http://tera.nexon.com/news/noticeTera/View.aspx?n4articlesn=706
It looks like a “new director and development team” has been tasked with addressing some of the (negative) feedback that K-TERA players have been giving regarding the game. One of the top issues mentioned was class balance issues (that immediately, the development team will begin working on addressing this on an ongoing basis).
Another core issue is the games content noting that at level cap (65), the primary means of character growth and progression have lacked diversity (primarily running dungeons) while other parts of the game have been lacking (such as guilds and battlegrounds). Interestingly, the director highlighted focusing on PvP (which is usually not what most players prefer doing) as well reworking dungeons (something which the prior director also had mentioned when they came up with the current method of gear progression that came via the Arsenal update).
The last key point was how the current gear progression has a somewhat uniform process of grinding for those materials leading to a lack of diversity and is also unmotivating (a complaint with the current gear progression is how it becomes unfun after awhile). So the new team will be looking into revamping (again) the gear progression to address the shortcomings (there are too many) while offering more diversity. Part of that will include the team looking at the past history; the objective is to promote fun play (which TERA has been lacking ever since the implementation of this current gear progression system).
So what spurred this? Probably not just negative feedback from Korean players but also diminishing player population (CCU’s and retention rates) which is affecting revenues. This could also be a trend happening in other regions (besides Japan) as well. Also, I put “new director and development team” in quotes because it’s not actually new in the sense that the prior team were summarily dismissed (some folks are just moving to deal with completing Ascent: Infinite Realm and others who have already completed their tasks on A:IR is going to try and inject their ideas into how to address TERA’s issues). In other words, keep expectations low.
For myself, the Arsenal patch and this gear progression originally sounded good. You could play, gain item experience, and progress gear (and thus character progression) on your own timeline. The execution however in terms of the escalating gold costs and required materials turned into an ever growing treadmill where there was a point where it became unfun.
The old system preceding this would introduce new gear tiers that pushed the tiers downwards (what was high would then be middle tier) every 6 months. Now, the game gives you a base level 65 set that you constantly enchant upwards. The lowest two tiers are easiest to chance but after that, it turns into a grind for materials (the key ones being extremely limited in terms of how they are acquired on NA) as well as gold (myself, I’ve stopped enchanting). Thus the divide grows between the top geared players versus a completely new player where more of the dungeons cannot be run since players lack the item level to enter.
Furthermore, the most recent patch capped the amount of item experience that can be acquired (forcing players to enchant since they will no longer acquire item experience). That was honestly one of the dumbest changes made (defeating the original purpose of allowing players to progress their gear when they wanted to).
No mention was made of expanding the open world content, optimization, or what plans Bluehole has for TERA (when many other Korean studios are now focusing on moving their franchises from UE3 to UE4). Also, these changes won’t come to other regions 3-6 months after it has been released in Korea. Basically, the game will continue to slow bleed players across all regions (more so outside of Korea unless they figure out a way to shorten the timeframe that these changes are deployed).
