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Aion: Curse Founder's Open Letter to NCsoft
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
Curse.com founder "Netcurse" has posted an open letter to NCsoft Korea on AionSource pleading with the company to move fast in addressing a number of key issues he feels will be a detriment to Aion's long term success here in the West.
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In the letter, Netcurse says, "...there are three issues I want to bring to the front page today that need to be addressed or this game will end up being a 300k subscriber game within 6 months, not the one-million+ subscriber game it should be." And then proceeds to go through a laundry list of the game's most glaring issues, but also provides what he feels would be appropriate solutions.
Read Netcurse's letter here.
Via Massively.
Comments
Wow! End level in 20 days and you complain about grind. I never made it to end level in WoW in 20 days and never heard anyone complaining of how long it takes to get to the level cap, all MMOs have a grind, however I can see that more and more players are wanting instant gratification then spending the time to develop their character, which is the way MMOs should be. But I wont argue with semantics of an MMO.
1. The crashes for the fort sieges should be fixed, or is it many people are trying to play on high settings with out-dated drivers and graphics card? We don't know specifics and only the tech team can begin to understand the problem. And I am pretty sure they are already trying to fix it. Believing that they are not is very naive. And saying that "All the engineering staff should be working on this along with NCWest..." Well lets just forget all the other issues, because we'd rather have everyone work on this issue!
2. "24/7 GM support. A spammer should be banned within 1 hour. Require level 20 for /1 and /3 chats.
Develop an in house anti-cheat program, this will benefit all your games." 24/7 GM support is easier typed than done. Requiring levels for players to achieve will block out the voices of the players who need to be heard to receive help, thusly alienating the lower levels. I can understand the frustration and coming from a "self-proclaimed veteran MMO player" you should understand that not everyone who plays MMOs now are also veterans to MMOs and requiring them to level up to a level that would take someone such as yourself a few hours to get to, would take another, lesser experienced player more time to achieve given the lesser ability to reach out to other players. And, at this time, NCSoft has developed a spam filter that seems to be working quite well.
Also, how is NCSoft supposed to develop an anti-cheat program if all their devs are working on the fort siege crashes?
Yes, they need to try to fix hacking, by adding more server side checks, not an anti-cheat program unless you're referring to Warden, which makes me giggle inside.
~Webby "This MMO needs more dead bird."
Very impressive. I absolutely love Aion but this list is a great view into the problems that Aion is facing and moreover he provides some good ideas on solutions.
I'm interested to see how NCsoft responds.
I am pretty sure it is unlikely you will see a response from the actual game makers in NCSoft Korea...ask anyone who has played Lineage 2, the communication to the western players is patchy at best. Remember we are an afterthought to their primary market in Korea, if the Koreans arent also complaining about an issue then chances of a change are slim.
botting and such is a good example, and the use of third party credit sellers is pretty much accepted to a degree in Korea, certainly more so than over here. They will only crack down when it gets to a point were the Korean user base is complaining too.
I'm sure the Korean Corporate officers at NCSoft will take notice.
I believe Net is saying 15-20 days of played time. I.E 360-480 hours played. Not just 2-3 weeks of playing in general.
I am pretty sure it is unlikely you will see a response from the actual game makers in NCSoft Korea...ask anyone who has played Lineage 2, the communication to the western players is patchy at best. Remember we are an afterthought to their primary market in Korea, if the Koreans arent also complaining about an issue then chances of a change are slim.
botting and such is a good example, and the use of third party credit sellers is pretty much accepted to a degree in Korea, certainly more so than over here. They will only crack down when it gets to a point were the Korean user base is complaining too.
Don't think this is entirely true. I mean the Koreans have had the game for a year and have just dealt with the botting and suddenly it comes to the US market and after a month of complaints about botters they put out patches and work to solve the issue. And while it hasn't been entirely eliminated, it does show that the US team/player base holds some decent weight and can make things happen.
