Yet Another TERA Review (CBT4)

Had some time after finishing the fourth closed beta, so I figured I'd throw down all my own impressions on the game, having played pretty vigorously through all four betas thus far. It's really long, I apologize in advance. If you're interested in anything in particular, I threw up a table of contents below. As with all reviews, take this with a grain of salt.

Table of Contents:

• 
  Highlights
• 
  Starting Experience
• 
  Combat System
• 
  BAMS
• 
  Dungeons
• 
  Leveling/Questing
• 
  Crafting
• 
  Artwork
• 
  Endgame
• 
  Miscellaneous
• 
  Summary

Highlights - The Important Stuff:

Payment Model: Sub, no cash shop

Tab-Targetting: No

"Action-Combat": Yes

Quests: 98% Kill10/Gather10, 2% KillBig1

Crafting: Yes, but mostly crap

Instances: Yes

OWPvP Servers: Yes

Graphics: Very Nice

Big-Ass Monsters (BAMS): Tons

Fully-clothed Females: A few

Scantily-clad Males: A few

 

Starting Experience:

It's a lame excuse, I know, but you really DO have to give this game a real chance to appreciate it. As best I can tell, the starting experience was planned on Friday evening at the bar, and without the marketing department present. It's common knowledge that you need to hook newcomers fast and hard with MMO's, but this game starts out slow. Pretty, but slooooooow. If you've been researching and noticed a lot of comments of "Got to lvl X and got bored", there's a definite reason for this.

With the exception of 2-3 bosses, the entire starting island (lvl1-11) can be face-tanked, which pretty much fails to highlight the action-combat system used here (kind of like Ferrari trying to sell cars based on cargo space and cupholders). It starts out pretty slow, getting people accustomed to a lack of tab-targetting, and largely fails to speed things up later on, making it only slightly more "action combat" than your standard hotkey cycling system. Levels 12-19 are faster and a little more dangerous, but still no ball of fire. It isn't until lvl20 that you truly get a feel for the game's drawing points - the combat system and BAMs.

Combat System:

As mentioned in the highlights, there's no tab-targetting in this game. You want to hit something, you need to aim at it. You don't want to get hit, either block or get out of the way. Your armor is your secondary line of defense here. This isn't "action" to the extent of a genuine hack n'slash, but as general chat during the first beta showed, it was a pretty big adjustment for many people and beyond standard MMO-fare.

With the lack of targetting and increased mobility comes an increased dependance on positioning. Classes that can block need to face the right direction. Classes that can dodge need to make sure they finish somewhere safe. Attacks from behind do more damage. Melee weapon swings go through everything in their path (don't worry, no friendly fire), obstacles or other enemies can get in the way of ranged shots, and players and enemies can get in the way of each other (intentionally or not). One of the more dangerous places to stand is behind the tank, where a boss could decide to spontaneously charge and push the tank back 30m, cheerfully trampling anyone else who was in the way. The difference between a good and a great party is one that makes these factors work for them.

You'll still have a hotbar with skills, but many of them are triggerable in combos by simply hitting the space bar. For situation-dependant skills (i.e. only usable after blocking, or being knocked down), it works well, although your space bar will get a serious workout, and I personally had to remap my jump key away from spacebar to prevent the occasional accidental jump (useless for combat purposes, except for guaranteed knockdown).

All in all, this system is one of the game-definers, and you'll be spending a lot of time doing it. You hate this, you pretty much hate the game. You like it, you might just be convinced to overlook the shortcomings. But as mentioned earlier, it's going to be a few hours before you're actually forced to use it properly.

BAMS (Big Ass Monsters):

The other big drawing point, and largely self-explanatory. Not that giant monsters are unique to this game, but they're not a novelty here. There are entire fields full of these things all over the place, starting at about level 20. They're big, don't die easily, can one or two-shot you, and will actively move around the battle with auto-trample set to ON. They're only a step down from actual dungeon bosses, and you can find entire zones full of them, without any pesky mobs along the way.

Best of all, thanks to TERA's combat system, good players can avoid damage entirely, meaning that it's entirely possible to form a non-Trinity group and go hunting them for fun and profit. In fact, it's not uncommon for people to try soloing BAMS, although this tends to be either extremely unforgiving of mistakes, or extremely slow (depending on your class' strengths). Lots of fun either way, and between the chance for drops and the associated quest turn-ins, you can get rich and well-equipped in the process.

