Aion 1.5.1 patch additions receive an overwhelming "Meh"
by Brooke Pilley 
Nov 9th 2009 at 1:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, Aion, Patches, News items
The latest additions to Aion's 1.5.1 patch notes illustrate the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" reality that is MMO development. They also show a potential communication disconnect between the game's players and developers or possibly even unrealistic expectations. Upon reading the pages and pages of player comments on these patch note additions, the general opinion can be summarized as such: "These changes don't address our major complaints."There's no doubt that 1.5.1 will greatly improve Aion (less grind anyone?), but players seem to be sticking on a few major points that aren't yet in the tentative patch notes. Most of the players commenting on these notes seem to feel that Aion's first big patch should tackle the crashing fortresses issue (crysys.dll), flying spiritmaster pets, better UI customization, and a number of other issues (less grind included). There also appears to be resistance to a new debuff that will be added to aether extraction. Players will now be randomly debuffed when gathering, but can quickly remove it by typing a captcha. This change is obviously aimed at bots, but many state this will become an annoyance for everyone.
Check out our summary of part one of the patch notes and AionSource's interview with NCsoft's Lani Blazier to get a comprehensive view of the situation.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Amana said on 1:58PM 11-09-2009
Captcha.. yup some great thinkers on the Aion team.
Not.
So glad I don't play this any more. All power to those who still enjoy it though.
=)
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Scuffles said on 2:04PM 11-09-2009
What you talkin' bout Catpcha rules !!!!!1!11!
One of two things is going to happen, the bots will be patched to deal with the captcha and continue on botting within two weeks ..... or players will complain so much that it will be removed within two months ....
Amana said on 2:21PM 11-09-2009
lol - this^^
DeathMutant said on 2:43PM 11-09-2009
If our flight timer does not freeze while we are trying to figure out the captcha I expect to stop extracting aether altogether and never craft anything that uses it. I will not pay anyone else for it either and expect prices to rise dramatically anyway.
I absolutely HATE captchas and usually take 2 or 3 tries to get one right because some are so obscure and use ambigious letters like lower-case L's and 1's.
---
Bot-like behavior is so easy to spot why doesn't NCSoft just enlist volunteer GMs with limited powers -- like EQ's "guides" -- and give us better tools to aid them? Sure it can lead to griefing but with a GM personally investigating the complaint someone who repeatedly reports a false bot could be penalized themselves.
Captchas, bah! :-P
Nollind Whachell said on 6:34PM 11-09-2009
This is AWESOME! They should expand it though and make it like a CAPTCHA meta game that you can play for a few minutes at least!
Remember, it's not a bug, it's a feature!
Verit said on 2:29PM 11-09-2009
I dunno - if botting is such a big problem maybe you need to look at the core issues - for instance material intensive crafting, boring quests and massive amounts of exp required for leveling.
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Plastic Rat said on 12:08AM 11-10-2009
Some players are happy with that kind of gameplay. That's who the game is designed for. I for one enjoy taking my time leveling up.
Botters aren't there due to a gameplay issue. Players will bot, cheat and use exploits no matter what you design.
Most of them are gold farmers where the intention is to make money. This means making as much gold in a short a time as possible.
That has absolutely NOTHING to do with how the game is designed.
Verit said on 1:14AM 11-10-2009
I've only ever found two bots in World of Warcraft, and I've played since launch. They were everywhere in Aion.
Design absolutely has an effect on how much people will bot. They seem to fester in games that are resource heavy, grind heavy. They were everywhere in Lineage 2 as well.
my2cents said on 4:41AM 11-10-2009
The only way to make a game design implemented so far that can ward off gold farmers is a game in which there's no meaningful economy, which is something a lot of players enjoy having. In WAR for example, you do still have bots and gold farmers but the market for it is much lower seeing as money is just not an issue in the game. It's almost hard to get rid of your money if you try once you hit a certain point in the game.
