Hello everyone, I’m an avid MMORPG gamer, Telsiai pioneer, and I’m currently working for another game publisher of another popular game of a different genre.
I would like to share some of my thoughts on what ToS, as a game and as a community, as someone who has been both in the frontlines of the fanbase (in pulling my friends to DL the game) and as someone behind the scenes (doing the eCommerce/marketing/customer support etc. nightmare.)
I have also read some threads before regarding changing the whole rank/circle design. I’m expanding on some familiar points here as well.
It’s a marketing head’s worst nightmare
No matter what toppings you’re gonna serve with the ToS ice cream to a regular con goer, they’re gonna see a bit of RO in it. And they’re gonna latch onto it while nitpicking everything else.
That’s where it’s gonna get difficult. They will probably ask you how it’s the same, and how it’s different to get a clear picture on what they’re gonna experience. Mind you, it doesn’t get any easier if they don’t play RO. It’s quite hard to paint ToS right now to the newbies and the ‘picky’s’ or vets of MMORPG.
I will not be tackling exp or mission progression right now because I think ToS overhauled their early content with the new exp progression. It’s just chaos now. What I used to follow to make a character to level 100+ is now bypassed by dungeon runs; and really, the journey of the Revelator seems a bit lost.
The real problem to painting ToS is character creation and progression.
Here I’d like to emphasize the power of a choice in an MMORPG.
Players LOVE to customize. It’s like a morphine shot on that con-goer when you show the Rank/Circle system of ToS.
Newbies have that sense of wonder and vets have that nerdgasm in taking on that challenge of finding the meta builds.
But in the state of things now, the rank/circle system opens too much choices without giving enough information on the pros and cons of choosing that rank or circle.
How many characters have you re-rolled?
How much time did you actually spend outside the game to plan your character only to go through it and just remake it again.
It’s the weakness of the gameplay if a skill simulator is quite essential onto knowing if you should invest on a certain character and be able to smooth in late game content.
I can play Pokemon well into late game content without needing a skill/stat simulator. I do that to be competitive.
But I go to ToSbase just to know if I’m gonna make a Cleric or not and not even for PvP or PvE in mind.
I say that the simulator is essential because late game content punishes the non-meta build a bit too much.
And I say that as someone who is being eaten by the metabuilding phenomenon, and my boyfriend is just pissed how he can’t customize like he thought he could seeing how certain monsters are in lvl 280+ maps.
Let’s not talk about “that’s why people farm in (insert map here) until level XXX” Let’s think about that while asking the question “did the devs intend it.” Would they intend to make content for a certain recommended level only for others to not do it all. It’s either an error in recommendation or design.
In RO, character building was straightforward. You had 2-4 choices max, and the options are very different: like a Wizard AOE and a Sage bolter, an Assassin and a Rogue, a Knight and a Paladin. Choices were segmented well.
You can clearly see an advancement in what you can do and the paths you chose already has synergy rooted in it.
In ToS, I make a Krivis, smiting my enemy with Zaibas to later on see a blue version of the Krivis symbol being made available to me for change. A Paladin, I thought, would be a great idea! I smite with mah hammer while the lightning rained on my enemies OH YEAAAAAAHHH.
Nope. Your guild mates laugh at you and escort you to the graveyard of Krivis-Paladins.
Going back to the acquisition head in a con: his 1-5 minutes window with that con-goer will probably revolve around what classes he/she can do. Lines are now long in the booth. A cosplayer points at the LED screen shouting: “Hey, it looks like RO!”
Your team, in the next con, decides to give out handouts because your first wave of users are having a hard time in the slump of the learning curve.
Will creatives be able to design a flyer that has all the useful information? Not a flyer. No.
A handbook maybe.
That just opens another can of worms.
And that’s just for the whole skill tree issue, there’s still that can that has “Stat build” on the label–the can that’s making me ‘choose’ between PvE and PvP without even knowing–which just adds more accessibility issues for late game content and therefore retention.
Let’s not, however indirectly, punish the players with the choices we made available to them in the first place.