thisisgame.com]

[aznkenshin]

Originally Posted by Cynthe

Well like I said if you can solo mobs in Aion like a beastmaster can in FFXI I'm all for it, if you've never tried beastmaster well it demands strategy and you have to carry around more items like pet food and food for yourself, and extra equipment to boost your charm rate which you have to switch to your strength gear when you get to hit the mob ect.. You also have to pick the right spot with enough mobs to both charm and damage, which also has a nice exit to a zone if something should go wrong, which it does, often. You have to be ready to die a lot...

Hee, Meleoffs you're going to make me want to play again!!! ; ; *cry*

Cynthe, I completely agree with what you said. And yes, this is making me want to play it right now.

I would like to add the fact that Korean community members have begun to mention that soloing is very difficult at later levels, particularly at around level 20+. This is great news to me, because that supports the genre, Massively Multiplayer Online.

[Birdman]

Originally Posted by AznKenshin

I would like to add the fact that Korean community members have begun to mention that soloing is very difficult at later levels, particularly at around level 20+. This is great news to me, because that supports the genre, Massively Multiplayer Online.

It also supports hours of looking for people to do things with you if you have no friends.

[eternalchaos]

na... as long as there is a large community parties should be fine. I mean WoW has no real issues later on with instances and yes while there is 9milion people (more liek 5 million active players as there are tons of double and triple account holders); That 9million is spread over like 50 servers.

FFXI has i think 15 servers; they got 200,000 users now down from easily over a million at its peak. Even with 200,000 you can still find plenty of parties. Problem is early areas are just running thin so it is hard to advance. I think the biggest problem you see in games now is that if you make it possible to Solo, it is then to easy to get to the end.. you make it party based; becomes to hard to find parties

Even in GW there were spots you had to party just for ease of play. (until they added Heroes of course which you could physically control )

[aznkenshin]

@Birdman

lol, that sounded somewhat offensive, even though you might've not directed it to me. Thanks for changing your sig! I love that polar bear!

@eternal

I agree with you on your last sentence. Yes, GW did a phenomenal job in making it easy for common players to find allies. In that game: "Remember, you never fight alone."

[serano]

Ok so i have read the initial post, the replies and everything else that was stated in this topic and it immediatly made me want to register to reply.

As an L2 veteran that still plays after 3 years of hardcore gaming, the initial statements from NCsoft about Aion were very promising! After this post that was made by this player I'm having some doubts if it still has its appealing character it used to have.

Firstly I agree with most people, a game should not be created to be easy, thus hardcore gamers need to find the point of crunching in the game where it becomes challenging. In the MMORPG style that classicaly means the grind. I'm referring now at grindrates for example in L2 at 70+ especially 79-80 which takes about a year to accomplish.
Now the image that I had, and which was told in many interviews is that Aion would not focus as much on the exp rates but more on the difficulty level of the mobs not on its HP only but on its intelligence. I understood this as: the way the mobs adapt to the situation just like players would adapt to the situation and so make a challenge to the player constantly adapting and mastering your skills and tactics bound to your class. Solo or in group.

Secondly it was also stated by NCsoft spokesmen that the game would have a casual appeal as well. Soloing would be made possible and the necessary levels could be accomplished in a minimal time as well IF the player learned how to play his class and learned how to adapt itself into different situations. As it was posted by the starter of this topic one MP bar for one mob sounds even worse to me than L2 where i could actually kill 2 mobs with a full MP bar.

The point I'm trying to make is that the difficulty level of MMORPG's these days lies within the grindrate. For some reason Asian's love it and probably others around the world aswell.
BUT you can move the difficulty level out of the grind, coz it is the grind that mostly makes people quit games. It would be wiser to put the difficulty in mastering classes the way they are supposed to (which would actually mean real rollplaying). Difficulty should not automatically mean much harder grind.

