Starting a special Design Breakdown this time not with a class but a game mechanic, this thread won’t have the same structure as usual and won’t have any thematic discussion. The Cannoneer breakdown will be delayed as the new rank will be soon and it’s more appropriated to get at least a reset there in order to get the most of it as i have no experience with the class. In case you enjoy this kind of discussion go check this link for a hub of class design analysis along with the criteria for such.
This wasn’t supposed to be the first non-class breakdown but it is a requirement for a more important one. Also i’d like to point out that it’s terrible to have X Property Attack and X Property Damage as stats as they can be easily mixed up, it’s as easy as giving it some name that won’t be confusing.
Damage Properties
Damage properties are a tool that is commonly used in RPGs to add strategic value by having bonuses and penalties based on the action and the targeted enemy, it’s a cheap and effective way to get players into situations of advantage or peril. This can be further explored with class systems as certain classes have access to elemental skills or other properties that encourage party play, characters weak against certain enemies can fall back during combat and return when they have the upper hand.
The difference in Tree of Savior is that this system is employed as a smaller element instead of a strategic component and that is due the class diversity and unpredictability of build paths. Properties can vary from game to game but the fantasy medieval ones usual have elements and occasionally physical properties as well, in our case we have both applied and each one can be split into minor groups.
For this system to be effective players need easy access to those properties, be able to use them frequently or have a wide range of options to pick, they also can’t useless later on. This is something harder to achieve with a complex class system such as the rank-circle one as players can go deeper on them, as properties can be split into different classes they can become less accessible for higher ranks and lose efficiency later on due escalation. Wizards are the ones that have most issues when dealing with properties as they take elements, even with dedicated classes to some elements it is hard to weight the value of a property against the weight of their identity since the later one be more decisive when building a character, and it’s further aggravated by how many they are as physical properties are described in a triad.
As a matter of fact the game values more the skill execution over their damage properties and that is fine, but in order to make properties shine they need to be explorable in ways that weaker skills stay relevant and strong skills don’t get trivialized. It also helps to have maps with more elemental diversity as they often have two elements picked with an occasional third and rarely go beyond that, as much as this keeps maps consistent it reduces the strategic potential of the property system.
Elements
There are 8 elements present in the game and they can be divided into 2 groups. The divinity, with Holy, Dark as Psychokinesis as the outsider, and the aristotelic elements, with Air replaced by Lightning, Water as Ice, Fire, Earth and the Poison as the outsider. In order to get players to understand elements their relationship has intuitive, water can conduct electricity and a such Lightning is strong against Ice and that’s easy to memorize.
This also applies to their names which Ice and Psychokinesis. Even Ice being the solid state of water it is taken as a different and stronger element when considering reducibility, Ice is seen as an specialization of water and not part of it and that can be odd when this aspect is used later on. Psychokinesis as a word isn’t friendly at all, it’s hard to spell, isn’t even a concrete than a visible element nor is established enough within media to be embraced by players, it isn’t much of a big deal but having it named as Soul, Spiritual or Psychic could be as fitting but more remarkable.
As interactions go the first group uses a direct relation as Dark and Holy are both strong and weak against each other, meanwhile Psychokinesis is strong against both and itself. Aristotelic elements operates in a rock-paper-scissors circle as each one is has one strength, poison on the other hand dominates all them with lesser power. By having elements divided as that we get two interesting points, each group has a dominant element, Psychokinesis and Poison, that offers more advantage over others and they don’t interact outside their group bubble.
The issue with those interactions is that the outside elements aren’t as intuitive as the core, it makes sense for Poison to be strong against Ice and Earth as it pollutes them but it feels off for Lightning and Fire as those aren’t physical things and on the Psychokinesis it is strange to be able to dominate the divine elements as those can shape the mind, not to say it also breaks the rule of being weak against itself. It would be possible to reshape the elements into a closed circuit by taking Poison to beat Earth and Ice only and get Psychokinesis to take Lightning and Fire, then Holy can be Poison weakness as it purifies and Dark can take Psychokinesis as it corrupts the mind. Having a closer system doesn’t make the system better but it’s a possibility available as the current system has Poison as this element with scattered small advantage and no weakness. The current system is good enough and aside for names and a possible Poison weakness is the only improvements it really needs.
Physical Triad
There’s been a special property system used on some games that is exclusive to physical damage, it uses a parallel triangle of attack and defense instead of the elemental rock-paper-scissors and is based on real life weapons and armor interactions. This system uses Cut/Slash, Pierce/Thrust/Stab and Strike/Hit against light (Cloth), medium (Leather) and heavy (Plate) armor respectively as warriors needed better armor to defend against their foes and those had to develop new weapons to bypass that defense. The real difference between those systems is that the physical one it makes players interact on the defensive side as well, elements not only have a more complex interaction but also are limited to attack and nothing else.
One interesting aspect of physical properties is how it has a variant for missile damage, as a matter of fact it is fairly pointless to have a secondary division as Bow (Arrow) can fit into Slash and Gun (Bullet) can be taken as Pierce instead of having those split as a hybrid of both, and having it as a direct part of it the mechanical use more effective even if that sacrifices some of the thematics. It’s ironic that the simpler system has lower values and no weakness when it can be better explored as elements have higher percentages and almost three times the amount of properties.
A fact that few remember is that there’s a 4th armor property, Ghost, but it can be dismissed as it only interacts with Magic and is fairly rare, not to mention it isn’t available for players to use.
