Why I think Tree of Savior failed

[プリンツ・オイゲン]

Just giving some word on why I think Tree of Savior went down hill pretty fast. Notice how the game only sustained for about 2 months (1month founder's and then 1 month when everyone got in)

***WARNING*** This is based on the early days of tree of savior and many things may be out of date.

http://steamcharts.com/app/372000#All

The Good
-First Trailer for the game itself: excited people about Ragnarok Online revival

The Bad
- Founder's pack: caused a divide between higher and lower leveled players (IMC's excuse was server testing and afraid of overload)

-IMC/Tree of Savior believe the Ragnarok Online nostalgia can carry on the game for a long time

- Pay2win SERVICE: You can pay for benefits like running faster, less penalty, more buff slots?, too many to list. I don't know much about this, but all I know is service made quality of life better than those who free2play. ( People argue you can buy the TP token from other players. However, doesn't that mean the player who paid money for the token still get a butt ton silver? They STILL BENEFIT)

- Pay2win ACCESSORIES 2: Accessories can get enchanted to make yourself godly powerful and it required you to buy scrolls (which costs real life money). This meant that players who paid money can make themselves drastically stronger in game than someone who doesn't spend money.

- Can't trade silver: Most MMORPG you can lend each other money to help friends get something or etc. In tree of savior you can't so that destroyed the need of talking to anyone.

- Can't trade equips?: I don't even know or think you can even trade with other players mainly due to can't trade silver so it didn't get me motivated to talk to other players about equips.

- Server population is a secret: Even until this day I don't even know if it is Orsha or Kalepdia that has the most amount of players. Many steam user troll other players say stuff like Orsha has the most players when in reality it is a ghost town compared to Klepedia. The only way you can find out is if you look at reddit or some other fan base and hope they aren't lieing to you.

-Game Design is terrible: I am not talking about graphics, but the game's design itself. If a new player joins the game I can guarantee a 99% chance they will suddenly get lost when they somehow suddenly jump into a zone that is +20 level higher than them, but they follow the main story quest line. Many players at this point believe they need to start grinding or what not. I looked at the leveling up guide it is by god a freakin mess wanting you to jump back and forth between cities in order to level up without a problem (maybe). This game is not newbie friendly, it is DIE HARD only.

-Where is the new content? Every new content that gets added into the game is for higher levels only or "end game" players. In the beginning to mid there is nothing there to keep players engaged. I never made it to the PVPing level and I don't even know how far that is. Im assuming Rank 6?

-The most important reason why the game failed. THE COMMUNITY. There isn't one in Tree of Savior
1) Tree of Savior players are not friendly: they will mislead you in server choosing.
2) Your class must be meta or else you are out: If you make class choices that are meta you will have no friends or guild members to interact with
3) Ragnarok Online heavy nostalgia players: they keep praising tree of savior as Ragnarok Online 2 ( the real one) and ignore everyone else

tl;dr

Tree of Savior failed because IMC didn't engage or try to get more players. The community trolled newcomers and kept to themselves.

[Dynemanti]

Every MMO loses most of it's player base after the first month or two. Between launch hype making people play way more, people seeing all the stuff they wanted to, new games coming out, most people not caring about pvp or endgame pve, and people who just didn't like the game after actually trying it. Then it'll sometimes be a slow build back up. WoW is going to be an exception cause it's blizzard, much like how "hero shooters" don't work except overwatch.

Though if I had to say why I quit, pretty soon after starting I quickly realized this wasn't a classic RO style game but rather a incredibly linear quest based game. Therefore it wasn't what I thought it would be.

[jvjd]

For me it failed at the point of not explaining the game properly especially for new players. It was pretty evident in the early days with so many players having very questionable builds which is why class reset tokens wese heavily asked for
If you designed the game as such that i have to go outside of it to understand as to not screw up then you have failed in that category

Then came the anti bot/anti gold spam features that did nothing to stop them but jsut inconviniece the playerbase - there too much to list in that

Third thing would be where is that Massive in MMO??World bosses, cool - completely monopolized by guilds in the early days.......really?? great anti-social structure guys ...hope you all are still there and not whining of lack of content/players ingame

[No' Name]

ToS Is amazing, even to this day, but failed in many ways, too many to bring up.

I'd say the majority left due to the "Grind".

While yes, Mmorpg's are at the very basic a Grind, ToS had way too much of it. There was not enough quests, and or the exoerience wasn't gained fast enough to keep players interested.

Tree of Savior has TONS of classes, and sub classes, many of which people (including myself) wanted to reach, but the grind could easily take up to 200 hours, just to reach what you wanted to try out, and find out, the class you've chosen sucks, and not many people are willing to remake, and play through another 200 hours, just to reach a specific point. It's boring, and time consuming.

