ToS is a game which has a huge variety of classes for the players to choose, one can mix and match classes to create their own unique builds. However, while the concept looks really nice on paper and is a huge draw for players seeking variety in builds to the game, reality isn’t as rosy as what is painted to be. Classes are segregated into tiers and aren’t balanced to each other in a flat hierarchy. Choosing Lancer at R8 offers significantly more damage boost than choosing Swordsman C2 at R8, even when both are available for choosing when a player reaches rank 8.
This severely hampers free choice of a variety of classes in which the game is advertised to be. If a player decides that he likes the playstyle of ranger c3 + quarrel shooter c3 + archer c2 he will be starved for progression in future content as the skills themselves doesn’t have the damage capability to clear those content. Players who make the choices based on what is considered fun for them felt that the game is punishing them for their choice as it becomes more and more difficult to even quest at higher content. Hence every now and then there will be topics asking for class resets in the forums.
It is not easy to solve inbalances in classes. One thing in which I hope IMC would understand is, if the game offers class selection and choices based on a player’s free will, there definitely will be players who will choose a class that is of a lower level rank than a class that is of that rank, like Quarrelshooter C1 over Mergen C1. A good game would allow this and still make the player feels that his/her choice of QS1 is as viable as other choices at content lv280+. It is a tall order to balance this but it is not impossible. One way is to rebalance all classes based on a flat hierarchy, with each skill having a percentage damage instead of a flat damage value. This will create lots of work for the devs, makes balancing unnecessarily hard due to the sheer amount of classes and also rebalancing of all content so that no one class will be too overpowered in early/mid/late game. With the game at this stage, it will be near impossible to rebalance all of these without incurring any sort of backlash from the player community, even when it is of a good cause.
There is another, much simpler way to solve this inbalance issue without a major rework on all skills and content. It is to increase the limits of attributes of the lower rank classes. An example, Ranger is a Rank2 archer class, damage for a character specialising in Ranger will start to fall off at level 220+, where the monsters start having high HP to soak more damage. R7 classes such as Cannoneer/Musketeer has high flat damage values even at level 1 making them able to clear the content easily as they are balanced for 220+ content.
As such, an attribute for a skill like barrage can be added like the following:
Enhanced Barrage - Available from level 220
Increases the damage of barrage by 20% per level. Max 10 levels.
The above provides a number of benefits:
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Allows all classes to compete with classes of higher rankings. Classes with no clear path of advancement at R8+ such as Corsair c3 will still be viable in terms of damage.
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Allows more class diversity as there isn’t a real need to specifically choose a R7 or R8 class just to have enough damage to survive the content. Players can play whatever build they want without feeling punished at all.
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With an attribute toggled by character level limit, skills and early content need not be rebalanced as they are already balanced well.
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Offers another money sink for players to work on.
Thoughts on this?