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Team Name: Crevox
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Character Name: Crevox
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Class Build: Wizard 2 / Linker 3 / Sorcerer 3 / Shadowmancer 1
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CPU: i7 4790k
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RAM: 32 GB 1600
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Graphics Card: GTX 1080 x2
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OS: Windows 10
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Internet Connection Speed: Cable
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Country/State: United States
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Comments
Overall, there’s a few topics of GVG I’d like to tackle.
Large Guilds, Limited Maps
I feel that there are too few maps for having no player caps from any individual guild. This straight up makes it impossible to win versus guilds with a significantly larger number of players than you. It’s fine if the very large guild decides to take and hold a specific map, because then smaller guilds can fight over other maps, but right now there are only 3 maps. There’s no rhyme or reason a small guild or large guild should go to any specific map. Meanwhile, I feel like if there were many maps, it would be too easy for every guild to just hold a specific map, so it makes sense that there’s only a few, especially due to the current limited player count of the game.
My suggestion is to somehow orient specific maps toward being more favorable for smaller guilds to fight over, so that they can participate and not feel left out. Have player count limits from each guild on those specific maps, for example. As it is now, if a large guild decides to occupy a map, or multiple large guilds decide to fight over one, smaller guilds have zero chance. This is even more true because those smaller guilds not only have less player counts generally, but less powerful and organized characters.
Templar is too powerful
I feel like Templar provides far too much power to guilds to not have. The usage of Buff Share and skills like Bloodletting, Ein Sof, and Swell Left Arm provide significant power boosts to the entire guild just for being there. This boosts the entire guild’s HP by a gigantic margin (double or more), provides immunity to the majority of bad status effects, and significantly buffs attack damage. This is only a small portion of the skills that Buff Share allows usage of. It greatly increases flexibility of group compositions and eases organization/strategy by a huge amount.
On top of Buff Share, the ability to warp to guild members and teleport them is another significant strategic advantage. This allows for a myriad of strategies that are simply not possible without a Templar. Combine this with powerful combat skills like Shield Charger and Non-invasive Area, and this class alone can significantly change the outcome of a battle.
I feel that this class alone provides too much power, and guilds without one are at a significant disadvantage. This is even worse since it is a very unpopular class for any type of content other than GTW, so very few players even have one, or want to play one. Players may not realize how powerful it is when you don’t have one, but when you do, its effects are noticed and almost make winning a battle too easy. I feel the class needs to be modified in a way so that it is more popular, making it far more likely to have one on your team, or its effects need to be toned down in some way so that it cannot turn the tide of a battle on its own.
PVP Rules applied are ambiguous and need changes
It seems that the developers have decided to apply some TBL rules to GTW, but not all. This is not only very ambiguous in that you cannot know what rules are in effect or not, but it also leads to balance problems. For example, currently, it is possible to use elixirs (TP potions) within the GTW environments. These are very powerful and allow for a large amount of self healing. If an individual has a large quantity of them, it is extremely difficult to kill them due to the low cooldown and high potency of these potions. Because they are a TP item, this leads to a sort of “pay to win” situation. Items like these need to be disabled within the GTW environment.
Besides just item restrictions, it’s very difficult to know how your own skills are modified within GTW. Players were very confused during the first test, and still are. If the balance is going to be maintained as-is, I feel this needs to be displayed somewhere so that players can better plan and strategize.
However, I am in the belief that any type of effect that provides invulnerability (Revive, Vital Protection, Statue of Goddess Ausrine) needs to be significantly toned down in duration or potency. This is not enjoyable in any way, to fight against or to have on your side. If you have it on your side, you win battles with little effort. If the enemy has it, you can’t do anything but run/hide/escape until the effect ends, because you cannot harm the enemy. If both teams have it, it leads to an awkward stalemate where everyone is either maintaining the effects or waiting until they end. It’s too strong and greatly harms the balance of many classes for its existence, while providing far too much power to the classes that do have it, leading to a Templar situation where winning a battle is too strongly determined by the quantity of those classes on your team.
Buff effects from the environment are too potent
The developers decided to buff the map effects in order to encourage using the map more, but I’m not sure if this was necessary. Players did not use them very much in the first beta test, but I feel this was mostly due to learning the content. We’re reaching a point where they are becoming too powerful. The damage buffs provided by Tree Root Crystals on top of the amplifier lead to very high damage levels which can cause an entire field of enemies to die from certain class attacks. Because buffs are so powerful, it leads to a case where unless the defending guild is significantly more powerful than everyone else, anyone with buffs will easily kill anyone who does not. This causes the point to constantly change ownership, and whoever is owning it at the end becomes the winner. I do not believe it is in the spirit of the content’s design for it to become a case of timing when to take the point near the end in order to maintain it.
I also feel like the boss monster’s effect of providing knockdown/knockback immunity is too much. It is difficult to know if enemies have this until you attempt to use one of these skills, it doesn’t work, and then you die. It cuts off the options of far too many classes and also devalues those supports that provide these powerful effects (Plague Doctor, Exorcist, Pied Piper, etc). I felt like the defense buff from the boss monster was fine as is. However, I do believe the tree root crystal’s defense buff is also too potent, as it can be combined with this defense buff/invulnerability/skills like Ein Sof to lead to an unkillable foe. Again, it is very difficult to tell who has these buffs, and it would be wise to strategize around targeting these individuals last, but there’s minimal or no way to tell. It is very disappointing to waste critical class cooldown skills on these players and deal little to no damage.
Lastly, I feel the boss monster’s HP is a significant point of contention. It is arbitrarily set at 50 million and also only provides benefits to whoever gets the final hit. I feel like this could be different per map per my suggestions above, or it could be made a bit easier to kill in some way. As it is now, it lives too long for the majority of situations, but this could change as player power gets higher.
Lag and bugs
I’m not entirely certain this needs to be stated, but I will. The game’s frame rate and stuttering continues to be a persistent issue with GTW. In addition, Desynchronization and server lag continue to be a problem. Beyond that, of course, there were at least a couple days where the content did not function. These issues need to be resolved or improved before I could consider GTW ready for release.
Conclusion
There is more I could cover, but I do not want this to go on too long. I believe these are the main issues of GTW that need to be tackled for the content to improve to a point to be ready for release. While the daily GTW schedule is taxing and far too frequent, I believe that if this content was modified a bit and done once a week, it would be very fun and be a great addition to the game.
Thank you for reading and I look forward to enjoying this content in Tree of Savior.