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Tabula Rasa's testing procedure needs a revamp
With the recent announcement that, once again, our favorite servers weren't going to be part of the testing process (no offense Centaurus) for Tabula Rasa's new patch 1.7, we're reminded of how horrible this system has proved to be over the last several months. For the uninitiated, the TR development team generally chooses only one of the game's four servers to copy over to the test server. If your server is picked for that patch, all of your characters are copied over and you can log in and test things out a couple weeks before the patch goes live. If yours doesn't get picked, you're stuck rolling a new character from scratch.There are several problems with this. For one, the active hardcore fan base (that is, the kind of people who would actually log into a test server to report bugs and forgo any progression on their actual character) is precipitously small to begin with. So when they take this active player base and divide them by four to test new patches, everybody loses. Only a fraction of the community leaders get to contribute input to class changes, patches don't get as thoroughly tested as they might be if the full community was brought to bear, and poor writers like those at Massively only get to cover patch changes in earnest when their servers are chosen.Is it really too much to ask to be able to copy a character to test on demand? Let your hardcore fans do your work for you!
Win Tabula Rasa gear
If you like to wear your hobby on your sleeve - or on your head, around your neck, or on your chest - it's time to gear up with some Tabula Rasa branded swag. The best part? You can get it for free. Techgage, a tech-related news site, is having a Gear Up at Techgage Contest where you can win a TR-shirt, beanie, or a set of rare AFS dogtags.There will only be three winners, and you only have until April 8 (11:59PM CST) to enter. So go read the rules 'n regs, then fill out the entry form ASAP.
Are you ready to rumble?
Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa will be getting a fighting arena in patch 1.8. The new arena contains a large ring complete with red and blue "corners." Both 1 on 1 and Squad vs. Squad events will be sanctioned by AFS officials. The arena will also include a bar (to help you wash away the money you just lost when your fighter decided not to take a dive), a medic station so wannabe "Rockys" can yell "Cut me, Mick," a upper viewing deck and several recreation rooms. But they need you to help them name it. So get your thinking caps on and submit your ideas for the new Arena (to trcontests@ncsoft.com) by Friday, April 11, 2008.
April Fools' on Tabula Rasa Vault: wait until you see these PAUs!
The good folks over at TR Vault have reportedly gotten their hands on an early preview of some of the goodies we have in store for us in patch 1.7, and boy will these changes knock your socks off! They went way beyond the Skitterin hybrid class Destination Games announced today, going all out with three additional hybrids, three new PAUs (check out the Exobiologists' sweet ride!), and a whole slew of weapon and class changes that should make any Tabula Rasa die-hard chuckle.Among my favorites were changes to the Spy's blade that would increase both damage and range (!), the reduction in damage and increase in threat for the already woefully useless grenade launcher, and best of all, a new "poledance" emote for Exobiologists' clones to make them actually worth a darn in PvP combat, even just as a distraction. All we can say is poor, poor Exobiologists. Barbie cars and poledancing? April Fools' Day has not treated them kindly.
April Fool's in Tabula Rasa: New hybrid class!
Have you ever wanted to be a Skitterin? Just lie around all day, eating, sleeping and gracefully avoiding the footfalls of soldiers running to and fro? That sure would be the life, wouldn't it? Well now you can with Tabula Rasa's newly-announced Skitterin Hybrid class! We're especially impressed with the artist's rendition, complete with acorn flail. I wonder if that does more damage than the Spy's blade? NCSoft has unveiled a dandy of an April Fool's joke today on their official site. Apparently, there has been overwhelming feedback from the players in favor of creating a Skitterin hybrid class, so the devs thought it would be fun to play along. Be sure to head on over and check out the complete story behind the Skitterin Hybrid and how it came into existence. No, it's ok, it all happened in a lab.
Experience modifiers are good, no bad, wait good, no definitely bad
When we reported early last month that the Destination Games team was looking to give a serious buff to Tabula Rasa's experience modifier system, it was then largely regarded as something to be happy about. Too many players were suffering from the attrition of climbing from tier 3 at level 30 to the so-called "elder game" waiting at level 50. Not only do the incentives to continue leveling dry up around that point, but the quests themselves become sparse and hard to link together.Well evidently, the fan community has decided in all of a week that the buffs to the modifiers are simply too much, and some have called for them to be scaled back, or changed so that anything more than 3x experience is restricted as a veteran reward or unlocked after leveling one character to 50. On this, we have to disagree. Allowing for the majority of players to finally make that push through to 50 will go a long way towards pressuring the TR team to finally implement a real end-game to draw people back into the fold. If they can't succeed at that charge, than they deserve to fail. We're OK with putting them on notice.
