[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
Analysis on Tera Endgame
Note: There is a tl;dr at the end
Hi everyone, I’d like to present my thoughts on the current state of Tera’s game content, especially in regards to endgame. While I have many thoughts and ideas, I decided to focus on one main point: the long term playability of the game’s content. First I would like to present these graphs that show the peak players on Steam. Note: The data is not 100% reliable and Steam is only a small sample of the total Tera population. Nevertheless, there are interesting points to infer from this data.
The highest peak occurred in May 2015. This is due to the initial steam release. In the following months, the population declines steadily. This is expected as not everyone who tried the game liked the game; this is true for every game. The next peak occurs in December 2015. This peak coincides with the release of the Brawler class. This is followed by a decline until we reach steady state at around 3k players until May 2016. We get another flux of players in May due to the release of Ninja.
To keep the post concise, ill bullet point my observations based on these charts
-The peaks for Brawler patch and Ninja patch are nearly the same, about 7k players. My conclusion is that a majority of that is due to players who stopped during Brawler patch came back for Ninja patch. Furthermore, these players still kept up with Tera updates to know about Ninja Patch, so it is not the case that they completely abandoned the game.
-FIHM and DS was released in March 2016. This had no impact on the peak player count.
-Manglemire patch was released in July 2016. The player count continued to decrease until it reached 3k players
-Post Brawler and Post Ninja patch, the player count always bottomed out at about 3k. This implies that these are the active players who aren’t swayed by patch contents.
Out of all the content patches, only the new class patches positively impacted the player population. Dungeon content had no impact. Additionally, we can conclude events, cosmetic releases, etc. also had minor impacts. Often times events such as strongbox, triple drop, etc. coincided with the weekend. So it is unclear if these events had an impact or if the weekend just meant more people got on. In either case, events and such had no lasting impact on player count.
Now I want to present my personal insights and explanation as to why Tera isn’t improving the player count. I’ll skip the details and simply start with my conclusion: Tera’s PvE content haven’t been designed for replayability. I feel that both EME and BHS have recognized the long term replayability of the game through their recent actions: The TERA rewards system, and the upcoming Guild change. In both these systems, players are rewarded for clearing content on a daily basis. This approach seems to be “give the players a reason to login everyday” but what should be done is “give the players a reason to want to login every day.” I have many ideas, but this post has already gotten too long. I’ll dumb it down to my top 2 points.
Endgame PvE
First, the problem with PvE. This is not unique to Tera; this really applies to any MMO with PvE content. It’s the simple fact that players can complete the content faster than developers can make new content. To bridge this time difference, there are two options: make the content so difficult that it takes months to clear even once, or make the content repeatable. The current content is not difficult enough for option 1 and option 2 is unfulfilled. Let’s look at the dungeon mechanics themselves. Most dungeons right now are tank and spank. What we need is mechanics beyond “iframe/block this or die.” What I’d like to see is more mechanics from older dungeons. As a player, I present my case for my favorite dungeons during my time on Tera: Sky Cruiser Hard Mode and Timescape Hard Mode. For me, these dungeons presented fun mechanics but were still not quite at the level I would like. What makes these dungeons stand out for me is the interaction with the environment. For SCHM, making sure the laser didn’t pop crystals, absorbing lasers as a team, getting swiped into the fire meant “perma-death”, the sense of urgency as the fire spreads as the fight reaches a conclusion. In TSHM, adding a puzzle to the fight increased the complexity of the encounter. If someone died, others had to quickly act to take over each other's roles. Let’s contrast that with today’s dungeons. Dreadspire: a big circle room. Shadow Sanguinary: 3 big circle rooms. DF: use of the environment comes down to the floor is lava, don’t touch. The only good example in 2016 that comes close is FIHM where you have to break pillars without killing your team. So, in terms of mechanics, I’d suggest by start looking at the environment and ways players can interact with it. This can create a more fun experience, but it doesn’t necessary make it repeatable. This comes down to how players are rewarded for completing the dungeon multiple times. Right now, we have shiny title for HM and loot. Loot ranges from mid tier gear, jewelry, to VM craft items. Is this loot adequate enough for repeatability? For newer players, yes. The decline in population is slow for this reason. The problem occurs when you hit the HM. If someone has full +15 and title, they have no loot incentive nor title incentive. Then we see a domino effect. These players have no reason to stay and will spend their time on another game. Sounds like this is small portion of the community, so why does it matter? With the exit of hardcore players, there is an added barrier between hardmode and mid tier. The new upcoming players are left without mentors because the experienced players have left. Some will overcome this barrier, but others will quit. This trickles down all the way to when people first hit 65. And this all starts with people who reached the endgame who have no incentives left. Now take my proposed suggestion. If the dungeon itself is a rewarding experience, there is now reasons to keep playing. Furthermore, we have to ask what loot do you give to someone who has it all? That brings us to my second suggestion.
