Tree of Savior Forum

Please tell me where is the depth in this game

General Discussion
#1

Hello everyone,
Since yesterday I’m afraid of one thing. Is there any subtility, depth in this game ?
I’m just level 100, so I haven’t seen anything of the game yet. I’m aware of that. But I’m constantly questioning myself about the classes that I’d like to follow. And I’m afraid I haven’t seen, from a spectator point of view, the depth of the gameplay.

I will explain myself. I know this is a korean mmo, that farming is the core of the gameplay where you spent most of your time. That is what I am looking for. But does TOS do it well ? I will talk about an other korean mmo where I spent a few hours… enough to know what I’m talking about. The name is Nostale. I do not play it anymore and I’m not trying to sell it to you. This is just an example to explain myself.

In Nostale you can only have 10 skills at a time so the subtlety is not here. Anyone can farm anywhere as long as their stuff is good enough. The subtlety is not here either. What Nostale does well in my opinion is the optimisation of the farming. Each monsters take a few skills to kill, so killing them one by one is incredibly inefficient. You have to kill them in group/pack. The bigger is the group, the more efficient you are. But to keep increasing the size of the group you need a perfect timing. You have to keep the aggro. If you ignore a monster too much it will run away but you can’t loose time with it neither. You have to not be to slow or you will end up dying, to manage your skills to be able to kill the pack at the end. And to know what you’re doing for the group not to scatter. So even if farming is accessible to everyone but there is depth to it. You can challenge yourself by increasing your efficiency in farming. This is what make thing interesting and where I found my fun.

Now let’s talk of what I saw in ToS. Once you have your build (Your 3 classes) you will have one or two rotations and will keep doing them in every situations. Since I’m strictly talking about the gameplay and not the theory crafting behind that the subtlety is not here. If you are stuck somewhere (dungeon, challenge, etc) you do not have much of a solution beside upgrading your gear or changing your build. The subtlety isn’t there either. (Once again, I’m not talking about theory crafting. I know it could be very interesting to find the most optimal build for each situation but that is not the subject.) And in farming there is nothing. The last video I saw was someone presenting his Onmyoji. Everything he has to do was using white tiger. If there are still a few alive to use Toyou, then to walk to keep up the loots…. No fun, no subtlety, no depth.

I’d like you to to show me why I am wrong. I want to be wrong. To find something that will keep me hooked in this game. Maybe there are some class deeper than others? Tell me.

Thank you

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#2

Could you elaborate? I’m really not sure how this consitutes depth.

I can’t think of many “deep” MMOs either. Depth to me would be something like Disgaea, EVE or Dwarf Fortress. Massive item customisation, skills within skills, etc. Sounds to me like you just want more options for skill use, and I’d say that this depends on your class.

For example, Onmyouji has massive AOEs so they don’t need to round up enemies the way certain other classes would. It’s more or less the class’s main gimmick. Other classes may need to draw aggro with AOE taunts or simply smack everything until it chases them.

I should also mention that where TOS excels is variety. There are lots of classes that play very differently. Most MMOs only have a handful, and so they focus on adding multiple skill builds. Take WOW – there are only twelve classes, but each one has (iirc) three potential roles. A Paladin can be a Holy Paladin, Protection Paladin or Retribution Paladin. TOS, on the other hand, has eighty classes.

EDIT x2: Fixed typos and explained a bit more.

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#3

@Naiyro

That’s kinda about it, IMC thought that allowing players to be gods based on their equipment enhancement was a good idea and now you can just rotate to skills and obliterate everything. Every “challenge” in the game is locked behind a stat wall and once you get over it they will cease to exist.

I’ll link a flagged post i’ve written about this issue, you may want to copy past into a word file to read it better as many people complained about the light text being unreadable (thanks IMC). Also, this way to play more with classes individual power in the shape of an event.

That’s actually false, ToS offers a fake variety with a lot of classes that have different costumes, special effects and, sometimes, a bonus against a certain type of enemy. Among 17 swordsmen advancements 1 is a defensive option and 1 is a guild oriented class, the other 15 are offensive classes that can’t be combined due weapon incompatibility, some with a small additional feature that makes them feel less alike.