Has TR's cloning system become obsolete?
The clone credits in TR were originally created in lieu of an easy way to freely change your character's skill and attribute points. This pertains both to the storyline, and a more hardcore approach to skill point changes. We tend to think NCSoft had the right idea with this, as do most game developers in their MMO's infant stages. Does anyone remember the attribute point system in Guild Wars when it first launched? Now skills and attribute points can be reallocated repeatedly with no penalty or cost at all. This seems to be the lay of the land with most current games, but we wonder if Tabula Rasa will soon follow that trend.So now the question is, what's easier: completing a Target of Opportunity for the clone credit, or gathering 600 control point tokens for the respec? The opinions seem to sway for either side, but there are certainly pros and cons for both. With cloning, you can remake your character completely, while keeping the same class and points. This can also be a con though if you've grown rather attached to your character. In that case, a respec would be the appropriate course of action. Whichever you decide, it is nice to know we have a choice to use either now, depending on the situation.
Picking apart the patch for Tabula Rasa 1.6
Ever since patch 1.6 dropped, we've been diving back into Tabula Rasa, milking that sweet sweet experience modifier for everything it's worth. Scanning the air-waves though, we've been hearing about a few wonky things from the patch. Nothing big, mind you, and nothing serious. Just a few things that have stuck out to players that any enterprising player would probably be keen on knowing. Blades now do physical damage with their alt attack. - Players in general chat have been emphatic about this one, noting how the Spy's alt attack (hitting F while wielding a blade) still does type damage, and not physical damage as promised. Evidently, this is already being looked at. Powerful Kael can now leap long distances in pursuit of their target. They do not utilize this at close range, but will do so to prevent their enemies from escaping. - Be prepared to be a little frightened by this one. Kael have gotten a fairly substantial buff. Kael used to be big brutes who you could kite around and destroy with a pistol, but with this and the addition of a new stun attack, they will close distance in a blink and make quick work of you. The only circumstance where you cannot interrupt a reload is when you manually reload a weapon that still has some ammo left in it. - With this thread as our witness, this is not true. You can still interrupt a manual reload. For our money, this seems like a good bug to keep in - who wants to die while reloading? All in all, a pretty good patch with some neat new tricks and no game breaking unfun.
All TR classes getting a look by patch 1.9
The Tabula Rasa crew has sent down another missive from the heavens today, instructing everybody to give themselves a big pat on the back for the rigorous testing that made patch 1.6 a success. Looking forward to patch 1.7, they've stressed that while the changes to the Ranger sub-classes are their first and primary focus, they will be making an effort to look into every class to see what needs to be changed. Specifically, they mention making a global pass on all abilities for every class sometime between now and patch 1.8 and 1.9. In the immediate short term, they're looking to make changes to the minion system, which should give classes like the Exobiologist a little more utility than they have in the current build. Pets will also now receive a damage bonus from the mind attribute, giving them some added reason to spec something other than body for a change. In addition to some other, smaller UI changes, they also sought to make it apparent that the current costs for redeeming items with CP tokens is not set in stone, and can and will be tweaked if they're not seeing the desired results server-side.
Tabula Rasa patch 1.6 going live "soon"
Happy news from the Tabula Rasa development crew. Patch 1.6, which has been sitting on the hotplate for a good long while, ostensibly as penance for the bungles surrounding patch 1.5, is officially in the queue to hit the live servers either late tonight or sometime early tomorrow. The update also mentions that they're hard at work on a last-minute hotfix to cure some minor bugs with Wargame results and schematic drops. No hard deadline on when we can expect to see that hotfix, though signs point to the next couple days.For those who have been out of the loop, or who have only just returned to the game courtesy of the Amazon deal earlier this week, there have been a number of big changes to come along in patch 1.6. Torqueshell rifles got a new look, and then another new look, in an attempt to increase their effectiveness. They've also reworked the utility behind capturing and defending capture points, adding new goodies like respecs to the list of rewards that players can get after redeeming tokens. It's an exciting group of changes, and we'll be keeping our eye on the live servers.Complete patch notes, taken from the test server, are available after the jump.
Can you keep cool under Live Fire?
If you can then the Live Fire Sports League (LFS) is where you need to be! This Saturday the LFS is hosting a King of the Hill 6 versus 6 squad based elimination tournament in Tabula Rasa. Here are the mucho important details: Date: March 29, 2008 Time: 9:00pm Eastern, 8:00pm Central, 7:00pm Mountain, 6:00pm Pacific Server: Orion Map: Wilderness Zone (4) Assembly point: Twin PillarsThis is for characters up to level 10 and will be a fight for Memory Tree Hill. For all the details check out PlanetTR.com ASAP. Time's running out soldier!
