I'm not saying he isn't allowed to have his opinion of the game, by all means come on here and say your beta experience was shit. But to call it a 'review' and try to pass it off as a proper review with a rating when he hasn't played the end game is a joke.
Don't even get me started on how terrible the 'suggestions' were.
The suggestions were to turn TERA into a Sandbox game...
Why can't the sandbox fans look foward to ArcheAge like I, and many others are?
Stop trying to turn games into things they are not, there is no way they could suddenly make TERA into a sandbox.
Oh a review for an upcoming MMO from someone who hasnt played the end game.
I give your review a 1/10, and I think I am being generous.
for me i think big name review sites shouldn't be giving out scores till they experience endgame. But for the average person who isn't getting paid to write a review why should they need to?
So basically if I hate a game from the start I should force myself to push through for weeks on end to reach endgame were its fun?
If the person is reviewing endgame stuff without experience it obviously that's one thing but to give an impressions review after any amount of time from a player is valid to me. If a game doesn't grab a person within the starter area or shortly after it I feel the game fails in many ways. With so many games out there it really should be a developers goal to draw a player in within the first 10 levels and if a game fails to do this I think its a huge mistake.
I always find it humorous people here say you cannot base an opinion on a game till you played X amount of hours or got to X level. To me this is bullcrap and if a game fails to be any sort of fun from start to finish for someone they have every right ot review it on this basis. Doesn't matter if its an MMO or single player game.
I'm not saying he isn't allowed to have his opinion of the game, by all means come on here and say your beta experience was shit. But to call it a 'review' and try to pass it off as a proper review with a rating when he hasn't played the end game is a joke.
Don't even get me started on how terrible the 'suggestions' were.
well it does say final "impressions" also at least he tried to say what he would like to see changed.. many people would just come here a post game sucks another asian grindfest or whatever and leave it at that..
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
I'm not saying he isn't allowed to have his opinion of the game, by all means come on here and say your beta experience was shit. But to call it a 'review' and try to pass it off as a proper review with a rating when he hasn't played the end game is a joke.
Don't even get me started on how terrible the 'suggestions' were.
The suggestions were to turn TERA into a Sandbox game...
Why can't the sandbox fans look foward to ArcheAge like I, and many others are?
Stop trying to turn games into things they are not, there is no way they could suddenly make TERA into a sandbox.
no one knows when or even IF AA will even be out outside korea.. Sure it will be but who knows when.. me personally have been looking forward ot some sort of themepark game with more sandbox elements blended in..
also the argument you can't have sandbox type features in a themepark MMO is so close minded and ludacrous unfortnuatly the dev's seems to feel this way in many games but in the end most those games fail in the end.. wonder why that is?
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
I'm not saying he isn't allowed to have his opinion of the game, by all means come on here and say your beta experience was shit. But to call it a 'review' and try to pass it off as a proper review with a rating when he hasn't played the end game is a joke.
Don't even get me started on how terrible the 'suggestions' were.
The suggestions were to turn TERA into a Sandbox game...
Why can't the sandbox fans look foward to ArcheAge like I, and many others are?
Stop trying to turn games into things they are not, there is no way they could suddenly make TERA into a sandbox.
The suggestions werent to turn it into a sandbox, they were just to make it so you can powerlevel more efficiently than through questing.
Judging any MMO just by a few hours impression is just wrong.
Anyway... I do not care for the leveling/PvE/different combat part, if it has the PvP right (just as L2) then that alone will be worth it for me and many others.
A good game should have you interested from the start. If the first 10 levels are so boring that you don't want to play past level 8 because you just don't care, then it's likely you're not going to play past level 8. I didn't particularily like Tera that much - I didn't hate it either, it was just kind of yeah it's a korean style mmo with reasonable xp gain for questing and killing mobs. It'll definitely find its place in the market but I'll wait for GW2 or TSW myself based on my experience with the game.
To be fair it was a "First Impressions", not a review.
And knowing how devastating Fadeds posts about Rift and Tor were to me this score actually isn´t that bad.
Not first impression, final impression, which means your done with the game and its pretty much an review.
