Tabula Rasa, now with no FUN!

[Venkman]

Tabula Rasa is better than WoW!

But is it bigger than the Beatles?

Who puts a news site up as a beta?!

And shit I'm tired of the "Ethical Parables". As far as I know there are three quests all told in TR that have any choice at all, and none result in anything you didn't see a zillion times since accidentally locking yourself out of Neriak in EQ1.

And the restarting from zero would mean something if there was more than one path for advancement. It's rolling the exact same race/class/eventually-talent combo in WoW except with a few levels already ticked off. Oh, and those levels are the early ones before the full pain of DIKU kicks in.

I'm not saying TR sucks. And it is different from WoW. But these schockly "I got a photo op with RG" 'journalists' piss me with their repeat-the-bulletpoints "reporting". This shit makes real sites and the work they actually try and do look bad.

Quasar-fail.

[Surlyboi]

I'm not sure how anyone could play TR past that 'blow up the wall' mission at the very beginning. Where the explosion doesn't hurt you or the NPC guy standing 3 ft away from it.

Just for fun I planted the explosives and didn't move. The explosion sent me flying and did damage to me. This happened a few minutes ago.

It didn't have any effect on Nija because the PVE portion of the game realized it was no match for his mad PVP skeelz and so the explosion merely made nooise and then crawled into a ball and licked its own anus. 

[schild]

When I played beta, that blow up the wall bit pissed me off a huge deal also.

[Surlyboi]

Well it had no effect on you because you're obviously awesome, for reals.

[Kageru]

Playing it because a friend is interested. It feels a lot like CoH, one or two "cute" tricks that are thinkly spread over a nice long XP curve. Even with the hybrid combat system shooting stuff is still quite satisfying though.

[Miasma]

Tabula Rasa will be fun for a few months until I hit the cap, it's not so good that I can see myself leveling up my clones.  Unlike most other MMOs I've played it does keep on getting better as you progress though.  The first few levels and the starter zone are pretty weak but the zones and instances that follow are good.  It's the first MMO I've played where I'm not overly concerned about gaining levels, I want to progress through the zones and instances nice and slow so that I see everything.

Last night I was hunting down an enemy sniper who was trying to steal away some wildlife and convert them into controlled units.  I found him and started firing, at half life the guy starts running away, he hoofed it to an open area and called in a dropship to evacuate him out.  The prick waved at me as he disappeared.

Then I ran an instance, the battles get quite fever pitched as you progress.  We completed a breach into the enemy area completing an objective and then got a radio message rewarding us right then and giving new orders.  After we disable a force field a massive battle erupts as enemy dropships bring in reinforcements but now it's safe enough that our side can bring in people.  Our dropships appear giving us a couple platoons worth of soldiers and a half dozen mechs, now that we have mechs the enemy sends in these huge robots called stalkers which crash into the earth like a meteor strike and unfold to engage us.  There are well over a hundred enemies and allies shooting the shit out of each other as the five of us try to stay close and tear up the enemy.  It was quite a bit of hectic fun, I really look forward to the instances and it seems like there are at least three in each zone.

[shiznitz]

We completed a breach into the enemy area completing an objective and then got a radio message rewarding us right then and giving new orders.  After we disable a force field a massive battle erupts as enemy dropships bring in reinforcements but now it's safe enough that our side can bring in people.  Our dropships appear giving us a couple platoons worth of soldiers and a half dozen mechs, now that we have mechs the enemy sends in these huge robots called stalkers which crash into the earth like a meteor strike and unfold to engage us.  There are well over a hundred enemies and allies shooting the shit out of each other as the five of us try to stay close and tear up the enemy.  It was quite a bit of hectic fun, I really look forward to the instances and it seems like there are at least three in each zone.

Note to devs: the above is what a new player should see within the first 20 minutes, not after XX hours of levelling.

[Sky]

Actually, I found quite a few of those fun battle moments. Some scripted, some set pieces, an occasional emergent one. TR isn't a bad game.

