Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

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?”  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.

Oh that, yeah we missed that.

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.

"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.

My guildie is not getting 10 stacks of anything at this rate.

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.

No Isle or window seat for you Legionary, enjoy the middle seat in econo class.

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.

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.

Mom always said to wear clean underware.

Let’s turn this up to 11.

A few “nice to haves” for Aion would include a 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.

Did you hear something?

The 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.