True variety lies in class relations like Mergen, Quarrel Shooter, Musketeer and Pied Piper, as all them have different strengths, weaknesses and playstyles, however only the first really matters as the game is all about killing a lot of enemies as fast as you can, and even then you have Ranger, Cannoneer, Matross and Arbalester as classes that can do about the same thing.

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#4

There are other aspects of variety here not just simply support, dps and healer. Play style (weapon variety), pvp (cc focus, dps or tanking) and pve (loot chance farming, boss dps, cm cleaning, legend raid), I would confidently say if you want to feel competitive in all the content this game offers, you will need at least 4 characters with different builds. And the meta is constantly changing (OBT forever). Different from other mmo where you are making one character to roam the world, tos is forcing you to build a team. I think that is where it shines.

Back to the op, farming seem to be repetitive. You can change your builds but they all pretty much the same, skill rotation some require you move bit but mostly just staring at the cds. The recent raids do require you know you are doing (white crow, Misrus). I like one hit ko mechanics but I don’t think that would be implemented everywhere. A lot of new players jump into raids and just get wiped without knowing wtf is going on. That is not a pleasant game experience. If you look at the new weekly boss thing they added to the Ktos recently, a lot more mechanics make it quit hard.

#6

Let’s put this in a slightly different term, in which kind of game content you would see yourself asking “it would be great if we had X instead of Y in my build/party” when both X and Y classes are from the same group (target dps, group dps, buff support, debuff support, control, etc), or even in a sibling group. I can’t see anyone saying “it would be great if we had Doppelsoeldner instead of Matador in my build/party” or vice versa in 99% of the time, with the exception of classes that were forgotten or left to perish altogether. That’s not to say content should demand specific classes to be completed, but rather that having said specific classes to be easier.

The only time weapons change a playstyle is when you get a scout and decide to only use basic attacks, then you have a single target ranged attack with pistol or an AoE melee attack with dagger, aside that they only limit your build options. A different playstyle means you’ll react to situations in a different way than others, Fencer is a good example for this as you’d make more use of their attacks when timing it with enemy attacks, when other classes would avoid it altogether. I don’t see any reason to use any other strategy other than grouping enemies, casting a skill and move (which also works against bosses). If you meant weapon variety by options within the same group then yes, those do offer a small change, but they don’t change how you, as a player, acts in game.

Few classes really have a particular playstyle that isn’t just specific combos, and when they do it just doesn’t work (like Sadhu and Hunter) or is overwhelmed by the straight forward playstyle that dominates the game, i don’t think anyone plays Sapper in PvP by luring enemies or protecting itself with traps (yes, the class is designed to PvP, but that’s how it would be expect to play in PvE).

I’d like to double down that statement. Let’s assume you need 8 characters with complete different builds to be able to do any kind of game content regardless of the circumstances, if that were true what would it be from any character beyond that point (considering we have a limit of 40 character slots) ? Aside being able to gather more resources, what other benefit do a player get from doing it? Can it experience the game in a new and enjoyable way that the other 8 weren’t able to provide? Even if you can, at which point would it stop being true? At 11 characters? 12? 15? 20?

There’s just no reason to…

  • explore new ideas
  • pick specific classes over others in their own interest group
  • approach or avoid combat depending on the enemy you’re dealing with
  • use control skills to stop enemies (as you can just kill them)

And yes, those don’t apply to PvP, but that far from being the main game mode.

This is why i say ToS diversity is fake considering the amount of classes you can pick, the real scenarios the game presents for classes to shine is limited and they all have to share the same spotlight.

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#7

By depht I mean something where the player can make a difference. I mean something where the two exacts same characters will end up doing things differently. Something where you can think :: I am more than a bot. It don’t have do be much. Just something that make you feel that your are better at the game now. I don’t know the others but Disgaea is only about skill. I don’t need that, just a little something.

