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First impressions
Combat
I don't like themepark mmos, something to bear in mind when you read this. However my main gripe with standard mmos is the combat. so I was hoping I might get into tera despite it being a mostly generic mmo. It IS an improvement over your current standard mmo, but a disapointingly small one for me personally.
Despite the crosshair on your screen it does not play like a fps at all, all it does it make you face the right direction then your attacks will land. Ranged attacks seem very short range. It's nice that mele swings are aoe and abilities can be activated with no valid target, this is something we had in AoC and is coming in GW2 and I hope it ends up being a new standard in mmos.
I haven't tested all classes for enough time to know in depth about skills, but my impression is its like most mmos; pretty poor. You get a couple of moves and you buy better versions as you level up. On my lvl 15 char I am only really using 2 or 3 abilities. Maybe once I am high level I might have a whole row of useful abilities and enjoy combat more, but for now its dull and there seems little stratergy required. Infact the game will actually auto situational skills if you press space
PvE
Is DRAB, its so easy. never once have I been anywhere close to dieing to a mob. There was 1 quest which said you needed 5 people, I did it solo thinking i'd fail but it was just as easy, I was watching TV most the time too.
If you are mele I recomend running around agroing multiple mobs then using your abilities on the group of them to save time, even then they are not a challenge.
The idea of dodging mobs is cool, for example mobs glow red before doing a special attack, however the AI is too slow/easy. You dodge and they are still facing the wrong way attacking where you where several seconds ago. However vs mobs at high level I expect this mechanic to be more challenging.
My pvp experience
So my first experience of pvp was some archer 10 levels above me trying to shoot me but missing as I zig zag on my horse for lulz, then he 1 shots me. Dunno if that is a bug or intended. But I actually wasn't bothered all he did was provide me free transport back to the city where I was going to hand in quest anyway! As far as I can see there is no penalty for dieing, and for killing I read there is some minor penalties if you stack alot of kills
Later whilst questiing I stole some other peoples quest interactble chests, however these people I stole from are in a group of 3 and gang raped me. Fair enough, I LIKE that you can kill people who steal your mobs/objectives, in most mmos there is nothing you can do to stop these people griefing you. I beta'd swtor and while i was killing the mob to get to quest object, someone else would run past me and claim it.
However these 3 people from before attacked me and this other guy later, I ran and 1 of them chased me so I turned and engaged getting him low before his friends came to kill me. Now here we have the other side of the griefing coin, pointless ganking.
I saw these 3 gankers later in city and proceeded to spam "PUSSIES... can't 1v1" etc. in local like the mature player I am. This caused 1 of them to challenge me to duel, I owned him and did a /dance to rub it in. They tried to kill me later again whilst I was low hp and questing, but they failed hard and I manged to escape alive, BUT what was the point?! i ended up riding back to town but I would have got there quicker if I let them kill me.
Obviously this is an awful FFA implementation. There no point to pvp, and battlegrounds are apparently not in this test. But world pvp is awful, I want to be afraid to die. There needs to be a penalty for death and a big consequence for pking. Pkers should be flagged all the time not switch between blue and red at the press of a button.
TDLR
The game is just incredibly bland, boring and meaningless.
I mostly played slayer on pvp server which is lvl 16. I will update after playing some more if I feel the need to.
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Comments
Ah youre a slayer, once you get overhand strike(activates quickly when chained after other skills) and the glyph for the 50% chance to reset cooldown combat becomes a lot faster, also the ranged attack distant blade at 22 can hit 3 times(only if used in succession within a certain time period) and its really helpful for ranged classes.
As for combat, you wont come close to dying until level 20, at 20 you start getting kill quests on BAMs, basilisk is the first one youll get then at 22 you go to celestial hills and you have to kill Nagas and Kumas, when enraged they can probably two shot you, also it takes 8-15 mins to solo kill them.
I recommend group play for BAM quests.
However, I see this is the issue with TERA, you dont get the difficult content until level 20+, but they said they will be revamping it before release, so I hope they do to stop all the people from leaving early.
When you die you have a chance to lose crystals(1 of your six is usually what happens), which sucks at high levels because the rare ones are moderately expensive. At max with the new update youll have 12 crystals and losing the green ones will suck because you get points to buy them from dailies.
zomg wall to big can't read it, all I got from your post is got to lvl 16?
Thanks for reading my wall of text and replying with alot of good info. i'm glad to hear there IS a penalty for death and sounds like a good one too.
I guess i might try to get to lvl 20 to try challenging pve. The problem is not only is leveling initial very dull and easy its made worse by the fact there is only 1 starting area.
I just leveled a archer to first city (lvl 12) and even the story quests are exactly the same. you basically have to grind through hours of the same crap everytime you make a character, so the game better actually get fun later on.
on the plus side playing archer is way more envolved although not any more challenging. slayer is just stand next to mobs and spam 2 attacks, archer actually requires good positioning for lining up shots and skills feel like they actually combo.
My blog:
+1
Combat: ummm never play an action combat game have you? Its action combat not FPS there is a huge fcking difference there.
