f13.net

Alan Dunkin posted the link on Q23. They are taking applications for beta (http://www.playtr.com/beta/index.html).

I wonder why so much silence these last months. They've been VERY quiet.

How about direct link to beta application? Middle-man parasitic sites (playtr) 4tl.

[Edit: It seems playtr is studio in charge, web design 4tl]

Is it still a carebear fps?

Is it still a carebear fps?

Far as I know, yes.

Why? Can someone please explain to me how PvE FPS is a good thing? Its like co-op chess, where you can only move but not take.

I have to agree with Sinij here.  Oh my God.

Oh my God that it's PvE FPS? Or Oh my God you had to agree with Sinij? :)

Yeah, PvE FPS? Total fucking garbage. Like System Shock, Deus Ex or Thief.

What would possess a game that had faerie unicorns to EVER get rid of them?  I would play that game just for that reason!

I would, too.  Only women would like faerie unicorns though, and we don't exist on the internet.

Tabula Rasa is a coop pseudo-FPS with PvE alien fighting.  Y'all can tell me that automatically sucks if you want, but bear in mind that definition would include System Shock 2 and Gears of War.  Truly, two formidable robot Jesuses of games.

Richard Garriot > Brad McQuaid

I want to be a Lord British fanboi again. God knows I want to see someone dethrone WOW, and back in the day, you'd think RG would be the man to do it. I fear that he's become too much of a businessman, though.

Just curious: when we talk about UO we say Richard Garriott (and Raph, of course, and Starr Long too). When EQ comes up it's Brad McQuaid (and Jeff Butler), and when you think at DAoC you think Mark Jacobs', but who would you say is "the man" behind World of Warcraft? How come some Lead Designers (or whatever they are) become famous and stuff while some others remain mostly hidden under the huge brand name?

I am not even sure about WoW lead. Is it Pardo? I mean, how come his name comes up so rarely?

I admit, I'm rooting for Tabula Rasa.  Richard Garriot > Brad McQuaid, in my book.  That's probably because I used to play a ton of games worked on by Lord British back in the C-64 days.  Granted, I liked WarWizard, too.

Yes, Rob's so unknown that Time magazine named him to the TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World list. In other words he basically skipped the gamer worship phase except by those who remember him from his days in EQ and went straight to being recognized by the mass media.

But seriously, to the public Blizzard was always about their executives like Mike Morhaime and Bill Roper and the designers and creative people toiled in relative obscurity. For whatever reason Blizzard decided to make Rob the "face" of WoW (and now VP of Game Design) even though by his own admission he entered the WoW design team very late in the process. Allen Adham (who?) was the original designer on the game but left to go into semi-retirement writing financial software.

There are plenty of games for you pwntards to play. I'm more concerned about the 'not-fps' aspects than the lack of pvp.

What you fail to realize is that all FPS PvE games are SINGLE PLAYER , they work because there are things in a single player games that you can't hope to do in a mmorpg.

So Tabula is ether not going to be mmorpg (and more something like diablo) or not going to be fun. Considering RG working on it I bet that Tabula will not be mmorpg in a classical sense, more like massive matchmaking multiplayer rpg.

Name one that isn't a pile of shit.

It's because the entire company contributes and assists with the design and quality presentation.  The face of WoW is Blizzard, not any one person.  You can say "Yeah it's led by X and X person" but if you want to know who worked on WoW, the credits shipped with the product.

Simplifying, Pardo made WoW till before launch, then he was replaced by Tigole who drove the rest of the process post-launch.

Name one that isn't a pile of shit.

Examples of shit:

Shadowbane
Planetside

Sign up anyway. They probably want a broad range of setups playing TR so they can hone in their true minimum and recommended specs. You can only go so far designing for intentions. Eventually you gotta find out if you were right :)

It was my understanding that while it FELT like a shooter, it wasn't a shooter.   You still had specials and preset moves you could do a-la SWG rather than running & gunning like Planetside

If the gunplay can impress, then this game will do well. I liked Planetside a heck of a lot, and fighting a war in that game felt pretty good most of the time, but there were certain cheesy elements that ruined it, like one guy being able to take out a battlemech.

As much as I loved PS back in beta and for a bit of launch, I found there were a number of things that were sorta non-intuitive even then. For example, I loved me my Reaver. Why couldn't I kill infantry with missile splash damage? I think they tweaked that at some point, but it didn't make sense to me. If splash damage would make it too powerful, up the cost for training in. Force it to a higher BR as a result and/or a greater degree of speciality, whatever it takes to make it operate more as expected.

/rant off.

Man. Four years. I gotta let it go  :wink:

OT: From when Grimwell is at SOE, and what is he doing?

And the English thing: We all post hastely sometimes, missing grammar, syntax and spelling sometimes so much the post is near unintelligible. Some are just more obvious about it than others.

January 08, 2007
Benefactor Stone Project Participants

Benefactor Stone Project Participants who registered their disk via the www.playtr.com website were sent an email today. Please check the email account you registered with for enlistment information from CCO CuppaJo.

Help me out understanding this game in it's current form.  This is my perception, tell me how far off I am:

It's a MMORPG that pretends to be a FPS but once you put your crosshairs somewhere over the target the computer "rolls the dice" to determine if you hit and there is no player (as opposed to avatar) skill involved, and there is no PvP.  Levels, item gathering, catassing and all the other crap that 95%~ FPS players hate is included.

What you fail to realize is that all FPS PvE games are SINGLE PLAYER , they work because there are things in a single player games that you can't hope to do in a mmorpg.

Hm.


They were passing these out like, E3 2005, I believe. Or 2004. I think it was 2004. I had my 'Benefactor Stone'. Anyone else remember these?

There's no dice roll in Planetside, is it?
It's the same mechanic of Auto Assault instead. Without wheels.

I was reading IGN's preview from E3 2006 (I didn't have much time to look at it when I was there), and they mentioned clan-based PvP, but they haven't revealed their hand for PvP yet.

So, it's not COMPLETELY PvE. There is SOME form of PvP to it.

Both are correct. TR's system sounds like AA which could be fine. I didn't have a gripe with AA's combat mechanics specifically. It was fun driving around spraying bullets. The rest of the game around that part didn't look good or make much sense to me, though.

