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Aion vs Fallen Earth (beta tested both)
I played both Fallen Earth and Aion in closed and open beta, and before you listen to the lies and biased opinions that are already out there take some time to read this comparison. They are VERY different games despite them both being labelled as MMORPGs, and sadly Fallen Earth pushed its Release Date back to the EXACT SAME DAY as Aion... therefore this analogy was bound to start popping up.
Just so you know ahead of time I chose to play Aion instead of FE because I was once a fan of WoW and my personal preference for MMOs is to play a pvp heavy theme park game ala WoW. Also lots of my friends chose to play Aion so that was a big part of my decision. I tried to be as unbiased as possible but just keep in mind my preference is different from yours, everyone enjoys and hates different things...
Fallen Earth vs Aion : Sandbox First Person Shooter VS Polished PVP Theme Park
Sector 1 in FE is a bigger quest grind then Aion lvl 1-20, not only does it take longer to travel to each starting town, you have to complete all the beginning zone quests in order to maximize the number of Attribute Points you get, which is the enitre point of the game. If you couldn't stand levels 1-20 in Aion, you will have an ever duller time going to all 12 of the starting towns one by one just to find the quests that award extra AP so you can boost your stats to the right level to be able to use specific armour/weapons and maximize your other stats so you have a fighting chance when you finally reach Sector 2.
All 12 starting towns look exactly the same with all the exact same MMO quest objectives.. it took me twice as long (traveling takes FOREVER even with horses) to find and complete all the noob quests that award AP, than it did to get from lvl 1-20 in Aion at which point rifting and RvR become a very big part of progression. With FE there was very little incentive to group up with other players in my long ass journey through sector 1 because everyone is doing their own thing. With Aion its always a good idea to stick together in the lvl 20+ zones because you never know when an angry riot of opposite faction players will storm through your questing area and camp your bodies until backup arrives.
There is always risk in going out alone into the wilderness, losing exp and abyss points in Aion vs repair costs in Fallen Earth. Aion has much steeper penalties for dying than Fallen Earth, but in Fallen Earth your equipment will eventually break if you don't repair it (have to craft repair kits) but its very easy to make more. The cost of Soul Healing in Aion to regain lost exp is harder to manage then repairing/replacing gear in Fallen Earth.
Fallen Earth is more of a first person shooter with MMO itemization, the graphics are a little outdated but the content makes up for it. The crafting in Fallen Earth is NOT more complex or in depth than any other crafting system out there... except for the fact that EVERYONE is a crafter and simply adding mountains of useless crap to craft in Fallen Earth doesn't equate to a complex crafting system. At around level 10 you will have so many useless recipes taking up space in your crafting window that you will be looking for the "delete recipe button"
The aiming with rifles/pistols isn't very responsive and a moving target is very hard to hit when you factor in the server lag and memory leaks they still seem to be having problems with even in Open Beta. It's much easier to go melee because of this and you have the advantage of carrying more (Strength) and not needing to waste space/wieght on ammo. But once you start nearing Sector 2 most of the mobs begin using ranged weapons and being melee chasing after mobs that kite is frustrating. Getting aggro from more than a few ranged mobs will get you killed easily.
If you mess up your Ability Point distribution you seem to be permanently screwed as they have no system in place to know what the maximum amount of Ability Points a person can accumulate through grinding exp and quest rewards. The stigma system in Aion is not exactly like Talent Points in WoW but make it much simpler to "respec" your stigmas if you come across a new stigma that drops for your class.
Fallen Earth is very different from Aion and at first I loved it because of the storylines, the post-apocalyptic theme, and the FPSMMORPG sandbox feel it had. However after leveling 2 characters fully through Sector 1 after each Beta Test I just didn't have it in me to want to do it again. There are very few resources outside the game available to help you skip the non-essential quests and just go after all the AP quests, you really have to know someone who's done it before otherwise you'll spend days just quest grinding to get anywhere.... if that's your niche then you will enjoy FE, you have to make it through Sector 1 to get to the good stuff in Sector 2.
