f13.net

Official release date is October 19th with pre-order honkeys getting in on the 16th. RG had a shindig at his hovel last night. NDA dropped as of 12:00:01am this morning. Official website redesign going live this morning. Have at it.

I spent the first five minutes trying to wrap my head around the terrible control scheme and then another five going through the clunky UI.  I thought the scripted tutorial was pretty good even if didn't completely work (which was fine, it was beta and I'm sure it's fixed by now).

Then I spent half an hour with hundreds of other people trying to collect the first Logos since it only spawned once every so often but every single person had to get it.  Garriott's in game response was to laugh and proclaim that they would increase the spawn time - hahaha, maybe if the twit had actually walked over to where we were and could see a cloud of one hundred identical looking avatars trying to click on this stupid thing he wouldn't have been so flippant.

Eventually I got out into the game and started questing and so on, it was fun for a few hours.  Then it slowly dawned on me that the entire game consisted of pointing at mobs and holding down my left mouse button.  Then I realized that was all the future held for this game.  I swear you could hear the sucking noise as all of my will to play the game dissapeared.

I also found an unlimited money bug that was so obvious I'm sure one in three people figured it out, in order to fix it they would have to seriously mess with their cloning system.  I can totally understand bugs and lack of polish in a beta but the problems I found were deep in the core mechanics that you can't change by the time you're in beta, it's too late.

I would love to hear about what they have changed since then.

To be fair, you sometimes need to crouch or hide behind a tree. Trees in this game are fun. Embrace the fun. Hug a tree.

I haven't played for awhile, so take with salt.

- Endgame: there is none. At all.
- Character advancement: no real skills past level 30 or so
- Class differentiation: Soldiers and specialists are different, but the sub-specs are functionally identical. There are no real archetypical classes except for the medic.
- UI: can't scale, move items, or customize. Base UI is workable, although the map sucks.
- PvP: there is none, just duels
- Performance: client is fairly light, not a major issue like EQ2/vanguard/etc
- Combat: mechanics are fairly compelling, with cover taken into account, but lacks the polished tank/healer/CC/DPS complexity found in dikus like EQ
- PvE outdoor (non-mission) play: pedestrian, kill X elephants for X elephant uteruses
- PvE mission play: Story arc missions are quite good, with little scripted sequences, etc. I hear they added a lot more of these since I last played the game.

Summary: nothing special, but worth a shot if you're burned out on your current MMO.

Massive patch is going live today. Patch notes have no been posted yet although the patch has. Seeing as how the release got pushed back two weeks I'm guessing they've a bit more work to do. Seriously, trees.

To be fair, that line was in the VERY beginning of alpha, and they fixed it right away. The really funny part was that there were two lines with hundreds of people each-- and the line at the top ended at a statue with NOTHING THERE. I took some hilarious screenshots.

(http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/7728/untitled2copyys9.th.jpg) (http://img408.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitled2copyys9.jpg)
(http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/8407/untitledcopyvg1.th.jpg) (http://img75.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitledcopyvg1.jpg)
(http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/5817/untitled3copyvs5.th.jpg) (http://img75.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitled3copyvs5.jpg)

The post-NDA info rush is just mind-blowing.

Hah, I went to the dead end first myself.  After I found the right place I went back and kept telling the people standing near the idol that nothing spawned there but they didn't believe me.  I can't believe you actually managed to form a line, on our server it was just a massive scrum.

The game, at least when I played it, was so bad it isn't even worth the energy it would take to bash it, now that's scary!

I played TR all of twice. Maybe a few hours of gameplay.

The game's client needs some serious optimization. Performance on my (understandly) lower-end system SUCKED ASS, especially in the non-instanced public areas. The gameplay was really not that interesting. It didn't suck, but it wasn't in anyway interesting enough to write a lot about. I'll probably try it one more time, just to see if the latest patch made it better, but I see no reason to proclaim it as anything other than a mediocre game. The Logos spells things actually made me less interested in playing the game.

I have a laser rifle and I'm tossing spells on an alien planet. And yet I still don't feel any different than when I play any other type of diku game. The cover thing wasn't even prominent enough to matter. I made 5 levels and I think I might have died once because if I got in trouble I ran, and nothing I ever faced was that tough or fast enough to beat me.

Lag in the public areas was fucking awful. To the point of me firing weapons repeatedly at dead mobs who just stood there.

I forsee a gimpy release.

Was there more than one server? Maybe I just logged on later in the day than you did. It was amazing, never seen anything like it in all my years playing MMOs. Hundreds of people lined up for hours to get that one little logos. The top picture is the wrong line, the 2 bottoms are the correct one. Note the minimap, every little white dot is a player in line. Yeah. A lot of dots.

I of course, jumped the line and got it in 2 minutes. Then I ran back and forth along the line, getting the self-appointed line watchers to yell at me, and responding with various bon mots like "suck it, line bitches". Good times, good times.

There is PvP, There is Clan VS Clan WAR. Also, the logo issue, I NEVER had that problem. The control scheme is not that hard, and very familiar to FPS fans.. I’v been in the beta for quite a while now...

Being a FPS lover, and a (mmo)RPG lover, i found the game to be a nice detraction, but the RPGer in me says..."Its not very deep", and the FPS player in me says, "Why when i aim at his head at point blank. Do I "MISS'"?.

Out of 10, i give the game a 7 1/2 in most areas... I have never been able to put my finger on what makes me not want to give it higher.

I can however tell you, i would have given it a solid 9 if they hadn't of changed things recently. Oh, and the quest system IS very compelling, and quite interisting. Multiple endings are nice, moral choices are also good, High marks in that department.

I remember when there were me and 2 other people on in early, early beta. I got in way early, for filling out one of those little Logos discs, back when it was a flippy anime game at a prior E3.

My, how times have changed.

It's fun, I just don't see myself spending money on the game, it's not good enough.

Plus, :nda: is WAY WAY BETTER. Like, leaps and bounds.

***Freudian slip detected***

That.

I had high hopes for this game.  I won't say it's terrible, but it really did nothing to get my interest.  Contrary to that, it gut-punched the interest I came in with by being just plain uninspired.  I'm not talking about beta buggy wonkyness, either.  I got stuck in a rock for a while.  That I expected.  I guess I was left after a few hours of game play thinking to myself:  People are going to be playing this game in 2007-8?  I'll probably log a couple more times before beta ends, but I very seriously doubt I'd buy this game. 

For me its the graphics lag during combat, or maybe its just piss poor animation, can't be sure. I kill a mob, and he remains standing for a good 4 seconds before falling over despite having the 'I'm dead' icon floating above his head. What's up with that? If one part of the server knows the mob is dead, how hard is it to push the 'fall over' animation along with it?

If you are talking about the red skull. You are supposed to run up, and hit the melee key to perform "Finisher". Its just a small window to do so.If you leave it, they will "Fall over". But not knowing that, does make it seem like a bug.

They should change the name to Auto Assault 2 at this rate.

Oh, another area i wanted to talk about is accessibility: Mainly, tutorials and descriptions. I feel they need allot of work in this area, Things need to be explained more clearly, and more completely. Such as item descriptions on , well, items. And the noob tutorial itself is quite disorienting, as its quite the flurry of windows you are assaulted with, sometimes many at one time.. as the "first time actions", and the "tutorial windows" seem to pop up at the same time.

I got in fairly early, I think DQ had already burned out by then, though.

I went for Grenadier because I always take grenade launchers when possible, love 'em. Character was a lot of fun, a couple flame throwers, couple flame launchers and an EMP launcher for the paper-thin giant mechs.

It was fun, but after a while there needed to be more. Not sure what that more should have been. Normally I'm the 'if it's fun, that's enough' guy. But one day, it just wasn't enough and I never went back. I was grenading my way across the Marshes and got tired of it.

Some nice combat mechanics. The reduction of grind (not that there's much grind in the game imo) with clones is cool, but you're facing the EQ2 problem of playing for a long time as someone other than what you want to be, the game changed radically when I got launchers, then again when I got the flamer. Problem is, the combat isn't much better than CoH. There is a better variety of missions, though. Some of the instances were laid out pretty well but still could have been tweaked to be a lot better, with more character and detail.

I agree with Bloodworth. The quest system is nice, there is way more flexibility than most mmo allow, like smuggling drugs to help troops or reporting the smugglers and getting cursed out by troops. That's the kind of thing that kept my interest for a while, but eventually it devovled into me and a couple guys finding the best hunting spots for orange drops (good gear), which is out of character for me. I'm a questing fooliac. As MBW said, the rpg is very light and the fps is ultimately not satisfying. Not as bad with the grenade launcher as with the sniper rifle (snipers didn't get sniper rifles when I left, which is another thing...).

Just seemed kind of generic and meh. Sucked me in for a while but left me cold not too long after. Definitely worth checking out, as it could be good if you like action-rpg that's not too deep. Never got to see any PvP action, haven't played since Springtime. Left right at the patch where they put in the big floaty damage numbers, didn't really need that imo, though it's not why I left.

I made it to like level 5 and didn't have the slightest urge to log back in.

Who is gonna pay monthly for it?

 I dunno, I couldn't make it to level 6.  It just generated a huge "BLAH" from me.  For as long as it's been in dev and as hyped as people have been about, "OOOH RICHARD," the game certainly felt bland.

I didn't see any of the quest "choices" you people are talking about.  They come later, I guess.  All I saw was a bunch of "go here, kill x, bring me their spleens" and "run this message over yonder, past the level 12 mobs that'll eat your face."  Logos were way too powerful at low level, as well.  I could empty my clip (as a soldier) into a monster, reload and fire another few rounds or just cast one spell and kill the mob.  Mmmmm k.

The newbie experience was awful.  Absolutly horrible.  A bunch of NPCs standing around that give you the meat and potatoes any long-time gamer wants to know, while while you're forced to complete a mission for the dumbfucks who don't know wsad and 'click the mouse to fire'.

 Completing the first scripted mission sucked, too, because I didn't do any actual combat.  The NPC spawns they sent-in with me killed everything while I was plink-plink-plinking on the first guy I targeted.  Also, I know I've got an undersized vid card for my rig  (Nvidia 7300; it's meant to be a media center, not a game machine) but crap the fire effects pwnd it so bad I was getting 2-3fps when near them.

There's probably a market out there for this game -there is for any game- and I don't see it hitting VG levels of FAIL, but it's certainly not the 2nd coming, and shows that RG was just lucky with Ultima and should have stopped years ago.

Not me, i don't think, unless they add something really cool after launch...

I think about all the crap talk Mr.British was talking about the MMO genre..., then i play the game.... *shutter*.

My money as far as games of this ..err.."Type" is on Fallen Earth, at least there skills have nothing to do with AIM, only damage (developer statement). I think the setting is more compelling than generic Si-fi #235 also.

@Merusk - There are quite a few "moral" Choices in quest lines in the game, im going to take a stab and say i think it was around, maybe level 8-10 (Depending on area and other quest lines) when they becomes available, and that system is one of the best things about the game.

Eg: Do you give the medical supply's to the dying solders? or sell them fro a profit? It is war after all.

 :x

EDIT: I won't. Also as to TR. It was fun. Nothing amazing. I expect to pick it up sometime in the gaming drought of next summer. Assuming WAR/AoC has not sucked me in by then, and/or I'm already burnt out on them.

Starts with Hell, ends with Gate. And that's just guessing from non-NDA violating posts. Don't ask questions.

When people say stuff like that I keep assuming they mean Warhammer, didn't think about Hellgate.

I can sum up my TR experience in 1 word:  Confused.

I was confused and disorientated at nearly every point in my play experience.  The UI confused me, the controls confused me, the upgrade path confused me and the character creation confused me (that's it?  Pick what pants I like and match colors? Um, OK.).  Standing under a turret with a HUGE freaking gun and watching it's beams fire out of the barrel at me at a 110 degree angle was just embarrassing.

Combat was point and click and then watch -8, -8, -4, -8, -13, -8, switch guns, -7, -7, -2, -12, -7, health pack, wait for cool down, -8, -8 etc... until dead.  I never made it as far as Sky as it was just sooo pointless.

I was one of the few who liked Auto-Assault (just not enough to pay for it) I don't like TR at all.

I must be a glutton for punishment I suppose, because I have, and still do enjoy the game.

I'm not really sure what it is that makes it appealing to me. The non fantasy setting is certainly part of it. The quicker fast paced combat is sure as hell nice, but many of the concerns are valid that the previous gents are posting.

I've made level twenty...four? I believe it is. Been through most of Foreas and it's instances. Was just starting on Areki. I will say this, Areki is just god damn insanity. You walk out of the first base and not more than a few hundred yards away is a full on throw down. 3 - 4 Stalkers. Literally 75+ bane soldiers constantly, Predators, and 5 - 6 Striders all just laying into an AFS entrenchment. AFS mechs cutting loose like nobodies business, dropships coming down for both sides constantly. Sorry, but I enjoy it.

TR isn't the second coming. The end game is extremely iffy, the crafting is pretty much tacked on, and the mob variety could use some serious work. But I do enjoy it none the less and it'll be a nice moonlight MMO till the next heavy hitter comes along.


EDIT: Tack this on as well. I will say the starter zone has a serious problem of not getting people into that "I'm in the middle of a war" feeling like it conveys in late divide through Areki. I think if people didn't go cold on it early (mostly design flaws being the cause) people would probably look at it a bit more favorably.

'Asstastic' is my NDA-free review; the game manages a truly epic degree of suck.  The degree of lag was truly epic, with loads of shooting at an already-dead alien, or an alien that randomly disappears, or being shot by invisible aliens.  Once you get into the game, you're treated to shooting at an alien.  For an encore, you shoot at another alien.  To top THAT off, you shoot yourself in the face, because you've figured out the trend and death's sweet embrace is the only escape.

About halfway through the beta cycle, they got the ingenious idea of making it take twice as long to level and ramping up the death penalty.  Oh boy!  So now instead of shooting at 10,000 aliens to get the class features you want, you get to shoot at 20,000 aliens!  The starting class unsurprisingly rather blows; you only get basic weapon use and a lightning bolt attack.  In fairness, the lightning bolt is more useful than any other magic I've ever seen, but that doesn't change just how much it sucks to have no options other than running around lightning bolting aliens.

As you level, you get points to spend on your skills, to be better with shooting your pistol, or have better lightning bolts.  But if you progress along the class tree and find a weapon that you like better than your standard weapon, no refunds, sucker!  You're never ever getting those points back.  The same goes double for armor, which also requires a skill to equip.  More advanced classes get access to armors with extra features, but if you don't put any points into the basic newbie armor use you'll be taking assloads of damage while waiting to be able to buy the skill to use the better armor, leaving you with the unpalatable choice of making the grind that much harder, or wasting points on equipment you'll never use again.

They talk about the cloning system being a boon to players, and to an extent it is.  If you clone your character before choosing a branch to follow, you can fire up the clone and then take the other branch.    That only helps if you're only interested in the two sub-branches from where your character currently exists; if you want to go and take a completely different limb of the tree, you have to start from scratch, or at best load a clone ten or so levels lower than your character and head in that direction.

If you want an MMOFPS, get Planetside, which is a better game in every respect.  Even with the Fanta ads.

I was thinking they meant WAR but your answer would be even better from my POV.

Additionally:

As a soldier you know you've joined a shitty army if they make you buy your own bullets.

I made it to lvl 40 or so. As I said, I haven't played in months, when I last played the crafting system was just a stand-in for when they actually implemented one, and there were only a couple maps available. There also wasn't a death penalty, and I did my bit to argue that against the usual gang of mmo penaltards, car battery to the balls reference and all.

The lightning bolt could use a nerf, once you get the ae version, it's pretty uber forever, though I rarely used it once I got my launchers and flamer. I was playing around with a few different powers and they were good, just not as good as ye olde bolte. So that's actually a pretty easy fix if they can ignore the 'zomg u nrfed litenin' bullshit that would ensue (in a beta). DEFINITELY need a respec option, for some reasons Kitsune mentions, and also so you can try a few builds out before deciding on one, since you have no clue what it will play like beforehand.
You're in what amounts to a guerrilla army on the run with your home planet decimated. So...there's that to consider. Or you could use Forean arrows. I was kind of hoping Forean Rangers would be playable, they're nifty.
Yeah, I love the quests and PvE and itemization in PS. Two completely different games with very little overlap.

Falwell mentions the big set battlefields, they are great. In many zones you can shift the control of the area, though in Alpha that wasn't working much of the time. So you take out a bunch of enemies and your buddies land in a dropship and back you up, fun VOs, if a bit repetetive. They never really had base capture working back then, not sure about now.

Speaking of VOs, the writing and voice acting was great. I like that they went with a grittier adult theme and hope it doesn't wither under the pressure to make it AFA/Congress friendly.

Once again you have to grind to get to the "fun." Wonderful. Why the fuck isn't "insanity" the first thing you see as you log in? That might actually be gripping.

No thanks.

The rat and bat over population problem isn't going to take care of itself.

Damn skippy, you maggots! Do you think those soldiers on D-Day were just thrown into that? Hell no, many bothan...err foozles got whacked in places like Wisconsin and Oklahoma before those boys were sent in to that madness.

Ok, bad sarcasm aside, throwing people into the madness straight off kinda defeats the purpose of the game. How can you ramp up from insanity? Will you need the game to come to your house and sodomize your dog? It's a game mechanic and were it to go straight to said insanity, people would be bitching about it "being too hard" or worse, "not keeping up the intensity as one progresses" or "It's all the same after a while"

Not that I'm defending the game. It's certainly not the robot jesus and it won't win too many awards for ground breaking game design, but it is a nice change of pace from elves and orcs and fucking undead with butt-rock dance moves.

Hmm I guess NDA is down?

My view on this game is probably somewhat biased by my love of the setting.   I think the game has some flaws.  The initial tutorial and newbie area are somewhat dull in comparison to the rest of the game.  You have to get to the equivalent of like say WoW level 12 before you start seeing the kind of insanity the outdoor area's in this game can have so the hook isn't really up to snuff compared to the rest of the game.  The other big flaw is the end game hasn't really been discussed.  It might only be good for playing till the end then quitting ala WoW.

The instances are amazing and easily a cut above anything else out there in terms of creativity.   One of them has puzzles for opening doors to free prisoners for instance.  Some of the area's are so jaw dropping awesome looking it's stunning.   In the dungeon instance you fight a big ass robot at the end that could nearly oneshot us.  It was only killable by running around it from behind since it turned so slow.   To me at least that was pretty interesting and something I felt I'd never see in WoW.  This game has a lot of little things also where the environment feels a part of the game instead of like WoW where it's just a location for mobs to spawn.  For me the fact that they didn't go to far into the FPS stuff is a good thing but I'm sure others will feel the opposite.  It's incredibly fast paced but I can't really form a final opinion on it.  I don't get tired of it while I'm having fun doing other stuff is probably the most I can say about it.

They've been adding content really fast compared to only a month and a half ago but the question is whether or not they'll finish in time.  I suspect if they finish it though that it'll go over better with less jaded people due them going past the bad hook.   They'll get past the first area at least and find out the game is really fun.

Heh, the NDA drops on the day I'm almost completely offline. Did manage to keep up with the lurking though. Damnable cellphone typing...

Everything everyone has said I pretty much agree with. Great details covered already. My opinion is more at the esoteric level though.

Adding the "RG" name to this title did not make it the sort of game you'd expect from one with his name on it. It's not so much the Star Wars idea vs SimBeru implementation, but it's not far off. RG is a brand for, basically, us. And what we'd expect is something more worldy, where the "cool and unique" combat system was intended to add depth of play to a larger and more dynamic living breathing world of choice and accountability.

I mentioned a few weeks ago a disconnect between the PR for this title and the actual game the testers were playing. It's actually more fundamental than that. So much was first released to the press and then introduced to the testers, but even that wasn't much of an issue. It is more that all of the high-sounding ideas of accountability and moving battle lines and the like really has never been apparent across the whole game. Rather, it's all very much normal static DIKU.

• You have objective givers, dense content areas, quest progressions that lead you to such areas and new objective givers, the usual round of things.
• Crafting changed completely but is still just serving the same purpose as it does in a DIKU.
• Tiered class choices is just pre-Pub 19 EQ2 without the need to play from scratch.
• Skills and stat choices are WoW talents.
• It's all about the gear and how that affects your damage output, not the things you'd expect like targeting and the usual FPS skills. People have pointed out that the videos always showed characters standing in one spot while shooting. That's the game.
  
  

None of this would matter except that the expectations set by interviews and PR just don't connect with what actually is.

Then there's the stuff I was personally looking for, like the world. Way back in May I asked where the it was. This is humanity's last hope and we have an economy? Where's the resources to build this stuff? How are we technologically progressing when humanity's tech seems largely incompatible with our "allies"? Where's the population centers? Where are the children, the world itself, the thing we're fighting to save? This element has never been introduced. We're all the last generation of humanity ever, fighting because we would rather live until killed than just end it ourselves. I never got any sense of there being anything more than a series of progressive battlegrounds. That's fine if it's an FPS. But "RG" does not connote a long series of pointless battles across varying degrees of landscapes. I did propose they reshift the opening sequence to take place in a city being invaded on Earth. Start people in a tutorial where they learn the controls while retreating, Halo style. Failing that, start people in Continental Divide. It's in that area when the game does start feeling more like Starship Troopers, in a good way.

None of this stuff matters to many I'm sure. But the better MMOGs are much more self-consistent than TR is. Even if a player doesn't recognize why the game is improved through complete self-consistently, they'd probably recognize when it wasn't, insofar as asking themselves why they don't like it.

