Originally posted by Razephon

That was a terrible review imo. Sure its his opinion, but it was a poorly made and quite frankly uninformed one.

TERA is at least a 7 overall by even a critical eye. I can't take anyone seriously who rates this game below 7.

This coming from someone whose a bigger fan of GW2 (also admittedly been following TERA for a long time). 

OP is complaining about mechanics that are pretty much staples of every other MMO out right now. 

OP wants to play GW2, not TERA.

Seem OP complaint i doubt he like GW2 or even any other mmorpg. I think he just need to play something else and take break from mmorpg period for a period of time.

I'm not sure I agree with the "do away with linear questing" because we're talking about MMORPGs rather than MMOs. There's a difference of role-playing between the two. A standard MMO would be the multiplayer aspect of Call of Duty. Massively Multiplayer Online. The thing about a Role-Playing game is that, of course, you're playing a role of a hero/heroine. MMORPGs will always have a standard format and abolishing "linear questing" would likely hinder the genre.

What could be suggested to put into it's place? Dynamic questing? If people aren't led into other areas by these quests, they'll stay in one zone/location and wait for their dynamic quests "pop up" or w/e the method of retrieval may be. RPGs are typically about amazing stories that come unfolded over, usually, a long period of time. It's much easier to be immersed into pre-determined tasks (if you consider the fact you may've created multiple toons and be going through the same routine you did before) because you can add story and purpose to it.

In contrast, I could see the idea where you could go to w/e zone you wish to go to and begin questing there but since WoW was used as a reference to "if i wanted to linear quest i'd play wow" then that would be considered linear questing anyways. The fact of the matter betwen all MMORPGs is which of these can pull off all of the traditional mechanics efficiently and add their own style to them. You could be doing the same thing as another MMORPG but add enough of a twist in style and play to make it feel different and possibily more appealing. I believe Tera is a beautiful game, the combat is fun, graphics and environment are well done and a lot of the mechanics work well with one another. Comparing it to another game just causes problems, but comparing it to the traditional MMORPG idea seems more realistic. When you play it for 4 hours and don't like it so you return to your game of 7 years, it sounds like home-sickness. I'm not saying Tera is perfect, no game really is, but in its own sense, it's a great game to me.

Originally posted by Laughing-man

Originally posted by evilastro

Originally posted by Laughing-man

Originally posted by evilastro

I'm not saying he isn't allowed to have his opinion of the game, by all means come on here and say your beta experience was shit. But to call it a 'review' and try to pass it off as a proper review with a rating when he hasn't played the end game is a joke.

Don't even get me started on how terrible the 'suggestions' were.

The suggestions were to turn TERA into a Sandbox game...

Why can't the sandbox fans look foward to ArcheAge like I, and many others are?

Stop trying to turn games into things they are not, there is no way they could suddenly make TERA into a sandbox.

The suggestions werent to turn it into a sandbox, they were just to make it so you can powerlevel more efficiently than through questing.

"Move AWAY from Linear Questing into a Lineage II OR FFXI system where leveling emphasis is placed on GROUPS fighting MONSTERS" 

From his review.

The only way to do that is to remove themepark elements in favor of encouraging sandboxy ones, FFXI is a rather sandboxy theme park, and very similar to UO when it comes to what you are doing when you are leveling up. 

People like questing, maybe the way they did questing is dull, but to steer away from it is to discourage themepark gameplay.

Fighting heroic / group mobs to level up isnt a sandbox characteristic. Plenty of themeparks including SWTOR have leveling options with heroic / group encounters instead of soloing / questing.

Originally posted by Herodes

To be fair it was a "First Impressions", not a review.

And knowing how devastating Fadeds posts about Rift and Tor were to me this score actually isn´t that bad. ;)

to be fair it is a "final impressions" thread, from a poster who starts a new i hate tera thread every day.  faded, we get it you dont like tera. don't play it. but dont write an impressions review comparing it to other games.  let it stand on it's own and talk about what it does well and what it doesnt.  part of giving a review is being un-biased imo. and the "impression" i get is that you are very very biased. 