Sector 2 gets more interesting because you choose a faction and you start to gain more Mutation powers, the ideas are sound and a lot of people will enjoy the 6 factions pvp, but for me personally it wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped it would be after all the work it took to get through S1, and the thought of doing much the same quest grinding I did in Sector 1 only having to deal with ranged rifle mobs and other players ganking me just deterred me from continuing, also it was close to the end of beta and everything was getting wiped.
Aion vs Fallen Earth:
The first 10 levels of Aion were as dull and generic as any other starting zone in an MMORPG, anyone who didn't bother to spend the 3-4 hours it takes to get past level 10 and become a Daeva has no right to criticize Aion because the game changes quite a bit after lvl 10, and then again after lvl 20 and once you hit lvl 25 and enter the Abyss its almost a whole new game.
The amount of time it took me to get through Sector 1 in Fallen Earth is about as much time as it took me to reach lvl 25 in Aion, and that was because I just couldn't wait to get to Sector 2 and finishing off the last few noob towns. Aion is very similar to the WoW style of MMOs, and because of this I thoroughly enjoyed it once I started doing open world pvp after level 20.
It reminds me a lot of vanilla WoW with better graphics, better game engine, flying/gliding and movement mechanics being a big part of pvp. Aion seems like it will have a large population right from its official release and that's a big plus for me because Fallen Earth felt like wandering through a bunch of ghost towns, literally.
Aion's skill system is more dependent on skill chains than it is having 40+ different skills and talents like WoW has, and Fallen Earth has about 100+ skills you can get not including all the mutation skills you get later on. I found the less skills i had on my hotbar the easier it was to manage everything, and the complexity of using what skils and when is more complex than WoW because most skills open up various skill chain paths that all have their own unique application depending on the situation.
The ability to write short macros in Aion definitely helped when i was using the same skill chains over and over, and became more useful when it came to PVP. PVP in Fallen Earth is like Counter-Strike, you strafe back and forth using rifle skills and mutations, trying to hit your opponent, it tends to go Melee>Rifles>Pistols>Melee but its usually more like whoever has the most buffs on and has a better AP distribution and knowledge of how the game engine works will win. PVP in Aion near the lower levels is also rock paper scissors but the balance is there depending on what classes are participating.
Group PVP in Aion is a must if you don't want to get ganked by a duo while questing. I've seen every class go solo vs a duo and come out a winner, skill chain combinations and using movement/terrain play a big part in going against the odds, but you'll usually see 6vs6 happen more often if not a full Raid vs Raid. Before I quit WoW I was an arena gladiator in season 1 and 2, so Aion's version of PVP definitely had me at the edge of my seat more so than Fallen Earth.
With Aion 1.5 they filled in all the leveling gaps with simple quests that tie into the killing of mobs you'd be doing anyways to level up to 25 and head to the Abyss. This is proof that anyone who says Aion is a Korean Grinder is full of shit because mob grinding isn't the only way to get ahead. The Western crowd seems to prefer WoW style quest grinding to level up so they added a lot of quests to fill the void and win over the Western crowd... along with more dungeons and even more PVE raid content.
Fallen Earth is mostly about raising your crafting ability and boosting your stats to create better gear... its very uncomplicated, just A TON of things to make, which means you will fill up your bags way too fast, so part of the game is learning to take what you need, store the rest and hope you dont run out of ammo before you get back to town.
Aion is polished, every aspect of the game shows how much NCsoft has put into it, it's also had a year in Asia to flesh out everything in the game and get rid of all the bugs. When comparing Fallen Earth to Aion in terms of bugs and server stability, game engine, response to imput, Aion wins hands down. But its really not fair to compare a brand new game like Fallen Earth being developed by an Indy company to a game being brought over from Asia after a year being released and being developed by a huge established company like NCsoft. Personally I have an nVidia GTX 280, and I bought it to play high end games, Aion looks beautiful on my pc, whereas Fallen Earth had a huge issue with GTX 200 series cards and memory leaks.
Summary/Conclusion:
For me, the nostalgia of the good old times I had with WoW before I quit 3 years ago, and the potential for RvR and open world pvp encounters along with graphics my pc should be able to handle no problem, I chose Aion.
