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DEVELOPER'S BLOG
Tree of Savior Herbal Life Pt.1
Greetings, Saviors. The following is the list of herbs in iTOS. Take a look at what items you have in your inventory.
Weekly Question and Answer – November 18th, 2016
Q1. On keyboard mode you use the space bar to interact with NPCs, but on mouse mode all you can do is click, which can be a bit complicated to use in busy cities. Any plans to work on this? A1. We are aware that TOS’ fixed quarter-view style can sometimes make things difficult for mouse mode users, especially when objects are too close or overlap. This is something that we’re concerned about as well and definitely want to improve. We’re still considering this issue in general, but some improvements that maybe could be applied in the future would be, for example, defining specific keyboard keys for certain actions or allowing for more flexible control setting in mouse mode. Q2. We know kTOS introduced equipment slots in companions already, but they only work with the same equipment used by player characters. Are you planning to add any companion-specific equipment? A2. Yes, one of the reasons we created those equipment slots for companions was to eventually have items made specifically for them. As of now, this feature is still very much in the early stages of development so there’s no telling when the final products will be out, but we are looking over a few companion equipment options, including some companion hair accessories.
Weekly Question and Answer – November 11th, 2016
Q1. The statement on trade restriction that we can retrieve our silver in 48 hours from the market. Will you consider making more comfortable for us? In-game market is inevitably tied to malicious criminal acts such as RMT because it is the main distribution channels in the in-game items and currencies. We are continuously monitoring the transactions of major RMT-items on the market and requires a period of delay to detect illicit activities and prevent such actions from significantly affecting iTOS. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience you have experienced with the 48 hours restriction. It is difficult to remove 48 hours restriction, We are examining all the options for reducing the current waiting time more in the future patch. Q2. There is no function and system to change our companion even we typed wrongly. Is there any plan to allow us to change companion's name? We've usually received suggestion about changing companion's name. So we did make a plan to allow our players to change your precious companions. We firmly promise that it will be applied in a future patch. Q3. When can we meet any of new Gestures and Emoticons to express our characters as eating popcorn and etc ? We are planning to develop new Gestures and Emoticons for our players as possible as we can. However, we firmly focus on fixing bugs as the top priority.
[UPDATED] Weekly Question and Answer – November 4th, 2016
Q1. At the moment, the map from the teleport is different from the mini-map from the hotkey (N) and cannot search on the teleport map. These are quite inconvenient. Are they intentional? Previously, we planned to make different between world map and teleport map but now, It has become almost same each other. We firmly understand the inconvenience and will provide more comfortable and convenient function for players. Q2. Guild raid rewards are not satisfactory compared to the effort we have put into raising the guild level. We are curious to know reward renovation and additional contents to vitalize the guild contents. Perhaps it is not sufficient but the amount cubes given as guild raid rewards will increase from 1 to that proportional to the tickets. Other plans include updating guild events and adding new guild event rewards such as a falconer-only companion and so on. We are currently coming up with ways to ultimately improve not just the guild contents but almost all the aspects of the game. Q3. At the moment, monster gem getting destroyed when extracted is quite disappointing. Is this intentional? Also, do you have any plans to provide us with alternatives? Monster gems do not have a level system as Red Gem, Blue Gem, etc and their effects do not stack with similar effects and furthermore, they increase a skill level by 1. These factors make it the monster gem destruction unavoidable. For the moment, there is no plan to create an alternative to prevent it. Q4. There are some talks about the high mdef for some monsters in the high-level maps coupled with high hp. Do you have any plans to balance them? Yes, we are planning to balance some of monster's HP in the high-level maps. However, we believe that increased properties of Gems and Enchant Scrolls' Status and transcendence equipment which will lead to our players to grind them more easily.
