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Susan Kath announced as new Lead Designer for Tabula Rasa
Tom Potter has stepped down to pursue another opportunity, and Susan Kath has stepped up to the plate to take on the role of Lead Designer in the epic SF MMO Tabula Rasa. Susan is more than qualified, having worn numerous different hats in her career with TR, and been with the project for four and a half years.In her meaty introduction, Susan quickly switches from talking about herself (which she dismisses as 'boring') to talking about Tabula Rasa's future. There is no doom. There is only awesome. The coming content includes 'a new instanced map, in which players (with or without clans) can battle over control points in order to win exclusive rewards.' There are prototype mechs in development, and a tantalizing system of mech customization through a form of alternative advancement.
TR's Tom Potter reveals some exclusives for TabulaCast
As we announced a few weeks ago, the folks at TabulaCast landed an exclusive interview with Tabula Rasa's lead designer, Tom Potter. They reached out to the community during these last few weeks, asking players to submit their own questions for Tom to answer on the show. Now, that episode has been recorded and is ready to download. In this audio interview, we hear more than just the usual about how new features are coming "soon", Tom actually gives us some specific deployments where certain changes may be made. For instance, when asked about concept art for the much-anticipated Personal Armor Units that Destination Games has been promising for around 8 months now, Tom says that we can expect a finalized design within the next one or two deployments, and then after that, concept art will soon follow. He also discusses some exciting features coming down the pipe such as completely new enemies, more PvP maps with the possibility of class vs. class battles and a working prototype for the new crafting system they're developing, which will work on a more streamlined infrastructure.Take a listen to this episode to hear more about what Potter reveals on the future of Tabula Rasa.
Feedback Friday highlights beefier shotguns, other changes
For all the complaints one could levy against Tabula Rasa, the one you almost never heard was that the game was lacking in varieties of awesome firepower. Even if you counted yourself as a heavier Logos ability user (as this blogger did with his lightning-happy Demolitionist), you could still bust some skulls with good old-fashioned lead to the head. This week's Feedback Friday revealed that they're looking to expand on this awesome firepower with the inclusion of new kinds of Incendiary shotguns, adding double and even triple barrel version for maximum Bane-blasting goodness. And that's just the first stop in a whole new line of weapon upgrades.They're also looking to expand expand character customization to address player concerns that avatars aren't unique enough. They plan to do this by making character profiles distinct from NPCs, and adding the ability to dye armor multiple colors, to give them a more snazzy look. Good to see the team under Tom Potter finally getting around to some long-time player complaints.
TR's Tom Potter knows what it will take
There's been a fairly substantial amount of buzz surrounding Tabula Rasa over the past couple weeks. Ever since long-time designer Paul Sage was announced to be leaving the game to be replaced by designer Tom Potter, fans and observers alike have been left to speculation about the state of flux surrounding Destination Game's sci-fi MMO. To their credit, they've really stepped up to the bat, both with the recent War College meetings at their Austin studio, and with other interviews around and about the gaming media.Adding to this steady trend is this week's Feedback Friday, penned by none other than Tom Potter himself. Potter really goes all out and addresses many of our complaints, including the hyper-active enemy aggro, buffs to Logos users, a link loot system, and a true, blue repeatable end-game. Perhaps best of all, at least in this bloggers' opinion, is his acknowledgment that the crafting system needs a near-complete overhaul. Now, we have to emphasize that there is a serious difference between knowing what needs to be done with a game and actually accomplishing these changes in a reasonable amount of time. Now that we know Potter is wise to what's wrong with the game, we're expecting him to push the changes through, and soon!
TR's lead designer answers your questions
How often do you get the opportunity to ask a big-time developer a question and actually hear their answer? Unless you travel to a gaming conference and stand in line for an hour, this isn't likely to happen, but on the next episode of TabulaCast, the hosts John and Matt will be interviewing Tom Potter, the leader designer for Tabula Rasa. They will be asking him questions submitted by the listeners regarding the game and his new role in the lead designer seat after taking over for Paul Sage last month. Of course, not all questions will be on the show, but only the very best will be chosen. This is a very exciting interview for the folks at TabulaCast who have previously interviewed some of the "leaders" in the Tabula Rasa player community including PlanetTR's main admin DeadRinger, Ten Ton Hammer's TR lead Tony "Radar X" Jones as well as both Community Coordinators: Amy "Critters" Crider and Tia "Avatea" from NCsoft Europe.
