Aion February Community Address (wall o' text)

[Drex]

Greetings Daevas,

First off, I want to share that I am very excited to serve you- all of the Aion players- as Aion producer for NCsoft West. Having worked on Aion for the better part of two years, I've seen it grow from PAX 2007 and the first demo area in Poeta to prelaunch mayhem and now post-launch live operations. As a fellow Aion player myself, I have a vested interest in making it the best game possible, and helping you feel as excited about it as I am. Aion has huge potential, and we have only tapped the surface. We are working on a lot of exciting things set to release in both the near-term and long-term timeframe.

As the producer, one of my focus areas is to communicate frequently and honestly with you. Global coordination of a game as large as Aion takes a lot of planning. We know that at times you may feel like you're wringing water out of a rock in regard to getting information from us, but we want to be cautious with telling you the correct information to not mislead the community. We are in constant communication with our development and production staff, and we really want to share with you more information on a regular basis, but due to scheduled release timing, localization efforts and Western development schedules, we aren't always able to share what we'd really like to.

I know you have all been waiting with bated breath for information on the next game update. While I can't give you a lot of details, I can tell you a couple of things that we are addressing in upcoming game updates. We've listened to your feedback and have been working diligently with the Korean development team, and we are proud to say that over the next few updates (the first of which will be coming in Q2 this year) we will address some of your major concerns: a desire for more content at lower levels, increased rewards for quests, and improved drop rates. Even though we aren't always talking publicly about the next update, we are always listening and integrating feedback into the next update. As part of that, we're trying to coordinate and deliver on what we say even before we say something. Our goal with update communications is to not only be transparent with you, but also give you a reason to trust us when we talk about updates so that you know we will deliver on what we share with you.

If you've been reading the news lately, you know that MMOs are under attack by RMTers ("gold sellers") and hackers- not just Aion, but several other MMOs as well. Even Google has been the target of recent attacks. To combat this, NCsoft has been communicating with several other MMO companies about ways we can fight back as an industry. At NCsoft, you already know that we regularly review our account security processes and implement changes on an ongoing basis to ensure your Aion accounts, in addition to your other NCsoft game accounts are secure. These complex systems take time, require rigorous procedures, and need a very steady hand to balance additions and not disrupt the security measures currently in place. We sincerely appreciate the patience you have shown as we take time to make sure we are setting up and implementing the appropriate systems to best protect you.

This year in Aion, you will notice that we are implementing a lot of the suggestions you've sent us about the game services we offer. We're also planning on providing you more services and increased interaction with our team. We recently introduced exciting paid services (name change, Legion name change, character customization, and gender change), and we will be adding more services throughout the year aimed at improving your experience. (Yes, server transfers are coming!)

We also recognize that our in-game events have been disappointing to you, and we aim to fix that. Along with the introduction of double XP weekends (as experienced during the Christmas holiday), we started offering scheduled server-wide events players could enjoy on a more regular basis. In the future, look for us to add new events like reduced Kinah soul-healing weekends. (Yes, that's what you think it is- cheap soul healing for everyone!)

To go hand-in-hand with the additional server-wide events, our community team is hard at work planning and prepping both in-game and out-of-game events for you. The first event of this nature we ran recently in game, and it featured two Shugos who were in love but constantly separated. Many adventurers of Atreia aided in reuniting this couple, and the overall response from this event was extremely positive. It is this level of service that we will hold ourselves to going forward. Events like this will let you talk to and play with our community staff, and they help foster and grow our relationship with you as the year goes on.

To close, I want to reiterate that Aion has phenomenal potential, as I've personally seen glimpses of it myself. And as the producer of Aion, I will lead our hard-working, effective, creative production and community teams to increase the level of our service in and out of the game, taking Aion to a new level with you by our side.

Chris "Kinslon" Hager

lol

reactions:

ohmigaw in late summer you might see something
reduced soul healing weekend as an "event"? christ
oh good more content for low levels
hopefully the droprate increase is meaningful but i can't say i'm waiting with bated breath
and a little self fellatio at the end to make sure you know how awesome they are. wouldn't be a news update without that.

i also thought this was one of the better reaction posts:

http://i46.tinypic.com/vybd3q.jpg

[arus2001]

I somewhat politely criticized and suggested some points of focus in their forum, but yeah, this is likely a seriously long-winded version of shit SE used to say.

[Groovebox]

I cannot believe that there will be no content update until Summer, that's fucking unacceptable in the MMO world. Hard to imagine this game will have any sort of subscription base when the update rolls around.

