Pants's Tabula Rasa Diary

[Dog Pants]

There seems to be some bad vibes about TR, but most seem to have been borne from the beta. I'm curious about the game so I bought it anyway because it has potential, so I'm going to document my experience before writing a review. Feel free to call me a mong, but don't just reply with "omg it's fucking shit!!!one!!" or you'll just look like Chicken.

1. The NCSoft Launcher.
The PCG forums wrote this off as a buggy load of shit, presumably from the beta. I think it's great. Not only does it do its job with a minimum of fuss, but now I only need the one icon on my desktop for Guild Wars, City of whatever, and Tabula Rasa. This is good.

2. Installing
I've already been vocal about this. The DVD install took a suspiciously short amount of time, and I was correct in my suspicions - there was a 3.5Gb download waiting for me. Not impressed, as the game is only six months old. Still, it had almost finished by the morning and had luckily only disconnected about an hour before the end.

3. Entering the game
Fairly standard NCSoft stuff. A very nice intro about aliens attacking Earth, normal log in via PlayNC account. There's about 16 character slots, although I can't see anyone using them all. Charater creation is okay, better than most but nothing to write home about. Everyone starts as the same class and you branch off as you level up, so it's really only about appearance. Still, I managed to create a ginger bloke with a big handlebar moustache so I was relatively content. Biggest downside to the character creation though was that all your characters have to have the same surname, which somewhat limits your creativity.

4. First hour
The control and combat system is certainly different and will take some getting used to. This is compounded by the tutorial not being very good, although I worked it out slowly. Combat feels very strange, using a third person FPS style kind of like Max Payne, but I'm going to persevere as I suspect it's unfamiliarity that is giving me problems with it. I've heard terrible things about the UI, and I admit it isn't the best, but it isn't as bad as what I've read about it with the only painful bits in setup and keyboard shortcuts to do the rest. They seem to have adopted the Guild Wars manner of recharging health (and armour, such as it works) fairly quickly once you stop taking damage, minimising downtime out of combat.

Opinions so far:
Not as shit as everyone else seems to think, but not setting my world on fire. That said, I'm not even out fo the tutorial yet and I suspect it will start to polarise me once I get into the game proper.

[Killavodka]

We'll make it Orky 5punky

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[FatherJack]

Problems I had with the beta were mainly the controls and the UI - the fact that it crashed very quickly meant I didn't spend much time trying to get to grips with them.

Be interested to know if there are improvements there. Personally I don't like being forced to use WASD, particularly with MMO games when you have to travel large distances.

In FPS games, I set forward to be the right mouse button, which I find much more comfortable to hold down all the time, and since they're mouselook-always-on I just look where I want to go to steer.

In MMOs, I'm a little more flexible, as most have default, unchangeable actions for the mouse buttons, but:
- I hate having to use anything other than the mouse to "look around", it's just counterintuitive - and I don't mean move the mouse to the edge of the screen to turn, either - that's horridly clumsy.
- I don't like using the middle-mouse button, it's a wheel and should be used for scrolling. My annoyance is further compounded by a large number of games I've tried which use it actually fail to detect it as a press (because I rolled a bit by accident) more than half of the time.
- Really for those long distance runs, you need a forward/run toggle button - there's no way I'd have traversed the distances I have in other MMOs if I'd had to hold down a button the whole way.

So, if TR has a camera controllable by either holding down the left or right mouse buttons and moving the mouse and it has a toggle for forward motion assignable to a key, then I was unfair to criticise its controls.

As for UI, my main complaint was that the tutorial instructed you to press a series of keyboard buttons to open menus, etc - which I then promptly forgot. I wasn't told how to open them again using on-screen elements (usually there are at least three ways to get at them in other games) and I couldn't review the chat log to remind myself what button did what.

It didn't help that the display of the tutorial was a bit bugged, and the text cut off before I'd read it (and I'm a fast reader), with no way for me to redisplay it - but I appreciate that things like this would be among the first things fixed in the full release.

As for crashing - I guess that's something they would have worked on, too. It was effectively a memory leak - I saw my RAM usage creeping steadily up, until it CTD'd instantly. I think it's the only game that's done that to me under Fista.

[Dog Pants]

Problems I had with the beta were mainly the controls and the UI - the fact that it crashed very quickly meant I didn't spend much time trying to get to grips with them.

Excellent, I never played the beta so I was hoping someone would post something like this. I'll address the issues in order:

Personally I don't like being forced to use WASD, particularly with MMO games when you have to travel large distances.

In FPS games, I set forward to be the right mouse button, which I find much more comfortable to hold down all the time, and since they're mouselook-always-on I just look where I want to go to steer.

