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.
What makes it not like a sandbox game play?
Again, I listed off evidence as to why it is, and you just said "no its not" no evidence. Please provide some.
Let me explain again why it is
Sandbox game - you go out grind skills and kill monsters to kill harder monsters without any real guide as to where to go and why you are doing it, generally you do this with a group of people, or you will probably die repeatedly ala UO.
Themepark game with sandbox combat elements - you go out and grind skills and kill harder and harder monsters without any real guide as to where to go and why you are doing it, generally with a group of people or you will die repeatedly ala FFXI.
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.
Sharding as in Server channeling?
A Shard is typicaly what you refer to a server as... for instance RIFT which was using it as a nod to UO, which was doing it because of THIS cinematic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBeA6JHkV1I
Server channeling is actually very awesome, do you want to lag a whole crap ton with an insane drop on your FPS? Perhaps you enjoy competing for every single little monster you encounter because there are about 500 other people in that zone trying to just quest, or grind monsters for that mater.
Channeling is not the problem, perhaps the implimentation of it is.
Instancing did not kill game play, you just need to use it right.
I think they do the ch pretty well, i heard in higher lvl area from the korean player there is no ch because ch are based on population and i do believe they change base on amount of people. CBT1 island of dawn started with 4ch in the first 5mins and 10mins later there was freaken 29ch ofc go back next day it was down to maybe 5-7. So i think that good, when there lot of people put in more ch but when its empty take them away. And ya 1ch is bad because start of CBT2 the area right after island of dawn had only 1ch and people were stuck there for 30-60mins trying to finish 3 quest.
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.
Albeit a LOT shorter than my review, you summed it up fairly well. I also enjoy reading other people's opinions & scores of a game as long as they're pretty fair.
Albeit, for me personally considering all the MMOs I've played over the years, my score was fairly low. I completely agree that for others it probably is a 5 or a 6 .
At the end of the day the entire point of a Preview, Review, or Impression is done in order for the average consumer to really have a thought provoking experience to consider if that product is what they thought it would be, or if it really isn't something they want to spend money on.
A fair opinion in any case !
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity: Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
I think they do the ch pretty well, i heard in higher lvl area from the korean player there is no ch because ch are based on population and i do believe they change base on amount of people. CBT1 island of dawn started with 4ch in the first 5mins and 10mins later there was freaken 29ch ofc go back next day it was down to maybe 5-7. So i think that good, when there lot of people put in more ch but when its empty take them away. And ya 1ch is bad because start of CBT2 the area right after island of dawn had only 1ch and people were stuck there for 30-60mins trying to finish 3 quest.
Well the point I made was that instancing, and "channelling", wouldn't have been necesarry had the game given alternative ways to progress through the game rather than restricting players to a specific path that push everyone onto the same path in order to move on.
Again, it's just something I feel could have been avoided had design choices been done differently as I've yet to see instancing (channeling, etc) done correclty. In fact, the only relatively close to "proper" use of instancing that I've ever experience would have to be "Epic Quests" for a specific class's epic weapon/item. Having to spend months trying to kill a mob is no fun when everyone in the world is trying to kill it, and instant respawning such an important mob isn't a very rewarding feeling for a player. So, I suppose instancing is good for the end of a very rare quest. However, instancing your entire gameworld based on population has never been a good idea as far as I've seen .
-Faded
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.
Albeit a LOT shorter than my review, you summed it up fairly well. I also enjoy reading other people's opinions & scores of a game as long as they're pretty fair.
Albeit, for me personally considering all the MMOs I've played over the years, my score was fairly low. I completely agree that for others it probably is a 5 or a 6 .
At the end of the day the entire point of a Preview, Review, or Impression is done in order for the average consumer to really have a thought provoking experience to consider if that product is what they thought it would be, or if it really isn't something they want to spend money on.
A fair opinion in any case !
Exactly that's his opinion and yours..
I don't get why people feel the need to post reviews of a game that they have no intention of playing except to discourage other people from playing it also because they didn't like it....
Maybe you were trying to help people decide if they wanted to play it or not I don't know some of your review I think is harsh but that's just my opinion....
I just hope we don't see you in every TERA post saying how much you don't like the game and how other people shouldn't because you didn't because that seems the norm nowdays....
I liked it and pre-ordered but that's just me I'm sorry you didn't but hopefully you will find an MMO you will enjoy....
I don't get why people feel the need to post a review of a game that they have no intention of playing what's the point except to try and discourage other people from playing it?
But that IS the reason, OP thinks hes saving us from making a terrible choice, hes our hero.
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.
Albeit a LOT shorter than my review, you summed it up fairly well. I also enjoy reading other people's opinions & scores of a game as long as they're pretty fair.
Albeit, for me personally considering all the MMOs I've played over the years, my score was fairly low. I completely agree that for others it probably is a 5 or a 6 .
