Hope to Development Team - June Edition

A monthly post where the development team answers top suggestions and concerns from the community.

tos.nexon.com 트리 오브 세이비어 PC-Online MMORPG 트리 오브 세이비어. 회화적인 그래픽과 클래시컬한 배경음악, 방대한 오픈월드 맵을 만나보세요.

What kind of game does the development team want to create?

From your suggestions, we were able to evaluate your concerns and those of the development team as well. We ourselves have pondered a bit through your suggestions and will provide answers to each of them.

Direction of Tree of Savior

The development team wants to make Tree of Savior a game in which you create your own unique character from among a choice of many different class builds, and then enjoy playing the game through various different types of content. This vision and design has not changed since the launch of the game, and two large scale reorganizations of the game (Battle System Rework and Re:Build) have been done in order to strive towards this.

Firstly, the development team is currently preparing to add a new system that will stretch beyond the limits of a standard class build, on top of the standard balance patches we are continuing to make.

In addition to this, games need to have a variety of different content in order to be fun, so we are planning to add popular features that exist in other MMORPGs that are lacking in Tree of Savior. We plan to start showcasing housing and lifestyle content within the near future, and also added a high end Legend Raid (White Raven) that was designed to be taken on by a party consisting of the standard roles of Tank, Healer, and Damage Dealer.

Finally, in addition to this diversity of different content, users that play the game are divided into solo players, party players, and those that aim to play with their guild. We want all these different types of players to choose their favorite type of content and be adequately rewarded for it. This means we are currently working on a horizontal structure for the remainder of Tree of Savior’s 2019 roadmap, with updated content that is different than the usual solo and party content we’ve made up to this point with adequate rewards available.

1. Hidden Game Systems [Hidden Features]

The development team sympathizes with how you feel about hidden game systems. Tree of Savior was aiming to create “endless exploration and adventure” from the beginning of the game’s development, and we thought this was core to the game’s design. Unfortunately, the development team also had a desire to provide content that was “hidden” in order to provide a new type of enjoyment, but this has led to feedback from saviors saying that it results in a lot of inconvenience and it is not kind to users.

As Tree of Savior’s first year went by, information about the hidden content that we created was shared throughout the community both inside the game and out, and thus the “exploration and adventure” we were aiming to achieve by finding this “hidden content” had its value diminished. These types of content have been abandoned, and the rewards they provide are no longer relevant to building your character.

The development team plans to reorganize these hidden contents, continuing with the ideal of “exploration and adventure.” Here is the direction we want to take:

Categorize Hidden Content

We are going to categorize hidden content that is currently in the game so that we can provide continuous updates to it. We will change current hidden field content that has no similarity to other content, and also change NPCs so that they can be continuously updated.

Balance Hidden Content

We plan to rebalance the hidden content based on the exploration and adventure they provide. This means we will better control how the hidden content is executed and accessed, through the addition of new gimmicks and mechanics, alongside new hints and information provided throughout the process.

Update Rewards of Hidden Content

After we have categorized and rebalanced the hidden content, we will update the rewards to make them more interesting and satisfying. We will update the rewards so that even if you’ve been a savior for a long time, you will not be disappointed.

2. Progression of the game’s story [The balance between story, game content, and how users interact with it as they progress through the game]

Tree of Savior’s world is the creative result after the development team interviewed people of Lithuanian culture, studied their myths, and read various original books. Through these efforts, we were able to create a new, original world that was presented from the beginning of Tree of Savior, and continue to explore it through art, sound, and storytelling. However, as the years of the game’s service have gone by, we are aware of regrets of how we’ve handled the story and a lack of focus that has been placed on it.

The development team would like to reorganize some of the game’s story content in order to relieve stress and fatigue that players experience while growing their characters, so that both new and existing saviors can enjoy the stories and scenarios Tree of Savior has to offer before the upcoming Episode 12 update in the future.

Quest Progression

Currently, there are over 1,000 quests that exist within Tree of Savior, and many of them can only be done if certain conditions have been met.

The majority of quests are based on character level, while there are some that are hidden and others that are related to the revelations (main story quests). As a result, there are many quests that are brought to the user’s attention within a very short period of time when a character levels up quickly, and the extreme number of choices that are offered (especially for new and returning saviors) causes confusion and inconvenience.

As a result, the development team is planning to reorganize quests in order to mitigate the chaos that is caused while progressing your character, and prepare various stories and NPCs that you can enjoy at a better pace.

We plan to give priority to main quests on your first character until you reach an appropriate level, dismissing long chain sub quests and the currently abolished Orsha questline. After you’ve enjoyed the revelation story quest on your first character, you can enjoy subquests and the Orsha questline when leveling new characters.

To this end, we plan to raise the subquest EXP rewarded to match that of the main story quests, to motivate users to experience various stories and meet new NPCs.

Improve inconvenient quests and the fatigue they cause

The development team is focused on improving the questing conditions for many complicated quests within the entire level 1-420 range, improving quests that cause a large amount of fatigue such as those that cause nonsensical waiting and collection of too many items. We’ve already made improvements to some main quests, but we plan to continue to progress through all the quests gradually from the beginning.

Updates to the Revelation Main Story

The story of how the savior gains relevations to go against Giltine will be updated to provide more information and context, and new quests may be added.

