So I participated in the Aion beta this weekend. Overall I was happy with it. I started off with a scout->ranger, but when I got to level 11, they had only given me two ranged attacks and I wasn’t in the mood to switch my weapons to use my melee attacks or kite each mob for two minutes to kill it, so I leveled up my mage->spiritmaster, caught up (well pretty much) to Amber and enjoyed it much more even though we were both so squishy. Hopefully the characters get carried over to the next beta, when I’ll actually get my ranger to level 16 (lots of new abilities) and see if I like it a bit better. I also played a warrior for like an hour to level 5. She’ll eventually be a templar.
Character creation was tons of fun, and I wish I’d spent more time in there. I didn’t mess with any males or elyos. The only problem was that the eye color choice seemed to have disappeared from the pictures on the aionwiki. Hopefully that will be back for live.
Started leveling with millions of other people. I kept getting dced, but even with tons of people there were enough mobs in the starting area. The Angelica (a gatherable item needed for a quest) was a bit harder to find.
Died a lot, but apparently that’s par for the course in Ncsoft games. Even with both Amber and I, we had lots of deaths. More than seemed right, even for clothies. But then there’s nothing wrong with a little challenge. Ended at level 17.
A few suggestions (and gripes) about the gameplay:
Inventory system: Too small. Started with 24 slots (or about that) In 17 levels I was able to upgrade my “cube” twice giving me about 40 slots. There were 15-20 gatherable items, some of which had a ‘fresh’ version. Health and mana potions had instant and hot versions. Bandages, powder for health and mana, crystals to rez group members. Not to mention the millions on millions of manastones and the dropped crafting items. Most of the time I had maybe 16 slots free when I headed out of town.
Chat: Default colors are horrible. But since they’re easily changable it was not a huge deal. However, no shaded background behind the text made it hard to read at times. The profanity filter is stupid and lazy. My friends and I couldn’t even understand each other before we turned it off. No general chat channels made it feel very secluded. Even though people were running by all the time it didn’t really feel like they were there. The lack of some sort of way to ask questions to the general population was just a downside for me.
Crafting: While I find it fascinating the detail and complexity, let’s go back to the issue of inventory space. When I went to craft, I needed to put all my non-crafting things in the bank. Gatherables + extra crafting materials + resulting material + chance of special resulting material + patterns you can’t learn and extra materials from the crafting request quests. I NEED BAG SPACE. I also forgot to check if it’s possible to do any crafting when you’re not standing next to those complexly animated tables.
Gear: Everything is basically the same shape. Some of the helms were pretty ugly, but then I’ve always been one to hide my helm anyway, since I like actually seeing my character. Call items boe when they are. The whole “Can’t be put here, can’t be traded, can’t be put there” is too long and messy. Having space for two sets of weapons, however, is win.
Travel: Not being able to autorun is HORRIBLE. Point and click is NOT a worthy replacement. Also, there has to be a faster way to get places. Can’t fly, and most of the time going TO a place was uphill, so no gliding. (I can hearth back.) Plus as a SM, my spirit doesn’t move when I glide, nor can he get off cliffs, and barring all that he agros things I fly over and more often than not unsummons himself.
Also why don’t fps connect? If the teleport and flight systems are going to be separate, at least connect all the fps to each other, and all the teleports to each other. Also, when I say I want to go somewhere, I don’t want to have to THEN say that I want to spend the money. I saw how much it cost when I clicked on it. Just take the darn money.
Flying: Bit of a learning curve, but not bad. I don’t understand why there isn’t the ability to glide to the ground when your flight time is up. Seems unnecessarily annoying that your wings just disappear and you’re left for dead if you’re too high.
Fighting: There’s no indication of when you’re in battle or not. You can be in your fighting stance and not actually in battle, or out of your fighting stance and in battle. At least they added a little message when a mob chasing you gave up, but it doesn’t always seem to work. And again with the pet thing, there’s no passive mode. If something hits me, away my spirit goes even if I’m running away.
Mobs: Mau are OP. Nerf plz. Mobs spawn and immediately attack. So many deaths to things spawning on me, and hitting my squishy self before I knew they were there.
Gathering: Really? An equippable item to see gatherables? Guess you’re not big on people actually questing AND looking for things to gather. Plus the inability to even attempt to gather when you have no extra slots (even when you already have that gatherable in your bag) because of the chance of that “extra special” version is dumb. NEED MORE BAG SPACE FOR ALL THIS STUFF.
Asking if we want to pick up quest items when in a group is stupid and it wastes time. I have never pressed no, and I can think of no situation where I would. The point of a group is that everyone gets everything eventually.
Turning in place should not cancel casting/gathering/living.
Certain quest items that just sit out in the world need to respawn faster or not despawn when picked up. It’s a huge bottleneck and just annoys the heck out of groups.
Mana: There is no way of regaining mana that does not have a cooldown. Make it only usable out of battle, but mana should not be this annoying of an issue. It was an absolute nightmare until we actually got the ways to regen it at all (level 14?).
Really? DP only lasts for the duration of your log on and yet the game tells us to go take a break every hour? L-O-L
