More Aion

One of the things that is essential to me as an MMO gamer is having elements such as crafting to enhance the downtime that we all experience when we’re not questing, doing instances or pvp’ing.    It could be argued that crafting should have the potential to be a stand-alone and critical part of any MMO.  However, many developers seem to take the approach that  crafting is just an extra add-on, and not vital to the game in any way. 

Want an example?  Take a look at Warhammer.  Crafting in WAR was clearly an afterthought—something that was banged into the game in order to be able to say “Look!  We have crafting!”  Never mind that the items were mostly useless and did nothing to enhance a character or the game itself.  The crafting feature was just plain silly, and so boring that it did nothing to encourage me to want to engage in it.

Age of Conan’s crafting was better, and it’s clear that the developers wanted the system to be viable and important to the game and its economy.  It’s a lot more fun to engage in—especially since the most recent patch—and does provide a diversion on those nights where I don’t feel like questing or grouping.  However, there are problems with it, such as the limited choices of professions, logistical issues like not having a crafting merchant anywhere near a trader (except in guild cities), and the lack of being able to having crafting as a stand-alone part of the game (crafting was tied to adventure level, making it impossible to have characters who do nothing BUT craft).  Although the crafting in AoC was far from a failure, it could have been so much better in so many ways.

During my beta weekend in Aion, one of the things that I was determined to try out was the crafting system.  I did not have high hopes, as the last two games I’ve played (AoC and WAR) both had disappointments for me in crafting, and I expected Aion to be no different.  I was, however, pleasantly surprised.

Harvesting in Aion is traditional.  You obtain crafting materials from harvestable nodes as well as from mob drops.  The nodes are scattered fairly plentifully about the zones, and they seem to have fairly quick respawns.  Each node grants you three “attempts” to harvest.  It is possible to fail and gain nothing.  It is also possible to “crit” while harvesting and find a “rare” green item.  One thing that I found sort of fun was harvesting aether—which you can only find in nodes that are, you guessed it, up in the air.  Yes, you have to fly to harvest aether!  How long the novelty of this will last, I don’t know, but it made me giggle and added a fun sense of danger when I had to try to hurry and finish my harvesting before I ran out of flight time and plummeted to my death.  Not that that ever happened. *shifty eyes*

The mob drops seem fairly random as far as the types of materials you get.  I did notice that the mobs had to be a certain level in order to drop a particular level material.  For example, only a level 13 or higher mob would drop level 13 materials.  I can see the mob dropped materials becoming a bottleneck for crafting, however, as the only way to get them is through grinding or buying them on the broker.  As expected, the prices were stupidly expensive.  I do wonder if this will deter the crafting element to some extent.

In Aion, there are six professions: cooking, handicrafting (jewelry), armorsmithing (chain/plate armor), weaponsmithing, alchemy and sewing (leather/cloth armor).  You can “dabble” in every crafting profession up to a certain level, and choose two to become a “master” at.  I won’t bother going into the pluses and minuses of each profession, as I haven’t tried them all yet; however, I am confident all will have their proponents and opponents.

I chose to try out armorsmithing and cooking first.  The crafting trainers are located in your home city, and there is a trainer for each profession.  You must buy your initial training and subsequent recipes, as well as a certain amount of materials in order to craft—making crafting a tidy little moneysink.  The trainers offer workorders, which allow you to advance your crafting skill quite nicely while providing you something remotely entertaining to do while you level up.

One thing that I enjoyed about crafting was that it wasn’t simply “click one button” and poof! Finished item!  Most items require you to make other items first—for example, to craft a pair of chainmail gloves, I might have to craft steel wire first.  Steel wire requires me to craft steel ingots from the raw iron that I gathered.  So each item required a multi-step process, making it engaging and interesting—far from easy-mode. 

That’s not to say that it is so difficult or hard to understand that it’s no fun to do.  The processes themselves are straight-forward and easy to understand.  But it does require some thought and planning to make sure you don’t run out of a crucial material, etc.

It is possible to fail on your crafting attempt, meaning that you lose the components and the coin you’ve invested.  Your probability of failure corresponds with your crafting skill and the level of the item you are attempting to craft.  For example, if my crafting level is 25, it is extremely unlikely that I would fail in crafting a level 10 item.  However, if I’m attempting to craft a level 25 item, I might just have to endure a failure or two.

It is also possible to “crit” on your crafting and end up with a superior item.  As far as I can tell, these crits are random.  I saw the figure of 20-30% chance thrown around on some forums, but I can’t attest to that.  It’s a nice surprise when it happens, and the items that are produced can bring a nice profit on the broker.

