Ace Online
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For the love of all that is holy, DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME UNLESS YOU LIKE KOREAN PAY-TO-WIN GRINDFEST ABANDONWARE MMOs!
But if you do, it does have some redeeming characteristics. In general, for every one or two boneheaded game design choices, there's a nugget of genius.
So yeah, I've been sucked into this game again, and before I get bored of it again, I figured I'd give you guys the review I'd been promising for a long time. As there's a lot of ground to cover, I'll try to stick to covering one major subsystem at a time.
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The Grind
Where better to start on a Korean MMO than the grind? The first time I checked out this game back in 2009 (and promptly quit soon after), the grind was a major issue. By the time you were around level 70, it was several hours of solid grinding to gain another level. In the 80's and above, you were looking at days, or weeks.
The most popular grinding location was "The Wall":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9RWmqbyUyk
Imagine flying along this strip, nuking missile launchers for hours, days, or weeks on end. Even better, there were only two instances of this zone, Dimension Corridor, one PvP-enabled, and one "safe." Now, if you have more than two brain cells, you're probably thinking, "Wait a minute, only two instances with limited mobs for grinding and many players? What were they thinking?" And you'd be thinking correctly! So, to establish some semblance of order, players would call "dibs" on the zone, by saying, for example, "GRINDING SAFE WALL" in world chat. Not looking forward to this honor-system enforced grind for days on end was one of a few things that prompted me to drop the game.
The Grind Today
The good news is that this boneheaded "design" has been mostly patched away with a server experience buff and grind maps. It's possible to get a new character into the 80's in a day, and to 101 in a few days. At 101, you get kicked out of the grind maps, and your best normal grinding mobs get you .025% of your bar per kill. So, 4000 kills per level. At 111, you lose the experience buff and get about .005% of your bar per kill with every possible experience bonus you can scrounge. So, 20000 kills per level. Max level is 115, but most people stop at 110 or 111 because that's the highest level requirement on gear.
Now, the designers realized that even this grind was punishing, even if it wasn't as punishing as it used to be, so they devised a solution. They created Hidden Place, or HP for short.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au843mIDa7A
The mobs in Hidden Place give at least an order of magnitude more experience per hour than world mobs, but the designers had to ruin this good idea with some caveats. First, Hidden Place may be accessed only once, by only one nation, per hour. As the video above describes, you have to kill crystals in a certain order to make the portal spawn, so it's very easy for an idiot or griefer to make a lot of people very angry. Secondly, as the video also explains, if you don't have a Stealth Card active, you will aggro all the boss mobs in the room and wipe everyone in there, and since they can only enter the zone once per hour, lock them out for the rest of the time, also making them very angry.
As a side note, making players very angry in Ace Online is generally one of the easiest things to do in the game, and also one of the most rewarding. You will likely find this to be a recurring theme.
Now, at one point, the designers might have rubbed their two brain cells together and realized that Hidden Place fell short of being a viable solution. So, they created Distorted Place!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xd_akSr0BE
Distorted Place (DP) is an instance only accessible through Hidden Place, and to get into Distorted Place, you need a Red Code, which drops from the boss mobs in Hidden Place, and a Blue Code, which is a cash shop item. If you're already thinking
, that's a good sign, because in addition to spending real money for the privilege of grinding more quickly, you have to endure the hassles of getting into HP to even have that opportunity. But even better, the "honor system" bullshit of "GRINDING SAFE WALL" as explained earlier lives on in DP etiquette. Only one player at a time is supposed to enter DP, and dibs are similarly called in global chat. Violating this etiquette is another great way to make people very angry.And now, you know enough to be able to appreciate this exchange:
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Ace Online
Oh wait, not that Ace. Carry on then.
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@JBert said in Ace Online:
Ace Online
Oh wait, not that Ace. Carry on then.
It's also been through several other aliases, like Space Cowboy Online, and was licensed as Air Rivals in certain regions like Europe.
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Currency and Economy
Before I can show you how this game is extremely greedy, perhaps the greediest P2W game I have ever seen, I need to provide some context on the economic systems therein. Ace Online has three currencies:
- SPI
- War Points
- Credits
SPI
SPI is the currency used in NPC shops. It's mostly useless as a medium of exchange between players because you're capped at
INT_MAXof it, and it's very easy to rack up 2 billion, so it's not very valuable. However, it's essential for purchasing kits (the equivalent of health or mana potions in other MMOs) from vendors, and it serves a very useful purpose for auctions.Auctions are one of the rare flashes of design brilliance. Every couple of hours or so, all items that failed enchantment break, but instead of disappearing, they show up for auction so there's a chance for the enchanter to get the item back, or for some newbie to pick up something valuable. However, they are notoriously hard to win since everyone's timing the auction to bid at the last millisecond before it closes. SPI is the auction currency, and given that 2 billion is the most any player can hold or bid, there's a price ceiling on auctioned items, which is kind of cool.