I liked about as much as i disliked with Fallen Earth, its a sandbox first person shooter with MMORPG elements and has an interesting setting, but i just dont think they were ready to release with what they've got so far, in time Fallen Earth will be a great niche game that is very unlike WoW type games, and I'd love to try playing it again in a year or so. I really thought that Fallen Earth pushing back their launch date to the same day as Aion was a mistake, and hopefully it won't suffer because of that.
Because Aion will eventually draw in the kiddie WoW crowd, if you choose your games purely on the quality of the community, I'd say try playing Fallen Earth, the game seems to cater to a certain type of community and you probably wont find as many annoying ppl. But this could also just be due to the fact that Aion already has a larger community and the larger a community can bring in almost anything. The Aion community so far seem to be made up of lots of WoW vets who left early on when WoW got invaded by junior high students and pre-schoolers. I left WoW when I saw all the other good pplz leaving for much the same reason, Aion seems to be the WoW vets refuge as well as where all the PVPers are headed.
Hope this helps to anyone trying to find a new MMO to play this fall, if you're trying to quit WoW go with Aion, if you're tired of theme park MMOs Fallen Earth is very different in a sandboxy kind of way.
Thanks for taking the time to read, sorry for the walls of text.
Play what makes you happy, forming your own opinions about what makes you happy is the first crucial step when it comes to almost everything in RL. Keer to your strengths, don't do something repeatedly if it annoys you, and don't be afraid to try something different it just might be what makes you happy.
Cheers
Comments
My reason I didn't do Fallen Earth was because it was a crappy shooter. Not gonna make fun of the idea or the sandbox, both of which in theory are great. I just hated how the shooting felt about fifty times worse than shooting in Fallout 3, which doesn't have precise shooting on purpose. Give me a shooter with similar quality shooting as CoD4, BF2 or CS:S (preferably CS:S). Especially if that is the main way of combat.
Aion is just cleaner. At this point in my life I am having less and less tolerance for unpolished content as the genre gets older and technology gets better.
Plus, they really aren't comparable in terms of content. It's apples and oranges. I only went with Aion because it's just better looking and more polished.
I didn't read it all, because I just don't care and I've played both myself.
But I just want to clarify a misconception in the title and the first few lines.
Fallen Earth was in Beta.
Aion was in a translation, it's been out for almost a year.
Big difference.
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Aion has not been out for three years, its not even a year old yet in its native korea
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
My bad. lol.
November 25th, 2008. Fixed. Still a big difference between a released game and a beta game. Especially when one is by a big corporation and the other is by an Indy company.
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My bad. lol.
November 25th, 2008. Fixed. Still a big difference between a released game and a beta game.
A year by a company like NCsoft makes a huge difference, they have the money and man power to make that year what the Fe team would've took way longer to do. We're comparing a AAA title with an indie game here.
My bad. lol.
November 25th, 2008. Fixed. Still a big difference between a released game and a beta game.
A year by a company like NCsoft makes a huge difference, they have the money and man power to make that year what the Fe team would've took way longer to do. We're comparing a AAA title with an indie game here.
Heh, beat you to it! :-D
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My bad. lol.
November 25th, 2008. Fixed. Still a big difference between a released game and a beta game. Especially when one is by a big corporation and the other is by an Indy company.
Yeah true, from what iv seen the game is a little choppy but they will hopefully evolve over time like eve if everything goes well.
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
I did address the fact that Aion was out for 1 year prior to it coming to North America, and to take that into consideration when you look at Fallen Earth. Also talked about Fallen Earth being made by a indie company and Aion being a multi million dollar project that NCsoft has put tons of money and effort into.
To me Fallen Earth is still unfinished, but fans of the genre will most likely look past that to see the potential it has.
Since they are both being released in North America on the same day and lots of ppl are being misinformed about both of them I thought it was only fair to compare them from a perspective of OMG WHAT SHALL I PLAY THIS FALL?!?
You guys are bringing up something that is VERY important when making a decision between either of them.
After being through so many "Open Beta = Release" games like Runes of Magic I'm just sick and tired of putting money into an unfinished product. Pre-ordering Aion felt like I was actually buying something quality instead of feeling like I'm "investing" in a game that will pay off two years from now when I've probably lost interest.
