… feedback on the Aerial Island update (it’s actually an En Masse Entertainment “survey“; EME is a subsidiary of Krafton while the TERA development studio Bluehole, has always been a key division of the parent company that used to be known as Bluehole, Inc). I normally would bother to take the time to consolidate/organize what I’ve written here to provide a lot more focused and detailed feedback. But why should I when En Masse Entertainment (publisher for NA) has forsaken most of their community engagement (accelerated over the last 1.5 years) while Bluehole/Krafton failed to take action on feedback from years ago when it actually mattered.
It’s not even much of a survey either (way too generic when there needs to be more specific questions so that those can be dialed into separately). The fact they are reaching out isn’t surprising to me. En Masse has recently lost several games they published (ZMA, AVA, and Kritika Online) and haven’t been successful at landing something along those lines except for two small games (in conjunction with their respective Netflix series) from a small studio (BonusXP). For TERA, they’ve recently turned into a mini-Trion with the easy cash grab route. They effectively downsize anything community management related (choosing to use Discord instead of their own forums) and “promoted” most of their personnel who were in those and other positions, to ones overseeing whatever projects while pulling double duty in those other community management/social networking (but with bare minimal engagement).
As a publisher, they are skating on extremely thin ice with the two buy to play games, Closers (which is a good candidate for closing) and TERA (which they haven’t been handling well). And out of those two, I believe TERA is what makes them the most revenues (but that is also on a declining trend across most regions with the exception of Japan, given the stuff that Bluehole is shoveling out). They’ve done little to encourage me to remain a customer that is willing to spend money. And this is where I am a supporter of Krafton’s sink or swim mentality when it comes to their subsidiaries. If EME doesn’t clean up their act, they are going to end up just like Trion in the insolvency sense (or to the point where Krafton’s leadership in South Korea will pull the plug on this failing endeavor). EME used to be good but that went out the door when the original team departed throughout 2016.
As far as Bluehole/Krafton goes, this update was pure garbage in terms of the RNG and excessive grind elements even from the point of view of Korean players and that was months ago when they received it. The fact this came over as is to other regions; they have got to be off their rockers if they believed NA/EU players would eat up this level of excessive grind and RNG (sure, there is always a small group that will embrace it). No doubt their metrics are dropping into a blackhole for NA/EU as well (thus this survey which IMHO will likely end up going into a virtual blackhole). Word to players who intend to fill out the survey thinking it will amount to change; IT WON’T MATTER. Bluehole/Krafton doesn’t really even listen to their home demographics feedback so why would they listen to feedback from other regions? The fact they are releasing content this way which doesn’t feel fun or rewarding at all, says a lot (you the players will eat this crap we are shoveling out). Here is the thing though; players don’t have to eat that crap (nor throw any money at it). As I mentioned before, part of the problem is portion of the player base that obliges these types of designs and the worst ones are whales who shovel easy money to the publisher.
As for this patch, I finally finished the story line at the end of last week while I was in queue for ArcheAge Unchained (I had sort of stopped playing the update for a few days once I hit Verakk Fortress). So it’s nice to have the meat of the update finally available (the reputation NPC’s, the flying buff and ability to get to the outlying places). But I am not going to login daily to grind through all of those Exodor dailies. RNG failure with enchanting the new gear is not my idea of a fun and satisfying reward loop. As far as the limited amount of time they (EME) put out a blatant cash grab loot box of the new enchanting mats, they need to congratulation themselves for getting a few whales to throw down several tens of thousands of dollars on them in order to achieve results like the following.
Since the following is what is normal at a lower enchant level (plus once you hit +7 or so, there is a chance for the item to get damaged requiring it to be repaired, and then from +10 or so, you can lose enchant levels along with the damage).
So yes, EME made initial $$$ on those few folks but that is a short term bump that is not sustainable over a longer term. I have no desire to spend that kind of money with companies that don’t give a damn about their customers.
