f13.net

Not sure who else is following TR, but I like what they're trying to do, both now and what they designed against previously.

But one thing I just got concerned with is the minimum system specs, as posted on Stratics (http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/tr/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=trdiscussion&Number=1687&page=0&view=&sb=5):

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: 

• Windows® 2000/XP/Vista
• 512 MB System RAM
• 2.5 GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 or equivalent AMD™ processor
• 128 MB Direct3D and Shader 2.0 compatible video card and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver
• 8x DVD-ROM drive
• 4.6 GB free hard disk space
• DirectX 9.0c
• DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
• Keyboard, Mouse
• Broadband Internet connection

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS:

• Windows 2000/XP/Vista
• 3.5 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent AMD processor
• 2 GB System RAM
• ATI™ X1800 series, NVIDIA® GeForce 7800 series, or higher 3.0 Shader compliant video card

For an FPS, that feels right. For an MMO, that feels high. The trouble with TR is that it's not really an FPS in the traditional sense. By integrating traditional RPG components in a hybrid system that feels like player skill matters, I feel they're balancing the good part of Planetside (an FPS for the rest of us) and the longterm interest of the average player, as seen in traditional MMORPG.

So for them to have what appears to be fairly high minimum specs (largely related to that 2.5GHz processor) seems to be taking a risk of cutting off the RPG side of things. Granted, if someone loves RPGs, they've probably got Oblivion and a rig to play it effectively. But MMOs still traditionally lag behind the leading edge of tech, because the needs of the game spans more than any one critical component. A graphics card alone does not solve issues with a slow hard drive, slow RAM or a slow processor.

I plan to be building a new rig in the spring anyway, so it doesn't matter to me per se. I just found it interesting.

Thoughts?

Guess I won't be playing TR anytime soon.

I'm still running an Athlon XP 2700+ system, so uh....

And damn, not even Oblivion has 2gb of RAM as its recommended reqs.

I suspect those numbers include Vista baseline requirements...?

Wow, that's just insane. They're cutting out a huge portion of players there. I just can't see that flying in the market.

Every news bit I hear or see about TR drives my hopes down even further. Those specs are stupid to the extreme. The WoW vs. EQ2 release battle has shown that lowered system specs can help sell a subscription game, while assinine high system specs can tank it.

These are the Vista specs (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/capable.mspx). They look fairly non-cutting-edge to me, something even I could force onto my aging rig. Maybe there's a premium resource requirement to developing to Vista, but TR doesn't even require nor recommend DX10, so not sure about that either.

Absolutely.  I can't tell you how many friends of mine chose WoW, even though they were old time EQ players who wanted to play EQ2, because of the requirements.  I positively think that EQ2 would have had a MUCH better start if they hadn't excluded so many people in this manner.

Those 'Vista capable' requirements are a joke.  Perhaps if you turn off Aero, and don't mind your PC taking forever to do anything(Anyone run WinXP SP2 on a machine with 256 megs of ram?  You'll know what I mean.)  The 'Vista Premium Ready' specs are basically, 'What it takes to run the OS and common office applications, at the same time, without specifically pruning back the OS(like turning off Aero)'.

2GB RAM requirements for something expecting to run on Vista really doesn't phase me in the least.

--
Alkiera

So what, like .05% of people have the recomended specs? *boggle*

Aero is that crazy 3D-desktop UI thing right? I can see that being a huge hog unto itself yea. Plus, those specs are effectively for an unknown, maybe even based on brand new desktops with the new-car smell too.

Ah who knows. The point remains that even the minimum spec for TR is fairly high by conventional means. Sure anyone who loves and only plays Prey and that ilk will have no trouble with TR. But like the Planetside discussions of old, how many people are going to come from their FPS games to a gimped FPS, and specific to TR (and in some ways Huxley), one with decidedly RPG-overtones.

These are different target markets for a reason.

I could see why SOE thought targeting the cutting edge was a good idea. Lots of good cross-promo potential (which basically just meant getting smacked with nVidia logoso in the client). But people have learned things since, including who actually is on that cutting edge and what sorts of games they'd rather play.

TR seems to cast too narrow a net. Maybe.

What Intel CPU do you compare an Athlon XP 4200 with?

Question:  Why doesn't Tabula Rasa make degrade graphics such that I can run the game on a 1ghz machine with a few-years-old graphics card?

I have no problem with the graphics looking like crap, if I get to play.  Why are they not offering that possibility?

Hell, it used to be you could run Quake 2 on the newest latest greatest graphics card, *or* you could turn it down to something resembling Duke Nukem 3D on minimum settings.

WoW, despite being a shit game, has that option as well.

Guild Wars also runs very smoothly considering the eye candy it offers.

That sort of versatility used to come standard.  Why is Tabula Rasa not doing this?


Oh, and what exactly are they offering new in the gameplay department that should make this necessary?  Pseudo-twitch?  I've had real-twitch in MMOs for over six years now, and there's no reason that would require such a beast of a machine as this.

First time I've seen that come up as a requirement. Has any other MMO ever specified broadband only?

Seems reasonable to me for a game in 2006.   My machine is 4-years old as of last June.  It's at the minimum specs and it wasn't top-of-the-line when I bought it, but just under.

