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Grind?
I've had plenty of bad experience with Korean MMOs. Most tend to send you into a world with little objective other than kill, kill, kill. There never seems to be a purpose to what I"m doing, and the killing takes more and more time as I advance until I can't advance due to bordom or frustration with the slow levelling speed.
Does anyone know if this game has anti-grind philosphies, or more importantly, a purpose? If the game placed you in an interesting world full of quests I'd play, but many Korean games tend to ignore quests and emphasize killing.
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In the korean version of the game, grinding was the quickest way to level. However, many players have said they were able to reach max level solely from questing and instances, without even being able to read korean. The game did turn more group-centric towards later levels, with more emphasis on party mobs and dungeons. Recent patches have made the game more solo friendly.
Ideal for me would be both group and solo content. Never really both in these games. Group stuff for guilds and such, solo for, well, solo when you play at odd hours.
I am currently playing the Korean version of Tera and If you want to grind you have the option but you can get to cap purely by doing quests and instances. The only real grind there is in Tera is just like what WoW/Rift or any other popular mmo has.
As far as group content is concerned there are times where you are forced to get a group to move the main story quests along (level 20+) which for an english speaking person in a korean game can be difficult unless you find an english speaking guild like I have.
This is where any grind would come into play, which is if you can't find a group you can grind to get high enough level to get the next area's batch of quests. Or do repeatable quests which also reward you with marks you can turn in for gear so it gives it more of a point and makes it a less painful process imo. But this is only if you can't find a group, if you can find a group its not an issue of course. I personally have the most fun doing the group content actually.
It really upsets me when people just dismiss this game as a typical korean grinder, Aion really seems to have given Korean games a bad name. I'm not saying you guys are saying this, I've just seen it said so many places its insane, and I bet those people never even played it.
Overall I'd say its a nice balance, and I'm enjoying myself alot, I just wish it was already out in english >_<
I'd say if you like the game's graphics and you want a change from the typical mmorpg combat system you should check it out once it releases here. If your on the fence I would suggest waiting for english release because the korean text can make things difficult if your not a patient person.
Oh, also there is a nice story to follow throughout the game so you actually have a reason to be doing what your doing. I really enjoy that, there are also some cutscenes for major points in the story, which can be skipped if you've seen them one too many times.
Also, what byegeorge said was true as well, just thought I'd mention that
Is there a stat or trait grind?
Will killing so many of mob X increase you resistance or reward you with a placable trait like in Lord of the Rings Online?
Thanks.
Edit: How about the frequency of loot? Is it mostly crafting materials or do items drop and at what frequency. Is it more like Guildwars or more like Lineage?
youtube.com/gcidogmeat
Aion is cake to level in. I think you mean the lineage series.
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
Well, personally when Aion first came out once I hit around 30, I think it was, it started to be a massive pain to level and everyone complained about it including myself. Maybe its different now after all these patches but I haven't played in a long while and people to this day complain about it from what I've seen. Is it different now? If so maybe I'll go back and actually level my guy past 35 lol... Yeah, I don't like grindy games >_<
There isn't anything like the lord of the rings trait/resistance reward system from mobs to my knowledge. There are titles and achievements for doing certain things but I don't think they actually give you stat bonuses. Also, there is the whole repeatable quest system I mentioned that rewards you with medals you can turn in for gear that rewards the grind liking people.
As far as loot goes, there is no vendor trash, every item that you get is useful for something. Either crafting, gear, or a crystal for buffing your skills. Loot drops very well on group monsters and instances, less of course on normal mobs. Its all random though so sometimes you don't get anything, and other times you get like 6 pieces of loot from one monster. The only complaint I have as far as loot goes is the money drops. Money seems to be completely random, one monster will give you 30 then the same type of monster will give you 2k.
But sadly I can't really compare it to guildwars or lineage because I honestly never played them enough to give a good opinion
All in all I'd say the loot system is pretty typical of the average MMO other than the fact that every item has a use.