Additional Property Attack/Resistance
The whole reason to bring this subject up is to reach this part, as many should know there are two substats groups that deal with property damage and they aren’t interesting at all. Additional property damage is applied at the end of the damage calculation which means that +100 Ice Property Attack adds 100 damage to every single hit, that is still subject to property vector and can be reduced to 75 or increased to 150, and the resistance works as the damage reduction counterpart. It isn’t an intuitive stat as it applies to all forms of direct damage, it won’t decrease if take opposite property nor boost the property when having additional attack.
Property Attack can be an effective stat for those that have access to multi hit skills or have high attack speed and Property Resistance requires a decent amount of P/M Defense to decrease damage and can still be effective against multi hit, notice that the offensive variation doesn’t need to care about which property are taken as for defense it needs to match the enemy attacks. We’ve reached a point that attack can be up to 6 digits with raw stats and is the real way to deal damage, Property Attack doesn’t contribute on it at all as the peak gear value for end game is 300 and it requires 3 to 4 different properties to get to the bottom as 1%. On the other side these values can’t be scaled up as it requires too much Property Attack to impact single damage skills yet it ramps up with multi hit. At this point it should be noticeable that those stats are quite lackluster aside for those specific conditions and not too long ago it wasn’t much of an issue, however with the current identification system these stats became common and haunt players that try to get the perfect gear yet it doesn’t need to be like that. As much as niche elements can work for a small portion of builds it doesn’t work when they’re shoved down everybody throats for low to none benefits, in fact they’re less effective than standard P/M Attack aside for additional damage lines.
There’s an easy and obvious way to fix it that should’ve been implemented when Damage Factors were introduced, take the matching Property Attack and add it as extra P/M Attack to skill factor formula, as any player would assume that skill that deals Fire property damage it would be improved with Fire Property Attack, that’s exactly how to make it desirable and stay as niche. This kind of mechanic is niche but offers room for everybody as those that committed a class that is dedicated on a single property can expand their power while the others can still can have the current iteration, it can even be expanded with racial and size properties as well as they share the same mechanics. Of course the same should apply to Property Resistances when taking P/M Defense into consideration but that may be harder to sort out. Another way to address it is by changing it into a % value to increase power of property skills but that’d remove the current use for basic attacks and mismatching skills, it would be effective on the defensive part however.
The real issue with these mechanics is that they’re boring and deceiving, few really wants it over real P/C/M Attack but will take it because it’s there and that’s why it should be expanded into something that players will seek. There are 16 variations (including race and size) on Property Attack identification and that takes more than half the red stats. It’s obvious that elements such as Holy, Dark, Poison and Earth may be more desirable but it won’t make the others less important as other classes can make use of the remaining elements. Also we can’t forget that some skills and attributes do increase Property Attack/Resistance and those also need be adapted to any change, offensive ones can follow the same structure as Sacrament, it’s also possible to have it as multiplier buff or stack/share to other party members but all that need some careful balance to prevent them to overscale.
Lack of Property
It would be interesting to talk about propertyless skills before finishing it off, this is a concept that isn’t used at all and can be explored in all stages of the game. As the game is right now every single skill has a property and even spells that are listed as Magic only have the Null property, but that can change if we abide a natural property and use weapon’s instead. That will work for only a small portion of skills and can’t be done with wizards with the current weapon set, which may return Strike Magic, but has could be expanded if Rods and Staves receive a base element, it may be a pointless effort as few skills can take this mechanic but it’s interesting to consider it.
On the other side physical skills seldom use elements at all even when they have visual cues that support it, as much as elements should keep as a wizard major trait it would be nice to have some swordsman and archer trees to have one or two elemental skill per class to have this extra spice as it’s done with Bullet Marker. The only physical class that really goes into elements is Wugushi and it has poison on every single skill, yet classes like Sapper, Ranger and Shinobi use explosives and don’t have Fire property on their skills.
EXTRA - HP Recovery
This segment didn’t had much of research so it may be removed later on if proven utterly wrong or inconsistent with the real application
Unlike Property Attack/Resistance this is a real lackluster stat that came along in the unwanted list of stats you can get from appraisal and headgear enchant, it’s generally a good stat but doesn’t feel impactful as it is only applied to base regeneration and the second stage of potion recovery when it could apply to the whole thing. Ironically the stat is provided by CON and this is the one used to boost heal and potion efficiency, by doing so the whole power is concentrated on the base stat and the substat has no relevance aside for the marginal use it has and this isn’t the best way to deal with it.
It’s natural to take HP Recovery to enhance heal and potion recovery instead since CON increases said stat, and also provides more substats, and it also makes room for lower HP characters to be healed with the same effectiveness as a character with CON but taking only the byproduct, in fact it can even be designed to take both and boost healing further. Of course that has to be properly tested and balanced in order to make it fair and effective else it may resurrect the CON healing cleric that was shot down.
This can be applied to SP Recovery as well for potions at the first stage, yet as the max SP values are way lower the recovery part feels more present by default. Stamina won’t be taken into the mix as it is a completely different beast and is questionable in use.
And that concludes this unusual breakdown, if it can even be called that. Since new rank is out in two days the next week, and that implies in a lot of things to check/adjust, might be Cannoneer as it was supposed to but if people are interested on getting into the card system/boss cards it can be delayed for another week. Share your thoughts on Property Damage as it doesn’t seems like people are really concerned about it as it seems like the usual stance is to shrug it off, also for any inaccurate info just comment down as it helps to take the discussion forward.
- Cannoneer
- Equipable Card System
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