It's just that we're all getting older and have more permanent stuff to drop $2-3k on.  In my early 20s doing so every 2-3 years for a new computer wasn't a big deal. Nowadays I just laugh and play old games.

Jobu: I've never seen one absolutely requiring broadband. However, I have seen Xbox games requiring broadband (those with integrated voicechat). And, I don't think that anyone would argue that broadband is sort of the minimum requirement for competing in PvP in most of these games. It's just that legally these companies can get away with saying 56kpbs is fine if players can have a modicum of an experience within the game world. I personally find it shocking that anyone in this genre is using dialup at all. But even with almost 50mil American households having broadband access now, I guess there's enough that don't.

Yea, but it's reasonable for games in other genres in 2006. MMOGs have generally had to cater to a lower common denominator. In theory.

No idea. Not sure what engine they're using, or whether it's custom, which could be the problem.

Further, it really won't be known until we get this thing on some home rigs whether their minimum spec is a technical one or basically "look, we're a serious FPS game" advertising-for-relevance spec.

Heya,

Yes Darniaq, AFAIK, engine is completely built in-house (should be still called "Palantir") and also TR will indeed feature an integrated voice chat software.


Lucas
TR Stratics

No point & shoot fps combat, even with a CoF ala Planetside colors me decidedly uninterested in Tabula Rasa. The traditional mmo elements are what turns me off mmo, I can barely stand the genre anymore, though I should hit up Planetside again, at least that game had fun gameplay.

Let's hope they don't screw it up with Huxley. There's that 'unannounced' mmofps SOE supposedly has under wraps, but...it's SOE.

Those specs don't strike me as too terrible, meeting an exceeding most of the minimum requirements and even meeting one of the recommended requirements, even though my computer is apparently too terrible to run City of Villains and get better than 20 FPS (or 2 FPS during pitched battles).  The only question is if I have a "Shader 2.0 compatible video card", which I'm not sure a Radeon 9700 qualifies as.

Despite the game being slated for a Q4 2006 release, I doubt we'll see it until half past 2007 (using standard MMORPG delay deviation reckoning) so I'm not stressing overmuch.  That kind of hardware seems like a big deal now, but one year from now you can probably pick it up for $200 or 50 Cheerios box tops.

EQ required a 3d graphics card before they were commonplace.  Planetside had some hefty specs for it's time, too, IIRC.  I don't recall the specs for most others, but it's only been in the last few years  that devs have been dumbing-down specs with the understanding that 'the masses' don't upgrade machines. (Particularly after watching SOE deal with the chaos of deciding not to support Win95 in 2000/1.)

Perhaps it's a statement that they're only after 'serious' gamers who have the bankroll and care to keep their machines within the last 1-2 years worth of tech.

It's also occuring to me how those requirements are fit for a Richard Garriott's game: Wing Commander I (ok, still an Origin game anyway) and the leap to the 286 generation; think about Ultima VII and how bad you needed a shiny 386 (and let's not forget the dreaded Voodoo memory manager); 486 was basically compulsory for U8; and U9...well, U9 is probably sluggish with the recommended specs of TR, anyway ;)

Yeah, different times and different genre, but still quite fit for the creator ;)

Lucas, I understand why you're pimping it.

But this is Serek Dmart stupid. Garriott doesn't make games that require that sort of shit because of some kind of magic. AFAIK Garriott has so little to do with this game now since he bungled the entire 1st version that even mentioning him is a stretch. Basically, they're trying to do too much shit and are leaving a lot of shit up to to the client. Having played TR, I can nearly guarantee you can turn a bunch of shit off in your 512MB of RAM box and still run it just fine.

Garriott doesn't get to say he needs that much RAM. CliffyB can get away with that kind of shit. As much as we don't want them to, so can the boys at 3D Realms and Id. Even Valve. But Garriott? Haahahhaohohohohohoho.

Thanks...I...Well, yes, I'm glad to be here as well ;)

Actually, it felt very similar to PS to me at E3, particularly in that CoF sorta way. But it's not shipping with relevent PvP in large degrees iirc (I think they'll have arenas and /duel-variant, which to me means not shipping with relevant PvP). So a different feel for a game that feels similar to play.

As to the engine, I'm no tech, but I saw nothing in either iteration that pointed to any specific requirement for mega-tech.

Hehe. Welcome Lucas. :)

Which would be fine if they really think they'll get a critical mass of gamers from the pool of folks who have that sort of tech. But outside of MMORPGs as they exist today, what does the name "Richard Garriot" mean to anyone? This is still a generic sci-fi MMO to even a good percentage of the folks in MMOs, already replete with a number of marketplace challenges as a result. I think it's very risky (maybe even hubris) to push the envelope so much for a game with "MMO" in it's name when it has almost nothing else it can point to and say "this is why you should take us seriously".

The difference with EQ was that by that point, 3D was already on the rise in many degrees, and there were really only one or two other real competitors against which to compare, and some were 3D anyway (though based in bitmap-3D). Nowadays, there's scores of MMOs, some with such low technical barriers they're played in browsers, thus having shaped the culture of the genre.

You have an Athlon XP overclocked to 4200+? That must be some wicked cooling system. In any case the model numbers on the Athlon XPs and Athlon 64s are basically the rough GHz speed of a P4, even though AMD will swear on a Bible that that's not the case. Also the 64s tend to be somewhat conservatively rated while the XPs are more aggressive.

