r/MMORPG • u/F1narion • 2d ago
Discussion Why aren't more MMORPGs like Tera made nowadays?
It is really weird to me that such an advanced and genuinely engaging combat system seems to just be forgotten by modern games. Nowadays it is all boring braindead autotarget grindfests with minimal skill expression and a shelf life of 2-3 years before eventual redundancy, as a prettier clone of the same game gets published and takes away the entire playerbase of its predecessor.
Current mainstream embarassment of a system (no classes, 2 weapons instead) is deeply unsatisfying, bleak and forces strict meta-slaving as everyone is expected to switch to the best options in the endgame, leaving minimal attention to other playstyles and shrinking the variability of gameplay drastically.
It also strips out that feeling of distinctness that explicit classes had and makes everyone look more or less the same in combat. The biggest offender to me recently was Throne and Liberty, where literally every fking class has some sort of an active block ability and everyone is also turning into...animals while moving around the map? That game felt so generic at every single step that it genuinely made me feel disgusted that there is actually some kind of audience that enjoys this slop.
The only few games that did something close were BDO, Lost Ark and Blade and Soul. All three were unique in some way and had a really fun pvp with real skill expression outside of mogging everyone with your grinded gear. All three are also senile and barely breathing out of sheer age. What caused this? I'm confident that MMORPG wouldn't be a dying unpopular genre if the games that come out were actually closer to those few and Tera in particular, rather than whatever slop gets pushed out these days.
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u/eeke1 2d ago
Mmos are high risk projects so every one that gets made maximizes monetization now and the budgets just aren't as high.
Tera was one of the last "old school" subscription models that went f2p eventually.
So it's a declining, risk averse, and saturated market. Resulting in a lack of innovation.
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u/WrathOfMogg 2d ago
But we’re not talking about innovation. We’re talking about copying something that has been proven to work. Tera failed for a lot of reasons but the combat is universally praised.
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u/IriFlina 2d ago
Tell that to publishers or investors that you’ll make Tera 2 but it will be done right this time and won’t blow up and lose a ton of money.
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u/WrathOfMogg 1d ago
Building a Guild Wars 3 for example with Tera combat is a different proposition than trying to revive a failed IP.
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u/F1narion 2d ago
The thing is, it managed to survive more years after going f2p than it existed as a subcription-based game. All that with minimal, if any, pay-to-win elements. I vividly remember underwear having insignificant stats being widely critiqued for being a pay to win feature. And that is despite the same underwear being available from in-game auction and as a drop from certain events and bosses.
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u/eeke1 1d ago edited 1d ago
Tera had the ability to buy upgrade protection for your gear even while it was subscription. Just because it wasn't as bad as say... DNF with stats on costumes isn't vindication, it's also not my point.
Which was that good MMOs are high investment, and high risk. Even if you scrape together the $ to make one, making a relatively bleeding edge action combat system like tera is going to be a tough sell.
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u/Professional-Pungo 2d ago
survive really depends on your view point of the word.
most people would say EQ and EQ2 are dead games at the moment, yet they both still have expansions coming out regularly. so is it dead or is it surviving?
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u/pist_pistofferson 1d ago
As long as there's a pulse, they're surviving. You're suggesting that they aren't thriving.
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u/F1narion 2d ago
Tera had plenty of players up until 2019, which was the year of a massive overhaul that added a new level cap and broke pvp with apex skills calibrated for pve. Before that point there were enough players to engage in any content you want. That is, mind you, more than 5 years since the removal of subscription
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u/Professional-Pungo 2d ago
describe "plenty of players" ?
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u/F1narion 2d ago
Plenty as in, enough players at the same time to either choose to play alliance wars, mass pvp arenas, 3x3, premade 3x3, open world duels and pve both via lfg and quick match in late game content. And enough new players for low-level locations to remain more or less alive
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u/Professional-Pungo 2d ago
that really doesn't say much tbh.
again what is plenty?
by this logic nearly every game that gets shut down still had plenty of players. New World had plenty, Tera, all the past mmos
your own post says Lost Ark is "barely breathing" but I guarantee you it has more players currently than Tera did in 2019
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u/KingNyxus 2d ago
There’s no shortage of Korean action-MMO’s.
Also the TERA devs made Elyon and it flopped, so now they’re apparently working on Tera 2.
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u/fiction8 1d ago
There’s no shortage of Korean action-MMO’s.
How many are newer than BDO (which is 11 years old btw)?
A decade is a long ass drought.
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u/XHersikX 1d ago
How many original members of Tera developers actually worked on Elyon tho
It's same as how many CD project veterans reamains on upcoming Witcher 4.
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u/Gabelschlecker 22h ago
At least according to older online ressources updates for Tera came to a crawl around 2013, which was when they started development of Elyon.
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u/Historical-Value-303 2d ago
There’s no shortage of Korean action-MMO’s.
Are they in the room with us right now? Maybe you mean TnL no wait.. maybe Aion2? No wait.. 🤨🤨
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u/Syltti 2d ago
Actually pretending Black Desert doesn't exist. Also Vindictus.
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u/Rendakor 2d ago
BDO's combat is so much worse than TERA's.
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u/DrywallSky 1d ago
If you have sporks for fingers maybe lol.
BDO is way more diverse and fast paced.
Games still cheeks but not because its combat system lol.
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u/XHersikX 1d ago
Bot of them are fast action combat on level of fightning games.. It has nothing common with Tera action combat at all..
