Tree of Savior Forum

People NEED something to compete over in PVE

General Discussion
#1

Everyone here knows I’m not one to complain. I’m a big supporter and long time lover of the game, even with its various flaws. I’m frequently getting into disagreements with others over various bits of melodrama.

I feel however that it is necessary to bring up an issue that rarely gets discussed here. One that is dwindling the population, killing guilds, and putting the game on life support. Right now the most popular and active guilds on Fedimian can barely get their members to log into the game, not because people dislike the game, but because those people don’t have a reason to.

There is nothing for players to compete over. Nothing at all. I don’t mean in the pvp sense, which in the majority of MMOs is the less preferred game mode. I mean in the pve sense.

Being an older player, I remember what the game was like before the 24hours worldboss debuff was added. Every guild in the game was competing with one another to get worldbosses. We were doing it 24 hours per day, everyday. It was a constantly changing “gamemode” in which players were spying on other guilds, strategising and theorising the best ways to track bosses, and strategising party compositions to defeat rival players.

It was the peak of Tree of Savior. When the servers were most lively, when the players felt like they had goals and purposes, and when guilds enjoyed the ability to get their players to organise together to beat other players at a thing.

Players could log in at any time of day and join the hunt. The hunt would be different every day at every time, and it would constantly have surprises.

The problem with the debuff was that it prevented people from being able to just login and start playing with whatever friends are online. Some friends would already have it, so organising anything on the fly was nearly impossible. It prevented people from playing with their own guild, and with the people they wanted to play with. It essentially killed almost all worldbossing.

I’m not necessarily saying that you MUST remove the debuff and bring back the old worldbossing. I am however using it as an example of when tos was at its best. As a guild leader at the time of the previous worldbossing, compared to now, getting activity organised is nearly impossible. Everyone is demotivated. Nobody has a purpose. Things are on life support.

And it’s not that people don’t want to play. It’s that they don’t have a reason to play. No competition means no motivation.

I see players discussing this endlessly in game. But I rarely ever see this mentioned on the forums, in particular the damned debuff, everyone is always mentioning it in game but not bringing it up in threads on the forum. I am very worried that IMC don’t know that it’s part of what’s damaged the guild ecosystem so much, and part of what has taken away so much activity from their playerbase.

Please offer constructive suggestions for bringing competition back to the open world in tos, the worldboss debuff, and problems with current activity levels in guilds.

Thanks for listening to me rant a little.

9 Likes
#2

We had competition of some sort when the game had more people during WBs, the issue is, high/max level players could came by and steal the cubes just like that, so there wasn’t competition except the one that you kill fast or someone will steal from you with a couple of hits (the high/max level guy).

Suggestions about that where made, IMC ignored, we let it be, and now the game don’t have many people doing WBs, except the ones affected by the next meaningful patch (next one is the Sorc buff so they are going for certain bosses now), I lost the count how many times I was leveling an alt and bumped into a boss these last months.

I feel the same way, this game don’t offer anything except leveling, grind certain gears to end up being obsolete in a future patch, grind material for the same gear like your life depend on it, grind shards to increase the gear potency, then remove the shards, lose a couple of then and lose the gear itself that you had a hell of a time grinding mats to make it.

It’s only death awaiting for it if IMC don’t do anything, but as I said on another post, I feel that IMC want to kill this game, at least on west. They are trying to force an excuse to close it down here.

Now is just a matter of wait.

6 Likes
#3

I don’t like how only a few people get cubes from WB. I honestly think GW2 did it right with the WB scaling with the amount of people and everyone who participated got something. If IMC would implement that, then yes it would be fun tracking down bosses.

2 Likes
#4

You do know that when PvE in this game becomes competitive the “this game is not p2w there is nothing to win” argument goes out of the window immediately?

1 Like
#5

That would have the opposite effect. I still wouldn’t be able to motivate anyone in the guild to come and do that activity because there would still be no competition to it.

The competition comes in beating others to the goal. In the depriving of the other guilds of the prize.

That’s bad for the people that don’t receive something. But in every guild and guild leader that I’ve talked to, it is the reason all the guilds hunted the bosses. Because the competition vs the other guilds was very entertaining.

If everybody wins, there isn’t a competition.

@AllyAlly that’s really never been something anyone in any of the active guilds on Fedimian cares about. I’ve never paid to win. Nor did any of the previous top boss killers before the debuff was implemented. I can’t speak for other servers of course, but that’s just not the experience we had in our guild back then and we were definitely one of the most effective guilds on the server, if not the most. But that’s partly down to the way we were tracking the bosses too. KRMG was undoubtedly the best dps on the server at that time and not at all a p2w player.

Besides that I’ve never seen anyone make that argument unironically, it’s a joke aimed at IMC rather than a serious argument. It didn’t affect bossing back then and wouldn’t now.

The real p2w comes in the form of who has the better PC to not drop fps to 3fps during the boss fight.

#6

I think the world boss update removes the debuff. Not entirely sure tho.

#7

This game is p2w anyway.
Just open your market-tab and look for the most expensive items.
And you will find only gatcha stuff.

So who cares anyway?

Tos endgame now is to wait for the next patch for the new p2w cubes.

9 Likes
#8

You’re missing a big thing here and that is that no one did old world bosses because “there was a competition”.

They did them because the gear was good and worth it.

Greed motivates people more than this imaginary “compeitition”. No one joined old world bossing solely to flex nuts. They did it out of greed.

Sorry to hear your guild is dying but that’s pretty much every guild right now. It’s not your guild, it’s the game. But that has nothing to do with the boss design and the new world boss rework is going to change all this so this entire thread is moot.

5 Likes
#9

I wasn’t sure either, so I thought it would be better safe than sorry to bring it up here.

@celgaming

Sure. Things were valuable.

But worldbossing died overnight, when the debuff dropped. You’re right that the current drops need to adapt to the newer way the server is in order to be attractive, but I’m not sure that it’s worth criticising really given that we already know the drops are changing.

There isn’t really any need for debate about what caused people to stop worldbossing. It all stopped overnight as soon as the debuff dropped. I recall it very clearly. The guilds went from 24/7 drop-in drop-out worldbossing to no worldbossing whatsoever, unless specifically grinding one specific gear. That’s not how everyone was bossing before the debuff, everyone was just jumping in to hunt whatever the next known boss location was, and keeping secrets from the other guilds on the timings. It didn’t matter to anyone what the drop was, only what the next-boss was because whatever rare drop might occur typically had some sort of value.

With that said, even the bosses with bad drops were being killed. Like Ferret Marauder, which had bad drops but was still killed by people if we knew the timer for it and a better boss timer wasn’t going to overlap with killing it.

It’s not moot at all if we haven’t got confirmation on the debuff going away. Absolutely nothing will change if it doesn’t go away. The atmosphere and environment will still be the same, but instead of organising parties for ET you’ll be organising parties for a wb kill. It’s not the same as what was driving the high guild activity levels that existed before. If there isn’t competition and everyone feels restricted, people won’t stick around for it. This game’s obsession with restrictions has consistently been a thorn in its side.

They have done everything in their power to eliminate any emergent gameplay. And with the emergent player-driven gameplay went half of the interesting activities.

#10

That must’ve been a long time ago. I seriously doubt the debuff is what killed world bossing, people were still very active at it months after, mostly with deathweaver and chap for the cards, those still had competition going on, the other bosses didn’t because their drops were just worthless.

Removing the debuff isn’t the solution to make WB more attractive, it’s better drops, and that’s what we’re getting next update.

2 Likes
#11

A small group of people were still at it, for specific drops, on only specific bosses.

Small groups of people still killing a boss because they need x drop is completely different to the serverwide game of cat, mouse and keeping secret timers away from the other guilds that went on week after week.

It’s not just a fight for the boss itself you see. It was a fight for information and knowledge about the boss timers, holding onto that, lying or convincing others about incorrect timers, and so on. There was far far more to it. On a scale that spawned systems like this for our guild. But I know of 2 other systems other guilds on Fedi were using. And I know that the others were all tracking through simple chat notes.

It was a very entertaining past time, that I know many members of Insanity on Fedimian will recall.

Unfortunately this past-time was completely killed by the debuffs, which were implemented as a result of unguilded people who complained that they, without any organisation behind them, could not get a boss. This was a mistake. It was a mistake to think that improving the random chance of a player being able to stumble across a worldboss in solo play would be an improvement over the server-wide organised game and competitive nature of the worldbossing that caused people to get so incredibly organised in order to compete. Nothing was stopping other players from joining guilds in order to get into that gameplay either, it was a poor decision when it happened, that nobody on the forums was very happy about. And it remains a poor decision to this day.

#12

We need something else instead of just the WB hunt because in the end doing the same thing over and over again gets boring over time, people need to start thinking ahead, world bossing alone wont make people stay in this game for years, and maybe not even for months.

One of the biggest problems i see, is that at the moment the only guild content we have its guild “missions” and “bosses” wich in all honesty are very boring and dissapointing, the rewards are so bad that its hard to care at all on doing them, the only good ones come at higher levels with the practo drop rate, but other than that there is no point on wasting time on them and also Im tired of the same reused bossees over and over again.