[Ratman_tf]

We completed a breach into the enemy area completing an objective and then got a radio message rewarding us right then and giving new orders.  After we disable a force field a massive battle erupts as enemy dropships bring in reinforcements but now it's safe enough that our side can bring in people.  Our dropships appear giving us a couple platoons worth of soldiers and a half dozen mechs, now that we have mechs the enemy sends in these huge robots called stalkers which crash into the earth like a meteor strike and unfold to engage us.  There are well over a hundred enemies and allies shooting the shit out of each other as the five of us try to stay close and tear up the enemy.  It was quite a bit of hectic fun, I really look forward to the instances and it seems like there are at least three in each zone.

Note to devs: the above is what a new player should see within the first 20 minutes, not after XX hours of levelling.

You do get to see this kind of thing early in Tabula Rasa. My first few control point visits were very cool and memorable.

Pravus Research is an awesome instance too.

I will probably get the game when they put mech suits in. Just because I like mech suits.

[Surlyboi]

We completed a breach into the enemy area completing an objective and then got a radio message rewarding us right then and giving new orders.  After we disable a force field a massive battle erupts as enemy dropships bring in reinforcements but now it's safe enough that our side can bring in people.  Our dropships appear giving us a couple platoons worth of soldiers and a half dozen mechs, now that we have mechs the enemy sends in these huge robots called stalkers which crash into the earth like a meteor strike and unfold to engage us.  There are well over a hundred enemies and allies shooting the shit out of each other as the five of us try to stay close and tear up the enemy.  It was quite a bit of hectic fun, I really look forward to the instances and it seems like there are at least three in each zone.

Note to devs: the above is what a new player should see within the first 20 minutes, not after XX hours of levelling.

Hell with that. They do that and then you're gonna be quitting around XX hours of leveling,  bitching about how nothing amounts to those first climactic 20 minutes.

[Slyfeind]

Who puts a news site up as a beta?!
And shit I'm tired of the "Ethical Parables". As far as I know there are three quests all told in TR that have any choice at all, and none result in anything you didn't see a zillion times since accidentally locking yourself out of Neriak in EQ1.
And the restarting from zero would mean something if there was more than one path for advancement. It's rolling the exact same race/class/eventually-talent combo in WoW except with a few levels already ticked off. Oh, and those levels are the early ones before the full pain of DIKU kicks in.
I'm not saying TR sucks. And it is different from WoW. But these schockly "I got a photo op with RG" 'journalists' piss me with their repeat-the-bulletpoints "reporting". This shit makes real sites and the work they actually try and do look bad.
Quasar-fail.

Damn, DQ. It's so rare to see you fly off the handle like that, it's a pleasure to watch. :)

Note to devs: the above is what a new player should see within the first 20 minutes, not after XX hours of levelling.

Hell with that. They do that and then you're gonna be quitting around XX hours of leveling,  bitching about how nothing amounts to those first climactic 20 minutes.

Well, then there's the revolutionary concept of making your game full of cool stuff like that, rather than just the first 20 minutes. Srsly, games have been made where it's cool stuff all the way through, from start to finish. It can't be that hard to do.

[Nija]

When I played beta, that blow up the wall bit pissed me off a huge deal also.

Maybe they had physics turned off when I first tried it.

It was really awful.

I'll try the 2 week trial that should be showing up any day now. Will they beat D&DO for the "quickest free trial offering"? We'll see!


And for the record, I play scout. Pyro is my first love, and very dear to my heart. They just aren't any good in organized play, unfortunately.

[Surlyboi]

Note to devs: the above is what a new player should see within the first 20 minutes, not after XX hours of levelling.

Hell with that. They do that and then you're gonna be quitting around XX hours of leveling,  bitching about how nothing amounts to those first climactic 20 minutes.

Well, then there's the revolutionary concept of making your game full of cool stuff like that, rather than just the first 20 minutes. Srsly, games have been made where it's cool stuff all the way through, from start to finish. It can't be that hard to do.

Have you played MMOs at all? 

[Hoax]

I'll try the 2 week trial that should be showing up any day now. Will they beat D&DO for the "quickest free trial offering"? We'll see!

And for the record, I play scout. Pyro is my first love, and very dear to my heart. They just aren't any good in organized play, unfortunately.

I'll second this, also Surlyboi may be being a crazier fanboi for TR then Schild has been for HG:L, I vote cage match.