Dungeons:

The dungeons are pretty standard groupwork (max party size of five, btw) material, relying largely on a Holy-Trinity-ish combat mechanics against stuff that can kill you fairly quickly if you're expecting to just sit and spam skills. The aforementioned combat system comes into its own here, with all the previously mentioned variables actually mattering. Since crowd-control skills don't factor hugely in this game, things can get hairy in a hurry if you let them. While the three roles are still there, the combat system tweaks them all in various ways.

Heaing - many heal spells need to be locked on with the target cursor before launching, and another healing option involves simply dropping orbs for other people to pick up at their leisure. The simpler, easier AOE heals need to be used sparingly, since they generate lots of aggro. It's entirely normal for a good healer to add in a little extra ranged damage between heals, when possible.

Tanking - rather than pitting your gearscore against the boss and hoping your healer can keep up, you need to actively mitigate incoming damage (either block or dodge, depending on class), while fitting in attacks to maintain control of the fight, and aiming the boss so the damage dealers have safe(ish) zones to work in.

DPS - There are no true safe zones (except possibly in another room). The goal is to learn how to stay clear of damage, while positioning yourself for maximum damage - often behind, although many bosses are quick to use moves to hit whatever's hitting behind them, no matter how good a job the tank is doing.

There are both instanced dungeons and open world "dungeons". The former are self-explanatory, and the ones so far have had 1 hour lockout cycles (see below for more). Nothing you haven't seen in pretty much every other MMO other there, I'm sure. The open world "dungeons" are basically just like a open world zone, except with everything compressed into a smaller area. You have the option of exploring them by yourself or in a group, depending on how big a monster you want to kill (and by extension, what rewards you're after).

As experienced so far in beta, dungeons are pretty much the primary source of equipment in this game. The drops are superior and easier to what you can craft or earn elsewhere, even over BAM drops. Which is negative point imo, but word is that this may not be the case in the release (see below for more).

Leveling/Questing:

Heavily quest-driven leveling. Not only did the Korean version add more quests later on, but EME actually added even more quests on top of that. At level 38, I've skipped multiple zones worth of quests. While the levelling curve steepens noticeably at level 30, there are still TONS of quests available, and any talk of "Korean grind" really doesn't have a foot to stand on in this game. For better or for worse. In fact, if you like raising alts, you might appreciate the ability to choose some (not all) of your levelling zones.

Unfortunately, the quests ALL of the "Kill10" or "Gather10" variety. Partying gives a slight experience boost, but the mob kill credits aren't shared (distributed round-robin, I think), so the benefits are weak. BAM kill credits are shared fortunately, so partying is definitely worth it there. Fortunately, the required numbers are still fairly low at this time, with the majority still only required ~15 mobs or so for completion. The quest dialogue is entirely forgettable as well, although at least the English is good.

On a side note, the quests are generous in experience, but often cheap in money. Whereas the enemies themselves are weaker in experience, but generous in money. There was a noticable trend in the first two betas, where people who quest-leveled were poor, while people who ignored quests were rich. So in the end, both avenues could be considered viable.

Crafting:

You know when you play an MMO and get the impression that something was added simply so they could say they had it? That applies big time here. This has been a big complaint since the first beta, and EME hasn't been very talkative. Without getting into the gory details, there's some gross stupidity to be seen in the recipe design so far.

With the small exception of combat consumables (which generally can't be purchased from NPC's at all), this is not a crafters game.  The system is setup in such a way that crafting gear is more expensive, more time consuming, and weaker than other options out there. Including quest gear, I might add. Couple this with loot tables that sees necessary craft mats often dropping at inappropriate levels (too late, usually), and you generally outlevel any gear by the time you craft it. That said, there are two possible caveats to this - Enchanting and templates.

Since the enchanting system requires sacrificing a similar piece of gear for a chance to improve the target piece, crafting offers a possible source of sacrificial gear to burn. And, since this game has the option to transpose appearance templates on other gear, crafted gear can serve as an appearance template. But these are both quite minor in usefulness, as many frustrated would-be crafters have discovered. Big strike against  here.

Artwork:

Unless you've been living under a rock, you may have noticed that the female armor in this game is exceptionally well-ventilated and suitable for sun-tanning

But sexism/gender issues aside, the character artwork IS good. Every race has distinctive armor looks, with a wide variety of appearances available from a single piece of armor. No simple generic templates scaling here. And when you find a look you like, the right amount of in-game gold will let you transpose the appearance template onto whatever your main gear is, and a dye system will let you fine-tune things. Those who take pride in their appearance will like this. In fact, I highly recommend going through your chosen race/class's armor before committing to serious levelling, to make sure you like what's in store for you. It's actually worth the effort in this game. I can understand that not everyone approves of the styling, but I would call that an issue of taste, not quality.