As for the soloing/grouping discussion. People are still making a big deal out of the difference between both playstyles. I believe that once you reach the end-game cap, people will automatically focus on grouping because end-game is mostly about the PVP-aspect of the game. This can also include raids and exclusive content that is specifically aimed to people that reached the cap and give extra benefits to guilds or to help others get their aswell.
So you must look at from the perspective from how to get the end level and what should be the difference. People here have stated that if you play in groups you should have a better droprate of items from mobs, ... while in fact that would mean rendering the soloing-part of the game useless. The only difference between those two should mean time, and not much of it. It would seem logical to me that groups will not exp in the same place where solopeople would exp. The extrabonus is that people that group is that they get more exp/hour then they would if they solo. Their advantage is that they learn new skills faster/ more support -> easier exp/they get the level cap faster. Is this enough to encourage group play? yes it is. People that prefer to solo know that they will go slower, but that does not mean that they have to go 3 times slower. For example if you would get a group together and you can exp 3 months nonstop and get the caplevel in that time that does not have to mean that people that solo need to reach this level in let us say 1 year. I do remind myself that there are also 2 kinds of soloers. You have the 10h+ soloers and the 3h a day soloers. But it should be said that a hardcore soloer should at least have a minimal delay in hours to get to the same level as someone who is in group.

This whereas the soloer needs to adapt his gameplay as being solo on the mob, where the difficulty does not ly how much HP he has or how fast he goes down, but how he manages to play to get him down.

And the group who has a more challenging mob in HP amount but also has the XP bonus + the comfort that his groups might have a nice DPS output aswell as support and if they have a tank also have the luck of not having to deal with the death exp loss. These are benefits that a group has and a soloer does not.


My last resolution: IF we force people to group like L2, multiple people will be forced into multiple accounts/dualboxing and not yet to say buffbotting/supportbotting or w/e and we will enter a world like lineage 2. The fact that WoW for example doesn't have this problem in the amount that L2 has it is because single classes do have the strenght to accomplish something on their own without having to bother every 5 minutes to sit down/get buffs/... A game therefor should be created where people are offered singleplay with the luxury of having groupplay aswell and not the otherway around while giving the real groupplayers enough content or challenges aswell without giving them the advantage in the end by looking to the way they exped up!



Some might say I might have nagged and wasted 5 minutes of precious time and about 2KB of database storage space, other might think I made some pretty accurate points towards MMORPG and Aion. Fact is that Aion profiled itself as an MMORPG that would appeal to hardcore aswell as casual players. This means that XP should not be game difficulty but other factors. As a hardcore L2 player I've had it a little with non stop hardcore pve grind and I like to relax and enjoy the game, the beauty, the story and the intrigues of it and at the same time advance combined with intense gameplay where I can relive hardcore gameplay but not 24/24 7/7 without the option of slowing down withouth cutting myself. As far as I understood this was how Aion profiled itself as the combination of WoW/GW/L2 dipped with the glamour and glitter of FFXI. Let us hope that all these negative/postive points are just some points that are used on BETA only and that they do balance out the difference between kinds of players in the LIVE servers. How carebear it may seem, they could make different kind of servers with different rates or with different expressions on gamecontent itself without excluding any part of it.

[Jest]

Originally Posted by Marchosias

teldath, I get the feeling you haven't read any of this thread. As Rekuja said, it's been explained multiple times, by multiple people why forcing you to group is a bad thing. You talk about how you can get a group in only half and hour... WHAT THE ****?! Only? I have a life. I'm balancing school, work, and a social life. I might only be able to log on for an hour, and I want that hour to be spent soloing and making some sort of progress, not waiting half an hour, then getting a group and feeling like a **** when I leave half an hour in... Nobody comes out of that happy.

Furthermore, what you're saying about gear in FFXI and how it's all situational and you need to use specific gear at specific times sounds ridiculous, and I really hope the games not actually like that. I mean, I understand having PvP and PvE gear separate, but different sets for different mobs? I mean you're inventory would constantly be full of multiple sets of gear without room for anything else. Beyond that, how is a game that requires you to have found multiple sets of gear to fit each situation skill based? I'm not trying to bash FFXI here, but from your explanation it sounds a lot more like whoever's put in the time to get those multiple sets of gear is going to come out on top.

