Aion 2nd N.A. Beta weekend

My WAR account expired today! That's good news, by the way. I logged in a handful of times in the weekend, but each time, I only got as far as buffing myself and checking my friends list. I had no motivation whatsoever to do anything else. The last time I logged in, I saw that Order was pushing all 3 zones and seiging a Fortress. I winced and made a face as if I had drank rotten milk and logged off... and logged into Aion!

I got to level 10 after some nasty PVE. Aion's PVE isn't bad by usual standards. I just dislike PVE; always have, always will. I threw in the towel a couple of times when I had to do some stupid travel quests that made me run all over the place and back again for 30 minutes.  This would be equivalent to what WAR calls "epic quests" (or what I like to call "epic travel quests"). I don't know why game designers think it's "fun", or "epic" to have quests that make you run back and forth for more than a few minutes.

I recorded some videos from the weekend. I don't have many videos of the PVE action. Instead, I have more of duels and what seems to be an Arena. Flight does add another interesting dimension to the game, and I'd say that if you are not deft in managing your flight abilities, you will definitely be at a disadvantage.

Getting a feel for Spiritmaster mechanics on some NPCs:



Spiritmaster vs melee (Assassin, Warrior). There's a mismatch between caster CCs and melee counter-CCs at the this level. Things should sort themselves out at endgame:




Spiritmaster vs RDPS (Sorcerer, Spiritmaster). There aren't any anti-caster CCs at the moment. Only thing at this level are damage chance-to-interrupts and spell chain pushbacks (stuns). Because of this, it's pretty much like a wild west gunfight at this level --- whoever gets the interrupt first wins. The 2nd video is a little more interesting. In it, I fight a Spiritmaster and I try to do some kiting to disrupt the stun/damage sequences:




Spiritmaster vs Priest. It's a "max DPS and heal interrupt" game. Feels like DPS is greater than HPS at this level from the fights in the videos. Although, Klausen (from Phoenix Throne) destroyed me on his Cleric earlier by outhealing my damage and sneaking in some damage between heals. I didn't have fraps running at that time though:



Arena. We found out about the existence of the Arena minutes before we had to go to bed and rallied a group to go up against a team that had been kicking ass there. We held them off for a short while, but eventually got overwhelmed by their number of healers:



Bonus vid - Tooka (Lylia) kicking butt on her Chanter:



Combat is more involved and engaging than WAR even at this level. But that's the advantage of a combat system where classes are ultimately balanced with each other. Systems balanced for group combat have to dumb down each class so as not to give too many tools to each class. I think this is where WAR fails hard twice. First, by having classes balanced at a group level, paper classes will always be at a disadvantage to counter scissor classes, and have to rely on help from rock classes. This means that when group synergy is not just perfect, players die fast and are not able to do anything about it. Second, WAR has CCs that have no counter (stuns, long disables). Focused fire is enough to give serious problems in any combat system. But when you add the two characteristics of the WAR combat system mentioned above, combat becomes extremely cheesy with the one-two I-WIN combos. I believe it is possible to have a good combat system balanced for group PVP, but just not the way WAR does it.

Case study: why lower tiers are more fun

People are always talking about how the quality of gameplay plummets in T4. I am going to try to elaborate on this because I feel that this is one of the weakest points of WAR. The fact that people are experiencing a significant and noticable decrease in their gaming experience is a gigantic hint to some of the fundamental problems in WAR. From here on, note that I only speak for myself. As much as I hate the RVE endgame, I believe the problem is not because of Fortresses or Keeps or BOs, or any of that RVE bullshit.

The problem is combat and mechanics.

Somewhere between Tier 3 and Tier 4, almost every class begins to get armed with the The Cheese: disables that last a long time, AOE CCs, and powerful AOE damage. Prior to this, no one person had the power to do enough damage to single-handedly slaughter multiple people simultaneously. There was also limited CCs such as silences or stuns, so for the most part, classes had to rely on good ol' fashioned single-target damage. There were fewer AOE snares and disables, so everyone was free to run around and brawl. No one felt helpless for losing control of their characters due to CC.

Furthermore, there was not enough damage that someone would be vaporized within one GCD. But yet, people died, and fights were won and lost --- even though damage was lower, it was never a stalemate. In any prolonged fight, eventually people would fight smarter and do a better job of focusing fire and selecting targets. And that was what made fights fun. There would be clash and a battle. But without crazy damage, the battles could mature and people could got a few good licks in. There's also enough time to experience the joy of a "tough" battle, and being able to go through a process of figuring out what is going on, who we're fighting, and rallying the mob to outsmart the enemy. Thus, giving every fight (even over something as boring as a BO) a chance to blossom into an epic fight.




