Tree of Savior Forum

A prestige system idea

The “Enlightenment” system


Introduction


Hello and welcome to my suggestion-post about the „Enlightenment“ system. The name „Enlightenment“ is just a placeholder. The name, as everything else can be worked around, but the informations, details and specifics are worked out while considering my own experience/struggles and the experience/struggles others had with this game.

This systems goal is to improve the long term experience of active players.

Please read everything before commenting or asking questions, because certain questions will be answered upon reading everything.

Every name I invented will be defined and explained in the glossary beneath.

Glossary

Dreaming – Every character is „Dreaming“ for as long as the „Mastery“ isn’t reached. This is merely a story part.

Dedication – „Dedication“ is a value that further increases the experience gain of the character upon using „Wake up“.

Determination – „Determination“ is a value that further increases the characters abilites upon using „Wake up“.

Enlightenment – Upon „Enlightenment“, the characters „Luck“ is increased by one level. „Determination“ and „Dedication“ are increased with „Enlightenment“ too. The value of increasing capabilities is 100% per stage.

Enlightenments – There are 10 „Enlightenments“ in total per character. Upon reaching the last „Enlightenment“ the character has reached it’s „Mastery“.

Luck – „Luck“ is just what it sounds like, luck. Drop chances and any other factor based of luck is enhanced.

Masteries – A teams limit of „Masteries“ is set with the maximum amount of characters.

Mastery – If a character has reached it’s „Mastery“, every character will experience a buff. The more „Masteries“ are completed, the better the buff will be.

Wake up – „Wake up“ will set a characters progress to 0 again, but the progress bar of „Enlightenment“ will also increase. You will need a specific amounts of „Wake up“s to reach each „Enlightenment“. For example: A „Wake up“ can be done with reaching level 100, but using that with only level 100 won’t make you progress much in the „Enlightenment“ progress bar and won’t increase your „Dedication“ and „Determination“ a lot. Remember, this systems goal is to improve the long term experience for active players, reaching level 100 isn’t really considered active or long term. So the higher your level upon „Wake up“ is, the more will everything else increase too.

Directory

  1. How would the „Enlightenment“ system work?
  2. The problem with levels and experience.
  3. Further explanations of important values.
  4. Do you need to buy more character slots? And what about companions?

1. How would the „Enlightenment“ system work ?

A final set number of „Enlightenments“ is implemented for every character you have. On top of that, there also is a final set number of „Masteries“ for the whole team.

A character has 10 stages of „Enlightenment“, before it reaches the „Mastery“.

To reach „Enlightenment“, you will need to „Wake up“.

As defined in the glossary already, the character that used „Wake up“ will be reset to Level 1.
Everything will be reset to a beginner character.
Items can be storaged in the team storage, not in the personal storage. The reason for that is, that every character is „Dreaming“ (all these names and the story behind it can be worked around, it’s not that important), the character was dreaming and so everything they have done will be lost if not storaged in the team storage.

The player pays a huge prize, but will be heavily rewarded.
The character that used „Wake up“ knows what will await him, that’s why it’s „Dedication“ and „Determination“ increased upon waking up.

Every „Enlightenment“ will increase a players capabilities by 100%.
The „Dedication“ and „Determination“ provide a better flow of progression. The „Enlightenment“ contains the values „Dedication“, „Determination“ and „Luck“.

For example:

If your character used „Wake up“ 10 times being level 100, the first „Enlightenment“ is reached.
After each „Wake up“, even without reaching „Enlightenment“, the character will still experience a buff of „Dedication“ and „Determination“, which still will buff a characters experience gain and capabilities overall.


2. The problem with levels and experience.

The last example of the 1. chapter seems like you would need an ridiculous amount of time to reach the „Enlightenments“, but that’s not true. The „Enlightenment“ system will need to be worked around so that is suits the ingame character level progression.
My example can still be worked around, but if we go back to the last example of chapter one and instead of using „Wake up“ with level 100, we use it with level 300, we will find ourself almost reaching the second „Enlightenment“.