As the minimum requirement? Not that I'm aware of but most if not all the major ones list broadband under the recommended requirements but that's mostly cause of latency issues not bandwidth ones.

They are doing the same thing as EQ2 and excluding all the people with DirectX 7 GPUs meaning the bazillion people who have GeForce 4 MX GPUs of some sort. For some reason all the state-of-the-art FPS engines can support DirectX 7 cards (Doom 3, Source, F.E.A.R., Unreal, etc.) but I guess the SOE and NCsoft engine guys just can't figure it out.

It does.

I still don't get why you all seem to think this is such a high-end rig.

You can buy the 'min' specs for $350 at Dell, including a monitor, without a discount or coupon.  You can get the recommended specs for about $860, same conditions.  (I'm assuming on the vid card here, since they offer Nvidia not Geforce, but it's the lowest end mid-price Dimension)

Yes, gentlemen, our machines are simply old.

The Dell Dimensions have crappy video options (X600 SE is the best they offer). An XPS 400 with a 7900 GS and a Pentium D 940 (3.2 GHz) with no monitor is $1220.

I think pretty much everyone is looking at the "recommended" specs, because those are the ones that really count. As with most games, sure, you can run the program with the minimum specs, but a lot of times that's hardly playable.

Their recommended specs are just a little obscene.

Well I was pretty interested in this MMO, too bad my comp will probably have a stroke trying to run it.  Thats pretty steep for the average MMO gamer.

That 'recommended' is probably a combination of Vista and TR, not just TR. The Vista beta I have on another machine has a 640 meg footprint before pagefile use. So throw TR on top of that and sure, you need 2 gig. But the same thing can probably be said for Planetside running on Vista.

640 megs, are you kidding me?

How does Vista use THAT much more than XP pro?

Beats the hell out of me. Mind you, it is a beta, and there's bound to be a bunch of code bloat.

I'm not buying a new pc to play this.

What does Vista offer, again, that is going to make me want Vista?  Every time Microsoft releases a new OS the system reqs go up dramatically, but I fail to see what I'm doing with Windows XP that's so much different than what I did with Windows 95.

As a MS cheerleader, I nevertheless feel justified correcting this to:

Mind you, it is a MS product, so there's bound to be a bunch of code bloat.

Tech Support (Not much of an issue for the tech-inclined around here, but globally a big deal with all the clueless users) and driver updates along with the ability to play new games/ run new software as MS once-again uses their monopoly to strong-arm a new OS and new system upgrades on everyone.  Direct X's newest version won't be offered on 98/xp/whatever other variants are out there, unless MS changed that stance from when I last heard.  So if you want to play new games in a year or two you'll be buying a new machine or plugging Vista on your current 'Vista Capable' one.

Vista seems a plausible reason for the specs, but seemed to be discarded as a viable reason earlier in the thread.  Makes sense to me, however, particularly after thinking again on what a clusterfuck EQ had to deal with when MS dropped support of Win95, and then SOE followed suit.  I don't recall much sympathy from folks on this boards predecessors at the time, however.

These aren't the final system reqs either guys. The games' not even into a beta phase, and those are the required specs for it's current setup. there's still a lot of time to change them, or implement lower level graphics, to drop the bottom on the reqs. The NCSoft Knowledge Base (http://support.plaync.com/cgi-bin/plaync.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1029&p_created=1089992750&p_sid=EPen-yei&p_accessibility=0&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MSZwX3Byb2RzPTQ3JnBfY2F0cz0xNiZwX3B2PTEuNDcmcF9jdj0xLjE2JnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li=&p_topview=1) says they "should be close", but i wouldn't be surprised if they got tweaked before release.

We're not the only ones talking about this, so I'm hoping the collective voice will result in them rethinking it.

Because that happened well into the life of EQ, not before it launched.

And again, it's not a question of whether you or the semi-hardcore techs out there build a new rig to play TR. It's whether they're going to want to for TR.

The vast majority of gamers out there are do not have rigs like this. Look just at the specs for World of Warcraft (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wow/?id=aww0823p). That's a machine you could get in 1999. And having played on a rig like that (hey, I had to know...), I can say that, yea, the game is playable (though no way I'd try a Garr fight on it).

The average gamer is not sitting on the edge of their seat awaiting Bioshock. They're playing MMOs or casual online games or whatever, all of which don't push the envelope because part of their success factor is casting as wide a net as possible. The PC is still a tool, something built for what most people use it for. The rest tweak themselves or pay premium to Falcon.

TR is already racked with challenges:

• It's by someone most gamers don't know, so there's no cache there to ease the messagin.
• The publisher not doing all that well of late. That matters to NC soft, maybe some vets.
• Has a traditionally under-performing theme (generic sci-fi).
• Had it's original design literally and quite publicly tossed, which matters to the veterans.

So take all that and add oppressive system specs? Doesn't seem right.

Unless they're planning a $50mil advertising campaign and some sort of Coca Cola tie-in, this game has a very good chance of falling below even the niche radar. And that'd be a shame, because it does seem like a good game experience from what I played.

But then, given all the above factors, I also feel there's still a fair chance this doesn't come out at all.

this doesn't need a lot of words -- this is dumb

how many times have we raised and re-raised our hopes for TR?  I'm not buying a new PC for this either

My computer is new and I'm still a wee bit under the spec for the reccommended processor and about spot on with the rest.  I'll be able to play this one with a decent return, but I'm sure there will be a game coming out soon that'll give me grief.  I'm so pissed off at games, anyway, I might read a book!  Not one about games.

