Everyone goes on about how TERA's only advantage is its combat (which is huge), but there's lots of little things I like about the game that set it apart:

One of the first things I noticed playing was the character maker process.  When you're choosing a race, as you scroll through them, the music changes and the background falls into a depiction of the race's world.  This is just cool.  You may say, "So what, that's just the character maker."  But to me it shows that if they're going to put effort into making even that part of the game cool, clearly they're going to put a lot of effort into making all of it cool.

Another "small" detail is things move realistically.  Horses move like horses.  Crab monsters do a sideways crawl attack like crabs actually move sometimes.

Finally, the engine rocks.  Coming from SWTOR where you could have two windows up and not move them, the UI in TERA is like two generations ahead.  Lots of style to the UI like fade effects etc.  Very fast loading screens.  Plays very well on most machines, and yet looks stunning.

What little things in the game made you stop and think: "Huh, this is really cool."

t-minus 5 replies until GW2 battle.

1) The crystal system, I just love it and it's really fun to tinker with setups and change on the fly for different monsters, dungeons or play styles.

2) Everywhere you walk there's ground effects, dust/sand, particles, grass shreds, splashes, etc.

3) Almost all grass/shrubs/trees blow in the breeze.

4) Ability to upload guild emblems viewable to everyone.

5) The deathmatch system, created by the players for the players up to 10v10 and you can bet money or items on the outcome.

6) Combat, my favourite part about the game.

7) Animations/Graphics, I'm sure a lot of people are in agreement here, especially those later level zones, so nice.

8) Storyline, hey, it's better than I thought it would be and the cutscenes are rather nice especially towards the end.

9) Almost forgot, the size of the game, it really is pretty huge. Compared to some more recent released games like SW:TOR and Rift, that's for sure.

10) Repeatable quests stack for those grinders out there or if you like fighting a particular monster, you can go kill 50/5 Ovoliths and then go back to the quest giver and turn it in 10 times.

EDIT: 11) The UI customization, I don't think they forgot a single thing, you can honestly do just about everything. Even your chatbox you can customize everything from the names, to the colour, to what things you want to view, the size, how many chatboxes you have...wonderful.

EDIT2: 12) The ability to gather all resources with one character, also the buffs gathering provides and the ability to group gather, five party members can gather from the same node if they do it at once.

EDIT3: 13) Instant mounts.

EDIT4: 14) The auction houses two very amazing features, one is a special search that can search for things like "armour better than what I am currently wearing" or "enchanting material for my weapon". And the other is that in the auction house theres two buttons beside something that is listed one is buy out and the other will be grey if the person offline, but if hes online you click the button and a screen pops up, you can then try to offer slightly less and it auto sends a message to the person hosting the item in the AH if they are willing to sell it for the price that you just offered, if they accept the item is sent to you right away and ready for collection.

character/monster designs and animations.

Ok this is something most people haven't tryed before. I did it today by accident while bored. Press alt/esc to bring out your mouse. Hold shift and click on a player or mob. Now the center of your screen is whatever you clicked. Ofc if do anything you bo back to your character. But allow you to make other model the center of your screen as long as its with in 40m of you.

Originally posted by Pivotelite

8) Storyline, hey, it's better than I thought it would be and the cutscenes are rather nice especially towards the end.

Ironic isn't it? One of the main thing people complain about is the dry questing system. TERA has a nice over-arcing storyline with cutscenes. Who would have thought? I guess many players just can't get over where the rest of the exp comes from, especially when youre trying to get to max level as fast as possible.

I like alchemy and gathering -- enchanting too. I llike that many tradeskills are not low level affairs or are somewhat costly. This is good for the game, especially if people make use of the broker. 

BAMS are a love/hate...but killing some dragons tonight out in Sienna was just awesome. This thing took off, flew around the whole valley and landed back near us. Beautiful skill, engaging fight....then it decided to reset at 10% health. 

