As the beta offically ended, I can finally write what I experienced.
Graphics:
The Graphics,characters,npcs, monsters,zones they all look amazing but it seems game has some optimization problems when it comes to skills,particles.If you are alone or 2-3 people in screen its all ok but once there is 5+ people in your screen, all using skills, ■■■■ goes down…My fps dropped to 5 at some point and we were only rank 2 at the time.
There are lots of bug regarding graphics and I reported them as much as I can.
Zones and Gameplay:
Hoping that we will also have buffed exp rates, I created a cleric to level up but of course I only played it like 6-7 hours or so.Then I created a swordsman, and leveled it to 55.When I created cleric I wasn’t aware of damage types(slash/pierce/blunt) and I think game should teach these damage types(gives you a hint when you are getting your 1st weapon rewards).Not just that but some other small hints popping up during tutorial would be nice.I’m not saying annoying amount of them but the ones like explaining jump a little bit further(like “you can use basic attacks but only small amount of abilites can be used while airborne”).
Gameplay until the chapel F1 felt quite easy and smooth as a swordsman/highlander. When I entered chapel F1 and played through F2 I didn’t expect mobs to hit that hard, and expected game to have get even harder after that point which is frustrating imo, but It didn’t.The moment I cleared chapel and went to further zones, game actually got easier, mob hp increased over the zones but damage was fair again.
Highlander/Barbarian:
For the most games(be it aRPG’s or MMO’s) being able to stack high amount of crit damage can ■■■■ things up quite fast, and it feels same for the ToS.Being able to crit for 4-5x of your normal damage at level 40s seems a little bit stupid.Aggresor needs some serious nerf(maybe make crit damage buff flat amount or give crit chance instead of damage) in my opinion or it can break late game even worse.
Overall most skills need more explaining in their texts,like savagery.I couldn’t test the level 2,3 but It doesn’t say the second stab attack makes less damage, but it seems like it does the half damage for the level 1 buff.
Bosses:
Early bosses are…quite ok.you learn about attack patterns, see some traps and their effects.But as the game progresses,boss def and hp goes up quite fast and damage not so much, which turns bosses into chores.My solution would be,keep the hp but reduce the def of the bosses a bit, and increase their damage.They already attack slow at least let them hit hard.
Leveling,Questing and Grinding:
The topic everyone loves,rages and fights about…
For the beta, I feel like IMC nerfed the exp, they didn’t want most people the pass lvl 46 wall, but as it is the only example I have, I’ll talk about it.
Quests are fun, interesting, not your usual go fetch some stones or kill 10 slimes but rewards need some serious tweaking.From level 30 to I stopped leveling(55) I only recieved lvl 2 exp cards and only 1 exp card for the most of the time.Exp cards either needs scale every 10 level or so, or higher level quests needs to hand more cards if req. exp for the levels stays same.
Grinding is ok for me, it allows you to meet new people as you form parties and chat/socialize, but as for the iCBT we started grinding way too soon and way too hard for a game with 500 levels(so far) but I think It was intentional to keep us below lvl 46 so I won’t cry about it so much.Mob exp scaling on the other hand seems like a serious problem and it needs better scaling as mobs are getting more hp,more time to kill.I felt like I actually get lesser exp/hr as I leveled up.
Server stability:
When I heard the servers will be located in US I was afraid of my ping, and was expeting 200-300 ms delay, which could make the game unplayable for me but, during the beta I never felt any delay except the day IMC released 2nd set of beta keys(which was a global lag).But when I do instant stops,turns while letting some mobs chase me,mobs seemed like reacting late, they start attacking to me after they pass me.I’m not sure if this is because of mob ai or my connection, nor I was able to test it.
However small the content we were able to test,IMC thank you for giving us this beta even though you were occupied with kCBT.