I've not tried anything other than WASD, but the quick reference guide has a traditional MMONG setting and a FPS style setting. That suggests you might be able to remap them, but I haven't tried.

- I hate having to use anything other than the mouse to "look around", it's just counterintuitive - and I don't mean move the mouse to the edge of the screen to turn, either - that's horridly clumsy.

It has automatic mouse-look due to the way combat works. Problem with that is that when you open a window (quests, inventory, etc.) you get a cursor and can't look any more. That's a neccessary evil I suppose.

- I don't like using the middle-mouse button, it's a wheel and should be used for scrolling. My annoyance is further compounded by a large number of games I've tried which use it actually fail to detect it as a press (because I rolled a bit by accident) more than half of the time.

The middle mouse press switches to an over-the-shoulder view, which in my opinion is terrible and so I'll never use. KV likes it though for defensive actions as it's a little more first person.

- Really for those long distance runs, you need a forward/run toggle button - there's no way I'd have traversed the distances I have in other MMOs if I'd had to hold down a button the whole way.

Num lock.

As for UI, my main complaint was that the tutorial instructed you to press a series of keyboard buttons to open menus, etc - which I then promptly forgot. I wasn't told how to open them again using on-screen elements (usually there are at least three ways to get at them in other games) and I couldn't review the chat log to remind myself what button did what.

It didn't help that the display of the tutorial was a bit bugged, and the text cut off before I'd read it (and I'm a fast reader), with no way for me to redisplay it - but I appreciate that things like this would be among the first things fixed in the full release.

Yeah, I had a problem with this to a lesser extent. The instructions are in the quest window and in the middle of your screen until you've done them, but then they never appear again. This isn't helped by the buttons being slightly different to other MMONGs - inventory is B for backpack - but it's only a matter of getting used to them.

As for crashing - I guess that's something they would have worked on, too. It was effectively a memory leak - I saw my RAM usage creeping steadily up, until it CTD'd instantly. I think it's the only game that's done that to me under Fista.

I've not had any crashes or lag, or any other thechnical problems so far. Mind you, I'm not using Fista.

[Killavodka]

Be interested to know if there are improvements there. Personally I don't like being forced to use WASD, particularly with MMO games when you have to travel large distances

Tick box in the control menu for FPS style or MMO style

Really for those long distance runs, you need a forward/run toggle button - there's no way I'd have traversed the distances I have in other MMOs if I'd had to hold down a button the whole way

Numlock does that trick (same in WoW)

I wasn't told how to open them again using on-screen elements (usually there are at least three ways to get at them in other games) and I couldn't review the chat log to remind myself what button did what.

Ctrl brings up a radial menu which has everything on it (A bit like the armour selection in Crysis) Also if you purchase the game there is a manual with a quick reference guide.

It didn't help that the display of the tutorial was a bit bugged, and the text cut off before I'd read it. As for crashing - I guess that's something they would have worked on, too. It was effectively a memory leak - I saw my RAM usage creeping steadily up, until it CTD'd instantly. I think it's the only game that's done that to me under Fista.

Both bugs in the Beta, were fixed by the final build, and as you can tell by the download required post-purchase they have changed an lot from then.

[Joose]

The big question for me is quite simple: What does it do differently from other MMO's that will make me want to play it.

For CoH its the character creation and development. I feel like Bleurgh and friends are my creation, and thats brilliant

For WoW its that it doesnt do anything particularly original, but it does everything extremely well. Regardless what general 5punky opinion is, I think its fairly undeniable that despite all the seas of clones that came after, what WoW does, it does the best.

For EVE its the fact that everything is pretty non-traditional, MMO wise. That and theres a lot more player driven stuff than any other MMO out there.

So what is it about Tabula Rasa thats going to grab me?

[Dog Pants]

Fair point. I've not played enough to make a real judgement on it yet, but the two things that made me want to try it were the two things that make it stand apart - it's not a fantasy setting and it has a shooter style combat system. The setting I can see working quite well, although I prefer a more gritty setting myself, but the control system I'll only know about once I get used to it.

I was talking to KV last night about my reservations, the main one being the same that World of Warcraft falls down on - can I team up with other 5punkers without having to create endless alts? CoX does this quite well and makes up the gaps by making it fun to make a new alt, and Eve does it by not really having a level system. Guild Wars does it by having the level limit fairly easy to achieve. Tabula Rasa's best hope is that, according to KV, you can viably do an instance plus or minus about 4 levels, which isn't a bad scope. Again, I'll wait and see.

[Baliame]

Tabula Rasa's best hope is that, according to KV, you can viably do an instance plus or minus about 4 levels, which isn't a bad scope. Again, I'll wait and see.

You can also do that in WoW. With a full team I mean.

