☕Tomo's Offline Teatime Summary ( ＿ ＿)✒️

Tomo’s Offline Teatime – Let’s Meet and Talk

Hello,
This is Tomo. We have finally completed our first offline teatime at KOG Headquarters.
Since this is our first teatime, we weren’t able to invite a lot of players and couldn’t stream the teatime either.
Since many players are curious about what went on during the teatime, we plan to summarize what conversations we had during the teatime.

[Communication]
There were a lot of player concerns over us not revealing roadmaps on future patches.
From now on, we plan to publicly announce roadmaps on a regular basis. The first roadmap will be revealed along with the end-of-year thank you letter.
We will also adjust the platforms and methods so that more players can receive news about the game.

Q. Players have been receiving update news through leaks. We’d like to see a roadmap in advance.
A. We will be updating roadmaps throughout the year on a regular basis so that players have a definite updates to look forward to.

Q. The Discord does not have Korean Moderator or GM and all events are in English.
A. Tomo will temporarily put up Korean announcements. It will not be easy for us to communicate directly, so it will end up being an announcement for now.

Q. Twitch has ended their service in Korea, making it hard for Korean players to get Twitch Drops. Wouldn’t it be better for Korean developers to participate in streaming?
A. We will consider using platforms such as YouTube which has better accessibility. We do not have any stream plans for the moment. We will consider such options.

Q. Hotfix announcements have always been in Korean and other languages just displays ‘will be updated’. Changes are made much later and many non-Korean players have expressed discomfort in checking Korean announcements.
They would like to see Korean announcement as a placeholder with ‘will be translated’ for English and Portuguese announcements.
A. We will discuss with the localization team. We do not want to give an impression that this game is solely for Korean players, so we have been refraining from making Korean announcements. We will discuss this again.

Q. Wouldn’t it be nice to have Naver Cafe or Official Website for Korean players?
A. We have ran Blogs in the past. To run a comunity well, we need constant management on top of creating it.
We currently do not have enough workforce to cover for Korean community, so it is a struggle for us at the moment. We will discuss internally about reinforcing the Official website.

[Update]
Our goal next year is to bring more content and updates to the game.
To do that, we need a yearly plan. And to prepare for the plan, we are hiring more people and are planning to make our goal bear fruit.
Right now, we will continue with updating the 4 dungeons. On top of that, we will prepare for improvements to quality of life and new events.
Our goal was to bring 1 dungeon every 3 weeks and update all 5 dungeons, but to achieve the goals on a realisitic development schedule, we will be going through some cycles with no updates.
On top of that, we have prepared a Attendance Log Event on December 24th as a thank you for spending the year with us.
We hope players are happy with the gifts we have prepared and claim many rewards that are in store.
On top of that we will bring Hard Difficulty for ‘Chapel of Eternity’ dungeon and update the feature to Clain All Rewards at once.
We are currently preparing a guide system that displays the equipment state so players can prioritize their growth.

Q. Card Collection needs improvement. We need Card Fusion based on points and lock system for cards of higher importance.
A. We have Account Share for Cards and Card Fusion Improvement planned ahead. We will include the suggested features in the improvement work.

Q. The update is based on a 3 week schedule. How about reducing the cycle to 2 weeks? Events can be completed in 2 weeks, leaving the 3rd week feeling empty and like there is nothing to do.
A. We will improve that by adjusting the rotation period for events or make events be opened on a weekly basis in 3 parts.
Too many events would make the game tiring and changing the patch cycle to be 2 weeks instead of 3 weeks would change all our plans in terms of update preparation process and schedule, so we are very careful in that approach.

Q. We believe that the core part of Master Road is to receive rewards based on Battle Power. As someone who invests a lot of time into the game, we believe that more challenging missions are needed rather than missions based on total battle power.
For the final reward, many players receive Advanced Rune Summon Chests instead of Voidal Equipment Boxes.
A. For Master Road, we have improved the 2nd run so that Mission Sorting Order and Difficulty have been improved by a lot. Many players did want to receive all the way to the final reward.
We will consider what may constitute to be a meaningful challenge and reward for players who have gone past the voidal equipment stage.

Q. It feels awful to use Property Scrolls and end up being weaker.
A. We do feel that the fact that players can digress in their growth process is a problem indeed.
However, since ‘Property Scroll’ and ‘Single Property Scroll’ are core rewards of the dungeons, it’s not something we can easily change.
If truth be told, the fact that we have removed property changes for anklets that drop in ‘Chapel of Eternity’, that Awakening Cores do not allow stat drops, and that we plan to bring ‘Stat Drop Protection Scroll’ feature into ‘Single Property Scroll’ on the improvements are all a way to improve this issue.
We have thought about setting the minimum property on equipment to begin with internally, but it didn’t work well with players who craft multiple pieces of equipment to use different sets of armor for various cases, so we didn’t bring that into the actual game.
We will improve the game in the future so that players do not feel discomfort in their growth process.

Q. How about creating set effects that are better than the actual properties, so that players grow stronger with set effects?
A. We have not thought about that in the improvements. We will talk internally about this to see if this is a good direction to take.

Q. Is there a reason why Black Serpent Necklace, Constellation Anklet, and Unicorn Anklet are not in the game yet?
A. We will sell them next year. The reason we did not release them yet is because it did not feel right to bring more reinforcement items into the game when the reinforcement system needed to be improved in the first place.
Since we are still discussing ways to improve the reinforcement system, we will even consider selling them with ways to skip reinforcement.

Q. Is there a reason why Lightning Necklace is not at the same level of value as other necklaces?
A. We will consider making this change.

Q. Will you increase the stat increase range when your Card Collection Score reaches 2,000?
A. We have not yet decided on anything yet. We will consider that when we get close to expansion.