PvE: From the looks of it you never got to lvl 20 and fought a BAM or did dungeon. Also they nerf the first dungeon because to have to find 5 people to leave the starting island is a pain.
PvP: Its all FFA game works, its about traveling in groups to be safe. All FFA game have gank, if you don't like it than roll PvE server.
Ofc if its not your style or taste it will be dull and boring to you, doesn't make the game dull and boring because obviously there tons of people that disagree.
Slayer gets a bit more involved with BAMs because you have to dodge constantly and you get a kick that stuns and you should be using that before its power move because it interrupts the attack.
Id say archer becomes less involved when grouping BAMs than a slayer unless the monster is in a jumpy mood and decides it wants to bodyslam or throw fireballs at the ranges dps.
I disagree thats for sure, Tera freaking ROCKS! and if someone thinks it's boring they are just Trolling.
and you know what we do to Trolls in my part of town? We kick them in the NU7$!! :P hehe
this just goes to show that improving combat alone doesnt make a fun and engaging game. they said so themselves a year ago: TERA's questing would be the standard "read wall of text, kill 10 wolves, get some pointless reward" and grind grind grind.
along the same lines, focusing just on the story without reiterating on combat or anything else doesnt make a good game either. we learned that from TOR.
i just dont understand why devs keep taking shortcuts and wasting resources to create more of the same old, which everyone is bored of. it's actually rather annoying. then again, it's a business and this happens in the business world all the time. out of the hundreds of restaurants in my city, maybe 20-30 are worth going to.
nah. pretty much everyone who has tried TERA thought it was a disappointment in one way or another. it's a Korean game, didnt you know? bland and average were the most frequently used descriptors i think.
@Consensus
I know it sucks pre 20, a bunch of my friends quit as well last weekend. I stuck it out "as an archer". Post 20, wow the game picks up greatly. The first instance is amazing fun. The pvp penalty also works for dying from pve as well. Although you can lose some of your normal items on chance too. The ganking is what makes this game fun, not just because ow hey I can go gank someone whenever. But because the penalty is annoying and getting them back for griefing in a non city area is awesome. I actually just pre ordered the game. I feel it's worth it, and we have no idea when GW2 will be released yet, although I'm thinking it will be out in Q4 personally.
I mean compare the abilities you have and the play style you have of a game at level 16, any game, and then compare it to TERA's at 16.
Ok as a Warrior on the game World of Warcraft you'd have 7 to 8 abilities you could use, and I can garentee some are situational (like victory rush) and some you won't use every fight.
The game play you experience at level 16 in WoW is not what it will be like at 40, or at level cap. The game play evolves, its this way with every mmo.
Look at FFXI, the first 10 levels you mostly auto attack and use one or two abilities... yet many people think of it as their ideal and favorite game.
MMO's are not fractals, the beginning is not representative of the end, or the middle for that mater.
Ofc every single game has its disappointment.... care to find me one game that didn't have a single flaw in it? (beside portal)
Its not taking short cuts its call limited resourced. Do people here even understand how much an mmorpg cost? How hard it is to get that kind of money for a first time dev compnay? They promised us an action combat system which by god is hard as hell to program with all the collison boxes.Even GW2 couldn't do it and they have much much much much more funding to work with. Consider that they spend good bulk of their resource on one thing ofc they won't have much left but to go standard on quest. And they revamp lvl 1-40 quest in ktera soon.
Way to miss the point completely. I'll stay on the pvp server; I'd rather awful meaningless pvp than no pvp, thanks.
Yup, thats why its called an opinion.
Anyway i'm level 20 now but probably do not have the time to try these BAMs where the game is supposed to be challenging.
True, this was an impression not a full review. however I disagree with alot of peoples opinions here that the starts of mmos are always less fun. darkfall is possible most challenging at the start, and alot of recent themeparks let you que for pvp battles from early levels (swtor/war). battlegrounds are disabled in this beta but hopefully they might add something fun to do in early stages of the game, although I doubt they are an alternative form of leveling in tera.
My blog:
I've just had my first taste of TERA with the EU beta weekend. I've played this game too many times before... the combat system doesn't save it for me.
I love the unique creature designs, graphics and the music but there is no choice in any way. You can't even choose a weapon type. Warrior duel wields swords and always swords, no axes, sickles, clubs etc. No skill choice either. It's very linear as well.
TERA makes WoW look like a sandbox in comparison. It's polished and the combat works very well, especially with an xbox controller, but that system has been placed in the same clone model we've seen too many times now. I was literally falling asleep while playing it. Not because it's a bad game.. it's just the same as all the others and that really bores me now. I'm definately skipping this one.
Well as you say its your opinion and I like to read opinions.
Tho to me and perhaps I read to much into this... it seems that you are really looking for a PvP focused game. If you can't get that you want a game where you can advance mostly through PvP.
So I guess it doesn't come as a suprise at all (to me) that your opinion was.... what it was for Tera.
Tera doesn't seem to mesh up very well for what you really want in an MMO.
Hopefully its clear I'm not trying to judge your opinion at all... I know what its like to look for a certain kind of game... and all the new games aren't really what you are looking for.
