In many ways, players in the western market are interested in a different game than those in the east. As we talked about before, grinding in games is one example of this. To resolve this, there are often pretty big changes that must be done to the game, which almost always ends up relying on some sort of “rested experience” system, where you can bank experience to gain it faster when you log in later. This is a pretty big change because it requires UI and core changes to how the experience and leveling systems work.
Another example of things we would rather be changed are the costumes (both functional and non-functional). I think that culture plays a major role in what we like to look at and what we all find acceptable, and TERA’s costumes are no different. There have been some tweaks to the game for when it came to the western market that help make things look a bit more appropriate, but we really do not have any separation otherwise. This has been a huge source of dismay for many players, in that there are many looks that may be more appropriate here but not in kTERA. Instead, we are forced to take and accept whatever fits in for the eastern part of the world, without any real changes due to our way of thinking.
The lack of separation is pretty easy to understand, though, with how TERA is run. Pretty much what happens is the publishers (such as En Masse Entertainment) have to send in their requests to the developers (Blue Hole Studios). Any changes, therefore, must be made by the developers, rather than the publishers, which really limits the amount of creativity that easy publisher is able to exercise. While this would not be such a problem if the games were hosted in similar areas, it is when we are dealing with a world-wide release like TERA (or, really, pretty much any MMORPG as of late). In cases like this, there really should be a separate team that handles game changes for each publisher. Even small teams could accomplish a lot, and then there could be another team that deals with all of the core features and such. This would allow each publisher to get their own views out, and it would help immensely with allowing the players to feel like they are actually being heard. As it is now, it feels more like we are being ignored, despite that not being in any control of En Masse.
