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Hands-on with Tabula Rasa's next patch: harder enemies good for the game?
Tabula Rasa is a peculiar game compared to many in that the difficulty of enemy encounters usually isn't measured by enemy strength, but by their numbers and composition. Man to man, your typical AFS soldier is more than a match for even the toughest units the Bane can throw at them. While that would seem to make the game a cakewalk, this is balanced by the fact that the enemy usually travels in roaming packs, containing enemies of different types that complement and balance each other. The difficulty of the game is largely derived from finding ways to pick apart these units before they can burn you down.Among the many changes to come to Tabula Rasa in the most recent patch on the public test server is a new, enhanced enemy AI. For whatever reason, the Destination Games team decided to amp up the difficulty of enemy encounters by increasing so-called "aggro sharing" between enemy monsters. Having given the new build some time on the test server, we've got some thoughts and criticisms.
NCsoft ramping up TR community interaction
If you jump around the greater MMO web community as much as I do, you might have noticed the recent deluge of threads started by NCsoft community representatives across many of the major Tabula Rasa forum communities. While little has come of the threads so far (to be fair, most were posted around noon EST yesterday, so it's early yet), most players seem excited at the prospect of even greater interaction with the Tabula Rasa development team. And that's what they're promising. Kagasumi is the only NCsoft "Ambassador" we've spotted so far, and though he is only a lowly QA Tester, he has apparently been tasked with being the initial line of contact between players and the design team, with additional staff to follow.Gaging from the responses, the most productive discussion at this point can be had in the thread over at Planet TR. Kagasumi actually acknowledges and responds to a number of player suggestions. The drama is mercifully low and the number of good ideas is actually pretty high. It's promising, although it's this kind of effort that originally had us questioning the decision that led to Tabula Rasa going without official forums in the first place. Tabula Rasa's online community is extremely diffuse, so these sorts of feedback-gathering exercises require a good deal more effort than they might have otherwise. Still, we're excited to see what, if anything, comes of this.