I think it looks fine on top-end rig. Some of the wierd latency stuff is an issue, but this isn't billed as a PvP game. Adding that late in the day doesn't change that it's all about the PvE. It can be fun in short spurts but it's not an omgmustachieve type experience.

No guesses on its success.

There's at least two before you get to level 10. One is the drug delivery mission that's already been mentioned. The reward for delivery is 10K cash which is a ton of money when you are that low level given how fricking expensive ammo is so it was a trivial choice to just do the deliveries. Now that drop rates have increased by an order of magnitude or more money is not quite as much an issue as it was back then. There's another early one involving a Forean deserter. That one was bugged so I could never complete it.

Fortunately for NCsoft it is not as bad as Auto Assault.

No he's talking about mobs that are dead but are still standing. Happens quite a bit. I even ran across a Stalker like that once (damn killing stealing NPCs I was trying to kill it!).

Having been in both beta tests, I agree that it is better than Auto Assault.  Now here is Spaz Cat for your entertainment.  (http://www.terranuts.com/forums/images/smilies/spazcat.gif)

To go along with the website revamp and the NDA drop they also announced the official release date. October 19th shelves, October 16th pre-order early access.

http://www.playtr.com/news/latest_news/afs_intel_declassified.html

I hesitate to guess too, having been so wrong on LOTRO.

But, I mean... I just don't see how it could possibly succeed. LOTRO had the best license imaginable, the setting was elves and orcs, and it was polished more than any MMO but WoW. Tabula Rasa has a silly pretentious name, generic sci-fi setting, and the closest they got to polish was a german QA guy, Hans.

TR is more of a "unique" experience than LoTRO was though. There's some cache they can get from that alone. But the brand is being pushed (PR, interviews) in ways at odds with the actual experience (gameplay, tester feedback). I don't know why they dropped the NDA. I would have thought they'd go the SWG route of never dropping it. No good can come from it in my opinion when even the journalists who could talk about it reported an aggregate "meh".


In the technical sense, these are missions with choice. In the sense implied by all the interviews with RG about TR, the accountability often hawked, they very much are not. And this is a perception problem because with that sort of hype, people are going to look for something that doesn't exist nearly enough in TR to call a critical part of the total experience.

After one of more recent wipes, I avoided both and still never had a problem with ammo (always stayed away from chaingun anyway).

LOTRO did not have the best license available. How many gamers give a fuck about Lord of the Rings. In fact, it's such Not an Amazing license that EA scrapped The White Council and the other LOTRO adventure games didn't do _all_that_amazingly_. Basically, popular books, popular movies, not so great for gaming. Stories about Walking don't translate well. Also, I don't see LOTR's millions of fans as gamers and I don't see gamers as frothing LOTR fanbois.

LotRO did well? Is it keeping it up?

My 3 miniutes of beta showed it was boringtown, if it manages lasting success we wont see a good MMO for decades.

To be fair, this is not how I played a lot of the time. Some mobs had insane one-shot-kill melee attacks and I'd keep on the move to avoid that, or to get optimal positioning for burst or cone damage patterns. Positioning also played a role, I remember starting out with the pistol and crouching would give damage bonuses, so it was (and I do hesitate to use the reference lest anyone get the idea this is a skill-based traditional fps) kind of like Battlefield 1942 where you'd get accuracy bonuses for crouching to fire. Run, crouch, fire, run. It was for different reasons, but the mechanic was in the game. Also, as had been mentioned, cover has some meaning, and if you watch a firefight in the more "realistic" fps style games, there's not a lot of running around, people will hunker down behind cover. If you want to compare it to a bunnytard game, then yes, there's a lot less movement.
Isn't that the point? That we're reduced to a series of running battles and shacking up with the sentients that will shelter us from the storm in return for fighting the Bane? That there are no population centers, that Earth was decimated, that we're on the run but fighting until we can't fight any more?

On the tech front, I never had latency problems except for one patch that was hotfixed. I did, however, play on a high end computer (at the time, heh).
OMGMUSTACHE :P The hairy-faced one approves of this new slang.
See, this is why I found it a good decision node. It's too bad the money was trivialized, because SO many people said "Oh, it's a no-brainer!" Well, sure, if you put monetary gratification over your morals, of course it is. The tough decision was to do the right thing and not make the easy money. Really sorry they changed that, it was one of my favorite things.

OK, then. Name a superior gaming license to LOTR.

Yes, LOTRO is doing quite well. I thought it was boringtown too, but it sold subscriptions.

The problem with the cover and crouching mechanics is that there is no feedback that they are in fact doing anything. You might think crouching is giving you a damage bonus but how do you know? The UI gives you absolutely no feedback that that is the case and unless you have a pen and paper handy and can quickly write down damage figures and compare the data you don't know for sure. Same with cover, not to mentioned the constant "I can't see that" voice messages even though you are doing damage to the target. It would massively help the cover issue if you could in fact fight in first-person mode so you could see what the engine thinks you are seeing.

Even the game designers very very rarely bother with crouching or cover when they fight (watch the IGN videos).

Riddick? Nearly anything that was born out of Pixar or Dreamworks (Cars was the second best selling game of last year I believe). There are lots of good comic book licenses with huge gaming crossover. TMNT? Spider Man? Xmen? Thing is, most good licenses can't be more than single or multiplayer (locally or limited over net) games. See, licenses where there are tons of good heroes or villains result in players wanting to play those characters.

Star Wars was a terrible MMO license.
Matrix as well.
Oh, and obviously, LOTRO.

DDO could have been good, but they licensed one of the worst realms to base it in. They should have bought Planescape, hell, even Dragonlance would have been better. But then, again, people would have wanted to play Caramon, Raistlin, Palin, etc. I don't think anyone would have wanted to be Riverwind though. He could've been a quest giver.

Oh, and then of course, there are licenses developed outside of the industry but made for the industry like the Tom Clancy stuff, Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell.

Along with the WANT TO PLAY AS THE HERO problem, there's also the problem of continuity. Obsessed fans get pissed when canon is broken and gamers don't want to dick around in a story that doesn't allow freedom because every word of it is memorized by half of the geek world and we've had enough of it already.

Come to think of it, it's harder to think of a gaming license (particularly for MMOGs) worse than LOTRO. Wait, that's not true, Buffy would be worse than LOTRO. The OC wouldn't be though. Teenie Boppers would suck that through a cocaine laced straw.

Turbine did a fantastic job maintaining continuity with the lore. No doubt it was tough, but they pulled it off. They handled the "want to be the hero" problem quite well (for a MMO); throughout the course of the game you continuously interact and assist Gandalf, Strider, etc.

Uhhhh, you can't be a hero. There's no other way to "handle that."

You are a hero in LOTRO. You're just not Frodo.

It's as good as a licensed MMO can get.

Right.


Which isn't good enough. That's the damn point.

Edit: Mind you, LOTRO is making money. But then, MMOGamers will play fucking anything. They're a desperate breed of gamer.

As has been stated a lot, IP like Star Wars or LotR will help initial box sales but the game has to deliver a game to keep subs. There is an article on the current Games For Windows magazine that claims SW:G sold 1 million boxes. I don't know if that number is aggregating expansion packs, but to have sold 1 million boxes and only have the subscribers they do is just sad.

I am going to chalk this post up as sarcasm, and move on.

Where was I wrong? History has proven me quite right.

LOTRO is a solid game if it's your first mmorpg, it's just looks weak compared to WoW.  I also get the feeling Turbine slacked off with content additions after release, they would have got more attention if they had released subscription numbers at the high water mark (200k, 300k?) but guess AC2, AC1 and DDO has left them scared of being open about that.  Cal leaving when he did probably didn't help either.

Also Buffy would be a great game, werewolves and vampires, we just need someone to squeeze those plus zombies, pirates, ninjas and massive robots into something.

I dunno, I think SW could be a great license. If it were done in a Privateer-style game, where you could fly for three or more factions (reb, imp, hutt), have a huge galaxy with system subplots and overarching background plots (found the ancient sith homeworld!). Flight model from TIE Fighter (seriously, TIE Fighter 2, ffs already). Land on planets and have ground combat from Jedi Knight, with saber moves and whatnot.

Maybe Serek Dmart is free to develop it.

I agree with DDO sucking, especially due to the campaign world. But then I think everything Turbine touches turns to shite.

I also agree that Riddick would make an excellent campaign world for a space based MMO.

City of Heroes

There's already a 40K MMO in development which should be close enough.  Unless you really want a side quest to outrun the Sun.

Because i think your blaming the IP, and not the execution. Some of those games were doing quite well, until management went wrong.

And from a player perspective, those games are very enjoyable (at one point and time).

I mean, what is your gage of success? and how much opinion are you allowing to enter that measurement. I enjoyed SWG-pre-cu very much as did about 500k** at one time i think it toped around (before the issues), last they spoke about it..don't really care for it now at all, ironically when they went from "your own story" to "everyones a hero" as you said, style...an i am currently enjoying LOTRO.

So, we talking fail in a business since, or a opinion since? Because other than personal opinion, im not sure what the reasons you stated some IP's would be better, or worse...

What are your guidelines here? Because i see some horrible IP's in your list, that would not work as a MMO at all. Or, are you talking about apealing to a more modern audiance?

Because SW, and LOTR... Have very HUGE fan bases, more so than some of the ones you listed... Are the fans gamers? maybe not, it may not directly appeal to them (this also explains such things as LOTRO design for accessibility, and no pre-mmo experience required). maybe thats was your point. Something seen as a bad thing to some around here, when its not.


**been a long time since i looked at any numbers for SWG, but thats one i recall

EDITS: sorry, more thoughts after rereading what you wrote.

You really, badly need to read my posts again, I don't thin k you're getting it (still).

I think the jist of what you are talking about it that you feel, that those IP's do not appeal to modern gamers? And if so, i would disagree.

"How many gamers give a fuck about Lord of the Rings"

If that is not what you mean, then please elaborate if you care to.

Well, just watched the training video and ironically just checked my mail and got a beta invite. I suppose I'll find out sometime tomorrow if this things any good or not, but in the meantime, are there any 'pet classes'? I took a quick look at the website but didn't see anything that really told me about how classes progress or jobs or such. Will look again but I figured I'd ask those who have been in TR for a bit. Any love for someone who likes to cower like a little girl behind a meat shield minion?

That comment was relative to how many fans of the movies and books there are.

Which is to say, not many.

The crossover just isn't there to create a blockbuster, super megaton profitable MMOG. Or even a super megaton game. There's a reason Turbine was able to acquire the license rather than a dev/publisher with a well-known name like EA or UBISoft, etc. No one else wanted it.

That is pure speculation on your part unless you bid on it yourself. EA and UBISoft have no demonstrable interest in making MMOGs. EA made some bucks on RTS LotR games so it wasn't that they thought the IP was bad, although one could argue EA just wanted to play the movie hype.

EA bought Mythic (DAoC, WAR).

Thats not true, lol. Unless your speaking about gamers, in that regard, i would give a little on that. Then again...DnD?


Again, it depends on your gage of success.

Whats a "Blockbuster" to you? And in what way are you using it here?

But i do understand what you are saying.

I think LoTRO is a virtual clone of that other game in damn near every regard.  Doesn't that figure into why the crossover from the movie, or books isn't there?  Why play LoTR when you could play that other game with, oh by they way, the rest of the known universe?  I don't think it has as much to do with whether or not an IP is more or less suited for gaming, and more to do with how games formulated around huge IP's are usually hastily hashed together in order to capitalize on box office buzz.

While I don't know if I'd call LoTRO hasty or hashed (in fact I know it isn't), it clearly doesn't do anything that other games don't already do and better.  But that doesn't mean the IP isn't suited for genre x.  It just means that the iteration wasn't gutsy enough to catch too many people's attention, or somehow next gen enough to (LOL) topple that other game.  If anything, a huge IP like LoTR made all the difference by getting enough people interested to justify the money they spent on it.  If it were Elves 'n Stuff Clone #756 Online, I doubt we'd even be talking about it.  I think if LoTRO was renamed Riddick Online and the exact same game was set in space, given the current market, it would have probably had the same result - a moderately successful MMO at best.  But it isn't because of the license.

As far as why big name developers weren't chomping at the bit to get on board this IP, isn't the market for something this similar to something else KINDA saturated at the moment?  I'm no marketing guru, but just sayin'. 

 :-)

schild: \o/ MMOs sucks, omg listen to me.

Mr. Bloodworth: Please explain why MMOs suck.

schild: OMFG they suck, were you not listening to me? Even worse, LOTR is a horrible gamer IP.

Mr. Blood: What makes it so horrible?

schild: WTF, cant you read? MMOs suck !




Seriously, schild is as worthwhile to talk to as I am these days. Cept I just spout shit about FFA/loot PVP and he just spouts off how bad all MMOs suck.

And for the record, LOTR IP is not that bad. Its just the game is not fun.

For good IPs, I'd say Wing Commander...Mechwarrior / Battletech maybe.... I'd say Syndicate but thats not really an IP.

Wrong.


Video gamers. Even with DND for video gamers, it depends on the setting. Even DND gamers don't care about the setting they used for the game. Or at least, that's what I got from the conversations had on the net. Also, yea, gamers would have had more interest if there'd been, you know, dungeon masters, or a reasonable story. D&D isn't built for MMOGs the way their structured at this point, they're far too rigid for a pure D&D playset.

As for the blockbuster point, there's no need to even discuss it. WoW has 10M + boxes of the original campaign sold, 10M+ subscribers, and no one else except FFXI has broken 500k by any reasonable amount, or for the most part gotten anywhere near it. So uhm, I don't know, let's call a blockbuster an arbitrary 1.5M + boxes sold. Seems reasonable. Considering how shitty the genre has become. I'm not going to lower the bar because the playfield is full of retards.


Don't compare me to you. It makes me uncomfortable.


I'll sit patiently to be proven otherwise. But that'll never happen. Because it's a terrible license for an MMOG.


Oh, my bad. You're fucking crazy.

I would love any of those, if executed correctly. Add to the list, Dune, LEXX (lol), Robotech.

Reason i bring up DnD, is not the Online game, but the PnP game, and its relation to the LOTR works.

Not true. The time frame they chose was horrible. If they had used the KotOR time frame, it would have been pretty damn cool. Or hell, any Star Wars time frame that wasnt the movies.

I said from day one, that the time they placed the game at was probably the single worst time they could have chosen.

This is why we don't agree. You're in a camp with Slayerik, that should stay hella far away from ever making a decision on the setting of an MMOG.


Can't be Han Solo? Can't be any of 50 major characters, fanbois won't play it, word won't spread, as such, you might as well not pay for the license and just create something similar without a huge stable of heroes. Actually, I take that one bit back, the fanbois might be the only ones who will play it. KOTOR didn't sell _that_many_copies_ btw, and no way would the mmog be more successful than the console/pc title.

EA had to purchase an existing studio to get back in the game. You think what they paid for Mythic < the development costs of a new MMOG? I don't. That means they had no confidence in thier own ability, IP or no IP.

I don't know what MMO UBISoft is working on/funding.

I'm with schild here, and I don't know his reasoning but here's mine:

Movies and large novels are about a powerful story arc with a few characters out to save the world. Any player of a MMOG would like to be doing the same thing, but in the storyline of those novels and movies the main characters are already doing that and a PC can't be them. The world is already being saved, or has already been saved, or is going to be saved some day... but not by you. So in addition to the F.G. Superman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxfzm9dfqBw) problem inherent to all things massively multiplayer, there are even bigger heroes out doing the even bigger work.

The last thing these games need is NPCs reminding you of what every other player already has: You're nobody special.

Better IPs would be long-running episodic television or comics. Small, interesting stories in a large and multi-faceted world.

Controls seem similar to Neocron. I remember that opening windows in Neocron also disabled mouse movement because it changed to a pointer, but when the windows were closed, the controls were more like an FPS... sort of. I still need to watch the remainder of the video, but the work day is over and it's sunny. More later...

Hummm, you know, that has never been my motivation for playing a MMO. May be why i liked the SWG-pre-CU times, before they added "Your the hero" like aspects, i wanted to make my own story, with my friends, in that world, and thats why i still play MMO's.

You couldn't pay me to be Luke, Frodo, Spider man... Because i may not have made the same choices as them, and i allready know how it ends, my story on the other hand....

Now that the NDA is gone, can anyone actually post some screenshots that aren't firefights in rocky landscapes? You know, show something that's actually scifi, like city scenery and shit like that?

Then no company making a MMO for you should be worried about IP at all. They just need to make an interesting world for you to make your own story in... and if they invent their own rather than buying somebody else's then no fanbois show up to tell them they've screwed up.

So SWG and LoTR are still crappy IP choices.

IP is a double edged sword, it seems much safer to make a mmorpg based on a game rather than a book or a movie with well known characters.  LOTRO and SWG are good backdrops but both restrict the actors you can play on centerstage (Jedi, wizards), game ip's don't have a problem with random idiots being in control.

Let's say this game flops and opens to terrible reviews. In a larger sense where does Garriott go from there? Because I know we all enjoyed Ultima and/o Ultima Online but he's not precisely setting the world aflame the past several years. Is he done?

He'll nurse his new baby for a couple years to be sure. As to his future? Depends very much on his success now. Imo, assuming TR doesn't tank Sigil style, I'd think Garriot has one more in him before he calls it quits.

I can agree those suck as licenses in many ways but only if you are saying that Star Wars in the same setting as the movies is horrible for an MMO.   The Kotor setting could be good if it took place a few centuries after Kotor 1 or some such.

I concur on everything but Dragonlance.  Dragonlance has too many problems to make a proper MMO.  Forgotten Realms is a great setting for an MMO but it has way too much background story that would get in the way constantly.   Planar traveling with epic levels would of been the best choice by far.

It's been changed to 1k now instead of 10k.

If you say Star Wars to 99.9999% of American consumers, they'll think of the movies. If you say it to gamers we just drop the 9's after the decimal point. LEGO Star Wars 2 (the one based on the trilogy people liked) sold almost as many boxes in its first week as the original KotOR sold EVER. Get past that "you won't be playing the movies" and you still run into the Jedi problem that Mr. Parker mentions.

People who buy the license for Star Wars so that they can impress the fans of the novels need their heads examined.

He was done years ago, you all just wanted to blame it on EA rather than him.  Sorry.

He'll be better off consulting and guest lecturing at the various game dev programs springing up everywhere.

Mechwarrior/Battletech MMO, would rule all... don't deny it.

Yes, yes it would.

What will be his lecture topic? "How Not To Be Relevant"?

<lowblow>I'm with Raph.</lowblow>

I'm here all week.

Add Bartle and shake well.

Waaay too much IP debating going on in this thread, and not enough NDA removal information about the original topic Tabula Rasa.

I'd say this thread was in danger of being derailed, but then again every thread here is like that, which saddens and disturbs me.

Why can't one thread be about a single game, and maybe not mention the other games that already have 150 threads of their own? I was reading this to hear about TR, not WoW or LotR, but yah know, whatever.

MORE TR INFO, AND START A NEW THREAD FOR IP DEBATING.

PS You fookers never stay on topic (F13.net the new Morlocks, now with more spam on the rails).

You don't run into any Jedi problems in the time period I mentioned.  That was the specific reason I mentioned that time frame.  At that point in time it's perfectly reasonable for everyone and their mother to be a Jedi.


So?  That has nothing to do with making Star Wars games in a different time period.  Kotor obviously proved the viability of taking pretty much any time period and slapping lightsaber + jedi on it = money hats.   

Couple of things:

I once argued SWG's timeframe was wrong too, but have changed my mind. To get the budget and attention, it had no choice but to be part of something bigger, the ties with the movies.

It matters less that people couldn't play the heroes than that the combat wasn't fun. This is similar to LoTRO's problem. There are many MANY games outside the genre for IP where people can play the hero. But just like the unique aspects of other genres, in MMORPGs, it's pretty much expected that you don't get to be that hero. And that expectation is communicated to newbies who either adapt and stay or leave, just like people who adapt and stay in other genres, or leave.

Other IPs have their own problems, and the most obvious ones are already under way. If they don't gain any sustainability, then I think major IP holders will look to different ways of going into online gaming. These games are too expensive to do on a whim, and I can't see major IP holders accepting the visceral downgrade in their brand presentation required for a Flash/browser game. So I expect more creativity, probably an array of experiences tied together across various experiences. A single persistent-state static-content environment only works for a few things, as keeps getting proven. You gotta like the world, and most IP really isn't about that.

When did WoW break 10mil worldwide accounts?

When did SWG ever get anywhere over 275k?

It's a measure of TR that this thread is mostly about everything else. It's the same problem with LoTRO. After the accepted "meh", there just really isn't anything to talk about.

And as to RG, I really don't know how much involved he's had in the day-to-day of development of TR. See all of the traveling and interviews he's done talking about stuff not in the game in any meaningful way. I don't know what he will do next, but I don't think he'll suddenly stop traveling and start producing TR content. Mostly because I don't know how much of a direct hand he's had in the last year.


What ever happened to NC's Exteel?

My cousin got into the beta and said it was a lot of fun for three days... then he was sorry that he was part of the Beta because those three days meant he wasn't going to buy the game and get to play it with his friends. There was nothing left to do.

Would it be any better than Planetside? Are the mecha just that inherently fun? Are the clans and storyline really so fascinating and well-defined that you'd want those worldy aspects tacked onto what is already a fun and varied selection of not-so-massively multiplayer games?

Generally this whole IP mess is the same mistake that Hollywood makes all the time. A good movie comes out and the studio bigwigs dissect which genres it covered, which stars it had, and the size of its special effects budget. Then they produce a bunch of flops with the same ingredients.

