[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
Lets go through an overview and pick apart pieces we can see of what's going on.
Tera is using a classic server architecture. There has been a bunch of cheaper versions of servers that have been rising in population among game developers. Generally people call them "Cloud Servers" but that really doesn't mean much, the difference comes from the part where they use off the self consumer grade parts and build a bunch of little computers and interlink them. (Which is all "cloud" really means now after all the buzzword hype.) Tera isn't able to use this because their server programming was mostly created years ago prior to all of this, they would have to redo and refactor a bunch of code to make it so it even works on a "cloud" server group. (Before even making it run well.) Then there is a bunch of features like mass groups that wouldn't even be possible on a "cloud" server. The reason why I bring this up at all is the cost difference, most groups that have looked at the price difference between have come up with around a 1:16 cost ratio. When you have a big huge server running everything you need specialized equipment that costs a lot of money to power, cool, maintain, the up front cost. All these other games that are getting away with the consumer grade stuff costs around 1/16th the price in upkeep and server cost. (Just right off the bat.) This is going to be the same in every publisher region.
Then on top of this Tera servers have to be robust and really strong servers, just think about what types of data the game sends compared to other games. Take something like league, it's a 2 dimensional game, (automatically remove that extra pesky 3rd dimension,) remove the cost of hit-boxes moving everywhere, (there's rare skill shots, big whoop,) and they have a simplified ruling system between mismatches. (And since they can just put you on a cloud server that's close to you, they don't need as good internet either assuming they are getting their servers from a 3rd party. This I'm not sure about.)
Some game companies even make their players host mini servers bypassing a lot of the cost of servers.
We are talking about a massive difference in server costs, so far apart it's not funny. The companies that are running the game for them in different areas of the world don't have a high profit to player ratio just from the server costs. Then you add in the part where few Tera players actually are paying. For that just look around, how many people do you know that buy elite, how many buy piles of boxes all the time, go look at the purchase history for boxed goods. We're talking about a very low income for Enmasse and a while they are making a profit, it's not a huge one.
So BHS takes their scoop from a fairly small pool of money, (I don't know exactly how it's set up,) and doing so in each region. Then they have their own little issues. They are still stuck on using the unreal engine and they would have to rewrite the entire game to update it to another engine or even another version of the unreal engine. Something to remember about the unreal engine, it was made for rapid production of games, but it said "-intentionally censored for effect- updates and code maintenance," it is fighting the devs with every bit they try to make. Then on top of that they are stuck using old tools that are compatible with the old version which are more than likely more clunky, bug ridden and almost certainly less productive than current day tools. We're talking about stuff that's almost 10 years old. Think about that in computer years.
So when it all comes down to it they have very little money but they have a lot of stuff they must do to keep the game alive, so what do you do? You produce content for the largest amount of the player base as possible that will have the biggest impact on everyone. There are going to be people left out no matter what. So yeah they could make less classes and make sure to make a male version, but ... why? Actually think through what that would do from a "normal" players perspective. We have no idea the female / male percentages other than there's a number of us women playing the game. (More recent polls and studies on games have show female populations on MMOs going up to 45% in some cases.) Most women don't care if the class is female, and some even will like it. Pretty much the only women who want it to be male play male characters so they don't get harassed. Then of males, there is at least a fairly reasonable minority (maybe it's the majority, maybe it's not,) that likes to play female characters. Other than that most men don't give a -censored-. They simply don't care, they care about having fun. Then we have the tiny group, the little loudmouth group that screams and whines because they feel emasculated while playing a female character. When it all comes down to it almost everyone is fine playing a female character. Pretty much almost everyone. If we're going to make an educated guess off of polls in men in general (go and google some, make sure to look at ones past 2012) we're talking about a single percentile digit of the player base. That means over 90% of the people don't care or like the choice. That's pretty darn good.
Why on earth did I do this massive rant? O.o
It is simple, that tiny group is starting to whine already as the announcement of the class has been announced. People like me are sick and tired of people demonizing BHS over this topic every single time they make a new class. We get bombarded with the same stuff over and over wrapped in whatever they can shove onto the forums and not get shouted down. I'm just so sick and tired of it over and over and over again.
If you are so desperate to have more male classes in the game, maybe just maybe, people in that tiny group should have spent more money on the game.
If it truly didn't matter, BHS could have gone back and forth between female- and male-only classes, but they didn't. They add female-only classes because that's how they farm players of their cash.
That should make them your enemy, not worthy of your defending them. If they only care about your money, why do you bother singing their praise?
"I guarantee it!" You've said that quite a bit haven't you?
So you feel a need to restate what I said and get it entirely wrong. Go back and actually spend a few minutes reading.
Since you probably are not going to I'll put this in extremely blunt terms.
The developers are not evil gremlins that are going to pop out and eat you, they are not little monsters trying to hurt you. They have an extremely difficult job and they have to make choices that are best for the player base as a whole.
You keep on pushing the "developers are evil" thing to mask your actual intention. "Look at the hand, keep looking at the hand." You keep trying to deflect from what you are actually angry about, you have a problem playing female characters. Playing a female character probably makes you feel emasculated, maybe there's another reason. Either way you keep on hiding what you are actually saying behind a smoke screen. You are sitting here whining because you didn't get your way in the manner you wanted it. And then you hide it, try misdirection, and on top of all that keep trying to "you are saying x" when it's total BS that you pulled from where the sun doesn't shine. People like me are tired of people like you.
And just to top this off. You have absolutely no idea how many a company can treat its player base.
Vindictus: Flour bug, bots, ridiculous class imbalance, servers going down all the time, hero mode bug, support response time numbering in months, accidental bans for longer than a year, lann existing, crazy rng, grinding equipment for months, item destroy chance, enchant runes, enhance runes, prices, single core mini servers attached to your client, response from server delayed.
Blade and Soul: Bots, queues, ridiculous class imbalance, insane faction imbalance, prices, market doesn't work, fps lag, server lag, fake hit boxes, messed up leveling system, equipment system resets.
Firefall: Account wipes, money disappearing, characters disappearing, crystals disappearing, bad support, developers got fired, elite ranks, PvP got removed, BP got removed, PvE instance servers gone, storyline instance servers gone, crafting got removed, classes got removed, (even after leveling them,) In game currency not appearing after spending money, server lag, fps lag, raids only created for players playing the game well past 3k hours, storyline revision, massive imbalance in classes, thumping mostly removed.
I can stick up another 10 games on here that look like that.
Enmasse and BHS treat the player base really -intentionally censored- well.
You don't have the slightest clue what other companies are getting away with.