Tree of Savior Forum

My feedback on linear progression and other stuff

Gameplay Feedback Quest/MIssion
#155

The only thing i am afraid of at the moment is that some people want a faster lvl progression. I am not sure if iam even in the right forum part here to talk about this, if so i am sorry its quite late already :P(i know bad excuse).
I just wanted to say that i have played most MMOs/MMORPGs(which sadly most were not) in the last few years. If you increase the experience gain in a game that is based on grinding levels, with little other content to keep players occupied you will eventually destroy the game and people will leave.

I see this trend for example in blade and soul. I bought the highest tiered founders pack with the exp boost. This exp boost effectively ruined the game, because every time you did a quest you were 2-4 levels above the quest level and it was no challange whatsoever.

I agree that TOS should be less linear, and possibly you should be able to skip the main questline if you have already completed those quests with another character. But the more urgent issue for me is that you need more socializing stuff. From what i have seen, long grinding is actually good for socializing. I would compare it to slowboating to the next gate or mining in eve online. When people see they cant rush through content, they either quit or adapt. The letter giving rise to enormous socializing possibilites within the community. People start randomly chatting with one another to give just one example. We need game mechanics that support socializers and we need to prevent the possibility to rush through the game within a few weeks.

Add content that has nothing to do with the level process itself. Or at least implement strong unique drops that can only be accessed by excessive teamwork within large groups of players/guilds.

The community in eve online for example is as mature as it is, because things take time and every player plays the game in a different way. I don’t expect TOS to have the same complexity as Eve Online, but the community can be just as mature and helpful as it is in Eve. And except that one guy here that wants to troll people i find it wonderful that everyone tries to help improving the game by providing valuable feedback.
This game could be big. Lets help make it so!

Thanks IMC for the wonderful beta and keep staying in contact with the community. It will benefit all of us!

Cheers,

Chillhausen

1 Like
#156

Comparing to RO, it has been more disappointment.

As I post on another thread, few things that they went opposite of the success trend:

  1. Open World vs Quest Story
  • As you mentioned, now games are trending toward Open World, and they went backward for Quest Story line. This can be very similar to Diabo3, and their only success measurement is real money auction house, which most likely won’t be as successful in ToS.
  1. Class Dynamic and Stats
  • It used to have 2 offensive stats for each classes and 2 defensive stats as well, which can combine into at least 2 or 3 built per class. Currently, this is not happening with magic offense, which is a major disappointment.
  1. Itemization
  • Part of the success in RO, and now Path of Exile. They used to allow different stats or skills attach to equipment. And these days, people may expect 10 or 15 stats on an equipment. However, the number of attributes do not interest me in the current ToS.
  1. Reason for MMO
  • With Story Line, this is more a single player game. Worse with exp penalty, where you cannot level with your friends. I hope they give exp on their MOBA PvP with level scaling, and have at least some success factors toward League of Legends.
  1. Stats
  • In RO, the point incremental is reduced by double every level. If you have 10 on stats, adding 50% means adding 70% on another stats. Now ToS is the opposite. So what happen is, if you have 200 on stats, adding 50% means you are only adding 30% on another stats. This makes the learning cure much more difficult, and too powerful at the end. They should modify this at MAttk level, and reduce the effectiveness on the sub-stats level.
#157

I have a reason to believe that there is some dynamic mob spawning/multiplier in effect for more player populated maps. I went to Demon Prison 2F some days before the beta ended. There was a massive difference between the mobs spawned per pack when there was a few parties on the map vs. when I went there in the early afternoon (I was basically the only person on the map). I think what they would need to do is reduce the amount of influence that player population on a map has in regard to mob spawns, and just bump up the base spawn rate to compensate.

That way players who arrive on a map at a less populated time won’t feel as shafted (due to having far less spawns). If a person multi boxed a bunch of characters on a map (assuming the scaling has a fairly high limit), then in theory he could turn any map into a decent grind map provided it has a decent base mob count.

#158

It depends. There are two things going on here:

  1. If you have more people in your party, more mobs will spawn on you in groups. Get in a party of 5, and you should see the same increased spawn, regardless of the number of people total on the map.

  2. Mobs don’t heavily respawn in the same area if you keep killing them there ( except for certain special areas ). You need to travel around and kill mobs in many areas in order to ‘refresh’ the spawn in a single area. If there are many people on the map, they are doing the job for you. If there are less, you need to do this job yourself.

