My honest opinion after 200 hours

[Buddha]

So, I've now played the game for around 200 hours and can objectively say that it doesn’t work as an MMO and won’t sustain itself in the long term. The game is fun for a few hours, but you quickly reach a point where it devolves into pure grind, and the daily, repetitive, limited task rotation feels more like work than enjoyment.

But first things first. There is a main story and quests, which are fairly good, sometimes including puzzles, and they provide a good introduction to the game. You also get showered with all sorts of items and resources for crafting and upgrading, giving you a constant sense of progression. This phase of the game is quite enjoyable. However, as soon as you reach level 50 and enter the endgame, the game reveals its true face: monotonous mechanics and a repetitive task rotation, bound to various currencies that constantly limit and restrict you.

The open-world dungeons and PvE content differ at best only visually; content-wise, it’s the same mechanics—usually a series of arena fights against bosses. The group dungeons are also extremely small and simple, usually consisting of a few rooms with a final boss whose mechanics are easy to learn. It doesn’t really matter whether you’re fighting an open-world boss, doing a dungeon with a group, completing resistance contracts, or soloing bosses. Everything feels the same, is quickly done, offers little depth, and serves merely to add some visual flair to the gambling aspect, repeated as often as possible to keep dopamine levels high. Nothing has real depth; everything is highly repetitive because it doesn’t matter why or how you kill a boss or complete a mission. The only thing that matters is the anticipation at the end to see if you get the desired item or not. It’s pure gambling mechanics, like at a slot machine—nothing more, nothing less.

And of course, you never get what you want. When a boss is killed by 150 people but only drops 6 items, with 5 of them always being resources and the last one going not only to just 1 in 150 players but also with a 1 in 15 chance of being the wrong item, you can calculate how long you’ll be killing bosses. That the bosses only appear every few hours and all at the SAME time, so you can only do one boss, I’ll just mention briefly in the context of probability and time factors. For comparison, I’ve been playing for a month now, every day, for 200 hours. I’ve participated in every guild “raid,” done open-world bosses daily, and at least 3 dungeon runs a day, and I’ve never dropped anything relevant to my meta gear. Not a single usable item for me. You also can’t really play freely; you’re constantly restricted by this time system, the currencies, and limitations. If you can’t kill a world boss at exactly 8 PM to take advantage of your 0.0001% drop chance, you’re just out of luck and can try again the next day.

Every day, you grind through the same boring stuff and even feel pressured because if you don’t play for a few days, the currencies you need for dungeons only accumulate up to a certain point and then expire. This creates pressure that needs to be dealt with. Guild tasks, raids, and bosses are the exact same as solo tasks or open-world bosses. Nothing really stands out or provides a challenge. You only occasionally fail a group dungeon due to a lack of communication from teammates. Everything is tied to endless grinding: resources for crafting, items for the lithography book, and whenever you manage to gather something, you realize it’s just a fraction of what you need to, I don’t know, craft armor—only to have luck spoil it because the crafted item doesn’t have the trait you need. Sure, you can change that, but that, too, is tied to endless grinding. I can’t fully describe how deviously long-winded and boring this system is. I hate to say it, but you’d have to be an idiot not to see it—or to see it and still keep playing the game because I wonder where the gameplay or fun is supposed to be here if you aren’t addicted to gambling and can’t stop.

The game is heavily pay-to-win oriented. PvP fans might want to give it a try, but they should know that without spending real money, progress is minimal. In open PvP, like with conflict bosses, a solo player stands no chance, so joining a guild is almost mandatory. In arena PvP, it’s nearly impossible to get by without real money since gearing up is essential to remain competitive. While you can earn in-game currency (which can also be purchased with real money), it takes forever—and I mean forever—and still isn’t enough to make a significant impact. Don’t even try to play as a healer in the arena.

The PvE content feels like pure busywork, grinding PvP gear that you eventually end up buying or upgrading out of frustration because it takes way too long, is the same boring routine, or you just never get anything useful. In the end, everything boils down to repetitive grinding to slowly—very slowly—get stronger. This monotony makes the game unfortunately very boring and frustrating in the long run, especially since it’s the same thing over and over again. The world is small, the dungeons are irrelevant, there are no raids, boss mechanics aren’t really challenging, the PvE content feels like work, and you can tell that the whole game is just about keeping players hooked—to make them addicted and then get their money.

