As NCsoft launches its Empyrean
Calling 2.5 update to Aion today, Gamasutra talks with the MMORPG's team about
the game's evolution in the past two years and localizing features for different
regions.
When Aion launched in North America in September 2009, many
praised the subscription-based online title for its polish and visual design,
but other criticized it for requiring players to grind for hours before reaching
more entertaining portions of the game.
Aion has made an effort to ease
the grind and expand its offerings through regular updates, like today's 2.5
patch that adds a mentor system for low-level characters, two new instances,
character customization and pet system enhancements, new skills, and more.
NCsoft is also introducing a 10-day free trial option to Aion tomorrow,
allowing new players to play the game with a 20-level cap.We specialize in
providing third party merchant account. The
MMORPG will begin hosting various in-game events designed to provide players
"with a true taste of the game", too.
Gamasutra sat down with associate
producer Adam Christensen, GameGuide lead Scott Hannus, and GameGuide content
writer Sean Orlikowski to discuss how Aion has changed since its launch, and
managing the different play styles of Korean and American users.
Aion
was a game where the push was to make sure the content was developed in concert
and localized in concert so the feedback was going bi-directionally with the
Korean team. How have those efforts panned out?
Adam Christensen: It's
kind of a living breathing thing that we slowly have to nurture, but the
relationship with the devs over in Korea, I would definitely say is getting
better for sure. We're making steps in the right direction with each significant
update. With developing the overseas build is a process of communication that's
constantly going back and forth between us and NCsoft West and NCsoft Seoul. And
we're in contact with them on a daily basis.
From the NC West
perspective, how have you felt about the uptake of the game and the audience
response in the U.S. market?
AC: We're definitely excited about it. We
want to try and provide the best experience that we can for the North American
players. That's something that we're always having to re-examine because there's
a huge significant different between the play styles of the players in South
Korea and the players here, so we're constantly having to examine that via the
community and the feedback we get directly from the players, whether it be on
the forums or submitted tickets from customer service.
We're always
trying to re-examine how we can make it a better experience for the North
American players. So, when we get feedback from the players, we try to wind it
around and spin it into a way that we can directly make an increase to the
quality of life within the game.
I've gotten the impression that there
is definitely a cultural difference in how players in different markets play
games, not just Korea and North America but also even in Europe and Japan and
other places. Trying to satisfy those different styles seems tricky.
AC:
Yeah. Totally tricky. I mean, if you want to look at something in particular,
look at like fortress sieges that we have within Aion. We have opportunities to
gather everyone together and take over a fortress. In Korea, if one faction has
owned the fortress for too long, there's even some instances where they'll
actually give it up just to keep the game fresh and new for everyone. So, if
they've had it for long enough, they basically just turn it over to the other
faction
I don't think the North American players would. You know, you'd
be hard-pressed to find a time where the North American players would just give
it out just because the game's health was dependent on it, you know what I mean?
So, to keep the gameplay fresh and everything like that, we're always trying to
come up with better ideas on how we can better maintain that quality of life.
Would you say that's due to the specific audience you've attracted? Or
is that more just a cultural North American thing?
AC: I think it would
probably be a mixture of both. When you talk about fortress sieges, of course
you're going to be referring to one specific audience within the Aion world, and
that would be people who are really into PvP. And so that audience is, you know,
pretty hardcore.
They care a lot about faction balance and everything
like that. They're going to do their best to maintain fortress ownership and
maintain faction supremacy and everything like that. But I think there's
definitely a little bit of both in there. There are cultural differences and
style of play differences.
The Korean seems to have a more general
casual PvP than we do, where a casual audience would approach PvP more openly.
AC: Oh yeah. That definitely plays a part in it, too. There are so many
different styles of play out there, so it's hard to pinpoint one contributing
factor. One thing we're always trying to do is work with community, as well.
