tldr: the 400+ levels to the very start of “end-game” wasn’t fun. I never paid attention to the main story because besides silver, anything rewarding is behind endgame content, the translation wasn’t good at times, there were too many quests, and the quests were boring and/or annoying.
Background Info
Played around mid February to 4/4/21, reached level 453 with a pyro/ele/tao and leveled a SR/Thau/Ench. Stopped at getting to the requirements for CM3. Got bored of the grind. Wanted fun PvE content with a cool world. I have no interest in PvP and GvG content.
The game’s problems are probably shared with other MMOs and I don’t think the problems are solved well here. I’ve just played a few other MMOs.
Poor Pacing
The game seems set up so that you should just complete the main quest as soon as possible so you can experience the real game. Monsters and quests probably don’t have a chance to give you something valuable during the grind to end-game other than specific skill gems maybe. With end-game content also limited in various ways, there are just a couple ways to progress casually (such as those quests that give attribute points) which becomes boring quickly.
A bland world
The world part in this game is severely lacking. Due to anti-botting changes, field monsters are no longer rewarding and are no longer unique (if they ever felt unique) Rewarding content all comes from dungeons that are instanced, such as the leveling instance dungeon, Raids, Challenge Mode, etc. Even sub-quests are locked until you have a level 400 character. There is some incentive to complete maps but they’re not that rewarding. As rewarding content was focused at just the endgame, there was less reason to pay attention your first 400 levels such as what you were fighting, where, and why.
Poor Translation
Perhaps I skip through the dialogue in most games nowadays. From what I’ve paid attention to, the translation hasn’t been the best. Some people can read through that, it hurts the story and characters for me however.
Possible Solutions
I’d say make field monsters feel unique somehow. Presumably can’t have valuable drops, but perhaps team locked useful drops/cosmetics/quests? Something so fields and monsters feel special again.
Make quests less annoying, the worse were the quests where you had to interact with 10+ objects with 3+ second cooldowns.
It feels too late for this game to develop content other than PvE and PvP content. Gathering, crafting, world economy, minigames, those help prevent a game from getting stale but I feel like TOS isn’t able to do any of those.
Please make sure the translations at important story sections are improved as that’s when I tried to pay attention.
And that’s all I can think about at the moment. See you later maybe.