The Aion Experience

Welcome to this week’s screenshot Sunday!  Kicking off this weeks show is the cool sky above Impetusium and as always, click to enlarge.

Have you ever noticed the flying fish above Altguard’s center? More like Flying whales because of their size, but still pretty cool…

The entrance to Morheim…

And just some cool scenery shots…

Enough of what I look at, let’s get to some reader submitted shots!!

Valnark from [GER] Balder read a previous screenshot Sunday post and wanted to share the following image:

Captured last evening just before Dreadgion turned its nose over to me and killed me instantly (3 hits for 2-3k, everything parried and blocked, I’m a Templar ). Anyway I guess that pretty closeup was worth the Exp-penalty afterwards. For a while… almost every fighting stopped. Elyos and Asmodians just stared up and died afterwards. An impressive moment.

Next is from Weeble on the Gorgos EU server, and I do have to say, it’s rather revolting lol. It’s of an NPC they found in Heiron, wonderfully called “Deshirung the Blimp”

And last, but by no means least, we have a couple of submissions Melkun, on the European server Perento.

A nice view from Elysia, Poeta, during a thunderstorm…

Something we miss badly on asmodea: Porgus!

Seen a really cool scene or mob in your travels? Feel free to email it through to me along with your characters name and server to have it included in a Screenshot Sunday post!

As I scan though my Google reader to see what new blog posts have been added, I notice a few themes:

1. There’s the people dinging level 50 in Aion. A lot of them. I really do feel like a slacker at level 22…
2. There’s the posts of people who dinged (dung?) level 50 a few days or weeks ago and are now bored. The PvP scene isn’t what they had hoped, there’s no real WoW style raiding or dungeon crawls and all their friends have already abandoned them.
3. The post Aion player – the players who have already left Aion but can’t seem to leave the game alone long enough to stop bashing it, stating how bad it was for them or generally, how the people left playing it are idiots. /clicks un-follow on that blog.
4. Then, there’s the people, like me, who are just too distracted playing other games. Torchlight, Dragon Age Origins and Fallen Earth seem to be the most popular.

This leads me to ask myself, is Aion dying already? I only have to look at my gaming experience to somewhat answer that – all my fellow WoW guildmates are no longer logging in, even my partner doesn’t really play anymore (granted that’s more to do with out lag frustrations). And even I, who just last week loved the game dearly, have found myself groaning the familiar “urg, not more of this” grinding complaint.

I can’t figure out what the difference between WoW and Aion really is in the earlier levels. Sure Aion has a higher gold sink, more xp required per level etc. But really, aren’t all MMORPG’s pretty similar? Both Aion and WoW give you quests to complete and help you level, both give you loot, money, crafting options etc. What was it about WoW that had me hooked by level 3, yet Aion is still 50/50 at level 22?

I still like the game, I think. I dunno. I can’t decide if I’m clinging to it because it’s the online MMORPG style I’m familiar with, or if because I genuinely do enjoy the game. I wasn’t having much fun when I transitioned from Altguard to Morheim, the jump in mob difficulty was painfully noticeable. No longer was I taking mobs with ease, in fact the very first mobs right after you zone through were dropping me to half health each time. (I was 21, they were 23)

The other night I decided to go and have a look at Brusthonin because it’s apparently meant to be slightly easier. And it was, remarkably so. That is, when I could actually get to a mob. The fact that there is no mob tagging in Aion is one of my biggest leveling frustrations at the moment. I know, over the grind and everything! With my lag, buffing takes me a good 5 seconds, and then there’s the slight delay while Alexan aligns the arrow in her bow and fires it. Most times someone has jumped in and taken my mob by this point, regardless if my arrow lands or not.

I’m a nice player, even though I saw it first, and technically I started attacking first – it’s not my fault my arrows have to travel – I leave the mob to who ever jumped in. The same courtesies are not repaid. Even when I do manage to get the first damaging attack in, if there was a spell caster mid-cast, they keep attacking. Hell, some even go as far as to start attacking a mob I’m already on if they think they can out-damage me! Spending 10 minutes fighting to get a single quest mob is not fun. This didn’t happen in WoW, once you got that first point of damage in, the mob was yours.

During my frustration that was the ridiculous lag, impolite fellow hunters and general Aion loneliness (anyone want to my be friend?), I started to question my time in Aion. How long would I stick around? After retiring from WoW quite a few months ago no, I am desperate for that next big MMORPG that everyone flocks to. Desperate to raid dungeons, kill bosses and generally hang out with my friends online. I miss that feeling of wanting nothing more than to log online right that second. The hating being at work/school/where ever and instead of concentrating, you spend all your time thinking about what you did the night before, and what you might do that night. The complete and utter mind capture that is an awesome game.

