Feel the Wind Beneath Your Wings with the Aerakyn Player Race!

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Afista_DG, Nov 4, 2014.

  1. VicariousExp New Member

    I feel the need to make my point about the age discrepancies:

    [IMG]
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  2. Merriel Well-Known Member

    Do you think you could 'fix' existing races so we can do same with them...like arasai and fae?
  3. Pixilicious Well-Known Member


    Totally..freeblood body would matched alot better imo too, I dont like the human much either, but love the aerakyn hair and face (only talking about females)
  4. Sorwen Member

    I hate the freeblood face though. The first instance where they didn't match their NPC counterparts and they used the elf body too. Instead we get....

    [IMG]
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  5. Csipi Active Member

    Hello all. I gave the new race a try and I think they look great. The male Aerakyn do have a more haggardly looking face, but I think that it gives them more a dragon type race persona...and it works in my opinion.

    The wings for functionality are absolutely fantastic. No fail there. They do work wonderfully, you can run, jump and fly...so full kudos to the art/graphics team for pulling that off.

    The only disappointment I have is with lack of certain customization features. I think there needs to be more hair choices but that isn't such a big deal because with the horns they have I could see that differing hair styles probably wouldn't be that noticeable.

    Which brings us to the next customization feature: the horns. Not enough, not enough at all. I mean the sarnak get all kinds of different ways to tweak their horns, I really think some similar choices should have been made for the Aerakyn.

    Lastly the wing colors. It sounds like you guys did a lot of work on these so I do not want to sound belittling in any way, but you need more colors. Especially the bottom front part of the wings. For the most part the two major colors that you can get for this area is either Pink or Dull Grey. I was really looking forward to a color customization similar to the fae/arasai, but what we got was far less and very disappointing indeed.

    Oh yea and I guess there is one more thing. The Aerakyn really, really do deserve their own voices. Brute male/female is doing them no justice.

    Still though, very fun race. Also they dont cost as much as you might think. I purchased the noble + character slot which is 4800 SC. But you can buy 5000 SC for $45, then you get the All Access bonus...so essentially the extra character slot was nearly free.
  6. Clash Member

    Even with all that creative savings, it still costs more than the entire new expansion.
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  7. Csipi Active Member

    Very true, but think about what you are getting: A new race, an appearance weapon, a riding mount, a jumping mount, and a flying mount...not that bad of a deal really.
  8. Clash Member

    I guess it's a matter of perspective. I got the Freeblood for free back when it was offered. Getting mounts in the game is trivial, though not with stats. Stat mounts are obtainable though. And there are already plenty of weapons and appearance weapons that can be used.

    At least the Aerakyn is account wide, but I haven't seen a definitive answer on whether the Noble Aerakyn is account wide. I'm not getting them either way though, 4200SC is just too much. If I build of that my SC with my 500 monthly, I would most likely put it towards getting a low level to 85.
  9. HaphazardAllure Well-Known Member

    Noble Aerakyn is account wide. I did not purchase it, but if you look at it in the sc marketplace in game, it states that it is an account wide unlock.
  10. Sorwen Member

    Seeing as until Freebloods you were getting races as part of the expansions and many of us even got those for free. On top of the fact that fae fly without having to pay any extra and we were told Aerakyn would fly(and have combat animations) not just some with special purchase. All on top of a race seemingly cobbled together and with stuck in appearance like the Freebloods. No, it really is a bad deal. If you are happy with paying more for less then that is your decision. Many of us are not however.

    I don't find value in something chopped up and sold to me in pieces just so I can be charged more money for a similar thing.
    Tierisch likes this.
  11. Bigguy28 New Member

    Begining to think they weren't tested at all, put in 3 bug reports related to the Aerakyn in the past two days. Latest one being, I just got level 30 armorer on my level 16 berserker, got the Sundergust wings but it won't let me use them.
  12. Csipi Active Member

    well, feelings of entitlement aside, it still is a great deal and I am happy with my purchase. :)
  13. Covic Developer

    Just talked to design, and are you having issues with the mount or appearance of the wings?
    We test everything as much as possible. But there are way more players than devs so Players usually find things that get by us. Our game world is huge so we dont always find all the issues that may pop up.

