Seems high: Tabula Rasa specs

[HaemishM]

What about Tabula Rasa is innovative again?

[Krakrok]

Remember, NCSoft's strategy is to make lots of 50,000 target subscription games.

[Margalis]

That's a really bad strategy given that the development cost is largely fixed and not linearly proportional to number of subscribers.

[geldonyetich]

What about Tabula Rasa is innovative again?

What, futuristic massively multiplayer battlefields of quasi-RPG FPS action with extensive NPC support on both sides isn't innovative anymore?  I could see certain implementations of such as being quite.

I mean, sure, with Planetside we've got our massively multiplayer FPS - but lack of NPC support.  With DAOC/Shadowbane we've a certain mixture of players and NPCs involved in combat, but not hordes of NPCs leading invasions.  With Neocron we've got our quasi-RPG FPS action, but the implementation is too weak to do much with it.  Given the great number of elfy games out there, having a futuristic themed game made with present-day technology is innovative enough.

[Engels]

Dude, just because TR doens't have any elves doesn't make it non-elfy.



Oh look, there's an dorf, a human and an elf! They're holding guns, but by god, I got that warm fuzzy 'brave companions fighting da orcs' feel all over again!

[geldonyetich]

Your dwarves (there's 3 of them) are humains in partial cover behind a wall, and your elf is just a woman.

The brave companions fighting hordes of orcs is there, I suppose.  Taking down hordes of alien bastards is kinda like that.

That pillar in the background reminds me of nazis.  Which is oddly reassuring, knowing that we've endured so many clones we've started seeing them where they're not.  Perhaps holocaust inflicting fascist architexture will be enough to pull us out of that habit.

[caladein]

Your dwarves (there's 3 of them) are humains in partial cover behind a wall, and your elf is just a woman.

The brave companions fighting hordes of orcs is there, I suppose.  Taking down hordes of alien bastards is kinda like that.

That pillar in the background reminds me of nazis.  Which is oddly reassuring, knowing that we've endured so many clones we've started seeing them where they're not.  Perhaps holocaust inflicting fascist architexture will be enough to pull us out of that habit.

So instead of cloning the majority of MMOs, they're cloning the majority of FPSs? What a time to be alive.

[geldonyetich]

You know, I'm trying not to come off as a total TR fanboi since I don't really know enough about the game yet, but from what I gather it's not a MMORPG clone and it's not a MMOFPS clone, but rather something in between and yet running on many game-centric features completely different from any such hybrid you may have seen elsewhere. 

I understand how hard it is to believe that anyone in the PC gaming industry can be something more than a no talent clone producer, as the empirical evidence to the contrary is overwhelming, but I'm afraid that's just how TR is rolling.

[schild]

SOMETHING IN BETWEEN AND YET COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM ANY SUCH HYBRID YOU MAY HAVE SEEN ELSEWHERE?

Christ, you should write marketing text.

It's a shooter with a fucking cone of fire. It has guns. It's kinda fun.

[Zane0]

I don't think it'll do poorly, necessarily.  It's hard to really justify much criticism.  Every major flop so far, to my knowledge, has been due to large design flaws or shitty code.  What I see right now is a polished and well-funded MMO with high-ish system specs, based on a tried-and-true design with a few interesting innovations- it's a design that this community does not like very much perhaps, but it is not an objectively terrible one given the mileage of recent fare..  I'm predicting a medium draw.

But there haven't been many mmo's with very high system reqs that didn't have other hugely obvious flaws, and there haven't even been many real sci-fi MMORPG's.  It's a wild card, and probably risky in a lot of ways; will be interesting to watch.

I think I'm rooting for it, actually, because a really popular sci-fi MMO might open a lot of doors.

[Krakrok]

something in between and yet running on many game-centric features completely different from any such hybrid you may have seen elsewhere. 

So what you're saying is that it's a Paladin, right?

[Engels]

Can someone explain to me what exactly a game-centric feature is?

And how can a game-centic feature be something completely different ?

[stray]

Can someone explain to me what exactly a game-centric feature is?

Not sure, but I think he just means it adopts some mechanics from "games" other than typical MMO's. Like shooters, for one.

So in that respect, it's a hybrid.

And how can a game-centic feature be something completely different ?

It's different in that it adopts some mechanics that other hybrids haven't adopted yet?

Beats me.

[Venkman]

There's not much to over-think here:

Take Planetside, add in RPG narrative as directed through Quest NPCs and reduce the relevance of PvP (probably to be launched as an advertised expansion later).

They're not the first to do it, but they're the first to do it with the backing of a big company.

It's not hard to see that TR has struggled for relevance in this genre. It was first dreamed up at a time when EQ ruled all and everyone argued about whether the Lineage numbers were relevant because of how PC Baangs split off shared royalties and what not.

