Hi IMC.
Let’s talk about skill design in tos. Not the moves themselves, not the damage, not the balance, but the manner in which those skills communicate to players visually.
ToS has some interesting visual design but it suffers from being effects-heavy while communicating pretty poorly with the players.
Let’s take a pvp situation for example. Today in pvp I watched as a Musketeer in a team received abuse from another player for being “afk”. This looks ok on the surface, the Musketeer didn’t move from the spawn spot and they were killed where they were standing by a cata rush.
The reality however is quite different, that Musketeer wasn’t afk, they were using Snipe. This skill and situation is an example of poor player feedback, the other player didn’t know the Musketeer wasn’t afk because the game doesn’t communicate what the players are doing at all. A casting animation that shows the Musketeer kneeling and looking down their sights/scope would solve that. You’ve implemented this for skills like Meteor, but it is missing on a vast range of skills across all classes.
I’m not going to talk about all skills in the game, but for the sake of giving an example that isn’t a casting animation, let’s also talk about another Archer skill - Full Draw.
This skill has two effects, it knocksback the target hit by more than a full screen length (when levelled properly) and it roots the target hit in place for up to 15 seconds. It has two charges and a CD of 20s. It’s an extremely effective move.
When a target is hit by Full Draw their reaction to it is “I’m bugged”. They go flying across the map, and then they’re stuck in place, spinning around their character trying to move is the typical reaction. There is no effect that visually tells the player they’ve been hit by a knockback move and there is no effect that tells the player that they are rooted in place. Worse still - None of the teammates of the archer using Full Draw have any idea that an enemy player has been CCd for a full 15seconds, so they treat this player like they’re not CCd and often dance around just out of range. This is in contrast to moves that do communicate well without being visually noisy, like the skill “Stop” on Chronomancers.
What would solve this communication problem for this move? A ray of wind “whoooooshing” through the air towards and behind the player would tell them they’ve been knocked back. An effect that demonstrates the rooting, like their feet/legs been bound up by vines/weeds would solve the rooting problem. If you really wanted to be lazy about it you could just put text above their head saying “Pinned”. This would effectively communicate to all players correctly and clearly, both on the friendly team and the enemy team.
These are just two examples. I’m sure the forums can go through some of the skills of many of the classes in the game to find and explain others.
Often Tree Of Savior has too much visual noise on screen and not enough clear communication. This is BAD for pvp. It’s exciting to watch and gives a player a big feeling of strength for their power-fantasy in pve, but in pvp in any game visual noise is usually disliked while players prefer to have clear visual feedback.
Please try to strike a balance between things. And please try to ensure that moves properly communicate with players. As a pvp player I would prefer less noise and more communication, but I understand you also have pve to cater to.
Now I will leave it to the forums to argue over the topic as well as post other skills that have similar problems. Please leave bugs, balance and other things out of this topic, this is a topic purely about the visual communication players receive.
Thanks for reading.
EDIT: I don’t know why I put a serious tag on the title. Too much redditing