Tera and DPS meters

This is a polarizing feature that some players would like to be a part of Tera sometime in the near future. There are many arguments to be made on why it should or shouldn’t be a feature of the game. Of those arguments there are sufficient pros and cons as to why this should happen. On one hand having DPS meters will help the player identify that they are not doing enough to help the party/raid; on the other that same feature can be abused to where, due to low dps, a party/raid a member can be booted from the group or not allowed to join in the first place. There are more arguments why dps meters should be available to which I won’t get into here. Instead I’ll share my thoughts on having it.

Let me be clear that when dps meters are used correctly that they help the player identify where they are in the effectiveness of their gear/spec/skill rotation. However, let me also say that I’m against dps meters when they become a measuring stick to arbitrarily rank a player on how they perform to which that limitation inhibits their ability to become part of a group who can help them improve. To me the advent of dps meters was one of many reasons why my love for WoW started to wain over time. Too often I saw the negative aspects of dps meters being misused and the greater internet fuckwad theory in full effect.

Ultimately dps meters and gear score was a big factor of what ruined WoW for me. In the beginning it was a game that I loved to play and had incredible fun in. Where it was difficult to get into upper echelon guilds that were the best at end game raids they were not concerned with dps output or what gear you had but whether you were a good fit for the guild, that you showed up to raids on time and knew the boss fights. When the top guilds recruited new members they usually had an established web site with an application form, and you would be interviewed by an officer who would determine if you had the qualities that they were looking for. Guild invites were not random or given after a public channel recruitment post hooked an observer. Getting into a top level guild was a big deal.

So, in closing I’ll just say that I for one am hesitant in adding a dps meter to Tera but that doesn’t mean that I’m absolutely against it. Should EME include a dps meter my preference would be that the individual player sees only their dps output and no one else’s. Furthermore EME has been doing a bang-up job of providing dungeon guides to the community. As part of their guides they should include what dps output is recommended from the players to be a helpful contributor. Although this is not a perfect solution I think that it’s not a bad compromise to start with. Should other better ideas exist I would be open to suggestion.

Tera project continues and patch 17.29.03 released

While its been a week since I’ve last posted anything that doesn’t mean that I’m done with this blogging endeavor. Instead I’ve found my summer to be filled with a lot of business that I wasn’t expected. What I had hoped for was the free time to play Tera and be level 60 by now. Instead I’m now level 42 and still truly enjoying Tera.

What has kept me busy is having the summer off from work and spending that free time with my youngest son, who also has the summer off. While our oldest son is busy trying to establish his independence from us my wife is busy with an intense work project that she has to have completed prior to our Italy vacation later this month. To me that family time is much more important especially spending time with my youngest son, which is far more rewarding. That being said, let me share in brief some thoughts on Tera.

Path 17.29.03 was recently released. Let me summarize my thoughts on what has changed.

• Character transfer level requirement has been changed from 5 to level 10 with a 24-hour cool down is in place; also the amount of gold allowed to transfer was lowered from 100,000 to 30,000.
  • I am not entirely sure why this would be implemented but I’m guessing that some players may have found some way to exploit the game with the previous less stringent transfer rules. Does it have to do with the recent Vanarch election process? I don’t know for certain and some brief google searches didn’t find a sufficient reason why this was included.
• Changed daily quest reset time from 7 p.m. PDT to 8 a.m. PDT
  • This makes sense to change dailies reset at a more convenient time other than peak player hours
• Reduced the number of players needed to create a new zone channel
  • Since I’ve never created a new zone channel I’m not sure what the necessity of this change was but can guess that it just makes custom chat channels easier to generate
• Saved the best for last: Changed the timer that one can post messages to the Looking for Group channel to one message per minute
• • I can see what they’re doing here. In the patch notes they included the snarky comment “Seriously, it’s not Barrens chat, people.”. For those who were not in vanilla WoW days this was a reference to the amount of chat that went on in the Barrens that if Obi Wan Kenobi had anything to say about Barrens chat it would be, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”.
  • It was a lot of fun to be a lurker and watch the LFG posts that the players in Tera posted. Occasionally I’d chip in what I felt were helpful messages but would for the most part stay away. Now that there’s a 1 minute timer on the LFG channel it has changed the chat, but not much. What EME should to is up that timer to 2 minutes on all channels but include a global or out of character channel without that restriction so that the players who enjoy that social aspect of the game can chat there, and those who don’t want to participate can stay out of them.