People are fond of genres, have favorite stars, and tend to like the epic visuals... but what makes money is good movies.

I want to play a good MMORPG. I don't care whether it's about vampires in 16th century Europe, cartoon pigs in modern Happyville, or  Mormons in 19th century Illinois. Are my friends playing it? Do I see a little and want to play more? Is it, y'know, fun?

There is some good Book IP that isn't driven by characters.

LotRO is all about characters, thus it's going to fail if your guaranteed audience is only there for them.

But only in a MMO. You don't have this problem in an single player game because you don't have competition for involvement with these characters.

I'm not really sure I'm agreeing with schild, but LotR is not necessarily good MMO IP.

I patched my copy of TR up last night, and they've made progress on fixing the lag, it wasn't as bad as it has been before.  It also had more quests, which lead to more experience and a slightly less grindy play experience.  An improvement across the board, but still not one that I'd be inclined to pay a monthly sub for.

Yes, yes they are.

As if the uniforms and general cos-play acts weren't disturbing enough, check out what our crazy eccentric General British did for his latest TR press event....

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/tabula-rasa/818778p1.html

To be so loaded that you don't have to give a fuck about anythng. Must be a helluva life.

I've said it before, but since everyone else is repeating themselves...

SWG.

Set it the day after Return of the Jedi ends, and disregard the existing EU novels/comics/crap.  Don't just disregard it, pitch the freedom (and resulting room for player impact) as a feature.  Star Wars nerds would eat that "Be a part of a new continuity!" line like it was candy, and "The movies end as your story begins!" is a very simple, soundbite-friendly marketing concept that even casuals can grasp instantly.

Then you can do whatever you want.  Jedi, no Jedi, Sith, whatever.  You can have Han and Leia and Chewie running around, you can have Lando giving out newbie quests, you can do anything.  The actual EU had Palpatine's ghost possess a clone body so he could run around swordfighting and shit.  If Star Wars EU nerds didn't rebel at THAT, they certainly won't rebel at anything story-related you may engineer to facilitate game development.

When things go off the rails this badly this soon.. it's because there's nothing to discuss.  You want to discuss TR, you're going to have to find a group of folks who aren't bored with it after 3 posts.  Even if I hadn't made my own contributions, or seen it for myself that would have told me enough about it.  AVOID AVOID AVOID.

The same thing happened with DDO, albeit DDO threads lasted a smidge longer before getting derailed.   That's not a good thing.

Agreed.  I played PNP Mechwarrior and Battletech for all four years of college with a regular gaming group.  We tried other systems, but always came back to the mechs.

Seriously.  The gameplay could suck and I would probably still plunk down my small money to keep playing a Battletech MMO.

Personal preference: 3025.

The only way a thread stays on topic for more than three pages here is if it's about SWG, Trammel, or the EVE war.

Why can't an MMOG thread be about one single game? Because games don't live in a vacuum, punk. There's no reason for them to be about one game. They all have the same base playstyle. They all have the same goddamn flaws. The industry itself is stuck on a fucking treadmill instead of, at the very least, walking slowly down the road of evolution.

That was, until I didn't sign an NDA and got to play Hellgate: London. Oh, sweet sweet Hellgate London. Repeat after me: Hybrid games are the fucking future.

Chromehounds would have been perfect had it been massively multiplayer.  As it is, the game is damned fun if you get into a good squad.

Finding a good squad in Chromehounds is like pulling a wolverine's teeth out with chopsticks.

Nowadays, probably.  When it first came out, though, I didn't have too many problems.

I played a few games, I agree. With a good squad it was the bee's knees. Not always though. You had to have a good squad to play against also. Shame too, I doubt we'll see a more streamlined sequel. It was a fantastic experience though.

Put me down as well in the group that couldn't get past a few hours /played.

The game strangely reminded me of CoH. Get mission. Go off and blast shit. Turn in mission. The graphics and dialogues were also similar. Having just burned out on CoH, I just couldn't get into it.

Similarly to what others have said above, I really wanted a world to play in, not a mission-fest.

Yes, and I want to get sent to a slam with a doctor who will shine my eyes!

Actually, the threads that get the most discussion are either a) immensely and unarguably popular for doing that formula right; or, b) different enough to have their own sub-culture.

TR simply isn't different enough from the type of games already done better. Everything that needed to be said about it was done before this thread was split off from the other one.

TR.

Hrm. 

Re RG:  Only thing I can see his influence on is his name attached to the box hoping to bring in some sales from RG/Ultima fanbois. 

Re UI:  Clunky, even after getting used to it.  Using Q and E to cycle through specials at first glance seems like a good idea, but just seems to get in the way.  Q/E, Q/E, Q/E to get to the third special you want to fire, and whoops! missed it! Q/E, Q/E, Q/E, Q/E, Q/E back around = dumb.  Alternatively, you can use 1-5 (or 6-10), while using the same hand to move around via WASD movement while using your left hand to mouselook/aim and left button to fire.  Need three hands and two sets of eyes.  Click on the target THEN press tab to 'lock on'?  So, shoot at it, tab, keep shooting.  Needlessly redundant.  Not fun.  Seems more for a console than a PC; the xbox360 controller would probably work very well with this game (possible future port?)

Re Logos:  Just a double grind. 

Re Classes:  All feel the same.  Nothing really separates one from the other.

Re Cloning:  Good idea in a linear progression game.  The idea that I could switch roles without going to an alt or deleting my character is very appealing.  It's just too bad the classes are mostly dull and near clones of each other.

Random thoughts: 
It reminds me of a SinglePlayerRPG with other people running around in it, almost like a huge, graphically enhanced version of xbox live. 
How can you be special (logos) if everyone else has them too?  If everyone is the hero, no one is special.  The hero becomes marginalized.
All combat all the time.  Bleh.
No world feeling to it.  No cities whatsoever? 
Nice graphics.  Runs well on my machine with minimal lag.
There's nothing 'sticky' to it.  I can get the same feeling logging into Gears of War and running co-op.

So many things wrong with this statement, that I'll deal with them one by one.

1.  I am most certainly not a punk, and tend more towards being a hippie, but what's more absurd is I'm probably (at least) 10 years your senior.

2. Generally, any poster who uses personal attacks or name calling uses them because they don't actually have a response or they like to start trouble in the forums (true on both accts?).

3. As the person who is supposed to be running this forum, I'd expect that you would attempt to keep threads on topic, where usually the discussion itself is derailed by you (like this one).

4.  I'd also expect the person running a forum to not resort to my #2 problem.

5. Although I agree with your sentiment about the "treadmill" clones of MMO gameplay, designs and flaws, I don't agree that every thread should become a discussion of other games. Yes, comparing and contrasting differences/similarities can be useful, but that doesn't mean that every thread should become discussion of "best IP", what's hottest atm, or some other topic in disregard of the main one a thread is (supposed to be) about.

6. TR certainly had enough differences from other games that I wanted to read people's impressions, and NOT the endless IP debate or about games with already bloated threads discussing them.

7.  Based on your responses in this and the previous thread, I'd guess you never actually beta tested TR, but then again 90% of gamers don't actually play to help eliminate bugs but instead consider betas as "previews". I also notice that the only "on topic" post of yours was one that could be considered NDA violating because it was prior to the NDA lifting.

8. Hellgate:London most certainly does have an NDA (http://alpha.hellgatelondon.com/nda), but so far the thread about that game hasn't violated anything and is still remarkably on topic (albeit discussing the freeplay/RMT aspect of the game).

As engaging/entertaining as the pointless circular debate is, I am here reading this thread for TR impressions, as are those visiting this thread because it was referenced by the front page. My posts, thus far, are equally as pointless, but at least I am still interested in discussing TR (before I plunk down a pre-order), where every other off topic poster could easily start new threads or revive old ones (about other topics).

I called you a punk because you showed up to scold the thread. Being 10, 20, or 30 years my senior doesn't mean you get to show up and be the BMOC and decide the direction of a thread about a game that really doesn't particularly needs its own thread. Also, I wasn't calling the gameplay or anything else IN THE GAMES, a treadmill. I was talking about the game development process. The online gaming industry does a lot of running considering it's at a dead standstill.

Also, beta tests stopped being about bugs a long time ago. This is something that pisses me off, but it's the reality about it. While dev teams probably find a shitload of bugs, the Community Reps and PR types all treat beta tests as an opportunity to create buzz. Or in the case of things like TR, AA, etc. it ends up making people a lot less interested.

So, here's my advice: Don't preorder it, ignore it, and hope it goes away. TR does not deserve any love considering the final product of it's more than half-decade of development. As I said before, I don't know where the money went. Hell, if the opinions in this thread weren't clear enough, I'll break it down even further. It's another MMORPG. That's pretty much the sum of it.

Schild likes to see himself talk and prognosticate, I've noticed. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's his site. Let him. Do I think he's wrong? Most of the time, fuck yeah. But hey, his opinion is as valid as anyone else's here. (Slightly less valid than mine, but that's because everyone's is)

That said, anyone bitching about the interface and keymap in TR? Took me two minutes to change that out to a setup that's more comfortable and intuitive for me, if you couldn't be arsed to do that, you really need to turn in your gamer card, 'cause...yeah.

Once again, I'll reiterate, (and keep this bitch on topic) I think the game has some merits. Does it deserve game of the year? No. But it is worth giving another shot if the last time you played it was early beta. You don't like it now? Cool, but at least your complaints will be based on a more recent vintage. Does stuff need to change? Sure, the story arcs could be more prevalent, but that may or may not come with time. I've got other games to keep me occupied if I want something deeper right now.

Hey, it's cool if you want to peak into what the Realm of Mediocrity looks like. And it's not even that it's deep or shallow. It's just Another Game. You basically just said that without saying it. What TR comes down to is that you have got to be DESPERATE for an MMOG to find something interesting there. It's so... bland.


Does not compute. I should not have to be so pissed off at the default UI by the beginning of the tutorial that I want to quit out of the game. Fucking UI is dreadful. I shouldn't be "arsed" to fuck with the default UI. It's like in EQ, the default UI is fine, but there are better alternatives - which is an OK scenario. The default UI in TR on the other hand looks like it was put together by a hyperactive 8 year old.

TR splits it's players into two groups

1) You're a veteran since EQ1 where the very UI fought you while the monsters pounded your avatar
2) You're new to the genre or been away since Ultima VII and remember this "Garriot" guy so are intrigued by the first game to carry his name in a long time (though I don't think his name appeared on any of the Ultima boxes, it still was synonymous).

The UI of TR is its least important point to both groups. It's the total experience which is teh meh.

Having said that, the UI in TR is not bad. It's just not 1-0 hotkey like what a veteran would suspect (yes, I know, UIs are more than just 1-0, but that's usually the first thing people look for in screenshots). Unless Funcom changed something, neither will AoC. Neither was Eve. Neither is :NDA: nor :NDA: This genre needs a lot more invention than yet-another-RPG or yet-another-FPS, across many categories of game elements. If you're looking for the UI you're used to in DAoEQ2WoW, you're not looking for a very different MMORPG to begin with.

You need to qualify that with "AAA PC MMORPG industry developed by industry veterans". Everything else in "online gaming" is going all over the place, and doing quite well at reinventing stuff.

Except for fun. :(:(:(:(:(:(

I really wanted to like TR, but damn it they just made another game from the "for korea, kekeke" mould... 

Ran through it until level 15 then lost interest as I realised there'd be no big advances until 30, the grind to get there was going to be slow and that all I had to look forward to was literally more of the same.   Spent a lot of my time either charging into shotgun/melee range, sniping in battlefields, or getting stuck on geometry as a result of knock backs being poorly implemented.  First two were pretty fun, the last one definitely wasn't.

When combat worked well it flowed beautifully - NPCs lay down supporting fire while you do your thing against the oncoming tide of hostiles, with your XP booster gradually turning red as your killing spree progresses with corpses and loot littering the ground.  But when combat worked badly it was a game breaker - without a decent chat and grouping system the solo player was in trouble any time they came up against a pack of hostiles at a similar level to themselves.


In the right light TR can be a pretty fun and entertaining game that's suitable for casual play because it can generally be put down and picked up at short notice, however I can't see casual players subscribing for very long precisely because of the grind involved - just pulling the "grind to earn a better class" mechanic might alleviate some of that.


But that said ... features that were worthy of adoption by a better game;

Melee - being able to smack an opponent around with your weapon just feels so right for this kind of game, giving you an alternative to running away the moment your clip finishes or your gun overheats or just for an ammo free finisher.

Dropships - as a mechanic for spawning mobs these were inspired, allowing TR pull re-inforcements out of thin air without breaking the 4th wall, and providing a justification for the amount of hostiles seen behind "our" lines and allowing the game to throw you a life-line if you became.

My biggest bitch about dropships is that you couldn't use them to reach specific destinations, similar to the drop pods from PS - despite watching drop-ships from both sides drop NPCs almost anywhere, they didn't seem to transport players.  There was also the feeling they could have been stolen a page from PS and allowed dropships to be shot down by fixed defences, thus adding extra tactical elements to be fought over and captured.

Battlefields - with the regular drops of hostile and allied NPCs the static battlefields ensured a constant flow of battle, locations actually felt like war zones where neither side could achieve the upper hand.  With some improved NPC AI and better thought out mechanics TR's battlefield locations could have been something to laud over other games.

No Dropships were about the worst possible way they could've done it. This is a war with all sorts high technology and alien technology but apparently:

1) Anti-aircraft technology has all but been forgotten

2) Cannons won't fire on them

3) You can't damage the dropships yourself

4) The dropships inexplicable can't drop troops inside of outposts even though there's no "roof shield" protecting the outposts (I won't even get into the stupidity of walls being insurmountable barriers in the game)

all of which are immersion breakers. If they would've just had them teleport into place only #4 would've been an issue.

I liked the concept of the drop ships, but agree they were more immersion-breaking than supporting, like so much of the experience. We've got gravity guns and logos and we're stilling using mechanical elements? Warpgates and use drop ships? And again, where's, like, the society? Someone asked for screenshots of settlements, and I'll post some this week (I have scores), but they're all military installations, ground-based, largely unshielded. It's like Star Trek in its inconsistent use of technology (you can create artificial singularities, bend time, and cross various instances of the multiverse, and yet can't transport a bomb onto an unshielded {to transporters} Borg ship until two complete series later?! Throw the thing down a blackhole for crissakes...).

I actually wonder if the original direction would have turned out better. At least they wouldn't have to try and explain so many of the decisions they made if it was more interestingly iterative than trying-but-failing-to-be innovative.

You're not the world :)

For better or worse this is the general opinion I'm seeing on the variety of discussion sites I visit. I have zero experience with the game but considering how much my time is limited these days, there are games I definitely have to let go by the wayside without even trying them personally and this joins that list that includes games such as SWG and Vanguard.

I liked the first version of TR much better than this sci fi one!  After this tanks, maybe they can add on another part of the world (or a hidden planet) which could be the old fun/non fps one.

Didn't Everquest eventually add a unstuck command?  That should be mandatory for all MMOs.  Why frustrate players over something so simple.

3025 is the only way they could make Battletech not be a giant pile of ass.  3050 basically handed the battlefields to the Clans with their vastly-superior-with-no-drawbacks tech, and after 3050 the storyline just became retarded thanks to the Wizkids miniature Mechwarrior game, which thought it would be just uber to come out with 130-ton mechs.  Apparently Wizkids is run by 12-year-olds, because I had the same idea at that age and thought it was the best idea EVER.

If they made a Battletech MMOFPS, they'd have to have free play for non-mechwarriors, or else you wouldn't see a single damn vehicle or infantryman on the battlefield.

The very beginning of my online gaming days started with an online MUSE, 3028. Still one of my fondest online gaming experiences to date.

Well, yeah.  How many times did we use vehicles or infantry on a mech-battlefield?  Almost never, and never by choice.  I'm assuming the online version would be the same.  But then again, an online version would probably makes vehicles a tad more crit-hit-resistant.  The mechs are the queens of the battle.  Why would you want to play anything else? :D

Of course, if they added aerotech and had you actually trying to down the dropships before mechs can even deploy...that would be pure awesome.

In my perfect world, they develop BattleTech first, and then expand into MechWarrior.

Edit:  AeroTech could be added after that, of course.  Frankly, I'd want them to freeze the timeline.  No advancing to clans.  And damn, but I want to jump into the MechWarrior part as a member of the Explorer Corps.  ~sigh~

New tech and mech can always be introduced as rediscovered lostech.  Damn, I'm getting horny just thinking about it.

All the Non-Mech units would just be NPC's I think. Being a Mech Pilot makes the player the "hero" in terms of the story while not having them be 'the heroes' from the novels and lore. It's pretty damn easy to make people feel badass when you put them into 70 tons of giant robot.


The issue with a Btech/Mechwarrior MMO would be scale. Do you keep it to one planet? One system? Or do we go for the whole Inner Sphere? There is potentially so much to work with, but it would be *so* easy to get overwhelmed and even easier to pump out boring, crappy, featureless worlds. Then of course you would have to devise a proper PvP system for it all.

I'd drive a tank if every iteration of BattleTech didn't nerf them horribly to keep them from raping the stupid-ass mechs.

Well, they could go a couple ways about it, as far as the map is concerned.

Start us out on the Periphery.  Keeps things open.  Downside: lore disconnect.  Upside: much less of a headache for the design team.

Best Idea as far as I'm concerned: Start with the whole map.  But only make the MAIN planets reachable at first.  Don't bother giving a reason.  Just make them the only ones there and selectable for travel.  That way you can still visit some of the big names (House capitals, Solaris VII, etc) but don't fall into a SWG trap.  Plenty of room for expansion still.

And I think in the online version it would be much easier to beef up the tanks and still keep the game fun.  They can't be the equal of mechs, sorry.  But a heavy tank should be able to blast a light mech.  Just a matter of scaling it, that's all.  One-on-one, same size, mech should usually win unless the pilot is inexperienced.  So vehicles should swarm or pick on the smaller guys, just like in the PNP game.

P.S.  I did attempt to try TR.  Not recently, though.  It kept crashing after chargen.

How long before these superstar game developer fad dies out?  :heartbreak:

The only 2 superstar that still possess a shrine in my heart is Sid Meier and Will Wright

I felt the same thing. I'm wondering if they used CoX tech in the game. The waypoints let you jump between instances of the zone you are in much like the trains in CoX do. Or at least from what I remember them doing. CoX bored me. Tabula Rasa isn't terrible and they have over a month of bugfixing to go. Perhaps I watched Starship Troopers one too many times.

Ok Schild. Put the goddamn XBox 360 controller down. It's fucking up your perception. MMO default UIs have always sucked. Always will.

Then again, maybe I'm just so used to changing every default UI to my favorite setup that I don't even give it a second thought.

As for the blandness of the game? Maybe it is. I'm certainly not desperate for an MMO, I've got more than a handful of subsidized choices. That said though, there is something immensely satisfying about bitchslapping a giant alien with a pistol.

I like pie... I'm just saying..   :-D

I watched a few of the gameplay videos and was kinda interested but have to say I'm not anymore.

One thing that I am curious about is: what's the purpose of levelling, capturing bases, running instances?  What's the carrot?

All these things sound cool but I haven't heard anything about why you'd want to do it.  In DAoC you'd capture keeps to bring another realm out to fight for some some RvR or set up for a relic capture.  In other games you level to get to the "end game" or run instances for precious shiney loot.  What I've seen of TR makes it seem like a single player game - you level to finish, you capture bases to get the next quest, you run dungeons to level or quest. 

There's no end game if that's what you are asking. There's also no "grand strategy" game where your actions on field make a difference in terms of the "war". Sure you can help (re)capture bases but the NPCs will do that on their own without your help and none of the bases that can be captured that I've seen so far have any significant value other than cutting down on travel time a bit. So basically you have to like the combat for combat's sake, which is different than your typical MMORPG, so there will be people playing it just for that.

How are the quests? Do they form a coherent story?

Typical MMORPG fare. Story is coherent.

I hate when I post on Fridays, I only troll M-F while I'm at work. Anyways, two pages later....

Schild: I'm batshit crazy but I'm the only one here that has come up with an IP that seems to make people interested/excited. Instead of coping out about how there are no good IPs, just think a bit and you too could produce something besides MMO hate. You take jaded to the next level.

I downloaded the latest patch of TR this weekend, and tried it again. I'd upgraded my video card to something a little more recent and the game looked much better. It was still boring as hell though. I think I managed about an hour before just being bored. I got out of the tutorial instance, got about 2 steps into a quest on that first base area and just couldn't do it anymore. It was just so meh.

It's a combat game for combat's sake, and the combat is BORING. Unlike fantasy MMOG's, I cannot see that adding more levels would make combat anymore interesting, because it would just mean I use logos more and try to get a gun with bigger OMFGWTFBBQ damage. The combat is just boring.

Performance was a little better, but not much. It didn't help that I had to play on the Euro server because the US one died right as I logged on to create a character. Even so, the game is just not worth bothering with. It doesn't suck, but it's boring.

Serious question, What do you look for in a MMO, what could have made it not "Meh"? I guess, what were you hoping for?

Something different. Something that doesn't feel exactly like something I've played 20 times before. It also needs to be fun, combat needs to entertain me, not make me feel like I've done it before. It also needs to perform well on my machine and if it doesn't, it needs to make me want to upgrade my machine so it plays better.

This game didn't. Combat felt just like Neocron or City of Heroes or any of the other billion DIKU types of games I've played. It felt just like an EQ-type game, only with PEWPEW instead of CLANGCLANG.

The last MMOG I've played that I actually felt like playing past the first 5 levels was WoW.

