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[Discussion] What would make a proper Tera 2.0?
With more and more people complaining about the game (which I kind of expected). I really just want to throw this question to everyone out there.
If there will be another MMO introducing Action Combat as its focus, what would make it better than the game we now know as TERA?
To be very fair, Tera NA has done pretty well in a few segments: Near zero bots, an economy that in great honesty feels normal (it doens't just crash and not rebuild itself after a while), gameplay that you can argue is bad nowadays but it is still infinitely better than the boring tab-based MMOs which are so cliche and I can fall asleep grinding. And the fact that it is up to this day 100% NOT P2W.
A real reboot (not a legacy server, but a completely new game with the similar focus) would revitalise the entire scene IMO. Coupled with the new engines and other various systems, it is high time we look at what makes Tera such a successful game when it first started and what could be done to make it better.
1) Actually increasing the level cap after each year.
A gear cycle kind of MMO definitely won't work out. People will eventually get tired over the same random dungeon grind, and it doesn't feel like you are progressing further into the game despite having better gear. By adding more maps and a few dungeons in endgame new maps, you can actually make a storyline that is so worth going after by newer players and I am pretty sure it will feel more fresh after a while.
A big question would be what to do with older maps after there is a new level cap. Turning 1 of them into a levelling dungeon, and the other 1 or 2 being cycled in and out as an additional extra hard mode dungeon (add new mechs onto the bosses etc.) will help alliviate the problem. Things like the glyph system can always remain and you can always have something like a sabex armory or mid-tier dungeon tokens to let all players have them.
2) Make all kinds of gear harder to get, but make them last a longer frame.
The biggest problem is now that gear cycles are so fast, players felt that BiS gear is not worth going for. The biggest question to the devs is this: Why don't you SLOW down the gear progression, put in the old-school retooling system on each cycle (BiS to BiS is possible, but shouldn't be too fast to the extent all gear progression doesn't make sense and not too slow to the extent that you might as well get a new gear set and enchant from there.
Awakening System IMO was perfectly alright. It is a system that you can't run away from in any MMO if you want to make it grindy and giving a slight incentive to p2w. In fact, I feel that if you put the same awakening system into gear that lasts longer, it doesn't feel as painful as if content cycles are this fast (ie. what we have now).
3) Make jewelry crafted instead of dungeon drops.
Many existing MMOs already have this. Instead of giving them from dungeons, specific mats can be dropped from there. On top of regular items farmed in OW, you can craft gear specific to a class/role. For example, a healing end-game jewelry would be something with innate healing rolls. This gives more customisation options and stuff that are forgotten in the current Tera will return to its true glory.
4) Make OW grinding more worth
Stop saying that IoD is OW, because it isn't. True OW is the world you see while doing quests. The easiest way to prevent bots is to remove gold from them, but there is no reason you can't put BAMs that scale in difficulty similar to IoD in the OW and make them such that a bot (or a few for that matter) can't bot the BAMs. Bots killed many games. Tera isn't one of them, so let what we call Tera 2.0 be the same!
5) Promoting Cooperative behaviour and punishing toxic ones.
Tera is a game where cooperation matters. Sadly in IMS, it rarely is the case. Better players will always rail down on weaker players and they tend to be the ones who feel ostrasized. There should be a way to commend helpful seniors and GMs and staff should actually reward them with recognition and stuff.
Truth be told, I finally started spamming low-tier dungeons during weekends just for the fun of it. I see some newer players completely decorated in cash shop costumes (not the ones from events, those new dresses that showed half of the fem castanic's twin peaks, the cowgirl suit and the snow dresses). When I inspected them, I kind of expected to see proper crystals but I see people running 4x Pounding Concoaches. I found out they are on the same server as I am and I just mailed them a complete set of fine cruxes suited for their class (my alt was too poor to sponsor niveots lol), giving a full detailed explanation of how crystals work and why you should use this. One of them was smart enough and asked if the fine niveots are better than the cruxes and I replied what I should: fine Niveots are better than fine cruxes, but the setup must still be similar. That guy's first reaction was "Oh, so that's why my main was always kicked in LKNM."
I am pretty sure if more people take the time to explain of saying that "R.A.G." line, more players will understand. Sure there will be some noob players that will go "Who cares, it is my style of playing." Just tell them that they will not find a party with an attitude like that.
