Disclaimer: It seems that some people just read just to react. Feedback does elicit some kind of an allergy to most of us, since it somehow attacks us. I just want to remind people that this is for a game that I loved and I still see potential in, even if my faith in it and in the staff is wavering. So please don’t read just to react, read to understand.

Hi everyone. I am Grandt, the ex-GL of Rhythm Mortis, having 4.8k hours of game time, and have decided to quit playing this game a couple of weeks ago. Why though?

Problems of a non-NEET

The main reason why I stopped playing this game was that it became more of a chore than a game that I can actually enjoy. For a couple of months, I have been running characters in saalus convent and 290 and, for a while, farmed Earth Tower lolo equips. These dailies would take a significant portion of my game time, if not all, and by the time I would have finished everything, it’s either I already had to sleep because I had to be an adult the day after or scrape the remaining time of my night for studying. Not everyone has 24 hours to devote to this game. For a game that only features poorly designed en d-game content like buggy guild bosses, a poorly designed PvP/GvG system, and a more glorified form of dailies, Solmiki and Fantasy Library, I realized that there was no point in farming for better equipment. It seemed like a vicious cycle of farming for equipment to be geared and ready for more farming for better equipment. For what though? What happens after? Wait for the next update and go through the vicious cycle again? If you love dressing up your character then go play Barbie dress up then.

What to do now?

After realizing this, that religiously doing dailies is eventually going to make me quit, just like the rest of the “end-game” player base, what can I do now? Our PVP system is shiet, mainly because it doesn’t allow organized 5v5 play. We tried replicating it in the outside world by doing 5v5 ourselves, players sending duel requests at each other, but it feels different because you cant resu/revive people back into the “5v5”. While I do not mind that TBL is filled with metalords, ehem mikokabbainquis, since I am a meta slave myself, I do not appreciate the fact of it being limited to only 2 hours per day, since not everyone’s free during 4AM GMT+8, IMC. Rerolling or questing also did not become an option, even if it’s better experienced with guildies/friends, because everything feels so redundant. True that ToS actually gives us 2 options for starting cities, but it doesn’t fcking matter. I did try to break the monotonous life of daily-less ToS, making guild events like fireball football and curling, 2v2 PvP events, and others, but it didn’t prove to be sustainable and entailed much work. It felt weird that I cannot enjoy a game I used to enjoy with a laidback attitude.

Wailords and the lack of IMC intervention

I do not understand how IMC lets whales like some people we know run around with RMT’d equips. It has been the woe of the community and there are numerous facebook groups right now with groups buying and selling equipment/silver/shards using real life money. I could post pictures right now for IMC, to know the extent of RMT they choose to ignore, but I’d do that if they’d message me. I know that it really is part of every MMO since not everyone has pride in themselves, but I do not see IMC doing anything about it, which could lead to consequences. One perfect example we peenoise know was the fall of Philippine Ragnarok because RMT was never really dealt with and players could just create chat boxes in prontera, selling equipment for money. I believe that IMC had their share of faults, mainly by making blessed shards tradeable and reducing the market silver cooldown from 3 days to 0. In my opinion, shards could have been better off if they were account locked. RMTers will always beat those who run 5+ characters in saalus and that is very discouraging for us. If we could buy ourselves into getting higher tier gears, why engage in this dailies-centric game? The 3 day cooldown of silver did not stop RMT to be honest, but I believe that making it to 0s cooldown made transactions easier and also gave RMTers the psychological phenomenon called instant gratification. In turn, it encourages them to buy more and more silver. With your meager population and people who actually care and report these players, I do not see why you cannot address these issues.

Half-baked game

I have been playing this game since founders Day 1 but have been ardently following its updates ever since it was still in its beta testing phase. From Day 1 and till now, I have experienced every problem that ToS and IMC threw at us. Some of these problems would be CommanderLoadFail, party cutscene bugs, instances getting filled, channel/game crashes and crashers, and FPS drops. Some bugs prior to founders’ were lvlxx skills and the exp card bug, something I didn’t experience myself but heard from beta-tester friends. We could argue that IMC did try to address these problems, and even though it would take from a week to months (sad cutscene bug, hue), these problems should not have existed in the first place. I agree that bugs would be present, even in AAA games, but to be plagued with these many bugs, it does seem that the game lived up to its name, being a tree. Also, I do not understand how the developers screwed up and made this 2.5D game run poorly even in mid-tier potatoes. My potato could run Overwatch and FFXIV with no problems, but it seems to overheat and suffer when I play ToS. We really cant argue that the game is just in its early phases because it should have already been standing on the shoulders of other MMO giants and should have learned from their mistakes. It is 2016/7, a very different environment for tech, compared to its predecessors, RO, MU online, RAN, FlyFF, etc, which were released in the 2000s. That’s a fakken 16 year gap sir.

ToS, an irony.

I do believe that the concept behind ToS was to find your own path by exploring different combinations of circles of different classes. And I believe that the team level system was introduced to encourage rerolling because it would be easier the nth time around, while looking for the build that we truly own and enjoy to play. It was fun at first, until the game proved to be less forgiving to the non-meta builds. This became more apparent in post-maven content, where mobs became harder to solo and quests becoming harder to finish. It is also apparent in grinding parties and Earth Tower parties, not allowing the adventurous builds to join them. Meta builds have been present since day 1 and have plagued my gaming experience to the point that I eventually became a meta slave and, sadly, discriminated the non-meta builds from my parties. Kudos to the non-meta slaves, I praise you for not succumbing to the system and for enjoying the game while getting booted out from parties (not sarcasm).

There’s so much I want to say but I am getting tired and I want to totally separate myself from the game so I just want to get this over with and post the thread.

I do hope that IMC realizes that NPC forum lores, art contests, new loading screens, and gacha costumes will not fix bugs and will not distract us from these bugs. Armbands and ERP carton boxes won’t blind us from your poorly designed GvG. The red panda and gem abrasive is not effective in inviting us to play your time-limited and cleric plagued TBL. I hope that they realize that they can do better, for their buggy game, for their measly gaming population, and for the potential players who want to enjoy the game. I guess it’s time for a server merge.

I cannot offer you alternatives or ways on how to correct your game, I am a medical student, not an IT/computer engineer. All I can offer you is feedback. I did enjoy your game for the first couple of months, but when loyal vets like me (who poured much of our 2016 into your game) and a lot of founders players (who actually waited for the game to be released) decide to stop playing your game, then I guess something is wrong.

That’s all. Good bye ToS, it has been a blast.

PS: White and hueknights, reflect and ponder, have I played enough of ToS to give an intelligent opinion? If yes, by all means reply then, if no, then go plague other threads instead.

grabs popcorn Amuse me knights.

EDIT: WELP, seems like some people, esp the reddit community, cannot digest the fact that I spent thousands of hours before leaving the game. Like I said, I am an ex-GL of a guild. You cannot just abandon your guild veterans and newer mates just because you cannot stand a game. For me, a big part of the game is socialization – if you don’t get enough friends in-game, then you’re out sooner or later. I bet a significant portion of the people inside ToS are just playing because some of their friends/guildmates are still playing it too. It has just come to a point that the game’s very tiring, even with friends, the guildies have also grown tired of the game (even if you had 34 members, online counts are low) and almost all the veterans have left, that I decided that it must be my time to leave as well. When you become a GL, it entails responsibilities. Then again, in my 9 months of gaming, I see guilds living for 2-3 months then gets disbanded. Maybe these people don’t really understand what it is to have a guild. Sadface. Hue~