Tabula Rasa? A pity it's not.
Picked up the TR release with a '3-day trial' key, on Monday. Unsurprisingly, at least a few things bugged me about it, right away:
I downloaded their "client downloader" (~600Kb)...
Which downloaded their "client installer exe" (2.77Gb)...
Which self-extracted and dumped out the "setup files" (2.87Gb)...
Which finally installed the TR client (~3.5Gb)...
Which then patched itself up to the latest version (extra ~300Mb).
I expected to be able to work within a 6-7Gb constraint (which is all that's left of my games drive). What the hell's with the triple-3Gb whammie plus extras?
The only saving grace (during install) was it only being a "one-shot patch" (that seemed to be specifically built for the downloaded install, which was surprising). This was less surprising once I realised it was NCSoft (whose patcher I actually -like-.... when it works! *snort*).
...and that was just the installation. :P
Creating a character was straight-forward but had a couple of things that made me grunt:
The surname you choose for your first character is the surname for every single other character that you create on that server (of which there are 3 US and 1 Euro) and that seems to be because every other character is a "clone" or from the same family. Irritating. It does make finding people easier, though, in that all chat-channels (and friend-list, etc) all work off that surname. So if your first character is called "John Smith", you'll always show up as "Smith". The only down-side to that, is if you want to play an "alt" character to get some peace and quiet: short of creating said alts on a completely different server, forget it.
The "choose face, hair, etc" selection buttons were irritating: you had to rotate numerically through #1..#2..#3..#4..etc and were completely unable to access a drop-down or type in the one you wanted. So, if you were trying to choose between face #3, face #6 and face #38.... yeah: you had to rotate quickly through all the ones in-between to decide. Meh.
Last but not least, their "colour selection" discs were buggy: the "current colour" wasn't the colour that was shown in the disc and certain colours were impossible to pick. Stupid bugs. They need to fix them.
The game-play itself, though, was surprisingly fun! The "newbie" tutorial throws you straight into the action and introduces you to the "mission objectives/completion" interface right off the bat. Being accustomed to MMOs, it was only a few minutes before I was in the *actual* tutorial zone as opposed to what turned out to be the 'introductory tutorial's mini-tutorial sub-zone'. Colour me impressed: it was a nice intro to a game I haven't more than glanced at the cinematics for, previously.
And then we get to do some real missions... wooooo! I ran around and talked to lots of NPCs (with varying levels of textual mission blurbs that were a mixture of amusing, annoying or hat-tips-to-other-things) and only noticed a couple of text errors across the three or four dozen of them. Occasionally, the sound clip of the NPC speaking didn't match the text in the mission pane but eh... the voices were well-recorded and fit the look of each NPC; so I'll let them away with it.
The missions themselves are really quite varied but almost invariably follow the zone's theme - which is a good thing! Your character being "receptive" leads to a lot of missions where you're being guided to find Logos (one of the main conceptual aspects of the game) but, at the same time, you're being asked to help the locals, help your fellow soldiers, help the medical staff, carry out an investigation or clean out a cave system; and they all tend to inter-mingle and happen in the same areas. It's all quick-flowing and easy to find your way around (for those of us that aren't direction-sense challenged ;P) and the mini-map and main maps are, generally, highly detailed; the only gripes I have are the mapping textures randomly shifting out of sync and looking like a low-quality sat-scan or being unable to zoom the main map, to distinguish some of the icons from each other. Filtering out icons until I could see the others got around that issue but both are definitely oversights that need seen to.
Blowing things up seems simple, at first: point at enemies, a target cursor swirls over them, you press your left mouse button and - assuming you haven't forgotten to reload your weapon *shifty* - open up with a reassuringly awesome-sounding hail of bullets; in most cases your target will, indeed, end up dead. Landing hits is an easy-mode "shoot what your reticle is over or has targeted" as opposed to the Counter-Strike style of "only hit if you're aiming properly". Twitch reflexes are advantageous in high-pace combat but definitely not required. Simple.
