Hi, I’ve been playing ToS for a while now, and I’ve decided to share some insights on current state of game. Some of you might know me, most probably don’t. I was helping @DiscKZee here and there, but I was mostly making utilities and delivering info for a medium international community. I got multiple characters to various levels, right now I have two Rank 7 characters. I’ve also been in Lithuania once.
I will try to write in simple English, so that everyone can understand easily. I might appear rude at some points, but this is for the better good.
I’m also writing whatever comes to mind, so I might forget some aspects now, but will come back to add them later.
This game needs some big improvements. You guys are trying to release the game when it’s not ready to be released. I assume either you’re running out of money, or Nexon is pushing you to release it, that’s fine, money makes the world go round. We don’t know when exactly you want to release the game internationally, it might be December 2016, and the “release” international version will be very different and better from “release” Korean version.
But, the sooner, the better. It’s easier to fix a game with 280 levels of content, than with 600 levels of content.
Items and Stats
I’ll start here, because itemization is the aspect that needs to be improved the most.
First of all, lack of gear variety. Think of three equipment pieces that first come to your head. Now think of reason why you chose those. Yeah.
Weapons don’t have this problem, armor pieces do though.
I understand this is “early game” we’re talking about, but it is still painfully strict. There are two problems: some slots have only one item that provides interesting bonuses, and some slots have none. Having at least 3 cool items per each slot is key to success, otherwise it’s everyone playing with copy pasted builds.
Next, some bonuses are just bad. Why would I want an item that gives me 5 ice defense, or 6 damage against plants, when I can get items that give me more defense or damage against everything? They need to be much more significant. An item with 50 ice defense, or 60 damage against plants? On lower levels, I’d take that.
Look at this thing. Now, if I was an Archer, going against a Beast race boss, or a zone full of them, I’d consider getting this. Please make more of these.
But the problem here is, again, that item is really lame for a purple item. A purple should give way more bonus damage, and maybe have less penalty on other things.
So in conclusion here, make the “tricky” bonuses bigger. Much bigger.
Please, take a look at what Diablo 2, or Torchlight 2 do regarding equipment, armor sets, bonuses to stats, etc. Look and learn, because they do it perfectly. Google “diablo 2 items”, “torchlight 2 armor sets”, and so on, and check the top results. Please, take inspiration, or even rip them off, just stop adding items nobody will ever use, outside of trying to get Adventure Points, I guess…
Oh yeah, don’t add random stats, the thing where item can have random values. Nobody likes that.
Main stat system isn’t too terrible right now. I guess INT could get an extra bonus.
On this topic, collections. I know there is a lot of them, and it will add up, but some of the bonuses are really unappealing, considering the things we need to complete those collections. Compare the “Revelation” collection which everyone will get, and random zone collection which is hard to complete in many cases. Even making them a % buffs will be a step forward.
Consider adding “buff limit” as a stat. The concept right now is really clever. However the base number is weird, sometimes it’s 5, sometimes it’s 7, and I believe it was 8 under some conditions. Make it visible in stat window.
Some items could carry +1 buff limit effect, too.
##Combat and PvE
So, let’s start with infamous issue. A lot of high level zones have those enemies which hit like a truck, have HP like a truck, and make up for 25% population of that zone. They’re not even elites. Just why. Difficulty is imporant, but this isn’t the right way to do it. Maybe we’re playing the game wrong and you expect us to have full CON tanks to take those hits. However I remember you want solo experience to be equally fun, that kinda ruins it.
Make every “normal” enemy, well, normal. No insane hits, health, etc.
On that topic, some zones need increased mob density. Having little mobs makes it harder to level up. iCBT2 was a great example, everyone grinded like crazy in zones that had a lot of mobs, and used cards to skip zones with low mob density.
On that note, Elite mobs should be rarer too. Some zones have “okay” amounts of them, but the zones have low density to begin with. I’d say, one in every 20-30 mobs should be Elite.
Defense formulas. Make them scale, not subtract. 100 mdef, 500mdef, doesn’t matter much when I get hit for 2000. There is a lot of ways to approach it. I could quote games, but there is a lot of formulas. Do some research on this, if you can’t think of a good one.
###Bosses
Yeah I could talk a lot about them.
When I think of a “good” example, I think of Earth Templeshooter. He has heavy physical attacks that make tanks godsend, small and fast shot to deal some consistent damage to tank (and keep healers working), a strong, but dodgeable magic attack to keep tanks moving, and an AoE attack to boot. A really solid and interesting combo of skills, he’s Sorcerers’ #1 choice for a reason. If I were to add something, maybe adding some extra magic attack, and the auto-attack have increased block penetration.
Please make all bosses like this. Fun, interesting, where you can’t hold C for entire fight, but where C isn’t useless either.
Bosses and debuffs need some tweaks. There are the “hard CC” debuffs like Stun or Frozen, which would be too powerful. However, they also are required for some abilities, which are useless in boss fights. Please, make all debuffs work on bosses, in weaker forms. For example, Frozen could be instead “Frostbite”, which will slow bosses’ movement, and maybe their attack speed too.
Field Boss respawns could be changed. I did some boss hunting, and noticed some bosses have respawn conditions. Those are great, keep them. Maybe even make more bosses have spawn conditions. If I understand well, Chapparition respawns only after certain amount of players dies in the zone. If that’s correct, please change it, or reduce the amount of deaths, because I have seen it only once, on first day of iCBT2.
As for timers, they should be changed too. Not necessarily make them random time periods, like 2-6 hours, but definitely make each boss have different time, not 4 hours copy pasted.
Last, Boss Cubes. It’s a nice concept I guess, but I liked seeing what other players got. Well, if it’s a cube, it could have more stuff inside, to reward players with something else than Talt and/or Card.