IMO we need competitve guild raids. Actual guild raids with actual hard bosses and mechanics with a rank performance system and clear time rank, etc. On the other hand pvp content cant be denied since not all the people like PVE, a good game has to manage well both kinds of players, PVE and PVP ones and offer them fun stuff to do.

In the end im sure with the update of WB and the new gear that requieres WB/field boss drops some of the stuff you said/want might be back again. I just hope we get something new to make us of our end game stuff.

2 Likes
#13

I agree.

Another issue with this is that the guilds at those higher levels are very demotivated. And absolutely nothing is in place to allow newer more motivated groups of newer players to catch up in their newer guilds.

The last time we tried to bring this up to IMC (admittedly a long time ago) the response we got was that they had tried large guild raids in testing but it “wasn’t fun” and was too disorganised or messy to be enjoyable. Something along those lines, I’m paraphrasing.

I don’t think the PVP scene in tos will ever take off anymore. It was never very large even at the game’s peak. There is certainly a section of the community that enjoys it, but it’s only a tenth of the size of the section of the people that play for PVE. That’s to be expected though really, it’s the same sort of ratio as other MMOs.

#14

I don’t think this can be solely blamed on the debuff, or even at all. This boss mafia you’re talking about wouldn’t have kept people interested for months given the same useless drops, you also have to take into consideration the population drop, you’re also from Fedimian. I guess the only way to kind of prove this is to wait until the new drops come out and see how the playerbase likes it.

2 Likes
#15

Will just merge my post under your thread since they are both asking technicially the same thing. Sometimes I do wonder will these threads/posts like ours ever get shown to the developers or not but let’s just hope for the best.

In short the something in which @Awoooo has mentioned are goals. In MMOs, players often start the game with some sort of idea on what they would like to be or achieve in the game, besides to have fun with the time they allocate to the game. Perhaps be top in PVE or PVP, or to be the prettiest/cutest/coolest character in game with the best looking avatar, or be first to own some world item or such etc. That’s the overarching goal for the player. Then the player will look in the game for sub-goals to help propel him/her forward towards their own personal goal.

When 2 players or groups of players have similar goals, like being top or 1st to do “something”, it breeds competition. Alongside with goals, competition between players is what engage them to spend more time in the game. And more time = more chances to make more money for the game company.

This is what ToS is seriously lacking at the moment, providing goals and purposes for its players.

A goal can only be constituted as valid when there is something that can be gained from it, aka rewards. Rewards can come in the form of recognition, prestige, riches, bragging rights etc. In games the gains are usually given in the form of documented achievements, titles and game items, things that a player can use to set him/her apart from others.

Looking at ToS, there is very little form of documented achievement in the game. The highest earning player stats our npc oracle provides are bot/afk farmer invested due to necros and sorcerers. Monster hunting top 3 players are tucked so deep into the user interface that most of the players don’t even bother much about it since being in the top 3 provide no rewards and such.

Titles provide little or no difference since by default player names are off for most of the players to declog the screen. We only get to see some rare title every once when we happen to press Alt key to show player names and health.

Next is on items. I love it that in ToS there are numerous ways to set the player’s avatars apart. Things like costumes, headgears, weapons and offhands. But then, with the exception of weapons and equipment, the costumes and headgears are easily buyable with real life money or from the silver market.

Things which are easily achieved will often fall short in becoming an overall goal for players.

This includes other aspects of the game such as reaching max level, or completing the build. Since these both are achieved in a matter of days due to the generous compensation, buyable exp tomes and failure to see how shop buffs affect levelling, they are hardly considered as something that is a goal, or rather now, they are just a stepping stone to other goals.

So it boils down to weapons and equipment (items), which can be used as rewards for players for strive for. With good items as rewards, players will be willing to fight world bosses, farm for days and weeks, or traverse dangerous dungeons to get them. And this breeds competition should the item be really hard to get and is limited in nature since gaining the item itself would mean setting one apart from others.

Personally I do think that itemisation is one of the foundation pillars of what makes a great game from a mediocre one. This should be one of the key priorities of the game after the damage rework.

Let us look at the state of itemisation in ToS… hmmm.

2 Likes
#16

I dont know in your server, but in mine there was never a “competition”. The bosses were monopolized by 2 guilds 24/7 (They are still monopolizing right now the “best” bosses), there was no strategy because they can come anytime and crash the channel to reset the timer. I think you ignore 90% of the playerbase who can only dream to be lucky and snipe a WB.
The removal of the debuff only means that the same people will just not need to change the char to get the next drop…

6 Likes
#17

I wonder the same… after the last Q&A some of my guildmates lost interest in the game when they read about the “sports” stuff, lots of them quited the game already and to be honest would be nice if they anounced realistic stuff that they are planing to implement, at least that would give us some hope.