Then you start finding out the more complex aspects of combat: if you hold your fire for a fraction longer than you really want to (heh heh), your targeting reticle will spin to the center and you'll draw a bead (and, hence, a better lock) on the enemy. Pressing TAB during or after target acquisition will "perma-lock" it and means you won't attempt to lock onto other targets that might run in front and try to draw a lock: nifty! Drawing a bead on a target results in certain weapons (like rifles) having a higher chance to score critical hits with the appropriate advanced skills. Crouching while firing results in more accuracy and higher damage but makes you more vulnerable to melee attacks: you'll be more likely to be knocked flat and sustain critical injuries. Crouching behind things is also meant to provide you with cover but either it's bugged or the indicator that shows how good your cover is is bugged: either way, I couldn't tell so I just crouched to shoot things better. :P Certain weapons work better against specific foes and sometimes foes are immune to specific types of damage. Each weapon has a range at which they work the best and there's a bar under each and every target indicator that shows how close to that optimum range the target is; that indicator also shows whether the target is moving, how fast - the faster they're moving the harder it is to land hits - and who they're focused on. You need to be able to switch between the most appropriate weapons for the task at hand, remember to reload and be able to move and run when things get out of hand: which is all too often. :) They fall short on tutorials regarding your targeting reticles, though: I picked all of that up just by watching things change based on situation - I can safely bet that most people haven't a damn clue what all the "neat coloured things" do.
And then you have Logos (pronounced: Law-goss). Effectively, you're one of a select subset of humans that have been born "receptive". That is, in short: you have the ability to learn cool magic-like super-powers. Woo! Think "X-Men and the Mutant Gene" versus "You and Being Receptive" and you're pretty much on the button. We get to thank the alien race that was here on Earth before us for that. Oh, and we also get to thank them for the race of bad guys that followed them and wiped Earth out. Go aliens! Anyway... Logos-powers are activated by right-click and are as varied as the weapons you get to use. Want to throw lightning bolts? Sure! It's the first thing you learn, in fact. Lightning bolts that arc to other targets? Just improve your skill in that power and you can do that, too. One power ("Rage", in the Soldier skill-tree) boosts the energy around you, so your shots hit harder and do more damage; the higher levels boost your damage further and can exude an aura that gives your nearby squad-mates (and allies, at the highest level) the same bonus. Another one makes you run faster. Yet another (in the 'Spy' tree) lets you metamorphose yourself into enemy creatures (with appropriate special abilities). They're varied and they're fun and the destructive ones are impressive to watch.
Finding these Logos is no small task in and of itself, though. Even though a couple of Logos are found in the open, getting to them usually involves mowing down enough enemy that you'd be surprised the forest isn't painted permanently red. Most Logos are to be found in highly-dangerous cave-systems filled with nasties that want to eat you either because they're just not very nice or because you're invading their territory. Fun, huh? Find a Logos shrine and you can activate it and learn said Logos. Learn the right ones, and you'll be able to learn and use specific skills from your trainers that rely upon those Logos to work: an example are the Logos called "Damage" and "Area" - the skill that requires them (Shrapnel) does an area-of-effect blast that uses up metal bits in your inventory (which you can salvage from destroyed machines and such, with the right skills and equipment, or just buy from a supplies officer) and hurts everything in your immediate vicinity. Higher levels use up more Power (a player statistic which can be raised as you level-up), more metal pieces, do more damage and affect a wider area. Simple, straight-forward and highly entertaining. :)
As you gain in levels, you get to choose which "path" you want to take... when you hit level 5, you get to choose whether you want to be a Soldier or a Specialist. Soldier (at a higher level than I am) splits off to Commando and Ranger. Ranger splits off into Sniper (which I'm aiming for - pun intended *snicker*) and Spy. The Specialist tree is more of a support tree and has things like Engineer and Medic; though they're all more than capable of blowing things away as they all started off doing just that. :D
Dying is only a minor setback, though (although it's more like you're blown unconscious then "recalled" by the med-tent, than dying). Which is just as well, as it happens rather more frequently than I'd like. :P I'm usually good at the whole "survival thing" in MMOs (my WoW characters rarely die pre-50s) but jeez... sometimes you wonder where the blasts are coming from, just to turn around to see a Thrax Officer and his half-dozen buddies show up under a shield drone and.... *squish*. Not pretty. One of the newbie caves has creatures that I think are designed to do nothing more than piss you off: in that task, they are fully successful, as they repeatedly succeed in annihilating solo and duo teams of recruits that think they're "hard as nails and can take on anything". Not so, young padawans. Say "hi!" to the cute medic in the tent, back at base. Again. And again. And again. And... yeah. You get the point. Just as well their "recall" systems work, huh? You -can- be resuscitated by a fellow recruit, if they've gone down the right Specialist tree but I was playing solo, for the most part. I visited that tent a LOT. I really do hate it. :P For what it's worth, those cave-creatures (squid-like things) aren't impossibly hard... they're just hard until you work out the tactics they use: in the case of the squids, they retreat behind an ink-like cloud of energy that soaks up anything you throw at them and then reaches critical mass and magically explodes outward for high damage; hide behind something (like a rock) until the cloud explodes, then open up again - repeat until it dies. Simple once you spot how they operate and this goes for pretty much every single enemy in the game.