Tabula Rasa is Amazon's Deal of the Day
A friendly heads-up for you MMO completionists among us. If you're one of the of the few who balked on the fantastic Tabula Rasa deal that GoGamer had going last month, consider this your chance at redemption. Amazon is currently offering the regular edition of Tabula Rasa for $9.99 as it's gaming Deal of the Day, with the Collector's Edition (which features a surprisingly beefy chunk of swag goodies) going for the low, low sum of $19.99. We have quite the affection for Tabula Rasa around the Massively offices, in spite of its flaws. Even if you ignore our positive opinions of the game wholesale, it'd be really difficult not to get at least $9.99-worth of enjoyment out of the title.And for you Tabula Rasa regulars, this should be icing on the cake. As reader double9s pointed out to us, you can get double the mileage out of this deal by giving your new copy to a friend and then having her sign up using the recruit-a-rookie program. She gets a free game, you get another month for $10, and the Destination Games crew gets another warm body filling their servers, everybody wins![Thanks to everybody who sent this in!]
Patch 1.7's impact on the Spy
If you're anything like most members of Tabula Rasa's Spy class, you were first intrigued by 2 things: the chance to scare noobs in Alia Das disguised as a Thrax, and the immense power of the blade. Seriously, does it get any better than that? In a recent announcement for patch 1.7, we're informed of a reduction in the blade's damage coming soon. It was inevitable that this would happen, as it is general knowledge that the blade is extremely overpowered. It is also inevitable that many people who play the spy would get upset about this change.Fortunately, the good folks at Destination Games have offset the cons with some pros. For one, we have the wonderful new changes to most of the Spy's best abilities, as well as complete revamps of old, under-used abilities. Cloak Wave will now... well, it will now work. This includes the intriguing concept of the spy's entire squad actually being invisible to other players when in a PvP situation.So will a high percentage of spies completely ignore the ability buffs and concentrate on the blade's damage reduction on this upcoming patch? Yes, probably, but not this spy. I look forward to the class being more about real stealth and strategy, and much less about hack and slash.
Tabula Rasa: A fan's P.O.V.
Misery may love company, but negativity breeds page hits. People are more fascinated with "misery" then they are with joy, and once the bad PR bandwagon gets rolling there's usually no slowing it down. Why do you think the evening news and daily newspapers are so rife with doom? It sells.Case in point: Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa. Over the last few months TR has been the bane (pardon the pun) of gaming's misery lovers. But one fan of this funtastic sci-fi MMO has a different perspective. One that some of us here at Massively who play this game happen to agree with. In what amounts to a call to arms to the "silent majority" (those who play and enjoy the game but remain quiet in doing so) , as well as a defense against the horde of negativity, Tabula Blogger gives an unbiased rundown of the things that seem to be harped on the most (crafting, PvP, end game content)... from a player's POV, not a video game journalist's paid commentary.In particular I like the point made about how fast some players managed to "finish" the game and then had the audacity to gripe about no end content. TR has only been out five months (it launched in early November). Those who race to the end of any MMO within weeks of a game launching and then gripe about not having anything to do just don't get it. MMOs take years to make and aren't designed to be finished in mere weeks. They are not sprints (like single player frag fests), but marathons that should be enjoyed and savored. [Via Ten Ton Hammer via VirginWorlds]
The Digital Continuum: MMO features in the year 2013
If you were to look back five years ago at the year 2003, the feature lists on the MMOs of that year look quite a bit different from the games of this year. Everything from graphical advancements to new in-game concepts like Warhammer Online's Tome of Knowledge. A lot of new features have cropped up through natural evolution and forcefulness as well. A lot of these improvements were obvious, but many of them have also been unexpected.So what kinds of advancements will the massively genre have made in another fives years? Maybe we'll all be playing MMOs on the newest consoles, or maybe not. There are a lot of variables in this considerably young genre we all love, so looking five years into the future can lead to scary places. Although that won't stop me from trying to peer towards the future in an attempt see what sorts of virtual worlds await us all.