And some of the stuff he pointed out is what other people like and he completely ignore entire section of the game which is the PvP. And Sustainability is not about quest, we all saw how sustainable SWTOR was with its quest, it last them 2 week before they ran out of thing to do, Sustainability is end game contant not lvl progression.
no one knows when or even IF AA will even be out outside korea.. Sure it will be but who knows when.. me personally have been looking forward ot some sort of themepark game with more sandbox elements blended in..
also the argument you can't have sandbox type features in a themepark MMO is so close minded and ludacrous unfortnuatly the dev's seems to feel this way in many games but in the end most those games fail in the end.. wonder why that is?
you CAN have sandbox features in a themepark game, of course you can, never said you couldn't, however he wants to REMOVE themepark elements for the sake of sandbox ones.
That makes no sense, the time it takes for them to revamp the questing so it is gone and rework the game so it plays more like FFXI or UO or ArcheAge when it comes to combat / leveling, another game would already be out. It is simply impossible.
Lots of games add in sandbox elements after the fact, don't know why you say otherwise... Aion is adding in player housing now, FFXIV is adding in player housing, lots of games have sandboxy elements, look at guild wars 2's open world exploration rewards for doing things like platform jumping and avoiding traps and such...
I'm not saying he isn't allowed to have his opinion of the game, by all means come on here and say your beta experience was shit. But to call it a 'review' and try to pass it off as a proper review with a rating when he hasn't played the end game is a joke.
Don't even get me started on how terrible the 'suggestions' were.
The suggestions were to turn TERA into a Sandbox game...
Why can't the sandbox fans look foward to ArcheAge like I, and many others are?
Stop trying to turn games into things they are not, there is no way they could suddenly make TERA into a sandbox.
The suggestions werent to turn it into a sandbox, they were just to make it so you can powerlevel more efficiently than through questing.
"Move AWAY from Linear Questing into a Lineage II OR FFXI system where leveling emphasis is placed on GROUPS fighting MONSTERS"
From his review.
The only way to do that is to remove themepark elements in favor of encouraging sandboxy ones, FFXI is a rather sandboxy theme park, and very similar to UO when it comes to what you are doing when you are leveling up.
People like questing, maybe the way they did questing is dull, but to steer away from it is to discourage themepark gameplay.
I'm not saying he isn't allowed to have his opinion of the game, by all means come on here and say your beta experience was shit. But to call it a 'review' and try to pass it off as a proper review with a rating when he hasn't played the end game is a joke.
Don't even get me started on how terrible the 'suggestions' were.
The suggestions were to turn TERA into a Sandbox game...
Why can't the sandbox fans look foward to ArcheAge like I, and many others are?
Stop trying to turn games into things they are not, there is no way they could suddenly make TERA into a sandbox.
The suggestions werent to turn it into a sandbox, they were just to make it so you can powerlevel more efficiently than through questing.
"Move AWAY from Linear Questing into a Lineage II OR FFXI system where leveling emphasis is placed on GROUPS fighting MONSTERS"
From his review.
The fact he said that makes me wonder if he played to a certain level, even after stating he played 32 hours. At 20 you hit basilisks and need to group to kill 5, then 22 you need to group to kill Kumas, then Nagas then 24 you need to group to kill Naga Juggernauts...this continues throughout the game as BAM quests are everywhere, they are also all repeatable.
SWTOR = Lots of fun getting to 50, this is where the game shines. Once you get there, well, thats when the fun ends.
TERA=Lots of fun getting there if your a PvPguy/girl, questing is a means to the endgame right, its not hugely ambitious or new, it does a job, its ok. Once you get there you have loads of awesome endgame mechanics, this is where TERA shines.
This is the entire problem with TERA. It shows it's true colors too late to matter. Again, a HIGHLY flawed development choice, and only seeks to destroy a fine product otherwise.
Linear Questing needs to be a MINUTE point 1-58, and something the player has a right to choose. However, currently it is FORCED upon the player, and that isn't right.
You respond to these people but continue to ignore the fact that I pointed out it is not forcefully linear like you stated in the second post on this thread.
I'm not saying he isn't allowed to have his opinion of the game, by all means come on here and say your beta experience was shit. But to call it a 'review' and try to pass it off as a proper review with a rating when he hasn't played the end game is a joke.
Don't even get me started on how terrible the 'suggestions' were.
The suggestions were to turn TERA into a Sandbox game...
Why can't the sandbox fans look foward to ArcheAge like I, and many others are?