Speaking of tactics: the enemy AI is surprisingly impressive and is a rude awakener to anyone that's used to the critters in EQ or WoW. In the control-point attacks I took part in, it becomes obvious just how much effort has been put into the AI, in general: the melee enemies would split off and run at the sniper-types, the shield-drones will chase the highest-ranking troop, to protect them, and the snipers would run to the -back- to get range on you, while enemies will run to stay under the shield-bubbles as opposed to fighting in the open, if they're available. I was utterly amazed to find that the two medics that were healing me and nano-repairing my armour while I took on a particularly nasty melee-style alien were *NPCs*, not players. They even cheered me on when I killed the thing (which I couldn't have done without the repairs and heals), shouting things like "Way to go, buddy!", "Kick ass!" and some rifleman NPC nearby shouted "That'll teach the bastards to mess with the AFS!". As the last enemy went down, a nearby Commando NPC quipped "Woo! Smoke 'em if you gottem!" I'd wondered at the "mature" rating of the game, initially, but the content (verbal more than textual) as I've played has explained it. I've yet to hear it again, but one of the forward assault troops shouted "Up yours, Crusty! Hahaha!" as she killed one of the Thrax (whose nicknames are 'crusties' since their armour looks shell-like, I assume). Funny.
Then there are the things that make my teeth grind and put the game on the back-burner:
Firstly, horrible multi-monitor support in their use of DirectX. Even though it's default is "full-screen", I frequently end up able to move my mouse off the edge of the screen just before I click and the click registers on the second desktop and minimizes the game. I've died a few times, now, due to that. Also, it just randomly seemed to minimize when something updated on my second screen, leaving me at desktop wondering "wtf?". I minimized everything I didn't need to see and the problem went away (GoogleTalk seems to be bad for that, lately, having shown similar symptoms during WoW but TR seemed to just be doing it on a simple screen-refresh).
Secondly, their implementation of DirectInput sucks: there are certain groupings of keys that just outright do not work. I use the same groupings of keys in other games and they work just fine. Something is messed up and it's annoying. And needs fixed.
Thirdly, the bugs in the game: I haven't, personally, found any mission bugs in the time I've been playing but, if the General Chat is anything to go by, there are a plethora of them and the GMs aren't numerous, active or responsive enough to help. There are a reasonably high number of critters that are just incomprehensibly "stuck" in the terrain and are evasive to any form of attack.
Fourthly, the crafting system is sucky (even though it's primarily a pewpewpew game): maybe I just haven't got into the game enough to see if crafting is worth anything but, from first impressions, my thoughts on it consist of "blah." I have yet to find a crafting system that comes even remotely close to that of SWG or Project Entropia and this makes me unhappy at the MMO world in general (and the EQ2 craft system also fell short due to their false claims that you could level a crafter without any combat levels. They failed. Voyage Century Online did a better job - but these are things for a different rant. =P)
Last and, by far, the worst are the BSoD when I quit the game: four times I've run it, four times I've quit to desktop and four times I've received a BSoD-and-reboot within 2 minutes of the quit. Four too many and the biggest reason I'll be passing on a non-trial account. No other game I play does it, so it's definitely a TR issue.
All-in-all: TR rocks. Just not enough to pull me away from WoW.
