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Make Tera Great Again
Okay hopefully the honestly stupid Donald Trump reference actually brings readers in, but yeah I would like to provide a suggestion that will very likely improve the situation that Tera is in right now.
I find that these days what many players are really only doing in this game is: get on, do vanguard Island of Dawn dailies, do one or two dungeons, log into other alts to do other solo or channelworks stuff. And this is a big problem because the hardest dungeons are attempted only by a really small handful of players, and most players get their characters geared in BiS/+15 before doing the dungeon, which honestly defeats the purpose of this game to begin with. Island of Dawn is a good concept, but right now it gives so much that there is no point even doing some dungeons, and it is really disappointing because people would rather just grind the boring BAMs for gold rather than actually experiencing the dungeons or PvPing, and even if it is a dungeon they are for merely fast channelworks runs just to grind out feedstock on a million characters.
Alliance is pretty much only there for the actual gold and gold enchanter bonus, and so much potential can be put in there. PvP is largely one sided not just because of premades but also people who give up after the first wipe. They are adding new dungeons and making lower ilevel dungeons easier for the newer players but what happens after that? Nerf the harder dungeons to the extent where it is boring to play?
I will bring out the points bit by bit to bring back activity into this game rather than mindless grinding of easymode stuff. Many may not agree with me, but some measures must be taken to bring up activity, and letting the game not become an alt gold grinding simulator. I will not touch on rebalancing issues or any issues that are known to be fixed over the next months because it is like rewriting their patch notes.
1. Throw the shade tokens from IoD into the dungeons as actual loot or as Vanguard Request rewards
Like Tyrantblood tokens, these tokens have so much potential outside of IoD. They have done a Vanguard daily for DFNM, and I think that is a good thing. It will be even better if these tokens are an all-obtain item on the ground after the final bosses of dungeons, of course with Shadetop being dropped at a minimum of SSNM if implemented at this point of time.
The reason why these tokens should be dropped in dungeons is because it doesn't honestly make any sense for the strongest brooch to be crafted just from farming blatant BAMs nonsensically in IoD. This is a controversial idea I believe, considering most players are already used to grinding TAR and the like for vanguard creds and feedstock, but this honestly has to change.
With the tokens being found in greater quantity, the prices of the items that come from these tokens (eg: Goddess' Tear) goes down too. You may ask if that is a bad thing, but with proper measures as mentioned below, the price will not only stabilise, the amount of people eventually getting the brooch will also increase too.
2. Increasing Feedstock and gold amounts dropped in dungeons, further increasing based on dungeon difficulty, and include a rare drop of jewels that are given to all players at the end of each dungeon
I believe many people have suggested this before, and the reason for the suggestion doesn't differ from mine. The reason why most dungeons aren't that worth going into that much is because you literally gain nearly nothing other than about 20 feedstock, occasionally an ore, sometimes a crystal box and unless you need the gear and/or materials that's about it. The majority of the reward of clearing a dungeon comes from the Vanguard Request. While I'd admit the vanguard request restriction is good to limit players from "clearing the game" extremely quickly, outside of that the dungeons honestly gives crap rewards, which results in most players just grinding IoD anyway. Increasing the amount of materials you can get from clearing a dungeon gives the player an incentive to actually find others to do dungeons or even IMSing the dungeon.
Having a rare drop of jewels, as well as raising the chance for a jewel in harder dungeons gives the jackpot feeling to players. Like Kyra's Catalyst, it is a gamble, except that now it is treated more like a bonus reward than a gamble. I would not advocate having additional rewards for scoring well in a dungeon because 1) It casts weaker classes/players away, 2) high scorers are already rewarded in the Crusade system, which unfortunately I heard is going to go soon.
3. Increasing the rewards from Instance Matching System post 65, giving more rewards based on the difficulty of the dungeon
This is a suggestion that I feel is very controversial just because of how the state of the IMS post-65 is like, but I think something can be done to it.
