First I need to thank IMC for inviting me to this beta test, I don’t think I’ve ever been selected as one of the first testers for a beta/alpha for any game in my life, I’m extremely grateful and hope i can return the favor with this post in some way. 
A little info about me: It’s been at least 6-7 years since I’ve actually been excited for a new MMORPG, i don’t have the free time i used to anymore so the majority of the games i play these days are the type that don’t require any huge time investments to fully enjoy, or sometimes they require money investments instead if you want to play competitively (MOBAs, TCGs, Strategy, Open world/Sandbox/Exploration). I have a full-time and a part-time job along with other activities i enjoy doing besides gaming, but when i saw the beta key i just had to make extra time for the first CBT, and it was worth it.
I’ll cover as many parts of the game that i can, listing some things i liked and some things that could be improved.
UI and HUD:
Liked - Very clean and simple design, i had little to no trouble figuring out what most buttons did by their icons. The menus in game were not intrusive at all as they mainly appear on the sides of the screen instead of in the middle, which was very important to me as i often like to swap gears or set potions to a hotkey inside of a dungeon or other unsafe area.
Improvements - Clarity was the biggest issue i had here, there were a few options in the settings that i kept highlighting, with the hopes that there would be a bubble with more details about what it does exactly, the same thing applies to pretty much all the stats in the character info menu. There is no such thing as too much info in video games, i would love to know more about how “block penetration” works or what my percent chance i have to hit/evade the current monster I’m fighting. The refresh rate of many HUD things seemed to be slow or non-existent, which may have just been a bug, along with the chat history constantly being wiped clean each time i changed maps. It made things annoying when exploring through different maps while chatting with people in a party at the same time.
Aesthetics:
Liked - EVERYTHING! The art style gave me a nice nostalgia hit from when i used to play Ragnarok online, i can see why Tree of Savior is being advertized as the spiritual successor to that game because i got the feeling i was playing a new and improved version of it shortly after logging in for the first time, and then again each time i went exploring to new areas of the game. The music fit perfectly in pretty much every area of the game, i especially loved all the dungeon sound tracks, adding an epic and intense feel that made me really look forward to battling my way through with a party in hopes of finding or summoning a challenging boss at the end. Even the way our characters look and change appearance with costumes added to the overall style of the game.
Improvements - Nothing really to add here, the only thing i can think of for an improvement is adding more visual customizations for our characters, more hair styles/colors and possibly height adjustment and skin color. That’s about it.
Controls:
Liked - I played with a PS3 controller about 90% of the time and loved it much more than the keyboard and mouse controls, it just felt much more natural to me early on, although as i gained more and more skills i noticed it becoming a bit weird at times holding down the different L and R triggers and remembering which skills where on which button, but overall the controller made my battling experiences very enjoyable. I also LOVED how i was able to do a few neat things with the controls like kiting monsters to avoid taking damage, and stutter-stepping/orb-walking to increase my attack speed on some classes. These little things make a big difference to me in any game i play, it vastly increased my enjoyment of the gameplay as it was a challenge to consistently pull off little tricks like this for their advantages, definitely one of my favorite things about the game along with the music and art.
Improvements - I spent a majority of my time on the Swordsman class, but during my short time on the Archer class i noticed it was much easier to stuffer-step/orb-walk for a much more noticeable increase in attack speed compared to the other classes. I don’t know if this was intentional because they can’t attack while jumping in the air, but i would’ve liked to see a more noticeable benefit on the other classes as well. Also, being able to change the control setup is a must for next CBT, not being able to change what each button does caused a lot of frustration for many players.
Mechanics:
Liked - The ability to group up a mob of monsters and hit them all at once is always an enjoyable feeling in games like this, along with overkill feature to keep us trying new skills out both in party and solo play. With the vast number of classes and skills to choose from, it makes us feel like we can make our characters more unique to fit which ever play style we want, more options is always a good thing. So far the bosses have been fun when they are much higher level than my character, i do love a good challenge and noticed that the bosses do become slightly more challenging as i progress, so i assume they become incredibly difficult and fun in the later stages of the game.
Improvements - Of course i have to start this one with Exp rates, like I’ve said in a number of topics already, i like to feel like I’m making progress at a decent pace when i play any game, currently i lose that feeling around level 30-40 because of how slow it becomes. I really hope the exp rates are at least 3-5 times higher for the next CBT and for release day, it also felt a bit linear as there were limited leveling/question options in the early stages of the game. Next would have to be item variety, the number of items to choose from were not very high, along with their differences in stats being extremely small. I would love to see more items like the Wide Crossbow that gave a huge boost in Crit attack, and the Vubbe Gauntlets with the nice boost in STR. I only saw 1 piece of equipment that was part of a set, but the bonus for having that set was still a bit underwhelming. Gems were also a bit awkward and underwhelming to me, most of them didn’t seem like they were worth using because of the drawback, and not giving a big enough boost to make up for it in most cases. More gem options would be awesome, even allowing us to pick which stats get increased and decreased would help a ton. Blue mobs and bosses need a big switch in rewards also, along with all boss fights being repeatable. Currently the blue mobs give way too big of a reward based on luck, while bosses give too small of a reward and are much more fun to fight against. A minimum of 1 boss in every dungeon would be nice too, it can be either a field boss or summoned through a quest. I also think quest bosses should have their HP and damage scaled up based on the number of people in the party. Hitboxes for a few skills seemed a bit weird or not accurately matching what is displayed on screen, this apples to both player skills and boss skills. Exploration rewards like treasure chests seemed to be missing from the higher level areas, i only saw a few in the earlier stages of the game and that was it. I was expecting more treasure chests then i actually found but i can understand if many were removed from the CBT on purpose.
Miscellaneous Improvements:
One of the Korean CBT videos i was watching had a cooking system, i hope we are going to have that in our next CBT, i would like to suggest a marshmallow, chocolate, and graham cracker items to make smores over the bonfire for increased healing or a similar effect. Maybe even the option to cook meat type items for double the healing amount.
Besides the overkill mechanic, i would love a “combo” one added that gives bonus exp/drops for killing monsters of the same name/type repeatedly, or within a small time limit. Also a “multi-kill” one that gives bonus exp/drops for killing more than 1 monster with the same attack/skill.
Bigger party sizes of around 8-10 would be fun, even if this party size increase is limited to specific dungeons or end-game content that actually require more people.
Equipment synthesizing to give stats from one to the other would help a ton when fighting in specific areas. For example, if i know i’m going to fight in an area with fire monsters, i could take my old +10 fire resist ring and synthesize it to my current armor and give it that +10 fire resist while destroying the old ring in the process.
I’m sure i missed some things but this wall of text is getting long! Thanks again to IMC and the ToS team, I’ll be happy if anything in this post can help you guys out at all, you guys are awesome and i know this game will be too!
