TERA Online

[Keroko]

I wonder though, what can the western branch do to change it? If the Korean company isn't going to change this (and given the average Korean MMO, it's not likely to do so), how likely is it that the western version is going to change?

[synaesthetic]

Don't get me wrong, the game's still a lot of fun, and when they add the "instant action" Nexus mode in the big patch coming soon, it should be even more fun for max-level characters.

But I'm getting a lot of SWTOR deja vu here, in where the game was terribly enjoyable during the leveling phase and then a huge letdown during the endgame phase.

[Mow Yun]

Source.

[Vexx]

Wow... that'll burn some forum threads "some bugs" and "some rebalancing"

Here's a page and a video of the Lyn race from Blade & Soul...

[Kismet-chan]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

To be honest, two of the biggest things I'd change about TERA would be to remove the aggro mechanic entirely (by definition changing lancers from tanks into something else, perhaps medium range pikemen type units) with the exception of taunts (giving all non-cloth classes a taunt, and make their cooldowns a bit longer), and severely reduce the effect gear has on the gameplay. Both of these things are "traditional MMO" lead shoes that are dragging the game down, making it less unique and different than it seems on the surface. Sure, TERA feels totally different than your average MMO when you're soloing a BAM or whatnot, but when you're instancing it becomes a lot more similar to the "clicky-tile MMOs" that EME claims TERA to be better than.

Of course, making these changes would require a lot of work and imagination, and would prevent easy/cheap to develop "non-content" like gear check bosses with enrage timers and eleventybillion hitpoints.

That's just the thing, though. I've said it before in this thread, but I'll say it again. TERA's one and ONLY selling point is its combat mechanics. It wasn't aiming to make TERA rapidly different in ANY other way. That's why the quest system is tedious as hell, crafting is a joke, and the economy is crap. It's all typical MMORPG fanfare. But were they aiming to make any of those features unique from the start? Nope. The same goes for how instances work. TERA suffers from "Holy Trinity MMO" syndrome. Without the tank and dps, you won't get very far very fast. Without a healer, you won't get ANYWHERE.

Someone from K-TERA told me all of these same things back in CBT, and he said if you don't like any of them, you don't play TERA. He actually went as far as to say that you shouldn't play MMORPGs in general, because to date there is no MMORPG in existence that does not rely on the Holy Trinity, and he is somewhat correct (I can think of a couple of fairly recent games that are semi-exceptions to this rule, but none of them completely abolish the Holy Trinity aspect to their endgame content 100%).

So sadly, either you learn to deal with it, or you drop the game and leave. (Note: I am NOT referring to more insignificant/purely aesthetic/cosmetic things like us not having walk emote or inability to mix and match hair types/ears/horns on the Elin and Castanics. I'm not gonna touch on that issue right now... I am solely focusing on the problems with instances/gear/heavy reliance upon tank + healer + dps.)

Originally Posted by Vexx

Here's a page and a video of the Lyn race from Blade & Soul...

There's already a Blade & Soul thread, y'know. XD

[Vexx]

There's already a Blade & Soul thread, y'know. XD

Aye, that was my last "just in case" post. I don't think Syn is expecting TERA to overhaul the combat/gear mechanics... but its more a meta-gaming "why can't game producers take notes and do it all right?" Basically, that's what WoW did - when it came out it didn't really INNOVATE *anything*, but it took stock on individual things that worked well in various games and wrapped them all up. Yeah, it got mushy later. EQ2 I still consider one of the better games out there (outside of combat mechanics and desperately needing a graphics overhaul) in terms of questing, storylore, RP tools, housing, etc. It looked around and took notes.

However, I don't think the "holy trinity" was being questioned so much as the "gear check" problem. If someone with crappy skills and the right gear can take a boss, but someone with excellent skills and sub-optimal gear can't... that's a little alarm bell for some of us.

[synaesthetic]

Alarm bells should, because the actual strategy part of Auricadis aren't that complex. Someone gets blinded, use the mirror. The boss starts charging its big gun, use the cannon to knock it over. Really simple stuff.

The only thing that makes the boss more than a slightly refreshing change from the usual tank-and-spank is that it has an enrage timer once it hits 30% health. You have a very limited amount of time to burn it down at that point, and all of the strategic elements of the fight are gone at that point. The mirrors disappear, the cannon is gone and everyone is afflicted with blindness. When the screen goes completely black, the boss oneshots everyone.