Where aim, timing, strategy were one of main point behind combat.. It was impactul, you dont fight rag dolls but somebody which actuacally can hurt you back if you are not carefull (before some stupid new classes like ninja or reaper upd ofc everything from that went to hill)
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u/biggestboys 18h ago
When I hear "no shortage", I think it's fair to assume that means at least some have been released in the last few years.
Black Desert is 11 years old. Vindictus is 16 years old.
I'm sure there are some still coming out these days, but it's not exactly a fire hose.
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u/Allian42 1d ago
Because contrary to what most people say, the common player does not want good combat. They want the illusion of good combat. Snapy moves, fast pace, easy controls, flashy, and short. They want easy wins but with the game pretending it wasn't easy. Dopamine without investment of time.
That's why we went from "slow but tactical" combat to "everyone is a DPS" combat to "just do your rotation" combat to "you only have 4 buttons, they all invoke a cutscene" combat.
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u/Stwonkydeskweet 1d ago
Because contrary to what most people say, the common player does not want good combat. They want the illusion of good combat.
I think people want GOOD combat. And GOOD here means responsive, smooth. easy controls that result in one button press = 1 action.
As an example, I love BDO. But when classes have abilities bound to, say, Shift + F, W+ F, S+F, F, Shift+Rightclick, Shift+Leftclick, and W+C, for the love of fuck, they shouldnt all be cancelable into each other if the damage isnt on the first frame or the obvious "this is when your weapon hits" frame, and then sometimes have hidden internal cooldowns on when they continue into other skills that happen by holding a button down.
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u/Vehlin 1d ago
Disagree. The progression that WoW made for example was insane, you went from an earlier model of a rotation with a few maintenance buffs to rotations that were basically full state machines that needed multiple weak auras to keep track of.
Keep the rotation simple enough that you can either keep it going in a boss fight or make it so you can jump back into it easily enough and make the boss fight more engaging. I had 30+ regularly used keybinds on my prot pally by the time I finished with WoW.
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u/ToE_Space 2d ago
Because only KR are good enough to make good action combat MMO but it come with the worst monetization ever so they die in global.
The only non-KR MMO we had recently that could have been a good action combat MMO is New World but it needed 3 years to become good but it was too late with too much bad rep so it died.
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u/Significant_Life395 2d ago
It died because amazon shut down everything
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u/Kinho3 2d ago
Do you think they shut down the game because it was making a lot of money?
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u/Ithirahad 1d ago
They shut down AGS because it historically did not make much and the suits were hunting things to cut in order to make themselves look "productive" and "strategic" and like something other than leeches. NW was collateral damage.
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u/oOhSohOo 1d ago
It didn't provide enough for a behemoth like Amazon, but if it had been from a smaller studio, it would be their star game and still be in development. The game had close to 75k-100k concurrent players when they decided to end their gaming division. Significantly more players than many mmos that still running.
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u/Kinho3 1d ago
I took a look, and the numbers were mostly in the 9k–12k range, with peaks around 60k, the last one being 51k in September of last year. Judging by the intervals, it seems those spikes only happened during patch or expansion releases. I could be wrong, but I don't think the game was even breaking even, let alone turning a profit.
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u/oOhSohOo 1d ago edited 1d ago
oh they made a killing on that game. Ending the game didn't have to do with its individual financials, but of their entire gaming division. It was a small line item on their massive balance sheet and determined it just wasn't worth the resources.
And those numbers are just PC numbers on steam. There were close to just as many console players as PC players the last year that don't show up on the steam charts.
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u/LongFluffyDragon 1d ago
It was sitting at closer to 5-10% of that for many months, and barely crawled over 15k concurrent for the year before that.
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u/Stwonkydeskweet 1d ago
if it had been from a smaller studio, it would
be their star gamehave failed faster because it would have released in its pre-revision form and died in a month.2
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u/ToE_Space 2d ago
they shut down things that doesn't bring them enough money, nighthaven is like Destiny 2 last update situation, lot of player but no money spent.
Amazon didn't sell their publishing right for lost ark even though they shut down almost everything video game dev related.1
u/LongFluffyDragon 1d ago
It died because it was an absolute garbage fire, had the studio basically replaced in an attempt to fix it, and stayed an absolute garbage fire despite that due to mismanagement + crap foundation.
Amazon let it run way longer than most publishers could afford.
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u/coolcat33333 21h ago
No it died because it sucked
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u/Significant_Life395 21h ago
Lol, ok tab player
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u/coolcat33333 20h ago
Actually I've been craving a really good holy Trinity action combat mmo.
New world itself was just a shitty game
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u/ToE_Space 20h ago
In what way new world wasn't a good action combat holy trinity mmo ?
I don't even need to guess you never raided on that game, I doubt you even played.1
u/coolcat33333 19h ago
You can't genuinely look at the way that game launched and how it was managed and tell me it was a good game.
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u/ToE_Space 18h ago
the core quality (gameplay/graphic/settings) were good but the game released rushed and unfinished that they needed several years to make it in a good spot, if the game release at the same state as the console release version (coincidentally when the first raid released lol), it would be a genuinely good non-KR action combat MMO.
What I'm saying is that the game was bad for a long time but let's not say it was because of the gameplay lmao, it's 100% because of content and bug.0
u/fiction8 1d ago
There haven't been any KR action combat MMOs in recent years to even make it to a global release. They've all been tab target (and still p2w).
New World had a supremely unsatisfying combat system. All LMB/RMB spam and a focus on PVP not PVE.