Well, I didn't read it for a reason sorry. Because, then I'll start picking it apart. I just tried and I already found something in the first part.
"All 12 starting towns look exactly the same with all the exact same MMO quest objectives.. it took me twice as long (traveling takes FOREVER even with horses) to find and complete all the noob quests that award AP"
Just that one sentence, there are 2 things wrong with it.
1) All 12 Starting Towns don't even look remotely similiar.
2) AP quests aren't required. AP Quests are meant to be hard for a reason and usually come at the end of very long quest chains. If you have 10 extra AP at lvl 45 (max) then you are essentially lvl 46.
But yeah, like I said. I didn't read it for a reason, not that I have anything against you.
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This is what got me to skip Fallen Earth, and made me fall in love with Aion.
The way I feel about Fallen Earth is like this:
I hope the game lands a solid player base and lasts for many years to come cuz I'd like to check it out then; but hell if I'm gonna play it when Aion is coming out so soon
How do you compare apples to oranges? I believe this is what you just tried doing. IMO I'm not much of an apple guy but I love oranges. You can just merely argue that post apocalyptic is cooler than divinity or vice versa and you could of made the review a lot shorter. You can compare sandboxes (which its more hybrid than a true sandbox) to a themepark especially when their "combat systems" are different (shooter isn't really a combat system and Aion is just a traditional commonly used combat system). Actually, from what I seen Aion took everything from the old school MMO's, added a couple twists and fine tuned it a bit to make it competitive with more modern times. This is just a horrible comparison of apples and oranges.
Having also played both betas everything I said you probably already knew, lol.
You may have a point there, and its more because the way I see starting zones, but all 12 of them have roughly the same number of quests as well as the same number of AP quests, if you discount the 3 central towns, Oilville, Edenville and the other one.
It's actually an overall issue with the way Ability Points work, and the NEED to build up as many quest AP rewards as possible to gain the edge at endgame.
In closed beta I found an AP reward quest that was bugged and it allowed me to hand in 10 bandages to complete the quest... of course I had to see how many times i could repeat it... I ended up with a completely imbalanced AP score... and they had no idea because nobody even knew what the maximum possible number of AP you could get from the starting zone. I reported it and deleted the char but since then the AP system just seemed to flawed to me to ever work in a shooter.
Some of the AP quests were as simple as go craft/buy 10 bandages and bring them to me. Nothing in the starter zone was ever too difficult enough that I needed to group up. In Aion some quests and areas are almost impossible without help, even the solo quests were a lot more challenging than FE.
If I was serious about playing FE, and anyone who will be playing FE would be a total noob to skip over the extra AP quests in the starting zone. The only way to max out your stats in endgame is by gaining AP, the more you have the better you are etc.
If you made it to Sector 2 you'd know just how much harder everything gets, any edge especially a few extra AP to use better armour is important.
I guess I'm just the type of player that need to have a completely clear quest log to feel accomplished lol
I think doing those starter towns helps you rather than being a chore, well first of all you get Ap which is great, then you get to explore all the starting towns with different focuses ie crafting,combat,rifle, then the main quest towns are rather difficult [started off at zanesville and went straight to oilville] so you will build quite abit by the time you get to those. I think they did it on purpose for the above reason, again just speculation.
12 towns all with the same tin sheds rearranged to fool the yanks.
Please FE = theme park choose your own class as you level up, shame the pvp sucks and it is clunky.
There is definitely a method to it, and if you are playing the first time around its much more appealing.
I played through it twice already and really don't have much desire to get through it a 3rd time.
It's the same for Aion, i didn't try to reach the lvl 30 cap because I knew it was getting wiped. I'm more looking forward to getting past 30 with guildies and friends, than dreading the all the hours i'll end up sinking into getting back to lvl 25.
Also the excitement of starting fresh with thousands of other players in Aion is also something you can only experience a few times in several years of playing MMOs. Fallen Earth can be played solo or in a party and the experience is the same, grouping in Aion just felt more involved and necessary, it's my kind of MMO.
And btw, thanks for the legitimate reply. I was hoping you wouldn't flame me.
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Very well written and unbiased. Aion ftw.
"Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
Other people have said it, but I just wanted to thank you for such a thorough and unbiased review/comparison of these games. I would like to see your level of depth and clarity in the official reviews on this site.
They are both good games for what they are; I think I like Aion a little better, but that may largely be because I am not such a big fan of the feeling of Fallen Earth. I tend to like the idea of sandbox games more than theme parks, but there is something about Fallen Earth that does not resonate with me. But they are both well-made and well-designed, for what they intend to do, which is of course very different.
I digress. Thanks again.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
Nice thread going atm. Not a big flame war like most on MMORPG. It is always a joy to read a thread like this with no hostile replays.
Having played both also, my choice is the opposite FE over Aion because it is not high fantasy. If I wanted something like WoW then I would just dust off my old WoW account. Now what drives my choice for FE is the different environment to play in. Plus I did enjoy the crafting system. It was not complex like EQ2 or Vanguard but not simple like WoW. Also the time part of it, not the normal gather mats then push button and instant uber sword of goblin slaying.
I would have fun playing either one, but if I had to choose what to drop 50 bones on FE wins for me.
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Compare Aion to L2 or WOW, it has been out over a year already. Comparing Aion to FE just because both are launching in the west soon is an odd choice.
CO and FE would be a fair comparison.
The whole premise of this thread is somewhat strange to me, this isnt a flame, but I see these types of threads all the time and it makes me wonder about some peoples thought processes.
I,ll claify what I mean, the 2 games in question are in the MMO sense are surely so different in style and in direction that if you dont know what style you like, then asking in forums isnt going to help in the slightest, unless there is an alternative motive to seeding the question.
I say seeding as the style of thread comes up so often between such mind blowing stupid comparisons and in most cases cause a wee flame session, that an intentional act is the fairest assessment, or on the other hand, sheer crass stupidity and lack of insight about oneself on the other.
I started this thread as a reply in another thread about FE or Aion, it was full of so much nonsense about both games my reply became too long, so I decided to share my experiences of beta testing with both games in a new thread to get rid of the formentioned nonsense to give some clarity to those that haven't played both games and might be interested to know what they missed.
Other people have been asking questions and making threads asking about both FE and Aion, since I have played both of them and have an interest in both Fallen Earth and Aion, despite being very different styles of MMOs, I decided to share my thoughts... I said it twice now I hope you can understand, I wouldn't take so much time to write this up if I was trying to bait the trolls.
I'm just killing time before Aion launches, I'm actually reinstalling it again now having just purged Game Guard from my pc. Fallen Earth and Aion are the only MMOs I've beta tested recently and even though they are so different and I enjoyed them both anyways, I guess that just makes me an eclectic personality.
You're right, shame on me for trying to post my thoughts and experiences in an attempted unbiased fashion for others to do with it as they will, it's my fault that nothing ever presented on these boards ever stimulates discussion and instead has to degrade into flaming and trolling. It's because of ppl like me.... lol
so far so good
Excellent thread, well-written and honest exposition which mirrors my own experiences in these two Betas. A few screenshots to break up that wall of text and you'd have a fully-fledged MMORPG.com blog in the making. As it stands, your many valid points will be missed by those who just can't face wading through it, which is a great pity. Still nice work though, and yes it's a breath of fresh air to see that the thread hasn't been derailed or turned into a flamewar yet.
Kudos.
You seem to come down alittle hard on both games tbh.
Saying FEs crafting is as simplistc as any other mmo is a bit off. The entire game revolves around it and When I played FE You could totally avoid the majority of the missions/quests. You make FE sounds like a mandatory mission themepark.
Other than that I had no problem with your review. I do have a hardtime taking anyone seriously that would create a VS thread between a Indy Fps Sandbox against a AAA themepark.
It's like the people that put Eve against Wow, noone takes them seriously.
Apples and Oranges, honestly.
Also putting any AAA game thats been out for near a year already against a indy sandox in beta with low funding isn't right.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
/agreed 100%. These threads, on X-versus-Y unless they are very similiar MMO,s which is all to common is pointless, and to the OP, who despite me saying this isnt a flame to you but to the whole issue of these type posts and my thoughts or opinion on their motives...Do you not think there isnt any subject seeding going on, yet again not about YOU, but in general.