hmmm the design is bad…
vs
either they are brain dead or we are brain dead.~ lalalala
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I really like the OP idea, but repeativeness of this method would be a big problem.
One of the solutions to the repeativeness would be a modification in the map quests and instanced dungeons: Every reborn, you make different and harder quests on the same map that you have passed already, and instanced dungeons would have different formats and maps with the same theme/similarity to the original ones.
1 Like
One thing I thought of, maybe this was already said, since I’m kind of piggy backing off the idea of revisiting old maps from ridelith. However, I kind of do think there should be a transcendence type activity, if there are no rebirth systems.
How it would work: One of two options, first would be players who are transcending are required to go to lower level maps. However, the catch is that on that map, people are getting normalized gear, stat, and level bonuses of that map. So, if your level 330 on a level 8 map, your level is 8 and you get the stat bonuses of a level 8 map (similar to how old pvp normalized gear and level). Thus, making the content actually requiring effort. My second option is an idea similar to hunting grounds. Where these lower level mobs and maps are cloned and placed in certain areas that are only accessible when transcending.
Requirements to transcend: To unlock the transcendence activities, you have to be class level 15 on rank 8. So, around level 315ish and this is for all ranks to come. Thus, rank 9 or 10, you still only need class level 15 on rank 8. This would solve the when to implement it stage and separate it from the rebirth stage because it won’t be inconsistent. (Would it increase the skill gap between low-level and high level players? Yes, but the thing about that is, pure leveling and class ranks increase the level of skill between high and low-level players, so that argument has to be voided).
Why do it? So, instead of giving flat bonuses or status points, I think it could instead give one or two things. I think a “transcended player” could get bonus skill points similar to that of skill gems. Without the need or using that for a slot. I think this will still greatly affect the player, as well as, not pushing them over the top. Another option, for a reason to transcend, could be through other bonuses in an option format that people have to choose. " Gives 2% bonus elemental damage, when using a potion adds an extra line of attack, when attacked by magic attacks grant 5% bonus magic defense, etc…" I think bonuses like these are not game breaking and could carry into any later stage of the game.
Rebirth is
A)Something they will want to avoid as much as possible because it was already done in RO and something similar to WoE is something they will absolutely need to keep the ‘RO nostalgia’, adding too many things RO had and not splitting apart from is not good at all, especially since RO is basically challenging them with ReStart
B)Not really a good idea, it wasn’t great with RO either, is it a cheap way to recycle content? Yes. However, people have to want to go through the content again, and it’s only a cheap way to do so if it takes long enough. Right now there is a HUGE disparity between leveling, there are either stacking EXP and multipliers/etc to get there fast, like, 2 hours fast (Still probably 1day at most even with rebirth having a higher exp requirement), vs taking 10 times as long any other method, dungeons being the most preferred by far so you would almost require dungeon resets or take forever to level up
C)Rebirth before you have your set max level is a terrible idea, anyone who reset now would be missing almost half the game if the intended max level is 600. There is some things you can gain out of reset and I wouldn’t mind seeing something similar be an alternative to the rank reset vouchers they said they’ll offer ingame, but I don’t believe now is the time, and if it was done now there shouldn’t be great benefits. They need to consolidate their leveling schema before anything.
If they wanted to expand content it would be better to recycle content in other ways but before that it would be pointless to go for the easy ways to expand content when the main way they need to aim for is R9 release and consider not making it something that’s so easy to put on a’daily’ hold. Dungeons and ‘dailies’ are a real chore in this sense and it plagues the MMOs that use it as a crutch to ‘limit’ time. DFO had this problem big time with FP as well, limiting someone to what they can do daily just limits the time they play the game and in droughts they either drop it or log on daily (assuming the dailies take less than an hour), do their dailies and go play another MMO, it becomes a side piece, not a main game.
