For me the whole game felt like a mixture of Ragnarok and Diablo, which is fine and refreshing for the market.
ToS in the end is an mmorpg with Hack’n’Slay combat which is really nice but at the moment has some general problems.
1) Monster density
Most maps aren’t crowded enough. Throw in more monsters and reduce spawn time. Makes the game more fun (as you slash through monster hordes) and solves some of the known problems.
We see the effect: Besides Towers/Dungeons like crystal mine, mage tower and Demon Prision I saw next to no other players (Laima). Well of course, every other map sucked in comparison and was far less fun. All other maps gave us were necessary and unwanted exp cards grin. Uh. Sucked.
In the end Mage Tower/Demon Prision was player spent most time which proved that.
Also thinking back to Ragnarok probably the best map we had was Biolab. And most PVE stories I hear from back then if I remember the good old days with some friends are either about Biolabs or Guild Dungeons.
It is the same principle, high monster density. High risk, high reward. Perfect.
And also instant spawn is some much better than waiting for respawns which is fuckin retarded and a lackluster in general. We do not want to sit on spots and wait for some monsters to appear so we can finish our quest like 50 other peoples clumbing up trying to do the same. Monsters spawn -> Instant death -> Lots of killsteals. Back to waiting 30sec. That simply doesn’t work.
Look back what we had in Ragnarok like Orc Dungeon. To many people but who cares, we had instant respawn. Worked out was fun slashing through it.
I mean IMC probably took a lot of ideas from diablo, you can’t tell me otherwise. It simply looks like this. But the way it is now it’s not consistent.
Just be reasonable, most of the subquest are boring and unwanted. Just remove them and let us slay monsters in a fun way. The main quest mainly is fine. Guide us through every map in an innovative and not repetitive way.
At the moment it really is quite fine. Like in mage tower being guided was really nice!
Maybe instead of kill this/collect that. We can get more defend (but then again lots of monsters, make it a challenge) or destroy. Doing some objectives that guide us through the maps to explore these and later use them to grind by setting up tactics to destroy a maximum number of monsters in time.
tl;dr: Easy fix, add more monstes and reduce respawn time. Remove retarded subquests and maybe also exp cards. Let us fight and not walk/wait. We want to see stuff explode/die by our hand on the screen and not sitting and waiting to Z some respawn down.
2) Make Monsters use spells
Am I the only one who misses monsters doing something creative? Even most bosses just don’t.
Let them set up Firewalls, Magic Circles, Defensive Walls, Heals (some mobs later on had this but not really effecive), Ice stuff (but not the annoying freeez - wait - freeze - god damn it - wait -freeze) etc. Make us dodge. Make us fight and not hold down z forver.
Funfact: This and 1) also solves the “AFK Z down” problem if people just die to respawn sitting on a Fireball.
3) Reduce cooldowns.
kOBT is going to do this anyways. I mean we all want to have fun. Holding down Z is not that much fun and waiting for cooldowns to go off is even worse. With more monsters we would need more tools to destroy them. We want nice effects for this.
Pyromancer is really close to this as you can burn down a lot by diffrent spells and effects. On the other hand wizard was like quest Earthquake. Wait for CD to go off. Move to the next spot and cast Earthquake. Completely boring.
We do not need more spells as this kills gamepad gameplay or just makes the game harder/stressfull. But being able to more often use the tools we have is fun. This would also make more classes pick up value points in SPR and increase the usage of stats.
Also increase the HP/SP tick rate. The idea with campfires is… uh. Waste in my opinion. Back to waiting. Waiting is not fun at all. Balacing around this in the next Beta iteration would be really good.
tl;dr and conclusion
The core idea is awesome. The execution gets boring really fast. For me it was about a week as I felt combat got lacklusting, waiting game and repetitive.
Why does Diablo work? Because there is enough to kill, fun tools to use and a main story which shows you the map. We actually have the base for exactly this but need some proper adjustment to make it fun the long way.
I think Diablo like games handle combat right. The mmorpg factor gives us more developement, more skills and also real party play. Repetitive questing is boring and does not work nowadays (in my opinion).
It would really be nice to be able to log, hack through some maps for progress and maybe continue the main story while enjoying that our character does what we want him to do. And have some developement meanwhile.
Also skill/stat reset should also be in the main game as this brings refreshment. But it should be expensive. This would deflate the market. But no changing circles as that would be broken and bullshit. There are decisions one has to deal with after having done these - RPG factor.
Another good idea
Now that I think about it having all that written down.
How about having a main quest guiding us through the game which unlocks the maps we then use to levels and gear up. Maybe also with choices like am I going to unlock Mausoleum or Tenants Farm now? Ok Mausoleum first as there are some good items for me and after 2F I unlock the Tenants Farm route, etc…
Would be very nice.
Actually Ragnarok did quite well in this regard. More than most games even until now. You had PVP (WoE), MVP Hunting and Guild life. In between you could decide whether you go for Exp or Gear grind for progress and you had the choice between mass monsters, strong (and ceative) monsters or both as a party.
If we had enough to do besides the grind it would be fine to spend some time on every map until you can unlock and progress on the next maps. For me it would totally be fine having to spent like 10h on crystal mine fighting, leveling and gearing up. This could scale into late like average of 30h for mage tower while you are busy taking care of field bosses and minor guild wars at this point.
Then you get some frontliners who can tell you how it looks like on higher level maps and it would take some time even for the hardcores to clear the actual content we have now.
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I really want ToS to succeed. The core ideas are soooooooo good. Best I have seen for a long time.
But the execution is… questionable.
// IMC Senpai notice me! 