I am pretty sure it is unlikely you will see a response from the actual game makers in NCSoft Korea...ask anyone who has played Lineage 2, the communication to the western players is patchy at best. Remember we are an afterthought to their primary market in Korea, if the Koreans arent also complaining about an issue then chances of a change are slim.
botting and such is a good example, and the use of third party credit sellers is pretty much accepted to a degree in Korea, certainly more so than over here. They will only crack down when it gets to a point were the Korean user base is complaining too.
Don't think this is entirely true. I mean the Koreans have had the game for a year and have just dealt with the botting and suddenly it comes to the US market and after a month of complaints about botters they put out patches and work to solve the issue. And while it hasn't been entirely eliminated, it does show that the US team/player base holds some decent weight and can make things happen.
That's true. Though they were pretty sketchy during Lineage 2 they did catagorically state that Aion was being designed with a global market in mind.
The lead designer really is a nice guy. No really. He is. And the interesting thing is that he is willing to listen to people. This is not to say he is going to go right out and change everything as he is a creative mind as well, but he is interested in feedback.
The question is whether or not NC is up to the task of being just as detail oriented as say Blizzard.
I really do find it ridicoulous that I can't submit a petition during non-business hours.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I am pretty sure it is unlikely you will see a response from the actual game makers in NCSoft Korea...ask anyone who has played Lineage 2, the communication to the western players is patchy at best. Remember we are an afterthought to their primary market in Korea, if the Koreans arent also complaining about an issue then chances of a change are slim.
botting and such is a good example, and the use of third party credit sellers is pretty much accepted to a degree in Korea, certainly more so than over here. They will only crack down when it gets to a point were the Korean user base is complaining too.
Don't think this is entirely true. I mean the Koreans have had the game for a year and have just dealt with the botting and suddenly it comes to the US market and after a month of complaints about botters they put out patches and work to solve the issue. And while it hasn't been entirely eliminated, it does show that the US team/player base holds some decent weight and can make things happen.
That's true. Though they were pretty sketchy during Lineage 2 they did catagorically state that Aion was being designed with a global market in mind.
The lead designer really is a nice guy. No really. He is. And the interesting thing is that he is willing to listen to people. This is not to say he is going to go right out and change everything as he is a creative mind as well, but he is interested in feedback.
The question is whether or not NC is up to the task of being just as detail oriented as say Blizzard.
I really do find it ridicoulous that I can't submit a petition during non-business hours.
Agreed.
Yeah it is interesting.
Netcurse won't need to take responsability for his suggestions, he could just suggest whatever he see as fitting. Raise quest rewards by 15% or whatever solution. Presenting something definite like that, how come he knows that, what do he base that on, obviosly NCSoft doesnt.
I would eventually leave it until "after" to decide if it was a good ideas or not.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
Yeah it is interesting.
Netcurse won't need to take responsability for his suggestions, he could just suggest whatever he see as fitting. Raise quest rewards by 15% or whatever solution. Presenting something definite like that, how come he knows that, what do he base that on, obviosly NCSoft doesnt.
I would eventually leave it until "after" to decide if it was a good ideas or not.
uh..What?
Curse founder is spot on.
He likes Aion, yet he is stating qwhat the majority of us is saying in this forum and that the fanboys refuse to accept.
The grind between 18 and 25 becomes unbearable by the majority of players, if you read the complains in this forum, all of the people said they quit between 18 and 25, so there is a problem
If NCSoft doesn't address it, they will end up like AoC and WAR, that's as simple as that.
I don't think NCSoft is going to improve the game by that much.
Personally the game is too solo oriented, there is not enough group content to keep you going and forget about the grind.
But kudos to the Curse founder for addressing the problems in such a public way.
In summary:
To fix Aion, make it WoW, where you can level to the cap in a week, and mods cause everything to become a "who has a thousandth of a percent better damage? the rest of you are noobs!" game in every group.
