Tabula Rasa
So someone reminded me on Friday that Tabula Rasa was ending today. At around 2AM I was excessively bored, so I went and registered for a free account, and jumped in the game. I will start off with a disclaimer, I played for almost exactly 11 hours (nothing in terms of an MMO) and what I did play was likely vastly different from the normal user experience. I went with a straight DPS class, though I didn't have time to find all but the fir sets of logos so I couldn't use most of my skills. I also didn't try any missions beyond the first ~15 levels, or crafting, or team play, or PVP, etc etc. From what I did see, I can understand why the game failed to some degree.
First major issue is the UI. I would wager that Garriott is a vi user, since the entire UI is built around a modal system. Normally you have no cursor and your mouse controls the cam directly (and thus controls the targeting reticle, which I will get to later). If you open any dialog, or hold Control, you enable "UI Mode" where you have a cursor to use dialogs as in a normal MMO. This means that if you need to interact with a dialog you can't control the camera, and therefore can't turn. Also the default binding for "Fire" is the left mouse button. If you are in "UI Mode" and accidently click on something that isn't a UI button, you still fire on your last target. Given how few ability/item slots they give you, this makes it very annoying to work with the inventory.
This also leads into my next gripe. Despite what people seem to say, this isn't an MMOFPS. Combat is standard MMO combat with an FPS target reticle pasted over it. Even though the targeting looks like an FPS, really like a normal MMO except you target something as soon as your cursor passes over it. All this means is that it is hard to target the mob you want within a group. Other than bit of UI, its all just normal gear, stats, rolls, recharge times, etc. I suppose the ability to crouch for added DPS is a minor difference from the status quo, but I never saw enough of a difference when crouched to care (see earlier disclaimer about not playing high-level content).
Missions seemed functional, but the overworld missions lacked any sense of flow. From what I can remember, they were all one of "click n glowies", "kill n of x", "escort x to y", or "find logos x". Aside from the last one, nothing too unusual. I only saw one of the touted "moral choice" missions where I could choose to let a conscientious objector escape from the military or haul him back to his superiors (I let him go) and it didn't seem to change anything. I ran two instances solo, and those missions fad better flow and continuity. Overall I rate missions as fine, but nothing special.
Graphics were nice, animations seemed smooth and effects were nicely done. I didn't get to see every area, but those I did see were nicely done. Emotes in particular were excellent. I am going to have recommend that Champions get a poledance emote (funny story about that later). Music was also very well done, and nicely accented each area.
Combat was fun, though as part of the end-of-the-game stuffs they were dropping special red items that were insanely overpowered before ~level 40. Even with normal items, pacing was nice and quick. The AI didn't seem that smart, but that might change with higher levels. One thing I really loved was that NPC spawns are done amazingly. When enemy foot soldier spawn, you actually see a fully animated dropship swoop in and a nice beam-down effect play. There were even a few mechanical enemies that you would see drop in from the sky in a packed, ball-like form and then they would animate opening up and standing.
Overall I rate the game as very pretty, but only meh on gameplay. The logos system was interesting, but I can see that someone that doesn't enjoy random exploration would be more put-off by it. I would have liked to see it used a bit more freely though, linked to some kind of ability crafting. The ending event was a nice idea, but didn't really work out due to ridiculous levels of lag. It was below even what I would call "slideshow gameplay". Anything that was triggering a transaction would lag the client, sometimes for 30-60 seconds each. Also the entire zone would lock up about every 20 seconds, sometimes for quite a while. Yesterday night I didn't see any lag, so I guess it was just due to the unusual load from the event.
I'm glad I tried it out, and I think it had a lot of good idea and good people behind it. I hope the best for all the developers and the staff at NCSoft. I definitely hit close to home being there at the end, seeing the GMs do a 10 second countdown to the end of the world. It is kind of morbid in a way, but really this is the fate of all MMOs. No matter how successful, all things must end eventually. I know one day we at Cryptic will have a similarly mournful day about Champions. If any of the team from Destination reads this and wants to apply at Crypic, please shoot me a message.
