Never thought I’d see the community this way. It was originally such a wise, eager and kind community. I feel like it’s just because few people realize how good we have it… IMC handles ToS how games always should’ve been handled, they treat us with respect and gratitude, listen to the players who’re unfair and blame them for everything. They’re doing the best job they can, and are the first company I’ve been with that are honest about everything. It’s not in their power to magically correct things, they have to inform the developers of issues and then they will change things in a patch. People expect so little of them and are very cruel, so whenever anything actually goes wrong for them it becomes pretty toxic. Despite this IMC is still doing great. You have to love ToS when you realize how great it is compared to all the other MMORPGS released now a days, be grateful you don’t have to wait 5 years for a first CBT, be grateful you don’t have to pay 100-200$ for some early permission to play, be grateful you get to test this game and have a say in how it will be in the future, you get to make it your dream game. Yes, important features like the party, friend, market and chat systems may be bugged, that doesn’t mean ToS is a bad game or IMC doesn’t care about you, people have to stop taking the CBT personally… it’s a test where anything wrong can be justified, you’re supposed to be talking about improvements, not stating it’s a failure.
Start focusing on giving constructive feedback to IMC, don’t look at something like it’s the end of the world, look at it as how good it can be and tell IMC how to improve it. You don’t focus on the negativity in a game as great like ToS, if you see someone botting don’t automatically assume the game is dead, this is ToS, not some generic MMORPG, don’t log off and cry to the GMs to ban the botter, stop the botters yourselves with the oldest trick in the book, simply kill everything before they do until eventually all of them stop putting effort into botting cause the community is that strong. The reason they bot in the first place is because it can be more efficient than doing it themselves. If you don’t like something in the real world and think it’s wrong, are you going to beg others to put an end to it or do it yourself ?
The things people see as bad have led to some of the best experiences I’ve had. Everything is so peaceful with yell off, the game is a paradise, not some dystopia… Great conversations are started when everyones in a local chat, people communicate more and share a lot. This is how it’s supposed to be, the core of MMORPGS. Okay, they messed up the prices ? Just change the way you play the game, adapting isn’t hard. After a while ToS isn’t just a game anymore. That’s what this game has been to accomplish for a while, now its natural to me when others think of the game as broken.
What I am getting at is people blame the game way too often, its unhealthy for it. Suffering the grind is all a part of the learning curve and if you truly did everything right and still don’t like it that’s okay, just give constructive feedback for how it could have been better for you, if you have enough supporters IMC will surely let the developers know what you suggest. Just make sure you’re thinking of every potential player and not just your own desires. I personally love how grim and dark a cute and innocent looking game like ToS gets, when you combine it with an interactive game it becomes very interesting, but I wouldn’t ask them to make everything a horror story since it could possibly force away a large audience of kids with strict parents. You can’t just ask for x5 monster exp or repeatable bosses, you have no idea how huge a change this is to the game and how easy it will make it for us amateurs and mini veterans. Does the real world handhold you all your life ? No, and we have enough games that do… Not to say ToS doesn’t still handhold us a lot, people just don’t notice it. It’s only fun for a lot of us when we can at least progress and explore without the handholding. The 90% of players who aren’t us will become us sooner or later, so you would really be killing the game before you even get to experience what we talk about.
We have to start being a real community, like in real life. The only problem for me isn’t that the in game community related systems are broken, it’s that we separate each other mentally and don’t think about other people. Servers, friends, guilds, parties… all lies, we are all playing ToS so that automatically makes us all connected. I don’t care where you’re from or what language you speak, if you play ToS, if you’re in the game, you’re my comrade… you’re your character, whether you treat me or others the same or not effects how good or bad the game will end up, because we’re all one.
Before the game even launched the community already tried to separate each other with race, religion, sex, language why does ToS need to have the bad of the world ? Why make a unique game like every single game ? Peace and understanding is simple, its where everyone can be allies, we are the ones who control the ToS universe, why would you ruin the game this way when it’s supposed to be a magical place. If you are doing a quest and there aren’t enough objects or monsters to complete it, why fight everyone else trying to compete over resources instead of making a party and teaming up with them, would you rather have allies or enemies, lovers or haters.
People feel more comfortable talking to others in their first language, and you’re pissed ? … I don’t want to say anything about this since its a serious issue in the real world. But really, do you want kids to come on here and see all of our hate, and then grow up to be racist & xenophobic ? We invented internet language for a reason, the game has emotions, there’s no reason not understanding others should bring ill mannered players and chat.
More people need to start treating this game like its precious; if you really want to help ToS become better you can’t worry about obvious things like the friend system being bugged. Focus on the little things, it’s better to have every single tester focus on fixing or improving small things. Why would IMC want to see 10,000s of feedback reports about the same issues. All of the small stuff will determine a polished game from an unpolished game. This will decide for millions of people who try the game whether they want to invest their lives in ToS.
It’s up to us to finish this game, our game… IMC isn’t some big company like blizzard that can just polish up a game on its own. No matter how bad or good a game is, if its community isn’t kind, wise, strong and play a huge part in the game, it won’t be a great game. Do you really want ToS to be just another good game that dies one day or do you want it to be a great game like RO and live in our hearts for eternity! 5,000 testers, 100,000 testers, it doesn’t matter, It’s all up to us as individuals, all of our actions in and out of the game matter. ToS is in your hands. If our community has no soul, the game will have no soul.
That being said, please get further into the game before you start giving feedback on the game as a whole … Sounds harsh, but lots of the stuff people have problems with are cause of lack of knowledge and experience. I am talking about lvl 140 at minimum, it’s possible to get that with almost no grinding if you do every single quest. It’s impossible if you don’t know what to do though, so don’t be afraid to ask your peers and share information. The more you learn about ToS the more you will love and accept it.
The attitude the western market has towards new games can seem awful and rejecting to publishers. It might be a waste of time and money when few will actually want to have the game over a couple months. We have it now, and people already treat it like trash. We were eager to have ToS and they put it in our hands. What about all the work the translators put into the game, the quest and lore are great, everything they’ve done was for us… and yet, people act like… they bought the game for $1,000 and are missing a lot of perks. We have the power, don’t start assuming the game is ruined just like that.
Since almost every company now a day’s only have CBTs to rip off people for money, not to actually prepare the real game. I can see how people got the wrong idea. ToS isn’t a finished product; there will be bugs and glitches. You have no right as a tester to get mad at a game when you can still test it. Teleportation and repair cost 100,000 silver ? Walk everywhere and find a nice cheap squire. If you’re to weak to play without gear form a strong group with players in town, turn the bad into something good. Market is down ? Communicate with players; find people who know where to farm the recipe or gear, open up a real shop. Don’t expect to have it nice, easy, and polished playing. We’re here to make it so people who play later will have that. In exchange we also get valuable wisdom and hands on experience. If you aren’t a real gamer and can’t handle testing a real game simply put it down until official release.
Tldr
What happened to people solving their own problems, making the best of every situation ? It’s like some people intentionally want to make ToS a bad experience instead of a good one… acting like the victims on a CBT I am betting the ones having problems are the people who just rushed in hoping to have the time of their lives thinking IMC is obligated to fix problems like the prices, etc for them.