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Comments
That's what I meant by the publisher helping. EME is the publisher, and they can help bring attention to guides, videos, etc through social media, the streams, their website, etc. If necessary, the developers (if EME can't on their own) could implement tools to help have some of this information accessible in the client as well. If information becomes easier to come by, then you end up with more people understanding things. Of course, this won't resolve everything, as you can't teach people that aren't willing to learn.
Every rotation with Avatar weapons does damage.
Why bother looking further into how to improve DPS when you kill the boss in 15 seconds.
I like how lvling really is now. You can be casual lvling, there's dgs and IOD to improve your gameplay when you reach 65. Overall, it is nice.
You can argue they don't know how to play properly, but they will learn. And let's face it, they will struggle and suffer at 65 as a first char. Period. \\\\\it's not like hardcore and challenging players aren't having fun. Ppl are competing even at pve as dps all the time. Everything seems really transparent know, you guys know what i mean.
For godness sake, ppl were being kicked from channelworks these days because of an event. Endgame can be paranoic in this game. lol
My only concern with lvling too fast right now is dungeon queue. That can takes a while. Got an hour queue for ascent of savarash on my last alt. That's insane and really not funny. So... Maybe what you are asking will improve instance match. That would be great even for new pve players right now in some points.
FOR NEW ACCOUNTS/ONE CHARACTER TYPE ONLY (Melee/Ranged/Tank/Healer)
Each room would consist of lessons and bosses (with nerfed AI to serve the purpose of the lesson) setup like this:
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With VOICE TUTORIAL, and not a boring voice actor like in saleron sky garden!
DPS
Room 1
Tutorial gives players a set of equipment and some scrolls to reroll/masterwork their equipment. Explains the rolls on equipment and why experienced players choose them, enraged will be demonstrated later. After a few rerolls, the tutorial makes the weapon/armor piece they reroll become most optimal. Repeat until all pieces are set.
Room 2
Tutorial gives players bound enchanting materials to upgrade their equipment fully, describing Tier 'X' Alkahest, Masterwork Alkahest, Extensive Alkahest, and Premium Alkahest. (Ouch a few enchants failed and your armor isn't upgraded fully! Here's some more material to make up for it!)
Room 3
Tutorial gives players Jewelry, brooch and explains semi-enigmatic scrolls. Same concept as above but we don't want to overwhelm our newbies by putting it in the same room. I'd also put a free innerwear either in room 1 or 3 I'm not quite sure
Room 4
Tutorial gives players bound crystals (Focused, Savage, Pounding, Bitter/Spiteful, Hardy) and explains that Focused, Savage, Bitter/Spiteful work as damage multipliers against all creatures whenever you make a critical strike. The pounding crystal increases the damage by percentage and that the enrage property of Focused will be explained later. It also details that Hardy crystals reduce damage against all monster types.
Room 5
Tutorial gives Nostrum and Talisman Trio and details the effect of the crit power scroll(consumables being removed); spawns a boss dummy with 95% frontal and side defense and asks the player to get behind it to do deal damage in x amount of time (or kill without a time limit.)
Room 6
For room six the tutorial explains what an iframe is (invincibility frame) and which abilities count as an iframe (a lot of players don't know gunner recall for example), how they are used to dodge very powerful attacks and that timing is critical. Portal to the next floor sits behind aoe floor circles that slow movement speed.
Room 7
This room is what will mess with people some. I'd have nonlethal aoe circles that apply a debuff that stacks 4 times and the player has to dodge these circles within a timer countdown. if the stacks completely fill, the test has to be restarted.
Room 8
Hey players remember when we talked about the focused crystal, and the enraged rolls on your weapons/armor? The tutorial will explain all that now! Room 8 would be a carbon copy of the channelworks last boss fight, except nerfed for 1 person to handle. However I would not put the slayer in, only the lancer.
TANK
Mostly the same as above, except for these changes:
Room 4 (Focused, Wrathful, Carving, Pounding)
Room 5 (Side, Behind Defense +95%, Keep aggro from Channelworks Lancer during the time limit)
Room 8 (Remove Lancer NPC, Replace with Slayer)
HEALER
Room 4 (Swift, Brilliantx3 OR Brilliantx2+Glistening)
Room 5 (Keep a dummy healed through DoT damage for a time limit)
Room 8 (Keep Lancer and Slayer NPCs; buff their damage significantly and find a way to make them healable)
After completing this tutorial the player would have: Correct crystals, CCB, proper armor +12 and jewelry rolls. (I'd put this set equivalent to like Dreadnaught this patch. This would let players skip the nuking of any resources they have to Dreadnaught and completely focus on getting Slaughter or the slaughter equivalent in the future.)
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Ideally this would all be at some point before the Kalivan's Challenge, Abcess and Channelworks quest line, and have those three quests give players BOUND materials to help with enchanting/rerolling their Slaughter gear. Reason for this is I'm hearing a lot of newbies are quitting when their slaughter fails to enchant using up all their resources. If we can alleviate that maybe we can keep some players around. I know this may seem like it's making the game -easier-, it is, but only new accounts would benefit and you'd have to be real dedicated to abuse it (for Island of Dawn purposes)
I'd vouch for Morgan Freeman to do this. 10/10 would take the lessons over and over.
ones i got at level 60 tough i got into nexus~ i mingeld with players they told me about some skills what crystals i should use and how some skills actualy work and thats a thing this game is missing alot atm~! open world mingeling like nexus wher you want to work together for somehting and not like dream junk wher its every person for them selfs and screw you healer that my mote!
What is needed, imo, is just some proper guidance for newbies. Back when IoD was the starting area, players were considerably better at their jobs than now (still not good, but better). Avatar weapons weren't handed to you until the first dungeon, which took some time to get to - people knew how to survive without a hundred crits per minute. They had to, as they'd just gotten through roughly an hour and a half of content without the weapons. It made soloing bearable, and people knew what was up, as they'd done a variety of things and faced a variety of monsters (including a solo mini-dungeon) on IoD.