Weekly Question and Answer – October 28th, 2016
Q1. SPR and INT don’t seem to be as effective as other stats in the game. Any plans to address this? We agree, so we did make a few plans to address stat effectiveness. Starting with the INT and STR stats, we are currently undergoing internal tests to improve their effects. In the case of SPR, however, instead of increasing the effects of the stat in itself, we focused more on improving how certain skills scale with it (particularly skills in the Cleric class tree.) Q2. All the Lv 270 and Lv 315 items right now are either purple or red. Are you going to introduce any regular high-level items as well? We know there are a few players who were curious about this, so we wanted to let you know that yes, we are in the process of preparing new regular items for the higher levels as well. The release date for the new items isn’t set yet, but if everything works out we expect to be able to launch them as soon as our next kTOS patch. Q3. Will our male characters ever get hairstyles with a beard or mustache included? We’ve always received suggestions about beard/mustache and shaved head styles, and at the same time, there have always been those who feel like it doesn’t really fit with the design of the game. Considering the consistent requests we get from players, however, we feel like it’s time we give it a try, so we’re going to start designing a few samples.
Weekly Question and Answer – October 21st, 2016
Q1. It is very difficult to tell elite monsters from regular monsters. Do you have any plans to distinguish them with a certain clear indicative effect? We are currently in the process of making a method to highlight elite monsters. We understand that, at the moment, players may have trouble instantly recognizing elite monsters which might hinder intuitive gameplay. This may also reduce the fun factor of finding and defeating these relatively rarer monsters. What we are planning to do is indicate them visually on screen and also their names will reflect their elite status to add a sense of drama as well. Such features are on their way. Q2. The monsters run away so fast that it somewhat hinder the gameplay. Is the current speed of monster retreat intentional? Additionally, would there be other gameplay elements regarding the monster fleeing AI such as a monster running away to call for a backup? We also see that the monster fleeing AI can be improved in a variety of ways to improve gameplay. We have come up with some ideas and are now in the final testing and execution stage. Certain changes will be implemented to make the monster behave more organically, less intrusively and allow players to experience the thrill of the hunt. Q3. There is no clear indication of critical evasion and other chances through the character statistics. Are there any plans to make them more intuitive? The chance calculation of critical evasion and alike is based on not just the character’s statistics but also that of the target. Therefore, it is very difficult to have a fixed number representing such chances. However, that is not to say the status quo will remain completely the same. We are internally discussing and experimenting with some ideas to make the gameplay more informative such as displaying target monster’s critical evasion chances on the monster info UI.
Weekly Question and Answer – October 14th, 2016
Q1. It is difficult to see how lenses and hair dyes will look on characters before purchasing them. Will there be a way to see what it will look like on the character before the purchase to prevent bad decisions? We have developed a way for you to preview what the items will look like on your characters. We hope that you will be able to make more satisfactory purchases with this preview function which will be implemented in the not too distant future. Please keep a close eye on future patch notes to see it. Q2. kTOS recently had a major revision of the Enchant Scroll and Gems that changed a lot of the currently established norms. We are wondering if there will be a similar revision to the current Monster Card system. While we may decide to add new cards to allow more diverse usage, we currently do not have any plans on revising the Monster Card system. If we do decide to make any major changes, we will be sure to announce them beforehand, so make sure to read any announcements on the Official Website. Q3. It is nice to finally be able to trade more items via the Market system. We are now finally able to trade Gems and Monster Cards which is great for enhancing character abilities. However, it is difficult to find them unless we know exactly what to search for since they do not have a separate category in the Market. We are planning on creating separate categories in the Market to allow easier perusal of Monster Cards and Gems. We hope that this will aid you in your search for those elusive cards that are preventing you from creating your preferred build. Q4. A large part of playing an MMORPG is having fun with friends. As such, it would be nice if the option of using the automatic party matching system in a pre-made party. As avid gamers ourselves, we understand that being unable to find a party with friends made things difficult. Therefore, we are pleased to announce that the ability to use the automatic party matching system from a pre-made party has been developed. Please read future patch notes carefully for when it will be implemented. - Preview and Purchase UI - Instanced Dungeon and Mission Entry UI p.s The feature of UI can be changed for the future patch.
