Tree of Savior Forum

Improving ToS: Addressing A Lack of Challenge

General Discussion
#1

Hey, fellow Saviors.

I won’t beat around the bush. ToS has some issues that we’re all well aware of (FPS drops, lack of meaningful content, RNG overload, etc.) but I’m hoping to get some discussion going about one thing in particular; the lack of real challenge.

As I’m sure everybody knows, the game is built around damage. As long as you’ve got enough investment in your gear and your build isn’t completely broken, you can solo just about anything that isn’t a world boss. Even things that are labeled as group content don’t actually require a group if you’re built and equipped properly.

Now, I’m not saying players shouldn’t be able to reach a level of power that lets them do some crazy stuff but allowing content to be trivialized so easily is bad design. It shortens the lifespan of new content and removes the incentive for players to be social and form parties (Kinda the purpose of an MMORPG. Sorry solo artists but it’s true). That’s especially bad in iToS since we only get new content every once in a while. If most of the playerbase has that stuff on farm within a week of its launch, it’s no wonder that people put the game down for long periods between Rank updates.

With the last update, we got Challenge Modes and they’re okay. Problem is, the challenge is really just about surviving a zergfest while packing in even more damage to kill mobs within the time limit. There’s still very little need for cooperation amongst players and even less need for everyone to play a unique role within the party (Why do we even have defensive classes like Pelt and Paladin when their skills aren’t really ever needed outside of the highest end PvE content?)

So how can IMC go about fixing this issue and increase the longevity of their game? I’ve managed to think of two different ways that don’t require a complete overhaul of game mechanics and one that might. They are as follows:

1) Give monsters in group content more meaningful skills. As it stands, the vast majority of monsters in group content either don’t use any skills at all or have one skill that players don’t even have to care about. That one mob’s using Pain Barrier? So what? It’s gonna be dead and exploding into little bits in another half-second anyway. Giving monsters skills that actually force players to react would go a long way towards making group content more than just a DPS race. Tossing in some CC skills like Sleep and Slow, combined with debuffs like Lethargy and Hexing would cause players to have to think a little before aggroing a spawn. Of course, doing this right would require some forethought to create synergies that would make individual mobs dangerous and there’d be limitations insofar as what the AI is capable of but it’d certainly be more interesting than what we’ve got now.

2) Tone down the enhancement system. This one’s not my favorite but it would do something to address the rampant power creep. As it stands, players can upgrade their primary damage source (Weapons) to a crazy degree. There’s no limit to the number of anvil enhancements you can do provided you’ve got the silver and the right materials to get around a particular weapon’s potential. Transcendence, while time consuming to accomplish, gives a huge boost. Again, I’m not opposed to players being able to achieve some crazy things but with a properly upgraded weapon, it just gets ridiculous. I watched a Cleric solo the Raid instance the other day. That just shouldn’t be a thing. Getting a handle on power creep is a must for preserving content.

3) Change the way aggro works. This would probably require the biggest investment in terms of Dev time. As it stands, aggro is basically just a matter of who’s doing the most damage. Mobs don’t really prioritize one player over another. They just go for whoever’s hitting them the hardest. Since that person’s also killing them quickly and they’re not really dangerous, there’s no reason not to unload with everything you’ve got. As we used to say in City of Heroes, death is the ultimate debuff. Changing things up to include some form of healing/support aggro would make fights more strategic in nature and give tanks a reason to exist. This could be done by class, with Cleric and Wizard skills generating more aggro per usage than Swordsman and Archer ones. To really be effective, something in this vein would have to go hand in hand with suggestion #1.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on how to improve this particular part of the game. If you managed to read this far, thanks. I hope to hear some of your suggestions in the comments. You may now commence flaming me and talking about how dead the game is :rofl:

5 Likes
#2

bring back the original R8!
where every archer and mage enemies were your worst nightmare!
Thevrin quest golden era!
actually if you feel too easy, you can play it with the hardest difficulty by only equipping weapon, not equipping any armor

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#3

If it were only in group content, I’d be down.

