tr
Latest
One Shots: Giving a new meaning to "green hybrid"
We sent out the call for more screenshots from Tabula Rasa, and our readers Shadow Wind and Mark 'Jukovic' Benson have stepped up to offer up a veritable feast of Tabula Rasa goodness for the eyes! Today's lovely screenshot was described as the "obligatory hybrid alt." We're glad to see that alt-itus is rampaging around the galaxy at a good pace. (And also glad to know we're not the only ones with it!) Now we'll send out the call to the rest of you -- from AO to Zu Online, all screens are welcomed! The next time you're wandering around your game-world and see something cool, fun, interesting, beautiful, or exciting, snag a screenshot and send it to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com. We love seeing new things. %Gallery-9798%
Paul Sage gives pep talk on 'elder game'
In a welcome change for Tabula Rasa's Feedback Friday, we got a little pep talk and look at the future from lead designer Paul Sage. The stately Sage ruminated about many common points of interest for Tabula Rasa players, including clan-owned CPs, personal armor units, and multi-squad instances. From the tone of the discussion, we get the vibe that none of these things are going to see the light of day in patch 1.7, as we might have hoped, but they're still being worked on internally. It's definitely required reading if you're a fan.One thing we were really surprised to see was that attack and defend tokens as they currently exist are going to be merged together and expanded to be used as a reward for a whole array of different achievements. The principles will likely remain the same, with certain respec and crafting rewards available for purchase with a certain number of tokens, but you'll soon be rewarded for new things like certain missions, killing certain world bosses, or even just reaching a full experience modifier.
New TR patch bringing the goods on test server
Word on the street is that Tabula Rasa's patch 1.7 should be hitting the public test servers as we speak. As you probably already well know because you follow our coverage religiously (right!?), patch 1.7 should herald in some hefty changes to the Spy and Ranger classes. We've been hearing good things about Fire Support, the new skill replacing Reinforcements. Evidently, these spawnable AI allies for Rangers actually have the capacity to kill enemies now! What a pleasant surprise.An even better surprise is that, perhaps hearing our prayers, dev team member Harleyquin will be on the test server all day at Alia Das, leveling players to 30 so they can test out the new class changes. This is an extraordinary boon to the player base, because their existing testing procedures only allowed players with characters on a given server (and it's Centaurus this time around) to run through the changes and report feedback. It's certainly not a long-term solution, but it shows that they've been listening. So make sure to go poke Harley if you've got the time to log on.For the full patch notes, check after the jump.
Tabula Rasa top 5 tips for assaulting CPs - Part 1
Tip 1: Prioritize your targets and take them out with hit and run tacticsOne of the mistakes that most frequently leads to a player's early demise is rushing in to assault a capture point without properly assessing a situation. Sure it looks like there's only a few lightbenders guarding the gate to the base, but if you swing a few degrees closer to the door, you'll see they've got a whole slew of buddies waiting just inside the force field to come make hamburger out of your face. The smart player will identify the enemies he has to deal with and, if he's alone, attack in a series of hit and run maneuvers, taking out a few enemies at a time. Start with the healers and shield drones, and work your way down the order of importance. Those Thrax might be easier to kill, but it doesn't do you a lick of good killing them if a Caretaker just rezzes them right after you run away. Click on for Part 2 of our Top 5 Tips for Assaulting CPs >>>>>
Tabula Rasa top 5 tips for assaulting CPs - Part 4
Tip 4: Kite away big targets like bosses, Kael, and StridersWhile a lot of players (especially Spies) seem to pride themselves in their ability to take down hard targets quickly, it's usually a much wiser decision to kite these guys away from big groups and take them on by yourself or with the help of other players or AI troops. Kael, Striders, and especially boss characters (as denoted by their white aura and unique name) can be extremely tough nuts to crack,. It's hard to even out-damage their considerable regenerative abilities, especially when you've got a group of ten other guys plunking away at you in the meantime. So pull those big guys from the crowd and take them out before going back in and cleaning up the dregs. As a secondary point, don't be afraid to run away! Even specialists with their repair tools equipped can be quickly and efficiently downed under sustained fire from a boss and a big group of lackeys. If it looks like things aren't going to go your way, high-tail it out of there and save yourself the rez sickness. Click on for Part 5 of our Top 5 Tips for Assaulting CPs >>>>>
Tabula Rasa Top 5 tips for assaulting CPs - Part 5
Tip 5: If you need more guys to kill, just knock on the doorIf you're running around outside a CP and find yourself needing enemies to kill, just plunk one or two shots into the force field covering the gate and you should get a fresh supply of enemies to come out and try and make paste of your face. If they don't try and drop-ship down on your head, they should come rushing out of the base like bats out of hell. We're not sure if they have some sort of psychic connection to the door or if it's got some sort of doorbell function we weren't made aware of, but it works. Still, it's a crucial point of order in keeping your experience modifier alive. That wraps up our top 5 tips for assaulting CPs. The control point gameplay continues to be a big part of what makes Tabula Rasa such a unique and engaging experience for fans. Plenty of companies have done siege warfare before, but there's just something so organic about the way control points bounce back and forth between player control and the AI. With the added incentives brought about by the new token system, capture points have once again risen to prominence in players' daily grinds. With these tips in mind, we hope to see some of your out there on the battlefield!