Yep. Still have the soundtrack too (and was hosting the five songs they permitted me to for a time). They changed the game but kept the language they created for it.

And slog, you're not far off from what was at E3 2006. It worked a bit faster than you implied, but the foundation is the same.

You know, I'm going to flame Planetside.  I'm sorry, because it is one of the more fun games to have "MMO" stuck in front of it.

Planetside might have been a failed experiment.  It doesn't have very many players right now, and I've often attributed it to not patching in enough content quickly enough.  But maybe the problem was really this: latency prevents a true massively multiplayer shooter from really working.  It's the problem of multiple clients on a server architecture increasing the packet size by <base packet>^<involved clients> - there's a definite upper limit of playable twitch gameplay.  That's why, in the middle of a pitched firefight, I encounter the 80m away player who jumps side to side from packet upsides too often to easily kill.  That's really frustrating, and I can see that being a foremost reason so many players were driven off.  It's no wonder Huxley sounds like it's going to have instanced fighting areas.

I'll be honest, I still want to play TR.

I wanted to play the original version more though. It's funny, I finally get a post-apocalyptic gunny MMOG and that flagrantly ... happy, colorful version was more desireable. But then, it's no secret that I'm broken. Maybe I should get off my ass and ask when I can play.

Planetside blew it by not offering changes. Instead of redesigning the bases so that they actually make sense for the way the game evolved, they added the annoying caves. Instead of adding more specialized vehicles, they added the BFRs.

I'm in agreement that this is a whole other level in which Planetside was buried.  Not only lack of changes, but the wrong changes, for example tweaking the game to play twitchy when it couldn't handle it.

Another level in which Planetside went splat was the lack of meaningful use of the persistent world.  There's a fundamental lack of respect involved in working for 8 hours to take a continent only to log in the next morning and find that a lone hacker took the whole thing back without resistance.

You explained the issue well. One idea I would consider for PS is that a locked continent could not have a base hacked until X uniques of another empire had died there. Let the ninjas hack all the towers, but keep the bases locked from solo hackers until there is some fighting.  Hacking all the towers would mean losing the continent benefit so the defenders would have a reason to come an try and retake the continent. Right now, if the NC hold have locked Hossin, it just takes a single cloaker to hack the warpgate linked base to open the whole continent to the hordes.

Why isn't it going to have pvp?

Why isn't it going to have pvp?

Speaking of FPS style MMOGs don't forget World War 2 Online (ducks).

SO someone needs to do a FPS style MMO where you have to wear some kind of mech suit all the time, and that suit can't bunny hop or turn too fast, etc, again so it works well with latency and client predictors.

SO someone needs to do a FPS style MMO where you have to wear some kind of mech suit all the time, and that suit can't bunny hop or turn too fast, etc, again so it works well with latency and client predictors.

Fuck that was a good game...  Even though it was incredibly simplistic and there were some flaws (they needed to redesign hitboxes hella bad on some mechs) it was proof positive that fun gameplay can be > polish.  I have no idea why they killed it everyone who played it loved it so much...

 :sad_panda:

EA killed BT 3025 years ago...

VE3D: I haven't seen Tabula Rasa since E3. What's been happening?

Richard Garriott: So just before Christmas break we started with outside beta testers—what we call "friends and family"—[and] we've been slowly expanding a few hundred at a time. In the next build, we're going to be moving up to the point where we'll be bringing in thousands of people at a time—and pretty soon going to closed beta within a month or so, where we'll have hopefully tens of thousands…then later in the summer to Open Beta where we have basically anyone who wants to play. So we're in that final push to launch at this stage. Tabula Rasa will come out this year. We don't have a public specific date yet, but definitely the light is at the end of the tunnel. We're tying up the loose ends and polishing it up so we can get it out the door.

(Click to Enlarge!)

VE3D: Which features of the game have you guys been focusing on most in the last few months?

Richard Garriott: I'd say missions and combat are the two areas we've been focusing on most. Hopefully what you got a taste of, even at E3, is what I believe is a powerful blend of user-interface style. Instead of like with most MMOs in combat, you highlight a target, then you ignore the target, because he's just going to stand there and whack you—and you are staring at the interface and clicking fireball/fireball/swordswing/healing potion—Tabula Rasa is a game where you're really shooting through the reticle. You're constantly observing what's happening on the screen where you're aiming. It's still a role-playing game in the sense of when you shoot at something, it's based on your equipment and attributes as to who will be injured…but they're not just sitting there hitting you. Your opponent is moving and is aware of, say, if you're behind sand bags, he has a lower probability of hitting you, so he may instead run around to the side, kick you to the ground and start rifle-butting you as required, or however they can find their best position to engage you.

So it's no longer what I consider plodding-MMO-historical-type. This is an action-based role-playing game where you're having to pay more attention to what's going on on the battlefield.

VE3D: So you have things like flanking in the [NPC] AI?

Richard Garriott: Exactly. That's one of the things we've been most pleased with. When you think about most MMOs, once you've determined your best weapon and method of distributing damage, you basically end up doing that repetitively with each opponent you encounter. We've worked very hard to make sure that each creature has an AI associated with it that will change the way you need to engage it. It goes through simple things, like damage types and resistances that will make you change weapon types or abilities you're using; but the more interesting things are those that will require you to change the way you need to engage them.

So, for example, one of the opponents is the Shield Drone. An enemy Shield Drone protects nearly perfectly the enemies protected by it, so they can shoot you, but you can't shoot them. So the only way to disrupt that circumstance is for a member of your party to essentially sacrifice themselves, run inside the Shield Drone area—which now means they're going to be hand-to-hand with every person inside that Shield Drone—and they're going to have to, once inside, take out the shield drone. And so the rest of your group will focus on keeping that person alive for however long it takes for that person to take the Shield Drone down. And so I think it makes the battlefields more interesting.

VE3D: What would you say is the mix of content between solo and group/raid stuff?

Richard Garriott: It's pretty close to 50/50. The square footage in our game is a mix between public spaces and private places—about a 50/50 mix also. In most MMOs, the way public spaces work, to the north of the town is where the Level 1 monsters spawn, to the west is where the Level 2 monsters spawn, east is Level 3, etc. So adventurers will go out and play "whack-a-mole" and farm the monsters, and when [they] finish, the monsters will spawn back right where they were, so the next person can come farm.