Most newer players will use the Instance Matching System, for the most part they don't have many friends or don't have a guild yet. IMS has potentials to form friendships from players in the same server and even in other servers, and shouldn't be left to be just an extra way for players to find a dungeon to queue in. However, apart from the easier dungeons, most players choose to LFG instead to prevent trap players from entering their parties. I am not saying that LFG is a bad thing, since it should exist in the game. But with very few groups looking for newer players to try out the harder dungeons, and usually having difficulties in finding endgame pve/pvp guilds, I would say newer players are stuck in the trench in this one.
The idea is to increase the rewards for the IMS, which has a diminishing value when you have more players queued with you. The additional rewards can be from bigger crystals (amethyst sucks ain't it), and an extra lootbox containing feedstock and other expendable items such as nocteniums.
This incentive for IMSing players brings average players out of their comfort zone. It will most likely not affect static players at all, but more daring experienced players will probably IMS for better rewards.
This reward should not be doubled by elite, because most newer players would not pay for elite at the start, and it doesn't make sense to double the chest with potentially a sizable amount of gold value in easier dungeons.
4. IMS pairing players from the same server together first
This should help reinforce intrinsic rewards. Of course this can be abused by having a 4+1 static queue for hard dungeons to get more rewards as mentioned in Point 3, but I don't think people will go to that extent.
5. Lowering the amount of Vanguard Credits and gold earned in Channelworks, and increase the amount of vanguard credits earned in harder dungeons
This by itself will eliminate farming on multiple alts on easy-mode dungeons by more than half. Players should not even be doing the easiest dungeons for a large amount of gold income. Instead, reward players who finish well in harder dungeons because at the state it is in they are really under-rewarded.
6. Rework alliance completely, buff the bams to level 65 difficulty, increase daily alliance quest gold reward slightly, increase conflict rewards and let the alliance credits be eventually able to purchase materials for the newer VM sets as well as conflate materials.
Alliance is a very good concept which was unfortunately destroyed by the +15 mechanic. Now with Conflate being a very strong PvP gear to farm for, there can be a chance to make alliance more competitive than it is now regardless of server.
The state of the current alliance quests are actually perfect as it is. The only thing that really needs fine tuning is the stats of the BAMs, which were initially tailored to level 60s. Without buffing these mobs, any rework to alliance will just turn it into Island of Dawn v2.
As for the store, it is unfortunate to say that aside from PvP crystals, there isn't really much to buy right now. The only way for this to change is to rework the store each gear patch to include materials like ores in the store.
7. Remove the weekly cap for PvP credits, but increase the price for bonanza boxes but include a set of "discounted" bonanza boxes (about 10 resetting each week) that can be purchased at the current price from each store and increase the prices for VM materials
A major concern about farming for conflate is that it takes WAY too long to get the full set that people will rather just grind for starfall instead. It doesn't make sense for a gear that is meant just for PvP to require that much time to craft based on the amount of weeks of resets you need just to get all the required recipes and nodes. By removing the weekly cap, people should be able to farm for their nodes indefinitely, and while taking roughly the same number of battles to eventually get it, won't need to worry about a weekly cap to stop them.
This of course will cause VM materials to lose its value in the dungeons if the item is left at its current price, hence mats that are meant for VM gear should be more expensive to make up for the infinite credits you can obtain.
Bonanza boxes are also another cause of concern, especially due to their expendable nature. With infinite credits also comes infinite bonanza boxes. What we want is to make the first few boxes each week affordable so we can keep the current economy somewhat stable, but allow them to buy additional boxes at a steeper price if they want to really do an all-in.
8. Points penalty for AFK players in battlegrounds
While the current system for afk players is good to keep farm bots out of our battlegrounds, there should be a more stringent penalty, such as reducing the amount of credits they can earn the next game. This is a simple yet effective solution to counter AFK players, and you don't even need a low priority queue to help you.