Stop trying to turn games into things they are not, there is no way they could suddenly make TERA into a sandbox.
The suggestions werent to turn it into a sandbox, they were just to make it so you can powerlevel more efficiently than through questing.
"Move AWAY from Linear Questing into a Lineage II OR FFXI system where leveling emphasis is placed on GROUPS fighting MONSTERS"
From his review.
The fact he said that makes me wonder if he played to a certain level, even after stating he played 32 hours. At 20 you hit basilisks and need to group to kill 5, then 22 you need to group to kill Kumas, then Nagas then 24 you need to group to kill Naga Juggernauts...this continues throughout the game as BAM quests are everywhere, they are also all repeatable.
note don't duo BAM when your half asleep not the brightest idea me and my friend had.
"Move AWAY from Linear Questing into a Lineage II OR FFXI system where leveling emphasis is placed on GROUPS fighting MONSTERS"
From his review.
The fact he said that makes me wonder if he played to a certain level, even after stating he played 32 hours. At 20 you hit basilisks and need to group to kill 5, then 22 you need to group to kill Kumas, then Nagas then 24 you need to group to kill Naga Juggernauts...this continues throughout the game as BAM quests are everywhere, they are also all repeatable.
That too, from my understanding it has that sort of sandboxy group encouraged element for those who enjoy it, which I do from time to time, I really enjoyed FFXI.
I just think that forcing people to group or encouraging it too much makes people not want to play your game, and I like keeping my friends playing the same game I am.
The reason I say group leveling is more sandboxy is because thats essentially the same thing you would be doing in a pure sandbox game to level up your skills, in UO we got a few folks together and hunted down some monsters, or we sparred, or we went out and went to a dungeon and grinded on Demons. Its the same for FFXI in terms of what you are doing to "level up" you even have skills in FFXI that sometimes you had to have a skill up party to level your skils... very much like a sand box game...
Themeparky games encourage questing, going from booth to booth and doing the games the themepark has set up.
That was a terrible review imo. Sure its his opinion, but it was a poorly made and quite frankly uninformed one.
TERA is at least a 7 overall by even a critical eye. I can't take anyone seriously who rates this game below 7.
This coming from someone whose a bigger fan of GW2 (also admittedly been following TERA for a long time).
OP is complaining about mechanics that are pretty much staples of every other MMO out right now.
OP wants to play GW2, not TERA.
Seem OP complaint i doubt he like GW2 or even any other mmorpg. I think he just need to play something else and take break from mmorpg period for a period of time.
I'm not sure I agree with the "do away with linear questing" because we're talking about MMORPGs rather than MMOs. There's a difference of role-playing between the two. A standard MMO would be the multiplayer aspect of Call of Duty. Massively Multiplayer Online. The thing about a Role-Playing game is that, of course, you're playing a role of a hero/heroine. MMORPGs will always have a standard format and abolishing "linear questing" would likely hinder the genre.
What could be suggested to put into it's place? Dynamic questing? If people aren't led into other areas by these quests, they'll stay in one zone/location and wait for their dynamic quests "pop up" or w/e the method of retrieval may be. RPGs are typically about amazing stories that come unfolded over, usually, a long period of time. It's much easier to be immersed into pre-determined tasks (if you consider the fact you may've created multiple toons and be going through the same routine you did before) because you can add story and purpose to it.
In contrast, I could see the idea where you could go to w/e zone you wish to go to and begin questing there but since WoW was used as a reference to "if i wanted to linear quest i'd play wow" then that would be considered linear questing anyways. The fact of the matter betwen all MMORPGs is which of these can pull off all of the traditional mechanics efficiently and add their own style to them. You could be doing the same thing as another MMORPG but add enough of a twist in style and play to make it feel different and possibily more appealing. I believe Tera is a beautiful game, the combat is fun, graphics and environment are well done and a lot of the mechanics work well with one another. Comparing it to another game just causes problems, but comparing it to the traditional MMORPG idea seems more realistic. When you play it for 4 hours and don't like it so you return to your game of 7 years, it sounds like home-sickness. I'm not saying Tera is perfect, no game really is, but in its own sense, it's a great game to me.