At the end of the day the entire point of a Preview, Review, or Impression is done in order for the average consumer to really have a thought provoking experience to consider if that product is what they thought it would be, or if it really isn't something they want to spend money on.
A fair opinion in any case !
Exactly that's his opinion and yours..
I don't get why people feel the need to post reviews of a game that they have no intention of playing except to discourage other people from playing it also because they didn't like it....
Maybe you were trying to help people decide if they wanted to play it or not I don't know some of your review I think is harsh but that's just my opinion....
I just hope we don't see you in every TERA post saying how much you don't like the game and how other people shouldn't because you didn't because that seems the norm nowdays....
I liked it and pre-ordered but that's just me I'm sorry you didn't but hopefully you will find an MMO you will enjoy....
I had every intention of "Playing" & "Buying" TERA until the last 3 CBT's I was a part of (EU + US CBT1 & 2).
I wrote this in order to give valuable feedback from an opinion perspective of a player "impression" or "Preview". I've met quite a few people who ignore mainstream "Review" sites like IGN due to the fact that they're generally paid off for their strangely glowing reviews of a specific product regardless of all the negative feedback that comes on launch or thereafter.
I find it strange that because an opinion differs from their own that it somehow invalidates it, and means it shouldn't have been posted to begin with even though that in itself is the whole point of a "Preview", "Impression", or "Review".
Also, no you will not see me in every TERA post saying how much I didn't like the game. Nor have I ever directly told someone "You're wrong for thinking this is a good game". However it may have appeared in prior posts I've made I've always tried to disconnect my feelings from an opinion for a game thereby directly drawing from past experiences & what I experienced in a specific product.
Let's be very clear here.
An opinion is: "I dislike this game because it is a Linear-HandHolding-Quest style of leveling".
A Fact is: "The game primarily uses Linear Questing to advance a player through the game towards end-game".
While it IS true that towards the "End" of TERA (specifically 35-58) people tend to spam instances & BAMs in order to level so they can get away from all that linearness of the quests. It doesn't make it an "opinion" over how a game has decided to proceed in terms of how players may primarily progress through its content. This I've never understood why people get angry over?
Again, let's be very clear here. I did, in fact, intend to play this product until the very harsh reality of what TERA is hit me when I realized I was forcing myself to grind to end-game for the actually "Fun Bits" of TERA. That to me, wasn't something I could justify 100s of hours to justify.
Hope I cleared that up for you sir/mam !
-Faded
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity: Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
Sometimes I wonder if you played to the higher levels you claim...or didn't and are just pulling information out of your arse.
"So, in relation to other WoW-Like MMOS you CAN choose to "grind" mobs for exp, but you need to kill 20-30 challenging mobs (takes about 2minutes per mob?) in order to compete with quest rewards that take a fraction of that time. I believe at level 22 I needed 150,000 exp to go from 22 to 23. Each quest was giving out around 10-15k exp, and each monster was giving out about 500-900 exp per kill (again, monsters take about 2minutes to kill for DECENT exp, and then you have to factor in downtime with TERA's horrible rest system). Even IF you can evade getting hurt quite a bit with your class in TERA you WILL have downtime because you can't dodge/block every hit ."
Challenging mobs? What are these challenging mobs? Normal mobs take 10-20 seconds to kill and give you like 500-900xp. These certainly are not those challenging mobs you speak of...but they do give similar xp, weird.
Whereas group grinding BAMs(would these be your challenging mobs??) takes around 3-5 minutes(doesn't sound like it...) per kill and gives you 9-12k xp(nope, definately not them) with group play bonus xp at that level. Solo'ing them takes 8-15minutes.
So these "challenging mobs" you speak of don't even seem to exist...what is this conspiracy?
TERAs rest system is not bad, i've never once had a problem with it nor anyone I was grouped with all the time. Also I never had downtime because I could dodge/block enough to not lose enough health to have to sit around. With BAMs I obviously brought a healer or purchased health potions/bandages before going.
Later on (talking 25++) you can run instances with friends or groupmates for "decent" xp & items, but again the Linear questing is MUCH faster than grinding mobs.
First instance starts at level 20, second starts at 26, so both things do not relate to your 25+...I again doubt you played now passed a low level because at 25 the 20 instance does nothing and at 25 you can not enter the 26 instance.
Stamina also depletes VERY quickly by fighting monsters. This means that purely grinding on monsters isn't a valid tactic whatsoever UNLESS you spend ALL of your gold on campfires.
Campfires drop on occasion from monsters and regularly from BAMs, nevermind the fact by level 22 I had 100k gold in my invent and campfires are only 4k and the wood to extend how long they last is like 400 gold, so again, if somehow you spent all your money on campfires you were doing something very very wrong.
Faded has a nice review just from all the CBT. Things will change and progress and the game will be a lot better come release. I think people's problems, once again, is that they want the new MMO to come out that will be top of the charts right from the get-go, and when people have constructive criticism that hints that this new MMO they're looking forward to won't be that steady game they're looking for, it makes them mad.