I find that boring. It's perfectly suitable for where we are in the evolution of the genre, but I think we can do much better. The way we tackle that in Tabula Rasa is, first of all, it has a more dynamic battlefield. First of all, along the boundary between the main human area and the Bane (which we call the enemy), we've scattered what we call Control Points, which are patterned largely after what you might see in some first-person shooters--; they are basically Capture the Flag-style outposts. When one side captures one of these outposts, the outpost converts to a support system for whichever side that captures it. For example, there're vendors that come online which you may not have access to otherwise, or the NPCs that give or finish missions come online or offline. There's a waypoint system that is accessible or not, based upon the status of that Control Point, and there's a hospital usually associated with them that is available as a respawn point [for the controlling faction].

So, the shared spaces are non-static. Enemies may start at their bases and work their way out along these Control Points. You can cut off supply lines at the source versus just having them appear in the field beside you. We think it makes a much more realistic world. So that's what I call the improvements in the shared spaces—in the group activities.

But then the instances we use for storytelling. If you think about [typical] solo-player games, they did a great job of making you feel special, but you had to play alone. In most MMOs, they don't really try to do a lot of storytelling, because it's frankly hard to do in a shared space. In most MMOs, instances are used for when you're fighting the big dragon and going for the big drop. You're not competing with all the other players for the once-in-a-thousand-times-it's-going-to-drop-something something special—but it's just a random collection of monsters and treasure.

We use our instances as a storytelling space, so it becomes much more like a solo player game. There are lots of puzzles and traps, and NPCs that advance you through the story. There are some instances meant for you to play by yourself, but many of them you can play with your party of friends. You and your friends together will be accomplishing some great goal that will give you the feeling you've accomplished something very special as a group.

 VE3D: How do you envision the "end game," so to speak? When you're pimped out and skilled up, what do you envision a player doing at that point?

Richard Garriott: The elder game features include a long list of things, but first let me explain what gets you there. In most MMOs, [your progression] will be through a series of missions that lead you through the leveling process. In Tabula Rasa, each of the worlds we visit has a problem that we're dealing with. For example, the first world you're on has a peaceful indigenous population. If you just nuke the enemies, you might make it uninhabitable for the indigenous population you are there to ostensibly save. When you finish that plotline, you effectively finish that part of the story we're trying to tell; then when you've "graduated," you move on to the next chapter in the story.

In our game, we often give you multiple missions that can't be simultaneously completed, and you'll have to make the difficult decision of "who am I going to help here…what are the ramifications of helping one group over another?"

VE3D: So they're mutually exclusive? Like if you do one...

Richard Garriott: ...the other one's failed. And you'll know—it'll be clear. One of the first ones—one of my favorites is a drug-running mission—there's a group of NPCs that tell you, "Me and my buddy are being forced to stay up all night. We really need a stimulant. Will you help us get this stuff? And it pays well…" A lot of players will take that at face value, figure it's the wrong thing to do, so they're going to turn [the NPCs] in—because there's another guy trying to figure out where all the stim-dust's gone to, the commander of another area. But if you do that, you actually find out that this whole organization is somewhat corrupt, and stim-dust is really needed by a lot of these people, and they really do have trouble finding it, and you've cut off something that's actually a much more sophisticated story than how it appears on the surface. It still doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, to go down one path or the other. We're just full of these kind of ethical parables [requiring you to choose] what would be the right thing to do.

So, anyway, that's what leads you up to the elder game. In most MMOs, the first decision you make is what class you're going to play, and that's a permanent decision for that character. And once you've started leveling, you can't really go check out the other classes without starting over at Level 1. So what I think often happens…people will focus on one character to get up to peak level. If you have to start all over again, that's what I would call one of the "opportunities to exit."

Tabula Rasa has a very different leveling mechanic. We have a class "tree" that your character goes through, and you can load and save your character state all up and down the tree. You can "clone" your character at any point along that tree. What that means is that you can, for example, once you've explored the soldier class up a few levels, you may decide what you really wanted to try was a ranger. Well, that ranger—which has more sniping and spy skills—that branch of the tree may have only been 10 or 15 levels behind you. You can go clone your character back at that branch and explore up the tree the other way. And so we think people will explore a much broader suite of all the content we provide compared to most MMOs.

When you reach Level 50, which is our current cap, that's when your character becomes a General. The more General levels you've reached (stars), then the elder game includes things you can do each time you add a star, but in these higher echelons you get into things like being able to pick up a squad of NPCs that help you and being able to command them around the battlefield. We also have player-versus-player maps that kick in.

That drug-running mission I just told you about is an example that, on the surface of our game, it seems like a simple struggle of humanity trying to survive against the Bane—these evil aliens we're bringing in. But once you get into the game, you realize it's got a little more subtlety to it. The human command is not necessarily the group you may want to align with. The civilization on the first planet you go to may not be where you want to give your allegiance. The Bane are pretty much where you definitely don't want to give your allegiance. But as players get to higher and higher levels, they'll get to create their own factions. You may say, "Look, I agree with saving humanity, but the way they're doing it is all wrong." That gives us our impetus for the player-versus-player part of the game that shows up later on, beyond the impetus of just challenging another player to a duel—which is always fun, too—but the fictional faction battles come in at the higher level of the game.

VE3D: So PvP is a higher-level feature of the game?

Richard Garriott: Well, you can PvP immediately…you can start the game in PvP. But the fictional basis for turf wars comes into play at the higher levels of the game.

VE3D: What's your character's name?

Richard Garriott: What would you guess it would be?

VE3D: Umm...Commander British?

Richard Garriott: It's actually Lord British. Well, that's the character I play—at the moment—because you can clone your character. We have a first and last name capability in the game; that way your reputation follows you no matter what clone you're in. Your reputation goes to your last name, your family name, and each individual character has a first name. So one of my characters is Lord British. I have a female character named Lady British…pick how many variations of Lord and Lady, sons-and-daughters-entourage-British.