If you watch some BAM videos you'll see above level Warriors that get 1/4 of there HP taken away if they don't maneuver correctly.
I can't wait
Just not worth my time anymore.
You have 4 "standard" attacks which you can either click seperate, hold down to cycle them or a combination of these. Most mobs don't let you cycle through all start to finish though without hitting you. This means nothing while the mobs are easy but certainly will later on.
They are not the same attack with different animations however. They equal to Light/Medium x2/Hard, the last is of course the most powerful attack. Trick is the "cycle" resets If you either wait too long to continue the chain or use an ability.
The standards attacks have another important aspect, energy replenishment. Around the "Lumber" area, about level 12, you'll notice that if you spam special moves you will run out of energy quick. Weaving your special moves with your standard moves is a game within itself.
Maybe that's why I personally like TERA so much. It's great for those that want to get the most out of what they are doing all the time. I still think the content is too easy, at least around level 15, but my hope is that by the time hard content does hit I'll actually know what I'm doing lol
Just not worth my time anymore.
You played this game too many time before but you had your first taste in beta this weekend wtf o.o?
I don't see problem with choicing weapons, the reason weapons are locked is because Tera combat rely on hit boxs, trying to program 1 weapon for a class with all its skill and hit box is already a pain, trying to give class mutli weapon and your just asking for trouble.
I have no idea what your trying to say, clone model? Look mmorpg can only vary so much before its not a mmorpg anymore. If your tried of mmorpg model in general i suggest you stop playing mmorpg, because no game will not look like a clone to you.
I mean I've played the go to ! go to ? game too many times. I didn't say anything about any other mmorpg pleasing me or that i think one will. I don't care if the dev team never claimed it wasn't a ! and ? game or anything like that. it is and, for me, it suffers because of it.
It is a clone, by which I mean WoW clone, and a very strict clone. Not just in its concept but in it's design, features, general feel and it's progression. The combat is good. It's not a massive leap forward but its going the right direction, but that alone isn't why I would play an MMO..
Here's the facts. I was bored while playing it. There is nothing you can defend here.. it bored me. Some other MMOs don't bore me. I'm not saying everyone will find it boring.
If the weapon thing doesn't bother you, fine. It bothers me though, I consider it a massive shortcoming. That was just one example of where choice is limited in the game, there are many more.. only being able to customize your face but nothing else and not choosing any skills are others. The appearance of armor sets are almost entirely determined by the body piece making it hard to create varied looks. A specific piece of armor doesn't look the same on a Human as it would on a Aman. Yes, I understand the 3D models are different but the armor looks drasticaly different on other races, as in a completely different piece of armor, not just reshaped or rehashed. The armor design does look great though, but it's all predetermined for you due to the dominant chest piece and your race. If you can't make your character your own then it's just not very immersive, in my opinion.
I also thought there are too many consumables with random effects, it didn't appeal to me but I can see some people liking that, I just found it a pain. Making you/encouraging you to stand by a campfire every now and then was also something I didn't enjoy. Whatever reason they have for it, doesn't matter, it made the game feel worse to me and I felt fed up each time I had to do it.
I went into this game with an open mind. I've never trashed the game in the past and I'm not trashing it now. I was looking forward to it. I tried it. I didn't like it. Sorry, there's nothing I can do about it. Making out I'm burnt out on MMOs and trying to find excuses doesn't change the effect TERA had on me. It's not for me.
Guess Tera isn't for you than. Hope you find something that suit your taste.
Although i have to disagree on WoW clone, all mmorpg have those elements, WoW copy it off other mmorpg before it. WoW isn't the first mmorpg that set those standards so i wish people stop calling thing WoW clone unless your talking about allod where they completely take everything.
Tera has no faction, differen't combat, Open world FFA pvp, different polictial system, guild wars, soon server vs server and massive PvE event call nexus. So no its not a WoW clone. Unless you want to start talking about Core mmorpg elements than all mmorpg have those in some way shape or form.
The WoW clone bit is a lost battle (and a really heavily beaten dead horse). I've seen EVE called a WoW clone on these forums, so everything is a WoW clone according to some people.
From my limited time with the CB, my impression of Tera is that of a generic questing experience with combat mechanics offering a tad more engaging gameplay.
However, one of my major gripes with the combat is the constant rooting of your character whenever a skill is activated. To me, it takes away the sense of dynamic gameplay from an otherwise innovative twist on standard MMO combat. Rooting your character in-place during the animation is fine for certain skills (high dmg/healing etc.) but not for every skill in your arsenal!
With that said, Tera is not a terrible game and my impressions are based on a lvl 16 char's point of view, maybe my issues with the game are remedied at higher levels?
* Waves at Pushkina *
Everything is a pong clone, best and most hardcore game ever. Also the first.
No idea why so much hate, playing my first CBT weekend and I lvled 2 char to lvl 27, mystic and lancer. The fights are very dynamic I really don't understand those who cry about the "root" part of the fight as you kinda end up running and moving 95% of the time spent fighting... I'm gonna be playing every weekend , EU and NA ^^