Tabula Rasa, now with no FUN!

[Trippy]

Typical MMORPG fare. Story is coherent.

[Slayerik]

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

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

[HaemishM]

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

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

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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

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

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

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

[HaemishM]

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

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

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

[Slayerik]

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

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

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

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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

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

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

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

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

[tmp]

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

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

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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

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

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

So SWG and LoTR are still crappy IP choices.

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

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

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

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

[Soukyan]

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

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

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

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

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Amaron]

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

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

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

[sam, an eggplant]

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

[shiznitz]

It lacks any depth whatsoever.

[Nebu]

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

[HaemishM]

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

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

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

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

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

[Nebu]

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

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

[Stephen Zepp]

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

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

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

Those were the days!

[Yoru]

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

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

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

Those were the days!

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

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

[SnakeCharmer]

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

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

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

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



Rather than what I SHOULD see:



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

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

[Venkman]

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

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

[Stephen Zepp]

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

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

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

Those were the days!

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

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

You made me do a vanity google:

Code:

/***************************************************************************
 *  Original Diku Mud copyright (C) 1990, 1991 by Sebastian Hammer,        *
 *  Michael Seifert, Hans Henrik St{rfeldt, Tom Madsen, and Katja Nyboe.   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Merc Diku Mud improvments copyright (C) 1992, 1993 by Michael          *
 *  Chastain, Michael Quan, and Mitchell Tse.                              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Ack 2.2 improvements copyright (C) 1994 by Stephen Dooley              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  In order to use any part of this Merc Diku Mud, you must comply with   *
 *  both the original Diku license in 'license.doc' as well the Merc       *
 *  license in 'license.txt'.  In particular, you may not remove either of *
 *  these copyright notices.                                               *
 *                                                                         *
 *       _/          _/_/_/     _/    _/     _/    ACK! MUD is modified    *
 *      _/_/        _/          _/  _/       _/    Merc2.0/2.1/2.2 code    *
 *     _/  _/      _/           _/_/         _/    (c)Stephen Zepp 1998    *
 *    _/_/_/_/      _/          _/  _/             Version #: 4.3          *
 *   _/      _/      _/_/_/     _/    _/     _/                            *
 *                                                                         *
 *                        http://www.ackmud.org/                           *
 *                        zenithar at ackmud dot org                       *
 *  Much time and thought has gone into this software and you are          *
 *  benefitting.  We hope that you share your changes too.  What goes      *
 *  around, comes around.                                                  *
 ***************************************************************************/

[Viin]

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

[schild]

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

[Nebu]

Let's summarize.

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

Did I miss anything?

[schild]

Let's summarize.

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

Did I miss anything?

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

[SnakeCharmer]

Let's summarize.

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

Did I miss anything?

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

What kind of crack are you smoking?

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

[Grublet]

Tabula Rasa... NOT PRETTY. In fact, it's downright depressing.

War is ugly.

[Baldrake]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[shiznitz]

Flytext of damage numbers over a targets head (or my own) in an MMO completely and totally sucks ass. 

Make the combat as immersive as possible. 

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

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

[SnakeCharmer]

Flytext of damage numbers over a targets head (or my own) in an MMO completely and totally sucks ass. 

Make the combat as immersive as possible. 

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

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

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

[CadetUmfer]

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

ok so maybe that'd be a disaster :p

[Mrbloodworth]

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

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

ok so maybe that'd be a disaster :p

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

[CadetUmfer]

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

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

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

[Venkman]

Improved AI
Cloning
FPS-like controls
Low downtime:

My own thoughts:

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

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

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