We're just full of these kind of ethical parables [requiring you to choose] what would be the right thing to do

The more General levels you've reached (stars), then the elder game includes things you can do each time you add a star, but in these higher echelons you get into things like being able to pick up a squad of NPCs that help you and being able to command them around the battlefield.

Well, you can PvP immediately…you can start the game in PvP. But the fictional basis for turf wars comes into play at the higher levels of the game.

That's one of the things we've been most pleased with. When you think about most MMOs, once you've determined your best weapon and method of distributing damage, you basically end up doing that repetitively with each opponent you encounter. We've worked very hard to make sure that each creature has an AI associated with it that will change the way you need to engage it.

In our game, we often give you multiple missions that can't be simultaneously completed, and you'll have to make the difficult decision of "who am I going to help here…what are the ramifications of helping one group over another?"

There can only be so many branches/ factions when doing things that way, though.  Too many and you will alienate your customers by ignoring the people who made a different decision than you can come up with new content for.   It'll be interesting to see how 'wide open' it actually is, and how it's handled.

VE3D: I don't think players think about MMOs as having a lot of AI. They think of them as having scripting.

Richard Garriott: They don't, right. Literally even the tutorial map, which you'll be able to play at GDC [in March], it's really funny to watch people who are uninitiated to Tabula Rasa. Either they treat it like a first-person shooter and start jumping up and down and zigzagging, thinking it will make a difference, which it doesn't. What we have to educate people to is that the targeting is "sticky," you still have to aim through the reticle, say I'm going to shoot you, and if he runs under cover, you still need to move so you can get a bead on him, but the targeting reticle sticks to who you mean to be targeted to, so it's not an arcade game.

And the other behavior is people treat it like a traditional MMO, and you just target the guy and ignore him while you fireball/fireball/sword swing/healing potion. Whereas right in that same intro sequence you are taught, here's a group of sandbags right beside you. If you step behind the sandbags and kneel down, now when they shoot at you, the hit probabilities and indicators show you down behind cover—now you can face the whole storm of guys coming at you and pick 'em off, no problem.

It's getting people to realize now that it's neither extreme of the mind numbing whack-a-mole, nor the dexterity-based jump-up-and-down-and-zigzag. It becomes now tactical—where I really need to consider what group of opponents they are, how they are going to move, what's their sensitivity, how smart are they and therefore now I'm going to make judgments as to what I'm going to do. But that becomes apparent to you right at the beginning of the game.

I've, err, "heard" that beta invites went out for those who were on the Benefactor Stone Promotional thing from E3 last year (or was that two years ago now?). Do we think it worth having a forum set up for it, one that could be closed once the game launches or the beta dropped?

I've already mentioned I had my Benefactor Stone piece of cardboard.

That's what I'm not good at... shooters.  For some strange reason, they make me feel panicky.  I would really like to see Garriott do something wonderful, though...

Another TR video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvl1f_11K-g&mode=related&search=), with interview with Richard Garriott.

Applied and have the benefactor stone from several E3's ago - anyone have an idea of what is up with the betas?

Really, if the game's farther along than I'm thinking, then their press has been pretty abysmal, and PR needs a kick in the pants.

IF I had some guild members in the beta, they might be interested in running with other folks who MIGHT be in the beta.  IF that were possible, I'd be interested in hearing from anyone via PM to make that happen.

He's not talking to the community nor the testers but he is talking to the press. Article in PC Gamer this round, short on real details, and he didn't play it for very long.  But this seems very much like typical corporate approach: talk to the media, not the actual audience.

PS  For anyone still missing the first TR, I finally found the unicorn screenies   http://media.pc.ign.com/media/016/016535/img_2226509.html   http://media.pc.ign.com/media/016/016535/img_2226509.html

He's not talking to the community nor the testers but he is talking to the press.

I seriously hate you man... past midnight here, I have church in the morning, and Im going to be laughing at that damn unicorn pic the entire night....and maybe through church tomorrow...

He hasn't ever since the infamous apology statement was released during the Ultima IX debacle. His community manager advised him to stay away from the boards while she stepped up and took the heat (she was later axed in the TR meltdown). Weak.

I would've played the shit out of that weird harp slinging bard in the original TR. That game had more color than Banjo Kazooie. It was gorgeous.

Fun though TR could be, I've long felt their biggest challenges are business related. Is PvE Planetside sellable in sufficient quantities?

Eh, it was playable at E3. It's what Star Wars Galaxies wanted to be. Mostly third person, twitchy-feeling lock-on combat with proper collission detection.

So, yes, it's a hybrid.

The combat was tolerable. Basically, the metagame is going to make or break TR. Absolutely make or break it. Will the guild stuff be good? Will there be proper crafting? Player Housing? Will the loot system be appealing.

Can you dodge shots or do you just stand there like a fucking idiot?

WarCry: We know that if your character dies in TR you will respawn at a checkpoint. What other penalties are there for dieing?

April Burba: We know we will have a death penalty, but it has not been added yet and we aren't really ready to talk about it until we have had a chance to put it in game and see how it works out.

Trippy, to answer the previous question about dodging shots. I couldn't tell. There was so much pew pew pew pew pew that I think it's just based on constant dice rolls and there's so much shit going on that if you actually dodged one shot, you'd get hit by another. So, uhm, yea. Probably no REAL dodging.

Makes me think one of two things: 

You have to be stationary to fire. 
Or you have to be stationary to have any hope of hitting anything.

Didn't I say that before, a few pages back? I'm pretty sure I did.   I also previously mentioned - not in this thread - that the 'landing ships' and what-not in the vids looked like they were very much on rails.  I know some folks were all  :heart: :heart: :heart: when they saw the vehicles, but I think the reality is far different from their imagination.

Yet another reason the lack of info to us plebs (a game magazine? Really? Who the fuck reads those on a regular basis anymore?) or even the 'non-journalists' at IGN or even X-fire is going to hurt the game.  If everyone's got their own vision building-up in their head about their wonderboy Garriot's 'new vision' and it turns out to be something less than their vision, it's going to get ugly.   You don't want to over-hype the game, but you don't want the fanbase you've got coming up with delusions of their own, either.