Dear god, the mob density…:face_with_head_bandage:

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#4

i have couple of things to say about the first one (bosses included)

I do like the idea that players have to think before aggroing the world and spamming skills but it could be pretty annoying too the way monsters are now.
Just following your example playing a melee character against enemies that continuously cast sleep on you is really frustrating, I don’t want to imagine monsters using iron hook on you, or sadhu’s possession or every other form of CC.
It could be a good and interesting update but as of now monsters are dead meat or are just a pain in the neck with their arrows/magic projectiles spam.

I was extremely unhappy with original R8 mobs, while i do like the difficulty now. There should be other difficult content in the game where you have to form a party and complete the task (solmiki, higher levels of challenge mode, word bosses and raid dungeon boss) but not every aspect of the game should be challenging in this way.

i’d love if bosses had more mechanics instead, like being immune to frontal attacks or having something else:

  • dungeon bosses are just easy as a normal enemy, they just die with a couple of skills
  • world bosses are just a damage race, some players just ignore their attacks.

i still think imc way of balancing is “increase its HP and defense” instead of “give them some features”, that’s why the game is a damage race now and that’s why i like your suggestions

1 Like
#5

I think that right now, the R9 field content is pretty good in terms of difficulty.
It isn’t so easy that any badly geared/built character can easily solo it with just buffs (like a full support Wizard for example), and at the same time, it isn’t so difficult that only someone with good gear/build can do it.
My only issue would be the mobs respawn in certain areas. On my Taoist I had to use Fade and Dark Sight quite a lot to finish quests that required me to pick items up. It’s annoying. On my Wugu I can only get 1-2 items and then I have to rekill the whole area again. When you have to do this kind of quests a lot, it gets old fast.

I also had no issue with R8’s difficulty since it made full support builds actually useful. But I can understand not everybody wanting this level of difficulty. R9 is a good compromise.
I think field content should be balanced so you can have fun when partying, but at the same time if you want to solo you can do it without suffering too much.

It’s mostly bosses that make the fights boring. “Boss”. They’re supposed to be that amazing final fight you have. But except for the Demon Lords WB they only feel like another mob that just has more HP.
Without giving them OP stats, bosses could be more fun based on the skills they have. Although I suppose the formulas (or stats ?) are also part of the issue since even if you get hit by a boss you usually don’t lose much HP.
Still, you can add random mechanics: the bosses can drag someone from afar (like the ranged DPS that’s been a pain in the butt to them), they can summon aoes that stay for a while, they can debuff, they can drain HP/SP, and such. Of course, depending on if it’s a boss from a dungeon or a World Boss, the power of the effects would be different.
I also always love games that have several kinds of aggro. Peltasta/Swordsmen being able to aggro more easily is fine and makes sense. DPS building some kind of aggro makes sense too. But it’s fun too when support skills build aggro. Healing ? Shielding ? Buffing ? Debuffing ? These should build some aggro as well.

#6

I think OP has great ideas, the problem is the damage has already been done long ago and no amount of fixing at this point is going to bring people back.

They have failed to address big issues for the longest of times and it’s evident the International Tree of Savior (Western market) was nothing but a quick cash grab.

The evidence is in the pudding. Think back to the launch fiasco, the after effects of it and how promises were broken before the game even reached one year of age.

I could easily make a list of these issues and how none of them have ever been addressed, but that would be another thread entirely.

Just look how Necromancer botting is still happening and there has never been a real official statement about it and no bans ever handed out for it and then realize that it is still happening and IMC could not care less.

The Korean developers operate on a different mindset than Western developers, and to learn more of that you only need to watch this video of another Korean MMO’s death story to learn just how much of it is similar to Tree of Savior:

3 Likes
#7

I can definitely see that being a problem. In fact, it reminds me of the Vubbe Shaman you encounter in Crystal Mine 3F. Since Sleep is their only skill and they spawn in decent numbers, it’s easy to end up getting caught in chain CC. Avoiding that kind of situation would require the Devs to put some thought into how spawns are organized. Too many mobs with dangerous skills all stacked on top of each other just wouldn’t be fun.

Agreed. My suggestions are intended for group content only (Dungeons, ET, etc). Open world content should always be soloable.

That’s pretty much what it’s been up to now. Making mobs sacks of HP isn’t challenging or fun. Glad you like what I came up with :grin:

I’m with you 100%. The spawn rate in certain areas is crazy high. It makes doing any kind of collection quest a real pain. Considering ToS really only has kill, collect, and talk quests, making a third of that content frustrating isn’t a good idea.

