I've been procrastinating (as usual) on a few of my projects for this month. The first one that I'm kinda sorta working on now: A press tour article on Gravity's Maestia MMORPG. Even though I showed up a little late to the party, I managed to get a quick look at the game, showcasing all the features that will be available with the upcoming Open Beta launch.
Seems like a pretty average MMORPG, but I do like some of the features it has like Mercenary system and the faction-based PvP. I should be done with article by the end of the day.
Also on my to-do list is the upcoming RaiderZ CBT from Perfect World Entertainment. I tried the game out during it's alpha phase and it was so incredibly un-optimized back then. I did like how the combat played out, though. Looks like it could be a nice F2P alternative to TERA.
Speaking of TERA: I'm still playing but I'm starting to get bored with it now. This is due to the lack of things to do at the end-game, and because En Masse's incompetence.
From CBT1-4, everything was swell, but then CBT5 and OB came and everything went downhill from there:
- Removed mischief engines, effectively screwing up the crystal economy
- Removed lucky eggs for the sake of 'making alchemy more useful'
- Removed crafting quests, effectively making crafting more difficult and tedious than it needs to be.
- Remove pets/vendor shops (this is the only change that makes some sense, but is still VERY debatable since a couple of MMOs have both player shops and an Auction House/Trade Broker that co-exist together.)>
- Lowered the item drop rates for everything.
- Re-arranged dungeons for late game and end-game without proper re-balancing (Ascent of Saravash, anyone?)
- Made the ToT dungeon more tedious for earning master glyphs (In K-TERA depending if you defeat 1 to 3 bosses, you can earn 1, 3 or 5 dire badges towards earning master glyphs that cost 60 of then, but in NA TERA, you can only earn 1, 1 or 3 dire badges.
- Lowered success rate for equipment enchanting and made it twice as hard as it is in K-TERA
- Made changes to elin and castanic outfits just so they won't offend the dumb soccer moms that can't tell the difference from fantasy and reality.
- They reduced nexus times so that only a select few can participate (Both K-Tera and TERA EU has Nexus runs everyday. TERA NA only has Nexus runs on the weekends
- They basically made the game inferior to its Korean counterpart in several ways
Kinda funny how the EME version of TERA has more gear grind and RNG than the Korean version, huh? What's even funnier is that K-TERA got bashed by South Korean gamers for not having enough grind in it. Maybe BlueHole should consider switching the two versions of the game? They'd would probably be more successful if they did.
Ha.
The main reason I stuck with this game for so long was because I enjoyed the time and friends I've made on the RP server, but just recently I cancelled my sub and will be using two chronoscrolls I got for this month and the next to see if the Queen of the Argon Part 2 update will make a difference. Besides that, I really hope En Masse is starting to see the error of the ways and will start putting things back in order. They already started backtracking a little since they re-added the Valkyon’s Response reward even though it was removed when OB started, with an excuse stating "Grouping is its own reward". Sure the rewards now are crappier than before, but it's a start.
I have a little bit more I want to say about TERA, but I gotta get going. Will update this post later!
3 comments:
I really doubt that QOA2 will make that big of a difference. From my take: TERA the world is gorgeous, TERA the character/armor models is fantastic, TERA the combat system is extraordinary... however TERA the game is pretty weak, and actual gameplay is very 2005. But it really doesn't have to be... The framework is there, and the UT3 engine is incredibly flexible... as flexible, that is, as the developers want it to be.
Mind, I still play, I really like the two guild I'm in, one of which I'm serving as a officer, and the RP community is one of the best and most supportive I've ever encountered in a game.
However if it were not for them, I'd likely be gone already, and I haven't even leveled to 60 yet as I'm in no rush, and find RP and decking out my character in outfits to be more interesting than what will likely be a very run-of-the-mill endgame and rep/armor grind.
And really really not looking forward to the string of item and personal wealth sacrifices that getting items enchanted to +9 seems to be.
Now, to be fair, the reason why EME lowered enchant chances was because they removed the penalty of loosing all enchant levels that a failure would net you, but that doesn't excuse their ignorance or perhaps dismissal of the fact that the bulk of the Western audience members DO NOT LIKE rng-based success ratios when it comes to crafting. As far as dungeon runs and drop ratios go, it's pretty well accepted that it will be a crap-shoot, but when it comes to crafting, we feel that results should be directly proportional to labor and dedication, and going through 29 failures in a row is not only punishing, but also terribly boring and does not to the already dull crafting system any favors.
Sorry for the rant, I'm a dedicated Crafter in every game that I play that offers the profession and TERA's the first game where I haven't devoted much time to this pursuit... And this is because their crafting system managed the feat of being duller and more frustrating than both RIFT and WoW's, which is quite amazing.
Definitely agree with you there. I had to spend well around 600g just to upgrade my sword from +5 to +6 and 800g to just to upgrade from +6 to +7. En Masse's idea of "westernization" is so ridiculous, it seems almost as if they're trying to make things more tedious, hoping that people will jump for that carrot on a stick to keep subs going while they prepare for the QotA PT2 update.
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