First of all, I want to thank IMC for letting me test your game during this beta phase. I had a blast, enjoying every bit of my hours played.
The only purpose of this post is to give you as much constructive criticism as possible, trying to not stop writing too much about topics that are already discussed in the official forums.
Instead of experiencing the late game of this beta (levels 140+), with my limited spare time I used this period of time to test different builds on three of the four classes available. These are my findings, my opinions and my suggestions, so you’re welcome to consider them however you like.
Special mention to the general audience in this forum: you will have here a subjective-based reading, so if you have a different opinion by all means express it (without the hate, of course). Responses are welcome, but I encourage you to create your own detailed post so that we can all help developing the best game ever.
Final note before we begin: English is not my native language. Sorry for any inconsistency and/or writing mistake.
Thank you in advance for reading.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
I. Classes: General feedback
I.1 Shields and sub-weapons
I.2. Cooldown system and cast time/animation
I.3. Auto-attacks and HP/SP regeneration
I.4. AoE ratio and consistency
I.5. Stats distribution and effects
I.6. Overheat and 1 point-wonder skills
II. Classes: Specific feedback
II.1. Swordsman
II.2. Archer
II.3. Wizard
II.4. Cleric
III. Final notes
I. Classes: General feedback
Tree of savior has 4 different classes to choose from. They all have different weapons and skills, but they have some things in common. I will discuss a few of them here.
I.1. Shields and sub-weapons
If you decided to dual wield, you have the chance to use a dagger or a shield. However, both of them does not benefit you the way they should.
Indeed, if you select a shield you have the problem that you can’t manually block: this is a Peltasta-only attribute. Because of this, all shields that do not have special bonuses have no particular use for the Swordsman, except for the physical defense they provide and they lucky automatic block it can occur during a fight.
My initial suggestion is: make it possible to manually block with a shield and create an attribute that allows to increase the block chance. However, if this is intentional, my alternate suggestion is: give them one of four natural stats:
a) magic defense (for light shields);
b) evasion and/or high block chance (for parrying shields -they could have both, because they’re % based-);
c) standard physical defense (for medium shields -the ones that exist right now-), or
d) high physical defense and increased stagger duration on block (for heavyweight two-handed shields -Rodelero only, would require a level 1 passive attribute to allow using them-).
On the other hand, if you choose a dagger, the same problem arises: if they don’t have a special bonus (like arde dagger) you just simply do less damage compared to a normal attack with your main weapon (exception is Corsair, but remember we’re talking about the class in general).
My suggestion on this matter is: give sub-weapons one of three natural stats:
a) magic attack (enchanted daggers that bypass the damage penalty you could have versus a monster with your main weapon -pierce against leather, for example-);
b) evasion and/or block (for parrying daggers -less block than parrying shields, but more evasion to compensate), or
c) debuff on hit (amount and/or duration can be increased on hit up to a cap- limit increase depending on the item level). Examples could be physical/magic defense decrease, evasion/accuracy decrease, poison/bleed, fire attack/defense decrease, among others.
I.2. Cooldown system and cast time/animation
There is absolutely nothing wrong with skills having a cooldown. It’s just a different kind of mechanic and a lot of games now share (Tree of Savior is a MMORPG, but cooldowns exists on RTS games like Warcraft/Starcraft and MOBA games like DotA/League Of Legends.
However, those games have something in common: over years of class balancing, they have achieved a motto: if the cooldown is long, the result must be massive. In other means, the cooldown duration must be directly proportional to the impact of the skill (damage/defense wise, buff amount/duration, etc.)
This is a beta, so numbers must be polished. I just encourage you to create incredible good looking-high impact skills with a long cooldown, but bear in mind that the average amount of time a five-cell party are a couple of seconds, so no matter how good a skill is, if the cooldown is one hour chances are no one will use it. My suggestion is 90 seconds for the very best high-end skills.
