After a full month of daily play (that will end by now since my GPU can’t take it anymore) i’ll leave my final feedback about the game current state, i won’t go so deep in some aspects and specific classes since the ideia is talk about the general status, all the essential content is in bold so you can get all the points reading only them (just like this).
Tested Classes - Swordsman C2, Peltasta C2, Barbarian C1, Rodelero C1, Squire C2, Wizard C1, Cryomancer C3, Pyromancer C3, Sorcerer C1, Cleric C1, Krivis C1, Bokor C2, Archer C2, Quarrel Shooter C1, Hunter C1, Sapper C1.
Highest Character - Level 200, Swordsman C1 - Peltasta C2 - Rodelero C1 - Squire C2.
Server and Rank - Gabija - Rank 75.
Lack of information
As the first topic and also the one that bothers me the most, there’s no problem to have some hidden information or even things that you’ll learn as you play but most of the essential information is still cloudy like the defenses and damage relations, skill damage scales, debuff chances and/or duration, debuff resistences… I understand that some of these informations aren’t 100% accurate (like the debuff infliction chance) and they can overload the game UI if they’re everywhere but they should be somewhere.
This can’t repeat at the official release, it took me more than one month to know about important things like how Missile penality works and i learned that in the forum, the same goes to cancel buffs which is really important when playing as a Sorcerer and even about cast time affecting skill level (which is pretty cool by the way).
Monsters
There’s only one thing new in this section - flanking. This is a really cool feature (it’s annoying sometimes but it’s pretty cool) but that’s not enought, it would awesome if they could fight in group (some can do this at a minimum level with heal) and make fights more interesting, i know that demands a lot of time and effort but at least i would like it.
Speaking about monsters i don’t feel like elites are in a good state, the point to have an elite mob is to have a special challenge at the map that you can face or avoid (also, i’m not sure if the rewards are good enough) to make the game more interesting, but as your level rises there will be some maps with a lot of elites (most of Roxona Reconstuction Agency West Building mobs are Black Colifly) with an abusive damage and huge HP amounts, i don’t see a problem to have this kind of monster but it must have a good balace between power, HP and quantity,
Quests and Grind
Before any further discussion this game is more grind friendly, i’ve made some tests at 3x rate and i got some interesting results about what i’ld expect to be the progression in OBT, still i’m not 100% sure.
I’m really, really, really glad that are a lot of quests at earlier levels, i can’t see myself as a ToS player before reaching rank 3 (or even 4) so if i want to skip this as fast as i can and i know that i can’t rely on high level quests to level fast, still most of the quests are more of the same and this make them boring as time goes by, also the rewards can’t keep up at higher levels so it’s more like a little bonus than a leveling option.
Grinding has a better long term reward but it can easily be more tedious than questing (except for Demons Prison) when monsters aren’t a real challenge or you can’t take a lot of them to level fast, in a few time you’ll be stuck at a repetitive cicle untill you reach a higher level which can take days or months (i’m still waiting for a smarter mob with a good reward).
Honestly i don’t think it’s good for a game with so many classes to explore to be so slow, perhaps the major problem is the EXP chart, that will be even worse with future updates.
Instances
Probably the best way to level right now and a good way to get some rare gears. The EXP is way better than regular grind but after some time you won’t gain EXP due the level difference. Still it’s possible to go there for drops and where lies the instance problem. I’ve seen a lot of purple items and recipes (some won’t be crafted due the material rarity) that are dungeon only drops, items that should be hard to get, i don’t know if they increased the chances for the beta enviroment but it’s really concearning if thing keep like this in OBT specially because higher level characters/parties only kill the bosses and get the rewards.
Bosses
They’re both fun and boring. One of the best things that ToS has to offer is the prediction (not only the AoE guide lines/circles) that allows you to react every enemy action as long as you’re aware his stances however they can’t attack other than with skills (or don’t have enough attacks), they just stay there waiting to use the next skill and this also happens when they cast traps. This isn’t a problem in quests but it’s a little disapointing for world bosses.
Penalities
For the first time i feel like i can die in peace (still i don’t want to), the durability penality works really fine since you won’t be able to keep up without your gear so you have about 4 to 5 deaths untill your gear be destroyed (that’s no problem if have a Squire nearby, still it’s something limited) and that’s a problem even if you have iCoins.
On the other hand the level penality is awful, you’re almost forced to face monsters near your level because your damage against higher level monsters is drastically reduced while the enemies gain a huge damage buff, this wouldn’t be a problem if we had more options, right now there is only one or two good spots at each level division.