Neocron you at least had to keep your reticule on the enemy. MMOFPSes are bastardized, but this is a bastardized MMOFPS...If that makes sense.

Accessibility? I am quite sure its for the RPG oriented. I had suggested a toggle to turn it off (the sticky), for a Gain of some sort (Real aim = + to something). They hated the idea, lol.

Shadowrun? Well, in the form of MMO anyway, the FPS thing they made out of it is perhaps another story...

"Superior gaming license" in the sense the world has been from ground-up developed to allow small groups of players have self-contained adventures in rich environment. So there's no conflict between the IP plot and your gaming needs detracting from primary issue that's building fun game. Plus the setting are more flexible and allows for more variety in both content and player abilities, than what you can squeeze out of Middle-earth.

Thing is, i enjoy the setting, if it also a setting i can relate to , because of some other works, fantastic. So, in that respect, IP's are good. I understand your point about restrictions when using an IPs. SW and LOTR are two IP's i really enjoy.

 i think some of this debate is "The Hero" V.S "A Hero". Some people want to be THE (so we have single player games) Some want to A (So we have MMOg's)

I think people who want to be "The", wont like the MMOg approach, and Vica-versa, Then again, everyone like to be "THE" hero, but then, isn't that a matter of perspective, I mean, you can be "THE" hero, with in a group of people... Others do not necessarily take away from that, i guess it depends on what you care about, such as joe smoe MMO player #4.5k having better armor, or more money, something i don't really care about and does not impact my fun.

So again, using an IP isn't a bad move, and most faults still pivot on implementation, not the IP its self.

I agree with the reticule comment, and I liked the way the reticule would widen and blow your aim if you moved, but as you gained in skill, you could move and maintain better aim more readily. Didn't Planetside use that, too? It was a good mechanic. I can't say that it made either game more interesting, but it was a good way to do MMOFPS controls.

The "Cone of Fire"system in planetside sounds close, but there is no way to improve it in an RPG manner. Planetside is RPG-lite, using only loose concepts, but esentialy everyone is the same from day 1, only more options open up.

I'm not going to say that you are going to like the game but you I don't think it's like what you described (unless I've misunderstood your wording).  You don't just get bigger OMFGWTFBBG guns for instance.   Switching weapons during combat is something you do constantly and basic firearms don't just suddenly become useless as you level up.  Logos usage is a pretty strategic affair too.  If they manage to make cover work a bit more obviously it could become really interesting.

I'm not sure I think it's going to be fun long term but it's definitely different than other MMO's in terms of combat.

It is different. Very different. It just lacks the depth of todays gen3 dikus.

It lacks any depth whatsoever.

Somewhere between the design board and the actual implementation, MMO's seem to take a hard left into mediocrity-ville.  I was really looking forward to this game and Auto Assault for their ideas... after seeing the implementation I'm dumbstruck.  What the hell happened on the way to the circus?

I think I switched weapons once, becuase I went from a shotgun to something longer range. If it gets better as I level and get more options, great, I won't make it that far because I'm bored before level 5. I never even got to pick a class, because again, I was bored stiff.

MMOG developers seem to think that players will get mesmerized by watching numbers float over a mob's head and have shiny particle effects blow shit up every once in a while. The first time I did that with other people around, it was very novel. That was 1998. It's old now. I'm not waiting beyond the first half-hour for the actual mechanics of combat to get more interesting. If I don't have an interesting gun and do something fun in the first 30-minutes, I'm not buying the game.

This reminds me to one of the things we used to do in MUDS.  You'd give damage a name like "hit" and make the name sexier as the number got bigger (i.e. "smash").  When players got high enough in level they'd not only "eviscerate" things, but they'd see it in all CAPS.  I guess there is a certain visceral approach to game design, but this wears off so quickly that I begin to wonder why it gets as much air time as it does. 

omg...memories. I spent 3 days coming up with an auto-scaled damage message based on not only the damage done, but the type of hit. HUGE constant arrays of nothing but colorized "text shiney".

Those were the days!

Your slash <*>==<*>O B L I T E R A T E S<*>==<*> a butterfly!

Ah, when "Diku" really meant seeing the names of Sebastian Hammer, Hans Henrik Staerfeldt, Katja Nyboe, and friends every time you logged in.

Flytext of damage numbers over a targets head (or my own) in an MMO completely and totally sucks ass.  If I want to see shiny damage numbers and descriptive text over a 'toons head, I'll head down to the local arcade and plop some quarters in Street Fighter or Mortal Combat.

Hide it.  Put it in a combat log I can click on and see it if I want to.

Make the combat as immersive as possible.  Fuck watching cool down timers and my Health/Action/Stamina/Mana bars.  Give me a UI that shows my 'condition' and my target's 'condition in a large enough (or let me resize it) area that I can keep a good track of it with my peripheral.  Allow me to set up a chain of attacks or actions with a combat queue and the ability to stop that chain of attacks if I need to.  Essentially, give me the UI of preCU SWG with near the same combat mechanics but a working HAM (or equivalent) system.

Last time I played SWG, during combat (PvP or PvE), this is what I looked at the entire time:

(http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa251/snakecharmer_04/that.jpg)

Rather than what I SHOULD see:

(http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa251/snakecharmer_04/this.jpg)

I may has well been playing an MMO in which stick figures were beating on cubes and circles and other stick figures.

What's the point of designing a beautiful world with fluid animations and or (ugh) particle effects if when they're in combat (which is what 90 percent of MMOs come down to) all they see is the first image?

Finally got around to going through some screenshots. Forgot they had never implemented a print screen function for the entire time I was in. Only ended up with 25 or so shots through the prnt scrn/MS Paint method. These are the only ones I thought worth uploading. I included one inline because I liked the lighting. None show UI.

http://www.darniaq.com/TR/TR03.JPG (http://www.darniaq.com/TR/TR03.JPG)   http://www.darniaq.com/TR/TR16.JPG (http://www.darniaq.com/TR/TR16.JPG)
http://www.darniaq.com/TR/TR18.JPG (http://www.darniaq.com/TR/TR18.JPG)   http://www.darniaq.com/TR/TR14.JPG (http://www.darniaq.com/TR/TR14.JPG)
http://www.darniaq.com/TR/TR04.JPG (http://www.darniaq.com/TR/TR04.JPG)   http://www.darniaq.com/TR/TR02.JPG (http://www.darniaq.com/TR/TR02.JPG)

(http://www.darniaq.com/TR/TR02.JPG)

You made me do a vanity google:

Oh the nostalgia is thick! I think I still have my build files for the Circle then Smaug MUD I ran somewhere ..

(http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/9813/precuawesomenesswd4.jpg)

Actually, that's what a UI looked like in SW:G. Note the pre-CU spam of my smuggler radness.

Let's summarize.

Pretty world.  Fun short-term combat fix.  Lousy UI.  Meaningless progression. 

Did I miss anything?

Eh? Combat isn't fun though, feels like SW:G at launch only... polished. And uhm, Guild Wars was a pretty world. Parts of WoW were pretty. Tabula Rasa... NOT PRETTY. In fact, it's downright depressing.

What kind of crack are you smoking?

TR feels like what combat should have been at NGE launch, m a y b e.  But no way in hell is it like the typical MMO tab target autofire autoaim of preNGE SWG. 

War is ugly.

So now that we've all agreed that TR underwhelms, can we talk about it's "novel" features? There are a few areas where TR claimed to innovate. For the most part, I quit the game too early to really see how well they work.

Improved AI: The AI is supposed to be more interesting than simple scripted mobs from other MMOGs. On the face of it, this seems great. In practice, I didn't notice a lot of difference. Is the AI really better?

Cloning: It's nice to allow players to rethink and choose another path. No more Shadowbane-style rerolls because you made a wrong decision during character creation. But in practice, is this really particularly different or better than WoW talent respecs or DAoC /level 20? (I woudn't know; I didn't get that far.)

FPS-like controls: Ok, we've discussed this a lot. I expected to like the controls a lot more than I did. I agree with earlier comments that there wasn't enough feedback between choice of cover or stance and effect on combat, so it was easy to ignore it. I agree that the target reticule in Neocron did this better.

Low downtime: RG made a big stink about not wasting players' time running all over the world, trying to get grouped. To me, this came at the cost of the "world" feeling. I think he (and Raph) did this better in UO with the "recall" mechanism.

Any other ideas from TR that are worth carrying over to other games?

These two sentences are somewhat at odds. Putting damage numbers on screen was an effort to increase immersion by allowing one to look at the screen instead of staring at a chatbox during combat. And it works. I only occasionally look at my chatbox in EQ2 combat. Add in voice chat and I barely need to look at any scrolling text.

Now I can understand how some people might not like the floating numbers, but stashing them in a chat scroll isn't the answer either.

I don't pay attention to the chatbox until after the fight, usually to determine what I did wrong/right.  The target's health meter is enough of an indiciation as to whether or not I'm doing damage or damaging it quick enough.

There's always the Homeworld idea of not having health bars for enemies...

ok so maybe that'd be a disaster :p

I am quite sure that most MMO's have the option to turn off floaty numbers. Kinda standard option.  8-)


If mobs were created (and didn't impact FPS/Net) with more visual cues of damage or, near death (using appearance,sound, and animations, like.."limp") , that would be cool...

But why turn something off that helps you?  (knowing exact damages)

MMO UIs have evolved toward making the player more and more efficient.  Take some of that away, and we'll bitch about having to "fight the UI."  Leave it in, and we get to bitch about "no immersion."  Either way, we win!

My own thoughts:

• AI is variable, which I like. Not every NPC is going to respond the same way. Unfortunately this is not apparent in the early levels, that critical first 5-10 hour period where people make their choice on commiting to the game... or not.
• Cloning is nice, but you gotta still need to level-up your clone after choosing to play it. This wouldn't be so bad in a game like pre-20 WoW where you've got almost a dozen different starting zones and related content, one per race. But in TR, you've got exactly one path of advancement, and doing that repeatedly is going to wear thin.
  
• FPS-like controls. I found this better before the numbers were displayed, even though I knew intellectually they were there. The numbers break immersion for me because I wanted an FPS-like game feel. Now it's just another RPG with slightly more control over your chance to hit. A health bar is fine, in the absence of instantly-recognizable changes in mob appearance and behavior (which I think we're still aways off from in persistent worlds).
  
• Low downtime. This is pretty much true. There's still running, but the distance to content isn't that bad once you've unlocked the control points.

One thing that bothered me a lot was instancing of the "public" spaces. There's a population cap due to performance, and they got around it by instancing the public spaces. I didn't like that much in late EQ2 beta when they had to do it for Antonica either, but feel it's more pronounced here. The idea of a moving battlefront is cool, but I wonder how that works in the instances of that zone. Is it in one place on Instance A and another on Instance B? Or does one's own activities in Instance A get calculated as part of the aggregate push/pull of the front across all Instances?

Basically, I wanted the immersion and accountability promised, but one has been reduced and the other never really implemented in the way I had envisioned it. Neither is a showstopper for fans of course.

Because someone in this thread mentioned they didn't like floaty numbers/damage?

I like to turn off floaty names.

No it doesn't. It's boring. It's not even a click click clickety click, it's just point at target, tab, click left mouse button with an occasional right mouse button until dead. Keeping the cursor on the target was sort of critical, just not in anyway fun.

Never saw evidence of it. If that's because I didn't play 5-10 hours, the developers FAILED. As has been said before, there aren't 3 MMOG's, there are a shitton. Players don't have time to waste on games that don't give them something pretty damn quickly. Most players can finish a console action/RPG in 10 hours, and they don't have to pay a subscription fee for that.


Great idea, never saw it. That could just be because I didn't play long enough, which means I didn't get far enough along the path to differentiate my character from any other. FAIL.


Poorly done. Nice try, but they did nothing to differentiate this from other MMOG's I've played.


Doesn't really help if the activities you are always doing are always pretty boring.

I know that I've hammered this before, but when are MMOG developers going to learn that you cannot hold back the good stuff for the second 5-hour stretch? You have got to HOOK the player from the get-go or they won't stay around past the free month (or even the open beta). You have got to WOW them (no pun intended) in 30-minutes or you're done. It's not even a grind issue anymore. I know that you have to keep them for long periods of time to make the subscriptions pay off, but you have to get them to that point. Putting drab content in front of them the first 30? FAIL.

Just wondering, is it possible that developers take into account that most people who actually PAID for the box are going to play it long enough to "get to the good stuff". I know I would if I had layed down 40-50 bucks for such a game. It is easy to say that you won't play a game that "is not fun in the first X hours", but would you do the same if you actually spended money on it ?
Just wondering.


Disclaimers:
Nonetheless I agree with you.

I know it is not the best publicity for the game, but maybe it is effective (moneywise or other)

I have games on my shelf that I paid full price for and quit less than five hours in.

(E.g. Gary Grigsby's World at War... wtf was I thinking of???)

For the record, WoW's hooks were:

1) Introductory cinematics including swoopy flight over the next 10 hours of your gaming world, showing other players running around.
2) Quick ding-gratz at the beginning, giving you new abilities and tools at just the right pace to let you learn the controls without getting frustrated or bored.
3) Stellar artwork and service -- very stable platform. (Obviously the early queues were ridiculous, but they had that fixed well before it would kill them -- they did have Blizzard mojo to help ease them over that hump.).
4) Huge word of mouth from a smooth beta.

I can't argue with you here with the possible exception of "stellar ... service".  What continues to puzzle me is how all of that can be true and still I found the game to be dull and uninspired from a gameplay standpoint.  If WoW had come out 6 years ago, it would have been my robot jesus.  Now... not so much.  I do get your underlying point though... with all of the examples out there to draw from it's almost criminal that we still see crappy mmogs being released.  TR appears to be another new addition.

Probably because you were bored as shit by the whole DIKU concept, having suffered through the previous incarnations. Most of the people who love WoW, who got hooked so easily, are people who never really got into DIKU.

WoW said "Here's the fun part" from the beginning, in a game designed to run well on modest systems and polished heavily.

It's still DIKU, but it was DIKU without all the shit in the way that came before. Experienced gamers would just shrug at the roadblocks and annoyances of EQ, EQ2, SWG, UO, etc and push through them since they knew what was ahead. Newer players generally just said "Fuck this [buggy/incoherent/boring/grindy/whatever is appropriate] POS" and went and played Halo or something.

You forgot that WoW ran well on shitty old systems and TR struggles on my not quite 2-year old system. No one in development seems to get that anymore. It's one of the reasons consoles sell better than PC games.

Also, I played WoW in beta, before there were queues. And I was still hooked by WoW enough to play it up into the teen levels during beta, knowing I'd have to start over at release. After one wipe in TR, I couldn't be arsed to play to level 5. Hell, I'd STILL pay for WoW if I wanted an MMOG, I wouldn't pay a damn dime for TR.

Yeah -- that is a big deal. I'm not a console fan (my wife is). We have a PS2, a gamecube (my kid's) and are getting a Wii. We don't have an Xbox (the few times I have an urge to play one, I visit a friend.). My PC has always been my gaming platform of choice, especially for FPS (I suck at them enough without having to fight console controls too).

But I'm buying an Xbox 360 as soon as I can afford it (I wand the HD tv to go with it), and rearranging a chunk of my house to get it hooked to the internet (No, I don't want to use wireless. I'm lazy and can't be arsed to upgrade. It's ethernet cables across the ceiling for me), because I'm sick of always feeling my PC just isn't quite good enough for the new shiny. WoW was one of the few games I didn't have that "I wish I had more PC to run this".

Convience is winning out, along with Xbox Live and the fact that I can play Worms on Xbox. :)

It's getting bad enough in the PC world to push me to consoles as a primary games platform, which says a lot. My next PC upgrade will be late next year, at the earliest, and for work -- not games.

Count the number of MMOs that appear on Consoles.

Nobody argues that one of the nine aspects of WoW's success is that it ran on almost anything that can play Bejeweled. Now list how many modern FPS games (launched since WoW) can make the same claim. TR 2.0 was conceived as a pseudo FPS game, current implementation regardless. Their baseline was not standard-DIKU at the time.

The five-hour-rule is important in any game. But you need to remember the first most important rule is to sell boxes to some companies (because to other companies it doesn't, ie, all those guys who give the client and monthly access away for free). Selling boxes can defray and/or pay off the initial development. I don't know if that's the case for TR though, given the amount of time and money that was spent before the reset.

I like the Xbox 360, particularly XBLA and its integration with Windows Live. I just don't like Vista enough to upgrade to it at home. That's partially keeping me from getting the console, so I just play the one we have at work.

I didn't play TR and certainly won't but...

What is worse than having a beta with an NDA... with people letting everyone know as soon as your NDA drops that your game sucks ?
I have seen that so many times.

WoW didn't have a NDA during beta as far as I can remember. If you are not confident that you'll get positive reviews from players, never ever enter beta stage. Forcing a NDA on a beta nowadays is basically telling me that the game is going to suck.

My thoughts on TR agree with the consensus (meh), however my biggest complaint would have to be the lack of character customization. Everyone starts out shooting and throwing lightning, and after 12 levels I was still shooting and throwing lightning. There's about as much choice available as in WoWs talents. Except everyone is a shaman. And your only non-talent ability is lightning bolt. ZZZzzzz...

What?

Someone hit "new topic" instead of "reply", it seems. Fixed.

Was that me? Sorry, if so. Posting from a cell phone ftl.

That won't be an issue in 3 years. But the point about consoles was ease of use and standard of playability, not about consoles in particular. But you knew that.


Their mistake. I realize FPSes feel the need to pile on the shiny, but for MMOG's in today's market, lack of graceful degradability in performance is a HUGE fucking mistake. It's putting barriers between the player and the subscription, and for a game that was as expensive as TR, took as long to develop and doesn't have WoW's built-in audience, it's suicidal. It's not like the game IS an FPS, it's not even FPS-lite. The player can't dodge, so latency shouldn't be much of an issue. Make the client RUN great first, then look great second. Anything else is less customers who will buy a sub.

My point about consoles was the same as yours, as they apply to today and stretching back through the life of MMOs. And unless a) keyboards and mice are standards on consoles in 3 years; or, b) an entire generation of millions of kids gleefully adopts VoIP, I highly suspect what persistent world MMOs make it to consoles are not going to be of the variety we here enjoy playing.

Otherwise, we agree on TR as a non-FPS. They may have wanted it to be, and therefore thought maybe they could adopt the push-envelope system specs. Their results though...

While controllers are probably a feature I highly suspect the biggest impediment to MMOs on consoles is that the online aspect is so much more limited, or has been until recent times.

This will change. Consoles will dominate nearly all gaming in the future.

I generally agree with all Haem has said here. I also wince at statements like "the nine aspects of WoW's success" and "the first most important rule"!


I really really doubt this. The barriers between PC and console gaming will continue to come down into the future. And even if they don't, you're not really in a position to say what types of games 'we' here enjoy playing. Not only do we all have differing tastes but to a certain extent no one knows what games they like playing before they play them unless they're completely derivative. So the chances that console MMOs will be made in the future that you don't like is assuming as much about the way developers go with MMOs as much as it is a statement about consoles themselves.

Well, you're right and you're wrong. As computer hardware continues to be heavily commoditized, the distinction between computers and consoles will blur and cease to be meaningful. Much like stereo equipment in the 60s compared to the 90s, <$100 will get you something that's good enough to do whatever you want. If you feel the need to spend thousands on an enthusiast rig it'll be available, but the benefit will be increasingly small as time passes.

This is something people have been predicting for years, but which shows no inkling of coming to pass. The closest thing we've is being able to play some video on a hacked xbox. Sony's "efforts" in that direction have been token at best.

The game developers like consoles because of hardware/software consistency and reduced pirating. People like consoles because of hardware consistency as well.

Hardware and software customization is at the heart of what makes a PC a PC. There's no possible merging of PC and gaming consoles; they are diametrically opposed.

Hardware customization will cease to be meaningful at the consumer level, that's what commoditization means. When hardware is fully commoditized, the console business as it is today will cease to exist, because there won't be any reason for content creators to pay their licensing fees. And no, we're not there yet. This is at least 10 years away.

Your consoles in this generation can now:

have logins
connect to online services
browse the Web
download and install software
have a desktop picture
send and receive email
use IM
have a filesystem
serve media
track appointments
play movies
play music
attach peripherals

That's a lot of inklings, to my mind.

I envision a day when everyone has a commodity box in their living rooms with big brother monitoring them, and also have chips in their wrists too.

Everyone get your tinfoil hats ready.

I have to confess that I miss the days when online games required you to own a computer and actually know how to use it.  It was like a magical idiot filter. 

Two Words: Microsoft Surface. :)

That never worked.

You should compare general chat channels from early muds to that of WoW.  It was like a completely different world... people used whole words, punctuation and everything.

I believe you, but i don't believe the internets or any of its incarnations, or predecessors were devoid of asshats :)

Well, with my MUD that had at peak hours close to 100 or so without multiplay, I'd say 5-10 were asshats. So let's say 7.5%. However, as the game went on and more people started dropping off the MUD, there was a greater proportion of asshats. I wonder if this is true of most games.

Consoles already do, across many genres. Not all of them though, and as you can see with Microsoft, they are looking to blend the PC and Xbox console in a lot of ways. It's part of their "Anywhere" strategy. Some parts of it are working ok while others not so much, but they're trying.

When I say "we here" about MMOs, I mean folks like those in this thread, including myself, who enjoy DIKU and other worlds with deep immersion, based on where we've been and how that's honed our preferences. Sure that can and will change. And of course I don't speak for anyone but myself. But it's what I see.