War Points
War Points are a currency that players get for participating in PvP events, and most mobs drop WP capsules as well. This is the de facto in-game currency since event participation (or farming mobs) is a good guard against runaway inflation, as well as WP being much scarcer than SPI. This doesn't stop certain players from spinning up multiple instances of the game via Sandboxie or VMs to drag multiple alts through PvP events and get credit for the event on each character, but WP alting is a bannable offense if caught.
If you cared enough, you could probably program an autonomous cluster of Azure or EC2 instances which all logged into the game from different IP addresses and acted sufficiently human, but I will leave that as an exercise to the reader. If you value your time, it's usually better to, um... "outsource" your grinding to someone in a third-world country, where a few bucks here and there will make a significant difference in their local standard of living. This is also bannable, of course. However, while playing Ace Online entails a gigantic moral grey area for a large number of players, there are some "legal" alternatives and loopholes which I'll get to in a moment.
I should also mention that the game is, not surprisingly, popular in many third-world countries. In theory, you're only allowed to speak English in global chat, but this rule is broken so frequently that nobody cares anymore.
Credits
Credits are the Real Money Currency™ and bought in USD. This makes them highly desirable to players in third-world countries with a lower local standard of living. While some credit-purchased items are tradable, many of them are not, so you have to engage in a two-step trade by "gifting" them to another player. This presents an obvious scamming risk, and the GMs do not provide support for credit trades for this reason.
However, while credit trades can be risky, they are permitted, because you're in theory giving the hosting company and developer money from having bought credits in the first place. It also provides a gigantic loophole, in that instead of saying, "Oh, I'll buy that item from you for $240," (real-money trading is bannable and very bad), they can instead say, "Oh, I'll buy that item from you for 300k credits," (completely legal). Credits are most frequently sold in exchange for WP, and the rate fluctuates based on how many active players each nation has, or whether any hackers have recently discovered a new exploit to poof millions of WP out of thin air (which has happened a couple of times).
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Equipment
As you might expect, equipment is where most of the P2W greed comes in. There's a lot of
to cover, so I'll start off with armors:Armors
Armors can have a prefix and suffix, and can be R, D, or E type. Here's one:
- The base type is a WP Metal Jacket Guarder, which is good because it's a WP armor that can be upgraded and keep its affixes (this is not true for every armor type)!
- It's a V5, which is a rank based on required level. It goes up to V15 (required level 109), but once you upgrade it past V11, it ceases to be tradable, so then you have to downgrade it if you want to sell it. Granted, it's not as lame as soulbinding in other games, but it is annoying nonetheless.
- It is an R-type armor (hence the -R). R-type armors have the most energy and shields. D-type trade some energy/shield for defense, and E-type for evasion.
Now, the wonderful thing about D and E-type armors is that there are also affixes which grant extra defense or evasion, and between character buffs, character stats and armor stats, it's pretty easy to get well over 150% defense or evasion, which basically means you're immune to anything that doesn't have a massive amount of probability or pierce-statted equipment. If you max out your Attack stat, you get 50% natural pierce and about 25% natural prob, but that's still nowhere near enough to make a dent in the highest-level whales. Typically, you might need about 210% prob to have a 50% chance to hit someone with a full evasion build, and about 120% pierce to do half-damage to someone with a full defense build. And the best part? It's very difficult to have enough prob or pierce at the same time to be able to kill both, so that if you encounter a dynamic duo of one defense whore and one evasion whore, you're only able to kill one of them at best.
Rumor has it that one of the company insiders gave a completely serious and definitely real tell-all interview as to the motivations behind these unkillable "survival" armors:
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Weapons
Getting the correct affixes on armors is relatively easy, as there are only a couple hundred of them, and Normal gamble cards will allow you to access everything except a couple of GM-only affixes. Super gamble cards are even better, as they cut out all the Normal-quality affixes, so you have basically double the chances of a good affix.
Weapons, well, those are a completely different story. Not only can you not upgrade them, but there are three tiers of weapon affixes:
- Normal
- Super
- Hyper
Normal gamble cards give you access to every affix in the game, but as there are several hundred of them, good luck rolling the exact ones you want. Super gambles are a much better option, as they're still relatively cheap and filter out all the crappy Normal quality affixes.
Hyper gambles are an exclusive Credit Shop item, although you can sometimes get them during seasonal events. Some players were able to park alts in said event maps and ended up with dozens of hyper gambles, which pissed off the game host and developer enough such that such events don't happen much anymore.