TR's Ranger classes get a second look
We're pleased to report that this week's Tabula Rasa Feedback Friday is uncharacteristically juicy. The decision was made in the Classes and Combat teams that Rangers and Spies needed a serious looking at in patch 1.7. Their logic was that the two Ranger classes, Spies and Snipers, are too narrowly restricted by their class-defining weapons. Snipers have been struggling with this recently with the changes to Torqueshell rifles. And while Spies have been anything but hindered by their spectacular Blade damage, their effectiveness discourages Spies from trying different tactics.Among the changes that will be heralded in patch 1.7 (it's worth reiterating here that patch 1.6 is still in testing and has no confirmed release date) is a new ability called Fire Support, which will take the place of Carpet Bombs in the Ranger repertoire. It's different effects at different ranks should give it increased utility for single-target DPS. Another ability with the potential to be quite cool is Tactical Evasion, which, at pump 5, would give the Ranger player the ability to set up a temporary beacon that you will teleport back to after a given amount of time. It sounds like a near way to rush into a crowded area, take out an important target, and get away quickly. To check out the full range of changes, make sure to check it out on the official site.
Tabula Rasa patch 1.6, take two!
Tabula Rasa players have had some reasons to complain recently. As we reported a few weeks ago, the Tabula Rasa team pushed out patch 1.5 without giving it enough time to sizzle on the test server, and the result was a PR headache that was only resolved in ensuing days when they were able to throw some hotfixes together to address the game-breaking bugs. As exemplified by the recent patch to the build on the public test server, they're actually looking to take in player feedback this time around, and the result is a much happier community and a much more refined build altogether.The new patch, which went live on the PTS on Tuesday, put into effect the changes to the Torqueshell rifle that Critters mentioned last week. It also addressed a number of other bugs, like RPG damage not being affected by item rarity in addition to adding some tweaks to Necromites. One unforeseen change was a dramatic increase in the number of CP capture tokens required for a respec. Players had been complaining that the relatively low cost of the respec token, originally at 100, trivialized the process and made it too easy to shift between builds. In response, their cost has been upped to 600, which should make them a more substantial item. We'll see how it turns out.
TR's PAUs: batteries included, some assembly required
Giant, walking, robotic instruments of death. There's just something about them that appeals to us as geeks. Sure, it might be more practical to build a tank or an airplane as an instrument of war, but you don't get that same rush as you do when you see a bipedal weapons platform in motion. As we've reported to you recently, Tabula Rasa's own bipedal instruments of death have made an appearance on the public test server, and, even in their unassembled form, we couldn't be more excited to see them.A poster by the name of Seraph on the Planet TR forums went even further than we did, using his photoshop-fu to put together what the Grendel might look like fully assembled, just from looking at the parts sitting around the garage in Foreas Base. While we'd rather like to believe that it would be slightly taller and imposing, it seems like a pretty accurate mock-up from what we can tell at this point. But then, that's just the Grenadier's PAU. We've still got seven more to go!
Tabula Rasa goes green, unofficially
Another Monday, and another Weekend Wrapup from the Tabula Rasa community team. This week, in addition to highlighting the usual slew of events, like this weekend's Friday Night Fights winners and the new Tabulacast, they also featured two new pieces of fan fiction which actually prove to be of surprisingly good quality. As always, they (and we!) encourage you to send in some of your own original material. The Tabula Rasa universe is still not nearly as fleshed out as it could be, so every bit of writing can have the affect of changing people's view of the game world.And of course, there's always St. Patrick's Day. While the AFS does not formally celebrate this day of Irish pride (who cares who is Irish when a race of alien jerkoffs are trying to commit xenocide?), the GMs will be making appearances at random across all four servers today to deliver green dye as a sort of unofficial holiday goodie. Granted, green isn't quite as rare a color as white or black these days, but who are we to look a gift horse in the mouth? And remember, if you're looking to truly maximize your green for the day - think Forean.
TR's patch 1.6, why play when you can wait?
MMO players, of which I count myself a part, are an interesting folk. While we profess to play our games of choice out of the pursuit of fun, many of us scarcely hesitate to flagellate ourselves (figuratively, I hope) for some new piece of gear, or stay up far later than good sense would have dictated to finish a raid, or stop playing our game of choice altogether because some hot new patch is coming down the pipeline that will change the way we play.I can now count myself in that last category, as the word that patch 1.6 was going to render profound changes on Tabula Rasa's experience modifier system has caused me to seize up and stop playing the game altogether. Perhaps it's a bit misguided to just forfeit playing the game on account of a patch with no concrete deadline, but then, who wants to spend all that time fighting enemies and grinding mobs with a paltry x2.5 experience modifier when the patch is going to be bringing down x6 multipliers with 30-minute boosters that bump it up an additional 50%? Setting aside simple quest experience, you could be looking at a whopping three times the experience gain pre-patch! Who wants to grind now when that's coming down the pipes? Not me, that's for sure.
