In the following I want to state how I experienced the game during testing and how it might get better. Before I start I’d like say that, although it may not sound like it, I (mostly) had great fun and most of the expectations I accumulated over the past year were met. For those which weren’t, I just expect more and greater things coming from IMC.
FYI I played for 55 hours, mainly as Archer to lvl 60, a little as Swordsman to lvl 35 and created a Wizard and a Cleric and played them to lvl 20. My Archer was ranked around 215th in Adventure Journal ranks.
Controls
The controls in this game are lovely. I played with my XB1 controller most of the time with my mouse next to me to open windows and also tried out how playing the game with a keyboard feels like.
As for the controller, it was easy to get the combinations for skills and items memorized and walking with sticks felt a little strange and stiff first, but went to normal very fast. However, it took me a little while to figure out the smaller things on controller like sitting down, switching weapons and target locking / switching. The game still lacks some of the neccesary support and tutorials for controller based playing. Also, until the end I couldn’t figure out how position lock and facing the taget worked for controller or if it existed at all, which leads to my next point. For some skills, I had to face my enemy (High Anchoring, Barrage), in order to do so I had to walk towards them a little. And to not get hit, I tried to keep walking as shortly as possible and walking away from them for a time before returning towards them. This, however, stretched the time needed to use a skill and more often than not, I ended up firing in a different direction than actually planned.
Sowrdsman, of course, didn’t have any of those problems, only downside was that starting to sprint felt kinda difficult.
Another thing I disliked was that the D-Pad was only used to altnerative movement. Those are 4 keys that could be used for something more usefull (e.g. facing arget, weapon switching, position lock, opening inventory, etc)
Then as for the keyboard controls, they felt very well from the start. As European, the only problem I encountered wa that Z and Y were reversed, so it was rather difficult to attack and jump in short time, I also often used the skill I used with the T-button accidently and I could not figure out how to change keyboard controls. I didn’t let it bother me and switched back to Gamepad.
User Interface
I honsetly want to like it. In visual terms and style, it’s close to perfect. But what bothers me is how unorganized it seems. Perhaps even by trying to be organized. Inventory seems to be the best example. By differentiating into so many different types of items, a long list of single items is created. Overall, different tabs should maybe be highlited and single subjects could be combined.
I also disliked that the Chat Windows sometimes dissappeared and wasn’t permanently visible, although that’s actually a good feature for people who don’t want to get in touch with the toxic place known as “Global Chat”. Otherwise, it may be better to be able to resize the window.
The only other thing that bugged me were the maps. World map / Warp map was a bit hard to navigate, perhaps Areas shoudl be highlighted as well or circled or something. Concerning the Mini-map, I seemed to be unable to completely explore some areas. Some hint of visual feedback might have helped, like coloring areas you started to uncover but forgot a corner or something in red. But overall, UI is pretty fine.
Maps, Areas and Exploration
Except for being unable to uncover maps to 100%, I liked most things like the visual design of them. There was a lot of diversity and the more I played and discovered, the more I was amazed on how much love, detail and creativity was put in the world. Especially as I progressed into the lvl 50-70 areas (thornes & forest), along with the music they made a wonderfull fit.
However, other than the starter maps, most of the areas become more and more linear, almost tube-ish. You have a small, open field, which is connected to an other small open field via tubes. Saulia Woods had a lot of big, open fields, that just ended into some slimmer pathways and I think those were designed very well.
Adventure Journal
Though UI-wise a little overwhelming at first, it’s a great feature to create motivation, keeping memories and finding diversity in playstyle. I wouldn’t know wat to criticize about this except for that there’s not more to do for the Adventure Journal because I had so much fun filling it as well as possible.
Class Balancing
Now we start discussing the pivotal points. First of all, I know that it’s practically impossible to properly balance the 80 classes ingame and it’s fine that way. However, what bugs me is that already the starting classes and rank 2/3 classes are extremely unbalanced. And even so much that it discouraged me to play from the second day. To be more precise, as an Archer i felt awfully weak after having tried out swordsman myself and partied with a few other swordsmen.
As an Archer, auto-attacks were far to weak. Compared to swordsman, my attacks did half the damage of what they did, not to forget how swordsman also has higher attack speed. And not to forget that Swordsman’s auto-attacks do AOE damage. And not to forget that Swordsman even has two !(2)! buffs to increase their DPS to the point where using skills becomes pointless to them, while Archer has kneeling shot to increase DPS at best. Honestly, I found myself too often in situations in which a Swordsman did the damage I do with skills with his auto-attacks. But what drives it to the extremes is the Barbarian, who crits more often and much harder than me without an Agi build. As Archer, I couldn’t Overkill a lvl 1 enemy with my auto-attack even on lvl 55, which my Highlander easily did on lvl 17.
To become ranger, it took my Archer 4h 12min, which my Swordsman did in 92 minutes. To be fair, I spent some more time exploring the city and maps with my Archer, but I still wouldn’t stand the chance if I tried to get my rank up in 90 minutes as Archer. Oh and by the way, my Archer had almost 90% of his skill points invested into STR, with my Bows always being +5 at least and usually with one or two red gems lvl 2/3 inserted into them. A Boss fight took my Archer around 6-8 minutes, my Swordsman barely took longer than 2-3 minutes.