Another interview with TR's new lead designer
When it was announced that designer Paul Sage was stepping away from Tabula Rasa to pursue other projects within NCsoft, many players in the community were understandably concerned. So much so, this blogger observed, that many didn't even pause to reflect on the ideas of the new guy in the lead designer hot seat - Tom Potter. Perhaps mindful of this, their PR squad appears to be shopping him around to various sites so players can get comfortable with the man and his ideas.In his latest interview, Potter doesn't step out of the box terribly much. After describing his history in the game industry, he pretty much toes the existing line of restrained enthusiasm for features already announced (like the clan-controlled CPs we've heard about for months), without really giving any concrete facts or ideas for us to chew on. Potter said that with unlimited time and budget, he'd love to implement things like space stations and Bane motherships. While this is a neat idea, it's something we were sort of expecting from future expansions anyway, and not something that would be liable to bring TR off of life-support. Perhaps we're asking too much, but we just want to be excited about the game again.
An interview with TR's Lead Designer Tom Potter
Recently, WarCry had the chance to sit down with Tabula Rasa's Lead Designer, Tom Potter regarding the state of the game as we see it today. He discusses how successful some of the game's features have been and what they plan for the future of the game. He also touches on Richard Garriott's space flight plans and how involved he still is in the ongoing development of the game. We can't help but wonder what type of inspiration his space flight will evoke.One of the most interesting pieces of this Q&A is the admission that the game's developers consider themselves more prepared now than they did at launch. While this is perfectly normal for new online games that depend so heavily on the community aspect for its success, it's still interesting to note that Destination Games, being so new to the development world, have finally licked their wounds and are ready to move forward full charge! This includes plans to offer incentives for existing players to stay, and more free trial periods to entice new players to come see what the game is really all about.
TR's Feedback Friday throws us all a curveball
In this week's installment of Tabula Rasa's Feedback Friday, we get quite a shock. It seems the game's lead designer, Paul Sage will be relocating within the company to a new project. This promotes Tom Potter to a new rank as Lead Designer, and this announcement is our first glimpse into his visions for the future of TR.To be quite frank, most of what he tells us is what we've been hearing for a long, long time. We'll have PAUs, we'll have Clan-owned Control Points, we'll have better AI, and crafting, and truly balanced classes, etc. We just wonder if this change of the guard is going to end up being good or bad for the game. It seems change would be a good thing at this point, considering the level of disappointment we hear from players in the major forums, but are Tom Potter's ideas going to be enough?
Tabula Rasa dev journal: Sanctus Grotto
Tabula Rasa has received a lot of buzz over the last few weeks. Some have stated that it's an incomplete game, others have erroneously called it a financial disaster, while others (like myself) enjoy it for what it is. And all of this fallout (some of which reeks with the taint of hidden agendas - anyone who actively cheers for the demise of a game must be questioned) comes after only being live for four months (the game launched on November 1, 2007). NCsoft has reiterated that they are far from abandoning this sci-fi MMO. To prove that point they gave us their latest developer's journal to pass along to you. What follows is a retrospective written by Tom Potter, world builder for the new Sanctus Grotto instance. Sanctus Grotto Retrospective Tom Potter, World Builder Sanctus Grotto was an instance that was in development for some time before I started working at Destination Games. I joined the Tabula Rasa team late in development, so my job was to take the initial vision to completion. The conceptual foundation was already complete so you'd think that there wouldn't be much left for me to do. But Sanctus Grotto is a perfect example of how even "final" designs are often in a state of flux, and how making a few small changes can quickly multiply into something much larger. %Gallery-9822%