Like I mentioned earlier, the direct player feedback that we get and how
we can spin that into improvements in the game, we try to maintain the interest
of both the PvPers and the PvPEers, and just the plain PvEers.Not to be confused
with RUBBER MATS available at your
local hardware store There's all those different audiences that we always have
to maintain balance with game content and everything like that.
The
community has actually been able to come up with some events that are trying to
appeal to those people. We run an event called "For War And Glory," which is the
rifting event where we actually open up the capability of rifting. Rifting is
basically teleporting to the opposite faction's territory,We also offer
customized zentai
suits. so you can go in and straight-up PvP.
That's something they
actually put the kibosh on in Korea, and we have buffs in place so that rifting
was significantly weakened. So, during these rifting events, we actually take
away those buffs. This is an opportunity that we want to give the players who
want to PvP to be able to go in and be able to do that.
Scott Hannus: I
think it's also worth mentioning that one of the reasons we did it is we sent
out these surveys to players, and it turned out that 70 percent of the
population in the Western territory like casual PvP or hardcore PvP from time to
time. So, by seeing that data, we said, "Hey, we need to put this back in."
AC: And right now we're running these events on kind of a week-on,
week-off basis so we can try to appeal to both.
You know, one thing I've
heard spoken about is the difference between the audience you want and the
audience you have.
AC: Right.
Which audience do you operate the
game for?
AC: All I can really say about that, like I've been
mentioning, that's one of the reasons why we're constantly trying to get
feedback, to take a proper gauge of what the audience is that we have.
There's almost this vocal minority. The people that speak on our forums
are not always going to be the majority of players. It's going to be the most
vocal. So, we want to try and find every way we can to really be in touch with
the pulse of the players and really find out what they need and what they want
for an enjoyable game experience.
SH: That's something both the game
guide and the community work on together. We play Aion. We see the changes in
the game.Houston-based Quicksilver
Resources said Friday it had reached pipeline deals Sean, he's played Aion
since...
Sean Orlikowski: Beta.
SH: ...the dawn of time.Handmade
oil paintings for sale at museum
quality, I mean, we all have an idea of, you know, what players want, what they
expect in the game.
SO: Mostly because it's what we want to do. So,
we're our own advocates in a lot of cases.
Having played Aion since the
dawn of time, has the shape it's been taking been satisfying?
SO: Yeah.
One thing I mentioned in earlier interviews is I just leveled another character
recently. I had two characters previously that I had leveled early on, and I
just went through and leveled another one. It's literally night and day how much
easier it is to level, how much more experience you get for the quests you're
doing, how much content there is to help you along toward the next level.
So, it's an unfortunate stigma that's stuck with this game since the
beginning when some of that content wasn't there. We've really been trying to
communicate that Aion is a very different game than what it was even a year ago
with all these player-driven content updates that we've come up with for
feedback.
Well, it's really hard to convince people to either come back.
I mean, I don't know how hard it is to convince people to hop on a train that's
still in motion, but it's definitely hard to get people to come back to it.
SH: Yeah. We have been very successful with our re-activation events,
re-activating accounts. Every time our population has seen a significant bump
from doing those. I think we are reaching out to that audience. We're hoping to
do that with 2.5 as well.
AC: And like you said about getting new people
to come in, we actually have a free trial system that we're going to be
implementing as well. It's something we haven't really done before. It's a
ten-day pretty much unrestricted free trial. You can get as far as you can. The
only restrictions are some safeguards.
That's interesting. I mean, at
this point, there are a lot of mature games in the market. There are a lot of
games with large audiences, so pulling people has got to be harder than it's
ever been, I think. And there's a lot of free games, and whether or not the free
games are any good, they're still free. And some of them are. At this point,
some of them are good also.
AC: Yeah.
Some of them are quite
good. Some are a lot better than they were two years ago.
SH: Yeah. For
sure.
It's interesting to see the evolution of a game and seeing people
keep a game going, and seeing a game take new shapes because ultimately very
often we only end up, you know, hearing about games when they launch.
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