En Masse Entertainment (NA) will be the last region to roll out the level 70 (patch 80) update for TERA on April 9th, and is naming their update Skywatch: New Heights. Besides the brief mention in their news posting (which includes a forum post regarding the leveling event), there aren’t any other details (as I mentioned before, low quality effort is the norm for EME now); most other regional publishers at least provided some information regarding the changes coming with the update at least a week or two before (helpful for those who don’t go around chasing down info from different sources).
I had to take a quick look over at the Gameforge forums to see what players there thought of patch 80; some of the tilted feedback didn’t surprise me considering the negative reception that happened in K-TERA (and they had it far worse with the original XP). The following is a rant of sorts so proceed at your own expense…
No, neither Gameforge nor Bluehole (aka Krafton) are out to deliberately kill TERA (plus you cannot kill what has been “dying” for several years) either. The “problem” as noted before is that TERA’s latest level cap extension happens to comes without actual new content because the team that ended up taking the reins of the development, put the cart before the horse and decided a level cap increase sounded good on paper, but then decided not to put more production value into designing proper expansion content (in the form of actual story lines, associated quest chains, and new areas) that players could go through to level up. Sure, we will eventually see the “Mysterious Island” zone but as I noted before, that is something which should’ve been part of a proper level cap expansion. Instead, it is one quest per level and spending time grinding open world mobs and/or running dungeons until you run out of dungeon stamina (aka adventure tokens) and/or engaging in fishing (manual and AFK) or gathering.
Bluehole is also using skewed data from the mostly hardcore grinders (the ones who enjoy no-life grinding as well as the ones with way too much money and way too little sense, that continue throwing large sums of money at their respective publishers) to come up with these sort of ridiculous end game “designs”. Then there is the other data points from new players who level up and then quit once they hit max level. In between are the players who find themselves between a rock and a hard place where they need to either adapt and play those parts of the game they find enjoyable or to vote with their wallet and move on (because there isn’t much sense to stick with a game that one cannot find fun/enjoyment in). In short, chalk it up to poor decision making with design considerations and the objectives they (the current TERA development team) are trying to achieve.
This blog is a testament to this approach where I eventually voted with my pocketbook when it came to Blizzard Entertainment games back in 2015 (designers becoming more out of touch with their player communities). And when more customers do that in droves, companies do end up feeling that impact (often times, when it is too late). But if one keeps on feeding quarters into the slot machine of a game they are complaining more about than actually enjoying, you are being part of the problem by giving the company money they do not deserve. With F2P titles, customers can make a whole lot more difference in putting a bag of hurt on the publisher (and by extension, the developer with reduced revenues from their revenue sharing agreement) by chewing up server resources without feeding quarters into the coin slot. Myself, I am not even close to exiting stage right with TERA (but I have made a conscious decision to starve En Masse Entertainment of revenue given the low quality effort in recent years with how they handle their side of the game).
I fully realized what was coming down the pipeline for TERA but knew this level cap increase and its ridiculous implementation wouldn’t affect my own personal enjoyment in those areas of the game that I do enjoy taking part in (nor was I going to spend time preparing and doing anything different; this is a game and I have better things to do then to take care of a bunch of pre-requisites before that patch drops). So the level grind nor the tacked on systems to extend the life of level 65 gear and the existing skill system, don’t really bother me since I don’t even bother tryhard enchanting my existing gear (because I don’t bother with the dungeon content; I may change that stance if they give us solo mode versions of all level 65+ dungeons). Just like with EP, I make small amounts of progress (I still haven’t hit 300 EP yet as of this entry) and will slowly inch through leveling across the characters I play. I doubt that I will ever hit Heroic Oath tier gear on any of my characters without changes to the current setup (or it may end up being academic IF they one day decide to eventually roll out actual level 70 gear; I wouldn’t count this possibility out).
I realize that is contrary to how many actually play the endgame meta though where the max level abstraction is a number that many feel the need to get there yesterday, and fast. It’s like how some folks calculated the optimal way to get the most daily EP. More power to those players but I personally do not care about playing these sort of games like an automaton. So I’m treating this update no different (efficiency be damned). I’m actually looking more forward to the pet (partner/servant) system that comes after this update since that is a different form of equally ridiculous grind (but one I know I can make better progress in).
The trade broker listing and negotiation fees the developers felt a need to put in place for this update is a perfect example of a team that is out of touch with the player base they are attempting to retain. Like I mentioned, the development team aren’t out to deliberately kill TERA; they just are catering to a specific part of the end game demographic that either no-lifes it and/or throws a lot of money at it (everyone else be damned).
Thus for many who fall into the non-hardcore grinder and/or non-whale camp, this newest end game design will literally be just that, “end game” as in stop playing TERA. Bluehole/Krafton and their respective publishers will need to live with the long term consequences of these decisions though; they however are just another one of these studios with LILO (Lazy In Lazy Out) game design. Are they the worst? Not by a long shot. Compare how much larger NCSoft is for example and how many games they’ve killed or can’t even get off the ground (like Lineage Eternal/Project TL) considering all their resources. Compare them with Pearl Abyss with how most of Black Desert Online’s cash shop is purposely designed around removed functionality that players can buy back. Or XLGAME’s funneling most of ArcheAge’s revenue to fund dozens of failed mobile game projects (this isn’t anything new when it comes to using revenues from one project to fund the next thing but they took it to a whole different level trying to get one successful mobile hit and failed, prompting Jake Song to return back to the project).
I’ve made it no secret that the game industry (in general regardless of country of origin) is heading towards a day of reckoning with their monetization practices as well as how game development is done in general (which leads to half-baked products where players often time have to go searching for the actual fun). But until that implosion happens, I’m stuck playing those games that I’ve managed to find the enjoyable parts to play in (which is why I’m not going anywhere with TERA for the time being).