Most online genres have their crutch that they use to recycle loads of content, for ARPGs it’s the wrap around (Hard Mode, Merciless Mode, Nightmare mode, etc), for MMOs it’s new base classes being released along with new areas so you essentially have to level up again on this new character. But if leveling up is not a fun interactive core part of the game it should be, this falls flat. If it can be done in a few hours, this is pointless.
I think Diablo 2 did a great job with it’s Nightmare / Hell difficulty mechanics. You did re-go through quests / content but you’d keep improving and monsters would show up with different characteristics you never seen before (i.e. physical immunity) never making the gameplay too repetitive.
ToS would have some issues with implementing this kind of system because players with 0 rebirths and 10+ rebirths can always be in the very same map (and playing together). You could still have some differentiation, like rebirthed players take/deal more damage to monsters, but I think that would be very tricky to mess with. Another option is to separate rebirthed players from non-rebirthed ones (like make instanced maps) but I’m not very fond of segregating the player base.
A mechanic like that could work but it would need a lot of thought put into it.
I like this idea too. When I mention a rebirth system the first thing players tend to think is repetition. But my idea here isn’t to force players to repetitively do the same things over and over again over a few extra stat points. I like the idea of incentivating players to take different paths for leveling (i.e. questing instead of farming dg runs).
However the issue of making different dg runs / quests for rebirth-only characters is that you segregate the player base (as in my response to @ridelith) and that’s not something good in an already low-population game. This is a great idea but also needs a little tweaking to avoid player segregation.
I agree with you, exp cards / questing and even grinding outside dgs need to be made much better than what it currently is to be able to compete with farming dgs for rushing 330. This game has tons of quests and most aren’t being properly utilized.
Like I stated in my first post, rank 9 and new content will always be welcome. The issue is that developers can’t make content faster than players can play it (and will never be able to). Older players tend to end up re-playing content even if they don’t like it. Eventually you’ll get bored of doing the same things with the same character and will want to change, but then you have to redo the whole game to make a new build. Making new characters is also a good way to farm silver / blessed gems more effectively and the rebirth system is just an option for not making an alt you don’t want and instead making your main character stronger (always evolving, even if you change builds).
This is the way developers have to prevent players from attaining “absolute endgame” too fast to the point they would quit. I’m not a fan of dailies either, but if you could do an infinite amount of saalus runs a day you would “easily” achieve a transcedence stage 10 weapon which would result in quicker boredom. Time walls (a.k.a. limiting your runs to daily) are always criticized in mmo games but it’s physically impossible for developers to create content faster than you can play them.
Rebirth is the cheapest way to reuse content but IMC needs to improve early game quest first. The easiest thing they can do is increase the level of the quest bosses by 10-20 levels to make it more challenging. Yes some classes will have a hard time dealing with it but it forces players team up with another player. Instead of giving tons of EXP cards why not increase the EXP that the monsters give so people will be forced to go explore the world? Increase the drop rate of low level items so newbies will feel good when they get items just by grinding and for the love of God just make the Cafrisun set a level 20 dungeon drop so people that really need the set can get it instead of bots.
That’s not true that it’s physically impossible. If they didn’t do what they did currently with dungeons/questing/grinding and instead balanced it out somewhere inbetween with dungeons being lower exp, grinding benig slightly inferior but not several factors inferior as it is now, and same with quests, we would be okay.
When the only way you’re getting new people (mainly alt accounts though) is through events that make it possible to reach max level in a day, there’s a problem and it creates more problems as you go.When dailies really become a problem is when it’s obvious to everyone that anything but the dailies, isn’t worth doing at all because of how much of your time per exp/money/etc you are getting in dailies vs not in dailies. If daily dungeon runs of 140DG can get me 800k in 30minutes but I am only getting 100k-200k in 30 minutes outside of it with similar gear, why would I bother going past that 800k in 30 minutes unless i’m hard pressed for money? I wouldn’t. Similar in exp. If 230 DG gives me 3 levels in 30 minutes but it takes me 3 hours outside of it, why would I spend my time outside of it? I’d just make an alt and level 2 characters at that ‘max speed’ and not worry about that slower speed outside of dungeons.