My own opinion is this: I was in the beta for a lot of these AAA MMOs that have recently come out, and I never bothered to buy one. That doesn't mean a whole lot of people aren't having fun and will continue to have fun in these MMOs. It's just that I am also looking forward to an MMO that will be a steady #1 for a long while and I haven't played it yet.
Faded has a nice review just from all the CBT. Things will change and progress and the game will be a lot better come release. I think people's problems, once again, is that they want the new MMO to come out that will be top of the charts right from the get-go, and when people have constructive criticism that hints that this new MMO they're looking forward to won't be that steady game they're looking for, it makes them mad.
My own opinion is this: I was in the beta for a lot of these AAA MMOs that have recently come out, and I never bothered to buy one. That doesn't mean a whole lot of people aren't having fun and will continue to have fun in these MMOs. It's just that I am also looking forward to an MMO that will be a steady #1 for a long while and I haven't played it yet.
I'll say Tera community is part fault over this as well, but its becoming a reflex response. Just like almost all gamer go in to instant game defense mode whenever some one talk bad about videos games in general even if its constructive critsism. There was just too much bullshit we had to deal with by the time a person who give some legit reason come around its hard to not go in auto defence mode. I mean when you get people make the wildest assumption about the game w/o even bother to google it its pretty irrated speically when it happens about 3 time a page =
I'll say Tera community is part fault over this as well, but its becoming a reflex response. Just like almost all gamer go in to instant game defense mode whenever some one talk bad about videos games in general even if its constructive critsism. There was just too much bullshit we had to deal with by the time a person who give some legit reason come around its hard to not go in auto defence mode. I mean when you get people make the wildest assumption about the game w/o even bother to google it its pretty irrated speically when it happens about 3 time a page =
Well I still don't fully believe this review was done legitimately because many things in it do not make sense, just look at my post on the bottom of the previous page.
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.
Albeit a LOT shorter than my review, you summed it up fairly well. I also enjoy reading other people's opinions & scores of a game as long as they're pretty fair.
Albeit, for me personally considering all the MMOs I've played over the years, my score was fairly low. I completely agree that for others it probably is a 5 or a 6 .
At the end of the day the entire point of a Preview, Review, or Impression is done in order for the average consumer to really have a thought provoking experience to consider if that product is what they thought it would be, or if it really isn't something they want to spend money on.
A fair opinion in any case !
Exactly that's his opinion and yours..
I don't get why people feel the need to post reviews of a game that they have no intention of playing except to discourage other people from playing it also because they didn't like it....
Maybe you were trying to help people decide if they wanted to play it or not I don't know some of your review I think is harsh but that's just my opinion....
I just hope we don't see you in every TERA post saying how much you don't like the game and how other people shouldn't because you didn't because that seems the norm nowdays....
I liked it and pre-ordered but that's just me I'm sorry you didn't but hopefully you will find an MMO you will enjoy....
I had every intention of "Playing" & "Buying" TERA until the last 3 CBT's I was a part of (EU + US CBT1 & 2).
I wrote this in order to give valuable feedback from an opinion perspective of a player "impression" or "Preview". I've met quite a few people who ignore mainstream "Review" sites like IGN due to the fact that they're generally paid off for their strangely glowing reviews of a specific product regardless of all the negative feedback that comes on launch or thereafter.
I find it strange that because an opinion differs from their own that it somehow invalidates it, and means it shouldn't have been posted to begin with even though that in itself is the whole point of a "Preview", "Impression", or "Review".
Also, no you will not see me in every TERA post saying how much I didn't like the game. Nor have I ever directly told someone "You're wrong for thinking this is a good game". However it may have appeared in prior posts I've made I've always tried to disconnect my feelings from an opinion for a game thereby directly drawing from past experiences & what I experienced in a specific product.
Let's be very clear here.
An opinion is: "I dislike this game because it is a Linear-HandHolding-Quest style of leveling".
A Fact is: "The game primarily uses Linear Questing to advance a player through the game towards end-game".
While it IS true that towards the "End" of TERA (specifically 35-58) people tend to spam instances & BAMs in order to level so they can get away from all that linearness of the quests. It doesn't make it an "opinion" over how a game has decided to proceed in terms of how players may primarily progress through its content. This I've never understood why people get angry over?
Again, let's be very clear here. I did, in fact, intend to play this product until the very harsh reality of what TERA is hit me when I realized I was forcing myself to grind to end-game for the actually "Fun Bits" of TERA. That to me, wasn't something I could justify 100s of hours to justify.
Hope I cleared that up for you sir/mam !
-Faded
Now I do agree with some of what your saying but there is also things I don't agree with such as you labled
A Fact: the game uses Linear Questing to advance a player.....
What MMO doesn't I mean there is barely any MMO's on the market atm that don't use quests as there primary leveling I mean you can't fault TERA for just using the normal method....