9. Stop nerfing all easier instances
The reason why players cannot adapt to the game is because of the steep difficulty spike that occurs after you finish the easier dungeons. However, the easier dungeons become even easier, letting even the weakest of players be able to kill the bosses with ease. Look at Kalivan's Challenge. The bosses move so slowly, I could get out of the room to get a cup of water, and I will still not die in Idoneal. Players should get used to being wiped if they make too many mistakes and in return get used to not giving up after failing once in harder dungeons, and making gearing dungeons too easy will defeat the purpose considering they are usually also learning dungeons.
====================================================================
It doesn't take much changes for people to start being active in the game and actually playing the game at its original form. Solo and easy dungeon grinding should never be the priority of us as players, and we should always be ready to take on challenges and dungeons. While this alone will not satisfy the most experienced of players, this can be a stepping stone for Tera to become a game that is actually enjoyable rather than a pointless gold grind. With that, I hope Tera will be great once again.
PS: I am not American
I find that these days what many players are really only doing in this game is: get on, do vanguard Island of Dawn dailies, do one or two dungeons, log into other alts to do other solo or channelworks stuff. And this is a big problem because the hardest dungeons are attempted only by a really small handful of players, and most players get their characters geared in BiS/+15 before doing the dungeon, which honestly defeats the purpose of this game to begin with. Island of Dawn is a good concept, but right now it gives so much that there is no point even doing some dungeons, and it is really disappointing because people would rather just grind the boring BAMs for gold rather than actually experiencing the dungeons or PvPing, and even if it is a dungeon they are for merely fast channelworks runs just to grind out feedstock on a million characters.
Alliance is pretty much only there for the actual gold and gold enchanter bonus, and so much potential can be put in there. PvP is largely one sided not just because of premades but also people who give up after the first wipe. They are adding new dungeons and making lower ilevel dungeons easier for the newer players but what happens after that? Nerf the harder dungeons to the extent where it is boring to play?
I will bring out the points bit by bit to bring back activity into this game rather than mindless grinding of easymode stuff. Many may not agree with me, but some measures must be taken to bring up activity, and letting the game not become an alt gold grinding simulator. I will not touch on rebalancing issues or any issues that are known to be fixed over the next months because it is like rewriting their patch notes.
1. Throw the shade tokens from IoD into the dungeons as actual loot or as Vanguard Request rewards
Like Tyrantblood tokens, these tokens have so much potential outside of IoD. They have done a Vanguard daily for DFNM, and I think that is a good thing. It will be even better if these tokens are an all-obtain item on the ground after the final bosses of dungeons, of course with Shadetop being dropped at a minimum of SSNM if implemented at this point of time.
The reason why these tokens should be dropped in dungeons is because it doesn't honestly make any sense for the strongest brooch to be crafted just from farming blatant BAMs nonsensically in IoD. This is a controversial idea I believe, considering most players are already used to grinding TAR and the like for vanguard creds and feedstock, but this honestly has to change.
With the tokens being found in greater quantity, the prices of the items that come from these tokens (eg: Goddess' Tear) goes down too. You may ask if that is a bad thing, but with proper measures as mentioned below, the price will not only stabilise, the amount of people eventually getting the brooch will also increase too.
2. Increasing Feedstock and gold amounts dropped in dungeons, further increasing based on dungeon difficulty, and include a rare drop of jewels that are given to all players at the end of each dungeon
I believe many people have suggested this before, and the reason for the suggestion doesn't differ from mine. The reason why most dungeons aren't that worth going into that much is because you literally gain nearly nothing other than about 20 feedstock, occasionally an ore, sometimes a crystal box and unless you need the gear and/or materials that's about it. The majority of the reward of clearing a dungeon comes from the Vanguard Request. While I'd admit the vanguard request restriction is good to limit players from "clearing the game" extremely quickly, outside of that the dungeons honestly gives crap rewards, which results in most players just grinding IoD anyway. Increasing the amount of materials you can get from clearing a dungeon gives the player an incentive to actually find others to do dungeons or even IMSing the dungeon.
