Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Afraid Aion endgame will become like WAR endgame?
How's it going everyone? Some of you guys may have seen me posting lately. One of my concerns is how players will participate in end game pvp. My friend and I thought about it and he came up with a possible solution. Below is his description.
"One of my main concerns with the game is that its endgame will inevitably degenerate into what has happened to WAR's endgame. For those of you who do not know what happened to WAR, basically it led to people PvEing keeps and objectives while avoiding contact with other players as much as possible because it was the most efficient way to grind renown points (RPs). Well, suffice it to say, the basis of Aion's endgame is very similar. Instead of grinding RPs, one grinds abyss points (APs). The possibility still exists in Aion for players to gain APs solely through PvE (killing the balaur in the Abyss). Although this is not the most efficient method at first, as one's rank increases, it becomes the safest and most stable method.
If this is something you are afraid of, then why not do something about it? Wouldn't it be great to have a server dedicated to people who prefer to PvP in situations like this? Well, I have created a website with the intent to begin creating a community for players who put the enjoyment of PvP (in all its shapes and sizes) above progressing through the PvP ranks by any means necessary. If this is something that interests you, check out my website ( http://aionfactions.homelinux.com ).
The current plan is to announce a server on the site for the people registered on my site to all play on. Then when the game is released, the chance of it having an enjoyable PvP environment at endgame will be much better.
If you'd like to help with the effort, copy and paste the last two lines of my signature into your own. Then keep posting about Aion and the word will spread. "
******SHORT VERSION: If you prefer to PvP at endgame, register on the linked website if you would like to be a part of a PvP community for Aion's release. Then when the server list is announced, the site will have a server name for everyone to roll on.**********
EDIT - If the server for the site is down please try again later. Thanks!
***Update***
Still waiting to decide what server to roll on. Still collaborating with other forums.
Pledge your support to creating a PvP Community on Aion. Join our server on release.
http://aionfactions.homelinux.com
Comments
Yes you get AP from killing mobs but not as much as killing a player of the other faction.
what does lvl rank and safest and most stable method of pve ap's have to do with anything ?
Just because your abyss rank is higher does not make you stronger (your still open for a pk kill regardless of rank).
If anything the players that go into the abyss just to pve are the ones that are most likely to get ganked.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
they can only farm abyss points in the abyss though, meaning theyre there for oyu to hunt them down and take what they ground off the npcs anyway, and people that do nothing but grind the pve targets are gonna be easy targets for the real pvpers!
Here's a WAR vs Aion article, pretty interesting, I'm sure you can find other stuff comparing the two via google;
http://aionicthoughts.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/why-aion-will-work-while-war-did-not/
there is actual instances,dungeons, and crafting to do unlike war wich was nothing but rvr,wich rarely had enough people because 1/2 the servers would rather scenario because its fast and easy.hell wars crafting was the worst in any game i played, i believe it was eventually fixed but i remember there was a bug that when you created an item it would delete an armor piece >.< i lost my bp,sword and my gun on my witch hunter in one crafting session before i realized what was going on and stopped crafting for good. and abyss gear isn't the end all gear to have. crafted is extremely nice as well and there are dungeon sets. they are all on par with each other, crafted don't have set bonuses but the abyss gear the set bonuses was focused on pvp stats,example of pvp stats would be + dmg to player characters first that stands out to be soley a pvp stat.
I wonder, IS Aion really such a PVP game like WAR? I find PVP unbelievably boring. Always the same rush in, kil, get killed, rush back. I feel zero sense in PVP, tbh. Bores me numb. So is PVP the most important goal in Aion? I had the idea so far it was more a PVE game, no?
If its like WAR, that would be bad. All the ever same-ish PVP hamster wheel WAR was, was so so so so boring.
As long as PvP continues to provide the largest amounts of AP, it will be a non-issue.
Hell, if the Koreans and Chinese servers have active Abyss PvP... the EU and NA servers should be teeming with it.
It's a mix. It isn't the lame ass scenarios and keep trading that occurs in Warhammer. It's mostly open world PvP and rifting.
More PvP at this point than PvE, but that has been balancing out w/ recent content patches.
They're trying to blend the two together. A couple examples:
1) You can earn Abyss Points via killing mobs in the Abyss... but naturally the Abyss is an open PvP zone.
2) the best PvE instances are not only located in the Abyss, but they require for your faction to have control over fortresses... which require mass PvP. However the instances also grant Abyss points.
3) there is an dungeon where both sides zone in and compete against each-other to reach the final boss, if the two groups meet in the dungeon they 'll be able to battle it out
There are more, but you get the idea.
It's a mix.
More PvP at this point than PvE, but that has been balancing out w/ recent content patches.
