T.E.R.A.

[vrumpt]

actually screw it, i'll just wait for english beta/release. Don't really wanna try to pay/get a korean account.

[Gryffes]

Hangame/tera seems down, for anyone else? Me + a friend on a diff ISP can't connect to anything hangame related right now.

( nvm seems to be back for both of us now - most weird ).

[Cloudius]

My main is lv50 (took less than a month), and got an alt to lv18 after about 3-4hrs of game play. imo the game only gets grindy if you chose (or in my case forced) to go solo at higher lvls, where the game shifts focus to more group play.
If you have ppl to play/lvl with (Say NA/EU versions, or a group of friends in KR) you won't feel a grind at all. And when I say grind I mean stacking repeats for decent exp and medals (used for lv50 gold, bad status but good for enchanting).
Unlike Aion I didn't feel frustrated/Burned out from grinding in Tera, it was actually fun since you interact with the mobs, and aoe grinding is fun.

Also I hear they changed A LOT of the elites to solo quests in the last update, so it might be even easier for my alt.

[tol]

I understand peoples hesitance on wanting to know what kind of juice we're all drinking I wanted to give a bias(because I enjoy the game atm) rundown of some key points about TERA and my reasoning about why I am having FUN right now.

Combat:
I find the combat to be very engaging because you must have a degree of skill to aim your skills. In the same vein, it’s equally important to know where you should be standing because on boss fights this can and will get you killed (guilty!). The combat feels alive and fluid, I would say that Monster Hunter and DCUO both have very similar qualities to their combat systems as TERA. The skill animations, in my opinion, are nicely done and well animated.

Introduction of charge-abilities add another level of risk-vs-reward in terms of more damage output but also risking the monster avoiding your attack or being out of range by the time you’re done charging. Dodge/Roll type abilities increase your battle mobility and can help you avoid nasty attacks or reposition.

At level 25, more depth is added through t he introduction of glyphs which modify your current abilities with certain bonuses that you choose from.

I find the combat system, though not new OR innovative, is very polished. I can’t, off the top of my head, remember having any bugs with skills or the combat system in general. I think that is where the biggest separation is clear in the combat system is that there may be games that got to market first with target less combat but they were very “beta” in application.

Leveling

All my experience comes from level 28 and below. Like I’ve said before.. ive felt that it was almost grind-free to this point. I've solo quested, i've done repeatable quests for a little bit, done each dungeon, missions, group questing and none of it has been boring. You have the option of making the game as grindy as you want.

If you want to make the very best exp/hr possible known to man then you might find a nice repeatable quest and go to town or form a group and grind elites but by no means is TERA forcing you to do this, unlike say Aion for example.

Quests / Missions

The quest system is not revolutionary, but much like combat it works well because they weren’t going for some crazy half-baked idea. It’s ala-WOW “!” over NPC head indicating a quest is available. Yellow is a regular quest, Red is a mission quest, and Blue is a repeatable quest for Medals (redeemable for gear in Velika). It’s very standard-fare MMO quests. Kill X Mobs, Retrieve X Items, Kill Named, Escort/Defend NPC.

The rewards from quest scale pretty well, usually you can count on a few upgrades per zone gearing you up for the Dungeon of that level range. The experience scales well, with more experience yielded for group quests usually involving BAMs.
Mission quests are usually solo friendly for the first few bits in each new zone, but by the end they require group play because the last couple missions have been dungeon related thus far.

There are outposts and quest hubs that flow very well. Once you complete the last quest in a hub, a new “!” quest will appear with a NPC there and he will usually point you in the direction of the new camp. This creates a very linear quality to each zone which is either a detractor or bonus depending on your own personal preference. You can skip a hub all together and if you are high enough level to trigger the quest at another hub you can pick up the quests just fine. I’m just mentioning that BHS has a clear idea how they want you to progress through each zone.

Graphics

The graphics are top notch at this point. It’s visually very appealing to me but if you’re not a fan of the art direction in this game, you won’t like it(no brainer?).

Attack animations, spell animations are all very good looking and high quality. Character models are very good looking. Armor is amazingly detailed. I think in terms of character models, it’s a close 2nd to FFXIV for myself personally however the armor models are the best I’ve seen yet. If you’re not a fan of huge armor on males and skimpy on females then this isn’t the right MMO for you. I really enjoy that there is a bit of lightheartedness in their design.