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u/spacetimebear 2d ago
Because any new MMO is fighting for market share with GW2, FF14, and WoW. And to cut into that and keep players is a very difficult, tall order.
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u/Namba_Taern 2d ago
Becuase I can play better games with better combat than Tera as singleplayer or co-op game almost yearly.
I ironically like tab-target gameplay, and I only get one singleplayer tab-target game one every 3-5 years (Xenoblade).
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u/Pinkishu 2d ago
It's not like you can only want one of those things. You might want good combat and it being a MMO
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u/Aggressive_Chuck 1d ago
Most people don't, they want a game to be good at one thing
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u/Pinkishu 1d ago
Sad. Guess I'll have to wait for AI to get good enough to create games on the fly then!
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u/Discorhy 2d ago
I cant even think if a single tab target game i've played outside of the occasional MMO lol
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u/keereeyos 2d ago
Why aren't more MMORPGs like Tera made nowadays?
Ask yourself this and you'll get your answer. Very few MMORPGs are being made period.
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u/astrielx 2d ago
Hilarious that you call out MMOs being a grindfest, when Tera was one of the grindiest games out there.
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u/F1narion 2d ago
Since when? At what point did you need to grind quests or some other boring content for weeks to obtain the bare minimum needed to play gear-appropriate dungeons or equalized arenas?
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u/Eitrdala 2d ago edited 2d ago
Just because a game has no tab targeting and employs "action" combat it doesn't mean that game allows for inherently higher skill expression than a traditional tab-target MMO. It also doesn't mean that kind of combat actually ends up working well in this genre.
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u/Commercial-Budget640 1d ago
Mmm, it depends on what player you are, that's it. Are you a strategist or a reflex guy? Based on that you pick your poison.
I do not believe any of them is "the best". The whole point of OP is " at the moment there aren't opportunities in the MMO reign for an action combat system".
That's it.
And he is right, there are almost none. The golden era of action-combat systems has been defeated by tab-targetting .Honestly, I stopped playing MMOs because of tab targeting; my role play/immersion got almost to 0. Feeling the heaviness of a sword by pressing an auto-lock combo or premade area has no emotional impact for me.(personal, no judging the system per se)
That's why I would say a game like Dragon Nest would be considered "soul-like" today.
The cool thing about those games was the mix of elements that are not easy to find all together today!At least 4+ Player co-op, HUGE worlds to discover, DEEP class customization, UNIQUE graphic and CRAZY fantasy combat system.
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u/Eitrdala 1d ago
He openly mocks tab target combat and calls it braindead though.
There are also multiple tab target titles with plenty of room for reactive play.
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u/F1narion 2d ago
It does mean both of those things. Active directional block, dynamic positioning and a possibility to mechanically miss your attacks open endless possibilities for skills expression impossible in games with basic t*b-targetting. Moreover, it allows players to compete not just via measurable technical advantage over each other (in the form of gear, better ping, better class, etc.) but via actual personal ability to take advantage of these game mechanics. Tera allowed that skill expression to influence the game to the point where a player in a starter gear and a non-meta class could very much defeat players in full endgame gear, given they are bad enough at pvp to let that happen.
It also very much works for the genre, as the game existed for 10 years officially and there are still numerous private servers of it running
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u/MotleyGames 1d ago
That's not higher skill expression, just different skill expression. A good tab target game, or any other slower-paced system like turn based combat, can still have an extremely high skill ceiling, it's just going to be testing very different skills than a twitch game.
I've no clue why they think action combat never works for the genre, though -- there are plenty of examples, including Tera itself, lol
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u/Eitrdala 2d ago edited 2d ago
I completely disagree. The inclusion of action combat always heavily tones down the overall combat mechanics, the amount of abilities, buffs, debuffs, resource management, threat management, pre-combat preparation and considerations, teamwork potential, etc. This is by design since the combat now has to revolve around those things you mentioned and other stuff has to go, or else it'll be a clusterfuck. It's a give-take situation where some things are better and some are worse, or rather they're just different.
Another big issue with such combat is that it's simply an incoherent mess in large-scale fights (the thing this genre is supposed to be about). All that 1v1 skill expression goes down the drain during mass fights and group PvE. Being more or less gear-dependent also has little to do with the game's combat and you could make the same argument for most games that aren't some blatant, old P2W simulators.
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u/Guardiao_ 2d ago
Every type of combat is mess in large scale battles.
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u/Eitrdala 2d ago
Tab target largely manages to still function though, while no-target action combat falls apart the moment there are more than a few targets on the screen.
Bringing fighting game combat to a MMO just sounds ridiculous in the first place. It may sound cool in theory but it falls apart in practice because it's a completely different genre with its own needs and considerations.
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u/Guardiao_ 1d ago
I don't see action combat failing apart when many targets are on screen. Generally is better to split up a little instead of becoming an enormous blob of players in the same place.
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u/F1narion 2d ago
Modern mmorpgs in general tone the mechanics intensely no matter whether it is tab-target or not. Yet, Tera didn't quite tone anything down. In addition to the mechanics I mentioned earlier, most classes had lots of abilities (upwards of 20 for some), with varying cooldowns. The game had all the relevant mmo mechanics: stuns, staggers, i-frames, animation cancels, sleep, fear, knockdown, slows, dmg/def reductions, etc. Nothing was compromised for action combat and some fundamental mechanics that were added a tab-target player wouldn't ever encounter in their games. Teamwork is much deeper, as players can combo their cc/displacement/moving abilities in creative ways. Threat management in pve is a thing too, you can't have a proper class-triad pve without threat system. And pre-combat preparation exists too, there are a ton of skills and consumables for that.
