Tabula Rasa, now with no FUN!

[amiable]

Gaming, imo, has gone past If You Don't Like a Game, Don't Play It.

We're firmly in the - considering the rising costs of development and longer dev cycles, etc - "Don't be part of the problem" protip zone.

There's a lot more. But those are off the top of my head. It's not a matter of taste. It's a matter of giving people with the money (the important folks) the wrong impression. That we're willing to put up with, nay, will hand over money for that shit.

Well, there is the rather uncomfortable possibility that the majority of people buying the games you describe like and enjoy them. 

This argument is very similar to one I have with my wife regarding wine.  Background:  My wife is a wine snob, she hangs out with wine snobs, its one of her things.  Now, I'm not very into wine but every year me and some of my friends head out and buy Beaujolais Nouveau as soon as it comes out and have a party and get rip-roaring drunk.  A good time is had by all.  My wife despises Beaujolais Nouveau.

Why?  Because Beaujolais Nouveau is crap wine.  The fact that it sells well encourages other wine producers to make crap wines.  As a result she feels the overall quality of wine is decreasing and its because idiots like me purchase crappy wine and don't save their money to purchase truly outstanding wines that she enjoys. 

Now I have tasted many glasses of the wine that she enjoys due to their "full-bodied complexity" and "overtones of chocolate and cinnamon."   In my opinion they taste like ass and I would much prefer my shitty bottle of Beaujolais.  Whats more is I really resent my wife (who otherwise is awesome) about this, because she will attend our wine party, sit there not drinking the Beaujolais, and endlesly mock the palletes of those of us enjoying our Beaujolais.  We even started bringing other wines, to mix things up a bit, but her response is: "hell if you are going to drink that crap why not just drink the damn Beaujolais?"  The net result:  It does nothing to decrease our interest in consuming Beaujolais, but it substantially increases our desire to strangle her.  Our response is:  "If you don't like the wine, don't drink it."  But the undertone is: "Who the hell are you to tell me our wine is crap, if we like it?"

I think the analogy is apt to this game.  While you may be correct that Tabula Rasa will never go anywhere and will fold in a few days, I don't feel it is apt that we "should just play WoW, its like TR only better."  I feel there is a difference, I enjoy it (more the HGL although HGL is an enjoyable game) so who is anyone to tell me my personal preferences are wrong?  While I won't claim that Tabula Rasa is a fine wine, it is a nice Beaujolais, and I think it tastes good and does the job of getting me drunk.

[Modern Angel]

I will admit only that the screenshot of the little base defense thing looked good. I'm still not doing this.

[Venkman]

Critics often make the mistake in thinking they speak for the masses. This has always been one of my personal life pet peeves, and I see it in games as much as it exists in movies, music and poetry before ("advanced" entertainment media with "formalized" languages of critique). The high-brow conversations some of these groups have only matter to that group. Like any emergent group, they've created an insular persona and language that requires many rites of passage just to be given the nod of attention. Many times, such groups are little more than yet another clique more interested in creating a group they can lead than in creating any sort of fundamental shift in how society thinks or perceives.

MMOs have evolved to the point where they're just another genre. As such, anything that launches and is playable has a place here. It's only up to the companies whether a game stays open. This is no longer the circle-jerk of dev/player interaction to create a wonderful new experience nobody knows how to program for. You've got promo agencies like Electric Sheep making MMOs for chrissakes! Anyone who thinks this genre is still young and new and worth a lot of ample forgiveness hasn't looked much beyond the AAA retail-purchased titles.

And that's not because of critics. It's because of money. The masses have that money, have long proven willing to spend it, and don't care about nearly anything similar to what the pre-Trammel crowd still hopes comes to this "new and emerging" genre.

[Falconeer]

I will admit only that the screenshot of the little base defense thing looked good. I'm still not doing this.

Yes I agree, and that's why I wanted to like it. Too bad the combat isn't compelling. It is supposed to be about the pewpew but it's more like tweetwee to me. Nice try, but it needs refining.

Pewgate London on, the other hand...

