CBT impressions from a newbie’s perspective
Hello everyone especially to the IMC team. First of all, I would like to express my appreciation as one of the lucky few to be able to enter the 2nd CBT of Tree of Savior and try out this game. While I’m not new in the world of MMORPG’s, this 2nd CBT is my first experience playing this game. Personal preference, but I did no prior research or read any guides beforehand and entered the game, clueless to the TOS world. I hope this (rather long) thread will shed some light on the overall “newbie” experience of the game.
To get things started, I’ve played 70 hours during this CBT according to steam and managed a level 106 archer (Archer 2 > Ranger > Wugushi, planning Archer 2>Ranger>Wugushi>Rogue) and am still playing, just paused for a while to type this. I know it may not be enough for some, but I believe I played enough to have a decent grasp of overall gameplay and features TOS has to offer. This is my personal opinion of the game. Comments are welcome but hopefully let’s keep this thread civil.
My feedback will be divided into two parts: Game Features and Class Gameplay
Game Features:
**1. Art and style **
TOS did well at this. The overall art style is quite a throwback to the early days of MMO and the environment fits well when combined with the use of character sprites. With all the realistic 3D games or over the top cartoonish ones we are getting recently, TOS is a refreshing change with its mellow and conservative art style.
2. Music
Music is also one of TOS’ strong points. I like the tracks. Sometimes I would sit or grind in a certain field or dungeon just to listen to the music. It’s nice too that some tracks have totally no connection to the actual area (like the dungeon music sounding like dance music). Now this doesn’t mean it is perfect. As TOS has an annoyingly large quantity of recycled music. All dungeons basically have one single track up to my current level. I’m uncertain if that was intended, but hopefully additional tracks will be added to give a different feel to the fields and dungeons.
3. The World (Environment, Story, Freedom)
One of the most criticized part of any MMO along with character progression (tackled later). Contrary to most, I did reach my current level without passing through Guard’s Graveyard and Katleen Forest and went straight to Mage Tower by following the story. I had to backtrack a bit after noticing I’m about 15 levels below the area I should be in and NPCs stopped giving me quests. So there is some degree of freedom to explore. Maybe a few more maps for each level range and it’ll be perfect.
Environment was made well, grass looks like grass with it breaking off a bit as you walk. Nice little touch. Monsters stand out, some are recycled, but which games don’t do that. The painting feel in general is a nice touch. But for some reason, it lacks a certain something that makes you want to just pause for a little while to look at the scenery.
As for story, it is a bit cliché, but expected. Lore isn’t really a strong point in most MMORPG’s anyway. My main complaint is that there is absolutely no replay ability aside from playing a new class. Each character you make will go through the exact same quests. There is no branching quest, no choices, all quests are either kill quests or fetch quests for shallow reasons. Makes me feel like my character isn’t some chosen one destined to save the world and limits the freedom and immersion in the story. Quests look like they were thrown in just for the sake of having it. I believe that you can remove 90% of the quests aside from the main story and a few others like the one in Fedimian Suburbs and absolutely nothing will be changed in your understanding of the story. Oh did I mention that the party dungeons have absolutely zero lore? Yeah, I don’t even know why that dungeon existed, what it’s for or whatever. It’s just a place for grinding to the next level goal.
This may be nitpicking, but I do read and try to understand the lore of games I play. And quests are a central part of that. Quests should give the player insight of the game world. It is one of the criteria for me to really get into the game. Even a MOBA like League of Legends I read every article in the JOJ (while it still existed) and that gave me further insight of the world in that game. In RO (which I know many who play this game played in the past), I actually loved Kiel Hyre’s story line, and the whole Biolabs lore kept me wanting to learn more.
I would actually appreciate less quests but one packed with lore than a multitude of bring me quests that do absolutely nothing for me to appreciate the game. At the current pace of the game, I’m actually just doing my thing following the main story and picking up side-quests for the sake of EXP cards while I 100% explore the map and move on to the next map the main quest is pointing me to. I’m just skimming through all the text aside from the main story. It’s just a fetch or kill quest anyway, save a few.
Make quests that make the players actually WANT to do it. Make us sympathize for the NPCs, the town, village or whatever. Give us a reason to actually help that NPC.
