Tree of Savior Forum

Pretty clear why the game barely gets new players now

Got back from the game after 2 years and now the game forces new players to create a level 450 character before letting you make a level 1 character and actually play the game like it’s supposed to. Why is that a thing? Is the game so bad that IMC needs to force players to skip 90% of it just to keep them a little longer in the game? It doesn’t make any sense, there’s no bond with the character, no sense of progression… And then, after doing the “level 440 tutorial”, I manage to create a level 1 character with a friend and we begin our leveling journey and we get one of those challenge mode portals but, guess what? We can’t do it together because now it’s solo only content. Imagine letting people play an MMO game with friends and do content together… I guess that’s too hard of a concept for the company to understand.

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Yeah. The updates were pretty much catered for veterans, basically. They want to either make them continue playing or get back the recently retired players. Although they did improve on a few things such as UI.

Most people including devs and players are pretty much enchanted, that the way for the population to bloom and make new people to play is to add more content and/or educate/guide players in the way of progression, when the problems go beyond those.

At the end of the day, it is still a role playing game. And, like any other rpg that most people play, we want a connection with the character. Not just comfy grinding or competitive flexing.
Being able to play with other people is the cherry on top.

And automatch was actually made to break fix parties and make a way for veterans to play with newbies, since newbies get a lot of hate/avoidance in parties for being undergeared. But guess what, automatch having low rewards does not really make it enticing for veterans that are set for high difficulty contents. So they make a solo instead, continually lowering the rewards and difficulty, and for what reason? Because, nobody else wants to play.
Defeats the purpose entirely.

Why call it an mmo if you play alone, likewise, why call it an mmo if you only play with people you know. Why can’t mmo have both types, and the rewards/difficulty not be discriminated and stuff.

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Even long before this new “tutorial” was added, ToS has been horrible at retaining new players. It’s only a thing now because IMC officially decided all content before Episode 12 is obsolete, and honestly, it already has been since the introduction of Goddess gear back in August 2021. There is no longer any reason to start a new character at level 1 now unless you just feel like doing Episodes 1 ~ 11 for fun and for a couple extra attribute points, but even then you can just do the same on a fresh Level 450 character since the experience will be the same either way. I wouldn’t have fun doing obsolete content, alone, in empty maps, making no real progress, when the relevant content everyone is doing is just a few episodes worth of quests away, so being able to start at 450 (or 460 if you use the jumping card the login rewards give you) is a welcome change for me.

All of that said, this new tutorial, if you can even call it that, is so awful I questioned what I just spent 5 minutes doing. I wasn’t taught anything other than I can use this “Return” warp to quickly go back to an NPC when I finish a quest, but literally no NPC or text popup has told me how to use it. Thank god I’ve played this game since 2015 so I already know everything, but I really feel for the new players when they have to do this “tutorial” that gives them no information and no sense of direction. I’ve been wondering for a while why I see so many people in the Support Guild ask what to do after they’ve done this tutorial, and now that I’ve done it myself, I clearly know why.

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I don’t get why you want to try out to explore the maps as Level 1 which the game clearly already went beyond Level 450 with tons of new equipments, raids, and side contents.

They have retained like almost full 5 years of new Level 1 character for new players and it didn’t go well (unless you were in the Season Server that gave you tons of things to keep up with the veterans). Lots of new players gave up after reaching out past Level 440 - 450 due to they couldn’t keep up with the daily and progress the game shoved you every single day (we have weekly content as well).

Right now is what they could do to keep up with the new players. Simplified tutorial, choice to go back to West Siauliai Woods to do quest from Level 1 Episode 1 (because Episode 1 until Episode 11 is so trivial in term of difficulty. It doesn’t make difference if you beat them from Level 1 or Level 440 characters). Event shops are there to provide you some boost on your Episode reward gears, so that you can quickly do some new raids and/or contents.

Albeit I kinda agree with so little content to do as a party (beside the hard version of the raids, which it’s not for everyone). At the moment, things you can enjoy as a whole party are some main/sub quests.

it’s simple, imagine buying a book and then only reading the last 3 pages. I like the game, I love the music, art style, and I want it to do well. Sadly, I don’t think FORCING new players to create a level 450 character before unlocking the option to create a level 1 character is the right call, there’s no sense of progression and saying that it’s ok to skip 90% of the game because it’s easy or old content doesn’t make any sense and isn’t a good argument. It is still a big part of the game, with effort made to write a story and build the maps, I mean, cmon, imagine not saving Vaidotas, or not going exploring the maps and vibin with the soundtrack… The game has so much potential, but the higher-ups just want to milk everything they can out of it before it dries.

