Bad Game Design When It Comes To Instances

[Taien]

Before you jump down my throat, hear me out. I've been playing about a week now and enjoying the game so far, but I've found something that absolutely annoys me to no end.

Instances and the matching system.

-I've been following along with the quests, and never once have I stopped to grind.
-Now I'm at the point where I am trying to do the second dungeon (with the Vampirs), except I am overleveled for the dungeon (even though I have never ground this character once). So I can't instance match for the dungeon.
-However, I still have to do the quests in the dungeon to advance with the story.
-So since I can't instance match, I can't get a party. But since I have to do the party version to advance quests, I have to solo it.
-While soloing a party dungeon, you gain a crapload of experience, so now I'm getting even further ahead of my quest curve (which I DON'T WANT, this game is too easy already).

Seriously, what a terrible system. It's almost designed to completely screw over its own experience model. Why not just let me instance match for any dungeon I am high enough level to enter, and scale my level down or something? Many other games have done this, and it's a MUCH better system than the one we have here. There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to instance match an older dungeon. And this only happened because the first time I did the dungeon, I had no idea where to go and my party (like all instance matched parties) didn't speak and rushed through the dungeon, so I missed the main quest because I was just trying to keep up with them.

Please fix this...it has completely discouraged me from playing today because I don't want to get even farther ahead of the curve when I shouldn't even be ahead of it in the first place (I have never done a repeatable quest more than once, and have never sat down for a grind).

ARGH!!

[Taien]

Is there a way to lock XP gain so I can finish the dungeon without compounding the problem of being overleveled?

[Idi0ticGenius]

Sadly, you are the very few minorities. Majority of people think the other way, if it takes too long to do something, they quit.

The game used to be so hard it made players quit because of that.

now, the game is erally easy, drawing a lot more players than leaving. So I'm pretty sure if you were managing the game, you'd probably do the same based on profits.

People don't even do story quests in this game. All they care about it endgame stuff doing hard dungeons, gearing up... just like what most MMORPG players do.

Sure, there are players who prefer to progress in story, I did it, and I completed all of the quests in game. It's not hard at all, just takes too much time.

You can always go back to those dungeons even if you are overleveled. Just go to a specialty merchant and buy a teleport scroll if you haven't been there at all. You will get a teleport route to it at the city nearby or in the province.

[KarmaTheAlligator]

Or you can just solo everything until endgame. No worries about being overlevelled there, and you can take your time doing the quests. Or get in a guild with some people who don't mind running the dungeon with you, overlevelled or not.

[Pico]

You don;t have to do the dungeon to continue the story. If you are high enough level, you unlock the next story quest anyway. Then when you are high enough level, you can solo the 5 man version of the dungeon and complete the story. Or just wait outside the instance and search for group. Some people don't care what level you are and will do the dungeon just to complete the quest and not so much exp.

[Darjir]

As with any game you are newish at, it takes time to get used to the game systems. Both in terms of how they work and developer direction in how they assume you'll play.

Quest flow assumes no boosts, dungeon xp, or rested xp. Since you'll be using some or all pretty frequently they've made the yellow quests available to do or ignore, depending on how much xp you need to advance the story quests. Yellow quests only add a small amount of story and you can skip nearly all of them. At 60+ they get phased out almost entirely and if you solo 5man dungeons you can ignore them at as low as 20. Quickest way to get back on the level curve is to ignore yellow quests until they're the same level as you and just do story quests.

Keep in mind that despite its recent release on steam, TERA is an old game. As with any mmorpg of its age the focus is to just get you to endgame as quickly as possible. Once there the dungeon/raid system will make more sense.
No IM for low ilvl dungeons because you're expected to use lfg, chat systems, or grab people waiting at instance ent. to fill parties. Or just solo them. And to keep the IM list only showing things you need a group/raid for. Dev direction type choice in that since many are uncomfortable with interactionless grouping.

[Fire in the bowl!]

Originally posted by HBMSTaien:

Before you jump down my throat, hear me out. I've been playing about a week now and enjoying the game so far, but I've found something that absolutely annoys me to no end.

Instances and the matching system.

-I've been following along with the quests, and never once have I stopped to grind.
-Now I'm at the point where I am trying to do the second dungeon (with the Vampirs), except I am overleveled for the dungeon (even though I have never ground this character once). So I can't instance match for the dungeon.
-However, I still have to do the quests in the dungeon to advance with the story.
-So since I can't instance match, I can't get a party. But since I have to do the party version to advance quests, I have to solo it.
-While soloing a party dungeon, you gain a crapload of experience, so now I'm getting even further ahead of my quest curve (which I DON'T WANT, this game is too easy already).

Seriously, what a terrible system. It's almost designed to completely screw over its own experience model. Why not just let me instance match for any dungeon I am high enough level to enter, and scale my level down or something? Many other games have done this, and it's a MUCH better system than the one we have here. There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to instance match an older dungeon. And this only happened because the first time I did the dungeon, I had no idea where to go and my party (like all instance matched parties) didn't speak and rushed through the dungeon, so I missed the main quest because I was just trying to keep up with them.

Please fix this...it has completely discouraged me from playing today because I don't want to get even farther ahead of the curve when I shouldn't even be ahead of it in the first place (I have never done a repeatable quest more than once, and have never sat down for a grind).

ARGH!!

it did not use to be that way it used to be lots more quests n lots less exp and BAMs used to be hard ect they made it easy to appeal to more Free 2 play NA players who like exp handed to them like wow. they even cut out big chunks of the story from the game.

[ウィッチ（？）]

If instance match doesn't work because of level.. just ask around on area/LFG chat to make group manually. Just because system kick out you for being high level does not mean you cannot run instance.
Or come back when you are leveled more.. which makes easy to solo "group mode".