[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
First. It's no secret that after the DCMA stuff which pretty much acted as a soft ban on a bunch of players, NA has lost some population. Some went to EU and others were forced to not play Tera at all and had to move on to another game. I doubt EME will release a numbers figure right now (or after this, ever). I also wouldn't be surprised if this version is regarded now as the worst overall version of the game globally.
Second. OP already said he's not going to play. So there may be not much use arguing here anymore.
Third. I'm staying in this version, though on and off as I've been. I feel that's the best I can do since I don't burn out and I feel no compulsion to stay for long periods of time. So I'll be treating the game more casual than even casuals.
I've been doing the same. I might do a binge here and there, but nowhere near as much as i used to for assorted reasons, one of which being the more I play, the more the flaws in the game stand out.
Some people may not of been using proxy for cheating, but a huge majority of them were as there was a lot of scripts out there that were game breaking and unfair to the community, even ones for sale giving people access to gm panel, removing delays on skill casts for awakening skills that allowed you to attack faster then a Korean with an insane internet connection who has only 10 ping. Also others that were by far worse that shall not be named... not to mention there was over a dozen discord groups that were involved in selling these scripts and their communities were pretty big despite being difficult to find and these communities were not only providing scrips for tera but hacks/cheats for other games.
There's more to do endgame now then there really has been since f2p launch, but it's still a monotonous grind-fest that it's always been. Apex was imo the best thing to happen the game from a playability standpoint, making virtually every class more fun to play, but the population being what it is means if you don't find guildies to play with, you're locked out of 70% of the content.
I want to start off by saying I loved this game (still do) and not here to tell people this game is dead and you should leave. I just want to debunk some of the unreasonable correlation and lack of info (Along with personal bad experience making them overestimate the magnitude of consequences). We had memeslash type hack before proxy existed, GM panel access/calendar rewards/tera rewards exploit can be done without proxy. RMHM exploit also can be done without proxy. Zerk 'exploit' is done through keyboard's macro, most gaming keyboard is capable of this (albeit there would be partial SP edit). Did you guys know that all of those potential exploits were reported numerous times and were never fixed? (the proxy dev themselves reported some exploits to EME but no response) Every game has exploits. Knowledgeable players reported security flaws. proxy was scapegoat for their lack of motivation to fix the game. Don't you guys realize none of this would have happened if they just fixed their security flaws/potential exploits? Hacker vs Mod is always unending battle and is present everywhere. They simply gave up and found a scapegoat. I won't say game is dead, but you sure will spend more time trying to find party for hard modes....
For PvP, where the said exploit is mostly used, Because EME won't do enough (Ban exploiters more often, Fix the memeslash/wall desync) discord channel such as Battleground have been blacklisting exploiters (Doing EME's job lol). Zerk apex skill can be abused with SP sure, but main method is really through Razer keyboard official software (BTW this gets fixed so don't bother to attempt this now) - this was once again bad programming by BHS, no delays in between casts... (And unfixed for good 6 months or longer, should be fixed now 'zerk nerf')
Best action EME should've taken is REGULATION and work with, not against devs, devs actually done their best to prevent exploits despite what you might believe (such as sending exploiters to 'dead zone' etc). Blaming them would be like blaming gun manufacturers for gun violence. And I guess its correct analogy considering this was somehow similar to US's firearm problem. You get it(proxy/gun) to be on the even ground with the owners/users, thus the prolific spread. Can you ban it now? probably not feasible. That was proxy situation. It contains means for exploits. But did BHS did ANYTHING for past 6 years to fix the ping issue? Quite a decent few action games do have client side predictors. For one, theres black desert. Once again back to gun violence analogy; This happened not because gun existed. It's because there were no police to stop criminals and government decided that not having police around was not the issue, but having gun around. That's why people are outraged and it is such an issue. In what game do people STRONGLY support and even boycott a game for a hacking tool? because to most people it wasn't a hacking tool, like gun is around for their protection not because at one point of their life they wanna kill someone with it.
People need to realize that reasons proxy was being used was due ot player being outside of US/ xigncode EME introduced can be a potential security threat to your computer (And does not do its job which is to detect proxy/meter... despite using your computer's resources). Not understanding these points can make people wonder why proxy was needed if at all, and only project their frustration about exploiters. (BTW trust me they are not majority. You could assume almost all players in big guilds were using proxy at one point and no they are not all exploiters). Now you know the main reason why people used proxy. THEY are the majority. not the exploiters.
And as you all know they reversed their position on proxy/meter because of how hurt they were, despite some people thinking this wasn't as bad as people make it out to be. It is as bad as people make it out to be. I would say at least 25-30% of End game population left (there were never many to begin with, being old game thus you won't feel them missing, until you want to do hard mode dungeons or raid).
Wish I see less people hating on it and imagine what it could've been with me, if EME understood that proxy devs were doing THEIR job and should work together and roll out official fix with strict regulation to PREVENT illegitimate way of using proxy and make everyone happy. Nope. They don't know the game to understand why it was used, and only focused on what evil this brings. If you made the game into kill 1st boss 2nd boss 3rd boss go home, then wouldn't you try to 'spice it up' and make it more exciting? You guys remember MCHM days? Everything had its purpose, dungeons weren't 1 direction, kill 3 boss and take loot, and it actually dropped gears like other MMOs.. now you get lackluster enchanting materials instead of gears \o/. That was probably why meter was used by many competitive players. What else is there other than dps race? Open world bams were actually strong and it dropped valuable material. Gathering gave you valuable material AND you needed to craft the buff scrolls. PvP actually gave you useful buff for being ranked AND gave you special gear for being one of the best. BiS incentivized you to do all this content as it was required. Now gathering is pointless, 'pvp' is barely alive, open world bams are one shot and pointless. They killed off their own contents. BTW, not even bluehole shares the sentiment that meter is the cause of toxicity, they just released a dungeon with dps tester in KTERA (doesn't work properly, not surprised). Toxic people hated you over your gears. Now they hate you with slightly more reasonable basis. You can't avoid toxicity. Inherent in Human race.
Not even kidding, 20 years of gaming and I personally have not seen a publisher as confrontational as EME, they dropped DMCA bomb, AND later tried to recruit proxy dev (WRONG ORDER LOL). If you've been playing this game since release you would know how long we had the server routing issue and how long we BEGGED for solution. How do I have 60ms extra playing tera, when other games have much less ping and they are also based in the States? I'm sure some of your guildies might tell you that they indeed live in the States but still have ping issue... I do not understand why bluehole always throw away their successes to the gutter. TERA was 2nd biggest MMO after WoW and still is one of the only games with true action battle system. Bluehole also released the once popular (and still is, just not as big) PUBG. Why they don't ever optimize the game or fix the game properly just blows my mind. I hear console tera still has release date bug not getting fixed. EME pretty much being BHS following the suit of leaving things until it goes up in flames. Hopefully they sort their stuff out now they have experience in getting burnt.
As much as i appreciate your post and to debunk the whole "most people who used proxy cheated" bs statements when a majority of the player base cant even modify their ini. Files properly.
I wouldnt have put in the effort at this point, anyone who is informed knows you can cheat without proxy and cheaters still are cheating apparently.
Proxy still works for an extremely small minority and only because they know how it fundtions whereas a vast majority just did as they were instructed and boom magical ping fix.