Thank you for voicing out in a civilized manner. You nailed it.
Good post there man.
Everyone, like and flag this post for staff attention.
About time we used the flag command for a good thing.
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357 likes and counting; if IMC sees just how many think what OP said is true, they’re bound to notice something is wrong. This and @Melon’s thread is trending right now, and whether they respond or one of the threads “magically” disappear, then we’ll know what they think. I doubt this thread had one single flag…unless “one of those types” pop up. That said,
Shouldn’t we get more priority since we are the bigger target market and directly under IMC rather than a publisher?
Firstly, I would like to thank you for the love and support Tree of Savior. I would also thank you for becoming the Founders and buying all the founders packs. It is very unfortunate to hear that you decided to leave. However, Thank you for the detailed and long list of the aspects of the game that you found dissatisfying. On that note, there seems to be necessary that I should address the points raised in your letter and clear some misunderstandings.
The trade restriction in TOS was designed to solve the bot and RMT problems. I do recognize that it might cause inconveniences towards the players as well. If, like you have said, the restrictions were not there due to the fact that the bots and RMT are inevitable and unavoidable, would that have improved the game overall? Unless we compare two situations side-by-side, I cannot say for certain. However, I would like you to understand that we have been working on reducing restrictions through continuous patches.
Server instability is an issue that we have been and currently are trying to solve but it is indeed a difficult issue. However, what I can say that the client lag has been improved through the recent optimization effort and it will be included in upcoming patchs soon.
As for DDoS, its very difficult thing to overcome. Everytime DDoS attack occurs (including today), Service provider blocks targetted machine, so we have to provide service excluding that machine. The problem is Service provider also limited our access to admin account as well, so we cannot add machine instances for now, resulting very crowded users in less machines in SA regions.
We have made a contract with one of the world’s biggest cloud service provider, but their counter-DDoS measures differed from region to region. This situation is beyond our expectation and we are currently in talks with the service provider but we are yet to receive a satisfying answer from them. The proposals we have received were seeking a different service provider or move it to the NA region, which may leads to also dissatisfying solution to many users. So we’re seeking for other solutions now.
Even since the announcement of the One Month F2P Delay plan, our users have raised many issues such as a ping problem, lags and even racism and regional pricing. In order to address those issues, I have decided to separate regions and transfer the necessary data between them. During that process, each region required its own devices and infrastructure. It meant that the cost of having the servers in four separate regions was drastically higher than having them all in one region.
You mentioned that, the region transfer usually only takes 10 minutes for other company. In reality, that is simply not possible. DB duplication process from one continent to the other continent takes a considerable amount of time and the whole process requires our utmost attention if we were to avoid any errors. The fact that the process was not planned months in advance meant that much effort and care were needed for the preparation, execution and confirmation.
We also wished to allow players to obtain TP as soon as possible after transitioning to F2P. However, we were unable to sell TP via DLC products as identical DLC products cannot be purchased more than one time.
There is a separate system, the ‘Steam Inventory System’, but it is taking some time to develop and verify since it is different from the DLC system which we had been using up to this point.
The Beginner’s & Veteran’s Packs were launched to allow players that wished to purchase more premium items until the ‘Steam Inventory System’ is fully implemented.
You do not need to purchase these DLC products if you do not agree to their contents or pricing. You will most likely not need the extra boost as you already had purchased all the Founder’s Pack.
We did not launch the Beginner’s and Veteran’s Packs thinking that everyone needs to purchase them. It was more of a stop-gap measure to allow certain players to obtain more TP and other items before the launch of the ‘Steam Inventory System’. Those items were currently un-obtainable since there are no DLC products in the Store.
It would have been better if we could have also launched various DLC products that only contain TP. However, There is a limit Steam places how many DLC products we can sell at once. It was not possible to create diverse products since we had to create 8 different DLC products in order to provide 2 types of products to each of the 4 different service regions.
We did not reject the communication. We did not fired the Community Manager. Her leave was made by her own and I also hoped her to continue working. She had hard time dealing with responding community. It’s difficult to improve and solve problems fast in these situations. Current community managers, may seem to be less enthusiastic. But, I believe they are doing their best as they can.
I admit that the game currently has many issues. However, I really want to convince you that we have never given up and will continue to solve any issues one at a time. One example of such an issue is the monopolization of World Bosses and we are addressing this issue on the Korean servers by applying a debuff after defeating the Bosses. This will soon be applied to the Steam servers as well.
It’s regrettful if you consider that IMC is a cashgrab with over-priced DLC products while not trying to deal with any identified issues. It could have been due to the fact that we weren’t capable enough or did not communicate as well as we could have. However, I sincerely hope that you do not misunderstand that to mean that IMC does not care about Tree of Savior as a game, because we do care. We love this game at least as much as, and probably even more than, the players do. We created this game and will continue to improve this game to the end.
We thank you for loving Tree of Savior and hope that we will be able to meet again in a better gaming environment.
Regards,
Hakkyu Kim
Omg KimHakkyu personally replied! There is hope from IMC!!!
I was on the verge of quitting. now i will stay longer to see ToS become what i want it to be!! IMC i know this game has great potential and im playing it atleast 12 hours everyday!!
IMC Senpai i want to believe in you! but please do not let me down again by no communication to players!!!
Well… now I’m more speechless than I was before.
LOL
Edit: I really appreciate the transparency, but at the same time I would have rather seen it in a news announcement. It being in this thread feels a little …strange.