Cosmetics
My endgame experience comes down to gearing up and buying costumes. For better or worse, costumes has been a goal for many players. Those who find +15 too hard, settle for dress up. Those who do +15, also dress up. Let’s tie that back in with my previous point about loot. Our current connection between dungeons and costumes is fashion coupons. This should be completely reworked. Personally, I didn’t want to clear SSHM 100 times because the title isn’t interesting. Furthermore, it loses its shiny effect after the patch. How about you give me Darkuryon’s spear? Or an emote that makes me scream “I WILL CRUSH YOU”? Give me Darkan’s wings not as a tier 10 reward, but as a reward for killing him many times in SCH. Why limit it to title dungeons? Add unique cosmetic flair beyond a title for all dungeons. The allure of cosmetics is that they can be seen by others and serve as an achievement. Making these a loot drop rather than an achievement can extend the lifetime of a dungeon(i.e. Cosmetic is crafted from dropped material). Beyond dungeoning, you can implement other ways to add unique cosmetics. Key here is unique. Right now, the Tera rewards offers unique ones at the high tiers only. There should be a range of cosmetics available to all players. In summary, cosmetic items is a way to increase play time for endgame players. Side note: this has to do with my personal opinion of achievement hunting. Some people do this as endgame. I actually enjoyed it but there is little tangible rewards. The laurel is only displayed to your party members. My suggestion is adding it to your name somehow, such as a border around the guild emblem(not feasible because not everyone is in a guild, but you get my point).
TL;DR: I think that Tera lacks long term incentives to continue to play the game after you have cleared current content. My suggestion is to design engaging dungeons that the very act of doing is both fun and rewarding. I would take a look at the interactions between players and the environment as a starting point for redesign. Additionally, players have no items to work towards after gearing up. Most players turn to cosmetics. Make unique cosmetics only obtainable by doing current content to provide an incentive. This is mainly BHS responsibility because the problem comes down to content design.
This post was much longer than I anticipated. There are many other problems I have noticed and will make another post when I have the time and motivation. While I believe my assessment of the problems is accurate, my suggestions are largely subjective. Feel free to add more suggestions in this thread!
Hi everyone, I’d like to present my thoughts on the current state of Tera’s game content, especially in regards to endgame. While I have many thoughts and ideas, I decided to focus on one main point: the long term playability of the game’s content. First I would like to present these graphs that show the peak players on Steam. Note: The data is not 100% reliable and Steam is only a small sample of the total Tera population. Nevertheless, there are interesting points to infer from this data.
The highest peak occurred in May 2015. This is due to the initial steam release. In the following months, the population declines steadily. This is expected as not everyone who tried the game liked the game; this is true for every game. The next peak occurs in December 2015. This peak coincides with the release of the Brawler class. This is followed by a decline until we reach steady state at around 3k players until May 2016. We get another flux of players in May due to the release of Ninja.
To keep the post concise, ill bullet point my observations based on these charts
-The peaks for Brawler patch and Ninja patch are nearly the same, about 7k players. My conclusion is that a majority of that is due to players who stopped during Brawler patch came back for Ninja patch. Furthermore, these players still kept up with Tera updates to know about Ninja Patch, so it is not the case that they completely abandoned the game.
-FIHM and DS was released in March 2016. This had no impact on the peak player count.
-Manglemire patch was released in July 2016. The player count continued to decrease until it reached 3k players
-Post Brawler and Post Ninja patch, the player count always bottomed out at about 3k. This implies that these are the active players who aren’t swayed by patch contents.
Out of all the content patches, only the new class patches positively impacted the player population. Dungeon content had no impact. Additionally, we can conclude events, cosmetic releases, etc. also had minor impacts. Often times events such as strongbox, triple drop, etc. coincided with the weekend. So it is unclear if these events had an impact or if the weekend just meant more people got on. In either case, events and such had no lasting impact on player count.