I'm not saying he isn't allowed to have his opinion of the game, by all means come on here and say your beta experience was shit. But to call it a 'review' and try to pass it off as a proper review with a rating when he hasn't played the end game is a joke.
Don't even get me started on how terrible the 'suggestions' were.
The suggestions were to turn TERA into a Sandbox game...
Why can't the sandbox fans look foward to ArcheAge like I, and many others are?
Stop trying to turn games into things they are not, there is no way they could suddenly make TERA into a sandbox.
The suggestions werent to turn it into a sandbox, they were just to make it so you can powerlevel more efficiently than through questing.
"Move AWAY from Linear Questing into a Lineage II OR FFXI system where leveling emphasis is placed on GROUPS fighting MONSTERS"
From his review.
The only way to do that is to remove themepark elements in favor of encouraging sandboxy ones, FFXI is a rather sandboxy theme park, and very similar to UO when it comes to what you are doing when you are leveling up.
People like questing, maybe the way they did questing is dull, but to steer away from it is to discourage themepark gameplay.
Fighting heroic / group mobs to level up isnt a sandbox characteristic. Plenty of themeparks including SWTOR have leveling options with heroic / group encounters instead of soloing / questing.
To be fair it was a "First Impressions", not a review.
And knowing how devastating Fadeds posts about Rift and Tor were to me this score actually isn´t that bad.
to be fair it is a "final impressions" thread, from a poster who starts a new i hate tera thread every day. faded, we get it you dont like tera. don't play it. but dont write an impressions review comparing it to other games. let it stand on it's own and talk about what it does well and what it doesnt. part of giving a review is being un-biased imo. and the "impression" i get is that you are very very biased.
To be fair it was a "First Impressions", not a review.
And knowing how devastating Fadeds posts about Rift and Tor were to me this score actually isn´t that bad.
to be fair it is a "final impressions" thread, from a poster who starts a new i hate tera thread every day. faded, we get it you dont like tera. don't play it. but dont write an impressions review comparing it to other games. let it stand on it's own and talk about what it does well and what it doesnt. part of giving a review is being un-biased imo. and the "impression" i get is that you are very very biased.
Since when have I ever stated I "hated" TERA? Never, I said I was disappointed with the Linear route they took for 1-35 gameplay, and then "apparently" the game opens up into a Sandpark end-game.
To me, and essentially everyone I play with, this was a terrible idea. Even for the WoW players in our group they said it was ALSO a bad idea. A player shouldn't have to WAIT until end-game to have FUN with a product they're paying for. If TERA were F2P I wouldn't be posting anything about TERA other than "Hey, it's F2P, don't expect much! " given that I DO actually dispise the F2P model of targeting your WALLET rather than the player enjoying themselves.
With that said, you're wrong about how impressions HAVE to be un-biased. The very nature of giving an IMPRESSION is to share your opinion based on prior experience with the market. It in and of itself is a BIASED opinion. Do you REALLY think the guys over at IGN gave an UNBIASED review of SWTOR being a 9? No, and I won't force myself to give a review of a product that it doesn't deserve.
Furthermore, a "Final Impression" thread is just that. a FINAL impression of a product before it releases. Thus, any further threads I make that judge the game will be a REVIEW and NOT what can be considered a "Preview" or Impressions thread.
Although I do get a TON of positive feedback in PM's and in the threads themselves about my threads pointing out positives & negatives about a product I fully understand that most of the time people will simply post a reply based on how they FEEL at a given moment, and not really posting with a logical thought out opinion. As a previous poster stated they didn't feel so bad about the scores I gave TERA considering my very LOW opinion of SWTOR & Rift.
Lastly, from my experience with MMOs over the past 15years I can definitively say that 32hrs, and reaching the CAP for CBT#2 (lvl 27), on my Popori Slayer was well enough playtime to get a feel for what TERA really is about. Members that claim that not having played "end-game" & max level yet that I cannot give a proper final impression of the game, and they are the individuals thinking with how they FEEL towards TERA (ie: they want it to succeed) and not with a logical standpoint from previous experiences.
I also did NOT claim ANYWHERE that TERA should become a sandbox. Lineage II was NOT a sandbox, and DAOC was NOT a sandbox, and FFXI is NOT a sandbox. They are SandPARKS, a mix between Sandbox & Themepark. This is what TERA was thought to be, and has elements to harken back to all 3 products, but primarily force the player early & mid-game ot linear quest which is a BAD design to go with. I pointed this out, and some of the more emotional individuals didn't like it. For that I am sorry, but I will not shade my experience into a color it doesn't deserve.