Really, I'm thinking the game's going to be hurting in short order.  Too much 'unknown' floating out there, not enough info & time for people to temper their expectations w/ reality.  If you hear "Deus-Ex gameplay" while thinking it's "True FPS" 5 or 6 months before launch, you can come to grips with that.  If you go in thinking "FPS" and get handed dice rolls, you're going to be pissed and not give much of a chance at all.   Doesn't this hold true for you Garriot fans thinking "world" if you were to login and find "Planetside" instead?

7)  Click to target.  But not twitch to continue to aim. 

Spiffy: Fast-paced combat system; "cloned" characters and open class system; Logos powers; morality-based missions.

Iffy: Combat system takes some getting used to; how much effect will "ethical" missions have on gameplay?

Earth is dead and Ilyana is a recruit for the Allied Free Sentients. She's raw meat, a fresh body dropped on the lush world of Forean to battle the Bane. She's Logos-sensitive and that marks her as potentially valuable to the campaign to destroy the Bane. Merely being able to harness Logos isn't enough to ensure her survival, though. She'll need to use all kinds of weapons ranging from laser pistols to rocket-propelled grenades to psychically-generated lightning in order to survive. Denzil's Caldera will be her trial by fire and if she fails, humanity is one step closer to extinction. Her first view of her new world is of burned-out bunkers, smoke and the screams of wounded soldiers. Welcome to Tabula Rasa.

This isn't the Tabula Rasa I saw in May of 2004. Back then the game was a bizarre conflation of eastern and western sensibilities that sported weapons shaped like musical instruments, bizarre mathematical pseudo-science and monsters that belonged more on a 1970's black-light poster than in a modern MMO. More recently, I was invited to Austin, Texas to finally go hands-on with Tabula Rasa. After a brief time creating Ilyana, my ALS "Recruit," I was dropped unceremoniously on Foreas. Foreas is a chaotic war-torn world filled with fast-moving monsters, the sound of explosions and lots and lots of gunfire.

I like this better.


"We lost a good two years worth of work." The speaker is Richard Garriott, better-known as Lord British to the legions of gamers who grew up playing his Ultima titles. The place is a cramped conference room in NCSoft's Austin office a few hours before my hands-on time with the game. Garriott and his long-time collaborator Starr Long are giving a briefing on the new game. The original, it seems, suffered from an issue of "too many chefs" and unfocused development priorities. Trying to make a game that appealed to both western and eastern sensibilities, the resulting mishmash pleased no one and the frustration on both sides caused friction among the original team.

In the end, NCSoft did the almost unthinkable -- jettisoned several years' worth of work, nearly 20 percent of the original team and the majority of the game's code base and art assets. The "new" Tabula Rasa is a much more narrowly focused product. Rather than try to redefine the MMO genre as a whole, the team is now merely trying break out of the mold pioneered by Ultima Online, refined by EverQuest and perfected by World of Warcraft.

Whack-A-Bane

"One of the biggest problems MMOs have is that they never immerse you in the world," Garriott said. "You spend most of your time pressing buttons, watching the interface and waiting for a cooldown meter to finish so you can press it again." Long and Garriott refer to this kind of MMO combat as "whack-a-mole" and claim that it's a legacy of a problem faced by the Ultima Online team. Given the connection speeds of the time, it was prohibitively difficult to synch combat in massively multiplayer online space, so the team solved the problem by taking the pacing of the battle out of the hands of players. The result was the traditional "round-based" combat used by most MMOs since.

Tabula Rasa's combat is different. As Ilyana appears on the planet her AFS trainer runs her through the basics. Combat is in real-time, and movement, cover and range are extremely important and battlefield positioning will be critical. Indeed, at first glance, the game looks like a first-person shooter and when I face down my first Bane, I treat it as such. I kneel down behind some rubble to shoot at a Bane soldier and then duck behind a shattered column to avoid its return fire. Then I see the Bane's bullets dodge around the column and nail me anyway. Tabula Rasa is demonstrably not an FPS and playing it as such is guaranteed to get an avatar killed.

At its heart, Tabula Rasa remains an RPG with RPG-style statistics-based combat. That means that when Ilyana fires a rifle at a Bane soldier, the game juggles a whole lot of character skill numbers really fast to determine if the shot hits or misses, how much damage it does and whether it causes any secondary effects. The difference is that the pacing -- the "pulse" of combat -- is placed under the player's control. Players want to keep moving and utilize cover not to mess up an opponent's aim, but because all of these effects are taken into account when the computer rolls its virtual dice. Combat is more about situational awareness and timing than either twitch reflexes or speccing out maximum DPS. Winning a fight means holding fire until various parameters snap into place that maximize the chance to inflict damage. Many of the monsters in the game are built to take advantage of this system. One of the Bane's floating gun platforms (called a "Predator"), for example, is essentially unkillable from the front and will require coordinated effort from a team to hit the platform in its weaker rear armor.

It's these shifting parameters that the Tabula Rasa team hope will make the world far more immersive than the standard MMO. Rather than creating a static universe filled with mobs that wait around for the player to kill them, Garriott and his team are working on what they call "dynamic battlefields." NPCs in the game will have their own agendas and will pursue them whether or not the player is present. AFS and Bane forces will launch assaults on each other's bases and many of these attacks will be successful. This causes the planetary maps to constantly shift. A player may have a quest completed, for example, and be unable to turn it in because the position that held the NPC that made the request has been overrun. Some of the rarer loot in the game won't be rare because of the mobs that guard it, but because the players will have to arrange assaults on strongly held Bane fortifications just to have the quest for it become available.


I saw this in action myself during Ilyana's "Denzil's Caldera" missions. When I had taken her through some of the basic combat maneuvers, the sergeant NPC doing my training told me that the Bane were holding a secured position in some ruins up ahead. A force field guarded the door and several anti-infantry cannons guarded the force field generators. I found myself in the company of a group of computer-controlled howling commandos charging teeth-first into this little nightmare. To my shock, these guys were good. They worked together to open holes for me to slip through so I could fire rocket-propelled grenades at defensive emplacements and set charges to blow open the force field.