Related to this topic is the skills cast time. If the average amount of time a monster walks/fly to hit you in melee range is 1 second, having unmovable-while-casting skills with 3+ cast time is unbearable for solo play. Changes are made so fix this issue (for example, Cataphract’s skill set can now be casted while moving) but this should be an all class solution, not just a job only attribute.
If this is intentional, however, then the only response could be reducing the cast time of low-end skills, or create attributes (toggled on/off) that decreases cast time at the cost of reduction of damage, duration, etc.
Finally, on behalf of all the players that have a romantic affair with latency (sad violin is playing on the back of my mind), reduce cast animation to prevent monsters interrupt you even when you cast the skill at max range.
Right now, you can skip the animation by jumping or doing another action, but that looks awkward and ugly. As an example, with a level 15 multi-shot, archer C1 skill, you can jump while the animation is showing the sixth arrow is leaving your bow. This makes that the rest of the arrows keeps hitting the monster with no one shooting them, and you can also attack and use other skills, including a second multi-shot because it as overheat.
To fix this issue, prevent animation cancelling as much as possible, but reduce the general cast animation of the skills (remember only the Wizard class has the sure-spell skill).
I.3. Auto-attacks and HP/SP regeneration
Because of the skill cooldown mechanic Tree of Savior has, auto-attacks have an important role in this game. However, attacking too much prevents your HP/SP regeneration, so you need to have a balance between offensive and resting phases (unless to use potions non-stop).
Suggestions on this matter include the following:
a) dramatically increase the HP/SP regeneration, because the numbers at this point a abysmally low (use for reference the Paladin skill restoration, even with that buff on the difference is marginal);
b) create an attribute that increases the amount of HP/SP regeneration a bonfire adds while sitting -could be job only, Paladin for example-;
c) allow items to have life steal/mana steal as a stat, or
d) make auto-attacks restore a tiny bit of HP/SP on hit. To prevent abuse with high attack speed or multi-hit skills, it could have an internal cooldown of, for example, 2 seconds.
I.4. AoE ratio and consistency
AoE ratio is one of the most infuriating and visually unappealing stats in the game. Having a massive skills with an AoE ratio of 10 that disintegrate monsters…but leaves unharmed a tiny kepa that was in the area because it was the eleventh mob? Using swashbuckling to redirect monsters into a bottleneck can only be destroyed by using multi-hit skills or unlimited AoE ratio skills (like Flame Ground).
Balance wise this is not good and characters almost require to have AoE ratio increase of their items (Vubbe fighter gloves Best In Slot until level 170 because of this). Additionally, some one-hit only skills like archer C1’s multi-shot can hit more than one target with the same arrow by leveling your AoE ratio to 3 (achievable on the beta by using the Vubbe Fighter Gloves and Light Plate Armor-Pants for the AoE Ratio bonus set), which is impossible to know beforehand: the discovery was an accident.
In my opinion, the brute fix to this issue is removing AoE ratio from the game, changing it to AoE radius/range. That way, players can choose in their itemization if they want bigger area of effect skills or not, because even the smallest one can hit every monster. It’s visually ad-hoc and prevents inconsistencies.
I.5. Stats distribution and effects
One of the problems that a lot of MMORPG games share if that there is not enough variety in the end game character customization when it comes to stats distribution. If the game is too easy, every level point goes to offensive stats; if it’s too hard then and only then you remember that HP and defense are also relevant.
To put it in perspective, in the beta right there are some PVE builds that require full DEX, because they can dish out enough burst AoE damage to a pack of monsters that it is not necessary to have concerns about defense; on the other hand, there are PVP builds that have all points in CON, as not only single target magic damage skills are unavoidable and unblockable, but also because the difference in damage versus a full INT or STR character is not enough.
My suggestions on this topic are the following: make every effect an own personal stats. By I mean that STR, CON, INT, SPR and DEX should give only one increased stats, while also it would require the creation of more stats. Common names are WISD (wisdom), LUCK (luck), AGI (agility), RES (resistance), WGHT (weight), MOV (movement), ASPD (attack speed), CAST (cast time), ACC (accuracy), EVA (evasion), STA (stamina), HP (health points), MP/SP (mana/spell points), etc.
