K-TERA’s product director (nickname Jerry) posted an interesting developers note regarding some of the things they are prioritizing for the first half of 2020.
Initial look back at 2019 statements aside, the pertinent portion begins after the 20년도 상반기 라이브 주요 대응 heading. I’m using machine translation so this is the general gist and may not be 100% accurate. I’ll add my commentary at the end.
1. PvP content will be improved by adding better rewards not just for PvE, but also for PvP gear (by lowering the cost to purchase them with the tokens that are rewarded from participating in the various battlegrounds. The intention is to incentive more players to take part in the PvP battlegrounds.
2. Increased rewards and experience from Exodor related quests/content. The gear rewards will also be adjusted in order to incentivize more players to be able to take part in the content (currently, temporary versions of the level 68 gear is given to players in order to allow them to progress through the story quest where they are able to obtain permanent starter gear.
3. Dungeons will be re-balanced (rewards including gold and gear drops) to allow for more natural progression. The main story questing will be adjusted from level 65 through 68 (which is where access to Exodor is unlocked).
4. The existing gear system will be restructured starting with the general removal of most of the level 65 equipment system. Whatever tier ends up remaining will have its enhancement system simplified and have increased success chance (the main emphasis is a transition to the new Exodor gear system). More Exodor gear will also be rewarded to allow better progression through the mission quests (and that newer questing gear will be more easily upgradable). This isn’t a replacement for end game level 69+ yellow superior/legendary gear.
5. General class balance with the objective of diversifying play styles. Part of the change will involve the physical and magic damage balance. Right now, class skills are either more powerful in physical or magic damage. The objective is to make that less of a focus where classes can build their character around either and to also make sure all classes are more powerful after this balance tuning pass.
6. There will be more methods to re-roll the random properties on the end game Exodor gear. Character stats will also be improved (handled together with the balancing of classes) in order to meet the objective in number 5 (more options and diversified play styles). New items from dungeons will also be rewarded that reduces the chance for higher end enchants, to reduce the chances for equipment to become damaged or reducing the chances to fail enchanting (which leads to higher end enchants damaging that gear requiring it to be repaired in order to continue enchanting).
7. The gathering and crafting system will also be updated to make it more convenient and meaningful. The 3 different gathering tools will be unified into one and new recipes introduced. Vaguely noted is that new features will also be added to the crafting system.
8. Enhancing the character system to better support/easily develop alternate characters. My note: Part of this likely will involve making some of the existing character based systems (like the level 66+ advanced skills system) server wide (similar to how the Enhancement Point system is server wide and applies to all your characters on a specific server). Again, nothing very specific.
9. Client optimization (better performance) and better matching systems. One of the biggest news is that they are working on a 64-bit client.
Commentary: Numbers 1-8 are sort of standard fare which may or may not improve the existing game play (I am basing this on past developer notes which sounded good on paper, but turned out to be less than stellar once implemented).
This leads me straight to number 9 which involves their doing the ground work for being able to implement a 64-bit client. What impresses me is that they decided to actually throw resources at this task (something I was not expecting since I more or less expected them to let the game die before doing anything like this). This one is big because the existing 32-bit client code is to put it lightly, a spaghettified mess. Refactoring this codebase likely has unveiled cruft that needed to be removed. Changing code has this tendency to break other things in the process (the old exploding parts problem). Why would Bluehole/Krafton invest resources in this area now?
I believe part of it is a realization that some of their other projects aren’t panning out well and that they do not have much to fall back on. TERA has been their mainstay that has managed to maintain a smaller but still loyal player base. The new Exodor content has been testing this loyalty though including myself (I’ve stopped logging in so that I can take advantage of the returning player system after not signing on for 30 days, once there is something worthwhile to login to play again). Ascent: Infinite Realm is still MIA for the next Korean beta test. Their competition is moving some of their older MMORPG projects forwards (like NCSoft with UE4 Blade & Soul). And there are no guarantees PUBG Corp or its subsidiary studio, Striking Distance will strike gold (what I believe will end up happening is a lot of hype, but no actual substance delivered where it will amount to a lot of wasted money from unmitigated hubris).
Thus I see at least some form of contingency planning to at least bring part of TERA’s code into the present. And if they are managing the content production work for TERA Frontiers properly (where the assets, models, effects, etc can also be leveraged for PC and console), could allow them a pathway towards an UE4 version of TERA on PC and console (as a just in case everything else fails). Getting rid of the cruft in the existing 32-bit client is just a starting point but a much needed one going forward.
