TERA - a mildly angry review

This old game came up every now and then but I never looked into it,
and as you might have guessed already; didn't miss out on anything.
Being free, I installed it (nice 70gb size btw) and thought I give it a quick try. Oh boy.

Have to admit, they almost got me at the first half.
Seemed pretty decent for a free mmo. Made a tiny what's her race, with a cute ninja face ...aaaaand the ui is a fucking mess.

I've grown to certain standards after playing wow for years, and I still don't understand how every other mmo can make themself feel so floaty. Wow, for the most part, is accurate and responsive, while Tera and other mmo games have this weird slightly lagging ui feel to them.

Instantly got pissed off at the hard coded "no cursor" mechanics, you have to hit a key to bring up the mouse with other overlay options. No thanks, I like to rmb to fix my camera straight ahead and freely look around with lmb. Both rmb and lmb which are attacks here. Which makes sense I guess since this is supposed to be more like a arcade slasher? Still not for my taste.
You can take the attacks off and have a empty mouse, but afaik there's no way to change the camera style to that of wow? Could be wrong though ofc.

The interface visual design choice is also off putting, a cyberpunk hexagon techno mesh is coating targets and npc models, icons are bloated and too colorful. One of the worst things, another straight jacket which I HATE, is the camera locks down into a npc when you interact with them for quests, you can't move or even look around at all. I just can't. I can't! Please kill me.
Constant freedom of controls is a must. No exceptions. Ever.

The animations are anything but smooth, and seem to lack proper transition frames. Your character snaps into changing directions, reminding me even more of some isometric ps1 games like metal gear solid.

This might be just a class flaw, since I rolled a ninja, but her attacks almost all force me to move, and being a control freak this reeeeally made me mad. Every attack keeps shuffling my char willy nilly around. Absolute teeth grinder. I almost thought this could be bad if you fight near a cliff and fall down but oho no, they made invisible walls so you can't even intentionally run off a cliff. Save the children, hurray.

So I just played an hour or so to lvl 8 and almost lost my fucking mind.
Pretty much the same story with guild wars 2 back when I gave that a try.
Same problems, and even worse: you couldn't even readjust the action bars properly. I mean why is it so hard to add more options and flexability to your god damn ui? Why doesn't everyone do it the WoW-way ? It's simply the best.

Feeling a bit guilty when I think about how many people worked on this for thousands of hours and I hit my stress limit in 1 hour.
Don't these companies consult players or take any advice or feedback at all?
How can you come up with enough money to produce a huge game like this and yet... end up with another clunky turd of a game?

It's just oof and meh all over the place.

Anyone here play(ed) Tera and liked it?
Why? How?

played it before it went free to play. loved it. way back then though it was actually innovative and the combat was fantastic. it was a pretty big break through from every other mmo at the time which was a big invitation. the pvp felt pretty good too.

the graphics and art were pretty astonishing as well. unsure how well it holds up as i haven't touched the game in a ton of years.

the movement in combat felt pretty precise and responsive, that i remember. you gotta play with your character. i was archer (have no idea what a ninja is, didn't exist back then) and one main attack has you jumping backwards which was your main mobility. feels really great to master it up and using it to dodge attacks and such.

i was a part of a guild with some pretty elite players at the time. we progressed very well but like all mmo's the grind was completely insane.

i ultimately have fond memories of the game but the experience dropped pretty damn hard once it went f2p

"

xMustard wrote:

played it before it went free to play. loved it. way back then though it was actually innovative and the combat was fantastic. it was a pretty big break through from every other mmo at the time which was a big invitation. the pvp felt pretty good too.

Combat was pretty decent but there were problems way back when it had a sub, hell even going from closed beta to launch there were things removed for no apparent reason and nothing changed really over the years, they just up and remove stuff and seem to forget that the whole lvl1 to cap game exists in a fucking mess.

Story writing as a whole is lackluster and disappointing.

Newer areas (In particular the cap level hub town when I last played.) are poorly designed with far too much empty space. All of the important NPCs are condensed into one place which just generally feels shitty.

The guild "War" system is EXTREMELY frustrating, and it was basically impossible to have a small guild with friends for fun while being repeatedly trolled and spawn killed in town (wtf?) by big guilds that have no repercussion to declaring war because the daily cost is pittance to them.

The single saving grace of this game is that the combat system and control scheme is beautiful and the most fun I have ever had playing an MMO. I will still come back from time to time to play it for that reason, but the other core systems in the game are too poorly designed to warrant me playing it on a regular basis.