Your comp is new and you got a plain ol' P4 chip, or you got one of the P4 hyper-threading dual core dohickeys? They're completly different chips, if I understand things rightly. So far as I know, a P4 2.5ghz dual-core should be more powerful than a P4 3.5ghz.


And do what? If those truly are the system specs recommended, what're they going to do.. recode the engine again? Hack some downgrade ability into it?

MS is taking a very aggressive stance with Vista. They want people to upgrade, and do so faster than they did for 95-98 and 98 for XP.  That's why they're not offering DX10 on lower OSes.  I'd be surprised of they were supporting XP much longer than a year or so after Vista's release.  That's within the first year or two of TR going live, and something they need to plan for.  (And something I wonder about on WOW and other low-end games that can't ever move from DX9 without forcing out tons of players.)


I don't think anyone wants to play TR at all, for more than just the reasons you're listing later. That's not what I'm taking issue with. It's the stance that these specs are 'unfair' or 'unacceptable' for a game coming out in 2007.  They're not.  Technology is unfair to some, and always has been.  You upgrade or you watch it pass you by.  That's nothing new. I'm not a semi-hardcore tech, just someone who keeps a light interest in it. If I were anywhere near hardcore I'd have upgraded my system from 512mb a long time ago. 


I don't deny that. The vast majority of PC gamers are also trending older, yes?  Those of us in our 30s are folks who have better things to spend money on these days like houses and kids and vacations.  I can drop $2k+ on a new PC or I can go on vacation wtih my family.. guess which I'm doing now as opposed to my 20s where a tent and a campsite with beer was good enough for a week.  That means I'm behind the times.  I'm not


You're assuming they're going after the average [PC] gamer. I'm not. I also think they're out of touch with reality and the game wouldn't sell if it ran on my 486.  My argument is not about THIS PARTICULAR game, but the specs of a gaming rig to run something in late 2006/2007 (TR's release date).

I haven't bought a new machine for a few years.  It's about time to do so.  I can tell my machine is out of date when new game specs require it.

I agree with previous posters - If TR ships on time, these specs seem high.  If, however, they don't ship for 6-9 months, then maybe not.  Although for an MMO, it does seem odd to cut out that large a playerbase. 

Are people upgrading pcs at the same rate they have been? (For me, every 3-4 years).  That's key to know whether that curve has flattened.

We don't know how much the spec ties to what the engine does. There could be any number of things they could adjust to lower it, including choosing to load some files instead of others (as is the case with the very-scalable EQ2 engine... which however does look dull and dingy no matter the settings anyway ;) ).

I can see that. However, they can't ignore market forces either. If the Vista specs are a joke as implied on page 1, then people won't be getting Vista on $300 computers next year. If that's the case, the Microsoft is going to be lengthening their projections for rollout of the OS to the masses. People by and large get their new OS with a new computer. Unless Microsoft creates some magical system that requires no consumer involvement during installation yet has that mythical 99.99% probability of maintaining all files, programs and user settings, resulting in the average user only seeing a pretty new 3D-based desktop, there is no way in the world they'll stop supporting XP by the end of 2007.

At the same time though, there could be a corrolation drawn between those consumers likely to upgrade, those who are gamers and those who have systems that match the minimum spec. However, the question is (as it has been for the duration of this thread): are those gamers the TR gamer?

Oh I get it, you thought I was lamenting the specs in general?

Nah. I would find those specs fine for Prey or Bioshock, which is why I referenced those two titles in this thread. FPS games have always pushed the envelope on tech, and that's fine given their marketshare and the secondary industries tied directly to them (and the Stanley Cup nVidia and ATI have to pass back and forth every few years). Those are not designed for the broadest swath of the mass market.

For TR though, no. For the reasons I stated and the ones you haven't yet :)

I really want to love NCSoft as a company, but I can't help but think that they're just pissing dumptrucks full of money into a tar pit with this project.

I've heard Lord British say that this game is for a casual audience, pick up and play. But then the setting is for the least casual of players (guns in space! casual!), and then they go ahead and make it so that only relatively high end machines can play it.

This thing is going to crash and burn on Auto Assault x 1000 proportions.

Again, Vista is a total hog.

What does Vista offer you? Nothing really.

Well, there is Direct-X 10.  It's got some nifty features... which is good, considering its very existance will ultimately be what forces PC gamers to buy it.

The dual core Pentium Ds don't have hyper-threading.

More likely than not, no. Unless the program is an extremely well-balanced multi-threaded app the GHz advantage of the single core (and hyper-threaded) processor will out-weigh the much slower but dual core processor.

The beauty vs install-base sweet spot for Fall 2006 is 2.5GHz / GeForce 6600 / 512 RAM.  And there are many GeForce 5200s out there.  Better run on them.

That's assuming you are targeting existing PC gamers.  If you really want to reach out, you need a fallback to 1.6GHz / GeForce4MX / 256 RAM. It can look like shit, but it must run at a decent framerate.  

TR is taking a big risk.

Asking a new game to run on 256mb of RAM is quite a stretch.

