Old content and how to make the game enjoyable by ArenaIW

[ArenaIW]

Hi, i’ve been playing this game for too much time and I can say playing it right now is ■■■■■■■ boring. Therefore i’ll write down what i would wish this game was like.

TL,DR: Make leveling slower by adjusting EXP given to that people aren’t overleveled from one episode to the other and by the time a character finishes episode 13 it reaches 460. Make Legend Gear which adjusts to character level. Make field monsters at low level be more tanky to allow more skill experience. Add Gabija coin acquisition to dungeon clear to increase player queueing. Add an option to copy goddess gear in a character locked manner in order to allow more build variety. Make goddess raids for each old outdated raid which adds Goddess tier Gear Progression and gives people more things to do. Take as example Lepidotera Hard in order to make raids that require players to have more involvement with the mechanics and not Snake which is just dumb mirror turning.

Leveling - Questlines - Getting new players to enjoy the game.

I’m personally under the impression that all new players should be able to reach level 460 simply by questing for two main reasons: population is incredibly low to rely on dungeon queue systems; and secondly, players can be overwhelmed by power difference between them and endgame players.

Leveling should be an interesting solo content adventure in which people can test skills and develop their character at a fair pace, and when finishing the leveling storyline one must have gone THROUGH ALL QUESTS without having to retrace back.

On our current patch, while advancing through the multiple low level areas you will find that all monsters die to one-hit, which is very boring and also limits the possibility of skill testing. You will also find out that at level 200 you will have at least 4 storylines that you haven’t touched at all. Those 2 are the main reasons why EXPERIENCE given at early levels must be heavily diminished while respecting the proper level thresholds and monsters should be tanky enough for people to try out their skills and skill interactions.

In order to avoid overleveling at early stages, the solution would be as simple as considering what level do you want a player to be by the end of X questline, and make sure the amount of EXP given during the complete questline bring the player from level 1 to the level desired, for example 40. Currently we have 13 episodes and a level cap of 460, you could easily have each Questline give 36 levels, and so by the time a player finishes all episodes, their character will be cap level without the need of dungeons.

Regarding monster toughness and character identity.

As far as I am concerned, killing monsters in one-hit is incredibly boring at early stages of the game and leads to players disengaging from going forwards. Having monsters impossible to kill or incredibly strong would have the same effect.

Currently all monsters up until West Jungers Road (Currently known as Sajunga Road) are way too weak. I would heavily suggest increasing the defense of all field monsters by a substantial amount while keeping their attack values low. This would allow players to have a better grasp and feeling of skill usage.

Gear is also a very heavy problem for new players who have no experience at the game. Many players don’t know there is such a thing as Kedoran gear at Wings of Vaivora and many don’t know how to or when to upgrade their armors and weapons.
A solution I would suggest for allowing comfortable questing without the reliance of seeking for new gear at the start of the game would the implementation of that which i’d call: “Savior’s Equipment”

Savior’s equipment would be a legend grade combination of armors and weapons which would have a window similar to goddess gear. Just as some other gear from the past, such as “Harvest” unique weapons and some tutorial class specific weapons, Savior’s Equipment would level up along with the character level. It would also be team storageable and having Weapons or Armors swapped between types would also be free and doable at any point. You could change a savior’s sword to a staff at any point in time depending on the character you are leveling. Due to it being Legend Grade, ichors and visions could be equipped on savior’s gear. Random stats could also be rolled or implemented for free. Set effects can not be applied to Savior’s gear.

All in all the intention of this changes would be to have a comfortable questing experience where a character can be thoroughly practiced and episodes are completed sequentially.

For those people who don’t want a questing experience and already have maxed out characters, level 460 cards are available at the Exchange badge shop.

What would happen to dungeons then?

Dungeon system is completely outdated and is only useful in order to generate pamokas. It’s content that noone has interest in playing which makes queue times incredibly long.