Normally, a prefix Hyper gamble costs $4, and a suffix $8. Yes, that's $4 or $8 for one reroll of one affix on your weapon. Why they are priced differently is anyone's guess, as it's possible to get the same affix on either side (though this wasn't always the case). There are about 250 Hyper affixes, and if you're only looking for one or two, you might spend quite a lot of time and money arriving at that desired result.
Now, you might be thinking, "Fuck that shit, I'm not paying $4 or $8 for a single reroll, especially if Normal gambles can access the same fixes." And you'd be correct, except Hyper gambles sometimes give additional bonuses for certain affixes. For example, Legend (+15% prob/-15% reattack), Warrior (+15% pierce/-15% reattack), and their lesser cousins Bio, Meteo, Hound, and Kobal all have a chance to randomly add another 5% min/max damage bonus if gambled with a Hyper gamble card, or a weapon weight bonus or missile valid angle bonus that nobody really cares about.
I'll leave calculating the expected costs to succeed at a 1/250 roll at $4 or $8 a pop, plus the unknown probability of getting the desired bonus whilst succeeding at that roll, as an exercise to the reader. Granted, there are a handful of affixes that are workable, so it's not always a 1/250 roll, but it's still not uncommon to spend several hundred dollars on a single weapon, or several thousand if you want perfect affixes with double bonuses. It's almost always better to trade for a weapon that already has at least one affix you want (and let someone else eat those enormous costs), if you can.
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But it gets better!
Enchanting
Like many similar games, there is an enchanting system of increasing difficulty as the number of enchants adds up.
Generously, the first five levels have a 100% chance of success. After that, chances start to go down:
Enchant Level Chance of Success 1 100% 2 100% 3 100% 4 100% 5 100% 6 90% 7 80% 8 70% 9 60% 10 50% 11 30% hyper, 40% regular 12 30% 13 20% 14 10% 15 5%? 16 5%? 17 1%? 18 You get the idea. This means you have an overall chance of 15.12% for an e5 (level 5 enchants) item making it to e10. There are +15%/25% bonus cards you can use while enchanting which apply a multiplicative bonus (i.e. probability x 1.15 instead of + .15). Using 15% cards from e6 onwards effectively doubles your chances of making e10 from e5. 25% cards are rare and valuable enough that you don't see a reduction in overall cost in using them until attempting e13 and above, and I know this because I've run simulations with millions of trials to figure out the optimal strategies for enchanting.
Once you achieve e10, you have the option of using Hyper enchant cards, which often have twice the stat bonus of normal enchant cards. For example, normal defense cards add 1.18% per level, for a bonus of +11.80 at e10, but hyper defense cards add 2.75%, so by e13 you have nearly double the bonus you would at e10 - 20.05%.
Now, what happens if enchanting fails? The item poofs and goes to auction! Unless, of course, you used an Enchant Protect item (or eprot) or Hyper Enchant Protect item (hprot) when enchanting. Eprots will prevent the item from breaking, but it will revert to the enchants it had at e5. Hprots are a cash shop item (costing $7.04 each in their cheapest form) and can only be used on items e10 or greater, and causes the item to revert to e10 on enchant failure. Counterintuitively, it can often be cheaper to enchant using regular eprots, as the cost to enchant an item back to e10 is usually less than that of an hprot.
Most established players stop at e12 or e13, as the gains are both quite logarithmic and quite diminished past that point, but others decide to go further. I now invite you to ponder how much money went into making this weapon:
There's also a guy with an e16 evasion armor.
And I say this all not from a standpoint of ridicule, as I would be throwing stones in this glass house and calling the kettle black, as I myself have spent a sizable chunk of money in support of this game (yet not quite as much as this guy). Instead, I say it from a point of reverence, perhaps admiration. If you can afford to spend $10,000+ making one weapon in an online game that might shut down next week, you have truly made it in this world. If you derive enjoyment from it, even better! There are worse things.
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@Groaner Reminds me of this:
Achaea: the game where microtransactions cost hundreds of dollars
How much would you pay for a microtransaction? Nothing? A fiver? If the answer is in the region of $500, you might be playing Achaea.
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@Rhywden said in Ace Online:
@Groaner Reminds me of this:
Achaea: the game where microtransactions cost hundreds of dollars
How much would you pay for a microtransaction? Nothing? A fiver? If the answer is in the region of $500, you might be playing Achaea.
That's interesting if the prices expressed in the article are as listed, and not obfuscated through probability. It's much harder to sell someone a $100 widget than it is a 1% chance of getting that same widget for $1. I've seen the latter employed way too many times. It is, after all, the concept behind loot boxes.
I have heard quite a few stories about some of these ancient MUDs and obscure MMOs. One fellow Ace player mentioned he was $10k into a different game he was playing, only to get owned by people who were $20k "invested."