The concept of having STR stats that give only damage makes it unappealing to max without sharing points in other aspects. If you do that, you will have a slow movement character with not enough accuracy and critical damage. On the other hand, a high physical defense and fire resistance character will not have a mana pool and will need good itemization to compensate the rest of the elemental resistances.
To sum up, level the player choose in what way his/her character will excel at. With high-end numbers, a max fire resistance should have at least a 90% damage reduction in that aspect and will not be overpowered at all, simply because they will receive extreme high electric damage, for example; a high-end movement speed characters will breeze through maps and AoE skills will never hit them, but single target skills will without enough evasion or magic block.
Character customization in this kind of environment would be extremely difficult and players will have no other choice but to test. Guides will be needed for casual players that are confused and do not want to start new characters, so they will search for information on the official forums, making contact with the rest of the community. Only players that completely ignore the community will consider the game hard to understand, so an ingame reminder and/or developers guides/tutorials are a must in this situation.
In consequence, party play will be necessary to help each other, because with lack of stats the game will increase its difficulty, and solo play should be rewarded accordingly, as cleaning an area of monsters against all odds will not only feel good, but should also have bonus in drops, experience or money.
There is so much to say in this regard and it would probably create the biggest debate here, but there are also a lot of topics remaining, so for now I will focus on them.
I.6. Overheat and 1 point-wonder skills
Skills points are an extremely limited resource, not only because they are only 45 available in classes that at max rank they would need 100 points to max every skills (Highlander and Barbarian, for example, with 4 level 15 skills from C1, 3 level 10 skills from C2 and 2 skills from C3), but also because distributing them in different skills make you a jack of all trades, but master of none.
This scenario creates and environment of no build variety, putting 1 point tops in lacking skills, or none at all, not because they’re completely useless, but because they’re not good enough compared to the others.
A way to balance things and prevent 1 point-wonder skills is number tweaking, of course, but also overheat could be used. My suggestion is make every skill to have a possible overheat.
What? That is extremely overpowered, isn’t it? Of course, but is you make some restrictions it wouldn’t be. These are balance alternatives:
a) Skills receive an added overheat by leveling to 7+, while already overheat skills can have another charge. This creates the chance of having 6 skills with overheat, and 6 skills are what a job class could normally level up to 15 or 10 at C3.
But what about level 5 C3 Skills? Refer to b);
b) High-end C3 skills with long cooldowns can have a passive skills that gives them overheat at the cost of huge amounts of SP (or to prevent high mana pool abuse, change the amount of SP to % based).
Using all charges should normally deplete the mana pool of the user. Consider this like completely exhausting the character, just like athletes in real life.
c) Overheat skills at level 5 could add that their charges have now their own internal cooldown. In the beta, if you use the first charge of an overheat skill with 10 second cooldown, you will recover your charge at more than 25 seconds, which is not intended.
However, the intented result right now is that if you use the second charge when you had 1 second remaining to recover the first one, the entire skill would start its cooldown state, preventing you from using the almost-obtained charge.
The suggestion is that every charge has its own cooldown if you level it at least to 5. That way, you can pace your skills however you want, and even high-end C3 skills could have this addition if they are maxed.
II. Specific class feedback
II.1. Swordsman
As the main melee class in this game, the swordsman excels at it: with numerous weapons at his/her disposal, the mass audience enjoy dishing out damage in different ways, including slashes, pierces and strikes. Because of this, I hope the class name changes to Warrior, Fighter or something of sorts, because the sum of it with the use of a spear (Hoplite), a pistol (Corsair) or a kunai (Shinobi) results in something awkward.
There is an issue of changing classes. Because a lot of skills need a specific weapon requirement, certain classes does not have any compatibility with others. For example, shield driven skills like Rodelero’s cannot be used without a shield, and as such there is 0% symbiosis with Highlander’s two handed weapon skills. In my humble opinion, this is NOT a problem: environment creates build diversity.
