I haven't yet seen this mentioned, but if you're running an ATI card (As I am) do a search for the string:

AmbientOcclusion=True

and change it to

AmbientOcclusion=False

Ambient Occlusion; as far as I'm aware, is an Nvidia only option. Disabling AO gave me a huge performance boost with no loss to video quality. Give it a try. :)

As goes without saying though, make sure that you make a back up of your preferences before you change anything. Hope this helps!

Phirefly, I promise you that you'll get the fifty or sixty dollars worth out of it. The game is solid, beautiful and most importantly FUN!

I was concerned about the investment initially as well, but I've been more than pleasantly surprised. :) Come on aboard, we'd love to have you!!

I'm glad to hear that so much has changed in Crux Black since I stepped down. :) Master.Po I wish you the best of luck, you've got some really good people in there that will do well by you if you treat them well. Siliv and Omnius come to mind.

I'm also glad to hear that Crux Black now has a guild leader who takes time to sign in, and to hear that the ranks have been culled somewhat.

As for going for Crux being intended for political ends, yes, I think we all understand that. What I didn't understand when I was a member of Crux was that I was the means to that political end.

By the way Master.Po, are you new to Crux Black? I don't ever remember seeing you online when I was a member.

Enmasse, I gotta' agree and give props. When I signed on I did so with some trepidation, "Do I really want to drop $60 on a game I've really never heard of?" "Will this game be good enough to justify the monthly charge?" etc.

Well you put those fears to sleep as soon as I logged in. Beautiful graphics, fast paced combat, a well written story, everything I could have hoped for and more. :) A lot of love went into this game, and the care that the creators put into TERA is readily apparent. I hope to see TERA around for a good, long while. In fact, I hope to some day be reading forum posts along the lines of

"TERA's graphics are so ooolddd! Mod: Please redo the original race models, their polygons are showing!"

:P

You've crafted a game that I can make an emotional connection to, which is to say: Keep up the good work!!

tl;dr: You're either QQing about the cash shop or QQing about the people QQing about the cash shop. Stop it.

We get it, we all get it. You either:

Hate the real money shop.
OR
You understand the real money shop.
OR
You see the real money shop as a sign of the end times, leading to the inevitable apocalypse and as a result you're hoarding canned food and ammo.

That's fine. We've all seen the posts, Enmasse has seen the posts, now give them some time to react.

You will be okay.

This is not the end of the world.

This is not the end of TERA.

They aren't reaching into your wallet, you have to freely give them your monies.

Now take a breath and walk away from the computer. Starting fifty threads with hundreds of comments each won't do a bit of good if we don't give the developers and bean-counters time to read them, right?

Yes; if you feel strongly enough about it you need to speak up, but speak when they have the ability to listen. Right now it's a cacophony of voices, all shouting different things.

Stealing from another poster in this sub-forum: +1 if you agree, ignore if you don't.

Remember to breathe.

I don't know about the chat, it's working fine for me. The profanity filter seems to just filter out slurs about a person's race, ethnicity or sexuality. Personally I think that's in the win column, but since this is an open thread if you have a problem go for it.

Just remember: Solutions. This whole conversation has to revolve around solutions.

tl;dr: That needs to be improved and how would you improve it? What's working perfectly that Enmasse can take inspiration from?

Let's start up an official wish-list thread. What we want more of in the game, what we want less of, absurd impractical things and tiny quality of life changes.

Whether TERA sinks or swims is going to depend on the content of the game and the voice of the community, and anything we can do to improve TERA will go along way to keeping her afloat in a sea of F2P models. I'll start.

What I love:
1. The combat. (Duh.) TERA feels to me like an online Kingdoms of Amalur or Devil May Cry. The fast pace of the combat, the need to use strategy and the multiple options for tanking and dpsing are a welcome change from "You stand here, I'll stand here and nobody move!"

2. The class variety. In every previous MMO I've played the classes all felt pretty much the same. A warrior felt like a DK felt like a paladin felt like a tank. Mages and warlocks and druids and ranged dps. TERA made the bold decision to make each class look and feel unique and I like that. Jumping from one class to another is akin to jumping from one game to another in many cases.