As for only ever seeing two bots in WoW, no offense but you just must not have noticed them. I spent four years playing WoW and reported a lot of bots. Not nearly as many as in Aion, that's for sure. But at least 50. And sadly there were times when I'd report a bot and find it back in action a month later when my next alt reached that same zone. It was never to the point of being out of control, but it's also not an issue that Blizzard is above. So let's not put WoW on yet another pedestal. ;)
As for the 1.5.1 patch, I'm glad they are tweaking the leveling curve and quest xp gains as well as giving at least some incentive to defend a fort. But I do agree I'd like to see more...but then again it's an mmo and there will be many more patches to come. The Captcha thing is odd, and I hope it's just a short term solution to help curb the bot farming until they can get the bots under control. Overall I'm loving Aion but I, along with just about everyone, won't put up with forever. Thankfully it's gotten better enough lately that it rarely interferes with my questing, but if the bot population isn't reduced to 10% or less of what it is now within the next two months, I'm out.
Wjowski said on 2:40PM 11-09-2009
A captcha screen? In the middle of gameplay? Seriously?
That's some ass-backwards development there.
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danarchy said on 3:49PM 11-09-2009
Heh not a perfect solution but I think it would be hilarious to see a message like:
"You cannot attack that target as they are currently responding to a capcha"
"Asmowithevilname has fallen to his death due to capcha"
"Soandso has been kill by capcha"
"Sfdaasdf says: Hey! Cheap gold at keylogger.aiongold4win.com! Get for greatest power cheap! Pwurlevel 20 to 30 50 doller only! Character stolen and resold back to you for 200 onli!"
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Andrew said on 4:16PM 11-09-2009
Brilliant :P
Dread said on 5:02PM 11-09-2009
LOL!
Captcha - wtf?!?!
I've seen some arse backwards decisions before...but fucking Captcha in an MMO ?!?!?
Can't see it lasting more than a week.
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Ganesh said on 5:02PM 11-09-2009
there are MANY MANY problems with this game. this patch does little or nothing to address those issues.
i quit yesterday.
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Graill said on 5:13PM 11-09-2009
So comical........cue funeral dirge warmup.
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Temko said on 5:14PM 11-09-2009
and people called me a trolling DF fanboy when i said Aion is going to crash and burn. lol.
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Holgar said on 5:56PM 11-09-2009
I said before that NCsoft was out of touch when they released a grindy game in the western market. Although they seem to have realised this to some degree if they were truely "with it" they would have had the grind reduced and had more content in place at launch.
Now it would seem that they are reducing the grind but proving in other ways that they are still out of touch.
I'm not an NCsoft hater I just call them like I see them.
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Scarr said on 6:04PM 11-09-2009
Cudos to NCSoft for the patch notes.
Other then that, I am very disappointed in basically the entire patch. Debuff for Aether grinding. Wow... Fortress defense rewards mailed to legion leader to be distributed. wth? Good luck with that.
The splattering of XP tweeks is nice. But at this point, it just isn't enough to make me want to resub. The Aion community is also one of the worst I've seen, don't really want to play with those types of people.
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eddie said on 10:28PM 11-09-2009
Soooooo... they couldn't come up with a more interesting way to defeat bots than the captcha system most commonly seen in comment sections of blogs. You'd think they'd at least devise something that fits in a game... like clicking on the annoying sprite that's jingling in your face, something a bot can't do, but is a total non-issue for a player.
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buenoexcellente said on 12:38AM 11-10-2009
There are so many differences between the way games are played over in the Asia markets and the NA/EU ones that exporting a game like this becomes almost impossible without massive alteration in the mechanics themselves.
Example: In most Asian countries game time is bought by the minute. This gives developers a strong incentive to make players spend a lot of time playing. Thus the grind.
The grind isn't fun, so they have to find a way to automate it. So they add in a macro system that requires no user intervention once a macro is activated. These macros only work if you add in things like auto-range closing and auto-facing.
Add all that in, and it becomes absurdly easy to bot. I'm no programmer and I could probably write a bot for Aion.
Asians also don't seem to be under the delusion that there is a difference between "real" currency and game currency. Honestly... is there any difference between building a cabinet and power leveling a toon for sale? I suspect that WOW Gold is probably more valuable that some third world "real" currency.
I used to kind of scoff when people said things like "just another Korean grinder" but becoming more familiar with Aion has made me see what they mean. I'm going to continue to play Aion because I kind of enjoy this style game, and it turns out I'm good at it. However, I can see how frustrating it could be for somebody used to a more linear style of gameplay.
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