I'll be waiting on WH or AoC for that.
P.S. Be glad I know how to use tags. ;)
I downloaded their "client downloader" (~600Kb)...
Which downloaded their "client installer exe" (2.77Gb)...
Which self-extracted and dumped out the "setup files" (2.87Gb)...
Which finally installed the TR client (~3.5Gb)...
Which then patched itself up to the latest version (extra ~300Mb).
I expected to be able to work within a 6-7Gb constraint (which is all that's left of my games drive). What the hell's with the triple-3Gb whammie plus extras?
The only saving grace (during install) was it only being a "one-shot patch" (that seemed to be specifically built for the downloaded install, which was surprising). This was less surprising once I realised it was NCSoft (whose patcher I actually -like-.... when it works! *snort*).
...and that was just the installation. :P
Creating a character was straight-forward but had a couple of things that made me grunt:
The surname you choose for your first character is the surname for every single other character that you create on that server (of which there are 3 US and 1 Euro) and that seems to be because every other character is a "clone" or from the same family. Irritating. It does make finding people easier, though, in that all chat-channels (and friend-list, etc) all work off that surname. So if your first character is called "John Smith", you'll always show up as "Smith". The only down-side to that, is if you want to play an "alt" character to get some peace and quiet: short of creating said alts on a completely different server, forget it.
The "choose face, hair, etc" selection buttons were irritating: you had to rotate numerically through #1..#2..#3..#4..etc and were completely unable to access a drop-down or type in the one you wanted. So, if you were trying to choose between face #3, face #6 and face #38.... yeah: you had to rotate quickly through all the ones in-between to decide. Meh.
Last but not least, their "colour selection" discs were buggy: the "current colour" wasn't the colour that was shown in the disc and certain colours were impossible to pick. Stupid bugs. They need to fix them.
The game-play itself, though, was surprisingly fun! The "newbie" tutorial throws you straight into the action and introduces you to the "mission objectives/completion" interface right off the bat. Being accustomed to MMOs, it was only a few minutes before I was in the *actual* tutorial zone as opposed to what turned out to be the 'introductory tutorial's mini-tutorial sub-zone'. Colour me impressed: it was a nice intro to a game I haven't more than glanced at the cinematics for, previously.
And then we get to do some real missions... wooooo! I ran around and talked to lots of NPCs (with varying levels of textual mission blurbs that were a mixture of amusing, annoying or hat-tips-to-other-things) and only noticed a couple of text errors across the three or four dozen of them. Occasionally, the sound clip of the NPC speaking didn't match the text in the mission pane but eh... the voices were well-recorded and fit the look of each NPC; so I'll let them away with it.
The missions themselves are really quite varied but almost invariably follow the zone's theme - which is a good thing! Your character being "receptive" leads to a lot of missions where you're being guided to find Logos (one of the main conceptual aspects of the game) but, at the same time, you're being asked to help the locals, help your fellow soldiers, help the medical staff, carry out an investigation or clean out a cave system; and they all tend to inter-mingle and happen in the same areas. It's all quick-flowing and easy to find your way around (for those of us that aren't direction-sense challenged ;P) and the mini-map and main maps are, generally, highly detailed; the only gripes I have are the mapping textures randomly shifting out of sync and looking like a low-quality sat-scan or being unable to zoom the main map, to distinguish some of the icons from each other. Filtering out icons until I could see the others got around that issue but both are definitely oversights that need seen to.
Blowing things up seems simple, at first: point at enemies, a target cursor swirls over them, you press your left mouse button and - assuming you haven't forgotten to reload your weapon *shifty* - open up with a reassuringly awesome-sounding hail of bullets; in most cases your target will, indeed, end up dead. Landing hits is an easy-mode "shoot what your reticle is over or has targeted" as opposed to the Counter-Strike style of "only hit if you're aiming properly". Twitch reflexes are advantageous in high-pace combat but definitely not required. Simple.