However, the issue lies indirectly in the following: this only happens in the Swordsman class (and marginally in the Archer class). Wizards and Clerics have absolutely no restrictions and could use the same weapon from level 1 to 600 to use every skill in their kit. This is only compensated with the possibility of using slash, pierce and strike damage skills, although you need certain jobs to accomplish this feature (this encourages build customization).
My suggestion is the creation of more weapons for the rest of the classes, so that everyone would be put in the position is customization, selecting classes and weapons accordingly. Specifics on this later.
Finally, some job balancing and personal experience on Swordsman, Peltasta, Hoplite an Cataphract:
- Swordsman: Gung-ho and Concentrate are good C1 skills and extremely effective at max attribute, but those passives should be in C2. That way in the second rank there will be a hard selection between Swordsman C2, Highlander or Peltasta.
Restrain should have less percent at max level, but longer duration. 30 job levels are too much to offer to a single job class to only have in the end a 60 second buff (C3) with 120 seconds cooldown.
Finally, C3 needs love. AoE ratios of 2 with one handed weapon compared to Highlander C2 or Barbarian C1 with two handed weapons that can get ratios of 4+ is not comparable at all.
- Peltasta: great job class, excellent balance. Good enough damage for a second rank job class, and a lot of crowd control to compensate. My only concern is why can’t you have both Gung-ho and Guardian activated? They should just cancel each other in the stats sheet.
Let the player decide how much offense/defense they want by leveling those skills. They could have a level 15 Gung-ho and a level 1 Guardian (for the 18% evasion increase) if they want and it would not be overpowered, because you’re using precious skill points on them, which is a limited resource.
There are some numbers consistency with the damage of Rim and Umbro blow when used in the C2’s High Guard stance. These skills should do high amounts of damage even though Peltasta is a tank job class because you’re sacrificing 50% of your damage in everything else: auto-attacks and the rest of your skills. If they need a longer cooldown to compensate, I think it would not be a problem, because you are going to wait to use in conjunction with swashbuckling anyway.
- Hoplite: Overall nice job class, with high damage skills even without leveling their attributes, and the ability to use finestra, one of the best buffs in the game.
Use this skill as an example for the rest: great buff, duration equals cooldown if you level it up high enough, has room for even increased effect at C3 and has passives attributes that creates customization variety (10% INT applied into physical damage).
Balance-wise, C2 and C3 are only used to increase the level of C1 skills. This means that there are no reasons to put more than one point in 4 Hoplite skills (Thrust, Lunge, Long-Stride and Throwing Spear). This has to change by, for example, number tweaking and/or adding overheat to them.
Put the player in a tough decision: should I level finestra to 15 or just to 10 and put more points in spear lunge, as the piercing bonus effects increases with levels? Is pierce so overpowered that you have to max it, or is level 11 good enough on C3, because the bind effect attribute of Throwing spear is 100% and has overheat but REQUIRES to have at least level 4? These are just examples.
- Cataphract: my only concern was the skill’s casting. On the Korean Closed Beta they already updated the job class to be able to cast skills while moving, so I’m happy and have nothing else for constructive criticism.
II.2. Archer
Related to the above mentioned, archer can now use pistols and will be able to wield rifles and cannons. Therefore, the name should change to fit all these aspects. I don’t have a new name in the tip of my tongue right now, but I think Ranger could fit (this requires a name change for the Ranger job class).
In regards of weapon compatibility, Archers have the same indirect issue a Swordsman, but in a minor extent (Fletcher, Schwarzer Reiter). They are specialized jobs, so I think its fine. However, the weapon distribution level wise is not balanced.
Indeed, while Swordsman can use up to 5 different main weapons as early as level 75, Archers can only use 2. Pistols, Rifles and cannons will be used a hundred levels later, if not more on some weapons.
My suggestion is changing the job order and/or create a pistol class (not mounted like Schwarzer Reiter) or a throwing class (using darts or dual wield daggers, with job only daggers as main weapons). Name examples could be Gunner and Juggler.
Finally, some job balancing and personal experience regarding Archer C3, Ranger, Sapper and Wugushi:
- Archer: Slow and steady, the Archer is the proof of how good scaling skills can end up dealing high amounts of damage. Multi-shot no only increases the number of arrows, but also the damage of each one of them. The same happens with Oblique Shot: with the increase in damage comes the reduction of the damage penalty that the skill naturally has on the second target.
The only problem that this job class has lies in the AoE department. They have a lot of trouble with packs of large monsters, especially in quest-related ambushes, where the monster’s HP is higher. The same happens when some bosses summons minions that blocks the damage of certain skills like Multi-shot.
My simple suggestion in this case is add an AoE skill, preferably one with overheat and no monster limit restriction, like Pyromancer’s Flame Ground. A rain of arrows would be fine, with an attribute that binds the monsters affected by it for a period of time if they are hit twice in less than two seconds. This will have synergy with Multi-shot, even though it is not an AoE ability.
Finally, Archer C3 needs love, because adding only one skill that has a 30 second cooldown and a base damage of 508 (254x2) not good enough compared with other classes.
- Ranger: effective job class, excels in the AoE department. Balance is needed in skills like High Anchoring and Time Bomb, but Barrage is such a good skill that will carry for for at least two ranks, and even a third if you use both overheat charges.
The only problem lies in having good skills only in C3. I suggest switching positions between Bounce Shot (from C3 to C2) and Time Bomb (from C2 to C3), this will create an environment where C2 has good enough skills, while C3 is saving the best for last.
- Sapper: Absolutely fantastic job class. Very fun to play and cast animations are very short. However, cast-time makes impossible to use some skills effectively, like Punji Stake.
Because the first rank of sappers are on the third tier, which is still considered early game, the reagents of the trap related skills should cost a lot less, at least the ones from C1.
Finally, Collar Bomb does not need number tweaking on damage, but a lot in the radius. It’s almost impossible to hit a pack of monsters that are not extremely close. Also, it should have a different way of applying the debuff on monsters. I think that the best choice is using the same method of Spike Shooter: the AoE Cursor. This prevents using the skill on thin air and starting the cooldown with no results.
- Wugushi: one of the best balanced job classes in the beta, this rank excels at single target damage and boss rushing. It has a couple of good AoE skills too, but the Zhendu + Needle Blow literally leaves no one standing.
One quality of life improvement to be considered is that the infection spread of the Wugong gu skill only occurs when you attack the initial target. Unfortunately, because the skill also has a base damage included, you normally kill the monster before spreading the infection to the max limit available.
Because of this reason, please allow to spread the infection while hitting the new infected targets, as this will highly increase the chances of achieving the max limit of the skill.
Finally, if IMC’s intention is to make the possibility of using low tier skills on end game content, skills will need scaling, especially DoT ones like Wugushi’s. My suggestion is that, to prevent overpowered skills early game, create an attribute on Wugushi C3 that makes skills scale with DEX. That way, only Wugushi-centered builds will have the chance to use scaling poison attacks on mid-high levels, instead of players with only Wugushi C1 doing extremely high damage with just Needle Blow level 5 (100% enhanced attribute).
II.3. Wizard
Wizards are actually fine, generally speaking. Name, job classes and items. IMC had it right regarding the spellcaster class.
My only concern are the lack of suitable sub-weapons. If you want to use a shield for defense is completely justified, but if you want to have a one hand rod and a sub-weapon, physical damage daggers are awkward. In this case, IMC should consider adding tomes or spellcaster gloves with magic circles on them. They could be used as items that boots offensive stats, leaving the two handed staff with the AoE ratio (or better, radius) and increased damage for variety.
Finally, some job balancing and personal experience regarding Wizard, Pyromancer, Linker and Elementalist:
- Wizard: good job class overall, it is the pinnacle of hard customization, as you have to make the decision of leveling slowly and with a lot of hardships, all to obtain important skills like Surespell and Quickcast, or completely ignoring them to have high AoE damage with Pyromancer of huge AoE crowd control skills with Cryomancer.
The circle that needs love is the number 2, as getting Surespell with no long cast-time skills on C1 makes it rather lacking. Include and AoE skill with no cast-time that is not too disrupting (unlike earthquake) with an toggling attribute that highly increases its damage at the cost of adding cast-time. With this, players can choice for a quick low-mid tier skill, or a high damage skill that has synergy with Surespell.
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Pyromancer: much of this class has been debated in the official forums, so I will not go deep with the analysis here. Just add a toggling attribute that makes the fireball pushable only by its caster, and make the flame debuff part of every skill and auto-attack as and added buff of the enchant fire skill. If those two improvements are included, this job class will be a fan favorite (Flare has such a cool animation that I really wish we could use it effectively in the future).
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Linker: this class fulfills its job. In my opinion then numbers are balanced, but the issue lies in having Joint Penalty and Hangman’s Knot in Linker C1.
Indeed, having both of them at C1 makes Linker an incredible effective 1 point wonder rank class, that every Wizard will have because it increases your damage exponentially up to a cap. If IMC want Linkers to have their own identity as a support class instead of being part of every customization, then leaving things like this is the wrong choice.
The only suggestion that comes to mind if changing Joint Penalty to C2, to a max of 3 monsters at level 5 and 7 at C3’s level 10 (with an attribute that increases this limit by 3, to a maximum of 10), while changing Hangman’s Knot to C3.
With these changes, players that choose to support will want to have linker in their build and ranking it to C3 to get the best benefits possible, while parties will crave for this kind of specialized classes, as they will maximize their potential in both offense and defense.
- Elementalist: this job classes excels in the offensive side of battle, but this is only achievable in C2 and C3. The reason is that C1 has random damage skills.
Indeed, Prominence is completely random, while hail does not hit monsters in the area of effect with some of the dropping ice shards. Finally, Electrocute is random in the sense that it does not hit enemies that are too close or too far: it kinds of function like a Shotgun, with its short range and cone-like damage zone.
To fix these issues, Hail should not be random at all and Electrocute needs to be targetable, at least the first one of the electric chain. Prominence should stay random, but because this job class already has synergy with Pyromancer, it would be fun is this skills seek for monsters that has the flame debuff on them.
Regarding Meteor, I think it’s cast-time is fine, but a little too much for this game’s pace. It has to be in the high end, because it’s a finisher move, but 10 seconds without Surespell and Quickcast is a lifestime in battle.
Finally, Frost Cloud should hit flying targets, not only because it’s a C3 skill, but also because, like the name implies, it’s a cloud and not a ground-originated effect.
II.4. Cleric
Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to test this class, so I will not share with you any inputs at all.
My only suggestion, just like Wizards and Archers, are more weapons for the class and distributing them as equal as possible. Examples for weapon are wrecking balls and fists for main hand and rosaries for sub-weapons, while examples for names could be Martyr (excels at magic defense and reducing damage from behind) and Ritualist (excels at debuffing traps and crowd control, the latter something that the cleric class does not have much of -Sadhu’s Possession, Druid’s Telepath and Monk’s 1 inch punch: Silence come to mind, but nothing else-).
III. Final Notes
While this is clearly a long post, it is only part 1 of my feedback. I have a lot to say on Monsters, Leveling (Grinding vs Questing) and Miscellaneous things regarding graphics, audio, quality of life improvements, etc. However, this is what I could achieve before the beta ended, so here is it.
I hope you agreed on some points and disagreed on others! I know there is room for debate and improvement here, so please join the conversation and post your thoughts.
Thanks for reading.
TL;DR = You have come to the wrong place if you want a summary of a long feedback. Sorry!