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TR devs further clarify respec
Never let it be said that developers have it easy. Every word they say in the public forum is carefully analyzed, scrutinized, and questioned at great length. With all those eyes on that relatively small volume of communication, sometimes things get confused and people need clarification. We can scarcely imagine the flood of emails Destination Games has gotten questioning the details of the impending skills changes in Tabula Rasa, including the respec that is to go along with it. For the second time in under a week, they've addressed the issue on their official website.Straight from the horse's mouth, the respec (which is NOT included in the build currently on the PTR) will not only be available to everybody, including those not even in the Soldier tree, but will also be mandatory. Upon logging on to a character for the first time after the Rage change goes live, players will find all their attribute and skill choices wiped, and they'll be able to put all the points they've earned back into their builds as they see fit. This isn't the kind of respec you can save for a later date. They've also specified some of the details of the new Rage ability, including the definition of fast cast (a much quicker cast time) and the logic behind the abilities granted at the different levels.Did you notice what's still missing? Yeah, an ETA. Make with the patching already!
The itemization bug bites Tabula Rasa
As you should already well know, Destination Games is hard at work on patching up some common complaints in their new sci-fi epic Tabula Rasa. Though the most significant part of the patch for most players was Rage getting whacked with the nerf bat and the promise of a free respec, that wasn't all that Paul Sage and crew had in mind. An easily overlooked part of the patch notes says, and here I quote, "We have also fixed another problem where item rarity was not affecting damage bonuses on the items. Now green weapons will do more damage than their white counterparts of the same level. Blues will do more than greens." Itemization is getting tweaked, and it's going to have huge ramifications.As things of this nature usually do, the change has spawned a heated discussion within the TR community, with some feeling that the difference in itemization (which, if you'll note, is called a "fix" not a "change") is going to have profound implications for the way players approach equipment and the game in general. As the game exists now, damage is entirely independent of item quality, and the only advantages conferred by rare items (which follows the popular rarity scheme of white < green < blue < purple) are that they have their mod slots filled. In most cases an item bought at a vendor is basically equal to a purple of the same level that you can get either as a rare drop or as a quest reward. Why is that a problem?
Tabula Rasa: why game delays are good for us
Talking with some new friends in Tabula Rasa last night, we happened on the subject of game delays, and why sometimes we have to suck it up and take them without complaint in order to enjoy a more complete product later down the road. Of course, with as many players as the MMO genre has under its sway, the "without complaint" aspect is often ignored in favor of nagging and incessant whining. Gamers accustomed to instant gratification and pandering from developers are often inconsolable when a patch is delayed, saying nothing of an actual retail release. Forums and IRC chats become flooded with complaints, insults, and sometimes even threats of bodily harm. Mindful of a couple big titles delayed in recent months, I thought I'd offer up evidence of why game delays are sometimes good for us.The video you see before you is Destination Games' showing of Tabula Rasa at E3 2004, a scant three years ago. At the time, Tabula Rasa was a confusing mishmash of fantasy, sci-fi, and... unicorns? Sensing that they had an impending disaster on their hands, they replaced 20% of the development team, scrapped 75% of the code, and started over essentially from scratch. While some still debate whether the finished product they put on the market earlier this month was worth the effort, I find it hard to believe it could be any worse than the trippy mess of a game shown in their E3 presentation. In Tabula Rasa's case, the delay likely saved the game from bombing.So next time the big game you've got on preorder is delayed, relax. The developers are probably doing you a favor. That is, unless you like unicorns.
Tabula Rasa players ask: where's the rage?