Those are some solid ideas for improving boss fights and they’re the kind of things you see in other MMORPGs that take challenge into account as part of good design. No one should be able to run up to a boss, press two or three buttons, and have it fall over in the span of a few seconds. Similarly, players shouldn’t be able to solo bosses in dungeons and other group content. That stuff is specifically intended to be done with a team. If it’s a boss that comes up during a quest chain, fine, but group content should actually require a group to get done.

Actually, a great example of giving a boss some interesting mechanics is Shadowgaler in the level 50 dungeon. It hits hard with its normal attacks but that thing it does where it charges up for a second then unleashes that green energy wave that players have to jump over is actually really fun. If you get distracted or are standing too close when it goes off, you can end up hurting pretty badly. That’s the kind of thought I’d like to see put into every dungeon boss.

Exactly. How else can you really enforce team play mechanics if no one has to worry about how much aggro they’re generating? If there’s no real consequence for stealing aggro from whatever class is designed to take the associated damage, what’s to keep players from just going ham on everything that comes across their path? As you can see in almost every dungeon, not much :unamused:

I can see how you’d feel that way. The playerbase takes a nosedive between Rank updates and reset events and the lack of attention to longstanding issues has a lot to do with that. It’d probably be helpful if each region’s Dev team had the freedom to address their version of the game’s problems independently instead of waiting for hotfixes and patches to be converted from kToS.

Still, I love the game too much to just write it off as a failure. YMMV.

1 Like
#8

I would love to have repeatable areas that have as much mob density and scaling as the challenge mode does. As in, something that isn’t a once per day event.

My biggest problem with the “difficulty” in ToS has always been that it has made no sense in where it was found. Back when there were quests that would just kill you if you tried to solo them, auto-aggroing homing attack ranged mobs that could kill you in 1-2 hits in regular field maps, etc. the game was “difficult” but only in the sense that it forced you to use certain builds or else play in a group at all times. In a word, it was actually just frustrating. When they fixed all that, though, they also deleted all other difficulty in the game. They made field-dungeons as easy as normal fields, made dungeon mobs harmless, even made field bosses and intended challenge areas like Earth Tower considerably easier.

I feel that IMC’s major issue is that they lack any nuance in the way they design or balance the game. Everything is all or nothing. Either all the high level mobs are deadly as hell and will murder you wherever you go, or they’re all harmless little weaklings that die in one hit and can barely tickle you.

Right now I think only the level 350 (or is it 330? I can’t remember) hunting ground is an adequate difficulty for what it’s supposed to be. Soloing it is actually pretty intimidating unless you have a good high damage solo farming build because the mobs are pretty tanky and can also hit fairly hard, so it encourages group play, which is good for the kind of area it is. Now that unidentified items can drop anywhere, you can still solo farm normal fields, (plus you can get materials in normal fields so they aren’t just straight inferior to HG farming), meaning if you want to play solo you aren’t totally ■■■■■■. However, frankly right now HG farming isn’t rewarding enough in a group because of how bad the item distribution is. It’s also weird that challenge mode is designed to be done in a group, but the only place you can get the portal to open is a normal field where you probably won’t be farming as a group.

Hence why I’d want to see something like challenge mode but repeatable, so that high level groups can have some content that isn’t locked behind a daily or weekly limit and can still challenge them and provide reasonable rewards. With something like that you can have rewards distributed equally and based on how far you get, instead of being RNG and distributed unevenly so that one guy might get all the good gear drops while everyone else gets worthless gems and ■■■■.

2 Likes
#9

I think the reason why devs are unable to address this issue properly is because some players keep whining about how “difficult” or unfair the PVE content is. Like those players whining about link resist mobs and mobs immune to specific elements. While some players would say that the content is too easy. This could be very confusing on a developers perspective as they do not know if the content has to be balanced by adding or reducing the difficulty level.

#10

Why don’t they do like others mmo since 1997, just add difficulty choices and different scaling rewards.
Even if 1985 you could chose normal / hard modes.

