Tree of Savior Forum

So Kim Hak kyu was not the main developer of TOS until recently?

Original Korean News

Google Translated Version

It is said (by my friend, I can’t read Korean) that the development of TOS was primarily led by Kim Se yong, the vice president of IMC, until recently he left IMC, and 30% of the stakes held by him has been bought by Nexon. Kim Hak kyu took over his position and is now revolutionizing the game, including the recent combat changes on kTest, which we can see Kim is bringing some elements from RO like ASPD to TOS.

So we have been blaming on the wrong main person in charge for all the bugs and imbalance???

Looks like we are going to see a whole new TOS brought by Kim Hak kyu and will TOS become a completely P2W game due to Nexon is now holding more stakes? Hmmm, I’m actually quite excited to see where the game is heading to.

Just thought you guys might want to know because the game community is one of the most hardcore ones I have ever seen, and maybe some of you bought IMC stocks… lol.

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That surprised me too. So now the stock distribution is: Kim: 30%, Nexon: 30%, HanbitSoft: 40%.

It might be a little bit too late, but I kinda want to see this game be saved, it has great potential.

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Kim owns more of IMC than Zuckerberg owns of Facebook (24%). It’s normal for founders of a company to reduce their shares down as the company grows, bringing in more owners to get investment money.

I’ve always thought that there were internal issues at IMC. There were good signs for the game in the CBT days, then things went really bad at launch, then there was a huge period of low activity with nobody really working on things(like normal). My assumption has always been that internal conflicts happened in the company and highly skilled/important staff members were driven out as a result. I feel like the recent large increase in activity was caused by the hiring process finally getting the staff it required, hiring takes many months, especially for skilled positions.

With what we’ve seen recently and the upcoming updates I think we can only be positive about these changes. Everything is looking good, even the user numbers on steam are rising right now. Too early to tell if the trend will continue, but it’s a nice sign that there are others like myself coming back.

The game has work to be done, but I see no reason for negativity about this news. If anything I think we can attribute (at least in part) the recent flurry of high activity and upcoming things to this news.

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I have a post somewhere on the forums about IMC, and why TOS was released when it was. Given IMC’s history, limited financial capital from Granado Espada which Hanbit published and IMC only developed, and the timeline in development for TOS, TOS Mobile, and Wolfknights, hiring of Staff, and IMC’s decision to use local versions and publishers, my guess has always been a “forced” early release due to financial reasons, (whether that was due to lack of funds, or targets I’m not sure). If this were the case, the CEO of a company rapidly negotiating, hiring, and expanding into new regions wouldn’t have the time or even the proper resources to also directly develop the game itself. It has me especially suspicious given some of the comments in the Korean Talk Talk.

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Ironic how he and the original RO team left Gravity to pursue their own creative endeavors only to not be very involved in said creative endeavors.

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The blame game does not revolve around one man.
IMC has more or less failed as a whole to deliver a product capable of high player retention.

It’ll become another RO eventually. Devout early members with the odd new blood once a while, and bot armies to feed the broken economy. Cash shop goods to keep the servers alive and costumes for all those guys playing dress up. It won’t die, but it won’t thrive again.

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But isn’t it the job of the person in charge to prevent that from happening? Having a good direction and plans for the future and seeking out ways to eliminate difficult issues if devs abilities aren’t enough.

So isn’t it still mostly against one man? I mean there’s lots of them doing their job really well (art department for example) so can they be blamed?
It’s hard to say who is to blame since we still don’t know enough.

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What a good new! Hopefully he will make this game better :smiley:

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Ayyy lmaooo

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Why so many Kims? Mindblown.

ToS has already become P2W game, just look at the transcendence system that you know was implemented by Nexon.

So nowhere to go from here but up…

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Just to correct you, it’s pay to boost, not win.

It would be pay to win if it were something everyone could not acquire. It’s not like Blessed Shards are very difficult to get though.

I’m 100% against anything being market-only of course. That would be a disaster.

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What you are talking about isn’t really in ANY games nowadays. The transcendence is as pay to win as you’re gonna get in 2017.

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200k silver is like 15minutes farm though really.

2m silver for 10, so paying to boost gives people 150 minutes headstart boost vs grind players? It’s incredibly small.

You’re gonna need hundreds of shards for lv10 trans, so that is a lot higher than 2m.

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20-60m. Scary.

I’ve sunk 100s of millions into pointless anvil upgrades for the journal rankings. I don’t think it’s a massive issue yet.

I am prepared to get pitchforks out if they do release one that looks v bad though. Don’t get me wrong, not mindlessly defending the practice at all. I just think we should be careful about not scaring new players when it’s not a v bad one. Especially when the player population has increased 25% in the last 2 weeks.

Will grab my pitchfork if something stupid comes out.

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So they did kick someone out. Hopefully not a scapegoat but a weak link. Anyways, I’ve seen games selfdestruct because they’ve put too much manpower into rebalancing while forgetting about content. Hope that doesn’t happen here.

Skyforge. People like you defending it with “pay to progress” at first. Then they eased in the real p2w stuff and anyone who does pay gets put miles ahead of everyone else. In essence when you are ahead of others in an MMO and paid for that advantage it is P2W do not fool yourself. Speaking from the perspective of a dolphin/whale here not some 12 year that can’t afford $10 complaining on a forum.

It is not say Runes of Magic levels p2w but still giving a clear advantage for your money. What is really debatable is helm enchants with rare stats like AoE Ratio which was the absolute start of p2w mechanics.

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You’re talking about a Russian company. Not really relevant to whether it occurs in ToS.

It’s like the silly folks saying “Yeaaah but look Battlefield 1 got stupid premium packs” on the Overwatch forums as if Blizzard will do the same in their game. It’s completely not relevant to talk about different companies and their actions.

Offtopic: Are you going to make a post in any thread that’s not negative Opiuchu? I think I might spit my drink all over the screen the day that occurs.

Like the Asian companies are known to be even better or something. It’s pretty relevant when the p2w is already in this game despite what you just said.

They ever going to have anything positive to post about? Because I think I might have some positive things to say when they stop being cash grabbing money grubbers running this server like a slum lord.

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