[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
Well @counterpoint pretty much said everything on the subject.
Personally, coming up with some kind of petition showing that the community does care and want to see major improvements regarding TERA. The advantages of doing so will bring in more players and money for Bluehole and En masse.
I'm really starting to think that might be the problem. They need to fully understand that the direction of this game is hurting the player base on a worldwide scale.
I completely agree, and the fact that after all these years on the market, there isn't many MMO's like TERA. If they just capitalize on that, there's no telling how dominant TERA would be right now.
Well, FWIW, they made a strategic investment that you probably don't agree with. They decided to invest in the Western market through an expansion into consoles. You might say "what a waste! they could have just invested all that money into customizing and improving the PC game for us!" but my guess is that the board wouldn't see it that way. Investing in console is a way of building their in-house capacity both at BHS (programming/optimizing for consoles) and also at EME (Sony/MS certification, console game support, etc.). It's also possible that any improvements or optimizations they make for console could make their way back to the PC build. And, if console actually does work and find an audience, then that's a broader playerbase driving improvements to the baseline TERA for all regions and platforms. (If console is successful, that'll be even more voices at the table in favor of changes that match our market preferences.)
So basically, they took a more shrewd approach to the problem. Keep in mind that when the game first launched, they did customize it more extensively for various markets, and they went through a conscious process to try to unify them as much as possible in the last few years (as part of the process of speeding up the release cadence). So they've been down that road already; an "if you build it, they will come" spiel probably won't work on them. But it's not like they're outright not investing. They basically said "we're willing to invest, but into something that will help us grow as a company over the long term." My guess is that it's probably because, for their next MMO game, they are going to want it on consoles as well, and it's part of their long-term corporate diversification strategy. (It also means that, going forward, EME will be able to sell their services to other companies as a console publisher.)
I realize my saying all this doesn't solve our problem as TERA PC players dealing with the here and now. But I strongly suspect this is why they're doing what they're doing.
They can sort of make up for lack of content with constant events, weekly world boss events with small quests attached with meaningful reward for all gear levels. If they're able to do this, create their own events, I think they can do more than we give them credit for.
Also, look at past events and double vanguards. This alone tells me if done well they have the in house ability to make the game better. In the past an event could net you the mats you needed to do a lot of upgrading. So I don't think they're as hamstrung as we think. Some of the events were pretty op with mats weren't they? Wouldn't a lot of people would say they want to benefit from those events, but they're bad for the game and game economy.
If they did events/rewards and mat distribution better, it would have a positive impact.
Engaging the player base. A weekly video is nice, but look how many people are frustrated with the number and type of posts from eme. Respond and follow up.
I still think knowing what each role is responsible for and what exactly eme can and cant do would be helpful. I don't want to just give them a pass because we assume there's nothing they can do.
You have to remember that they made a conscious and deliberate decision with this gear cycle that they would try to interfere with mat distribution as little as possible. This was in direct response to the previous gear cycles where they ran events that influenced gear progression way too much (at least in their view, and as also expressed by some people on the forum). So right now they are being very conservative with mats for that reason.
I think they will start to loosen up over time (like they added diamonds to PvP jackpots this month), but they are being very cautious and purposefully letting BHS's system play out. So this isn't a question of "are you able to do something" it's "are you willing to do something". They're basically trying on purpose to make it so that any feedback people have about mat distro is BHS's responsibility this time.
(I'm not suggesting that this was a good idea, but just trying to explain one of the factors at play specifically related to this issue.)
Actually, I do not disagree with their decision to bring it to consoles at all. In fact I commend them for going that route. What I still cannot give in, is how they seem to really not want to leave the balancing decisions for each region, instead forcing their own method on the base build and deal with it, sucks for ya all to not have talents.
The decision to program to console, I can imagine it a lot the way you do: kinda like a training, instead of a new game from scratch, they learn the differences in hardware and how to actually deal with so much cores (as they should have done to begin with on PUBG or so I've heard) by porting it to a hardware with it's limitations. The long term makes sense indeed, and as we've both discussed since like last year's beginning (or was it even before) when we've heard of the console port, it can make it's necessary changes into our build too. Also, as you say, a broader audience IS beneficial to us too as there's more voices to say it out loud.
I just hope that console port IS successful and also brings some more people into PC too, and then they kinda wake up to the whole area differences, and I can understand how they, BHS themselves wouldn't do the balancing and PVE/PVP/Grind balancing too 3~5x to account for all the different areas.
Still, I believe this would be a valid investment once they're offloaded from the whole console deal (they'll always have work to do on it, but not nearly as much after it's done of course).
How hard is to make Tera NA to be a game that motivates players to want to play? Unless the more rewards they gain in game then the less is the chance to have them spend real money? I am confused because if that is the case then why not start by making Elite more appealing for both PvP and PvE players to encourage players to want to spend their 15$ on elite membership? Then move forwards and tweak the cash shop a bit for the same PvP and PvE players? I might be wrong but i am pretty sure that players would be happy to spend as long as they would have active battlegrounds/dungeons.
