The MMORPG Throne And Liberty A Letter

The MMORPG, Throne And Liberty, wrote a letter to the community. The letter can be found here. From that, here are my thoughts on what they provided and where we are going. I believe a letter can go a long way, but I genuinely think it’s only as good as what you do after, and most of the time it doesn’t go the way they stated in a letter to us the community.

Action Combat in MMORPG

There were many reasons why the battle felt static, but the biggest reason was the lack of freedom of operation. When planning the shape of a large-scale war, we considered formations to be important. So, we implemented collisions between characters and set most attack actions so that they cannot be performed simultaneously with movement. However, our decision resulted in inconvenience in movement and infringement on freedom of operation. The shortcomings became more noticeable in battles in peace zones, which took up most of the play time, rather than in large-scale war situations. To improve this, we have taken the following steps:​

• The overall combat system has been changed to allow attacks while moving.
• Conflicts between characters have been eliminated in all areas except conflict areas.
• The inertial effect applied when changing direction has been minimized to increase the responsiveness of operation.

https://tl.plaync.com/ko-kr/board/producer_letter/view?articleId=64dd917e58865d2fbabb9d4a

My issue with movement and combat in MMORPG ends up always being weird in my opinion, I rather keep it static in my opinion. What tends to happen is some sort of lag or invalid input where things don’t register properly when you are jumping, moving, or using obstacles to avoid taking damage. It becomes buggy or worse skills go on CD with no damage being applied due to some weird issue of a person being on top of you. This in turn plays into a problem of every skill is an AOE, which just destroys any other build potential as the gameplay has turned into an “action static combat game” similar to all the other style games out there. I believe that it’s nice we get some fluid design movement for the gameplay, but in the end, I do not believe it’s required for the game to be interesting or fun.

Automated Hunting in MMORPG

To discuss growth, it would be best to start with the story of automatic hunting. The MMORPG genre has inevitably been accompanied by long-term play. As the history of the genre accumulated over a long period of time, we decided that the existence of an automatic hunting system was increasingly recognized as a natural thing in MMORPGs, and we also followed that trend and introduced automatic hunting. However, I think this decision was taken too easily.

Through beta testing, we heard voices of disappointment about automatic hunting from many users. We reflected on the fact that what gamers who play with a keyboard, mouse, and pad expected was not an automatic game in which characters move on their own, but a game in which they could immerse themselves by closely controlling content worth manipulating.​

https://tl.plaync.com/ko-kr/board/producer_letter/view?articleId=64dd917e58865d2fbabb9d4a

Automated hunting has been introduced into every MMORPG game that’s been available in the last two-plus years. Having an in-game system for automated hunting or basic farming is heavily beneficial. Although, it comes with a negative impact that makes no one actually play the game.

Thus removing it to enhance player experience in turn brings people to use 3rd party programs. This causes a split between users, cheaters, and non-cheaters. Sadly, cheating will always be the top contender. What is the correct answer? I do not know. In the end, those with time and automated software will come out ahead in any MMO.

Hopes

The rest of the letter goes into detail about lowering the cap and difficulty on leveling, dungeons, and sheer number advantage. This can have a positive impact, all while creating an interactive environment. Allowing users to work together and build up each other within a guild or smaller group of players.

I am looking forward to the day I can dive into Throne and Liberty. I miss the days of creating something new. Creating a way to expand my own experience and ways of playing, and not just needlessly following some written guide. My hope is that Throne and Liberty can fit this for me.