Tree of Savior Forum

True open-world is something you can't fake

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#1

Hello all who may read this.

So far I want to say that I love Tree of Savior. The combat is solid and has a lot of fun variation between classes. The class system is just amazing. I love getting new class clothes every once in a while and using skills from different classes, its nice to see the different aesthetic each classes skills have and how they work in to using multiple circles on your characters.

The art style and music just make me want to cry. If you play this game without listening to its music then you are doing it completely wrong. The headsets for ToS are so much like Ragnarok that I just cant wait to start collecting them in an open beta.

I have a lot to say about all the good in ToS because a lot of the games design when broken down just screams that this game can have depth. But the main issue i have with the game is the post 2010 linearity of maps, not just what we do on the maps but with how each area is accessed by a small hallway that serves no purpose. The whole game as far as ive gotten feels like im in Ant Hell when I really want it to feel like I am running around South Prontera or Yuno Field. It words that make sense to people that didn’t play Ragnarok, i want it to be more like Final Fantasy 7/8/9 and less like Final Fantasy 13.

Anyone else agree? I know we have zero hope of getting this addressed or talked about being players from the NA servers but I want to know what the community of old Ragnarok players and people just giving Tree of Savior a try think.

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#2

Well, ive played all those games (ff 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13) and i really hated the 13…i also played ragnarok online a lot, and that’s why i loved ToS. The reason u are not feeling well about the world map, is because of the leveling up system, it’s too tigh to the game story, (u cant choose if u are going to orc village or anubiss map), and doing quests is faster than killing monsters (at least untill lv 65 -my lvl-)…but fortunatly the game has a lot of stuff that surpasses that problem
srry bout the writing, i’m just a brazilian player, my english s not that good

3 Likes
#3

Free roaming is an illusion unless complimented with many gameplay elements, none of which can be put into tos before release.

More realistic would be something like meaningful build choices.

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#4

I haven’t played yet, but I’m in full agreement if this is how things work. FF10 was my favorite in the series, but the linearity of it was so different from what I experienced first with FF8 and FF7. Even RO which I started in about 2003 -2004 area of time was so beautiful and when you mentioned Prontera and Yuno Field I definitely knew what you meant, especially early game I think it’s very important to have that open field feeling. To not experience that I think makes people feel like they’re playing a 1 player RPG.

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#5

Yeah, but it’s kinda hard to redesign the map after it’s done.

It seems that the developer never thought of designing an open world game anyway.

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#6

theres a lot of thread about this stuff and unfortunately the admins here are ignoring them. i love the game but its too linear like every other fail MMO.

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#7

So I guess TOS is like pokemon, semi-open world ?
You can just go to anymap you like (if you can avoid the high level mobs) until you hit a tree where you need to complete quest to burn it down to get pass it right ?

#8

Somehow pokemon is more open than this game.

RIP

5 Likes
#9

Yup…but the game is awesome

#10

To late to change this though. They could fix this by adding more optional area’s like Catacombs, Crystal mines Lot 1 + 2, Legwyns and Second Demon Prison. Those optional area’s make the world feel bigger and less linear. If you have explored those secret/optional area’s you should, they contain worldbosses n hidden quests. They should add alot more of em imo.

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#11

I really hoped that they change the boss. Instead of them only available to quest. Make them like RO where they (bosses) have respawn time and chase you to death. And who wants those cards anyway? If you’re not a sorc they’re good as trash, can’t even sell them.

2 Likes
#12

Funny you say this… There is literally story quests where you burn down vines to progress…

That said the only openness the game has is there are maps not used by the story but add lore in.

The major flaws are… There really are very few good grinding spots… And higher levels its much worse from what I read… Most side maps mob density is way to low and respawn rates not to good either.

There aren’t enough channels for the only good grind spot locations…

So if they just tweak mob density and respawns in more maps so there are more good places to party grind… + add more channels flat grinding will be easier to do…

If they change it so everyone who hits a mob gets full credit/drop chances then solo grind would also be a lot easier to do… For those who wanna be able to solo.

If you guys want an MMO that has no main story leading you around by the nose though… You could look in to Project Gorgon, its an indie MMO… Doesn’t look the greatest but has some interesting enough gameplay stuff (a lot of things I haven’t seen in other MMO’s) + pretty much just drops you in and say good luck (well aside from the “tutorial cave” area but I don’t recall it being to long… which helps you understand basics, controls and what not… )… Not interested? Well you can be a cow. I bet your interested now.