Exploration

I think exploration is a huge attraction, personally. I reminisce about the exploration I did in Everquest and other MMO’s throughout the years.

There is not a lot of wasted map space in TERA from my experience; almost everything will be seen if you progress through the quest/mission line in each zone. I find myself anticipating each new zone because so far I haven’t been let down with environment design. It’s beautiful, it’s convincing, I feel “immersed”. Having that joy of knowing you will get to see a new, interesting zone as you level up more is one of the reasons I think that leveling flows so well. There are x amount of reasons to want to level up. New dungeon, new zones, new abilities and armor. It’s the standard MMO carrot on a stick BUT it works. They’ve made it engaging enough that you are more inclined to forget you are being baited in the same ways that most MMO’s do because you’re having fun.

UI

The UI is very clean, not a lot of useless clutter. Most UI elements concerning inventory/equipment/maps/option menus are hidden behind the “alt” command which brings them up. You can move around elements on the UI as you wish, add extra chat tabs, move them around. I find the UI to be very intuitive which is hard to come by these days. Like many other things, they didn’t try and force some kind of innovative UI design that ultimately isn’t what we, as gamers or consumers, are looking for. I think that’s part of the charm of this game.

Sound

I am no audiophile or anything and in a lot of games I will mostly turn background music off and prefer to play my own. So far I’ve enjoyed the music, I’m not in love or anything but it’s listenable. Battle sounds and voice acting has been very good so far. Keep in mind that it’s in Korean and any kind of localization will probably change my opinion on VA. NYERK.

[vrumpt]

MEGAPOST

thx for this. i'll prolly end up skipping the hassle of the korean version right now and just wait for an english release/beta. Sounds like its definitely worth a try though.

[Foxer]

Tol, let's PVP some Kotas and friends. :3

[Rulke]

@ Tol - you TURN OFF the backgroung music!? blasphmer! The soundtrack to Tera is simply one of the best Ive ever heard imo.

[tol]

@ Tol - you TURN OFF the backgroung music!? blasphmer! The soundtrack to Tera is simply one of the best Ive ever heard imo.

No i was saying in most games I turn off the background music I haven't turned off TERA's yet~

[Rulke]

^ Ah! I see, carry on then :D

[Odin'sLaw]

i used to like ff11's sound track but 9/10 its really low or off :/ hope tera's makes me want to listen to it

[Elcura]

No matter how good the music is, after a while you'll get bored or sick of it. Or sometimes you just want to listen to your own stuff while fighting or crafting or whatever, nothing wrong with that even if the OST is top-notch.

As much as I like TERA's graphics, something about the visuals is weird as a whole, I can't really put my finger on it in a general sense... but I haven't seen much of the game in motion to really critique the graphics.

[Foxer]

^This. The soundtrack in TERA is maybe my second favorite of all MMOs so far. Second only to XI, not XIV, which was zZz..(maybe because the game didn't last very long). As for the art style, you have to like this kind of art to appreciate it I would say. As much as I absolutely detest FFXIV, and copy/paste, boring, dragged out environments, the look they were aiming for was second to absolutely none. I, for one, don't find it very exciting, but it would be retarded to say that XIV doesn't do something right, graphics wise. I would guess TERA is the same to others.

http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/3...t201103300.png

http://img852.imageshack.us/img852/3...t201103300.png

http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/345...t201103300.png

http://img858.imageshack.us/img858/3...t201103300.png

Might also be cuz 80% of the pics in this thread are me posting my Elin, in such a perfect balance of slutty/cute manner, and Elin, to me, belong in this game the least, art wise.

[Odin'sLaw]

she has a new coat!

[Foxer]

Yeah, just finished questing all my blue 33s on my alt, including them shiny Katanas. :3

Someone had asked about how fluent or how the animations look in this game.



Note: Not the best video card, half sized, Korean ping, and Elin. 4 very bad negatives to be showing off fluidity in this game lol.

[Elcura]

I absolutely love the environments in TERA, way more than XIV for sure (though I think generally things are TOO bright and saturated - hopefully I can turn that down cause I like the characters/monsters to be the highlight a little more). The character models however are what bug me a little, not style wise, I like the style of the armour and weapons and people... I think maybe it's the specularity. The materials don't really show through from what I've seen, and things seems to have a very consistent specular level which looks odd to me. Also, mostly too bright in those screens... which drowns out the details from the normal map (though it could be a case of environment lighting + angle, could look a lot better in motion or different lighting). There's a lot of fine tuning you can do with specular levels, and I think TERA for the most part got it wrong in that sense. The hair also bugs me, it doesn't look soft enough and it's shiny, so it reminds me of plastic... but the hair is nicely done (and hair is fucking hard to do well in 3D).

Also, I don't hate Elin posting, it's one of the races I'm definitely going to try when I play.

Edit: Cool video. About attacks/defence, is it a 1 button attack system (light attack, charge?) or two buttons? What defensive options do you have and can you cancel out of attacks/skills to roll away or block? Or do you have to wait for moves to finish before doing something else? Also, battle animations are beautiful, well, all the animations are really well done - I just blame Koreans for their cheesy views on what females do while idling.

[Odin'sLaw]

so whats the stat's on the new gear Fenux?

[Weltall]

My download should be comeplete by the time I get home from work :DDD

[Foxer]

so whats the stat's on the new gear Fenux?

It's ummmmmmmmm. Better than my green 27! It's in Korean silly, but all major stats are obvious, like in other RPGs.

My download should be comeplete by the time I get home from work :DDD

Sweet, enjoy the game. I mean, I know you will!

I absolutely love the environments in TERA, way more than XIV for sure (though I think generally things are TOO bright and saturated - hopefully I can turn that down cause I like the characters/monsters to be the highlight a little more). The character models however are what bug me a little, not style wise, I like the style of the armour and weapons and people... I think maybe it's the specularity. The materials don't really show through from what I've seen, and things seems to have a very consistent specular level which looks odd to me. Also, mostly too bright in those screens... which drowns out the details from the normal map (though it could be a case of environment lighting + angle, could look a lot better in motion or different lighting). There's a lot of fine tuning you can do with specular levels, and I think TERA for the most part got it wrong in that sense. The hair also bugs me, it doesn't look soft enough and it's shiny, so it reminds me of plastic... but the hair is nicely done (and hair is fucking hard to do well in 3D).

Also, I don't hate Elin posting, it's one of the races I'm definitely going to try when I play.

Edit: Cool video. About attacks/defence, is it a 1 button attack system (light attack, charge?) or two buttons? What defensive options do you have and can you cancel out of attacks/skills to roll away or block? Or do you have to wait for moves to finish before doing something else? Also, battle animations are beautiful, well, all the animations are really well done - I just blame Koreans for their cheesy views on what females do while idling.

The normal swing, is left click. That combos in, up to 4 times on Warrior. Like say pressing the attack button in DMC a few times, you come out with a default combo. All the other swings with blue around it were hot keys. I went though about 9-10 different skills, aside from the default 4-hit combo. As for waiting, you don't. If at 24 you learn a move that combos in better with any particular combo you're doing, you throw that one in. Like Lancer for instance, would be thrust, thrust, thrust, cancel last animation into shield bash or combo in with another thrust skill. You can do this after any normal attack. There are also default suggested combos that work well, like a Priest's Retribution Curtain, which is conal, to Fiery Escape, which is conal as well, jumps you back around 5 meters and gravities the mobs 70% for 3 seconds, to set up for something like a Sorcerer nuke, aoe sleep, etc.

[Pooky]

Everyone on the fence needs to just butch up and start playing. Waiting for NA because of moonrunes is silly, as 90% of the game is pretty self explanitory; the other 10% has been translated somewhere on the fansites (either fully, or enough that you get the gist).

If anything, K-Tera is better than waiting for NA release to try since it's roughly have the price of the starting box; and you can get accounts with 7 day timecards for ~$10. $10-35 is a much easier hit if it turns out you don't like it.

[Gryffes]

Another good reason for K-tera is what happened on my server in aion, a bunch of c/k aion players who were I believe chinese people living in the UK just leveled so much faster than everyone else and were oozing in gold drops from menotios/zap/jes a good month or so before we even got our first kill and put them on farm.

You'll avoid making class mistakes on your eu/na release and you'll have a big advantage endgame knowledge wise on PVP, world bosses, how to gear+glyph+crystal properly for the instances/etc.

A bunch of people now playing from my guild had a lot of reservations about moonspeak but are now enjoying the shit out of the game.