can someone please clarify for me; when the masses of players complain how annoying, grindy, unfair, etc enchanting is, the most common responses are:

you just want this game to be easymode!
or
this isnt an easy wowclone game!
or
you kids just want everything on a silver platter!

but what i dont get is theres nothing hard about enchanting. NOTHING. its not hard to grind normal mobs. its not hard to spend hours making gold. its not hard to drag and drop and pray to the rng gods. there isnt a single thing a kid over 10 cant do in the enchanting process.

so why the negative responses? theres nothing hard about spending so much time doing brainless gameplay.

in a "skill-based" game that lets you Q for a dungeon based on item level, but you really need up-rated gear to beat boss-fight timed-mechanics, this enchanting system requires minimal skill at all. the only thing it requires is time to grind gold.

the argument seems to be that gold grinding is not a recipe for longterm success to a game that stands apart from the rest for its awesome combat system. sure, pretty much every aspect of this game is grindy (rep, dungeons, nexus), but grindy with either defined results, or grindy while enjoying the suberb combat.

perhaps if enchanting WAS hard. WAS skill-based. that might help things. if there was maybe a minigame to enchant? maybe like an old-school slider game. not like bh/eme would implement this, but:

1. all mat requirements would stay as is for alkahest
2. speed of the slider increases with each level, thereby making it harder to time when we need to hit it to land in the target zone to successfully enchant
3. quality of the item being used: higher quality slows the slider more, requiring using golds at higher level to try to slow the slider as much as possible to increase your chances of landing in target zone.

now this probably wouldnt work either, maybe due to it being too big of a change, maybe lag/latency, whatever. but something like this sort of thing puts skill into enchanting. not just time. because time does not equal harder game play. the usual retort is that time equals no life, vitamin D deficiency, and numerous other insults. lets just say time sitting here grinding is easy.

as it stands, this is arguably the worst grindy aspect of this game, and may very well be a major reason why people leave this fantastic game before long. of course i agree that enchanting is a defeatist mechanic, but i love the rest of the game (except boring nexus) and would prefer not to see this game go down the tubes.

Its not hard, but it is tedious.

I love korean mmos in general, but one thing i hate is their love of RNG item upgrading, i never really got it. I would rather it be converted into a linear 'sure thing' than be based on chance. Ive no problem grinding for days, or weeks, or years. On the whole grinding is soothing and medatitive and helps a person obtain universal one-ness. But i like knowing that every single second i put in, gives me an equal value of gain gotten out.

Thats almost the definition of grinding really, time spent converted into positive gain, and thats why i love it! Anyone from any background or station can rest secure in the knowledge that they log on and spend a portion of their life into gaining a measure of power, uniformly equal and consistent with out bias or discrimination. It is the dream of grinding ;_;

Enchanting's easy. And should stay the way it is.

Only thing I hate about the game atm is that I have to PVE for everything.

wtb BG's.

Quote: Bringer on 06/03/2012, 08:34 AM - view


very philisophical. i dig it. perhaps if it was less rng, there would be less complaints, and less you-want-it-easy flame responses.

i personally had a chunk of time to spend this weekend playing, and did grind, and spend. ive dropped about about 10k only to get my +7 to +8 and fail repeatedly at +9.

now, while i am discouraged, i am pressing onward, but i can see why alot of these posters are angry with this system.

Quote: desyur on 06/03/2012, 08:38 AM - view

easy yes. i just dont think it can stay the way it is, and have tera maintain longterm success. this seems to be a major issue people have with the game because of how enchanting is done and how enchanted items are required to progess in content. if those 2 things were not linked maybe it would be different. however, the dps races in many fights require mostly or fully enchanted gear.

i dont think it matters if this system requires less time than ktera did/does. its still too much for the average NA gamer. and we need to be mindful of the average (aka casual) gamer. we need their subs.

Past a point, it's just beating your head against the RNG until it feels pity for you and let's you advance one small step toward the goal.

That isn't skill.

Quote: audabon on 06/03/2012, 08:50 AM - view

They will jump ship and move on next time something big and flashy gets released regardless of what this game does.

If they want long term success en masse needs to isolate and target a core audience that will be fanatical supporters of them over long periods of time. Look at how EVE worked, very niche game, and its had steady growth since it was released, no declines.

Thats the only way to be successfull in a post wow world where you cant count on addicting people to your game with 'my first mmo' syndrome. The people playing tera are almost entierly people who have already quit one or several mmos. And once you have quit an mmo once quitting other mmos is easy to do.

The best way to do this i think would be to target the people who were attracted to this game because it was supposed to be skill based and hard.

While im all for removing RNG aspects, i am against making things less time consuming (on average). In fact things should probably be more time consuming.

Just take out the fail, and change it for every level requires that number of items, keeping with white for up to plus 3, greens for plus 6 and golds above that.

I'd rather gather 9 items to sacrifice then the stupid RNG.

Quote: H3artless on 06/03/2012, 09:00 AM - view

Then when you get those 9 items in one day and enchant you have nothing left to do but quit.

See how it works? Keeps people playing because they have a reason to log in, people have been grinding hardmodes for weeks now, if they all instantly had +9, all those people, wouldn't be logging in.

Only way to rid RNG is make alkahest 150-200g EACH, then you'd have to grind for retarded amounts of money to get a guaranteed success rate, this prevents inflation and keeps people playing.

It's harder to farm this way though, as you are at say 2k and you know you need 10k more you're looking at how far away you still are...but with enchanting every time you get an item you think it will be the one.

So when grinding youre just like, I just need one more, then I can try and it could work!

or with pure money sink no RNG you're like:

Wow, I've managed to make 2k gold, need 10k more then I can have a +9...ugh...

It's not hard, it's just an annoying pain in the [filtered] feature. It's not fun, it's not rewarding, it's extremely tedious. When I get a successful enchant, I am not glad or relieved, I am pissed that it took so long. I can see the current enchanting system being a huge turn off to casual players, like myself, and there goes 75% of the game population. Most of us have full time jobs, we don't have time to farm dungeons all [filtered] day just to get equipment or cash to waste on the piece of crap enchanting system. I can only do about 1 or 2 dungeons a day, that gives me like 1 chance at an enchant a day (above +6), and when it takes like 10 attempts to get from +8 to +9, that took me like 1/3rd of a month!