[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
And with every patch, Gameforge comes out with some method to keep their version either p2w or way more grindy than TERA NA. Personally, I'd rather EME take time to tweak some things that their western players aren't going to like than to just release it as-is or use whatever tweaks Gameforge requested for their version.
And in all likelihood we probably won't be far behind GF anyway. Who cares if we get it on the same day? We all know how abysmal a company Failforge is. It's literally one of the worst publishers out there.
Our version is released even more as-is compared to EU. We got nothing from SSHM except vm7 mats, just like in Ktera. In EU they got 40 mwas/run. I can't bring myself to get the sshm title.
Mwas cost 60g in EU because half of the mwa supplies are in form of untradeable personal mwa.
What proofs do you have to show that EU Tera is more p2w and grindy? I have to remind you that in EU quatrefoil brooch costs like 80-90k, etching iii 50k, vm7 designs 4-5K, SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE PATCH.
Next patch I'm sure our vm8 designs will cost 500-600k.
The only thing we really have it easier is SES and maybe MES.
Anger is partly due to the lack of information.
Just go and look at their site, the information they provide on the new patch.
They have patch notes up way before implementation, not 24h before it.
They provided attack pattern pictures and tells on what the boss is doing, information about the new battleground, sorcerer changes in detail, droptable for VM8 materials, removal of stamina system details, UI interface changes in detail.
I am not talking about myself, because I often check Essentialmana, Yosha on every platform, Seraphinus and other people who translate korean, read discord channels or watch twitch streams.
But many people I know don't have this kind of time to idly read every comment relevant about the new dungeons and new content.
It would greatly help them if EME provided a similar telltale and what to expect on each boss, because this is the official website. This is the most accessible source of information for many. And not 24h before they release it.
And I am sure not alone who really had enough of people asking in dungeons why they died, because they have 0 knowledge about mechanics.
With the NM and HM Ruinous Manor coming in one patch we need every bit of help from EME so the community has the chance to keep up.
^
But, in actual fact, the "bugginess" of the last patch is a "when it rains it pours" situation. It looks horrible, but understanding the software end of things... it's mostly a really bad set of circumstances.
1) The dragons have no actual problem -- everything was working and ready to go -- but they got politically vetoed by a higher-up. You can argue they should have checked first, but they clearly thought they were in the right to do it -- although obviously now they know. That screwed them over as much as all of us; all their work in setting it up was thrown out and it caused them all this grief. The only reason Gameforge didn't have this problem is that they never told people when/how/if they'd be able to earn dragons with the passive in-game; their in-game dragons now have no passive (and an extreme grind), so no political problem.
2) The Civil Unrest bug was an actual bug caused by something that should never have been a problem in the first place: the server's timezone. It's basically bad server code from BHS that they never found because all the other global servers are using local time instead of UTC (which is crazy from an IT point of view, but somehow not surprising...). If Gameforge's servers had been running on UTC (as you're really supposed to do for servers...), they would have had the same bug, but luckily they weren't.
3) The rest of the problems and bugginess of the patch itself are common to all the TERA builds. BHS shipped all the publishers a patch that included known-bugged content that they had to remove in K-TERA (and this is hardly the first time). When you combine it with the above two issues, the whole thing seems even worse. They have fixed some minor bugs (but I don't know why they aren't posting patch notes; they've mentioned the fixes on the forums), but I assume the other major bugs aren't getting "hotfixes" because another build is already in testing and there'll be changes/fixes to some of it in there anyway. With BHS feeding builds faster now, we'll probably get less incremental fixes because they'll just fix the new build rather than the current one (which means players have to wait more).
So anyway, the true issue here is back to what was said at the start: communication. When everything's going wrong, that's when you need to be there to provide status, reassure everyone that concerns are being listened to, and make people see you're still on the right path -- and, of course, do it in a way that doesn't throw your parent company under the bus when they give you a poorly-made product to sell/support. And, considering all that's gone on in the last month, that's the one key area where I fault them.
I'm pretty sure there would've been plenty of "OMG, I want a dragon, just release what you have and I'll pay". Think about the Alice dress. They decided not to release it because of a bug and there are still, to this day, people who complain about it. If they promised dragons and released no dragons, the backlash would've been just as big.
Maybe as part of the compromise, which will require the in-game versions to go on the cash shop, they'll also make some direct buy. I think they should, even as regular mounts with no passive or extra advantages. But we'll see. Right now, someone at BHS clearly wants these to be seen as lucrative rare items and not devalued.
They did test it, and it worked in their tests. It did not work on the live servers. In the first week of the failure, there was a server crash right before CU was supposed to start, and they thought that was the cause. They also did more tests the following week to confirm it was working on their test environments. But, as it turns out that wasn't the cause, and the bug only manifested itself due to the specific configuration of the live servers.
The thing I fault them for here is for not having someone there the second week watching it live just in case, because they didn't actually know for a fact that they had found/fixed the root cause. But due to the crazy nature of the bug, it makes perfect sense why they could not find it until they confirmed it was isolated to the live servers, and added extra log information for special tests on the live servers to figure it out. It has everything to do with the very specific and flaky nature of the bug.
There was a thread about bugs in Civil Unrest the day that it first happened and the general consensus was that it was not very good due to all the same reasons people are talking about here now. All the same bugs/issues exist in their build too, as the build is identical absent publisher customizations (barring crazy time zone bugs...). But, in general, the EU forum has a lot less traffic than it used to a few years ago, and is much slower going than the NA Forums. They used to complain about bugs and problems a lot, but now it seems they've been worn down (or moved on?).
I bet it's more about trying to grab people like you that think that having stuff a bit before it's totally awesome.
You know the release date or what? 1 week doesnt make them better, quality of information and communication makes them better.
So far we are not 1 week behind, but infinite behind. The EME teaser page is a big nothing, no information no release date.
Secondly, it is about the quality of information posted on the GF site. And the patch notes coming out way before the patch hits, oh and the stream. Oh and dragons there.
And with this, BHS further erodes an avenue of interaction between players.
No more drive-by buffing of newbies as they level.
No more assistance to strangers who are hunting bams or questing in the open world.
With the loss of campfires and the invisible barriers that stop explorers, BHS continues to reduce TERA into a game of instances that ignores the rich and immersive open world where players can interact without having to worry about DPS or being good at mechanics.