Now I agree if you don't like that method and think its linear that's up to you but it just feels to me your being abit harsh with some of your review since it seems no linear to me then any other quest driven MMO....
And yes I agree I did tons of BAM's and Dungeons also because I got sick of the questing but that's also about every MMO to date.
Who doesn't run dungeons and such when they get sick of questing almost every MMO to date has way to many quests and eventually your gonna get bored and want something different....
I want to thank you though for keeping this civil at least we can agree to disagree 8)
The problem that is valid on this subject is the opening ten odd levels that have the chain that must be completed to exit the island. After this island the quests do branch slightly more but you do not have a great deal of choice until level 30+. For a game such as Tera with the interesting racial choices all locked into a single chain is poor design. All of this reinforces a "tracked" themepark ride atmosphere for the early levels and these are the very levels where the selling point of the game should be made. Because of this a low score is a fitting opinion.
I like everything about Tera except for the limited character creation and the quests.
I actually prefer instanced quests like City of Heroes. Because it makes pick up groups so much easier. The quest mean more and aren't just go kill10 things. They have actual things you do in them and everyone on the team get's exp for completing the quest/mission. With Tera's system, you only get that exp if you happen to be doing that quest someone else is doing. This makes teaming up annoying and too much trouble to bother with.
It could even be like the matrix online, where you can flag a quest as the team's quest and everyone gets exp for it if they are there and it's not instanced at all.
It's why old f2p games like Mu and Conquer worked so well. There were only a handful of quests that didn't matter. You just fought stuff. The fun can from teaming up and talking while you killed stuff. With tera you just have people running around doing mindless chores only made somewhat fun by its combat. I guess it's obvious, but if Tera had the outdated combat system, it'd just be just as boring and pointless as Aion.
I'll say Tera community is part fault over this as well, but its becoming a reflex response. Just like almost all gamer go in to instant game defense mode whenever some one talk bad about videos games in general even if its constructive critsism. There was just too much bullshit we had to deal with by the time a person who give some legit reason come around its hard to not go in auto defence mode. I mean when you get people make the wildest assumption about the game w/o even bother to google it its pretty irrated speically when it happens about 3 time a page =
Well I still don't fully believe this review was done legitimately because many things in it do not make sense, just look at my post on the bottom of the previous page.
I'm not saying I agree with the review, i have lot of points i don't agree on and some of the review is very bias toward the OP's way of thinking thats for sure. But just saying its a trend, when something gets bashed so much the community supporting it tend to go in to defence mode whenever some critisom good or bad is made about it.
Originally posted by Sojhin
To the topic of linear questing,
The problem that is valid on this subject is the opening ten odd levels that have the chain that must be completed to exit the island. After this island the quests do branch slightly more but you do not have a great deal of choice until level 30+. For a game such as Tera with the interesting racial choices all locked into a single chain is poor design. All of this reinforces a "tracked" themepark ride atmosphere for the early levels and these are the very levels where the selling point of the game should be made. Because of this a low score is a fitting opinion.
I think one way they could have better the starting was make lvl 1-20 tutorial or 1-15. So everyone start lvl 1-10 like their city or speical area for their race where they train recurits. Than lvl 10-15 they move to island of dawn for that whole thing and head out to main town at lvl 15. Island of dawn is needed for it is important background story, but i think adding something infront of it would be better. And making getting to lvl 20 for first BAM and Dungeon less boring for some. However just because the quest isn't exactly the best thing there is doesn't make a game score low, quest is only the means to an end, sure good quest helps you lvl but it doesn't retain players. Which is what a sub based mmorpg need, we all saw how only quest did for SWTOR.
Originally posted by jinxxed0
I like everything about Tera except for the limited character creation and the quests.
I actually prefer instanced quests like City of Heroes. Because it makes pick up groups so much easier. The quest mean more and aren't just go kill10 things. They have actual things you do in them and everyone on the team get's exp for completing the quest/mission. With Tera's system, you only get that exp if you happen to be doing that quest someone else is doing. This makes teaming up annoying and too much trouble to bother with.
It could even be like the matrix online, where you can flag a quest as the team's quest and everyone gets exp for it if they are there and it's not instanced at all.
It's why old f2p games like Mu and Conquer worked so well. There were only a handful of quests that didn't matter. You just fought stuff. The fun can from teaming up and talking while you killed stuff. With tera you just have people running around doing mindless chores only made somewhat fun by its combat. I guess it's obvious, but if Tera had the outdated combat system, it'd just be just as boring and pointless as Aion.
I know there is some issue with character creation but for a mmorpg its pretty good. If you want to make retard looking character than this is probably not the game for you. But over all its not bad. As for instance based quest, many people hate that, if they wanted instance based quest they could have sticked to dragon nest or vindictus. Its not hard to find some one with doing the same quest as you, you help each other finish the quest faster in groups.