This means that the progression bar is exponential, which also means that it will be impossible to reach the „Mastery“ for a character.
You might ask yourself now „Why? Why even bother then?“, the answer is simple:
Tree of Savior is not a finished product, more levels will eventually roll out in the future.

In order to actually reach the last „Enlightenment“, you would need to use „Wake up“ at least 2 times while being the max level of a character, but not the current one of Lv. 330, the one that the developers have in mind.
If they have Lv. 600 as a Lv. Cap in mind, you will reach „Enlightenment“ 6 upon using „Wake up“ and being max level.

This kind of progression bar will make sure, that players, which start playing when they see that the level cap has been announced, won’t have a HUGE disadvantage.

Some might think now:“Didn’t you say, that this systems goal is to improve the long term experience of active players? Wouldn’t it be quite unfair for newer players to be able to reach the „Mastery“ in such a short time?“

I’ve thought about that too. That’s why the system would take „Total „Wake up“s“ into considerations.

That basically means, if a player used „Wake up“ a lot of times, a specific factor for the progression bar of the „Enlighthenments“ will increase.

For example:

If a player has used „Wake up“ 50 times with level 330, he should be around the 6 „Enlightenment“, but because of the total is taken into consideration, upon just one „Wake up“ with the max level (if it gets released) this player should be able reach the „Mastery“ immediately.
This way, the players that have been active will get rewarded instantly reaching the maximum, but newer players won’t have such a huge disadvantage, that they will never be able to reach the players that have been active for a long time.

3. Further explanations of important values.

Now I’m going to explain certain important values that will probably still be unclear for some readers.

Keep in mind, that these aren’t final numbers, they can be worked around, but as I said already, I’ve chosen these numbers, because high risk should be rewarded respectively and because these numbers are adjusted to my and others experiences and struggles.

Dedication:

Dedication increases the total experience gained by a specific factor, exp cards are included, but the factor will be reduced by ½ for that. As mentioned above, the Dedication will reach 100% at the first Enlightenment, 200% at the second Enlightenment, 300% at the third and so on(This means that, if your exp gain is 300% the Dedication factor will increase it to 600% upon reaching the first Enlightenment). The maximum Dedication a character can have will be 1000% ( for each Enlightenment stage) and 50% for every Mastery reached on the maximum amount of characters possible in the game. 1000% + ( 50% * 15) = 1750%
While this number seem to escalate, please keep in mind, that the Mastery can’t be reached as long as the max Lv cap isn’t released. It will stay at 1000% and would be character bound until then. (The 750% would apply to any new character made, too. More about that in the next chapter.) 1000% still seems too good to be true, right? Yes, indeed. If a player would use an exp tome and have 300% exp gain, that would escalate into 3000% exp gain just because of the exp tome. Exactly for that reason, a hidden value will be implemented into this system too. The devs can think about what they want to do in this, but my opinion would be like this:

For every normal enemy, the exp end result after calculating Dedication into it, the exp gain should be reduced by the factor of 0.3. You would then only get 900% exp with the 300% tome for normal enemies.

However, when facing Elites, Giants, Bosses and field bosses, the reducing factor won’t be that small anymore. Field bosses would become really relevant if the reducing factor is 1 (3000% with 300% tome as in the example above). Bosses would have the reducing factor of 0.8. Giants and elites the reducing factor of 0.5.
If Tree of Savior releases a class that can transform enemy types into specific things, or even stack them, the reducing factor won’t really reduce anymore, in fact, it will increase the max exp gain even further.

For example:

If an enemy is a Field boss and some of the players are transforming it into a giant and elite at the same time. The original reducing factor will become an increasing factor with 2.0. That means that this field boss, while being giant and an elite too, will give exp the amount of 6000% ( still just because of the 300% exp tome ).

