I’ve had a great time with what I’ve played of the game (even with all the lag) however, I think this game’s biggest weakness right now is its battle system, most specifically with boss battles. In my opinion a big part of why boss battles are currently not very fun right now is that currently at least half of the time spent facing the boss is spent holding down the auto-attack button because sp runs out so quickly and skills currently have longer cooldowns.
I’ve seen suggestions that ask to reduce the boss’ hp and armor at low levels, which I believe is one way to help resolve this, however I believe that that suggestion is ignoring the underlying problem with the current system. The auto-attack in its current form, is currently not engaging enough as it is right now to hold interest in the game’s boss fights (especially the early ones when you have very little sp, and few skills). Frequently I find the hardest part about the bosses right now is keeping myself from zoning out while holding down the auto-attack so that I can dodge the bosses when I’m out of sp.
So with the above said, I think it’d be great to have some discussion on how the auto-attack can be improved so that the end battle system will feel more engaging. To start off, here are some of my suggestions with explanations:
1) Have using the auto-attack grant a small amount of SP back to the user per hit. Probably based on your spirit stat.
While this wouldn’t improve the auto-attack directly, it would serve to provide a more active way to generate SP so that skills can be used more regularly. Running out of sp halfway through the boss fight with no way of regenerating it besides sitting or potions is one of the biggest reasons boss fights are currently just about spamming auto-attacks. Having an active sp-regeneration system would make things more engaging and would help keep the auto-attack an important part of the end-game. The role of sp potions could instead be for large bursts of skills instead of their current role right now as being the only timely method sp regeneration in combat.
2) Implement a second auto-attack button, the heavy (or light) auto-attack and create auto-attack chains.
This is seen in a lot of action games and I feel like it’d be a good fit for Tree of Savior as well as it currently seems like auto-attack has a huge focus. Simple idea is to have auto-attack combo chains that increase in damage or have different effects(i.e. bleed, interrupt, sp regeneration etc.) or positioning(i.e. linear charge, circular aoe, leaping backstab, etc.). i.e. if 1 and 2 are light and heavy auto-attacks 1111 has a different effect from 1112 or 12, etc. This would help break the current monotony of standing in one place holding down one button.
3) Implement auto-attack attributes.
It seems strange to me that so much time is spent in combat just using the auto-attack, but there are so few ways to improve or customize it. Adding unique attributes to each class would go a long way to making the auto-attack more interesting and involved and could help give each class additional flavour.
Also another minor change I’d like to suggest is to allow the auto-attack (and maybe skills in general) to be used while moving. It can cancel the movement to keep it close to what we have now where you have to be standing still to auto-attack, but it would help make combat feel smoother.