4. Character and Progress (EXP, customization)
Bear with me as this may be longer than the previous one. Let’s start with EXP. The base / character EXP is tolerable. You do have to occasionally grind before reaching the next map level requirement if you blazed through everything and will find yourself not meeting the level range of the next quest map. But funny thing is grinding is not at all effective in the game. Monsters give little to no exp despite being 10, 15, even 20 levels above you. The EXP scaling is horrid for the effort you put into killing that said monster. You’re better off mobbing weak mobs that give you 0.1% exp each, than kill a monster 20 levels above you for 0.3%. Your effort should be rewarded rather than punished. Due to this, single target classes like archers are punished with slower progression than other classes capable of mobbing like swordsman. Add maps with strong mobs you are meant to take on 1v1 that rewards high amounts of EXP. And increase open world monster exp in general. At the current rate, quests are the only source of decent EXP.
But despite everything, I have only one complaint. Class EXP. If the main distinguishing feature of the game and the one everyone is looking forward to the most is the large amount of class choices. The game does its best to stop you from achieving it. I personally don’t mind leveling my character slowly, but for my class level, and in effect getting my “cool” SKILLS. I wouldn’t appreciate getting a +1 skill level after 1-2 days of playing, at all. It may be okay if it is like the last 1-2 levels of your class (13-15) but absolutely not when I haven’t even gotten to try out all the skills or gotten my skills to a decent level yet. Get your players to actually enjoy their class, than playing for hours just to be able to use his 2nd skill.
Next is customization: Hair style, name, done. I can’t even choose the hair color I want. There are basically hundreds to thousands of clones exactly like me (esp. come OBT). And costume only changes with each NEW class you try. At least improve the costumes with each circle, to add more variety.
Weapons and Armor, since this game adapted the tier based gear progression, all items are forgettable. I don’t even know what bow my character is using. You’ll basically throw away your old equipment once you reach the next equipment tier. It gives no incentive to save up or upgrade gears since you know it’ll be outclassed once you reach the next level range. I guess many games adapt this sort of gameplay, so I won’t comment on it much. And wow, 35 levels for a new weapon tier (40-75). I’m not sure when the next one after 75 is, 120? Too high of a gap in my opinion, this making some encounters more difficult than necessary especially when you’re close to the next gear tier.
Now on to stats. You are able to customize your stat to your liking, but it gives so little that you don’t even know if it is doing anything at all. Each stat spent gives too little returns, especially for offensive stats like STR and INT (DEX gives dodge as a defensive stat aside from crit so it is more efficient). Give players reason to spend more into a stat. Example, STR gives % weapon attack in addition to the base damage increase. So, assuming no crit, a person with 100 STR vs a person with 10 STR will have an advantage of 90% weapon attack and 90 base damage, rather than just 90 base damage difference, which is miniscule. At the moment, the damage tradeoff from building survival than building pure glass cannon is worth more than the tradeoff to being 1 shot in encounters in building glass.
5. Classes and Ranks
While it is refreshing to see a different approach to class progression, I personally don’t see the difference between the circles and the other MMOs that give you a huge skill tree for a single class and have different paths for specs. It looks to me like they just subdivided the skill tree into different “classes” and gave the specs different names. But since this is how they made the game, it’s decent.
As for balance, there is certainly imbalance among the classes. Some choices are clearly better than the other. Further improvement and balancing among the classes should be done. Take for example Archer (the one I played), Going Archer at least to C2 is almost staple for any build, as going any other is gimping you due to how powerful Swift Step (Crit attribute) and Multi shot are at high levels and attribute (especially Multishot 15 at C3), while going Ranger only gets you one decent skill (Barrage), and Steady aim adds miniscule damage despite maxing it. I would actually want to reset to Archer C3>Wugushi>Rogue or some combination just because Multishot is just that good compared to everything the Rank 2 -3 classes have to offer. Sadly you can’t do that.
Give each class a unique play style. Playing my Wugushi right now, I still feel like I’m an Archer, with some added AOE damage. That’s all. Even in boss fights I just spam multi shot, with the occasional poison skills on the side. Questing? Spam oblique shot, occasional Barrage, repeat. Going rogue may change that, hopefully.
6. Game Mechanics
Last part, but certainly the most important for me. Mechanics. This game looked promising because of the keybinds that actually reminds me of a more action MMO-ish control setup. This gave me the impression that this would be a more action oriented game. But upon playing it, I felt like I was playing a tab target game, and a slow one at that. I’ll explain in the next part.
