aight, since this is the end of the CBT I’d like to say thanks to imc for localizing the game!! I had lots of fun while I played, and am looking forward to future tests. with that being said, I’d like to go over some things I thought could be improved and give some suggestions/opinions on them. I tried separating them into categories to make reading it a bit easier.
if you feel like reading all this great~ if not uguu. maybe it’ll make a difference. who knows?
EXP
to begin with, the exp rate in this beta is obviously incredibly low. “the wall” when you start to feel the effects of the exp curve begins around lv 25. around that time is when I began to play less to ensure that I didn’t get burned out. I played about 3 days, with 8 being the first and 5 being split between the next two. and as I got closer and closer to 30(I got to 31), those exp cards you got from the “hidden” side quests really didn’t amount to much anymore.
going through all of the main/side quests helps a bit, but you still have to to a ton of grinding beginning at 25. you will always be behind in levels unless you start to grind for hours now just to catch up to what level the monsters are. there are apparently 600 levels’ worth of content for this game, so why should the grind start so early? you’re not even 5% of the way to the cap and the curve is already showing. I understand people don’t want to reach cap within a week, but at this rate it will take thousands of hours just to reach the cap. I can’t imagine anyone wants to slave away at this game just to reach it. a few months to reach the cap is reasonable for this kind of game, sure, but definitely not at this rate.
EXP - monsters
the exp the monsters give is way too low. the increase in exp of killing higher leveled monsters is minute at best. currently, the only way to get any decent exp is to hunt for blue monsters. this is part of the problem - they give too much exp, causing the hordes of monsters currently in the game to be rendered nearly pointless. it makes the rate in which you get levels solely dependent on luck and how many blues you manage to find…but wait - blues can be stolen from you. did you get excited because you found a blue so you start whacking on it and are about to kill it, but then a random passerby manages to hit it and take all of the exp? that’s going to be a normal occurrence with this system.
EXP - parties
even though this game is extremely grindy, it does not promote the use of parties well. exp is lowered as more players join to the point where it’s better off going solo. as mentioned above, blues give a ton exp in comparison to the other mobs. lots of people get into 5-man parties to farm for blues, but what about the other players? the ones who are more casual and just play with a friend or two and are unable to keep prime farming spots in maps for themselves? they have to make do with everywhere else on the map, where the concentration of monsters is also much lower. their leveling speed is slower than the rest because of that, and having the exp divided amongst themselves certainly doesn’t help.
so, to remedy these problems, I have some ideas!!
EXP - suggestions
first, I’d like to suggest adding in repeatable quests only after you have exhausted all main and side quests for an area and need to grind in order to be in the correct level range. the reward would be 1 exp card the same level as what you get in that area. to keep up with the grindy spirit of this game, the repeatable quests could require you to kill…50-100 of a monster? that way, you would still be killing a lot of monsters to keep it grindy, but you’d also get some extra exp on the side to make it just a tad easier. it would also make it less boring, considering there could be different quests for all the monsters on the map. you could move around and complete different repeatables as you please so you aren’t in the same spot all day.
the next two I could picture working only if they were both implemented in some form…
for parties, remove the exp penalty when players join and instead increase it. why? so people would want to party up to kill hordes of monsters of course!! why would I want to party with anyone if it makes my exp crap? I’d rather go solo or with a buddy to make it funner instead. the increase could be something like 12.5% for every extra player in the party, adding up to a 50% bonus when it’s full. the bonus could obviously be lower, say 20% at full instead.
for blues, remove the massive exp they give and instead make how much they give like an exp card. they would be more of an incentive than what they are now - simply a witch hunt for them to get levels as fast as possible. also, exp rewarded should be divided evenly between players according to how much damage they did to it, not who got that last hit. even with the exp increase with a full party, the blues’ exp still won’t be nearly as overpowered as it is now in comparison to regular monster exp. that also prevents newbies (there were many topics on the forums about it) randomly gaining 10+ levels and they didn’t even know how. they wouldn’t gain an whole entire level - just as much as an exp card in that level range would give.
on to a different topic finally~
Optimization/Graphics
currently, there really aren’t many graphics options to choose from. the ones that we have don’t make a noticeable difference, if any. aside from the FXAA, the game looked exactly the same on minimum as it did on max settings. sure the bloom effects just a couple of things (I was looking klaipeda’s statue and the water around it), but it still doesn’t matter much at all. I did not gain any fps messing with the settings. I go from ~60fps -> 15-20 when I’m around groups of players. since the current graphics options don’t do much of anything, there’s nothing I can do to help my case. for now, I’ll just have everything on minimum and pretend it helps.
Optimization/Graphics - suggestions
some things I’d like to see would be to hide shadows, and possibly sliders for draw distance and the maximum amount of players you’d like to see on the screen. since my fps dips horribly around large groups of players, that would help immensely. why should I be forced to render dozens of players I won’t even be looking at? everyone just about looks the same, anyways. you can’t tell who’s who unless you’re standing beside them and have names visible. also, please consider having a toggle for the UI. you can take screenshots, but they don’t look great because of everything else on the screen!! this game has some really nice maps, but it’s hard to really admire the beauty of them when there’s chatboxes, skillbars, and minimaps cluttering the screen.
Chat - feedback/suggestions
the chat is pretty good, although a bit buggy, obviously. many, many players complain about people using caps to talk (as I am one of them), but the emotes in this game are HUGE. they take up what would be multiple lines of text each. these are gargantuan eyesores that make no sense and don’t convey any real emotions as their miniature counterparts obviously do. they need to be miniaturized at the very least - or removed entirely. the typical smiley faces you see in every game and social media site are more than enough.
Self-Trading System - suggestions
this has been posted a few times before, but it would be cool if there was a way to send specific items to your alts. a mailbox type of system would be nice, but I personally think a shared warehouse would be more useful, considering you can just trade stuff to people if you want to give them items. doing it in person feels more special, right? having a mailbox would be kind of pointless because of that, and having to mail stuff to yourself feels kind of dumb.
Sounds - feedback/suggestions
this game has nice music at times, although sometimes it feels a bit out of place. I’m more worried about the effects, though. most of the time you’re mashing auto attack to kill stuff, so you hear that same banging noise over and over. monsters have no noticeable sounds, just when they die I think. I’m not entirely too sure though - the bgm and autoattack sounds accounts for just about 99% of all the sound in the game. it’s rather bland for such a nice-looking game, so some diversity would be nice. I don’t really recall what any bosses sounds like. I believe they just grunt or something.
…but yeah that’s just about everything I could think of~ feel free to post your ideas and whatnot if you bothered making it this far and have anything to say. I tried to keep this as civil as possible. there’s obviously going to be some formatting errors aside from me not capitalizing anything lol.
here’s some obligatory emoticons