Having a rare drop of jewels, as well as raising the chance for a jewel in harder dungeons gives the jackpot feeling to players. Like Kyra's Catalyst, it is a gamble, except that now it is treated more like a bonus reward than a gamble. I would not advocate having additional rewards for scoring well in a dungeon because 1) It casts weaker classes/players away, 2) high scorers are already rewarded in the Crusade system, which unfortunately I heard is going to go soon.
3. Increasing the rewards from Instance Matching System post 65, giving more rewards based on the difficulty of the dungeon
This is a suggestion that I feel is very controversial just because of how the state of the IMS post-65 is like, but I think something can be done to it.
Most newer players will use the Instance Matching System, for the most part they don't have many friends or don't have a guild yet. IMS has potentials to form friendships from players in the same server and even in other servers, and shouldn't be left to be just an extra way for players to find a dungeon to queue in. However, apart from the easier dungeons, most players choose to LFG instead to prevent trap players from entering their parties. I am not saying that LFG is a bad thing, since it should exist in the game. But with very few groups looking for newer players to try out the harder dungeons, and usually having difficulties in finding endgame pve/pvp guilds, I would say newer players are stuck in the trench in this one.
The idea is to increase the rewards for the IMS, which has a diminishing value when you have more players queued with you. The additional rewards can be from bigger crystals (amethyst sucks ain't it), and an extra lootbox containing feedstock and other expendable items such as nocteniums.
This incentive for IMSing players brings average players out of their comfort zone. It will most likely not affect static players at all, but more daring experienced players will probably IMS for better rewards.
This reward should not be doubled by elite, because most newer players would not pay for elite at the start, and it doesn't make sense to double the chest with potentially a sizable amount of gold value in easier dungeons.
4. IMS pairing players from the same server together first
This should help reinforce intrinsic rewards. Of course this can be abused by having a 4+1 static queue for hard dungeons to get more rewards as mentioned in Point 3, but I don't think people will go to that extent.
5. Lowering the amount of Vanguard Credits and gold earned in Channelworks, and increase the amount of vanguard credits earned in harder dungeons
This by itself will eliminate farming on multiple alts on easy-mode dungeons by more than half. Players should not even be doing the easiest dungeons for a large amount of gold income. Instead, reward players who finish well in harder dungeons because at the state it is in they are really under-rewarded.
6. Rework alliance completely, buff the bams to level 65 difficulty, increase daily alliance quest gold reward slightly, increase conflict rewards and let the alliance credits be eventually able to purchase materials for the newer VM sets as well as conflate materials.
Alliance is a very good concept which was unfortunately destroyed by the +15 mechanic. Now with Conflate being a very strong PvP gear to farm for, there can be a chance to make alliance more competitive than it is now regardless of server.
The state of the current alliance quests are actually perfect as it is. The only thing that really needs fine tuning is the stats of the BAMs, which were initially tailored to level 60s. Without buffing these mobs, any rework to alliance will just turn it into Island of Dawn v2.
As for the store, it is unfortunate to say that aside from PvP crystals, there isn't really much to buy right now. The only way for this to change is to rework the store each gear patch to include materials like ores in the store.
7. Remove the weekly cap for PvP credits, but increase the price for bonanza boxes but include a set of "discounted" bonanza boxes (about 10 resetting each week) that can be purchased at the current price from each store and increase the prices for VM materials
A major concern about farming for conflate is that it takes WAY too long to get the full set that people will rather just grind for starfall instead. It doesn't make sense for a gear that is meant just for PvP to require that much time to craft based on the amount of weeks of resets you need just to get all the required recipes and nodes. By removing the weekly cap, people should be able to farm for their nodes indefinitely, and while taking roughly the same number of battles to eventually get it, won't need to worry about a weekly cap to stop them.
