Hello,
My goal with this post:
Text is hard to interpret on the internet so I will start off by saying that I am writing this without any anger or annoyance. My only intention is to maybe change 1 or 2 little tiny things that may make other people's experience in Tera a little better.
Who I am in gaming:
I do not think I am special and I am not egotistical in games. I am only explaining the type of player I am so you have this as a reference during reading my post. I played competitive shooters for about 15 years. I was part of a professional gaming team for about 2 years. I was asked to help with testing game mechanics 2 times by development teams because I played at very high levels in games and also filmed and explained complex game mechanics. I also played a pretty big MMO for about 5 years at a pretty high level. So anyway, most of us have stories to brag on in games but all I mean to say is that I am not the best and never was but I am by no means your average player playing with average effort.
Who I am in Tera: Over 3 months I have played up to level 70 3 times and up to level 65 5 times in this Tera game. I also have a good understanding of about half of the game mechanics that influence damage exchanges. Basically, I do not understand this game fully and not nearly as well as some of the old die hard players here but I have played this game about 6 or 7 times past where an average casual player would stop.
My suggestions:
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Suggestion 1:
Review what is said by characters in the story and try to make the story as meaningful as possible to players.
My reason for suggestion 1: I have seen on youtube more than one player complain of being the "postman" in this game. That feeling where people are just flying from point to point happens because many people are not interested in the story and lore of Tera. I spotted multiple typos in the text boxes by NPC story characters at times so I feel like there is maybe 1 or 2 people at an office somewhere that are typing up all of this story text dialogue and it feels like the story lost importance over time with development staff. It's not bad. It has some very interesting moments but it could be cleaned up.
-> My belief is that the bulk of the player base is your casual players.
-> From the casuals, elites and die hard players will emerge.
-> but, the casual player base has to have fun in order for this progression to happen.
-> One way to retain the casuals is by having a meaningful story that they are emotionally interested in.
My main complaint about the story right now is there is a lot of vagueness at times. In particular with the names of characters you have never met. I never met some of the names said in the game and the only reason I even know who they are is because I did my own research and got on the wikipedia and tried to make sense of who characters mentioned vaguely in text were and why I should even care to try to look them up during my free time.
A casual player will not go do research on vaguely mentioned characters most of the time. That is why so many people eventually disregard the story entirely and then begin to complain on being "postmen" flying between check points on their mount.
Again, my main suggestion for fixing this would be to make things SIMPLE and LESS VAGUE with the LORE of Tera. I understand the excitement of a mystery in a story arc, but you have to make the story meaningful for the mystery to even matter.
One improvement example would be to make notable text words in the chat dialogue have a description box that appears with a mouse hover. It's just a description box like the one that comes up when you hover over an item in your inventory. You could bring up a little picture and a description for important places, characters, and items. People would love that stuff. A lot of times people sign on for an hour and play then go back to real life for two days. They forget what's going on in the story so something even like the description boxes would make the game a lot more meaningful to players I think.
Suggestion 2:
Implement interactive learning and training tutorials offered by NPC's somewhere in the world of Tera.
Reason for this suggestion: There is an entire website that is called "How to Tera". There are also endless hours of Tera filmed on youtube where players supposedly explain game mechanics for you. People do this on their own free time and it is sometimes wrong sometimes vague and sometimes just simply incorrect. This whole community is basically one big puzzle of doing research to understand WHY you need to develop your character in a certain way, HOW to go about improving your character that way then WHERE in the world of Tera to go to "grind" to resolve this issue.
Examples of interactive tutorial NPC's:
-> Something like a human sparing partner that will introduce you to buffs/debuffs.
-> Something like a trained dragon that will cast spells and introduce/train you against attacks seen in dungeons that confuse people.
-> Something like a wise old Sorcerer NPC that could analyze your character's attack strength then tell you one way you could make your character stronger each day. For example: He could explain that your weapon could be better then tell you what to do to resolve this issue. This would be a life saver for casuals right now. I would even pay 300 or 400 gold for a tip from that NPC if he dropped good tips.
Also, I would NOT put these interactive tutorials in the story as a requirement to progress. If you "MAKE" people learn, they will skip over it every time. It's a fact of human nature. That is not how people play games. They don't play a game to get a bachelor's degree in Tera or any game.
They turn on a game to play and that's it. If they learn a little bit as they play then that's a +1. That's how it works. So yes, casuals need help with understanding mechanics but you have to let them choose when they want to learn those complex game mechanics because they won't always sign on a game with the intention of "going to Tera school".
Suggestion 3:
Create Dungeons with different "TIERS" of difficulty. Die hard college nerds in their late teens and early 20's can play Difficult dungeons with 100% rewards. Players who want to play serious but not stress (typically your young to middle aged working class) can play a slightly dumbed down version of the same dungeon for 60% rewards. Then casual players who just want to play just to laugh and have fun socially with a beer in hand can play a dumbed down (easy) version of the same dungeon but only receive 30% of the same rewards.
Why this suggestion:
Right now there is a real problem with the flow of learning Tera battle mechanics starting at about level 65. Your level 65 dungeon "Gossamer Vault" is advertised as "EASY". It is also the ONLY multiplayer dungeon available to play level 65. Trust me, it is not easy for a casual player. Prior to this dungeon you could perform fine in Tera quite well without "grinding" really any equipment or character statistic of any type. All you basically had to do is gather equipment that matches your level then be of around the right level relative to the advertised dungeon (or quest) then play. That's pretty much it.
However, this suddenly no longer works at around level 65. You can't survive in Gossamer Vault without understanding pretty advanced team play concepts which most people never care to learn in the first place (ignoring your die hards). There's a lot of casual players that don't understand game mechanics and they just want to just walk in and shoot their bow casually or swing their sword with a group of players in a multiplayer dungeon. Right now you are simply not able to do this after about level 65.
The Tera dungeon system as a whole sort of operates under the assumption that players will continue to learn and gain knowledge and understanding of battle mechanics as they level up. As someone who has created tutorials and taught games to other players for about 5 years, I will be the first to say that this is not how all players are. Sometimes players reach a plateau in their knowledge and abilities and that's just how it is. You know what? That is OKAY. A game is supposed to be "fun"... for everyone.
So again, my suggestion is to create TIERS of high level dungeons that appeal to the different TIERS of high level players (casuals, die hards, social players relaxing, etc.).
Why this suggestion 2:
Dungeon Tiers actually seem very simple to implement as well. All you have to do is adjust damage output and/or remove some of the boss mechanics that bring players hardship then advertise the dungeon appropriately:
"Gossamer Vault. Difficulty: Easy. Rewards: 30%"
"Gossamer Vault. Difficulty: Intermediate. Rewards: 50%"
"Gossamer Vault. Difficulty: Advanced. Rewards: 100%"
I don't think this would actually divide up the players que'd up in the instance matcher in a horrible way because they can simply que up for all multiple dungeons at the same time like they do now. You also could simply consider the easy version of a dungeon and the intermediate version of a dungeon simply two different dungeons. Just list them as two separate dungeons in the instance matching menu.
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Thanks for reading my suggestions if you took time to read my text. I hope something I wrote is helpful to the community in some way.