The grind is minimal, oh no, whatever will I do, there's a couple levels that take a little longer, the world may end. Take that time to hunt for some decent gear. You're in the level range longer, take advantage of it (blues in the 20's, for instance, would last you a very long time; you can even get some yellows, if you get lucky).
The WoWtard needs to go back to his precious and stop trying to make every game on the market a WoWclone. WoW's unimaginative and generic enough as it is, we don't need even more other games homogenizing the entire genre to be just like the piece of trash. Some people do still like actually earning something, and playing a game, instead of just logging in, instantly hitting max level, and grinding end-game content to the exclusion of all else until an expansion comes out. Enjoy the damn game, it's probably one of the best I've ever seen, and I've played pretty much all of them up until WoW and the shovelware clones that followed it.
PS3 Running 24/7 since: 30 JAN 2008
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Aion is a game that has huge potential. It's a game based on tradition and clearly has a refined and direct idea of where it wants to be and where it wants to go.
However, neither of those aims right now seem to sit well in the Western market. NCSofts bread and butter may be in Korea and other Asian countries, but they stand to gain far more by cracking the Western market and that is something that - in their current state of mind - they aren't going to do. Remember, Blizzard makes its $2 billion dollars a year out of the Western player base for WoW, not the Asians.
To demand 300+ hours of levelling from a player is an unreasonable thing to do, especially when your quest content is - and always has been - boring, tedious and comes topped with a distinct lack of diversity. Add to that the fact that there are barely enough quests to cover each level and you are pretty much assured to spend more of your time grinding than doing anything interesting or entertaining. It's plain to see that quests in Aion are designed to point out to you where you should be grinding, rather than offering a compelling and interesting form of progression through content. That's not a wise thing to do in the West where - much to the dismay of the elite - the market is predominantly made up of casual players looking for a game that will compel them but takes little of their time to progress through. That is not Aion right now. Most players - even if they are starting to abhor it - will stick with World of Warcraft which is largely compelling and doesn't have a dire time cost on top of the monthly fee. It's interesting that Aion demands so much time of its players when NCSoft suggested that patch 1.5 would reduce this requirement significantly. In short, it didn't.
The group content - whilst well delivered - comes with no incentive outside of the experience itself. The itemisation in this area is dire and it DOES need to be looked at. The same applies to the idea of open PvP in the abyss from level 35 onward. How compelling is it going to be for the player who - when there are a whole bunch of level 50s wandering around - can't PvP because he constantly gets owned? In short, it isn't and it signals yet another reason why people will turn their backs on Aion in favour of a more forgiving player experience.
Aion is a pretty game with a well developed and refined engine to back it up. However, when users on high end machines can't take part in the pinnacle of the games content - Fortress Sieges - due to chain crashing, the incentive to stick around is largely diminished. With no one talking to the European or American player base about what is going on with fixes to this area of the game - or generally for that matter - players have no idea what to do. It suggests one of two things: either NCSoft don't appreciate the Western market enough to spend some money on Customer Service or there is a massive communication issue within the company itself, leading to the Western GMs and CMs being unable to pass information along because they don't have it themselves.
Edit: And as an additional comment to all of those people claiming that these proposed changes simply suggest making Aion more WoW like, that may well be almost-true. However, the fixes are not the important issue here. The important issue is the game has fallen short of what it needs to do to maintain a strong and healthy population of gamers. End game in Aion is all about mass PvPvE and that is greatly diminished if your player base falls below the 300,000 subscriber mark and is spread across multiple servers. With NCSofts policy of, "locking," servers that are full, a downward trend in subscribers would result in a few servers with cap'd populations and many more with low or dwindling populations that can't experience mass PvPvE in its true form. In effect, it is the casual players that will assure a large and healthy player base for Aion and also ensure the health of its PvP. You can dislike it but you can't not reasonably deny it. Making the game more friendly to casual gamers is an important goal.