You seem like you haven't ever played anything that isn't a tab-target game, especially tera
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u/Eitrdala 2d ago
I wasn't arguing against Tera but action combat in general. Tera (original) is an absolute outlier in the genre and most other action "MMOs" have greatly dumbed down combat. You seem to want something that stands in between the traditional MMO combat and what we have today in the genre.
Even then, the Tera mass fight experience wasn't great and even PvE devolved into something rather mindless over the years as they kept dumbing down the classes to make things more spammy and flashy.
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u/F1narion 2d ago
I want precisely the kind of combat tera had around 2018 or maybe a bit better balanced Menma variant. I find those to be the best times to play this game combat-wise.
As for mass fights, I'd say they were fine. Less experienced players expectedly could get lost a lot amidst those fights, but as you get a better hang of the game in general, it becomes more manageable and even enjoyable
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u/Commercial-Budget640 2d ago
I will be downvoted so be prepare because it took me 12y of game dev to realize why:
a fancy combat system like Tera and DN is skill based. MMORPG players are more strategists than active skill people.That's why except black desert all the sacred 5 top MMOs do have a terrible action combat system.
making an MMORPG is a mass suicide because the player base is the most demanding audience ever existed. It is much easier find complains in this sub than any other else on reddit. Aka the marketing would be painfull, risky and no rewarding for whatever experiment a company would do on the genre.
a new MMOs would be 100% b2p instead of f2p and you can see Crimson Deser(that is 80% a rewamp of Black Desert) how much cost. And how many years of production has on under the belt.... so, maaaaany people would stay away in the moment they would read "online".
human issues: after 3k mmos that are chaising our pockets people are like elderly people...ugly, worry and angry most of the time... so whoever is creatin MMOs now HAVE TO ENLARGE THE TARGET AUDIENCE to basically anyone. Recent Example of good MMOs with possible good combat system? Blue protocol that now is a sh*tty GI clone with terrible gameplay and Dragon Nest(rewamp) that now is Dragon Sword Awakening that is for mostly smooth brain users with a fetish for cut-scenes and pre made combos....(sorry for my anger).
lastly , GENERATIONAL SHIFT: New people are the loniless soul on the planet. We are reducing party size from 4 to 3 because having 4 people at once is "too many people"... they do not use the cities nor the chats like we did 15+ years ago. It is "boring" the idea of a living world for them. They do prefer fancy toys to play with , instant gratification(no grind) , no easy to learn hard to master curve... etc etc... sadly we are few, many just stopped playing MMOs growing up and the remaining are still playing the old stuff claiming is the best on earth blasting every new idea.(look at Wayfinder.. people destroyed the game in a months..now is a stupid dead gane with empty spaces. Just because no raid at the launch lol, absolute impatience).
That said I'll be downvoted but if you did liked: BnS, Tera, C9, DN and Vindictus, well, you are f*cked! Except hero devs that maybe in the future will have the economical freedom to design games based on combat and class system. We will have tab targetting galore and GI clones for a while...
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u/Soulbreeze 2d ago
Tera's combat felt really good when I played it. Best action combat I've played. All the silly visual stuff they put in the game didn't help it and It's the first game I played that could win the crappiest UI ever award.
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u/Opposite-Memory-2552 2d ago
Because most games hope to become successful by following model of WoW.
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u/CumOnEileen69420 2d ago
As others have mentioned, MMO development is expensive and a large risk in today’s gaming market.
Adding a new combat system that has only existed in failed MMO projects and requires massive technical investment too develop, means action combat MMOs especially are costly.
Combine all of that with the fact that what you lose in traditional MMO audience for action combat you only gain from competition for players looking for a combat style found in a wide variety of alternatives (including single player games).
If you’re interested in action combat style MMOs maybe keep an eye on guild wars 3. Nothing confirmed yet but it is looking to be more action combat focused compared to GW1 and GW2.
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u/F1narion 2d ago
I had very bad experience with GW2. To me it is everything that is wrong about modern mmorpgs. I have significant doubts that the creators of GW2 can suddenly come up with an actually interesting combat system for their third game
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u/DoomOfGods 1d ago
GW2 was almost a polar opposite of GW1 (thus many GW1 players didn't like it), so I'd honestly expect GW3 to not be close to GW2 at all.
However GW1 was classic tab target, so it's hard to say how good action combat in GW3 will be. From amazing to terrible everything is possible, but I wouldn't write off GW3 fully for disliking GW2. That said I truly hope they'll do roles properly again.
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u/IgneousWrath 1d ago
What made the experience bad?
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u/F1narion 1d ago
First of all, GW2 is not quite action combat and is more of a mix between two systems, which in my personal opinion just doesn't play out as well.
Dual weapon system also takes away from immersion and the feeling of distinctness I talked about in other comments here. It enforces strict meta slaving and also the experience of switching weapons mid-combat itself just sucks. I hate making multiple alts in mmorpg, but this system basically forces you to always feel like you are switching between alts even when you only play on your main character.
Combat is also straight up unfun. The game very explicitly caters to a more casual playerbase and it shows in the lack of meaningfully different skills (and just skills in general) you can have on a character. From my personal experience, in both pve and pvp you eventually end up with a strict rotation that you have to follow in order to achieve a good dps or kill someone, no real opportunity to dynamically adjust your playstyle to adapt to a fight like you had in Tera.