Weekly Question and Answer – October 7th, 2016
Q1. I would really like to ride a Guinea Pig companion. Will there be a way for me to do it in the future without a mounting skill? During our initial closed beta tests, Guinea Pig companions were actually mountable by all classes. Later, however, we ended up considering the possibility of it hurting the uniqueness of mounted classes, and that’s when we put the restrictions in place for Guinea Pigs. We don’t think we’ll change the current setup that soon, though, so it seems the only way you’ll get to ride a Guinea Pig companion is by creating a character in a mounted class. Q2. Will we ever get the current trading system of kTOS in iTOS? We did make some changes to the trading policies in our Korean servers which we trust would be welcome in iTOS as well. Currently, the new trading policies are undergoing a few internal tests in order to stabilize them before we bring them over to the international version. As always, you can keep an eye on our News page for future announcements with more details about these changes. Q3. Having the bosses in Siaulai Mission match the level of the highest-level character in the party can be a bit rough for those with lower levels. Any plans for improvement? We are well aware that this is an issue affecting auto-matched parties playing the Siaulai Mission. Because of that, we decided to make boss monsters match the average level of all party members, instead of the highest-level character alone. Development of this feature is fully complete now; it’s already been applied to our Korean servers, too. You can be sure we’ll bring it to Steam as well, you’ll just have to wait a little longer for this update. *P.S.: We would like to take this chance to clarify something about the new Dumpling items, as it seems to be confusing some players. When there are 20 or more levels of difference between your character and the monsters you're hunting, they will not drop Dumpling materials. Please keep this in mind, and our apologies for any confusion this may have caused.
Regarding Client Performance Optimization
Hello, my name is “Chase”; I am the TOS Dev team programmer in charge of client optimization. As we all know, client optimization has been one of the most requested features from the ToS community. There has been some improvements through other fixes, but there is still work to do. We are currently investigating solutions to this problem and we’d like to update you on the process. Current Status To optimize effectively, measurements are very important. A regular play pattern should be recorded and measured so that it can be compared with future results. In this process, replay function and performance visualization tools are used. So far, the optimization process has been focused on scenarios of either a situation involving one player or multiple monsters. The work has been done with the data from such scenarios. Through this, we have successfully achieved a few positive results in PvE environments. What we are focused on at the moment is the situation where a player is placed in a crowded place i.e. at big cities. City Environment Analysis We have captured a crowded city from our Japanese server and measured it via the replay tool. From our observations, we determined that a considerable bottleneck effect was occurring during animation updates, and after a more detailed analysis we concluded that the major source of the problem was in the morphing function. Morphing is the process that gradually changes one image into another. We use this process in ToS to create our unique style of animation you see in character hair movement, for example. The function itself is quite simple, but the intensive CPU processing it requires does tend to create some bottleneck issues. To solve this, we applied multi-threading, allowing each of the different objects to be simultaneously processed by its respective CPU core. Results The results we obtained after applying the multi-threading function exceeded our expectations. In our internal tests, we observed performance improvements of up to 1.5 to 2 times in a 4-core CPU, and 1.5 to 3 times in an 8-core CPU. FPS was steadily increased and occasional framerate spikes were significantly reduced. For reference, the specifications of the PC used for testing are as follows: CPU - i5 3570; graphics - GTX650; OS - Windows 10. One thing to consider, however, is that this multi-threading process might cause hidden bugs that are unseen at the time of testing. That is why testing sessions to see if newly worked-in codes do not cause any errors are needed. After this process goes through the testing and is included in a patch, we expect a great performance increase especially in areas crowded with player characters. Future Plans First, we intend to continue exploring multi-threading. Starting with morphing, we want to extend the process to gradually start separating other tasks that occur before and after it, such as effects where there is room for further improvement. Another aspect we’re tackling is related to resource loading. The slight performance drops that can happen whenever a character meets a new NPC or monster in-game are a problem we are seriously taking in consideration. We expect resource management measures will help a great deal in solving this. I am constantly keeping an eye on the feedback our players leave on the forums concerning FPS drops in their particular gaming environments. Rest assured that we will continue to work hard to solve the main issues that affect a considerable part of our player population. As you can see, there is still room for further optimization besides the measures explained in this blog post. Also, after the optimization patch is applied, there might be some discrepancies between the observed results from our development environment and the actual result on the environments of our users. Your feedback after the patch on how much it improved and what your computer specs are will help our development immensely. We strive to solve the client performance issue until the day it no longer is a top issue. Well, that’s it for now, I’ll keep working hard to bring you guys even more good news. Thank you for reading this rather long and technical stuff; cheers.