This is part II of the V part series, a collection of my observations and thoughts over on iToS.
- Balance in general PVE - A hollow game of numbers
Musings on iToS Balance - Part I of V - A hollow game of numbers
- Balance in player experience - Fun and 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
Disclaimer
These are just my personal observations and opinions, do feel free to disagree, suggest and discuss XD.
[Part II - Balance in player experience - Fun and Time Investment]
Fun is a word we often seen used around many games, be it MMOs, MoBAs, Vs games or strategies. It is hard to grasp what makes a game fun, as each of us come from different cultures, backgrounds, personalities and most importantly, expectations of the game itself. Fun is subjective to each and every individual, an implementation of the game might work for some but not others. But generally fun can be described as:
Fun - An engaging activity which the person derives pleasure from, and often feel that time flies faster while doing that activity.
At the other end of the spectrum, activities which are considered as not fun for the player become mundance and boring chores. This of course is subjected to the player’s personality and preferences in gaming. These ‘chores’ sap the player’s energy and leave them feeling less engaged with the game.
One can argue that players usually have the choice to do things which are fun to them and avoid those which are not fun, but not all games actually do give the players that choice, or rather an illusion that the choice is made by the player. Before we get to that it will be good to think about how games are actually made.
As we see, activities in games are designed to incite a certain behavior and response from the player. For example, hitting and killing a monster drops silver and loot; or when a player is struck his health pool will drop, and the player will die when the health pool drops below 0. Hence players are reinforced by the idea if they do a certain action a number of times (behavior), the game rewards them with an item/exp/silver (response). Vice versa, the game will also punish the player (reponse) if do certain actions (behavior), like standing in a pool of poison. A game is created using millions of such reinforcements and punishments. It can be, for example, behaviors such as killing 50 monsters to get a certain loot or opening up a gift box to gain a certain recipe.
So what has this got to do with fun? Player actions often require time to perform, and when the time invested on such actions cross a threshold which the player perceives as worthy of the response rewarded by the game, that activity itself becomes not fun and is a chore. It is felt to a greater extend when that particular task itself is crucial to the progression of the player’s character. Hence such ‘chores’ become a necessity (due to the fact that the player needs them to progress) which players can’t opt out off, making the overall game experience feel very one dimensional, like a train heading only one direction as dictated by the tracks it is on.
Railroading is often employed in games as a means to push the player to perform certain actions first before progressing further into the storyline, like inserting a blocked pathway forcing players to find another way; having experience gain limited so that players will venture out to explore other maps; having DPS checks in dungeons so that players need to hit a certain criteria before being able to attempt it. When this is employed in a good way, the developers will be able to deliver the experience they want the players to feel. The players themselves will be progressing through with the feeling “Ah, this is the natural way to progress, it feels smooth.”
Smooth progression with hinderance that feels second nature leads to fun, engaging encounters.
In a good MMO game, especially those with grindly nature, it is crucial to keep the above in mind. Things which are crucial to a player’s progress should be kept within a threshold where most players don’t feel that it is a chore to do. Hinderance should come in like second nature and not felt like artifically planted in just as a mechanic to let players invest more time into. In this way, players will feel more engaged with the game and not feel that each session is boring and un-fun. For example in some MMOs, experience gain is so low that the player have to repetitively kill off 100,000 monsters just to gain 1 level. Players felt bored as the levelling feels forced and grindy. On the other end of the spectrum, giving levels too easily to the player also creates the same boring effect. When something is too easily gained, most of the time it will be considered as insignificant/not of worth to the player.
ToS actually performs really well in certain areas in regards to this. The level up progression is one of the best I’ve seen/played, with a number of ways to get experience, from Dungeon runs, mercanary mission runs, questing to grinding. The game even have exp curve resets at major points so that the player will feel rewarded with level boosts after a long grind towards the reset. Gear progression up till Rank 7 also feels second nature, as when monsters take an upgrade in stats in each level bracket, there is a new assortment of gears which will be available to the player so that they can continue to progress.