A lot of people will most certainly call me crazy for these numbers, but we still don’t know enough about the upcoming level increase, the level cap etc.
If the difficulty on leveling in the level area of 600 and above will get multiplied by 10 or even more, a lot of people WILL give up, without this system here atleast. Another good thing about this system is, that the developers don’t have to think too much about keeping the players in the game and not making the game too hard and grindy(=> will talk about grinding further down this chapter). They could make the LV 600 enemies 50 or even 100 times stronger than the 300 lv enemies, but it still will be possible to get strong enough with this system to keep up with the difficulty.

This values sole reason is to keep the player happy and motivated.
It’s also good for replayability. You can get to a high level very fast after multiple „Wake up“s and „Enlightenments“. That way, the player can really experience the game itself, try out new builds and every player can experiment what they really want to do, not just reading about others that already had the experience just to be sure they don’t do anything wrong.

Determination:

The abilities will be improved upon using „Wake up“ and per „Enlightenment“ stage, the total value will increase by 100%. ( max. is 1750% with every stage of „Enlightenment“ and 15 characters have had their Mastery level reached.(50*15=750)).
Does that mean, that a character can be 17.5 times stronger than a character with the same specifics but without „Enlightenment“ and „Masteries“ to the max. ?
Not necessarily.

If a character were just plain 17.5 times stronger, that would mean that people with 5.000.000 DPS would have 87.500.000 DPS. ( I think that would be plenty enough, but just for fun, I will make an small example what would happen if everything would experience that buff.)

/*
*It’s said, that the capabilities of a characters will improve by 1750%.
*That would mean, that total stat points, weapon dmg, enhancement, transcendence, skill dmg % *etc. will *see their values increase by 1750%.
*That will result in far greater DMG than 87.500.000 DPS.
*Let’s take the Solmiki Musket, it’s enhanced to +16 and reached transcendence 10 already.
*Normally, the Solmiki Musket has the DMG range from 1273-2121 (I’m using tos.neet.tv as *reference here)
*With +16 and transcendence 10 it would have the range from 5507-8051.
*If the enhancement of +16 (+1688 DMG) will be increased by 1750%, it will reach +29540 DMG
*(1688 * 17.5). If the transcendence would be increased by 1750%, it would increase the DMG *of the *weapon by 3500%.
*
*The DMG range would be 1.078.455 – 1.079.303
*
*And that’s just the raw dmg with Solmiki Musket +16 transcendence 10, without buffs on the *weapon, *blessing, sacrament and other buffs.
*/

As mentionend above, I think the character would be strong enough already, if the end power is multiplied by the factor of 17.5.

Enlightenment:

Upon reaching an Enlightenment, the Luck of a character will increase too by 1 Level.

Enlightenments:

Every stage of Enlightenment will further increase the characters movement speed and some other debatable values. I personally would increase the amount of normal attacks you do with every 5 stages (remember, the final stage can’t be reached as long as the lv cap max isn’t released).

Luck:

Luck is increased by 50% per Level.
Luck increases the drop chance of every item that can drop ingame.
That would amoun to 875% extra drop chance, that means, that items that have 0,6% drop chance, that it will then have the drop chance of 5,25%. That would mean, that every item with a drop chance of 11,5% and higher, would drop everytime. Multiple drops per enemy kill could be easier gained like this.

Luck also changes the amount of silver that is dropped. The current silver drops will be set as minimum values, while the silver drops multiplied with Luck will be the maximum silver drops.

For example:
If an enemy drops 1.000 silver, you will have the chance of ([Luck Lv %]*0,01) to get the highest possible silver drops of ([Luck Lv %] * silver drop) silver.
If an enemy normally does drop 100.000 silver, you will have 8,75% chance to get 875.000 silver instead. ( Everything inbetween 100.000 and 875.000 can also be droped with the respectively chances. ).

Luck also increases chances of successful ehaancement and transcendence and other luck based function, but we will need a reducing factor here again, so that this game still keeps being competitive in getting end-game-gear.

Masteries:

If all possible Masteries, with the total being as big as the max. character slots, there should be a big reward for the players patience. For this to achieve, it would still need a lot of years. (Even with my Dedication value, this would take a lot of time. If a new character is made on the day the Lv. Cap is released, you will need to use „Wake up“ atleast 10 times in total.)

