Tabula Rasa, a post mortem.

[Ratman_tf]

Three days until the servers are set to be shut down. Here are my thoughts after taking the game up again for presumably the last time.

I love the setting and instances. The Eloh and Bane backstory is quite good for a MMOG, if you bother to go looking for it.

Questing. Now, I was a big proponent of quests and missions back in the day. Camping mobs was never fun for me, and games like DAOC and EQ seemed to be stuffed with it. I never had the feeling that my character was doing anything in the world besides standing around waiting for crabs and bugs to spawn so I could kill them and take their stuff.
Then WoW came along, and quests are the way to go. Why are you standing around? There's spleens to be collected!  It was good to have a way to advance your character without standing around.
But here we are on the other side, and it's been done to death. Every game now has it's quest chains and there's hardly any camping going on. But I feel it's gone too far in the other direction now. Everyone runs around collecting heads and running errands for other people. Rarely do you see a player doing something because they want to do it. Reputation grinds and dailies and etc. I think Tabula Rasa could have benefitied from a little more sandbox. Especially in the anemic crafting game. Gathering mats and crafting is a great way to get players to do things for themselves, and it was sorely missed in Tabula Rasa.

I don't think sandbox elements and crafting could have saved Tabula Rasa. At this point, I don't think anything could have saved it. The problems and dev drama ran too deep. But it certainly couldn't have hurt.

[UnSub]

Is it really a post mortem when it is still twitching on the autopsy table? 

[Nebu]

Summary: A sci fi game done right would be a nice addition to the MMO collection.  I think we all can agree with that. 

[Sky]

Post mortem: don't ditch your entire design when it's almost complete and start over from scratch. Suck up your ego, release the crappy game and then make the second one that you really wanted to make. I was in testing very early (of the second version), and almost every update made the game less fun to play.

There was definitely a fun game in TR. Missed it by that much.

[Ratman_tf]

Is it really a post mortem when it is still twitching on the autopsy table? 

My hope is that the interest in TR due to it going free until the shutdown might spark NCSoft into keeping the game afloat somehow.

I don't think it will happen, but stranger things have occured in MMOG land.

[Morfiend]

I enjoyed the hell out of Tabula Rasa when I first picked it up. I really liked the semi twitch style of combat, especially when using a shotgun. But the game had some major flaws, and bugs. And the dev team just didnt seem to know where they where going. About 2 months in to my stint in TR, they implemented a very badly thought out patch, that completely changed the way the game worked at a pretty core level.

What happened was that when I started the health system worked like this: Most creatures (players included) had a 10:1 shield to health ratio, which seemed realistic. You *knew* that when your shield was about to be gone, you where in big trouble, and same with a mob. A few classes had weapons that would bypass a portion of shields and hit straight at health (Medic). It all worked pretty damn good. Then they put in the patch that buffed health by like 1500%. This made players have as much or more health than shields. It also lead to mobs having hugely broken amounts of health that would regenerate faster than you could attack them. In the end it made the game go from a run and gun combat style where mobs died quickly, to a more standup tank and spank style.

It did not make the game more fun, and I ended up quitting shortly after.

I really wish TR could have gotten its self right, cause I loved the lore and setting, and they really had some cool concepts like cloning.

[Lantyssa]

They were a preview of the "how to mess up your game by knowing you need a change and doing the exact wrong thing" style that WAR perfected.

[amiable]

They were a preview of the "how to mess up your game by knowing you need a change and doing the exact wrong thing" style that WAR perfected.

This.

Example: it helps if you balance your classes, for the first few months (all that I played) spies were so ridiculuously overpowered.  Solution: instead of toning down the overpowered class they insanely buff the mobs to challenge the spies resulting in the game being totally impossible to play for the gimpy dps specailist classes.

Mid level grind was also WAR painful.

[Nebu]

I'm still waiting for comments about bullets and laser beams that travel around corners. 

[Slyfeind]

I'm still waiting for comments about bullets and laser beams that travel around corners. 

I'll comment on that! (Not directed at you personally, just generally speaking.) Get used to it. In an RPG system, it is necessary and inevitable for bullets and lasers and arrows and bolts (and magic missles, hello UO) to track the player. In an FPS system, you use physics on your projectiles and make them hit cover. But if it's entirely "roll to hit" then there is no way to avoid it.

Bullet hits player, player moves, bullet still needs to hit player.

Actually, there is a way to avoid it: let the player take damage even if the bullet sails harmlessly overhead after they duck. I wonder what would be preferable.

