While I have been fortunate (so far) as to not run into a lot of these problems myself, it is quite clear there are some bugs that are much more prevalent on the PlayStation 4 compared to the Xbox One.
https://forums.enmasse.com/tera/categories/console-bug-reports
One of the biggest ones is a flaw in the UI where the dialog for accepting a resurrection from another player does not appear (or is hidden due to an issue on the PS4 – the Xbox One does not have this problem). Many players are experiencing crashes and/or disconnects while in a dungeon instance and as a result, end up dying in the process.
In TERA, a character has only so many neophyte resurrections (where they can rez themselves by paying some gold) when running a dungeon. Once they are “skilled” in that dungeon (after successfully completing them several times), you basically have no self-resurrections and have to have another player or healer perform it (else you can rez back to the nearest town which means you are out of action until you transport back to the dungeon and manually enter it).
On the PS4 though, many players have been unable to revive their characters due to this UI bug so their characters remain dead even after attempting a dungeon reset, logging out and restarting the game. The UI display issues also prevents a healer from reviving the dead character outside of the dungeon. Some players have managed to wait it out by AFKing for at least half-an-hour but it’s not a consistent solution either.
Thus there are players who aren’t able to play those characters until support can get to their ticket (a mountain that continues to grow) or Bluehole provides a more permanent fix (which will take awhile since patches like this have to go through Sony’s and Microsoft’s certification).
Another game play experience ruining issue that seems to be plaguing the PS4 more than the Xbox One is the inability to complete major story line quests (more so if the player happened to crash/disconnect in an actual story line instance where the ability to reset it is also plagued by a similar UI issue). During the first OBT stress test, my archer did experience the inability to enter the gate for the “For The Children” quest (where the character enters a solo instance for Tiaran the Sorrow Tree). Exiting completely out of the game and restarting it “fixed” the problem (likely due to a lot of players in that starter zone area).
Some players are experiencing empty instances for story quests (especially the last few level 64 ones); attempting to reset the quest instance also fails because the reset UI only shows up for less than 0.5 seconds before disappearing. Since I’ve completed the story quest before, I usually stop at the “Storming the Castle” part on other characters that I’m leveling and just do Vanguard Requests to get to 65 (I stop mainly since the arch devan mobs are annoying from that point plus the fact that I’m not a huge fan of what happens at the end) so I never did do those two final quest instances that some players are seeing missing objectives for.
While there are these questing issues, the game does allow advancing since the main story quests automatically appear once a character hits a certain level. Obviously, this breaks immersion for those players (especially many newer ones to the game) who want to quest through the game their first time around (while also not having knowledge of the alternative ways to level).
Both of these are on the higher priority of list of things that need to be fixed. With that said though, it is clear now that En Masse and Bluehole should have held an actual closed beta test cycle after the initial technical test. While the problems present in this known issues list were also experienced by players during the short weekend open beta stress tests, the focus on that was the stress test part as opposed to real bug reporting/squashing. And that is unfortunate because this is going to end up snowballing as players end up with a less than favorable impression of the game.
What doesn’t help is the fact that EME chose to also put out at least two cash shop items; the item pass and then this mount loot box/cosmetic box. I do get the fact that the business side operation is something that EME has control over versus the development side (which is handled by Bluehole). What I am getting at here is the optics. This is the exact same thing that Trion did early on with Devilian when it had a bunch of launch issues (including the data loss issues players on the Segarro server in EU were experiencing) where they released at least 3 different supply crates (with a chance at a rare mount) within the first 4 weeks of the launch.
Sure, these companies have to generate revenues once they release BUT the optics with the cash grab becomes more obvious especially when to most players, they do not care about the details of whom is handling what. The publisher for all intent purposes represents the entire package and right now, there are players who aren’t having the best experience with EME or TERA on console. EME’s staffing is also probably not up to the numbers needed to effectively support this game on console given the numbers who will be giving it a try. I still stand by my “old fashioned” stance where you really only get one shot at making a good general first impression. And right now, there are those experiencing a myriad of issues that are getting the opposite (poor) impression.
Again, I haven’t experienced a lot of problems leveling a brawler through the main story (up to level 42 as of this entry) as well as running my reaper through most of the level 60-64 quest line.