Now I want to present my personal insights and explanation as to why Tera isn’t improving the player count. I’ll skip the details and simply start with my conclusion: Tera’s PvE content haven’t been designed for replayability. I feel that both EME and BHS have recognized the long term replayability of the game through their recent actions: The TERA rewards system, and the upcoming Guild change. In both these systems, players are rewarded for clearing content on a daily basis. This approach seems to be “give the players a reason to login everyday” but what should be done is “give the players a reason to want to login every day.” I have many ideas, but this post has already gotten too long. I’ll dumb it down to my top 2 points.
Endgame PvE
First, the problem with PvE. This is not unique to Tera; this really applies to any MMO with PvE content. It’s the simple fact that players can complete the content faster than developers can make new content. To bridge this time difference, there are two options: make the content so difficult that it takes months to clear even once, or make the content repeatable. The current content is not difficult enough for option 1 and option 2 is unfulfilled. Let’s look at the dungeon mechanics themselves. Most dungeons right now are tank and spank. What we need is mechanics beyond “iframe/block this or die.” What I’d like to see is more mechanics from older dungeons. As a player, I present my case for my favorite dungeons during my time on Tera: Sky Cruiser Hard Mode and Timescape Hard Mode. For me, these dungeons presented fun mechanics but were still not quite at the level I would like. What makes these dungeons stand out for me is the interaction with the environment. For SCHM, making sure the laser didn’t pop crystals, absorbing lasers as a team, getting swiped into the fire meant “perma-death”, the sense of urgency as the fire spreads as the fight reaches a conclusion. In TSHM, adding a puzzle to the fight increased the complexity of the encounter. If someone died, others had to quickly act to take over each other's roles. Let’s contrast that with today’s dungeons. Dreadspire: a big circle room. Shadow Sanguinary: 3 big circle rooms. DF: use of the environment comes down to the floor is lava, don’t touch. The only good example in 2016 that comes close is FIHM where you have to break pillars without killing your team. So, in terms of mechanics, I’d suggest by start looking at the environment and ways players can interact with it. This can create a more fun experience, but it doesn’t necessary make it repeatable. This comes down to how players are rewarded for completing the dungeon multiple times. Right now, we have shiny title for HM and loot. Loot ranges from mid tier gear, jewelry, to VM craft items. Is this loot adequate enough for repeatability? For newer players, yes. The decline in population is slow for this reason. The problem occurs when you hit the HM. If someone has full +15 and title, they have no loot incentive nor title incentive. Then we see a domino effect. These players have no reason to stay and will spend their time on another game. Sounds like this is small portion of the community, so why does it matter? With the exit of hardcore players, there is an added barrier between hardmode and mid tier. The new upcoming players are left without mentors because the experienced players have left. Some will overcome this barrier, but others will quit. This trickles down all the way to when people first hit 65. And this all starts with people who reached the endgame who have no incentives left. Now take my proposed suggestion. If the dungeon itself is a rewarding experience, there is now reasons to keep playing. Furthermore, we have to ask what loot do you give to someone who has it all? That brings us to my second suggestion.
Cosmetics
My endgame experience comes down to gearing up and buying costumes. For better or worse, costumes has been a goal for many players. Those who find +15 too hard, settle for dress up. Those who do +15, also dress up. Let’s tie that back in with my previous point about loot. Our current connection between dungeons and costumes is fashion coupons. This should be completely reworked. Personally, I didn’t want to clear SSHM 100 times because the title isn’t interesting. Furthermore, it loses its shiny effect after the patch. How about you give me Darkuryon’s spear? Or an emote that makes me scream “I WILL CRUSH YOU”? Give me Darkan’s wings not as a tier 10 reward, but as a reward for killing him many times in SCH. Why limit it to title dungeons? Add unique cosmetic flair beyond a title for all dungeons. The allure of cosmetics is that they can be seen by others and serve as an achievement. Making these a loot drop rather than an achievement can extend the lifetime of a dungeon(i.e. Cosmetic is crafted from dropped material). Beyond dungeoning, you can implement other ways to add unique cosmetics. Key here is unique. Right now, the Tera rewards offers unique ones at the high tiers only. There should be a range of cosmetics available to all players. In summary, cosmetic items is a way to increase play time for endgame players. Side note: this has to do with my personal opinion of achievement hunting. Some people do this as endgame. I actually enjoyed it but there is little tangible rewards. The laurel is only displayed to your party members. My suggestion is adding it to your name somehow, such as a border around the guild emblem(not feasible because not everyone is in a guild, but you get my point).