Gear checks are lazy, and I'm more angry about the gear check than the standard MMO threat mechanic. It's fine, it's a bit lazy (much easier than complex AI coding), but it works reasonably well. Gear checks are just plain insulting, though. I raged about them in every MMO I've ever played, and they just keep reappearing.

At least, though, in WoW and SWTOR, the gear checks didn't start appearing until you were either deep in raids or hardmodes. The fact is, this gear check is horribly misplaced, even if I were not annoyed at the fact it existed at all. Gear checks, used properly, should be the first boss of an instance, and basically a litmus test to see if your group actually has the damage capacity to complete the rest of the instance.

There's just no reason at all for a gear check to be the final boss of an instance. It's silly. It's poorly designed. And worst of all, there's a "hole" in the gear progression. If you're decked out in drops from the previous instances, Labyrinth of Terror and Ebon Tower, you are not geared enough for Baldur's Temple and Fane of Kaprima. But there's no other dungeons between. So what can you do? Indulge in the absurdly lazy "daily quest grind" for weeks before you can even move on.

That's just poor design. If you're going to design an endgame based on gear progression (and really, besides the original Guild Wars, which MMO doesn't?) then you desperately need to make sure the progression has no holes in it.

[Mow Yun]

I've seen level 50 warriors solo and kill level 54 BAMs. So for most cases (not including dungeons) it seems to be possible.

My guild buddies and I have been leveling from ~ 35 to 54 now (Lancer, Archer, Slayer), and we only rarely need the help of a healer outside dungeons. In that case, its pretty much only because we are forced to group with one, that we have one. It certainly makes things much easier, but I wouldn't say its impossible to do a dungeon before level ~58/60 without a healer. We do all the BAM quests as well, without outleveling them (We do them at the same level we get the quest)

What kills us most are the DoT effects from BAMs. The ones that deal X% of your life each second when you get hit.

EDIT: I really wish they'd compress the levels, though. The gap in stats shouldn't be so ridiculously high between levels, its quite annoying. But this is my first MMORPG, so I guess its all new to me.

EDIT 2: What I think about the "Holy Trinity," is that its not only the game developers who like to develop for it (its a tried and true method) but that players will by default switch to that kind - its easy on some members (DPS, maybe healers), divides roles clearly and easily, making it easy to show who carried their load and who was being carried. Players also like specializing, and its an easy way to differentiate classes. Some people like to do X, and in a "jack of all trades," type, there are likely more roles that a player does not want to do, than a role that he or she does want to do. As much as GW 2 claims to do away with it, I think, at least in the beginning, that we will see players not wanting to leave their comfort zone and default to specializing their gear or skills on those three roles.

[Kismet-chan]

Regardless, we can shout and complain and even toss the "but I'm paying for this!" card all we want, but it won't change anything. You either take it and deal with it, or leave it and find another game. It's sad and disappointing, but it's the truth.

[Keroko]

I would not go that far. The history of gaming is filled with examples where raising your voice high enough gets you heard. WoW, despite being filled with questionable decisions, is filled with an equal amount of mechanics much requested by its playerbase.

Originally Posted by Mow Yun

As much as GW 2 claims to do away with it, I think, at least in the beginning, that we will see players not wanting to leave their comfort zone and default to specializing their gear or skills on those three roles.

This indeed happened in the last beta, and threads were filled with how "aggro was broken" and "healing was weak" and "the tank classes needed more survivability."

Of course, it wasn't all bad. There were plenty of people who learned the ropes of the game pretty quickly and said they had a blast without any dedicated healers. I never got that far in terms of levels, but after spending a lot of time as a warrior rezzing people in the middle of a fight purely because I wanted to, I'm quite ready to believe that.

[Kismet-chan]

Originally Posted by Keroko

I would not go that far. The history of gaming is filled with examples where raising your voice high enough gets you heard. WoW, despite being filled with questionable decisions, is filled with an equal amount of mechanics much requested by its playerbase.

But this is not WoW, and neither Blue Hole or En Masse are Blizzard. I am HIGHLY doubtful that Blue Hole would take the time to change a considerable amount of code to address gear reliance or instance/BAM difficulty issues, regardless of whether En Masse would actually tell them of a concern like that (something that I am also doubtful of) or not. I am not saying that means they definitely won't, of course. Anything is possible. But is it happening any time soon? Very unlikely.