[Modern Angel]

Critics often make the mistake in thinking they speak for the masses. This has always been one of my personal life pet peeves, and I see it in games as much as it exists in movies, music and poetry before ("advanced" entertainment media with "formalized" languages of critique). The high-brow conversations some of these groups have only matter to that group. Like any emergent group, they've created an insular persona and language that requires many rites of passage just to be given the nod of attention. Many times, such groups are little more than yet another clique more interested in creating a group they can lead than in creating any sort of fundamental shift in how society thinks or perceives.

MMOs have evolved to the point where they're just another genre. As such, anything that launches and is playable has a place here. It's only up to the companies whether a game stays open. This is no longer the circle-jerk of dev/player interaction to create a wonderful new experience nobody knows how to program for. You've got promo agencies like Electric Sheep making MMOs for chrissakes! Anyone who thinks this genre is still young and new and worth a lot of ample forgiveness hasn't looked much beyond the AAA retail-purchased titles.

And that's not because of critics. It's because of money. The masses have that money, have long proven willing to spend it, and don't care about nearly anything similar to what the pre-Trammel crowd still hopes comes to this "new and emerging" genre.

There are few things that irritate me more than nerd snobbery. I have a couple friends who lament, in this precise language, that "MMOs went the WoW path" and "it's a shame the market went that way." They were hardcore UO players and then Shadowbane. Tried Guild Wars, bitched about lack of meaningful PvP. The end of this point? They're playing LOTRO and still bitching to me over supper about WoW. Never mind that they are playing WoW with a different skin and more grinding and way more odious raids. I'm like, look... you're a fucking nerd and I'm a fucking nerd and she's a fucking nerd. It doesn't matter whether your bowtie is striped or polka dots we're all still fucking nerds so quit getting all ragey over this shit.

There's this idea that you can pay for a game with a 60m budget with fucking Shadowbane players. Go read any unreleased MMO board right now. Any one, pick it. I'll tell you what you're going to see: I want meaningful death, will there be a hardcore mode with permadeath, can we gank, I hope the twelve year olds in WoW don't show up. And half these guys are the same dudes doing it in every game. The old school, pre-WoW mindset is so absolutely detached from reality you could write a sociology dissertation on it. You cannot, cannot, CANNOT fund the modern MMO catering to oldschool tastes and in oldschool ways. It cannot be done anymore.

[Falconeer]

Every time someone mentions Shadowbane these days I got a hard on. Oh.. 

[Venkman]

The old school, pre-WoW mindset is so absolutely detached from reality you could right a sociology dissertation on it.

I want that stappled on the doors of every college everywhere.

[schild]

The old school, pre-WoW mindset is so absolutely detached from reality you could right a sociology dissertation on it.

I want that stappled on the doors of every college everywhere.

You would both fail for not being able to find spelling and grammatical errors in single sentences.

[Ratman_tf]

I like to drop in here, and read the stuff people post, but man, sometimes it feels like this board is full of cranky old fuckers who've played every game and are just bitter that they can't go back to UO/EQ/Pong/whateverthefuck and relive their golden gaming moments.

P.S. Shadowbane was brown.

[HaemishM]

Welcome to f13.net.

[Yegolev]

How well did the game launch?
A) Great
B) Good
C) Okay
D) Trivia Contest
E) Disaster

Oh, sweet Jesus, this made me laugh.  I should have read this thread days ago.

You know, a trivia contest is how Roy Brisby won that panda from David Bowie, back in the late 1980's.  This was before trivia was popular, but Bowie has always been a trend-setter.

Ratman... you left off X-COM.

[Modern Angel]

The old school, pre-WoW mindset is so absolutely detached from reality you could right a sociology dissertation on it.

I want that stappled on the doors of every college everywhere.

Yeah but I totally typoed that. I am a horrible multi-tasker.

[Ratman_tf]

Now that I think about it, I think what Tabula Rasa needs to be a great game is ring explosions. Like when you kill one of those little shrub monsters there's this huge explosion with a ring. And big boss monster gets two or three rings of different colors.

Yep.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToaeOvqIFx0

[Modern Angel]

I like to drop in here, and read the stuff people post, but man, sometimes it feels like this board is full of cranky old fuckers who've played every game and are just bitter that they can't go back to UO/EQ/Pong/whateverthefuck and relive their golden gaming moments.