[Tale]

I really wish TR could have gotten its self right, cause I loved the lore and setting, and they really had some cool concepts like cloning.

Then if you're not playing right now, you're missing out. They introduced a wide variety fairly common random drop "red" class (epic) weapons and armour drops that make players very strong, and random-drop 2000% XP buffs. You can still die, and you have to kill stuff for a couple of hours to get a collection of reds (and then there are higher level reds to get), but the pace of the game has picked up immensely, and I can't get enough of it.

Anyone wasting their time posting "oh, it could have been fun" in this thread while failing to play it in its final two days, is even more frustrating to me than the fact they amped up the fun just before shutdown. You're all posting impressions of a game that ended a couple of weeks ago when they cranked up the speed.

[Nija]

In an RPG system, it is necessary and inevitable for bullets and lasers and arrows and bolts (and magic missles, hello UO) to track the player.

C'mon now. You can have a RPG without dice rolls. We'd be better off with less dice rolls, from a gameplay perspective.

[Hindenburg]

Not when latency is involved.
If you're gonna have players with 200ms+ latency, yeah, your bullets will have to bend corners.

[Tale]

I'm still waiting for comments about bullets and laser beams that travel around corners. 

There aren't any. If you think that's a problem with TR, you must have been playing it a long time ago in some kind of shitty beta form that I missed.

Line of sight currently works properly in Tabula Rasa. Anything that comes around a wall is happening due to lag, and well, it's the internet. I rely on line of sight to stay alive. I duck behind trees/walls/hills to make the AI bunch up and come towards me, in preparation for my shotgun blast.

[Tale]

In an RPG system, it is necessary and inevitable for bullets and lasers and arrows and bolts (and magic missles, hello UO) to track the player.

C'mon now. You can have a RPG without dice rolls. We'd be better off with less dice rolls, from a gameplay perspective.

You apparently don't have any understanding of Tabula Rasa. There's this stupid attitude that "it's just dice rolls underneath", when it simply is NOT. Go earn 4 pumps of Firearms skill, run around with a shotgun and tell me it's dice rolls.

[Nija]

You apparently don't have any understanding of Tabula Rasa.

Here's what I saw of Tabula Rasa.

I downloaded the client when it went open beta. I made a character and I started the newbie missions. One of the newbie missions was to take some explosives and blow up a wall. I picked up the explosives, which involved running over and standing next to a box, then hitting the use key, and watched my character crouch and stay motionless for 10 seconds. Once I had the explosives, I ran over next to the wall, pressed the use key, and watched my character crouch for 10 more seconds while he was setting the explosives.

Then I stood there ~1 ft away from the wall and watched the explosion animation do absolutely nothing to my character, damage or physics-wise, and I got a "mission complete" graphic. I then exited the game, uninstalled it, and deleted the X gig installer.

I do not care to see any more Tabula Rasa. That is just embarrassing for a 2008 era game.

[Tale]

You apparently don't have any understanding of Tabula Rasa.

Here's what I saw of Tabula Rasa.

I downloaded the client when it went open beta.

FAIL.

[Nija]

FAIL.

Yeah, look at all that time I didn't waste playing some 3rd world piece of shit game. Hoist the failure sails indeed.

[Tale]

FAIL.

Yeah, look at all that time I didn't waste playing some 3rd world piece of shit game. Hoist the failure sails indeed.

I've had a lot of fun in it, and I'm still having a lot of fun in it, despite its imperfections, probably because I haven't locked myself in a box saying "I know all about it because of beta and my cat died so it can never be fun lalalalala I can't hear you".

[Sky]

C'mon now. You can have a RPG without dice rolls. We'd be better off with less dice rolls, from a gameplay perspective.

Nah, the old skill vs stat argument. I would tend to fall on the dice roll side of rpgs, even at the cost of some immersion. I have decent fps skills, but if I have a high level character, I shouldn't be hobbled by my twitch skills.

But to echo Tale, one thing TR did good was give you the fps feel in an rpg environment. It wasn't quite PS, but they did come pretty close to nailing it, given the shenanigans in the office.

I just hope this doesn't hurt the chances for sci-fi mmofpsrpg.

[Delmania]

Nah, the old skill vs stat argument. I would tend to fall on the dice roll side of rpgs, even at the cost of some immersion. I have decent fps skills, but if I

Well it doesn't have to be so one sided.  You could implement a skill based system where the impact of increasing your skill decreases the effect of the dice role.  Something like where the more you use a bow, the more dex you get, and the less often you miss. 

[Nija]

Can you make Mario jump over a bottomless chasm?

Can you click on units in a RTS game?