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Jokes aside

Back then, the word “level up” used to have huge factor in games. When Tos started, it has all the mystical feature. You get out of telsiai, in an unknown world. Explore some maps, discover some monsters, fight some unexpected boss, figure out ways to level up, discover some interesting loots, farm them, wonder why the character was called a savior, wonder if gesti was the final boss, meet strangers, party with them, level up, have some conversation and make some friends, compete with other strangers on the field, get salty with them, then duel them. You rage, you laugh, you suffer together, you win, you lose.

Just like the guy in the video says, “new adventure awaits”.

The era of developers now wonder, why their games fail, why 50%/90% of their population leave in just a month. While the remaining % stayed for the grind.

Just like they said, “it’s empty”, “it’s irrelevant”, “it doesn’t serve a purpose anymore”. That is true, and that probably wouldn’t change. Well i just want people to know that there are players like that who left, because there is nothing different to do except to grind.

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This happens in every game even big dev old game like ffxiv with job boost pack or not so fresh game lost ark with level complete pack
Only tos give it for free to some extent
This game been more solo focus since day 1, not that surprising
Also tos isn’t about journey anymore, its exhaust it’s journey and explorative aspect, it’s now just about trying out builds because the devs keep changing the skills, grinding end game dungeon infinitely to farm mats to do rng, and most important of all dressing up in cute costumes
It’s always been take it or leave it game

It actually started as a game, where you were required to team up - to lvl up

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The “jump to level 450” option only makes sense to people who already play the game and needs more alts, or to new/returning rusher people that only care about the endgame. For everyone else (the majority of them), it feels even more confusing and makes you feel like you lost 450 levels of content, just a pair of steps away from the end.

This move not just make content pre-450 obsolete, but it’s pushing it under the carpet, pretending it never existed.

450 levels of story, quests, lore, potential content (if they would’ve dare to fix it), thrown away. And they expect you to know what’s going on as a new player in the Quests of Episode 13 onwards.

Even worse if the “tutorial” doesn’t even teach you anything about how to gear up for the endgame, leaving the new players even more confused and without knowing what to do after finishing it.

This level jumping only makes sense to make it easier for making alts for already playing people. Nothing else.

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LMAO a skip to lv 450 level for new players eh??..DAMN
that sounds like some lowkey private server thing to do…lol
back in the days… i remember in those very high rate P server in RO with max lv 999.
and that even in those games even u got to play for few hours/days to reach lv 500+.
looks like IMC is getting desperate nowdays.
should have made new players start FRESH(lv 1) for 1st char so that they can experience the “GOOD SIDE OF TOS” before falling to the DARKSIDE(braindead endgame )
and maybe for other slots can have lv 450 option with the choice to start lv 1 if the player wishes(fresh).
BTW… as usual it seems the NEW EPISODE has brought in some players and increasing concurrent users to 600-700 range. thats good.
but i m afraid that effect can only last for 3 weeks to 1 month before it becomes DRIED UP all over again.
so it has few weeks for gameplay for old players, but feels bad for the new players forced to start at lv 450 . :pensive:

So far its all about preferences. I still play with my 25 characters vary from lv 1 to lv 470 and now they are all almost lv 470.

As @Gambit said, this game is “take it or leave it” game. Until the devs really checks the global player suggestions (right now they only see the korean kTOS opinions), the game just stays as it is.

I think only Klaipeda & Telsiai servers are playable ? Because we still have new players around and lots of item stock so the price is not inflated as much.

Ah… yes…
But that’s like prior existence of probably cm as it’s milestone
Prior to cm people would hunt mobs in field to leveling or farm mats and the game has more social aspect (as well as botters), was good time indeed
Now leveling has little to no meaning, it doesn’t even have any sense of pride in entitle max level despite we have huge numbers of level, and mats are provided by doing repetitive raids which for me more hollow than field hunt, and the game crafting now is just meh compare to the original game crafting that is dead post skiaclipse unique era.
After cm it’s still quite party oriented but tbh it’s becoming even more solo game in every aspect even economy, especially now where more progress are locked to each account and silvers are tone down to reduce people power in economy thus imc control it with their gachas

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how many players i got using the returning/new player gear and ignoring the growth TT

Because there are so many other good games to play that provide much much better quality time

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bug&bot&play game props to make money players

:rage:

it’s hard for me to buy anything from the market. i don’t have enough silvers to upgrade my vaivora, or buy more scales. it’s feels impossible for me to catch up

I thought I was crazy or alone in this, because every year I download ToS back to play it and every year I am utterly disappointed. This year I found out that it’s changed completely, it’s unrecognisable, I couldn’t even recognise my characters that I had fun levelling up back when the game came out.