Fights like these will NEVER happen in T4, because of the AOEs and CCs. Note that in the first video, Order and Destro were fighting in close quarters. In T4, it would have played out like the following: AOE CC (frustrated victims), AOE damage (dead victims). T4 combat deprives the players of the chance to see battles mature into "epic battles". Another thing to note in the video is the number of people fighting. Even though the number is large, it doesn' feel "zergy", because no one gets "steamrolled". And that is key. Large-scale combat can be fun. It is not fun in T4 because of the "steamrolling" effect from AOEs and CCs. Large-scale combat is fun in the lower tiers because of the absence of them. And take a look at all the melee careers! Look at how happy they are being useful and swinging their weapons.

BTW, Shamans are overpowered :) Our shammies had no problems holding our own in T3, even though we were only lvl 20 and 22. Check out what I picked up yesterday at level 21: Gork's Barbs. Shamans get AP drain + healing debuff? Damn. Lylia picked up I'll Take That! with only 6 Mastery Points. My Zealot needed 10 Mastery Points to get something similar, but inferior: Boon of Tzeentch (requires Harbinger and has 5s cooldown). Other stuff to come in this tier are RunAway, EEEEK! and Gork Sez Stop. Shamans have the tools to disassemble any class.

In other news, Aion Beta opens today!

Cone of Fire peculiarities & ability cooldown burning

I recently discovered a peculiarity with Cone of Fire requirements: if you are running away from your target, then try to fire an instant ability by jumping and facing your target in mid-air, it will not fire. Instead, you will get the error: "TARGET OUTSIDE CONE OF FIRE". Additionally, if the ability has a cooldown, the ability will be placed on cooldown, as if it fired.

Observe this in the following video (and excuse me for being half-naked --- I had a little to drink and Lylia persuaded me to go for a "Lucha Libre" look):



None of my abilities managed to fire, except for one Aethyric Shock at point-blank range. Weird that I never noticed this before.

1.3 Single target vs AOE damage changes on PTS

AOE damage needed to be scaled back, so when Adam announced their plans, I was initially happy:

AdamG wrote:

Patch 1.3's major balance changes focus on the balancing of direct damage vs. area-of-effect abilities.   All careers should expect to see AoE effectiveness reduced across the board. This reduction can come in a change to damage/healing, AP cost, or effect radius, and will vary from ability to ability.

My response:

THIS IS A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION! 

This will yield lots of win in many aspects of combat in general, and for many careers. Off the top of my head: pressure on healing (particularly group healing) reduced, restored importance of melee careers, the rebirth of hybrid careers, and more meaningful and tactical combat. 

Once this patch is over, tweak CCs in 1.4 and WAR combat will be fantastic.

But after finding more info, as usual, they were overzealous and reckless (link):

Teddymonster wrote:

On top of that melee is hitting a lot harder now to where squishies are getting 2 and 3 shot.  Everyone knows that a WH can basically already do that to us out of stealth and they're going to do even more damage??  And on top of that add WLs, Slayers and WPs hitting for 2k....

I would without a doubt have to cancel my account if 1.3 even resembles what is happening on the test server right now.

My response:

This change of theirs is what boggles me. Now, on top of the lame disables and CC, they want to make it so that one person can 1-shot another person?

And that's not even taking focused-fire into account. If 1 career can 1-shot another career, in a team setting any target that is focus-fired will be instantly vaporized. 

I guess they want to make battles more like the gunslinging wild west where people die quick and people die often. If this is what combat becomes, I'm probably out too. 

They are about to do it wrong again by making too many changes at once. They scaled back AOE, AND buffed single target. The safer change would be to scale back AOE, but leave direct damage alone and this will indirectly buff DD. Meanwhile, the single-target heals/damage are balanced, and the group heals/damage are balanced. This will also be a safer change because in the worst case, damage is too low and combat becomes more tactical and require more teamwork; but they can incrementally balance this over time.

However, with the change they propose, the worst case will do the same thing the AOE + resist bullshit did since 1.1. Too much damage, meaningless combat, frustrated players, cancelled subscriptions.

Searching for the "good fight"

Lately I find myself searching for the last morsel of fun left in the game... the "good fight". The fight where you have to use every tool available in a class along with experience, to scrap for a win. Unfortunately, there are very few of such fights left in the game.

In large scale battles, it's a boring zerg(snooze)-fest. Max CC, max DPS, max healing, ... might as well take 90% of every career's abilities off the hotbars. In skirmishes, there's just too much cheese in WAR's combat and careers. Cheesy moves where one career can hit a key (or two), and faceroll the rest of the way to victory while the opponent is disabled. And since the cheese is so strong, that's the core that people build their groups upon.

Are there any "good fights" left in WAR?



Off I go in my search, while trying not to get steamrolled by cheese. To make matters worse, Mythic transformed me into a crest and gear pinata. Why siege a fortress when they can siege me? I now drop better loot (and with far less effort) than a Fortress or City encounter.