There has been much said on the topic of potential changes to the upcoming Throne and Liberty, particularly after playtesting feedback and with an eye on its eventual global release. A new official letter from the game’s producer has been shared by NCSoft, and details some changes already implemented, to be added, and what’s next.
The letter from producer Jongok Ahn was published in the original Korean here, and fansite ThroneandLiberty.online have translated and shared its contents. He says they've been busy with development since they originally showed more in a beta test a couple of months ago. As far as the changes, the overarching takeaway seems to be to make things more dynamic, increase player control, and to have enough content to support this direction.
“We've defined the game's problems as revealed in beta testing as two things: static combat and tedious progression,” he says.
If combat is feeling static, the opposite is to make it feel dynamic. To do so, they needed to add freedom of movement and more player choices. First, it had to be possible to move and fight at the same time, with smooth and responsive controls. They've added new skill types and increased the number of initial skills, made learning skills faster overall, and are working on making it easier to swap weapons.
Overall, some of the other changes affect progression. They're making it faster to level up and have increased the number of resources for crafting and enhancement, to cut down on repetitiveness. In the letter, Ahn says that the time to get to level 30 in the beta is now 1/3 faster.
Some frustration has also come from autoplay options. The game originally had an auto hunt system and auto travel, but it damaged immersion. Both of those systems are now gone. Instead of just simple auto travel, you have to go through the world and explore new areas, encounter new people and places, and make the world feel more inhabited for all.
In removing some auto play systems, they knew they had to add more content. So they've increased rewards for certain activities and zones, are in the process of adding more non-hunting mission options and dungeons.
With dungeons, you can limit by party size so you can’t just cheese your way through by bringing pure numbers. So this is part of new content that they will continue working on an adding, to make existing content less of a hunt and to make everything feel more explorable and social.
Amazon Games’ Merv Kwae Lee recently reiterated that they are working together with NCSoft to fine tune the build for its eventual global release. The upcoming Amazon Games closed technical test will feature some of these improvements