However, there are also areas in which I feel that ToS can do better.
One such area is the locking of an important material, Practonium (purple ball of fuwa fuwa :3), under a time sensitive mechanic. This mechanic, which is RNG based, punishes players with a 24hr lock out if they failed to roll on the low chance of getting the fluff. Practonium is an important item for character progression for players who played well into R8 content (280+ levels). Due to the defence and hp of R8 monsters, it is hard to even progress through R8 content without having an over-upgraded/transcended 170/220 weapon or a 315 purple weapon which requires practonium.
Likewise, due to the nature or R8 content monsters requiring players to get enough attack to damage and defence to mitigate, transcendance becomes one of the needed, non-optional upgrade for many players. In order to transcend equipment, players will need to run Saalus Convent numerous times; and since they are now a neccessity, running saalus has become a daily event for most if not all of the players. Players often create multiple ‘mules’ just to get more saalus runs in order to farm more blessed shards for the main to progress. This further increases the amount of time needed to run such instances, resulting in saalus dailies covering a significant portion of an average player’s playtime.
More on practonium and transcendence will be covered in Chapter III and V as they interlink and affects many areas in terms of balancing. For here we will just cover how both affects the player as a daily neccessity (for transcendance) and a time lock (mystical box).
Other dailies included numerous 290dg runs but since those are optional (as one can earn silver in other ways, although 290 rushes are the most efficient), these don’t really constitute much to the boring/un-fun side of the game.
Like what is said before, gear up till R7 are balanced against the content. Sadly as Rank 8 rolls out, players are not given any alternatives such as white gears to help lessen the need of having high upgrades or transcendence in clearing even the norm of R8 content, which are the normal 280+ maps. Most if not all 270+ gear are locked behind areas which require that gear’s power to acquire. It is rather ironic that in order to get Hasta set one would need to kill Blut, a world boss which normally require at least the defence of the hasta set or a high upgraded set of lesser level to defeat. Or getting the Newt gears will require the player to be in Martuis storage room, which actually requires gears of nearing that calibre to actually survive fighting there.
All the above collectively hinders the player’s progression in the game, so much as to make a number of the players feel that the current iToS is a chore to play instead of being actually engaging and fun. The hinderance at R8 felt artifically added in rather than well thought out. To even progress into end content (just to complete the maps), not end game dungeons like Solmiki, requires a substantial amount of pre-requiste farming/grinding.
Suggestion(s) on how to make ToS not feel like a chore
Changing the nature of getting Practonium
At the time of writing this chapter, @STAFF_Max posted an dev blog interview with Prince_Ken, who design how practonium is released to the player. I’ll just copy my reply and suggestion here from the other post.
Change Mystical Cube interaction into pick a number mini-game. In Mystical cube case, pick a number from 1-50. If the player picks the correct number, he/she will get the fuwa fuwa, parade it and call for a celebration. :3
If a wrong number is picked, the player will be rewarded with potions as before and try again 24hrs later. In the following day, the number to pick decreases by 1. So day 2 will be 1-49 , day 3 1-48 so on and forth. Just like how we have now, ultimately the player will get the fuwa fuwa.
Choosing to do it this way does 2 things. First by revealing a finite set of numbers to the player, it drives a positive connotation to them that as long as they ‘gacha~ed’ correctly, they can get the fluff earlier, if not even with the worst of luck it is 50 tries later. The game can dress this like real mini game with the gacha animation too.
Second is with a finite number like that, it allows the developers to create more content for the players. Make use of the numerous NPCs in the game, give out long daily quests just like the merc quests. For players who have spare time, they can engage these quests to gain 1 extra chance per day to reattempt the number cube.
Ultimately, it gives some form of control to the players, it makes them feel less disappointed as 1) they can see improvement and 2) they can somehow control their ‘luck’.
One small note here is that practonium affects more than just a single character in a team. It will be covered in Chapter III.