P.S. Shadowbane was brown.

I don't have any old timey MMO anecdotes that I get misty-eyed over every time I relate them; I played every single one of note prior to WoW and hated every single one. They were unpolished horseshit? I got a free copy of EQ when I worked at EB: didn't make it out of the first month. Got UO when it came out: lost its luster quickly. Repeat for every single one.

I'm not pining. I just want good games. The biggest hurdle to MMO development is the 'community'. You know the guys I'm talking about. It's the same few hundred assholes who leap onto each and every board for a newly announced game and start shrieking like crazed lemurs about all of the sort of stuff we've come to expect from fat neckbeards the world over; I listed them above and won't again. It hurts development and it hurts innovation. Because devs are only human and MMOs are unique in that you have to maintain some sort of relationship with your customer base since you need them for an extended period. They have to listen, or at least pay lip service to it. And the games are never good enough and never will be so while I'm not advocating the borderline disdain for the consumer that Blizzard sometimes shows dev houses seriously need to not listen to a word anyone says outside of the company and closed beta testers before the product ships.

So, no... good games. Innovative games. Neither one of those is coming in the MMO. They've done the same thing for so fucking long that the quote (by haemish, I believe) of "MMOs are a medium not a genre" is completely reversed; MMOs ARE a genre because they've dug themselves such a creative hole that they don't know what to do anymore. Or rather, MMOs suck and are going to suck for the foreseeable future because they're MMOs.

[Nebu]

So, no... good games. Innovative games. Neither one of those is coming in the MMO. They've done the same thing for so fucking long that the quote (by haemish, I believe) of "MMOs are a medium not a genre" is completely reversed; MMOs ARE a genre because they've dug themselves such a creative hole that they don't know what to do anymore. Or rather, MMOs suck and are going to suck for the foreseeable future because they're MMOs.

It's relative and dependent on taste.  There has been innovation and polish in MMO's, you just don't happen to enjoy the playstyle... which is just fine.  Eve has done a great deal of innovation as has Planetside, Shadowbane, and A Tale in the Desert.  I can understand why you (and others) don't like MMO's as they will never live up to the quality of single player or small-group games.  MMO's have to make concessions to accomodate larger numbers of simultaneous players, at least until technology catches up.  Personally, I like larger multi-player worlds and am willing to forgive a little in "teh shiny" to have it.  I enjoyed MUDs.  I liked EQ.  I had fun in UO.  Those games provided me more memories than any single player or console game that I can remember.  Your experience is different.  Tastes differ. 

[tmp]

There are few things that irritate me more than nerd snobbery. I have a couple friends who lament, in this precise language, that "MMOs went the WoW path" and "it's a shame the market went that way." They were hardcore UO players and then Shadowbane. Tried Guild Wars, bitched about lack of meaningful PvP. The end of this point? They're playing LOTRO and still bitching to me over supper about WoW. Never mind that they are playing WoW with a different skin and more grinding and way more odious raids.

Given their UO/Shadowbane roots it's possible they are playing LotRO because of the PvPM aspect, which is somewhat different from WoW 'sport pvp'...

[Modern Angel]

MMO's have to make concessions to accomodate larger numbers of simultaneous players, at least until technology catches up.

I don't buy that anymore. We've heard that for almost 10 years now. And it's not so much that I hate MMOs (I still have my WoW sub) as it is that I'm terribly disappointed with the lack of innovation. I don't even precisely know what sort of innovation I want. I just know that when we all said that WoW is good for the industry because it will force innovation that I wasn't anticipating even MORE EQ/WoW clones to be coming out in three years. It didn't force innovation at all; in fact, a game like PotBS which had no diku decided they needed to add some. Did TR need to be another diku WoW thing with levels and shiny? Did it?

I'll tell you what ought to scare the pants off of the other developers. They're busy making clones of what WoW is now and Blizz have already given strong indications that they're shifting to a five and ten man emphasis. You can see it now with five mans now offering some of the best gear in the game. For whatever reason Blizzard is prescient when it comes to the markets they make games for and if they've tested the wind and already moved these assholes releasing Star Trek Online with their raid on the Klingon capital are fucked.

