So I’ve got a key a couple of days ago, I’ve played a while as a str/dex Priest. I went straight for Priest 3 and my character is currently level 82. If it’s important to someone - I’ve played RO for 7 years and all that, but I understand that ToS is a different game and all that.
So first what player sees coming to the game is it’s aestetics. Visual part of the game seems very well made, it feels different from streams and videos when you play yourself. Everything is good - map design (visual part), character design, creature design, everything. Creature design worth a special mention, because it’s interesting how most creatures are infact illogical and silly looking if you think about it - like bunny assassins or pig sorcerers, but for some reason it seems very natural and fits the gameworld perfectly, just like RO. Some creatures seem really creepy, tho it seems it would be impossible to create something like this using ToS’ visual style. Game soundtrack is amazing aswell, it’s the only MMORPG in a long time where I can play with game sounds and music on and feel no disgust. The music is also perfect for the grindy attitude of the game as it helps you do stay calm and meditative while clicking on those mobs.
Personally, I’d love to see a difference in priest 1/2/3 costumes, and same for other classes, but that’s the only thing I could think of being changed it game’s visual aspects.
Since lvl 1 and to lvl 82 so far game is insanely friendly to the player and everything is handled and explained to him by quests, including crafting, for example, so even the dumbest idiot will make no mistakes and will understand the game fully and will feel comfortable while playing. As a minus of this system - game is extremely linear and it pretty much forces you to go to fixed locations to do fixed quests. If I’ll take RO as an example (please forgive me) - it had lots of locations for various levels - at the very least starting areas around Morrocc, Prontera and Geffen were equal, and later on there were lots of possible locations where one can play, however if you open ToS’ map you’ll see that not only it has only one starting location for everyone, but the game forces you to go one map after another and you can’t even swap places of those maps or something. Like, if you’ll try to kill a monster 30 levels above you - the reward won’t worth it, as for some reasons exp gap between different mosters seems pretty small, so you can’t go and hunt some big prey to get 1% exp instead of 0.1. I Know about those “elite” mobs, but still, you know what I mean. Plus, if you go to higher level locations - you won’t get all of the quest you could’ve taken which will result in a heavy exp handicap and quests are something you’re forced to do, because exp cards give insane amounts of exp compared to grinding. 15 minutes of questing equals 2-3 hours of grinding or something like that. And yeah, occasional quest bosses are piss easy, but are huge damage sponges and take ages to take down. Every monster knocks you down and prolongs his life this way. Sometimes you can be stunlocked for 10 seconds straight. Who thought that was a good idea? Sometimes those bossed bug out and don’t attack, but it doesn’t affect the flow of battle. Everything is exatly the same as if they’d fight.
Current game stage for me seems like a trampoline into the game for everyone, something like an extended tutorial of some sort. So now I can only hope for a bigger variety of playable locations. Simply put - I want flexibility, diversity and options in the game. So far there is none. And while we’re at it - I saw people cry about game being grindy already at those levels (before 80). So as I see it - there is no grind. 0, zero, null, ноль. I’m keeping up with locations’ levels and I’ve accindentally skipped a couple of lvl 60+ locations almost completely. So everyone who’s whining about exp rates or grind is doing something really wrong.
Next, talking about game’s mechanics, from cleric/priest perspective. First of all, I really like the damage type/armor mechanic. RO-like elements mechanic is still in place as well. However, most things seem not so good. Like, damage formulas are unclear, but it seems like damage simply calculates as Damage-Defence. Because of that some abilities, like deprotected zone, become completely useless very fast, as the only remove ~~10-20 defence flat, that will be more and more useless as you progress into the game. At lvl 82 I think of removing it from my bar. Healing is an example of a good mechanic - you can take it as a cleric and it will be useful till the end of the game, because it scales with your maximum hp. Safety zone is nice too, because it scales against the attacker’s damage. Mass heal and aspersion can be thrown here as well. But some spells and abilities seem to scale really bad. Or let’s take blessing - it has no scaling, just a flat damage addition. It would be fine if abilities took the character’s atk and multiplied it, but it seems like they don’t do it. So ability damage is not like Damage*250% for example, but Damage+ability damage, and later - Damage+ability damage-defence. So it can basically nullify some low damage builds because their damage will not be reduces as %, but will be simply reduced to 0. IMO it’s a very, very bad desicion.
Next - all abilities take 100000000000000000000000000 years to cast. While you cast sacrament+blessing+aspersion+stoneskin someone can run 4 screens away. I can’t say about other classes, but at least those abilities should be casted almost instant.
Next problem - contols. Yeah I know that cleric classes are not good to be played with mouse and I’ve been warned but still, I think it’s very stupid to make a PC game to be played via gamepad. Gamepad is a cripple of controller devices, and resembles of consoles - cancer of gaming, and of course is only suitable to play fighing games and nothing more. Why IMC have decided that players should use gamepad is completely beyond my understanding. I hope they will rething it completely and game’s controls will be more responsive and friendly. It seems like this decision made them consider “buff zones” like heal that’s casted on the ground instead of being casted on a player. And while we’re at it - all abilities have 100000000000 years cooldown. I’ve checked ToSbase and other sources and it seems that if I go monk I can only use double punch with some occasional ability uses every half a minute or so. I don’t know how does it make sence to give attacking abilities cooldowns that long in a grinding game. You will hit every 15 monster with a hand knife, for example. Yeah, great. In PvP it will come to 1-2-3-4-5 followed by autoattacks. And even if flat scaling (Damage+ability damage) is debatable, ability cooldowns MUST go down.
Stat-wise it’s a long talk. FIrst of all - dexterity must be nerfed. It’s a stat that gives you both damage, survivability and a chance to hit. Hit chance+dodge+crit that is. Other stats are not even remotely that useful and str/int are debatable due to abilities’ poor scaling. I think IMC would better bring here those multiplicities, like bonus attack for every 10 or 20 str, bonus crit and dodge for every, let’s say, 15 dex and so on. So far stat system seems ok but pretty boring at the same time, as you can’t actually make a character for your own playstyle with this system.
About classes and ranks - I think some attention must be payed to abilities’ scaling and some ways of making abilities of the first circles actual at higher levels, otherwise it can cause major disbalance. No one will level a class that will be useless because at lvl ~75 you will get another one which abilities will be better at everything.
Itemisation-wise - so far what I really like is that the best gear is made via crafting, this is really good and pushes people into communication that makes MMORPGs what they are. What seems a bit off so far is that 15-40-75-120~ gaps. So I’ve just bought my gear at lvl 75 and I’ll stay with the same gear till lvl 120. Not very fun if you ask me. ToS items have item levels, so why not bind item levels to player levels?
Gem system, potential system, etc. is nice. Too bad you can’t insert something really strong into those slots. (Yeah yeah, RO cards). I’ve heard something about moster gems, but haven’t seen one so far.
And in the end, talking about PvP. Haven’t done any, but REALLY looking forwar to some type of guild wars. IMO that’s a mandatory.
P.S. Gabija is not Soviet Union, please give us our market back, we want to do economy-related activites.