This of course will cause VM materials to lose its value in the dungeons if the item is left at its current price, hence mats that are meant for VM gear should be more expensive to make up for the infinite credits you can obtain.
Bonanza boxes are also another cause of concern, especially due to their expendable nature. With infinite credits also comes infinite bonanza boxes. What we want is to make the first few boxes each week affordable so we can keep the current economy somewhat stable, but allow them to buy additional boxes at a steeper price if they want to really do an all-in.
8. Points penalty for AFK players in battlegrounds
While the current system for afk players is good to keep farm bots out of our battlegrounds, there should be a more stringent penalty, such as reducing the amount of credits they can earn the next game. This is a simple yet effective solution to counter AFK players, and you don't even need a low priority queue to help you.
9. Stop nerfing all easier instances
The reason why players cannot adapt to the game is because of the steep difficulty spike that occurs after you finish the easier dungeons. However, the easier dungeons become even easier, letting even the weakest of players be able to kill the bosses with ease. Look at Kalivan's Challenge. The bosses move so slowly, I could get out of the room to get a cup of water, and I will still not die in Idoneal. Players should get used to being wiped if they make too many mistakes and in return get used to not giving up after failing once in harder dungeons, and making gearing dungeons too easy will defeat the purpose considering they are usually also learning dungeons.
====================================================================
It doesn't take much changes for people to start being active in the game and actually playing the game at its original form. Solo and easy dungeon grinding should never be the priority of us as players, and we should always be ready to take on challenges and dungeons. While this alone will not satisfy the most experienced of players, this can be a stepping stone for Tera to become a game that is actually enjoyable rather than a pointless gold grind. With that, I hope Tera will be great once again.
PS: I am not American
1
Comments
Now, said this, there's still a few things that could be done to try and fix things in the game. I'll sound like a broken record but I think I won't tire of saying this. The level up game. The 1 to 65 part, should be made meaningful again. A bit harder but not so hard as to scare casuals and their money away from the game. See, make people learn their class and mechanics from the start instead of waiting for level 65 and being kicked out of parties to force them to learn.
As for alliance, that stuff will be removed. Will be replaced by a GvG for the control of Velika's taxes or something like that. But thing is, anything that involved guilds like this, ever since the Vanarch system, was too open to exploits and hoarding by a few clever individuals who were among the only who fully benefited from the whole thing.
+1 for the level up problem.
Didn't know alliance will be removed. The more you know XD. But yeah, there will always be exploiters so it is really hard to stop them.
However though, no matter how casual one may be, dungeons should still be one of the bigger focuses in Tera (the other one being PvP). I don't know how farming BAMs alone can be considered fun to a casual because I for one was once a casual in another game but still preferred to go do mid-difficulty dungeons. I could dare say if a group of general vanguard quests can't give as much returns as running just one mid-difficulty dungeon here (3* dungeons), they would do the dungeon instead.
Or maybe it is just me being sick of doing stuff like TAR and nagas after the first day.
I wish they would do this instead of just removing it, the planned new GvG system sounds even worse. Also about an alliance update, the savaliths, executors, barricades, cannons, and guards should also be updated to being level 65. Conflict used to last up to 2 hours, now it's over in 10-15minutes. Alliance is pron to boosters though for rank, anyone below level 60 should not even be able to enter alliance territory. That would stop the easy method of boosting, but also a special option in reporting for alliance boosters just like real money traders got would help remove these abusers before they leave the alliance without an exarch or assault (or defense or adjuct I guess) commanders.
About the new GvG they are planning, it looks like one group will form a guild and the system is winner takes it all so that one group will always win (kinda like the one group that for the most part farms alliance on my server).