TERA is NOT:
-A Sandbox.
-A Sandpark until late to end game.
-Not the next "saviour" of MMOs (seriously, what's the point of this phrase popping up nowadays?)
-Will not tide you over for more than 3 to 6 months depending on past games you've played to death.
-Fun until mid to late game as early to mid game is all linear grinding. Be prepared to be bored & grind for quite a long time to get to the "fun bits".
TERA IS:
-A Decent representation of world-pvp on PVP servers. I found Guild Wars especially fun for random encounters.
-A decent game past lvl 35 or 40, or so I'm told repeatedly by players i KNOW love sandboxes/sandparks whom play kTERA.
-A good representation of how MMOs should go in terms of its Combat Engine. The combat was pretty much the only enjoyable feature of this product.
Just make sure that if you DO plan to play TERA that you do NOT go into TERA expecting something it isn't. That has always been my core philosophy when writing critical threads about ANY product. As long as you KNOW what to expect it generally doesn't piss you off as much as it would normally had you bought into all the Hype.
I try to be as objective as possible when writing things like this, or at least MORE objective than sites like IGN etc. However, I'm only human, and part of what it means to write a "First, Second, Last" Impression OR Review is that you're already going to be biased based on your past experiences. It is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to be unbiased in a product review of any kind.
Kind Regards,
-Fadedbomb
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity: Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
[mod edit] I've found it to be an amazing tool to socialize with other players. I've met a lot of cool people waiting for a bit of stam to regen or sitting next to someone's fire. It was like this in SWG, too. Also, he talks about perma-items that never break, but he doesn't realize that very, very expensive crystals (late game) can break on death. Or the huge money sinks in enchanting.... [mod edit]
[mod edit]
TERA is a niche game and not for the faint of heart. I sincerely hope it does not attract a huge NA audience, because that will turn the game from innovation and creativity, to a money-grab where changes are dictated because of financial pressures to keep a money-train rolling. Bad players that expect everything at once and those gen-Y kids that grew up with a gimme-now mentality [mod edit] are the ones that ruin great games!
The one reason why I won't touch this game is because of the Xserver dungeon finder, no way in hell am I going through that nightmare again.
Also I don't really like the idea of the entire game being instanced (channels)...I like "true" open worlds where everyone is in the same place. If it means you'll lag from time to time or that you'll have a hard time finishing quests the first couple weeks after launch, so be it. I play these games for the "massive" part mostly. SWTOR showed me that sharding kills the MMO feel...to me at least.
Other than that the game looks pretty promising, I understand why so many are excited about it.
The one reason why I won't touch this game is because of the Xserver dungeon finder, no way in hell am I going through that nightmare again.
Also I don't really like the idea of the entire game being instanced (channels)...I like "true" open worlds where everyone is in the same place. If it means you'll lag from time to time or that you'll have a hard time finishing quests the first couple weeks after launch, so be it. I play these games for the "massive" part mostly. SWTOR showed me that sharding kills the MMO feel...to me at least.
Other than that the game looks pretty promising, I understand why so many are excited about it.
I too felt the same way about SWTOR's over-use of instancing (sharding), and many people I speak to about SWTOR mention this as a major downside to the game whether or not they liked or hated SWTOR wasn't a distinguishing factor.
I also see the appeal of many aspects of TERA, however the overall presentation of TERA is too much to ignore in order to reach the "fun part".
At the end of the day I believe SWTOR showed the market what NOT to do in terms of eliminating the "Massive" aspect of an MMO.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity: Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
For the most part I agree with the OP's review, although I would go a bit higher on the score, say about 6 or so. The art style gets about a 5 from me because the overall look of the game world is really nice and lush and colorful and a few of the races look decent but the rest of the art design is filled with such awful, cutesy, goofy ass looking elements that I can't stand it for very long.
The quest design and story delivery mechanics are really bare bones and boring.
The combat was decent but not as exciting or dynamic as I was hoping.
Comments
The suggestions were to turn TERA into a Sandbox game...
