Well, compared to other modern MMOs it’s not. The standard formula nowadays is completely quest-based to max level, then instance-based to farm gear. Like you can quest all the way to max level, and still have tons of undone quests in the world.
There’s very very little modern MMOs that you actually have to sit and grind for the sake of grinding, which ToS still has.
Yes I just read through the whole interview and I agree with you. It turns out their initial version had no quest lines and they only added quests because their players were pressuring them to. They even considered removing quests altogether for the 3rd kCBT, but decided to only remove the quest markers.
Stay tuned for the translation though.
I disagree, ToS is the definition of quest based, which WoW democratized. And look at WoW, you could also grind, and you could also run instances.
When a game has literally several hundred, if not a thousand quests, not calling it a “quest-based game” is extremely misleading. And I’m not even talking about how the rewards (stats, collection, items, exp cards) make it basically mandatory to do them.
To quote a friend: “It’s like the difference between climbing a mountain or using a sky lift. And then people being like WELL YOU DON’T HAVE TO USE THE LIFT :B”
I think it’s because the definition for “not quest-based” has changed. You’re just not going to find a modern, commercial MMO that’s completely open-world, >90% grinding level-based game anymore. You just won’t… that style’s been left behind in the past with the last decade. It’s all quest/loot/instance-based now.
It’s probably the reason why they’re claiming that ToS “is not quest-based”. You still have to quest because the rewards are worth it, but it just means they rely less on quests than their counterparts.
Some upcoming MMOs are starting to advertise themselves as “without mindless quests”, such as Lineage Eternal, so hopefully this horrible mindless quest trend becomes a thing of the past.
The Korean players don’t know what they want by the way. They complain for the lack of quest, then in a recent Q&A, they complained that the game had too many quests. Make up your mind, people.
It’s probably redundant but I was reading a bit of it and translated part 1 and 2 here:
http://pastebin.com/NQGVVE56
will bring rest later. I’m kinda slowly and literally translating to the best of my limited abilities. I was originally doing this on reddit but realized it went over 10k characters limit. There’s still Part 3 and Final part I haven’t combed through carefully.
Continuing from my previous post for Part 3. Final Part coming sometime later. Sorry, I’m a slowpoke and getting the exact wording is infinitely harder than just getting the gist by reading a few minutes of it.
This time, I’ll try and just fit it in the forums.
Part 3. The Tree of Savior that the developer team dreams of and concerns about roles.
This thought kept coming up in my head as I conducted the interview. “Just what game is this Tree of Savior that the developer team is drawing up?” They say that they are changing the game according to the feedback they receive from their users, but they didn’t seem to have any thoughts on changing the big picture. From the start the game was giving rise to diverging opinions, but it seemed to me that it had little thought on drawing in as many users as possible.
I was constantly getting the impression that this game really doesn’t match itself to the market. Being unique in this way could be an advantage but the opposite could happen where as a result of polarizing opinions, it may be a critical disadvantage by not being able to draw many users .
Listening to what they thought of what Tree of Savior should be, it seemed that the development team dreamed of a game where the user becomes a resident of the world. To an extent the users themselves conduct some actions normally relegated to NPCs and they sit side by side to chat in town. As the users complete their characters, they are finding their own roles. Literally a game where you play a role, hence Role Playing Game is what the devs dreamed of. (TN: this last sentence worked a lot better with mixtures of Korean and English side by side, lol.)
However, if you want to stick to the essences of RPG, you must draw in a lot of users. Don’t you have to find other users with the abilities you need since roles are divided? However, if there aren’t enough people to take up these necessary roles, you can not create the ecosystem for the game. This is the same as not being able to present a play because you don’t have enough actors to play the roles. The developer team says that they worry a lot about this.
Tree of Savior was a game made with considerable amount of rebellion in mind from the start. Everyone makes full 3D graphics, so let’s make a 2D. For going low-end on graphics, let’s make the server have some high specs. Well, a concept like that. We think of this game as one that might be liked by users who don’t find it suitable to get a bunch of levels and going from instance dungeon to instance dungeon to farm.