I don’t believe there is actually a mechanism that creates more spawn on a map for there being more people on the map, only the first thing I listed is happening, and that’s just for parties. ( 100 solo players on a map shouldn’t increase the spawn rate at all. ) Also to address your example with someone multi boxing, the increased spawn for a 5-man party doesn’t apply to the whole map - there is simply a chance that a large group of mobs will spawn on the party itself. This shouldn’t affect other players too much.

#159

O.K. So here’s my two cents. I played RO fifteen years ago when it first came out, and the only reason I am playing this game is because I liked RO so much. So I am a fan, but I believe that I can make an informed opinion without letting my personal bias interfere. First things first: This is a beta! You guys have some extremely unrealistic expectations for a game that is in its infancy when comparing it to a game that has been around for fifteen years… I’m not saying that it will be or won’t be like RO; I’m saying that it is way too soon to determine.

What made RO, RO to me was the community. At the time I played the game the server had 500~1000 people on it. I don’t know the actual number, but you knew all the guilds and all of the people in the guilds. I play MMOs now and I’m shocked if I know more than 10 people. RO just seemed way more connected and personal than any of the other MMOs I’ve played. You sure as hell didn’t have any of the crap that we had when ToS initially launched with all of the negativity and racism… But that’s a whole other thing and I won’t get into that.

People are complaining about lack of freedom and overcrowding because everyone is on the same quest. Again, I think this is a bit of an unfair critique. The community in RO was much smaller due to the fact that it was a niche game back than. I don’t know the exact size of the amount of people who were able to participate in this CBT, but I am going to assume that there were more than a thousand? What happens when you have a thousand cars on a 4 lane highway trying to get to the same place at the same time? You get a massive traffic jam. What do you think happens when you try to accommodate a few thousand people, trying to do the same thing, with only 4 servers in beta mode no less…?

I will admit that RO did have more freedom in that each town (Morroc, Izlude, Payon, etc…) seemed to have its own leveling maps for different leveling ranges. You could find a level 20~30 map in 2 to 4 places, and that was nice and offered variety as well.

WOE, I loved it. PVP, I loved it. I don’t know if those kind of elements will be introduced in ToS, but it was a lot of fun and got the guilds to come together and again reinforced the strong community that RO had.

Grinding vs. questing: For me, I like to quest. If I have to vertwall 10,000 argrigopes again in order to obtain 1.5% EXP, I’m going to shoot myself. I will not be missing that at all. Although I do now all of a sudden find myself a bit nostalgic for grandcrossing a massive mob of Loli Ruris and Bloody Muderers in Niffelheim. Damn I loved that map when it first came out…lol. Still, don’t want to grind if I don’t have to ever again…

People keep talking about all of the maps they were utilizing in RO because they had all of this freedom. I don’t know what game you were playing, but I can vividly remember killing these particular things: porings, rockers, agrigopes, high orcs, loli ruris, bios stuff. I don’t know what 30 maps you guys were on, but according to my math I was on 6 maps…? And I farmed the **** out of these maps. It was not fun. Not fun at all. Really, really, really, holy crap, god all mighty, not fun at all!!!

Anyway, it sounds like a lot of the complaints can be solved with time and a small amount of patience. I for one will be playing this game when it goes live. There’s a lot to like and a solid enough foundation for me to give it a chance.

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#160

Yea, I do know about spawn cycling (other players killing mobs for you). While I can’t provide hard concrete data for my observations, it would also be quite hard for me to simply dismiss it as spawn cycling. That said, I often soloed my way through Demon Prison 2F on my swordsman alt. I usually ran from room to room to avoid the party “killsteal” train. :stuck_out_tongue:

There were areas where parties didn’t venture too often, so I don’t think it would be #1 where they would simply just let mobs that spawned on them live. Some of it could be spawn cycling though. That said, during the peak times, the rooms are usually not that empty as you can usually find 10-20 stragglers in a given room/area.

When I actually happened to be there during the early afternoon when no one was in there (except for one afk person at the statue). I toured entire floor a couple times just to get a rough idea of the difference of spawns… it feels a bit too drastic of a change. It would be hard to believe the difference in mob counts in general would just be #1 (parties abandoning spawns that drop right on them) and #2 that so much cycling happens that it appears that every room is extremely mobby.