In my first beta weekend, I can honestly say I spent half of my time doing nothing but harvesting and crafting—and having a good time doing it.  I never got tired of looking for nodes to harvest.  I never wearied of learning new recipes, doing work orders or the excited feeling I got when I got a superior item or a rare material from a node.

One thing that also bodes well for crafting in this game is that player-crafted items seem to be of some real worth—better than commonly dropped items in game.  Things such as potions and manastones, which are player-crafted, are of real value to everyone—everyone needs health potions and mana regen potions!

If a game can hold my attention with its “fluff,” such as crafting, it is a good sign for the long-term playability for me.  Playing the broker, crafting, harvesting—all of those things add a lot to my gaming experience, and when they are available to me, it gives me something to do on those nights that my gaming partner isn’t around, or the nights when I don’t feel like fighting something.

All in all, crafting is looking pretty good in Aion—at least from my perspective!

Aion Part Deux

Aion—the next big thing? Part 2

There was so much to cover in my initial look at Aion during their 3^rd closed beta that I simply couldn’t fit it all in last time.  Instead, I went with a general overview of my initial impressions.  However, with the next closed beta event coming up next weekend, I wanted to go ahead and get the rest of my “initial” impressions out of the way to make room for a more detailed look at the game after my next experience.   Believe me, I’ll be paying close attention and giving the game a thorough going over.  I’ve had too many disappointments with MMO releases to ever really be wide-eyed and optimistic about a new MMO ever again.

The Class System.  Aion uses what I feel is a return to a “traditional” way of choosing a class.  They provide you with four archetypes: warrior, scout, priest and mage to choose from when you first create your character.  NCSoft’s argument for doing this is to allow the player to spend time to get a feel for the class archetype before making a permanent decision.  At level ten, you select your permanent class type.  Warriors can become gladiators or templars.  Scouts can become rangers or assassins.  Priests can become chanters or clerics, and mages can become spiritmasters or sorcerers.    

Bleh.

Personally, I don’t agree.  Many MMO gamers are experienced enough to know what class they want to play at the outset—whether that be scout, tank, priest or finger-wiggler.  I don’t need to spend ten levels learning a “general” style of play before choosing my final class and receiving the abilities that will set me apart.  Instead of getting those at the outset and letting me make a decision as to whether or not it’s a class I’m going to enjoy playing long-term, I have to wait until I’ve slogged through the first ten “general” levels, then spend another 5-10 levels getting a feel for my specific class.  There’s nothing worse than realizing after you’ve spent a lot of time leveling up a character that you don’t like it and having to start over again, which with this system, you’re going to have to do.  Instead of 10-15 levels of repeat, you’re looking at 20-25—half the level cap.  This can take a good bit of time, which brings me to my next point.

The experience pace in Aion is a bit slower than many games I’ve tried.  One word that I hear tossed around a lot when discussing Asian-produced games is “grindfest.”  Is Aion a grindfest?  Well….that depends on your definition.  There IS a level of grindi-ness to the gameplay.  You are not going to zoom through levels to level cap without having to be thorough, do lots of quests and kill lots of mobs.  Crafting as well requires a bit of a grind to advance your skills, by doing work orders, harvesting materials to raise your harvesting skill, etc.

I don’t see this as a negative to this game.  I don’t mind a slower leveling pace.  I enjoy experiencing as much content as possible when playing, and I think a slower experience gain encourages people to actually get out there and experience the game—quests, new zones, mobs, etc.  The vast majority of us will spend our time at level cap, once we’ve reached it, so I’m never in any hurry to get there.  Boredom tends to strike once you’ve seen it all and done it all, so I like to delay that as much as possible in the event that the endgame isn’t fully in place yet.  There is a different mindset out there which seems to believe that a game doesn’t start until you hit the max level, and people race to level cap within a matter of weeks or even days.  I understand the point of view, but I don’t necessarily agree with it.   A well-rounded game gives you content the entire time you are leveling—not just at the beginning, and not just at the end.

Personally, I –like- having to quest to level.  I don’t mind killing lots of mobs, as long as the fights are fun and the zone is exciting.  It’s satisfying to me to watch my harvesting skill tick up a point.  I like feeling like leveling is really an accomplishment—not an entitlement.  There’s a fine line to walk between making something feel impossible (oh my god, I can’t believe my xp bar only moved one bubble after that) and too easy (dude, I finished three quests and dinged).  In my experiences in leveling my Templar up to 15 this past beta, I got the impression that Aion’s struck a good balance thusfar.  It’s when there is no variety, no feel of “new” that a grind becomes, well…a grind.

