I’ve been wanting to complete this for a long time but keep putting it off. This post is a collection of my observations and thoughts over on iToS. A few months back I posted a review on R8 content with regards to how dealing 1 damage impacts the experience of players. It touches briefly on how players perceive difficulty and progression and also how the game can help to improve on the experience of players. This series of posts is an extension of the 1st, each touching a different aspect on ToS balance. A pre-warning first as this will probably be a huge wall of text (seems like most of my posts are wall of texts, need to learn how to write shorter, zzz).
This is Part I of the V part series (cuz it is too long already have to break it up). I’ll post the remaining sections up once I finish fleshing out their skeletons.
- Balance in general PVE - A hollow game of numbers
- Balance in player experience - Fun and Time Investment
Musings on iToS Balance - Part II of V - Fun & Time Investment
- Balance within player’s own family - the All for One Syndrome
Musings on iToS Balance - Part III of V (The All for One Syndrome)
- Balance in interplayer content - Are we islands?
Musings on iToS Balance - Part IV of V (Are we islands)
- Balance in character building - Achieving the 80 class dream
Some background info:
I’m a semi-hardcore, non-competitive player for ToS. Currently at time of writing I’ve spent 2.8k hours playing iToS, have 15 characters ranging from levels 160s to 310s with a number of them rank 8 and most of the rest rank 6-7. I do love spending time in analysing things, how they work and the concepts behind, hence most of my posts in forums are suggestions and ideas.
Disclaimer
These are just my personal observations and opinions, do feel free to disagree, suggest and discuss XD.
[Part I - Balance in general PVE - A hollow game of numbers]
Difficulty in games usually fall under 2 main categories, usually a mix of:
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Requirement demanding difficulty, which is what most games build their difficulty level on. Content (PVE content) is perceived as ‘hard’ to the player when their character doesn’t meet the requirements. In most cases, it is gear and level. As the player gets higher in level and get better stats, the content gets easier as the player churns out more damage and takes in lesser.
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Skill demanding difficulty is lesser seen than requirements demanding difficulty. Generally it requires the player to exhibit some degree of knowledge in terms of game mechanics, and how to make use of this knowledge to solve the problem/get past the situation the game puts them in.
Most games are a mixture of the 2, with games which are heavily skewed towards the former like Diablo3 and others like Dark Souls whom lean towards the latter. Most MMOs tend to favor the former, as getting gears and levels are really good time sinks which favor the genre. For skill based challenges, MMOs tend to use scripted boss fights and dungeon encounters to give players the difficulty challenge, even when their gear is up to par with the encounter. In PVE, besides getting high end game gear for bragging rights, conquering challenging content is also a way used by most players to guage where they stand in the ‘player hierarchy’ of the server they reside in. For example, clearing WoW’s molten core is something most players push for during WoW vanilla.
Skill demanding challenges are usually the ones which will excite players, giving them the will to press on, spending days to prep gear and equipment, delve into game mechanics, hours revising strategies, play and replay past runs just to have that single exhilarating moment when they finally clear the dungeon. Equipment to them is a means to the end, as it makes their runs smoother with more room for mistakes.
ToS, like more korean MMOs, favors gear/level driven difficulty. This can be felt with the introduction of R8 content where players have to get a substantial amount of gear in order to deal good damage to R8 monsters. Skill based challenges is restricted mostly to the game’s only PVE end game, Earth Tower and Solmiki. Due to the nature of the game being an action-RPG involving many parties, it is hard to nigh impossible to have scripted encounters for world bosses and bosses in the general wilderness. Monsters can’t choose to crowd control a certain support character in the player’s party, nor employ group strategies just like how a player party functions. Hence most encounters in ToS are just tank and spank/kill with little to no strategy involved. This is also pointed out by @hayashiyuui and his friends, who describe the game as monotonous.
ET/Solmiki does have some form of strategy involved, which most PVE players strive for sometime back prior to R8. However, with the introduction of Cheesemelt™, this excitment fizzles away. Cheesemelt™ is the usage of Ausrine + Melstis and a status prevention spell (cheese part) + full out DPS with no care of defense (melt part). It is an effective strategy, but with little to no counteracting strategies by monsters besides pushback/knockback it becomes de facto for ALL encounters. This takes away the excitment as most encounters it just boils down to whether Cheesemelt™ is setup or not.
