Taugrim's MMO Blog

In this Play of the Day video, I buy enough time under heavy focus fire to line up 3 opponents for a one-way trip into the fire pit.

Here is the spec used in the video:
- Gunslinger: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#700bcrrdRoo.1
- Sniper: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400bcrrdRoo.1

I play as a Sharpshooter-spec’d Gunslinger, which IMO is one of the most underrated specs in the game. One key defensive talent is Spacer, which adds 2 meters to the distance for your knockback. Those 2 meters make a *big* difference

To see me PVP’ing live, check out my TwitchTV channel. My stream features real-time commentary and between matches I interact with the Chat Room.

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GAMEBREAKER Host for “The Republic” SWTOR show: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/video-game-shows/star-wars-the-old-republic-video/the-republic-swtor-show/

At GDC 2012, GAMEBREAKER writer Jason Winter and I attended a private session and hands-on boss fight demo in the En Masse Entertainment (EME) media booth.

Afterwards, we spoke with EME’s Chris Hager, the Producer for NA TERA.

Our discussion covered the following topics:

• 0:08: the hitbox implementation
• 2:40: the ability to buy a virtual good (Chronoscroll) from the item shop to sell in-game to other players
• 5:15: the Nexus Dynamic Event system
• 6:20: the Political system, which is based on the election of governors (Vanarchs) for each of the provinces

More on Hitboxes

My interview with EME COO Patrick Wyatt generated a lot of questions and debate about hitbox.

After dialoguing with gamers on social media and digging around on Google, I found the following excerpt from the TERA Answers thread on hitboxes which contains information originally posted sometime in the summer of 2011:

“If there are major differences in hitboxes so that those of a physically smaller race have a smaller hitbox and therefore are harder to hit, this would be an advantage. Conversely, because these races have shorter limbs compared to larger races, it is more difficult to attack enemies, and this would be a disadvantage. These elements would have a big impact on game balance, and certain races would then be preferred or avoided, and those who wanted to play the disadvantageous races would become frustrated with TERA.

However, simply ignoring the visual differences between races would create a potentially worse problem: lack of authenticity and immersion. This has been a large point of conversation and debate among TERA’s developers. In the end, we decided to make the hitboxes and attack ranges as close to the same size as possible across the races, although not completely equal, so that players would not get frustrated while playing the game.

For example, Barakas and Amani have slightly smaller hitboxes for their size, while the hitbox for the Popori is slightly larger than their size. There is still a difference, but it isn’t as major as the physical size of the model would lead one to believe.

The attack range went through a similar balancing process. The attack animation for the Popori is indicative of their slightly longer attack range, while Amani and Barakas hardly move forward. When they attack, the ranges for races have been appropriately modified and balanced to match their animations.

In short, we tried to make the game as balanced as possible while still maintaining the individual flavor of each class. Therefore, hitboxes and attack ranges have been configured in such a way that they are similar without being gamebreaking, but are not exactly the same size.”

I found the excerpt to be a bit confusing, even after reading it multiple times The excerpt is 10 months old, so we don’t know whether the information is still current.

What I heard from Chris in person was very clear on the matter:

1. Attack animations have been adjusted to make the reach of attacks for the same ability the same across races – i.e. reach is normalized
2. In terms of being hit or healed, the bigger you are, the easier you are to target – being hit / healed is not normalized

Chris’s explanation aligns with my experience in CB3, in particular the second bullet point. I found as a Sorcerer that the bigger my opponent, the more surface area of my opponent I could move my target crosshairs over and have the crosshairs form a circle, and the easier it was to hit them with straight-line spell attacks. This was the case when fighting mobs or dueling.

Please post your questions and feedback.

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At GDC 2012, I interviewed En Masse Entertainment COO Patrick Wyatt on bringing TERA, a Korean MMORPG game, to the West (North America, Europe).

Here are notable segments from our conversation:

• 1:02: respective roles of the developer (Bluehole Studio, BHS) and the publisher (EME)
• 2:08: specific changes being made to the game for the West. In terms of process, BHS owns making the game code changes, and EME facilitates this process by designing the changes to be implemented and synthesizing feedback from the community
• 6:27: how BHS is making different versions of the game for different locales
• 8:30: Patrick confirms that the core combat mechanics remain unchanged for the West
• 9:24: the hitbox implementation. Range/reach across hitbox sizes has been normalized, so a Baraka and Popori have the same reach for attacks. Character size does influence easy it is to be hit or healed
• 10:56: decision to go with Frogster as the publisher for EU TERA
• 11:42: establishing EME as a premier game publisher, in terms of their relationship with game developers and the community
• 17:02: EME’s analytics capabilities to understand what players are doing

For more discussion on this interview, see the thread on the TERA official forums.