Now, back to those classes. *shifty eyes*

Only eight classes does seem slightly limiting to me, however, I think NCSoft got it right in that the classes are identical for both factions, Elyos and Asmodean.  After playing WAR for six months, I got to where I hated the “mirror” system, where there was a mirror class for each faction—not identical, but with different abilities that supposedly balanced each other out.  To quote my dear grandmother, rest her soul, “horse hockey” (and she didn’t mean the weird Canadian sport played on ice rinks).  It never worked that way.  Players on either faction end up screaming that their counterpart is over-powered and that the classes are seriously unbalanced.  Sometimes they even were.  Having identical classes will diminish this somewhat, even if it doesn’t eliminate it entirely.  You’re always going to have folks screaming about class imbalance—“I’m a mage and that tank shouldn’t be able to 2 shot me!” or “I’m a scout and that mage shouldn’t be able to nuke me like that!” NERF NERF NERF!!! *ahem*  You get my point.  What I’m trying to say is that in this case, I think that Eight is Enough.

I can’t speak knowledgeably about all of the classes, as I haven’t tried them all yet.  I created a Templar, which is your typical sword and board tank class, and played her to fifteen.  I have to say, I’m satisfied with my character, even if it does seem that the skills are a bit slow in coming.  Combat for my Templar was meh the first few levels, but as I gained more skills and was able to start putting the combat chaining system (see my previous post) in play, it became more entertaining.  The Templar’s survivability is adequate, though I found it odd that my priest buddy seemed to be nearly as tough at the lower levels.  He died a lot less than I did.  Or I could just suck.  Who knows? *wink*

Stay tuned for a more in-depth look at crafting!

Aion–the next big thing?

So I preordered Aion.  I’ll confess, I really had no expectation of wanting to play this game, but my gaming buddy, Cal (*waves at Cal*), had expressed an interest in Aion some time ago and seemed intent on trying it, so I figured what the heck.  I had some reservations, simply because I’d heard things like “grindfest,” “bots and farmers,” “anime graphics,” etc.  The company who is producing Aion, NCSoft, has a mixed track record.  I always associated them with Lineage II, which I tried for a grand total of about 4 hours–I just couldn’t get past the graphics style.  They also produced the failed Tabula Rasa, which was shut down not too long ago.  Suffice it to say, I wasn’t expecting much from Aion.

Part of the joy of a preorder is you can test the game in some of the betas.  It’s a good way to get a feel for the game, to offer feedback on any issues that you see, and best of all–if you hate the game, you’re only out $5 for the pre-order deposit from Best Buy.  My expectations weren’t very high.  I knew the graphics were going to have an Asian feel to them, more anime-ish than I enjoy.  I’m not one of these folks who love anime.  At all.  I don’t get it, but that’s a topic for another day.  And graphics whore that I am, if graphics don’t appeal to me, I’m probably not going to play the game (see my reference to Lineage II).  I installed the client with some trepidation, and when it was time to create that first character, I held my breath.

And, quite simply, I was blown away. 

The character create was one of the most detailed and in-depth that I’ve ever seen.  The variety was unbelievable–44 choices for hairstyles, over 15 choices for “basic” face shapes, body styles, etc.  And every bit of the faces and bodies are customizeable by numerous sliders.  You can truly make an individual, unique character in Aion–from the beautiful to the grotesque or the bizarre.   The two races, Elyos (light side) and Asmodeans (dark side), have distinct characteristics–most notably, the Asmodeans have glowing red eyes, clawed hands and feet, and manes down their spine, while the Elyos look like they stepped out of a swimwear commercial for Old Navy.  I rolled an Elyos Warrior (more on classes later), and I was able to make EXACTLY what I wanted.  That hasn’t happend for me in a game since EQ2, and even then, there were limits.  I could literally have spent hours in the character create, just twinking and playing with the various looks and options.

After a great first impression in character create, I logged into the starter zone.  Graphically, the world is lovely.  It’s a “surreal” feeling world–very fantasy-oriented.  If you’re looking for gritty realism, then head to Age of Conan because you’re not going to get it here.  However, it truly is well done for the style, and I found it appealing.  The starting zone is, in a word, HUGE.  It’s expansive and has enormous variety in terrain.  I liked what I saw very much.  The music is….what it is.  I’m not a fan of Asian-sounding music, and that is definately what this sounded like.  It’s “pretty,” I guess, but I have a feeling I’ll be listening to iTunes when I play–unlike Age of Conan, where the music is so spectacular that it’s deserving of being on iTunes.