Things are very different now, one of the reasons I'm sure they dropped the original fantasy theme in favor of sci-fi. Yet, sci-fi hasn't done all that well in this genre either, for a variety of reasons. So they couldn't just swap the theme, they had to make more basic changes. They're simply combining stuff we've all seen in a way others have but with buckets of cash.

[HaemishM]

What about Tabula Rasa is innovative again?

What, futuristic massively multiplayer battlefields of quasi-RPG FPS action with extensive NPC support on both sides isn't innovative anymore?  I could see certain implementations of such as being quite.

So it's Planetside only with NPC support, heavy use of instancing, and PVP isn't the focus?

Not only does it not sound innovative, it sounds boring. Like "I'll play it for a week or two then get bored and never pay a subscription fee" boring. I liked it better when it was fancy elves playing lutes and shit.

[Venkman]

Basically, what I said, yea.

Any of these games read boring. TR actually plays pretty well. It's faster than PS in terms of combat, and because it features some amount of game-directed goals, it has an RPG quality to it. Plus switching weapons and ammo/sub-abilities types is much faster. The two things that have survived the transition from old to new TR is the ingame language and the better-than-"arcade style" action. But it's not too twitch so won't be dominated by fatal1ty wannabes. And it doesn't have PvP anyway.

[HaemishM]

And it doesn't have PvP anyway.

So it's just like I said, boring.

[WayAbvPar]

The idea of a FPS-style game without PvP is just so clownshoes stupid I can't possibly express it.

[Sky]

The idea of a FPS-style game without PvP is just so clownshoes stupid I can't possibly express it.

Unless it were minimally multiplayer co-op. Playing something like Medal of Honor with friends instead of the retarded AI would be cool. Or System Shock or Deus Ex or Thief...not that TR will be anything like any of those classics.

[geldonyetich]

Re: Game-Centric Features.

Stuff like drop zones and big battles and branched advancement with clones (old copies of your character) along the way.  Those are features that sound built into the core of the game rather than something sitting on the sidelines like crafting.  They sound interesting.  More details would be nice.

The reason why I'm not exactly a TR fanboi despite my apparent slavering over their features list because the devil is in the details.  In other words, it's really up to how well they implement things.  I'm liking the look of refinement I'm seeing in the screenshots and play videos, but unlike some of us I haven't had a chance to play it at E3 so I can't really levy my full judgement on it.  Where Schild's already summarized it as, "It's a shooter with a fucking cone of fire. It has guns. It's kinda fun" or Darniaq saw, "It's faster than PS in terms of combat, and because it features some amount of game-directed goals, it has an RPG quality to it" I'd probably be looking for things like, "How does it look like they're tweaking the combat to play out (Unreal Tournament versus Neocron), how much use are they getting out of those dropships, what does it seem to me that the overall developer's mindset is built to do through what this E3 demo conveys?"  That'd give me some idea how the end product might turn out, although an E3 presentation would still just be a shot in the dark compared to the release state.

We each have our own levels of interpretation, different things we look for in a game, and it's too early for me to see if TR really is something I'd enjoy or not.  However, what I've read on it looks unusually interesting.  It's a far cry from an EverQuest or Planetside clone, that much I can see.  Sorry if I can't explain it better than that.

[Merusk]

When I  hear "FPS" I think Move/ Run/ Duck/ Dodge while firing.  When I see TR game footage I see "stand there and click the fire button at NPCs"

That's not an FPS hybrid.. that's SWG's last combat revamp.

[geldonyetich]

That's not an FPS hybrid.. that's SWG's last combat revamp.

I'm in agreement, but I think it's important to add that where a revamp is where you take an existing system, rip the guts out of it, and Frankenstein together an alternative, and hope the players can stomach it, TR isn't a revamp.  TR is being designed this way prior to release.  (I nearly said TR was being designed this way from the ground up, but it isn't... they took it back to the drawing board at least once.)  The big difference here is that the makers of Tabula Rasa have have an opportunity to add more cerebral depth that those behind the NGE didn't.  Whether they make use of this opportunity or create yet another piece-of-shit game dumbed down for the lowest common denominator is yet to be seen.

[WayAbvPar]

The idea of a FPS-style game without PvP is just so clownshoes stupid I can't possibly express it.

Unless it were minimally multiplayer co-op. Playing something like Medal of Honor with friends instead of the retarded AI would be cool. Or System Shock or Deus Ex or Thief...not that TR will be anything like any of those classics.

That I could live with. I still think it begs for PvP, but coop play would at least be fun.

[stray]

I know I'm nitpicking, but co-op Thief would suck. Bad example. Co-op is fun for fast paced, shoot-em-up/brawlfests. Thief, otoh, is a highly scripted, slow paced stealther. It could work in no way other than that what it's been. If anything, it's a fine demonstration for why pure single player games should even be made.