[Senji]

Not just on these forums and in legion, but server wide, people are asking about 14 more everyday. Aion will be a ghost town the second beta hits, if not beforehand. Unless NCsoft is delaying content to better match up against 14's and WoW's timeframes.

[Cloudius]

We’ve listened to your feedback and have been working diligently with the Korean development team, and we are proud to say that over the next few updates (the first of which will be coming in Q2 this year) we will address some of your major concerns: a desire for more content at lower levels.

/facepalm
This game has no future.

[Alderaan]

Well, everyone's fucking around on 30'ish twinks because of the lack of content at 50, so it makes sense!

[OzzofAsura]

Isn't "the first of which will be coming in Q2 this year" meaning April, May, June? How do you get late Summer?

[Katlan]

YAY to lets say... 100% increase in instance boss drops... so it goes from 2% to 4%... AWESOME DEVS JUST WHAT I WANTED. and lol@ lower lvs. If they wanted to make the community happy they should of mentioned a change to HHOM proc's, among abyss, ect.. changes

[niwaar]

lol

reactions:

ohmigaw in late summer you might see something
reduced soul healing weekend as an "event"? christ
oh good more content for low levels
hopefully the droprate increase is meaningful but i can't say i'm waiting with bated breath
and a little self fellatio at the end to make sure you know how awesome they are. wouldn't be a news update without that.

i also thought this was one of the better reaction posts:

Its not late Summer, its early summer as Q2 would suggest. My guess is Mid to late May because they are so damn slow at translating content.. However, we will know very soon what these changes are as all of this should be in the 2.0 patch Korea is set to get this month. (I say this month because they were told February, but looks like closer to first week in March at best.) Which is why I call Bullshit on them not being able to tell us any specifics about any of these promised content updates. Korea is getting it soon, so they should know wtf is gonna be in it for sure by now.

More content for lower levels is a good thing as it will streamline the leveling process for those levels if they actually fix the gross discrepancies with quest XP that they are promising to "change". However, the problem with the game as it stands is that there is nothing absolutely to do at the level cap. People are playing more lower level characters because they are twinking lvl 35-39 sins and rangers to go fuck with Elyos in Eltnen. (I would say Elyos do it to asmos too, but its really not true since Morheim is a much more protective geography than Eltnen's wide openness is.) Either that or taking their 50s into Heiron or Beluslan and fucking with lower level people all day.

Changing the drop rates on monsters is NOT going to help people have more fun. Honestly, the drop rates are about what they need to be in order to keep people playing. If you saw better drop rates in SR, TL, DC, DP, etc you would have no reason to put yourself through the pain that these instances are. They dont necessarily need to change drop rates, they need to just code it so SOMETHING drops each time a "boss" is killed. Not a manastone or something like that, but a piece of armor, weapon or stigma ALWAYS. The drop rates on golds, blues, greens can stay the same, just make something drop.

In game events are a total joke, they have been since day one. They speak of this valentine's day event with Shugos and such... Did anyone actually understand that "event" was going on? I sure as hell did not understand that their little story had some kind of in game event attached to it. If they are gonna actually try to do something, then there needs to be some NPC in a major area of Sanctum or Pandemonium directing you to it.

Oh and btw... DBL XP and Soul Heal cost weekends are NOT an event. They are just a ploy to get people to think something special is going on.

I somewhat politely criticized and suggested some points of focus in their forum, but yeah, this is likely a seriously long-winded version of shit SE used to say.

Honestly, to me this is nothing like SE used to say. SE actually would come out (and still does) release vague information about what is to come in a forthcoming update. They may be vague, but at least they are pretty upfront. I would quote an example but they are all off the website at this point. However, they always had pictures, stated something like "changes to Summoners and a buff to summoner and beastmaster pet abilities" or "new armor set to appear in the June update". It was a lot more specific and gave us actual hope for change.

The biggest thing SE ever did for all of us in XI was have a fairly stable and routine update schedule. We got an update every 2-3 months like clockwork. It may have not been huge, but we knew something was coming down the pipe and were always told it was coming and something substantial about what it was going to be. NCSoft gives us "low level content and loot drop rate increase" omg... so much info and we dont even get a real timeline on its arrival.

Meh screw this game... When is FFXIV again? SWTOR? hell Cataclysm looks good right now, and WoW is pathetic these days.

[Warudo Ecksu]

more content....... for lower levels..... guess there's no point in even getting lv.50 in this game

[arus2001]

Honestly, to me this is nothing like SE used to say.

I'm looking at it more from the perspective of interviews at FanFests and such, in that they could somehow say something without really saying anything if they actually chose to say anything at all. "We'll look into it." "We'll take it back to Japan." and so on. The producer saying he simply has a "glimpse" of what's to come is either a case of terrible writing or a sign NCWest has no fucking clue what's going on with their game. With talk of lowbie EXP and lolevents, I'm more inclined to say it's the latter.