While this game brings back Nolstagia from Ragnorok online, and some say it's the spiritual successor to it, these are all old-school players who want to live in the past, but don't have the time to re-live it.

Time and Nolstagia don't make a good combination. And this game is a perfect example of it.

I've actually came back to this game, and noticed quite a few changes that players would enjoy, but I've also noticed a HUGE amount of bugs that have been in the Beta, the launch, and still presist today. Which is actually sad, and shows how little the Devs of this wonderful game, actually care. They've made their money, time to move on.

It's sad that every Action rpg, such as Diablo, MU, etc, etc, makes me want to come back to this game, but... The community/population is dead, so, why bother?

If IMC took care of their game, and promoted it, I could actually see more people playing it again. As it stands now though, the grind is too much, and the changes they've made since I've played (paying money for attribute points), are unappealing, and disrupts the game.

I'd hope that this game could change, but, I don't foresee it in the future. Hopefully the Devs, or whoever makes the next "Ragnorok", learns from these mistakes.

[プリンツ・オイゲン]

Originally posted by jvjd:

For me it failed at the point of not explaining the game properly especially for new players. It was pretty evident in the early days with so many players having very questionable builds which is why class reset tokens wese heavily asked for
If you designed the game as such that i have to go outside of it to understand as to not screw up then you have failed in that category

Then came the anti bot/anti gold spam features that did nothing to stop them but jsut inconviniece the playerbase - there too much to list in that

Third thing would be where is that Massive in MMO??World bosses, cool - completely monopolized by guilds in the early days.......really?? great anti-social structure guys ...hope you all are still there and not whining of lack of content/players ingame

Yea there was lots of experimentation going on with the classes, then people started making "meta builds", then people started getting isolated

[プリンツ・オイゲン]

Originally posted by Humor:

ToS Is amazing, even to this day, but failed in many ways, too many to bring up.

I'd say the majority left due to the "Grind".

While yes, Mmorpg's are at the very basic a Grind, ToS had way too much of it. There was not enough quests, and or the exoerience wasn't gained fast enough to keep players interested.

Tree of Savior has TONS of classes, and sub classes, many of which people (including myself) wanted to reach, but the grind could easily take up to 200 hours, just to reach what you wanted to try out, and find out, the class you've chosen sucks, and not many people are willing to remake, and play through another 200 hours, just to reach a specific point. It's boring, and time consuming.

While this game brings back Nolstagia from Ragnorok online, and some say it's the spiritual successor to it, these are all old-school players who want to live in the past, but don't have the time to re-live it.

Time and Nolstagia don't make a good combination. And this game is a perfect example of it.

I've actually came back to this game, and noticed quite a few changes that players would enjoy, but I've also noticed a HUGE amount of bugs that have been in the Beta, the launch, and still presist today. Which is actually sad, and shows how little the Devs of this wonderful game, actually care. They've made their money, time to move on.

It's sad that every Action rpg, such as Diablo, MU, etc, etc, makes me want to come back to this game, but... The community/population is dead, so, why bother?

If IMC took care of their game, and promoted it, I could actually see more people playing it again. As it stands now though, the grind is too much, and the changes they've made since I've played (paying money for attribute points), are unappealing, and disrupts the game.

I'd hope that this game could change, but, I don't foresee it in the future. Hopefully the Devs, or whoever makes the next "Ragnorok", learns from these mistakes.

Yea, if i recall correct ( because I never got to the end) people had to grind in order to get the last levels to be "maxed level". However, the game's poor design made it very possible for players to think they needed to grind in like ( level 40 --> level 45). I got stuck at that point and had no idea what the heck I needed to do because I doubt I am supposed to spend days for 1 level so early in the game.

Then it is revealed later that I am supposed to start the quests at the other city.

Apparently, if you follow the guide you can reach the end with little to no grinding. However, how the hell is everyone supposed to know that. A game for die hards only for die hards

[プリンツ・オイゲン]

Originally posted by Dynemanti:

Every MMO loses most of it's player base after the first month or two. Between launch hype making people play way more, people seeing all the stuff they wanted to, new games coming out, most people not caring about pvp or endgame pve, and people who just didn't like the game after actually trying it. Then it'll sometimes be a slow build back up. WoW is going to be an exception cause it's blizzard, much like how "hero shooters" don't work except overwatch.

Though if I had to say why I quit, pretty soon after starting I quickly realized this wasn't a classic RO style game but rather a incredibly linear quest based game. Therefore it wasn't what I thought it would be.

