Hi all, this game has got me interested since it reminds Ragnarok, however I’m a bit skeptic since MMOs nowadays are each more plain and boring than the next one, and even Diablo 3 turned out to be such a disaster.
I had like to hear all of you people, your thoughts and reviews about the game.
I offer some of my views, but beware I know nothing of ToS at this point.
First of all, when trying to accomplish anything in life, we follow in the example and experience of those who came before and left a vast amount of knowledge for us to benefit, so we don’t have to start from scrath. This is true for any field, be it math, physics, programming, milking cows or making games.
In this sense, do the developers of ToS played in-depth many great games out there, so that they know ho to make one, or port/create advanced mechanics and systems to their game?
Mainly games like this have to cover 4 areas:
1 - Visuals, types and variety of scenarios, places, creatures, objects, effects, so on.
2 - Quests, people, dialogs, coherence, presentation of campaign, world lore and history.
3 - Character evolution, planning, mechanics, differentiation, grinding.
4 - Itemization and its complexity, trading, plus any other side systems there may be.
Korean games are somewhat infamous for the insane amount of grinding (nooot fun), and the “Free to play but PAY TO PROGRESS” model.
I would like to believe that the makers of this game know better… however, as Ultron would say, down in the real world we’re faced with ugly choices ^^
The game looks great in its trailers, but so do many others. Its not the graphics and polishing that concern, but the ability to present gameplay that is entertaining, with many layers of complexity to it, something MMOs are not good at.
So I’ll go into each area with more detail:
1 - World visuals, variety of scenarios, landscapes and everything contained within these, like creatures and objects. Good layout usually feature “map types” such as hot/snowy/desolate/tropical/desert/ruin/swamp/underground/foggy and so on so forth for as many scenarios as there can be.
Themes are aslo used in certain areas/regions, for example to inspire a horror/terror mood by using the scenario illumination, music, sounds, creatures, quests. A different region could inspire a totally different feeling, making themed areas is great to improve scenarios and landscapes, providing a deeper sense of uniqueness and identity.
Does the game have a night/day cycle? If not different illumination on scenarios to portray times of the day would be cool. Have no idea if the game plans to provide randomly generated scenarios, but that would be very cool too =]
A gripe I had wirh Ragnarok was that most of the time you had to focus on 1 enemy at a time, there should be more focus on scenarios that allow you to fight many enemies at the same time, as happen in ARPGs like Diablo, Path of Exile or the upcoming Lost Ark Online.
2 - People and Questing. The overall sense that the world and the NPCs are a living thing and that they serve their own interests despite what the player does. Also the sense of purpose that a player character has.
Most games out there populate their world with dull NPCs devoid of personality, their only role EVER is showing up somewhere or stand in the same place, forever doing nothing while waiting for the player to talk to them. Those are the examples NOT TO FOLLOW.
Then there are games with NPCs that have names, walk around, talk to other NPCs, perform tasks, have their own characteristics and behaviour, sometimes they can be found in different places, or sleeping/eating/being replaced, these NPCs have programmed/scripted routines so that they appear to be doing something different every time, some of these NPCs you can talk to, they have personalities, allegiances, gossip about the world and its lore… even moods based of whats going in region when they’re talked to. These are the examples to follow.
Having NPCs that populate the world to behave and look as alive as possible in turn makes the gameworld feel like a real place, not some artificial space. Old people, kids, teenagers, babies, different races, all behaving as they should. Poverty, crime, the rich, the authorithies, the commonfolk, and specially bad/shady/evil people.
Most games place a side as being good and the other being bad… the world is made up from shades of gray, theres an incredible number of ill mannered or inconvenient people all around that players have to deal with using means other than combat. This differentiates seriously designed games common ones: depth and presentation of its storytelling, lore and NPCs.
About questing, well, “the more the merrier”. Just mind having many quests that are not combat oriented, the nature of these can be diplomatic, investigative, furtive, making a delivery, an escort, finding something… there are simply too many types, but the way the gameworld is assembled and presented often prevents many types of quests.
Above all I urge the use of COHERENCE, there are too many games out there with absurd and illogical choices, assigning NPCs in stupid places doing stupid things, making stupid suggestions, sending player character DO EVERYTHING while his entire faction/army won’t lift a finger, or even having a world full of technology but strangely the people are okay with being murdered in the streets, some settings push it too far.
As a good example of a game that makes the world looks alive and has an endless amount and variety in quests, I suggest “Baldurs Gate 2”, you don’t even need to play the entire game, just get out of the first dungeon and into the city to see how the world looks alive and presents itself with all kinds of people and challenges. Its an old single player Computer aRPG but since the date it was launched (roughly 20 years), its more than enough time for online game industry to start developing games as rich as this one in content.
Guild Wars 2 also does a very good job at these aspects, being an MMO.
3 - Character development.
Hoping theres both genders for each class, I’m not the type that likes to see males playing females or vice-versa, its for weirdos =P
But more important is that inside each class there is distinction, plenty of customization and differentiation so that players don’t feel like copies of each other (its common and a major letdown in MMOs).
I can’t really talk much since I’ve no idea how characters in ToS will evolve, however I can comment about my good/bad gaming experiences:
The breaking point that defines good character evolution, is having plenty of choices to choose from while having to make sacrifices inside each class, focusing on some fields and excelling in certain areas while becoming normal/weak/null in others. In most MMOs there are no choices and no limitiations, characters in a class are granted everything the class has to offer, only changing back and forth through a set of skills and thats all there is.
