Heya,
I wanted to make a suggestion regarding Avatar weapons for the upcoming Classic Server and hear everyone's thoughts regarding this feature.
I personally I think, for the leveling experience to be "better", the Avatar system should be DISABLED.
Here are my arguments:
1. Class identity
Talking to Oltsoldat, the idea I got was that the server wants to retain the class identities, at least on Tera Classic. This means that we want to retain the strenghts and weaknesses of each class and having avatar weapons will void any of that during the leveling process.
The leveling process of Tera classic is actually part of the core experience (it will take a considerable amount of time and is actually a lot of fun to us classic tera enjoyers!), so having it triviliazied by Avatar weapons will spoil the fun. Everyone will be able to solo the whole game and to me, that goes against the idea of having an MMO thats build around players coming together to overcome challenges.
2. It can be turned on at a later time
Should we decide to turn them off at first, and later decide to turn them on (for example due to lack of playerbase to find leveling partners), I believe its better to turn it on LATER, than turning it OFF later. Once players have gotten used to the avatar system, its unlikely that they will ever want to turn it off. (imagine living your whole life with a microwave, a dish washer and a washing machine and then having to accept to live without it suddenly).
3. Clashing with other potential features, such as "Blast from the Past".
If the staff enables "Blast from the Past", it allows high level players to help out low-level players by joining them in lower level dungeons. The high level players will receive "equalized gear" for this dungeon run, which is generally much weaker than "good gear at that low-level". If the low level players had access to avatar weapons it would completely triviliaze this power dynamic, making high level players sort of useless in those groups, since they likely dont have access to avatar weapons then. (from my understanding)
4. Classic experience
In my opinion, "Classic Tera" is all about reliving the old ways of Tera, where things took time, BAMs were actually scary/fordmidable enemies and dungeon bosses had to be cleared carefully with their mechanics in mind. Modern Tera is more about a solo trip power fantasy with strong classes + avatar weapons that triviliaze any content until late-game, classic tera is about getting good with your class and working together. Avatar weapons will push players to just do everything on their own and I dont think thats aligned with that experience.
5. Most Loot becomes useless
The most important thing to me actually. I love loot, I love upgrading my gear as I level up and clear content. Finding that new shiny blue weapon for your class from an instance that you can enhance with alkahest is super rewarding. Now I can kill BAMs much quicker, or alone even, which speeds up leveling or allows me to level up by farming monsters, instead of questing. The power dynamic gives the player a certain level of freedom and feel powerful.
With avatar weapon all loot becomes meaningless. The only thing you care for is picking up shards while questing and then oneshotting everything. I really dislike that because it ruins one entire aspect of having a power fantasy and dopamine release throughout the leveling process.
I would like to hear your thoughts about what you think about the avatar system and whether we should have it or not.
(And if yes, what are your arguments for it?)