It’s pretty much too late for them to fix it up to 330, but they can still fix it going forward, however they would have to do that by limiting things like x8 and it’s much much too late for that as well, unfortunately. Maple had a similar problem with 2x EXP scrolls from cash shop, but because it wasn’t tossed around in events and allowed to essentially stockpile them for near free, it didn’t become as large of a problem as it is here. When you combine these things they really magnify the issues.
Not every MMO creates ‘dailies’ as a solution, hence why people have a problem with this, it wasn’t always the default, it’s just a simple cop out way of limiting progression but there are better ways that aren’t so straight forward in their ‘daily limit’. Something like ET would be fine as a weekly for example because it takes up so much damn time.
Stating it’s physically impossible is not only false but it’s also a way to deflect the real issue at hand, even if it were physically impossible it doesn’t change the fact that it’s an unfun mechanic and their job is to make a game that people enjoy, that’s part of entertainment. Forget the fact that every modern MMO is just a skinner box, and consider the fact that there needs to be some fun inside of it for that to work on a level that it makes good profit.
ET is a good example of a way to re-use content, the problem is that it stands alone in that field of ‘beyond lategame’ gear, so there’s nothing you need that gear for other than preparing for R9 and demolishing it’s content, PvP, etc.
These will probably be largely solved with GvG, start of R9 content, and maybe one or two more sidecontent pieces like ET that hopefully aren’t as much of a perceived(well in ET’s case actual) time sink.
1 Like
i dont really like rebirths that much, i only have 4 characters and leveling is already really boring (ive made around 10 chars total out of my whole game time) and doing the same maps will be boring. having to do them over and over for 1 character (as pretty much a priority to be on par with other people) would probably lead to me quitting the game as i really dislike 35% of the maps in this game. and i only have 4 characters, as a game with people who have 10+ characters they would most likely be bored faster than i will be.
i however like @ReportofAusterity idea
2 Likes
~Small chat first :3
Ahh can’t believe that I’m actually split in between writing this not-so-short post and using the time to play Nier Automata. Probably the main reason for getting this feeling is that the realisation of knowing that this post of mine (and other forumities suggestion posts) wouldn’t get noticed or conveyed to the people who can put the suggestions to use or mention in their brainstorming sessions. Perhaps it is good to just try once more…
Long story short, ToS is severely plagued with a huge lack of content. Players get bored of doing the same end game everyday, log in to Earth Tower and Saalus. There isn’t any other thing which is a pull factor or incentive for them to stay after that. For those who already got their gear to a good, comfortable level, There is literally 0 things to look forward to in the game.
Question to IMC: If your game’s progression focus is grind to get gear, what happens after players grinded the gear? The game has ended?
I’m sure that IMC has realised that something is missing in their game which make more players leave it than new players join every month. They acknowledged the symptoms, like players concentrating on certain maps ignoring all others, the dailies nature of the game. I do think that their solution to that, like racing, fishing etc, aren’t addressing the root cause of the game at all. Gimmicks such as these wouldn’t last and hold the player’s interest long.
To IMC: It will be better to focus your manpower and resources on improving an aspect of the game in which will draw more players in other than gimmicky stuff in which players just participate for a couple of times then leave it there.
Restructuring a pillar which supports a grind game - Items
I can’t stress this enough, been posting about this over numerous posts previously, so much as I feel I’m a broken recorder harping on the same thing again and again.
Short version of why is the more items the game has for players to collect and try, the more goals the players will have. And it also forms part of the end game in which players can continually work for. For a longer explanation please read my previous thread on it here:
https://forum.treeofsavior.com/t/musings-on-itos-balance-part-v-of-v-balancing-in-character-building?source_topic_id=366739Restructuring the entire items group isn’t an easy feat, it is as hard if not even harder than balancing classes and skills. But for the longevity of the game and potential to draw in more players, it is essential to take this step. I do see IMC is addressing this, starting with boss monster cards, which is really great. It will be even better if they announce that they are looking into the items diversification too to renew hope in the community.