RIFT: Storm Legion expansion

RIFT: Storm Legion

A very cool video, teasing the upcoming expansion for Rift. Two weeks before Tera’s release I had removed the authenticator from my Rift account because my intention was to resub shortly afterward. Clearly that hadn’t happened as I’m fully invested in seeing Tera through (I’m still incredibly excited about the game and nearly level 2/3 of the way to level 60).

With the announcement of Storm Legion and reading up the summary as to what to expect I have to say that my interest in Rift is once again piqued. Perhaps later on after summer I’ll revisit Telara; that is if  I can pull myself away from Tera, The Secret World, Guild Wars 2, and who knows what else that has me captivated.

Forever alone

Not really forever alone actually and this afternoon I had taken the first step to address not being in a guild. Since launch day a RL friend and I have been playing Tera. Since then another friend had started playing this past Memorial weekend. While we have been content in playing as party members we have recently started chatting about being in a guild but haven’t invested the time to start looking. As of a short while ago that has changed as I’ve proactively posted a thread on the Dragonfall forums.

LF west coast guild

Now that the ball is rolling hopefully I’ll be able to share some additional tales of high adventure in Tera with guildmates.

I’m pretty sure that her armor provides optimal protection…

Looking fab-u-lous!

My current gear is a tad bit on the flamboyant side. Wouldn’t you agree? These games crack me up.

       

Tera – Sinestral Manor

Here’s an album that I’ve put together from my experiences in Sinestral Manor. The dungeon is laid out pretty well and has wonderful pacing. The significance with the second dungeon in Tera is that I’ve learned to follow the story quests that lead up to the dungeons. Doing this has opened my eyes on the lore of the world and gave me that sense that my role in this world is significant. In the previous mmo that I played, SWTOR, I didn’t have the same feeling, which is odd considering that Bioware is known for the stories of their games.

Click on the dungeon map below to see my web album hosted on Imgur. The link below the map is to the Tera website describing the story quests that lead up to the second dungeon in tera.

 

Tera Sinestral Manor guide

 

Under My Skin

For a week I was out of the loop and unable to play anything, even iPad games. So after returning home my first stop on the way home was to pick up Diablo 3. This post isn’t about D3, it’s about Tera. A game that initially I wasn’t too keen on and one that I was convinced that I would be ready to drop-kick to the curb and move on to the next new shiny. However, as I started to grasp the idiosyncrasies of the game something started to happen; I genuinely started to like Tera.

What is it about this game that has me so enthralled? To be honest, I don’t really know. The leveling and quest paths are such a grind-fest. They can be monotonous and rote with little to differentiate themselves from other contemporaries of the mmo genre. The zones are not as open and expansive as I would like and most of the time you get a feeling that you’re enclosed within a maze with no ability to diverge from the path to explore. The chat channels are filled with trolls lambasting on the failures of Tera and hyping the virtues of WoW, or they’re discussing the omnipotent abilities of Chuck Norris, or my favorite so far citing anything from reddit.

So what is it that keeps me logging back into Arborea? Perhaps it’s the discovery of something completely new. Of late I have been discovering the nuances that makes your character more unique by purchasing glyphs. This shouldn’t be a fresh idea since they are almost comparable to WoW’s glyph usage in that they modify and improve existing skills. For me to discover this at level 29 after they have been available since level 20 has been an eyeopener. However, more than anything it has been the story line quest chains that have me coming back for more. These story quests became apparent shortly after I had made level 20 and got into my first dungeon. Since then I’ve done the quest chain that led to the second available dungeon and am now on the chain for the third dungeon. What I’ve discovered in these story line chains is something far deeper than what I saw in SWTOR class quests and for me hearkened back to vanilla WoW when you would have to do quests to unlock your access to end-game dungeons. As I’ve done these quests I’m discovering more about the world that I’m a part of and my role within that world and for once in a long time I feel that my participation in this world matters. Whether that’s a sentiment that’ll stay with me until I reach max level remains to be seen, but it’s a journey that I really look forward to discovering.