Casual players are by no means complaining about difficulty. Difficulty is a topic that both hardcore and casual gamers have differing opinions on within each group, and has nothing to do with whether you can play the game for one hour a day our eight. Difficulty and time are completely different. Casual gamers are complaining that if you're forced to group they simply won't have the time to make any reasonable progress. If you're hardcore and get a group in half an hour that lasts for 2.5 hours you're spending 1/6th of your time finding the group (still pretty ridiculous imo). If you're a casual gamer spending half an hour to find a group and playing for an hour total, well then that's HALF your time spent just finding a group to level. This is the complaint of casual gamers, not difficulty. Difficulty only enters into the equation here because it's being used as the tool that forces people to group. From the sound of the interview it's literally impossible to solo effectively, which is a problem, regardless of how raging a boner you get from FFXI (which again, I'm not trying bash... only using your description of it to point out things I disagree with. I did enjoy the game when I played it, it just took too long for me to get groups to reasonably fit into the amount of time I can devote to a game).

Originally Posted by Ecronyte

And, I like challenge, in fact I thrive on it. I was attracted to Aion because it has potential to be very challenging. The flight dynamic, the combo system, the mob AI, etc. A challenge is exactly what I want. I used to solo super hard quests/areas and group quests/areas in WoW and L2. Because I like seeing what I am capable of, I like to see if I can manage what most people have a hard time with in a duo or trio.

I just don't think forced grouping makes the game challenging. And I certainly don't think it makes the game appealing to the casual market.

These two posts pretty much sum up my thoughts. Well said people.

[Fuz]

I'm not the guy to be in denial about any negative information on a game I'm looking forward to, but this is one thing I see in just about any MMO.

They're really hard to progress in at first, but get gradually easier as the game gets older. I'm assuming this is by design; make the game harder initially, and draw people in by constantly making it more forgiving.


It took me about a month to get level 40 on my first character in Lineage 2. These days you can do it in less than a week, or 1-2 days if you're really dedicated. At level 50 on my first character, I had 4-5 buffs when hunting with my clan. Nowadays you get free buffs between level 1-39. These include things like HP leech on all physical attacks, increased attack/defense, increased attack speed, and even a little orb that follows you around while randomly healing you. In addition they added weapon rentals (free for completing certain quests), summon'able pets that heal you, and a "newbie protection" buff which makes people of higher level unable to attack you. Not to mention the benefit of a mature economy and playerbase in regards to item availability and support.

I mention L2 since it's made by the same guys, but this happens in all other mmo's I've played as well; RFO just flat out multiplied XP gain across the board, Eve has revamped their newbie tutorial (and the whole concept of easing you into the game) several times. Ryzom initially dumped you in the middle of the game with a "You figure it out, bye", but now has a whole island dedicated to getting newbies off the ground.


Even if there are no direct changes which makes progressing easier, it will become easier due to player knowledge (knowing how/where to go for the best quests and xp), and a maturing economy (more high-end gear circulating).
I don't know anything about just how hard Aion currently is, but I know - for a fact - that it will become easier.

As for myself, I don't mind a "hard" mmo as long as it's a challenging hard, and not a "perform mundane work for as long as you endure it" hard.
In regards to grouping vs solo, I prefer it when they put a focus on player interdependency. I dislike it when games promote how you can always solo on all classes, since I feel it takes out a lot of the variety between classes. A scout class becomes an "archer who can see invisibility", a crafter becomes a "warrior who can make stuff", a buffer becomes a "nuker with buffs", and so on.
But that's just me.

[eternalchaos]

hehe I played FFXi and personally never had to switch armor out constantly. I did switch weapons once in a while simply to level up said weapon.. OR because using an Axe with the dark knight next to me would trigger a better combo attack instead of using my two handed sword.


Solo'ing is the ideal method for people in the end.. you do what you want whenever you want. However even the mostpopular MMO's.. Lineage, Everquest, WoW, FFXI and even specific areas in Guild Wars require you to party. In the end you can't escape the "solo" aspect if you want a community feel. End Game in WoW is pure party based. You can't even move w/o a party. HOWEVER as said above, to get to this point shouldn't be mundane and rediculous like some MMO's these days have become. It should be difficult yet rewarding. Each level makes you stronger and previous tasks easier.. The more you push the more the game rewards. Many of the free MMO's i played gave you nothing. It was just quest after quest with 'nothing' worth your time. At least in WoW the more time you put into it; the bigger your rewards get.