They're trying to blend the two together. A couple examples:
1) You can earn Abyss Points via killing mobs in the Abyss... but naturally the Abyss is an open PvP zone.
2) the best PvE instances are not only located in the Abyss, but they require for your faction to have control over fortresses... which require mass PvP. However the instances also grant Abyss points.
3) there is an dungeon where both sides zone in and compete against each-other to reach the final boss, if the two groups meet in the dungeon they 'll be able to battle it out
There are more, but you get the idea.
The problem is, no one can say that fortress switching won t happen just like WARs keep swapping. If that happens the game will not be great. We ll have to see.
In Aion... if you get killed and run back and get killed again it won't be a good thing. Maybe from rank 9-5 but after that you start losing more AP per death than per kill.
At the moment in China cross faction guild take turns farming each other to farm abyss points which sucks , but remember you lose rank if you buy pvp items with your points so your rank will go up and down anyway .
Also crafted gear is better stat wise then the pvp stuff at 50 unless your attacking another player due to the % bonus vs players on the pvp gear .
I also think Aion isnt finished end game ... basically they are still bring in new content for lvl 50 , instances within captured forts etc so think of it as a work in progress which is going to take you alot more then 3 months to finish unlike AoC .
The higher rank you are the more abyss points you lose per death. That's why some people have been saying that when people are higher rank they will only engage in sure to win combat, or may be more likely to run away. If that's the case they maybe morely to avoid pvp combat a lot and pve points at times. That's all that he is getting at.
Pledge your support to creating a PvP Community on Aion. Join our server on release.
http://aionfactions.homelinux.com
It's a mix.
More PvP at this point than PvE, but that has been balancing out w/ recent content patches.
They're trying to blend the two together. A couple examples:
1) You can earn Abyss Points via killing mobs in the Abyss... but naturally the Abyss is an open PvP zone.
2) the best PvE instances are not only located in the Abyss, but they require for your faction to have control over fortresses... which require mass PvP. However the instances also grant Abyss points.
3) there is an dungeon where both sides zone in and compete against each-other to reach the final boss, if the two groups meet in the dungeon they 'll be able to battle it out
There are more, but you get the idea.
The problem is, no one can say that fortress switching won t happen just like WARs keep swapping. If that happens the game will not be great. We ll have to see.
That's the point of putting the dungeons in the fortresses. You won't want to lose them or you can't run the instances. And legions have a vested interest in defending their fortress, as they get money from it.
Meh they'll add new PvP stuff, wait they already have... so that's fine.
and from 1 -> 1.5 they added plenty of PvE instances too....
WAR has added Lotd in a whole year.. hmm... gotta say Aion's done a lot more into the game than Mythic ever have.... hell Mythic were supposed to have 6 cities... it ended up being 2...
sigh, WAR is dead.. which is a shame since the actual fantasy setting is one of my favourites (tome of knowledge reading is always good) shame the game is so bad, from the engine to the AoE mess to the inability to play their own game.
"nothing actually matters, we're just slightly evolved monkeys clinging to a dying piece of rock hurtling through space waiting for our eventual death." - Frankie Boyle, Mock The Week
I'm hoping the NA /EU crowd are above this... at least on the scale of entire legions cheating(no doubt there individual players will try to). At the very least I can see this sort of thing being somewhat moderated by the legit guilds on a server, if not by NCSoft itself. I know I'll be more than happy to answer my guilds call to go slaughter some kill trading cheaters... and I'll go out of my way to kill members of those guilds in the future.
I try not to let anything that happens in the Chinese version bleed over on my opinion of the NA version... just because NCSoft doesn't directly moderate their game there... nor does the Chinese community seem to give a rats ass about the quality of their servers. It would only take word of NCSoft banning a single legion guilty of this to nip it in the butt.
On paper so to speak Aion's pvp end-game has to be better then WAR's. Big reason is the 3rd faction, as well as more options for fighting over objectives. As for the long term health of a pvp end game I think it's down to something outside of game mechanics and design and that is the communities, the rivialries, there has to be more of a reason to attack then just for AB, if one side wants to attack the other side because it's the enemy then you've got something. Only time will tell.
It is not like WAR, but it is a PvP game at it's core. They will add a lot more PvE stuff in 1.5, but still the core of the game is PvPvE. If you do not like PvP, do not bother with this game. There are better games for PvE.
There's world PvP, but we also instanced PvP as well. When we launch there's going to be sixteen new instances than what their is in beta. Everyone knows that you're going in to fight against other players. But in the world PvP, if you're on the Abyss you're putting yourself out there on the line. That's also where a lot of the good rewards are and - I think - where a lot of the fun is in Aion.