    Dave
    Shmogre likes this.
  14. Bigguy28 New Member

    The mount, it won't let me use it, says I need to be level 30 to use it. I can change appearance to it fine.
  15. Csipi Active Member

    @ vicarious...lol dude, chill out. If you actually read the posts above mine, you can see that people were questioning the male look

    That is why I commented on the males. I agree the females do look out of place...they look nothing like their male counterparts. It would be nice if they changed the females to show more resemblance to the males
  16. VicariousExp New Member

    I've addressed the look of the male aerakyn too - I find them grotesquely haggard and ugly, but I respect artistic freedom. Maybe in the SOE world, dragons are haggard and have 46-slot eyebags. I can't in good faith recommend playing a male aerakyn if you don't find wizened old men appealing.

    This however, does not excuse SOE's artists from criticism - no other race has this kind of uncanny age divide. SOE has up to now been very egalitarian with the representation of both genders - both erudites genders are equally haggard and ugly, both high elves have pudding-faces full of botox and older non-SOGA models had the advantage of an age slider. By deciding on this kind of "males are old and women are nubile" standard, any Aerakyn pairing is going to come off as creepy, like the 80 year old billionaire dating a women young enough to be his granddaughter. Maybe that's SOE's biting social commentary on people with the spare cash to be able to afford their new race. Either make them both botox young or haggard old (not that I think SOE will actually change anything because artistic directors in my experience aren't exactly the most tractable of people).
    Tierisch likes this.
  17. Sapphirius Well-Known Member

    Oh, I dunno. I've found the art department to be quite agreeable when you present them with a problem. The Feerrott Climber froglok skin went on bugged and asymmetrical for several years until I made a post about how off it appeared. Of course, I then had players trying to convince me that animals with bilateral symmetry had no actual symmetry, which was kind of laughable considering it's one of the first things they teach you in biology.

    Perhaps the art department will take a look at these comments and how off-putting the age difference is and then do something about it? Just... please don't make the females old and haggard like the males. I've already plunked down my money and would totally demand a refund if they made the females look that ugly. Give the males those botox faces or give us age sliders. I'm old in real life. I really don't want to be old in game. I know some folks do, but I don't.
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  18. Griffon Lady Well-Known Member

    I think what SOE is forgetting in it's quest to make money off of a free to play game is the old "In for a penny, in for a pound". AKA, if they make add-ons easily affordable, more people will buy them. When people have more investment in a game, they are less likely to leave. Emotional investment works through storyline and actual friendships in the game, but these days those aren't as spellbinding as ye olde dollar. It's a combination of things like those that work best.
    Gaining the investment of more people will work out better for the company in the long run as opposed to the investment of a handful of people that can basically afford to be big tippers, where a lot of people really can't or won't for digital things in a world that will eventually sunset. Since these items are digital, they don't need to make a certain amount of profit per item as they would if they were manufactured. They need to make a profit for the work that went into the items, the place that work was done in, the energy that was used making said items, and the wags/insurance/etc... of the employees involved, as well as paying off any new equipment needed over time and setting aside money for new equipment, replacements in case of breakdowns/burnouts/etc...

    It's expensive to run a game company! (and if any one knows more realistic costs, please feel free to add the more accurate numbers)