[Xhieron]

I know it's a little late to get in on this thread, but given that beta is closed atm and I haven't read anything to contradict the OP's concerns (although I have read, albeit several sources removed, that the mob hp is something that is being tweaked), I decided to chime in.

The OP is reasonably satisfying to me for this stage in the game. The best experiences I've ever had in MMO's were in FFXI, and ever since then I've been looking for something else that could compete--and so far, nothing has. (I tried going back to FFXI, but it was hard to find an English-speaking group in the lower levels. In hindsight, I should have just never quit FFXI.) The setup described reminds me of FFXI in some respects, and I like to hope Aion can improve on the model to make it more accessible. In any event, the solo-group balance problem is probably the most pronounced we're going to run into for the next few generations of MMO's, and I pray that Aion tackles it appropriately and just settles the question once and for all.

There are a few premises which we must take for granted, and I think we would be remiss to overlook them. Namely:

1. If grouping is not required for reasonable advancement, no one will group. See World of Warcraft mid-game, EQ1 druids and necromancers mid-game. See also backlash against EQ2 solo content shortly after release.
2. Grouping is necessary for community-building. See City of Heroes, Guild Wars PVE (where, in the absence of group content, it is near impossible to build strong relationships with guild/supergroup comrades).
3. All players want the most amount of reward for the least amount of effort and the least amount of dependence on others.
4. All players want all competing players to be at a disadvantage to them. See "Casual players shouldn't get epics" threads in the forum of your choice, both PVE and PVP.
5. Someone will always complain.

Taking all that, the question is whether one can create an environment that 1) allows players to solo, 2) encourages grouping and community development, and 3) makes players of all demographics proportionately unhappy so that no one cancels.

It sounds to me like this is the direction Aion's beta is taking. It's beta, of course, so there's tweaking to look forward to, but it trends toward synthesizing the two poles of the question. Mind you, the OP said it was possible to solo. He/she merely suggested that it was not as pleasant as he/she would have liked. Now, without more information, I cannot make a reasonable judgment on the post. I'd like to know a few things--how much experience was the solo kill worth? and more importantly, factoring in down-time, what is the exp/hour rate of the solo character as versus a group which is killing faster? If a group of six kills six times faster than a solo character, and the exp is divided six ways, that's absolutely fair, barring bonuses and what not. Loot distribution is also fair, assuming the group stays together long enough for the distribution to average out, and assuming the loot system compensates for anomalies in its RNG (e.g., after thirty kills, every member in the six-man party has gotten at least one drop, assuming there is one drop per kill).

Nonetheless, I hope that is not the case. Rather, I would prefer a system where the solo person takes, perhaps, seven times as long to kill a mob for six times the experience. --just enough to make it advantageous to seek a group, without the need to sit in Jeuno and spam. The ONLY drawback to FFXI that I can recall was the absence of the ability of a non-BST to solo at all--even poorly--past 15 or so. If I understand the OP, this is not the case with Aion. Blowing through an MP bar to kill a mob is a far cry from faceplanting on that mob. Slow soloing is not the same thing as no soloing.

Like many others, I have a certain nostalgic attachment to difficult encounters. I have far less time available to play games than I had during FFXI's prime, but if I make a demon-warrior in Aion who carries a big ****ing sword and a shield, I expect to tank. That means--yes, a high level caster should get three-shotted if he gets critted. He needs me. (Incidentally... Kite. Kiting's good for you, and fun. All the videos I've seen of Aion suggest that casters are able to do this, at least well enough not to get slaughtered when solo.) Likewise, left by myself, a mob will chisel my HP away while I whittle at it until I die. I need a healer and a DPS. If I want to solo, I choose a weaker mob and rest a little when I'm done. Roles are good. Roles help people feel valuable, and encouraged grouping builds communities.

