Bit of Feedback on Tera's World/Questing

GreenEyedMonster Profile Options #1

0
0
Neutral
As much as I love this game and it's combat, I have to say the questing/world is pretty dull. I really feel like it is one of the major things that the game is missing.

Don't get me wrong, the game is BEAUTIFUL, but it isn't interesting. I know I am probably going to bait all kinds of anti-WoW haters by saying this, but it a relevant example: WoW did it right with their model of questing. Even though I rarely ever read WoW's quest text, and even though the game looked like poop smeared on a canvas graphics wise... I always knew what was going on with the storyline just because of the flavor and fluffed added to the zones. Not only did I know what was going on, it was mildly interesting and kept me engaged while leveling, even though the combat system is that obnoxious tab target BS.

This is an area I really feel Tera lacks in. The world is quite beautiful and scenic, but randomness and lack of cohesion within zone quests leaves the game to have a F2P feel of "We just stuck a bunch of monsters we felt were themed to the zone and made up reasons for you to kill them."

Also, if you don't read the quest text, you will have NO IDEA what is going on in the lore or the zones. This really wasn't the case in WoW. I never read the quest text, but just the rich questing told the story as you played. As much as I disliked WoW, that was something they really did right.

Before you guys start screaming at me to go back to WoW, realize I am not a fan of WoW, I was using it as an example. I love this game and intend to continue playing it till either the servers close down or there aren't enough people to keep it fun anymore, I am just providing feedback. It kind of hurts to have to put disclaimers like this, but I know how this community can be when you say anything negative at all about the game, even when it's constructive.

Edited by: GreenEyedMonster 12 months ago
Nerdking100 Profile Options #2

0
0
Neutral
I think the issue that people have is that people compare an eastern game to western game which isn't going to have same design pattern. So what I'm saying is shouldn't you have expected this already? This is a korean game, do you think koreans care about a storyline? Does silk road have a cohearnt story line? It's just an outlet for hold farmers with bots. I personally know people that do that. Morale of the story have an eastern mind set with the game not a western. We have different gaming values than they do.
Slubber Profile Options #3

0
0
Neutral
Zdravko Lvl.60
Mount Tyrannas (PVP)
Aman Warrior
I never quested in WoW and I have no idea about the lore, I just leveled through battlegrounds, I find WoWs aesthetics to be repulsive but I love the game because I could PvP all day and level 10-85 in battlgrounds mostly.

TERA the world leaves me taking screenshots/videos at random turns, so many places where I just have to stop and look at the creativity and marvel at the world design. I have a folder that is currently at 785GB full of screenshots/videos, I plan to make a video some day when i'm really motivated.

The mobs can be poorly placed I will agree with that, the only zones that have a really good theme going are the argon zones, the lore and cutscenes and even questing in these zones is better than the rest of the game. I got instanced story quests that involved killing no mobs, I had to sneak by mobs and kill some coils, I got instanced zones defending hordes of enemies with a speed boost and 100x modifyer to all my stats, there's a destroy this quest for every kill quest, there's actual interesting cutscenes/lore, finding the room with all the people being argonomorphed was pretty awesome.

Considering the argon zones are 58-60 and this was the newest patch, it seems the devs are getting something right and hopefully they continue on such a trend when QoA part 2 finally releases.

Just my two cents.
Edited by: Slubber 12 months ago
zeruel1223 Profile Options #4

0
0
Neutral
OP, I remember Vanilla wow. The old world zones didn't HAVE a storyline until Cataclysm. It was like Tera's yellow quests, and yellow quests only. Farmer joe has problem, go solve problem.

The expansions sometimes had overarching stories for the relevant zones, sometimes. Usually the "story" in any zone, old world or otherwise, was just a 5 quest chain, with several story chains existing in the same zone but being completely unrelated to each other.

People complained when Cataclysm added in linearity, too.

I cannot even claim that WoW engaged in world building especially well, it mostly depended on prior knowledge of the various races and factions (prior knowledge from the warcraft games), not really fleshing them out in game, or just giving a very cursory explanation for why you are doing X or Y. A great deal of the lore building that happened once WoW came out, happened in the books.
Outl4wXGP Profile Options #5

0
0
Neutral
Midori Lvl.60
Mount Tyrannas (PVP)
Castanic Berserker
Slubber on 06/06/2012, 06:56 AM - view


The mobs can be poorly placed I will agree with that, the only zones that have a really good theme going are the argon zones, the lore and cutscenes and even questing in these zones is better than the rest of the game. I got instanced story quests that involved killing no mobs, I had to sneak by mobs and kill some coils, I got instanced zones defending hordes of enemies with a speed boost and 100x modifyer to all my stats, there's a destroy this quest for every kill quest, there's actual interesting cutscenes/lore, finding the room with all the people being argonomorphed was pretty awesome.

Considering the argon zones are 58-60 and this was the newest patch, it seems the devs are getting something right and hopefully they continue on such a trend when QoA part 2 finally releases.

Just my two cents.