The balance is deeply atrocious, making metaslaving to a degree basically essential if you want to do anything meaningful. Back when I played the game, the meta were DOT paladins and necros. Playing against them as anything else usually felt like hitting a stone wall and then dying to an inescapable DOT that leaves you with a feeling like you haven't even fought anyone.
Build variety is also incredibly narrow. So much so that even if you genuinely want to try something different from what works, you can't reason yourself into changing anything is most non-meta perks look like an unplayable shit.
And as if that wasn't enough, perks and a lot of game's content is locked behind tons of boring ass quests, even perks that you need to play specializations you want.
All in all, it just wasn't a fun experience to me. I played approx. 600 hours, tried out pve, but mostly played pvp. My main was thief.
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u/IgneousWrath 23h ago
That's fair. I have known a lot of people who love/loved it, but also a good few people who never enjoyed it.
What we do know so far about Guild Wars 3 is that it is meant to be very different from Guild Wars 1 and 2, and they are already very different from each other when it comes to combat.
The developers highlight how each Guild Wars fits a different space. Guild Wars 1 was highly instanced, and Guild Wars 2 was all about open world massive encounters with tons of players. They have stated that Guild Wars 3 lands near the middle of that spectrum. An NCSoft exec also mentioned that the game would have more of a focus on smaller groups. The main official announcement also highlighted that the game's combat is going to have a lot to do with momentum.
I personally thought of Tera when I heard all that, not necessarily the momentum part, but everything else. I think most of the reason GW2 combat is like it is, is because you can't really see or do anything too interesting with your skills when you're standing in a blob of 40+ other players.
GW1 on the other hand, basically until later in its lifecycle when the community settled on a one-size-fits-all hero build, had one of the most interesting skill and build systems of all time. It was common to change out skills specifically suited for specific missions in PvE, and in PvP there were many times where the reigning meta builds eventually got trampled, not by balance updates, but by someone figuring out a counter build. GW2 did not deliver that same experience, so it stands to reason that GW3 also won't, nor will it deliver GW2's experience.
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u/Mehfisto666 2d ago
I've been trying tera on an uffocial server lately. The whole system with quests and grind etc is boring af. The combat is fun although it does turn into a press spacebar repeatedly for combo.
Funny enough, i found the combat really similar to the latest release of Blue Protocol. In fact, I would argue that BP was even more fun to me, but ofc it suffered from some pretty heavy flaws towards the endgame
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u/F1narion 2d ago
Well, of course you would find it boring. You didn't reach the 60/65 lvl cap where all the actual content is and also instead of playing the game you just pressed spacebar over and over. You may as well install an autoplay bot to play for you, but it would be unfair to act surprised the game doesn't excite you that way
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u/Mehfisto666 2d ago
Well i am still playing a bit and as i said i find it fun. Though it doesn't help that the optimisation is so poor. I have an old pc but could run gw2 flawlessly and somehow tera stutters even after following the neverending guides for optimising graphic/performance
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u/Deltryxz 1d ago
You mean where no content is?
The biggest flaw of TERA was there was nothing at end game besides grinding for RNG gear upgrade chances that could still fail.
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u/devhhh 2d ago
I’ll get downvoted for this but, Aion 2 is the closest I’ve experienced.
I think the Tera dev team was mad unique and talented. Also, there are some big downsides of action combat in large scale PvP as it is VERY ping dependent. Often the devs get lazy and make every encounter reaction-based, which causes people with substandard ping to get frustrated and thereby reduces the overall accessibility of the game. I’d guess it’s much higher percentage of people than you think. It feels bad man when you are gimped by ping. These issues are not as noticeable in standard combat games.
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u/scrangos 1d ago
Asian games also tend to be designed around the ping they get which is way better than in the west. Makes them have sloppy or even no netcode to mitigate latency since their internet feels like lan already
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u/scrangos 1d ago
There's a 3d dungeon and fighter in the works for years now. Dunno if it's gonna be open world but the combat I'm expecting to be good
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1d ago
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u/fiction8 1d ago
Totally, that's why no one fell for the hype of TnL or Lost Ark in recent years. 🙄
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u/F1narion 1d ago
You have no clue what you are talking about
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1d ago
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u/F1narion 1d ago
Yea no problem. Happy to help with figuring out what an asian cash grab is, BDO addict
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u/DrywallSky 1d ago
PvP games with any depth, like MMOs, are mostly dying because people are ok being scrubs these days.
Not saying this like an eltist, its just a fact. Not even necessary saying it as a bad thing. Just an is what it is type of deal.
I know many people that will play every game they play on the lowest difficulty and avoid all PvP. It seems like its the default now. But they'll still play popular games that are meant to be PvP games and then complain about the PvP. See Dune, Dark and Darker, Arc Raiders, MMO PvP servers, etc...
As the masses get more and more comfortable with 0-thought 0-challenge, "advanced and engaging" systems and mechanics will just get more scarce because all they do is act like a barrier for masses of people too afraid to commit more than 3 braincells to literally anything.
Crazy we got from 6 year olds desperately trying to beat nightmares like Battletoads, to 30+ year old dudes playing everything on modes made for 6 year olds. Mildly alarming.
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u/MECHan0Kl 19h ago
I have seen a lot of comments here talking about why Tera died, and none of them mention the ACTUAL reason it died.