Finally, I don't think class-specific techniques should be out of the question. I'd like to see more ninja tanks. I'd like to see classes be able to solo difficult content if they master a certain strategy and use their abilities in a certain way. That does nothing to impede the capabilities of others.

[Nihlus]

Interesting read.

However, it's hard to say one way or the other because it is a beta, so that means that content and/or mechanics are still likely to change before retail is released. It takes a lot of fine tuning to create a great MMO, and that fine tuning takes place not just during beta phases, but throughout the life of the game as well. To completely judge a game based solely on its beta is kind of rash.

Right now, from what I'm picking out is this:
There is some solo content, and naturally duo content.
Missions are party based, which is fair, they are important story impacting missions, so they should be.
There's challenge to it, it's not just a run up and click auto-attack, go eat a sammich until you win deal.

Right now, everything I'm seeing in Aion is appealing to my FFXI background, which is great, I loved that game, so right now I'm still feeling really good about it.

One of the things I loved about the FFXI model, meaning the requirement for a party to complete many things, meant that people generally had to act civilly. If you got a reputation on a server as a complete asshat, well, it was tough getting a party composed of quality players. Not an absolute mind you, but definitely more-so than in WoW. Wow, you can solo your way straight to 70 with limited aid, if even any at all. That's fine I suppose, but it does deprive people of the chance to learn how their class functions in a group.

I still think we're in for a grand time with Aion.

[raou]

Originally Posted by serano

Ok so i have read the initial post, the replies and everything else that was stated in this topic and it immediatly made me want to register to reply.

As an L2 veteran that still plays after 3 years of hardcore gaming, the initial statements from NCsoft about Aion were very promising! After this post that was made by this player I'm having some doubts if it still has its appealing character it used to have.

Firstly I agree with most people, a game should not be created to be easy, thus hardcore gamers need to find the point of crunching in the game where it becomes challenging. In the MMORPG style that classicaly means the grind. I'm referring now at grindrates for example in L2 at 70+ especially 79-80 which takes about a year to accomplish.
Now the image that I had, and which was told in many interviews is that Aion would not focus as much on the exp rates but more on the difficulty level of the mobs not on its HP only but on its intelligence. I understood this as: the way the mobs adapt to the situation just like players would adapt to the situation and so make a challenge to the player constantly adapting and mastering your skills and tactics bound to your class. Solo or in group.

Secondly it was also stated by NCsoft spokesmen that the game would have a casual appeal as well. Soloing would be made possible and the necessary levels could be accomplished in a minimal time as well IF the player learned how to play his class and learned how to adapt itself into different situations. As it was posted by the starter of this topic one MP bar for one mob sounds even worse to me than L2 where i could actually kill 2 mobs with a full MP bar.

The point I'm trying to make is that the difficulty level of MMORPG's these days lies within the grindrate. For some reason Asian's love it and probably others around the world aswell.
BUT you can move the difficulty level out of the grind, coz it is the grind that mostly makes people quit games. It would be wiser to put the difficulty in mastering classes the way they are supposed to (which would actually mean real rollplaying). Difficulty should not automatically mean much harder grind.

As for the soloing/grouping discussion. People are still making a big deal out of the difference between both playstyles. I believe that once you reach the end-game cap, people will automatically focus on grouping because end-game is mostly about the PVP-aspect of the game. This can also include raids and exclusive content that is specifically aimed to people that reached the cap and give extra benefits to guilds or to help others get their aswell.
So you must look at from the perspective from how to get the end level and what should be the difference. People here have stated that if you play in groups you should have a better droprate of items from mobs, ... while in fact that would mean rendering the soloing-part of the game useless. The only difference between those two should mean time, and not much of it. It would seem logical to me that groups will not exp in the same place where solopeople would exp. The extrabonus is that people that group is that they get more exp/hour then they would if they solo. Their advantage is that they learn new skills faster/ more support -> easier exp/they get the level cap faster. Is this enough to encourage group play? yes it is. People that prefer to solo know that they will go slower, but that does not mean that they have to go 3 times slower. For example if you would get a group together and you can exp 3 months nonstop and get the caplevel in that time that does not have to mean that people that solo need to reach this level in let us say 1 year. I do remind myself that there are also 2 kinds of soloers. You have the 10h+ soloers and the 3h a day soloers. But it should be said that a hardcore soloer should at least have a minimal delay in hours to get to the same level as someone who is in group.