You're right.  As is asking it to run on a GeForce4MX, which is a GeForce2 with lipstick.  But both remain a significant percentage of the install base, even for gamers. 

Two years ago the most popular Dell PCs came 256 standard, and GeForce4MX was a strong selling gaming card.  If you want the mild-core gamers who bought an OK rig two years ago -- or laptop gamers who bought a year and a half ago, you need to run at that spec in some capacity.

Hell, ~40% of Steam users had less than 512mb this year.   http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html (http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html). 

Heck, asking WinXP SP2 to run on 256MB of RAM is a bit much.  By the time you've gotten logged in, you've already started swapping OS to disk to free up RAM.

--
Alkiera

I would hesitate to call them gamers if they haven't even upgraded their RAM beyond 256mb. I struggle to remember if I have ever owned a PC with that paltry amount of system memory, even when I was a neophyte gamer.

I find that Steam stat astounding...I can't even imagine what they're actually running with only 256mb.

I am still unclear what the selling points of Tabby is?  Semi-FPS in a sci-fantacy world? Mostly PvE?

Worse. Cartoonish FPS PVE. Think Wow with lasers.

Actually, there are some interesting looking features in Tabula Rasa, such as:

• The overall combat isn't entirely RPG and isn't entirely twitch, it's geared to appeal to those whose reflexes aren't quite up to the job.  Put your reticle over something will guarentee you'll hit it, but skills determine how much damage you'll do.  There is some auto-aiming involved.  Ideally, play executes differently enough that it won't feel like the typical auto-attack grind we've all grown sick of.
• There's dozens of classes with a branching advancement system to ease you into choosing one you like.  Don't like the class you ended up as?  Apparently you can make clones from earlier stages of your development and swap between them to try other classes.  Alt-friendliness is good for the indecisive.
• Level-range friendly, lowbies can play with their higher up friends.  (Yes, it does run on a level-based system.)
• Casual friendly, good for short bursts of play if you don't have much time.
• Big battles where teams of players with NPC support attempt to take maps back from enemy forces, "Starship troopers" style.  (I get the feeling the majority of the game will take place on wartorn battlefields.)
• Fully integrated voice chat.  (From the start, rather than tacked on like in Dungeons and Dragons Online or Planetside)

...
Or so I've gathered from GameSpot coverage (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/tabularasa/news.html?sid=6150719) and other various snatches of reporting about the net.  Overall, I'm getting the feeling it's going to take your standard six-member EQ hunting group slowly farming experience and turn it into a six-member infantry squad rapidly fighting their way across enemy battlefields to achieve various goals.  With NPC and other group player group support, maybe.  It's a coop game, which is a turnoff for PvP players, since it's all the players versus the evil aliens.  (I woudn't be surprised if they add some kind of PvP element before or after release, however.)

So I've pieced together from hype, anyway.  What I actually get when I get my hands on a beta copy is yet to be determined.  Assuming it doesn't end up in a catastrophic Ultima Online 2-style vaporware (which NCSoft has yet to do) I think that Tabula Rasa will definately be a game to watch for some innovation on the massively multiplayer field.  It's just innovative enough that I suspect we're going to see more delays past its Q4 2006 release date, but it's something to look forward to for 2007.

I think that this pretty much explains where all the money in NCsoft is going. They're getting close to 100 people on the Tabula Rasa team. Most of them will test the thing internally, so they need at least one PC that can run it. Most of the developers will need another one for cutting code on. The graphics folks probably need honking great Macs, and refreshed them all on Monday. When NCsoft dotbombs itself, there's going to be some fabulous gear on eBay.

all of your points make it sound like TR was designed for me, but I just somehow don't care. The original trippy music instrument wielding version sounded a lot cooler than this PvE Planetside 2 (minus the cool stuff).

I thought the people who got to play a bit of it at E3 liked what they saw.  Or am I getting that confused with another MMO?  I'm going to be unreasonably hopeful about Tabula Rasa.  I like the fact that they have already scrapped the whole game at least once and tried again.  If that had happened with SWG it might have fulfilled its potential.

I'm also going to assume that there is some sort of oversight at NCsoft and that they wouldn't piss away so much time, money and reputation on a lost cause.  Heh, ok, even I didn't believe that one.

Yeah people who have played it seem to like it, which is far more important to me than any feature list.

Remember- people liked the E3 version of Auto Assault once upon a time too.

Yeah, I've heard people say it was fun, but the idea of massively multiplayer co-op shooter appeals to me a great deal less than even Car Wars Online did. Every successive screenshot and movie I've seen of the game makes me even less interested.

TR is just a bunch of rehashed Neocron ideas mixed with cheap azn/russian bulk graphics design.

F U RGarriot.

I knew Auto-Assault was a lost cause when I saw only three weapon slots and the protracted grind.

The jury is still out on Tabula Rasa pending further details about the gameplay coming to light... and I've played Neocron.

Richard Garriott helped make AutoDuel for the PC (http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/autoduel/credits), we'll see if he can make a MMORPG (since Ultima Online went through mutations at about the time of his departure it's hard to tell how much of that he's responsible for).  That's an interesting point, Tabula Rasa isn't another clone, it's gaming history - Garriott's first game since Ultima IX, which again I'm having a hard time figuring out how much he was responsible for due to EA kluginess.

I'm with Merusk. You can come close to the recommended specs for the price of a PS3 with a brand new system and the minimum specs from Dell are a no brainer. A one gig stick of ram is only $60 and 6600 GTs can be had for $60 as well.

Then you're missing the point the same way that Merusk is. That's fine for a bleeding edge FPS. This is an MMORPG - one of those D&D persistant world thingies that are typically played by smelly middle aged people who harbor elf fantasies. A part of the reason WoW was so much more successful was that it can be played on any reasonably current system, Macs included. People don't tend to buy new computers to play MMORPGs. Maybe Tabula Rasa will be the first to encourage large numbers to upgrade, but it doesn't seem likely based on what we've heard, does it? Having this sort of system spec for an MMORPG is like asking people to invest in a dual-headed Itanium system to do word processing.

I predict it won't even be published.  I get bad vibes from this game. 

(http://www.indra.com/8ball/14.gif)

I'm not so sure they're shooting for the fantasy loving MMORPG audience.  Tabula Rasa won't play anything like EverQuest... probably more like Call of Duty but with an RPG overlay.  Considering it's in a futuristic instead of fantasy backdrop, and it seals that they're shooting for another audience entirely.  Probably a new audience, considering there's not another game quite like TR.

But maybe I'm wrong about that.  While I'm piecing together this image of a big quasi FPS with an RPG overlay whose overall underriding action has to do with fighting across alien battlefields, I'm still lacking certain details.

Me too.  Feels kinda like UO2... all that built up optimism about a Garriot enspired game, multiple delays, far too much innovation on the table to be seen to fruition.

What about Tabula Rasa is innovative again?

Remember, NCSoft's strategy is to make lots of 50,000 target subscription games.

That's a really bad strategy given that the development cost is largely fixed and not linearly proportional to number of subscribers.

What, futuristic massively multiplayer battlefields of quasi-RPG FPS action with extensive NPC support on both sides isn't innovative anymore?  I could see certain implementations of such as being quite.

I mean, sure, with Planetside we've got our massively multiplayer FPS - but lack of NPC support.  With DAOC/Shadowbane we've a certain mixture of players and NPCs involved in combat, but not hordes of NPCs leading invasions.  With Neocron we've got our quasi-RPG FPS action, but the implementation is too weak to do much with it.  Given the great number of elfy games out there, having a futuristic themed game made with present-day technology is innovative enough.

Dude, just because TR doens't have any elves doesn't make it non-elfy.

(http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/3849/1028xf9.jpg)

Oh look, there's an dorf, a human and an elf! They're holding guns, but by god, I got that warm fuzzy 'brave companions fighting da orcs' feel all over again!

Your dwarves (there's 3 of them) are humains in partial cover behind a wall, and your elf is just a woman.

The brave companions fighting hordes of orcs is there, I suppose.  Taking down hordes of alien bastards is kinda like that.

That pillar in the background reminds me of nazis.  Which is oddly reassuring, knowing that we've endured so many clones we've started seeing them where they're not.  Perhaps holocaust inflicting fascist architexture will be enough to pull us out of that habit.

So instead of cloning the majority of MMOs, they're cloning the majority of FPSs? What a time to be alive.

You know, I'm trying not to come off as a total TR fanboi since I don't really know enough about the game yet, but from what I gather it's not a MMORPG clone and it's not a MMOFPS clone, but rather something in between and yet running on many game-centric features completely different from any such hybrid you may have seen elsewhere. 

I understand how hard it is to believe that anyone in the PC gaming industry can be something more than a no talent clone producer, as the empirical evidence to the contrary is overwhelming, but I'm afraid that's just how TR is rolling.

SOMETHING IN BETWEEN AND YET COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM ANY SUCH HYBRID YOU MAY HAVE SEEN ELSEWHERE?

Christ, you should write marketing text.

It's a shooter with a fucking cone of fire. It has guns. It's kinda fun.

I don't think it'll do poorly, necessarily.  It's hard to really justify much criticism.  Every major flop so far, to my knowledge, has been due to large design flaws or shitty code.  What I see right now is a polished and well-funded MMO with high-ish system specs, based on a tried-and-true design with a few interesting innovations- it's a design that this community does not like very much perhaps, but it is not an objectively terrible one given the mileage of recent fare..  I'm predicting a medium draw.

But there haven't been many mmo's with very high system reqs that didn't have other hugely obvious flaws, and there haven't even been many real sci-fi MMORPG's.  It's a wild card, and probably risky in a lot of ways; will be interesting to watch.

I think I'm rooting for it, actually, because a really popular sci-fi MMO might open a lot of doors.

So what you're saying is that it's a Paladin, right?

Can someone explain to me what exactly a game-centric feature is?

And how can a game-centic feature be something completely different  ?

Not sure, but I think he just means it adopts some mechanics from "games" other than typical MMO's. Like shooters, for one.

So in that respect, it's a hybrid.


It's different in that it adopts some mechanics that other hybrids haven't adopted yet?

Beats me.

There's not much to over-think here:

Take Planetside, add in RPG narrative as directed through Quest NPCs and reduce the relevance of PvP (probably to be launched as an advertised expansion later).

They're not the first to do it, but they're the first to do it with the backing of a big company.

It's not hard to see that TR has struggled for relevance in this genre. It was first dreamed up at a time when EQ ruled all and everyone argued about whether the Lineage numbers were relevant because of how PC Baangs split off shared royalties and what not.

Things are very different now, one of the reasons I'm sure they dropped the original fantasy theme in favor of sci-fi. Yet, sci-fi hasn't done all that well in this genre either, for a variety of reasons. So they couldn't just swap the theme, they had to make more basic changes. They're simply combining stuff we've all seen in a way others have but with buckets of cash.

So it's Planetside only with NPC support, heavy use of instancing, and PVP isn't the focus?

Not only does it not sound innovative, it sounds boring. Like "I'll play it for a week or two then get bored and never pay a subscription fee" boring. I liked it better when it was fancy elves playing lutes and shit.

Basically, what I said, yea.

Any of these games read boring. TR actually plays pretty well. It's faster than PS in terms of combat, and because it features some amount of game-directed goals, it has an RPG quality to it. Plus switching weapons and ammo/sub-abilities types is much faster. The two things that have survived the transition from old to new TR is the ingame language and the better-than-"arcade style" action. But it's not too twitch so won't be dominated by fatal1ty wannabes. And it doesn't have PvP anyway.

So it's just like I said, boring.

The idea of a FPS-style game without PvP is just so clownshoes stupid I can't possibly express it.

Unless it were minimally multiplayer co-op. Playing something like Medal of Honor with friends instead of the retarded AI would be cool. Or System Shock or Deus Ex or Thief...not that TR will be anything like any of those classics.

Re: Game-Centric Features.

Stuff like drop zones and big battles and branched advancement with clones (old copies of your character) along the way.  Those are features that sound built into the core of the game rather than something sitting on the sidelines like crafting.  They sound interesting.  More details would be nice.

The reason why I'm not exactly a TR fanboi despite my apparent slavering over their features list because the devil is in the details.  In other words, it's really up to how well they implement things.  I'm liking the look of refinement I'm seeing in the screenshots and play videos, but unlike some of us I haven't had a chance to play it at E3 so I can't really levy my full judgement on it.  Where Schild's already summarized it as, "It's a shooter with a fucking cone of fire. It has guns. It's kinda fun" or Darniaq saw, "It's faster than PS in terms of combat, and because it features some amount of game-directed goals, it has an RPG quality to it" I'd probably be looking for things like, "How does it look like they're tweaking the combat to play out (Unreal Tournament versus Neocron), how much use are they getting out of those dropships, what does it seem to me that the overall developer's mindset is built to do through what this E3 demo conveys?"  That'd give me some idea how the end product might turn out, although an E3 presentation would still just be a shot in the dark compared to the release state.

We each have our own levels of interpretation, different things we look for in a game, and it's too early for me to see if TR really is something I'd enjoy or not.  However, what I've read on it looks unusually interesting.  It's a far cry from an EverQuest or Planetside clone, that much I can see.  Sorry if I can't explain it better than that.

When I  hear "FPS" I think Move/ Run/ Duck/ Dodge while firing.  When I see TR game footage I see "stand there and click the fire button at NPCs"

That's not an FPS hybrid.. that's SWG's last combat revamp.

I'm in agreement, but I think it's important to add that where a revamp is where you take an existing system, rip the guts out of it, and Frankenstein together an alternative, and hope the players can stomach it, TR isn't a revamp.  TR is being designed this way prior to release.  (I nearly said TR was being designed this way from the ground up, but it isn't... they took it back to the drawing board at least once.)  The big difference here is that the makers of Tabula Rasa have have an opportunity to add more cerebral depth that those behind the NGE didn't.  Whether they make use of this opportunity or create yet another piece-of-shit game dumbed down for the lowest common denominator is yet to be seen.

That I could live with. I still think it begs for PvP, but coop play would at least be fun.

I know I'm nitpicking, but co-op Thief would suck. Bad example. Co-op is fun for fast paced, shoot-em-up/brawlfests. Thief, otoh, is a highly scripted, slow paced stealther. It could work in no way other than that what it's been. If anything, it's a fine demonstration for why pure single player games should even be made.

Medal of Honor co-op would be Ok though (Are there mods for this btw? I think Call of Duty has some..).

PS against NPCs, yea, boring. TR missions against NPCs, not so much. Granted, what I played was pretty tailored, but it did show both what was technically possible in the engine and what they were thinking experientially. We'll see, if this thing comes out (I've long felt there's only a 50% chance of that).

The thing that is killing this game is the freakin' footage. They need to stop making it. Instead, they should be pushing out playable demos. If they published as a free download (with, say, a 7-day DRM on it) of what we played at E3, I think the general impression would be different.

Not I'm-gonna-buy-a-3GHz-supercooled-rig different maybe, but people wouldn't not buy the game because the movies show it sucking. Informed advertising is always better than crappy advertising, and that's what's happening right now.

So you don't just stand there and shoot? How does it play out then?

Seems like the people controlling those characters in the videos are doing fine playing that way -- Which, in turn, indicates that the game is designed that way. Or are the videos not showing the part where these players get wiped out for being stationary dumbasses?

From what I experienced, moving minimized the chance of being hit (duh), enough so that you couldn't just tank what was in front of you. The videos I've seen don't really capture that well. Yea, there are cases when big-boss-types are stationary targets with turrets, so you stand and shoot and then duck behind a rock or something. But if your target is moving, you want to be moving as well. Splash damage also seemed to work logically, something that never seemed to in PS.