[Modern Angel]

There are few things that irritate me more than nerd snobbery. I have a couple friends who lament, in this precise language, that "MMOs went the WoW path" and "it's a shame the market went that way." They were hardcore UO players and then Shadowbane. Tried Guild Wars, bitched about lack of meaningful PvP. The end of this point? They're playing LOTRO and still bitching to me over supper about WoW. Never mind that they are playing WoW with a different skin and more grinding and way more odious raids.

Given their UO/Shadowbane roots it's possible they are playing LotRO because of the PvPM aspect, which is somewhat different from WoW 'sport pvp'...

Except they raid instead of PvP. It is exclusively disdain for a 'popular' game when 'popular' in this instance doesn't mean 'popular' in the Titanic sense. It's viewing the world and the industry through a nerd lens; it's having disdain for a game housewives play and enjoy just as much as foureyes. You need some nerd lens but not exclusively nerd lens

[Venkman]

The old school, pre-WoW mindset is so absolutely detached from reality you could right a sociology dissertation on it.

I want that stappled on the doors of every college everywhere.

Yeah but I totally typoed that. I am a horrible multi-tasker.

I was thinking of that as a sig line and woulda made the correction :) But I leave the whole grammar fascist crap to the wanks my peers.

MMO's have to make concessions to accomodate larger numbers of simultaneous players, at least until technology catches up.

Technically this is correct, but in practice rarely does it seem like there any concessions that were worth making. I like the WoW combat system better than I did the Oblivion one, and way the hell much more than the crappy one in KOTOR. WoW's (and CoX's) are just more tactile and immediate. And yet these icons of "RPG" didn't have to make any of the concessions that MMOs arguably need to. Meanwhile, the MMOs mostly have crappy one-dimensional quests not even worth reading the quest text for, which is about the least technically complex thing to pull off in a genre of server load balancing, anti-hacking tech and e-commerce. Yes, large numbers of compelling quests cost money, but this is for a genre that continues to collect cash after launch. LoTRO has less quests but 90% of them beat all but the top 5% of WoW's any day.

And the bugs? A lot of them are just lazy/inexcusable lack of planning and proper time management. I do lean off of those creating a lot of tech or trying to do things fundamentally different (to those you and I both mentioned, like PS, ATiTD, Eve). But most people making whac-a-mole DIKU only have themselves to blame.

The technology is already here. There's a gigantic crossover between people playing modern MMOs worldwide and broadband insertion. And the most successful MMOs aren't pushing any of the tech boundaries even the older FPS games were. So basically, I don't see this as a crutch anymore. I don't even really see it being used as an excuse anymore by the relevant devs. And that just serves to highlight the few that do.

[geldonyetich2]

Shadowbane will always have a place in my heart as the MMORPG that took its release day screenshots based off of the gameplay I recorded with the Shadowbane client functionality (Imgs 20-30 on GameSpot).  The guy with the two blades in the middle is me!   



It might have got away with its high and mighty PvP accountability paradise goals if only their server architecture, stubbornly restricted to a single box, could have endured what they had planned for it without crashing.  On the upshot, it's free now.

As for Tabula Rasa...

I do want to defend its pixely honor, I've got all the good words to point out what people are missing about it, but deep down I know it's just another tramp.  I could say that beta bored the hell out of me but I liked release enough to put over 40 hours into it.  I wouldn't be lying, I got my box price out of it, good for me.  However, I should also say that the longer I play this game, the more and more I encounter lack of polish.  Wilderness > Divide > Palisades.  Some level 20-25ish instanced areas are broken to the point where they can't be completed.  The end game, the "Eldar content", is simply not there.  Tabula Rasa, you degenerate hussy, you could have done something with your life!

The only way I could really recommend this game is if you're patient.  Patient enough to subscribe to a game that is more entertaining than than most MMORPGs because it more resembles to City of Heroes than World of Warcraft, but with the understanding that a lot of the content is buggy or missing.  If you want to wait 6 months, just to see if Destination Games can do this, that would not be a bad idea.  I'm planning on waiting 6 months myself - it'll just cost me $90 (-$15 for the first month) along the way.