Rework the level up, give less experience for dungeons, remove the joy of growth buff and remove avatar weapons. Enable rolling on BoE rare and superior items as the default in lower level instances, and make lower level dungeons a bit harder. Modify the experience boost from elite so that it's something you can toggle on and off. Remove talismon trio charm and evenfel nostrums from elite, this is paying for a huge advantage over free to play players. Let's not forget that it is eliminating yet another gold sink for elite players. Make elite players pay a listing fee on the broker (but a lower fee then free to play players). As a free to play player right now (have been elite in the past but can't afford it atm), I spend a few thousand gold a week on charms. Now I'm playing a fair bit but elite players spend basically zero gold on charms, and they also get a free nostrum and scroll.
Gathering nodes should give at least double per gather or always give some of the base material + either extra base material amount or something special. Remove the sharan noctenium energy, veined noctenium ore, and noctenium laced petals from alliance nodes, all they do is annoy people since you have to spend production points to gather them and their only use is to turn in for an alliance quest.
Remove gear handouts from the red quest on the IoD, instead just give them enchanting materials + some tier 8 feedstock for when they do get their dread armour. Lower the item level of dungeons that drop slaughter so that you can do them in non masterworks +9 dreadnaught via instance matching. remove smart boxes for chest and weapon drops, but bosses that drop chest or weapon armour should have a guaranteed chest drop, it just might not be the one you need. This makes crafted gear a thing again, also bosses that drop gloves should usually drop a glove and same for boots (but less combinations so it doesn't need to be 100% chance, maybe 70-80% chance).
Increase the amount of feedstock dropped in dungeons. Up the drop rate of materials for crafting dreadnaught and slaughter, and slightly buff the design drops. Let crafted gear have a slightly increase masterwork and enchant chance for dreadnaught and slaughter since you can't use BoP gear for a chance to get it enchanted. Fix etching, allow for combining 5 tier one etchings into a tier 2 temporary etching, but make it permanent if you crit. Make a recipe using powders and oils to straight out make dendrites. allow combining 3 temporary etching 2's and some oils + pure peace/fire to make a temporary etching 3 with a low chance of making a permanent one if you crit. If you crit and make a pure titan's peace/fire, you should get the pure one on top of a regular one, not instead of. Add artisan additive at 300g each and master additive at 500g each in the specialty store. Add semi enigmatic at 150g each and spellbind at 60gold each to the specialty store. Lower the drop chance of semis and spellbind drop chance from the enchanting bonzana box. Slightly up the gold from battleground vanguards.
And finally, bring back blast from the past, but don't allow level 65's to join an in progress party, and make sure their vanguard requirement involves killing each boss in the actual dungeon. Buff lower tier dungeons so they are actually somewhat threatening, un-nerf demokron factory normal and hard modes, and remove the double healer queue at least for normal mode.
I think that covers everything I can think of right now :awesome:
Will go point by point. I agree with some and disagree with some.
Originally the max level was 60, hence it made sense for level 60 players to enter. If rework is set in place they probably need to rework the PvP crystals (which was set at 60) as well. What made sense is that if Alliance is reworked to 65s you should leave it only at 65s. But well RIP Alliance it was nice knowing you.
I wouldn't say reducing experience from dungeons will help lots considering it will fling alt players into rage. But yes avatars have to go someday. That thing made everything turn into easy mode. The charms and scroll buffs was sadly inevitable and I feel that without it elite really has not many real perks other than free broker fees. Even when I was an elite for half a month when scrolls and nostrums were here I spent quite a bit on charms just because of battlegrounds. And not all players are rich enough for elite so I tend to charm for them in dungeons too.
Don't mind me but I am the kind of guy that hates the fact that you don't need to be put into a challenge to get what you want. IoD was one, Nagas and TAR was another. Back when BRNM dropped Ambit (I only enjoyed that patch for 3 days I think), at least you need a decent reaction time to handle that dungeon. The new entry dungeon: Kalivan's challenge was such a joke compared to that. I think any complete newbie this patch will die in BRNM at its original difficulty even after clearing stuff like Demokron's Factory just because of how much they nerfed the dungeons to the difficulty it was before. And for a long time the game was a goldmill. How many patches was it when you can just do general quests on multiple alts to get a steady stream of gold? A very long time ago. Hence my points above have been made to counter mindless grinding which was one of the biggest problems Tera has at the moment.