    That being said, since these items are digital, they can be sold to as many people as possible with no difference to their cost to produce, save adding memory if they sell enough to affect the server, which is highly unlikely. o.0
    Now, lets say it costs $1000.00 to produce a new mount for some reason (I honestly have noooo clue how much it actually costs, just a random number that's easy on the math. lol)
    It would only take 50 people buying that at a rounded $20 each to break even. $20 has been proven in the past to be an easy amount to part a customer with, but that was back in the days when ATMs were the main source of money before check cards, so I'm not sure how accurate that still is.
    So, if the mount is just mind bogglingly awesome, and 500 people buy it, that's quite the nice profit since it didn't cost a dime more to sell the 450 copies of the mount, just flagging the character it goes to.
    Now, lets say the mount and merc and housepet added to the CE cost $3500 to make (the scrolls and jewels were pre-existing items, so it did not cost them anything to add them to the CE).
    70 people are all they'd need to break even. Every one else that bought one would be pure profit. This is good math for a profit, yes, but in the long run... would you rather count on 70 people to buy your product, or several thousand?
    Now lets say the CE upgrade was reduced to $20, making the whole expansion package with CE a rounded $60.00 (who really cares about that penny any way, right. lol). Now, imagine half of the people upset about the $50 pricetag on the CE upgrade was willing to part with $20 more than standard edition. I don't have time right now to go count them, so I'm going to pull a number out of my ear again. 23 people on this page here, 18 pages of posts in this thread, so I'll just use 200 as my number here. So 200 people buy the CE, as well as the 50 who were going to buy it anyway. That's still $5000.00! So they made more money in my scenario (admittedly, there may be more people % wise that did buy the full price CE already, but no way for me to know that.)
    Now there are these little nuggets.
    Those people have invested money into a digital world, making them at least a tiny bit more likely to stay here, which in turn makes them more likely to spend more here later on.
    If those people are happy, they will spread the word, pressure spouses, friends, family, even strangers to come play with them. The more excited a player is about their game, the more likely someone is to follow them.
    You can never make a second first impression. If they get talked into downloading the game (thank GOODNESS for the streaming client, because the first complaint I've seen from new players is how long the download took! lol) Now, lets say they start looking at prices. There's that first impression on "will I be able to buy stuff", and most of the SC stuff is not bad, but the negative is always what gets the most attention. Making sure those things aren't going to leave them saying they'll pass," it's cheaper on this other game" is not the first impression to make.
    The balance is a difficult thing to find. There are those who feel entitled to absolutely EVERY thing for free, and it has to be easy. There are the people who throw money at everything without batting an eyelash, no matter how overpriced. Some where in the middle is good, base wise. I do LOVE the different levels of difficulty added to the instances. Solo is easy enough for nearly any player to get through on the first try, solo advanced is good for pairs of people and still fairly easy. Heroic can be made into a challenge with a small group, or over powered by a raif geared group (and I gotta say, after slogging through an instance a few times, it is exhilarating to get a couple raid geared peeps in there and demolish the place. lol) And there are of course the raid versions. They are doing an excellent job at making the game accessible to a wider audience.
    Now, hook em while they're new! XD Make the prices more inline with the recession and lack of pay raises the average gamer is dealing with. (XD Poor students and people that just want to escape the underpaid drudgery of house and work are probably the majority of your player base, yah?)
    More people investing in the game does not have a downside that I can see.
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  19. Sapphirius Well-Known Member

    OK, now for a cosmetic problem that the art department really can work on.

    Cloth simulation on aerakyn does not work in game.

    It works on the log-in screen, but not in the game. I play on extreme quality settings with shadows turned off. (graphics card: AMD Radeon 5800 Series) Cloth simulation works on every single character I play... except my new aerakyn. I'm not sure why. I've tried turning that setting off and then back on. I've tried dumbing my settings down and then back up. I've gone in on the advanced settings tab and played around... it just won't work on these models in the game. It also shows cloth armor simulation on the dressing window.

    Here's the screenshot of the dressing room and login screen (which is how I know it should work) and in game.

    [IMG]

    Also, if you change your appearance in game at the barber shop, it shows your wings changing color on the appearance window, but your wings don't change colors with you after applying your new look. I logged out, it was the same thing on the login screen. The wings were a different color from the rest of me, but when I logged back in, it corrected itself. Zoning also corrected the issue. Could this be because of the wing appearance feature?

    [IMG]

    EDIT: updated some information
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  20. VicariousExp New Member

    I can confirm that this happened to me as well on males.

    As an aside, your screenshots kind of press home how pretty the female aerakyn are, relative to the men. No eyebags and they don't have cheekbones you could cut cheese with (for giggles, try maxing out the cheek slider on male aerakyn and viewing them from a 3/4 angle, it's hilariously ugly and looks like some sort of facial eruption). Maybe I should just switch my character's gender.
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