Personally, I think of Tree of Savior as an MMORPG that focuses on the ‘R’ of the acronym. I also think I am drawn to that aspect too.
RPG is a Role Playing Game, couldn’t you say it’s a bit of a theatre? If everyone’s only fighting that just doesn’t seem right. We worried a lot about ‘If I had a role in the game what would it be?’. (TN: Developer thinking from player’s perspective) There was a video that was uploaded which showed a pyromancer who casted a fireball on the ground and a cryomancer would play soccer with him using the fireball and some goal posts.(TN: little unclear to me but maybe the cryo was making ice walls as goal posts? or they just used the environment? or some other pyro skills? No idea since I haven’t watched that video and I have little experience with both classes.)
Most videos show just farming normally, but isn’t it refreshing to see someone playing around like that? At that moment I really felt that we were seeing what we intended. You can’t really find this kind of fun in other games, you know? Since nobody makes games like this, we had no choice but to make our own. Of course we’re not claiming that we’ll replace the current MMORPG market.
The users gradually find their own roles. If you go into town, you can find squires sharpening swords, alchemists brewing potions and roasting gems for other users. If we can see things like that one could say that players have settled on roles as we intended. If we released some boss on the test server saying that we need to test a boss, we were able to see base camps and free refreshment tables form in the backline to support the users. The MMORPG that I’ve been thinking of is like this.
One could say that it’s replacing NPCs. Shall we look at an example? In the cleric tree, the Oracle class skills recently got changed. Its 3rd Circle skill can change gender of the user. To use the skill it takes quite a bit of materials. We wanted to leave roles like this in the hands of the users. But since it’s the only skill they gain at Circle 3… that seems to be how the class will be identified. Surely, it won’t be a popular class?
If you want to be given this role, there’s a number of tests you have to pass. Among the classes getting patched in, there is a class called the ‘Kabalist’. This class can increase a user’s max HP by a huge amount. It’s just the max HP value that is increased and it’s up to you to fill up the HP bar. There’s another class called the ‘Plague Doctor’ which can use ‘Healing Factor’. This is a regeneration skill. If you lose HP, this regenerates the lost HP so quickly that it’s scary. (TN: The expression is lot a bit upon translation.)
If these two use their skills together, wouldn’t it be easy for them to survive no matter how many attacks they receive? But you could die too. We’ll observe how users will utilize characters that can fulfill such roles. We won’t force roles. There’s a lot of cases where that was attempted and failed.
Since there’s so many skills there’s some rare sights that you can come across as a result of these skills working together. If it’s too strong, we’ll adjust. We think that we can make very fun scenarios or phenomenons as a result of skills coming together like puzzle pieces. I have high expectations in that regard.
We expect users to find and make their own roles. Certainly, Tree of Savior is a game that is polarizing. We aim to be ‘distasteful’. (TN: I think they’re saying that they’re deliberately not conforming to popular opinion at large. Not that they want to alienate their current user base)
We really are worrying a lot about roles. Specific classes won’t be popular. We know that already. If you complete a class and worked on settling on that identity, it’s a situation where you’ve given up on opportunity cost? This character is the best possible in this area. Even though the usage may be limited, aforementioned point would be certain.
Second point is that of the definition of what a player is. We want a player to be not just a single character but multiple characters defining a single player. That’s why we’ve implemented a lodge. Perhaps we could say that the lodge defines the player? You can look at social interactions as something you do as a team. We want that one character in the player’s lodge to signify one aspect of the player’s abilities.
The third point is depending on ‘skill’ the value can shift. Remember the Oracle example I mentioned earlier? It must be quite the arduous task to even reach 3rd Circle Oracle. However, to change a character’s gender, someone has to get to that point to make it possible. It takes that much effort. That’s what it says effectively. It could be a role that nobody will select. However, just having that as an option is meaningful in itself.