The "new" starting area is brainless. The only clear direction that I could pick up? How to move and use your abilities. No explanation of potions, or crystals (beyond a VERY minimal "hey, use these!"). Nothing teaches you how to do anything beyond the basics, and you're handed an Avatar weapon right out of the gate. I don't mind a "faceroll" as long as people know how to do what they're supposed to properly...but no, nothing. It's really no wonder new players have gotten infamously ignorant.
There needs to be better guidance and variety in the starting area, or the area immediately afterwards (not just "Pick up the teddy bear, patch it up! Good job, here's some gear!") and/or a training area/practice dungeon where 5 new players, and new players ONLY, can go in and learn how to play their jobs in a group properly and how to notice and handle boss mechanics. 15 or 30 minutes of your time, mandatory before you can go into any legitimate dungeon - that's not a big trade-off, and it will save everyone a lot of headache in the long run.
TLDR: Add in more clear guidance towards new players again, and you'll see a lot more improvement than simply making the leveling process longer/harder than it currently is, imho.
Because that would take away the only sense of accomplishment a poorly performing player has right now.
Some games have different levels of difficulty that you can start a character with. Typically I would start such a new game in the easy or moderate mode. When that gets boring I start a new character in the harder or hardest mode. One mmo I played lets you switch between a handful of different difficulty modes. Usually people would switch their character to a harder mode after they had leveled it a bit, but just for fun I started one fresh at the hardest mode. It was fun/interesting for a while but it took a long time leveling and that can get boring as well. Finding that "just right" level of difficulty that would work for the majority of people is not easy on a game like Tera, which doesn't have such options for the players at the lower levels and only has 2 options for some dungeons at endgame.
Another game has different difficulty levels for each dungeon. Before you enter the dungeon you and your team choose from 3 to six levels (depending on the dungeon) of difficulty. The gradations from easy to very hard are gradual and well-balanced. Here, it's not obvious how to progress in a smooth fashion like that. One dungeon is very easy, the next might be hard. Unless you know the game well, it's kind of potluck for a new player. The I-levels on the IM list should help as an indicator, but for most people the I-level should be regarded as the lowest possible level for one person to be carried at. If the whole team is at that I-level they are going to have a difficult run. Most new players to the game aren't going to know that so they gather their friends and join up for an IM run of KDHM in their +9 Dread gear and get kicked or learn to enjoy the floor for most of the run. Sometimes they ask to be kicked. The learning curve at endgame is sometimes steep, but Tera seems to be improving on that issue.
lol about making things easier. The leveling portion of Tera is very easy to long-time players. I have no idea what it's like for new Tera players these days other than to say I recruit new players (in my 6 month old guild) on a regular basis and have not heard any complaints. However, I CAN say that some months ago when 2 of my guild members did an IM run of KDNM with me the healer (who was not in my guild until after the run, and was a new Tera player) said she (or he) was traumatized. She actually did a decent job and we said so, but a new Tera player whose first choice is to be a healer often takes their responsibility very seriously and endgame can be quite stressful for them at first.
What works best for you may not work best for them. Your parents, or someone somewhere in your life should have told you in your formative years that NO ONE likes unsolicited help. Don't "help" unless you are asked to help. If you DO offer help to someone who is clearly having a hard time then be very careful how you word it and try not to make them feel like an idiot. As for new players - usually they are in the process of experimenting with different things to see what works. So of course they are not reading every guide or even the log-in stuff. They want to try stuff and find out for themselves. That's the joy of starting a new game!
In addition, everyone has a different way of playing their class and they glyph differently according to that and they have different issues with lag on the game. It's been proven that certain crystals that are supposed to be good for dps are actually very bad if you are very laggy on the game, i.e. you do much less dps with them.
It's best if you just don't take things so seriously. It's actually kind of funny sometimes to see how klutzy some teams are, as long as they don't start swearing and blaming everyone else for how bad they are doing. If you prefer to be so serious and have everyone play exactly your way and gear up and load crystals your way, etc., then make your own guild and insist that all your guildies do what you tell them. However, I can tell you that I've encountered a number of players who became unhappy with the game because they had such a guildmaster. It's a GAME! Just let people have fun. Don't insist they have fun YOUR way. If you want them all to have fun your way find some friends who are like-minded and just do stuff with them.
My first year on the game we sometimes were in a queue for 6 hours, so actually one hour isn't terrible. It's not good but it's a lot better than 4 and 5 years ago. When school starts up again, more students will probably be joining in on the game again and queues will pop faster. That's usually my experience every year.
You are the 2nd person so far that has suggested a tutorial run of dungeons. I agree that even just an in-game video tutorial of end-game dungeons would help. An npc next to the entrance of the dungeon could offer these tutorials for each boss room - explaining the mechanics and offering suggestions for strategy. Perhaps even another npc at the entrance to each boss room to remind new players of those mechanics would help as well. I would NEVER make it a required gateway to get into the dungeon. I usually quit a game when they make me do that kind of stuff. It's very boring, for the same reason I don't really like the new starting area on Stepstone Isle. We are pretty much trapped there. It's like a prison compared to the huge openness and freedom that Island of Dawn was before they burned it. We are so controlled and manipulated on Stepstone Isle. I usually quit games that force me to do such "teaching" instances every time a character is leveled, or that keep me tied down in an area until I've passed a certain test or leveled to a certain point or completed a certain quest. Please don't tell me how to have my fun and don't force me to play my fun stuff your way. Giving me options is good. Not making me go off-game to find instructions and tutorials on how to play a dungeon is good.