I am not sanctimonious enough to write this post in hopes of having my already little-known presence in Teraville be missed. I also realize these complaint posts are popping up on these forums ad nauseum. I do however care quite a bit about the concept that drove this game into existence, and would at least like to express my feelings on the subject to an audience w/ a reference point. (My girlfriend checked out about 10 seconds in...) This is the reason I cancelled my subscription to Tera.
Leveling to 60 in Tera was fine. Sure the quests were redundant, but I did not mind because the combat was so exciting. I mean, all quest-based mmos are pretty much go to x location & kill x amount of things, so the combat actually made this a bit more bearable for me than in most games. I grinded my way up to 60 (I use the term "grind" very loosely here) because I was so excited to get to endgame. I just knew that w/ this game's combat system, the potential for what fun I could have w/ my character would be sky-high. Then I hit engame.
I went weeks sitting in queues for hours, spamming dungeons to get 0 enigmatic drops, breaking crystals due to bad pugs, and experiencing everything else that everyone is complaining about on these forums. Most of these dungeons ended before they even got started because of squabbles among players. There were times I would log out of Tera and say to myself, "Self, you just spent 5 hours playing a video game. Not only did you accomplish nothing in the real world for your gaming in the first place, but also you have accomplished nothing in the game despite all your frustration. Oh, and you broke 3 crystals in that last horrible PUG, so you have netted -500 gold for your efforts. You have officially just wasted time wasing time." Needless to say, I was very frustrated. Then I found this out:
In Balder's Temple, there are sloths to the left of the main entrance. If you go in and solo them every two hours you will net usually 200 gold (gold drops + vendor garbage) as well as a good chance for t12 enchant fodder to drop for about 5 minutes of work. You can also do hard-mode every 6 hours w/ the same rewards/drop chances. This action is the best profit/time in the game. Farming monkeys every two hours got me a +9 t13 weapon & +9 t12 armor in about a week and a half by amassing enough gold to continue to force-feed gold into the RNG system. I succeeded at endgame by not participating in it. To make things worse, once I had gotten said gear, the most profitable thing to spend my time doing was to still kill these monkeys over and over again. Upon this realization, I lost interest in logging in.
As beautiful as the graphics are, and as great as the combat is in Tera, your system does not reward player effort in an already mundane endgame environment. Everyone on these forums can continue to debate the copious complaints, but the result is still the mass exodus of an already dwindling playerbase. I truly had high-hopes for this game when I started it. There is no combat system that can compete w/ Tera in today's MMO market. This game set the bar for what I hope is to be expected of combat in future MMOs. Hopefully now someone will come along and refine it into something fun.
TL;DR - Tera is about killing little monkey creatures, and I'm going to go play something else.
Leveling to 60 in Tera was fine. Sure the quests were redundant, but I did not mind because the combat was so exciting. I mean, all quest-based mmos are pretty much go to x location & kill x amount of things, so the combat actually made this a bit more bearable for me than in most games. I grinded my way up to 60 (I use the term "grind" very loosely here) because I was so excited to get to endgame. I just knew that w/ this game's combat system, the potential for what fun I could have w/ my character would be sky-high. Then I hit engame.
I went weeks sitting in queues for hours, spamming dungeons to get 0 enigmatic drops, breaking crystals due to bad pugs, and experiencing everything else that everyone is complaining about on these forums. Most of these dungeons ended before they even got started because of squabbles among players. There were times I would log out of Tera and say to myself, "Self, you just spent 5 hours playing a video game. Not only did you accomplish nothing in the real world for your gaming in the first place, but also you have accomplished nothing in the game despite all your frustration. Oh, and you broke 3 crystals in that last horrible PUG, so you have netted -500 gold for your efforts. You have officially just wasted time wasing time." Needless to say, I was very frustrated. Then I found this out:
In Balder's Temple, there are sloths to the left of the main entrance. If you go in and solo them every two hours you will net usually 200 gold (gold drops + vendor garbage) as well as a good chance for t12 enchant fodder to drop for about 5 minutes of work. You can also do hard-mode every 6 hours w/ the same rewards/drop chances. This action is the best profit/time in the game. Farming monkeys every two hours got me a +9 t13 weapon & +9 t12 armor in about a week and a half by amassing enough gold to continue to force-feed gold into the RNG system. I succeeded at endgame by not participating in it. To make things worse, once I had gotten said gear, the most profitable thing to spend my time doing was to still kill these monkeys over and over again. Upon this realization, I lost interest in logging in.
As beautiful as the graphics are, and as great as the combat is in Tera, your system does not reward player effort in an already mundane endgame environment. Everyone on these forums can continue to debate the copious complaints, but the result is still the mass exodus of an already dwindling playerbase. I truly had high-hopes for this game when I started it. There is no combat system that can compete w/ Tera in today's MMO market. This game set the bar for what I hope is to be expected of combat in future MMOs. Hopefully now someone will come along and refine it into something fun.
TL;DR - Tera is about killing little monkey creatures, and I'm going to go play something else.