Imagine taking any MMO off the shelf and putting it on a console. How would that work? Seriously, the entire UI has to be changed for the console, whether it uses a keyboard/mouse or not. The resolution itself is against you, as is the play environment.

So I said what I did because for MMOs to be relevant on consoles they need to change. And that could include changing their audience. That's not a guarantee of course, since so many here are also console gamers. But it's not as easy and obvious as you amy think. To be honest I look forward to this. Now with HDTV and looking at the 360, I'm finding myself more interested in public social lounge-chair gaming than darkened/headphone gaming.

To me that's the bigger issue. At a technical level there's nothing preventing an MMO on a console. And that was true in the last generation (EQOA, FFXI notably).

No, it really wasn't. Idiots own computers too, and know how to use them. Social skills, OTOH, not so much. Sportsmanship, not in a million years.

I guess I'm thinking back to a time earlier than most of you.  Yes, I realize that idiots are ubiquitous.  In the early, pre-internet online computer world, most people I ran into were either engineers, computer scientists, or students in those fields.  I found that it was far easier to find intelligent conversation than it is now that the PC with an internet connection is far more commonplace.  If you have a different opinion, perhaps our experiences were different.  I just know that the first time I heard the general chat channel in WoW or when I stumbled into VN that I was saddened for the state of humanity. 

Yup, back when the Internet was "non-commerical" places like Usenet were populated with University people and people from tech companies who were part of the early backbone. And then AOL subscribers got access to Usenet...

Most of the shit we have nowadays wouldn't be here without commercialization. Is it worth it? Depends on your POV :)

Hey now, not all of us AOL users from that time were idiots.  Some of us actually took the time to learn how to fucking behave.

The pay-per-hour days were definitely a filter of their own sort even though I'll concede the AOL idiocy was pervasive enough it justified many blanked domain bans. (And got worse when the hourly rate was dropped.)  It should be an axiom that the more accessible something is, the worse it is guaranteed to be.   It's worked for everything so far.

I remember that day clearly, it destroyed a community that had taken years to build in a single day. Post volumes instantly sextupled, then increased logarithmically over the next week. Imagine opening up the sunday times and seeing the ORLY owl or shamans bitching about warlocks. Truly, it was a sad day.

How far are you going back?  Recall the war between alt.tasteless and rec.pet.cats?  The many and various newsgroups that were made for no purpose than griefing?  There was plenty of asstard-ry.

86 or so is when I first started posting regularly. Things weren't quite so bad back then.

I loved usenet in the 80s. I wish I knew of a war between alt.tasteless and rec.pet.cats. Sounds like a good time.

Sigh....

The things I missed because I didn't have internet until I went to college in '94.   :cry:

Someone crossposted to both groups how to cook a cat, which led to a rather spectacular flame war.  The two groups probably couldn't have been more different.

I definitely want an archive of that.

Me too, google was no help so far, just pointed me to a Wired article from 1994 that I could not find as  well  :crying_panda:

alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die?

alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork came first, I believe.

I have fond memories of alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die.

alt.fan.lemurs

alt.fan.o.j.simpson.run.faster
alt.fan.o.j.simpson.gas.chamber

"War" info starts here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.05/alt.tasteless.html?pg=3&topic=

Post mentioned in article: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tasteless/browse_thread/thread/3f265cf9ef49d3e1/3deb7eafa638c3bb?lnk=gst&rnum=2&fwc=1#

Example of kitties taking it to alt.tasteless: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tasteless/browse_thread/thread/abbbe9b859eac29f/a580d2bb69b07077?lnk=gst&rnum=5&fwc=1#

Watching the frontpage video showing the first 20 minutes of gameplay probably saved me 50 dollars.  Thanks for that.

Oddly enough, looking at the video I'm absolutely bowled over that they didn't go first-person with this.  The style of gameplay, and the greater emphasis on PvE rather than PvP, mean this would probably be less latency-intensive than Planetside (feel free to jump in and correct me if I'm wrong on this), and PlanetSide does just fine.

If this were actually an FPS -- or at least did a decent job at adapting FPS gameplay to online play, a-la either PlanetSide or Neocron, I'd buy in a heartbeat.

All I can hope for now is that it's a flop, causing them to NGE the hell out of it early on because they have little to lose, and maybe a few years from now I've got an interesting game to play.

Their first mistake was making the game so PVE centric. Half ass games can get by for a while if their PVP is solid. The game might have at least got more than a 5 minute try by me if the promise of pwning noobs was in my future. Pwning foozles? Not so much.

It wants to be a free game but even then I wouldnt play. But maybe a bunch of poor kids would. It's not bad, just uninteresting.

I seem to recall a lot of talk about focusing on the "fun" in this game in a Richard Garriot interview...

I'm starting to think he doesn't know what fun is.

Welcome to the world of MMO design prerequisites.

Can we take it as read yet that most of the MMOG pioneers had no idea whatsoever what they were doing and just got very lucky, or do we need to wait for WAR to launch first?

Most of them have pretty much said that, so I thought it was a given already. 

Lord British in SPAAAACE!

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2007/09/123_10317.html (http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2007/09/123_10317.html)

Publicity stunt, or do you think he has actual interest in research?

Publicity. British doesn't have interests, only delusions.

Dude, his dad was an astronaut. Of course he wants to go into space. Then again, who wouldn't? It'd be a blast.

I'm more worried that going into space might result in a blast than being one.

And a rat tail.

That's the case with most successful people. Very few replicate their success. Besides, Garriot gets something of a pass because he didn't just get lucky once. He made a bunch of great games before UO came along. Making fun of his rat-tail and modern delusions is all good internet anonymous fun, but the man has done more for gaming than anyone saying such crap.

You stay classy, anonymous internet insulter.

I had a cousin who was born with a tail.  It wasn't a rat's tail, though.  I guess it was some sort of strange ancient human tail.  I never saw it but I remember everyone whispering about it.  Every time I asked to see it, someone shouted at me.   :|

There are entire online communities that would probably be envious of your cousin.

For anyone that cares...

Tabula Rasa is not going to segregate US and Eurotrash in the live game. Methinks they are worried about server population.

Uhm. What the hell?

I don't follow. Why would letting players choose what continent [timezone] they prefer to play have impact on server population?

What's with releasing a Euro client anyway? Is it about subscription fees (15 Euro > 15 USD)?

NC is a global company. Why wouldn't they want to launch in more than just one territory, particularly when so many other games have too?

As to the server population, I think it's more a matter of density. If EU players were separate from US players, and both markets decline, both groups experience a lessening amount of players, lessening amount of instanced public zones, lessening amount of PUG potential, lessening amount of examples that other people like the game too. It then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, the reason for server merges and bad press. Obviously if a decline is going to happen, it will anyway. But this lets them stem the tide somewhat if it does.

Darniaq explains well. That's what I meant. He smart. Me not so much.

Rather substantial patch over in the beta, seems quite a bit of rethinking has gone into the "Control" point game play.

I just got an email about pre-ordering and getting ten free days of Tabula Rasa.

I think that's a new record. -30 days til Free shit.

Has any thought gone into the FUN point of game play?

Sorry, I had to.  :evil:

What?

Not sure. Ill have to look.

Tabula Rasa™ Patch Notes
Patch Notes and Known Issues 9/25
September 25, 2007


Patch Notes 9/24/07:

General:

• Top 3 damage dealers get XP for a Kill:
Top 1: 100% XP
Next: 50% XP
Final: 25% XP

• More ToO Missions added.

•Foreas Valverde is now open.

• On Arieki: Ligo: Thunderhead, there is a new area called “Vashtar Pass.” This cave system is on the eastern side of the map, and creates a bypass for the Eastern Rim Control Point between Outpost Aurora and Substation E-104.

• XP modifier now goes up in percentages 125%, 150%, 175%, 200%, 250% (no longer 2x,3x,4x,5x,6x)

• Added an NPC that allows you to skip bootcamp.

• Polish, Polish, Polish - Art updates, area beautification and fillout, tweaks to base areas, missions/content adds.

• Bug fixes galore - over 1000 bugs fixed for this patch all over the game.

UI Updates

• Changed the Chat tab default names to General, LFG, Trade and Combat

• Overhead indicators now display for players that are in a wargame

• Added /afk and /brb slash commands. Type the command again to turn them off.

• Tons of Icon updates

• Assorted sound changes, additions and upgrades to tutorial speech.

Skills and Abilities

• Grenade Launcher damage now falls off from the center of the explosion instead of doing the same damage to all affected targets.

• Force Blast now uses 50 Power at all pump levels

• Electric weapons’ tooltips now say they do “Electric” damage instead of “Energy” damage.

• The cover modifier of paint target should properly apply now.

• You shouldn't be able to equip/unequip or change your action bars around while polymorphed now.

• Staff weapons no longer heat up when their ranged attack is used.

• Tourqueshell Rifles now take rockets and have a clip size of 4.

• Corrected the ammunition type requirements for some weapons

• Frighten ability now has higher Power costs, especially at high pump levels

Control Points

Many Control Points have been revamped and updated. Please note that some of the rewards are currently placeholder.

• When AFS controlled:
o The base’s ‘functionality’ is online:
o o Forcefield changes to AFS faction
o o Turrets change faction. If they are destroyed at the time of change, they will respawn next time in the AFS faction.
o o Waypoints are online
o o Hospital is online
o o Mission givers and vendors are online.

o AFS defenders spawn in
o o Bane defenders that are remaining stay intact.
o o Bane waves that are remaining from previous assaults attempt to run to the waypoint.


• When Bane controlled:
o The base’s ‘functionality’ is offline:
o o Forcefield changes to Bane faction
o o Turrets change faction. If they are destroyed at the time of change, they will respawn next time in the Bane faction.
o o Waypoints are offline
o o Hospital is offline
o o Mission givers and vendors attempt to escape by running to the waypoint.

o Bane defenders spawn in


• All control points have two control point base commanders – an Assault Commander and Defense Commander:

o Defense mission:
o o Turn in defense tokens to receive a choice of 4 armor modification recipes
o Assault mission:
o o Turn in assault tokens to receive a choice of 4 weapon modification recipes

o Tokens are given based on player actions:
o o Assault tokens are dropped on the Bane defenders as players assault a CP.
o o Defender tokens are dropped on the Bane assaults as players defend a CP.

• Special notes:
o Crafting stations, footlockers, and any other player controlled interactables are online if not listed above. We are not disabling these based on control point faction at this time.



Crafting

• Reduced the variety of Item Modification recipes in crafting. Damage type specific weapon enhancement recipes no longer drop.

• There were a large number of changes scheduled to go into this patch for crafting but they have been delayed until the next patch.


Fixed Issues from last Patch:

• Fixed issue in Securing Torcastra so that you no longer have to leave the instance and come back in if you fail the mission.

• Radial and Conical Healing Discs are no longer healing self only.

• The Rez Sickness timer will no longer report the incorrect amount of Rez Sickness time left after multiple deaths.

• Logos should now all be placed in game for abilities.

• If you have more than 11 members in your clan the clan window now causes the scroll bar to become active.

• For the Tier 4 ability 'Bot Construction' after a bot is spawned it should now follow the player around.

• The Repair Bot now repairs player armor or mechanical units.

• Some doors did not allow players to enter. This should now be resolved.

• Craftable grenades of any damage type no longer all do physical damage regardless of intended damage type.

• when killed, enemies should now give the correct amount of credits.


Known Issues:

• Staff is not currently getting a bonus to melee damage with each pump level. This is a bug. Both melee and ranged damage should increase with each pump of this skill.

• All tooltips for grenades are being incorrectly listed as fragmentation grenades in the ability tray.

• If you find yourself crashing you may want to disable deferred lighting in your video options menu.

• The Rage ability description is incorrect.

• All of the Hortimunculus pump levels are working the same way. This is a bug.

• The Imperial Valley Control Point is handing out assault and defense tokens incorrectly. You get defense tokens for attacking and assault tokens for defending.

• Using Rushing Blow on a Maw may cause your character to be unable to attack. If this happens, log out and back in to correct the issue.

• If you make a character and then delete him you may be unable to create another character with that same first name for up to 30 minutes.

• If you die while under the effect of the Spy ability "Polymorph" you can get into a state where you are unable to draw your weapon. If this happens, log out and back in to correct the issue.

• If you use the Spy ability Polymorph at any pump level and you holster your weapon, you will not be able to unholster the weapon again. In order to fix this issue you have to use Polymorph again and then click it off or log out and back into the character.

• When you disable tutorial tips via the tutorial tip's dialog box they cannot be turned back on.

• At times you may appear to no longer be in your clan. If this happens, log out to character selection and back in and it should resolve the issue.

• Some crafting recipes cost the same to make an item as to purchase the item directly from an NPC. This is a bug.

• Polymorph pump level 2 is not repairing Mechs or Turrets. This is a bug.

• Rez Trama Kits I and II may not update the Rez Sickness timer correctly.

• If you complete the portion of the mission Obstruction Destruction that asks you to Blow up the Downed Dropship and then lose connection or log out, when you get back into bootcamp the detonator acceptor will be floating in midair without anything to blow up.

• If you change your graphic settings to custom and the log out when you log back in your setting will return to high.

• The Exobiologist ability Hortimonculus is not working as described in the tool tip.

• The recipe for Class VII Concussion Grenade states that it requires Crafting: Explosives level 1. This item should be listed as a level 3 or 4 crafting level.

• Ranger Reinforcements are not doing melee damage.

• Several instance areas are offline at this time.

• Some abilities/actions do not work properly in PvP Duels.

• Enemies in the Hydro Plant on Concordia Divide will not attack until attacked first.

• Some Tier 4 abilities or weapons may have bugs, fail to work or not operate as intended.


Broken Missions


Concordia Divide
• Mission: Machinations
Issue: Unable to Turn in/complete mission.

• Mission: Filching From Filchers
Issue: Unable to Turn in/complete mission.

• Mission: Careless (Formerly Taking Care of the Caretakers - Dr. Sherman)
Issue: Unable to Turn in/complete mission.

• Mission: Data Thieves
Issue: Quest items do not properly assign to squad members

• Mission: Keymaster of Torcastra
Issue: Mission npc Hamilton gets killed by friendlies if led out of the prison

Torden Plains
• Mission: Combat Ground Patrol: Plains
Issue: Unable to Turn in/complete mission.

• Mission: Speak to Colonel Franks
Issue: Players are unable to interact with Colonel Franks to get the mission

• Mission: Operation Mole Removal
Issue: “Speak to Colonel Franks” is the a pre-req for this mission

• Mission: A Brother's Message
Issue: “Speak to Colonel Franks” is the a pre-req for this mission

• Mission: Periodical of Questionable Morality
Issue: The second objective of this mission does not complete correctly

• Mission: Geyser Chimney Basin [CP]: Assault Tokens
Issue: Objective does not complete when you get 25 tokens

• Mission: LOGOS: Lightning
Issue: Objective does not complete when you add the logos to your tabula

• Mission: LOGOS: ADD
Issue: Objective does not complete when you add the logos to your tabula

Torden Incline
• Mission: Free Labbna
Issue: The second objective of this mission does not complete correctly

Torden Mires
• Mission: Miner's Apprentice
Issue: Parties cannot get the keycard for the final objective, making it incompletable for all but one player

Valverde Plateau
• Mission: Maligo Base: Coup
Issue: Some squad members may not be able to complete the mission because there are not enough corpses to loot.

Valverde Marshes
• Mission: Dogtag Detail
Issue: Players may not be able to loot dog tags off fallen AFS troops

Torden Abyss
• Mission: Styx and Stones
Issue: Cannot Plant Mission items making the mission incompletable

• Mission: Pipe Down
Issue: Targets of quest are untargetable and cannot be destroyed


Patch Notes Archive

Is it just me?  Where's teh hype?

No promos at the local EB's or other.  I wouldn't know about this if I didn't read f13.

Hey.  That's a good tagline for bad games.

It's hard to hype a game whose server crashes at least once a day.

Once a day isn't too bad for beta.  BC beta was crashing every 2 1/2 hours or so.. the wow stress test was pretty harsh as well if I remember right.  Now, if they're still doing the whole "servers are only online for testing  from noon to midnight pst" thing then yeah, I'll agree it's very bad.

It's less than a month from release. If you can't keep the servers running at least 22 or so hours (taking it down once a day for a couple of hours is acceptable) without crashing at this point in time it's a problem.

They are doing that too. They tried switching to a 24x7 schedule but failed miserably so they are back to their limited hours testing schedule (still with regular crashes).

Ow.

"Hey ma.. what's that bright light in the sky?"
"Another star going down in flames, son."

And I didn't even mentioned the big problems they've been having with rollbacks and inventory resets. I haven't tried the latest patch yet (just finished downloading it) but for a couple of weeks everytime you zoned or logged in or out items in your inventory and personal storage locker would unstack and/or dup (yes dup). And then there were the rollbacks where if the server crashed you wouldn't just lose minutes of progress but *hours* of progress. As in they weren't saving any of your character state for hours at a time.

They already have hills.

Hellgate is going to wipe its ass with unsold boxes of Tabula Rasa.

I was going to say Hellgate could have been named "Diablo II meets Bioshock:  The game Tabula Rasa wanted to be."

• XP modifier now goes up in percentages 125%, 150%, 175%, 200%, 250% (no longer 2x,3x,4x,5x,6x) Exp nerf
• Grenade Launcher damage now falls off from the center of the explosion instead of doing the same damage to all affected targets. Combat nerf

Lot of known issues and broken mission. Inventory problems and roll-backs have been around since the alpha. I was always losing skills and items, that was actually what made me stop playing originally.

So all in all, right on target for typical mmo launch. And good job nerfing the one thing I enjoyed in the game, thanks for making sure I never consider playing!

I'm sorry, but Hellgates premise sucks. I'm not going to even read reviews about it... much less buy it. A vampire/demon slaying SciFi game? No thanks.
Tabula Rasa's premise is good, well... at least "ok" but it sounds like they fubard the game itself. Why a new control system? WASD rocks and I don't want anything new.
Neocron has an awesome premise... to bad it has so many horrible bugs. If I could get a Neocron like game with WoW's stability and polish I'd be happy.

Man, wouldn't it be great if you knew what Hellgate: London was?

(Didn't mean to follow you in here and rag on you again, heh.)

I know man. That game, even with the bugs and shitty initial combat, was some of the best PVP I've ever experienced and had some great systems in it.

It's basically the same premise as Shadowrun (minus elves and orcs and such).  Maybe Shadowrun vs The Omega Man.  Heck, it's the same premise as DOOM.  'Sucks' as regards the premise isn't going to win you any credit for rationality.


That way, in your own mind, you can never be wrong.  Clever.

WTF is with backspace making you go back in your browser. Whose bright idea was that? May I slap them?

Anyway as far as reviews go just look at all the gushing 9-10/10 reviews of Halo 3 and tell me they are good for anything other than feeding the hype and doing what their bosses tell them to do and/or whomever paid them off.

Me and my brother played the campaign through yesterday. I don't like FPS unless I'm playing with him, he lives and breaths it. We both said it was crap.

Ending especially. They basically just did the Halo 1 ending again. Right down to the last level. Hell not even a good boss fight in the whole thing. Basically they just threw a asston of enemies at you and said ok good luck, kill em all.

Multi Player might be somewhat redeeming but why fucking give a game 9-10/10 when all you have played is a shitty campaign and probably a handful of multi matches.

Edit. I give it Two Epic Fails out of Five.

One for not being that good. And another for supposed to have being good and all the hype.

You know, I think you expect some server suckage in beta and even early launch.  Rollbacks are way worse of course, but as long as it's not carrying over into live, I guess it's to be expected in beta, even if probably not this late in beta.  I admittedly haven't logged into TR recently, so I don't know how bad it still is.    Even if it carries over into live, I guess I've just been conditioned to expect it at an MMO launch.  Usually, these kinds of things are what is fixed.  Hopefully they're done as quickly as possible.  But shit like that doesn't really bother me if the game is worth it.

That's the problem with TR.  It's not worth it.  Why?  I've been thinking about what I thought sucked and to be honest I've confused myself.  On one hand, on a fundamental level I think games that are basically third person shooters are fun.  We can probably all point to a third person shooter that we like.  But somehow, with the way TR does its targeting 'lock-on' thingey it takes away that freedom from a normal shooter to switch targets fluidly by simply putting reticle on target.  In TR, you tab onto your target and it really doesn't matter where your gun is pointing.  Now that probably doesn't sound like a tremendous flaw, but in practice it somehow is.  It makes you feel like you're just standing there clicking mindlessly as a mob's health bar diminishes in varying ways depending on which button I've mashed. 

It's really confusing why the seemingly simple difference between targeting styles can make such a huge difference to me.  It feels like it shouldn't, but it just does.  I think, and this opinion is solely mine, that this is the single biggest thing that will ultimately sink this game.  There are other things that are horribly wrong for sure.  But this one is the crowned prince of what's wrong with TR.

So, yea, I know there is probably some technical limitation that prevented them from doing it another way, or something.  But as it is, it's no different from being a mage in WoW.  You have a target, and you 'nuke' it with your gun.  There are special powers and whatnot, but they just feel sort of ancillary.  Even that wouldn't be so bad if there were different types of classes that did things differently.  But there's not.  Unless you call tossing a grenade to do damage different from shooting a gun to do damage.  But you don't.  'Cause you're not retarded.

If they can't get past the server crashing daily with less than a month left in beta, then don't expect that to get fixed soon after release. History is not kind to MMOG's that have server crashes this late in beta.

But yes, TR has bigger problems than server crashes, problems that should have been fixed in the alpha stage. If the fun isn't in beta, it won't be ever.