Can you make Lara Croft's tits bounce?

If you answered yes to any of these, you can aim a ranged weapon at a target and have a good chance at hitting it without fucking dice rolls.

[Hindenburg]

Now try it with 600ms.

[Ratman_tf]

Can you make Mario jump over a bottomless chasm?

Can you click on units in a RTS game?

Can you make Lara Croft's tits bounce?

If you answered yes to any of these, you can aim a ranged weapon at a target and have a good chance at hitting it without fucking dice rolls.

So what? I can make my sim go to the bathroom in Sims 2. Does that mean every game should have toilets and bladder meters?

TR wasn't aiming (hur) at pure FPS, and there's no reason why they should.

[Ratman_tf]

You apparently don't have any understanding of Tabula Rasa.

Here's what I saw of Tabula Rasa.

I downloaded the client when it went open beta.

FAIL.

No, he's right there. You don't release a crap game to open beta. That's just begging for a red-ass-beat-down.

[Trippy]

You apparently don't have any understanding of Tabula Rasa. There's this stupid attitude that "it's just dice rolls underneath", when it simply is NOT. Go earn 4 pumps of Firearms skill, run around with a shotgun and tell me it's dice rolls.

The shotgun is a special case cause it doesn't have the weird hybrid "lock on" mechanism that most of the other weapons do (or did when I played, dunno if they eventually got rid of it). With the shotgun it really does feel like you are playing a 3rd person shooter.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10842.msg347079#msg347079

[Delmania]

Can you make Mario jump over a bottomless chasm?

Can you click on units in a RTS game?

Can you make Lara Croft's tits bounce?

If you answered yes to any of these, you can aim a ranged weapon at a target and have a good chance at hitting it without fucking dice rolls.

Eh?  I'm fairly certain if any one of us picked up a bow or shotgun and fired it, we'd miss the mark. 

[Nija]

Eh?  I'm fairly certain if any one of us picked up a bow or shotgun and fired it, we'd miss the mark. 

I grew up in Arkansas.

[naum]

Do these recent MMO failures signify a turning point — granted, past game servers went dark, but it seemed that the trend was for any game to have an eternal half-life, clinging to existence, with a decaying subscription base (i.e., M59, UO, SWG, Shadowbane, etc.…)…?

[Lantyssa]

Eh?  I'm fairly certain if any one of us picked up a bow or shotgun and fired it, we'd miss the mark. 

I come from a family of hunters.

[Hindenburg]

Eh?  I'm fairly certain if any one of us picked up a bow or shotgun and fired it, we'd miss the mark. 

My father thought it was a skill worth having, taught us all as soon as we could handle the recoil.

[UnSub]

Do these recent MMO failures signify a turning point — granted, past game servers went dark, but it seemed that the trend was for any game to have an eternal half-life, clinging to existence, with a decaying subscription base (i.e., M59, UO, SWG, Shadowbane, etc.…)…?

I think the turning point is "don't expect you can recoup $50m+ development costs just because WoW did". Or "don't have a business plan that requires 500k+ players to break even (but do have a business plan, because HGL shows that is important)".

TR cost too much. HGL had no business plan. Fury had no business plan. I counted about 9 MMOs closing last year. The eternal half-life is over.

[tmp]

Can you make Mario jump over a bottomless chasm?

Can you click on units in a RTS game?

Can you make Lara Croft's tits bounce?

If you answered yes to any of these, you can aim a ranged weapon at a target and have a good chance at hitting it without fucking dice rolls.

Why does Mario have a limit to how high/far he can jump? Why do the units in the RTS games have stats like health, armour, firepower? Shouldn't it all boil down to how fast you can click on these units or how frequent you can hit that jump key?

Games don't all need to be about direct application of player's own dexterity and nothing else. In fact, very few are.

[Delmania]

Ok, so I stand corrected on 3 cases.  But if you take average joe gamer gave him or her a shotgun or bow, and told them to hit a target, they'd be all over the map.  If you want to get the true experience, you'd need to implement some major physics on your weapons as well as the impact of the environment around.  The dice rolls are the easy way out.   Not everyone is good with an FPS engine.

I mean isn't that one of the reasons we play these things?  TO do something we can't do in the physical world?

[tmp]

I mean isn't that one of the reasons we play these things?  TO do something we can't do in the physical world?

It works both ways i think -- when the game usees character's simulated skills rather than player's own, it can be used both to allow actions the player would be incapable of, as well as not to allow actions that player could do (because it wouldn't make sense for the simulated character in game to be capable of these actions) And either option allows interesting "what ifs".