1 Like
#11

Awesome post. I am not 100% sure if there is no way to fix, but surely it would be hard(pissing people off and even harder gain those people trust again and getting new players)

#12

But link resisting mobs had to be addressed. After a specific level, too many could resist it. Since Linker’s role is to link mobs and allies, several species of mobs being able to resist makes the class loses its worth.
The thing is that the link even failed if you linked linkable mobs, because it also tried to link the unlinkable one(s).
Next to that, you don’t have many classes that have this kind of issue. Only a very few rare mobs are resistant to CC/skills. When it’s the whole point of the class, fewer mobs should be able to resist to it. Or you make it so all CC don’t work on several kinds of mobs, but then CCs in general would lose their worth.
For example on my Dievs, mobs resisting my Laima’s debuffs don’t bother me, because it’s not the whole purpose of the class. But if a lot of them could resist the silencing or my Owls’ damages, it’d be annoying because then what’s the point of going Diev 2-3 ?

#13

The exact thing happening to corsair now.
Now the game is all farm HG gears and corsair whose major purpose was pillage doesnt work for it.

1 Like
#14

Give mobs pre-open beta Golden Bell Shield.

#15

Not trying to troll here, but none of the items on your list satisfies your list of complaints.

For example

Why do we even have defensive classes like Pelt and Paladin when their skills aren’t really ever needed

Even though this is definitely a false statement, especially considering the paladin buffs, none of the things you suggest would fix this issue. Furthermore

  1. Change the way aggro works

Isn’t this already being addressed in the intense swordsman balancing? Check out the peltasta changes at the blog post.

Provocation values of all Peltasta attack skills apply as 50 times the value of damage.

Swash Buckling is changed to force enemies to face the caster during the skill’s duration

New attribute doubles the provocation value.

Might not be perfect, but it’s weird to ask for something that they are already doing in the current live version of the game.

#16

I believe that the link resist should not have been an issue as, on my perspective, a balanced game would have end game content that would have specific monsters that are immune to specific classes. This encourages party play.

“But how bout me? I only play solo!” >> Well there are offline games for a reason. MMORPGS are meant to be played multiplayer. You still have the opton to solo play, but it should only be to a certain extent. You still would have other options like finding another map which does not have mobs that are resistant to your class.

I remember grinding my Ragnarok online wizard in thor’s volcano. 2 mobs on that map were impossible to kill with magic. But I still grind on that map, and just avoided those 2 monsters.

EDIT: As for the different difficulties, Sure, you could apply that on instanced dungeons but not on the open world maps. Also players would still complain: “This is unfair, rewards of hard mode is better than easy mode!” or “Hard mode is impossible to finish! I dont wanna play easy mode”

#17

Yes, this works as well. That’s why at the end I said “Or you make it so all CC don’t work on several kinds of mobs” (I didn’t mean they don’t work on the same kinds, but different species could have their own strengths), which would mean you need different builds for different occasions.
But even this is flawed. While I agree that it’d make the game more interesting, even if you’re not solo it can be annoying to know that for some fights, contents, or whatever, your build just “won’t work”.
Even if ultimately when there are a lot of ranks released I don’t think it’d be an issue anymore because when the mobs can resist your skills you can use your other classes to balance it. But for now, when almost half your ranks are being used for 3 circles of one class, if this class can’t work it’d be annoying to too many people.

#18

bosses that cast lvl 10 original frost pillar and one shot players with ice wall projectiles.

wait… this isn’t the New Boss Mechanics thread OxO;

1 Like
#19

What happened is a that lot of monsters could heal from fire damage or very little damage from it, darkness damage was a big issue when almost all monsters of the game are dark element, and linker immune monsters was plain stupid instead of just reducing -75% damage for example.

The real issue was that in that “balanced” environment, they forgot to make it equally immune or hard for physical, magical, ice, lighting, holy, psychokinesis and maybe other type damage.

Then why don’t you say to the biggest video games companies that putting difficulty choices with better rewards was a very bad choice lol?
When players want better rewards locked behind harder modes, they have 3 choices, play with guild, play with friends, rmt or f uck off, it’s the main social aspect of mmo seriously.

#20

i haven’t played in several months while the easy leveling really put me off along with the incredibly easy dungeons. the main thing that bothered me was sever stability, my current comp is high end so i tried tos on it and while it ran much smoother. the game still had problems in dungeons.