Story line only pick up around lvl 40+ and gets really good int he last few lvls lol. I love the agron war story line at lvl 59/60.

Originally posted by spikers14

Originally posted by Pivotelite

8) Storyline, hey, it's better than I thought it would be and the cutscenes are rather nice especially towards the end.

Ironic isn't it? One of the main thing people complain about is the dry questing system. TERA has a nice over-arcing storyline with cutscenes. Who would have thought? I guess many players just can't get over where the rest of the exp comes from, especially when youre trying to get to max level as fast as possible.

I like alchemy and gathering -- enchanting too. I llike that many tradeskills are not low level affairs or are somewhat costly. This is good for the game, especially if people make use of the broker. 

BAMS are a love/hate...but killing some dragons tonight out in Sienna was just awesome. This thing took off, flew around the whole valley and landed back near us. Beautiful skill, engaging fight....then it decided to reset at 10% health. 

I forgot to add the fact you can get all gathering professions and that gathering provides buffs and that they have group gathering.

Thanks for the reminder!

Also I love those dragons, as well as the balrogs, both fly around so much and are really interesting. Shame it reset at 10% for you lol.

Originally posted by rexzshadow

Ok this is something most people haven't tryed before. I did it today by accident while bored. Press alt/esc to bring out your mouse. Hold shift and click on a player or mob. Now the center of your screen is whatever you clicked. Ofc if do anything you bo back to your character. But allow you to make other model the center of your screen as long as its with in 40m of you.

Woah, that's so neat.

Is this for filming purposes maybe? I'm surprised nobody knows about this.

Originally posted by Pivotelite

Originally posted by rexzshadow

Ok this is something most people haven't tryed before. I did it today by accident while bored. Press alt/esc to bring out your mouse. Hold shift and click on a player or mob. Now the center of your screen is whatever you clicked. Ofc if do anything you bo back to your character. But allow you to make other model the center of your screen as long as its with in 40m of you.

Woah, that's so neat.

 

Is this for filming purposes maybe? I'm surprised nobody knows about this.

Well its going to make fliming and streaming duels and DM's HELLA more exciting to watch than from the side lines for sure. Definatly getting guild to use it when we stream our tourments next weekend. Ya i only happen to use it coz we use mumble and i changed my push to talk key to shift. So i was holding shift to talk while trying to check my guildies equips and it zoomed in i was like wtf... so i tried it again and told him to move and realise it . But its only 40m range but makes watching duels SO much better. Also i think you use it for scouting, like in a room you can't see you do that to a mob and you cans everything around it.

Automatically applying you to join a party when you try to invite someone who is in a party and you aren't, instead of simply saying "this person is in a party."

Repeatable quests counting past the max limit, so you don't have to pick it up > hand it in > pick it up > hand it in etc.

Combo system in general makes the combat more fluid.

Applying to Instance Matcher as specific roles.

I only played beta but what stood out as interesting or fun to me was the combat, mob design (may not be a ton of them but the ones they do have look amazing) and the political system. None of it is really new really but yea, cool.

You guys keep reminding me to add things to my list...but I think i'll just stop updating it. I can't believe how much I relied on the repeatable quests stacking in BETA when I got a group and farmed my ass off, I remember with one group we managed to get 50/5 Ovoliths before turning it in. 

So handy dandy, i'm also trying to bump this because I hate how much negativity is on this site, the people who like the game don't make threads daily, only the ones that don't. We need less arguing and more discussions. <3

Sadly this happens for most games, except GW2, but we'll see on release. :P

I just love the way the active combat system changes much about my approach to the game and how I deal with mobs. In most MMOs you can predict almost to the percent how much damage you'll take from an encounter. You will get an add and simply know if that's too much for your HP so you have to run or Pot.

In TERA if I get an add it changes much more dynamically how I act. I'll step back further from the mobs and play it safer, just moving close as I'm using an AoE. I can choose to take a little longer but reduce my damage and avoid dying. Some mobs I can kill without taking any damage at all when I'm watching carefully.

