TERA news » September 2015 Producer Letter

Greetings TERA Citizens!

My name is Patrick "Treeshark" Sun, and I’m here to talk about the current state of TERA and to look ahead at what's to come.

Current State of the Game

Recent patches have brought us the Dreamstorm, new BuddyUp Program, Dressing Room, and Gridiron battleground. Unfortunately they have also brought with them several changes that we hope to address with upcoming patches.

• Gold drops were severely altered to combat botting in other TERA regions. We do a pretty good job of combatting botting here, so these changes are not necessarily the best for our community. I’m happy to report that we will be reverting as many of these changes as possible to get things back to the way they were.
• Dungeon drops also need to be improved, and we are currently discussing what changes we will be implementing to the dungeons to improve them. We have a good amount of information from the last time we did this, and will be using this as a guideline to the new improvements. In the past, we have made changes ourselves to help improve areas like this in TERA. However, we’ve noticed that this has caused problems, both in how we maintain these updates and how they impact the actual game. Because of this, Bluehole has agreed to make these changes directly in the game build. Getting these changes will take longer, but it will be better for the game in the long run. This method will help us streamline our process and create a more stable build with fewer inconsistencies going forward. We are working with Bluehole to get this build and to test it as soon as possible, and will provide regular updates about our progress.
• Lagging/freezing issues that have cropped up recently are being diligently investigated. This has been a very difficult problem because of the complexities involved with the recent changes in a third-party company's software. Even within our office we saw that game performance changed daily, playing normally one day and then encountering the issue the next. While we do not have a full resolution yet, we are working with Bluehole and Microsoft on a solution. More information on this can be found here.

On the Horizon

On the upcoming slate for TERA, we have quite a bit in store.

• Bluehole has long been wanting to improve the starting experience for TERA, and it’s finally here! A new character creation and character selection screen, as well as a new beginning island to replace the Island of Dawn is arriving in October. It’ll present all our players with a new introduction to TERA, and feature a story about the giant tree towering over the island!
• Also arriving in October will be our first North American community designed costume set! We were amazed at the entries we received, and cannot wait to unveil this set to celebrate Halloween in TERA.
• Next up, we will be getting a new class: the Brawler - a melee tank that uses her fists. The brawler will be a human female class that starts at level 1. Her primary weapon will be her powerfists – powered gauntlets to help her dish the damage and attract all the danger nearby. Coming along with the brawler will be a new set of top gear, which will combine PvE and PvP sets into a unified set of gear for players to use. There will be a lot more information on the Brawler in the coming months, so be on the lookout!

Lastly, I’d like to introduce Matt "Denommenator" Denomme to the TERA team as Senior Producer. Matt has been working at En Masse since February 2012 and has worked on TERA through its initial launch and the free-to-play transition. He then moved to the role of a producer on En Masse’s Zombies Monsters Robots, before recently re-joining the TERA team in May to lend support with the Steam launch. He has been working behind the scenes on TERA ever since.

With the recent changes in the Community team affecting our Twitch streams, both Denommenator and I will be increasing our presence on the forums to communicate directly with you. He will be especially active on the forums in the next few weeks while I am away overseas on my honeymoon.

PEACE-

Treeshark out.