When I had taken down the door I found the place inside swarming with Bane. I shot up a couple and the NPC sergeant told me not to worry about killing every Bane I could see. I should just carve my way toward a control point in the center of the ruins. The control point was a glowing red column of energy and once I reached it, it took a few seconds to turn blue. An enormous transport swooped in from nowhere, dropping off fresh combat troops that finished off the remaining Bane. Non-combat personnel including trainers, vendors and quest givers took up positions around the ruins setting up defenses and crafting stations. It was one of those moments when your whole perspective shifts. What had been just a mission location suddenly transformed into the game's first town and quest hub. Apparently this happens a lot in the world of Tabula Rasa.

What's the Word?

When the Caldera had been secured, things calmed down a bit for Ilyana and I was able to explore a bit more about the setting and gameplay structures of Tabula Rasa. It seems that in an unspecified future, humanity is on the verge of mastering its global sandbox and its own penchant for self-destruction when a cosmic monkey wrench in the form of the Bane shows up. The Bane are a peaceful collective in that "submit to us or die" sort of way. After they essentially burn Earth to the ground humanity gets a last-minute save thanks to alien technology that allows them to make a quick escape and join an underground multi-species resistance movement called the Allied Free Sentients.

The good news is that humanity may hold the key to finally defeating the Bane. It seems that certain humans are sensitive to the power of "Logos," a mysterious pictographic language that, when appropriately combined in the minds of an attuned user, can alter the very fabric of space and time. Logos is an actual language devised by Garriott and it's festooned liberally throughout the game on walls, obelisks and in various hidden places. It can be translated (thought it's not necessary to do so in order to play) and Garriott expects big fans of the game to look for and translate the hidden passages in the game to uncover more about the game's back story. For those of us just interested in blowing stuff up, the acquisition of Logos symbols is one of the game's driving dynamics (there are over 130 of them and many will be extremely difficult to acquire). One of the first missions offered to Ilyana was to enter a nearby cave in order to find the Logos symbol for "Power" that will allow her to fire telekinetic lightning bolts.

After acquiring my first Logos power, I take some time to run some one-off missions, working to level up Ilyana. At level five, I'm offered my first specialization choice -- "soldier" or "specialist." Tabula Rasa's class system is designed so that players can tailor their class experience based on the way they like to play the game. This first choice splits the game between those who like being front-line soldiers and those who enjoy taking on more supporting roles. As characters continue to level up, the classes get more specialized through four tiers of differentiation.


According to Garriott this allows the players to make choices about their characters based on their experience in the game rather than at character creation when they don't really know what they'd like to do. Such traditional character development scenarios are filled with what Garriott calls "exit points," moments when players look for a new game rather than working their way up through lower levels again. The game even allows the player to clone an avatar at any point in order to try out other decision branches.

Ethical Dilemmas

Ilyana's first five levels are split between running operations for the AFS proper and making the acquaintance of the Foreans, the indigenous inhabitants of the game's first planet. The Foreans are a generally peaceful, ecologically-minded race that desperately wants to kick the Bane off their world, but aren't willing to destroy their planet in order to save it. According to Garriott, this will cause some conflicts with the human contingent of the AFS who mean to destroy the Bane by any means necessary and open up a serious can of ethical worms for the player.

Garriott, of course, is justly lauded for introducing the ideas of ethics to computer RPGs in Ultima IV. That game made the development of a character's virtues as important a part of the game as level, loot and killing power. Tabula Rasa hopes to take this dynamic to a new level by offering several sub-factions within the game that offer a variety of ethical dilemmas. "Broadly speaking, the AFS are the good guys and the Bane are the bad guys," Garriott says. "Between that black-and-white view of the world, though, there are many shades of gray."

Many of the quests available in Tabula Rasa will be offered by mutually antagonistic groups and will force the player to make decisions that they may feel uncomfortable with. In one example, there is a mission arc within the game in which the player will be tasked with destroying a dam in order to deny the Bane access to a vital area. The problem is that there's an innocent village that will be wiped out by the exploding dam. Does the player follow orders and wipe out the village or do they attempt to warn the village and risk allowing the Bane to get a foothold in the area? According to Garriott, there won't be any "right" or "wrong" answers, just unappetizing choices that the player will have to live with.

In my own case, Ilyana's first ethical dilemma came about as a result of a trip to an AFS prison. It seems the AFS managed to capture a Bane Thrax Soldier -- something extraordinary as most Bane die before submitting to capture. The problem is that in order to keep the Bane alive, the AFS needed Bane food; the prisoner simply couldn't process anything else. Naturally Ilyana drew the short straw when it came to assignments and she was assigned by a medic named Campbell to get this monster's lunch.


The mission to get the food was exciting, if a bit routine. Head out to a Bane base camp, click on glowy food packs and try not get shot. The interesting bit happened after I got back. I suddenly had two options when it came to turning in the food packs. I could turn it in to one Agent Franz who was going to use a combination of drugs and starvation to wrangle some information out of the prisoner. I could also listen to the entreaties of the Bane itself, a conscript Thrax named Thull who promised to repay my kindness if I gave it the food directly without allowing the food packs to be drugged.

I now had a choice to make, neither of which made me feel particularly good. Give in to short-term compassion for an enemy prisoner and miss out on information that might save the lives of other AFS soldiers? Be a good soldier and give the food to Franz knowing I was sanctioning torture? How to know which was the correct course? My one act of compassion might open a door to freeing the Thrax from Bane control. On the other hand, the Thrax might be lying to me to play on my sympathies. According to the members of the development team, there's no real "right" answer in terms of moving the game forward. Picking either choice would provide the same item or monetary reward, but it will open up a different series of missions -- one involving the human intelligence services and one involving service to the Thrax. Both will eventually lead to a satisfying conclusion to the Forean story. The difference will be how the player feels about the Bane, the humans and themselves.

Unfortunately, all that would have to wait. My time with Tabula Rasa was over and I still had a lot of questions left unanswered. Could the Thrax be turned around? How far could I go and not truly betray my people? How much effect would these different missions have on the resolution of each planet's story? Will this matter at all to the power gamers who pride themselves on never reading quest text? Good questions, to be sure, and now that the space harps and cosmic unicorns have been jettisoned in favor of big guns and flesh-eating aliens, I'm much more eager to find the answers during the game's scheduled release this fall.