I would suggest dungeons are granted a “economical” reward. Considering the current state of the game and intentions of IMC, granting Gabija coins upon clearing would be the best approach most likely, let’s say for example 1000 Gabija coins upon Dungeon clearing. That would allow for more better queueing times and more player engagement with the content.

So now we are level 460, completed all questlines, what are players offered at this point.

Once the cap level is reached, Gear progression begins which is the most extensive part of this game.
Currently we have the Equipment storage system, which I honestly really enjoy. There’s a few things i might personally change though;

First one would be Requirements for ARK and Goddess armor Crafting / Leveling. Arqueniums and Thierriniums are somewhat expensive to get for new players. I would personally not remove them at all from the “Ingredient formula” but personally I would move the “Level” in which they are required.
For Arks which are leveled per character, it is hard to have an approach which allows the Player to level the ark from 1 to 4 with a low cost, which permits the player to experience how the Ark works without having to completely invest on it whilst going to level 5 and above, which makes the highest damage difference, have a relatively higher cost.

For Goddess armors, which in this case have a “team based” leveling system. I believe Arquenium should be moved from Registration requirement to Leveling material when upgrading from Level 1 to Level 2. This would also allow new players to experience multiple armors at low level without having to invest heavily on each 4-piece set.

Regarding Current State of Goddess Gear:

In order to play multiple builds, a character requires multiple copies of armors and weapons in order to have sets of skill gems, awakenings, enchants depending on the build of choice. I believe that a system in which allows Armors and Weapon enhance, transcendence and evolution values are copied on CHARACTER LOCKED gear is necessary in order to allow people to have MULTIPLE READY-TO-GO BUILD OPTIONS AND INCREASING GAMEPLAY VARIETY.

Current Raids

A lot of content has been left behind and has no reason for existing or being ran at all, that includes earth tower, Velcoffer, Skiaclipse and so on. The main reason to run the content currently is for Weapon skins, which I believe is a good enough reason, but having only one “difficult” raid at the time is very unappealing, and leads to players not feeling motivated to play at all.

A more diverse variety of “endgame raids” would allow mean more gametime and involvement by the players.

WE WANT MORE RAIDS, MORE CONTENT TO DO, TO HAVE FUN. Keep in mind FUN doesn’t strictly mean HARD nor HEAVILY REWARDING. AS LONG AS INTERACTIVE GIMMICKS WHICH DONT REQUIRE BEING PUNISHING OR BENEFICIAL ARE ADDED ITS MOST LIKELY GONNA BE FUN.

Therefore this is my petition.

I would love if all raids were granted a GODDESS VERSION and rewards from every raid were to be used for gear development.

Goddess raid Velcoffer
Velcoffer Goddess raid giving a new Goddess Tier Seal, Velcoffer Seal +1.
Level 1: Damage +15%, Dragon Strenght +1 Affects set effect performance
Level 2: INT/STR/SPR depending on class + MATK/PATK/Healing
Level 3: Dragon Strenght +1 affects Accesorry performance
Level 4: Min. Crit / Defensive Stats
Level 5: Dragon Strenght +1 affects Relic performance. (For example +600 RP).

Goddess Raid Skiaclipse:
Upon clearing gives Refined Feathers.
Refined feathers are used to apply set effects on goddess armor. Here you can reintroduce incredibly varied selection of armor set effects, including classics like Sauk, Aqrova…

Currently Set effects are very few and monotonous, granting the game a big variety of set effects with multiple applications would allow for a more diverse gameplay.

In order to tune set effects, old option should be rebalanced.

Sauk:
Grants character player a 150% damage boost for a limited time.
Cooldown 30s
Duration 12s
Dragon Strength 1: Add an additional 6s Duration.

Proverbs
Passive effect; When hitting a monster apply a 5 second debuff. “Proverbs”
Reduces damage done by target by 12%.
Dragon Strenght 1: Increases damage reduction to 18%

Goddess Raid Lepidoptera:
Acquisition of material for Luciferie upgrading to Goddess Tier accessories.
I would heavily recomend Force wave is removed from new Goddess tier Triukas and Elemental overload is reimplemented. Force wave requiring a directional input in order to direct it has made it become despised by all Wizard Players.

