TERA PvP First Impressions

The second round of closed beta testing kicked off this weekend; opening up PvP for the first time, and while limited, it gave us our first glimpse into TERA‘s PvP system.

In short, TERA features an open PvP system where anyone can attack anyone else, as long as they aren’t in a protected area. These areas include any towns or outposts that have quest NPCs in them, so there’s plenty of safe zones around the map.  In this second round of testing, only open PvP and Guild vs Guild were available, no battlegrounds (PvP matches).

While it is completely open, TERA uses an “outlaw” feature meant to discourage griefers; although, in the end, it’s kinda pointless. We’ll get to that later.  To initiate an attack on another player, the attacking player must declare they are an “outlaw”. This turns their name-plate red and they are free to attack anyone they want, however they received lesser stat rewards for PKing while they’re an outlaw.  On the other hand, players that kill an outlaw will receive greater stat rewards.

In this beta test, the stat pages weren’t recording anything, so how this works exactly is not known, but that’s the gist of it as I understood from the NPC.

The Guild vs Guild War system basically removes the “outlaw” feature for the two warring guilds. Players are free to attack anyone from the opposing guild and will receive normal stat rewards.

The main issue with the open PvP system is that there are no rewards past the statistics, and when compared to PvE quests, it really pushes you to PvE. I can spend an hour and complete a dozen quests, gain items, money and XP, or I can spend an hour PvPing and gain nothing. So why bother wasting my time with PvP?

For someone like me who enjoys PvP much more than PvE, I gravitate towards it; but if there’s absolutely no gain, I’m forced back to PvE to advance my character.

TERA‘s open PvP system is fun, but still requires some major changes to hit a home-run. First and foremost: they need to add incentives. Those that decide to grief and continually mark themselves as an “outlaw” to PK, should receive both greater rewards for their kills and added incentive against them. This would discourage most players from griefing, as there would be greater rewards for others to kill them, but would temp some by offering greater outlaw rewards as well.

Currently marking yourself as an outlaw is almost meaningless, as there’s almost no reward when you kill someone. It basically just shows players you want to fight, but by doing so you receive less stat rewards when you do.

Overall I had some fun over the weekend. TERA has no faction system, so you’re always surrounded by potential enemies, which just makes it more exciting when compared to those MMORPGs where the PvP and PvE zones are separate. The system still has some major flaws in it, but hopefully we’ll see some positive changes in the next beta weekend next week.

 

10 Comments

  1. Frogster handeled Runes of magic really bad and I doubt they will handle this better.
    They promised a bunch of stuff that all sounded amazing. But they never come…
    The pvp system sounds similar to Runes of magic which they promised to fix from the beginning.
    And 2 years later there were still no incentive to pvp on the pvp servers. Just like you describe there to be no incentive now in Tera.
    Then they introduced battlegrounds which still did not have any incentives and was only good for those that enjoyed PVE as they could wear more items since they did not get the negative effects from being a PvPer (PKer).

    Frogster lied over and over again about what they were developing for the game and what was coming. At first it was a little late and did not come in the beginning of the summer. Then it was more late and did not come during autumn. Then 1 year later they introduce shit which I myself could have designed ALOT better even if I only spent 1 day thinking of the dynamics.

  2. And from the sounds of it they have learned nothing in the last 3 years since they still have no incentive for PvP.
    And yes they do not develope the game themselves, but they do know what is being develeoped and they are lying about it. They can also give feedback to delelopers about what they want. But they ignore and lie to the PvPers…

    I used to play DAoC 10 years ago. That game had better programming and better dynamics, was more balanced and had better PvP.
    You would think that the games would steal atleast some of the good ideas and balancing. But it is like Frogster learned nothing from history.
    DAoC is known by many as the best PvP game ever made. Runes of magic run by Frogster was nothing close and just a huge waste of time. Just like the false promises Frogster is making now with Tera will turn out to be.
    (I am assuming Frogster are making false promises still since they did this concequently for the 2 years that I played Runes of magic)

  3. Frogster has nothing to do with TERA, its by developed Bluehole Studios and published by En Masse Entertainment

  4. Perhaps YOU have learned nothing about PVP.
    If you really like PVP it needs little to no reward other than a title or body count.
    Sounds to me like you want to get mega-gear and gank lesser geared players. That activity is sometimes forced on those trying to PVE and makes them leave games that allow it.

  5. Perhaps YOU have learned nothing about PVP.
    If you really like PVP it needs little to no reward other than a title or body count.
    Sounds to me like you want to get mega-gear and gank lesser geared players. That activity is sometimes forced on those trying to PVE and makes them leave games that allow it.

    Bang on buddy, this review is terrible its full of whines and secondly rolling enemies with your clan and being unbeatable in PVP is much more satisfying than PK’ing ppl who are leveling or worse geared than u are.. really u want to be rewarded for griefing ppl? ur a joker and shud be whipped irl imo, i hate griefers and even worse are griefer who would expect to be rewarded for being a total knob. Get a life whiney b****

  6. i would have to agree.. l2 was more fun and had better pvp than daoc imho and this is a child of that.. so if you want a reward for killing newbs, go back to wow

  7. Do you mind if I quote a couple of your posts as long
    as I provide credit and sources back to your site?
    My blog is in the exact same area of interest as yours and my users would genuinely benefit from a lot of the information you provide here.
    Please let me know if this okay with you. Many thanks!

Comments are closed.