Then you start finding out the more complex aspects of combat: if you hold your fire for a fraction longer than you really want to (heh heh), your targeting reticle will spin to the center and you'll draw a bead (and, hence, a better lock) on the enemy. Pressing TAB during or after target acquisition will "perma-lock" it and means you won't attempt to lock onto other targets that might run in front and try to draw a lock: nifty! Drawing a bead on a target results in certain weapons (like rifles) having a higher chance to score critical hits with the appropriate advanced skills. Crouching while firing results in more accuracy and higher damage but makes you more vulnerable to melee attacks: you'll be more likely to be knocked flat and sustain critical injuries. Crouching behind things is also meant to provide you with cover but either it's bugged or the indicator that shows how good your cover is is bugged: either way, I couldn't tell so I just crouched to shoot things better. :P Certain weapons work better against specific foes and sometimes foes are immune to specific types of damage. Each weapon has a range at which they work the best and there's a bar under each and every target indicator that shows how close to that optimum range the target is; that indicator also shows whether the target is moving, how fast - the faster they're moving the harder it is to land hits - and who they're focused on. You need to be able to switch between the most appropriate weapons for the task at hand, remember to reload and be able to move and run when things get out of hand: which is all too often. :) They fall short on tutorials regarding your targeting reticles, though: I picked all of that up just by watching things change based on situation - I can safely bet that most people haven't a damn clue what all the "neat coloured things" do.
And then you have Logos (pronounced: Law-goss). Effectively, you're one of a select subset of humans that have been born "receptive". That is, in short: you have the ability to learn cool magic-like super-powers. Woo! Think "X-Men and the Mutant Gene" versus "You and Being Receptive" and you're pretty much on the button. We get to thank the alien race that was here on Earth before us for that. Oh, and we also get to thank them for the race of bad guys that followed them and wiped Earth out. Go aliens! Anyway... Logos-powers are activated by right-click and are as varied as the weapons you get to use. Want to throw lightning bolts? Sure! It's the first thing you learn, in fact. Lightning bolts that arc to other targets? Just improve your skill in that power and you can do that, too. One power ("Rage", in the Soldier skill-tree) boosts the energy around you, so your shots hit harder and do more damage; the higher levels boost your damage further and can exude an aura that gives your nearby squad-mates (and allies, at the highest level) the same bonus. Another one makes you run faster. Yet another (in the 'Spy' tree) lets you metamorphose yourself into enemy creatures (with appropriate special abilities). They're varied and they're fun and the destructive ones are impressive to watch.
Finding these Logos is no small task in and of itself, though. Even though a couple of Logos are found in the open, getting to them usually involves mowing down enough enemy that you'd be surprised the forest isn't painted permanently red. Most Logos are to be found in highly-dangerous cave-systems filled with nasties that want to eat you either because they're just not very nice or because you're invading their territory. Fun, huh? Find a Logos shrine and you can activate it and learn said Logos. Learn the right ones, and you'll be able to learn and use specific skills from your trainers that rely upon those Logos to work: an example are the Logos called "Damage" and "Area" - the skill that requires them (Shrapnel) does an area-of-effect blast that uses up metal bits in your inventory (which you can salvage from destroyed machines and such, with the right skills and equipment, or just buy from a supplies officer) and hurts everything in your immediate vicinity. Higher levels use up more Power (a player statistic which can be raised as you level-up), more metal pieces, do more damage and affect a wider area. Simple, straight-forward and highly entertaining. :)
As you gain in levels, you get to choose which "path" you want to take... when you hit level 5, you get to choose whether you want to be a Soldier or a Specialist. Soldier (at a higher level than I am) splits off to Commando and Ranger. Ranger splits off into Sniper (which I'm aiming for - pun intended *snicker*) and Spy. The Specialist tree is more of a support tree and has things like Engineer and Medic; though they're all more than capable of blowing things away as they all started off doing just that. :D
Dying is only a minor setback, though (although it's more like you're blown unconscious then "recalled" by the med-tent, than dying). Which is just as well, as it happens rather more frequently than I'd like. :P I'm usually good at the whole "survival thing" in MMOs (my WoW characters rarely die pre-50s) but jeez... sometimes you wonder where the blasts are coming from, just to turn around to see a Thrax Officer and his half-dozen buddies show up under a shield drone and.... *squish*. Not pretty. One of the newbie caves has creatures that I think are designed to do nothing more than piss you off: in that task, they are fully successful, as they repeatedly succeed in annihilating solo and duo teams of recruits that think they're "hard as nails and can take on anything". Not so, young padawans. Say "hi!" to the cute medic in the tent, back at base. Again. And again. And again. And... yeah. You get the point. Just as well their "recall" systems work, huh? You -can- be resuscitated by a fellow recruit, if they've gone down the right Specialist tree but I was playing solo, for the most part. I visited that tent a LOT. I really do hate it. :P For what it's worth, those cave-creatures (squid-like things) aren't impossibly hard... they're just hard until you work out the tactics they use: in the case of the squids, they retreat behind an ink-like cloud of energy that soaks up anything you throw at them and then reaches critical mass and magically explodes outward for high damage; hide behind something (like a rock) until the cloud explodes, then open up again - repeat until it dies. Simple once you spot how they operate and this goes for pretty much every single enemy in the game.