3. The writing. Most people don't take the time to read quest text, and I appreciate that, especially in a game like TERA where we all just want to get back into the combat. If you do take a moment to read though, you'll find quest text and exposition full of well written wit, inside jokes and emotional resonance. I've never played a game with so many polysyllabic words used and I like the change of pace.

4. The graphics. I won't even go into that one, you already know how much and why I love them.

5. The difficulty level. TERA seems to have found a sweet spot here, at least for me. The combat and enemies allow for both simple and complex tactics, and as such players that just scrape by with 1hp, and players that absolutely destroy their enemy. Skill based combat ftw!

What I DON'T love:
1. Crafting. It's broken. It's no fun. I can't even put my finger on why I don't like it, but I don't. In most other games I'm a crafting addict, I'll get excited about a new recipe, jump on the chance to buy cheap materials off the Auction House or farm that one reagent that I've been missing. I've tried to try crafting in TERA but it just doesn't work. Since I don't know the problem I can't suggest a solution (Readers, what do you think could be done?) But I know /something/ needs to be done.

2. Questing. Nope, I'm not gonna' get on TERA for not completely changing the way questing operates in a video game. Frankly I think that the reviewers who knock a star or a point or a letter off TERA's score for uninnovative questing are being foolish. Except for one style of quest, one I keep coming across that drives me crazy. Here's how it goes:

Quest giver 1: "So you want to save the world? See that guy standing three feet to my left? Go talk to him."
*Walk three feet, talk to Quest giver 2*
Quest giver 2: "Ah, saving the world huh? I don't know anything about that. Tell my friend who you just spoke to that I can't help you."
*Walk three feet, talk to Quest giver 1*
Quest giver 1: "You'll be wanting the long lost sword of Amonzee, the only way to retrieve the map to the location to find the stone to open the door to fight the boss to get the loot is to bring me 27 vials of bunny blood. Now go! Find the shine that contains the portal to the Island of Bunnies!"

This is skipping a lot of intermediate steps, so I'll be more concise: Going to Point A to get a quest to go to Point B to get a quest to go BACK to Point A is not a quest. It's a chore. Not game breaking, but frustrating as all get out.

3. The Island of Dawn. It's long and it's boring. I don't know what to suggest short of reworking the entire zone, which I'm sure isn't feasible but DAMN is it long and boring.

I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of any off the top of my head right at the moment. The point is this: TERA is a really, really good game, but it could be an excellent game, one to give the big names a run for their money. Just a few tweaks here and there.

Now it's up to you dear reader. What can be fixed and how would you fix it? Be as specific as possible or as vague as you need to be. It's up to us; working together with Enmasse, to make sure this game we love has a nice, long life span.

Wow, I really really like all this community out-reach in this thread! I've taken a few days off from TERA but I'll definitely be chatting some of your respective guild leaders up in game. :)

Someone made the comment on the connected thread that "Crux has done more to bring this community together than I ever thought possible." (Paraphrased) So I'm glad that some good has come of it.

Thank you all for your kindness and patience as we ex-Crux members have come to be aware of what was going down. I stand by the statement that the best thing that you can do for both the server, and for those Crux members who aren't involved in the d-baggery, is to calmly and kindly explain what's been going on. :)

/moar popcorn!

See you server side,
Stalk

I don't mind. I really don't. For one thing this is a valid revenue stream, one which many many games make use of. Micro-transactions are common in the mmo-world, and allow some games to continue offering content well after the game's subscription based life span wears out.

Secondly we're only talking about vanity items so far, weapon skins are just as much a vanity item as Blizzard's pet shop is, all they do is add aesthetics to the game.

One further point though: Us buying items from the item store won't "save" TERA. TERA will sink or swim on it's merits and it's word of mouth. Enmasse and the game as a whole would benefit much more from all of us trying to get a friend to subscribe to the game than they would from all of us getting a micro-transaction.

Just my three cents on this. :)

Well I'm gonna' chime in one final time on this matter and make a request:

If you happen to find yourself grouped with a Crux member AND that person isn't an [filtered]-hat, consider inviting them to your guild. Make the argument, explain what's been going on and see if he or she is interested. I know that's asking a lot for a lot of people, but there ARE some good people in Crux who just got caught up in the wave or inducted before they even hit level 10.

Maybe I should make my own guild. Hmmm....