#161

Hmm it does seem to make a huge difference though. In CBT1, when everyone was stuck at Tenet Garden, I could just sit in one of the areas and farm endlessly, since I knew everyone else was somewhere on the map killing. Same with Demon Prison, if the map was full of people I could just take a room and farm there without caring too much. But as soon as 1 or 2 of the room-camping parties left, I would almost instantly notice the spawn dying down and know to start moving around.

#162

People are complaining about lack of freedom and overcrowding because
everyone is on the same quest. Again, I think this is a bit of an unfair
critique.
I will admit that RO did have more freedom in that each town (Morroc,
Izlude, Payon, etc…) seemed to have its own leveling maps for
different leveling ranges. You could find a level 20~30 map in 2 to 4
places, and that was nice and offered variety as well.

This is a big deal for a lot of people, and simply adding more channels doesn’t fix it. It does mitigate overcrowding, but not the freedom part, plus adding more channels has its own issues, especially if they have a field boss spawn on it as well. That alone could have an effect on the economy due to extra bosses that can be farmed. With that said, in RO each class had their own leveling areas so competition for mobs was mostly with other people that were the same class as you (rather than every class). From a min/max point of view I wouldn’t say there was that much freedom in terms of which maps you went to for leveling up though.

I think we would have a bit more map flexibility (without having to add more maps) if the mob exp scaling was looked at and changed. The whole exp penalty for killing mobs 5 or more levels under you only exists because of how little the exp scales as the level/hp of the mob goes up. The exp penalty can be removed if they design proper mob exp scaling because players will then migrate to higher level mobs on their own when they start to feel that the mobs they’re killing aren’t quite as good anymore, and its more preferable since it’s the player making the decision rather than the game just saying “ok, we’re just docking exp from you now”.

Grinding vs. questing: For me, I like to quest. If I have to vertwall
10,000 argrigopes again in order to obtain 1.5% EXP, I’m going to shoot
myself. I will not be missing that at all.

I don’t mind grinding as long as its fun. I will be honest here, as I leveled up a level 200 wizard, 200 swordsman, 148 wizard, and 60 wizard (lol) in this beta. I tried changing my grinding maps somewhat (it’s possible at the lower levels if you try a bit), but once you hit 145+, you really don’t have good options. There are other maps, but the efficiency is pretty low in comparison. Of course, it depends on what class you are and such. But as far as I know, Demon Prison is a pretty hard place to avoid as it’s pretty rich in exp provided that it’s not too crowded.

Ideally it would be nice to have an open world dungeon every 10 levels or so. If that isn’t possible then at least provide more alternate maps that can be used. I do feel like the exp gained from quests is quite high compared to killing mobs, even when they had the 2x mob exp rate. Truthfully, I felt like the 2x exp event from mobs actually made the higher level mobs (120-130 and beyond), feel like they kept up with the exp scaling. It also means you simply pick mobs that you can kill the most of in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of difficulty, as the exp reward is pretty much constant for a given level unless it’s an elite or so.

Take the 145-165 grind that became quite popular. I walked into Demon Prison 2F and basically thought that hey… ignoring the exp penalty and Harugals, I will have to kill 54,363 mobs on that floor since they all give the same exp (minus the Harugals).

People keep talking about all of the maps they were utilizing in RO
because they had all of this freedom. I don’t know what game you were
playing, but I can vividly remember killing these particular things:
porings, rockers, agrigopes, high orcs, loli ruris, bios stuff.

As far as min-maxing went, yeah, there wasn’t that many maps (linear in that respect). But you at least had the option to pick a less efficient map though. A lot of the maps in RO were unused anyway cause they weren’t useful or good for anything (no MVPs, good exp mobs, etc). They simply just existed there to make the world feel larger, which is not necessarily a bad thing though.

#163

Well, if I want to treat the information from tosbase as being accurate for Demon Prison 2F.

Then I can say for sure that I’ve seen much more than just 3 Harugals during peak time with many players on the map (even in areas where there are no other players, but just me solo). So there definitely seems to be a multiplier of some kind that is going on. It might be possible that it’s a side effect of what you stated in #1 where a full group gets additional spawns dropping on them, where if they kill them those additional spawns get sent elsewhere on the map (regardless if the person is partied).

