Tree of Savior Forum

Kuripi's General Thoughts/Requests for IMC

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#1

Dear All (and Esp. IMC),

I’ve had a few thoughts bouncing around and accumulating over time and probably will have a few more in the future, so I’m just going to make this one thread and just post things in it every once in a while.
Okay, so, to start:

Expand Guild Features
• Give the Guild Leader the ability to assign Guild Rank/Position and name those Guild Ranks:
• Each Guild Rank should have the option to open a window with a list of permissions. Those permissions can cover a variety of things so as to reduce the burden and improve functionality of the Guild. Such as (and among other things):

Member Invite*
Member Removal*
Guild Storage Access
Guild Quest Access
Ability to Maintain the Guild Tower
*I’m aware these marked features are already in but embedding it into a rank/positional structure can make it easier to manage and also allow Guilds a certain degree of flexibility in how they organize themselves.

Rank/Position can allow for such elements Quartermasters and Quest Organizers if a Guild wants such things. As an example, Guilds may want to expand their leadership elements beyond that of the Guild Leader due to timing issues (ie: Maybe the Guild Leader is only on at certain hours or otherwise is away for an extended period of time, rendering limited access to certain Guild Features and can effectively exclude certain Players from activities or paralyze the Guild as a whole.)

Swordsman Self Buffing, a Small Feature:
It might be a small feature and I don’t know how effective it would be, but I’d like to request at least the testing of allowing Swordsmen to move while performing their buffing skills. Swordsmen can sometimes have a lot of buffs and they end up standing there while the rest of the Party moves ahead. This can result in loss of front line time, which I feel is part of what a Swordsman’s role should include.

More posting later. Thanks for looking!

#2

Honestly most buffs should be able to be cast while moving, most games are that way. It feels so clunky with some abilities in this game.

#3

Ya, I’m just approaching the whole thing with the idea that the standing still thing was intended by design.

So I sat down and tried fishing:
In fact, I’m typing this while my character is fishing in another window right this instant. I seem to have time, after all. Some discussion in guild chat went around about the whole fishing thing and I’m probably not really well informed on all the details surrounding it but I’ll go ahead and share my thoughts anyway. Apologies in advance if it comes off badly.

(Okay, I stopped typing because my guild decided to boss hunt and I have to say that boss hunting is at least more interesting than fishing) Anyway, I was going to say that I was half expecting fishing to be more interactive and a bit faster in process. There are a few fixed features to it but ultimately it’s a fairly ‘hands off’ process, which I have mixed feelings about. If there’s a design discussion posted by IMC, I would love to see it and understand their design choices. In some ways, it feels like this is just the first step in making fishing a complete system. Maybe it would eventually become more interactive and tie into a more complex crafting system (Squire and Alchemy, I’m thinking off the top of my head), I don’t know for sure. Right now, however, it feels fairly basic with a lot of room to grow. Sort of an alpha baby step bracketed into a live game, if you will.

I want to type up ideas, probably none of which are particularly new to be honest, but I find myself pretty tired from the constant running and having the game freeze during world boss fights. I’ll just stop here. It will give me more time to think about a more complete system that could integrate into the rest of the game at least…
Pardon the rambling.

(edited for formatting)

#4

You know they should address this issue above all else…

#5

Stability is for sure a problem but not everyone is going to be able to work on that. Though, I can’t help but wonder how many people have (or would) drift away when the content starts getting stale. So they need to crank out some sort of content while other members are working to fix things --even if the new content is introducing new bugs, unfortunately. It’s a difficult situation for sure.
As a side note, I really do think the game might be a pile of spaghetti code considering the age of the engine and how it seems to break in unrelated ways sometimes when a “fix” is introduced.

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So I’m back to fishing again:
It would be great to have it more interactive and more integrated into a larger system. Maybe that’s the plan in the future, I don’t know. But since I’m sitting here at my desk fishing, I seem to have nothing else going on (at least with the computer) at the moment, I may as well type this up. Think about that, for a second. I’m “playing ToS,” but that gameplay involves me setting up an automated fishing system and then just going off In Real Life to do something else for anywhere between 1 and 3 hours. I was going to go into the effects of that but other people have probably already talked about that and I think it wouldn’t take that much effort to grasp what effects such a system might have.

Two major problems I think are time and level of engagement.
Time probably isn’t too difficult to address. Okay, except maybe when it’s presented to players as a special event (lol) -because they will feel pressured to do it, especially if they want a particular prize. Anyway, special events aside, some tweaking of time scales are largely a matter of playing around with the various numbers. (Speaking of numbers, the bait costs really can put a dent in the bank and it’s only been 2 days!)

After the initial set up for fishing, the level of engagement suddenly drops to near zero. People just go afk and most conversations are far and few in between. I feel that increasing the breadth of the system so that it integrates into the rest of the game could help generate interest and depth.

Sticking with the more common rod, line, and bob arrangement, let’s start with elements needed to capturing fish.