One of the biggest questions that Tabula Rasa players have had since the new patch went out on the public test realm has been: what happened to the nerf to Rage that the devs had been rumored to be talking about? Rage is an attack enhancement for those in the Soldier tree that, when fully pumped, offers a temporary 100% buff to damage output. Outside of maybe Training: Weapons, Rage is probably the most ubiquitous skill choice people take, and is almost directly responsible for the huge imbalance between the Soldier and Specialist trees. Destination Games had been proposing a reduction of the damage buff down to 25%, but it was conspicuously absent from the patch notes.We still haven't heard anything official from the developers themselves, but the rumor so far has been pervasive. We weren't able to track down the original source of the rumor, though threads discussing it can be found on most RGTR forums. It's something that makes sense from a balance standpoint and that is the topic du jour in general chat, so we'll see if we can't get any official word. In the meantime, keep an eye on the patch note pages to see if any incremental updates pop up on the PTR.
New Tabula Rasa build on PTR, includes screenshot feature
As part of their "Feedback Friday" feature (which in honor of the holiday this week, was written on Wednesday), Tabula Rasa developer Destination Games revealed that a new build is officially live on the Public Test Server, and includes a number of changes and bug fixes. Among the added goodies is the inclusion of a Military Surplus store, which promises to be the primary venue for selling your old weapons, armor, and other bag-cloggers. There are military surpluses available in all the major zones, alongside the normal vendors. They've also added the ability to toggle the UI and added an integrated screenshot taking utility -- which was really long overdue.I've only just started in Wilderness myself, but my impression is that there are lots of prominent bugs that still need to be stamped out. It seems like every few minutes somebody in general chat asks why a quest turn-in doesn't work or why they can't enter a cave to access one quest without triggering another. Further complicating the frustrations is that fact that players can't copy their characters to PTRs manually. They're populated with copies of a given server, so advanced players who might otherwise be able to provide valuable feedback are barred from contributing by this arbitrary limitation. These are the sort of things that can keep people from resubscribing, and moving to other, newer offerings.
Tabula Rasa RP bloggers wanted
Though there are some among us who espouse that roleplaying is dead, Destination Games apparently hasn't gotten the memo. As part of their on-going community-outreach efforts, which have been fairly awesome to date, they're looking for capable roleplayers to blog, in character, about their experiences fighting the Bane in Tabula Rasa.All you have to do is head over to their fansite registration page, fill out a few forms, check a few boxes, and you could very well have your work shown as part of their on-going Soul of a Soldier feature. So far a lot of the content they have posted is from the perspective of humans just coming to terms with their place in a pitched-battle that encompasses nearly all of the known universe. Granted, Tabula Rasa is less than a month old, but I think there's a big niche that can be filled beyond this sort of "wow, I'm fighting aliens" material that is up there so far. So hop to it, Massively scribes, and smite those bane with your thesauruses!
Tabula Rasa crafting 101
Over at Stratics, there's a good guide for learning how to craft, modify and disassemble items in Tabula Rasa.Crafting was relatively broken in the Tabula Rasa beta, so I'm looking forward to creating enough paint to drive Dulux out of business. Delicious, delicious paint.Several TR veterans have also recommended you start disassembling weapons for their components immediately -- whilst it loses you some credits in the short term, it'll give you a wider range of modification ingredients when you're a higher level and with a Supersonic Rocket Launcher Flamethrower of Doom that you want to upgrade. Try it out.Be sure to read the end of the guide too, if you've been curious what the numbers next to a weapon attribute mean!EDIT: fixed link, tricksy blogsmith
Tabula Rasa to go without official forums, common sense
No, you're not taking crazy pills - that headline says "without official forums." In a moment of inspiration, blogger noisyparker thought to write down Tabula Rasa's community model, as it was described in their now-defunct beta forums. Most of it is fairly standard fare. A blog with an RSS feed to chronicle press releases, community news, the usual. Conspicuously absent though are official forums. The reason? The TR crew feels that official forums aren't conducive to a community atmosphere, because people's posting habits tend towards the dogmatic when they think there's a developer listening. Most people have had to endure the pain and self-loathing involved in browsing official forums before, so we know the behavior they're talking about. Still, it seems like a questionable decision to eliminate what is typically the primary conduit for communication between developers and players. Guess we'll just have to wait and see how it works out.