If there's one thing the guy got right, it's saying that Aion has potential. The rest has just seemed to get people confused or angry.

[Alderaan]

Aion has such huge, almost limitless potential. That's why so many of us are pissed off about what NC is doing. The game is beautiful. I love the characters, the animations, the combat speed. I actually went back to XI during the breaks in beta and couldn't believe how clunky and slow everything felt.

Fix flight combat
Get rid of luck in HHoM
Make instances actually worthwhile
Eliminate surkana ninjaing
Make forts vulnerable every 2 hours
Give us objectives in the Abyss

Fix the fucking Abyss. Having half of you server not enter a zone should be sending up red flags that maybe something is wrong. So much potential.

[Katlan]

NCsoft thinks new content = higher lv cap.. but that higher lv cap will be the same thing it is at 50... only diff is there won't be a miragents set to grind for. Will be like 1-2 new end game instances.. and I guess a raid.. and abyss for instances dont count, sorry NCsoft

[Franzer]

hey cheap soul healing weekend. cool so my cost of 1.6m for my 36m exp soul heal can go down and i feel like i was rewarded that weekend? what a bunch of fuckshit. And if the level cap is gonna go up, why would i want to get rid of that free 36m exp into 51 anyway?

[niwaar]

I'm looking at it more from the perspective of interviews at FanFests and such, in that they could somehow say something without really saying anything if they actually chose to say anything at all. "We'll look into it." "We'll take it back to Japan." and so on. The producer saying he simply has a "glimpse" of what's to come is either a case of terrible writing or a sign NCWest has no fucking clue what's going on with their game. With talk of lowbie EXP and lolevents, I'm more inclined to say it's the latter.

If there's one thing the guy got right, it's saying that Aion has potential. The rest has just seemed to get people confused or angry.

Yeah I agree there, SE reps always had a way of saying "Oh Really? Well we will take write that down and take it back to Japan."

The real problem with the way NCSoft is doing business is that the game is not truly run or developed my them. Its being done by some small software dev studio in Korea that has nothing to do with the communications with their userbase. The reason why the bigger games have done well is because their communications are linked with their dev team. Blizzard's PR is done by parts of the team itself (Ghostcrawler, etc.). SE does all their development in house as well as their communication team is part of SE itself. Regardless, NCSoft is "bringing this game to the West" instead of developing the game from the ground up for a worldwide release.

[arus2001]

According to the official thread (Tamat), they'll be revealing more about the update tomorrow.

[Aro]

According to the official thread (Tamat), they'll be revealing more about the update tomorrow.

inb4 repeating what was in the community address.

[Aro]

inb4 repeating what was in the community address.

The only thing that could of been worse... more buying dyes with real money

[niwaar]

According to the official thread (Tamat), they'll be revealing more about the update tomorrow.

Said "reveal" lol ...

Greetings Daevas,



It’s been an exciting week, and it promises to be an even more exciting weekend as we prepare to flip the double experience switch later this evening. On Wednesday, you heard from Aion’s producer, who disclosed some information about what we’re working to bring to the live servers in the first half of the year. To reiterate what Kinslon said, we’re listening to your feedback and are collaborating with the Korean development team more than we ever have in the past. The next couple of updates will build upon an already solid foundation by improving aspects of the game that we’ve identified based on your feedback. These updates will continue to enhance the experience that our loyal fans have come to expect.



We appreciate the patience you’ve shown us over the last couple of months. We know you want information, and as Kinslon said, we’d love to tell you everything we’re talking about internally, but we have to be careful about what we do share. We don’t intentionally avoid sharing details because we want to. We do so to avoid disappointing you later if our plans don’t come to fruition. So often, our ideas go through fundamental changes before they’re implemented, even if we decide to implement them after testing.



Next week, the Aion team is meeting to finalize our feature list for the update planned for the first part of 2010 and to discuss an even larger update that will follow later in the year. We can’t say much more then that in this update, but we will try to ninja leak something out to you soon.



Now for a look at what’s going on in the community. This week we put our focus on YouTube as we continue to search for player created Aion machinima.

Today's "Eye on Community" address... I guess this is what he was talking about when he said he would reveal more eh? Doesnt tell us shit, except that if they are going to decide next week whats going into an update it aint getting here before April. What they really need to do is discuss when everyone is going to move to GW2 or that other Korean fighting MMO they intend to "bring to the states" next year.

[Aro]

Guess I was right