Weapons
Melee weapons are great, i can’t say the same about bows and crossbows… The bonus damage mechanic is a good attractive and an interesting way to balance some aspects of the game still i’m not sure if +/-50% is a good amount, i’ld go for a lower value (25%~30% perhaps).
I belive no one will disagree that [Missile] is awful, the damage is way weaker than any kind of weapon without any bonus (or even with penalities) and it’s really depressing to see a single target attack hit less than a AoE attack. The truth is that right now it is so bad that archer classes often use SPR builds to spam skills (Oblique Shot) instead using regular attacks.
One thing i’ld like to point is the importance of the weapon identity and that’s something we have, i still hope to see even more new weapons with unique traits in the future.
Potential
The concept behind the potential system is pretty interesting, i belive that it’s a good way to limit the gear lifetime and its power and it will help to stimulate the economy however having consumables and materials untradables is awful, you can’t buy anything to help a friend that wants to craft a gear (it’s possible to get a gear but it will consume potential…) or to use a specific skill.
Directly related to potential and as a primary use for it we have the Anvil Enhancement (or refinement) which enhances your gear main status, for non-weapons the bonus seems really insignificant (+1 stat per refinement) while weapons can get +100 Atk/MAtk or even more. One thing that’s really bad about the system is the fact that it punishes you so hard for every failure, you have to pay a fee for each try (which isn’t refundable in failure) and each time it fails the gear loss one refinement point and one potential point, making possible loss all your silver to get a regular +2/+4 gear with no potential (also you’ll loss some potential with gem sockets, amulets and trades anyway).
I understand that it should be hard to get a +15/+20 gear but i feel it’s more expensive than it should, i think it’s better for the economy if the player can waste a lot of gears (and get a good use for the market) trying to get a better one than stick to the same gear fearing the failure, also it would be nice to have a small chance (1~2%) to avoid the downgrade in case of a failure.
Classes
I can say it is the core of the whole game and what makes it so unique and fun, the ideia is to be able to make whatever you want and have fun but that’s something that is really far from us right now, i won’t talk about balance because that’s something that takes time and must be done with care.
One of the major problems is that most of the classes are charming choices to get a rank but they’re not interesting to keep, there are a lot of classes that have awful skills (i know that are skills for specific situations, but that’s not the case for all of them) at all circles that won’t even make you bother to spend a single point, i can even imagine the case that someone will have to get C2 without any interesting skill just to get one or two C3 skill. A good class will take your time thinking so every single choice will have a meaning, it’s not about “take that, it’s good” but “i will/won’t get this because it’s better for me”.
Most of the offensive classes seems to be at a good spot (still it can be better), supports seems fine too and there’s not much to say about the special type, defensive classes however are pretty weak at their function. What i noticed to be a real problem is the fact that these classes usually gain more damage with skill level instead of utility and they also get full ofensive skills (with no utility attributes), perhaps some skills have scaling uitilty but we don’t know because the skill doesn’t mention it.
The deal is, a defensive class should have more defensive skills than offensive and it also must have at least one new defensive skill each new circle, also the choices have to be interesting like a ‘damage x utility relation’ over ‘damage x cooldown’.
Skill and Scales
If i’m not wrong most of the skills use a formula like this one - MAtk/Atk + Skill Bonus Damage. This works pretty well with multihit skills but it’s completely useless with single damage skills and it needs to change otherwise we’ll see more and more high SPR values with a few points in STR or DEX (magic is more likely to have multihits), which should increase their damage. Also some buff gives a flat bonus that can make it less interesting at a long term.
Attributes
At first i was agains it but after some research i’ve started to like them, after all i can have an additional effect for a skill if i need it or if i use it often and they can be turned on and off whenever you want, the problem is that you have to pay a fee and wait after that each time you learn a new attribute level, one by one. A lot of players complain about this because they need to go back each X minutes to enhance it again and that’s really annoying, most of the time you have money enough to get 5+ levels but you the game doesn’t allows you to do so (it would be different if we could queue them). Also (back to the lack of information topic) you don’t know about the attributes penalities, is it going to increase the SP cost, cooldown or both? It took me some weeks to realise that…
At last but not least there are less and less attributes for higher ranks/circles (specially the non-skill related) and there are some skills that have only the +1% damage one (there are some that doesn’t have any at all), this little upgrades can boost you power drastically if used correctly. There are some cases when an attribute can be stronger their own skill like what happens with Gung Ho and Concentrate, you don’t need to spend points with them to get a strong skill, nothing good comes from a bonus that is better then the own thing even if they can coexist.
Even pointing all this things i know that Tree of Savior is a good game and it will become even better and it doesn’t have to change all these things i mentioned above, untill there i’ll be patiently waiting.