[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
Expecting those with jobs and generally families to have the same experience as those who play often is unrealistic. Knowing the "basics" wouldn't solve anything, because that's still within casual level and would still be "memed" about. Other games don't have experienced developers or publishers and they seem to do fine. Picking on his experience is just a distraction from the actual issue(s).
It's not picking on him - It's accurate to say that someone who is less knowledgeable should take advice from people who know more than they do. EME makes a lot of public mistakes based simply on a lack of knowledge of tera and it's players and often those mistakes are caught by knowledgeable players before they make it into the game, but only if they're actually announced beforehand. Likewise, having a player who knows about this subject tutoring people (including staff) before it's released is a good way to ensure the transition between the gearing systems goes smoothly - and maybe educating EME employees more thoroughly about it will allow them to catch any errors before rather than after they're patched into the game.
You're not wrong, but there's a logic to not going too far in this direction either (even though it may seem illogical). Making a working game and addressing the technical/content-related issues is BHS's responsibility; they're the ones getting paid to do that work. If EME spends a greatly-increased portion of their time to try to catch all of BHS's errors (and stay ahead of their current patch, the way players do), they're doing BHS's job for them and not getting paid extra to do it. And at the end of the day, a lot of the issues they may catch will still be BHS's responsibility to fix, so it only increases their frustration by being even-more keenly aware of problems they're powerless to solve. It's much more politically effective to lay all the problems that occur (such as the problems with this week's patch) right on BHS's feet so that they feel the pain of their own incompetence, rather than doing a whole bunch of double-work to make up for their inadequacies.
Now, there's a balancing point to this. There are issues with the game that are within EME's responsibility to address, and I think more forward visibility is necessary to help with this as well. And obviously EME is responsible to hit their metrics to meet their end of the bargain, and inevitably that depends on having a viable product. But people have this sort of belief that if EME understood the game more deeply, somehow they'd be able to convince BHS to care about NA player opinions (because "the problems are obvious if you'd actually play the game"). But the problem is actually that the BHS developer vision is just sharply different than what players here want. Considering the politics, that's not a fight you can actually win. Obviously, you have to inform them of the issues. But, to a certain extent, you have to let them fail and be there to say "I told you so."
That being said, I am still trying to gather a list of questions/issues related to the gearing system so that at least the issues can be raised up the chain. Even from the player side, we are part of the same political game: we can only inform them of the issues...
That's why you get people who ARE experienced onto streams to teach.
It's a start to rebuilding the relationship between EME and the community, which is getting worse by the day.
Many other games also do have experienced developers who play the game and can actually balance things much better than 10 minute Crabs making people 1m gold.
EME aren't developers either and they never had a say on previous issues the game had for our region, the upcoming change would be the first time they do since Spacecats has been around... They've only been in control of added events, some of which were changed based on apparent experienced players anyways. Even taking experienced players into account, not all of them agree with each other on everything. Being good at the game doesn't equate to understanding economics, or even simple math for that matter.
Knowing 'more' doesn't mean you make better decisions for the community as a whole. The intent plays a bigger factor along with the ability to understand beyond your own perspective.
Don't forget EME can't do anything even if they found an issue other than report it. They didn't code or design Tera, the responsibility to fix any and all errors with the base game is on BHS. BHS has very limited resources for Tera, and as such they fix issues based on priority, we've had bugs in the game that took years to fix, and some that still are not fixed. There was even a glitched VG before that added to inflation and some devaluation that BHS had a fix for but didn't bother fixing it in NA for a while. It wouldn't matter how great EME was at playing Tera, it wouldn't cause BHS to dedicate additional resources to Tera. If you wanted to complain about optional events, then yes, that could be EME's fault, although some of their errors there came from listened to apparent experienced players anyways... There's also issues with how limited events can be on Tera too. BHS didn't really put much into publishing tools, EME relies on BHS to do something as simple as create most of the boxes for example.
Lack of communication or changes catered to the West should honestly be expected when it comes to KR/CH games published in NA. Not only do KR devs tend to think their region is better to focus on, but the simple fact they do not publish the game already means there's an immediate wall between players, because you have feedback coming from players to the publisher, which then has to go through all the chains there, then finally to the devs and then through their chains and all the way back. This is why KR developed games aren't successful in NA, I mean Tera is apparently one of the bigger KR games and look at how small it is.
I wasn't really speaking about game balance but rather events and reward balancing. Having events like VHNM Talismans/ABNM Smart Dyads, Crabs/Rogue Invasions, Mongo Neon, etc. encourages people to just wait for events instead of actually playing the game and properly rewarding clearing difficult content. What's the point of running VSHM when you can just wait for an event and get so much more for minuscule effort?
Of course perfect balance is impossible, but this discussion isn't about game balance.
If you want to talk about Tera, KTera GMs have gotten Deathwrack and Oblit on their own. I've never seen an EME GM playing the game other than on stream, let alone get BiS gear.
As for other games:
Jeff Kaplan, lead designer of Overwatch, says that he was platinum in his reddit AMA - https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/5yj2zk/ama_request_jeff_kaplan/dew6urj/
Rebecca Ford, Community Manager of Warframe, regularly does high end content like the game's raids on the weekly streams.
Again, you don't have to be super good and clear HH P4 regularly. You just have to give people a reason to believe that you actually understand why people are complaining.
You will need diamonds emeralds etc to upgrade. Once a piece of gear reaches max enhantment you can upgrade to the next one but it is +0.
I.e. mid tier max > upgrade becomes high tier 0.
So farm your gold / upgrade to misery at least. Then farm mats and SES. Semi scrolls ARE going to be the only way to re roll for all gear pieces.
In the cases o farming Vm9. I suggest you stack up on materials. It can still be crafted post patch but there wont be any more drops post patch.
Any more questions feel free to ask. I will also post the document Ive read through regarding the system itself.
Final note: the changes remove awakening and 15. All in all it will be a grind to the top for everyone. Casual or hardcore. Ideally I feel it will close the gap gear wise and will somewhat be back to skill > Gear
EU announced they would be getting theirs in October, and since they're a better indication of our future patches than the information that we get from our own publishers, we should get it sometime around the same time or after.
It seems bad with what we get these days, but remember that the drops and rewards will be changed to reflect the new needs (so more gold and gems).
> lots of gold and gems?
Don't worry, because from Ktera, dungeon drops gems and the gold gained from vanguard quests and dungeons will be increased. Moreover, each character can now clear 16 vanguard quests per day, instead of the current 8.
The link provided on page one only shows the new mats, doesn't show any conversion rates from what I saw.
There's a chance it could be the exact same as Ktera, there's a chance it could be different. It's more likely that it will be the same items as Ktera, but different ratios due to different economies. But we have no information on the worth, unless you want to gamble it will be the exact same as Korea.
At K-Tera those can be enchanged for 300 tokens.