Ditto on the Pyro stuff too, you only need one per 2 engies to clear spies except on certain maps where a good offensive-defensive pyro disrupting shit and picking up the occasional uber for a big counter push run can be a godsend.  What name do you play under Nija or am I retarded?

[geldonyetich2]

Tabula Rasa is pretty good, especially because of those "middle of a giant epic struggle between AFS and Bane" moments.  The trouble I'm having in the game is mostly in the longevity department.  They focused mostly on the lower level game towards the end of the beta, and the longer I go the less polished the content seems to be, ranging all the way down to "downright buggy atrocity" level in some instances.  Still, there's something to be said for the core gameplay, which gets considerably more interesting if you make it a regular habit to try to use cover.

[Ratman_tf]

When I played beta, that blow up the wall bit pissed me off a huge deal also.

I'm wondering why that's such a big dealio for a couple of you. Is it also stupid that I can blow up a rack of pressurized gas tanks in Hellgate London and take no damage or knockdown even if I'm standing right next to them?

[Slyfeind]

Well, then there's the revolutionary concept of making your game full of cool stuff like that, rather than just the first 20 minutes. Srsly, games have been made where it's cool stuff all the way through, from start to finish. It can't be that hard to do.

Have you played MMOs at all? 

Yeah. They need to try harder at the whole "fun" thing I think. WOW is, I'd say, about half cool stuff and half boring stuff to pad the experience...as opposed to EQ at launch, which I would say was 10% fun, 90% padding. Portal is all cool, all fun, non-stop. So is Tetris. (And naturally that all depends on what your idea of "fun" is, blah blah academic blah blah.) You just can't have 60 levels of boring gameplay and boast "OMG 60 levels! And we're adding 10 more per expansion!" I was a little excited to go from 61-70 in WOW...until I was actually playing it. Now, when I hear we can go from 71 to 80 in the next expansion, that's actually a deterrent for me. I don't want to go 71-80. That will be 10 levels of boring, because 61-70 was boring, and I don't see how they can make it any different.

[Trippy]

When I played beta, that blow up the wall bit pissed me off a huge deal also.

I'm wondering why that's such a big dealio for a couple of you. Is it also stupid that I can blow up a rack of pressurized gas tanks in Hellgate London and take no damage or knockdown even if I'm standing right next to them?

It's immersion breaking. The whole "world" is like that. There are walls that are literally shorter than your height with your arms above your head. In other words you could pull yourself over the wall and yet there's a prisoner in a "jail" with walls that high you have to rescue. Like she was too stupid to figure out she could trivally escape from it. Enemies teleport in except for some reason they can't teleport into enemy bases when there's a "forcefield" wall on the front entrance. Note that there's no "roof" over the base but they still can't teleport in if the forcefield is up. Those are just some of the examples.

[Surlyboi]

Bingo. That's a lesson I learned at about year two of EQ (Yeah, I'm a slow learner, but a solid guild that you can shoot the shit with while wasting time can make up for a lot of sins). And granted, I still played it for another four years (See the thing about the guild.)

I've played plenty of games that were filled with t3h kewl and the fun all the way through, but the very nature of MMOs in their current form sort of makes that impossible.

As for a fanboi cage match, I'd have to get a cut of the proceeds or no-go.

And the enemies teleporting in? They can do that sometimes too oif the field is down. They fanwanked something about the nature of the control point being logos powered that keeps stuff from teleporting in within the perimeter.

[Venkman]

schild touches upon the main issue I had with TR. It's just illogically inconsistent. That wouldn't be terrible, because we've been dealing with that this since the arbitrary ecosystem shifts of EQ1. Except all the PR about TR is about how it's different and groundbreaking and immersive roleplay in a dynamic world. It's really just some canned waypoint migration, AI playing Crysis in the background while the players are shooting ground troops teleporting in from airships that should be shot down.

I've been able to climb over walls since CoD2. To be blocked by a rock is just can't-jump-in-SWG silly.

[Nija]

I'm wondering why that's such a big dealio for a couple of you. Is it also stupid that I can blow up a rack of pressurized gas tanks in Hellgate London and take no damage or knockdown even if I'm standing right next to them?

It's a huge deal after playing Soldiers: Heroes of WW2 years ago.