TL;DR: I think that Tera lacks long term incentives to continue to play the game after you have cleared current content. My suggestion is to design engaging dungeons that the very act of doing is both fun and rewarding. I would take a look at the interactions between players and the environment as a starting point for redesign. Additionally, players have no items to work towards after gearing up. Most players turn to cosmetics. Make unique cosmetics only obtainable by doing current content to provide an incentive. This is mainly BHS responsibility because the problem comes down to content design.
This post was much longer than I anticipated. There are many other problems I have noticed and will make another post when I have the time and motivation. While I believe my assessment of the problems is accurate, my suggestions are largely subjective. Feel free to add more suggestions in this thread!
1
Comments
For one there is plenty of reason to do old content. Be it for quests that reward cool items that turns your character into a mob, ghost, etc for a short time or soloing old dungeons and raids because they have rare mounts and pets in their drop tables or because some of the gear looks cool and you can use it for transmog like Tera's old reskin system. Better yet Blizzard even reworked some of the old raids mechanics to make it possible to solo them for that exact purpose.
Most of the rep grinds in WoW also reward a pet or a mount for maxing them out. All we have is a single panther for grinding multiple factions and its not even maximum speed or has any regeneration.
Or going after old crafting recipes to create cool stuff like for example Elixir of giant growth, a scroll that teleports you to a random location or even your very own mount. Compare that to Tera where crafting became entirely useless besides etching.
1) PVP
Tera has the worst pvp endgame due to graphic and idea. As solo player queuing for BG, 70% of time you lost it. You're not there to play, you're there to feed the gangs. I am not here talk about skills/get a group/be part of the gang etc. It's about that this system/BG idea is creating madness to 70% of the population. Go join one and read the chat on the losing team, "stupid people," "dumb team," "xxxxxxxxxxx" all those words going around. Who like that? Who like to being a feeder? Who like to be a loser? But you queue solo, you're a loser by its ratio.
2) PVE
Fun at the beginning, but nothing to do at the end. When this game first launched, takes like 2-3 weeks to get to cap lvl 60 back then. Nodaway, starting a new alt without any gold/items fund by the main char, only took me 2 days to get from 1-65, and that's slow. Some people get it max in 11 hours. So, what's the fun of it?
Conclusion: Tera, I was once call it the best PVE game, now LOL, not much to enjoy it. Most MMORG gamers look for PVP at endgame, but Tera is totally a joke at PVP. Besides this Kuma mama game that is less violently cursing each other, how do you expect new-mid gamers to enjoy other BGs? Basically, the more you play BG, the faster you lost interest of Tera.
To vkobe, I am just saying that this BG idea is creating massive madness to players. Tera needs a good pvp fun in order to keep hardcore players. I started this game when it first came out. Me and 20 friends/gamers played it. We were all from Aika Online. Then later on, when we started this Tera PVP, we all agreed to quit because of its pvp system. We paid a full year usage for the game (When Tera came out, it was a paid to play game), only played it less than 2 months. Tab target PVP? what for? In BG, when you first meet enemy group from other side, you only see shape of the players, you don't know what they doing. attacking/blocking/knock down/afk or whatever, all this Tera action combat they claim it's amazing on magazine/website, have no value at all other than blindly keep punching skill keys and hoping you kill someone. Aika online has the best PVP system. Tera just need something like that to replace its madness BG. This BG is driving people away.
To Kubitoid, sorry buddy, there's nothing wrong pay to play a game. Imagine, a game that is 100% paid players, free gamers just can't stand seconds there in a fight. If it's 100% free gamers, this game, doesn't matter how good it is, it will bankrupt soon. Paid players in a way, keep the game running. Paying or not, it's about the value of the game itself. It's fun then it deserves every penny. Like, you go to a theme park for fun, you pay for the entry ticket. You hungry, you want food, you pay for it. I assure you won't pay for someone to punch you in the face and be happy about it.
IMO It would be more economical to relaunch a TERA 2 than to try and fix problems with patches. However, this is a long ways away, since no company is going to stop a game that makes money. We will have to wait for the game to die out before we can see major changes.