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@Groaner said in Ace Online:
@Rhywden said in Ace Online:
@Groaner Reminds me of this:
Achaea: the game where microtransactions cost hundreds of dollars
How much would you pay for a microtransaction? Nothing? A fiver? If the answer is in the region of $500, you might be playing Achaea.
That's interesting if the prices expressed in the article are as listed, and not obfuscated through probability. It's much harder to sell someone a $100 widget than it is a 1% chance of getting that same widget for $1. I've seen the latter employed way too many times. It is, after all, the concept behind loot boxes.
I have heard quite a few stories about some of these ancient MUDs and obscure MMOs. One fellow Ace player mentioned he was $10k into a different game he was playing, only to get owned by people who were $20k "invested."
Didn't B*****m declare lootboxes to be illegal gambling?
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@PleegWat said in Ace Online:
@Groaner said in Ace Online:
@Rhywden said in Ace Online:
@Groaner Reminds me of this:
Achaea: the game where microtransactions cost hundreds of dollars
How much would you pay for a microtransaction? Nothing? A fiver? If the answer is in the region of $500, you might be playing Achaea.
That's interesting if the prices expressed in the article are as listed, and not obfuscated through probability. It's much harder to sell someone a $100 widget than it is a 1% chance of getting that same widget for $1. I've seen the latter employed way too many times. It is, after all, the concept behind loot boxes.
I have heard quite a few stories about some of these ancient MUDs and obscure MMOs. One fellow Ace player mentioned he was $10k into a different game he was playing, only to get owned by people who were $20k "invested."
Didn't B*****m declare lootboxes to be illegal gambling?
I do believe there were some grumblings in the EU, as well as in several other jurisdictions. As to whether any regulations would have any bite on a "worldwide" server not directly marketed to the EU for a game that has been effectively abandoned by its developer is a different story.
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By this point, you're probably thinking, "@Groaner, this game sounds like a shitty cash-grab. Making decent equipment entails insane amounts of money, and the developer doesn't really care beyond collecting a paycheck out of it. Heck, you haven't even mentioned yet that the game requires DirectX 9.0, and has to be run in compatibility mode to even function on Windows 10, which is going to be a barrier to entry for non-tech savvy folk. Why do you play this terrible, greedy game?" And you do raise valid points. But, if you will, think of the game as an onion - a shit-covered onion, that once you peel off the outer fecal-encrusted layers, you arrive at the sweet, healthy tissue. Now, while cutting onions often ends in tears, I will let the reader decide whether this is taking the analogy too far or not. But let's talk about some of the more unique, interesting, and dare I say, fun systems in the game:
Factions
Like many other MMOs, there are two eternally-warring factions, ANI (Anti-Nationalist Influence), and BCU (Bygeniou City United).
ANI is a stereotypical rebel faction that calls Arlington City its home, and BCU is a stereotypical entrenched government faction that calls Bygeniou City its home (and that's pronounced Bee-Gen-You, not Bye-Gen-Ee-You). In spite of these stereotypes, it's not a battle of good vs. evil as both factions are morally gray. They are also symmetrical in pretty much every way. Players start off as part of a mercenary group called FreeSKA, working out of either Arlington or Bygeniou City, and must choose which nation to support. In theory, this choice is permanent and affects the entire user account, but in practice, you are permitted to send a ticket to the GM once every three months to request a nation transfer, which resets the quest that decides which of the two factions you're on.
From a theoretical game design standpoint, since the factions are effectively symmetrical, faction balance is a solved problem. However, actual faction balance depends heavily on how many players from each faction are online, and that varies a lot based on time of day (think about European players logging off and going to sleep, followed by Asian players waking up). In theory, a GM would need to carefully monitor the situation, and modulate the rate of nation transfers to ensure good balance. However, let's just say the situation on that front is, uh, one of... "benevolent neglect." The result is that one faction typically dominates the other at certain hours of the day, and sometimes one beats the other into submission for days or weeks at a time. Since neither the game developer nor the host have a huge interest in micromanaging nation balance, but since the game host is happy to allow nation transfers, it rests upon the community to self-regulate. Kind of a cool libertarian experiment, isn't it? And on the topic of politics, it's time to move on to...
Leadership
One system I haven't seen in any other game is the nation leadership system, which implements a lot of interesting ideas.
Every month, a player is either elected or appointed to be the leader of their nation. Colloquially, these are known as "election months" and "fame months," and the systems alternate every other month (but the changeover is a manual process performed by the GM during maintenance).
Election Months
As you might guess, during election months, the leader is democratically elected! One account, one vote - doesn't get any purer than this. Yes, players can make multiple accounts. And yes, it is advisable to vote early and vote often. I considered myself to have exercised remarkable restraint the last time I ran in the election by only voting for myself three times.