Speaking of raids. There are raids, but they look exactly like an open-world boss, except that you can exclusively fight this boss as a guild in an arena. But there’s no lead-up to the fight, no old castle, no ship, no enchanted forest—nothing. You just enter a portal and are immediately in front of the boss. Then you fight for 5 minutes, the gambling factor kicks in, because this time you’ll definitely get something, right? Nope, nothing again; quickly move to the next open-world boss. The same clicks as always, nothing dropped again; off to the open-world dungeon. The same mobs, killed the same way, and after 3 hours, still nothing. And that’s the whole day, until your currencies run out and you’re more inclined to buy what you need because you can’t handle the frustration anymore. I really can’t put into words how vile this game is.

I’m just aiming for 100% Steam achievements, as there’s not much left to do, and then I’m uninstalling this garbage. Absolutely no recommendation from me, and I’m not saying this out of frustration but from an objective realization that has matured over 200 hours.

[SweetStarfieldFan]

Originally posted by ⎝ Miller ⎠:

Until they quit limiting things it's better to play wow. Bottom line.

That's like saying, 'Until the coffee shop fixes their cups, I'll stick to drinking straight from the toilet.

[marsHm311oW]

Seems like another was banned for saying the game is bad.

[Offence]

Originally posted by marsHm311oW:

Seems like another was banned for saying the game is bad.

Or better yet for speaking the truth about the dire situation.

[NotxEevee]

Completely agree with this post.
I want to like the game and I honestly enjoy its combat, but since lvl50 it's been such a drag.
Right now I'm at the point where the only way I can really upgrade my gear is either through dropping items on world bosses (never gonna happen) or by farming Lucent and buying the items I want from the auction house.
It's just an artificial grind to incentivize people to spend money for Lucent. It sucks.

[Skillo]

Originally posted by NotxEevee:

Completely agree with this post.
I want to like the game and I honestly enjoy its combat, but since lvl50 it's been such a drag.
Right now I'm at the point where the only way I can really upgrade my gear is either through dropping items on world bosses (never gonna happen) or by farming Lucent and buying the items I want from the auction house.
It's just an artificial grind to incentivize people to spend money for Lucent. It sucks.

This type of comment makes no sense to me. "since level 50 feels like a drag"

So you enjoyed the levelling? walking from one corner to the other for 4/8/16 hours? Is that the definition of fun? Maybe play FF14 or something idk

[Umbre]

Buddha and BigCheese both banned lol
They couldnt argue without reporting each others

[IIFriggII]

Originally posted by Eido:

You probably haven't played any NCsoft productions before

aion, b&s, l2, even l1 a bit.
this is not following any off the formula, the closest is the l2 but thats due to how they design it to be owned by sweatshop farmers, to make easy money in various illegal and bad ways.

its also not the same team making it, this has as much to do with ncsoft products as candycrush had to do with windows....

so yer, his pretty spot on as well, this is clearly a 3month hype mmo for fast earning by scamming everyone including investors... and it worked, and it cant be punished.... the world and its people are so freaking stupid and just malicious

[IIFriggII]

Originally posted by Umbre:

Buddha and BigCheese both banned lol
They couldnt argue without reporting each others

steam ban people when they feel they are not giving the right attitude, there is no ruleset they use, which creates more "hype", its like algorithms on youtube etc. if something you hate get you to interact it will showyou tons off it, bc it doesnt care for negative reactions, all reactions are good in its mind....
sigh.... stupid, broken, degenerated world and people

[SweetStarfieldFan]

Originally posted by NotxEevee:

Completely agree with this post.
I want to like the game and I honestly enjoy its combat, but since lvl50 it's been such a drag. It's like the game actively wants me to quit.
Right now I'm at the point where the only way I can really upgrade my gear is either through dropping items on world bosses (never gonna happen) or by farming Lucent and buying the items I want from the auction house.
It's just an artificial grind to incentivize people to spend money for Lucent. It sucks.