Tera has those quest, they are BAM quests that require recommend you do in full pt and are repeats.
You can team up to do dungeon/BAM in tera the same way, you also team up for protection against pk or for pk as well.
Well ya, the selling point of Tera was NEW COMBAT SYSTEM. When did it try to sell itself as anything else? I think people need to get in to their thick skull the amount of money it takes to make one of these games. Its avg of probbly 50million+ thats a shit tons of money for a first time develpor like Blue Hole Studios. They don't have any sucessful preview game to draw funding upon so ofc what they can do to a game is pretty fuckign limited. They decide to focus on polishing their combat system for this new action combat style and amazing boss AI and thats what they fucking did. So with their main resource focus on that quest was left to the basic for now. Doesn't mean they can't fix it in the future which they already are because the next patch for korea revamp lvl 1-40 quests. At least quests are hella more easy to add in than trying to fix core issue with the game.
The problem that is valid on this subject is the opening ten odd levels that have the chain that must be completed to exit the island. After this island the quests do branch slightly more but you do not have a great deal of choice until level 30+. For a game such as Tera with the interesting racial choices all locked into a single chain is poor design. All of this reinforces a "tracked" themepark ride atmosphere for the early levels and these are the very levels where the selling point of the game should be made. Because of this a low score is a fitting opinion.
I do agree on this I wish they would of had Racial starting areas also but I mean what can we do now besides just deal with the hand were dealt I mean is it a game breaker for me that answer is no...
The problem that is valid on this subject is the opening ten odd levels that have the chain that must be completed to exit the island. After this island the quests do branch slightly more but you do not have a great deal of choice until level 30+. For a game such as Tera with the interesting racial choices all locked into a single chain is poor design. All of this reinforces a "tracked" themepark ride atmosphere for the early levels and these are the very levels where the selling point of the game should be made. Because of this a low score is a fitting opinion.
I do agree on this I wish they would of had Racial starting areas also but I mean what can we do now besides just deal with the hand were dealt I mean is it a game breaker for me that answer is no...
Maybe in time who knows...
This was one of my major concerns about TERA. It pretty much exemplifies the issues with the Linearized approach TERA has taken pre-30. I can't keep new clan/friend/family members interested in TERA for more than a couple hours due to horrible design flaw.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity: Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
The problem that is valid on this subject is the opening ten odd levels that have the chain that must be completed to exit the island. After this island the quests do branch slightly more but you do not have a great deal of choice until level 30+. For a game such as Tera with the interesting racial choices all locked into a single chain is poor design. All of this reinforces a "tracked" themepark ride atmosphere for the early levels and these are the very levels where the selling point of the game should be made. Because of this a low score is a fitting opinion.
I do agree on this I wish they would of had Racial starting areas also but I mean what can we do now besides just deal with the hand were dealt I mean is it a game breaker for me that answer is no...
Maybe in time who knows...
This was one of my major concerns about TERA. It pretty much exemplifies the issues with the Linearized approach TERA has taken pre-30. I can't keep new clan/friend/family members interested in TERA for more than a couple hours due to horrible design flaw.
Well current ktera patch is 1-40 quest revamp, if i guessed right we get that in obt or launch so idk maybe it be fixed by than.
MMORPG Developers will soon learn that Linear Quest Grind leveling isn't the way to draw on players anymore. Unfortunately for TERA, they didn't get the memo.
MMORPG Developers will soon learn that Linear Quest Grind leveling isn't the way to draw on players anymore. Unfortunately for TERA, they didn't get the memo.
You do realize tera wasn't developed in the past year thats its been under development since 2008.... there was no SWTOR to spoin everyone with their fancy voice over and even than if we look at SWTOR we saw how well just good quest did for them.
MMORPG Developers will soon learn that Linear Quest Grind leveling isn't the way to draw on players anymore. Unfortunately for TERA, they didn't get the memo.
Oddly enough, for me, one of the problems with TERA was the combat. Everyone seems to be really hyped and excited about it, yet I can't see it. It's slow, it's predictable, it's not fully dynamic spectacle fighting combat and it still relies on same principles as pure hotkey based MMOs do.
That combined with how boring the mobs are in early stages, doing same, slow attacks that You can just side-step from gets really repetitive after just 1-2 hours.
I realize I've only been able to see veyr early levels of gameplay, but it's those levels that decide whenever I will bother with the game later or not. I do not feel like games should "test my devotion" by throwing unimpressive content at me before I can really play the game "as intended".
Overall the game felt very alike to what I've already seen from older Asian MMOs. Same structure, similar designs, similar theme- the only things that's different is combat. While I would love to see the political system shine in it's full glory, after playing for those 20+ levels I simply do not feel like playing any more to reach the "end game". The whole late game focus is what really hurts TERA's potential. If levelling is just a pacing process before everyone can enjoy the game, why even have levels?
Comments
What makes it not like a sandbox game play?