I think it was done for accessibility. They are after the RPG people, not the FPS people, and they think that RPG people,..well, Can't or wont like to "Fully" have to aim.

You ragged on me somewhere else? Doh! I better check my other posts... lol

If I have it wrong about Hellgate London, please correct me... but seriously, I checked out the website and all I see is SciFi+Vampire+Anime... I like the scifi part... but thats about it.
---
Ok, I just re-looked at the site... maybe more daemons than vampires... but whatever. I'd still not want to play it.

Zero vampires, and I'm not seeing much that's anime about it. Which anime is it suppose to resemble?

Which anime?  I don't know what that means.   :|

Charlie knows absolutely nothing about Hellgate and has decided to continue to know nothing. There's no reason to respond.

It seems to me that he has been doing this in several threads.

Charlie my man, I seriously want to help you. I want to spread the goodness that is Hellgate, but I fear you may be too far gone.

There's no cause for alarm. Everything will be fine. Drink the Kool-Aid.

Sorta defeats the point of aiming at all though, don't it?

Are the grenades actually "aimed"?  If so, wouldn't that just be where the 'twitch skill' part moves to, especially with the damage now being based on proximity?

That's not how TR's targeting/aiming system works. TR uses a "sticky aiming" system where your reticle will "snap to" a target if it's close enough to one. Think of it like a console-style aiming assist mechanic. If you turn and move the reticle far enough away from the target you lose that "lock". So it's a "soft locking" system not a hard locking one like in typical MMORPGs. Note that where your gun is pointing is not important -- it's where your reticle is that matters as the game will autoface you to shoot where your reticle is pointing when you fire (watch my controls video for an explanation of this).

Where the Tab key comes into play is if you are shooting into a crowd of possible targets. With the snap to system your target will switch around as your reticle moves around making it very difficult to focus your fire on a single target. If you use the Tab key it'll prevent that from happening but again if you move the reticle far enough away you'll lose the target.

If you are standng still and your target is standing still then it does work and feel like a typical MMORPG where you just stand there and press the mouse buttons over and over till the creature is dead. If either of you are moving then you do have to aim to be able to hit your target, just not nearly as much as in an real shooter.

If you want to pretend you are playing a shooter use the shotgun which has no tab locking or snap to aiming at all -- you just point and shoot like you do in a normal shooter.

Saying "it's like anime" is like saying "it's like comic book" or "it's like movie". It's just medium, there's metric fuckton of both visual styles and genres (SciFi being one of them) contained in either of these.

I'm going to laugh if Hellgate tanks.

I mean, I like it, but robot jesus it ain't.

Then again, I haven't played TR in weeks either...

Gahhhhhh   :nda:  :nda:  :nda:

Honestly, if you speak about the game, what are they going to do, especially if you do it anonymously?  You're not press, you're just random internet guy.  Nothing to lose, no trace to track.  Worst that will probably happen is that the post gets deleted.

Don't do it. It's really fucking simple.

You the accept button for the NDA or you're playing on someone else's account that did.  Cavalier violation of NDA is going to land you a seat next to Mediocre (currently ban avoiding  :roll: ), Bruce and Dark Vengeance.

Don't advocate NDA violation, that's just stupid. 

Ras totally has a point, strike my comments from the record.

Not being cavalier, just grumpy and absent-minded.

I'm not in the Beta at all, but sort of taking a different perspective on things.  Yes, you'd probably be a Pariah in whatever internet community you decided to do this in.

The guys who run this site (or any gaming site) don't want their posters to break an NDA because developers will not support a site that tolerates NDA breaking. It is social enforcement.  Everyone knows that people break NDAs all the time on private forums. private messages  and person-to-person conversation, so just keep it there.

TR graphics look like DAoC at launch as far as world textures go. That's just so-so.

As to the gameplay, I have not bothered to play it yet, but I watched the gameplay videos posted on the front-page here and wow... it just looks boring.

In all honesty, I would rather test this (http://www.uoherald.com/kingdomreborn/). And that's saying something...

Thats just stupid. The mods here could get in trouble for shit like that, and while I may enjoy being a dick some times with borderline NSFW posts, I wouldnt blatantly spit in the faces of the guys who put their time and money in to this site.

NDA violating is really fucking stupid. You may not enjoy folks like Raph and Lum and Cuppycake coming around and talking to the plebians, but many of us do. Creating an environment that openly disrepects that relationship is the essence of being a Douchie Von Douchington.

Blast off in T minus 13 months. (http://www.richardinspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=News.viewnews&newsid=268)

So, is the TR dev team footing the bill for this to get him the fuck out of their hair for awhile?

Space Adventures advisory board includes Skylab/Shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott, who happens to be RG's daddy. I'm sure there's a discount involved.

Take your kid to work day?

If I were on his staff, I would kick him directly in the motherfucking teeth for wasting money on this space shit instead of investing it in making a good game.

Truly, Mr. British, you are officially King Douchebag. Fucking top of the hill. Goddamn.

News now getting beyond the usual gaming media...

http://www.space.com/news/070928_garriott_spacetourist.html (http://www.space.com/news/070928_garriott_spacetourist.html)

Former Astronaut's Son Signs on as Next Space Tourist
By Tariq Malik
Staff Writer
posted: 28 September 2007
2:55 p.m. ET

A retired NASA astronaut's son has signed on for a multimillion-dollar trek to the International Space Station (ISS) next year, a space tourism firm announced Friday.

American computer game developer Richard Garriott will pay at least $30 million to launch toward the space station aboard a Russian Soyuz spaceship in October 2008, said the Virginia-based firm Space Adventures, which brokered the flight with Russia's Federal Space Agency.

"Journeying to space has been a dream of mine since I was young," Garriott wrote on his Web site www.richardinspace.com. "This is hardly surprising since my father, Owen Garriott, is a former NASA astronaut who participated in such missions as Skylab and Spacelab-1 in the 1970s and '80s."

Garriott's father Owen, 76, joined NASA in 1965 as one of the agency's first six scientist astronauts. He spent just over 59 days in Earth orbit as part of NASA's Skylab 3 crew to the U.S. Skylab space station in 1973, then flew on the 10-day STS-9 flight aboard the Columbia space shuttle in 1983.

The younger Garriott's launch will mark the first time an American astronaut's child has reached space. If all goes according to plan, he will be greeted aboard the ISS by Expedition 17 commander Sergei Volkov, a Russian cosmonaut himself the son of veteran spaceflyer Alexander Volkov.

"I am so pleased that he is able to embrace this himself and that he is dedicating his flight to research," Owen Garriott said of his son in a statement. "I am very proud of him."

Richard Garriott, 46, is expected to spend about a week aboard the ISS during a 10-day spaceflight. He plans to perform science experiments as part of commercial agreements with private firms, including a series of protein crystallization experiments for the biotechnology firm ExtremoZyme, Inc. founded by his father. 

"I am dedicating my spaceflight to science," Garriott said in a statement. "We need to be adventurous in mind and stimulate our intellects to answer today's most daunting scientific questions and to invent tomorrow's technological marvels."

Residing in Austin, Texas, Garriott developed the Ultima computer game series and co-founded the Origins Systems computer game company with his brother Robert. He also co-founded the North American branch of the online game developer NCsoft.

Garriott's 2008 spaceflight will mark the sixth to the ISS by a paying visitor. Space Adventures has brokered the flights of all five previous space tourists, beginning with American entrepreneur Dennis Tito in 2001.

The most recent private spaceflyer, American Charles Simonyi - a Microsoft co-founder - paid up to $25 million for a 14-day flight to the ISS last April.
---------------

30 million bucks...not bad.

I completely agree with you and almost everyone else here about NDAs. You want to respect the concept of the NDA. However:

Agreed. But I think more damage is done with disrepectful crap like this:


Schild, you know I love ya man, in a macho fraternity guy comrade sorta way. But I also know you don't want this place to be a bunch of sideline sitting stone-throwing sig-writers either, no matter what you might feel for certain games.

To be fair, this is about him throwing money at being a SPACE TOURIST.

Seriously, if I were sitting in a chair higher than him in Korea right now, I'd kick him right off the hill. It's not about sitting on the sideline throwing stones. It's about wasted potential. Though, at this point, even calling it potential is going a bit far. As a game designer, I think Mr. British has bought the farm.

Of course, he might be going into space to scream.

To be fair, according to Mr. British it's about SCIENCE.

Hell hath no fury like investors duped. Perhaps for some game developers Earth is becoming vice-tight place?

I've been in a bunch of beta's, never broken an NDA and would almost always see it as wrong. But in certain circumstances I think I would condone it if done in a forum that was ok with that sort of thing (Fires of heaven for example) By certain circumstances, I mean like when Sigil started selling pre-orders for Vanguard when the game literally wouldn't even boot for a large percentage of us and an entire continent was missing from the game. It was clear that what they were doing was wrong an immoral. They were trying to sell the game they told the world they had... but it didn't exist. Basically bait and switch. I didn't breach the NDA because there were already hoards of people doing it, and my help wasn't needed, but I didn't shun those that did. It was the right thing to do.

I can only bust RG's balls so much on this one. Going into space is a once in a lifetime opportunity that few would pass on if they had the means and the methods.

Now, promoting this when you're getting ready to ship what the public seems to view as a lukewarm product at best, well, that's not sound PR.

Perhaps I missed something, but if I had the money to do so, I would be a space tourist in a heartbeat. Perhaps you just aren't as into it, but the dream of going into space is a powerful one and if someone has that dream and gets the opportunity, I can honestly understand why they would not pass it up. Living out a dream vs. tweaking a game for a bunch of whiny players? Surely you can see why space wins for him. I think he made his mark a long time ago and could have retired, but his love of games is what prompted him to continue making a new one, even if it does seem to be a lousy one. I won't fault him for trying. As for the timing, well, it's not like you can just pick your flight departure time for these space missions... yet.

I don't give a single shit nugget about developers' feelings. That's pandering bullshit, and entirely contrary to the concept of a rant site. Rants aren't vaultnetwork bootlicking back of the book blurb bullshit, they're funny, concise, correct, and most importantly direct criticism. Now all that said, I can't see Lum calling anyone a douchebag for their activities outside of gaming either.

Back on topic, I don't break NDAs because I gave my word. Not because I want to make friends with developers, or because I'm afraid of legal action. I told them I wouldn't do it, so I don't.

Maybe I'm in the wrong place, but I thought we left behind hate for hate's sake long ago. I'm not advocating anyone bend over just so they can get a beta invite or align themselves with a "red name". I just mentioned what I did (which is a closed issue as far as I'm concerned) because these are real people with real jobs paying real bills and could stand to lose real money by wonton abuse of NDA-provided privileges. If you want to be an ass, that's your (and my, and most anyone ehre) right as Anonymous_Ranter_01. But the head of a fairly well-traveled and watched site is a bit different. But again, a non-issue. I have a lot of respect for the community here and what management's been able to achieve*. I only mention it to clarify my earlier statement.

As an aside, I applaud RG for taking this opportunity. I'd do it in a heartbeat with little care on how I got the cash :)

* Colors and contents may vary. Consult your local retailer. Not available in all territories. Not a flying toy.

Darniaq, there's a whole SLEW of reasons this project (which I used to be UBER excited about) pissed me. Shit, it could be an entire article.

It's not hate for hates sake, and I could make one of those bulleted lists you love to point it all out. Hell, I could make a graph. You know what, screw it, I'm passing out when I get home and then I'm writing that article, making the list, and making the graph. >_>

Well, as long as it's got the graph!   :-D

It will be the first graph I've ever made for f13.

One of the axes will not be "LOLs" I promise.

Could you make a separate graph with a "LOLs" axis for the rest of us. ;)

Is this baby going to be frontpaged?

Yes.

If there's no LOL factor, I'm buying two copies and sending you both.

So, I'm about 3 pages into an article that doesn't really say anything. Mostly because there isn't anything to say. It has a pretty sweet timeline and I've got two graphs sketched out. But short of that, it's mostly just rehash and me calling Garriott an Astrolarper.

If Hollywood has taught us anything it's that in space, no one can hear you scream. Pity. As for Hellgate, a buddy tried to show me the beta last Thursday but the NDA gods must've been watching. He couldn't get it patched to get in. He said he really likes it though. I don't think that breaks any NDAs.

Heh, Starr Long just came out and announced that TR is delayed another 2 weeks. New official launch date is 11/2. Pre order start is 10/30.

Maybe they are putting an extra coat of polish on that turd. Does anyone here actually plan to give them money?

I'm still using a firehose to clean off after Vanguard.  TR will not suck me in.

The game has actually regressed in the last month. It's less stable, less balanced, has character rollback issues and character breaking quest bugs (I can't get off the first planet because of one) and lots of stuff is still unfinished (some low level quests still do not have proper quest rewards).

Ouch. Looks like the TR team is going to be in 24/7 crunch for the entire month of october. Crystal meth for everybody!

QFT. Corollary - even if the fun is in beta, it will probably be patched out before launch. 

Good plan...sneak it out while everyone is busy playing Hellgate: London.

Developers do love to "tune" exp gain in order to make the game more "challenging". 

:mob:

I am STILL pissed at Mythic for their giant group XP nerf that happened a a week or two after DAOC launched. Effectively killed the game for me, since my normal grouping buddies were catasstastic.

I looked breafly, but didnt see it in this thread. So.

TR has been pushed back. (http://www.rgtr.com/community/community_news/a_message_from_starr_long.html)

It's like 5 posts above yours. Are you the new replacement for Cuppycake? The endless dev stalker?

So it is.

And, i dunno, i just read a lot of (MMO) news sites ETC..figured i post stuff i haven't seen posted on F13, because i know we all love the tidbits.. I'm not aware of any dev stalking.

Stop touching me MRB!
/duck

You know you like it. Can't stalk the willing.  :cthulu:

You guys want a room?   :evil:

I thought I was the only one still grinding that particular axe.

At f13.net, you are free to grind whatever MMO axe you like, up to and beyond the end of the actual game that caused said grinding to start.

Nope, I'm still grinding too.  That bit of useless cockblockery completely ruined my ability to play DAOC, for that exact reason.  Couldn't keep up with guildmates, couldn't group with them after the nerf, canceled my subscription and threw the game away.

Can I jump in and grind my axe too?  Same problem as Way and Kit, same result.  It's the one thing that has me wary of getting fully behind Warhammer, as fun as it looks.

It got her a job, meh.

Oh and to add to DAoC axe grinding, the nerf to Mercenaries coupled with the xp nerf caused me to cancel and uninstall before the 30 days that came with the box were over.

Oooh, I got's a DAoC axe too!  Mine was born of the archery nerf.  Absolutely necessary for PvP, but made archers absolutely worthless in PvE, which killed the game for me.  Wantonly destroy my non-disruptive PvE playstyle for the sake of balancing PvP which I don't participate in and you lose my money.   I understand I and my fellow co-nerfees-who-cancelled made a noticeable blip in their earnings, for which I'm glad.

No, I'm not bitter.  I'm actually thankful.  That's one less bait-and-switch grind I played to the bitter endgame.

Some Combination of ToA+Style Review (or lack there of) was what finally drove me off. They told all the melee class TeamLeads (another genius program  :roll:) for nearly a year that the style review would fix everything, no need to report on style deficiencies or gaps, it will all be take care of in the style review.

Then when it was finally time for said review "No, sorry, we aren't doing that anymore."




Question: What does Tabula Rasa actually mean? Is it Latin for something, or just some stupid made up alien words?

Latin for "clean slate."

So this is the kind of game one gets when the developers get their brains wiped clean?

Actually, it's what you get when you distill the dreams of dinosaurs.

Hmmm....sounds like a good idea for a song....

It was alpha/beta test for me that drove me off… …boring, unimaginitive magic system, uninspired hamster wheel-a-thon missing dungeons and too much of a leveling curve…

Oh, yea, axe to grind!

Planetside launch: the huge XP nerf between beta and live. That effectively killed it for me. It seemed predicated on the DIKU thinking when in reality Planetside was about the fights not about the advancement. It was as if they thought they needed to tie advancement to more places to see in a world that was largely the same wherever you went. Sure there was weather, but nobody was there for the immersion.

The other axe, though far less so emotionally, was the over-reliance SWG:JTL had on returning to the ground game.

Each game gives me a new axe to grind.

AC1, when they added housing without thinking of the PvP implications.

DAoC, when they nerfed XP and I couldn't play with my friends anymore.

WoW, when my newbie night elf died and so I used my speedy noncorporeal ghost form to try and explore, but my ghost form couldn't quite make it to the mainland because it 'drowned'.

Gabriel Knight, that fucking voodoo code puzzle.

I see Tabula Rasa as being what the devs reputation will be after TR launches.

Nah... haud diutius utor rasa.

I took Latin V 20 years ago so I don't even remember what "haud" is.

The Planetside exp nerf is also my grinding axe. That and the fact that it seemed like more people played it to 'get exp' than to act like a military unit and work toward useful objectives. The resetting and stuff never bothered me, just that.

haud : no, not at all, by no means.

So, in the last few days they have announced short and long-term plans for the game, as some of you may already know.

- Large, free updates will be called "Operations":
"Operation 0 - Fair Trade" (http://www.rgtr.com/community/community_news/operation_0_fair_trade.html)

- Also, there is an announcement about the so called "Elder Content" of TR, coming to you, well...sometime in the not so distant future...or whatever:
"Elder Game" (http://www.rgtr.com/community/community_news/elder_game.html)

- And how could you resist the temptation of pre-ordering just to attend an in-game Halloween Holiday?
"Tabula Rasa Halloween Event" (http://www.rgtr.com/community/community_news/tabula_rasa_halloween_event.html)


Oh, and tonight it's Friday Fight Night in Alia Das, 8pm CST:
http://boards.playtr.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=116999&an=0&page=0#Post116999è (http://boards.playtr.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=116999&an=0&page=0#Post116999è)

Hyping in game events while in beta is a new one for me.

Pretty sure the Rikti Invasion that took years to actually enter CoX live was hyped in beta. Or was it that it took place in beta but they didn't talk about it much?

And I think SWG and WoW had events in their betas too, as examples of dynamic content. But those weren't PR'd much.

Hazy memory.

The pumpkin-head picture managed to look like a fantasy game.  Where are my fucking pewpewnicorns?

I think it was.  The sad truth is that I HATE THE FUCKING RIKTI INVASION in its current state.  Events like these are SO much better on the drawing board than they are in implementation. 

But aren't these TR events actually during beta? That is how I read it. It is one thing to hype these to the beta players, but quite a new thing to hype them to the public.

No, the Rikti invasion actually _happened_ in Beta.

The devs had Rikti "mastermind" NPCs and were calling in Rikti squads on players.

This invasion is automated and tends to lead to a knot of players forming and then Rikti spawning around them and the whole thing turning into a slideshow.

New patch is being uploaded on the servers. It's going to be the last beta patch; beside the episodic content ("Operation 0" mentioned above), we may get a new patch on headstart or launch day, bar any hotfixes before that.

UI tweaks, chat bubbles addition and other stuff (yeah, I would love to get a job as "patch notes summarizer":P) :

http://www.rgtr.com/news/patch_notes/patch_notes_and_known_issues_109.html (http://www.rgtr.com/news/patch_notes/patch_notes_and_known_issues_109.html)

I finally downloaded the beta and was actually pleasantly surprised, the game got me interested right away unlike any MMO I've tried since WoW. Staying power? Who knows, but after about two hours of play I'm looking forward to more.

I still like it. This latest patch has introduced some really annoying bugs (It kinda sucks when you can't attack mobs because the buttons you've assigned to do that, or pretty much anything else suddenly stop working for no rhyme or reason) and they've torqued the aggro and the damage tables up on the mobs to ridiculous levels. Of course, the tardcores think that's cool and cries of, "they turned off god mode" abound from that segment of the population...

Yeah, the constant schizofrenic whining on the beta forums is getting on my nerves: now that the game is finally somewhat challenging, they want to go back to "god-mode".  Before, it was totally soloable and people cried, and now that the Devs dared to make it more challenging, there are threads like "WTF, that enemy actually killed me???".

Hey, nothing new under the sun, ok, but IMO every patch actually polished the game more and more, especially for the first 20-25 levels, adding nice touches here and there. The recently announced features are promising for the endgame as well, so let's see if they can actually implement them without screwing the rest. In every MMOG I play, I usually pay scarce attention to the "nerf" bonanza happening to weapons or armors in-between a patch or the other. As far as I'm having fun with the whole game (as in gameplay in general, enviroment, social aspects...Hence not only combat combat combat and calculating DPS damage with a NASA computer) I'll keep playing.

Unfortunately, what is lacking is the skill system: it's not game-breaking for me, but it surely can for an awful lot of other players. For now it's not varied enough.

Trip down memory lane:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=334.0 (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=334.0)

In a few of the shots you'll see a tan and white cowgirl hero. That was me. Those weren't my original colors. I got into a supergroup right when the invasion started and those were the colors they had picked. My original colors were dark blue and white. People thought I was a Dallas fan. :D Anyhoo. That was one helluva night. Best end of beta event I've ever been in. It got so crowded towards the end though that a buddy of mine got stuck in the hospital and the game wouldn't let him out because the zone had reached the max number of players.

There's a fine line between "challenging" and just plain, "This is the third time I'm tying to do this milk run mission because random spawns just ganked my ass again" annoying. When people say "WTF, that enemy actually killed me, it may not be because they were used to playing in "god mode", it may be because they knew the odds of winning or losing against certain foes and now those odds have changed yet again.

Obligatory link to Zero Punctuation beta review (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2326-Zero-Punctuation-Tabula-Rasa).