For example, a field boss cube could give Card with 100% chance, a random drop from its drop table with appropriate rate, some silver (because bosses drop a lot of silver, which may cause lag), some consumables, maybe materials, or even EXP Cards. A random mix of stuff, not just one boring item.
##Skills
I won’t talk a lot here about how to fix every exact skill, I’ll just say general feelings about it.
First of all, personally I like games where auto-attacks have some power, instead of mashing 123 buttons to deal any damage. However, without Armor Break, Sacrament, Enchant Fire, Concentration, Blessing, and Arde Dagger, auto-attacks aren’t a great source of damage. Additionally, 0CD skills are straight upgrades, often for little to no SP cost. That’s the main issue to fix, if you wish for auto-attacks to be the “main dish”.
The main issue with auto-attacks might just be the armor. Enemies have too much armor, so it reduces damage significantly. Fixing the formula might just work.
There is no need to make the auto-attacks super good, but definitely would be nice to have them when you have no SP.
#Speaking of SP
SP is a bit of an issue early on for all classes, I agree. However, after some point, in 200’s, with no points in SPR, and later on even without SP potions, I’ve NEVER ran out. I could farm monsters in place with high density for 20 minutes, and still have a lot of SP, and when I got close, I could recover it all with 30 second cooldown.
SP should be a resource. That means, you should run out if you don’t spend it wisely.
It’s a bit hard to explain what I mean, but, if you can’t run out of SP, why even add it to the game? Only things I pay attention to are my HP and Cooldowns. I could disable my SP bar, and I wouldn’t play any worse. It’s a worthless thing right now.
Another example. Imagine your monthly salary. You could spend it all on the first day and starve for next few weeks. Or you could spend small sums on food every day, and even have savings for next month. This is how money works, and this is how SP should work too.
Try it. Make some adjustments. Reduce SP recovery and increase cooldown of potions, increase SP costs of skills maybe even reduce skill cooldowns even further, and see if people are complaining. If people aren’t complaining about SP, then something still needs to be fixed. A man who goes bankrupt overnight would definitely complain, right?
Using a lot of bold text here, because this needs to be fixed.
In other good MMORPGs, mana in raids is an important resource, a race against time, because if healers run out of mana, it’s a wipe. I’m hoping to see this in ToS too.
DON’T GET ME WRONG. Some classes, already are like this, mostly when they have some spammable skills. I don’t think those should have it even worse than they do. I believe, that instead of reducing the SP consumption of those few classes, they should up SP consumption for all the others.
Same deal with Stamina. What’s the point? Swordsmen can dash, Monks can use Double Punch, and that’s it. Make more skills consume stamina, 0 second cooldown skills in particular.
Overheat was a great idea, being able to use skills few times before cooldown is fun. However, based on formulas in game files, and past FAQs/interviews, you guys wanted to make skills “cool off” when using other skills, and make that scale with SPR too.
I hope this idea becomes fixed, because it’s really great concept. I imagine it as being able to cast Energy Bolt between every other skill, to create very dynamic combat with high skill ceiling.
###Now, the skills themselves.
Thank you for Divine Might change. It was broken before, now it’s not only fixed, but also a much better skill.
The problem is, not many skills synergise with it.
I noticed you’re starting to make more skills scale per skill level, notably Heal. Keep it up, make every skill point worth it, no matter what skill it’s been invested into.
On that note, consider making more skills 1 point masteries instead. For example, Conceal has the “correct” scaling, but would anyone put 15 points in it?
Damage values, especially on “1 hit” skills, should gain percentage values, which increase based on skill points invested. Make a level 5 skill hit for 500% of your base damage. It might end up too strong, or still too weak, so what? Just change the values again, see how it is then, and repeat the process until effects are satisfactory.
##Other stuff
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Market improvements. First of all, allow us to filter things to just one per item ID. I don’t really want to see 1000 Kepa Dolls, Dilgeles, etc. Just give us an option to display only the cheapest one. Fix the “too many results” thing too, it’s really annoying.
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Shared Account Storage. I have no possible way to trade an item from one character to another, due to the “Untradable Items” restriction, and equipment loses 2 potential.
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Add a “now playing” song information, so we can see the track name and composer of BGM currently playing.
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Add a menu where we can choose which song will play where/when. For example I’d like Deives Veliava to play during ALL boss fights, it’d be great to set it with just few clicks, or text commands. Being able to set up This isn’t that urgent, but would definitely be nice to see at some point, maybe even a year after release. Oh, also separated themes for Field Bosses and Dungeon Bosses.
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Let us choose voice actor for our characters. Korean voices are cute, Japanese voices are cute, I’m sure English ones will be cute too. But, everyone sounds the same. If all voices are in the game, why not let us choose during character creation? It’ll definitely make things more pleasant.
That’s all for now. Thank you for reading this wall of text, both IMC staff (if I got lucky), and you, random Toster. If something is unclear, or you disagree, feel free to say so in comments, but if you strongly agree with something, then say so too, IMC needs to know it’s not just one nerd who feels that way.
Remember. This is a Beta Test. Now is the time to experiment, try crazy ideas, and see what people think.
Honestly, all this complaining, but you guys did a great job with many aspects as well. It would take me three times as long to list that stuff, so I’ll just say, keep up the good work. For every thing you did wrong, you probably did two or three things right.
If you don’t improve this game, I’ll fly to South Korea and kick your ass. Well, I’m not rich enough to just take a plane ride and kick people, but I can write mean things on the internet. Please don’t let me, no, don’t let us all down. You have potential to make a game that will last decades, don’t mess it up. 
