October Aion Community Address

[Knite]

Hey everyone-

NCsoft has released the first of its monthly Community addresses. In it they will address upcoming fixes, community feedback, and other bits of useful Aion information, so have a look and discuss! The letter seems to cover many things that we've been talking about since launch.

From www.AionOnline.com

It’s been a month now since Aion opened its doors to players in North America and Europe. In that month, the growth of the game’s community has signaled Aion’s success. We’ve received an amazing amount of feedback, both positive and negative. We’d like to reiterate that we’ve been listening. We have been working around the clock toward solutions to the problems many of you have experienced.

You’ve told us that it’s difficult to advance within certain level ranges. To address this issue, we’re planning to raise quest experience, in addition to reevaluating the experience rewards characters gain for individual kills. We understand how frustrating it can be to repetitively kill enemies. Our goal is to limit the need to mindlessly “grind.”

In this week’s Eye on Community, we answered a question that a player had about client instability. In the reply, we noted that most of the claims stem from the infamous “Crysystem.dll error.” We’ve been working with members of the community to identify the cause of the problem in order to find a permanent solution. Our development team is currently investigating, and will be testing a variety of different short- and long-term solutions. These include adding additional and improved display options to the Aion client, as well as system and memory optimizations.

We’ve heard your unhappiness about the chat spam and bots in Aion and recognize it as an annoying problem. We’ve taken measures to reduce the amount of chat spam you’ll be subjected to and have already seen substantial improvements in this area. We’ve been expanding our GM customer service staff, and we have also assembled a special team dedicated to hunting down and eliminating botting operations. It’s obvious these activities erode your gameplay experience far too much to be acceptable. They also harm us from a business standpoint due to the RMT organizations’ frequent use of stolen credit cards.

Many of you have asked us why we haven’t spent more time communicating the specifics of our plans. The unfortunate truth is that the same people spamming chat channels and setting up bots are also reading our announcements. In order to keep the enemy in the dark, we cannot be too vocal about our plans to fight back.

We want you to know, though, that we’re more dedicated than ever to eliminate chat spam and the use of bots. The good news is that you can help. If you see any suspicious player activity, report it. To quickly report these players, use the /AutoReportHunting feature by typing /AutoReportHunting while a suspicious character is targeted. It’s important to note that this system will actually begin to penalize players after they’ve been reported multiple times. The more of you that use this system—the more effective it will become.

To add more specificity to what we’re discussing here, early next week we’re going to be releasing details about a game update that will go into further detail about how we’ll be fixing some of these issues, in addition to others.

It’s been an exciting month, and the future of Aion is full of promise. Please continue to send us your feedback and never forget that patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

-The Aion Community Team

[Sardoni]

Good read. The "in the dark" statement is honest, but still convoluted. It's inferring we should psychically know that they are making steps to take care of the issue. While I have confidence that NCSoft will take due course, less isn't more in most of these situations

[Netcurse]

Thanks NC. I am hoping the XP changes will be effective within 2 weeks. Most people are still under 35.
What can't happen to Aion is 300,000 players going back to other gamers and spreading the word that aion is a grind fest.

[dalavita]

How much influence does the EU/US branch of NCsoft have on the game itself, considering that the developers are all in Korea. Do THEY listen to the western community, directly or indirectly?

[Awken]

Originally Posted by Netcurse

Thanks NC. I am hoping the XP changes will be effective within 2 weeks. Most people are still under 35.
What can't happen to Aion is 300,000 players going back to other gamers and spreading the word that aion is a grind fest.

Agreed..

[scarr]

Great news! My credit card number is standing by for re-subscribing once more details are released! Unlike other aaa titles that I tried and abandonned without looking back, Aion is something worth waiting for. Thanks for hearing us!

[Aluen]

Originally Posted by dalavita

How much influence does the EU/US branch of NCsoft have on the game itself, considering that the developers are all in Korea. Do THEY listen to the western community, directly or indirectly?

NCWest has it's own devs.

[dalavita]

Originally Posted by Aluen

NCWest has it's own devs.

The game is following the patches of the korean client, I doubt it's going to have separate implementations of it based on our demands, which is why I'm wondering how much the korean devs listen to this community, if at all.

[Ekkio]

In this week’s Eye on Community, we answered a question that a player had about client instability. In the reply, we noted that most of the claims stem from the infamous “Crysystem.dll error.” We’ve been working with members of the community to identify the cause of the problem in order to find a permanent solution. Our development team is currently investigating, and will be testing a variety of different short- and long-term solutions. These include adding additional and improved display options to the Aion client, as well as system and memory optimizations.

Well, I guess that's news.. they're not ignoring the issue; still not much information, let's hope they won't just throw in a new "ultra low" slew of video settings.

[Aluen]

Originally Posted by dalavita

The game is following the patches of the korean client, I doubt it's going to have separate implementations of it based on our demands, which is why I'm wondering how much the korean devs listen to this community, if at all.

Like the spamfilter and the XP bonus added with 1.6 soon? You can have as many doubts as you want, but it wont change the fact that NCWest has it's own devs.

Of course, they can't do core changes (like the CrySystem.dll crases), but they can do patches for west AION on their own.

[Amodin]

Originally Posted by scarr

Great news! My credit card number is standing by for re-subscribing once more details are released! Unlike other aaa titles that I tried and abandonned without looking back, Aion is something worth waiting for. Thanks for hearing us!

Amen to that.

Originally Posted by Sardoni

Good read. The "in the dark" statement is honest, but still convoluted. It's inferring we should psychically know that they are making steps to take care of the issue. While I have confidence that NCSoft will take due course, less isn't more in most of these situations

All they needed to really do was acknowledge with methods other than ignoring the blatant truth. Even a simple, "Duly noted" or "Working on it, stay tuned for updates soon" would have been nice.

Instead this is what was said:

[dalavita]

Originally Posted by Aluen

Like the spamfilter and the XP bonus added with 1.6 soon? You can have as many doubts as you want, but it wont change the fact that NCWest has it's own devs.

Of course, they can't do core changes (like the CrySystem.dll crases), but they can do patches for west AION on their own.

Spamfilter isn't a game-changing feature first of all, and the XP bonus added in 1.6 is being implemented in Korea, which is where it's from in the first place.

I'm not talking about "core changes." More about gameplay, content and balance changes.

[Knite]

Originally Posted by Amodin

Even a simple, "Duly noted" or "Working on it, stay tuned for updates soon" would have been nice.

This is fairly close:

Originally Posted by Knite

To add more specificity to what we’re discussing here, early next week we’re going to be releasing details about a game update that will go into further detail about how we’ll be fixing some of these issues, in addition to others.

[murasamune]

make the xp increases retroactive!

[birdra]

Originally Posted by murasamune

make the xp increases retroactive!

please not. no free levels please, seriously. would be unfair against people who grinded because it was superior exp anyway.