Lessen the hinderance on R8 content progression, increasing equipment and reshuffling equipment in the 270 bracket
While I do support that ‘end game content’ such as Solmiki needing really good equipment to contest in the dungeon, the rest of the common maps should be made more accessible to an average player. Players shouldn’t be made to feel that they will need weapons with lv3-4+ transcendance to kill mobs in these maps, nor heavily gem their grynas so that they won’t get hit so hard in those maps (due to not having 270 white defence gear, where does Blint Gear even drop anyway).
Suggestion to adding in white/blue gears in the 270 item bracket. This includes 270 white weapons, armors of various 270 tiers and accessories. Distribute them so that they drop just like how 220 whites drop in the normal R8 maps.
With this implementation, players wouldn’t feel so compelled that they need to farm saalus so many times just to get enough defenses/attack on their 170/220 gear in order to meet even the minimum requirement to survive in R8 maps. This will in turn lower the amount of dailies in which the players feel forced to do (since we only get 2 trys of saalus per character per day) in order to progress. This will also in-turn, lower the reliance of practonium and lessen the negative sentiments on waiting for RNGesus to bless on the mystical cube.
Note: Help the fencers too, they don’t even have a purple/orange 315. Kind of sad that their current best endgame weapon is a rapier that is level 170.
Thoughts on Transcendance
It is really hard to think of a good solution to transcendence as it is so deeply entrenched into the current ToS metagame, anything done to it will affect other aspects of the game. Balancing a game is like trying to balance weights on a flat surface with a needle as its balancing point.
What transcendance affects:
- Character balancing, class damage and mitigation
- Content balancing, monster damage and mitigation
- Health of ToS economy, due to the absolute need for shards now
- Balance of characters within a player’s team. Mules farm for 1 character (All for One) while themselves deprived of it, to be covered in Chapter III.
- Balance in inter-player interactions, PVP settings
And what repercussions we need to look out for when changing transcendance
- Players who are deeply invested in transcendance, how will the change affect them?
- Players who created many alts to farm for it, how will the game compensate for their used playtime
- Content readjustment, how will players attempt the existing content if transcendance is readjusted
- Build restructuring, transcendence is created as one of the bandaids to help builds which can’t make the mark. How will those builds be like when it is changed?
As of such, my current suggestion for transcendance is as follows, (pasted from one of my previous posts tucked deeply in one of the threads). It is still raw and I don’t think it is the fitting solution we are looking for as of now, but hope this will be a good start of a good discussion on how to change it. Many thanks to @ZeroFoxGiven and @Andraax for inspiring this idea, You 2 own this idea :3
Transcendance: Increase effectiveness of equipped item’s stats.
Example
Stage 1: +5% effectiveness
Stage 2: +10% effectiveness
Stage 3: +20% effectiveness
Stage 4: +35% effectiveness
Stage 5: +55% effectiveness
Stage 6: +80% effectiveness
Stage 7: +110% effectiveness
Stage 8: +145% effectiveness
Stage 9: +185% effectiveness
Stage 10: +230% effectiveness
Items such as Max Petamion equipped on a lv7 transcended neck slot will give
+27 str
+27 dex
+27 con
+27 int
+27 spr
Or equipped an Ignition Rod on lv10 transcended main hand slot…
17% chance to inflict [Burn] on an enemy for 10 seconds
It changes the entire dynamics of gearing, promotes a variety of more builds based off equipment and overall makes the game more interesting than just straight up BiS weapon + gear with max atk and def. Even low level equipments such as Zachariel Bangle becomes more attractive to use with this implementation. It also allows the devs more room for creativity, allowing them to come up with equipment with unique abilities rather than just straight up damage or defence. Like a weapon with 40% of its level attack but with a 20% chance to deal every hit in 3 hits etc.
If this idea is taken up, many things will require a change, such as class skill damages, content rebalancing and item rebalancing. Much things to do just to rebalance the effects brought forward by this ‘bandaid’.