The starter quests were typical.  FedEx, kill 10 snarkdoodles, gather ten flowers, find ten widgets.  I’m ok with that.  For some reason “traditional” has become synonymous with “boring” in the MMO community.  Personally, I don’t mind traditional, as long as it’s well done, and Aion has done the quests fairly well.  You get tastes of the lore, and the stories are acceptable.  If you are one of the folks who just clicks through the quests to get to the “accept” button, then these are going to be nothing special to you.  Another thing I noticed is that Aion doesn’t spoonfeed you.  In some games, you get little x’s and circled areas to show you just where to go to find what you need.  You don’t get that in Aion.  You can opt to find a quest giver or NPC by hitting “locate” if you want to, but those folks who enjoy a challenge can certainly head out on their own to find their adventure.  Some of the quests simply tell you “in a hard-to-find location,” so you actually have to work at it.  I can see this being either fun and challenging–or maddeningly frustrating, depending on what mood I’m in.  You also get a series of quests called “campaign” quests, which you are required to complete before moving on to the next set.   The rewards are decent, and they are designed in such a way as to let you experience all of the zone you are in.

The UI is vanilla, but it’s well-thought-out.  They’ve opted for a traditional look and feel, and it works for this game.  One thing that’s annoying me greatly is that I can’t change the opacity of my chat box.  I like for my chat box to have a black background all the time, because I find it hard to read text when it’s just shown against the terrain/background.  I’ve not been able to find an option to do that, so consequently, chat isn’t easy for me to read.  You get typical hotkeys, “K” for your skills, “P” for your persona, “I” for inventory–nothing groundbreaking here, but as I said, it is functional and easy to use.

Combat didn’t impress me at all at first.  For the first ten levels, I felt very much like all I was doing was mashing a button and waiting for auto-attack–and I was.  The animations are alright, but coming from Age of Conan, where the combat is very interactive from the get-go, and has an incredibly realistic feel, the combat in Aion seemed a bit flat to me.  However, I will say that there was great improvement as I passed level 10 and got more skills to use.  Aion uses a combat-chain, which is quite fun and simple to use.  It reminded me very much of EQ2’s heroic opportunities, except this is for a single player, not a group.  You hit a combat art, and then it chains to the next one in the series, allowing you to land a more powerful attack.  There is also variety, and you can choose on the fly which skill you want to use for the fight you’re in.  For example, do I want to knockback and build hate, or do I want to just whale hell out of it?  I think the combat will be involved enough to keep me interested–especially at higher levels with more skills.

Flying.  Yes, that’s the thing that supposedly sets Aion apart.  And you know what?  It kinda does.  It was freaking cool to complete the quest and get my wings–complete with a nifty cut-scene of my character flying into battle, looking badass.  And although it would be wonderful to fly everywhere, you’re not allowed.  Some zones don’t allow flight at all, and your flight time in others is very limited–if you don’t land, your wings disappear and you fall to your death.  Not that this ever happened to me. *shifty eyes*  However, I understand that flight time is limitless in PvP, though I’ve not experienced that myself yet.  Having flight makes questing pretty interesting in some zones–the thing you’re looking for might just be above you.  There are also nodes that you must harvest–in the sky.  It adds a nice twist to things, and I’m looking forward to seeing this in action in PvP.

Harvesting and crafting.  Well, I’m going to have to do an entire post just about this topic, but the short version is that I’m VERY happy with what I’ve seen so far.  I’ve been missing “filler” in some games.  WAR’s crafting was a joke and an afterthought with no real function.  Age of Conan’s has improved somewhat since the 1.05 patch, but it’s still limited.  Aion’s crafting system reminds me of the old EQ2 system–where you have to build components in order to make a finished product.  It’s extremely involved and fun–and they’ve made it simple enough that it’s not overwhelming.  This beta weekend, I think I spent half my time crafting–and having fun doing it–and that says something, to me at least.

I’ll definately be writing more about Aion as the new betas come out.  Oh, that’s another thing they are doing the smart way.  The betas and “open” betas are being done on weekends, and they are spread out.  I think this is a very smart decision, as it will keep folks hungry for more.  I know I”m going to be sad when this beta weekend is over!

Overall, my impression of Aion is that it’s pretty, it’s polished, and it looks to have gotten a helluva lot of things right.  I’m eager for more.