Why can't the sandbox fans look foward to ArcheAge like I, and many others are?
Stop trying to turn games into things they are not, there is no way they could suddenly make TERA into a sandbox.
well it does say final "impressions" also at least he tried to say what he would like to see changed.. many people would just come here a post game sucks another asian grindfest or whatever and leave it at that..
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
The pvp is fun, very fun. But then again m ost carebears on this server who hate griefing will object me on this.
no one knows when or even IF AA will even be out outside korea.. Sure it will be but who knows when.. me personally have been looking forward ot some sort of themepark game with more sandbox elements blended in..
also the argument you can't have sandbox type features in a themepark MMO is so close minded and ludacrous unfortnuatly the dev's seems to feel this way in many games but in the end most those games fail in the end.. wonder why that is?
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
The suggestions werent to turn it into a sandbox, they were just to make it so you can powerlevel more efficiently than through questing.
A good game should have you interested from the start. If the first 10 levels are so boring that you don't want to play past level 8 because you just don't care, then it's likely you're not going to play past level 8. I didn't particularily like Tera that much - I didn't hate it either, it was just kind of yeah it's a korean style mmo with reasonable xp gain for questing and killing mobs. It'll definitely find its place in the market but I'll wait for GW2 or TSW myself based on my experience with the game.
Not first impression, final impression, which means your done with the game and its pretty much an review.
And some of the stuff he pointed out is what other people like and he completely ignore entire section of the game which is the PvP. And Sustainability is not about quest, we all saw how sustainable SWTOR was with its quest, it last them 2 week before they ran out of thing to do, Sustainability is end game contant not lvl progression.
you CAN have sandbox features in a themepark game, of course you can, never said you couldn't, however he wants to REMOVE themepark elements for the sake of sandbox ones.
That makes no sense, the time it takes for them to revamp the questing so it is gone and rework the game so it plays more like FFXI or UO or ArcheAge when it comes to combat / leveling, another game would already be out. It is simply impossible.
Lots of games add in sandbox elements after the fact, don't know why you say otherwise... Aion is adding in player housing now, FFXIV is adding in player housing, lots of games have sandboxy elements, look at guild wars 2's open world exploration rewards for doing things like platform jumping and avoiding traps and such...
"Move AWAY from Linear Questing into a Lineage II OR FFXI system where leveling emphasis is placed on GROUPS fighting MONSTERS"
From his review.
The only way to do that is to remove themepark elements in favor of encouraging sandboxy ones, FFXI is a rather sandboxy theme park, and very similar to UO when it comes to what you are doing when you are leveling up.
People like questing, maybe the way they did questing is dull, but to steer away from it is to discourage themepark gameplay.
The fact he said that makes me wonder if he played to a certain level, even after stating he played 32 hours. At 20 you hit basilisks and need to group to kill 5, then 22 you need to group to kill Kumas, then Nagas then 24 you need to group to kill Naga Juggernauts...this continues throughout the game as BAM quests are everywhere, they are also all repeatable.
You respond to these people but continue to ignore the fact that I pointed out it is not forcefully linear like you stated in the second post on this thread.
note don't duo BAM when your half asleep not the brightest idea me and my friend had.
That too, from my understanding it has that sort of sandboxy group encouraged element for those who enjoy it, which I do from time to time, I really enjoyed FFXI.
I just think that forcing people to group or encouraging it too much makes people not want to play your game, and I like keeping my friends playing the same game I am.
The reason I say group leveling is more sandboxy is because thats essentially the same thing you would be doing in a pure sandbox game to level up your skills, in UO we got a few folks together and hunted down some monsters, or we sparred, or we went out and went to a dungeon and grinded on Demons. Its the same for FFXI in terms of what you are doing to "level up" you even have skills in FFXI that sometimes you had to have a skill up party to level your skils... very much like a sand box game...
Themeparky games encourage questing, going from booth to booth and doing the games the themepark has set up.
Sandboxy's want you want make your own adventure.
That was a terrible review imo. Sure its his opinion, but it was a poorly made and quite frankly uninformed one.
TERA is at least a 7 overall by even a critical eye. I can't take anyone seriously who rates this game below 7.
This coming from someone whose a bigger fan of GW2 (also admittedly been following TERA for a long time).
OP is complaining about mechanics that are pretty much staples of every other MMO out right now.