If I have the hypothetical tank, and the hypothetical sniper is in the 3rd story of the hypothetical 1930s Era French building, I want to be able to hypothetically DRIVE THAT TANK INTO THE BUILDING to kill him.

[Ratman_tf]

It's a huge deal after playing Soldiers: Heroes of WW2 years ago.

If I have the hypothetical tank, and the hypothetical sniper is in the 3rd story of the hypothetical 1930s Era French building, I want to be able to hypothetically DRIVE THAT TANK INTO THE BUILDING to kill him.

I haven't played Solders: Heroes of WW2. Can I steal a Nazi's uniform and put it on so I can sneak up on the Germans? If not, why not? What's stopping my character from doing it?

I can make a laundry list of stuff I can't do in video games, simply because the devs didn't code it in. I'm not going to fault Tabula Rasa for not letting me shoot down Bane dropships, because shooting down Bane dropships is not why dropships were put into the game. (For example)

[Nija]

I haven't played Solders: Heroes of WW2. Can I steal a Nazi's uniform and put it on so I can sneak up on the Germans?

Yes.

edit: All I'm saying is I want big ass explosions in my game. And if they have big ass explosions, they better work correctly. Who lets beta testers, potential customers,  into a game that has things not working within the first 2 minutes of the user's experience?

[Ratman_tf]

I haven't played Solders: Heroes of WW2. Can I steal a Nazi's uniform and put it on so I can sneak up on the Germans?

Yes.

Awesome.

edit: All I'm saying is I want big ass explosions in my game. And if they have big ass explosions, they better work correctly. Who lets beta testers, potential customers,  into a game that has things not working within the first 2 minutes of the user's experience?

The thing that interested me about the explosive charge in TR, is that you could blow up static features with it. I was disappointed that there wasn't any more uses for charges at the control points. You just shot the force field until it died.  Although you do get to blow up some generators in one of the instances...

Not getting blown up by the explosion I filed into the same category with "I also can't pick up a rock and throw it past a Bane to distract him."

[geldonyetich2]

For force fields and turrets, you tend to use EMP Bombs.  These are placed anywhere on the ground but otherwise work similarly to the detonators.  Although an immersion breaker with the EMP bombs is that you can only place one at a time - place anymore and the last one vanishes.

[tmp]

edit: All I'm saying is I want big ass explosions in my game. And if they have big ass explosions, they better work correctly. Who lets beta testers, potential customers,  into a game that has things not working within the first 2 minutes of the user's experience?

If you have correctly working big ass explosions, you have beautiful grief potential in game full of potential asshats. If you make the explosions work selectively to cap that griefing option, then it's immersion breaking.

Can't win, really.

[Kageru]

Another annoying aspect is no official forums, or even a single designated unofficial forum, so the community (which I do not believe is large) has fragmented out to a number of pretty average web sites. A great way of making the game feel amateur and disconnected in the name of saving a couple of bucks. Even vanguard eventually realized it was a bad idea.

The other interesting thing is the surprising number of PvP guilds. It's fairly amazingly immersion breaking when the "last desperate survivors of humanity" start ignoring the bane and shooting each other... although maybe that's realistic too.

The first people cat-asses are starting to reach 50, which is a little scary both for humanity and probably for the game developers... I have a suspicion this thing isn't launching with much of an end-game.

[Trippy]

Another annoying aspect is no official forums, or even a single designated unofficial forum, so the community (which I do not believe is large) has fragmented out to a number of pretty average web sites. A great way of making the game feel amateur and disconnected in the name of saving a couple of bucks. Even vanguard eventually realized it was a bad idea.

What the?

NCsoft does a good job running the CoH/CoV boards. It's bizarre they wouldn't have one for TR.

Edit: I should add that they had one for the beta setup the same way as the CoH/CoV ones and that was working fine so it's not like they didn't have the infrastructure in place to run the offical forums.

[Venkman]

Damage control maybe?

[DarkSign]

Another annoying aspect is no official forums, or even a single designated unofficial forum, so the community (which I do not believe is large) has fragmented out to a number of pretty average web sites. A great way of making the game feel amateur and disconnected in the name of saving a couple of bucks. Even vanguard eventually realized it was a bad idea.