We all know the Mudkip being banned incident. That is what we call toxic behaviour. But there are honestly lots of ways you can be toxic, not just by being a Mudkip lol. On top of what I said at the top of this point, not cooperating with teammates and not even trying to justify why the way the teammates are playing will not help them etc. All of these ruin any players day and they should be at least given verbal/written warning.
6) Keeping everything to a single server if possible.
Truth be told, if OWPvP is a thing, let it be. Just make a system that doesn't encourage high levels one shotting a completely fresh player, because that honestly is the main reason why newer players don't want to try PvP. The reason why everything should be in a single server is because there is better control of the economy. One server is enough to accomodate all playstyles. I personally don't believe in making servers dedicated to a playstyle, when what the game offers to a player is everything, regardless of PvE of PvP.
7) A PvP dev community, inclusive of possibly making it an e-Sport.
If we want to compare Tera and B&S PvP, I would still say Tera's feels more cohesive. With proper balancing of both gear and classes I am pretty sure Action Combat MMOs will have a good PvP scene.
8) Keep cashshop to cosmetics and boosts, it shouldn't affect damage output in any way a free player have no access to without anyone touching the cash shop.
In short, delete dragons. It shouldn't have existed IMO. Costumes alone were enough to keep Tera afloat back then, I don't get why they added stuff like dragons in to attract more sales when obviously it is the other systems that made the game not worth spending on in the first place. I don't mind risque costumes and stuff like bikinis. Just no dragons please.
9) Dungeons that add complexity and promoting team play rather than pure reaction time.
After the age of 24 your reaction speed starts to decrease. If you want people of all ages to enjoy the game, you shouldn't add things that require a split second to react or you die, even if you are at 0ms ping.
It is understandable if bosses are reskinned from their original BAM types, but there should be at least a new BAM type once a year.
10) Put a personal DPS meter into the game
Seriously. If you want to promote class balancing, this is the best way to do it. No fear of others laughing at your bad dps or toxicity of bad dps whatsoever. Make it an emphasis that it is a learning tool and it can be switched on or off depending on whether you like it. Sure it may promote elitism, but the fact that VM gear is churned out so rapidly is also what causes this problem. Put an average and expected DPS based on the gear (It is calculatable) so you can get a better estimate of how you fare.
I can guarentee that a large portion of the newer players will practice and improve with a feature like this inbuilt. And because it is personal, people cannot really compare straight, bringing out the best of both worlds.
Welp this is my 10 points. I am pretty sure there are people who have their own list of ideas. DO NOTE that I am assuming that said Tera 2.0 will be optimised lol.
If there will be another MMO introducing Action Combat as its focus, what would make it better than the game we now know as TERA?
To be very fair, Tera NA has done pretty well in a few segments: Near zero bots, an economy that in great honesty feels normal (it doens't just crash and not rebuild itself after a while), gameplay that you can argue is bad nowadays but it is still infinitely better than the boring tab-based MMOs which are so cliche and I can fall asleep grinding. And the fact that it is up to this day 100% NOT P2W.
A real reboot (not a legacy server, but a completely new game with the similar focus) would revitalise the entire scene IMO. Coupled with the new engines and other various systems, it is high time we look at what makes Tera such a successful game when it first started and what could be done to make it better.
1) Actually increasing the level cap after each year.
A gear cycle kind of MMO definitely won't work out. People will eventually get tired over the same random dungeon grind, and it doesn't feel like you are progressing further into the game despite having better gear. By adding more maps and a few dungeons in endgame new maps, you can actually make a storyline that is so worth going after by newer players and I am pretty sure it will feel more fresh after a while.
A big question would be what to do with older maps after there is a new level cap. Turning 1 of them into a levelling dungeon, and the other 1 or 2 being cycled in and out as an additional extra hard mode dungeon (add new mechs onto the bosses etc.) will help alliviate the problem. Things like the glyph system can always remain and you can always have something like a sabex armory or mid-tier dungeon tokens to let all players have them.
2) Make all kinds of gear harder to get, but make them last a longer frame.
The biggest problem is now that gear cycles are so fast, players felt that BiS gear is not worth going for. The biggest question to the devs is this: Why don't you SLOW down the gear progression, put in the old-school retooling system on each cycle (BiS to BiS is possible, but shouldn't be too fast to the extent all gear progression doesn't make sense and not too slow to the extent that you might as well get a new gear set and enchant from there.
Awakening System IMO was perfectly alright. It is a system that you can't run away from in any MMO if you want to make it grindy and giving a slight incentive to p2w. In fact, I feel that if you put the same awakening system into gear that lasts longer, it doesn't feel as painful as if content cycles are this fast (ie. what we have now).