OP wants to play GW2, not TERA.
Seem OP complaint i doubt he like GW2 or even any other mmorpg. I think he just need to play something else and take break from mmorpg period for a period of time.
I'm not sure I agree with the "do away with linear questing" because we're talking about MMORPGs rather than MMOs. There's a difference of role-playing between the two. A standard MMO would be the multiplayer aspect of Call of Duty. Massively Multiplayer Online. The thing about a Role-Playing game is that, of course, you're playing a role of a hero/heroine. MMORPGs will always have a standard format and abolishing "linear questing" would likely hinder the genre.
What could be suggested to put into it's place? Dynamic questing? If people aren't led into other areas by these quests, they'll stay in one zone/location and wait for their dynamic quests "pop up" or w/e the method of retrieval may be. RPGs are typically about amazing stories that come unfolded over, usually, a long period of time. It's much easier to be immersed into pre-determined tasks (if you consider the fact you may've created multiple toons and be going through the same routine you did before) because you can add story and purpose to it.
In contrast, I could see the idea where you could go to w/e zone you wish to go to and begin questing there but since WoW was used as a reference to "if i wanted to linear quest i'd play wow" then that would be considered linear questing anyways. The fact of the matter betwen all MMORPGs is which of these can pull off all of the traditional mechanics efficiently and add their own style to them. You could be doing the same thing as another MMORPG but add enough of a twist in style and play to make it feel different and possibily more appealing. I believe Tera is a beautiful game, the combat is fun, graphics and environment are well done and a lot of the mechanics work well with one another. Comparing it to another game just causes problems, but comparing it to the traditional MMORPG idea seems more realistic. When you play it for 4 hours and don't like it so you return to your game of 7 years, it sounds like home-sickness. I'm not saying Tera is perfect, no game really is, but in its own sense, it's a great game to me.
<a href="http://www.enjin.com/"; alt="gw2 guild hosting"><img src="http://sigs.enjin.com/sig-gw2/0373e9d4bd309bce.png"></a>;
Fighting heroic / group mobs to level up isnt a sandbox characteristic. Plenty of themeparks including SWTOR have leveling options with heroic / group encounters instead of soloing / questing.
to be fair it is a "final impressions" thread, from a poster who starts a new i hate tera thread every day. faded, we get it you dont like tera. don't play it. but dont write an impressions review comparing it to other games. let it stand on it's own and talk about what it does well and what it doesnt. part of giving a review is being un-biased imo. and the "impression" i get is that you are very very biased.
I've got the straight edge.
It is funny that I came to the same conclusion from a list made by a player on the korean servers.
Because you're a genius!
Since when have I ever stated I "hated" TERA? Never, I said I was disappointed with the Linear route they took for 1-35 gameplay, and then "apparently" the game opens up into a Sandpark end-game.
To me, and essentially everyone I play with, this was a terrible idea. Even for the WoW players in our group they said it was ALSO a bad idea. A player shouldn't have to WAIT until end-game to have FUN with a product they're paying for. If TERA were F2P I wouldn't be posting anything about TERA other than "Hey, it's F2P, don't expect much!
" given that I DO actually dispise the F2P model of targeting your WALLET rather than the player enjoying themselves.
With that said, you're wrong about how impressions HAVE to be un-biased. The very nature of giving an IMPRESSION is to share your opinion based on prior experience with the market. It in and of itself is a BIASED opinion. Do you REALLY think the guys over at IGN gave an UNBIASED review of SWTOR being a 9? No, and I won't force myself to give a review of a product that it doesn't deserve.
Furthermore, a "Final Impression" thread is just that. a FINAL impression of a product before it releases. Thus, any further threads I make that judge the game will be a REVIEW and NOT what can be considered a "Preview" or Impressions thread.
Although I do get a TON of positive feedback in PM's and in the threads themselves about my threads pointing out positives & negatives about a product I fully understand that most of the time people will simply post a reply based on how they FEEL at a given moment, and not really posting with a logical thought out opinion. As a previous poster stated they didn't feel so bad about the scores I gave TERA considering my very LOW opinion of SWTOR & Rift.