Tabula Rasa top 5 tips for assaulting CPs - Part 3
Tip 3: Don't rush to capture that CPOne of the rookie mistakes a lot of people make is immediately rushing in and trying to capture a CP when the force field comes down. This rarely works because all it takes is one enemy shot to interrupt the capture process. And there's usually at least one enemy lingering around waiting to take a pot shot at you. Do your clean up first, then capture. One should also consider their surroundings and whether that CP is even worth capturing. If other people were assaulting a CP before you got there, make sure to ask if they're grinding for assault tokens. It would be awfully rude to rush in and snipe the CP they've been working on. If you hadn't considered farming the CP yourself, you should. Capturing a CP basically cuts off enemy reinforcements, meaning that your experience modifier and your supply of assault tokens comes to an abrupt end. Click on for Part 4 of our Top 5 Tips for Assaulting CPs >>>>>
Tabula Rasa top 5 tips for assaulting CPs
When patch 1.6 hit the live servers, Tabula Rasa's grinding game as we knew it was shaken up. Experience modifiers were bumped up as high as 6x the normal rates and a new system was implemented that allows players to collect universal CP assault and defend tokens in exchange for worthwhile items like attribute respecs and 50% experience boosters. With these changes, grinding capture points has never been a bigger part of the Tabula Rasa experience. While battling our way from zone to zone, we've seen a lot of players falling into the same mistakes and meeting their untimely demise. In an effort to assure that everybody enjoys the CP capturing experience as much as we do, we've assembled a two-part guide to Tabula Rasa capture points, with tips, strategies, and common etiquette that should help take your TR experience to the next level. For part one, we'll give you some useful tips for that always difficult task of assaulting enemy CPs. Click on for Part 1 of our Top 5 Tips for Assaulting CPs >>>>>
Tabula Rasa top 5 tips for assaulting CPs - Part 2
Tip 2: Turn solitary shield drones against the enemyOne of the most loathsome sights in the game is seeing a huge mob of Bane running towards you completely protected by a swarm of shield drones. While shield drones are generally a huge pain in the ass, and fairly high on the hit list, that doesn't mean you shouldn't use them to your advantage when you can. If you're inside their yellow dome of energy, you receive the same protective benefits as the enemy. So instead of destroying that lone shield drone sitting in front of the base, consider using it as a staging area. They'll only be to scratch you once they're inside the bubble too, so wail on them before they can close range. Click on for Part 3 of our Top 5 Tips for Assaulting CPs >>>>>
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!
Patch 1.7 to grace TR some time next week
The Tabula Rasa community team sent out another bulletin this Friday, specifically concerning the changes that should be coming to the public test server some time between now and next week. Among the tweaks they mentioned for patch 1.7 are tweaks to the way enemy spawns and high-level AI is handled. In the Palisades, Torden Incline, and the Plains, they're looking to smooth out enemy spawn patterns, in addition to alleviating some of the tougher spots in Divide and Wilderness, where enemies that you just finished killing will often pop right back in and shoot you in the back.They also mentioned some exciting changes the group mechanics, including the clan owned CPs (finally!) and some a new LFG system that should make the quest to find a group considerably less arduous, or so we hope. Tabula Rasa still strikes us as a solo-centric game, so we'd like to see group play pushed to the forefront, even if it means they have to beat us over the head with it.Also, one final announcement for the especially dense among us: the Skitterin hybrid class was an April Fools' joke!
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.
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.
One Shots: Strength in numbers
While today's One Shots doesn't have a lush landscape or a picturesque sunset, it does show off one thing that we feel is very important to make MMOs fun -- cool people playing together! Today's screenshot comes to us from Sevenwind (aka Alarie Medea from the Orion server) who snapped this picture while out playing Tabula Rasa the other day. Sevenwind writes:[This is] a shot in Tabula Rasa of a small group I was in today. Just a reminder grouping is more fun than soloing! Join a squad today and fight the Bane as a team! Do you have a screenshot of your playtime? Groups, solo, raids, you name it -- we'd love to see them! All games from old-school to new-school are welcomed too. Just grab those screenshots, pop them in a mail to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com, and send them along. Your screens and stories are what give One Shots life!%Gallery-9798%
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.
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.
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.