[Dog Pants]

You can also do that in WoW. With a full team I mean.

Maybe it won't work then, I don't know. It hinges on being able to play with other 5punkers, which you just can't do in Warcraft because everyone progresses at different speeds. I did try it with Joose but due to the size of the game and difficulty in travelling I never actually met up with him.

[Killavodka]

You can also do that in WoW. With a full team I mean.

pfft as a WoW know-it-all i can tell you that the limit is +-2 lvls with all of the instances with a minimum of a full party unless you have somebody too high "boosting" you through it for equipment. In TR most of the instances are soloable by well-equipped folks, so it's often easy enough to take a lowby as long as they know the risks

I did try it with Joose but due to the size of the game and difficulty in travelling I never actually met up with him.

WoW is very good at baffling just about everybody new to the game. Traveling isn't such a big deal, as long as you know where you are going and don't accidentally wander into enemy territory.

Also one of deject's hates of TR was traveling but with the latest patch there are alternative methods of transport, with vehicles on the drawing board for a future date.

[Baliame]

pfft as a WoW know-it-all i can tell you that the limit is +-2 lvls with all of the instances with a minimum of a full party unless you have somebody too high "boosting" you through it for equipment. In TR most of the instances are soloable by well-equipped folks, so it's often easy enough to take a lowby as long as they know the risks

Guild's starting Black Temple, so I believe I've seen it all. Been in Uldaman at 36 and UBRS at 55. Full run. Little to no wipes. Pre-TBC. Non-boosted parties.

Maybe it won't work then, I don't know. It hinges on being able to play with other 5punkers, which you just can't do in Warcraft because everyone progresses at different speeds. I did try it with Joose but due to the size of the game and difficulty in travelling I never actually met up with him.

If you can bother getting 25 5punkers to 70 we can go raiding. WoW is built around end-game with mostly multiple paths leading to it (so you've probably seen it all non-endgame if you have 2 70s)

[Killavodka]

Guild's starting Black Temple, so I believe I've seen it all. Been in Uldaman at 36 and UBRS at 55. Full run. Little to no wipes. Pre-TBC. Non-boosted parties.

With a guild run, yes I can see where you are coming from. But you try getting a lvl55 into a random group for UBRS and they would shun you hard unless they were desperate and you were a well equipped healer (healer's don't suffer the immense damage loss from the enemy being 5-7 levels higher than you, and if the group is right then you aren't going to get hit to die super fast)

If you can bother getting 25 5punkers to 70 we can go raiding. Magical Gaaay Fairy Land is built around end-game with mostly multiple paths leading to it (so you've probably seen it all non-endgame if you have 2 70s)

Herd of cats?

[Killavodka]

/tangent

[HereComesPete]

And all that is why WoW is almost as bad as space chess. Far too much SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS for my taste.

[Dog Pants]

Well serious business makes it all the better for 5punkers to fanny about in. I really can't see more than a couple of 5punkers getting to level 70 though - the few of us who have played it can't even get on the same server, let alone meet. I'd have been happy to play Warcraft if I could have played with 5punkers, I do like the game, but with a couple on one server who I could never get together with, and everyone else scattered over loads of different ones I could only ever team with randoms and that was arse.

[Killavodka]

Thankfully I have an MMO guild who are more like pack of dogs than herd of cats. Similar cursing, more organisation...

[Dog Pants]

Night 2:

5. Combat
I'm starting to like combat in TR. Under the skin it's pretty similar to any other MMONG; you have a target selected and you attack it with your left mouse button with your selected weapon. Thing is it dynamically changes target to whatever's under your reticle so it feels like more like an FPS. This lets you run and jump about like a loon in combat (if you want, which I do), although staying still and crouching gives you more damage.

6. Weapons
At the moment they seem to fall into categories: pistol, rifle, shotgun, chaingun. Of those categories I've found cartridge and EMP, the first of which does physical damage and teh second does armour damage. I know there's more types later, like laser for large targets (which seem to be immune to cartridge). I'm very much enjoying my chaingun, which chews through ammo like nobody's business but it's cheap and I can carry thousands of rounds of it.

7. Career
Classes and levelling work well. Everyone starts off the same class and tehn branches off into sort of class trees at certain levels. Levelling is the usual thing, and you need to go to a trainer when you reach the levels where you branch classes.

8. Logos
This is like a magic ability thing that everyone gets. You can use different ones depending on your class but you can only unlock them when you find the 'Logos' that activates it. From what I can gather they're like mystic alien runes, and as well as enabling your skills they can be used in combinations to do things. There's probably a couple of hundred of them from what I can tell and you find them in shrines out and about.

9. Quests
Pretty standard stuff here, very much like Warcraft or Guild Wars. Nice battlefield setting, with choke points containing trenches and bunkers and NPC fighting, but mostly pretty standard stuff. Plenty of them though.