It may be wasteful and luxurious. Sometimes the effort put in inherently gives the endeavor its value, you know? (TN: It may sound bit weird to force the rhetorical question, but otherwise I couldn’t see how to make one as in the original) Even though it’s a non mainstream class and non-battle class, the person that reaches the peak of that class is that rare and that much impressive. There are roles that will give the feeling that ‘oh this is possible too’ instead of being useful all around. Such things will probably have a warning issued in game. If you can, please don’t? (TN: umm… Kim Seyong, you lost me sir.)
Picture caption: As a similar example, TOS has Templar class as the only one that can form a guild.
However I had the feeling it was excessive. So, we could say that we’ve compensated for it quite a bit? I think our early plans were too focused on the roles. Let’s say that as a wizard, one invested fully into Pyromancer and then selected alchemist. There’s plenty of meaning in process of progressing to alchemist but once you’ve advanced to alchemists nothing really works. (TN: Uh can any alchemists verify?)
Even if you are a crafting profession, you need to have basic farming capability or survivability. If your combat capabilities dies as a result of drastic class changes that in itself can be a problem. The amount of fatigue caused by that can’t be ignored either. Through the CBTs, we’ve made changes to things like this.
Classes introduced at the 7th Rank have fire power to address such situations. We’ve removed restrictions since there’s a lot of skills from previous classes that just don’t work well together. There’s lot of new skills too. We’ve refined classes a bit so that they can take on supportive roles while simultaneously be able to make progress. (TN: aka level up) We’d like to hear opinions from those who played in the CBT after they’ve experienced the OBT.
The fact that we can’t give all the roles to the player is a point of concern. It feels as if uniqueness of classes like Krivis die through sale of scrolls. (TN: I’m guessing Daino Scrolls sold by a Pardoner.) Tree of Savior prefers to promote party play. If Krivis is around there’s more buffs to be had. If priest is the class that gives variety of buffs, Krivis has the role of changing that environment. (TN: aka increase max buff limit and allow all of them buffs)
But if you buy a scroll, it becomes possible even without a Krivis… Krivis’s skill is something that will be used frequently even in the late game. However, if you leave that solely to the Krivis, there may be problems in supply and demand. When you look for a compromise, it can’t be helped that some character’s uniqueness will die a bit.
We’ve implemented the scrolls, but it looks like we still have to observe the test in order to see which side is better and examine the transition.
Actually not mind for the auto attack, but at least make auto attack more interesting.
For example, Wiz auto attack is terrible without any modifier, at least i can shoot AoE damage like fireball, iceball, with no cd but deduct SP like archer’s oblique shoot.
Let us do it by modify our weapon with gems to change elements, new recipe, awakening or etc.
Not only that most of the mmos lock u in a linear class build and doesn’t encourage build diversity this is the another reason tos can shine cause everyone can make their own build
We want to appeal to people who wish to play at a slower tempo (i.e. casual?).
We also do not intend to change the game into one that focuses on skills.
Thank God.
So, please, enable account storage 
I’m pretty excited to see this statement because it’s the one I’ve always hoped for from TOS. Overall, really really am satisfied with the whole answers. And many thanks to all the translators 
I’m wondering about the supposed auto-attack focus.
With each character getting 6+ out of 80 classes, each with a bunch of skills to use… it doesn’t feel like they were aiming for auto-attack as the focus XD
If they did want to make it about auto-attack, then I’d have expected skills being mainly about improving and manipulating your auto-attack in all kinds of ways. Instead, when you’re in a party, you feel embarresed to even use auto-attacks rather than something relevant LOL.
For auto-attack of savior, I’d have made damaging skills be buffs that modify your auto-attack for a while.
Let’s say, Oblique Shot and Multi-Shot. Instead of being skills you use, you’d use them once as a buff, and cause your auto-attack to work like those skills currently do, for either a number of hits or a specific duration. That way, most attacks would be actually let loose via auto-attack-key.