If you look at it, the ideal end game for a game ToS will be something like
I just reached max level and grinded my core set of gear. But there are other sets of gear to collect, their power are on par with what I have but it brings new gameplay modes for my character I so painstakingly levelled and attributed.
Apart from the 2 suggestions in the previous musing thread, here are the additional ones
Suggestion: Create equipment upgrading trees
Concept is similar to how grind heavy games like Monster Hunter do their equipment trees. Equipments themselves have an upgrade path to go, paths can be as simple as just an elemental change of the equipment.
Example: Aufgowle Bow
Aufgowle Bow
- Divine Aufgowle Bow (Holy)
- Flaming Aufgowle Bow (Fire)
- Freezing Aufgowle Bow (Ice)
- So on and forth
With just this it creates more goals for players to strive for. Materials required to craft the elemental variants can spread out across other maps, so players feel more incentive to visit more maps to level, quest and grind there. Elemental variants are good since it encourages players who want to min-max more to get the best damage against the content they are fighting. It also makes player vs player more interesting as players can change their armors to take lesser damage from elemental attacks.
For magic casters, their elemental weapons can also help boost their spells if the spell element is the same, like cryomancers get a +10% bonus to ice damage skills when they use a freezing heart of glory. With ToS’s multi-class builds and ability to swap weapons using Alt+Z, it makes players strive to collect multiple copies of such equipment with different elements. This helps increase the number of things for players to work towards in the game.
Another benefit of having such equipment trees are they can solve the problem of equipment getting obsolete. IMC has already tried it with such a weapon in game
Grand Cross --> Didel Grand Cross --> Marvel Grand Cross (still don’t know where it drops)
Why not extend it to the rest of the other equipments and also create unique variants?
Example: Toy Hammer
Toy Hammer (with its variants)
- Toy Hammer Rev.2 (vanilla upgrade for lv170s) --> Toy Hammer Rev.3 (vanilla upgrade for lv270s)
- Jewelled Hammer --> So on and forth
- Stat Hammer
Jewelled Hammer
Level 170
Attack 408 - 541
Magic Attack 429
Potential 10
Durability 40
Sockets 0/4
Deals 500% additional damage every (10 - number of type of gems socketed)th attack
Stat Hammer
Level 75
Attack 1 - 1
Magic Attack 1
Deals 500% additional damage every 10th attack.
Potential 7
Durability 40
Sockets 0/2
Deals 500% additional damage every 10th attack
Grants additional Patk equivalent to 250% of player’s patk and Matk equivalent to 250% of player’s matk
Suggestion: Introduce equipment with dependencies
Not to be confused with equipment sets, which grants a bonus when items of the same set are worn. Equipment with dependencies are gear in which becomes better when a criteria is fulfilled.
Example:
Commoner’s Sword (One Hand Sword - Purple - Lv270)
Atk 710 - 784
Potential 10
Sockets 0/2
+200 patk for every piece of White (common) equipment equipped.
Recipe of Commoner’s Sword
- 10x Replica Migantis Sword
- 15x Superior Koperon Sword
- 20x Firangi
Dependencies need not just be equipment based only, it can take on prerequistes such as buffs of classes.
Example:
Reflector (Level 120 Orange - All weapon types)
+50% additional damage per buff/debuff on monster/opponent, -30% damage per buff and debuff on player.
It is equipment such as these that present players with more choices and alternatives. When there are 2 or more pieces of equipment in the same slot competing for BiS without a clear winner, players will spend more time researching and refining what they feel is best for their builds. This creates more depth for the game, and depth itself is translated to content as players will continually farm and chase after the next piece of equipment that might improve their gameplay or character efficiency, even when the maps and things to do are the same.