Q. We would like to see Premium GC Club become account-wide.
A. GrandChase is strucutred so that players raise many characters, but we do feel the fact that certain items cannot be moved to the Warehouse or that they are character based is against that structure. Since GC Club also shares this problem, we will consider applying changes.

Q. GC Club is only acquirable through Seal Breaker at the moment. Why not make it so that it can be bought from the Shop directly at any time?
We are very careful with providing stats with purchase. I think we need to improve the fact that this comes from Seal Breaker. We would consider providing this outside of purchase.

Q. There are no items to purchase in VP Shop and Point Shop. Why not add outfits that were popular in the past?
A. In fact, we also don’t see that many sales either. I think it is time we consider turning equipment into Coordi. For popular outfits, we will consider limited time sales and event rewards.

Q. We’d like to see preview for Seal Breaker Coordi by slots.
A. Yes. We’ll improve that.

Q. Single Property Scroll and Stat Drop Protection Scroll are sold as 1 each. We’d like to see them sold in bulk.
A. Yes. We’ll improve that.

Q. Could Epic Reinforcement Stones be crafted as boxes?
A. Yes. We’ll improve that.

Q. Why not remove the limit on Skill Point for certain charcters? Or make Skill Tree Resets free.
A. We have thought of improving that part when we were improving the Skill Tree, but we have not been able to implement that due to development schedules. We will try to include that in the improvements next year.

Q. The chat filter is too restricting.
A. Yes. We’ll improve that.

Q. Can Chaser Pass Coordi return?
A. We are preparing a Chase Pass Shop where players can purchase previous Chaser Pass Coordi outfits and motions.

Q. Can Seal Breaker Encore rotations be faster by seasons?
A. We will consider an increase in Encore outfits or make them a permanent sale. We do need to check the development schedules due to resource scheduling.

Q. Could you make the Event Pets better? It pains me to see event pets be so useless.
A. The balance for these is indeed outdated. However, even if we make them better, we cannot make them as good as Seal Breaker Pets. We will consider this.

Q. I think people do not farm Harrier because it doesn’t offer much in terms of growth. Will you improve this?
A. Harrier dungeons were supposed to provide end-game content. The same went for the runes that dropped there.
However, with the recent dungeons, the difficulty and rewards are in an awkward state. We do need to restructure the value, but we do not have a definite solution yet. We will improve this in the future.

Q. Abyssal Path rewards vary way too much depending on the battle power. Also, the rewards are lacking compared to the effort that goes in. Will things improve?
A. For Abyssal Path, it was supposed to be end-game content, but it also serves as dungeons for gathering awakening materials. We already had improvements scheduled in terms of gameplay next year, but we will also improve the rewards as well.

Q. Old dungeons seem to have decent patterns, but most patterns seem to never be reused. How about contents that uses these attack patterns?
A. On December 24th, we plan to update the Hard Difficulty for ‘Chapel of Eternity’. If we revamp dungeons like ‘Tower of Disappearance’ where players have to battle against existing monsters, we will consider this.


[PVP]
PvP is in a difficult position at the moment. Back in the NetMarble days, I used to talk to PVP players in the PVP room and learn PVP skills as we talked about the game. However, it is very difficult for us to invest into PVP now that many players have left PVP.
Although we don’t really get a lot out of investing into PVP, we believe that we can’t just do nothing about it.
It’s not just the cost that’s at play here. The dev team is not so familiar with PVP either. There aren’t that many who have experienced and gone deeply into GrandChase PVP.
Currently, there isn't much PVP gameplay either, so we are in a state where we can’t really use data to determine our next steps either.
The dev team is currently experiencing PVP gameplay to understand what parts are fun and what parts are problems.
In terms of PVP improvements, we will need a lot of player help in balance and future direction.

Q. There are cases such as Elesis’ Dash Thrust or Evasive Slice where Hyper Armor or Invincibility is not adjustesd in PVP.
A. We did work on invincibility frames, but it seems that these were overlooked. We will check and fix these.

Q. For Ley’s ‘Barrage’, it breaks easily with melee attacks, but certain ranged attacks take much more hits.
A. We will check and improve this.

Q. There are odd parts to Combo Down System. The skill damage is quite lacking, but combo gauge is reduced by a lot. For attacks that do no damage, the combo gauge is not reduced at all.
A. Perfection comes from continuous improvements, but it seems that these parts have been overlooked and are incomplete. I’m sorry. We’ll check and go over this.

Q. It’s too easy to command attack after counterattack and it’s way too strong. Since it is easy to counterattack, the reward is too good compared to the risk involved.
A. Good counterattack is fun and improves the concept of defense, but looks like it is overvalued now. We will check and look over this.

Q. How about reverting the PVP Balance to how they were in the past?
A. Since we have had great reduction in the number of PVP players, we have considered this option.
However, we are not positive about running two versions at once.
It is not only costly to run two systems - dungeon and PVP separately, but this will also not include the various skills, controls, and other improvements to come in the future.
The realistic way to deal with this is to improve from the current version. As someone who loved PVP, I find this very unfortunate and disheartening. We will definitely look over solutions to this.

Q. Can we improve the same system for characters that act differently? We want this to be a fair fight.
A. We will look over things you have pointed out for us and adjust accordingly.


We thank all players who decided to participate in our Teatime.
There were many who spent over 3 hours to get to us. There were even those who arrived a day ahead to come to the Teatime.
Many have even brought questions and opinions of others and brought them to us in print.
We were touched by how passionate players were and how much they wanted GrandChass to be a better game.
I wish I could include all the conversations we had during the Teatime. We will make sure to not forget and keep this in our hearts as we consider everything.
We will definitely work harder to make Teatime better and larger in the future.

Thank you, all players of GrandChase!