Here’s the scenario: I’m level 550 or some ridiculous number, and I’ve still got another 50 to go. It took me six months of regular grinding to get that far, and the idea of rolling another character makes me want to go outside. Forever.
So I talk a friend into playing the game, and they want to play with me. What the hell do I tell them? “Sure, see you in six months”?? No, wait, I might be 600 by then. We’ll make that seven months.
Pre-renewal RO, a game about leveling until your fingers were bandaged stumps, never had the problem ToS is about to be crippled by, for a multitude of reasons:
- Character level stopped at 99, so the relative party range was far wider, proportionately
- You spent most of that leveling period going from 80-99, so your friend could drag their butt into your level range in a couple weeks, concievably, as getting to 80 wasn’t too hard
- You got full experience from any monster, and
- When you transed your character level reset, creating a “window” to play with your friend that, when carefully managed, could give you a lot of time to level with a newbie character
In short, Tree of Savior will be completely unable to draw in players who get initially interested in a game because their friends are playing. Take a step back and think about how many MMOs you, the reader, personally gave some time and/or money because your friends had already been playing and liked the game in question. Now imagine never being able to catch them, or play with them, for a many month grind, unless they stop their main characters and level alts they didn’t even want to play.
The only feasible way to play this game with a friend, as things are now, is to shackle your character to theirs, only playing at the exact same times, thereby letting the person with the least time to play dictate the leveling pace.
There are three solutions to this: (EDITED FOR CRYSTAL CLARITY)
- Remove all level range restrictions on both parties and monsters, and say hello to Powerlevel of Savior. (THIS IS A BAD IDEA. It was included as kind of a joke.)
- Allow the high level player to sync their level, stats, circles and available abilities down to their friend’s level, and allow exp gain as normal for both players. FFXIV style level sync. This is wonderful. (I REPEAT: ALLOW EXP GAIN FOR BOTH PLAYERS. As in, you will level from 550 to 551 by the time your friend goes from 1 to 30 or whatever.)
- Allow the low level player to be artificially lifted to the high level player’s level, with scaling temporary stats but without new circles or abilities, aka sidekick system from that one.
If nothing is done, the game will suffer greatly. The barrier of entry to new players wishing to enjoy the game with their friends will be insurmountable. It will be a sheer cliff of a height this genre has never seen before. It will hamstring Tree of Savior in an unavoidable and terrible way.
Preemptive response to babbies who don’t think there’s a problem because they didn’t personally experience it during a closed beta cycle: The level cap is level 200 and it’s triple exp, genius. Also, everyone started together. This problem is something that will only spring horribly into being in the retail version.
