[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
Plus, most of all of this is totally common sense, and we think EME cares while they laugh at us all the way. LOL Look at them complaining about the fat santas again...LOL As if we care that they can't seem to win free prizes and spend hours looking. LOL Lets be honest here, we're just fish in their bowl, and they're teasing us with some fake fish food. I'd be more disappointed except that the other games I play are giving away nice stuff to make me happy.
You all have played Tera for how long now? Aren't you used to and pretty much expect disappointment these days? These are the same people that put structures into $25 boxes. Seriously, I think someone really just hates their employer and wants to make sure that someone doesn't make much money off of this game. Ever get that feeling when you play Tera? I sure do.
Back in the early P2W days, when we hunted Caimans for glasses or anniversary boxes for other stuff, it wasn't anything near this bad.
Yeah, it's because back in the day, they didn't yet realize just how badly it was being exploited. It was the blue box that dropped catalysts that actually caused them to figure out just how bad it was (because they could easily add up how many catalysts people earned from them). Ever since then, basically, blue boxes and caimans have been really limited in terms of what they can drop.
The lack of foresight from both BHS and EME amazes me sometimes.
What exactly are they worried about? Marketplace crashes or whatever the hell? I remember before you said that's why they got rid of the monthly grab bags for having elite status (and I recall my rebuttal saying how something's wrong when the first thing people think when acquiring an item is how much it'll sell for...).
So my guess is that the devs (yeah, not blaming EME for this one, not entirely) still don't understand that they created a game that seems to encourage alt-farming, but then they get upset when people actually do it. I remember a while back someone bragged about how they made 10 or so brawlers specifically for farming (this was back when they could outDPS the DPS classes). The game allows a person to do this, but BHS wants to get mad at a player maximizing their potential gains from this feature? That's insane!
Same here, even with the tiny santas. I did a few more hours hunting yesterday, but now, I've just given up. It just gets old hearing that everything has to be so rare, because EME is allowing exploiters to ruin the game. Plus, I do think a lot of the exploiting stories are simply made up to justify EME being so stingy. I was hunting during that entire Blue Box event, and I didn't see all of the exploiters being pointed to over and over again. They say it was all about cheats showing people where the boxes were, but there were no cheats needed once you farmed the same area 20 times, you just knew where they were spawning. That event was probably one of the best events we have played, so telling everyone they'll never do an event like that again because of exploiters is sad.
The anniversary event was fun to, and mostly everything available wasn't even sellable. Anyone exploiting that event just hurt their bank storage.
I would say, the main things they appear to worry about (and try to prevent) now are:
1) anything that would fundamentally change or alter the flow/pacing of BHS's intended endgame progression (now or in the future)
2) anything that would undermine the value/worth of items they sell on the cash shop
3) anything else that could have lasting consequences down the road
With the Elite gift, though, I wouldn't say it was only that. Part of it was certainly also the drama it caused every month. But also, monthly gifts aren't possible anymore because they decided to make Elite vouchers with variable quantity (like 1-day, 3-day, etc.), so they had to switch everything to the daily gift boxes instead. Only way they could bring something like a monthly gift back now (without changing stuff in backend systems) would be to give a token each day in the daily gift box, and after <x> days you can trade for a prize... and then that makes one more merchant they have to maintain and keep up to date.
With blue box catalyst stuff, I assume part of the problem was that their business plan for that event included selling catalysts, but they made it so easy to earn massive amounts (due to blue box exploits) that it was objectively worse to spend money. I'm guessing that meant the event didn't meet its revenue targets (whether the event should have had a revenue component in the first place is another discussion, but for better or worse it did). Also, people were holding onto catalysts so that, in the next catalyst event (if the prizes were good) they could immediately dump all their catalysts to get all the best prizes right away without actually having to either pay or play the game at that time (which is also part of the point of the catalyst event). That's also why, after the next catalyst event, they wiped all unused catalysts (so future events would get a fresh start). So anyway, the blue box catalyst thing in particular was complicated.