The questline will be improved so that it will further complement the world of Tree of Savior, and help you understand the story to be prepared for episodes coming in the future.

Improve accessibility for unpopular party content

The development team has made changes to party content that is less popular to make it more accessible and less inconvenient to play through with previous patches.

For example, we have provided NPCs in cities that grant access to leveling dungeons, and also made changes to Earth Tower that typically required very long play sessions.

Subsequently, we plan to make similar changes to the Unique Lv. 330 raids: Former Fantasy Library: Sausis Room 9 and The First Refuge. We will provide details when a schedule for implementation has been decided.

3. Story Development

Selection of which content to develop and concentration on making specific content is essential for efficient and effective production of the game. Unfortunately, there are very few users who enjoy and pay a lot of attention to the story of the game, and the majority of users are more interested in fun and exciting content. As a result, it is only natural that the direction of the game’s development was shifted to align with the more popular demands from players, and we openly admit that the development team has chosen this direction.

The development team believes that the biggest problem is that the above “fun and exciting content” should have been treated with a much higher degree of importance to the game’s story. However, this was not achieved, and focus was purely placed on the fun of the content, when the relevance to the story is also important to providing that fun.

We believe that the small number of users that have a deep interest in the game’s story and are interested in analyzing and theorizing it have their immersion decreased due to the lack of story focus on new content. In the future, we plan to keep this in mind when developing new content and add various elements to appeal to these users and improve immersion with the game’s story and world.

4. The rapid acceleration of high calculations [The high value of numbers]

The original damage formula had many problems. Past information we provided on issues with the original damage formula are still valid even now.

Because of this, we believe the Log method of damage calculation is still the better method compared to the original subtraction method we employed in the past.

5. Class Variety

The diversity of classes that exist in the game is the greatest original achievement from the development team. However, while the new class rank system increased the freedom of choices made in your character builds, it has a problem in that it produces a high barrier of entry due to high complexity. Updates have been made in order to reduce complexity on class lines while not hurting the amount of freedom that is provided.

The development team is currently planning and developing a system so that it can continuously extend the limits of classes, and specific static class builds can be chosen with more freedom (reduce complexity and offer more valid choices that can function). We will provide updates on this new system in a separate post.

Reduce Randomness of Rewards

We have carefully reviewed your suggestions. We sympathize that it can be frustrating when another user can receive a better reward despite you putting forth more effort due to randomness. With regard to content, the development team is working to change the rate at which you acquire rewards in older content. In fact, Unique Raids have already seen several changes, and with the July 18th patch, all Unique Raids will be changed so that you can choose which recipe you receive when using fragments from the raid.

With regards to Boruta’s rewards, Boruta has only just been implemented a guild content after many different system changes. After some time has past, we will review the reward it provides and consider making additions to the medal shop based on your feedback.

Balance Two Handed Weapons and Raise Their Potential

We have carefully reviewed your suggestions. With the goal of survival becoming increasingly important compared to ending battles more quickly, the appeal of two handed weapons has gradually declined both due to how random stats have been added & balanced, and the attack value they provide being out of scale with the amount of defense provided by a shield.

We are aware of these issues within the development team and we are in the process of making changes. We will provide an update on this within the near future.

Suggestions for a Redesign of Drakonas Kite Moor

Property damage is calculated based on property resistance. Unless an enemy intentionally equips resistance against it, defense against it will not rise, unlike armor that provide defense against general attacks. As a result, we’ve taken into consideration the power of specific classes and synergies that can attack very quickly when balancing the damage this set provides.

However, the skills and abilities of classes that attack with high attack speeds and a large number of hits have begun to overvalue Drakonas Frieno instead due to its higher damage and the high skill factor on these skills due to recent balance patch buffs. This can change at any time based on the current balance of the game, and the current meta and ranks of classes. As a result, there is difficulty in changing the effectiveness of this item because it is still one of the top items within the game.

Lastly, to touch on your last suggestion, we definitely would like to add more accessories that appeal to summon classes.

Give New and Returning Saviors a Masinios Weapon on the First Day.

As you mentioned in your suggestion, a Masinios weapon (which is a level 350 unique weapon) is given on the 2nd week of playtime (12 days) as an attendance reward for new and returning users. We chose this because new characters with an average weekly playtime will reach level 350 around that point in time. In addition, it is more useful to provide a reward they can use immediately upon logging in, while providing another they can use later as a goal to reach.

If you reach level 350 faster than the 12 days, it is likely that a Masinios weapon will be useless to you by the time you receive it, and we agree that this increases the difficulty in leveling up when you reach this point (as you have not received the weapon yet). If the rewards provided to new and returning saviors via attendance rewards remains the same for a long period of time, we will check to see if the rewards are still appropriate in order to address the issues you are explaining (for example, perhaps providing a unique weapon that will grow with you up to a certain level instead of a Masinios weapon).

The Severity of Macro Use

We are continuing to monitor and detect unauthorized use of third party programs at all times.

(Crevox Note: Macro use and the suspicions of other users using it has been a large topic in the KR community lately that IMC has been cracking down on and banning users for.)

Conclusion

We would like to express gratitude to everyone who has provided their feedback and interest in Tree of Savior.