"The Household Attributes, Transcendence " a.k.a THAT
How THAT works
Similarly like how we get blessed shards and gems, through saalus (or some other way in which IMC dictates in future). Players are able to buy/sell/trade blessed shards/gems just like now.
Blessed gems are used to upgrade the team household. Household upgrades can be divided into 3 categories:
- Core Stats Category
Upgrades are patk, matk, evasion, stamina, hp, sp etc. These upgrades go upwards to a max limit of +100% and are exchanged in denominations of 2% per 10 blessed gems. The upgrades are like the guild’s forges and academies, and will affect all characters in the game account/team. So players can farm shards, contribute to this core stat and every character will benefit from it.
- Skill Augmentation Category
This are the so called ‘quasi-equip’ category. Each character will be given a max of 5 slots to add skill augmentations. A skill augmentation can be like the following:
- -2 secs cooldown to all skills
- Changes all attacks to 2 hit attacks (become fake multi hit, +10% damage total but divide into 2 hits)
- +100 fire element prop damage (and all other props)
- Changes basic attack to element prop
- % chance to resist negative debuffs
- % chance to freeze on attacks
- so on and forth.
Different skill augmentations requires different amount of blessed gems to purchase. For example a “-2 second cooldown to all skills” requires 20x blessed gems and a “-5 second cooldown” requires 100x blessed gems. Each skill augmentation only need to be purchased once and is available to all characters in the team. However, each character can only equip up to a maximum of 5 such skill augmentations. Players can change their augmented skills in the character select screen just how how they pair companions with the character. Players can come up with skill augmentation combos such as adding chance to change mob’s element property and having elemental damage that deals more to that property.
- Class Mastery Orbs Category
Apart from skill augmentations, players can purchase class mastery orbs. Previously in another post I highlighted about this idea, think it will be great to merge this with THAT. Here is the link to the previous idea (Thanks @Kupomancer for the name):
Basically as a limitation, each class can have a max 5 mastery orbs, with the limit of mastery orbs per character determined by the Rank of the character. A rank8 will have 8 mastery orb slots, a rank 10 will have 10. Each mastery orb can be purchased at a rate of 40 blessed gems per orb. For this purchase, the orb isn’t shared across all characters but is only for individual character. Once assigned to the character, the character can freely change where to put the mastery orb on which class their build has.
Benefits of THAT
-
Solves the problem of All for One, all characters will benefit when they contribute blessed shards/gems
-
Gives more reasons to reroll, increasing longevity of the game
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Gives IMC a platform to fix classes via Mastery Orbs, MO upgrades can help improve how low ranking classes work in end game
-
Allows more room for unique builds and creativity in builds with skill augmentations. There can be hundreds of augmentations implemented and with many combinations to choose from, even class builds that are the same will play differently. It also gives collectors another goal to strive for, to collect all the augmentations.
-
Limited core stat boost also limits power creep.
Cons of THAT
-
Shards become all the more important, which will affect market and economy.
-
Players who have few characters will have to find alternative means to get shards (IMC can increase the drop rate and availability of them though)
-
Saalus will become even more of a neccessity, but then it depends on how IMC implement where the shards will drop.
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Content need to be rebalanced to suit the new transcendence
-
Equipment’s patk/matk will drop back to before, in line with the core stats but pale in comparsion with R8 skill damages, and this will need to be balanced
Compensation to players with existing/legacy transcended equipment
-
All existing transcended equipment will revert back to their basic forms
-
Players are compensated with the same amount of blessed shards as per how much they invest in their transcended equipment
-
All current blessed shards and gems (armor/weapon) will be converted to the new ‘THAT version’ with a 1:1 exchange.
Note:
Blessed gem prices are raw and tentative, they are there to just serve to put the idea across.
Original post here:
To read about the previous sections, please visit the links listed at the beginning of the post.
Next upcoming Section III - [Balance within player’s own family - the All for One Syndrome]
, which is something similar to TOS.
), I realized “what if TOS has this kind of upgrade system, or at least a variation of it?”