[Review] Lv50 Chanter

[Ainx]

This might sound like a rant - just a fair warning. As it stands, right now (November 5th) Aion is not a long-term endeavor. Many people will read this and say "told you so" and "i knew that already" but those people are not level 50. They haven't experienced the game really yet.

Here's a brief timeline and what I experienced while leveling and at level 50 so far.

I started playing as soon as the servers were up on September 20th. I rolled a Chanter because I played one in C-beta and Closed/Open NA betas. I really enjoyed the class so I stuck with it in retail. I did not consider the end-game PvP content when I rolled a chanter and that was a mistake. I'm not going to let my class choice color my opinion of this game (much) though.

The Good:
Launch server stability - honestly, really good compared to other MMOs. There were hiccups and queues, but this launch was basically an A- on a grade scale. I've seen about 10 moderate-sezed MMOs launch in the recent years and Aion has been a great launch experience.
Graphics - Beautiful locales both in Elysea and Asmodae. Awesome animations for character attacks and spell effects.
Sound - Although buggy in some cases, the ambient music and general sound effects in the world are well done.

The Bad:
Imba solo PvP - An often-said argument here is that Aion is a group PVP game. So, when you're in the Abyss doing repeatables by yourself, you're basically nyerked. A sorc comes out of nowhere and 1-shots you. Then corpse camps you. Or a ranger. Or you get chain-feared by a spiritmaster. There are no diminishing returns on any crowd control / lock-out spells. A level 50 ranger can burst you from 100 to 0 in 4 abilities and that's after the 50% damage reduction. If it takes them more than 4 abilities, you can't heal yourself cause you're silenced or stunned. You're also snared every 8 seconds and your Greater Healing Potion is on a 30sec cooldown. Basically PvP in this game is a huge clusternyerk early and late in the game.

Imba group PvP - Imagine you're level 50 and in 12 man alliance conquering artifacts in the Core. Suddenly 3 sorcerers and a cleric fly up from nowhere and drop 3 Lumiel's Wrath on you. 5-10 people die depending on how clumped you were. If someone's left alive, the Cleric downs a jelly and drops their 4k DP on them to finish it off. Your stout alliance of adventurers was just reduced to ash by 4 people. Sure, they can't do it for another hour, but the point stands.

Lack of quests from level 30 on and terrible XP rewards - Ok there are some quests. The further into levels you go, though, the less there is to do. Suddenly you find that all the quests for your level only give you 1.5 bars of XP. You gotta grind out the remaining 80 million or 100 million XP at 35k xp a mob. Campaign quests give nice XP, but generally you'll end up doing them as they become available to you, except for some later on which are actually slightly challenging (end of the line Heiron missions). Now, naturally I had no problem with grinding, but that's not a very good way to retain customers on the western market. Out of the 20 people whom I started playing with, only 3 remain and only one is above 40 (aside from myself).

Terrible UI - Not as bad as FFXI's, but nowhere near as good as WoW's. Just the fact WoW lets you greatly customize the UI using their own API makes Aion's UI features laughable. I hate comparing to an established 5-year old product here, but come on. The raid (alliance) UI is so, so bad.

Terrible translations - The NA translation team worked really hard on moving Aion from Korean to English, but they must have been fired or something, because aside from quest text, NPC speech is absolutely retarded. From Lepharists to Balaur... "I will teach you a hot lesson" and "Go for the stupid one first" are just some examples of the bad in translation. I would prefer they left it in Korean. Even some quest text is poorly translated.

Did I mention imba PVP? I think it's because I'm a chanter and can't solo anything or anyone and typically get demolished by lower level burst classes like sorc and ranger. Unfortunately playing a free AP class leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth so a little bit of my PvP opinion is colored by that. It could also be that I'm bad and can't absorb a 7400 nuke at full HP, fully buffed.

I give this game a C+ and I'm totally looking forward to the next best thing. In the meantime though, I'll go run Dark Poeta, kill 14 bosses and see 3 blue drops of which one is an armor flux. Great design dudes, great design.

[Inzi]

Originally Posted by Ainx

The Bad:
Imba solo PvP - An often-said argument here is that Aion is a group PVP game. So, when you're in the Abyss doing repeatables by yourself, you're basically nyerked. A sorc comes out of nowhere and 1-shots you. Then corpse camps you. Or a ranger. Or you get chain-feared by a spiritmaster. There are no diminishing returns on any crowd control / lock-out spells. A level 50 ranger can burst you from 100 to 0 in 4 abilities and that's after the 50% damage reduction. If it takes them more than 4 abilities, you can't heal yourself cause you're silenced or stunned. You're also snared every 8 seconds and your Greater Healing Potion is on a 30sec cooldown. Basically PvP in this game is a huge clusternyerk early and late in the game.