Yes, 58-60 was so refreshing. The best two levels in the game, imo. It felt like playing levels in an addicting beat-em-up from the old school SNES days or something. It just felt so classic. So refined. And arcade-like in its execution. It actually made me rethink the questing through the entire game when I made alts after playing through the Argon pt1. It actually feels like they learned the most right around the Pora Elinu and Witch Academy quests. Suddenly, it felt like this open world gets divided into beautiful and dynamic levels like a classic game, filled with hundreds of mobs to burn through (only get this feeling when in a group, or playing as a Zerker, imo). When you head to Tulufan, the feeling is carried over. You go to the ruins and smash through every mob on the map, basically. And its gorgeous. Then Tulufan-2 is when you run through the dullish desert, only to come upon the vast sight of the ocean which is a beautiful moment. Then Tulufan-3 is the giant citadel. It just flows like an amazingly addicitng arcade-style beat-em-up. It's wonderful. And I honestly never noticed it until I made an alt after hitting 60. Can't wait till QoA2
GreenEyedMonster Profile Options #6

0
0
Neutral
Nerdking100 on 06/06/2012, 06:55 AM - view
I think the issue that people have is that people compare an eastern game to western game which isn't going to have same design pattern. So what I'm saying is shouldn't you have expected this already? This is a korean game, do you think koreans care about a storyline? Does silk road have a cohearnt story line? It's just an outlet for hold farmers with bots. I personally know people that do that. Morale of the story have an eastern mind set with the game not a western. We have different gaming values than they do.


Except Tera uses the western style questing system? I don't understand this argument.

Ragnarok online is probably more along the lines of a "eastern minded" style. Tera did not go with this style. They went for a western story based questing system. They just didn't do it as well.
zeruel1223 on 06/06/2012, 07:18 AM
OP, I remember Vanilla wow. The old world zones didn't HAVE a storyline until Cataclysm. It was like Tera's yellow quests, and yellow quests only. Farmer joe has problem, go solve problem.

The expansions sometimes had overarching stories for the relevant zones, sometimes. Usually the "story" in any zone, old world or otherwise, was just a 5 quest chain, with several story chains existing in the same zone but being completely unrelated to each other.

People complained when Cataclysm added in linearity, too.

I cannot even claim that WoW engaged in world building especially well, it mostly depended on prior knowledge of the various races and factions (prior knowledge from the warcraft games), not really fleshing them out in game, or just giving a very cursory explanation for why you are doing X or Y. A great deal of the lore building that happened once WoW came out, happened in the books.


Actually, they did. True cataclysm refined it. But there was a certain sense of understanding just from the zones and monster placement. The lay out of the zones and monster placement themselves assisted in how it played out. It feels like tera simply made a beautiful zone, then tried to populate with story and monsters later instead of doing it all at the same time.
EdgeTO Profile Options #7

0
0
Neutral
It doesn't matter where the bar was 10 years ago. TERA was released now, and will be compared to where the bar is *now* in other MMOs. And right now TERA's questing is way, way, way below the bar. Present day WoW, SWTOR, The Secret World, GW2, DCUO.. all have superior quest presentation. Even the more recent missions in Star Trek Online kick major butt in quest presentation compared to where TERA is at years later.

It should come as no surprise that nearly every reviewer mentions TERA's quests as a weak point of the game. And it should come as no surprise to EME, considering we warned them repeatedly through feedback during beta. Oddly, they felt more inclined to focus on "fixing" (aka as gutting) things players didn't ask them to fix, such as shops, mischief boxes, eggs, etc. Go figure.
Edited by: EdgeTO 12 months ago
zeruel1223 Profile Options #8

0
0
Neutral
EdgeTO on 06/06/2012, 09:26 AM - view
It doesn't matter where the bar was 10 years ago. TERA was released now, and will be compared to where the bar is *now* in other MMOs. And right now TERA's questing is way, way, way below the bar. Present day WoW, SWTOR, The Secret World, GW2, DCUO.. all have superior quest presentation. Even the more recent missions in Star Trek Online kick major butt in quest presentation compared to where TERA is at years later.

It should come as no surprise that nearly every reviewer mentions TERA's quests as a weak point of the game. And it should come as no surprise to EME, considering we warned them repeatedly through feedback during beta. Oddly, they felt more inclined to focus on "fixing" (aka as gutting) things players didn't ask them to fix, such as shops, mischief boxes, eggs, etc. Go figure.

To be perfectly fair, looking at the things EME has done, it seems they have few resources at their disposal in terms of actual development. They certainly aren't building any endgame content. I don't know what they are doing right now, probably localizing the QoA update so it runs on their servers properly, and hopefully looking into some of the issues that have been brought up on forums.
Mangix Profile Options #9

0
0
Neutral
WoW did it nicely once they started adding quests around CATA before then, questing was completely "side quests" as far as story goes.

They made them a lot more interactive for CATA and it helped a bit in the grind I would agree. The key thing was they were semi enjoyable, without having to watch a 10 minute .avi to tell you to kill 15 pillagers.
zeruel1223 Profile Options #10

0
0
Neutral
Mangix on 06/06/2012, 09:37 AM - view
WoW did it nicely once they started adding quests around CATA before then, questing was completely "side quests" as far as story goes.

They made them a lot more interactive for CATA and it helped a bit in the grind I would agree. The key thing was they were semi enjoyable, without having to watch a 10 minute .avi to tell you to kill 15 pillagers.

Is that a swing at TOR? Because I'd have to agree if so. Not every quest needed a cutscene and voiceover, it ended up being kind of annoying and certainly a waste of development time. I don't know what happened to people where they lost the ability to read a text explanation of a quest. If you write good quests, your players will notice and pay attention to them, regardless of whether or not the random NPC quest giver is actually speaking. Tera's problem is just that the quests are so boring and aren't fleshed out at all.