I should really play that some… Been a little while, Be nice to see what kind progress they made… But based on how a lot of the RO fans talk it sounds like it could be right up your ally based on my experiences with it, and no experiences with RO… haha…

Unn anyways…Totally not going off topic… :wink:

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#13

I think what can be done is reduce the level cap so that you can make multiple areas for same level or so
if u haf 60 map for 600 level, itll be linear
but if u haf 60 map for 200 level, you can work something out, less linear more spread out
these changes are simply changing value, nothing on redesigning maps or so…

#14

Of course it’s too late to change the maps. And I think that adding in some…just kind of open areas is a little bit of a throwoff if the rest of the game is so linear. BUT in FFXIII there was an area like that I can’t remember the name of but it was a huge highlands area with tough monsters and dozens of quests. That could work nicely as an option.

#15

Ragnarok being open world is just nostalgia goggles effect. Every job (more like depending on if they are agi based, vit based or ranged than actually the job) have different grind spots depending on whether you have a healer or not, or if you have a tanker (only works with healer), but they are pretty much stuck to those maps if they want to level at all and not spend weeks fruitlessly dying and losing exp. Most actually good grind spots involved having the tankers mobbing a tonshit of monsters, a healer doing it’s job and a single wizard casting Storm Gust for hours on the same spot while all other party members just sat there leeching.

You can explore ahead in ToS, just like in RO, during the first iCBT some people way bellow level 100 got to the second town without any problems and kept exploring the maps from there, nothing is physically stopping you from doing it.

And true open world is just a lie, doesn’t matter if it’s an MMO or a traditional RPG. Usually you have a world with tons of fake choices and few right options for you to do something and advance progress, Ragnarok is full of those dead maps, some of them might have some bots farming materials for some weird headgear or some other thing people won’t bother doing unless bots are feeding the market with those, but other than that there is nothing to see in those.

And about level requirements and such stopping your advance, RO also had those, and I’m talking about pre-renewal. The Sign quest had level requirement, Kiel Hyre, Dandelion, Rachel Sanctuary, Somatology Laboraty 3, Thanatos Tower, Mjolnir Seals and many others had level restrictions for you to be able to enter these maps. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this is ToS other than the instanced dungeons.

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#16

That’s already very open to me. At least I can think of different strategy to grind (technically you can in ToS, just much lesser option).

#17

Yea, I also think true open world is an illusion
Even in real life, you have to do a quest for visa and passport to go outside your starting country, and some area you can’t go in unless your level is more than 18, and you need a healer to go with, I belive…

2 Likes
#18

What is with this western open world craze…it’s been around for…decades and no matter how many times and how often churns out a fail product, someone always says “I want an open world MMO” after they just left their 15th open world MMO.

Let’s face it, the technical and logical challenges of making an open world MMO from specs, to programming to balancing can be better spent making a better game in pure feature set and fun.

ToS is old school enough to not wall off garden the playerbase, while still giving them much more freedom then most resent MMOs.

This open worldness is a non issue, especially since the developers needs to focus on driving down the basics of Bugs, clunky interface, and sub par-optimization.

#19

don’t need open world for a grind map. The best camps will always be the same.

1: A cluster of high spawn rate monsters

2: A retreat safe zone (in this case a campfire location that won’t get constantly harassed by monsters)

3: A choke point and/or maneuverable area to AoE and battle tip toe around

4: Monster types of favorable quality

You can say all that open worldness devolves to a developers intentially designed a spot, or unintentionally designed a sweet spot. The rest of the map might as well be ignored.

#20

You all are messing up with your terminologies.
What you’re referring to is a “sandbox” MMO, not open world. Technically most MMO are open world. They don’t have room-by-room corridor and maps that you can only progress forward or backward.
They are themepark MMO, however. In that you can go back and forth however you want, but if you want to progress then you need to follow a guide from the start of the park to the end.
ToS is not entirely themepark, and neither is it fully sandbox. You have all these maps and you can grind anywhere you want, there’s a series of quest in place but it doesn’t carry you from level 1 to 200. It’s just there to alleviate some of the grind for you. That’s why it’s not entirely themepark and not really sandbox either.
Which is fine really, I respect the developer’s choices of design, but they’re gonna have to flesh out this system a lot. Some people complaining the cards are giving too much EXP while the others are complaining about grinding being too long should say enough about how much IMC should be balancing between these aspects.
They really can’t satisfy everyone, nobody can, but they should make the grind more enjoyable than it currently is, even if it’s personally really satisfying to me already.

1 Like