Again, I listed off evidence as to why it is, and you just said "no its not" no evidence. Please provide some.
Let me explain again why it is
Sandbox game - you go out grind skills and kill monsters to kill harder monsters without any real guide as to where to go and why you are doing it, generally you do this with a group of people, or you will probably die repeatedly ala UO.
Themepark game with sandbox combat elements - you go out and grind skills and kill harder and harder monsters without any real guide as to where to go and why you are doing it, generally with a group of people or you will die repeatedly ala FFXI.
Whats the difference?
It IS a sandbox element.
Sharding as in Server channeling?
A Shard is typicaly what you refer to a server as... for instance RIFT which was using it as a nod to UO, which was doing it because of THIS cinematic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBeA6JHkV1I
Server channeling is actually very awesome, do you want to lag a whole crap ton with an insane drop on your FPS? Perhaps you enjoy competing for every single little monster you encounter because there are about 500 other people in that zone trying to just quest, or grind monsters for that mater.
Channeling is not the problem, perhaps the implimentation of it is.
Instancing did not kill game play, you just need to use it right.
I think they do the ch pretty well, i heard in higher lvl area from the korean player there is no ch because ch are based on population and i do believe they change base on amount of people. CBT1 island of dawn started with 4ch in the first 5mins and 10mins later there was freaken 29ch ofc go back next day it was down to maybe 5-7. So i think that good, when there lot of people put in more ch but when its empty take them away. And ya 1ch is bad because start of CBT2 the area right after island of dawn had only 1ch and people were stuck there for 30-60mins trying to finish 3 quest.
Albeit a LOT shorter than my review, you summed it up fairly well. I also enjoy reading other people's opinions & scores of a game as long as they're pretty fair.
Albeit, for me personally considering all the MMOs I've played over the years, my score was fairly low. I completely agree that for others it probably is a 5 or a 6
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At the end of the day the entire point of a Preview, Review, or Impression is done in order for the average consumer to really have a thought provoking experience to consider if that product is what they thought it would be, or if it really isn't something they want to spend money on.
A fair opinion in any case
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The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
Well the point I made was that instancing, and "channelling", wouldn't have been necesarry had the game given alternative ways to progress through the game rather than restricting players to a specific path that push everyone onto the same path in order to move on.
Again, it's just something I feel could have been avoided had design choices been done differently as I've yet to see instancing (channeling, etc) done correclty. In fact, the only relatively close to "proper" use of instancing that I've ever experience would have to be "Epic Quests" for a specific class's epic weapon/item. Having to spend months trying to kill a mob is no fun when everyone in the world is trying to kill it, and instant respawning such an important mob isn't a very rewarding feeling for a player. So, I suppose instancing is good for the end of a very rare quest. However, instancing your entire gameworld based on population has never been a good idea as far as I've seen
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-Faded
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
Exactly that's his opinion and yours..
I don't get why people feel the need to post reviews of a game that they have no intention of playing except to discourage other people from playing it also because they didn't like it....
Maybe you were trying to help people decide if they wanted to play it or not I don't know some of your review I think is harsh but that's just my opinion....
I just hope we don't see you in every TERA post saying how much you don't like the game and how other people shouldn't because you didn't because that seems the norm nowdays....
I liked it and pre-ordered but that's just me I'm sorry you didn't but hopefully you will find an MMO you will enjoy....
I had every intention of "Playing" & "Buying" TERA until the last 3 CBT's I was a part of (EU + US CBT1 & 2).
I wrote this in order to give valuable feedback from an opinion perspective of a player "impression" or "Preview". I've met quite a few people who ignore mainstream "Review" sites like IGN due to the fact that they're generally paid off for their strangely glowing reviews of a specific product regardless of all the negative feedback that comes on launch or thereafter.
I find it strange that because an opinion differs from their own that it somehow invalidates it, and means it shouldn't have been posted to begin with even though that in itself is the whole point of a "Preview", "Impression", or "Review".
Also, no you will not see me in every TERA post saying how much I didn't like the game. Nor have I ever directly told someone "You're wrong for thinking this is a good game". However it may have appeared in prior posts I've made I've always tried to disconnect my feelings from an opinion for a game thereby directly drawing from past experiences & what I experienced in a specific product.
Let's be very clear here.
An opinion is: "I dislike this game because it is a Linear-HandHolding-Quest style of leveling".
A Fact is: "The game primarily uses Linear Questing to advance a player through the game towards end-game".
While it IS true that towards the "End" of TERA (specifically 35-58) people tend to spam instances & BAMs in order to level so they can get away from all that linearness of the quests. It doesn't make it an "opinion" over how a game has decided to proceed in terms of how players may primarily progress through its content. This I've never understood why people get angry over?
Again, let's be very clear here. I did, in fact, intend to play this product until the very harsh reality of what TERA is hit me when I realized I was forcing myself to grind to end-game for the actually "Fun Bits" of TERA. That to me, wasn't something I could justify 100s of hours to justify.