Aion… is not that. Not for me. I look forward to playing each night because it means my daughter is asleep and it’s my (attempted) relaxation time. But that’s all. No wanting to log on during the day, no “omg just go to sleep so I can play already” desperation. It’s just… a game. I think the biggest problem for me is that none of my friends continued to play. Everyone I know abandoned the game like it had koodies. The biggest draw to an online game for me is the people. With Aion disappointing so many, I’m left all alone to quest and level. No familiar group members, and no back-up in PvP.

Finding another guild/group is a possibility, but I don’t want another guild. I want my friends, who all went back to/stayed in WoW. A game I’m very much over. For me, for now, I’ll experience the world that is single player games and expand my gaming CV. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to play Dragon Age!

If the “AFK Shops” needed another reason to log off other than being annoying, blocking the path and being like, so yesterday (C’mon guys, get with the times, no queues anymore!) I have another one. For all those over level 20, you earn rested XP! Also known as “Repose” in Aion…

I had heard about it from Mr Won’t-stop-out-leveling-me over there, but am finally able to experience it (har har) for myself!

The Open Beta Patch Notes state:

Repose
When a character higher than level 20 is logged out of the game, they gain the energy of Repose – and earn an extra 20-30% experience when killing monsters and enemy faction members! It takes two days to rest up to 100%.

Repose is applied when killing monsters or defeating characters of the opposite faction. An icon in the top right corner of the screen shows when your character has this energy stored.

This is AWESOME news for me!! Why? Because I get so little game time I’m ALWAYS going to have this buff!! So not only will I level quicker for my time invested, it will also (hopefully) help curb some of the need to grind as much. Sweeeet!

From doing a little investigating, it also appears that the higher you are in level, the better the buff you receive. While a level 20 receives a 20% buff, level 40’s are commenting they not only receive 30%, but that it also lasts longer. Makes sense thought, I can’t even begin to imagine how much xp you need to make a level once you get that high. And no, no one tell me please, let’s leave the deaded feelings until I actually get there lol.

Now, one important thing you need to know is that Repost DOES NOT STACK with any Lodas Amulets you might have – be they from collectors edition or what was given out to all players recently for being such wonderful people. The Lodas Amulet will over-right Repose. *

So they you go! Now, when you have to log off for that annoying family dinner, or your partner wants to watch a movie or god forbid spend any other personal time together away from the XP, you can power through it knowing that it’s only helping you to level faster when you get back on. =p



* Some players comment that they do stack, but then state “I got 20% increase as stated” as their evidence. Since Repose and the Amulet both give 20%, I would expect to see a 40% increase. If anyone can futher confirm if they do or don’t stack, it would be much appreciated.

While I think it’s totally fantastic that I can solo with my Assassin, especially coming off the frustration of the Ranger, I still have to watch the different mobs I try to take on alone as there are different levels of difficulty to a mob besides their obvious level.

There are several different ratings for creatures and NPCs. These ratings are displayed through the various target frames they have surrounding their health bar. It’s become very important for me to pay attention to these ratings to help determine if I’ll be able to take the mob with ease, if I’ll need to use a health pot or maybe two, or, the most important one for me to recognise, if I need to run my ass out of there!!

Target Frame Ratings

The first part to pay attention to is the target frame – the area surrounding the mobs health bar.

As you can see on the top one there is nothing really special, while the second one down – the elite – has the double bars at the end and a slightly enhanced circle on the left hand side. And of course Hero and Legendary look like they’ve been to some sort of academy and received their wings…

So long as you’re paying attention, you should be able to notice the differences immediately after targeting. But the mobs difficulty indicators don’t stop there… they also have spots!

Target Emblems

Ok, emblems as they are officially called. Spots, Dots, Emblems… they all refer to the little white markers inside the circle portion of the target frame on the left side of the health bar. The emblems indicates the relative difficulty of a target in relation to others of its kind.

So basically, you can have two mobs who look identical; however they can be different degrees of difficulty. This is what I pay particular attention too in these lower levels.

The first part, which most of you should be aware of by now, is the colour of the emblem background which will denote whether it is a hostile or non-hostile target. Red – for hostile targets – will aggressively attack you. On the other hand, yellow – non-hostile targets – will mostly ignore you.

Note: be wary when attacking non-hostile target when a similar creature or NPC is nearby as some of them will come to the aid of their comrades.

The second part is the actual marks on the mob…

Taking note of those dots is necessary for any soloing class out there – particularly one that can’t self heal well during combat. I know for me, I can take a mob with up to 3 dots fairly easily, however 4 dots can become quite tricky.

No idea if this info helps anyone else out there – I wasn’t aware of the dots (or, more to the point didn’t know what they meant) until my partner informed me. So maybe there’s someone else out there that shares my lack of knowledge about it hehe.