That said, if you're on your side of the world, eighty to ninety percent of what you're doing is basic PvE. Players can receive these "infiltration quests" however where they can jump through portals and go to the other side of the world. There's a whole system in place to help stop griefing and that sort of thing, but it still keeps you on your toes. It should remind them that a battle is still occurring without having them be constantly harassed.- http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/71749
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Obviously, a PvP game will attract the PvPers. They will always come. But they need people to kill. And from the developer's standpoint, a game needs a population of PvE people to fund the game and keep it running...there is usually not enough PvP people to keep a game alive for for a long time (years).
So I think the success of this particular game will be in finding an endgame carrot for the PvE people; something attractive enough to lure them into the Abyss.
The issue is the fact that you can gain high Abyss rank without technically ever seeing another enemy faction player. Raiding Balaur keeps gives HUGE AP, as do some of the abyss Campaign quests even at the lower lvls a lvl 30ish aby quest gives 1500 abyss points.
One of the main problems with this is that it makes abyss rank count for nothing. everyone will basically farm their way up the ranks and then do everything possible to protect their ranks.
As other posters have mentioned once you pass the scrub ranks of soldier you lose exponential points at death in relation to the points you may actually gain for killing another player... So NO ONE is going to leave the safety of their guild, keep, fortress, home town etc, in risk of losing the artificial prestige of having a high ranking title which again may have nothing to do with actual PvP.
As the OP said this runs the risk of players simply farming the PvE content as they do in WAR with PvP being a mere inconvenience in doing so, instead of PvP being the actual goal.
In the NA beta as a lvl 25 player if you kill a lvl 27 Balaur type mob you will get 11k XP and 12-14 AP per kill. Keeps are supposed to give thousands.
MMO's have turned into one big grind in some form or another, be it grinding for XP, faction, gold, crafting mats, or some form of reward points. This is fine and acceptable... the issue is when the grind detracts from one of the core elements of the game which in this case is PvP.
What are your other Hobbies?
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
One possible solution to the scenario you mention is to make player kills worth more than npc kills. Alot more. Also, to mitigate the high loss of upper ranks, maybe give buffs/skills to higher ranks to help them defend themselves? These skills could add utility to the player and would serve as a good carrot for levelling their rank. Skills like teleport 20 feet away, or summoning low level PC minions to help.
There is room here for a creative developer to not only overcome the problem you m ention, but make it fun for both sides as well...
When you reach max level what is there to do other than raid and pvp ?
One possible solution to the scenario you mention is to make player kills worth more than npc kills. Alot more. Also, to mitigate the high loss of upper ranks, maybe give buffs/skills to higher ranks to help them defend themselves? These skills could add utility to the player and would serve as a good carrot for levelling their rank. Skills like teleport 20 feet away, or summoning low level PC minions to help.
There is room here for a creative developer to not only overcome the problem you m ention, but make it fun for both sides as well...
Player kills ARE typically worth a lot more than NPC kills... The bulk of AP's however are gained through forthress raids. the issue is with the risk... Everyone gains AP by killing a player and everyone loses AP when being defeated by a player. The issue is with the amount of loss vs. gain as you climb the rank ladder.
In terms of a buff being put on a character, well thats in there too... Top tier players can actually drink a special potion that turns them into an epic boss, the exact details and duration or refresh on this I do not know. BUT also if the game falls out of balance to one particular player faction the LOSING side will gain a buff that gives +15% damage against players.
It almost reminds me of EQ2 on the PvP servers where once a player got a dreadnaught or higher title they worked VERY hard to protect it by never going out in the open anymore unless they had a ton of friends/buffers/etc. The only diffference being that in order to get the higher titles in EQ2 you actually had to PvP, Aion you do not.
What are your other Hobbies?
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
In Aion, your rank is never guaranteed. Once you get it, others can surpass you without ever taking you down.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
its not like WAR b/c
#1 BO and keeps have timers before they can be retaken.
#2 high rank will make u change ur playstyle b/c the amount of the abyss point u will lose when u die.
#3 plenty of pve to get better gears and abyss point so ppl will be spread out.
Hey everyone. I'm the guy who the OP quoted. I understand there's reason to believe that Aion's PvP system create a thriving PvP environment on its own. However, for those of you who don't want to risk it, why not roll on our server? The goal here is to create a community, not to sway people with our arguments. That really is the bottom line. If you're not opposed to rolling on a certain server come release and PvP is your intended endgame, then why not give it a try?
For the sake of the free bumps, please continue your conversations
Pledge your support to creating a PvP Community on Aion. Join our server on release.
http://aionfactions.homelinux.com
The problem with WAR was the BG's sucked alot of players who just wanted to pvp all the time into them, leaving very few attackers and defenders for open rvr
Aion has no battlegrounds, and hopefully never will, so players looking for pvp action will hopefully respond immediately to any attacks on their keeps, or rally for keep takes.