Originally posted by Fadedbomb
 

"If i wanted a WoW-Clone i'd play SWTOR or RIFT" :(.

 

It is funny that I came to the same conclusion from a list made by a player on the korean servers. 

Originally posted by thinktank001

Originally posted by Fadedbomb
 

"If i wanted a WoW-Clone i'd play SWTOR or RIFT" :(.

 

 

It is funny that I came to the same conclusion from a list made by a player on the korean servers. 

Because you're a genius!

Originally posted by brody71

Originally posted by Herodes

To be fair it was a "First Impressions", not a review.

And knowing how devastating Fadeds posts about Rift and Tor were to me this score actually isn´t that bad. ;)

to be fair it is a "final impressions" thread, from a poster who starts a new i hate tera thread every day.  faded, we get it you dont like tera. don't play it. but dont write an impressions review comparing it to other games.  let it stand on it's own and talk about what it does well and what it doesnt.  part of giving a review is being un-biased imo. and the "impression" i get is that you are very very biased. 

Since when have I ever stated I "hated" TERA? Never, I said I was disappointed with the Linear route they took for 1-35 gameplay, and then "apparently" the game opens up into a Sandpark end-game.

To me, and essentially everyone I play with, this was a terrible idea. Even for the WoW players in our group they said it was ALSO a bad idea. A player shouldn't have to WAIT until end-game to have FUN with a product they're paying for. If TERA were F2P I wouldn't be posting anything about TERA other than "Hey, it's F2P, don't expect much! :)" given that I DO actually dispise the F2P model of targeting your WALLET rather than the player enjoying themselves.

With that said, you're wrong about how impressions HAVE to be un-biased. The very nature of giving an IMPRESSION is to share your opinion based on prior experience with the market. It in and of itself is a BIASED opinion. Do you REALLY think the guys over at IGN gave an UNBIASED review of SWTOR being a 9? No, and I won't force myself to give a review of a product that it doesn't deserve.

Furthermore, a "Final Impression" thread is just that. a FINAL impression of a product before it releases. Thus, any further threads I make that judge the game will be a REVIEW and NOT what can be considered a "Preview" or Impressions thread.

Although I do get a TON of positive feedback in PM's and in the threads themselves about my threads pointing out positives & negatives about a product I fully understand that most of the time people will simply post a reply based on how they FEEL at a given moment, and not really posting with a logical thought out opinion. As a previous poster stated they didn't feel so bad about the scores I gave TERA considering my very LOW opinion of SWTOR & Rift.

Lastly, from my experience with MMOs over the past 15years I can definitively say that 32hrs, and reaching the CAP for CBT#2 (lvl 27), on my Popori Slayer was well enough playtime to get a feel for what TERA really is about. Members that claim that not having played "end-game" & max level yet that I cannot give a proper final impression of the game, and they are the individuals thinking with how they FEEL towards TERA (ie: they want it to succeed) and not with a logical standpoint from previous experiences.

I also did NOT claim ANYWHERE that TERA should become a sandbox. Lineage II was NOT a sandbox, and DAOC was NOT a sandbox, and FFXI is NOT a sandbox. They are SandPARKS, a mix between Sandbox & Themepark. This is what TERA was thought to be, and has elements to harken back to all 3 products, but primarily force the player early & mid-game ot linear quest which is a BAD design to go with. I pointed this out, and some of the more emotional individuals didn't like it. For that I am sorry, but I will not shade my experience into a color it doesn't deserve.

TERA is NOT:

-A Sandbox.

-A Sandpark until late to end game.

-Not the next "saviour" of MMOs (seriously, what's the point of this phrase popping up nowadays?)

-Will not tide you over for more than 3 to 6 months depending on past games you've played to death.

-Fun until mid to late game as early to mid game is all linear grinding. Be prepared to be bored & grind for quite a long time to get to the "fun bits".

TERA   IS:

-A Decent representation of world-pvp on PVP servers. I found Guild Wars especially fun for random encounters.

-A decent game past lvl 35 or 40, or so I'm told repeatedly by players i KNOW love sandboxes/sandparks whom play kTERA.

-A good representation of how MMOs should go in terms of its Combat Engine. The combat was pretty much the only enjoyable feature of this product.

Just make sure that if you DO plan to play TERA that you do NOT go into TERA expecting something it isn't. That has always been my core philosophy when writing critical threads about ANY product. As long as you KNOW what to expect it generally doesn't piss you off as much as it would normally had you bought into all the Hype.

I try to be as objective as possible when writing things like this, or at least MORE objective than sites like IGN etc. However, I'm only human, and part of what it means to write a "First, Second, Last" Impression OR Review is that you're already going to be biased based on your past experiences. It is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to be unbiased in a product review of any kind.

Kind Regards,

-Fadedbomb

[mod edit]  I've found it to be an amazing tool to socialize with other players.  I've met a lot of cool people waiting for a bit of stam to regen or sitting next to someone's fire.  It was like this in SWG, too.  Also, he talks about perma-items that never break, but he doesn't realize that very, very expensive crystals (late game) can break on death.  Or the huge money sinks in enchanting.... [mod edit] 

[mod edit]

TERA is a niche game and not for the faint of heart.  I sincerely hope it does not attract a huge NA audience, because that will turn the game from innovation and creativity, to a money-grab where changes are dictated because of financial pressures to keep a money-train rolling.  Bad players that expect everything at once and those gen-Y kids that grew up with a gimme-now mentality  [mod edit] are the ones that ruin great games!

The one reason why I won't touch this game is because of the Xserver dungeon finder, no way in hell am I going through that nightmare again.

Also I don't really like the idea of the entire game being instanced (channels)...I like "true" open worlds where everyone is in the same place. If it means you'll lag from time to time or that you'll have a hard time finishing quests the first couple weeks after launch, so be it. I play these games for the "massive" part mostly. SWTOR showed me that sharding kills the MMO feel...to me at least.

Other than that the game looks pretty promising, I understand why so many are excited about it.

Originally posted by Charas

The one reason why I won't touch this game is because of the Xserver dungeon finder, no way in hell am I going through that nightmare again.

Also I don't really like the idea of the entire game being instanced (channels)...I like "true" open worlds where everyone is in the same place. If it means you'll lag from time to time or that you'll have a hard time finishing quests the first couple weeks after launch, so be it. I play these games for the "massive" part mostly. SWTOR showed me that sharding kills the MMO feel...to me at least.

Other than that the game looks pretty promising, I understand why so many are excited about it.

 I too felt the same way about SWTOR's over-use of instancing (sharding), and many people I speak to about SWTOR mention this as a major downside to the game whether or not they liked or hated SWTOR wasn't a distinguishing factor.

I also see the appeal of many aspects of TERA, however the overall presentation of TERA is too much to ignore in order to reach the "fun part".

At the end of the day I believe SWTOR showed the market what NOT to do in terms of eliminating the "Massive" aspect of an MMO.

:)

For the most part I agree with the OP's review, although I would go a bit higher on the score, say about 6 or so. The art style gets about a 5 from me because the overall look of the game world is really nice and lush and colorful and a few of the races look decent but the rest of the art design is filled with such awful, cutesy, goofy ass looking elements that I can't stand it for very long.

The quest design and story delivery mechanics are really bare bones and boring.

The combat was decent but not as exciting or dynamic as I was hoping.

In the end, Tera is not a purchase for me.

Originally posted by evilastro

Fighting heroic / group mobs to level up isnt a sandbox characteristic. Plenty of themeparks including SWTOR have leveling options with heroic / group encounters instead of soloing / questing.

What makes it not like a sandbox game play?

Again, I listed off evidence as to why it is, and you just said "no its not" no evidence.  Please provide some.

Let me explain again why it is

Sandbox game - you go out grind skills and kill monsters to kill harder monsters without any real guide as to where to go and why you are doing it, generally you do this with a group of people, or you will probably die repeatedly ala UO.

Themepark game with sandbox combat elements - you go out and grind skills and kill harder and harder monsters without any real guide as to where to go and why you are doing it, generally with a group of people or you will die repeatedly ala FFXI.

Whats the difference?

It IS a sandbox element.

Originally posted by Fadedbomb

Originally posted by Charas

The one reason why I won't touch this game is because of the Xserver dungeon finder, no way in hell am I going through that nightmare again.

Also I don't really like the idea of the entire game being instanced (channels)...I like "true" open worlds where everyone is in the same place. If it means you'll lag from time to time or that you'll have a hard time finishing quests the first couple weeks after launch, so be it. I play these games for the "massive" part mostly. SWTOR showed me that sharding kills the MMO feel...to me at least.

Other than that the game looks pretty promising, I understand why so many are excited about it.

 I too felt the same way about SWTOR's over-use of instancing (sharding), and many people I speak to about SWTOR mention this as a major downside to the game whether or not they liked or hated SWTOR wasn't a distinguishing factor.

I also see the appeal of many aspects of TERA, however the overall presentation of TERA is too much to ignore in order to reach the "fun part".

At the end of the day I believe SWTOR showed the market what NOT to do in terms of eliminating the "Massive" aspect of an MMO.

 

:)

Sharding as in Server channeling?

A Shard is typicaly what you refer to a server as... for instance RIFT which was using it as a nod to UO, which was doing it because of THIS cinematic   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBeA6JHkV1I

Server channeling is actually very awesome, do you want to lag a whole crap ton with an insane drop on your FPS?  Perhaps you enjoy competing for every single little monster you encounter because there are about 500 other people in that zone trying to just quest, or grind monsters for that mater.

Channeling is not the problem, perhaps the implimentation of it is. 

Instancing did not kill game play, you just need to use it right.

I think they do the ch pretty well, i heard in higher lvl area from the korean player there is no ch because ch are based on population and i do believe they change base on amount of people. CBT1 island of dawn started with 4ch in the first 5mins and 10mins later there was freaken 29ch ofc go back next day it was down to maybe 5-7. So i think that good, when there lot of people put in more ch but when its empty take them away. And ya 1ch is bad because start of CBT2 the area right after island of dawn had only 1ch and people were stuck there for 30-60mins trying to finish 3 quest.

Originally posted by Ryukan

For the most part I agree with the OP's review, although I would go a bit higher on the score, say about 6 or so. The art style gets about a 5 from me because the overall look of the game world is really nice and lush and colorful and a few of the races look decent but the rest of the art design is filled with such awful, cutesy, goofy ass looking elements that I can't stand it for very long.

The quest design and story delivery mechanics are really bare bones and boring.

The combat was decent but not as exciting or dynamic as I was hoping.

In the end, Tera is not a purchase for me.

Albeit a LOT shorter than my review, you summed it up fairly well. I also enjoy reading other people's opinions & scores of a game as long as they're pretty fair.

Albeit, for me personally considering all the MMOs I've played over the years, my score was fairly low. I completely agree that for others it probably is a 5 or a 6 :).

At the end of the day the entire point of a Preview, Review, or Impression is done in order for the average consumer to really have a thought provoking experience to consider if that product is what they thought it would be, or if it really isn't something they want to spend money on.

A fair opinion in any case :D!

Originally posted by rexzshadow

I think they do the ch pretty well, i heard in higher lvl area from the korean player there is no ch because ch are based on population and i do believe they change base on amount of people. CBT1 island of dawn started with 4ch in the first 5mins and 10mins later there was freaken 29ch ofc go back next day it was down to maybe 5-7. So i think that good, when there lot of people put in more ch but when its empty take them away. And ya 1ch is bad because start of CBT2 the area right after island of dawn had only 1ch and people were stuck there for 30-60mins trying to finish 3 quest.

Well the point I made was that instancing, and "channelling", wouldn't have been necesarry had the game given alternative ways to progress through the game rather than restricting players to a specific path that push everyone onto the same path in order to move on.

Again, it's just something I feel could have been avoided had design choices been done differently as I've yet to see instancing (channeling, etc) done correclty. In fact, the only relatively close to "proper" use of instancing that I've ever experience would have to be "Epic Quests" for a specific class's epic weapon/item. Having to spend months trying to kill a mob is no fun when everyone in the world is trying to kill it, and instant respawning such an important mob isn't a very rewarding feeling for a player. So, I suppose instancing is good for the end of a very rare quest. However, instancing your entire gameworld based on population has never been a good idea as far as I've seen :).

-Faded

Originally posted by Fadedbomb

Originally posted by Ryukan

For the most part I agree with the OP's review, although I would go a bit higher on the score, say about 6 or so. The art style gets about a 5 from me because the overall look of the game world is really nice and lush and colorful and a few of the races look decent but the rest of the art design is filled with such awful, cutesy, goofy ass looking elements that I can't stand it for very long.

The quest design and story delivery mechanics are really bare bones and boring.

The combat was decent but not as exciting or dynamic as I was hoping.

In the end, Tera is not a purchase for me.

Albeit a LOT shorter than my review, you summed it up fairly well. I also enjoy reading other people's opinions & scores of a game as long as they're pretty fair.

Albeit, for me personally considering all the MMOs I've played over the years, my score was fairly low. I completely agree that for others it probably is a 5 or a 6 :).

 

At the end of the day the entire point of a Preview, Review, or Impression is done in order for the average consumer to really have a thought provoking experience to consider if that product is what they thought it would be, or if it really isn't something they want to spend money on.

 

A fair opinion in any case :D!

Exactly that's his opinion and yours..

I don't get why people feel the need to post reviews of a game that they have no intention of playing except to discourage other people from playing it also because they didn't like it....

Maybe you were trying to help people decide if they wanted to play it or not I don't know some of your review I think is harsh but that's just my opinion....

I just hope we don't see you in every TERA post saying how much you don't like the game and how other people shouldn't because you didn't because that seems the norm nowdays....

I liked it and pre-ordered but that's just me I'm sorry you didn't but hopefully you will find an MMO you will enjoy....

Originally posted by nationalcity

I don't get why people feel the need to post a review of a game that they have no intention of playing what's the point except to try and discourage other people from playing it?

But that IS the reason, OP thinks hes saving us from making a terrible choice, hes our hero.

Originally posted by nationalcity

Originally posted by Fadedbomb

Originally posted by Ryukan

For the most part I agree with the OP's review, although I would go a bit higher on the score, say about 6 or so. The art style gets about a 5 from me because the overall look of the game world is really nice and lush and colorful and a few of the races look decent but the rest of the art design is filled with such awful, cutesy, goofy ass looking elements that I can't stand it for very long.

The quest design and story delivery mechanics are really bare bones and boring.

The combat was decent but not as exciting or dynamic as I was hoping.

In the end, Tera is not a purchase for me.

Albeit a LOT shorter than my review, you summed it up fairly well. I also enjoy reading other people's opinions & scores of a game as long as they're pretty fair.

Albeit, for me personally considering all the MMOs I've played over the years, my score was fairly low. I completely agree that for others it probably is a 5 or a 6 :).

 

At the end of the day the entire point of a Preview, Review, or Impression is done in order for the average consumer to really have a thought provoking experience to consider if that product is what they thought it would be, or if it really isn't something they want to spend money on.

 

A fair opinion in any case :D!

Exactly that's his opinion and yours..

I don't get why people feel the need to post reviews of a game that they have no intention of playing except to discourage other people from playing it also because they didn't like it....

Maybe you were trying to help people decide if they wanted to play it or not I don't know some of your review I think is harsh but that's just my opinion....

I just hope we don't see you in every TERA post saying how much you don't like the game and how other people shouldn't because you didn't because that seems the norm nowdays....

I liked it and pre-ordered but that's just me I'm sorry you didn't but hopefully you will find an MMO you will enjoy....

I had every intention of "Playing" & "Buying" TERA until the last 3 CBT's I was a part of (EU + US CBT1 & 2).

I wrote this in order to give valuable feedback from an opinion perspective of a player "impression" or "Preview". I've met quite a few people who ignore mainstream "Review" sites like IGN due to the fact that they're generally paid off for their strangely glowing reviews of a specific product regardless of all the negative feedback that comes on launch or thereafter.

I find it strange that because an opinion differs from their own that it somehow invalidates it, and means it shouldn't have been posted to begin with even though that in itself is the whole point of a "Preview", "Impression", or "Review".

Also, no you will not see me in every TERA post saying how much I didn't like the game. Nor have I ever directly told someone "You're wrong for thinking this is a good game". However it may have appeared in prior posts I've made I've always tried to disconnect my feelings from an opinion for a game thereby directly drawing from past experiences & what I experienced in a specific product.

Let's be very clear here.

An opinion is: "I dislike this game because it is a Linear-HandHolding-Quest style of leveling".

A Fact is: "The game primarily uses Linear Questing to advance a player through the game towards end-game".

While it IS true that towards the "End" of TERA (specifically 35-58) people tend to spam instances & BAMs in order to level so they can get away from all that linearness of the quests. It doesn't make it an "opinion" over how a game has decided to proceed in terms of how players may primarily progress through its content. This I've never understood why people get angry over?

Again, let's be very clear here. I did, in fact, intend to play this product until the very harsh reality of what TERA is hit me when I realized I was forcing myself to grind to end-game for the actually "Fun Bits" of TERA. That to me, wasn't something I could justify 100s of hours to justify.

Hope I cleared that up for you sir/mam :)!

-Faded

Sometimes I wonder if you played to the higher levels you claim...or didn't and are just pulling information out of your arse.

"So, in relation to other WoW-Like MMOS you CAN choose to "grind" mobs for exp, but you need to kill 20-30 challenging mobs (takes about 2minutes per mob?) in order to compete with quest rewards that take a fraction of that time. I believe at level 22 I needed 150,000 exp to go from 22 to 23. Each quest was giving out around 10-15k exp, and each monster was giving out about 500-900 exp per kill (again, monsters take about 2minutes to kill for DECENT exp, and then you have to factor in downtime with TERA's horrible rest system). Even IF you can evade getting hurt quite a bit with your class in TERA you WILL have downtime because you can't dodge/block every hit :/."

Challenging mobs? What are these challenging mobs? Normal mobs take 10-20 seconds to kill and give you like 500-900xp. These certainly are not those challenging mobs you speak of...but they do give similar xp, weird.

Whereas group grinding BAMs(would these be your challenging mobs??) takes around 3-5 minutes(doesn't sound like it...) per kill and gives you 9-12k xp(nope, definately not them) with group play bonus xp at that level. Solo'ing them takes 8-15minutes.

So these "challenging mobs" you speak of don't even seem to exist...what is this conspiracy?

TERAs rest system is not bad, i've never once had a problem with it nor anyone I was grouped with all the time. Also I never had downtime because I could dodge/block enough to not lose enough health to have to sit around. With BAMs I obviously brought a healer or purchased health potions/bandages before going.

 Later on (talking 25++) you can run instances with friends or groupmates for "decent" xp & items, but again the Linear questing is MUCH faster than grinding mobs.

First instance starts at level 20, second starts at 26, so both things do not relate to your 25+...I again doubt you played now passed a low level because at 25 the 20 instance does nothing and at 25 you can not enter the 26 instance.

Stamina also depletes VERY quickly by fighting monsters. This means that purely grinding on monsters isn't a valid tactic whatsoever UNLESS you spend ALL of your gold on campfires. 

Campfires drop on occasion from monsters and regularly from BAMs, nevermind the fact by level 22 I had 100k gold in my invent and campfires are only 4k and the wood to extend how long they last is like 400 gold, so again, if somehow you spent all your money on campfires you were doing something very very wrong.