[Katal]

This is my first post here. I joined because I want to get into this discussion (and other ones as well).

I wanted to like Tabula Rasa. Before I was in beta, I wanted to try the game really bad. I would read and listen to Garriott's words downplaying the typical Everquest formula of MMO gameplay.

I'm jaded when it comes to MMOs. I've played and tried almost every MMO (I'm sure a lot of you have as well), from Western fantasy to Korean PvP-heavy games. I would try and beta-test every game I could, to find that "perfect game" that would draw me in.

I wanted Tabula Rasa to be that game, and when I first played it, I felt quite refreshed... but that feeling only lasted for a week or two.

At first, it was really fun. I liked that reactions were (fairly) quick, the interface was clean, and sometimes the action felt more exciting than WoW.

The more I played though, the more that exciting feeling wore off on me. Suddenly the 500th kick-to-the-face fatality on an enemy Bane just didn't put a smile on my face anymore. With some additional patches, combat became a bit slower, and shooting a rifle felt like throwing rocks at people.

The features the game touted, like control point capture, diverging quests, and interactive combat system were all good and decent... but when it really came down to it, these features were not really as revolutionary as Garriott made them to be. They really were refinements of other features in games, or things we've seen from other games put into this game.

Basically TR is doing what WoW did when it game out, and that's refining gameplay designs from previous games. This sounds like a horrible generalization, but to me, TR is like Sci-Fi WoW 2.0.

In reality, that is not really bad. For a lot a people, being Sci-Fi WoW 2.0 is good enough. Just being a bit better from the other games is good enough for them.

It's not good enough for me though.

I want something really interactive and refreshing. I mean, developers have the technology and know-how to do such a thing, but no one really attempts to do it, or maybe they do it, but half-ass it.

Let me give you a jigsaw game: Why can we just take the excellent combat, skill and class system (unique and soloable) of Hellgate and put into a wider-spanning universe that is large like WoW or EVE or any massive MMO?

Instead the mutliplayer Flagship gives us is playing the single player game all over again, just with better drops and you could play with a few friends, and maybe some additional seasonal content (holiday stuff, extra dungeons, items, all carrots really).

Simply put, stop giving us carrots and give us some cake. I'm tired of being handed carrots in my games. I just want some cake at the end of this tunnel.

[Insert Portal reference here]

[Falconeer]

Shadowbane will always have a place in my heart as the MMORPG that took its release day screenshots based off of the gameplay I recorded with the Shadowbane client functionality (Imgs 20-30 on GameSpot).  The guy with the two blades in the middle is me!   



It might have got away with its high and mighty PvP accountability paradise goals if only their server architecture, stubbornly restricted to a single box, could have endured what they had planned for it without crashing.  On the upshot, it's free now.

You don't know what Shadowbane is now, how much it changed and got better. You all don't know! You are seriously losing something. It's glorious! (not Signe glorious, actual glorious). Oh... 

[geldonyetich2]

Once Shadowbane went free to download and play, the intrinsic good or bad of the thing stopped mattering.  Try it, like or hate it, it won't cost you a dime.  Archlord and RF Online are similarly avoiding scorn these days.

[Nebu]

Once Shadowbane went free to download and play, the intrinsic good or bad of the thing stopped mattering.  Try it, like or hate it, it won't cost you a dime.  Archlord and RF Online are similarly avoiding scorn these days.

We still get to bash/praise them purely for academic's sake.  That's what keeps Terra Nova going, right?

[Falconeer]

Once Shadowbane went free to download and play, the intrinsic good or bad of the thing stopped mattering.  Try it, like or hate it, it won't cost you a dime.  Archlord and RF Online are similarly avoiding scorn these days.

What does that mean? I am not talking academically. I am talking about playing it. Now, 4 years later, it can be done. It works!

[Modern Angel]

because it more resembles to City of Heroes than World of Warcraft,

Which means what precisely? They're essentially the same game except CoH has a mindnumbing grind and no items or endgame attached. They're both the same formula.