The world's themselves are also good looking. Perhaps a little more open space than I would have liked in the earlier zones, but each is distinctive and good looking, especially if you have a decent computer that can support the better graphics settings. Lots of details like ships, flying beasts, weather effects, etc, make it a great world to wander around and kill things in.

On a less positive note, for the enemies, there's certainly some model re-usage and re-colouring, which I could do without. But at least they're reusing good-looking models.

Endgame:

Obviously can't speak for endgame through personal experience, but we at least have some hints already. Almost a full dozen endgame dungeons, many with a hard mode option, and En Mass has tweaked a number of the second-to-best dungeons so they'll be relevent as we immediately get the latest Korean content. Lots of square milage to explore, if what we've seen is any indication.

There's a political system, although it's not implemented at this time. But there are a bunch of off-duty NPC's in many towns, and I'm given to understand that they can be activated should the political ruler of the area decide to do so, which could be interesting. No idea beyond that, tbh.

We also have an idea of what the Path to Power will look like. And it's a beast of a path. Getting the rare gear drops is just the beginning - now you have to boost it up.

First you'll go through a process of repeatedly wiping and rolling for what stats the gear has - at substantial cost, of course. Once you manage that, you'll have to start enchanting. Insert your gear, offer a sacrificial piece of similar gear, plus some powder, and see what the RNG gods decide. Repeatedly. People looking to be in the top 1% or 0.01% will either need a golden horseshoe up their arse, or have to grind their brains out for gold and gear to keep offering until they get lucky. For the highest levels, increasing your odds of success involves sacrificing otherwise endgame-quality gear and extremely expensive powder. So yes, this could be considered extremely tedious for the min-maxers.

On the other hand, my attempts at moderate enchant levels with the system so far haven't been too bad, suggesting that the system wouldn't be too big of a headache for more moderate players. And there are some upsides to this system. There's no weapon destruction on failures - the worst that can happen is you go down one enchant rank. And at least you won't be staring at a cash shop icon offering trinkets to boost/guarantee success rates. So it could be worse.

Miscellaneous:

Instance Lockout Timers - Love them or hate them, instanced dungeons have these. The ones so far have all been 1 hour timers, with good groups consistantly running them in 30-45 minutes. And then afk-ing for the remainder of the time. Kind of a killjoy, tbh.

Gear Paths - Since dungeon gear is superior to other avenues (crafting, open world BAM's, quest tokens), this can make for a lot of people dungeoning (and afk-ing, see above), and a lot fewer interested in open-world partying. Point in case - finding open world hunting parties this past beta was almost painful. The beta before, thanks to a lack of new instance, it was easy and awesome. Supposedly, there's been a change in the Korean version that's made it more profitable to work open world, and EME seems pretty aggressive in getting current content to us for release, so hopefully that improves things. But I can't judge that yet.

Publisher - The NA publisher, En Mass Entertainment, has been fairly decent so far. Their communication was very good during early betas, so-so more recently. They've also thrown together some genuinely useful guides and question material on their site as well. The in-game translations are devoid of the usually Engrish, so they've actually bothered to hire proof-readers. Even their collector-editions premiums were fairly reasonable.

On the other hand, some of us beta players are beginning to suspect their control over the product doesn't extend too much beyond the original product over in Korea. They're aggressively "Westernizing" the game, but there's also some pretty stupid shit still in there that should be easy fixes that they've remained entirely mum on. Hard to say for sure, might just be poor communication (Seriously, even a "No" is better than silence). I can at least say for certain that I've seen far, far worse from publishers during beta periods, and not too many better.

Summary:

If you read this far, I'm impressed. I'd be happy to add anything else, but those are all the things that occurred to me while writing this up.

It's solid game. Great combat system, great looks. It beats the pants off the F2P offers floating around, both in quality and content. So far, I would even rate the beta as approaching that of Rift (which had an excellent beta). There are also some promising tweaks, changes, adn content happening in Korea that will hopefully come over here quickly as well.

On the other hand, the questing is thoroughly unoriginal, the crafting is shite, and I don't understand why they seem determined to funnel people into single instances when they have such a pretty world available.

Is it worth $15/month (multi-month discounts available)? Couple bottles of beer or fastfood meals? Not an issue for me personally, if the game is worth playing. This isn't going to be an Anything-killer, but I don't see any reason why it can't hold a solid and profitable niche.

Not going to give a numerical score, but I'll at least say that I have absolutely no plans on cancelling my pre-order. On the other hand, my two-week ago CBT3 excitement-fuelled plans of springing for a six-month discount subsciption are temporarily on-hold. I may wind up just taking this game a month at a time.