The Free TP could be increased to 100, this team will experience the token buff permanently and other neat things.
The total Masteries can’t be reduced, so a player can still delete a character and still experience the complete buffs this system provides.

Mastery:

It’s permanent to a character and team.
If a character reaches it’s Mastery, the whole team will experience a buff of 50% of everything a single Enlightenment stage would provide.

Wake up:

A character can use the „Wake up“ function once it has reached lv100, but as mentioned in chapter 2 of this post, using this too early will almost not have an effect at all.
Your progress gets wiped, but your character will indeed experience major buffs, which indeed will influence the total experience of playing this game to the better.


4. Do you need to buy more character slots? And what about companions?

As mentioned in the third chapter in the Mastery and Masteries text, the total of Mastery can’t be reduced. It’s highest lv is the amount of character slots available in total.
This means, that you can still have companions and you don’t really need to buy more character slots, although it would be kind of strange to put so much work into a character just to delete it when it has reached it’s Mastery.
It’s not as big of a problem to delete a character if you’ve reached every single Mastery possible, because you will more or less have experienced almost everything possible in this game. (You can build 150 different builds in total, before reaching the max. of Masteries possible) Of course, that’s just speaking broadly speaking. If you really want to experience and build every single build, you would be able to do that with this system.

That system looks quite ok and would surely be a nice system if TOS would tread the same path as RO with its map and monster allocation.
Currently,there are not enough monsters and the maximum level of huntable monsters is always equal or less than the players,so it’s quite a sad developement.



The positive aspect in your approach is that it would actually be quite beneficial to the underpowered Classes, as they too would hit damage cap eventually, largely benefitting the supposedly weak multihit skills. And the active damage cap would prevent people from becoming too strong on the long run.

Also,it would lessen the stress to use and overupgrade/transcend highlevel weaponry, enabling you to choose from a wider variety of items, e.g. Swordsman using Durandal for the extra skillevels because it doesn’t matter anymore if he uses Prierene Sword,Abdochar or Durandal.

However, that’s only as far as the damage cap stays intact; if you were to remove it/increase it for the sake of players benefitting from their increased basestats, it would have a catastrophic effect on the world as a whole because it would be really hard to counterbalance every single stat you might have or might not have increased.

Of course, making the monsters in the higher levelrange a lot stronger would eventually balance this out, but seeing that the other monsters would become even weaker than now,it should have a devastating effect on the economy (higher silver influx,higher droprates).

What also gets lost really quick is your character customization. If every stat gets boosted, even the base stats you recieve from equipment,your character will have very high all around stats.

And if they don’t get boosted, you’re forced to spread all stats to have an evenly beneficial effect.


What could be done is that you recieve enlightenment points (every point boosting a stat by 1%) every time you reach an enlightenment level, allowing you to freely improve the values of your stats and thus customize your character.

This would have two positive effects:

  1. players can still customize their characters and won’t become overpowered as quickly
  2. players still have to choose what to improve,making their characters more befitting their gameplay and enable players to cover up their weaknesses


What I do agree with is that monsters in turn should become a whole lot stronger.
I wouldn’t actually mind if they make a parallel world for this, e.g. the world “across the river”, i.e. the realm of Giltine or the demon lords.
Having to taste the bitter defeat because the monsters there are 50-100 levels above cap would be pretty nice, although I really hate being defeated simply because of the level difference.

There’s no reason why monsters shouldn’t be higher in base level than the players except the convenience for no-brainer gameplay.

I agree with mostly everything you’ve said.

There’s just one thing I can’t agree with.

You said, that the changes could devaste the economy, but that’s not quite right.
Well, it would’ve been better if I’d done an exponential increase for the strength level too.
Instead of 100% per Enlightenment, I think it should start from 20% and adding 20% to that for every Enlightenment.

This would make sure, that people who are really investing time in the game they love, that they are rewarded for that.
This won’t have such an devastating effect, because only the people who put hard work in the game are the ones who will be “over powered”.
And because that number of people would be quite small, the economy wouldn’t suffer that much.