I think the problem with this game is that they made it too anti-social through restrictions since you can't really benefit from be friending anyone besides having someone to fight a boss with. Everything else you are on your own

[FeelsGouda]

Originally posted by Waifu:

-Where is the new content? Every new content that gets added into the game is for higher levels only or "end game" players. In the beginning to mid there is nothing there to keep players engaged. I never made it to the PVPing level and I don't even know how far that is. Im assuming Rank 6?

I agree mostly apart from this one.
there is not a single mmo out there that actually brings new content to mid or early game (apart from re-imagining the game for example)
new content for mmos is ALWAYS endgame, and thats how it should be.
the problem with ToS lies simply at the fact that reaching end game is quite a chore given the fact that it has way too many levels and is in fact very boring.


I see why this game is more a niche mmo especially in europe/NA given the fact that those asia-mmorpgs are more on the grinding side which is not the way westerners are used to play. but yeah they could easily modify it to actually be more accessible and modern. things like non global dungeon finder for example are not really state of the art in the mmo genre.

[II Martín II]

Waifu said that ToS Failed, but their characters are selling buffs and stuffs in the game, c'mon dude....

[Monstrosity Gruk]

The potential system made many leave, including me soon probably.

[プリンツ・オイゲン]

Originally posted by II Urtiel II:

Waifu said that ToS Failed, but their characters are selling buffs and stuffs in the game, c'mon dude....

My IGN: is WaifuMaiLaifu c'mon man....

[プリンツ・オイゲン]

Originally posted by vietnamesedinosaur:

The potential system made many leave, including me soon probably.

Potential is the hammering to make the weapons shiny part ya?

[プリンツ・オイゲン]

Originally posted by Green:

Originally posted by Waifu:

-Where is the new content? Every new content that gets added into the game is for higher levels only or "end game" players. In the beginning to mid there is nothing there to keep players engaged. I never made it to the PVPing level and I don't even know how far that is. Im assuming Rank 6?

I agree mostly apart from this one.
there is not a single mmo out there that actually brings new content to mid or early game (apart from re-imagining the game for example)
new content for mmos is ALWAYS endgame, and thats how it should be.
the problem with ToS lies simply at the fact that reaching end game is quite a chore given the fact that it has way too many levels and is in fact very boring.


I see why this game is more a niche mmo especially in europe/NA given the fact that those asia-mmorpgs are more on the grinding side which is not the way westerners are used to play. but yeah they could easily modify it to actually be more accessible and modern. things like non global dungeon finder for example are not really state of the art in the mmo genre.

Yea, lots of contents should be added to new game. However, that is only the case when the path to the end is enough to support itself.

You can't have a like for example.
Level 1- 40 Dungeon A
Level 70-100 Dungeon B

Like having a gap destroys the engagement of players.

There is an example of an MMORPG ( that died) Maplestory where they kept on hammering content that is virtually all end game only. They basically gave higher end level players more options to level up while forcing the mid/low a very linear path.

" You should keep playing it will be fun at the end (1month maybe). Games that rely on a promised end isn't exactly good. It should always be fun throughout and players should want to stay not promised something"

[dennis_flaresword]

Hell the problems run even deeper that this. Basic stuff like disconnects, lag, rubberbanding, latency/ping problems and getting stuck at the load screen.

This game had potenial. The farming needed to have an explicit and rewarding purpose. A lot of the mechanics in this game was based on playing a lot and having a high player population. I don't know if Korea TOS is doing well. Maybe this just wasn't a game that can do well outside of the domestic market because of the hack job execution. Maybe they just needed to hire more talented computer engineers and programmers early on and take their time with the game before release. However even years in, there are monstrous problems still in existence.

[Smile]

+1

[Linkan]

I disagree with the pay to win aspect or any of your apointed design flaws.
What I do think this game needs is to get rid of the horrid RNG.
Velcoffer, for example, was a good step in a right direction, with game mechanics and party sinergy that required more than stack and aoe it.
However, what do you get from it? A cube with a chance to get an item or some fragments.
After you run it a ton or actually get an item, you'll face another RNG, this is one really disrespectfull to players, that is called Ichor extraction. 5% chance of sucess.

What this game need is more end game bosses with real mechanics, but with real loot at the end.
On the leveling, I do think it is quite enjoyable, but Dungeons are rather dead at moment. Around lvl 270 some like start to it. That's discoraging to new players.

Also, lack of propoer communication to player base a big issue. How long do we have AFKers in dungeons and nothing is donea bout it?

i'd add more group content, make it more challenging (and rewarding) as an alternative to soloing.