Let me know your questions and feedback.

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I’ve been reading through the comments posted on YouTube for my first TERA video, and Beta testers reported combat issues related to latency.

This morning I watched the last set of duels that I streamed on Saturday, and from the footage it looks like latency (or lag) impacts the quality of PVP combat.

Check out the following TwitchTV video for duels between Razer (level 5 Female Elin Slayer) and Kennedy (level 5 Female Elin Archer):
http://www.twitch.tv/taugrim/b/308466267

At several points in their duels, what Kennedy and I saw was the same: Razer was able to hit Kennedy even though it looked like Razer was clearly out of melee range. This prevented Kennedy from knowing where his opponent was, and therefore how to target and how to counter. Given that I saw the same thing that Kennedy was experiencing, we wondered whether the issue was Razer’s Internet connection. He checked and his ping time to our Vent server was low.

Keep in mind the latency occurred in 1v1 combat with very few players nearby. That said, the issue really isn’t whether the Beta server was tuned, how many people were nearby, etc – rather the issue is that given the importance of positioning in combat, TERA is by design more sensitive to latency (lag) compared to your typical non-action MMORPG. Games typically have higher “lag” as the number of combatants increases, so there is the risk that the quality of combat in TERA may drop in mass PVP.

Aside from the latency issue, in TERA the hitbox is based on character race, gender, and size. The benefits of being small (“it’s harder to hit me”) outweigh the downsides (“it’s harder to heal me”). I’d rather take less damage than be easier to heal, because that would mean there is less reason to heal me in the first place. In general, I believe that character race, gender, and size should not have any meaningful impact on game combat, to allow players the flexibility of creating a character that suits their personal preferences not game mechanics.

UPDATE (2012/02/13 noon PST): before you pull the “OMG NOOB TERA IS IN BETA” card, keep in mind TERA went live in Korea on January 25, 2011 – over a year ago. What is in Closed Beta is the version of the game that is being managed and operated by game publisher En Masse for NA.

Developers tend to localize games for new markets with via language (text and voiceovers), tweaks to XP, and content availability, not via changing core game mechanics. I observed this with Aion, which was live in Korea before going live in NA in 2009 and with Allods Online, which was live in Russia before going live in NA in 2010.

So what we can reasonably expect are fixes per Beta testing related to the localization process and changes to En Masse’s server environment and infrastructure, but probably not to the core game code itself.

UPDATE (2012/02/15): some folks are claiming that FPS games have lag too, and that it isn’t a big deal.

Let me frame a critical distinction between FPS combat and TERA combat.

In FPS games, you can run and gun – the action of firing a weapon does not cause you to move in a predefined path. Weapons in FPS games have a “reload” timer but they do not in themselves restrict mobility, unless the player chooses to do something like aim their weapon by using a scope.

However, in TERA, when you use an attack ability, you move in a fixed path for that ability. Keep in mind one’s ability to attack and defend are heavily dependent on positioning.

Therefore I expect lag in TERA to be more detrimental than lag in an FPS.

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In this video, I discuss how combat works in the MMORPG TERA, including:

1. how to attack and land blows on targets based on the animation for each attack
2. the secondary effects of successfully landing blows on targets, including stun and knockdown effects
3. how the animation for an attack impacts the player’s ability to move the character and fire off subsequent attacks
4. how the “hitbox” for each target influences collision detection and how easy it is to hit the target

As discussed in the video, combat in TERA is more similar to console games such as Tekken and Street Fighter than traditional MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft.

TERA entered Closed Beta for NA in February 2012 but keep in mind this game went live in Korea back in January 2011, so the game was over a year old at the time this video was made.

For more information on the classes, races / racial abilities, and hitbox considerations, check out the following excellent guide:
http://www.terapvp.com/threads/a-guide-to-choosing-your-class-and-race-in-tera.3964/

Follow Me

Twitter: @taugrim
YouTube: http://youtube.com/taugrimtaugrim
Stream: http://twitch.tv/taugrim
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Host on GAMEBREAKER: http://www.gamebreaker.tv