I know people will complain about this point citing excuses like "Oh I have a job and I can only play for 2 hours a day, having lots of Naga quests/IoD dailies helps me gain all the gold I need". Please, if dungeon gave way more gold and feedstock and all the other things I have mentioned on the original post you only needed to do at most 3 midtier dungeons a day which doesn't even exceed an hour to get the same amount of theoretical gold as you do as long as you know what you are doing in the dungeon. And I used to grind out on PvP dailies with just CS, which obviously takes more than 2 hours but it is an option if you want the highest amount of raw gold and credits on a character.
For the crafting of low/mid-tier gear... I have mixed feelings tbh. While having artisan skills can become profitable again, to the average player they won't have the ability to get to the veteran's state at the pace we are at. The eventual idea is to provide an actual reason to progress in the game instead of being 100% casual which honestly makes the game not fun even for casuals. End of the day when you ask this question "What should I do to get more gold?" The answer should be to get better at your class and tackle harder challenges and dungeons instead of creating 15 more alts to grind simple dungeons or Island of Dawn.
I find the Bonanza Box drops to be fine, maybe it is just me because I was grinding out my conflate mats so I can't really spam boxes anymore. Additives idea seem a little too cheap for one considering it is pretty expensive in the TERA Store and two it will crash the etching market pretty rapidly. Perhaps 3k for one artisan/ 5k for one master may sound more reasonable. Battleground vanguard gold is fine to me at the current moment, considering I farm fraywind instead of IoD (and yes I hate IoD because why should you be able to get the most amount of theoretical gold doing the easiest solo quests?).
BFTP was a concept I wanted to try because I wasn't in this game when it was alive, so I can't really comment on that.
THIS
The players in such a situation often have to already have the gear that drops in the dungeon in order to do the dungeon successfully. I've learned to give players the benefit of a doubt when they seem to be playing badly. Often it's just because of that terrible lag. They can't move as quickly and they can't put out skills as quickly. Until I made a recent upgrade I could not even put my mystic in KDNM, because my locking heal skill simply would not lock on people. By the time I was casting the skill, in actual real time the player had already moved. Or even by the time I locked on to them they had moved so my skill never actually locked on.
I'm glad for the changes they have made to lower end dungeons, since me and my guildies can finally clear those without taking hours and hours and wiping 3 - 6 times before we finally complete them. Again, we are not the rare few, we are the majority of Tera players. We play Tera because of it's playstyle and because of it's beauty and huge size and variety. To limit endgame to the few who have no lag or slight lag would not be a profitable decision for En Masse to make. Giving us a more gradual progression from easy to hard would be good. Making the grind for top endgame gear would be extremely beneficial. At the moment it's impossible for the majority of players to obtain enough mats for even one piece of top gear before a new patch comes out that gives us a new top gear set.
These are the reason so few players are doing the hardest dungeons. It's because it's too much of a grind for dungeons that we can barely do or for dungeons that we can't do at all due to our lag in them. The biggest problems are usually last boss rooms where the lag can become extreme and we can get frozen in mid-air or get bumped off the game. The last boss rooms often have tons of aoe graphics, especially in newer dungeons on the floors, and the bosses are so big they fill up most of our screen and are constantly moving. All of this moving stuff all over (add sorcerer, reaper and mystic graphics) and we can hardly move in there. Thankfully they brought DS back, which, up to the 3rd box at least, gives us far less lag (little to no moving floor graphics and the bosses are not so huge they completely fill our screen and they don't put out a lot of moving graphic skills that fill the room).