But not anyone can run as a candidate. A candidate must first prove themselves as experienced by racking up 1,000 total PvP kills (known as "fame", and more on that topic in a moment), be a minimum of level 60, and be the leader of a brigade (equivalent to a guild or clan in most other MMOs) that collectively made 1,000 PvP kills in the past month. So there are some requirements.
But once you register as a candidate, you may enter a blurb which becomes your "platform." Some make grand promises, others namedrop players on the same or the opposing nation, others make sophomoric remarks, and what have you.
There's a period during which one may register as a candidate, and a period where registration ends and voting begins. At the end of the voting period, the votes are tabulated and the winner becomes Chairman (ANI) or General Commander (BCU) at the next maintenance at the end of the month.
Fame Months
Every other month, there is no election, but the brigade that accumulates the most fame (PvP kills) during the month on each nation will have its leader appointed as Chairman or General Commander. Often, that means that the biggest brigades tend to have a guaranteed spot as nation leader every other month. However, this natural order is occasionally upset legitimately, or by creatively ambitious and patient players who log alts on both nations and kill them over and over again to accumulate fame (this is known as crossfeeding, and is a bannable offense, but again... "benevolent neglect").
Congratulations, you're Chairman/General Commander! Now what?
For the duration of your term, you are given quite a few goodies:
- Special shield item with +10000 points (when the best grunts get is around 2000-2750 from their shield item). This basically increases your survivability by a third, so it's a big deal.
- Flight lockdown cards (these allow you to ban a player from leaving town for one hour). These are mostly used as a punitive measure for players who don't follow the leader's instructions, or to neutralize spy accounts from the other nation.
- Radio silence cards (these allow you to mute troublesome players for a similar period). These are mostly used to silence spies who come over to the other nation to talk shit after a war.
- Your name is in light green instead of white
- Access to leader chat (a special global chat used for giving orders or talking shit about certain players or the other nation)
- A salary in SPI (which is drawn as a percentage of all vendor transactions in the nation)
- The ability to send mails to the entire nation
- The ability to appoint subleads
- Global warnings when enemy players enter your nation's territory
- A few other powers I'll explain in the future that are relevant to outposts and wars
Subleads
In case you have a social life outside of the game and can't be online 24/7, you are able to appoint two other players who will share a subset of your powers. On ANI, they are the Vice-Chairman and Strategy Director, and on BCU, they are the Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff.
Subleads also receive warnings (which can be useful if you're trying to catch someone sneaking in), have access to leader chat, and are also able to send mails to the entire nation, which as you might imagine, comprise a variety of topics:
- Helpful reminders of the date and time of scheduled wars or upcoming events
- Naming and shaming of scammers
- Complaints about players not following instructions
- Complaints about poor nation balance
- Questioning the sexual orientation of certain other players
Nation Contribution Points (NCP)
You might be asking to what Nation Points in the top image refers. At the end of each war, each nation is awarded a number of points based on whether it won or lost the given war. Naturally, winning awards a higher number, so the ongoing count becomes a reasonably good proxy for how well each nation is doing on the macroscopic scale. NCP is also used in a nation-balancing algorithm - if one nation is way ahead in NCP, the winning nation gets an added tax in SPI on all vendor items, and the losing nation gets a buff that increases all players' defense and evasion by a couple percent, depending on how far behind they're trailing. Sometimes, tryhard leaders will try to drag out wars (as longer wars tend to award higher NCP), but almost nobody cares about NCP except tryhard leaders. And as you might expect, NCP is reset each month as new leaders come in.
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@Groaner said in Ace Online:
a shit-covered onion, that once you peel off the outer fecal-encrusted layers, ... I will let the reader decide whether this is taking the analogy too far
I think you've taken the analogy too far already.
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@HardwareGeek said in Ace Online:
@Groaner said in Ace Online:
a shit-covered onion, that once you peel off the outer fecal-encrusted layers, ... I will let the reader decide whether this is taking the analogy too far
I think you've taken the analogy too far already.
I was waiting for someone to accuse me of being a Lorne alt.
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As elections are soon, it would probably be helpful to show off what's in store in this latest round of the Great Phillonian Experiment of democracy!
Arlington
ANI has a few candidates for Chairman this time around:
I'm guessing that the list starts at 2 because one candidate withdrew. Either way, ANI's 2nd candidate makes an appeal to some vague, unspecified former glory:
Yes, the UI in this game is
horrendous and full of visual and functional bugscharming. Candidate #3 is running on a humorous platform, I think?
Candidate #4 makes some hopeful, perhaps altruistic appeals. Never a bad move as a politician!
