About XP - Quests vs Grinding
Hello there! I am a long time MMO player, and I’ve been testing Tree of Savior since day one of iCBT2. I’ve put in 117 hours so far, and I am enjoying it!
But, if I may, I would like to discuss some points that, in my opinion, can be fine tuned for a better overall experience.
I’ve played all kinds of MMOs, and I know there are always two extremes on leveling: Grinding monsters or Grinding quests. Those are the ‘basics’ way of leveling. Some games try to value one more than other. Nowadays, the norm is to value Quests over monsters, making you travel around the world and keep you occupied.
Other games are focused completely on Grinding monsters in areas. There were several different ways to do that. Be it mobbing half of the map and killing everything with an AoE spell, or just move-kill-move-kill.
Now, I ask: What is the focus on Tree of Savior? In my opinion, right now, the focus is on Quest Grinding. Which doesn’t necessarily is a bad thing, but… is it necessary?
Now, now, let me explain why I think that. First, I will use the actual XP gain as the parameter.
When questing, you get EXP Cards of varying levels. It starts with LVL 1, and I’ve completed until LVL 5.
At the 80s, you normally get the Lvl5 Card, which gives you: 24.571 Character EXP and 18.919 Class Exp. That’s a good chunk of XP!
Let’s compare it with the Lv2 Card, which you get at the ~20s: 2.886 Character EXP and 2.068 Class Exp. That’s a good increase, right? Something like a 10x increase.
But… let’s compare it with Monster Grinding, and we will get at the first problem.
Let’s use the “Grummer” as a parameter, as it’s a monster that you can find in an area with a good amount of them, for grinding. A Grummer gives you 220 Character EXP and 202 Class EXP, it has ~446 HP. He is a level 28 monster, so low level! Comparing with the card that you can get at these maps, it would be something like ~13 of these mobs for the same XP than a Lv2 Card. That seems fair to me.
Now, let’s compare with another mob: “Vikaras”, which is a level 85 monster in Royal Mausoleum. It has 2.229 HP, and gives… 471 Character EXP and 320 Class Exp. That means that you need to kill a total of 52 mobs to get the equivalent of the Exp Card… The cards are getting better with the time, while the mobs aren’t following the same curve. Even more so if we think that the damage scaling is not that big. It increases, but in a slow pacing (that’s not a good or bad thing, just a perk of the game.), So we’re getting a few more Exp, for a monster that increased its HP 5 times.
And this gets even more noticeable with a second point: Mob density. Killing 52 mobs aren’t that difficult. But FINDING 52 mobs is. It seems like some maps are quite underused because the densities aren’t there to maintain a small group killing monsters.
For me, as someone who actually enjoys the monster grinding leveling, I found the first levels (until rank3) very enjoyable, and I really liked the pacing. It was on par with quest leveling! So I had a choice. But when I get into the ~70s, things get quite different. There are few maps that I can see myself killing monsters efficiently, be it for the difficulty vs xp gained, or the mob density.
So… Should Monster Grinding be better than Quest Grinding? No, I don’t believe. But I do believe both should be normalized and equals!
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Now that I’ve explained my point of view… What would be good solutions?
In my opinion, there are 4 things to evalue when you’re trying to find and balance a good grinding spot.
1- Number of monsters in the area
2- The size of the map/area
3- Respawn timers
4- Mob XP
Of course, those are my opinions and they are not completely tested, but I think the game has all the tools to solve it. It’s just number working.
Let me list some of my ideas!
1) Respawn Timers - There are some areas that you do have a good number of monsters, but… they just take too much to respawn. Maybe tweaking this number would be a good start! How about working with “insta respawn” after killing the normal monsters?
2) Mob density - Mob density is another important part for a good spot. You need enough mobs to kill. Of course, different classes needs different kinds of density; So, I don’t mean “Let’s mob all the maps!”, something like… creating spots with more density. In my opinion,
3) Special mob numbers - We have one of the solutions to equal the Exp Gain of questing vs Grinding: The blue mobs! But how rare are they, really? Maybe working with their respawn rates would be a good way to give the boost needed to balance the XP cards with the areas.
Maybe, even, create a “bonus chance” of respawning, the more you kill the mobs in an area?
4) Stronger monster = Bigger rewards - There are some areas that we can see that: the Royal Mausoleum Storage is a good example, with the Earth Hallowventer mobs. The monsters are stronger, but they give you better rewards. Why not create more of these areas?
Why more areas? Because we have an overpopulation in some maps, while others are quite deserted. Why not try to balance this, and use every map as different hotspots? Choices, choices choices!
That’s it!