This pose by the fire cracked me up. I don’t know what’s up with the semi-squat. 😛

Evil Is In Its Prime

Now that I can dive back into my NBI commitment I can return to playing games from the comfort of my cool basement office. While on our way home we made a brief stop so that I can get a few needed things, among them is Diablo 3. This is a game that I had wanted to play for some time now, especially after briefly participating in one beta weekend. Those few hours playing a witch doctor was enough to persuade me that D3 would be a launch day purchase.

That plan to jump right into D3 was put on the back burner when I realized that I’d be away for my training and would miss that launch by a few days. Luckily (for me), the first day sounded uncharacteristic for Blizzard in that the servers were giving a lot of players fits and not allowing them to connect.

These days as a more savvy customer base for online games exist we expect a perfect launch. This was evident in Rift and most recently Tera. Other games had some issues, but none were really show stoppers. That was my experience anyway and perhaps I was more fortunate than some. What I will say concerning D3 having launch day issues is that I’m not surprised. As sensational as Blizzard has been on their IP releases they are just as prone as any developer in getting a product out that can have some bugs. Since that stumble out of the gate I’m guessing that a few wrinkles have been taken care of since what’s been on the wire has been quiet.

Presently my install is at 53%, and I eagerly anticipate my descent into the dark depths of Sanctuary.

Tera – Additional screenshots

Tera is a gorgeous game! As a new blogger I often forget to stop and take screenshots of the environment that I appreciate. In the few that I post below I hope to satisfy your interest in the latest addition to the mmo block.

Here is my archer on his mount and riding through the Valley of Titans

While riding through an area this spot really got my interest up in the lore behind Tera. Who created those giant stone titan statues, and when did they do it? These questions has me excited for the future of the game. When the game devs talk about fights against BAMs, and I see stone statues of this size I can’t help but wonder if battles on par with Shadow of the Colossus is inevitable. That would be awesome!

Hitching a ride between towns

When travelling between towns that are of great distance between each other you can opt to ride a winged horse. On a beautiful sunny day such as this how can I resist?

This race creeps me out

In Tera the flippn’ Elin are of a smaller race that has the appearance of prepubescent girls. This creeps me out on all sorts of levels. Unfortunately my OCD to have a class of each race allowed me to rationalize creating an Elin sorceress. Which sounded pretty cool until my 9 yo son came in to my office to see what I was doing and caught me halfway through the creation of that alt. Although I had stammered and backed out of that creation I’ve since returned to finishing the creation of that monstrosity and now have a sorceress named Lithp, whose still on the backburner while I focus on my main. Anywho, I mention all of this just to point out that Elin that’s standing to my immediate right in the provided screenshot. Ugh!

Tera – First foray into the Bastion of Lok (BoL)

Yesterday evening, before I had called it a night, I was lucky enough to get into my first dungeon run in Tera. It was an opportunity that I had been looking forward to for several nights now as my archer had hit level 20. So when a small party were looking to fill out their group with some DPS support, I was all too happy to oblige them. After forming up we entered the dungeon, the Bastion of Lok. With this being the first group quest that I had participating in we did very well. There were no hiccups and everyone performed their role magnificently.

A party of five, minus one. This was the group from the first time in BoL

As much as I would love to recount that first trip I won’t do so. Instead I’ll share my experience in BoL from the second time that I had ran through the instance. This morning I had some time to kill before heading into work. So after dropping off my youngest at school I returned home (a short distance from the elementary school) and fired up the PC. As soon as I was logged into Tera a party invite popped up, to which I had accepted. Because the night before I had logged off outside of the BoL instance this group that needed dps took advantage of me showing up and was I glad that they did so. The second run was also as smooth as the first, and let me add more to the experience.