No, I'm saying that when Aion launched it was cake to level in.
I hit 32 on or about the second day. of course I played too much during that time but getting more than halfway through the levels with hardcore playing in two days does't really consitute a heavy graind. of course i did see people's complaints but frankly I think that spoke more to the types of games they were used to playing (WoW and City of Heroes seemed to be prevalent) and what their expectations were for Aion.
To put it in perspective, I left my character at about 46 or so (it's been a while) and I felt that I could have gotten the remaing levels within a week as the xp was happening. However, in Lineage 2, I never hit cap and left that game where I was killing 3 to 4 mobs for .01% xp.
Now that was a grind. Aion just has a longer leveling curve (which has been made "better" by recent updates) than some of the more popular games. But games like original Lineage, Lineage 2, Maple Story (or so I'm told) archage etc, have long grinds.
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
Yeah, you got a good point, most people have zero tolerance for anything that requires any time or effort put into it. i personally like to feel a sense of accomplishment when something takes a little longer to complete but not so much that it takes me an entire week for less than 2 levels. I guess I have been spoiled like a lot of other people when it comes to leveling in games. I'm actually kind of upset at how spoiled I've become over the years >_<
Yeah honestly I'm amazed at what people constitute as a bad grind anymore. People think if it takes more then a week or so of all out playing that it's too much of a grind. Two of my favorite games ever being ffxi and L2 I've always assumed if you can get to max level that quick the game is too easy and not worth my time. Mainly because of this, if you can get to max level in that amount of time is anything other then endgame even fun or worth doing? Now ffxi has an insanely quick level curve but that's because 95% of everyone has at least a few jobs maxed out, I mean c'mon the game is old nobody is doing that low level content anymore.
I love games where there is tons of content at all levels not just racing to the top so I can raid over and over again. Give me a great story with tons of stuff to do that makes my leveling more a journey then a race and I'll be happy. When it becomes a race from quest hub to quest hub I get bored and usually quit halfway through, just like I did in Aion. That games leveling was far too quick and easy if you as me.
I'm in agreement. I pretty much stay away from most quests in Rift. I just enjoy the Rifts themselves, taking a quest here and there and I'd like to get more involved with pvp.
Other than than that, being led from one quest hub to another is officially "not my thing". heck, during Rfit beta when i got to the "college of magic" area I looked around at all the npc's with "!" over their heads and said "screw it, not anymore.
This is how I play lotro. I don't do every quest that they offer. it's too much like a relay race.
With a game like Lineage 2, even though there was a hard grind, it wasn't the game. The point of the game wasn't to grind and then you got to top lvl and raided. grinding is what brought about all the game play, the player interaction, made you more powerful so you could partkae in pvp and pvp that had some consequence to it.
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
Sovrath I think it's safe to say that you and I have similiar taste when it comes to mmos. As soon as I see a "!" or a "?" I want to just break my keyboard over my knee and throw my monitor across the room. The running from quest hub to quest hub type of progression just makes me want to scream. I would rather pull 10million mobs then do that crap stylel of leveling. As far as I'm concerned it was the lamest excuse of progression that anyone could come up with when people first started complaining about grinding mobs for xp.
Korean MMORPGs got a bad reputation for excessive grinding, ganking, and bots well before Aion. Aion's contribution to that bad reputation is that they made a big to do about how they were going to localize the game for the West and wouldn't be like all of those other Korean MMORPGs that Americans didn't like. And then they didn't.
Now, you can argue that Aion is less grindy than Lineage 2, but that's not saying much. NC Soft seems to have thought, oh, so players don't want to spend 95% of their time grinding? Well, then, we'll make it only 70% for them, and they'll love it. And they didn't catch that a lot of Americans would prefer the time spent purely grinding to be more like 0%.
So now when TERA comes along and says, we're localizing the game for the West and we're not going to be just another Korean grinder, people are like, yeah, that's what Aion said, too. Will En Masse deliver a game that doesn't load up on the grinding that Korean games are known for? We'll see. If they don't, it will be that much harder for the next localized Korean game to claim that, oh no, this time we really are going to be different.