Nonetheless, thank you.
Edit: Wow, i just read hkkims reply. I am honestly surprised and impressed. Thank you for taking your time and replying!
I shortened my post out of respect for Hakkyus reply.
Its sad that you can give 1 Like only. sir, please accept all my
I really hope that OP is reading all these positive responses. It sounds like he only expect the so called White Knights to respond. but all these Replies imply approval.
2 Months ago i really thought “you cant just please everyone” with all the ppl complaining. With every issue that got debated over, responded to and fixed by IMC some new topic popped up. But things changed since march.
It really reaches a new lvl of ignorancy and disguise, that IMC almost completely vanished from the forum.
Why even create a developers blog if no one ever adresses the problems that really bother the ppl?
Why does it take serveral weeks to fix Skills that crash the client?
How on earth can console commands for testing purposes still be active like 2months after beta release?
Why do ppl have to wait for >2 weeks, after the guildleader had summoned the member to hangout and all of their characters got stuck?
(just some random things i saw in the forum)
well… thanks again OP for writing down whats on (yeah… almost) everybodys mind.
To OP of the topic:
You are nice, good bye.
See, all it takes is just one forum message to revive hope in people. Although it was a long and probably time consuming message since there are many issues that was unanswered by anyone for a long time.
This forum needs someone like Julie who’d respond to valid issues people are having in a more timely fashion than once in a few weeks. Even when definite answers can’t be given and solid solutions are not discovered yet, it’s important for people to know that IMC is aware of these issues and actually planning to try and do something about it.
For example on Telsiai server we’re still having latency issues for over 3 weeks (200-1000ms pings for players who are from Singapore, where server itself is based) and there was no single reply about it. It’s not an issue that just 1 or 10 people are experiencing. We’re all experiencing it and yet it remains unanswered/ignored. Don’t think it’s related to DDoS unlike SA server.
As i recalled, IMC always listen to community’s needs. Resolved may coming late but it will finally come.
Keep your good work. I’ll be here waiting for you.
Echo the same sentiments although I only agree to some of the points. The little to no communications (points 5,6,7) is what make me really think why do I even bother to play the game. Same as TS, I purchased almost all of the available packs (Packs 1 & 2 + discounted 1 & 2).
In the beginning I have really high hopes of the game, it has the graphics that I like, the playstyle that I love (very Ys style) and really good bgm. Since it is still new in the market (around 2months), I understand that there are still lots of bugs and stuff which need time to fix.
However that are really many other things which I totally don’t understand at all. IMC at the very least help me and others to understand why.
- Implementation of ktos patches. The question is why kToS can patch and iToS can’t. Numerous fixes from the kToS patch aren’t even that hard to patch, like increasing of skill damage for Dievdirby or reduction of Plague Doctor/Cleric’s heal skill duration during pvp.
In programming aren’t these skill/damage modifiers placed as class variables? Or these configurations are separated in a separate xml/config file which can be changed?
Since languages are separated in a separate LanguageData folder, it is just very hard to comprehend why kToS game client data can’t be used for iToS.
- The extreme lack of communication. The last developer blog entry is 26th April. That is almost 1 month ago. It just seems like the international community is forgotten 1 month after the last blog post. We as the community would like to know what you all are doing, what road map you have for the game the next few months and such. That is the point of having a developer’s blog in the first place.
Players want to feel that the company listens to their concerns. Being silent doesn’t really help much.
- In the recent 2 days of accounts banned update… only 3 servers are listed. Both SEA and SA servers are not in the list. It will be great to let us know why aren’t these servers have any ban account list as they contain a huge amount of bots and gold sellers.
My assumption after looking at the lists… is the ‘so-called bot recognition algorithm’ adds delay to the server too. It needs to track each and every movement of each account, check for repeated patterns (like bots) to determine whether the account is a bot or not. Since these 3 servers are so packed and overloaded, turning on this algorithm only makes matters worse. Hence it is turned off and there is no report/bots banned.
If that’s the case, it might be a better alternative to just hire an in-game gm whose job is just to go to each and every town/bot infested map and perma ban the bots right there since the algorithm isn’t working as intended.
Edit: Thanks Hakkyu Kim for coming over to clarify of many of the issues. we really appreciate it. If possible can someone over at your studio post some updates once every few days? With it the community knows what you all are working on and it will help lessen the unhappiness that is going around in this forum.
Could you explain why you didn’t fix many important bugs of iTOS (Gravity Pole crash, Physical Link not working, Auction House setting wrong limits…)
Are the same bugs plaguing kTOS ?
Do you know that your servers are lagging the longer they are up ? Do you know that this could be workarounded if you did (at least) bi-weekly maintenance ?
Could we have some meaningful mean of talking with the devs (like knowing if a bug is indeed a bug, if it is worked on, ETA of the fix) ?
And why are our patch notes so ridiculous compared to kTOS ?
Are we condemned to stay farther and farther behind kTOS ? Or are you planning to do HUGE patches in some months ?
Hmm… finally a response. I’m not convinced but at least now I can imagine what is going on.
Do it more often.
Well said !!! IMC please take note.
Thank you for the response and addressing the issues. Transparency with the userbase goes a long way and a simple acknowledgement and update on what is being done keeps us hopeful.
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Another ToS lover here, at some points i agree with you, and some others i dont, but i kinda feel its time to take a break from the game till it gets better, currently playing something else, dying to see what ToS will have to offer when im active again