This whereas the soloer needs to adapt his gameplay as being solo on the mob, where the difficulty does not ly how much HP he has or how fast he goes down, but how he manages to play to get him down.

And the group who has a more challenging mob in HP amount but also has the XP bonus + the comfort that his groups might have a nice DPS output aswell as support and if they have a tank also have the luck of not having to deal with the death exp loss. These are benefits that a group has and a soloer does not.


My last resolution: IF we force people to group like L2, multiple people will be forced into multiple accounts/dualboxing and not yet to say buffbotting/supportbotting or w/e and we will enter a world like lineage 2. The fact that WoW for example doesn't have this problem in the amount that L2 has it is because single classes do have the strenght to accomplish something on their own without having to bother every 5 minutes to sit down/get buffs/... A game therefor should be created where people are offered singleplay with the luxury of having groupplay aswell and not the otherway around while giving the real groupplayers enough content or challenges aswell without giving them the advantage in the end by looking to the way they exped up!



Some might say I might have nagged and wasted 5 minutes of precious time and about 2KB of database storage space, other might think I made some pretty accurate points towards MMORPG and Aion. Fact is that Aion profiled itself as an MMORPG that would appeal to hardcore aswell as casual players. This means that XP should not be game difficulty but other factors. As a hardcore L2 player I've had it a little with non stop hardcore pve grind and I like to relax and enjoy the game, the beauty, the story and the intrigues of it and at the same time advance combined with intense gameplay where I can relive hardcore gameplay but not 24/24 7/7 without the option of slowing down withouth cutting myself. As far as I understood this was how Aion profiled itself as the combination of WoW/GW/L2 dipped with the glamour and glitter of FFXI. Let us hope that all these negative/postive points are just some points that are used on BETA only and that they do balance out the difference between kinds of players in the LIVE servers. How carebear it may seem, they could make different kind of servers with different rates or with different expressions on gamecontent itself without excluding any part of it.

I had fun reading through all of the posts especialy this one, this is exactly how i feel about mmorpg's and im glad sombody else typed all that instead of me .

The reason i play mmorpg's is smply that i have the freedom to do whatever i want in a virtual world, i do not want to be forced to play a certain way and i do not want to be forced to party if i choose not to, keeping the doors open for all players only makes the game better.

[Kyouraku]

Originally Posted by srinknorei

To me, it seems the game is running into down-time issues. from this interview it sounds like monster HP is just a bit too high, takes just way too much mana, and that the mana regen is painfully slow. you would think people would want as little down time as possible. down time means you're waiting and not enjoying the game. that doesn't sound like fun to me. i hate waiting for the bus.

You should bare in mind that the level cap is only 20, who knows maybe in later levels mages will get skills like increased mana capacity, increased regen rates or (like in l2) toggle skills that increase mp regen while sitting...they might even steal the mana recharge skill so in a group situation everyone can have full mana most of the time.

Also bare in mind the point the guy below is making about items:

Originally Posted by Prelude

When Linege 2 first started.Ppl being about mid lvl could not even think about items at their range cuz they were so far able to buy only main needed stuff egg.Pots, soulshots,scrolls.Cuz there was no economy.
I mean he said he could kill one mob using all his mana. No wonder why.
No1 said that its gonna be 2 months mmorpg.As l2 players I see such a much same things like a based on l2 in game and such a much improvement in any part of it.Thats why i cant wait.