3) Make jewelry crafted instead of dungeon drops.
Many existing MMOs already have this. Instead of giving them from dungeons, specific mats can be dropped from there. On top of regular items farmed in OW, you can craft gear specific to a class/role. For example, a healing end-game jewelry would be something with innate healing rolls. This gives more customisation options and stuff that are forgotten in the current Tera will return to its true glory.
4) Make OW grinding more worth
Stop saying that IoD is OW, because it isn't. True OW is the world you see while doing quests. The easiest way to prevent bots is to remove gold from them, but there is no reason you can't put BAMs that scale in difficulty similar to IoD in the OW and make them such that a bot (or a few for that matter) can't bot the BAMs. Bots killed many games. Tera isn't one of them, so let what we call Tera 2.0 be the same!
5) Promoting Cooperative behaviour and punishing toxic ones.
Tera is a game where cooperation matters. Sadly in IMS, it rarely is the case. Better players will always rail down on weaker players and they tend to be the ones who feel ostrasized. There should be a way to commend helpful seniors and GMs and staff should actually reward them with recognition and stuff.
Truth be told, I finally started spamming low-tier dungeons during weekends just for the fun of it. I see some newer players completely decorated in cash shop costumes (not the ones from events, those new dresses that showed half of the fem castanic's twin peaks, the cowgirl suit and the snow dresses). When I inspected them, I kind of expected to see proper crystals but I see people running 4x Pounding Concoaches. I found out they are on the same server as I am and I just mailed them a complete set of fine cruxes suited for their class (my alt was too poor to sponsor niveots lol), giving a full detailed explanation of how crystals work and why you should use this. One of them was smart enough and asked if the fine niveots are better than the cruxes and I replied what I should: fine Niveots are better than fine cruxes, but the setup must still be similar. That guy's first reaction was "Oh, so that's why my main was always kicked in LKNM."
I am pretty sure if more people take the time to explain of saying that "R.A.G." line, more players will understand. Sure there will be some noob players that will go "Who cares, it is my style of playing." Just tell them that they will not find a party with an attitude like that.
We all know the Mudkip being banned incident. That is what we call toxic behaviour. But there are honestly lots of ways you can be toxic, not just by being a Mudkip lol. On top of what I said at the top of this point, not cooperating with teammates and not even trying to justify why the way the teammates are playing will not help them etc. All of these ruin any players day and they should be at least given verbal/written warning.
6) Keeping everything to a single server if possible.
Truth be told, if OWPvP is a thing, let it be. Just make a system that doesn't encourage high levels one shotting a completely fresh player, because that honestly is the main reason why newer players don't want to try PvP. The reason why everything should be in a single server is because there is better control of the economy. One server is enough to accomodate all playstyles. I personally don't believe in making servers dedicated to a playstyle, when what the game offers to a player is everything, regardless of PvE of PvP.
7) A PvP dev community, inclusive of possibly making it an e-Sport.
If we want to compare Tera and B&S PvP, I would still say Tera's feels more cohesive. With proper balancing of both gear and classes I am pretty sure Action Combat MMOs will have a good PvP scene.
8) Keep cashshop to cosmetics and boosts, it shouldn't affect damage output in any way a free player have no access to without anyone touching the cash shop.
In short, delete dragons. It shouldn't have existed IMO. Costumes alone were enough to keep Tera afloat back then, I don't get why they added stuff like dragons in to attract more sales when obviously it is the other systems that made the game not worth spending on in the first place. I don't mind risque costumes and stuff like bikinis. Just no dragons please.
9) Dungeons that add complexity and promoting team play rather than pure reaction time.
After the age of 24 your reaction speed starts to decrease. If you want people of all ages to enjoy the game, you shouldn't add things that require a split second to react or you die, even if you are at 0ms ping.
It is understandable if bosses are reskinned from their original BAM types, but there should be at least a new BAM type once a year.
10) Put a personal DPS meter into the game
Seriously. If you want to promote class balancing, this is the best way to do it. No fear of others laughing at your bad dps or toxicity of bad dps whatsoever. Make it an emphasis that it is a learning tool and it can be switched on or off depending on whether you like it. Sure it may promote elitism, but the fact that VM gear is churned out so rapidly is also what causes this problem. Put an average and expected DPS based on the gear (It is calculatable) so you can get a better estimate of how you fare.
I can guarentee that a large portion of the newer players will practice and improve with a feature like this inbuilt. And because it is personal, people cannot really compare straight, bringing out the best of both worlds.