And again, Not even compared to other classes, especially Swordsman, is Archer very weak, but overall and compared to other Archers. For example, I chose to put 5 points in Fulldraw. Until I put 2 points into Multishot as well, I didn’t realize the mistake I made. How can it be, that the skill that has 6 times the cooldown does far less damage compared to the other?
Because Archers auto-attack is so weak, he’s reliant on use of his skills. Due to the low SP-Pool of all classes, and of course Archer as well, that’s only possible for a short time.
Regarding Wizard, I think he’s the best balanced in the game from what I’ve seen. Although auto-attacks are very slow and weak, Energie bolt seems like a nice filler skill to use instead of auto attacks. And since WIzard’s other skills do high damage are almost all AOE spells, playing as WIzard is still a little challenging, but a lot of fun.
But as well as Swordsman, Cleric seems to be VERY strong, too. However, only in relation to certain skills, his auto attacks seem a little strong, too, when built on STR, but the lower skill damage keeps the balance. But honestly, I’m quite fine with clerics being a little stronger, so they still have all possibilities , especially playing solo, in the game.
However, I can’t point out enough how weak Archer felt to me. I had a hard time fighting bosses, being helpfull when grinding and playing solo. Then again, it’s also important to note that it gets a little better the higher your level is. On the last day of beta, I was able to quest and grind a little better than before, even alone.
Player progression and EXP-Rates
EXP-Rate is probably the most discussed topic after beta, as well as during testing. I’ll make it short, I’m one of those people who are fine with the EXP-Rate as it is now. Yet, I dislike grinding very muich, since it’s really boring and does not serve much purpose other than expanding playtime. HOWEVER, after seeing players on lvl 100+ after only a week bothers me a little.That is already one sixth of what you experience in the game after only a week.
Short anecdote, the past 7 years I played a game which was very, VERY similar to Ragnarok online, but much newer. In this game, it took almost 4 years for the first player to reach lvl 99 (max level). And everybody knew he just made it because he was rich enough to buy EXP-boosters for every minute he spent ingame. You could observe this player doing nothing but grind , around 8 hours every day. And it took him 4 years. But not even a month after he did it, there was the second one on max level. And a year from then on, there were hundreds of people on max level.
What I’m trying to say is, as soon as the first person hits the roof, it won’t take long until others accomplish the same. Once the first person in ToS hits max level, there will be many more shortly afterwards, and I’m worried how fast that would happen if the EXP-Rate is increased and there might be EXP-Boosters. And afterwards, you’ll see less and less players in starter areas, it will be lonelier for everyone and people will leave the game when there’s nothing more to do or players to play with.
However, as mentioned before, grinding is boring as well, especially if it starts as early as in the beta. And nothing dies faster than a boring game, because people will leave early without giving the game a real chance. So there should be a solution.
Leveling up and getting to explore new areas felt very rewarding for me. Why not built up on that? In Beta, we were rewarded with iCoins for Adventure Journal progress. If those rewards would bring EXP as well, you would be rewarded for Crafting, Exploring, talking to NPCs, collecting items and additionally for doing quests. I think that would be a great way to reduce grind in the game, especially in early levels, just as well as slowly introducing the game and single elements to players.
However, additionally I’d like to see more quests in the game. It’s a good thing that they’re hidden, but most quests were absolved in under 5 minutes, and since there weren’t many of them you could complete every quest in a map in around 30 minutes, including main quest. The quests in this game are really good and unique, so it’s also really sad that there’s not more for the players who’d like to run around more and read some dialogues instead of standing in a field and waiting for monsters to respawn.
About beta testing and bugs
Lastly, a short mention about beta testing.
I realize that the focus of this beta was not to try out all classes and differences, balancing or evaluate progression and feeling of the game, but more a server and stress test thing. I thought from the beginning, that 5.000 players would be a little too few, and it seems I was right since they invited a few more afterwards. And while I’m thankfull for finally being able to play the game after a year of waiting, I’d have appreciated to be able to experience a little more of the game for myself. Thousands of fans have waited for so long and what was given to them for their continuous dedication was a bit meager. I remember having read a conversation where a player stated that the situation was like telling your dog to stay outside on an already rainy day. Yet I still appreciate the chance that was given to us, especially because it was so well.
The translations were mostly fine and the community is great. I remember when the global chat was filled with discussion about the recent anime season for almost two hours. I told some of my friends (who REALLY wished to get into Beta, too), who are anime fans as well, and they didn’t really seem to believe me. You could ask any question to anyone and always get a reasonable and nice answer, GMs were very friendly as well and fitted perfectly in this community. Talking to them didn’t feel like talking to a machine like it does in other games, they were funny, made jokes and talked like the average community member would (except for all that portugese).
The last big plus was the relatively lag und bug free environment. Servers only lagged once and I encountered exactly 3 bugs ingame, of which only one was gamebreaking, as I floated out of the map. The other two were visual bugs with text floating above where it should be and the head of my Character turning by 180°, which was kinda creepy.
I’d like to say thanks for the great opportunity and keep up the good work IMC, translators and community members.