Golden Dog asks about Guild Wars, which is an example of a non-grinding game. A week of grinding to gain four levels in Aion is quite a bit. A brand new character in Guild Wars can hit the level cap in 10 hours of gameplay if you take your time, or considerably less if you rush to the level cap. You can get perfect gear apart from a superior vigor rune in not much more time than that, too. A PVP character can be at the level cap with perfect gear the moment you complete character creation. If it's Lineage 2 at one end of the grinding spectrum and Guild Wars at the other, then Aion is closer to Lineage 2. The difference between Guild Wars and most MMORPGs is that there is interesting content to do at the level cap, too, not just a grind-heavy endgame.
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Some people are far too quick to dismiss games as typical Korean grinders. I've seen some people claim that on the Uncharted Waters Online forums, too, even though that game
1) is heavily based on old console games that predate the World Wide Web entirely, so it doesn't borrow much from any other MMORPGs, whether Korean grinders or otherwise, and
2) is not Korean at all.
If those don't stop people from calling it just another Korean grinder, then TERA has no hope of avoiding the same fate.
Your exactly right. I couldn't have said it better myself. I guess after you saying that about guildwars I'd say you can't get to cap in 10 hours like guild wars but its not a grindfest like l2. You level fairly fast to 20 but it gets better after that and takes more to reach each one after that until 50 (which is the current cap) I'm currently level 32 after playing for like 3-6 hour days for around 7 days. I could be off there, but that sounds about right.
But in the long run things all come down to personal taste. It seems the majority of gamers have come to be more casual and want an easier time leveling. I personally like there to be enough challenge to where its actually rewarding to level but not require me to play for 10 hours a day to keep up with my friends. In fact for me questing, leveling, and enjoying the games story/ world and grouping with friends are the main reasons I play mmorpg's. Endgame content is just icing on the cake that keeps me playing as long as its good.
Speaking of end game, tera really doesn't have much of one right now, the cap is SUPPOSED to be 60 but they are still working on that right now. Hopefully by the time its released in america it will be out already because to be honest if the game releases in america the way it is right now people probably won't stay very long after they hit 50 unless they make alts. I believe there are only 2 major level 50 dungeons right now in the game and the political system, other than pvp which also has a part in the political system.
Overall I'd say give the game a try, its worth the money to play to 50 and experience it, but is it worth continuing to play for months afterwards? If you are the type of player that end game is really all you care about, I'd wait for the 50-60 content to be released before playing because there won't be enough for you right now. The game has its problems like any mmo but for me this is the game I'm most likely going to be playing for at least a year come US launch.
If I knew how to read korean I'd do a real review of the game, but I think there would be too many chunks of stuff missing if I did one now, I want to do the game justice because I think this game really deserves a shot to be a big one here in the english speaking community.
Oh, one thing I'd like to say is that the starting area can get a little boring, sure its beautiful but the game gets a lot more interesting once you leave the island. Especially since you will have more skills to use by then.
I really hope I have at least answered a little bit of what you guys wanted to know. I have never really answered questions like this before and I'm trying to answer them to the best of my ability, if you guys have any more specific questsions I'll try to answer them as best I can.
It has certainly been helpful for me, thank you.
I'm still unsure as to whether I will play Tera, but this does help the decision. I like the graphics though I do not have a lot of time to play. I haven't logged into an MMO in over 6 months; I use them mostly for inspiriation to write fantasy.
youtube.com/gcidogmeat
I don´t get it where ppl have the idea that Aion is a grind. You could hit easly in 1 Month the max level or 2 if u were casually that was almost the same at WoW Launch. Real Grind games like Lineage 2, FF XI or Ragnarok where the avereage joe leveld 1 year+ and never reached max level doesnt exist anymore.
