While I was away in Taiwan last week, IMC Games posted a new developer blog post for Tree of Savior, currently in Closed Beta phase in Korea under the watchful eyes of publisher Nexon Korea. Project Director syKim translated some of the questions and answers from Closed Beta 1, where the development team provided answers to the Tree of Savior community. Read on!
Q: Right now, the game can be only played by the keyboard. Do you have any future plans to include mouse control as well?
A: In fact, that was the most debated topic inside our development team, and at one time, there was a suggestion to make different control schemes for each class. For example, when you are playing with Wizard, you move your character with the mouse and when you are playing with Archer, use WASD + mouse targeting.
We tried several different versions, but none of them were well suited for Tree of Savior since characters’ directions of sight are very important in the game. Therefore, we concluded that all classes will be played by the keyboard. We do not have any future plans to add mouse controls. However, for the next CBT (CBT2), we will try our best to make the game compatible with the gamepad.
Q: Why is there a stamina system in the game? What is it used for?
A: During the beginning phase in the game, it is used to limit your character’s movement speed, but as your character’s rank increases, it may also influence your character’s skills depending on your character’s class attributes.
For example, there’s a skill called Shield Charge used by Rodelero (a character class) which you will use while moving (seen below). The skills like this will get influenced by the amount of stamina you have. Stamina will also be consumed when you are controlling your companions so eventually Stamina will be another parameter that you will have to manage in the game.
Q: When a class which uses dual-wield swords changes its job to a class which uses a spear, I am not able to use the skills that the previous class used to have. Hence, the class after advancement does not feel stronger. The same goes for Wizard type classes. Is it going to be like this in the future?
A: The reason why there are distinct skills depending on which type of weapons you equip is to express each weapon’s uniqueness. Also when you are in PVP situations, you can guess what kind of skills your enemies will use. Since a group of players feel uncomfortable about this, we will be adding a swap feature where players will be able to change weapons easily.
Q: Do you have any future plans to add voices to each character?
A: The voices that are currently available in the game were recorded for CBT1. We will do recordings for the voices again based on the feedback that we received after CBT1.
Q: Why are boss monsters so easily defeated?
A: There were two problems. First, we adjusted the game’s difficulty levels wrongly. We were trying to make the game easier in the beginning phase so that more people could adapt quickly and meet harder bosses as they progress further. However, many testers understood the game much earlier than we had initially expected, hence the bosses were found to be too easy.
The other problem was that many of the bosses’ patterns were not functioning as we intended during CBT1. The underlying causes for those malfunctions were discovered (programming bugs) and will be fixed for CBT2. Also, during CBT1, boss monsters telegraphed the locations where they will attack in advance, but this function will gradually disappear as players progress in the game and only Oracle (the class which foresees the future) will be able to see where monsters will attack.
Q: There are already lots of classes that have already been disclosed to the public, but are there any other classes which have not been disclosed?
A: Yes. I think we have more classes to be disclosed. For example, the Plague Doctor class seen below.
There are a few classes in Tree of Savior that are able to change their stances by wearing a mask. Plague Doctor is one of them. This class affects allies’ or enemies’ abnormal statuses and is able to use a skill which purifies polluted areas.
Q: What was the maximum level that players could reach in CBT1? It seemed there were lots of maps in the game…
A: There was no limit on character levels. However, we just included the quests and other content up to Rank 4. The number of territories that were included for CBT1 was about one fifth of the planned Open Beta version.
Q: When I looked at the client, BGMs were included as MP3 files. Can I copy them and give them to my friends?
A: You can give them to your friends as long as you and your friends don’t use them for commercial purposes. But, some of those BGMs still need be balanced and go through Mastering process. Also some of them may not be completely worked at our side. It will be better to use them when you have the client for CBT2.
Q: There was a BGM called “O Deive” in the game during one of the boss battles. What is the language in this music and what is the meaning of the lyrics?
A: Sevin, who is the Chief Sound Director of Tree of Savior, composed the music and Jung Hyun Jin from our development team wrote the lyrics. Martinas, who we seek consultation on the mythic Lithuanian settings in the game, translated the lyrics. Soprano Ji Young Kim and two Lituanians, Christina and Arnoldas, did the vocals. If we get a chance to produce OST CDs for the game in the future, we will also try to add the music score with the lyrics in it.
Q: Can we name our party to allow us to easily search for it?
A: Initially, we were going to have names on each party, but we concluded that it is better to have names on guilds, hence we excluded that feature from our plans. Instead, we are planning to add descriptions for each party so that they will be easy to find on the Party Search interface.
Q: Are you planning to add party quests or boss monster raids in the future?
A: We observed closely how testers interact with each other in “Party Events” during CBT1 and we are planning to emphasize this feature during CBT2. Besides hunting for bosses, we will try to add various similar missions and quests.
Q: I hope there are more types of companions in the future.
A: Right now, there are only two companions that are purchasable. We will add more companions in the future that will be unique to each village.
Q: Please give us options to change characters’ eyes or hair colours.
A: We already have a feature to change eyes or hair colours of characters in the game. But instead of making them possible when selecting a character, we want players to obtain them in the game.
We hope for your understanding regarding this system, since we believe that players will feel closer to their characters when they become unique and different from how other characters look after putting in the long gaming hours. Hence, we did away the system of allowing diverse customization options from the beginning.
Q: I want to know when your next CBT schedule is going to be.
A: We already started to prepare for the next CBT, and probably we will open up to Rank 6 classes for the next CBT. The detailed schedule has not been set, but I think it will be around this spring.