The other interesting thing is the surprising number of PvP guilds. It's fairly amazingly immersion breaking when the "last desperate survivors of humanity" start ignoring the bane and shooting each other... although maybe that's realistic too.

The first people cat-asses are starting to reach 50, which is a little scary both for humanity and probably for the game developers... I have a suspicion this thing isn't launching with much of an end-game.

No official forums smacks of cost-cutting, pure and simple. You might say that forum-hosting and paying 2 community managers isnt that large compared to the huge budget of an MMO - and you'd be right, but such MMO accountants arent always logical.

[Trippy]

They already had people like CuppaJoe (who was the CoH/CoV CM before moving over to TR) admining the beta forums so unless they got fired there's no cost savings there.

[DarkSign]

Premise 1: Beta is over
Result 1: Beta forums are closed

Premise 2: No official forums
Result 2: No offical forum CM

If premise 1 and 2 are correct, then the result of result 1 and result 2 = no CM still left.

Although this is making a mountain out of a molehill. 

[Lucas]

They currently have one community manager (CuppaJo) and two community coordinators: Critters and Avatea (EU).

Here's their official stance on forums:
-------

Here is the community model for TR:

Server News Page & RSS Feed: For all your Server outage info. When a
server goes down, that's where you look for more information.

Community News Blog & RSS Feed: For all your community news, dev news,
responses to your feedback.

Feedback Form: Where you can submit your feedback to the dev team -
directly.

News Page and RSS Feed: For all your PR type needs. (Reviews from other
places, news about RG going into space, those kinds of things.)

Clans Page: Clan pages created by TR Clans for their members.

Forums and Fansites Page: Lists the TR Wiki's, Forums and Fansites
created and maintained by you and other fans.

All these RSS feeds mean that you can get all your TR news from a
desktop news reader and they can be fed to all our fansites - so no
matter where you are, there is the latest news.

We want your community experience to be customized for YOU - we don't
want to force you to the official boards if that isn't where you want to
be.
Some players like a more mature audience where you can have swearing and racy themes.
We can't have that due to our T-for-Teen rating.
Some players want to RolePlay, some want to Trash-Talk PvP, some just want to be really, really, silly.
We want you to participate in a community that fits and feels right for you, not because you feel like you will miss out on something if you aren't part of the 'official' forums.

This is all a fancy way of saying that we want you to have a quality
community experience that fits you and we want to be able to be as
effective as possible in transmitting your feedback to the dev team and
vice versa.

The feedback form is a direct shot to the dev team. The Community News
Blog is a direct shot back to you. Instead of having to post all over
some official forums wondering if you are being heard, you will know
that the dev team is getting your message. Instead of wondering where
the dev posted, or digging through the dev digest on forums, you can
have the latest news from the dev team delivered right to your favorite
news reader.

Plenty of successful games (Guild Wars, DAoC) don't have official forums
and have thriving communities. The community is wherever YOU are,
in-game, on Stratics, on Warcry, at work - heck with RSS you can get
news on your cell phone. The community is YOU - not a forum.

We will be posting on fansites, however posts on fansites will mostly be
chatting with the community and addressing specific issues of specific
posters. If it is information that needs to be seen by the entire
community - it will be posted in community news.

April Burba
Community Manager
Tabula Rasa

[tmp]

They currently have one community manager (CuppaJo) and two community coordinators: Critters and Avatea (EU).

Here's their official stance on forums:
-------

This is all a fancy way of saying that the only sound we want to hear
from you is the monthly ka-ching.

fixed.

edit: not that i blame them. It's a very tempting prospect.

[Ratman_tf]

In the before-time official forums were a good place for games like UO and EQ to get feedback about their games. There was still asshattery on forums, but most of it was people playing the game and making comments about their game experience. Discussing what's good and what's not so good.

Nowadays? It's ten trillion posts about how somebody is going to sue the company over their broken Pallie build, or how their leet purple didn't drop correctly.

Hell, Lum's may have been the last "productive" fansite. Most companies nowadays know that builds are going to be broken, bugs are going to happen, and classes are going to have balance problems. They don't need thousands of people reminding them with humorous anecdotes (and lots of swearing) as punctuation.

Sum: I don't care that TR has no official forum. They don't accomplish much anyway.