Goddess Raid Glacia:
Upon clearing grants materials used for more Awakening, Color gem and Skill gem refining.
This is just a suggestion I’m not very convinced either.

RELIC REBALANCE:

IMC has explained how the relic is unhealthy and how they consider it a mistake. I do not disagree with that, but something must be made in order to standarize the game for kTOS and iTOS.

The most simple rebalancing would be reducing performance of magenta gems by either a half or a forth. Magentas are the most powerful gems and give enormous boosts in power; current level 10 goddess magenta gems are heavily overtuned.

Changing for example Marvel from 4,000 MATK (per level) and 2% final damage done (per level) to 2,000 MATK and 1% or 1,5% final damage done would cause magenta to be far less impactful.

Aside of the Magenta problem, there is also a lack of Cyan gem Variety.

Legend Cyan gems give and active effect which can never be reused without turning a relic OFF or ON, which heavily affect their usability. Meanwhile, Goddess Cyans give both an effect upon use and a passive effect while relic is on.

Requiring to turn a relic on or off to use the effect of a cyan gem might be affecting the variety of gameplay options available to the players. I believe that such a thing as a “Release Cyan” skill should be added in order to allow for many more gameplay interactions. Allowing a character to Recast the effect of a Cyan gem while the relic is ON or OFF.

For example:

new Legend gem: Impenetrable Shell

Upon relic release grants a 20000 HP shield to all party members. (+20,000 HP per level).

new Goddess Gem: Carapace of the Ancients

Upon relic release grants a 30,000 HP shield to all party members (+30,000 HP per level). While relic is active grant -1% final damage taken to all party members.

One might want to only use the shield acquisition during certain wipes or hard mechanics during a raid while in an all-out fight where individuals can be completely looked after the passive bonus will allow for better survival.

new Goddess Gem: Armlet of the Meteor.

Upon relic release teleport towards target location. Grants 1s Invulnerability upon use and a Meteor falls from the skies dealing 30,000% x 5 SFR at target location. Enemies hit by the Meteor will be “Starbound” debuff, if PC hits an enemy affected with Starbound while relic is active, that character is slowed for 2s.

[ArenaIW]

Regarding goddess raids and mechanics:

I feel like a lot of people I know, and myself included, consider Lepidoptera (Hard) the most FUN and INTERACTIVE raid that Tree of Savior has had for the last years. Making people inside the party team up for “polarity”, “moth transformation”, the “orb selection” selection to interact with the raid and the “Curse pattern”, made the raid famous for it’s difficulty.

I do not believe that any raid in the future should have a time limit, heavy boss HP pools or very punishing mechanics, because Tree of Savior has never intended to be an extremely hard game. Instead of that I would recommend bosses to enter invulnerability states whenever the party is intended to deal with a mechanic. For example, Giving Glacia damage invulnerability during the so called “Pizza”, making Moringponia invulnerable during “Raise” or Tantalizer unhittable while the “Magic Sources” are approaching would force players to be involved with the raid and clear content properly without dumb 30second speed runs.

When looking forwards to new content I would love if map mechanics or interactive mechanics were implemented on all raids. Some examples I would give for potential raid concepts.

Goddess Skiaclipse;

Night Pattern:
Stars fall every 5 seconds on the battlefield: A total of 20 stars will fall from the sky, players in the party must pick them up. For every star that is not picked, Skiaclipse Heals for 0.5% HP. Pattern repeats until Skiaclipse has recovered no HP during pattern.

Day pattern:
Skiaclipse covers himself in a dark aura and sun rays channel to fall from above. One sunlight beam will fall per character, For 9 seconds a of light beam follows each party member, on the 9th second the beam stops and on the 10th second it releases. The intention is to have all beams of light hit Skiaclipse. Pattern repeats until the 5 simultaneous hits are landed.