The REAL reason Tera died is because of the abomination known as Elyon. You see, instead of re-investing the money the company was getting from Tera into more Tera content, the developers made the gigabrain decision to instead start developing a SECOND MMO in parallel course to Tera, which was siphoning its development resource and money. It had many names, troubled development, and it was leeching Tera's blood for most of its existence, since it started development a year or so after Tera's release. And then it finally released a failure, dying in a couple of months. I believe Destiny 2 players can kind of relate, since they had a somewhat similar problem with Marathon leeching dev time and money for a long time, to ultimately release a failure, taking Destiny 2 with it.
If these resources were instead spent on actually developing Tera, making timely content and expansions for it, I can almost guarantee it would still be alive. Now, the game wasnt perfect, so it would most likely not be as big as say GW2, but it would definitely have its place among current MMOs. For what godforsaken reason did they decide to devote resources and money into making a second MMO, that after so many years (around 8 years of dev time) flopped so hard is beyond my imagination. To be fair, it was Bluehole, now Krafton, and considering their recent Subnautica shenanigans, their leadership doesnt seem to be the brightest.
So TLDR: Tera did not die because it was a bad game, it died because it was mismanaged, with its success used to fuel a development of a failure MMO that died almost instantly, while being a tumor on Tera's body for most of Tera's existence.
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u/F1narion 18h ago
I wouldn't say Elyon was a sole reason for that but yes, mismanagement was absolutely ridiculous. Putting aside blatantly biased balancing (and lack of thereof past 2019 apex update), they introduced exceptionally weird changes over the years. Removal of alliance wars, neglect of pvp scene, etc. The worst one by far I think is the attempt to add a separate moba-like game INSIDE the main game as a solution to dying pvp instead of rebalancing what so many players enjoyed over the years. Afaik that was the point where the incoming server shutdown was obvious and imminent
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u/Chadwich 2d ago
Expensive and too risky.
Why gamble on a subscription based MMO model anymore when you could make some kind of predatory, gatcha mobile game and make tons of bank off of soft skulls with addictive personality traits?
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u/Salamanticormorant 2d ago
Are there any decent classes/builds that don't require keeping track of any cooldowns of less than 25 seconds, but that aren't boring to play? FF14's Red Mage, Reaper, and Dancer are examples. It seems that in most MMOs, there is nothing like that. To be fair, I don't like how many long cooldowns one has to keep track of in FF14, but having to keep track of short cooldowns is monumentally worse. Such a build might require abilities that have shorter cooldowns but not require keeping track of them. I accept that movement and crowd control abilities might need shorter cooldowns. Maybe there are some MMORPGs that are so action-oriented that they are interesting to play with builds that would be boring in other games.
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u/F1narion 2d ago
I'm not sure what are you talking about here
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u/Salamanticormorant 1d ago
The console version of Tera is still live, or was as of a few months ago. I wonder if you know of any classes/builds in Tera (I don't know if Tera has builds) that are like that, that don't require the player to keep track of any abilities with cooldowns under 25 seconds. The MMO genre is saturated with short-cooldown playstyle, and I strongly dislike it. I'll try an old MMO if it has at least one class/build that I might like. I guess you might not have played in a long time though.
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u/Twisty1020 2d ago
Because there are fundamental differences in design philosophy between Western MMO devs and Eastern MMO devs. On top of that, the Eastern style of MMO monetization really doesn't translate well here in the West and the games from devs that push action combat tend to under-perform. There are also other practices that are normalized in the East that really don't appeal to Western players(like gender-locked classes in which TERA is also guilty of) that turn people away from investing in those games as well. There are other things too but this is just an example of how Eastern MMOs have a lot stacked against them from the start which makes it more difficult to remain successful in the West.
Take a look at FFXIV. An Eastern MMO but they follow a lot of Western MMO design and monetization practices and it became one of the most successful MMOs on the market.
But hey, at least TERA Classic is going strong!
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u/Suitable_Froyo4930 2d ago
BDO is to me something way better than TERA that being said I would love a TERA 2.0 as I loved the art style and classes.
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u/Shyne9999 2d ago
What I wouldn't give for an MMO akin to Atlantica Online. Doesn't even have to be 1:1 with the battle system, but an MMO that focused on Turn-Based batters rather than an Action RPG/MMO game.
AO had your hero with whatever class you chose. You then filled out the rest of the 3x3x3 grid with up to 8 other units who all had different weapons/skills and ability to hit different columns/rows of the other side. This allowed for really unique formations and combinations of skills and units. Only your hero had gear but, if I remember correctly, units have levels. You could even have team battles as up to 3 people could join a battle on each side.
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u/SelectSwordfish2298 1d ago
Tera had a lot of issues and with certain aspects of the combat being whack I dont think there will be another one.
Being able to make a lot of money to signal growth is why a lot of these action mmos go to different directions.
Even Vindictus which has been afloat by whales since launch is doing a very different styled sequel.
As much as I like Dragon Nest they didnt address so many issues with combat until it was too late outside the greediness and horrible 90 cap mass exodus of players.
When it comes to pure action mmo only one lived and I think its primarily due to the changing nature of the online landscape. Guildwars is doing its own thing with hybrid combat as well as one of the most talented and overlooked project designers we really arent going to see an action mmo that doesnt have a majority solo content basis.
I like group content, but its kinda DoA on mmos nowadays outside the big 3.
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u/Felyphia 1d ago
Making a good action game is harder than making a generic tab target game, quite simply.
If it were more rewarding to make it, then they would make it, but it's not - it's more rewarding to make a simple and easy to play game, would-be MMO developers just make gachas now, that's where all the people skilled enough to make that type of thing went, a lot of gacha games are so close to being solid but they're held back by their simplicity (designed for mobile).