Imba group PvP - Imagine you're level 50 and in 12 man alliance conquering artifacts in the Core. Suddenly 3 sorcerers and a cleric fly up from nowhere and drop 3 Lumiel's Wrath on you. 5-10 people die depending on how clumped you were. If someone's left alive, the Cleric downs a jelly and drops their 4k DP on them to finish it off. Your stout alliance of adventurers was just reduced to ash by 4 people. Sure, they can't do it for another hour, but the point stands.

/me awaits to see squad of level 20-30 fanboys to jump here to tell how you are wrong, how greatly Aion pvp is balanced and how fun it is...

[choongfu]

go back to wow noob

there i said it

[Inzi]

Originally Posted by choongfu

go back to wow noob

there i said it

Level 33 calling level 50 a noob. I see what you did there.

[choongfu]

Originally Posted by Inzi

Level 33 calling level 50 a noob. I see what you did there.

not to mention i sold it

[Ainx]

Though I played WoW before this, and FFXI before WoW, I am fully aware that both games are trash now. Too bad there isn't a suitable replacement yet. Guess I'll can always go kill some bandits in Borderlands while waiting on DP to cooldown.

[Aseenus]

Originally Posted by choongfu

go back to wow noob

there i said it

I really am getting sick of this phrase.

[Leonne]

go back to wow




because aion sucks

[Whatislove]

I dunno about the UI comment, default Aion UI i find to be 100 times better than wow default, but in wow's you can use addons to customize it in every way possible, so you cant really compare it to that, you can compare default to default.

I never understood why everyone keeps telling people that at level 30 quests only award 1.5xp bars and its a total grind... in my honest experience, i did not have to grind anything until level 37 when i started HQ grind.

I am level 40 at the moment and 2 million xp away from 41 and the only thing ive done from 40 to now is 2 aether labs runs (1 for the quests and 1 for fun), heiron quests and a bit of a HQ run for some molars, the actual group grind part in HQ was probably only 2 hours long, so from 40-41 i had to grind 2 hours in HQ with a group that was very fun and im going to have to grind out another 2 mil to level..which is like..less than an hour.

Anyway, i think people who say quests after level 30 get you 2 xp bars or less are grossly overexaggerating the situation

EDIT: I would say the game becomes a total grind at level 44-45 where quests only award 1.5 bars of xp, definatly not at 30

[dirtyklingon]

i did all teh quests available in beluslan and am now 34. guess what i get to do now?




GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNDDDDDDDDDDDDDD DDDDDDD

3-2-4-5-3-2-4 herbal treatment repeat.

[Whatislove]

Originally Posted by dirtyklingon

i did all teh quests available in beluslan and am now 34. guess what i get to do now?




GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNDDDDDDDDDDDDDD DDDDDDD

3-2-4-5-3-2-4 herbal treatment repeat.

I cant comment on asmodian leveling, but elyos 34-35 was easy :/

Ive heard asmodian leveling is worse than elyos in general though, and when i layed the OB i noticed that even 1-20 was significantly harder on asmo than it was elyos

Its actually why i ended up rolling elyos lol

[echo2691]

It brings us back to the same idea. Aion, currently, is for the hardcore gamer which can grind out the lvls and get to endgame. WoW, currently, is for the casual gamer which everyone can get max lvl and enjoy the endgame faster. Im a 42 chanter and the quests still give about 3-4 bars but it has slowed down alot. Yes, people say it is true that 30+ sucks and it does unless you have a group. This isnt a solo game ppl, its a group effort. 40+ you will be happier because there are more instances to do and more elite grinds.

[Hinagi]

If those sorcerers or rangers wrote the review, it'll be vastly different to this bitter outcome.

regarding whole alliance taking core artifact, does it not make sense to have a crew to be on standby to watch out for opposing faction who is very likely to turn up to ruin the artifact take over? for example rangers. because they can 4 shot someone, then use silence & root so they can't do anything even if they survive 4 shot. m i rite?

[Dakho]

I think it's about time for everyone to face facts and realize Aion is just a bad game.

[johnkx]

He's kinda right. Chanters can't solo pvp. He's like a broken assassin+cleric. The only thing that chanters have that others don't is buffs.