Which makes it sound like I'm arguing both sides here, that games need to think business first or creativity first. What I'm actually arguing is that you can't do either: business first is going to lead to stagnant EQ retreads smashing their heads against the WoW wall, funded by people with mroe money than sense whereas creative nerdcore first gets you Vanguard and the elusive Darkfall Online because nerds don't manage worth shit. The MMO genre is polarizing into those two extremes and nobody fucking gets it. There's a dot.com boom in microcosm going on where people are sinking millions into the next big thing when the next big thing isn't going to happen and they're giving those millions to either soulless hacks or geeks with a dream to have meaningful PvP or complex social dynamics without leaving their chairs.

[Venkman]

I think a lot of people do get it, particularly here. There's a lot going on in the genre if you cast a net to cover everything from Barbiegirls.com through GW to vSide. Most of that is academic though, in large part because they're for other groups. A lot of money is going after the not-WoW audience, in part because that audience wants different things that are also easy and cheaper to make, and in part the measures for success are numbers the WoW crowd doesn't really have easy access too.

We still await the "next big MMO" but are experienced enough to know even if it's WoW done better it's not the world-dominating/ all-humanity thing people have thought other games would be. Success is measured differently across the broadest spectrum of the "genre". Everybody would love 8+mil * $14.99/mo, but nobody has that so they measure things differently (and having 120mil registered accounts can't be a bad thing for something like Audition... they're making money from some of that, and "some" of 120mil is definitely more than "some" of SB numbers).

It's not wrong to like something others don't.

[Margalis]

I tried Archlord, in two minutes I got stuck on a roof and couldn't get down.

[geldonyetich2]

Re: Creativity and Business

IMLTHO, the score goes like this:

• Creativity + Good Enough For Me To Like Playing = Win
• Business = The Almighty Dollar = Screw Creativity, We Just Want It To Sell = Lose.

I would rather games work on becoming artistically more satisfying products and not just selling better.  Unfortunately for me, the almighty dollar is the one calling the shots here.  Reality is teh suck.

Re: What did I mean by Tabula Rasa being more like City of Heroes than World of Warcraft.

How can I put this?  If you play to level up, or socialize, or many other uniquely MMORPG-like reasons, you probably won't see the difference.  If you play for "the flow", the intrinsic quality of what makes a game an activity our brains like doing, City of Heroes is lightyears ahead of any EverQuest clone. 

Here's another way to put that might make more sense.  Rip out the online multiplayer component and the ability to achieve from both games.  You have a level 30 character in both games and the entire game is you taking out one encounter worth of bad guys.  In World of Warcraft, you run up to a single bad guy (as that's all you can take) turn on auto attack, and tap hotkeys in a specific order to win.   In City of Heroes, you lure 12 guys around a corner, tap hotkeys to win but this time you need to alternate between several targets, you have an inspiration tray to pull on, you have a Z-Axis you can use (flight), and you and your foes can actually be knocked around by the flow of combat.  Which would you rather have burned on a DVD to put into your PS1?

I'm not exactly sure how to go about saying what I'm trying to explain here, but they're not the same, not if you take a good look at them.

[Venkman]

You have never ever changed your opinion on how the genre should work.

I tried Archlord, in two minutes I got stuck on a roof and couldn't get down.

Archlord's only really different by business model. I mean really different shit, like standing around in a Mall hoping to get noticed by someone who brings you to a party where you listen to music and look at all the stuff they bought from that Mall. Still "MMO" in the persistent/lotta-people sense, but no real "game" at all. Even Entropia has something you need to "do" there.

[geldonyetich2]

You have never ever changed your opinion on how the genre should work.

Is it broke?  Should I fix it?  Will duct tape be enough?

[WindupAtheist]

This thread needs a chart.

[geldonyetich2]

[schild]

I think Tabula Rasa got caught in an infinite loop between "You Poor Bastard" and "Can You Blame Someone Else?"

[Rendakor]

I understand geldon's comment about WOW and COH not feeling identical: an even-mob in CoH is on par with a WOW green, difficulty-wise. Thus, there's an illusion of greater player power. A group running an instance in WOW fights a pack of 3-4 mobs at a time, while in City, the average pull for a group is over 10.
Its this epic feeling, setting few against many and coming out on top, that drags me back to COH every few months.