Yeah, that’s what I mean. By comparison, ToS’s progression is very linear. Even if I didn’t have a good reason to move maps in RO, I would do it anyway to have more variety while leveling.
Enemies in RO were a lot more varied and interesting too. they would use skills on you and had their own movement patterns. They could stack up on each other and be trained around for more than just 5 enemies at a time, and they were way more aggressive on average. If you bit off more than you could chew, the enemies would mow you down mercilessly (sometimes in a manner that felt unfair, but experienced players learned to work around this with quick fly-wing-fu reflexes)
Every mob in RO also had different EXP/Job exp spreads. There are some outliers like this in ToS, such as Hallowventers and Jeromel Park, but compared to RO it is very rare to see enemies who reward a specific style of hunting.
you often had to think about a lot more than just “are there flying mobs here?” in RO, and I wish IMC would be a bit more bold with their enemy designs in ToS. I loooove the monster and enemy designs in ToS, they are beautiful, but for the most part they’re a bunch of meat puppets who stand around and then move and attack veeeeeery slowly.
Anyway, remeniscing about RO isn’t constructive. I’m sure IMC hear this complaint more than enough, and over time they have certainly done a lot to make ToS feel more alive compared to how it was in closed beta. Yikes. I just have to disagree when people forget how cool RO’s good elements were and why some players felt baited by ToS’s design philosophy.