#18

i don’t have the energy to read what everyone else wrote [it’s 5 am] so just after reading your post.
the debuf has helped many people to participate on world bossing against guilds that hunt them down not letting other players ever getting the chance to experience that feature of the game.

as it is, i like it the way it is now [even so the competency is still sort of there, it just made it Harder for the competition to Overkill it against Regular players.

but i am not against a constructive idea on how to give an option to competitive guilds :o …
certainly not.
i also like the idea of giving Players a Reason to go world exploring and doing something in all maps in general for a good reason. since there are many maps the game never use again after just finishing the quest and exploring the map “per character.”

also… i remember a long time ago i wrote something about This on patch notch comments.i regret not saving what i wrote now, i still think it’s worth reading but i think nobody read it.
it was about 4 or 7 paragraphs long on how to make maps useful again.

#19

A good game focuses on either one and leaves the other one in the dust.
It would be honestly better if there was no PVP content at all in TOS or just some free fun thing withoutout any spoils obtainable for participating.
Games that give out things/essential things for doing PVP are pretty badly designed if the primary focus is PVE.

PVP games should be battle games/team battles like e.g. Battlefield,Half-Life,Overwatch. Especially games with a story should not make the people with a common goal whack each other for any reason.

Competition is what makes games really bad in the first place. People will have easier or harder times depending on their Class/Level/gear, which makes competitive content highly unfair and unrewarding.

Unless IMC decides that every Class across one Rank (e.g. Priest has the same output as Krivis,Peltasta,Quarrelshooter,Pyromancer and so on) has the same possible DPS output, this competition will not be fair and a cruel thing to do to the players aside from the already enforced level 315 equipment wall/transcendence/anvil luck/Practonium RNG/etc.

Instead of competition to make the already very unfriendly atmosphere even nastier, I believe the game needs community collaboration content to create a better environment for every player and give everyone the oppurtunity to achieve something/partake in the achievement process.

[“Khemet, a tale in the desert” is/was a really good example of how a MMO game can work without competition and with community collaboration. You could learn and do everything by yourself, but it was also possible to make some of your achievements/buildings accessable to the community, e.g. if you crafted a board to dry tiles, you could give it to the society so everyone could use it to dry their tiles.

The goal of the game/season was to collaborate to fulfill the request of the Pharaoh.]

This should include everyone and not be focused on guilds/parties alone, as every single player is part of the community and needed to continue the game service.

1 Like
#20

I can’t speak for your server, but if your server is like that it’s because you’re disorganised and they’re organised. If you want to beat them, get organised.

Refusing to compete properly is the reason they win. They’re not magically better than you, they’re just organised.

Join or make guilds to properly compete. If other players are organised, grouped up, guilded, and working together better, they are playing the game better.

Competition is what makes games really bad in the first place.

@Adeodatusv2 I struggle to comprehend this argument at all. Beating other players of a game is the end goal of 99% of games, the exceptions being puzzle games like Jigsaws, Rubiks cubes, single player card games.

Competition is the point and reason people play almost any multiplayer game.

If there is no competition you can not expect players to perform any activity once they’ve defeated it once(got the reward).

There’s no point to making a jigsaw puzzle twice. There’s no point to beating a rubiks cube more than once. The only reason people might do that is because they’re competing for faster and faster speeds, which has turned those non-competitive solo games into a competition that has made them last forever and ever.

I’ll say it again. Making a jigsaw puzzle is fun and enjoyable once. If your rivals beat you at making that jigsaw puzzle however, defeating them is a challenge that can occur over and over and over again, where the reward is simply beating the other side, not the drops, not the challenge that you’ve already beaten many times before. This is the reason competitive pve is valuable. It continues to last.

Heck. People even used to compete in tos for story/game completion due to the adventure journal until everyone had multiple alt characters that they needed to put time into that weren’t contributing. Even the mundane task of crafting every item in the game to +10(or was it 5?) became competitive to get the points it gives.

Slowly but surely everything competitive in tos has crumbled away, and that means players have no reason to continue playing once they have done the challenge once and gotten the reward from it.

As for toxicity. The game mechanics aren’t going to change the personalities of the people on the servers. I’m really sorry that toxicity is an issue on whatever server you’re on, but that’s a product of the people playing on that server and won’t change. They will still be awful people. Fortunately on Fedi we’re blessed with everyone being incredibly nice. They won’t stop being nice because we have competition, because their personalities won’t magically change. They will play to win, but playing to win isn’t toxic. I really recommend just blocking toxic people.