#8

The size of the goddesses’ boobs. :haha:

Character creation -> choose Wizard -> level up class to 15 -> advance to Onmyoji… :haha:

Nevermind… :haha:

Play a Doppel for combos. Try Summoner – with the forthcoming patch, you will have to manage your summons perfectly to deal damage. Try an Archer, I’m sure you’ll like Falconer based builds or forthcoming QS + Arbalester.

#9

@Hillgarm
I read your topic.
Very interesting and detailled. It reflect exactly what I was trying to confirm and much much more.

I do not understand neither why it was flagged. You really should send a ticket to correct that. What you wrote is worthy of the players attention.

@draconis

That is not my point. My point was to show an example of a game where the player skill and experience offer something. You do not need skill with an Onmyoji.

I will take a look, thanks

#10

So you’re looking at videos for classes with no rotation pretty much, one which spams its largest AoEs roughly for free… can’t say you’re going to find much in the way of depth there. The biggest problem with Tree however right now may be how easy it is to kill things, and then the difficulty jumps up significantly at endgame with raids (and PVP, in context).

I agree with Hillgarm to a point where there are almost like groups of classes that play a certain way, so it really depends on what you find personally interesting, and you can always offset a weakness of one class by picking up its strength in your 2nd and 3rd classes. Or you can specialize and pick all 3 that are good at one thing. Its depth is actually in that almost nothing is truly bad at everything, and its depth is in the systems involved in improving your character through gear–which you won’t see until the end of the leveling game.

There are builds with a more robust rotation or specific order to things. You might really like warlock if you want to stick with wizard, or FF.

What TOS does well is that you can be very creative with your builds, there are clearly outliers that people play a lot because they self-synergize and really outperform other builds for PVE DPS (ranger fletcher mergen being the prime suspect), but everyone can functionally do most things with most builds, and be largely successful with a build that they’ve created to accommodate whatever playstyle they prefer.

I think its weakness right now is that, as you said, some builds are just too similar, and some builds actually can be weaker and it’s hard to notice because damage in many things is so high, and someone’s effectiveness is almost hidden until they try hard content and find they have a really hard time. I also think the depth of some of the gearing systems is overcomplicated for no reason, it makes it really hard for new players to jump in and get going and they aren’t really intuitive or explained very well in game (“Why can’t I transcend my savinose gear? The window just keeps closing.” and “What’s a roast shop and why do I need it?” and “Why does your gear have a title and mine doesn’t?” and so on).

Most important thing is to ask questions like you’re doing and don’t get overwhelmed.

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#11

If you are worriee about all these at this point of your journey in ToS, maybe the earlier you deviate away the better…

ToS will rake you if not hundred, thousand of play hours. Those are mainly for farming gear. And when you get those gears you worked hard for, you use them to either farm more, or change to the next end game set of new gears

I have thousand of hours into this game. It is addictive. And it is difficult to let go. But I think lately I have had enough of every bug, mismanagement, etc I don’t even log for a minute anymore lately

If you’re a student for example, looking for a game on your free time, go for it. But if you’re working, and you game for FUN and leisure, stay away

Please don’t flag my post, this is my honest opinion at the current state of the game.

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#12

I am more of a cleric but I’m open to everything. I will take a look too, thanks. I just mentioned Onmyoji because it trivialize everything to the point of ridicule.

I understand that now. I think I will begin to try my own builds. But what Hillgarm was more or less saying is that in the end, almost every builds have the same playstyle.
The main goal of my topic is to find what ToS does well once your build is decided

Yes, Thank you !

@adrian.agulto.rn
I’m a asking these questions in order to not be disapointed. Yes, I am worried but I still have the hope of enjoying the game too. I want to love it but I don’t want to feel like my journey mean nothing. So, by writing here I’m trying to figure things out.
And I have no reason to flag your post. x) I did not create this topic for people to tell me that everything is fine and that the game is perfect. I want people honest point of view and I undrestood yours pretty well. So, thank you for sharing it

#13

My main is Warlock - Featherfoot - Sorcerer. Out of all my level 420 chars, this is probably the less powerful (I have Kinonmyo, Pyrele, Palinqui, Falcogen) but clearly the most fun to play. This is the character I started three years ago as my first character and I still enjoy playing it a lot.