Welcome to video gaming in 2024.
Show me a game that does not use the same mechanic in any similar or slightly different way?
Even ESO,WoW and SWTOR have the same mechanic that the higher the gearscore the grind is expontentially higher.

[KillJoy]

Originally posted by Offence:

Originally posted by KillJoy:

Korea is not North America. Something that does not well there might do well here, and vice versa.

Show me one KOREAN mmorpg that is still popular in NA right now .

In case you didn't know NA and EU culture never catered to p2w games that's why they all failed here in the west.

Culture has nothing to do with it. People play games they like, regardless of where they come from.

[NYGiantsYankees]

fun for a few hundred hours lol

[NotxEevee]

Originally posted by Skillo:

This type of comment makes no sense to me. "since level 50 feels like a drag"

So you enjoyed the levelling? walking from one corner to the other for 4/8/16 hours? Is that the definition of fun? Maybe play FF14 or something idk

Yes I did. Because I moved from one type of scenery to another, I fought different mobs, I leveled up while doing quests, leveled my skills and crafted my gear along the way.

Then at lvl50, the gear I need to progress is locked behind 3 daily dungeons, limited abyssal tokens and random spawning world bosses.
The progression is gated, unlike how it was during leveling.

It's that simple.
My response makes no sense to you because you don't want it to make sense to you.

Originally posted by Prof.GamePhilosopher:

Welcome to video gaming in 2024.
Even ESO,WoW and SWTOR have the same mechanic that the higher the gearscore the grind is expontentially higher.

Just because other games have the same mechanic doesn't mean it is or should be acceptable nor that the mechanic is well designed. It's the same re-used excuse that means nothing.

Also there's a difference between being able to queue for dungeons over and over while getting loot and 3 dungeons a day+time-gated bosses with random spawns.

[SweetStarfieldFan]

Originally posted by NotxEevee:

Originally posted by Prof.GamePhilosopher:

Welcome to video gaming in 2024.
Even ESO,WoW and SWTOR have the same mechanic that the higher the gearscore the grind is expontentially higher.

Just because other games have the same mechanic doesn't mean it is or should be acceptable nor that the mechanic is well designed. It's the same re-used excuse that means nothing.

Also there's a difference between being able to queue for dungeons over and over while getting loot and 3 dungeons a day+time-gated bosses with random spawns.

To clarify why Throne and Liberty’s mechanics make sense, let’s break it down:

The grind and progression gates aren’t unique to TL—they’re staples across the MMO genre. EverQuest, one of the earliest MMOs, had leveling that took literal months. In TL, you can hit max level in a day, so the concept that it’s somehow more restrictive isn’t accurate. Limited dungeon entries (like 3 per day) and time-gated events actually help casual players. Without these, the hardcore "no-lifers" would sprint miles ahead, creating massive imbalances. If you work a regular job, you’d never keep up.

This isn’t about “accepting” a mechanic blindly—it’s about maintaining balance in a live game with thousands of players.

[Hosenbund]

I had the same experience with mutliple games in the last years, the most recent one being "the first descendant"

Many of these games are highly addicting right at the start, and if you lack a life you may get to 200 hours in a month, and then you start to realize what kind of crap you were playing and question how you thought it was good in the first place, because the red flags were all over the place right from the first hours of play.
So feeling like a game is slowly becoming a chore but telling yourself "maybe its worth it" is the biggest mistake there is

I knew throne and liberty from many,many videos already, so i know how the endgame and many of its systems look like.
After it made a bad first impression on me after 1 hour i decided not to engage with it at all, because i am sure it will die anyways

There are enough good games out there which are not just after your wallet, and dont try to bind players to their game by making slaves of them through the use of dailes and weeklies.
they actually try to be fun and make you keep playing beause of that

[Psil_Semilan]

Originally posted by Prof.GamePhilosopher:

...it’s about maintaining balance in a live game with thousands of players.

Yeah right. Mhm, mhm. Talking about balance in a predatory p2w game that is pretending to require real skills playing it.
Just lol!