I now had a choice to make, neither of which made me feel particularly good. Give in to short-term compassion for an enemy prisoner and miss out on information that might save the lives of other AFS soldiers? Be a good soldier and give the food to Franz knowing I was sanctioning torture? How to know which was the correct course?

Gamespy hands-on (http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/tabula-rasa/794032p1.html).

Easy you clone yourself and try each choice and take the path that gives the best reward.

Hopefully each of these little ethical decisions will shape the face of a server (world) so that different servers actually see different story arcs.  It is well-past time we see a MMO that actually delivers a truly dynamic world/story-line.  That is really at the HEART of the RPG and has never made it into MMO-RPGs yet.

Seems like a lot of good IDEAS in that preview, but at the same time, a lot of stinkers. The shots tracking you around objects is going to be one of those things I'm used to with MMOG's and will continually disappoint me. In a game with magic, it doesn't bother me as much. In a game with pewpew lazers, it bugs me a great deal.

But it's all in the execution. I'm highly skeptical.

I know this was likely sarcastic... but it sounded like the reward was the same (present reward) either way you go, and the only difference was in future missions.

Honestly, though, even the ability to pick different things will stop being "Ethical" to me quickly if it has no effect on the outside world.  The first couple might make me pause to consider what is "right", "wrong", or just "best"... but after a while I will see that regardless of what I choose the storyling goes on about its merry old way.

Hopefully each of these little ethical decisions will shape the face of a server (world) so that different servers actually see different story arcs.  It is well-past time we see a MMO that actually delivers a truly dynamic world/story-line.  That is really at the HEART of the RPG and has never made it into MMO-RPGs yet.

The thing is, for all of that story telling and dynamic content, guess what the number one reason was for participation? Loot.

Hmmm... I could see myself being of the "loot" mind also before I started playing in a guild.  I am not sure, but I think guilds in general have evolved a GOOD bit since the days of UO and AC1.  Guilds tend to play games for bigger reasons than the loot.  I know that for us whether it was SB, WoW, or whatever, we set our own goals and played the game accordingly.

I could see guilds getting behind some of these scenario things in a large way.  Of course you would still have the masses and need to be able to get THEM behind the main Guilds.  I can see it kind of like the average American considers himself a part of some NFL team even though he will NEVER get to see all the content that the players on that team get to see.

So, how do we get people to feel accomplishment from watching other players actually DO the accomplishing?  Hmmm...

PS - wish I had not missed those days of UO/AC... because that scenario style of gaming is right up my alley.  Of course, that is now, some 9 years later... maybe I would have been one of the "where'stheloot" guys back then too.

We're not doing a private forum for Tabula Rasa.

Bummer. I was just about to send your 10 millionth PM too.

Hrose, if you're still around, please mockingly change the thread title to '"Richard Garriott's" Tabula Rasa back from the dead'.  TIA.

Hrose, if you're still around, please mockingly change the thread title to '"Richard Garriott's" Tabula Rasa back from the dead'.  TIA.

I take it they invited the entire intardnet?  Guess I'll trash this invite, then.  Fucking tards.

Nope.. because I didn't get an invite.  I are sadz.

Nope.. because I didn't get an invite.  I are sadz.

Need a whole new acronym for this game. I suggest MMODPS or Massively Multiplayer Online Dice Pitching Simulator.


I predict a short life for this game. Possibly shorter than AC2's miserable life.

<nelson muntz>HA HA!</nelson muntz>

I take it they invited the entire intardnet?  Guess I'll trash this invite, then.  Fucking tards.

Is there a super sekret forum for this now? Not that I got in or not  :nda: but just wondering...

Correction. I'm going to work on things. I'll have news about a forum sometime next week (hopefully early next week). Please don't bug me about it. :)

Theoretically, one could start the update patching at around midnight when one went to bed, wake up at 5:30am only to find it still patching.  Even if one has a screamingly fast Korean-approved internet connection of play-Starcraft-till-you-die-super-speed.

One might be vexed.  Theoretically.

Is there a super sekret forum for this now? Not that I got in or not  :nda: but just wondering...

Shame, because I bet those lucky guys that got in have some hilariously funny screenshots and stories already.

Theoretically, one could start the update patching at around midnight when one went to bed, wake up at 5:30am only to find it still patching.  Even if one has a screamingly fast Korean-approved internet connection of play-Starcraft-till-you-die-super-speed.

One might be vexed.  Theoretically.

I will only say this once.  It is NOT my connection.

I will only say this once.  It is NOT my connection.

I certainly hope not, because that wouldn't bode well at all.

I don't think it's him, but rather, the climate. In his heyday, just launching a game was a big deal. And everything was so new there were no real rules. You COULD literally make a big selling game out of your garage, maybe even program it yourself.

Nowadays that's still maybe possible in lower-order casual online and mobile games. But you won't be launching an MMO by yourself, so you need to convince people to work with and fund you.

WE know well who he is and what he's done. But the better ya know/of him, the more outside the core target demographic you are  :-P

Now of course the question is, "is this an MMO", and I don't mean to derail that badly, but I did want to pop up that sometimes it still can be done indie style.

Actually, it bodes the same as every other MMOG launched or betaed, good or bad, that Waterthread / F13 posters have been in. Some will like it, some will hate it, all will mock its flaws.

Yes

Jumping to the head of the line by hitting quote before I finish the thread, but not really true.

TR is the product of a heck of a lot of time and money

It is?

They have certainly spent time making it but my impression of the budget is that it is rather small.

Its that or beat off to gay porn.

Correction. I'm going to work on things. I'll have news about a forum sometime next week (hopefully early next week). Please don't bug me about it. :)

Why is it that the only thing worse than a game's live forums, are a game's beta forums?

EDIT: WHO IS ALSO LORD BRITISH LOOK AT HIS NECKLACE

I have no trouble with people dressing up.  I do it.  My problem is with a person who owns a castle but cannot afford a decent enough tailor to not look worse than the lousy costume put together by a crazed fanboy.

Fileplanet is giving away Tabula Rasa beta keys to Founder members.  If anyone is an interested Founder memeber.  I think they're limited. 

Fileplanet is giving away Tabula Rasa beta keys to Founder members.  If anyone is an interested Founder memeber.  I think they're limited. 

