Now
that Aion has reached the two plus week threshold, we
can review our hours of playing the game and start looking at which
areas need
some attention. As discussed in my previous article, Aion provides some
pleasant surprises even if it doesn’t push the envelope on
MMOG gameplay. The
real questions surround the typical American attitude of
“that’s great, but
what have you done for me lately?”
style=""> The
queues have dropped significantly as NCsoft promised they would (the
spread
between the players already hitting their head on the level cap and the
newbie
zones seems to be widening). The game is still smooth and plays well
for me but
there is always room for improvement. So far, I’ve picked out
a few key
ingredients that I’d like to see added into (or changed) in
the game. Some seem
like they would be easy, others more difficult, but heck I’m
not a designer so
I don’t care what it takes to implement them.
style="">Oh that, yeah we
missed that.
style="">Chit Chat.
Significant gnashing of teeth has occurred over the issue of gold
spammers. At
the very least we should have been given an option in chat to block
people
without going through a clickity-click-click-click-scroll-click
process. I’m
not going to pile on here because most of what has been said is already
played
out. I will add that I think new games should launch with a more robust
chat
function though. We should be able to change the opacity and probably
have
cross-server chat in addition to the ability to chat from outside of
the game a
la Steam or SOE’s Station Launcher.
src="/image/view/75388/preview"> class="MsoNormal">"Whisper and Block?" How about Kick
to the nads?
The check is in
the mail.
For the love of all things
launching after World of Warcraft, why am I
constrained to sending a single item mail? If I can’t right
click on 10 things
in my bags and have them mailed/faxed/carrier-pidgeoned over to my alt,
then
I’m not super pleased. Don’t make these simple
things seem so hard.
src="/image/view/75390">
My guildie is not getting 10 stacks of anything at this rate.
style="">First Class or Third
World, there is no middle ground. The
legion system seems to be missing
some controls. Why are there only two classes of legion members? That
means
that characters either have a blank check or can’t be
involved with the legion
warehouse, etc. Add in a few more layers. Most of the controls are in
place,
just add some levels.
src="/image/view/75391"> class="MsoNormal">No Isle or window seat for
you Legionary, enjoy the middle seat in econo class.
style="">
style="">Does this taste bad
to you?
In
addition to some of the housekeeping type items mentioned
above, there are a few areas of the game that I’m still
gnawing on to see how
they taste. One aspect is the combat
movement during a skill and
directly after it. When I cast a spell there
are a couple of things that happen; (1) character auto-faces the
target, (2)
immediately after the cast/attack there is some kind of movement
cooldown, (3)
any movement (even rotation) cancels the skill. I enjoy the first part,
I like
the auto-facing which means I can focus on what I’m doing and
not which way I’m
doing it. No more “Target must be in front of you”
type messages.
The
second issue though is kind of a bugger (not a bug I
don’t believe). Here is a common scenario for me:
I’ve cast my spell and now
since I am wearing cloth I need to run like the dickens, but wait,
I’m stuck.
This may be a game mechanic that I don’t understand, but so
far it has caused
me more issues than rewards.
The
WoW-player in me is used to rotating while casting to
keep targets in front of my character. While this isn’t
needed (due to the
auto-facing mentioned earlier) it is still something I’m
working on so that I’m
not fizzling my own spells. Even though I don’t need to
rotate, it would be
nice if it didn’t cancel actions.
style="">Lights, Camera,
ac…wait, where is the camera? It’s
been a while since I’ve had camera
issues like I do when I’m flying. Maybe I’m not
doing something right. Most of
the time everything is fine while on the ground, but so far
I’d say the camera
controls are a bit rough when in the air.
src="/image/view/75387">
Mom always said to wear clean underware.
style="">Let’s turn this up to
11.
A few
“nice to haves” for Aion would include a
style="">combat
indicator and group quest log.
My
wife says I don’t always have feelings, but I can usually
tell when something
is beating on me. In Aion though, I can’t seem to tell when
I’m in combat (or
more importantly for binding gear or eating, when I’m out of
combat). I play
with the sound turned down most of the time so if there is music or
combat
sounds, I may not always hear them. The exclamation point over a local
enemy is
nice to see when I’ve drawn some attention, but many times
that happens off my
screen unless I’m panned way back. A simple indicator showing
that I’m
officially in combat would be nice.
src="/image/view/75389">
Did you hear something?
The
style="">quest log
is
great. It separates the epic story quests from standard quests and even
puts
the crafting quests in their own area. It would be nice to get some
kind of
group quest log to see which quests others are working on, and what
their
progress is along those quests we share. I get tired of saying
“I need 2 more
mushroom hearts” and it would be nice if my party already
knew that.
I’m
sure most of you are sick of hearing that Aion is a great
game that runs smoothly. It is, but there is always room for
improvement and
from the developer posts NCsoft seems to be listening. We’ll
see if they act on
any of these issues, but none of the above are game-killers, just some
things
I’d change if I ruled the world.
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