Same patches release date for all Tera versions

Comments

• Catorii ✭✭✭

  May 2017

  You can't normalize the game across every publisher. Gameforge is more money-hungry than EME, despite EME's bad rap these days. There is absolutely no way they'll include some of the forgiving things EME has gotten added for our version, merely because it forces people to buy from their cash shop.
  
  Making the game different for each version takes time. We want our VG merchant MWA boxes, our bonanza boxes (which admittedly EME has not come up with a solution for past the short term anniversary tokens), our influx of CCBs, and the dragon scale system. Gameforge has other EU-exclusive things (non-useless Ghillie, but way more P2W game setup), and I'm sure RU does as well. JP has always had exclusive costumes/voices and probably mat accessibility changes too.
  
  If they were to even attempt to patch every version at the same time, that would mean that:
  
  A. They would have to translate everything before releasing it, leading to more translation errors and much, much longer waiting times between patches - translating into one language vs translating into every language available is a massive difference.
  
  B. They would also have to separate the individual aspects each publisher has asked for, which, with BHS' history, would likely result in us getting [filtered] EU mechanics by accident, or other regions getting our changes by accident. I really don't think BHS is up to this task.
  
  C. Take in bug reports from every single publisher all at once for new content, rather than being able to take in KTERA bug reports and fix those before releasing that new patch to other regions. By the time patches reach us, there's usually a fair number of fixes included in them, even if they aren't listed. BHS definitely isn't up to the task of the extra spam that would come from outside publishers reporting the same bugs they have. That makes it even less likely that region-exclusive bugs would get fixed.
  
  The only thing I think BHS needs to do...is either stop balancing around the KTERA Talent system, release it to every region, or delete it for good. Otherwise, they've gotten pretty good at giving us patches at a fair pace, and there's no reason for every region to get them at the same time.

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• counterpoint mod

  May 2017

  I think there are two reasons why this is challenging:
  
  1. There is a significant benefit to BHS to be able to deliver more quickly in one region and iterate a bit before sending the same patch to other regions. If they have to wait until patches are localized in all global market, it adds a significant impedance to their potential responsiveness, and increases the complexity of delivering fixes (due to the increased amount of variables at play).
  
  2. While EME is a sister company to BHS, the other publishers are separate companies, so it's much harder to manage and control what they do. If you go for this simultaneous model, it means that the slowest publisher delays the whole global operation. Most of the other companies that do simultaneous global patches publish the game themselves and have fully-owned subsidiaries in all the affected markets.
  
  Making all the servers like K-TERA has is sort of what they have been working towards overall (and that's why the release times in all other regions are much closer to each other now), but each publisher right now has different backend systems that integrate with TERA (for example, different login systems, different stores, different data analytics, etc.). You can't really make everything standardized without standardizing these connected systems, and existing publishers won't want to ditch their existing infrastructure (particularly since it supports more games than just TERA).
  
  So... basically, it's a good idea, but I think it will be very hard for them to pull off with the business arrangements they have. This could be one of the reasons why BHS is publishing their latest game themselves worldwide, since that way they really can unify all the systems and processes to have a common build.

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• ElinUsagi ✭✭✭✭✭

  May 2017

  Clarification about what I mean, I dont meant for the cash shops to be the same, I even said that is good that every region has their exclusive content as Nexon in K-Tera (I don't know of EME or GF having exclusive costumes for their version). What I mean is for the release of the story content, dungeons, bgs and stuff related to the game it-self and not about the cosmetics (those can be handled whatever each publisher wants).
  
  Other thing that I think is not good is about everyone playing old content (because in korea they already had that 2 months ago and are playing new content when we have our new mjor patch) leads to more disatisfaction, and I mean I think hope nobody tries to put words on my mouth, becuase people know for advance what to do and how to do it, so there is no challenge at all for those who claim to be min-maxers, they already are following with foot steps from koreans and they play a korean meta instead of trying to show a race for each region to see who makes thing better.
  
  We have no real surprises as we know before hand (3 or more months ahead) what is going to be added, removed, changed, fixed, etc; so most fo the things lost their exitement really fast. All of that I think is a problem that BHS should have to resolve for a game to be succesful.

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• counterpoint mod

  May 2017

  ElinUsagi wrote: »

  Clarification about what I mean, I dont meant for the cash shops to be the same, I even said that is good that every region has their exclusive content as Nexon in K-Tera (I don't know of EME or GF having exclusive costumes for their version). What I mean is for the release of the story content, dungeons, bgs and stuff related to the game it-self and not about the cosmetics (those can be handled whatever each publisher wants).

  Yeah, I know what you mean, but the thing that makes it technically challenging is not just that the cash shop contents are different, but that the actual technology behind the scenes for each publisher is different, since they use different cash shop currencies (often integrated with the publisher's other games). So it's not really just like you're distributing 1 game globally. It's like you're delivering 6 different variations of the same game simultaneously, each with their own technological customizations and integrations. That's what makes it hard because of their structure.
  
  I do understand the benefits, and it's a good idea, but logistically extremely difficult in this case.
  
  

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