All in all, Aion is a polished, well delivered and well conceived title that stands to gain a lot if it does things right. You can't say it is unsuccessful right now either but the longevity of the game is diminished by these seemingly obvious examples of poor design. When you localise a game, it should go beyond translating quest text and adding new voice overs. There should be a distinct effort to alter the game so that it better suits the particular market. Yes, it costs more money up front but with this sort of refinement and alteration, you are certain of a more successful and playable title and as such you make more money in the long run.
NCSoft won't respond unless they are pressed on the matter. Hubert's letter alone won't encourage them to make these changes or resolve these issues. If the community gets behind his sentiments - even if they don't agree with the fixes (because this isn't about the fixes he proposed) - then there is a chance that they will respond. However, it is more likely that they will refute the claims and fall prey to arrogance, which they feel they can afford.
http://www.themmoquest.com - MMO commentary from an overly angry brit. OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED!
The letter is nothing more then a whine fest. If the guy from curse wants it to be more like Wow then he can go play wow or any other clone of wow. The only part that has merit is the crashes and bots. The gold spam they seem to have under pretty good control atm.
An terrible open letter.
This is one of the biggest problems with people who dislike Aion right here:
Reduce 1-50 to 10-15 days played time. Aion has a great PvPvE end game. Let people reroll toons without having them think of the countless hours of grind they will have to do to get to 45+.
Reaching the cap in 2 weeks? Seriously, what happened to the old mentality were you played an mmorpg for months? Now you want to play through the entire game in 2 weeks? Really? Aion's endgame is fun, sure, but endgame is nothing more than a timesink like it is in every mmorpg untill the developer releases new content.
I have not experienced the endgame content in Aion, but from the looks it has PVP and PVE which looks fun but it's not something to going to keep people busy for months. It's clear that Aion's biggest strength is the journey towards the engame and this person suggest that's made shorter?
This is the typical attitude that so many western gamers here. We want to breeze through the content in notime and then start bitching there is nothing left to do.
1 million subscribers? Aion never had the chance to get 1 million subscribers in the west. There really needs to be and to pretending as if it's completely normal for an mmorpg to have 1 million subscribers in the west.
World of Warcraft is the only western mmorpg to break 1 million subscribers. The 2nd most popular mmorpg in the west was Everquest, which peaked at around 400k subscribers. An Asian MMORPG that doesn't have a famous IP to break 1 million subscribers in the west? Very unlikely.
What's so wrong with having 300k subscribers? 300k subscribers is a great number for an mmorpg in the west.
I have to agree, this whole "make it shorter to get to level cap" is ridiculous.
Also, it's equally ridiculous for players to start spouting the whole "needs millioins of players". I don't know of many games that can make that claim.
My feeling is that a low of word of warcraft players who probably have not played many other mmo's come to a game like Aion and immediately expect it to be similar but with a different setting. When it's not they start complaining.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I find that so hard to believe. I made it to 26 in about 2 days of hard playing.
It's ok that someone who wants to take their time reach 25 in a little more than 2 days.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
It's only a great number because so many MMORPGs have failed. 300,000 subscribers in a gaming genre is a dismal failure and is not a success. We're living in the age where having a broadband high speed Internet connection and a computer that can handle fairly taxing graphical demands is the norm. When EverQuest, Ultima etc were released, that was not the case. It was far from the norm, so 400,000 subscribers was considered a success. Hell when Neverwinter Nights (MMO) was release on AOL, 100,000 subscribers was considered a storming success. Why don't we just drop the baton down to that level? ;D
300,000 subscribers right now is niche. It's niche figure. Eve Online is considered - and sold - as a niche game. It has over 300,000 subscribers. Warhammer Online and Age of Conan were sold as main stream titles and they both have ~300,000 subscriber or less. World of Warcraft came along and got it right. That's why they have 11 million subscribers. It's not because Warcraft was a popular IP, although it did help. It takes more than a popular IP to sell an MMO - Conan, Warhammer, Dungeons and Dragons, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings being prime examples of IPs that did nothing for the success of the MMO outside of allowing them to cling on for dear life..