Bygeniou
BCU only has two candidates in the running, so voters must choose either the best of the two, or the lesser of two evils:
Candidate #1 appears to be running on a platform of destroying the enemy and "play funny." Some might quibble that his qualifications are lacking at the young age of level 107, but perhaps youth and new ideas are what Bygeniou needs in this era?
Candidate #2 is the far more experienced contender, being the incumbent General Commander (though appointed, due to it being a Fame month), as well as a long history of service in prior months. Critics might lament that Candidate #2 seems to be stoking conspiracy theories in lieu of a detailed platform; however, playing to fear and ignorance can also be an effective campaign strategy.
Elections start in a few days. What will the voters decide? Will players with 100+ accounts vote early, and vote often? Stay tuned!
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@Groaner said in Ace Online:
Will players with 100+ accounts
Not sure if you mean players with an account that's attained Level 100, or players with 100 individual accounts. Either way is sure to be hilarious.
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@TwelveBaud said in Ace Online:
@Groaner said in Ace Online:
Will players with 100+ accounts
Not sure if you mean players with an account that's attained Level 100, or players with 100 individual accounts. Either way is sure to be hilarious.
The latter (players who are in possession of over 100 unique accounts). I'm fairly conservative in that I have fewer than ten myself. You don't really need 100 unless you are trying hard to swing an election, are a farmer at high risk of getting banned, or are engaging in antics which tread dangerously close to getting banned.
If I have not yet communicated it thus far, one of the most appealing things about this game is the nostalgic Wild West feel of an '00s MMO, before everything became tied to a Steam ID or Facebook login or whatnot. Such an environment only cultivates such antics.
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Classes
While there are only four classes, or "gears," there are surprisingly quite a few viable stat and equipment builds for each, depending on your goals. Most equipment is unique to each gear, but there is some equipment that can be shared. Some people will argue that certain gears are better than others, but all of them are useful and important for different reasons.
A-Gear
Nicknamed the "Anima Mortar" on the character creation screen (and nowhere else), A-Gears (AGs) are tanks, in both the traditional MMO sense and the "it has guns and moves around on the ground" sense. In fact, they are the only gear type that can move around while on the ground, and some of the endgame engines allow them to move at ridiculous speeds (~550 m/s) while on the ground, making them arguably the second fastest gear in the game.
AGs are notable for their skill Siege Mode, which immobilizes them, but at the same time triples their gun firing rate. Players worth their salt will have weapons with enough reattack enchants and affixes to be able to shoot 15 shots per second in this state (depending on the player's local framerate. Yes, this is a
). While sieged, you can move your mouse and lock on to targets, and your gun will track the target as it flies above you. This is controversial, as players of other gear types complain that AGs require no skill (not entirely true!) since it's point and click. However, there are a few tricks players can use to break the lock. AGs are in fact quite vulnerable when sieged, so they have an ability called Barrier which protects them from missiles for 15 seconds (with a 1-minute cooldown).When on the ground while not sieged, AGs can turn invisible, making them sort of a "rogue/assassin" class as well, and a lot of playing AG well comes down to tactics. They also have useful and incredibly annoying debuffs that slow a target temporarily (Snare) or prevent shield regeneration (Shield Paralyze), as well as a massive damage AoE skill called Hypershot with a 15-30 minute cooldown (depending on skill rank).
The great thing about Snare is that it can be used on friendly targets as well as enemy targets, and snaring your allies is a very easy way to get them to loudly complain and curse at you. Repeatedly snaring allies every time the skill's cooldown expires is quite effective for this purpose.
B-Gear
The B-Gear (BG), known as the "Brandy Burg" on the character creation screen (and nowhere else) is the average class, the Mario class, and a bomber. While they are neither the fastest gear nor the gear with the most health, they are a big damage dealer that can frequently oneshot weaker opponents. BGs rely on their skills Ground Bombing Mode and Air Bombing Mode, which add 4-5 extra missiles to the normal firing pattern at their highest ranks, so that instead of launching one or two missiles per volley, you could be launching ten or more, hence the massive damage output.
Like AGs, BGs also have a skill that turns them invisible, called Invisible, and they are not limited to using it while on the ground, which makes them essential for stealth assault. BGs lack annoying debuffs, but they have Big Boom, which deals their current hitpoints in AoE damage, piercing defense and evasion, on a 15-30 minute cooldown like Hypershot. Frequently, BGs will carry special armors in their inventories with energy enchants to maximize their Big Boom damage.
I-Gear
The I-Gear (IG), nicknamed the "Idle Sniper" on the character creation screen (and nowhere else - noticing a pattern yet?) is the fastest gear in the game, capable of flying at up to 560-580m/s in bursts. It's also the most glass-cannoney, and one of the more simple gears to play, so that players can focus on the basics of flying, turning and rolling (invincibility frames against missiles, all gears can roll) without having to spam other skills as much as one would with other gears in the process. Now, while other gears have to wait several seconds between rolls, IGs have a skill called Chain Rolling which allows repeated rolling. This helps mitigate their relatively low health, along with their characteristic high evasion stats.
