Seems high: Tabula Rasa specs

[stray]

I need more clarification. What do you mean by "choose"? Do you mean those moves aren't really that necessary?

Also, trying to tank someone is the least likely thing I'd see in a FPS. It just doesn't happen. That it's even an option in TR tells me this game is pretty half assed in the 'twitch' category. Twitch has little do with "shooting" or even pace. Twitch is more about defense. And tanking is not defense.

It seems like this game has shooter elements, but only in superficial ways. An RPG with animations decent enough to bullshit some people.

[Venkman]

When I say choose, I mean the person can use their skills and experience to determine what to do. Of course, choosing to tank something generally means choosing to die. They could choose to do that to return to their bind point for all I know or care.

I'm probably just confusing things. In essence, it felt like PS combat to me, with a narrative element. Whether it ships that way is anyone's guess.

Oh, and if you never played Planetside, think of Neocron amp'd a bit. If not Neocron, think a traditional first person shooter somewhat gimped. It's not really real physics that determines what gets hit, but a combination of a target reticle, a cone-of-fire system and some dice rolls all working in concert to calculate what a specific weapon does to a specific target. It can get somewhat unintuitive though, something I felt plagued PS for awhile. Like missile damage for example. How the crap have I not killed three infantry fighters after having unloaded an entire battery of Missiles on them, causing all sorts of splash damage and explosions? It becomes an endless struggle to make that reticle>cone-of-fire>dice system to feel like what a more normal physics-based game does naturally.

When it's done well, this system can support big ass battles no FPS can touch (I loved the 150-person battles from PS). Where it sometimes falls down is in five-on-five encounters, because FPS games do that all day long and really well. And TR is one of the few hybrid-FPS games to focus exclusively on PvE, which means they can tweak encounters however the hell they feel like it.

But again, I have no idea what's going to survive first contact with a few thousand enemy beta testers.

[stray]

Yeah, I played Planetside. I'd rank it the second biggest tease and disappointment out of all MMO's. If it had the name "Star Wars" on it, it would have been the first.

[Venkman]

Hehe, Sky and I have long wished PS had SW on it. Not that we'd be still playing it now, but it would have captured a lot more people.

But I agree it was a tease. It needs something beyond large scale combat in a gimped-FPS system, and it certainly needed to drop that stupid fee.

[Technocrat]

Not sure who else is following TR, but I like what they're trying to do, both now and what they designed against previously.

But one thing I just got concerned with is the minimum system specs, as posted on Stratics:

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: 

• Windows® 2000/XP/Vista
• 512 MB System RAM
• 2.5 GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 or equivalent AMD™ processor
• 128 MB Direct3D and Shader 2.0 compatible video card and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver
• 8x DVD-ROM drive
• 4.6 GB free hard disk space
• DirectX 9.0c
• DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
• Keyboard, Mouse
• Broadband Internet connection

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS:

• Windows 2000/XP/Vista
• 3.5 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent AMD processor
• 2 GB System RAM
• ATI™ X1800 series, NVIDIA® GeForce 7800 series, or higher 3.0 Shader compliant video card

For an FPS, that feels right. For an MMO, that feels high. The trouble with TR is that it's not really an FPS in the traditional sense. By integrating traditional RPG components in a hybrid system that feels like player skill matters, I feel they're balancing the good part of Planetside (an FPS for the rest of us) and the longterm interest of the average player, as seen in traditional MMORPG.

So for them to have what appears to be fairly high minimum specs (largely related to that 2.5GHz processor) seems to be taking a risk of cutting off the RPG side of things. Granted, if someone loves RPGs, they've probably got Oblivion and a rig to play it effectively. But MMOs still traditionally lag behind the leading edge of tech, because the needs of the game spans more than any one critical component. A graphics card alone does not solve issues with a slow hard drive, slow RAM or a slow processor.

I plan to be building a new rig in the spring anyway, so it doesn't matter to me per se. I just found it interesting.

Thoughts?

This is great news! In fact, this is the best news I've heard come out of this genre in years! Thanks for the heads up Darniaq!

I've been praying for the MMOG genre to differentiate into high, medium, and low quality products...instead of everything being geared toward the lowest common denominator.

Thanks a bunch Darniaq, you made my day!

 



 

[Venkman]

Err, you're welcome. Just don't read the rest of the posts in the thread though  :-D

[Reg]

Hmm if people think that high system specs guarantee a quality product then Garriot should charge 30 bucks a month for it and really give these guys a thrill. :)

[WayAbvPar]

Err, you're welcome. Just don't read the rest of the posts in the thread though  :-D

 :-D :-D :-D

[Righ]

I've been praying for the MMOG genre to differentiate into high, medium, and low quality products...instead of everything being geared toward the lowest common denominator.

You might be interested to know that we're planning an (M)MORPG that will require a minimum of one fully populated IBM RS/6000 p5 595 frame to play. System requirements may go up by the time we launch - we're only in concept stage at the moment.