Yes, it’s a wall-o-text. But I’d rather not make 4 threads no one’s going to read.
With the 2nd ICBT well under way and feedback topics now popping up. I feel like I can now discuss my feedback and suggestions to the game as a translator who’s played through the game very closely (been holding back to avoid spoiling things for everyone, will try not to spoil here as well).
I really want the developers to be able to read and understand this post, so I’ll keep my English simple here.
The Linear Progression
As some players have said, with a great example by @rafael_clp at
The game feels very linear. It is almost like a single-player game where you go through 80% of the world just by playing the main quest. With only 20% of the world left for free exploring. That’s not enough for people who like to explore and find new, cool things that most other people have not found. I myself don’t want to start new characters because I know I won’t see anything new with that character.
It is actually very hard especially for me to suggest fixes to how quests work in this game, since I’ve spent almost 2 months translating all these quests . But here are some suggestions, some might be really stupid. I hope one of them is good.
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Make the main storyline very high level. This way, the lower level maps are more open-world, and the demons can be more bad-ass. Also it prevents main quest from breaking up due to level requirement, since it’s all around the same high level.
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Make the main story more of a ‘mystery’. Try to make the players do more ‘thinking’ work to find the revelations. Sometimes I feel like the NPCs already know everything, and the human players are just dumb people who are strong. If possible try to concentrate the main story to a few maps, so more of the world is open for exploring.
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Make players pick and choose quests. One funny thing I felt in the game was how a player could be a Tenant’s Friend helping the farmers but also help the baron the farmers hate. Why give us the option to deny a quest when you can do them all right now?
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Just make more maps that have absolutely nothing to do with quests/story. This could actually be easy to do, since I believe map and character design is the game’s best part right now. There are lots of “dead ends” in maps I can easily see becoming “2F Kateen Forest” or something. Make these maps beautiful, make them hard to reach, make them have cool/cute monsters that give interesting rewards.
If we’re going by #4, we’re going to have to talk about the item and combat system right now.
Items
Right now, once you’ve played the game enough, you know what items are good and what items are bad. That is a big problem for a game that talks about giving players freedom to pick and choose many kinds of classes.
For example, when it comes to equipment, AoE, magic attack, and critical (chance and attack) are easily the most important numbers right now. Aside from that, some items like Max Pentamion (+14 all stats) seemed to be must-haves for anyone high level. All the other items are just trash. I can confirm this by seeing how Level 200 KR players built their characters.
With these “ideal/perfect” builds, the game quickly became boring for me. Everyone’s going after the same equipment, why should I race everyone else to the same ending?
The fact that items are limited to level 40, 75, 120, 170 etc makes it boring since when I know I have the best item (it gives me +Critical, so I know it’s good), for my level, I don’t have a reason to look for other items, I just try to level as fast as I can to the next limit.
There should be no “right answer” build. Items actually are quite related to how monsters work right now so here goes:
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Make monsters more varied, and make those differences strong. Make monsters that fly very high, dig underground and move, have different kinds of poisons, have very strong and very weak elements, have very high critical resistances or move very fast.
Right now everyone is only focused on killing as many monsters as they can, as fast as they can (that’s why we focus on AoE and Critical) and this only works because most monsters are pretty much the same. Making some monsters ungrindable except for specific kinds of characters (or teams with those characters) will make the game feel more colorful. - Make more requirements for items to be equipped. Character level is too simple, make some swords require DEX and some bows require CON or SPR or something. This could give way to more interesting builds and balance some others. Make some “OR” requirements. Example: A sword that requires level 120, or someone with 90 STR. This can also make things interesting.
- Make item stats variable. Maybe one Iron Bow gives more Critical Attack than another Iron Bow?
- More class-specific items. I’ve started seeing items that aid Hunter skills for example. Those are good. Maybe items that help people craft things better or higher success of reinforcing item?
- Fix how grinding works. As I said on #1, people are currently focused on builds that kill lots of monsters quickly to level up quickly. Maybe if there are other ways to level up/ other things to do, there would be less focus on that…
How to Level Up: Combat & the Grinding problem.
Right now, there’s nothing to do but fight if you want to level up. You need to kill monsters to Level normally, You need to kill monsters for quests to level most of the time. Helping players tank damage or healing them doesn’t help you level at all. Under this system you’re going to see a lot of players complaining about EXP rates, not enough monsters, etc.
There needs to be more things you can do to progress in the game. Here are some ideas:
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Make it so people don’t need to fight monsters. What if I could level by shooting at a target range or training at a dojo? What if I could duel class Masters for fun/for reward?
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Some players would rather not base their characters around fighting or spend most of their time fighting. Perhaps make it so crafting and other non-combat activities help one level?
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Maybe the Card mini-game gives out EXP cards if you win? People will definitely start playing them if it did.
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More quests in town. Speaking of quests in towns, Klaipeda and Fedimian probably have fewer quests than many out-of-city maps, which is funny . I always thought more quests would open up in town as I got higher leveled. Maybe there are more quests in town that don’t involve fighting monsters? The great thing about town is that it is Level-neutral. Mr. Uska or the Cleric Master or the soldiers there could very much dish out quests ranging from level 1 to 200 there. What if I as a Highlander can still get quests from other Masters such as the Fencer Master? There are so many people in town, yet few people actually matter to me right now. That can easily be changed.
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Make Monsters more tough, with more EXP each monster.
Pardon my language but it sometimes looks stupid to see my character killing millions of helpless monsters and thanks to how the maps are designed in this game, there are not a whole lot of places to find the large amounts of monsters that I need to level in a full server.
Since adding a crazy amount of monsters wouldn’t be a good idea for server load, I would recommend making monsters stronger and worth a lot more EXP individually.
With this, each grinder will cover less ground, and tanks/healers and parties will probably be more important.
To make this work however, You will need to seriously improve monster AI, and monster traits, since fighting a high HP monster that doesn’t do anything is also really boring.
At the end of the day, I think it’s more cool to fight and gain a lot more EXP from evenly-matched monsters than to slaughter a million squishy things. -
Reexamine how EXP cards work and required EXP for leveling. A lot of people find it awkward when suddenly it’s easy to level at around level 45. To keep players adaquately leveled through a storyline, maybe make it so EXP cards have a level associated with them.
For example: Level 7 cards give bonus EXP to players under level 160 so they get to 160 faster.
Misc Suggestions
Some parts of the game feel like lost potential. We have the lodge system and books, but there’s no reason for me to visit other people’s lodges or read books.
Maybe I can start new quests by reading a book or document? Maybe the document tells me where to find a super secret recipe or item?
Maybe I can visit the lodge of a logged-out friend and leave him messages or gifts?
I have made many other suggestion threads before, here are some I think are still worth thinking about:
https://forum.treeofsavior.com/t/suggestion-buying-skill-upgrade-points-not-attributes/37745
Phew, That’s all, I hope IMC can read through this and that everyone is enjoying the game