Another time I was fighting a chain of similar mobs. It was really noticeable how 'tuned' in I was made a significant difference to both the time needed to defeat them and the damage I took.

I realise there is always some difference in every MMO between damage taken when in combat, but in TERA it feels like I am really fighting the mobs. In many ways it's most closer to a beat-em-up like Tekken than any other MMO I've played.

The combat was great. The art was fantastic.

Got turned off when the quests were the same and i found myself not even reading the dialouge anymore.

Originally posted by Reas43
The second poster nailed many of my favorite little details. But let me add a couple.

Mobs fight you smart. A simple low level example that gets far more intricate at higher levels: the hyenas. They just don't stand there waiting for you to smack them in the face, they strafe from side to side (at higher levels they are almost in reaction to your charge attacks) so they can e d up dodging YOU. and how they arrange to be on opposite sides from you to try and sandwich you. The monster AI is pretty much the best I've experienced.

When in a Pegasus if you fly by a tree you leave a flutter of leaves behind.

The clouds in the sky, their edges blend and move ever do slowly like regular clouds.

The vibrant colors. It's like any other game was in black and white before this.

They should have made mobs fight smart at lower levels too.  Low level mobs don't fight smart, they telegraph attacks and are vulnerable to circle strafing.  As is it is way too easy and nothing but kill 10 wolves for a significant chunk of time.  They should have spent more time making creative quests rather than going for kill 10 wolves grinding. 

Auction House providing Average Price of the item you're listing also saves a lot of time.

Originally posted by BigHatLogan

Originally posted by Reas43
The second poster nailed many of my favorite little details. But let me add a couple.

Mobs fight you smart. A simple low level example that gets far more intricate at higher levels: the hyenas. They just don't stand there waiting for you to smack them in the face, they strafe from side to side (at higher levels they are almost in reaction to your charge attacks) so they can e d up dodging YOU. and how they arrange to be on opposite sides from you to try and sandwich you. The monster AI is pretty much the best I've experienced.

When in a Pegasus if you fly by a tree you leave a flutter of leaves behind.

The clouds in the sky, their edges blend and move ever do slowly like regular clouds.

The vibrant colors. It's like any other game was in black and white before this.

They should have made mobs fight smart at lower levels too.  Low level mobs don't fight smart, they telegraph attacks and are vulnerable to circle strafing.  As is it is way too easy and nothing but kill 10 wolves for a significant chunk of time.  They should have spent more time making creative quests rather than going for kill 10 wolves grinding. 

Even the low level mobs have more impressive AI than most games to be honest, with one of the widest array of movements for any game i've played for just "regular mobs". The only issue is the really low level mobs are a little two slow if they sped up their movements would be great.

For example theres these level 17 demon looking guys, besides their two attacks and special attack, they can jump backwards, jump sideways, and run backwards. It often causes me to miss. Certain mobs also block, power up, stun.

If you actually think about it when fighting all the mobs in this game, they have a minimum of around four things they do, I can't say there's nearly that much for most themeparks...

I mean, most four legged monsters will kick you with their rear legs when you go behind them, some even have specials just to kick you when you're behind them.

I think you have to be melee to appreciate the mobs versatility, archer and sorcerer really is just sit back and kite down unfortunately. :/

The only things I find different about TERA:

1: Fluid animations.

2: Combat mechanics.

Thats pretty much it.  Everything else was pretty underwhelming.  Graphics were alright, but the world design I felt was pretty terrible.

Originally posted by CujoSWAoA

The only things I find different about TERA:

1: Fluid animations.

2: Combat mechanics.

Thats pretty much it.  Everything else was pretty underwhelming.  Graphics were alright, but the world design I felt was pretty terrible.

Don't see why you need to make such a negative post on a thread clearly dedicated to talking about the positive aspects of the game.