Casual people are the majority of complainers I think. One month to max level is too long for people to deal with, they want to hit cap in like 2 weeks it seems. Its all about personal taste like I stated before. If you don't like it just don't play the game. If I really like a lot about a game but its too "grindy" I just deal with it and enjoy the rest of it. Wish more people were like that.
As far as Tera goes I think at the rate I'm going, Im' level 34 right now, I should hit 50 in another 2 weeks, probably less, depending on if I play as much as I have been. So I'd say it would take a person who plays an average of 4 hours a day, 5 days a week around a month, give or take a couple days, to get to cap on their first run to 50. For me a month is good, not too quick, not too slow, as long as the content is there from 1-50. I honestly would have to say Aion kind of got really boring after I hit a certain point. Then again maybe its just the action combat of tera that makes me not feel that same way *shrug*
In my view, it's not how long it takes to get to the level cap, but whether there's enough content to get you there. Killing ten rats is fine. Killing a hundred rats, not so much, unless they die awfully fast or there are some real twists to make fighting the later rats meaningfully different from the earlier ones. Going somewhere to grind rats for a couple hours at a time while mostly not paying attention? I'd be better of spending those couple hours looking for a different game to play, since that's what I'll be doing pretty shortly if that's what the game is like.
The purpose of quests is to move you around, so you're not doing the same thing endlessly. You spend five minutes to do one quest, then ten minutes to do a different quest, and so forth. If you have to spend an hour doing exactly the same thing dozens of times in a row, that gets boring. If there aren't enough quests, so that you have to grind without them much of the time, or individual quests are unduly long and repetitive, then that defeats the point of having quests in the first place.
I played the korean version of the game for a while, and yeah, it was kind og uhm... "grindie":P
but for me the battle system was really fun and it made me care less about the grinding, and I usually hate korean grinders... I remember me and my gf actually had a lot of fun grinding elite monsters for hours, due to the difficulty:) but then again, changes are supose to be made for the NA/EU version, so there should be less grinding at release here:)
if you need info about the game you should head over to /www.terafans.com ^^,
It's a quest grind, like one of the EA boss put it, it's a quest shopping: http://torwars.com/2011/03/16/ea-talks-up-swtor-against-wow-again/
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1
Your right about the changes and the battle system probably is exactly why I felt as thought the grind wasn't really a grind but a fun experience. Good call on the terafans I'm on there every day, BiohazardGS. I should have mentioned it earlier myself haha
As far as content goes I was happy with what was there even though I couldn't read any of it.
The most fun I've personally had as well was in groups fighting in instances and world "elites/bosses"
Sovrat...always the voice of reason! This is very true. I think the only truely bad thing that WOW legacy has left us with is there new players that feel like endgame should be full of all this content. In games before WOW it was about the journey. Grind in games takes a back seat for me behind, gameplay, looks and bugs. I hope we will see this one day.
At level 40 the grind seems to kick up a notch towards old Aion unless you have a frequent group for group quests it gets pretty annoying. I hope they change it for US release because it will totally kill casual players. I actually come inbetween casual and hardcore. I love raids and dungeons but I dont want to spend hours in a dungeon only to get very little exp. This is really my only complaint since the other complaints are only because its korean and that doesn't count heh. If they fix the exp curve there I would have no issues with the game other than recycling of gear only making it a different color. but they are making a dye system and stuff like Aion has which I can't wait for.
If you really love raids and dungeons you shouldn't care the amount of exp you get each run. You farm the said dungeon for gear and other drops in order to survive in further content and world PvP. Eventually, after some runs you'll gain a next level and move to next area with your new gear.
Now, if you lower the exp curve or make the further content so easy you don't need the gear from that dungeon to survive, content becomes pointless. Why would you bother to LFG for the dungeon if you can skip the drops you could get there and still prevail, especially if mobs outside the dungeon give you a good amount of exp and are easily soloable. Then starts wondering why none visits lower level dungeons and how devs should implement DF -tool to breath life to these forsaken places, while the real problem would be a way undertuned low-level content.