This is why I wish they had a real director pulling these videos together. It's like a bunch of techs got together and wanted to faun over the depth of their texture maps or shit. Show the game play. Showing the quality of presentation is so 2000.

There's a lot that can change though, and like I said I was playing tailored events. When thousands of people start banging on this engine and it's automated content, then the real test begins.

The problem with Co-op is that to do it well, content creation is difficult.  Also, you want to have a fighting engine that's more than just Generic Shooting; the best fun I've had in co-op was probably The Opera mod for Half-Life, because of the strengths of the combat engine.  I'm really interested in trying co-op for Gunz, as well.

Churning out good co-op content is a lot harder than good PvP content.  Good PvP content is often symmetrical; co-op content by definition tends to be asymmetrical, and that requires more thought and careful planning.

A well done co-op (co-oponly, it'd have to be designed like that) Thief with new maps released with regularity, I'd play that.

And it would be very doable and awesome. But probably not have much of a market. Becasue it would be slow and require complex relations between the co-opers if it was good.

Tabula Rasa sounds an awful lot like an updated version of Phantasy Star Online.

Huh? Wouldn't you want to be crouched or prone with some cover? That's FPS.
This sounds ominous imo.

[edit] Oops..Nevermind. Didn't make sense :)

It's not really all that scripted. The AI is running on scripts, sure, but it adapts dynamically. For instance, one player could distract guards while another slips past. Or you could have the old co-op trick of having one player flip a switch so the other can get through a timed gate. Also, multiple simultaneous objectives.

I wouldn't hold the pacing against it, much of the time in BF2 I play very slow paced, sneaking into a base without guns blazing to give away my position. BF2 can be a slow paced stealther, you know :)

Probably not, but here one is (http://www.sega.com/games/game_temp.php?game=psu).

It's hard to discuss all circumstances in a game through the lens of having played it for a cumulative hour three months ago :) The long and short is, to me, TR played like PS enough to be compelling because of the integrated RPG elements. You could choose to crouch behind a rock while your intended target tried to flank you. You could choose to run while they were running (run-and-gun). You could try to tank them by standing there and going shot-for-shot. Like any FPS (and PS) it all depends on the situation.

You know me. I've wanted a good PS-like game since, well, PS. But it needed to be more than just a gimped FPS system with PvP. This may be it, or it may just be a distraction until something else comes along.

I need more clarification. What do you mean by "choose"? Do you mean those moves aren't really that necessary?

Also, trying to tank someone is the least likely thing I'd see in a FPS. It just doesn't happen. That it's even an option in TR tells me this game is pretty half assed in the 'twitch' category. Twitch has little do with "shooting" or even pace. Twitch is more about defense. And tanking is not defense.

It seems like this game has shooter elements, but only in superficial ways. An RPG with animations decent enough to bullshit some people.

When I say choose, I mean the person can use their skills and experience to determine what to do. Of course, choosing to tank something generally means choosing to die. They could choose to do that to return to their bind point for all I know or care.

I'm probably just confusing things. In essence, it felt like PS combat to me, with a narrative element. Whether it ships that way is anyone's guess.

Oh, and if you never played Planetside, think of Neocron amp'd a bit. If not Neocron, think a traditional first person shooter somewhat gimped. It's not really real physics that determines what gets hit, but a combination of a target reticle, a cone-of-fire system and some dice rolls all working in concert to calculate what a specific weapon does to a specific target. It can get somewhat unintuitive though, something I felt plagued PS for awhile. Like missile damage for example. How the crap have I not killed three infantry fighters after having unloaded an entire battery of Missiles on them, causing all sorts of splash damage and explosions? It becomes an endless struggle to make that reticle>cone-of-fire>dice system to feel like what a more normal physics-based game does naturally.

When it's done well, this system can support big ass battles no FPS can touch (I loved the 150-person battles from PS). Where it sometimes falls down is in five-on-five encounters, because FPS games do that all day long and really well. And TR is one of the few hybrid-FPS games to focus exclusively on PvE, which means they can tweak encounters however the hell they feel like it.

But again, I have no idea what's going to survive first contact with a few thousand enemy beta testers.

Yeah, I played Planetside. I'd rank it the second biggest tease and disappointment out of all MMO's. If it had the name "Star Wars" on it, it would have been the first.

Hehe, Sky and I have long wished PS had SW on it. Not that we'd be still playing it now, but it would have captured a lot more people.

But I agree it was a tease. It needs something beyond large scale combat in a gimped-FPS system, and it certainly needed to drop that stupid fee.

This is great news! In fact, this is the best news I've heard come out of this genre in years! Thanks for the heads up Darniaq!

I've been praying for the MMOG genre to differentiate into high, medium, and low quality products...instead of everything being geared toward the lowest common denominator.

Thanks a bunch Darniaq, you made my day!

 



 

Err, you're welcome. Just don't read the rest of the posts in the thread though  :-D

Hmm if people think that high system specs guarantee a quality product then Garriot should charge 30 bucks a month for it and really give these guys a thrill. :)

 :-D :-D :-D

You might be interested to know that we're planning an (M)MORPG that will require a minimum of one fully populated IBM RS/6000 p5 595 frame to play. System requirements may go up by the time we launch - we're only in concept stage at the moment.