And now for the funny story about /poledance. For the event, the devs and GMs were playing as Neph characters (the Neph are the Big Bad race in the backstory). Mostly they were set as enemies and were leading charges of huge numbers of NPC enemies against bases, but periodically one would set themselves as friendly and wander through a social hub zone as a nice photo-op. I happened across one of these friendly ones and followed him through the map to a more secluded area and then stood right in front of him and fired off the poledance emote. I was immediately rewarded with a level bump to 50 (I had gotten to 32 "normally" using the 200x XP boosters). Totally made my day.
First major issue is the UI. I would wager that Garriott is a vi user, since the entire UI is built around a modal system. Normally you have no cursor and your mouse controls the cam directly (and thus controls the targeting reticle, which I will get to later). If you open any dialog, or hold Control, you enable "UI Mode" where you have a cursor to use dialogs as in a normal MMO. This means that if you need to interact with a dialog you can't control the camera, and therefore can't turn. Also the default binding for "Fire" is the left mouse button. If you are in "UI Mode" and accidently click on something that isn't a UI button, you still fire on your last target. Given how few ability/item slots they give you, this makes it very annoying to work with the inventory.
This also leads into my next gripe. Despite what people seem to say, this isn't an MMOFPS. Combat is standard MMO combat with an FPS target reticle pasted over it. Even though the targeting looks like an FPS, really like a normal MMO except you target something as soon as your cursor passes over it. All this means is that it is hard to target the mob you want within a group. Other than bit of UI, its all just normal gear, stats, rolls, recharge times, etc. I suppose the ability to crouch for added DPS is a minor difference from the status quo, but I never saw enough of a difference when crouched to care (see earlier disclaimer about not playing high-level content).
Missions seemed functional, but the overworld missions lacked any sense of flow. From what I can remember, they were all one of "click n glowies", "kill n of x", "escort x to y", or "find logos x". Aside from the last one, nothing too unusual. I only saw one of the touted "moral choice" missions where I could choose to let a conscientious objector escape from the military or haul him back to his superiors (I let him go) and it didn't seem to change anything. I ran two instances solo, and those missions fad better flow and continuity. Overall I rate missions as fine, but nothing special.
Graphics were nice, animations seemed smooth and effects were nicely done. I didn't get to see every area, but those I did see were nicely done. Emotes in particular were excellent. I am going to have recommend that Champions get a poledance emote (funny story about that later). Music was also very well done, and nicely accented each area.
Combat was fun, though as part of the end-of-the-game stuffs they were dropping special red items that were insanely overpowered before ~level 40. Even with normal items, pacing was nice and quick. The AI didn't seem that smart, but that might change with higher levels. One thing I really loved was that NPC spawns are done amazingly. When enemy foot soldier spawn, you actually see a fully animated dropship swoop in and a nice beam-down effect play. There were even a few mechanical enemies that you would see drop in from the sky in a packed, ball-like form and then they would animate opening up and standing.
Overall I rate the game as very pretty, but only meh on gameplay. The logos system was interesting, but I can see that someone that doesn't enjoy random exploration would be more put-off by it. I would have liked to see it used a bit more freely though, linked to some kind of ability crafting. The ending event was a nice idea, but didn't really work out due to ridiculous levels of lag. It was below even what I would call "slideshow gameplay". Anything that was triggering a transaction would lag the client, sometimes for 30-60 seconds each. Also the entire zone would lock up about every 20 seconds, sometimes for quite a while. Yesterday night I didn't see any lag, so I guess it was just due to the unusual load from the event.
I'm glad I tried it out, and I think it had a lot of good idea and good people behind it. I hope the best for all the developers and the staff at NCSoft. I definitely hit close to home being there at the end, seeing the GMs do a 10 second countdown to the end of the world. It is kind of morbid in a way, but really this is the fate of all MMOs. No matter how successful, all things must end eventually. I know one day we at Cryptic will have a similarly mournful day about Champions. If any of the team from Destination reads this and wants to apply at Crypic, please shoot me a message.
And now for the funny story about /poledance. For the event, the devs and GMs were playing as Neph characters (the Neph are the Big Bad race in the backstory). Mostly they were set as enemies and were leading charges of huge numbers of NPC enemies against bases, but periodically one would set themselves as friendly and wander through a social hub zone as a nice photo-op. I happened across one of these friendly ones and followed him through the map to a more secluded area and then stood right in front of him and fired off the poledance emote. I was immediately rewarded with a level bump to 50 (I had gotten to 32 "normally" using the 200x XP boosters). Totally made my day.