Speaking of tactics: the enemy AI is surprisingly impressive and is a rude awakener to anyone that's used to the critters in EQ or WoW. In the control-point attacks I took part in, it becomes obvious just how much effort has been put into the AI, in general: the melee enemies would split off and run at the sniper-types, the shield-drones will chase the highest-ranking troop, to protect them, and the snipers would run to the -back- to get range on you, while enemies will run to stay under the shield-bubbles as opposed to fighting in the open, if they're available. I was utterly amazed to find that the two medics that were healing me and nano-repairing my armour while I took on a particularly nasty melee-style alien were *NPCs*, not players. They even cheered me on when I killed the thing (which I couldn't have done without the repairs and heals), shouting things like "Way to go, buddy!", "Kick ass!" and some rifleman NPC nearby shouted "That'll teach the bastards to mess with the AFS!". As the last enemy went down, a nearby Commando NPC quipped "Woo! Smoke 'em if you gottem!" I'd wondered at the "mature" rating of the game, initially, but the content (verbal more than textual) as I've played has explained it. I've yet to hear it again, but one of the forward assault troops shouted "Up yours, Crusty! Hahaha!" as she killed one of the Thrax (whose nicknames are 'crusties' since their armour looks shell-like, I assume). Funny.
Then there are the things that make my teeth grind and put the game on the back-burner:
Firstly, horrible multi-monitor support in their use of DirectX. Even though it's default is "full-screen", I frequently end up able to move my mouse off the edge of the screen just before I click and the click registers on the second desktop and minimizes the game. I've died a few times, now, due to that. Also, it just randomly seemed to minimize when something updated on my second screen, leaving me at desktop wondering "wtf?". I minimized everything I didn't need to see and the problem went away (GoogleTalk seems to be bad for that, lately, having shown similar symptoms during WoW but TR seemed to just be doing it on a simple screen-refresh).
Secondly, their implementation of DirectInput sucks: there are certain groupings of keys that just outright do not work. I use the same groupings of keys in other games and they work just fine. Something is messed up and it's annoying. And needs fixed.
Thirdly, the bugs in the game: I haven't, personally, found any mission bugs in the time I've been playing but, if the General Chat is anything to go by, there are a plethora of them and the GMs aren't numerous, active or responsive enough to help. There are a reasonably high number of critters that are just incomprehensibly "stuck" in the terrain and are evasive to any form of attack.
Fourthly, the crafting system is sucky (even though it's primarily a pewpewpew game): maybe I just haven't got into the game enough to see if crafting is worth anything but, from first impressions, my thoughts on it consist of "blah." I have yet to find a crafting system that comes even remotely close to that of SWG or Project Entropia and this makes me unhappy at the MMO world in general (and the EQ2 craft system also fell short due to their false claims that you could level a crafter without any combat levels. They failed. Voyage Century Online did a better job - but these are things for a different rant. =P)
Last and, by far, the worst are the BSoD when I quit the game: four times I've run it, four times I've quit to desktop and four times I've received a BSoD-and-reboot within 2 minutes of the quit. Four too many and the biggest reason I'll be passing on a non-trial account. No other game I play does it, so it's definitely a TR issue.
All-in-all: TR rocks. Just not enough to pull me away from WoW.
I'll be waiting on WH or AoC for that.
P.S. Be glad I know how to use tags. ;)