There are over 300 million gamers in West. The market share of MMORPGs right now is UNDER 10%. That isn't successful. That's a genre clinging on for dear life.
Aion has the potential to break the 1 million mark EASILY. All it has to do is look at its short falls and change them. I have no doubt if it were more casual friendly, less time consuming and a tad more forgiving on the player - more quest content, compelling group incentives etc - it will grow massively.
http://www.themmoquest.com - MMO commentary from an overly angry brit. OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED!
I find this letter to be half viable only because he got to level 50 in 15-20 days. Com on now, he spent almost everyday more than 8 hours playing the game. What do you expect ? During the week I can only squeeze in maybe 3 hours a night.
My thoughts, as well.
I was pleasantly surprised when I read it. I was expecting some arrogant rant by a person who felt he was someone special because he ran a fansite, but it proved to be a thought out and constructive letter by a knowledgeable member of the gaming community.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
My thoughts, as well.
I was pleasantly surprised when I read it. I was expecting some arrogant rant by a person who felt he was someone special because he ran a fansite, but it proved to be a thought out and constructive letter by a knowledgeable member of the gaming community.
Now that is funny to me he came off as arrogant and a huge whine about the game needs to be more like Wow. I also find it funny how he ask for add ons when his site would get a huge hit in traffic if that happen.
jesus, you ppl actually read stuff? He meant 15-20 days of real play time, thats almost 480 hours of gameplay
Well he does get some things right, but also some things wrong too.
The UI, yeah coul be a bit more flexable, a need before greed system would help some, the loot tables do need some rework or tweeking. Yeah GM support should be 24 hours but they are fixing that to make it so. Also working to find a fix for the crashes.
Spammers pretty much reduced their spam to a tolerable level, just need to tweek it some here and there. Bots, well some are gotten to quickly in a few days, but others take some time to destroy their network. It's a work in progress.
The grouping XP need to be reworked some and need to add a few more quests to each level above twenty-five.
He's wrong on 18-25 levels being a pain to grind.
Do agree that elities need more abilities to counter soloers.
Increasing quest rewards, ok i'll give him that.
Otherwise i enjoy the game very much, am a somewhat casual player who PvP's sometime.
I have a mixed view of this. I'd agree with the concerns about goldsellers, spammers and bots as they have cratered the economy and I nearly left the game over it. The rest... not sure I agree.
With limited game time my cleric is only 20, but I haven't found leveling grindy at all. However, I do find it very linear. With only one place to get more quests, I know I will find mobs appropriate to my level and a requirement to group in order to complete the campaign quests. If I don't find a group though, I'm SoL and so must either grind, work on different quests, work on crafting or go play something else.
One of the things I am seeing that looks like a trend is quick PuGs to get a group quest done, then moving on. Over time, that means you're still mostly soloing. Since there's an emphasis on grouping for campaign quests and PvP. it makes sense that group play should be rewarded rather than penalized. Buffing group XP could solve this but it makes me wonder if the concept needs to be reworked in its entirety.
I can't imagine anyone is surprised that the founder of Curse is advocating the use of addons. But NCSoft said at the start that they wouldn't go there. No reason to make Aion like WoW or any other game with a bazillion addons that can dumb it down. I'm enjoying having to explore and figure out things for myself - at least so far.
But I confess to being leery about what lies ahead. PvP gankage is one of my least favorite things and the death penalties are expensive enough at 20 that I can extrapolate their cost at 30+. Overall though, I'm enjoying the game so have extended my subscription for another month.
Even though he's Curse's founder, I don't think his point of view is more or less important than any other subscriber. This does not deserve the attention it's getting.
There are a lot of MUCH better posts describing Aion's true issues in details and are explained so well.
I just hope NC already know what issues to focus on (fortress crashing, botting, gold spamming etc.). Even though he states those issues in his post, they're overshadowed by the QQ to lessen the leveling curve, QQ to increase exp, QQ to increase drop rate of gold items (???).
Oh and did I say that most of his post is a QQfest?
No thanks.