But that sounds unnecessarily complicated, and I’m certain we’re all fine with how it currently is lol.
Glad to see these points made again.
Lots of people looking at TOS with a “get to max level as quickly as possible, then pvp/gvg”-mentality and feel like they might be misunderstanding what this game is about. It’s first and foremost about the journey/exploration of a world and the growth of your character, rather than about a competitive end-game.
Continuing from Posts 23 and 24 in this thread where I’ve been translating.
Fin. Message with the open beta coming up.
Kim Seyong
= I think that those who like Tree of Savior will have a lot to tell us. There will be those who don’t like it too but the game started with a bit of a defiance and it’s headed in a different direction from other games. It will be difficult to be loved by all users.
Rather than a game where you compete by getting everyone to be stronger(TN: I think he means the kind of games where combat and dps is sole focus), I want to make a different game. MMORPGs are all rather similar. Get stronger than others, and then flaunt that. However as you know Tree of Savior is a game where you can have a role with just the character itself rather than just the capabilities (TN: this last word maybe a synonym for stats but I chose to go more broadly. It may be a mistranslation).
Rather than compete with might, my character and the classes that make up my character represents what the player is. Ultimately it’s a game where player’s choice is important. If I raised three characters on the server, my activities are all part of one account, in other words one team. Upon choosing a team, you chat and trade as a team. (TN: so then why no shared bank/storage? T_T) Party play is also done as a team so the party is preserved even after switching characters.
We’ll form a class that establishes the guild with that lighthearted idea in mind (TN: uh what?). We want to make a game where raising a character for vengeance and having the team be one unified personality are possible. (TN: dunno how those two things go hand in hand but ok…)
The game may not be suitable for those who relieve stress by playing busily. It’s really a laid back game… I’ve gotta live in this world, I’m communicating in a new way in this world. That’s the kind of feeling we’re going for. Tree of Savior may be a instrument of a new form of communication? I think those who have such thoughts may find this game likable.
Even in the open beta test build, I anticipate that there will be many bugs. For those who are playing, please give us lots of feedback. We want to make a better (TN: game) world. We’ll be able to show a more splendid game upon release if we can progress with improvements. It’d be great if players who enjoy the game leisurely can play and give us lots of good responses.
Pic caption: Open beta test will start on the 17th.
Since @1curryman2 has pretty much got everything covered, I won’t be translating the Japanese version unless for some reason people want me to.
I’m with you guys. That design philosophy screams shared storage and equipment yet it’s not there. 
In my head there is a high chance that maybe that will be in our lodges and that’s why we didn’t see it yet…maybe I’m wrong… 
I think it will be like in PoE at certain point, you will have a stash on the lodge (with furniture) and since it will be implemented in a specific area of the game as a map we can put stuff there and pick with other chars.
Well it is quest based, yet not, more in the “not” as quest gives nothing but xp(cards) most of the time or shuffled in completely out of the way areas.
Without the quest database, I would have missed 20% of the sub-quests if not more. Heck first time around I grind-hell chapel fighting for farm spots…until I realized there was a completely optional lvl70-80 map of sub quests.
In the age of FAQs ya…a minor difference, but it’s totally is different fallback to the “As long as you follow the story and do quests, you’re set” tone of WoW-clone.
If one isn’t careful, they can end up being lvl130 with lvl1 pants…ya…lvl1. That’s totally counter to the “quest” games.
Same, but that’s because you are suppose to explore outside of the main path from time to time…
that’s what I hate when people say “the game is completely lineal” cause they just follow the main quests like mindless bots 
Awesome they talked about my video?
That, and…
Did someone besides me actually notice the small hint in the ? tutorials under Barracks?
Its mentioned there that you could send messages AND Items with the barrage message system.
What does that say to you? First, you can freely send items via messages if implemented… and second, you have access on items to send, you need a shared storage!
So in fact, its planned