Hope I cleared that up for you sir/mam
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-Faded
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
Sometimes I wonder if you played to the higher levels you claim...or didn't and are just pulling information out of your arse.
"So, in relation to other WoW-Like MMOS you CAN choose to "grind" mobs for exp, but you need to kill 20-30 challenging mobs (takes about 2minutes per mob?) in order to compete with quest rewards that take a fraction of that time. I believe at level 22 I needed 150,000 exp to go from 22 to 23. Each quest was giving out around 10-15k exp, and each monster was giving out about 500-900 exp per kill (again, monsters take about 2minutes to kill for DECENT exp, and then you have to factor in downtime with TERA's horrible rest system). Even IF you can evade getting hurt quite a bit with your class in TERA you WILL have downtime because you can't dodge/block every hit
."
Challenging mobs? What are these challenging mobs? Normal mobs take 10-20 seconds to kill and give you like 500-900xp. These certainly are not those challenging mobs you speak of...but they do give similar xp, weird.
Whereas group grinding BAMs(would these be your challenging mobs??) takes around 3-5 minutes(doesn't sound like it...) per kill and gives you 9-12k xp(nope, definately not them) with group play bonus xp at that level. Solo'ing them takes 8-15minutes.
So these "challenging mobs" you speak of don't even seem to exist...what is this conspiracy?
TERAs rest system is not bad, i've never once had a problem with it nor anyone I was grouped with all the time. Also I never had downtime because I could dodge/block enough to not lose enough health to have to sit around. With BAMs I obviously brought a healer or purchased health potions/bandages before going.
Later on (talking 25++) you can run instances with friends or groupmates for "decent" xp & items, but again the Linear questing is MUCH faster than grinding mobs.
First instance starts at level 20, second starts at 26, so both things do not relate to your 25+...I again doubt you played now passed a low level because at 25 the 20 instance does nothing and at 25 you can not enter the 26 instance.
Stamina also depletes VERY quickly by fighting monsters. This means that purely grinding on monsters isn't a valid tactic whatsoever UNLESS you spend ALL of your gold on campfires.
Campfires drop on occasion from monsters and regularly from BAMs, nevermind the fact by level 22 I had 100k gold in my invent and campfires are only 4k and the wood to extend how long they last is like 400 gold, so again, if somehow you spent all your money on campfires you were doing something very very wrong.
Faded has a nice review just from all the CBT. Things will change and progress and the game will be a lot better come release. I think people's problems, once again, is that they want the new MMO to come out that will be top of the charts right from the get-go, and when people have constructive criticism that hints that this new MMO they're looking forward to won't be that steady game they're looking for, it makes them mad.
My own opinion is this: I was in the beta for a lot of these AAA MMOs that have recently come out, and I never bothered to buy one. That doesn't mean a whole lot of people aren't having fun and will continue to have fun in these MMOs. It's just that I am also looking forward to an MMO that will be a steady #1 for a long while and I haven't played it yet.
I'll say Tera community is part fault over this as well, but its becoming a reflex response. Just like almost all gamer go in to instant game defense mode whenever some one talk bad about videos games in general even if its constructive critsism. There was just too much bullshit we had to deal with by the time a person who give some legit reason come around its hard to not go in auto defence mode. I mean when you get people make the wildest assumption about the game w/o even bother to google it its pretty irrated speically when it happens about 3 time a page =
Well I still don't fully believe this review was done legitimately because many things in it do not make sense, just look at my post on the bottom of the previous page.
Now I do agree with some of what your saying but there is also things I don't agree with such as you labled
A Fact: the game uses Linear Questing to advance a player.....
What MMO doesn't I mean there is barely any MMO's on the market atm that don't use quests as there primary leveling I mean you can't fault TERA for just using the normal method....
Now I agree if you don't like that method and think its linear that's up to you but it just feels to me your being abit harsh with some of your review since it seems no linear to me then any other quest driven MMO....
And yes I agree I did tons of BAM's and Dungeons also because I got sick of the questing but that's also about every MMO to date.
Who doesn't run dungeons and such when they get sick of questing almost every MMO to date has way to many quests and eventually your gonna get bored and want something different....
I want to thank you though for keeping this civil at least we can agree to disagree 8)
To the topic of linear questing,
The problem that is valid on this subject is the opening ten odd levels that have the chain that must be completed to exit the island. After this island the quests do branch slightly more but you do not have a great deal of choice until level 30+. For a game such as Tera with the interesting racial choices all locked into a single chain is poor design. All of this reinforces a "tracked" themepark ride atmosphere for the early levels and these are the very levels where the selling point of the game should be made. Because of this a low score is a fitting opinion.
I like everything about Tera except for the limited character creation and the quests.