Eclipse Pattern:
Players will be required to stand in multiple places in a telegraphed matter. First all 5 characters will be required to be in the middle of the map, over a pedestal of light, then different platforms would light up and demand the presence of a PC on top of it in a time limit before the next lighted platforms appear.
If a character is not standing on top of a platform at the proper time, that character is killed.

Earth Tower / Solmiki Tower → Beholder’s Maze

Beholder’s Maze would be a 10 Floor dungeon which would consist of 9 room in which Gimmicks are completed, which do not determine failure of the raid, but which meaningfully affect the difficulty on the 10th room.

Room 1: Entrance (Guards and Soldiers)
At the entrace there will be multiple monsters, some of them are soldiers, which must be killed eventually, and the other ones will be guards. There will be a total of 4 guards which upon seeing a PC will start running towards the exit. The guards job is to inform the main Boss of the Raid that Savior’s have stepped inside the Maze. The objective of saviors it to Kill the guards before they hit the exit. In order to make it more difficult to the saviors, Guards will have 1 AoE defensre ratio while soldiers will have 3 AoE defense ratio, so Guards will be the last target to be hit by AoE spells. Just like the old days, Crowd Control will be highly sought after since Soldiers are going to be tanky monsters that won’t take an instant to kill.

If guards reach the exit of the room, Boss will be prepared for the fight before saviors arrive and will have a buff which grants 5% final damage done.

Room 2: Kruvina’s Testing room.
the Beholder has ran mutliple experiments with Kruvina’s in the past, in this room there will be a total of 20 Kruvinas, all of them at the edges of the room. 5 of them give beneficial effects upon destruction, 10 of them do nothing upon death, and the remaining 5 cause a big explosion, dealing damage to PCs and Alerting the Raid Boss that something is going on in the Maze.

There will be “Experiment Managers” in the room, which are monsters. The experiment managers are aware of which kruvinas are bombs and which aren’t. Upon entering the room experiment managers will walk towards Exploding Kruvinas to activate them and then run away. The job of the saviors is to Identify towards what kruvina a monster is heading from the middle of the Map to guess which are the exploding ones, kill the monsters before they touch the exploding kruvinas and then destroy the other Kruvinas to look for beneficial buffs.
If a Kruvina Blows up, Raid Boss gets 5% reduction of damage taken. Kruvina buffs give 5% HP and SP regeneration every 5 seconds for the rest of the raid.

Room 3: Third Greenhouse
Beholder is known to have performed multiple plant experiments in the past, he keeps his own greenhouse at his maze. At this room there are no monsters at the begining. There are 10 Herb NPCs, 2 give beneficial effects (Increase 5% final damage done), 2 remove all previous beneficial effects, other 8 summon a plant monster which is weak and can be easily killed. When a Plant monster is killed, it explodes and debuffs nearby players with Foul Smell.
There is no need to interact with any NPC, this room has no time limit, you can just walk past it.
A player with Foul Smell will be preferentially targeted by the final Raid Boss.

Room 4: Main Hall:
At beholders Main Hall there are 3 exits, the lateral exits lead to room 5 and 6, upon entering one you can go back to Main hall. The 3rd exit is at the north where 3 guards are stanidng. Leads to Room 7. There will be 3 Guards at the main hall. Catch them offguard before entering field of vision and inform the boss.
If a guard leaves the room, Raid Boss gets +5% final damage.

Room 5: Weaponry
Beholder is a man of science, and advanced equipment. At the weaponry you’ll find equipment with beneficial effects.
Choose 1:
Suit of Kupole feathers: -10% damage taken
Saule’s Backbone: +10% final damage
Essence of a Wild flower: +20% healing power.
Flashbomb: 1 Consumable; Upon use stun all nearby enemies (Raid boss included) for 3 seconds.
Can stop mechanics.
Life Potion: 1 Consumable: Resurrects friendly player, doesn’t consume SC count or Resurrection count.

