First of all I’d like to thank IMCGAMES for the opportunity to try out this game that I’ve been waiting to try since its conception back in 2013.
Summary:
Overall I was very pleased with the game, but I do believe there is much room for improvements in areas other than minor bugs, glitches, translation errors, and racist conversations in the general chat (kidding… kind of). I’m sure some of these have already been mentioned, but I hope there’s something in this that could be useful to improving the game.
Technical:
DUAL MONITOR SETUP (GeForce GTX 970, HiSense 4K TV via HDMI, LG LED Monitor via DVI, 4K resolution, vsync off)
- I was having video card crashes during the more graphically intense events such as boss battles (one time during a field boss and I came back dead
). I was playing ToS on my 4K TV and both screens would go black. The LED Monitor would come back up after going black for a few seconds, but the 4K TV would lose connection and would not come back up. The only way to get the connection back would be to unplug the HDMI cable from my computer and plug it back in, but this would place the ToS client in a small windowed square that I couldn’t maximize. The only solution was to restart the client. Boohoo.
Gameplay:
GAMEPAD CONTROLS (Logitech Gamepad 310)
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I loved the gamepad controls and thought it fit the gameplay perfectly.
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I think there should be the ability to create custom control schemes (maybe binding emotions to the d-pad directions?).
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You can sit using the gamepad, but there seems to be no way to place a campfire. A possible solution would be to be able to accept a campfire placement depending on which direction the player’s body is currently facing.
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You can talk to the vendors and blacksmith via gamepad, but can’t maneuver through the selections to sell items or repair gear. It’s not a deal breaker, and I know I’m just being totally lazy, but it messes up my vibe, man!
Mechanics:
AUCTION HOUSE
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I’m sure this issue has already been brought up, but most of the equipment I would attempt to buy would tell me it was already sold. When I run the search again, the same item would still be listed in the auction house. The auction house seemed as though as it was not removing sold items from the inventories until a certain amount of time.
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In terms of sorting, I think there should be a way to filter equipment either by class, by items and equipment I can use currently, or both.
STORAGE
- I personally would rather have an account shared storage. I don’t see what the possibilities of exploiting are to being able to share items with your other characters. If there are issues, perhaps make it so that every time a different character grabs it from storage, it loses potential. Something like that. It’s just a huge hassle and to have to find someone trustworthy to help you transfer money or items to an alternate character.
GEAR
- I think there needs to be more gear between the levels of 15 & 40. This is far too large of a gap for there to be no upgrades, especially when the amount of exp required to get the next level increases dramatically after level 25. I believe that incremental weapon upgrades along the way would also give a sense of character progression. Gimme that carrot on a stick!
SP REGEN
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I know this has already been brought up, but the SP regen needs major rethinking as the game is obviously very grind heavy. AOE farming is hands down the most efficient way to grind levels to catch up to quests. On my highlander I had no problems AOE farming (mobs are at my level) with auto-attack very quickly for hours and hours without rest. SP reliant classes such as Wizards and Krivis’ (my other character) are very adept at taking out large groups of mobs quickly, but needs to constantly sit by a campfire every couple minutes or so. This is very lopsided and makes casters completely reliant on partying with melee classes just to grind. I know that ToS is meant to be a social game, but a party of 5 casters will never be as efficient as a party of 4 casters and 1 melee and that just doesn’t seem right.
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A possible solution would be to give SP reliant classes an attribute to either lessen the time between SP regen ticks, or heavily increase the amount of SP given each tick. I forsee this being a problem with caster classes that become melee classes later down the line (i.e. clerics -> monk), so perhaps the attribute could be nullified if the player decides to choose a melee class later.
EXP RATE
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This has already been brought up on various posts already so I won’t go into this much. It’s understandable if the exp rate was lowered for this CBT for testing purposes. But if this is the proposed exp rate for the OBT, it definitely needs to get ramped up. Considering that max level is 250 (correct me if I’m wrong), it just seems absolutely crazy to AOE farm for 2 hours just to get a level and a half at level 30.
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I personally don’t mind slow progression through interesting content. But as of now that ‘interesting content’ is limited to a choice between AOE farming one or two maps. So my suggestion is not to merely increase the exp rates, but rather to create more same level maps (with different environments) to give players options of different locations to grind. Rather than being funneled onto one optimal map at your level.
CRIT DAMAGE / CRIT RATE
- Not sure if this has already been posted, but please correct the information on the stats page under STR and DEX as they both state that they increase CRIT DAMAGE. Just a small issue but it was confusing for me in the beginning.
CLASS CHANGE MECHANIC
- I would really love to see a class change mechanic. Perhaps give players the ability to change classes available at the current rank level. With each class change, the player’s job level would reset to 0. With 80+ classes on the horizon, I think it would be a shame that players don’t get to experience all the available content as many players would be hesitant to start a new character for each class they want to try out.
That’s all the suggestions I have for iCBT 1, and I hope I have another opportunity in participating in the next CBT in order to compare and contrast what ever changes are made between iterations. I hope that my gripes and complaints above are taken merely as constructive criticism as I truly only hope for the continual improvement and success of this game. ToS so far is absolutely great, but far from polished. I believe as long as the developers continue to value and consider the feedback of the players, the game will have a bright future. Either way I’m still on board the ToS train and I hope to see you all in the next CBT! Choo choo!
~ Vicis