Medal of Honor co-op would be Ok though (Are there mods for this btw? I think Call of Duty has some..).

[Venkman]

So it's just like I said, boring.

PS against NPCs, yea, boring. TR missions against NPCs, not so much. Granted, what I played was pretty tailored, but it did show both what was technically possible in the engine and what they were thinking experientially. We'll see, if this thing comes out (I've long felt there's only a 50% chance of that).

When I  hear "FPS" I think Move/ Run/ Duck/ Dodge while firing.  When I see TR game footage I see "stand there and click the fire button at NPCs"

The thing that is killing this game is the freakin' footage. They need to stop making it. Instead, they should be pushing out playable demos. If they published as a free download (with, say, a 7-day DRM on it) of what we played at E3, I think the general impression would be different.

Not I'm-gonna-buy-a-3GHz-supercooled-rig different maybe, but people wouldn't not buy the game because the movies show it sucking. Informed advertising is always better than crappy advertising, and that's what's happening right now.

[stray]

So you don't just stand there and shoot? How does it play out then?

Seems like the people controlling those characters in the videos are doing fine playing that way -- Which, in turn, indicates that the game is designed that way. Or are the videos not showing the part where these players get wiped out for being stationary dumbasses?

[Venkman]

From what I experienced, moving minimized the chance of being hit (duh), enough so that you couldn't just tank what was in front of you. The videos I've seen don't really capture that well. Yea, there are cases when big-boss-types are stationary targets with turrets, so you stand and shoot and then duck behind a rock or something. But if your target is moving, you want to be moving as well. Splash damage also seemed to work logically, something that never seemed to in PS.

This is why I wish they had a real director pulling these videos together. It's like a bunch of techs got together and wanted to faun over the depth of their texture maps or shit. Show the game play. Showing the quality of presentation is so 2000.

There's a lot that can change though, and like I said I was playing tailored events. When thousands of people start banging on this engine and it's automated content, then the real test begins.

[Telemediocrity]

The problem with Co-op is that to do it well, content creation is difficult.  Also, you want to have a fighting engine that's more than just Generic Shooting; the best fun I've had in co-op was probably The Opera mod for Half-Life, because of the strengths of the combat engine.  I'm really interested in trying co-op for Gunz, as well.

Churning out good co-op content is a lot harder than good PvP content.  Good PvP content is often symmetrical; co-op content by definition tends to be asymmetrical, and that requires more thought and careful planning.

[lamaros]

I know I'm nitpicking, but co-op Thief would suck. Bad example.

A well done co-op (co-oponly, it'd have to be designed like that) Thief with new maps released with regularity, I'd play that.

And it would be very doable and awesome. But probably not have much of a market. Becasue it would be slow and require complex relations between the co-opers if it was good.

[Nevermore]

Tabula Rasa sounds an awful lot like an updated version of Phantasy Star Online.

[Sky]

But if your target is moving, you want to be moving as well.

Huh? Wouldn't you want to be crouched or prone with some cover? That's FPS.

From what I experienced, moving minimized the chance of being hit (duh), enough so that you couldn't just tank what was in front of you.

This sounds ominous imo.

[stray]

[edit] Oops..Nevermind. Didn't make sense :)

[Sky]

I know I'm nitpicking, but co-op Thief would suck. Bad example. Co-op is fun for fast paced, shoot-em-up/brawlfests. Thief, otoh, is a highly scripted, slow paced stealther. It could work in no way other than that what it's been.

It's not really all that scripted. The AI is running on scripts, sure, but it adapts dynamically. For instance, one player could distract guards while another slips past. Or you could have the old co-op trick of having one player flip a switch so the other can get through a timed gate. Also, multiple simultaneous objectives.

I wouldn't hold the pacing against it, much of the time in BF2 I play very slow paced, sneaking into a base without guns blazing to give away my position. BF2 can be a slow paced stealther, you know :)

[geldonyetich]

Tabula Rasa sounds an awful lot like an updated version of Phantasy Star Online.

Probably not, but here one is.

[Venkman]

But if your target is moving, you want to be moving as well.

Huh? Wouldn't you want to be crouched or prone with some cover? That's FPS.

From what I experienced, moving minimized the chance of being hit (duh), enough so that you couldn't just tank what was in front of you.

This sounds ominous imo.

It's hard to discuss all circumstances in a game through the lens of having played it for a cumulative hour three months ago :) The long and short is, to me, TR played like PS enough to be compelling because of the integrated RPG elements. You could choose to crouch behind a rock while your intended target tried to flank you. You could choose to run while they were running (run-and-gun). You could try to tank them by standing there and going shot-for-shot. Like any FPS (and PS) it all depends on the situation.

You know me. I've wanted a good PS-like game since, well, PS. But it needed to be more than just a gimped FPS system with PvP. This may be it, or it may just be a distraction until something else comes along.