TERA To Feature “RIFT” Like Invasions

Called the Nexus system, TERA will feature “dynamic” public events where portals will randomly open up in the game world, allowing monsters from the enemy’s realm to pour in. Pretty much the same thing that is implemented into RIFT‘s system.

When a “Nexus portal” opens up, a message will be announced on the server, and all players will receive a quest to help defend against the invasion. Players who successfully help defend will then receive rare and powerful items.

Being a MMO game with open PvP, I’m not quite sure how this will work,  as I’m sure some players, or guilds that are warring with each other, will take this as an opportunity to attack the defenders. Not that I will mind that; it’s a hell of a lot more dynamic then what RIFT has.

However, it’s still disappointing that En Masse is just copying what Trion has already done. Why not innovate some, instead of a boring scripted PvE event. Allow guilds to open up their own portals to attack players or enemy guilds? How great would that be? One guild might be in the middle of a group quest or raid, the guild they’re warring against learns where they are, teleports in, and all hell breaks loose.  That would be something to write about.

Apart from revealing the “Nexus system”, En Masse also revealed it will have a “PLEX” like system that EVE Online currently uses. An in-game item/currency will be available for players to buy, with real money, and can then be used to add game-time to their accounts. Like EVE‘s PLEX system, this will allows players to potentially play for free: if they collect enough of the currency. Although, this also creates a backdoor real money trade (RMT) market for those buying more than they need, and selling the items in-game for in-game currency.

Source: Massively

7 Comments

  1. Couple of things:

    It’s not scripted. That’s the whole point. Scripted means that it’s triggered exactly by something happening, and following a written event. That defeats the entire purpose of the system. It’s based on an algorithm to determine when the event is to be triggered.

    Second, the idea that people can open a rift in the middle of a raid on their own, breaks about 3 game design philosophy rules ingrained into developer’s brains by the end of college.

    If that ever was possible, I would never touch the game. You wrote, what, just yesterday saying how they’ve mixed in the market PvP and PvE together. That takes it to the whole next level, and it’s determined wrong by most.

    You would only attract a niche player group that wouldn’t mind that, and that’s bad for business.

    Third, to be fair, Blizzard “copied” the system too. With their own twist, of course. Give En Masse (really, Blue Hole is the developer studio) the time to release more info, or find a way to innovate.

    Though, sometimes things just don’t need innovation, just renovation, because systems become standard in a game because of the market trends (character customization systems come to mind).

  2. I don’t know exactly how TERA’s Nexus system will work or what triggers the event, so I’m basing my opinion off of Rifts system. What causing the Nexus to open might be dynamic, based on players actions, but the invasion itself is not, or at least in Rift it isn’t. That to me is boring. I only played RIFT to about level 30, but the rift events were pretty meaningless and after a few of them I just ignored them all together because there were the same thing over and over.

    The whole opening portals within raids was off the top of my head, it seemed like a cool idea, but you’re right, it would be difficult to implement in a theme-park game, even more so if raids are instanced. But I don’t think it would be impossible.

    I’m not a game programmer, so I don’t know what they teach game designers in college, but I do know the last 8 years has seen a long list of WoW clones where we’ve seen a lot of renovations and little to no innovations. Maybe that is what the industry needs right now.

  3. You are right. The industry needs to either see the renovation WoW did to EQ, or innovation to begin with.

    It’s not that it’s impossible – anything is possible if that’s your design goal – its just almost a taboo because of said design philosophies.

    If that’s how it works in RIFT, then that’s the fault of the devs, and can easily be remedied. Having 3-5 different scripts to run at different intervals / randomized would give even more dynamics.

  4. More yellow journalism.
    Adding dynamic PvE content, and an ability to play Tera for free are two exciting features that fans will be looking forward to. But you just had to add your $0.02 uneducated opinion to spin good news into not-so good news.

    Not only that but if you did any research on the subject at all, which you clearly did not, you could have easily found a better picture of the rift content in question. Along with the fact that rifts are actually just one part of a host of new features being added to Tera in Queen of the Argons patch. I just so happen to have a link right here, it took all of 2 seconds to find.

    http://www.terafans.com/news/321-k-tera-major-content-update-queen-of-the-argons/

    Before you start complaining about the industry not doing their jobs right, why don’t you make sure you’re actually doing yours right first?

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