There is also the issue that Tera has great combat mechanics and many players including myself would rather play Tera instead of a game like FFXIV where you stand in the same place for a lot of time and push buttons in a certain order over and over again for a rotation.. But again if Tera has NO PVP and the PVE is barely alive then the point of having a great combat system instantly disappears since that combat system cannot be put to use so the other games might be tab target or any other boring thing but at the very least they have PvP and PvE.
p.s. bless online is also coming soon this year...
It's a cycle, and maybe everything is shifting to consoles for now, but it will shift back later, or on to whatever we are using by then. Maybe tablets will have become so smart they can play games like this.
My only beef with consoles is the stupid companies that won't let them play on the same servers as us. If we could all play together, and you could play your character on the computer AND your console....but no. We have one company that refuses to let its customers get exposed to gen chat unfiltered and we all have to play separately. (#bitter)
It feels like we're being thrown away while a new class of players are being courted right in front of us.
Hopefully it will turn out better than that.
You have such a great understanding of why things are done, so what do we do about it? Obviously posting doesn't work. What sort of petition should we do, who should we address it to?
What I mean is: you're not going to topple BHS leadership or cause them to somehow wake from some stupor and be like "oh [filtered], we should really listen to what NA players want and give in." Giving them a huge list of major changes to the game's strategic direction is not an easy sell. They also had their reasons for changing things over the years, so if you propose "go back to how things were," it's a significant uphill battle. Besides, we're just one market of many, and BHS does not need us to survive; they can just close TERA NA and be like "we had a good run," and keep focusing on PUBG, A:IR, Console TERA, and TERA PC in the regions where what they want to do still works. EME is diversifying into other projects and can probably keep finding work, too.
Does all that mean we need to give up? No, of course not. I don't think either EME or BHS actually want TERA to die in NA either, as that helps no one. But I wouldn't spend time now focusing on how I'm going to checkmate the king.
I already said here what I choose to focus on. They're issues I can clearly articulate, are within EME's scope to address, and have a clear benefit to all players. Things I can explain in an elevator pitch. I hope that, in bringing constructive, achievable suggestions that they can "buy into," and seeing positive results, it'll lead to more trust and the next win. It's a frustrating, slow process that tries my patience... but it's the only way I see of keeping this pawn in the game.
Of course, you don't have to believe me. Maybe I'm misguided or wrong. I personally don't see how any amount of petitions or angry complaints to anyone are going to accomplish much, particularly if what you want is vague, nebulous, not clearly actionable, and likely at odds with their experiences, metrics, and global priorities. But I do know that even pawns can become queens, so nothing is impossible.
It failed in the same year K-Tera had dificulties to keep going.
Nexon got the rights to publish K-Tera shortly after China failed and their way to do things have kept alive the game there. Maybe that's one of the reasons BHS has narrowed their vision of how NA should be managed.
2016 was a really hard year for Tera world wide and Nexon cash shop marketing was what brought a second air to the game.
Hard to strive from that path once you have put a feet on that ground.
Even if that's the case, that doesn't mean nothing can be done. Or rather... if people really think nothing can be done, then there's no point in discussing anything in the first place. That's what I mean by achievable goals. I think there are still things that can be done to help make the game better, even if you can't fix everything or drastically change the whole game's course all at once.
Not that we don't appreciate you talking to them, especially if it is the only method of communication as its incredibly important, and kudos to you for doing so, it I'm sure its trying at best. Hopefully its rewarding at times as well. As a player council member are there regular meetings where you get to voice concerns or something?
Again, what if eme actually responded to one of the lists of good ideas with something other than "good idea, we're forwarding it"? How about a follow up to the message they forwarded. Whether its good news or bad news. Don't they have community managers? What exactly is the scope of the community manager?
I think there have been several direct questions eme could answer within this thread and certainly some actionable ideas.
No, that wasn't what I was suggesting. I was just trying to explain the issues I try to focus on, my reasons for choosing those particular types of issues, and why I take this approach. But everyone gives feedback in their own way.
I've suggested that we have regular meetings, but it's up to EME.
I don't even know if EME gets that kind of specific follow-up until changes are further down the development timeline. But even if they did... I'm not sure it'll really go better if they start giving people the "bad news." I mean, I think it'd still be the right thing to do... but I also worry that it'd make people even more upset for being ignored/denied.
Basically, people in our market are not used to being treated as a "secondary market." All the major tech companies and many of the major gaming companies are here, and they all spend a lot of their focus on making products people here like. They also tend to be more directly interactive with people here to get their feedback and openly iterative. BHS's development culture really isn't like that, from what we've seen over the years.
Anyway, I really wish that we could get a representative of the BHS development team to take and directly respond to questions from our market. I (and many others) have made that suggestion before too.