Alright so after some nice playing, I had a great time with TOS for the most part, but I’ve never been so completely turned around by one or two features of the game.
They completely ruin the experience for me and I feel it is the root of most of TOSes main issues.
Fixed spawn locations for monsters is an extremely dated concept and harbours tons of negative connotations and overall just seems lazy of the developer to not deal with issues as old as KSing when it comes to making an MMO.
Before I get into the issues I’d like to say personally that random spawns in the over world make it much more immersion, seem more real and put a dead stop to brain dead playing. This is one of the huge reasons I love Ragnarok Online The game you guys are trying to pass a torch from? or rather Usurp given the negative feeling this design choice as left with me.
Let’s get right into it shall we.
Kill Stealing
Kill stealing is so dang popular because in most over world and dungeon maps there are spawn areas that are the most efficient, in later levels players will not bother grinding in an inefficient manner as their time is now more valuable. The difference between a good spot and a bad spot could mean hours. So instead of wasting time doing that, players are more likely to stop playing until they can get one of the spots, or simply Kill steal other players to get the area they want to level in.
Botting
This is a big issue. The “grindier” you make the game, the more these troublesome things are going to appear. Fixed Predictable spawning is doing them a favour. They can easily make routes for maps since they know where every spawn is going to be. This is something that could be easily accomplished by any gaming keyboard with the use of simple macros to move the character around. I should not be able to effectively bot at your game using a simple macro.
Not that I’d need to make the route because the maps are not evenly distributed leaving most of the map barren while two or three rooms are constantly fought over as the most efficient places to level. Leaving out the need for a macro since I could just use a small weight to hold my Z key down, I really can’t believe this worked.
You’ll notice on the map above, this is an example of fixed spawns and the issues with them. Players will obviously find the most crowded area and flock there, as will kill stealer, as will bots/cheaters.
Random spawning would make brain dead farming a thing of the past since players would actually have to explore to find clusters, killing monsters in the same area over and over again would leave the place barren. This segways into my next point.
You’ve put so much emphases on exploration and then beat it over the head with a mallet?
This game has so many mechanics emphasising exploration, the map system rewards you for reaching every bit of the map, the class system also implies you explore the potentials of mixtures of classes. Hidden quests reward you for talking to NPCs that have no marker, again rewarding exploration. But you beat it over the head with outdated mechanics that encourage a group of people to sit in ONE room/segment and clear it out over and over. This is backwards to what seems to be a main design point. There is no predicting here, there is no improvizing, no exploring, just staying still and killing because if you move too far away from the spawn someone else will just kill it first. Bringing me to my next point.
Spawn Camping
Fixed spawns allows certain skills, which with “prediction” of spawning area of the monster can kill them instantly, preventing other players for partaking in the kills. This is only the strongest form, in reality, everyone who can do this, does do this. Any kind of Damage AoE that can be left on the ground, is. Even Swordsman Classes just use their buffs, approach the spawn and hold down Z to be the first and last hits on the monster. This is not innovative gameplay and is ultimately going to turn your game into an alt-tab grind.
Stagnant Community
With everyone using the least amount of effort possible to grind, eventually it will become extremely hard to even find a party, I assume later, parties will need two Krivis to ward of kill stealing while the other members catch the run-off.
At this point you might be saying.
"Well what if we want certain areas of the map to have certain monsters"
easy solution, make spawn AREAS and in those areas, randomize the spawns!
If you’d like to know what sparked my very deeply held issues with the game, please have a look at the video below.
That is all, I don’t mean any disrespect. I really hope the best for TOS but I think with outdated systems such as these it is going to fall victim to the same issues that have been plauging the MMORPG genre for years.
Thank you for your time.