I laughed at the bits I caught.  Unfortunately for me, I don't hear at the speed of light.

Server names released:

http://eu.rgtr.com/en/news_article/feedback_friday_2 (http://eu.rgtr.com/en/news_article/feedback_friday_2)

U.S. of A. :
Orion (West Coast)
Cassiopeia (West Coast)
Pegasus (East Coast)

Test Server (East Coast)

Europe:

Centaurus (Deutschland)
---

Hmm, just a single european server. Well, if the game is a "de profundis", at least they won't have to deal with the whole "merges" ordeal a la Vanguard.

3 servers for the US?

This is where you ask, do you feel lucky, punk?

You do, eh?  :evil:

So are these servers abnormally large population or is TR floundering from the get go?

Only three servers would be really pathetic unless they do have some sort of magical tech.  I can't think of an MMO that has launched with so few servers other than EvE and that's a special case.

Yes, lets start a dead pool for which two get blown away within a year or so.  I say they all get merged to... Orion.

Heh...

"Go to the slopes of Mount Longwayaway and kill five million Freddled Gruntbugglies"

TR can instance the main zones a la City of Heroes. On the other hand this launch setup reminds me of AA.

CoH didnt have many servers at release either (compared to a game like WoW at release), but they also allow free character transfer and even have cross-server chat for that matter.  TR will also have cross-server chat of course.
TR DOES have multiple instances of each zone, so in reality their pushin a LOT more servers then you think.  The nodes trickle away as you gain in level, but as the entire server population grows and levels, eventually more nodes will be added to the upper level zones.

Free transfer?  They did for the US to European servers or such, but they've only now introduce character transfer for CoH as a whole, and it's $10.  (Still a good deal compared to others games.)

yuck... talk about instant turnoff. Could this game get any worse?

Honestly, the game really isnt that bad.  And I'm a fairly cynical person. 

I think that's the point.  There's a world of difference between "isn't that bad" and "is A LOT of fun".

See the difference?  Us crazy gamers want more of the latter and less of the former yet we're continually disappointed.

Then call me crazy because right now, I'm actually enjoying it. Is it as grindy as CoX? Yeah, that would be my one major complaint right now. Well, that and they need to tone down the difficulty about half a notch.

Will it change the way I view MMOs? Nope, but I sure as hell like playing it right now.

Supposedly the first 25 levels are quite playable now. I guess I should try it again; I haven't played since the dang thing was in alpha.

There's a list a mile long of game differences from then till now.  And if they actually deliver the content they promised (within a respectable timeframe) then I see no reason why TR wouldnt be a blockbuster title...  vehicles (they're basically already coded and ready to go, garages and NPCs are already ingame), NPC squads (ala Gods and Heroes, already being tested), flashpoints, PvP contestable areas (ala Planetside), a mysterious playable hybrid race, high level elder instances, more planets... etc.

Regardless how much they add though... it'll still inevitably get old (just like WoW).  But, at least the game will be better.

That's ambience. Vehicle physics themselves are something else altogether. Can someone tell me if the NDA is done? Like, I think the game launches soon-ish but am too lazy to look it up, but still want to abide by the NDA if it's still in place.

NDA is done. Let 'er rip. (Oh, and check the title of the thread  :-D )

It's not ambience, it's an element of the terrain and bases that's been added to accomodate later expansion.  Bases in higher level areas are stupidly big and spread out for a reason (so large vehicles can get through unhindered).  The garages with an NPC lady standing there talking about vehicle rentals are there for a reason.  Same with the guy who runs the kennels.

Oh, yea, I skim "NDA" and assumed it was the same from when it was changed :)

Ok, no NDA.

Ghambit I want you to be right. EIther the later zones they made support vehicles or they rebuilt the earlier ones at the tech level. Vehicles were previously not supportable in this engine outside of the scripted events we see that use them.

Dont worry, I'm right.   :evil:
I follow this game fairly religiously these days.  Vehicles are basically all fleshed out.  Not sure if they've made it to the Dev server yet though.  I'm not gonna rehash TR news, you'll see on the playtr site what I'm talking about.  You cant get vehicles until lvl 40, so no reason to even make them uselful in the lower lvl zones- and there's no reason to rush them for release.

You'll be pleasantly surprised when you read the amount of stuff they're planning for this game.  But, planning and implementation are 2 different things.   Also, they've been pretty cryptic with a lot of things until recently (hence the splurge of new info.).  And I'm guessing there will be one more big surprise before launch.

we shall see

One time when Richard Garriott (aka General British) was on he said that vehicles would be introduced after launch so they are coming assuming the game doesn't tank at launch and everybody gets fired.

Maybe now that he's probably not going into Space he can concentrate more on the game.  Granted, TR really is Starr Long's game and not Garriott's.  The revolutionary combat system is his baby, and the game would be nothing w/o it.  Best he can do now is consult and dump money into the project or flat out take over if NCSoft abandons it post-launch.

Don't Richard and his brother basically run NC US? Robert is the president and CEO. Of course it's all funded by Korean won.

I guess that will change if TR fails and their attention moves to Aion.

Did I just see "revolutionary combat system" and TR in the same post?

Please tell me my sarcasm detector is broken.

Actually, no I won't :) You'll be the one I rely on for all the updates, in a Gutboy/SWG sorta way. It's good to hear vehicles are coming but quite honestly I finished with TR in August. Had a good six month run though, so not a fail. Just not interested in buying it. No specific reason why.

Ok. Sarcasm detector isn't broken. He's just fucking crazy.

What other MMO has the same combat mechanics?  please enlighten me (seriously) if there's one out there.  And I'm not talking about one that's slightly similar either, but a basic knock-off.

btw, by revolutionary I dont necessarily mean GREAT.  Revolutions dont always end up so hawt.

Oh no.

If you don't think pointing at enemies and holding down the left mouse button is revolutionary you're broken.  Sometimes they mix it up and you click the right mouse button, shit gets crazy man.

Heh.

If it were actually that simple I'd be more inclined to agree with you.  But if you feel leaving important details out proves your point somehow, so be it.  I wont bother repeating something I assume you already know.

Combat-wise, it felt closest to a watered-down Planetside. I know the technology is different, this is just "feel". The problem with TR (imho) isn't how much like an FPS is, it's how much it isn't. It's basically a normal RPG where you have greater say on what hits and doesn't. I don't feel as connected to the total outcome of a fight/skirmish as I did in PS, much less real FPS. That's ok, and I'm sure it'll have it's fans. But take out the omgfunfor4days slight tweak on combat and you've got the same sort of DIKU that make people wonder why they wouldn't just play more content complete and polished ones.

It does have a different theme. Kudos to them for fleshing out a sci-fi world at least. That should have been much more of the premise though. I lamented back in March that the theme doesn't do anything for the world. When I say "immersion" I don't mean fullscreen display. I mean, does the total game have a self-consistency in which things make sense? TR does not. And dammit, it really could have, quite easily, if they'd have elevated it to the same level of importance as crafting (why) and clan v clan (yea, because the last of humanity is going to fight themselves).

Either of those things (combat that made sense or lore that made sense) would have kept me interested.

Ymmv :)

There's nothing revolutionary about the combat system. "Sticky" targeting has been around for almost as long as there has been console shooters which the TR controls were clearly patterned after. Crouching having an affect on combat has been around in shooters for ages (at least since 1998). "Overkills" were in Mortal Kombat. The only new thing in TR's combat system is the effect of cover which would've worked a lot better if their combat LoS code actually worked and that's hardly a revolutionary idea.

It'd only be that simple if we were talking about your vanilla FPS.  TR is an RPG and a quasi "turn-based" one at that.  All of what you say is correct, but you fail to connect the dots on how it relates to applying it to a traditional turn-based RPG... which is what Starr Long accomplished. 

Rather than hash this all out yet again I'll simply cut/paste from a review I did on another site:
"The TR gaming mechanic:
Fear not you number/button crunchers out there, the mechanics behind hit/dmg. ARE “turn-based” so to speak… but the modifiers to the results are MUCH MUCH more complex and happen much quicker. We’ll take a game like WoW; you cast a spell and it does “x” dmg… period, end of story. Only real modifiers to this are in place well before you fire your spell… things like armor, resistance, range, etc; creating a pretty monochromatic gaming experience rooted purely in strategy and not in fluid tactics (a lot of singular button-pushing). In TR the computer is tasked with calculating these modifiers “on-the-fly.” You still have your traditional modifiers of resistance and armor. BUT, things like range, line of sight, hit area and aiming all play a roll in real-time. Not to mention, your traditional values of armor, resistance, etc. are NOT static. That is to say, they evolve depending on the damage you take during an engagement. As you take and give damage, you’re also treated to the damage and modifiers popping up over you or your target (without fancy add-ons). So you can aptly adjust your strategy based on what you see.

For example, in WoW you have “x” value armor which washes away “x” value dmg you take to HP. In TR, you have “x” value armor which as the armor takes dmg. it loses effectiveness (armor is represented as a % of 100). The armor itself USUALLY has to be defeated even before getting to your HP (some types of damage can ignore it…. Everything has its weakness). If you’re getting wailed on in a fight, over time your armor will take a beating and be less able to soak damage. In WoW, this value is static until your armor breaks. Thereby making armor in TR EXTREMELY important to maintain even during engagements (you obviously always want it near 100%). That armor of course can have special abilities like resistances, buffs, debuffs, etc. added. Armor also recharges as health does depending on that particular skill level, so even if your armor is gone if you take cover or fall back eventually it’ll recharge, albeit usually at a less effective armor %. Once hit, the dmg. your health or your armor takes pops up over your head, along with the amount that’s soaked. Same with your target’s.

Moving on; line-of-sight plays perhaps the biggest role in the game. If you don’t have it you can’t fire at something. No more fireballs through the walls. If a creature does have a bead on you and you’ve got partial cover, they take a big reduction in To-hit and dmg. The same goes for you. This simple mechanic makes the call to “Fall Back!” something that actually works. You can’t hit what you cant see.

Aiming is PARTIALLY FPS based. Yes, you have an aiming reticule and it’s extremely important to place it on the mob and wait for the good shot (like in Ghost Recon, it helps to crouch as the aiming-reticule focuses quicker). BUT, aiming affects to-hit AND dmg. not simply if you hit or not – it’s not as cut and dry as in an FPS. There are basically 3 ways to hit a mob; tab-locking, highlighting temporarily with the cursor, and pure aiming; tab-locking being the most penalized and pure aiming the least. Once aimed, the modifiers due to how much time you spent aiming come into play. This is all do on-the-fly in real-time usually measured in split seconds, so you don’t notice any of this going on (so it FEELS like a pure FPS).

Range is also very important. Different weapons and effects have different effective ranges which also modify results on-the-fly. Rifles don’t do much dmg. close up. Shotguns don’t do much dmg. far away. All weapons have a MAX range where beyond they won’t work at all. Weapons also fire at different rates and their DOTs are NOT listed like in other games (you must figure this out by yourself). You may have a pistol that does less damage, but fires faster then that rifle. At effective range you might do more harm with that pistol. What this mechanic does is very subtle. It adds another layer of tactics in that it’s best to switch attacks based on range as the enemy advances. As a group you will want to set up your attack/defense based on where each person’s strengths lie. Put your snipers in the back, pistoleers in the front, etc.

Hit-Location is also important in this game, something usually lacking in an RPG. Basically, positioning is everything. Not only must you study the battlefield, but you must attack from angles affording you an advantage based on the weakest part of your enemy. Certain enemies are heavily armored from the front, so attack from the back. Certain enemies have weak points, so aim for those."

Name me ONE MMORPG where this has been done before (specifically the combat mechanics themselves) and I'll quietly go away with my head in my hands.  Fact is, TR is still a "dice role" system with standard to-hit and dmg type stats to go along with everything else (armor, resistance, blah blah).  Even though the elements within it arent new (like tab-locking, crouching, etc.), HOW they're implemented (together) is where the innovation lies.  Regardless of the state of the game or if this combat mechanic "wows" you, it still is something different... and likely something we'll see more of in newer RPGs.

Neocron. SWG.

SWG, which failed miserably because they could never get CD in AND they decided to tack it on to a game that was already running for three goddamn years.

Or, for the cheap seats... DID SOMEONE SAY, "TWITCH"

heh, that never gets old.

Nope. Or is that yup?

Neocron is a pure vanilla FPS system.  SWG is for the most part just a sped up version of their old combat system, just with aiming involved. (albeit closer)
You could break off lists of games that have pieces of TR combat mechanic all day, but you wont find one MMO that has them all.  Which is what I asked you.

Nope. There's dice rolling in the background.

Ok Ghambit, you're at 11, we need you at about an 8.

That said, I'm totally on your side. It's a damn sight better than the NGE and I actually like it. The hurdle to 2nd tier's a bit of a pain in the ass, but it's definitely a fun game.

whaaaa???  (accesses memory banks)
I dont remember it being diceroll at all, errr.. at least not overtly so (scratches head).  And it's always described as being an FPS system.   I stand corrected then and ALMOST put my head in my hands. Regardless, you're saying it's JUST like TR's combat model??  I DEFINITELY dont remember it being like that.

No I'm not saying that. Like I said above the cover thing is unique AFAIK to the MMORPG world (cover is a common thing in turn-based tactical games and some RTSes but those aren't related to the FPS or RPG genres). But differences that minor do not make for a revolutionary combat system. In other words claiming something is "unique" does not make it revolutionary. You need to do better than that.

Ok, so we can all agree it's neither unique or revolutionary.

It's fresh and it ain't diku and right now, that's good enough for me.

What's not diku about it? The way I see it, it's like they took the core of diku and then dressed it up tp confuse you - a messy fucked up class and leveling system, and tacked on half-ass FPS combat routine as the gameplay. It's basically Hellgate Lite, with shitty loot and horrible hit detection. And it's uglier. And might have cost more to develop. Surly, go (pre)order Hellgate.

Anybody else notice that little gem and have sudden flashbacks of attempts to rationalize things in SWG - like that rifles hurt peoples minds becuse, um, they do.

I'm not picking on you here, I'll even admit that in glancing through what you wrote it appears to be a reasonably detailed combat system. But it just grates on me when the come up with absolutely silly mechanic ideas in the name of balance. Are they magic bullets coming out of the rifles that get faster the farther they go? Maybe they're heatseeking bullets that need time to zero in on the enemy's ass?

A post apocalyptic Scifi MMO without PVP? Instanced cities? No WASD?

This is the Pansy version of Anarchy Online, which was already fairly pansy.

Portal = Revolutionary
Tabula Rasa = Richard Garriott converts to Scientology.
 (How much you wanna bet the last boss is Xenu?)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/13/Xenu_BBC_Panorama.jpg)


edit: sp

Make rifles less accurate close-up (which amounts to the same thing as less damage) and it makes a lot more sense.

The periods after "dmg" in the middle of his sentences confuse me. I cry for our high school english teachers.

I haven't played TR but how does the cover in TR differ from LoS stuff that has been there since EQ?  I seem to remember rooting Centaurs in SK and hiding behind a tree to avoid arrows while I nuked em. 

Did the Centaurs do that on purpose? :)

LoS is overblown in TR. You see and can hit or you can't see and can't hit. Even WoW has that to a degree. TR mobs try and take advantage of it, as they do in other games.


I think the graphics at least are self-consistent with the intent of the lore, even if I find a lot of holes in that lore and no clear plan to fill them. But I definitely agree this is more DIKU-like (as interpreted by the genre) than not. Classes, XP, level-unlocked abilities, loot-affected stats, advancements to various level-appropriate content-dense areas, everything you expect from a polished DIKU ala WoW with a slightly different combat system.

It's fine really. This is a competent game in the context of the genre. It's just not the omgawesomethankgodRGisback that's been hyped. And that's fine too, as long is it continues to make business sense for NC.

If you are "behind/in cover" you take less damage. Conversely if you are crouched you do more damage. The problem with cover and crouching in TR is that the "what you can hit" LoS code does not match the "what you can see" LoS code so you constantly get messages saying "I can't see that" when in fact you are hitting your target fine. So you have to constantly watch the hit point bar of your target if you try to use cover or crouch on a regular basis.

Just to clarify "cover" in this context does not mean out of LoS. It means you are behind a low wall or rock or whatever where you are still visible but your body is partially covered.

Actually that's not true. See above.

Wake me up when merely competent games deserve funding and marketing like this one got.

Point taken, if mobs are actually ducking for cover when and where appropriate then that is revolutionary for a mmo.  mob ai is definately an area that needs improvement in todays mmogs. 

Mobs do not try and use LoS to their advantage in TR.

I agree from what I have read TR won't ever make a profit, Richard Garriott went off the deep end long ago but if you had his cash and influence you'd probably be long gone as well (I know I would).

I really think the guy is a genius but he probably shouldn't be let out of the think tank or too close to the production team.  I'm not privy to who was responsable for what in UO but it still has quite a few brilliant things in it that the mainstream mmogs have overlooked.  

Correct.


It's not really fresh, and it most certainly IS a diku. It has all the bits that make Diku, from classes, to gated by level content, to levels, hitpoints, etc. etc. etc. The only difference between it and a fantasy diku is how you attack. They removed the auto-attack from diku and grafted on an NGE style aiming interface, but other than how you point your mouse, it's so diku it hurts.

Good point. And I had thought mobs did try and use cover to their advantage. Some definitely were at some point in beta, at least in Divide, or maybe it was them just accidentally taking cover by sidestepping out of the way (their rudimentary avoidance). But that was long ago and it was far away and it was so much better than it is today.

"Deserve" and "got" unfortunately rarely align ;)

I recall mobs using cover as well as flanking.  These were elements supposedly coded into the AI .  It's doesnt happen as often as it should, but it does happen.

And I renig my "revolutionary" statement...  but I'm not renigging the "unique" statement.  8-)

You're still wrong and fucking crazy.

R-e-n-e-g-e, not renigg.

Renigg ::   To replace an employee, or to rehire.

Tycoon done quit de Chicken Shack . Looks like you gone have to renigg . Need one mo mofo das fo sho .

No results found for renigg. - dictionary.com

Thats okay Oban has made up his own not quite politically correct definition.

<sniffle>
you guys are MEANIES!   :cry:

So I am guessing that to renigg means to make someone an incomplete cross-slab once again.

Kaa

Actually...

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=renigg

hmm using the Oban definition:


It seems to say that Ghambit is not going to back up the Unique statement with any additional resources.  So in essence he isn't going to back it up, in which case he is really agreeing with Schild, making the following statement the one that makes no sense:


you dig?

edit: damn this is hard to follow.  Schild's statement does actually still make some sense in light of the fact that Ghambit is renigging his revolutionary statement, so he will stand by it and back it up with further reinforcements in the form of additional personnel.  It just isn't valid in the way Schild intended.

(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/Jive.JPG)

Oh yes isn't it about time for TR to be moved to the games that don't matter section?

hmmm... i might as well go along with this:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=renig

Most of these are pretty racial in orientation.  Yes, I am african-american (at least partly)... and, I used to play a lot of Spades  :roll:

I was actually suspicious that Oban might have slipped this one into the dictionary so I went and checked.  Date Added: Aug 25th of 2007, man that is cutting it close this logic of this entire argument would have had an entirely different outcome 2 months ago.

Oban wouldn't do that!  He's not dishonest devious that clever.

Just so we're clear:

renege: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=renege

No racial connotations there when you spell it right, for Christ's sake.

Fucking illiterates make my eyes spew blood.

Anyone who plays pinochle would know this.

For the thousandth time, the thread about a MMO on f13.net is twice as fun to play in as the MMO itself.

Fucking worthless medium.

This thing is going to make a nice Auto-Assault sized crater when it launches. The only thing it has going for it is the "clone my character so I don't have to re-grind hours of mind numbing content" system. Other than that, it is just another NCsoft game that has a hellish fucking eye-bleeding Korean grind driving it.

"But, but, it's fun up to around Level 25". So is City of Herillains. Just like fucking a Korean whore is fun until the burning pee starts. That's a different kind of eye-bleeding Korean grind.

If you play multiple characters to the level cap the cloning system saves you very little time percentage-wise if you do the math. It's another of the hyped features of TR that's incredibly poorly implemented. They also radically nerfed it during beta because they couldn't figure out how to fix their quest flagging system. It used to be you could clone whenever you wanted but they changed it so you only earn a clone credit at every "branch" point.

wait, what? 

If I shoot you with an AK-47 while you are in the same room I do less damage than if I back up a ways and try it??  Or it's easier to hit you the farther away you are?  Or you have a prayer of keeping a machine-pistol in full-auto on target?  wtf?  If you are within arms' reach AND moving or actively trying to grab or deflect my weapon, then I'll grant that a pistol (or knife!) is better than a rifle at that range.  Beyond 3 feet not bloody likely, and beyond 10' no way.  Pistols are popular for one reason, and one reason only.  They're small.  Small enough to holster out of your way, small enough to not burden you, small enough to conceal, small enough to not do more damage to you than your target if you fire it while your body is contorted into some strange configuration, etc.  For anything else beyond point blank range, if you didn't have to carry the blasted thing everywhere a long-arm would always be better.

And please don't tell me that the combat is balanced such that the guy with a vibro-knife or whatever has an even chance against the guy with an assault rifle starting from normal encounter range, unless normal encounter range is less than 10 feet.

Gah, visions of yet another MMOG's ranged combat totally crapified in the name of balance.

*edited to include quote of ancient post about what the hell I was ranting at

Use the Quote button.

Dude. If you stab someone with a sharp hunk of steel, you rip tissues and puncture organs. You don't do X amount of some imaginary "Hit Points".

