Prior to the release of TERA’s new update “Secrets and Shadows” we had the privilege of meeting up with some of the folks over at En Masse Entertainment for a private press tour of the up and coming additions to their acclaimed action MMORPG. Meeting in game and over Skype with Producer Patrick Sun (our tank “Treeshark”), Community Manager Sean Gibbons (our healer “Spacecats”) and on the chat but not playing was Product Manager Matt Denomme, along with us were two other press guys and all three of us were there to try out the new Ninja class.
To start things off we were taken out into the world to fight a bunch of random mobs and get to grips with the Ninja whilst the En Masse folks explained the ins and outs of the class. An agile melee DPS character the Ninja has an array of single target and AOE style attacks that have them flipping around the battlefield in some pretty impressive acrobatics; the movement between strikes just off the basic attacks was really impressive and animated perfectly. They can build up Chi (like the Brawler’s rage) to unleash their melee ultimates that consist of a flame wall or some projectile fireballs that can be shot in succession to burn up your Chi. The Ninja is very much on the squishy side as a cloth wearer, and whilst they can dish out some fearsome damage they are most definitely punished for their low defense if they’re caught out in an attack. One of the more intriguing skills at hand is the ability to disguise yourself as a target player, looking exactly like them, with the same name and any guild titles they may have; an ideal ruse for PVP and temporarily looking like an enemy team player to get closer to their own squishies and assassinate them (the disguise does disappear if you take damage or inflict it, and will last one minute with a two minute cool down).
All in all the Ninja is a nice addition, the only issue we foresee is that it is restricted only to female Elin characters; whilst we fully appreciate the developers desire to focus on churning out new content and classes so seem to focus on the one race/gender for new classes (trying to develop a new class for every race and gender uses up a lot of time and resources), it is a little weak that the last four classes have all been female only (Reaper, Gunner, Brawler and now Ninja). When asking the guys about it over Skype the consensus seemed to be that female characters are, in general, more popular with the playerbase (though this result must be getting more and more skewed given that four of the classes are now female only).
When we were all comfortable with how the Ninja played it was time to go visit the Shadow Sanguinary, the newest max level dungeon added with the update where players will face off against Dakuryon, a Big Bad that has been the main villain of some previous quests. To get to the dungeon we could go by foot or mount like a plebeian, but fortunately we had another new addition to the game; flying mounts. All jumping aboard our personal flying lion type creatures we all charged forward then leapt up into the air with a double spacebar jump to seamlessly start flying, a flying bar appeared to show how long we could stay in the air for before having to land and recharge. Using mouse view to steer and WASD for movement the actual mechanics of flying were very simple but very smooth, using shift we could even take a speed boost that quickly burned through our flight bar. The transition between running on your mount to flying and then landing again is very well executed by the developers and the animations are flawless.
Arriving at our destination we were directed to choose the standard version of the dungeon and not the “Hard” difficulty settings, in hindsight I can now hand on heart say this was definitely the right call. Inside the dungeon was a fairly straightforward area with four main chambers to fight a boss, one of which wasn’t fully finished apparently so we skipped that room, but the other three more than made up for it.
Our first battle was with Pahoegar, a creation of Dakuryon, who had a single eye and matching single huge arm that he proceeded to beat us to death with over and over. This particular boss would summon down columns that would perform AOE attacks on the area, often overlapping and generally making huge kill zones. After killing him and heading down a long corridor filled with falling rocks and snipers that would do long telegraphed attacks that you had to dodge, we reach Dakuryon.
Dakuryon had a habit of launching a full room AOE that would one hit kill all the Ninjas (as we were so squishy); before the AOE hits he quickly shows a blue area and then launches the AOE and the blue is gone. We were told to get into “the blue area” and for half the battle we were looking for a blue area when the room went red, trying to find a safe spot, not realising that the we had to see where the safe zone was BEFORE the room went red and get in it. More fighting and Dakuryon disappeared in a flash of light and we then see a cut scene of him injecting himself with some green liquid and reaching his final form: Imperator.
Imperator worked in a similar vein, lots of telegraphs and having to get into position quickly, only this time he would prepare to make a kill room and the safe zone was a small area around him that trapped you in his barrier. In there the attacks carried on with lots of quick AOE areas we needed to dodge, and learning the patterns of his attacks.
The battles were fun, they were challenging. For us.. they were pretty much impossible. We (and by we I’m talking about all the Ninja press guys) died well over one hundred times collectively, nearly every red AOE attack that caught us was an insta-kill and we spent more of the game dead than we did on our feet. We did have the top tier 10 gear from this dungeon equipped, and whilst our skills might be somewhat lacking compared to someone who has played the class for 65 levels, this dungeon was ridiculously difficult for a squishy class…. and rightly so! It’s the hardest dungeon in the game and gives out the highest tier equipment, it should be difficult. As long as teams don’t go in with 3 Ninjas and have their entire team almost permanently wiped, then experienced players should fare much better than we did!
Overall the new additions are going to be great and once more TERA takes a step in the right direction with its content updates, we think players are going to love the new Secrets and Shadows patch, we certainly did.
Deja tu comentario
You must be logged in to post a comment.