I actually prefer instanced quests like City of Heroes. Because it makes pick up groups so much easier. The quest mean more and aren't just go kill10 things. They have actual things you do in them and everyone on the team get's exp for completing the quest/mission. With Tera's system, you only get that exp if you happen to be doing that quest someone else is doing. This makes teaming up annoying and too much trouble to bother with.
It could even be like the matrix online, where you can flag a quest as the team's quest and everyone gets exp for it if they are there and it's not instanced at all.
It's why old f2p games like Mu and Conquer worked so well. There were only a handful of quests that didn't matter. You just fought stuff. The fun can from teaming up and talking while you killed stuff. With tera you just have people running around doing mindless chores only made somewhat fun by its combat. I guess it's obvious, but if Tera had the outdated combat system, it'd just be just as boring and pointless as Aion.
I'm not saying I agree with the review, i have lot of points i don't agree on and some of the review is very bias toward the OP's way of thinking thats for sure. But just saying its a trend, when something gets bashed so much the community supporting it tend to go in to defence mode whenever some critisom good or bad is made about it.
I think one way they could have better the starting was make lvl 1-20 tutorial or 1-15. So everyone start lvl 1-10 like their city or speical area for their race where they train recurits. Than lvl 10-15 they move to island of dawn for that whole thing and head out to main town at lvl 15. Island of dawn is needed for it is important background story, but i think adding something infront of it would be better. And making getting to lvl 20 for first BAM and Dungeon less boring for some. However just because the quest isn't exactly the best thing there is doesn't make a game score low, quest is only the means to an end, sure good quest helps you lvl but it doesn't retain players. Which is what a sub based mmorpg need, we all saw how only quest did for SWTOR.
I know there is some issue with character creation but for a mmorpg its pretty good. If you want to make retard looking character than this is probably not the game for you. But over all its not bad. As for instance based quest, many people hate that, if they wanted instance based quest they could have sticked to dragon nest or vindictus. Its not hard to find some one with doing the same quest as you, you help each other finish the quest faster in groups.
Tera has those quest, they are BAM quests that require recommend you do in full pt and are repeats.
You can team up to do dungeon/BAM in tera the same way, you also team up for protection against pk or for pk as well.
Well ya, the selling point of Tera was NEW COMBAT SYSTEM. When did it try to sell itself as anything else? I think people need to get in to their thick skull the amount of money it takes to make one of these games. Its avg of probbly 50million+ thats a shit tons of money for a first time develpor like Blue Hole Studios. They don't have any sucessful preview game to draw funding upon so ofc what they can do to a game is pretty fuckign limited. They decide to focus on polishing their combat system for this new action combat style and amazing boss AI and thats what they fucking did. So with their main resource focus on that quest was left to the basic for now. Doesn't mean they can't fix it in the future which they already are because the next patch for korea revamp lvl 1-40 quests. At least quests are hella more easy to add in than trying to fix core issue with the game.
I do agree on this I wish they would of had Racial starting areas also but I mean what can we do now besides just deal with the hand were dealt I mean is it a game breaker for me that answer is no...
Maybe in time who knows...
all gold on campfires... are you serious?
also i think grinding elites on later levels might level u even faster than questing
This was one of my major concerns about TERA. It pretty much exemplifies the issues with the Linearized approach TERA has taken pre-30. I can't keep new clan/friend/family members interested in TERA for more than a couple hours due to horrible design flaw.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
Well current ktera patch is 1-40 quest revamp, if i guessed right we get that in obt or launch so idk maybe it be fixed by than.
MMORPG Developers will soon learn that Linear Quest Grind leveling isn't the way to draw on players anymore. Unfortunately for TERA, they didn't get the memo.
You do realize tera wasn't developed in the past year thats its been under development since 2008.... there was no SWTOR to spoin everyone with their fancy voice over and even than if we look at SWTOR we saw how well just good quest did for them.
Swtor has the best quest system, with the best Voice overs. and i can't wait for next month to come, to cancel my subscription.
I'm sure Bioware learned that well.
Oddly enough, for me, one of the problems with TERA was the combat. Everyone seems to be really hyped and excited about it, yet I can't see it. It's slow, it's predictable, it's not fully dynamic spectacle fighting combat and it still relies on same principles as pure hotkey based MMOs do.
That combined with how boring the mobs are in early stages, doing same, slow attacks that You can just side-step from gets really repetitive after just 1-2 hours.
I realize I've only been able to see veyr early levels of gameplay, but it's those levels that decide whenever I will bother with the game later or not. I do not feel like games should "test my devotion" by throwing unimpressive content at me before I can really play the game "as intended".
Overall the game felt very alike to what I've already seen from older Asian MMOs. Same structure, similar designs, similar theme- the only things that's different is combat. While I would love to see the political system shine in it's full glory, after playing for those 20+ levels I simply do not feel like playing any more to reach the "end game". The whole late game focus is what really hurts TERA's potential. If levelling is just a pacing process before everyone can enjoy the game, why even have levels?