When I think of it that way though it seems like a really complex approach to compensating for player counts when it would be far easier to just have their spawn script say something like: if playercount > 15 then map_mobs * 3; or something like that.

#164

Because the monsters are easier to kill, and you can solo them, that makes most of the MMO games a solo based game. Back in the RO days, it is hard to level in GH Underprison by yourself, and you are hardly killing 3 at the same time. Also, the map is interesting with monsters that counter the other built. You have Zombie Prisoner that is the easiest target for Priest, but you have Hunter Fly that is hard to kill by Priest, or Injustice that can easily kill a Priest.

The game was designed to party (indirectly, hinted), and no difference than going into a dungeon. This is why the community is closer, because you NEED a partner.

#165

First of all, I want to thank IMC for delivering this great MMORPG to us players and allowing me to participate in the iCBT2! It was a fantastic experience (excluding the ongoing bugs, glitches, and exploits, but this is still in beta), and I’d love to join in future tests!

Secondly, I completely agree with OP. As a person that loved RO and still do, I feel that while ToS is already a great game, it still can’t compete with RO in the core game-play aspect.

The quest system in ToS makes the game too linear. The quests guide you through the game and literally tells you what to do, where to do it, and how to do. You are given very limited freedom, and if you want to explore or move on, you can’t, because if you don’t do the quests, you can’t advance any further than the quests allow you to. You’re chained by the quest chain. In RO, you never had to follow a main quest line, like OP pointed out, and you’re free to wander the world with no restrictions (except being in maps that are too strong for your level).

I am OK with there being a quest-line in ToS, but it shouldn’t be forcing every player to follow it, no matter what your class is. You can have everyone start the game at the same location with the same quest, but said quest should only be there to help players with the basic game mechanics; a tutorial on the game-play. Then, after players finish the quest, they should be free to explore the game by themselves at this point without the restriction of the quest-line.

Of course, having sub-quests are extremely important for story-telling, but they can also be for gaining a specific item or equip, access to a certain map, unlocking an achievement, or to simply expand your knowledge on the world of ToS and feel that you’re actually in the game. There shouldn’t be quests that holds your hands through the whole game, making it very repetitive and boring if players were to start again with a new character.

What I’d love, is a ToS with its incredible graphics, sounds, level and class system, and game control and mechanics, but is set in an open world like RO, where players are free to grind, quest, farm for items and silver in a different variety of maps. What ToS currently lack is the exploration, diversity, and immersion in the game. This issue will result in the game having a low re-play value.

Again, thank you very much for offering us a chance to play this beautiful game, and hopefully it will soon reach its maximum potential! :smile:

2 Likes
#166

I’ve got to say, this is what the game is truly lacking. That feeling of exploration in cities and fields, in RO every single map was memorable, and the spawns seemed relevant for the most part also. The open ended open world of RO is something I miss, it can only be found pre renewal. I also strongly felt in RO that certain classes/builds were more efficient against certain monsters. Most every monster had a drop worth grinding for too, at any level range.

The OP summarized my feelings on this perfectly <3

Lets support IMC in hopes that they can pull it off! I think they do understand how it would benefit them.

#167

I don’t know if someone said it in this thread but we will have a new town to begin, Orsha. This city has a main quest too, they will add new maps.

Now we need two more towns with their unique road and it will be ok, I hope.

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#168

Problem is, while a step in the right direction, this doesn’t change the fundamental flaw present. Quests are linear, and the only way to effectively progress.

So I can make a new character and follow the linear questline from Klaipeda -> Fedimian or from Orsha -> Fedimian. So what? It’s all just a linear path to follow that I can’t deviate from unless I want to suffer.

I’d rather be able to make a new character, and have 5-6 maps to lvl on with varying difficulties / monsters, and have different choices as I lvl up. What gets me is the current map is already able to support this type of gameplay. They just need to make grinding a viable choice vs. questing, increase spawns on certain maps, and make the lvl limit vs monsters not be so small.

I should be able to kill things +/- 30 lvls from me without exp penalty, and they shouldn’t magically do more damage to me / take 1 damage from me because of lvl difference.