In that sense, every game developer should have a look at Path of Exile “passive skill tree”, just to have an idea about how different characters inside the same class can become, not in what regards character active abilities, but in passive character building and planning, there are so many different ways to make a character inside each class, specially in what concerns the type of attributes/weapons/elements/abilities/mechanics of choice. The passive skill tree in PoE is an amazing method to completely differentiate players inside a given class.
About pace for leveling, it really depends on how much there is to do and explore inside the game without it becoming unrewarding and time consuming instead of fun. Surely this feeling is different for everyone, but I hope they base outside of Korea, cause Korea = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_(video_gaming)
Something that Diablo 3 and PoE kinda show is that theres NO NEED TO PLACE A CAP OR LIMIT ON LEVELS!!
Have each level close to and above what would be the cap (normally 100) taking weeks/months even for full-time players, to the point it becomes more funny and enjoyable to create a new character in a different class, but do not place a limit on levels, it feels like a character becomes stripped of purpose, theres really no need for level cap, so korean players can feel delighted too! =P
Another sort of “problem” that comes with next-gen games, is that many attacks and specials have HUUGE animations, so when a group of 2-3-4+ people is formed, it becomes harder to keep track of what is going due to visual polution.
A good solution for that would be an “alternate visuals option”, when turned on it uses basic/modest animations for visual intensive attacks. For example player goes into “options” and selects a number of players, like “4”, any time there are 4 or more players in the vicinity, all heavily animated attacks from other players will use simpler animations, it is not intended to be ugly, just generate less visual polution. The player could also tag his/her own attacks to use those simpler animations if the option is set to “0”.
What would be truly awesome IMO, is for each of these special attacks to have 3 different stages/animations, a simpler one when the attacks is new or weaker, an intermediate when the attack is performed normally, and a heavily animated when a character can perform that attack with incredible prowess. (While still having the option to decrease visual polution :P)
Lastly make the PvP fun by smart use of movement speed and casting time of skills, use MOBA games like DOTA2 and LoL to get an idea, MOBAs excel at making good PvP battles that rely on more than just raw power to define the winner (ToS could even host a MOBA arena type of map and look great while doing it! Exactly as per DOTA2 or LoL, with teams of 5 people each side, small armies/buldings for each team. Give it some thought!)
4 - Itemization and other systems.
I won’t go much into side systems as these are a given and vary greatly from game to game.
Itemization on the other hand is incredibly important and most MMOs are terrible at it, thus a major reason as to why MMOs can’t be entertaining in the long run: items are few and uninteresting, coupled with low drop rates.
Again, hoping that character clothes and animations change based on the equiped gear, otherwise its kind of a huge letdown, can’t aim big with oversimplistic design.
An example of a game that does great with itemization is again Path of Exile, characters start as “true survivors”, waking up in a beach with barely any clothes, using wood planks as shields and pieces of wood as clubs, wearing any rusty-old and broken gear they can find for armor, helmets, boots, etc, needing to progress further into the game and gain access to more “civilized ruins”, to then look outfitted like true warriors and all-else. There are many variations/models for each type of gear, as well as many grades of gear from normal to unique. Items can spawn a myriad of random properties, such items will be more or less valuable based on each character build. Has a very good crafting system too.
Another brilliant idea in Path of Exile are the currencies used in the game, since there isn’t money, trading is comprised of consumable items that serve a purpose each, and when one of these consumables is “used” it disappears as a trading item, that is a nice way to not overinflate economy. Again hoping that ToS has trading and an economy, wich plays a huge part in any serious game.
Path of Exile also uses some of its “item scheme” for enemies faced in the game, for example enemies spawn as types: normal/magic/rare/unique, with the magic/rare ones being random generated. A magic enemy (if lvl 35 or higher) for example can have a mod called “Vicious” in the name, this gives it a 85% to 109% increased physical damage when compared to its normal version, in the same way, a weapon (of lvl 35 or higher) can contain the “Vicious” mod, increasing its damage in the same range. There are just so many mods and combinations www.pathofexile.com/item-data/suffixmod and https://www.pathofexile.com/item-data/prefixmod
(note that higher level items or enemies won’t necessarily have a high level modifier, the modifier can be of a lower level as well, since its randomly generated)
Lastly, one thing that kept me interested most of the time even while grinding, when playing games that have a good itemization, is that sensation that at any moment an item with very good properties or a very good value may drop and that will be REALLY COOL and make the day worth :). In Diablo 3 this feeling simply didn’t exist (at least while I played), since item drops were crap upon crap, drop rates for anything useful were insanely low, and the unique items were lame and uninspiring.
Now lets talk a bit about the pay to progress. If the game comes with the pay to progress model I won’t play it. POINT.
Glad we talked about this.
This model may have worked at some point in time, nowadays games with it should choke and die, even if the game is good, nevermid if its bad.
Games like League of Legends, Path of Exile, Guild Wars 2, DOTA2, are the proof that microtransactions and visual enhancements are a business model that works, their community grows, their revenue grows. These games don’t sell advantages or content that will place a player ahead of another, people admire these games for it, and spend good money supporting these games in return.
Well, was it a long reading? Hopefully the devs get to read some of it.
I’m also interested in discussing or correcting anything that I may have said wrong, so please people speak your mind, and tell me what you know and what you expect from ToS :]
(Sorry for my english too!)
