It had been a while since I’d played Tera. They have made some changes. I noticed that they added Popo Brawlers, so I made one. My friend joined me and we were playing together as Elin Brawlers, which aren’t new. We were both around 20 when we came back in and we noticed several changes, many of which made the game less fun.
We had some fashion coupons left from ages ago, so we were able to wear pretty nice looking costumes.
Changes Noticed Since Last Time
I didn’t even both to take enough pictures to make this post interesting.
Here are a few of the changes we noticed:
The Starting Area on the StepStone Isle has been simplified.
The Main Story Quest line has been changed, simplified and shortened. There are odd changes like sending you to Pathfinder Post – normally a 58-60 area – while you are in your 30’s or somewhere. At this point, mobs are changed, but the Argon story is ruined in a way that makes no sense. Other changes drop portions all together. Like the change to “A Tale of Two Tales” which used to send you to Pora Elinu, but is just moved to zone quests that are optional. You wouldn’t know to go there if you hadn’t seen it before.
Dungeons that are part of the MSQ Line, have a new Solo mode which is required to progress. The solo mode is adjusted for a single player, but the bosses are still hard. At least they were for the Over Powered Brawler. I have no idea about Archer or Sorcerer. These never got their OP balance as far as I know, so they may be really tough in these dungeons. The problem is that you can’t level up and come back for these Solo dungeons. They now stand in the way of further progress since there are limited Vanguard Requests or other opportunities to gain XP. And you can’t bring a friend to help out either. Sigh. This makes the game no fun to bring a friend into and play with them through the levels. There is no option to play the Non-Solo version of the dungeon to advance the quests. So you can’t be “Carried” through the dungeon by a higher level player, and you can’t play with a friend to enjoy the content together. I get that the reduced player count made finding folks to do dungeons for the MSQ much harder, but to require solo play means that there is no benefit to having friends or mentors in the game. You are too frequently Stopped at the entrance to Solo content.
Zone quests – yellow ones – give no XP at all, only tokens. Which you will need, so you probably need to do most of them.
Vanguard Requests are greatly reduced, and often not repeatable. These were a major source of tokens for gear as you upgrade. Now, not so much.
The gear enchantment has been changed using fewer, and different items to do that. These changes are good. No longer do you enchant to +9, but only +3.
The choice of stats for many items has been retained. This is a waste of time, IMHO. Until you get to End Game, this all is a waste of time. Who cares about tweaking gear that you are only going to have for a few hours.
Clearly all these changes are designed to rush you through to the End Game, which has been enhanced by a recent update to a high level cap, Apex skills [whatever those are] and more end game dungeons and so forth. But this was clearly done by folks who had no appreciation of the original story. They were so cheap that there are no new maps in the game, only end game dungeons and high level bosses scattered back into the maps that are already there. As you level up from about level 30 onwards, you’ll see level 65+ monsters scattered around, and you’ll notice that your leveling quests have been moved aside to allow room for the high level mobs. It makes no sense, but it’s cheaper than making new maps. Also these high level monsters all use the same models that are already in the game. Another cost saver. It seems that Tera is on the slide to oblivion in a company that does not care.
My guess is that Krafton has made these changes since they bought Blue Hole Studios back in 2018. I’ll bet the folks that developed Tera have moved on, cashed out or are all working on other things.
We had no fun playing together in this game, and so have moved on to other things.
:ww
Windy Weather 