ALL video games have abstract combat mechanics.

A question I thought I'd ask here instead of the HGL thread, how is the crafting coming along?  I logged in recently and saw a bunch of tradeskill slots in the skill system but there was no indication of how they worked.  Is there some way to level up doing crafting or do you have to level a character up to fifty in combat, gimping him the whole time by using the points for tradeskills?

Also is there any point in crafting in tabula rasa or is it just a poorly tacked on afterthought.  Is there an auction house somewhere?

Nitpicking here.

Actually, (good) MPs are very accurate, even on full auto. For the whole 3-4 seconds (if that) it might take to empty the clip.

A letter from Richard “General British” Garriott:


I have highlighted the parts i find interesting.

As of the last time I played, most of crafting involves stripping the powers from your weapons and attaching them to other weapons.

You don't have to gimp your character to do trades, but you do have to invest in the tradeskills. This could take points from your combat abilities, I guess.

There is a building they added called the "Military Surplus" store. When I checked it out, it was the standard crafting station setup. No sign of vendors or aucton anything.

So vehicles, other races and the AH are coming Soon(tm)? I wonder which "Operation" will include the fun?

Yeah.  This is one of those games that's neither awesome, nor a trainwreck.  It's just depressingly mediocre and boring to read about.

The Uninstaller is loads of fun. It was the highlight of my beta experience.

Races? How much can a dev house not get it? Infinitely.

So, let me get this straight.  Each 'race' will most likely be geared towards being the best at a certain 'class', and all the people currently playing that class with the generic race will essentially be inferior forever unless they reroll?

Isn't that usually how this plays out?

Maybe they'll let you change race in game, as an extention of the cloning system...

f13: we love to hate.

I was pushing for playable races when I actually cared to give input back in alpha. In particular, the Foreans are a cool race and I really wanted to play as one.

I think its like a genetics system.

Fun to be patched in later™

Having other playable races makes a lot of sense in TR. It would have made more sense to have mentioned this was a longterm goal to the testers though. Some of the stuff they've announced smacks more of damage control than any part of longterm vision.

Damage control implies there is something good that just needs a quick adjustment. This game is a clusterfuck looking to grab some press so the first week box sales aren't lacking a comma.

This thread is depressing.  :awesome_for_real:

I hope TR ships soon, so we can all forget about it.

Let's email some screenshots to Jack Thompson.  :evil: 

That's the only way this game's gonna make the news.

This games in post-release now right? Any stats on sales figures yet?

(http://www.playtr.com/pre-order/images/available_110207.gif)

Headstart for the guys who purchased a pre-order pack started today (30th October), both in the U.S. and in Europe.

Yea, all 3 of you...

Four of us.  :awesome_for_real:

Yeah! Let's get intimate!!

That's what your pre-order pet is for.  :-P

Yeah, I'm already hugging him like there is no tomorrow  :hello_kitty: :hello_kitty: :heart: :heart: :heart: :inluv: :inluv:

Garriot is the Astley of MMOs.

ok, its 11/2/07, please tell us how horrible the launch was.

If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody is around to hear it, yea, you know where I'm going with this?

hehehehe, yes, yes I do...

Wait, I know!

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it...does a bear shit in the woods?

Does a wild bear shit in the woods... Please. What do they teach these kids?

Depends on your definition of "bear"

That said, it went pretty much without a hitch. (At least on my server)

If the launch goes well because no one cared, does it still count as a smooth launch?

I dont think having a server with 4 people on it launch crash-free is worthy of praise.

TenTonHammer (http://www.warcry.com/articles/view/previews/2591-Tabula-Rasa-Pre-Order-Head-Start-Preview)

                   (http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff26/stuabrtow/Oh_Noes.gif)

From that article ...

:awesome_for_real:

I wonder if they got a vacation to the moon for that article.

How many servers did they launch with?


She weighs 150 kilograms and fires $200 custom 2 cartridges at 10,000 rounds per minute. It costs $400,000 to fire this weapon... for 12 seconds.

You know?  I could even hear the accent there.  In my head.  A bit.


I need more coffee...  :awesome_for_real:

Oh my God, who touched Sasha? WHO TOUCHED MY GUN?!

...Just put your finger right in there, and squeeze gently.

It's 'custom tooled' cartridges, meaning they are crimped by hand.

I thought it was, but I couldn't be sure. The russian accent is thick on that one.

CRY SOME MORE

All you TR naysayers, so cocksure, so proud, prancin' about with your heads full of eyeballs...

TRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVIA.

Well, the game does have a bit of a sense of humor. In the human HQ on the second tier area of Foreas (the first planet) You get a series of announcements over the PA. stuff like, "Due to circumstances beyond our control, dinner is now being served in the mess hall" or my current favorite, a voice that sounds a lot like Christopher Walken announcing that if anyone is missing a watch, they should come see him in the infirmary to reclaim it. A game that obliquely references Pulp Fiction can't be all bad, can it?

Yes.

How well did the game launch?
A) Great
B) Good
C) Okay
D) Trivia Contest
E) Disaster

I've lurked for a while, but never posted.  I've been playing TR through late Beta and I think some folks are being a bit too harsh.  It's not without its problems (the lamentable lack of anything approaching balanced PvP being one), but it is not terrible.  As a helaer one mechanic I like is that healing tools require you to target (or if you are lazy just stand near someone and heal for less with the radial tools).  As someone who likes playing support characters but was driven crazy staring at health bars being able to actually watch the action unfolding on the screen is a refreshing change.

Is this the Robot Jesus of MMORPGs? No.  Is it fun and engaging?  I find it so, but YMMV.

As for launch, I would say good.  I never had a problem connecting and lag was fine (although considering there are only 4 servers, it indicates to me that not many folks are playing this game!)

It's not my finest hour to come in here, start a second account (because I sabotaged my first in order to break this habit) and specifically post to simply say:

Well, I like Tabula Rasa... granted, I liked Vanguard, too.  I made propaganda slides (http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com/2007/10/because-shorter-reviews-are-better.html) and everything.

But, well, here you have it.

Do you love me yet?  :hello_kitty:

No.

I might pick this up while waiting for Hellgate to stop sucking technical ass. A friend of mine who went through beta with a solid "meh" says it has improved a good deal. He's playing it right now while I swear at network errors and memory leaks. :awesome_for_real:

Edit: also Garriott is a dork

TR is worth a checkout. It doesn't suck. I personally don't think of it as RG's "comeback game", given the copious lack of any "signature" RG stuff except the PR. I also don't think it's worth anywhere near $14.99 in its current form.

But I do think that it isn't going to be closed up anytime soon. NC really needs a success, as evidenced by the amount of marketing through at this one, and the renaming to drag as much equity as possible. And it does have a solid foundation upon which to grow in the future. I feel for the launch players for the changes that are likely to come to the game. It's touching a lot less people than SWG did, so even if they do an NGE (which I expect at some point), there won't be the millions of voices crying out thing against it.

It's just that it's no TF2, HG:L, Crysis, nor WoW. And no matter what people might say about the overall quality of those games, that is its current competition because of what they purport TR to be.

I've been playing,  and largely it is fun.

You can do standard MMO "run quests missions and ding" or you can just sit back and mess around.  CP defenses have been mindless fun,  and there's nothing like going out and assaulting groups of lower level mobs spawning dropping in.

Shotgun, shotgun, run up and melee, shotgun.  Run through a couple hundred rounds with the chaingun just to watch the mob do the damage dance. 

Actually,  my whole enjoyment of the game might be due to the fact shotguns give you KNOCKBACK.  Fuck yah!

Unlike LOTRO,  they seem to have made combat fun.

You can't trust me.  I'll play a 6.5 ranked game (http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/914403.asp?q=two%20worlds) and call it 'worthwhile.'  I'll hype the most recent buggy hell spawn of Brad McQuaid (http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/920083.asp?q=Vanguard) because, despite being yet-another-fucking-EverQuest-clone, it seems to innovate in a couple ways I find neat.  What's more, I'll mean every word.  Why?  Because I'm a genuine gaming enthusiast.  One who, despite served crap time and time again, still loves gaming.  Likely more than whoever I'm arguing with, and therein lay our point of contention.

Though you should be brimming with confidence over my credibility at this point, I have to say that I like Tabula Rasa.  I like it because, like City of Heroes, you can knock dozens of enemies back with your shotgun and, through the sheer skill of you the player alone, live.  I like it because cover works, you can crouch behind something can have your incoming damage reduced by a great amount.  I like it because you have these awesome epic battles (http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd256/geldonyetich/Seriously.jpg) over Control Points that, once captured, make a meaningful change of the game world because now there's quests and shops there where there wasn't without you. 

I not only like the game for what it is now, but what it could become, once they get around to "adding the end game" and ironing out little bugs like "getting /stuck" or "certain abilities (http://tabularasa.wikia.com/wiki/Crab_Mines) operating at 1/5th of their potency due to incorrect coding".  Yes, this game has some very valid problems right now, even I notice it in my apparent game lust.

As others have said before, this game is not crap, and it does innovate in some impressive ways.  However, I have to acknowledge, it wouldn't be hard to build a case to the contrary.

I'm saying this to be constructive:

Maybe you wouldn't exasperate people here so much if you included less narcissistic meandering in your prose?

Its Geldon time of year again?   :awesome_for_real: 

He seems to have found the italics tag.  Air quotes on the fucking internet.  Clownshoes, ahoy.

Geldon has never really annoyed me. He's a good backwards weathervane.

Falconeer serves the same purpose.

Anyways, yah, TR.  How long until the free trial?

I actually had to wait in a queue for about 5 seconds logging in tonight.

It's the next WoW, bitches...

I was pretty sure you got to play for 10 days free with a preorder. They announced it 30 days before release. I called it the fastest free period ever, -30 days.

Hey now, I thought I was dumping on myself so the proper perspective would be shown on my Tabula Rasa impressions.

*grumble grumble* (Can't do anything right and Pedobear keeps staring at me.)

 :pedobear:

Neat enough to continue to play it?

Funny enough, two or three months ago I got bored of City of Heroes and picked up the SOE All Station Pass with Vanguard and EverQuest 2 in mind. Vanguard wasn't bad, a lot of the stuff I liked about the game was still there, lots of bugs had been ironed out, and the recent server merges had (at least temporarily) boosted the population to a reasonable level...yet, it wasn't meant to be, I soon head back to City of Heroes. 

The thing is, Vanguard was still too much an EverQuest clone despite what made it unique.  It's been nearly a decade since EverQuest came out, and I've had to endure so many clones that I'm pretty sick of a game that resembles it overmuch.  World of Warcraft?  Didn't last me more than 4 weeks.  Lord of the Rings Online?  A lost cause.  These days I need something a bit more interactive than, "Engage Auto-Attack and Tap Hotkeys."  That's why City of Heroes and (now) Tabula Rasa have my attention.

I don't know what to say about my hyping Vanguard here.  I think in my zeal to point out that Vanguard wasn't total crap, I might not have realized that it's functionally worthless if you're as sick of EverQuest clones as I am.

I find Tabula Rasa very nice myself: have been playing it since last february and still no sick of it. It looks like that it's performing better than expected, sales wise. Looking at the website and the content they plan to implement (as seen a few pages back, called "elder content") they seem to have a precise and promising roadmap stuck in their head. I hope they stick to it and make it real.

The two things that are bothering me the most are the limited class system and relative skills, something that should *at least* be mitigated by the planned release of "hybrid" races (which are going to be humans but with more "alien" abilities), and also the current loot tables, which I find repetitive and VERY far from the quality of WoW's, at least from lv 1 to 20.

Beside those two aspects, I find the game pretty addictive and with a nice storyline: Devs seems also involved in the game by playing some key NPCs themselves, like the "cover girl" Sarah Morrison and others, instead of making them robotic quest givers. In other words, they're aiming to get the players more involved with the world itself and the plot in general, which is a step in the right direction: I agree with what Darniaq used to say regarding the lack of a "connection" with your surroundings, but their plans are an indication they're definately working more on this particular aspect.

In conclusion, I see myself playing it for a long time, and I think the game will do pretty well, building a solid, no matter if not extremely large, fanbase.

Ok folks, as a Jaded ex-everyfuckingmmorpgoutthereplayer - I have to interject.

Good enough is not fucking good enough. Dear god, we have people in this thread saying "Well, it's kind of fun." No offense to those folks, but kind of fun is a really fucking low bar.

I have no opinion on Tabula Rasa - none. I haven't played it or the beta, so I can't intelligently speak about it. But I can say that when we have discussions that end up with the usual comparison to WoW (see last post), defining DIKU, and wondering why stat based combat doesn't feel like an FPS we have gone wrong. It may be a wonderful game, I have no idea. But if not -CALL IT. Cause folks the MMORPG genre is sucking wind big time. It's a Canadian soldier in Kandahar with no pot and a flat tire. And if we don't call it noone will. DON'T BUY IT IF IT SUCKS. Please. I beg. Same goes for War BTW.

I think that "try it for yourself then decide" is the best approach, personally (bar time and/or money restrictions, of course).

I'm not convinced by the now so common "bash the latest MMOG on the market" because you (in general) supposedly care for The Greater Good of the Industry, like you are on a crusade or something, probably out of boredom.

Hey, no problem in discussing something, but with a more constructive approach, instead of the insult to our intelligence that is now the silly duels Haters vs. Fanboys.

Maybe sometimes things just suck. Not TR in and of itself because it's so hideously average I have absolutely no opinion either way but just things. And when things just suck leave the critique at the sublimely simple "This game fucking sucks."

I don't play games to make a statement about the direction of an industry.  I play games to have fun.  If it ceases to be fun, I cease to play and they cease to get my 15$ a month. 

Is TR mediocre?  I can't really say, there are some things I like and some I do not.  The only other MMORPGS I participated in at launch were WoW and LOTRO.  My impressions:

1.  This game has roughly the same polish WoW had at launch.  Seriously.  WoW at launch did not have customizable UI's, decently balanced PvP (my druid would chain root every melee class and nuke them into oblivion, my warlock could chain fear folks all day), or any semblance of an endgame. 

2.  LOTRO was far more polished at launch, but the complete lack of world PvP and god-awful slow gameplay ruined it for me.

Is TR fun?  I find it fun.  The base assualts are great, combat is interesting and world PvE is usually more than pressbuttoning the same 3 abilities (which quite frankly is all I did in WoW, save for my Warlock where I press buttoned 4 or 5).  Positioning and cover are actually important, and can allow you to take on larger gorups than you should be able to if executed right.  It certainly is refreshing to have a healing character that is not totally gimped in combat.  But it is different, and I can understand why folks who are used to a particular FPS style and a particular MMORPG style may not like it, so I don't want to give a ringing endorsement because I acknowledge it may not be for everyone. 

I'm not sure why you are throwing all this hate at TR, I've played quite few MMMORPGs and this is far from the worst.  Did Richard Garriott kill your parents or something? 

I know next to nothing about TR, I have seen a single screenshot of this game with the words "Seriously: you should try this game" overlayed.  I think your comment would be a good addition to that screenshot.  It's a good starting point and if people continue not to treat TR with the respect it deserves you can then wheel the big guns out.

I mentioned that only because Richard Garriot is bat-shit insane, and there is the rather good possibility he has killed some folks parents.

The exact same sentiment could easily be applied to the six month Hellgate subscription you just bought and the lifetime sub you are trying to get.  The hellgate launch was an unmitigated disaster, there are bugs everywhere many of which make the game unplayable, subscription was down the first week, they took down the servers at primetime on launch day for an optional patch FFS, etc, etc.  We shouldn't be supporting games coded that poorly either (even if the game itself is fun) so that in the future developers know they won't be able to get away with it.  But let's be realistic, they can.  We payed for a game that barely rises to early beta level quality.  I bought a lifetime sub to HGL despite its clusterfuck of a launch.  My guild decided to try Tabula Rasa so I'm playing it too.  It's not as bad as I remember in beta, the game definitely sucks to start but gets much better once you start running instances with friends, defending/assaulting control points and get your third tier career choice at 15.  My biggest complaint is that the itemization sucks.

Picked this up  on the weekend, cuz yeah i pretty much have to try every MMO.  I really knew nothing about the game, except that a lot of people were saying that it was competent yet underwhelming.

I would say that sums up the training missions at the beginning, but not what I have experienced  in the main game.   The most impressive thing about the game is that you do feel that you are in a theater of war.  Mobs don't just wander around  aimlessly but get dropped in by Bane ships (with that distinctive sound)  and attack you, other players and squads of AI soldiers.  What I found interesting is that there doesn't seem to be a problem or concept of kill stealing.  The Bane come in and you work together  to repel the attack even though you aren't grouped. Everyone gets experience if you damage a mob.   Sometimes it's cool just to sit back and watch this stuff as it happens.  Add an addtional layer of attacking and defending outposts from invasion  and  what you have  is a somewhat convincing facsimile of being at war with an enemy that is trying to take and hold ground destroy any resistance.  At one point, I was exploring the map,  found myself in an area way above my level, and happened accross a full scale attack by the bane on an allied outpost.  Control was lost by the allies, and then taken back.  I wasn't sure what compostion of allied soldiers were actual players or AI (I imagine it was both), as from my vantage point it all looked pretty convincing. Whether there is some dynamic campaign going on or it is just random smoke and mirrors, this aspect of TR is definately notable, unique and most importantly enjoyable.  Hey even FUN.

Certainly somewhat of an advancement to the glut of mmo's with completely static PvE content.  Oh look.... here comes Fippy Darkpaw again.

The AAA DVD-ROM fullscreen side of this genre has become like any other semi-mature genre. Sure there's a whole bunch of stuff that the developers could try. But they're not because what works has been defined enough so minor tweaks can sell games. Like other genres. Every new game does not need to be an omgrecordsmashkillEQ1again experience. In fact, this genre is terrible for that hit-driven mentality anyway. Other genres can afford the OMGBioshock to OMGCrysis to OMGMassEffect one-time-purchase progression. MMOs need all that money to continue to pour into one game.

DAoC is fine. CoX is fine. There's a crapload of "fine" games out there with a relatively few "gotta check outs" coming. Nothing says mature genre better.

If anything really negative can be said about TR, it's that there's nothing really negative to say about it.

Tabula Rasa is bland. If you're bored of other games and just want a different quest chain, or a new virtual landscape to explore, Tabula Rasa won't kick you in the nuts.

Personally, I don't have a problem with that. If you're looking for the next Zowie! game, or the next train wreck, move along, cause Tabula Rasa ain't it.

But Hellgate doesn't suck. And you'll notice I didn't say TR sucks, I haven't played it and have no opinion of it. Both of which are unlikely to change anytime soon. I just said IF it sucks - don't buy it. HG:L has huge issues but c'mon - it's a tonne of fun.

I've played both.  HG:L wins IMO because you actually get shiny loot after hours of clicking.  But, they both are underwhelming.  I was hoping for so much more. 

I may try TR again after a few weeks of HG:L.  I think it has a lot of potential (more so than HG:L) .  Right now though it feels like a skeleton of a game.

I really want a new MMORPG, but they all suck.  WoW makes me stabby, I've played EQ for 6 years, EQ2 is too much like EQ, Eve is not for me, etc.  I just want a fucking persistant online Diablo, 3rd person isometric.  Hopefully Mythos kicks my ass.

This is absolutely ridiculous. And not because I'm a fan of HGL but because Tabula Rasa isn't going to get enough money or players to meet any false impression of potential anyone thinks it has.

With all do respect, I hope you're wrong.  I'm a big fan of HG:L too but I'm getting close to the end and the thought of rolling an elite character and tearing through the same content again is not very intriguing.  I probably will, but mostly because TR is so "meh" in it's current state.  Diablo2 stayed so compelling to me for so long because I actually enjoyed the story and setting.  Although it pains me to say it, I'm not getting the same enjoyment from HG:L's story.

Hopefully within the next 3-6 months one of these MMOs will compel me to play for more than 2 weeks.  You are probably right though, it'd be suprising to see TR take off and actually make enough money to improve things to a point that it's fun.

Funny. My description of D2 is: hey look a demon and some crystals and some other shit I don't care about even one bit.

Lies.  I'm fairly certain that when you think of D2,  you just here the "ping!" sound of a ring dropping.

Bullshirt. Anarchy Online was a blah game, without a ton of subscriber money,  that got it's shit together enough to put out three expansions and a ton of patches and add content.

Of course, Anarchy Online is still a blah game after three expansions and a ton of patches and added content.  :wink:

Anarchy Online continued to get funded by a company without an option. NCSoft can cut TR off really fucking fast. Particularly with the numbers it's not going to get. It's not like NCSoft is benefitting in Korea from the release of this game. Lineage 2 will outperform it until the sun explodes. Unless something "changed."


I meant the story. That's my description of the story.

Considering MMORPGs in general have a very high suck:joy ratio, I wonder if my judgment of Tabula Rasa may be inadverantly weighted by those mysterious aspects that make MMORPGs attractive.  If it were a choice between "Tabula Rasa" or "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time", I only get to choose one to brighten my drab existence, then I'm going to have to go with the later choice.  Similarly, if it comes to sheer gameplay value, "Hellgate: London" strikes me the better choice just because it was developed primarily to be a game without all this MMORP baggage weighing it down.

Why do so many of us continue give MMORPGs a try at all then?  I think it's because we think there is more there.  A sort of virtual persistance aspect, or perhaps the massively multiplayer aspect has a potential for enriching it that a single player game doesn't.  This being the case, Tabula Rasa gets an unfair advantage that skews the normal judgment of the matter.

Bah, all I know in the end is these kids won't get off my lawn. :geezer: