Tree of Savior Forum

Make the game difficult

Steparu made a comprehensive review of the game in cbt2 and just by watching youtube videos we can see that the game is too easy. Random cycled traps and sluggish boss is no fun at all. No offense but some of the bosses look ‘stupid’ just by seeing how they react and move during fights. I think everyone will agree that there should be a balance between fun and challenging game. A bit of challenge promotes team work, excitement, thinking, strategy, frustration, etc…

Hopefully they can buffed the bosses in cbt3 or international test like making them move faster, react faster, hit harder, traps that makes sense, etc

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Some players with the highest achievements have been invited to IMCGames office to give their thoughts about the game. Most of them also agree that IMCGames should increase the difficulty level of this game, especially when fighting bosses. So, we shall expect some improvements in the future.

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I wish they make Leveling A bit hard and Dying is not harsh enough,… cause what I’ve seen in CBT people just spamming Re-spawn here, Zerging it out (and put a cool down on that You can only use it every 2~3hrs)

I Don’t Mind Making it abit Grindy to Level, Cause it seems fun Leveling with a group and nuking the hell out of enemy,… But not soo retarded Like Official RO

Cause Making it hard to level is more rewarding when you reach High Level, people seeing you at High Level will most likely go :open_mouth:

@Edit : and rather than Experience share on party is “Experience Gain = EXP / Number of Party Member” it would be nice to just make it like Everyone gets the full Experience of the Monster rather than splitting it up, “Monster Exp = 100 and Everyone gets 100 EXP when it gets killed”

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Yes, yes, yesssss and YES!

A MMORPG has an amazing capacity to create stories within the community and there are no stories worth hearing that don’t involve conflict in them

To achieve something means to succeed where there is a chance of failure, the day I can tell my friends an amazing story about surviving a boss with an inch of HP is the day Tree of Savior becomes my favorite game.

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So, do you guys want trillion hp bosses with random reflect status ? Aka Yiazmat, aka “battle of attrition” bosses ?

Or do you guys want bosses that heal themselfes, instakill and need luck to beat ? Aka Ozma, aka roulette bosses ?

Or do you guys want… the DEMIFIEND ?!?

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Yup, the game has to be challenging, otherwise it will lack any sense of achievement in the end game.

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hmm challenge for me is ok… but to the point that overpowering boss and insta kill a party @_@" hmm needs a realy thorough strategy otherwise party/raid fails =V

also… boss shouldn’t be soloed… maybe soloed but too hard to beat… some skill ive red they can stun bosses… why is that? bosses shouldn’t be stunned XD debuff yes but stuning it dossent make sense… its a BOSS! =V

hmm a trillion HP boss… why not =V raiding it with 100 players shoudnt be a problem XD if thats even posible

you want it extra difficult? no problem, just use only 1 finger at the same time on the keyboard

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Inteligent bosses that use Spacing, skills and cool patterns!

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There’s a difference between what I call ‘natural difficulty’ and ‘artificial’ difficulty.

Natural difficulty is when difficulty stems from having the player’s skills tested more vigorusly in a way that is not frustrating. Say, needing to react faster to survive, dodging more skills or having to use their class’s strengths in order to succeed.

Artificial difficulty is when you act like the player needs to be punished or beaten by any means. It involves padding HP (just makes the fight last longer), adding frustrating effects like CC (which takes gameplay out of the player’s hands) and healing abilities that can’t be interrupted (just sets the player back and makes them feel like they’re wasting time).

There’s a difference between the two, as the prior makes the player feel satisfied with themselves, whereas the latter just frustrates them and makes them blame the system for their failures, or worse, ends up feeling like the game is a grueling task rather than being fun. This is half the reason why Dark Souls is considered in a polarity of either amazing or terrible by people who play it.

I remember reading about this on a blog post by Xypherous who now designs champions for League of Legends. You can find the post here. It gives a good insight into what is and isn’t frustrating difficulty.

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I am pretty sure they said in one of those Q&A that the game is not supposed to be this easy and that even those who played in previous betas will find the game a lot different in the next tests (too lazy to get quotes or source)

I thought they made enemies easier just beacause they were testing and stuff. Then they would make the game harder

I agree, I read on the tosgame article from their last interview after the cbt, that many people said it was too easy and they will work on it. so I have no problem making the game more difficult, but I think we can not say something more about it than making some suggestions how to make the game more difficult, as we didnt see how they are changing it.

Yes I want the demifiend :3

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Exactly, it’s a diffculty illusion of sorts because it takes longer than normal but is not more difficult but more frustrating.

Artifical difficulty only exist when the player(s) can’t counter it. High HP bosses need more dps, for example.

I have read that post by Xypherous, and i do have to disagree with the “immunity is frustrating” part. There is a very destinct reason to make enemies or bosses immune against attacks - so that players don’t hyper specialise in one attack type and steamroll everything. (Frostnova Sorceress from Diablo II !) That is why, in the past RPG’s, all bosses were immune against most status ailments. Luckily, in some recent RPG’s (FFXIII and it’s sequels !) status ailments were morphed to be good, but not overpowering, so they were able to give many bosses less immunities, while making the game more divert for the player.

Another thing is “sealing”, something i would have hoped to see more in games. Example being the sealed areas in Dark Cloud 2, where certain characters can’t be used. Just like with immunities, it stops players from using just one character only, while ignoring the rest. In turn that means that the game expierence becomes more rich and diverts the player from only using one tool, making the game better overall. However! There is an “unseal” scroll avaible ingame… for a good chunk of cash. That is another example of being “able to counter”.

@Greensburg Evil Laughter intensifies

I think it all boils down to the discussion: Do you want to defeat bosses with Stats or Skillz?

I take skillz any day son!

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It has been done before >:D

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@Sharp Yeah. Padding is alright to some degree due to power-creep in stat-based games; for example, your equipment gets stronger, so enemy HP has to increase in line with that to keep difficulty the same, etc.

However the opposite of that is HP sponges like The Sleeper from Everquest, which took many, many hours to kill by a huge amount of players. He also had a whole host of really really unforgiving and frustrating attacks like ‘Death Touch’ and a host of immunities. Of course, he existed in a game that appealed primarily to nerdy masochists (no insult intended), so the idea actually worked and was memorable. Not so much nowadays.


@NoElement

Immunity is different to resistance, though. Immunity completely invalidates many builds depending on what boss you’re fighting, and makes players feel useless. For example, a Cryomancer against a Ice-immune boss. This is bad design. Although I was talking more about damage immunity rather than status ailment immunity. Bosses should be immune to CC’ing status ailments by default (apart from in certain windows of time) since it opens doors to cheesy playstyles and is overall un-fun. The rules in that blog post apply from the AI’s perspective too!

I like how you brought up the Dark Cloud series - I adored them. However, in Dark Cloud you always had two characters to swap between, whereas in ToS you only have one (I believe?), so invalidating certain characters isn’t something you can do without frustrating players in ToS.

Then again, the diversity idea is also correct, as if one build is the best answer to everything, why build anything else? It’s a tricky balance between keeping every build valid yet allowing none to excel in every scenario.

Skill is also when you have to manage your stats correctly to overcome obstacles.

@Greensburg Huh, there was an MMO about SMT. Hm. Well, i “only” i invested ~200 hours into SMT : DDS to finely defeat the Demifiend, and even with perfect strategy, you still need pen&paper and 4 tries to finally defeat him! Since then, nothing came even close to him.

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