Adding depth to the game via quests and lore
Most of the quests right now in ToS are hardly worth any memory space in our brains, perhaps with the exception of Hauberk in Demon Prison… ahh the poor demon cat ><
Suggestion: Adding depth with stories
So, why not create more stories within ToS in the form of side quests? Everyone do fancy some drama series every now and then which are full of plot twists and the unexpected. These side quests can take some time to do, and are divided into “episodes” which are updated every 3 months. Take up such quests are entirely optional since they aren’t prerequistes for character advancement or main story advancement.
Branches can be created within such quests so that each branch (usually a choice) will offer a different conclusion to the series. Hence, in order to view the other endings, the player will have to create a new character to do the series of quests again.
Doing this benefits the game and the players in the following ways:
-
Enrich the ToS world and makes it feel that it is a living, fully fleshed out world than just content conveniently placed for a game.
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Engage the community. When a story episode ends with a cliffhanger, it promotes discussion and participation in the community. Devs can take the chance to see what the community says and make the next episode for or against the community’s wishes to spark more anticipation/discussion.
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With such story/lore content added every 3 months, it makes waiting for the next Rank patch much more tolerable.
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Story and quests can take place in the current maps and use existing characters (especially the class NPCs), which brings the players to quest and traverse maps which normally no one will go.
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Ability to create story contests in forums just like fanart, music remix contests. Players can submit their own stories and the top winners get an opportunity to have their story plot made into actual quests. Something in which players often don’t get an opportunity to do in the real world, a chance having their stories immortalized in a publication (in this case, a game :3 )
In the end, an excerpt from our ToS HOD.
HOD: That’s what we’re hoping to do, yes. We believe a good game should be able to offer the player the chance to live out their dreams, so we want to delve into that idea for our next projects. We’ve considered things like sailing a yacht, car racing, exploring deserts, jungles, oceans; any challenge or adventure that’s hard to come by in the real world. We’ve also thought about letting the players do fun things like car tuning, farm tuning, island tuning (we’re just really into tuning)… Or, if you want to enter more into the realm of fantasy, open a fancy bar and invite celebrities to exclusive parties, collect designer clothing or watches, sports cars… Basically, we want this kind of experiences that aren’t always feasible in your everyday life to be more readily available in Tree of Savior.
Nekorin: Allow players to tune their equipment too, by having alternatives and equipment upgrade trees. Create more stories to add more depth, preferably those which provokes thought and feelings.
9 Likes
Itemisation is definitely one of the points i think they missed greatly on. For the most part, people dont even touch any equipment outside of their endgame equipment, and just use whatever they have until they reach that point. The itemisation is so stale, because people just look for the most powerful weapon because it’ll have a bigger effect transcendance-wise.
I want more items, to have build-defining gimmicks or at least in favor of more interesting builds like our good old blood dagger, i wonder if it’ll be possible with the state of transcendance though, this mechanic really limits item variety, but i don’t have a solution that would respect peoples investment into transcending their items.
Upgrading your weapon with elemental affinity would be a great idea, if elemental damage had any impact, for the most part, it feels like element/attack type is just a bonus nobody really cares about, at least thats what i think, besides everyone would just spec to something that is strong in ET, because thats the only place where it might have a meaningful effect. I think more content is neede to reinforce elemental weaponry, which i think is a great idea though.
Itemisation in this game had so much potential, but i feel like im just running around with a billion recipes of crappy items that will become obsolete in no time because i outlevel their level range so quickly.
When i made my cataphract i decided i wanted to make a Galin trident, no matter how fast it would become obsolete, and it was actually pretty fun to farm the recipe, and gather the materials from various different maps that we’re far apart from each other. You really got to see a lot of the maps that you always neglect. Even though the item was obsolete in days, it was very fun at least for myself, to gather and craft for a weapon myself.
2 Likes
For someone who wasn’t want to read it all
1 More Content
2.Elemental weapon (hope it come soon)
3.Make Equipment go along with builds (new toy hammer for AA builds, Weapon that amp some skills but nerf some of it)
4.Make more socket become more than just 4 colors gem and monster gem.
