Bluehole developers notes about upcoming changes
Part 1: http://tera.nexon.com/news/devnote/View.aspx?n4ArticleSN=267
Part 2: http://tera.nexon.com/news/devnote/View.aspx?n4ArticleSN=268
Key things they touched on was acknowledging the troll like RNG. Part of this entails the removal of masterworking, awakening and the ability to enchant up to +15 on newer gear sets (existing enchantable gear will still be able to go that far but the new sets will again top out at +12). I need to state it but Devilian’s artifact system borrows heavily from the way equipment is enchanted, masterworked, and awakened in TERA (the addition of +15 was contentious here since failed enchants at +14 would reset back to +12).
Devilian’s unique tier evolving (in the original Korean and Thai versions) also utilized some of these same mechanics that exist between +12 through +15 where you effectively reset/lost evolution experience on failed enchants. I bring this up since Bluehole Ginno ended up adapting systems liberally from TERA (at times replacing systems they had been working on previously) since it made things easier from a software engineering point of view. The removal of this could end up affecting what Ginno does in the future for Trion (versus how the unique gear tier worked in the Korean and Thai versions).
Furthermore, the troll like RNG of some of this design is inherent in Devilian gear enchanting. Essentially, the higher that gear is evolved, the chances for success requires far more rolling of the dice. But with a huge exception. In TERA (depending on what quality of enchanting material is used), failures can lead to increased chances of success (to act as a fail safe). That fail safe mechanic is not present in Devilian gear enchanting because that was part of the Lucky Stone (not all of its core functionality was implemented in Kavel’s Tears).
Digressing, they’ve also added an equipment proficiency system where by just playing, you earn experience points towards that proficiency level. The higher those points, the higher the chances for success during enchanting. The main point of this is to provide a means of continual progression from just playing.
They also acknowledged their poor choice of quickly obsoleting previous gear tiers every 6 months as well as their constant changing/power creeping of dungeons as opposed to leaving those older ones intact and introducing new ones (which is what they will be doing).
It looks like they also created a system that allows lower tier gear sets to be promoted higher. This is something that works well for me since I can work my way up to a tier from playing. It’s a slower route but one that takes into account differing play styles. These are all fairly great changes for TERA.
Some of these are the result of design changes being done for the console versions.
The biggest one as I mentioned in a prior entry is if they can also update the PC version to Unreal Engine 4. The possibility exists if they are utilizing Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform for the Xbox version since this would allow Windows 10 PC’s to effectively share the same binaries (thus gaining the benefits of the newer graphics engine). Older Windows systems would still have to run the UE3 version unless Bluehole does the extra legwork.