I have the most horrible case of really strong hiccups ever.  It's those hard ones that hurt.  I've had them before and very nearly turned myself inside out.

 :cry:

Part of me wants to play TR.

Part of me wants to ignore it like the outbreak of a bad plague.

It's been in development too long, methinks.

I have the most horrible case of really strong hiccups ever.  It's those hard ones that hurt.  I've had them before and very nearly turned myself inside out.

Part of me wants to play TR.

Part of me wants to ignore it like the outbreak of a bad plague.

It's been in development too long, methinks.

How long has Tabula Rasa been in development? I'm just glad it's not a game that celebrates sameness.

Turns out NCSoft DOES want to make a distinction between reporter and player. C'est la vie. Rest of thread will reappear when the "real" NDA drops.

“There is an amazing amount of anticipation for Tabula Rasa’s launch within our development team and the player community,” said Richard Garriott, executive producer. “The player feedback at this point has been extremely helpful and we’re putting the final touches on the game. This pre-order release truly marks the final stages in developing this epic adventure, and since owning the pre-order allows players beta access, it is a great way to try Tabula Rasa out before we launch the game.”

Yea, good point. However, it's also a trailer because it's not in the game yet.

oops.

I'm confused by your statement but won't press the issue since this video doesn't affect my decision whether to buy the game or not.  If it does for you, then I'm sure there are countless other "game trailers" that are nothing but CGI that I can direct you to.

It's so easy to get in the beta that it's essentially open now. It's silly that they haven't lifted NDA so we can talk about it. Oh well.

Anyone else think there was a strange resemblance to Milla Jovovich?

Fileplanet is giving away Tabula Rasa beta keys to Founder members.  If anyone is an interested Founder memeber.  I think they're limited. 

Super, be sure to come back and tell us how it is.  We lost our Vanguard nut, so we're down to just the UO nut and the FFXI nut.

i was able to access beta the same day pre-orders went on sale (after people bitched about being tricked the devs opened it up) and have had no technical issues installing or playing. 

definitely will be buying on release.  maybe it's just a side effect of playing vanguard since beta that every other game seems so much better... plus no gnomes.

I am also in the beta (no NDA break to say that). But i'm not nuts about it.

I think the biggest question I'd ask of any MMO, including this one, is "Describe the first 30 to 60 minutes game play."

I think the biggest question I'd ask of any MMO, including this one, is "Describe the first 30 to 60 minutes game play."

Funny thing is, i hear the keys given away at sites, and places like file plant, are time limited, they don't go to the end.

NDA down for Journalist types. (http://www.mmognation.com/2007/07/30/tabula-rasa-beta-journal-first-impressions/)

I want to preface this with a note that this is a game still in Beta. Lots of things can change before launch

I'm a games.writer. And I'm not pulling any punches anymore.

It pisses me off that I can't respond to this. Oh well.

Remember, schild hates fun. It's not a game from Japan.

That's fine, if you agree with him.

No, Sky, my crap-tolerance is just much, much lower than yours.

This special retail box offers customers exclusive in-game items, including a special character emote, exclusive dye recipes players can use to create unique armor colors, and a unique pet. Players who purchase the Limited Collector’s Edition box also receive a briefing from Richard Garriott’s alter-ego in the game, General British, classified maps, an Allied Free Sentients (AFS) field guide, Tabula Rasa dog tags, an AFS challenge coin and a special edition poster.

Collector's Edition Announced

I'm still not in this thing. Bizarre. I always get into betas.

Collector's Edition Announced (http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=80309).


Pet?

The female characters are suppose to be soldiers. Shouldn't they look alittle butch?

A lot of my chars in CoH/V are butch looking.  Short, mohawks, and built like fat little brick outhouses.  In fact, one of my chars is named Brick Outhouse.

A lot of my chars in CoH/V are butch looking.  Short, mohawks, and built like fat little brick outhouses.  In fact, one of my chars is named Brick Outhouse.

My first character in WoW retail was a Dwarf Girl Warrior.

I LOVED HER. I STILL LOVE HER. OKAY IS THAT A PROBLEM

Screens: August 31, 2007

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A531738

Tabula Rasa
Beta-Test review
By Joey Seiler

Release date: Fall 2007

Even if you don't care for massively multiplayer online games, you still might be interested in Tabula Rasa. If you enjoy them at all, you'll likely love it.

Tabula Rasa is the upcoming science-fiction MMO from NCsoft Austin, headed up by Richard Garriott. While there isn't even a firm release date scheduled – other than "the fall" – early beta-test versions of the game are already showing its potential.

You play a soldier in a war against the Bane. And while you're outfitted with the latest in space-age weaponry, the real power comes from Logos, the remnants of a language left behind by the ancient Eloh. You gradually learn to read the Logos, uncovering more of the story and combining the symbols to form powerful attacks. It's like if Luke Skywalker practiced kabbalah.

Like in most role-playing games, characters gradually evolve into specialized classes, either brute-force soldiers or specialists like technology builders and medics. What makes Tabula Rasa unique is that at each crucial point, you can choose to clone your character. If you get tired of being a grenadier, you can jump back to one of your clones and explore what it's like to be a sniper without having to build a character from level one. It would be nice if the clones were saved automatically, but it's still a helpful option to limit the need to constantly grind out levels for a new character.

I'm not normally a fan of MMOs. The statistic-based gameplay usually makes me feel like I'm just pointing and clicking without any real control over the character. Tabula Rasa's first-person-shooter-style controls at least make it feel like the player is in the driver's seat.

With immersive visuals and sound that unwind a carefully orchestrated storyline, Tabula Rasa's preview state might not be quite enough to sell me on massively multiplayer games, but out of all the MMOs I've played, it's already my favorite.

Copyright © 2007 Austin Chronicle Corporation. All rights reserved.

That sounds like an advertisement, not a review :-P

I don't even know if the NDA is down for regular testers so I won't say anything.

Because it apparently didn't go into fun.

It's not. The press can say what they will, but the public is muzzled. Make of that what you will.

Unleash the evil?

Tabula Rasa Walkthrough Videos Narrated by Richard Garriott Now Available.

NDA drops September 6th, same time as website redesign

Has the game made any significant changes since a few months ago?