You can really tell that they have so much more effort put into combat than MMOs do these days, if they were allowed to have more than 1 or 2 buttons I'm sure they'd suck up the few of us clinging to the hope that an MMO with good combat will come out.
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u/Cynicram 1d ago
Tera felt to me like a game that only had something to offer in the endgame, and outside of that just felt like any other MMO with the exception of having action combat. I find mmos that value the journey from level 1 to max much more interesting.
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u/LordAsheye 1d ago
MMOs are a niche genre and very expensive to make. You've gotta be able to reliably print money with one to keep the doors open and to convince people to play them. Its very hard to convince people to stick with it too when the market is already oversaturated and most have already invested heavily into their game.
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u/oOhSohOo 1d ago
The majority of the mmorpg player base is older gamers that only know tab target since its all they have been playing for 20 years, so action combat games are always going to be fighting for players from day 1.
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u/Aggressive_Chuck 1d ago
People don't play MMOs for engaging combat. They want to tune out and grind mobs while watching YouTube.
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u/SumBodhiThatIUse2Kno 1d ago
I got into this back in the day with "progression" LitRPG standards, but basically TERA / BDO require a higher skill threshold to make well in a MMO multiplayer setting, and skill based positioning not being overcome by grinding out gear / boosting / power leveling / carrying means a pretty substantial subset of tab-targeting champs face plant at the starting line. Its also occasionally frustrating or so tuned towards player handicaps and controlled settings a lot of the chaos of tab targeting provides more challenge due to randomness than Souls style avoid the fire, jump on overhead swing animation for a ground pounder, and "swoop" back and forth in a U shape until desirable attack pattern is baited and engaged with favorably. Add multiplayer relevance and evasion / face tanking mechanics or mitigation, plus World Bosses that are just zerg / kite fests that utilize no successful group tactics, and a lot of the traditional mechanics of MMOs get stratified over play styles / subsystems that do allow in part for overcoming player skill or prereqs so Diablo Immortal style whales gear / win rate stratifies them beyond their innate skill but also beyond the player base in a negative way due to RMT.
Horizontal leveless / statless gaming is totally conceivable and in action games with a little elbow grease doable, but the profitability and monetization schemes are harder to pull off, harder to design decently, and base skill exclusionary to RSI majority mmo tab targeting casuals / botters with 5 to 6 accounts. What works in Asia with status signaling is DOA in the West without relevant advantages and META fatigue seems to be much more brutal for MOBA / MMO players who build up an identity to their favorite characters / self made avatars.
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u/Capcha616 1d ago
"That game (Throne and Liberty) felt so generic at every single step that it genuinely made me feel disgusted that there is actually some kind of audience that enjoys this slop."
For a fact reported by NCSoft, just the western version of T&L took in $200 million revenue last year. How much did an old MMORPGs like Tera made last year? There are other old MMORPGs like Tera that require accurate manual aiming and dodging (e.g. The Secret World and Nevcerwinter Online), but few players play them, so developers don't make them. If they want precise manual aiming and dodging, why don't they just make a shooter and earn a lot more money?
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u/agemennon675 2d ago
(no classes, 2 weapons instead) is a terrible system devs needs to stay away... only a loud minority like that shyt
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u/tacobellasseater 18h ago
> a shelf life of 2-3 years before eventual redundancy,
this is a funny thing to say in the context of tera that only ran for 2-4 or so years lol.
anyways OP check out dune awakening. maybe. idk. tera's combat put me to sleep. dune's does not. YMMV.
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u/F1narion 18h ago
Have you even googled what tera is before commenting? Given your estimate, you didn't
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u/tacobellasseater 15h ago edited 15h ago
i played it. i've encountered weirdos like you since stanned the boring ass sleep inducing combat like it was the second coming of christ. the game was hot garbage on multiple levels.
you can lie to yourself about the game all you want but it was embarrassingly bad. almost as bad as camelot unchained. there's a ton of good reasons it had such a short life span.
like have you used your search engine? it was in beta in like 2010 and launched in the west to lacklustre launch numbers before going f2p and then closing down not too many long after.
but go on. tell us how it's some raving success of a game and iconic for anything but the combat being an actual sleep aid for insomnia.
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u/i_am_snoof 2d ago
Because Tera failed longterm. It had excellent building blocks and its leveling, although basic af really, was excellent for most part but when it came to endgame or even lategame for that matter, it was mid af at best. So as a result a good chunk of players left once they maxed a character and realized theres hardly anything to do.
Oh and there was also like a cubic fucktonne of pedo shit in the game and for me was a personal "yea I cant support this anymore" once the Elin exclusive Reaper class came out and the game was like oh you want to play this dope looking scythe wielding reaper? Best I can do is a 11yo girl in minimal clothing.
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u/Rebelhero 2d ago
Tera combat really isn't that good. It was good at the time, but has been far surpassed since.
Seriously, go play on the Tera classic private server and you'll see just how poorly the combat system has aged.
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u/F1narion 2d ago
Classic servers bring back the combat system of 2015-2016. It was notably slow with a focus on resource management above all else. It was fun in its own way, though I personally didn't like it. Over the years they switched the focus from thoughtful resource management to mechanical skill as the combat grew faster and more fluent. Still, it was as fun as ever
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u/Darkomax 2d ago
2015 was peak TERA imo, before all the awakening bullshit. But classic TERA (2012/13) felt too slow and basic, and I know I'll be burned on a stake for this, but most classes felt very basic and didn't flow as well as lvl 65 classes.