With this santa event... my guess is just because it drops progression items, and because the event is going to run for weeks. That's why, as I said, they need a soft-cap/"grand prize" system (or to run more time-limited, but grander events so it feels more worth it).
Well, to be clear, in this case I wasn't really talking about alt-farming, but about various kinds of exploits that made it much easier than intended to find and claim maximum boxes as soon as they spawned. (And, no, it's not "made up." But it's also not a justification, because there are other ways around that problem, as I said.)
That said, maintaining a balance between casual and hardcore players is important for a lot of reasons, just like maintaining a balance between people who want to have one character and those who want to have many characters. I think the main point is that they often get this balance wrong. Part of it is, as you say, a lack of foresight. Part of it, I suspect, is the lack of built-in tools/features that would make it easier to build events that take this into account, and so the amount of extra time/effort it would take to build it.
I absolutely cannot imagine what caused them to take this route, though.
You were here back in 2014, Counterpoint. You must still remember when EME was celebrated while GameForge was reviled; back then, having easier leveling and frequent generous events was one of the big reasons that EME had so much goodwill (the other being Tonka and Minea). Back then, GF was the one that did nothing to fundamentally change BHS's intended progression, and while some people laughed at EME for it, the population numbers and popularity of the two publishers spoke for themselves. Now, the situation is reversed, and people are touting GF as the far superior publisher for their more generous events.
Keeping to KTERA's progression doesn't work for player retention, and most players don't give a a crap about people using multiple accounts or whatever. This was something that EME should have learned years ago. What happened to make them change so much now?
I definitely do not know why -- only people who work there can really say. But if I had to guess, I would assume that TERA PC became less strategically important for the company. Remember, back in the day the entire EME office (50+ people) were all focused on TERA PC, including three full-time community people just for this game. It was their first major project and they had to build up all their team and processes from scratch. Now, the amount of people fully-focused just on TERA PC is probably down to a half-dozen or so. The community team is now shared over all the titles, although certain people have a bit more of a focus on one game or another. Some of the old TERA producers like Denom are now focused on TERA Console, where EME is the global publisher (not only NA), so probably given a bit more priority (it's new, they have more say/control, and it's their first console project).
If you're going to manipulate a game's progression flow, it requires on-going attention to monitor and keep on adjusting with every new build that arrives. Doing it well requires people with deep knowledge of the game's economy, full understanding of current and upcoming patches, and experience with all the backend systems. And I suspect EME management doesn't see the value of all doing that when balancing the game's progression should truthfully be BHS's job (if BHS did a good job, none of the publishers would have to adjust anything). So instead, they've seemingly decided they're okay with taking the "hate" and sending the harsh feedback to BHS so that maybe they'll learn. In the meantime, they just do what they can within reason to keep the game profitable and keep people engaged, without stepping on BHS's toes or "covering" for their failures.
Anyway, it's a bit of a side-topic for this particular thread. This particular event is just an extension of this apparent overall strategy.
I am sorry, but something is really up with this event. You have a whole bunch of people saying that they can't find any or barely any fat santas yet you have some people saying they are finding them all over. Have the exploits been fixed? I keep wasting hours on this and just went through 5 different sectors even going to 6 different channels. I found about 10 tiny santas and no fat santas. How is this even any fun? The tiny santas give just the most sad of rewards yet they even barely spawn. If it's true that the fat santas keep spawning around the same area, then someone, has done something up with the code or messed up the "randomness" of it. With the anniversary event, I could at least find a few guys in an hour.
Yeah, I know I should just give up already. It's just that grinding fishing and flight missions gets boring after a bit.
Maybe that is why I am being so impatient this year. There are so many ways to make gold now that wasting time santa hunting is really expensive.
Honest to god, I think that is exactly how they are intending people to take it. Whether that's the right or wrong way to design an event -- well, opinions are clear. But pretty much all the events they've run in the last year have been "while you're playing the game, here's a bit extra" -- and not "here's a reason to play the game." Again, for better or worse.