HP/SP recovery speed is horrible. And I’m saying this as a class with little HP/SP to fill in the first place (I went STR/DEX). I can’t imagine how other classes with higher HP/SP pools would take to fill up their meter. Potions don’t scale as well. I don’t know if this was a throwback to the times of RO open beta, but even RO evolved to the point potions scale with VIT/INT. It just gives little incentive to increase the max SP stat, since potions recover a fixed amount anyway. HP is understandable to buffer damage though. In battle recovery is even worse. I won’t even think of relying on it recovering my HP/SP and just go ahead and pot, pot and pot more. I believe recovering a % of max HP/SP every few seconds out of battle proportional to your CON/SPR could help a lot. You spend more time sitting than playing if you don’t spam potions, which kills the enjoyment, especially early game when you can’t afford to spam potions yet.
Skills have very very long cooldowns. I’m fine with long cooldowns, if that skill is really worth the wait. Like a really really powerful AOE skill. But on the skills I tried, the cooldown isn’t worth the skill damage/effect. Further balancing should be done. I’m not saying we should turn the game into a spam fest, but the current CDs are way too long, and there’s no way to reduce it.
Next is combat. I feel as though I just spam Z, wait for cooldowns, spam cooldowns and wait some more. For bosses, run and kite, spam cooldowns, run again. The AI isn’t refined enough to warrant any sort of challenge. The only challenge is getting one-shot due to raw damage in party instance dungeons. Yes it is enjoyable, maybe for the first couple levels then it gets dull real fast. I don’t feel excited at all when I defeated a supposedly powerful boss (example the tenet gardens venter boss that spams the whole screen with AOE). Because the boss was being cheap due to his AOEs that take out like ¾ my HP, and I was racing more to upkeep my HP against the boss’ damage than any actual mechanics. They occasionally bug out and do absolutely nothing. This is game changing especially in harder boss fights. Definitely must fix before going live. Boss fight’s actually just tank and spank with occasional move out of the way of an AOE. Basically feel like playing WOW. Even WOW has much more mechanics, especially in Raid.
Magic, stat based dodge are a subject to point out as well. Magic cannot be dodged, only resisted (rather weakly). Talking from a PVE point of view, it gives magic classes a clear advantage over others. This absolutely cripples dodge based classes as it gives no chance of counterplay. I haven’t tried PVP so I can’t comment there. But on PVE, playing in Mage Tower and Crystal Mines Lot 2 was a nightmare. Get frozen by an ice mage and you die almost surely since you get frozen for like 5 seconds(not sure if you can reduce it), and proceed to get mobbed, unable to react to anything. You get mobbed in Mage Tower? You’re gonna pot for sure if not die. You can say, other games (in this case, RO) has unavoidable magic as well. Yes, but you have counterplay to it, like cards with immunity, elemental armors, and your Freeze gets broken with a single hit, not to mention monster magic attack generally suck anyway. Not the case in TOS. Oh, and magic HOMES IN on you, even a screen away… even magical normal attacks home in and is unavoidable except to tank and spam your pots.
STA is basically a useless stat save for a few classes. Maybe a new mechanic can be tied in to STA to make it useful to other classes. Maybe put in a dodge mechanic that consumes STA (with a 2-3s cooldown of course) that gives your character iFrames to dodge large AOE attacks or just something glass builds can use to protect themselves from powerful enemies. You know, like how GW2 and plenty other games have a dodge mechanic. Or maybe remove the iFrames and just put that feature as a repositioning tool for players.
Skill mechanics. Skill scaling on flat damage increase. I’m really sketchy about this. As skill levels only increases your damage by a little, it’s almost not worth putting additional points into a skill unless it gives extra damage buff, some really good attribute (like swift step to upkeep the buff), or gives extra hits. Your skills actually add little to your overall damage unless the said skill gives extra hits per level. IMO it would be better if skills did a percent of your attack damage instead of a flat +X, or maybe % of your attack and add +X as flat damage bonus. Either way, % scaling would make your base attack and actual skill levels matter.
There is no attack speed. Well, this goes both ways. But I feel like aside from swordies, other classes have very low aspd. It does give easier balancing issues, but this kills off some normal attack builds though.
Partying with other players. Well I don’t have much experience with party play due to the party system being broken majority of the time. A little tweak with the find party system and inviting/joining in general would help lots. Maybe add to the right click on a player below . As currently you need to wait for people to invite you before you can join the party. Hard to do in populated maps (in front of party dungeons)