#14

I’d say cleric DPS builds are very interesting. Exo is a little boring but the rest are fun.

I don’t know that I agree, but many of them can be grouped together. Some rotations are more of a priority based system, where you prioritize what comes off cooldown based on skill resets or CD reductions. Some rotations are more of a buff/debuff system of priority where you use specific skills to enhance others or while maintaining a buff for you, and then they kinda go from there. And some are much more linear. The thing is, until some new content comes out much further down the road, we won’t really get to see some of the most “optimal” rotations because this game until that point lacks a DPS meter (and when it does get introduced, it will only be for one subset of content).

I don’t really like the jack of all trades approach in a game that encourages alts so much, but many players do. I prefer to have character alt “specialists” for different aspects of content.

Warlock after the changes is one of the more interesting builds to actively play for sure. FF is one I never liked much playstyle-wise but still have it on my summoner. :stuck_out_tongue:

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#15

Hhhhmmmm, this is a pretty hard question whose answer will vary largely depending on the player.

For me it sounds like you wanted a “unique” combination that does things quite differently from other builds. In the current TOS (RE:Build) i think that’s hard to find. In the old class system there were more possibilities of “snowflake” builds that DO WORK no matter how ridiculous the class combinations are.

Anyway, i kinda agree with others, most DPS builds are similar, just optimal skill rotations. They probably only differ with the AOE (some are specialized on single target… or some have hybrid - can AOE for mobbing and can ST for bossing) and range (short to long? this is debatable). Exceptions are the currently-rare(?) auto-attack builds.

There are also synergies between skills of different classes, so maybe that should be taken into account.

For the video, i think you might have watched the wrong one, there should be… some other TOS streamers who do better skill showcases, who answers with sound judgment too.

#16

the point of tos is having 20+ chars that use the same gear so you can swap em and make daily stuff you are trapped into forever just to gear up that 20 chars every patch or unbalance they make. its fun

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#17

I think you’re playing the wrong kind of genre, if you’re looking for that kind of depth. A majority of players will always follow the strongest builds and easiest way to achieve gratification.

One thing you can do is what I did and make certain characters focus around one class and make a super class out of it. I did this with my corsair by adding enchanter and thauma to my build, since rebuild made all classes come up to par skill factor wise and due to the high amount of classes available it’s fun playing around with class combinations this way until master classes arrive.

#18

Hey thank you for the answers !

I think there is a misenderstanding… :sad:
I do not mind the fact that there is or is not build diversity or speciality. That is not important to me. In fact, in most games I am playing myself with Jack of all trades. What is important to me is to feel my progress in my understanding and my use of my character. I want people to be able to tell the difference between a newcomer and a veteran using the exact same character. So I want to know if there are content(s) in is this game able to pass this feeling. And if there is classes where this difference is more noticeable I am interested to know them. It doesn’t matter if the class is a jack of all trades or is specialised. What intersest me is a class that is interesting/hard (or harder than the others) to master.

I am not just looking for class but for any contents where the experience accumulated in the game matters.

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#19

Listen to this guy. That is Tree of Savior in a nutshell.

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#20

i actually have 20 account instead…

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#21

Well you’re obviously not going to be able to tell the depth of this game from low level grind :rofl:

Especially since they made the game very easy for newcomers to get into. You can get to Lv400 (Max level is 420) in less than 2 weeks with moderate grinding.

You’d see real challenge when you start doing high level contents like Uphill Defense(Very Hard mode) and Legend Skiaclipse (Current Endgame Boss). Heck I even see some people die in Unique Skiaclipse.

And of course, like any other MMOs, whales will always be able to brute force high level contents with over-upgraded gears. Heck even in games like Ragnarok Online and Dragon Nest, there’s always players that would speed run the toughest bosses/raids.

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