My suggestion is to make those harder dungeons easier, or give us more mid-difficulty dungeons, and definitely improve the drop rate or the quantity of drops for endgame gear mats and give us some other way to obtain the soulbound mats that doesn't involve doing a dungeon we can't do because we are not overgeared for it enough.
It's discouraging to lose so many friends and dungeon-run mates (guild members) over the years because they finally realize they can never get endgame gear, even after they have spent lots of money improving their computers, and they are thus limited to just a few dungeons, and so they leave the game. By the way, this is a pve guild so we aren't interested in doing pvp to get Bellicarium credits for mats.
Sorry to sound like that guy nobody wants to listen to, but, first, no idea where you get that MOST Tera players can't clear hard mode because of fps and lag. Sure, there's a lot of players posting about it here in the forums. But because I personally don't have a concrete number, I can't just go say the majority or the minority have that problem. If you can provide the numbers, please let us know as BHS and EME would be very interested as well.
As for that fps issue and the ping, not much EME or BHS can do about people far from the service zones. Game is ping dependent and also happens to need a pretty powerful computer to play. I will give you a point in the fact that they seem unable or ignoring about fixing their resource hogging UI, which is a huge cause for fps drop on many computers. But, there's hundreds upon hundreds of people able to enter HM content, and the only reason quite a few can't complete it is because of their own lack of skill. Not lag or fps. I see that the amount of players who play and complete HM content is fairly big an well comparable with any other MMO. I don't have a number, of course, but from the accounts of people who speak about it here and those who speak it in world, I'd say many people do and complete HM content as it is.
As for drop rates. I wouldn't change those. I'd change enchanting and gear rolling RNG a bit. I think those are the pain points. BiS gear material drop rates should stay rare as BiS is simply not for everyone. That's why pretty much all content (save DSU which is also bonus content for pros) can be done in mid tier gear.
Again. Not meant to offend nor start a fight. You are saying your views as you see them from your point of view. I just see a different point of view.
I average 280ms ping, 8-10 fps in endgame dungeons. I used to fight AINM/AIHM (the laggiest possible dungeon cuz 10 people) in 1 fps not using a gunner and still clear it without dying. I clear 3* dungeons like it is 3* dungeons: A little challenging but it is completable. I can clear most 4* difficulty dungeons without dying barring SS only because of carpet glitches on my own computer. And I only run +12 slaughter with no VM gear. Why? Most 4* dungeons are really easy now comparing to the 4* dungeons last time.
@Nopi not gonna quote but you bring out really good points. I have to agree that +15 is something not everyone should be able to get. Sadly we have entered a stage where while guilds usually bring normal players for runs, most pug LFGs only look for +15s. And that is a worrying trend.
Not to be that guy as well, but if you can't handle doing dungeons then don't. I mean that in a MUCH nicer way than it comes across by the way.
Personally, I've been playing solo in this game for the last 2-3 years (maybe longer). Groups are just not fun for me. I am a great healer. I used to be recommended constantly in the past; however, something changed in the player base where everybody started leveling way too fast to even learn their own skills. Eventually their lack of knowledge of their own class often led them to die... and of course who would the blame go to? Me. I was often defended by the better players, but it became more enjoyable for me to just play by myself.
Since playing solo, I have a level 65 Priest, +12 Slaughter gear, 415 item level, and Golden Laurel at 9455. Which is pretty good considering I don't do dungeons unless I can solo them on the group setting. I'm not saying this to brag as a solo player, I'm just saying dungeons aren't all there is to do in the game. When I was still playing (I quit playing TERA for much better game) I was easily able to enjoy myself playing solo by running around and killing any open world BAM. Additionally I would randomly heal/buff other players I passed by. It's much more enjoyable being thanked for the random heal/buff rather than the blame for an amateur constantly dying.
Now I know that playing solo isn't for everybody. In addition, although I do it, I still enjoy the community offered by playing in an MMO. However, it is something worth trying. Even if you don't play solo, if your PC can't handle dungeons, there really is a lot to do in the open world of the game.