Bait: A wider variety of bait that offers an improved chance to capture particular types of fish (see the part where I talk about the catches farther down) but not necessarily exclude fish types. Some bait could be gained from different processes such as from the Alchemist (digging and alchemy), Falconer (calling back), Diev (carving), and perhaps as the occasional drop (eg: plant types dropping the occasional grub and insects dropping a particular part)

Rod: Apparently you can fish up a nice rod. That’s a plus. But what if you can get a recipe drop in the field? Maybe it’s already in and we don’t know it. There are those mobs who carry fishing rods… A few people have mentioned that maybe fishing was designed to be a silver sink. So why not spread the overhead around a little more? Right now, it costs both silver and time. Time is used to generate money and 1-3 hours can be a person’s entire free time. Huge money sink. Anyway, maybe reducing the cost of bait and introducing a maintenance cost on the rods?
The various rods could maybe have a few different characteristics that could affect the fishing process.

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I was going to type more but I’m getting tired again -and my fishing is only at 5/10 …
Anyway, I’m going to add a short bit about catching, which is kind of related to a section I wanted to do about locations.

Catches:
I was thinking about the various catches and what could be done with them. Like cooking food, which probably would end up being something for the Squire. It might also be interesting if food and drink could be blessed for some kind of effect but that’s kind of jumping the rails a little bit on the topic of fishing. I would not only push for different kinds of fish but also rare events. Maybe even monster spawns when fish are being caught in the wild. Increase the chance of catching certain bosses or monsters with specially made bait which will then have to be fought. There are a fair number of aquatic looking creatures in game and maybe a hand full more can be made. Also messages in a bottle or other things that can initiate some kind of quest.

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Okay, I’m done for now. Type more later. Rest now…

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#6

Alright, so let’s talk about the process of catching the fish some more.

Location: This can be kept simple or increase in complexity.
It’s already established that there are multiple bodies of water scattered around the world map. It’s not known if you can catch different things, depending on where the body of water is, however. It could keep things interesting and can be used as a tool to spread players across the game world. Perhaps even populate lesser used maps.
Depending on how granular you want the system, I can see the use of multiple hit boxes for a single body of water that defines water depth and areas such as groupings of plants and such. This would go hand in hand with using a moving reticle to cast the line. Of course, there are things like system resource limits to consider, so maybe something like that isn’t realistic to put in. I’m going to go ahead and expand on it anyway.
Excuse me for this (brief tangent): Maybe hit boxes for depth and aquatic flora can also be used in combination with boats. It can be used to determine where the boat will run aground or how much stamina it would consume to fight the waves of the high seas if in a row boat.
That aspect probably isn’t worth the resources until more concepts can be tied into it, I think, but it’s at least worth the thought exercise.

Catch mechanics:
This might take a while and I might need to type this up in multiple parts.
I should take a second before launching into this part and say that fishing isn’t for everyone and even if the interaction is ‘improved,’ not everyone is going to want to fish. That said, some people are probably going to do it anyway because they want something from it but simply aren’t interested in the process no matter how nice you make it. For those people, maybe an auto-fish feature can be implemented that will auto fish BUT yield lesser yet non-excluding results. Meaning they can have just as much access to those who actively fish but perhaps have lower chances of getting the more rare catches/events. This rewards active fishers and provides incentive to actively fish without excluding those who want access. It’s still not something for everyone but it would be more inclusive.
Cues on having caught the fish is fairly obvious if we want to stay with the idea of feeling and looking like fishing. So, the fishing rod bends, the character reacts. Might I suggest having a bob as well? And, perhaps, some fishing rods can come equipped with a little bell, ringing as the rod is flexed by the catch.
Going back for a second to the line casting mechanic mentioned above in the location part I was typing, a visual cue of fish moving in different parts of the body of water to suggest population density or the odds of catching (specific?) fish could help a player in determining where they want to fish. As a cue, a combination of fading in and out while in sync with increasing and decreasing in size could suggest them approaching and retreating from the surface and they don’t have to be constantly present. This allows the swapping of different fish population sizes (and other aspects) of the visual cue.

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Will continue later

#7

Catch Mechanics Continued:
The interactivity was one of the things I mentioned in the opening post regarding fishing. Or lack of it. To make fishing interactive is, essentially, to turn it into a mini game. There are obviously a lot of ways we can do this, even while keeping it looking and feeling reasonably like fishing. After sitting here and thinking about the different ways it could be done, I’m just going to put down one possible way it can be done first and break it down a bit, I guess. I understand this whole thing is getting pretty long winded. :deadpopo:

…

(editing in:) Okay, continuing from earlier… (as if anyone actually reads this crap)
There should be a visual and audio cue once something gets hooked. This is where the aforementioned bob and bending of the rod comes in -along with the character responding to the catch. The audio cue of a splash, of course.
Trying to adapt elements that I think already exist in the game for the catch mechanics, I’m picturing a player enters a mode where they’re given a limited number of attempts to hit the space bar as the bob goes up and down. The bob going up and down would be a visual cue as to when to hit the space bar (a space bar prompt could be used her as well.) This would drain catch’s endurance bar with each successfully timed press of the space bar. Maybe some variance introduced based on how close the timing is.

(( I’ve stayed up way too late, so I’ll have to type up more later -sorry for these long winded posts, if anyone actually reads this drivel ))