IGs get an annoying debuff called Silence which disables the targeted gear's abilities for several seconds. Their 15-30 minute cooldown skill is called Berserker, which drastically increases both missile firing rate and firing pattern for 30 seconds. It's often invoked as a "last stand" measure, or to deal a lot of damage to one or more targets in a very short period.
M-Gear
Nicknamed the "Meadow Burgle" (whatever the heck a burgle is) on the character creation screen, the MG is the support class. As you would expect of a healer/buffer class, MGs have both targeted and formation (formations are like parties in other MMOs) heals, and potent buffs to damage, defense and evasion. These buffs are so potent that people will often create an alt and hide it somewhere in the map to repeatedly apply buffs. This practice is known as buffbotting, and is actually permissible under some circumstances, but is bannable under others (much of the reasoning has to do with WP alting, but more on that later).
MGs have a vitally important skill called Call of Hero (CoH), which summons any formation member to the MG's position from anywhere in the world, and while it has a warmup of a few seconds, it can be cast fairly frequently. This allows an MG to get help if enemies are targeting it, or to sneak a whole army through the backdoor. Players often will beg for a CoH rather than fly across the world to a war, and depending on the enemy's defenses, this may be a reasonable request or just laziness. Some players might prep their buffbots to send a CoH at the last second if their main character is close to death.
If that doesn't make them a formidable support class, they can also temporarily make themselves Invincible (at the cost of their weapons being disabled for the duration), and have a supremely annoying skill called Purify, which removes all buffs and debuffs on the targeted character and cancels active skills like Siege Mode, Ground/Air Bombing Mode, Hypershot, Big Boom, and Berserker. MGs are tasked with spamming Purify on notable players from the other nation to both annoy them and make them easier to kill. Their 15-30 minute cooldown skill is Full Recovery, which is the quintessential targetable clutch heal.
MGs have the slowest engines (400-460m/s), but they can fly backwards with Reverse Engine to evade attackers, and also make up for their lower speeds with their high defense (and/or evasion, if a good evasion armor is available). They can also be dragged by a faster gear in formation flight if need be (more on that later).
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The World
The planet Phillon (and its immediate vicinity) isn't one contiguous region as you might expect of a more modern or more-AAA MMO, but divided into zones which are connected by warp gates. So it becomes convenient to express the world map in the form of a subway map:
If you look closely, you will probably notice that there are multiple pathways (or chains) through the world. This is a Good Thing™, as it means there are multiple routes, making it harder to choke off access. If you look even more closely, you may notice that some of the branching seems unnatural. The "oldest" routes between Arlington City and Bygeniou City were through Bark City and Rock's Nest. The moon maps (between Denebola and Castor) are sort of off in their own little world, and are mostly irrelevant except to WP capsule grinders who want an abundance of mid-level, easy-to-kill mobs.
Later came the
PandariaPandea continent, which was bolted-in to the existing world by adding another warp gate to Bach Mountain Chain on the BCU side, and Edmont Valley on the ANI side.While it's less obvious from this map, a warp was also added to Lumein Volcano to bolt in another new chain starting at Ash Lane and a third, unplayable NPC faction called Next Generation City (NGC), who serve as the antagonists for that chain.
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@Groaner I noticed one of the stops in the NGC chain is not proper-named, and one appears to have no name and no color.
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@TwelveBaud said in Ace Online:
@Groaner I noticed one of the stops in the NGC chain is not proper-named, and one appears to have no name and no color.
Good catch! That would be El Dorado Metropolis, an inaccessible zone that was formally supposed to be added to the game at some point:
Supposedly, some players who are running illegal private servers have been able to explore it, but otherwise that chain ends for the rest of us at Mirny Stope.
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Memorable Locations
Ace has some of the most unique and interesting environment designs I've ever seen. The game is designed for large-scale PvP, and apart from the slideshow framerates during large-scale wars, it's one thing the game gets right and you can see that intent reflected in some of the environments.
The Dens
Surrounding Bark City are Den of Site - A and B, and while the game is light on lore, they appear to be part of some gigantic railway tunnel system. For scale, the rails are tall enough that A-Gears parked on either side cannot see or shoot through them. Here is where the infamous "den wars" occur. Den wars can be organic world PvP, or arise as the remnant of a more "scheduled" war, where each nation tries to push the other all the way back to its respective spawn.
Lumein Volcano
As you might imagine, a zone named Lumein Volcano might be a pretty hot place, but it's also home to the stone tiki Gigantic God Lumein which has missile launchers for knees. I mean, what's not to like?