10. Performance
I've only had a couple of issues with performance. A tiny bit of lag in a checkpoint battle (more about that later), although KV with his dodgy connection had some problems. I did get some issues with weird artifacts, which at one point made the game unplayable until I restarted it. Not a problem as I was in the camp, but would have been a nightmare in combat.

11. Checkpoints
Seems like these are like front line camps where you can res, heal and trade, except they come under attack from the Bane (or Crusties as they're known by the NPCs). Not just a few baddies hurling themselves at the guards either - this is like the last stand in Starship Troopers. We fought our way in to a camp and I thought I'd be fairly safe, picking off the Crusties who got inside by sticking my chaingun in their face and emptying it. Still, it was handleable. Until I saw a solid wave of them charging the gate, with massive ones stomping through them. It all kind of went downhill from there and I died outside the hospital tent after me and KV and about 6 or 7 other characters got pushed back there. We lost the CP, which means it'll have to be retaken before it can be used as a camp again.

12. Randoms
All seem to be very helpful, surprisingly. Seems like the high level guys are trying to keep people interested so they dish out help to noobs whenever they can. May not stay that way, but it's a good start.

13. Other stuff
A few bits and bats stuck in my mind. When you do an emote you get a nice little description in the chat channel. Nice touch, and you seem to be able to pick up emotes in game too. It's really easy to colour your armour - you get given 10 dyes right off and you can choose from about 10 colours whenever you use one. Enabled me to remain magenta even when I swapped my armour. I don't like not being able to move my windows after CoX and GW, but I can probably deal with that. Oh, and you get a nice little coup-de-gras sometimes in combat if you're quick enough on the melee attack that not only looks cool as you roundhouse the critter in the face, but you earn more xp too.


All in all, I'm a lot more impressed than I was yesterday. I'm looking forward to playing more, and I reckon it could easily compete with Guild Wars for my attention.

[Dog Pants]

Bit more to add:

14. Travel
Most is running about, but at camps there are local teleporters that once you've activated them you can hop about between them, similar to GW. Odd thing is that the gravity seems a little bit light, so you can jump really high and don't take much damage from falling. It's an alien planet though so maybe that's deliberate. There's also shuttle travel between the planets, but I'm nowhere ner getting there yet.

15. Quests again
I've found that most of the 'kill x of x' missions are secondary objectives. Completing them gives you a title like in CoH, and I think completing all of them for an area completes a mission and you get something nice for it. They're not too hard, as you run into gribblies quite often.
Also, a few missions require you to make 'moral' choices. I don't know how they affect things, if at all, but the two I've had so far are;
Do I drag an alien conscript back to the warrior chief or let the elder take him away for logos training as he has potential?
Do I squeal on the speed-pedalling private who has been nicking drugs from the field hospital, or do I deliver them for him?

16. Auctions and crafting
This exists. I keep picking up blueprints for stuff and you can use that with ingredients to make stuff like new dye colours and bits of kit or consumables. Pretty standard stuff, although I've not tried it yet because I've never found an ingredient. I've seen the auction house (military surplus store), but not tried that out either.

I've also noticed that class isn't massively important at my stage of the game. Everyone gets guns and armour, and apparently even the healer types are pretty self sufficient at this stage (I'm level 7).

[Hehulk]

11. Checkpoints
Seems like these are like front line camps where you can res, heal and trade, except they come under attack from the Bane (or Crusties as they're known by the NPCs). Not just a few baddies hurling themselves at the guards either - this is like the last stand in Starship Troopers. We fought our way in to a camp and I thought I'd be fairly safe, picking off the Crusties who got inside by sticking my chaingun in their face and emptying it. Still, it was handleable. Until I saw a solid wave of them charging the gate, with massive ones stomping through them. It all kind of went downhill from there and I died outside the hospital tent after me and KV and about 6 or 7 other characters got pushed back there. We lost the CP, which means it'll have to be retaken before it can be used as a camp again.

I'm curious about this bit. It's it epic kinds of win with you mowing down hundreds will you eventually get overwhelmed, or is it more of a 2 hits and your dead situation?

[Killavodka]

I'm curious about this bit. It's it epic kinds of win with you mowing down hundreds will you eventually get overwhelmed, or is it more of a 2 hits and your dead situation?

Depends on how you wade in. Theres often a bunker or wall to stand on where you can sit and pick off the leaders and the healers with a rifle, or if you are like me, risk it a bit more and jump into the middle of them with a shotgun. A typical wave will include about 25 enemies so as long as you don't get too silly and get them all on you its survivable. I think the most a single guy can take on is about 10 regular blokes.