The same can be said with Miko’s Clap with Dievdirby’s World Tree giving silence 100% uptime. It ‘cheapens’ the entire monster encounter as most monsters can’t really deal with silence. Same with Sage’s Missile Hole coupled with Chronomancer’s Pass, the additional 32 ‘shields’ to each character in the team makes a ranged mob encounter really a breeze.
This is one of the main reasons why most players now find the game monotonous. Players often take the path of least resistance, once there is an effective strategy, everyone will flock to it. If the suggestion is too effective, there will be no need for other strategies, everyone will just end up using the same thing over and over again. Think of how now most end game pve teams all have ausrine+melstis, missilehole+pass incorporated into their lineup. All in a single, mono shade.
Why bother to learn other strategies when one is most effective and conquers all?
Why bother to grind so much for gear when the only thing it does is to deal higher numbers while the content is technically still the same kind of fight except they deal more and take more to die?
This game, as of point of writing, is not challenging anymore. It is so hollow, like how Diablo 3 is. The only “challenge” part now is to get the gear to fulfill the base requirement in mitigating/dealing damage.
Difficulty isn’t just simply higher numbers
A good game should employ both sides of the difficulty categories. It should provide requirement (gear/level) difficulties and also skill challenges so that each and every encounter is fresh to the players. Players do crave challenges that will make them think more, exercise more of their skills in gaming rather than just pressing buttons in succession in the same semi-rhythmic fashion (ala skill rotations) for fights that mattered. They want to feel that the last ET/DG run is exciting and have stories to tell their friends on how they best the game while looking forward for the next run as it will provide a slightly different, yet fulfilling experience while doing the same content.
Suggestion(s) to make PVE more colorful.
The suggestion here isn’t to nerf the above combos, they are really effective and are excellent examples to show how class builds can come together to create something better. To make things interesting and challenging for players, there should be an equal and opposing strategy that can be employed by monsters and bosses to counteract these strategies. Good encounters are like a close tug of war game, even when the end objective is to let the players win, the game makes them feel that they did it while giving their best.
Give bosses the following 3 base abilities, they can be employed in a timed manner or give a pre-warning (red glowing attack circle) so players can react and learn. All 3 abilities are actually in the game already.
- A push-back ability can push characters out of channeled skills and safety zones
- Lachrymator
- Devaluation (Same as Devaluation of the upcoming Appraiser)
The purpose of having these 3 skills given to bosses is to make the encounter more dynamic. Players can retain their awesome cheesemelt combos but as Lachrymator kicks in, they will have to move out, breaking Melstis and giving up whatever favorable terrain they are in. Devaluation also makes encounters challenging to players since they have to be more careful once they get the debuff. For the uninformed, Devaluation is an Appraiser debuff which makes the player’s equipment lose all of their transcendence and enhancement levels for the duration of the debuff. The push-back ability can be like a 3sec pre-warning followed by an aoe push back.
This allows the game to have counters to the players combos.
With counters in place, battles become more fluid, players need to learn how to approach the encounter rather than just tank and spank.
Upgrade the list of totems types in which bosses can place.
- Punji totem.
- SP drain totem
- Boss healing totem
- Boss immunity totem
- A 40-50hp Totem that dispells a beneficial buff of players within the totem area of effect once every 4 secs.
Totems are good skills in which the boss can employ for some form of area control. The current totem list isn’t detrimental enough for players to run away from. Having more totems types such as the above will make encounters even at DG rushes more fun and dynamic. Some require the players to run away from, some require immediate attention which the players need to take care of ASAP.
Have more types of completion objectives rather than just DPS down a boss.
One such encounter which can be placed in ET/Solmiki is having 5 smaller bosses in the same stage where they get stronger and take lesser damage the closer they are to each other. The team will have to split all 5 up in order to stand a chance to kill them. The stronger players will dps their designated boss first then proceed to help the rest to clear.
One thing to note about designing for party play, there are also objectives which can be designed to require the team to be far apart rather than the usual stay together.
An example of such a stage:
A player will have to jump through a series of floating platforms to reach a few objectives while the other 4 players face an increasing amount of monsters on ground level. The whole party will inevitably wipe due to being overwhelmed if that 1st player doesn’t clear the floating platform objectives fast enough.
Next upcoming Section II - [Balance in player experience - Fun and Time Investment]