[Keroko]

Ah, I thought you were speaking generally, not this developer specifically.

In that case, yes I agree, though I agree more because of the greater barrier between us and the developers in terms of culture and language (Korean and all) than the attitude of the developers.

[HurricaneHige]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Alarm bells should, because the actual strategy part of Auricadis aren't that complex. Someone gets blinded, use the mirror. The boss starts charging its big gun, use the cannon to knock it over. Really simple stuff.

The only thing that makes the boss more than a slightly refreshing change from the usual tank-and-spank is that it has an enrage timer once it hits 30% health. You have a very limited amount of time to burn it down at that point, and all of the strategic elements of the fight are gone at that point. The mirrors disappear, the cannon is gone and everyone is afflicted with blindness. When the screen goes completely black, the boss oneshots everyone.

Gear checks are lazy, and I'm more angry about the gear check than the standard MMO threat mechanic. It's fine, it's a bit lazy (much easier than complex AI coding), but it works reasonably well. Gear checks are just plain insulting, though. I raged about them in every MMO I've ever played, and they just keep reappearing.

At least, though, in WoW and SWTOR, the gear checks didn't start appearing until you were either deep in raids or hardmodes. The fact is, this gear check is horribly misplaced, even if I were not annoyed at the fact it existed at all. Gear checks, used properly, should be the first boss of an instance, and basically a litmus test to see if your group actually has the damage capacity to complete the rest of the instance.

There's just no reason at all for a gear check to be the final boss of an instance. It's silly. It's poorly designed. And worst of all, there's a "hole" in the gear progression. If you're decked out in drops from the previous instances, Labyrinth of Terror and Ebon Tower, you are not geared enough for Baldur's Temple and Fane of Kaprima. But there's no other dungeons between. So what can you do? Indulge in the absurdly lazy "daily quest grind" for weeks before you can even move on.

That's just poor design. If you're going to design an endgame based on gear progression (and really, besides the original Guild Wars, which MMO doesn't?) then you desperately need to make sure the progression has no holes in it.

Wat...you can do Fane in quest gear, no problem.

As for BT, you can do it with Fane weapon drops, you just have not suck and die. Tera is different because boss room mechanics is not as important as boss attack mechanics. Honestly, there's nothing hard about "Oh its 50% boss is gonna do AoE, run and hide @ point A". Replacing that is boss attack mechanics where you have to dodge/block the aoes that bosses do randomly. If you suck with twitch mechanics you will bring the team down. If you die to "rapewalk" from BT boss in the last boss, you will likely fail the dpsrace in quest gear. The same idea goes for HM Fane and HM BT.

I don't see anything wrong with that tbh. Yes it is harder than the lower lvl instances for sure, but I play games for challenges, not cry to dev for a nerf so I can complete an instance, because that gives 0 satisfaction. My guild died a bunch of times in Fane/BT (we were much ahead of curve, and purposely not read up guides on them). Once the mechanics were learned, it became routine, boring. But twitch mechanic like dodging the rapespins or rapewalk are fun, because u can still die at any given moment with one misclick.

Of course, the two instances became too easy once we get the gear, but then we move up to HM fane/BT, which follows the same idea.

[synaesthetic]

Gear checks aren't challenges, though, is what I'm saying. You can take a group of people who can do a fight with complex mechanics and strategy required and still have them fail due to pure numbers when it comes down to a DPS race, even if the DPS race fight is nothing but a simple tank and spank with no threat dumps or wonky aggro. Because the entire idea of a gear check (and there were plenty of these in WoW raiding, so I've been there) is that if you don't have the required total DPS output, you will not kill the boss, plain and simple.

[Mow Yun]

**** archrunes, spent like 500g on the broker to afford enough to craft this appearance

[synaesthetic]

Holy crap that's adorable.

[Vexx]

This is why Elin are feared.....

[Dr. Casey]

Indeed, the kawaii is strong with this one.

[Kyero Fox]

Originally Posted by Vexx

This is why Elin are feared.....

Feared? Nah, Underestimated? Yes, But never will i shake in my armor when i see a evil elin.

Now a charging beserked Amani, yea I'll be a little feared.

Very cute armor tho.

[Vexx]

The thing to fear is 10-20 Elin stalking you

Some more pics of fan art...

Spoiler for 3 pics of Elin or Elin&Castanic: