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TERA : Action Combat
Posted Aug 27, 2010 by Suzie Ford
MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller takes a look at the way many MMOs are moving to a more action-based style of combat. Leading the way and touting this style as one of its major features is TERA, set to be published in North America by En Masse. Garrett takes a look at action combat and its impact on players. Check it out!
One of the major differences in MMOs vs. Action RPGs has always been combat. In MMOs we have the hot bar, in action RPGs we have skills, moves, and combos that work to bring down foes. Age of Conan started this trend with a unique combat system that players could use in fights, but it still used a hot bar system. The action combat added to MMOs is really starting to move in a stronger direction and TERA is heralding its approach. TERA’s combat system is a focus of the game design which gives players a lot of options when fighting opponents.
Read more TERA: Action Combat.
This game is only combat and nothing else.
No skill specialization and theres nothing unique except from combat.
I dont trust ncsoft nor ncsoft dev teams after aion's major fail.
This game has no connections with NC... it's 'En Masse' and indeed, Aion failed major.. but still has enough players..
Imo this game will fail....its only combat..and not for everyones liking...
Among games like swtor and gw2 i see this game as just another asian game with a different combat...all looks no substance...Aion style.
Though FSS' Hellgate London went under, thus eventually loosing the IP license to the Korean company Hanbitsoft; however, one thing FSS got right was the marraige between action-fps/1st-3rd person combat w/ the rpg character progression. You really did feel as though you were playing a true hybrid fps game with the progression of your character as you leveled and choose the skill/magic sets that suited your play style.
The question for Tera is will they be able to successfully marry the two genres as in Hellgate? And more importantly, will they survive where FSS went under?
Perhaps only time will tell...
How do you know?
It might be a good game, with lots of fun content.
I'm not trying to start a war here, and I'm not a fanboy, since I lean more towards "Rift: Planes of Telara"...
But I read somewhere that the westernization of this game is gonna be different from Aions, in that they are already, parallel to the development starting to make more quests, and I assume lessen the xp needed to lvl, and bump up the xp gained.
Aion is only just started to talk about giving Aion west a dev team of their own..
But noone knows, might be good, might be bad.
I don't think it's entirely fair to dismiss the game as "only combat and nothing else." Sure, most of the marketed appeal is about the combat system, but it's a huge selling point for the game - and really the combat system is one of the biggest features of any mmo.
There's also other interesting features that don't get much press - such as the breadth/openness of the game world and the sheer amount of exploration you can do, or the political system.
It's probably not going to give us anything new in regards to the usual themepark questing system, but let's keep things in perspective.
Also, it's worth noting, like someone else mentioned, EnMasse is very different from NCSoft. They are made up of former employees from Blizzard, Bungie, Xbox Live and more western companies - along with some former NCSoft employees. They probably are quite familiar with what a western audience would expect.
I was on the fence about Tera. And then I saw the run animation for the female characters. Bent over with their asses in the air, and armor split open in the back so you can see their panties. lol
That is a red alert that the game doesn't have any substance, because if it was fun to play in the long term they wouldn't need to go that far into sexualizing female characters.
Ignorant people just baseing thier opinion on the fact that its a Korean MMO instead of on the game itself. Considering American MMOs track record as of late aren't any better then Koreans big titles, I don't see why people keep judging them so harshly without playing them. Saying TERA will fail cause Aion failed is like saying Rift will fail cause WAR failed.
Lineage 2 was the same way, at least the Dark Elves was like that.
One major issue I have with the article is the implication that standard MMO combat is exciting and not repetitive but this combat would become very repetitive.
One of the things that has kept Asheron's Call interesting for so long is the fact that it is not the standard MMO combat. Just like TERA is doing, in AC you can move out of the way of spells/arrows and also put objects between the caster/archer and yourself which will absorb the projectiles. That is what keeps combat interesting, having to pay attention when you're involved in bigger battles (most of the PvE combat in AC is lots of creatures at once, and rarely is PvP 1v1 on Darktide).
I find standard MMO combat aka EQ/WoW/Clones style, to be the most boring combat ever invented in all of history. Sure there may be some "options" but you quickly figure out the exact order of number presses to win. You also rarely have to move much as spells/arrows/swings auto track and it is all a dice roll if you are hit or not. That means you just watch tv and keep hitting 2 3 2 4 2 2 2 6 over and over until you fall asleep from the boredom. I don't see how anyone can claim standard MMOs combat is anything but insanely boring.
You'd be surprised how fresh having to constantly move out of the way to avoid things can be, does swinging/casting the same spells get repetitive just like the standard MMOs? Yes of course, but the combat itself always stays more exciting.
I've gotten a chance to play PvE combat in TERA. It is fun but the level of mobs I was fighting were early levels so they were easy. If the AI/PvE combat stays that easy through out the game (which I would doubt), PvE would certainly get boring. But I am sure at higher levels it is more exciting and I would be shocked if group PvP battles weren't very exciting.
Wow, a company that has something that makes females look sexy ... how dare they! *sarcasm off* What kind of man would have a problem with this? Well, I guess you are from San Francisco.
there are 2 ways this game could go:
1. unique blend of character specific moves that are well integreated into a fluid combat system that makes every class different, and deep and customizable, and yet still fluid and fun.
2. every character has different animations, but overall everyone is doing the same thing: clicking left mouse button repeatedly to "attack" while their opponent dodges and rolls around making it hard to hit them.
my problem with this no-targeting combat system is that it lets the devs think it's a fighting game and not an RPG game. fighting games allow you to punch and kick in 20 different ways. spready across a bunch of different character classes and everyone gets a max of what...2 or 3 unique moves?
Well, only 2 classes can dodge. Also, each class in unique in how they attack over all and the skills are also unique to the classes.
I get where you are coming from, but did you see the video? If you play a female character, you WILL have nasty whore-like panties in your face 24/7. It's the difference between looking sexy and putting a sign on your ass "Will blowjob for food."
Sorry to disappoint you but Tera is an mmo, and will have everything you see in other title's like crafting, Lore, Quest, political system, guild housing, group play.
skill specialization in tera has more to do with your ability to dodge, move and position your char and less to do about selecting skills from a skill tree or adding points to your char stats.
Yea I really don't trust NCsoft either, that is why I am leary of GW2. Luckly Tera has En masse as a publisher.
If I play a castonic female cause its only that race sex combination that looks like that for one thing, I will be choosing that with that in mind. Also, it only shows like that if your wearing cloth armor. So If I decide to play a castonic female spellcaster then I am pretty sure I would be aware of that fact. Though calling them "whore-like panties" just shows how sexist you really are, a woman cannot dress sexy without being called a whore? It's a game, if you don't like it then play a different race or sex.
Their running animation is a sign that Bluehole put effort into making the races different in more ways then just texture and colors but most of the closed minded people on here wouldn't think that far, would you? No, you wouldn't, cause like most people alls you can think of is porn and sex and its all you focus on. TERA shows how immature the american audience is with anything remotely sexual. I would just like that one person who reads this takes it to heart instead of being offended. What some people take as "whore-like" I take as being different. Maybe some of you people who find this such a big deal should hunt down the people who have there unclothed night elves dancing in stormwind. It don't matter the game, people will find a way to make it sexual, just deal with it.
A lot of MMORPG's are actually "MMO-combat-quests".
If these games about 60% of gametime is COMBAT, then it should be better quality and about time.
I like this development, playing with loads of ppl where the combat is great could be a great experience.
But I'd like for new MMO titles to have more interactive options in addition to combat, next.
Thats ONE race. The High Elves dont run like that, the Humans dont run like that, the Amani dont run like that and the popori dont run like that either. Castanics are Succubi. They are SUPPOSED to be demonic whores. Your point? If you dont like it, play a different race. Or, hell, just dont play female castanics.
Edit: So it's just one race that runs like that? Something to keep in mind I guess.
Although having a different standard of dress for females in combat and calling it sexy is... weird. If it's a racial thing and both genders of that race dress in a similar way then yeah sure. But when you put the males in big tough threatening armor and put the females in next to nothing and say "yea that's sexy"... uhh, it's kinda more sexist than sexy.
To be fair a couple classes have dodge and a couple classes have block which is essentially dodging while standing still.
I did find a few classes to be very similar when I played, mostly because there's only so much you can do with a melee class that's different and when you have a lot of melee classes a couple of them start to seem very similar to each other.
There are also skills that are shared between different classes.
The only race that looks like that are CASTANICS! If your female friends have a problem with it then I got a simple answer to the problem. DON'T PLAY CASTANICS!! If you want to be a full plate female, play a different race! Did you know there are different races in this game? Did you know they dress different:? Did you know they run different? Cause it seems you didn't. Maybe if you quit being so easily offended over a game then maybe you could get more facts about it.
Dodge and Block the same? Are you sure you play RPGs? Dodge = no damage and moves away from target, Block = reduced damage and sits in one spot. Those are 2 COMPLETELY different things. Also, just cause classes abilities do similar things does not mean they are shared.
Quote:
my problem with this no-targeting combat system is that it lets the devs think it's a fighting game and not an RPG game.
You do know that rpg has nothing to do with combat mechanics...right!!
I think that the combat could be a grat feature for this game and draw many people to the game. At the same time as you cant target and auto attack. There will be many people who will not like this game.
In the end I really do hope that it is enjoyable and i know that i will be keeping an eye on this game
See the thing is that no one knows how this game will play out, I'm no fanboy of any certain Mmo, I enjoy trying them all out and seeing which one will cater to what I want in a game. Tera looks like something I would definitely like to try out and not just because of the combat system, if you looked into the game at all you would know that they will have "Open World" pvp(Somewhat like the pvp in Lineage 2(I extremely enjoyed l2 due to the Open world pvp)). Now if you read anything else about the game, they are going to have a lot more then just the combat system that they have bin talking about, there going to have a Lord and King system... I'm not going to go in depth into that, but if you have an imagination or care to see what it is, you might find that interesting also. Overall I think this game will have a lot of content, which is what many people look for then just some shiny graphics.
This game is much more then combat even though the combat is its main feature. Only takes a few minutes to go to the official website and read up on the game. Saying the game is only combat and nonthing else is just stupid.
cool story, bro
This game is all about politics, havent you heared of TERAs politic system?
You could not believe how hard I laughed.
If you've never played Lineage I or Lineage II, you will find Tera to be a harsh world.
The EQ clone games come from trying to emulate the Dungeons and Dragons dice roll system without the dice roll which in turns tries to emulate what would happen in a plausible setting. If you rolled 1d6 to hit a 20 there is a 1/6 chance you can hit about that damage which is kind of true in the sense that it seems to factor in strength, the wind, everything into that 1/6 chance. However if any of you Veteran gamers ever played NWN you know that dodging, blocking, safety rolls all happen by chance. Why not accept a game where instead of leaving it up to the computer, the player can take control of what D&D was trying to emulate in the first place?
As for 'a lot of content,' who knows until you try it.
Lol no. In Guild Wars block was exactly the same as 'dodge' although 'dodging' was more like tappity tap WASD to abuse the ranger's arrows.
I dunno... the PvP I saw from TERA was people dodging eachother all the time, waiting to get one of those huge knockdown hits off... didn't seem that intense...
I generally don't get the notion that "standard MMO combat" (as in EQ/WoW/...) is boring... sure you just need a set number of keypresses to defeat some random mob... in PvP it looks a bit different...
In WoW f.e. I used pretty much all 30-40 odd hotkeys in PvP... sure some a bit more situational than other but still used em... LotrO's Warden makes for some very actiony combat as well.... sure you just need to know 2 or 3 Gambits to get by but know them all, when to use them etc, and you can solo Nemesis Mobs of your lvl (boss mobs)
I dont see how twitch aim can get reptitive. The satisfaction of a hit is awesome, just look at world of tanks! The only thing you do is left click and use WASD and that game has a bright future.
Also scantly clad chicks go along well with fluid movement, keep up the good work En masse.
This while you and your friend's opinion is not universally true, my wife wants to play a female castanic and she does love how they look in game, I know of other female gamers who also like to play similar chracters namely the dark elves in L2 , because your friends feel umconfortable by a game doesnt make it universally true or correct, if you feel shocked or dont agree then you shouldnt play it.
But i bet you dont really feel shocked at swinging blades at other ppl, chopping their heads, shooting at them, and watch them bleed in games but let us not take it too far such as showing a bit of skin and some panties. OH no! thats wayyy too much.
Are you saying traditional mmo's are not reptitive ?
All mmo's and and games in general are reptitive.
I have tried some of the upcoming huge titles in beta, and they are boring. Nothing refreshing. Same old shit from 10+ years ago, with better graphics.
There is too little action, too much grind, too far between PvP fights.
My only hope is SW Tor. But thats not because of the PvP, but because of the story. I hope there is PvP though.
I'm done with MMORPGS for the moment, I want action RPGs. Like Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2.
But they are a year away. So I play League Of Legends in the meantime.
LoL got Instant PvP action, with 40 different champions to chose from, and the most broad customizations with 200 items, runes, and masteries.
And its free to play.
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If you want online action RPGs, you should look into Vindictus. It's a great game for being F2P.
I hope the game is a success just to bring a different playstyle to the genre and if you can make a bit more enjoyable with soft body "physics" so be it. Hell it may be a benefit in PVP jump around a bit more and get those little boys a bit distracted. it may make pvp a bit like a sing-a-long. Just watch the bouncing "ball". LOL
Yes I am pretty sure this game will crash and burn.
It's always hard for me to tell with this kind of post if the poster is actually joking. Let's assume not.
"What kind of man would have a problem with this?" Point 1: I guess any kind of man who doesn't need to get his kicks from sexualising everything, including pixels. Point 2: Why only address whether a man would have a problem, what about women who are tired of seeing their roles, even in an online game, sexualised.
"Well, I guess you are from San Franciso". I'm a woman, aged 53, from the UK and I agree absolutely with Normike.
I don't know why I am still surprised by narrow-minded ignorance, but I am.
This isn't NCSoft, these are the folks that got sued for stealing and using NCSoft's Lineage 3 source code.
Actually, En Masse is just the company that's bringing it here to the US, NOT the company who is making the actual game. The game is infact being made by a bunch of old NCSoft guys, some of the same guys who helped make Lineage 2, but as far as I know, NOT peeps behind Aion.
This game, TERA Online, was going to be Lineage 3, that is the fondation of L3. NCSoft, from what I understand, split it's huge Lineage 2 team up into 3. One part went to make Aion, another Lineage 3, and then a third to make Blade & Soul.
Then in a effort to just focus on Aion, for the time being, well into Lineage 3's development, NCSoft decided to suddenly pull the plug on the game. The guys behind L3 thought they had started something awesome with what they already had and thought it would be a shame to have it go to waist, just because NCSoft said to drop it. So they took what they had, without NCSoft's permission, made their own company, and turned what was the foundation of L3 into TERA Online.
This game is still one of my most want to play next gen MMOs. I'm pretty sure this game will have allot more going for it then just it's action game combat. Also, about the game feeling "limited" on skills/combos, they just added a bunch of new attacks to the game because beta testers said they'd like some more stuff to play around with. And they're adding more new moves soon.
I could be warong, the game may be like a blast of fun at first, but then get very stale after the first week or so. I've worry that Vindictus may be this way as well, as it has a very similar combat system. But the Korean version of the game just got a bunch of new cool stuff added to it also, to keep it fun, So I guess who really knows, until we get to play them ourselves...
Before I start I will go ahead and point out that im a Tera fanboy, but im simply going to point out the facts. Im not here to flame anyone. Also I have read every post here.
Well first I have to say if you have a problem with our scantaly clad Castanics then you obviously have never read a book (Thats as far as the flaming will go).
Everything in Tera is story line based, everything. En Mase is a large team of experienced writers, yes writers not game developers. Granted every single one have been in the video game industry for a long while.
As for the comment "combat being the only aspect of the game." im sure you have played mmos before, when has a mmo ever only had just combat?
As pointed out earlyer Tera will also have: Its fabled Political System, Lots of quest (not just grind quests), A vast magnificent world (which is larger than WoWs), Crafting (which is actually useful), Diverse classes and races (dispite what people have said so far), Guild Housing.
Im just going to stop here, I know how hard it is to read all this. Just go to the main site and complain on the official forums if you want.
to everyone saying that this is only combat, what are you an ass? did you even look into the game before banishing it to the giant pile of crap that the mmo world as built up. NO it is not just combat there is an emersive world filled with instances raids and story, there is pvp that desides which guild is top dog. They have announced a SKILL TREE. And on top of that there will be crafting and they added over 10 thousand quests to the game when people in alpha said there wasnt enough.
The mmo king has died he killed himself with to many expansions that made it easy for a 6 year old to rape him. RIP World of warcraft.
Uh, you have seen the layout of all the various armour costumes, right? The castanics may be the most blatant in some ways, but there's a lot of bare acreage even with the other (female) races' armour sets. And even in the recent action video that was released, there's some pretty obvious jiggle-physics going on.
I'll definitely be trying the game out, but it's a bit of a pet-peeve of mine that when developers decide to use eye-candy for their marketting, they seem unable to comprehend that a character can look absolutely jaw-dropping without resorting to wearing dental floss and postage stamps.
Of course this game is going to fail, I dont have a doubt because all the keyboard prophets that post here said so.Just like all those other "games" that these keyboard prophets have called doom and gloom on claim have failed even though they still have a player base still add new content, updates and game fixes.NEVER doubt those KEYBOARD PROPHETS because if "they" dont like the product of course its bad and destined for the scrap pile(or maybe just their personal pile anyways)
Please send us your artistic renderings of these "jaw-dropping" designs that will change the MMO industry for female character design. Often I find, female design to lack the bad assness or be streamlinedness, like male armor.
Im gonna say if games fall into the category of Art then so do MMOs, you can criticize but you cant make the artist and publishers change their art to make it "acceptable".
Honestly its just the fucking human form, Its still the same if you put 2 inches of steel on top of the body.
You say its 'unnecessary' to reveal skin and if you look at those designs theres a lot of crap on the costums of the male design which are also 'unnecessary'. Hell we could probably play this game as floating orbs, really everything can become 'unnecessary'.
For one thing, I was talking to HIM, not you, so obviously certain statements I mentioned don't apply to you. If you got a problem with the game then don't play it. If you have a problem with having a character that looks good then either don't play the game or play a different race, get over it. Maybe ,,, just maybe, the game was not created for bitter old women from the UK. Maybe, now this might be a streatch for you since you apparently think that things need to focus around you but maybe the game was focused for people who like looking at things that are sexy. Let's go out more on a limb, maybe there are people out there who are sick of looking at ugly orcs, dwarves and gnomes and want there races to look good (besides the popori, I guess we all make mistakes).
Why would I mention about what kind of man would have a problem with it? Cause its a GAME! If you get offended over pixels, man or woman, then you are just as bad as people who get off on pixels. They are not real, they arn't going to do anything to you.
So, why did I mention only about men? CAUSE I WAS TALKING TO A GUY! NOT YOU! If you want my opinion about what kind of woman would be offended then your going to get it now. Someone who apparently has a lack of life so bad that they have to come onto a message board for online gaming where trolls run rampant and complain about people narrow-minded when their argument is less then credible only based on a problem of what one poster typed to another. Believe it or not but even though more women are playing video games, games are still marketed for men cause men and what do men like? Beer, chicks and violence. So, deal with the panty shots and oversized boobs cause they ain't going away anytime soon.
While I agree with what your are saying Okakun there is no need to call people names, everyone here is free to express their opinion but lets stay polite.
In many ways our avatars are the celebrities of the MMO world. They don't look like the average Joe and they don't do what he does day to day. The nearest thing historically that existed to them were bards, travelling entertainers, knights errant, apothecaries and charlatans, ladies of the court and such. Even in crafting we are the artisans of our age. So we look like a hero or heroine should given the context of the MMO we are in. If women in Lotro were all running round scantily clad or the men only wore gear designed to show of their heroic muscles I would raise an eyebrow, in Tera it fits perfectly.
Ii see, jealous of some 3d pixels better that you dear old woman? You should play WOw, this game belong better to you.
you all remember huxley right? oh.... wait.....
My post was in reply to Otakun's, who was postulating that the only race with the "problem" (and I use that word loosely) were the Castanics. The first paragraph was basically my suggestion that a person who is having an issue with the over-sexualization of TERA's character designs is probably going to have issues with the Elven and Human female costumes as well, that's all. So, "just play another race" might not be much of a solution in this case, that's all.
And at no point was I classifying the designs as "unnecessary". "Lack of variety", yes. "Would like to see a wider variety of options", yes. And if I wasn't paying attention to the forum boards, it could certainly come across as a game trying to take the low road in marketting itself.
But you said, it's art, and I'm entitled to my own opinion (just like everyone else(, and I certainly have no perogative to make the game designers change things. Which is why when I get this game in the future, it'll likely just be one of things I don't bother worrying about too much.
Video games.
Didn't Chronicles of Spellborn have twitch combat and positioning? Didn't that game fail epically ? I'm not claiming to be an expert in that game's problems, but it seems that people who say they want more actiony MMOs don't actually play them when they launch.
The game looks good, my only concerns are that casters will be gimped. It looks like their spells go in straight lines, I doubt that will be that hard to dodge from a distance.
I'm hoping its ffa pvp also, this faction pvp system is played out.
Would you prefer your spells to be guided missles or turn round corners to hit your target? I know nothing of Terra combat, but I do know that ranged attackers have always had an advantage in every MMO I have played and every MMO I have heard this problem being discussed in.
Melee are always the lame ducks that get shot dwon before they reach their target by a barrage of ranged caster fire. Maybe this addresses that problem, I don't know.
I can already see the elitist and losers saying
"You use a melee class it takes no skill to play, caster are harder you noob get some skill"
Baha.
Isn't it becouse melee is simply outdated style of combat (even in real life ... :P) ? Range is tactical advantage (even in game) and you must realy nerf it hard to give melee chance - like shooting at speed player can actualy dodge the shot ... tbh imo shooting arrows or casting spells in slow motion is no less stupid than making them 'guided' missiles' .
I realy like GW2 aproach where warrior can switch to ranged weapon and still be effective, than making pure melee classes, becouse unless ranged is totaly nerfed, pure melee will always be sitting duck in a lot of situations.
A good point but in the imaginational settings of science and magic worlds of MMO's there "can" be things of this nature... The Holtzman Shield.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holtzman_effect
actually ncsoft is only publishing tera ^^
Of all of the MMOs I've played with skill buttons (which is a lot since most use it) I'v enever found one to have combat that wasn't insanely boring and slow paced. I played WoW up through high levels just like all of the other ones and it was boring combat. I truly do not see how anyone anywhere can find stanrad MMO combat interesting or exciting.
I've always played many genres of video games and a lot of them are centered around combat. With all the ways that games have figured out how to make combat fun I do not know why MMO's decided the standard method would be the least interesting and the least compelling. Sure someone might try to say that MMOs aren't centered around combat, but they certainly are.
Happy grinding dear fellas.hahahaha
I know I got bored of the hot bar click and watch combat of MMO's. I got so board I haven't played an MMO in over a year. This is a change and seeing how FPS' and such do well I think this can succeed as well. I'll have to play and see. I liked the combat in Conan, I thought it was fresh and fun. I hope this game and others will extend on that idea.
Agreed, but at least it's pretty! Plus you can't go wrong with such unique characters.
Speaking as a female gamer I have nothing really against the overly sexy clothing. I prefer when there's cleavage and legs are covered because I think it looks sexier; I do not associate sexy with fully naked (some armor is the equivalent of fully naked) but to showing some feminity while wearing good looking armor; I like armor, and I like seeing it, it's part of the art. If walking around wearing a sweatband as a dress is what my character must do so I can play, fine, I'll survive! I'll just think that my little lady is so powerful that she does not need protection or something.
The thing that really bothers me is the running animation. Why bent over? They look like they are falling, not running. Naked or not I still like to think my character is a strong woman, and associate a lot of it to posture. No need for bulging muscles, it's fantasy, they can be sticks and strong. But back problems aside, a strong willed and physical person is represented by an upright chin upposition, not a "woops I'm tripping" one. These characters are quite human, so I expect them to have human body language. If they were furry growling wolf snouted animals I would expect nothing like that.
I have no idea where this running animation comes from, seen it in some other asian games and do not really understand it. Does it come from some anime cartoons? Where sometimes the animation is choppy and you have to give the feeling of movement by overly bending characters when they run? I'm not very knowledgeable on this subjects, so perhaps someone can elighten me?