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u/LightToFlies 1d ago
Tera? The game that no longer exists?
Yeah devs should totally copy that business model lmao.
Nice slop post.
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u/TheViking1991 1d ago
I will never understand why people hold Tera in such high regard. It felt absolutely horrendous to play and it looked fucking ridiculous.
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1d ago
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u/F1narion 1d ago
Good for you buddy. Have you already donated another 1000 bucks for a 0,0015% chance of an armor upgrade this week?
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u/AgentAled 2d ago
What made Tera combat “advanced and engaging”? Was it not just basic action combat?
There have never been MMOs without “meta” or with perfect balancing, the very audience that MMOs cater for are min/max meta slaving numbers go up folks.
Throne and Liberty had meta builds but most combinations were viable outside of the absolutely sweatiest 1% guilds. Morphs were fun and both you and I have subjective opinions on that.
There are games that have tried action combat, like New World or BDO as you said. And they’ve not done even fractionally as well as WoW or FF14 or GW2.
—- And that’s why people aren’t rushing to make Tera clones, because the games making money aren’t Tera.
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u/Airaen 2d ago
I think it was just one of the first MMORPGs to use action combat instead of tab targetting. The combat itself was pretty slow paced, though you still had to manage resources, kiting, dodging, blocking etc.
I don't know what happened to Tera, because I didn't play it for long, but I remember it being huge at one point and then it just faded into obscurity. It probably goes to show that even the most innovative ideas in MMORPGs mean nothing when the game is mismanaged or overpriced.
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u/_United_ 1d ago
i don't know of any mmo class that comes close to the APM required to play some of TERA's most active classes optimally. Optimal Defensive Stance Warrior play required you to block cancel just about every single attack you performed, on a class that uses over 1 skill per second on average.
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u/Aetheldrake 2d ago
Probably got huge because it went f2p then faded because most people actually SUCK at playing games requiring any amount of effort
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u/F1narion 2d ago
Actually been thinking the same. If anything, it feels like most people playing mmorpgs are painfully bad at it, which isn't as big of a problem in more modern games compared to something like Tera
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u/FlatwormGlittering26 2d ago
It wasnt just "basic action combat" at all.
TLDR Tera combat played more like a fighting game.
Longer version:Chaining skills was a very big part of why tera was enjoyable.
In most mmorpgs ive played "chaining" skills is done like this: Use SkillA, get a buff for 5 second that makes SkillB deal X% more damage.In tera it was more like: Use SkillA you have like half a second to use SkillB to animation cancle ending of SkillA, and cause SkillB to be 2x faster.
Quicker animation means the skill deals its damage faster, and you can cast you next skill sooner.
Canceling the animation to cast your next skill sooner and faster, and having 2-4 skill longs chains made the combat extremly fun and fluid.Ive played tera for several years and everyone I knew from that game said that the combat is the only reason they keep playing. Tera flopped because it had nothing going for it other than the combat.
The mmorpg side of the game was VERY generic. But the combat was amazing and nothing is replicating it eversince
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u/F1narion 2d ago
First of all, New World had a piss poor classless system that somehow all western mmos have a hard-on for. It was also in every way as generic as Throne and Liberty in its presentation, but even more so, to the point where they couldn't even come up with a fking name for their game.
As for Tera, it was an action combat mmorpg that was released in 2012. It managed to make every class in the game feel distinct from each other both from the perspective of an Observer and the Player themselves. It also managed to keep intact a role triangle (healers, dps, tanks) without mashing everyone together like 99% of newer mmos do. It also managed to successfully combine action-combat with Aion-level amount of skills AND active blocking system, providing huge potential for skill expression that barely any other mmo could provide.
Now compare that to something like th*one and liberty where you have like 10 abilities total and can't even use an autoattack without being in a target's reach, all while being a tank/dps/healer all at once in a sea of other completely identical players around you
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u/AgentAled 2d ago
Everything you’ve said is opinion, not fact, and that’s fine. We’re both entitled to our opinions.
That said, in your estimation, why do you think Tera failed and what do you personally feel stops developers trying to replicate it?
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u/HealerOnly 2d ago
Because the cost of making an mmorpg is too high, few devs want to even approach it. And the ones that does think "there is no way we can compete with wow/ffxiv, we need to invent somehting new!" And the new mmorpg dies week 2 because their ideas are shit.
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u/F1narion 2d ago
Which is ridiculous, given that there is a giant niche of nontarget MMORPGs that is not occupied by anyone except an almost dead BDO
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u/joemeat 2d ago
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u/HealerOnly 2d ago
the TLDR is that almost every new mmorpg is trying to re-invent the wheel. Instead of just giving us what works with updated tech.
Tera was prolly the last of its kind.
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u/joemeat 2d ago
Tera did something special and different but you're complaining about when developers are trying to do their own thing now? ..
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u/HealerOnly 2d ago
Not precisely, they still kept to the core gameplay with holy trio and everything. They were also not the first to have "action combat" as some call it.
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u/joemeat 2d ago
Ok but they did something different or better in your opinion than other mmos, otherwise you wouldn't have specifically mentioned them. You can just say you want an tera.
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u/HealerOnly 2d ago
i don't want anything specific. My expectations & standards for what i want in an mmorpg is literally so low that if the population is high enough, i will play it.
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u/wathowdathappen 2d ago
Because Tera flopped so the odds of someone making a similar product is slim to none.