5.Recipe like r7 so we can hunt useless items on the map that no one will go for unique items
6.Make quest become more interesting , put effort to the lore make game like moving along the player
3 Likes
Interestingly enough I see a lot of people call ToS an ARPG and most of those ideas would be making it more ARPGish, which I would personally really love. The two best currently somewhat popular ARPGs I enjoy Marvel Heroes and Path of Exile have quite a few excellent ideas that would benefit MMOs, and ToS in particular.
Something else that I really wanted to see that might fit slightly with what you had there was divergent attributes, I was hoping they would do this since beta but never saw it happen. Enhance is fun, but by itself it’s just a boring damage sink, I’d love to see something like
- This skill turns into an auto attack modifier but has decreased damage (Can be used Kneeling, Bazooka, on top of Running Shot, etc)
- This skill has faster attack speed but less damage
- This skill has much more damage but less range
This could also be done with gems if they just made a new class of gems that can edit some factors of skills. This would make it harder to ‘hot swap’ without a serious investment (would also let it be something you can investigate beforehand in PvP circumstances)
A few classes/skills that I could see this working interestingly on are fletcher skills (like the above), linker skills can play around duration, amount of hits, and amount of targets (or even chance to link), pyromancer skills like fire wall would be able to play around carpeting a large area in exchange for much less hits per wall for example. These are just some rough ideas and they would all have to be tested a bit, but that wouldn’t be hard.
Letting you kit your character a little more interestingly, I really like the fun attributes that you’ll see sometimes that can basically give a skill entirely new interaction elsewhere like Hangman’s Knot: AoE Splash Defense or Fireball: Flame Debuff (working with Agny or just damage increases in general really well).
There’s a lot of current interactions ,but there are many skills that could use more built into them here, to make the current content more interesting and add more depth to character choices as well.
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It would only make the game even more repetitive and boring, and it is not new content at all. I would prefer a raid system, boss monster with unique sets, 24 hour pvp 1v1, more puzzles, more challenging missions with good rewards, etc.
The current whale event is the proof that the game won’t work with a raid system at all.
true. hopefully they are using these events to gather data for optimization.
There would have to be several patches purely dedicated to the games performance and optimization way before they can start thinking about raids.
Honestly the bad optimization this game has compared to way more graphic intensive games is my biggest complaint.
As for a rebirth system? Please no. I hated that in RO because it doesn’t fix the issue with lack of end game content it just prolongs it.
A Rebirth system might be able to work, though placing a limit on the amount of times it’s possible would probably be better to remove the problem of it turning into more of a grind. I really don’t want TOS to turn into just running through the levelling process continuously, that’s not really a fulfilling way to progress. It does have the major advantage of taking the emphasis of alts.
If any system like this were to be implemented, there would need to be many more changes first. It actually demonstrates the difficulty of further increasing features into a fundamentally flawed environment, which is the primary reason IMC has been holding off, they’re addressing those problems so they can actually add content that works.
The levelling process needs to be made more rewarding and fun, with multiple ways to level to have it vary. The pacing problems need to be addressed, and the difficulty. Events need to be less focused on skipping the entire process, and EXP related items like x8 Tomes, Multipliers and Resets, need to be made less effective. Levelling should be a good experience, not a rushed one, and certainly not one where gear from events make most gear in the entire game obsolete. Equipment progression, and the lack of useful long term items gained from questing and the lack of early game sources of long term gain, among other problems like Blessed Shard gain, and alts providing a too easy source of income/Shards all still need to be addressed.
A Rebirthing system has merits, though I’d argue under heavy restriction, but there are other fundamental changes that need to take place. TOS absolutely has a lack of content, but adding further flawed content isn’t the way to fix it, that’s what the point of the Transcendence system, gear effectiveness in PVP, and ET, and they are disliked for a reason. The base that TOS is built upon needs to be improved, that has to be top priority, if IMC can focus on multiple areas at once then that’s good, but I doubt many companies have the resources to do THAT much at one time.
TOS can’t afford to be average anymore, nor should we want it to be, it needs to be amazing, and we should hold it to that standard.
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