I’m so sad at returning to this game, I’ve got only a sense of the company itself stealing my time by making me connect to such a fraud of a game.

I’m going to try to list a few things that need to be changed to get an amazing game back.

  • Please, remove the boost to max level, this is outrageous, simply give players free Token and x32 Exp boosts, but taking them to max level (On top of giving them those, and more?). We want to levelup our own characters, otherwise, the purpose of playing is entirely defeated, whoever thought this was a good idea in dev department, should be fired immediately for being the most stupid person to ever develop a game. HAVE A GAME WITH LEVELS BUT MAKE PLAYERS START AT MAXIMUM HUEHUEHUE really doesn’t sound like bad marketing practice anyone?

  • Lock content by level. Yes, you heard me, I don’t want to know about guilds, or chat with other people on channels until I’ve hit at least lvl 20-30, it should be only communication with people I find on the same map as me and me calmly questing my way to learn the ropes. I find it extremely annoying that the WHOLE WORLD is explorable with no level caps, before this used to confuse me because I would end up in a map lvl 130 when I was lvl 49, just because they’re right next to eachother. So please, SPLIT THE REGIONS BETTER, reduce the amount of maps (Really, this, is key for your game to go back to being succesful, you’ve got a world WAY too massive to explore, too unrewarding to do so and it doesn’t even keep you interested in doing so).

  • I am bored senseless because the UI literally prevents me from seeing anything in the game whilst I play it.
    Whilst using skills, running, even whilst just checking my own inventory, the UI is just triggering an unexplainable rage within me whilst not even looking at the whole thing, it’s just so uncomfortable that it enrages you. Nobody wants sudden popup elements that take each 5% of the screen.

  • Tutorial(Controls) needs to be reworked, asap, including ALL and EVERY kind of key combination that opens any tab (F1-F9, explain how to open guild, how to search guild, how to do EVERYTHING, explain it like you’re explaining it to a baby, because as of right now, you’re explaining NOTHING even whilst having an actual explanation popup in game).

  • I cannot remember mobs, classes, or NPC names, not even city names, I can’t get attached mentally emotionally or any way at all in this game to any kind of content because the simple sheer amount of it overwhelms me. I don’t need 20 classes for Swordsman that force me to choose between my 2 types of favourite warrior weaponry.
    Yes, best selling trait of ToS, is that you can be a Dragoon, A Barb and a Martial artist at the same time.
    These classes need to be reduced in number, there really doesn’t need to be many classes per category if all you’re gonna do is create copies of skills just changing the weapon types, allow warriors to use ANY weapon type in ALL of the skills, and give UNIQUE TRAITS to weapon types instead.

  • For the love of god, we came for a mmorpg, we want to play with people, I remember back in the day, I still could group up with people my level, I think now low level content is a solo experience?
    This is firmly tied to the boosting side of this complaint.

  • Please add relevancy to which mobs are where and why they are there as well as their interactions with the map itself, as a youtuber said, 3 bosses can appear in 1 mine and theyre totally unrelated to the mine and interact nothing with it, ground could collapse at some point against a big ennemy, earthquakes from boss stomps could make rocks fall from the ceiling of a cave and damage players AoE, GIVE US SOMETHING INTERESTING.

Overall, this game needs a wipe, like literally, go back in time and undo all what has been done to it, because its trash.
However if they just stop bootsing people, emphasize party play, narrow down content and rework the UI, THIS SHOULD ALREADY INCREASE THEIR GAME POPULATION BY 100000%.

IMC is just trying to do anything and everything for retaining and sticking players to the game. But in turn its making the game even worse

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The wrong intention is problem here. IMC looks and works for retention and not for a enjoyable game, which retains players all of itself.

I got back into this game precisely because of the boosts. I’m not spending hours upon hours just to get to the level 470 endgame. Most people that play MMOs these days play them for the endgame, not the boring ass grind or the shitty MMO story.
If more people knew about this boost and all the free stuff they’d probably try this game out. I only found out about it because of my friend.

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