Anyways, this is like pretty much what i dreampt aion to be like so i am HAPPY to of read this, sure it would be nice to have some solo areas and as you guys who are "casual" have been mentioning your worried about group avaliability well...are you forgetting this will be the start of the game? EVERYONE will be grouping and if you can keep up with "the pack" at the start you should have no problem at all with finding a party, it wont be like games you have decided to start playing after they have been released for like half a year or so where lower level areas are pretty much dead.
Also the issue with mobs difficulty people are saying it should be made easier, going by how fast people made lvls1-20 (im asuming NC dont plan on releasing an expansion within the first 4 or 5 months of retail) if they did make it easier people would be hitting lollvlcap within this time easily. Obvioulsy if there is no ne of the above regen type skills the help mages with their down time, i do agree this will suck even in parties as most classes...if not all seem to rely heavily on skills from what i have seen in videos atleast...although this could maybe only be to show them off

[Icingdeath]

The real question is, will ncsoft consider the feedback from US/Euro/Rest of Asia market that they wish to market this game to?

While it would be impressive if that occurred and they tweaked the game according to more western tastes, im assuming that it would really be based purely off the korean market's taste.

So if you are looking for a hard game, maybe even harder then L2, then it might be something to celebrate. But is it?

Sure, promoting group play is a good thing but ramming it down peoples throats is another. Personally i didnt like waiting hours on end at the entrance of DVC to get groups fun.

The definition of hardcore and casual is very subjective but one thing remains consistent. If you dont have the player base, we as players however hardcore arent going to find groups so easily

We can slam games like WoW all day but the truth is, they do have the subscriber base to back it up. Question is, why?

Its simple. They cater to both hardcore and casuals and to both PvE and PvP. Till today, less then 2% have experienced the current hardest dungeon and the dedication involved getting there is surely anything but casual.

At the same time, being the top rated arena team isnt a cake walk either.

The golden bit is, it doesnt stop casuals that make up the numbers to participate and have fun while also providing a resource avenue as well as pvp content to the people who are hardcore.

Saying u only want hardcore people in a game is like saying you want houses only but u dont want any of the greenery, trees etc that surround you.

I dont know but that looks boring dont you think? What business could support the licencing fee, hosting costs for the server farms etc just for a few thousand people paying 14 bucks a month?

L2 bombed for the US/Euro market and it goes to show that you cant take your culture and lifestyle and apply it everywhere else thinking people are going to drink it up. Even Coca Cola learned that in india.

So yeah, personally i'd love for this to be a great game. Id really prefer it to have content options for the hardcore and the casual. I'd vote for choice to solo or group and more importantly for it to be fun and filled with players.

Realistically, i know our personal comments hold little influence and much is yet to be seen as it is what ncsoft decides and not us. certainly more so for those of us outside korea

[Logan]

From what I remember of the days when I stumbled into the Korean open beta of Lineage 2... it was also quite difficult, I made it to level 20 and did the class change quest although it took me a very long time to get the feel of the game and learn to adapt.

I can go back to Lineage 2 now with a trial account and proceed way past level 20 with ease and even after that now, so in my honest opinion; YES it is and will be difficult and seem quite hardcore now, but give it a few months and things will seem easier.

[Smartey]

Im glad it appears to be a bit more hardcore.

Let me do what everyone does when talking about MMOs, give you a WoW example.

I played a priest, shadow specced. When fighting mobs my own level, this is what I could do, and did, sometimes.

Damage them to 50% health or so. Stick on a quick heal. Set to 'auto-attack' with my wand.

Go downstairs, make a sandwich. Eat the sandwich. Get a drink. Drink the drink. Go to the toilet. Wash my hands. Go back upstairs to my game. Collect loot. Repeat.

What feels different about Aion (so far) is how monsters arent going to be easy. You will have to be focused. That said, you dont need to be a MMO pro or anything, but it takes concentration and practise to bring a mob down. Mobs will be different, so if you used a skill combo of 2, 3, 4, 5, 2, 2, 3, 2 for one mob, it might not work with the other. The other might be stronger, harder, faster. In that case, you would have to alter your playstyle, to perhaps, 4, 5, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4 for that mob. I like this idea, as it forces players to constantly change, and adapt to the situation. It essentially turns PvE into PvP, or PvPvE as it is said.

I want a challenge, not mobs that I can kill easily every time. Thats why Aion looks promising.

Edit: Not just that, but combat is on more of a XYZ axis, so you may need to fly upwards, retreat and heal up, before returning to the flight. Due to mob positioning, you may need to strike from above. Variety is what makes an MMO playable, for me.