[TERA PC & Console] En Masse is closing, but TERA lives on! We will continue to support TERA PC (NA) and TERA Console until service is transferred. Stay tuned for more information.
[TERA Console] The Grotto of Lost Souls update (v85) is now live! Read the patch notes here: https://bit.ly/TERACon_v85
[TERA PC] The 64-bit update (v97) is now live. Check out all the changes delivered on August 11 here: https://bit.ly/tera64_patchnotes
[TERA PC & CONSOLE] Summerfest Part 2: The Beach Bash is on from August 11 until September 1! Participate in event activities to earn tokens redeemable for costumes, consumables, mounts, and more! Details: https://bit.ly/tera_sf20
Comments
The hitboxes in this game are just absolutely terrible because you aren't supposed to avoid damage by moving out of the way, you are supposed to block or iframe. This leads to much simpler reactions. You don't have to think "which way do i have to dodge to avoid this attack and when should I time my block and in which direction". You can think "can I block it? If not then iframe". Like dark souls manages to make fighting with a sword and shield that only has 2-3 attacks much more interesting IMO because the boss attack patterns are designed to punish and bait players into dodging the wrong way or too soon or to rip through your stamina if you block too much or block the wrong attacks.
Imagine if blocking a hit as lancer used RE based on like an impact factor on boss attack and that you could only block 2-5 in a row before needing to recover it. Instead simply holding block uses RE over time (for some reason) and the actual hits you take don't seem to impact it. Wallop was changed so only the ending frames have block. I feel fights could be made more interesting to tank in that system. Tanking should be about surviving and controlling the boss not optimal dps in an action combat system IMO.
The fact that you are supposed to face tank anything is very annoying to me as well. All hits should have a 1-2 second stagger that interrupts abilities (stagger time based on armor class, light 2 seconds, leather 1,5, heavy 1) so that getting hit is always a dps loss. The more of the fight I'm ignoring the less fun it will be. Did you just start your highest dps ability but got hit? No dps for you from that ability until its back up, learn to dodge.
I mean people's posts here really say it all. You don't run a dungeon to have fun, you run it to farm. For what? Don't you intend to have fun at some point? Tera's only advantage is that the combat is fun so if you aren't having fun with the combat, why play? These are the questions I'm asking myself lately. Fortunately I still have HH to clear and learn but I feel like after I clear that once or twice, then what? Farm better gear to...have less fun in stuff I've already proven I can beat?
I feel the unwritten rules of action combat are that all damage is avoidable, all content is physically soloable in the worst gear (even if only by a perfect computer or something), and that positioning is important for survival. Action combat has no reason for stat checks. Passing a stat check has nothing to do with the core concepts or engagement delivered by action combat and its not testing any skillset. Adding rpg elements to action combat is designed to make things easier with better gear. Can you kill g rank monsters, solo, naked and while using a joke weapon in monster hunter? Yes. People still play those for many hundreds of hours, sometimes thousands, per entry. They play it despite not having fancy skills or rotations or costumes or rng p2w lootboxes. They play it that long almost entirely because the action combat is fun. I feel tera misses this mark with its combat. It serves as a nice initial draw and keeps some of the fights from being even more boring but at end game its practically like any traditional tab target MMO which is exactly what I was playing tera to avoid.
On the upside the world is pretty beautiful and huge and varied. Its a real shame that convenience creep has made 99.9% of it completely irrelevant. After hitting level 20 you can hit 65 without ever moving outside of an instance and in fact thats almost the most efficient way to do it (might as well do VG bams while waiting for queue pop). I feel like at this point tera would honestly be better off removing the vast majority of the landmass. It would shrink the file size of the game to almost nothing and put way less load on their servers I imagine.
Gathering is too easy and unrewarding. You should be hunting down single gathering spots that are guaranteed to have stuff you want rather then mindlessly wandering around IOD with a gathering pet. Crafting is also bad. Not only is it unrewarding its also tedious. Why do I have to wait for the bar to fill up? What possible positive effect does that provide to gameplay? If you aren't gonna put in a crafting minigame just let me craft instantly. On a related note, why are all VM gears crafted with the same mats? Why not have 1 rare untradeable (like lady's handkerchief) and then a bunch of uncommon to common mats that vary depending on the class? Incentivize more trading that doesn't make you feel like you are just gonna be buying back the mats when you need em.
RNG enchanting system. Why? Just give me an alkahest and feedstock amount to guarantee enchanting to next level. At the very least add advantage to jewelry and awakening. They created a nice convenient system to deal with anomalous RNG and then just removed it for the things that actually need it most.
Also why oh why will no game take monster hunters hitzone idea. Add hitzones and have dps crystals that give multiplier to hitzone amounts (so a 1.5 multiplier makes a 50 hitzone into a 75 hitzone for them) and give tanks a flat increase crystal (so hitzone +15 turning something low like a 20 into a 35) and wow game is instantly way better. Everyone has to actually aim and positioning is different per boss instead of always dps at back.
Is duo healing safer? Yes, no one is arguing that. However, past a certain skill level the added safety is being completely wasted. What's the point in that safety net if you never use it? If we're talking bad, or average groups, then why discuss efficiency? The majority will never be efficient, they will simply use what ever will allow them to clear (or so they think...), and that's exactly what duo healing is. It is not efficient for fast runs, it just makes failing the run less possible since these groups make mistakes often.
You also don't seem to understand duo healing doesn't allow two bad healers in the same party to clear. If both healers are bad, you will fail. You seem to be talking about one of the healers being competent and straight up carrying a bad healer, this is not the same as a bunch of bad healers that group together successfully clearing.
I don't think duo heals should be removed entirely, since even with duo healers most people still can't clear end game instances anyways.
I've done the current dungeons solo healing and previous patchs. Duo healing is really nice after awhile because as someone who used to solo heal 10 mans and whatnot, it's pretty annoying when people facetank literally everything for more DPS.
Cause this means you can never ever play with other people unless you party up and you don't want to party up with every random in sight just cause.
And if you don't, there is competition, in some areas you can even get kill stealing like situations which gets frustrating.
Since this starts with lvl 1, it completely shapes playing style and mentality which in turn means even in a dungeon, being in a party and only 4 other people everyone still has a solo player mentality, rarely talks (even a single "hi" is too much for most), everyone plays selfishly and fun greatly suffers.
In general this means you play with a crowd of strangers and only occasionally you have fun playing with friends or guild mates. But any time they are not online or don't want to do the same thing as you (most of the time usually) you are stuck with really unsocial people and the game isn#t remotely as fun as it could be.
And all just cause of one [filtered] core mechanic.
And as many have mentioned, instance is where the best content is at, so the big world of tera and all those zones serve almost no purpose other than greatly inconveniencing players because it takes so long to travel (if you mostly do instances, moving around within a single zone can already be far too long).
BTW, mount speed differences are a joke. You get 240 for your default lvl 11 mount and even an expensive mount with 280 is only 15% faster.
Big zones are fine only if hey are fun. Not if the majority of them is an obstacle and nothing else. The feel really empty when all you see past the model count is dull story quests and repetitive mob killing.
Oh and one big problem most mmorpgs have, zones are lvl bound. That's a gigantic waste. In some games like Diablo you can do areas at a higher lvl so even at endgame you can go to the first zone and get your [filtered] kicked, making it far more interesting than like a zone but being unable to enjoy it because everything dies from a single hit even if you use a lvl 1 weapon.
If the zones would become interesting at endgame, there would suddenly be a huge amount of content again.