Room 6: Bathroom
You can take a bath. If you do so, you are all cleaned up. Removes Foul Smell debuff.

Room 7: First Maze
Upon entering the First maze the final Raid Boss will be aware of your presence. The Maze consist of Walls covered in Creeper plants with 10 HP. They lose 1 HP upon hit. When touching a creeper plant you get rooted for 5 seconds.
There will be a total of 5 Maze patterns that are random upon raid entry. There is no time limit. All Creeper plants can be killed. Walls do not cause any debuff on the character.

Room 8: Second Greenhouse.

The beholder has done multiple experiments with plants in the past. the Beholder was forced to leave his second greenhouse because of experiment gone wrong.

At the second greenhouse there are 10 Grasswombs, which each spawn 10 Herbal Terrors every 10 seconds. There will also be 100 Herbal terrors when the Saviors enter the room. Saviors must kill all herbal terrors while dealing with the Grasswombs.
Herbal terrors are Low HP monsters that upon dealing damage cause SP-Burn 5% SP lost per hit.

Room 9: Laboratory Ruins-

There are no monsters in this room. This is were the old Beholder lab was. It’s now in ruins due to the first experiment that went wrong. You can find old books of beholder’s diaries of experiments.
Next exit leave to boss room.

Room 10: First Greenhouse.

The beholder tried to replicate a divine tree using essence from kupoles, he failed and made an aberration which managed to destroy the entire building. the Beholder couldn’t deal with it and decided to let it die eventually when it ran out of nutrients.

Monsters commanded by Baubas found the aberration long time ago. Baubas was fond of that monstrosity and decided to let it be and commanded the monsters to feed it with whatever they found.
Baubas hoped that maybe a Cursed Tree resembling the Divine Tree might grow from that thing.

The Raid Boss lies in this circular room. The Boss cannot move and stands in the middle. His attack patterns are very wide and heavy hitting but also very slow as well, which forces the party to move constantly around the room. Being unable to dodge attacks will be very punishing.

The boss will randomly target with it’s mechanics any savior with Foul Smell.

Raid boss: Cursed Aberration

98% Acid Raid: Raid Boss releases hot acid gas from it’s bulbs which precipitates when contacting the rooms cold walls. Acid Raid lasts for 20s and applies a constant debuff that causes DEF/MDEF -30%

94% Minion Summon: Aberration causes it’s roots to spawn Creeper Plants all over the battlefield. Characters will be rooted for 5s when touching a creeper plant.

89% Enduring: Boss hardens its leaves and roots, takes 50% less damage and does 20% more damage. Enduring buff dissapears at 80%. When enduring buff is removed, boss explodes and goes down to 50% HP.

87% Seed Salvo: Boss targets PC with foul smell, spits seeds at high speed to either All target players with Foul Smell, if no player has Foul Smell, then it shoots seeds towards all players. Seeds are shot for 15seconds, players must move in order to avoid being hit.

85% Acid Rain.

83% Acid Slide: Boss covers certain areas of the map with Acid. Whenever a characters enters contact witih an Acid pool it gets a 5s debuff that inflicts -30% DEF/MDEF.

82% Grass Hardened Blades. Boss targets PC with Foul smell debuff or All players if noone has such debuff. Heavy attack that can kill any Savior in 3 hits. Boss does a total of 10 Sequenced hits, there’s a window of 3 seconds in between hits. Upon hitting the ground with its Hardened Grass Blades, they remain on the floor.

81% Minion summon Creeper plants.

80% Explosion. Boss can’t withstand more damage, it’s own acid generation causes it to explode, dealing massive damage to Saviors and to itself. Saviors can hide behind Grass Hardened Blades to avoid taking damage.
Boss goes instantly to 50% HP, Phase change.

Phase 2: Cursed Tree.

The outer layers of the boss have been destroyed with the explosion and it’s main stem remains exposed. The heart lies inside it, fresh leaves and grass blades are exposed.
After the explosion the floor has cracked, roots might be exposed.
All previous buffs are removed from all characters.

Boss HP starts at 50%. Attacks become faster and are still incredibly dangerous to get hit by.

49% Root expansion. Roots appear inside the cracks on ground all around the battlefield. Roots have high HP, when a player enters contact with a root, he becomes rooted until the root is destroyed.

44% Blooming Trees: 4 trees appear at the edges of the map. Trees channel for 20 seconds, if they complete their channeling they deal damage to all players inside the room. Damage is equal to 40% of current health per tree.

40% One with Nature: the Cursed tree summons a pillar on one of the five edges on the floor. A player must interact with that pillar. Player who interacts with that pillar is covered by the Cursed Tree roots and becomes unable to move and attack nor take any damage from the environment. Pillars remain on the battlefield until the boss reaches 10% HP. Players that interact with pillars are unable to move, use skills nor take damage until pillars dissapear.

Saviors are not forced to interact with it immediatly.

For each Pillar on the floor with no player inside of it , a map wide debuff (Corruption) is spread, causing all players have 2% HP and 2% SP removed every 2 seconds.

If a player interacts with a cursed pillar, it disables the corruption debuff application.

36% Kupole essence expansion. The will of the resting Kupole realize about what’s going on and decide to help the savior. Cursed tree starts taking damage over time. The Cursed Tree loses 0.1% HP every 2 seconds.

33% One with Natura.

30% Pain-filled memories: Orbs containing the kupoles suffering spawn around the map revolve around its periphery. Players getting in contact with orbs take high damage.

26% One with Nature.

22% Make it stop: as the tree dies out the memores of the kupoles become more vivid, they go through their experiences with the beholder again.

Four Buds will appear around the cursed tree, each Bud causes a map wide debuff causing 0.25% HP and 0.25% SP loss every second. Players inside One With Nature also take damage.

19% One with Nature.

15% One with Nature and Complete Agony. The Kupoles can’t withstand the vivification of their past memories. You can hear their screams. The Cursed Tree starts taking damage equal to 1% HP every 2 seconds.

10% Spirit Consumption: the Cursed tree consumes the energy of all living things . Kupole spirits are vanished , pillars are destroyed. Players inside Cursed pillars take no damage, as they are considered part of the tree. Players that haven’t interacted with Cursed pillars die immediately.

The Cursed tree remains on the floor after consuming all kupole spirits, shinning vividly. Tree will be invulnerable.
Goddess Vaivora spawns by the saviors side. Before continuing saviors are granted the option of destroying the tree themselves or letting vaivora handle it.

With either option the Cursed Tree dies. Materials obtained from this Raid go towards Vaivora weapon development. Material for further leveling vaivoras to level 5 and 6. Level 5 would give stat points, level 6 would grant additional effects.

[AinsOoalGown]

all these are actually interesting ideas, i love the idea, but like many other game dev company, they rarely put effort to rejuvenate old content to make it somewhat relevant again. they would rather create new content that somewhat feel fresh that guarantee to excites players cause its new stuffs to try. or else they would sorta recycle old content idea, tweak a bit, and actually provide us the same s__t. IMC indeed doin recycle only at very worse level of recycling that the results rather poor (that old dungeon recycle to get that crown thingy level up mats) and give us the worst feel of its the same s__t all over again.

another very easy example to this is in PTCGO (pokemon card online) they never go back to revisit old card mechanic like EX and its mega EX, extra evolution break, GX and its GX attack etc. they never create cards with those unique mechanic anymore, or i can say its discontinued, and instead they copy the idea with current V and Vmax which actually almost pretty much the same with a little tweak.

In another dimension where games are actually created not fully for business but fully to pleased customers, to actually listens, and perhaps in another dimension where tree of savior developer is rich in budget, having good start, good playerbase, good economy, and all, this will likely happen.

sadly its too dreamy for our dimension and the game current situation.