Our party was comprised of a lancer for a tank, whose name was Lance.Henriksen. An effn’ brilliant name! The healer of the party was Masekai, whose efforts did not go unnoticed. Among our dps were two warriors, Kazuki & Amaura. Together we had no issues going through BoL.

Like any other mmo dungeon we had to go through and clear as many mobs as we came across. Most times they were rooms or hallways filled with groups that came in 2 or smaller mobs that came in bunches. Regardless of who they were we trounced them all equally. Eventually we came across the first big-ass monster (BAM) fight. The fight is with a rather large stone golem. Prior to the fight we had to tangle with Tetra Aniask, which didn’t take very long. Once defeated the golem came to life and then we were in for a much larger battle.

As with every fight, Lance.Henriksen was quick to charge in and get the BAM’s attention. From that moment on it was us moving around, avoiding the BAM, striking from behind and running after it as it moved around the room. This is a very fun fight and some of the animation for the BAM is quite entertaining. Quite possibly my favorite is his right “arm”, which is shaped kind of like a giant stone top. Occasionally he’ll put its tip down, which then spins like a top and zip around the BAM in a wide circle. Should you be within reach of that spinning arm you’ll be knocked down. However this is easy to avoid. The tactics to defeat the stone golem is pretty much tank and spank. Once it was defeated the drops were nice, but nothing good for the archer. Oh well.

Moving around and fighting this beast

Moving on we cleared additional rooms and hallways. What I am absolutely starting to appreciate about Tera is how different each fight can be. Sure, you can open up with the same one or two skills, but the fights are dynamic and never the same. I often find myself changing my tactics to suit the fight. Either I’m running in to drop a slow down trap, followed by a melee attack followed by an explosion jump-back, or I’m strafing around to find the best alignment to take a shot that goes through multiple mobs. Or I may be marking multiple targets that when I release my attack arrow shoot to the sky and land on their targets. However I do it I find that me and other players are always moving around and doing something to the best of our ability. To me this is a far cry from other mmo games where the players follow a strict code of attack chains to maximize their dps. In those games I get tired of the constant action key hit of 2-2-2-3-2-2-2-3-4-2-2-2-3… so on and so forth. In Tera, I can’t stress this enough, the action combat makes the battles feel more epic than they really are.

Here we are, clearing out a room as we move to the final boss of BoL.

Campfires are important to restore stamina. Here we are, outside of the final boss chamber getting our stam up (the heart if the top-left corner)

The final boss is the Bloodhound Vulcan (BV), a gigantic beast that strikes fear into the hearts of normal men. Unfortunately for him this group that entered his chamber were not normal. We quickly cleared out the imps, and then Lance.Henriksen tore into the BV . The fight took a while, but wasn’t difficult. The BV would occasionally launch into the air for a stomp on the group or charge/jump across the chamber that we fought in. Whatever he did we just stayed on him and continued our onslaught.

Moar dots!

No moar dots!

At 10% of the bloodhound vulcan’s health, another sub-boss shows up. In the storyline quest that leads you to BoL, this new sub-boss is the mastermind of the plans that brought you here. When I first entered BoL our group ignored this sub-boss and focused on the BAM till he was dead. And why not? Our dps was pretty spectacular. In our group this morning one of our warriors went off and picked up the mastermind and once the BAM was down we joined him in finishing up the mastermind and then clearing the dungeon. Afterward we rolled on the numerous drops, of which I didn’t get anything. 😦  oh well.

So BoL is a success. From a newbie to the game coming in and worried that my dps wouldn’t be suffiencient to contribute to the team I had discovered that the opposite was true. In both attempts at BoL I felt that what I had brought to the team was of value, and I was putting enough spank to keep me around. This is an empowering feeling that has me looking forward to the next dungeon. Until then I’ll run BoL at least 1-2 more times and until I move forward.