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#169

My opinion about ToS
Pro

  • Have many different class role (but still can’t beat old games like Ro1, L2, WoW)
  • Awesome BGM

Cons:

  • Imbalance classes
  • Boring animation
  • Stupid mob/boss/pet AI
  • Boring quest, the same with story
  • No challenge dungeons (just mobs with higher stat, i feel it’s even more crap than one of the best crap game Eden eternal)
  • Crafting is too easy and boring (for a old school game, wtf is this crafting system, even bunch of casual online game have better crafting system)
  • Status system is kinda fail (no resist -> prema stun, prema freeze … )
  • Potential system on weapon is kinda fk up ( even more fk up if there 's “potential protection scroll” will sell at the cash shop later )
  • Magic atk is too strong because we lack of magic defense equipment (bad at stat arangement)

and many stupid things that people discover and not listed here … :joy:

2 Likes
#170

I 100% agree with you . This game is like a Diablo where you simply rush the end . And item you get, have no value ( exept arde dagger that need farming to get it and propbably more item but most of them follow your leveling path )

I think the Job Npc need all to be in different place . Bokor close to a graveyard , Priest into a church ( this church can sell some holy stuff ) Pyromancer close to a volcano ect ect . This make feel your character . As you mentioned , Klapeida look like a NPC city with no heart . There is no place to simply walk and chill and fell the moment . Its only a video game , but if im playing ragnarok its because I was able to play it 15h+ a day because it doesnt make me feel its a video game . TOS getting me bored after 2h , you walk and check your map for a flag , you click to npc you do what he ask and you got XP . In ragnarok online you where level 25 at payon cave and if you getted a Archer skeleton card this make you rich , and this make you proud . In TOS nothing impress me because reaching level 200 is simply just so easy . Ofc its a CBT , ill give many chance to this lol .

2 Likes
#171

If you have 4 linear ways, you have 4 maps for lvl 10, then 4 maps for lvl 20… I’m at Klapeida, I finished all the quests from the early lvl, I just have to go to another map in Orsha with the same lvl.

Linear quests are not really a problem, the big problem here is exactly what you are saying : quests are “the only way to effectively progress”. More maps doesn’t solve the problem, but they will give us more freedom if IMC allow us to grind or to do quests.

That’s why, if they do more towns to begin, you will have more maps to grind for each lvl.

++ new maps and everything will be ok.

Sadly, I don’t know if they will change this system. I don’t understand why did they do this mistake, xp system from vanilla RO was good, why did they copy the last RO system which is a total bulshit :cry:.

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#172
  1. Reason for MMO .

Totally agree with you . Story line make this a Diablo game and a single game players . Most of the time , me and my friends was alone doing quest alone because we were never at the same place…

*Hey what up ?! wanna play tree of savior ? Yess ofc ! but oh…we are not at the same place in storyline , too bad .

#173

Perhaps they should make ToS’ quest line somewhere between linear and non-linear. like create a character, no initial quests will be given to you -> explore -> “accidentally” find a wandering (missable) NPC -> given a quest to slay “x” amounts of monsters -> finish quest -> continue exploring -> slay monsters -> get a notification that you are eligible to start a “hidden” quest after slaying “x” amounts of monsters" -> go to “x” town" -> stumble upon a “curious” item while exploring which would start another “hidden” quest -> decide to finish the latter quest first -> continue into town to finish the former quest -> explore town -> messenger comes after playing “x” amounts of hours or after staying in town for “x” amounts of minutes -> main quest line starts and so on.

Point is: maybe in implementing missable NPCs/Quests, Hidden dungeons, and/or Quest lines only found in places one wouldn’t think of looking, this would create something like “Hey, I’m the first player to have found this quest and I feel good about it”-feeling

#174

I agree .

About killing monster quest I have to say that I feel like playing a cheap game when the npc tell me to kill 7 time the same monster …Where is the challenge xD ? Real Challenge is : Kill 400 of these monster or 400 of another kind . THERE you have a challenge .THERE you proud to finish. I just stop The Elder Scroll Online because the xp is only base on quest and quest are so boring like the CBT2 .Same for WoW , Same for TERA . You talk to a npc , he tell you to burn 5 demonic totem xyz that make the village blablabla . You check on map you have all the location of totem , you simply follow the arrow that show you eeevvvvverrrryyything what you have to do . And when its done you receive the XP and patern restart . This game need to be like ragnarok online 1 because if this game is still alive 14 years laters , its because its a very extra well make game . And if this game going to be a linears Diablo 4 , I will not play it , we will be many I think lol… But as I always say , Its a BETA so hope is there !! :slight_smile:

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