Lastly, from my experience with MMOs over the past 15years I can definitively say that 32hrs, and reaching the CAP for CBT#2 (lvl 27), on my Popori Slayer was well enough playtime to get a feel for what TERA really is about. Members that claim that not having played "end-game" & max level yet that I cannot give a proper final impression of the game, and they are the individuals thinking with how they FEEL towards TERA (ie: they want it to succeed) and not with a logical standpoint from previous experiences.
I also did NOT claim ANYWHERE that TERA should become a sandbox. Lineage II was NOT a sandbox, and DAOC was NOT a sandbox, and FFXI is NOT a sandbox. They are SandPARKS, a mix between Sandbox & Themepark. This is what TERA was thought to be, and has elements to harken back to all 3 products, but primarily force the player early & mid-game ot linear quest which is a BAD design to go with. I pointed this out, and some of the more emotional individuals didn't like it. For that I am sorry, but I will not shade my experience into a color it doesn't deserve.
TERA is NOT:
-A Sandbox.
-A Sandpark until late to end game.
-Not the next "saviour" of MMOs (seriously, what's the point of this phrase popping up nowadays?)
-Will not tide you over for more than 3 to 6 months depending on past games you've played to death.
-Fun until mid to late game as early to mid game is all linear grinding. Be prepared to be bored & grind for quite a long time to get to the "fun bits".
TERA IS:
-A Decent representation of world-pvp on PVP servers. I found Guild Wars especially fun for random encounters.
-A decent game past lvl 35 or 40, or so I'm told repeatedly by players i KNOW love sandboxes/sandparks whom play kTERA.
-A good representation of how MMOs should go in terms of its Combat Engine. The combat was pretty much the only enjoyable feature of this product.
Just make sure that if you DO plan to play TERA that you do NOT go into TERA expecting something it isn't. That has always been my core philosophy when writing critical threads about ANY product. As long as you KNOW what to expect it generally doesn't piss you off as much as it would normally had you bought into all the Hype.
I try to be as objective as possible when writing things like this, or at least MORE objective than sites like IGN etc. However, I'm only human, and part of what it means to write a "First, Second, Last" Impression OR Review is that you're already going to be biased based on your past experiences. It is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to be unbiased in a product review of any kind.
Kind Regards,
-Fadedbomb
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
[mod edit] I've found it to be an amazing tool to socialize with other players. I've met a lot of cool people waiting for a bit of stam to regen or sitting next to someone's fire. It was like this in SWG, too. Also, he talks about perma-items that never break, but he doesn't realize that very, very expensive crystals (late game) can break on death. Or the huge money sinks in enchanting.... [mod edit]
[mod edit]
TERA is a niche game and not for the faint of heart. I sincerely hope it does not attract a huge NA audience, because that will turn the game from innovation and creativity, to a money-grab where changes are dictated because of financial pressures to keep a money-train rolling. Bad players that expect everything at once and those gen-Y kids that grew up with a gimme-now mentality [mod edit] are the ones that ruin great games!
The one reason why I won't touch this game is because of the Xserver dungeon finder, no way in hell am I going through that nightmare again.
Also I don't really like the idea of the entire game being instanced (channels)...I like "true" open worlds where everyone is in the same place. If it means you'll lag from time to time or that you'll have a hard time finishing quests the first couple weeks after launch, so be it. I play these games for the "massive" part mostly. SWTOR showed me that sharding kills the MMO feel...to me at least.
Other than that the game looks pretty promising, I understand why so many are excited about it.
I too felt the same way about SWTOR's over-use of instancing (sharding), and many people I speak to about SWTOR mention this as a major downside to the game whether or not they liked or hated SWTOR wasn't a distinguishing factor.
I also see the appeal of many aspects of TERA, however the overall presentation of TERA is too much to ignore in order to reach the "fun part".
At the end of the day I believe SWTOR showed the market what NOT to do in terms of eliminating the "Massive" aspect of an MMO.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
For the most part I agree with the OP's review, although I would go a bit higher on the score, say about 6 or so. The art style gets about a 5 from me because the overall look of the game world is really nice and lush and colorful and a few of the races look decent but the rest of the art design is filled with such awful, cutesy, goofy ass looking elements that I can't stand it for very long.
The quest design and story delivery mechanics are really bare bones and boring.
The combat was decent but not as exciting or dynamic as I was hoping.
In the end, Tera is not a purchase for me.