Once you kill him, you have to kill his glowing yellow heart (also visible here) which covers the portal to the next zone. If you're not quick enough, the heart respawns, blocking your access and you have to kill it again, which is most annoying.
G-ARK
While there are plenty of wide-open areas, sometimes there are tight spaces you'll have to fly through. G-ARK is a ship so massive that it itself is a zone, and there are many narrow corridors with twists and turns to be navigated to get through it:
Fantasy Flow
Much of the action takes place near the surface of the planet Phillon, but there are several zones that occur in the surrounding outer space. Fantasy Flow is a dreamy asteroid field with a colorful skybox and Gigantic Space Bugs:
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Memorable Locations (part 2!)
The Pandea continent presented new environments which were equally, if not more innovative.
Atus Beach
If a zone in Ace has "Beach" in it, it's not a sleepy resort town with palm trees swaying in the wind, and probably not a place where you'd want to vacation:
It might seem convenient that there's a tunnel going into the mountain, but the construction team clearly spared no expense as they HOLLOWED OUT THE WHOLE MOUNTAIN in the process.
Slope Port
Slope Port is a harbor of some sort, and this structure appears to be made of corrugated cardboard.
Like Atus Beach, it has a hollowed-out mountain Just Because™.
But this hollowed-out mountain is also accessible from the top via a sort of ventilation duct. Yes, those fan blades spin and you have to carefully time them to fly through without hitting them. To some extent, this game was ahead of its time in that it has simple player-world and player-NPC collision mechanics.
Pandea A/B Point
These zones are intended to mirror the Dens, but with a twist - they are less linear, with intertwined, forked paths and have long vertical tunnels as well which can offer a tactical advantage:
Daisy Riverhead
What's not to love about a floating pyramid complete with its own self-sustaining waterfalls?
Orina Peninsula
Like its ANI equivalent, Slope Port, Orina has a hollowed-out mountain AND annoying fans. But it also has convenient fixed access vents from the top.
The ventilation system is also a bit more complex than Slope Port, with several tunnels and fans:
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In a possibly unprecedented move, the ANI Chairman has resigned (most likely due to people bitching about his leadership skills and repeatedly insulting him)! A fellow brigade member has been appointed as his replacement:
The election has also gotten interesting for both nations, as old candidates have dropped out and new candidates have emerged:
If these gaps in numeric sequence look too much like the handiwork of an autoincrement column to you, rumor has it that the game uses a SQL Server backend. Candidate #5, now the incumbent due to his aforementioned appointment, brings a wealth of experience to the table, and a hearty campaign promise:
Candidate #2 was the favorite to win, but Candidate #5 throwing his hat into the ring has complicated the contest.
On BCU, both candidates dropped out, and now a third candidate has emerged, running unopposed:
Candidate #3's platform seems to be metacommentary about a brigade on the other nation.
Tomorrow's the last day for any new candidates to register. How will these changes impact the contest?
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Formations
One of the last actions of the outgoing ANI Chairman was to send a nation mail about formations, and thus presented an opportunity to talk about them. As I mentioned earlier, formations are like parties in other MMOs, but with a twist: the formation leader has the ability to allow the rest of the members to follow his flight in, well... formation.
There are a variety of shapes of formation flight:
And these aren't all for show, but some of them have useful effects, as ex-Chairman explains:
The most frequently used shape is Wall Formation, since it divides damage taken on one formation member across the whole formation.
Players are not forced into formation flight, but join it by getting near the formation leader and hitting F2 until their gear "sticks" to the leader. It's equally easy to leave formation flight.
Formations are also useful when the formation leader might be a fast I-Gear, and other members have slower engines as all members in formation flight are "glued" to the leader and can be dragged at the leader's flight speed. This property also makes them very useful for WP alting, as the formation leader can open up six instances of the game, drag five of his alts along for the ride and get 6x the war points for a war event. As I mentioned before, WP alting is bannable, but these days, the community finds the more egregious cases to be amusing, and critics of alt-draggers are admonished not to "hate the hustle."
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The election results involved upsets on both fronts! On ANI, the Southeast/south Asian bloc voted in droves for their preferred candidate (while the front runners ended up ostensibly splitting the vote):
And on BCU, the sole candidate failed where even African dictators succeed with a grand total of 0%!
Most likely, everyone assumed he was going to win and thus nobody voted for him. Thus, the GM intervened and appointed him to the position, and he sent a thankful nation mail:
And he's already put together an administration. ANI's new leader has yet to even appoint his subleads.
ANI won NCP this past month, but the nation is not off to a great start. Will ANI's new leadership rise to the occasion and deliver another victorious month?