Welp this is my 10 points. I am pretty sure there are people who have their own list of ideas. DO NOTE that I am assuming that said Tera 2.0 will be optimised lol.
3
Comments
^That's one way to start a Tera 2.0 demise right at it beginning.
+ A prove that they learned absolutely nothing from their past experience, which isn't really surprising .. it's BHS after all.
+ You can argue that : liking a sexualized little girl, with weird proportions, is something not everyone can do, however i doubt ther are many Tera players who doesn't have a slight hatred in their hearts towards those things.
A small cute race ? sure why not, i mained a Lyn blade dancer in B&S and it was one of my favorite Character i have ever made in MMO, but another "Elin concept" ? NO TY.
No one treats vkobe seriously lol. Elin is honestly fine as it is, most people are just exaggerating.
I personally don't think racelock is an entirely bad idea, it is just that most Korean games take out too much customisation from the original players who enjoyed the full customisation due to coding deadlines.
I would say that about 75% (give or take) of the characters pre-reaper in KR are female, very normal statistics in asian games anyway, which explains why all are genderlocked.
Anyways more points:
1) Race balancing
This is something the original devs don't notice but all races are somewhat meant to have the same number of casting animation frames. They blundered there so yea.
2) Making low-res particles for skills.
You honestly don't have to fully optimise the game. I really don't know why effects at 0 and max don't look any different and contribute nearly nothing to improving FPS.
3) Making paying for things actually feel more rewarding.
Cash shop is unavoidable. There is no turning about it. However, you can actually control how much cash shop should cost.
In theory, a character dressing (just one part, not the whole set to be fair), should cost less than 20 USD in order for it to sell massively, and gachas should limit you to 100 USD for a special looking one (it better actually look like it is 100 USD instead of a reskin). EME did right in the first segment. But the rare costumes don't look like rare ones, but just random reskins. The best way to make a rare skin worth it is to change the weapon effects completely, including 1-2 included skills. For example, a rare burning sorc disc should have a reskinned meteor for that dramatic effect. I swear more people will try and whale for it lol.
Also, emotes should not be limited to skill books, it should be included with their specific rare cosmetic when you wear it. Sure players will feel bad that they can't obtain some emotes, but at least it feels like players deserve the emote for paying/rnging for that rare cosmetic.
1) Doing a new level cap means you have to put in new areas with higher level monsters. This is not done in 6 months, but you want to have it yearly.
2) Longer gear cycle. We all know that people come back with every new gear cycle. They go for their gear, get bored and take a break.
3) I’m with you in this. Crafting should be revamped as it was 1-2 years ago.
4) Good ideas that follow
7) Making Tera an e-sport is useless. Tera as the lowest PvP mentality, the majority of Tera players are casuals. If you ask the average Tera player what’s important, he’ll say “cosmetics”.
8) Delete dragons? So, what about those how have paid hundreds of $ for their dragons? You’re telling EME to betray players? I hope you’re ready to take the blame personally.
9) As said, Tera is for casuals. We have so super-easy mechanics here and people are not even able to perform accordingly. People jumping into the water at Kalivans, tanks backcritting at DF and lots more. We all should remember the days back then when we had no red glowing danger zones on the ground. In my opinion, BHS hit the spot for the majority with this one.
10) good idea
I’d focus on only 2 points:
A) Buy a new engine. With the actual engine running on 2 cores only (and not much loading GPU), even the expensive PCs make it look worse.
Truth be told, I am not expecting my intended "Tera 2.0" to be done by BHS. If there would be a Tera 2.0 it would be made by another better dev team, or at least the original BHS team with extra people.
Also you are missing the point entirely. I am intentionally meaning a complete fresh start, in a completely new game. It never talked anything about adding things I know (in the current game) is impossible.
Back in the day, level cap players were able to queue for lower level dungeons and were given gear apropos to that level. It was supposed to encourage the teaching of lower level players their class and skills, but it was removed. Possibly because actual teaching wasn't helping, sadly. From both the mentor/mentee, the mindset would either be "why should I help" and "I can learn this class by myself/I play fine" respectively.
It would be nice if there was something like this again, but perhaps with tweaks to make it so that only people who wanted to learn would queue for such a thing. Tera is a game based on team-play. Maybe it's just my wishful thinking, lol, but whenever I see a priest in a dungeon not using energy stars or TP endurance debuff, my hands itch to impart all the knowledge I have and stop this travesty immediately.