I was leafing through the latest copy of CGW to hit my mailbox when I saw
the preview of Lord British's newest entry in the MMO wars, Tabula Rasa.  It
looked intriguing, but looks can be deceiving ... particularly in a gaming
rag.

Have you seen or heard anything on it?

TIA
Crash

news:10dlk1b902s44d0@corp.supernews.com...

I've been following TR but it's sufficiently out there (probably next year)
that I haven't paid close attention lately. The pedigree is impressive, with
both Garriot and Starr Long and sponsorship from NCSoft (publishers of City
of Heroes and the upcoming Guild Wars). But ever since Star Wars Galaxies
it's become apparent that even the best pedigree won't save a bad game, and
that won't be something we can even start to evaluate until betas begin
later this year or next. So until then, not much useful commentary, just the
usual sorts of speculation about the prospects, goals and ambitions.

I'm somewhat interested in TR, but the things that I like about it are also
the things that make me wary: the game is very ambitious and sets out some
goals for itself that will be difficult to achieve without diluting some of
what makes these games fun. I think it'll be interesting to compare it to
Vanguard as they both develop on parallel tracks from contemporaneous MMOG
designers with significant track records that reflect vastly different
design philosophies. I expect McQuaid's game to have a lot more of what made
EverQuest compelling to its initial players: significant challenges (a la
Kunark/Velious), punishing consequences and corpse retrieval, item
acquisition, raiding, large worlds encouraging extensive traveling, heavy
crafting focus and an emphasis on character interdependency.

Tabula Rasa, on the other hand, claims to look at the collective history of
MMOGs and address as many of the un-fun components as possible while
capturing the best elements of all of them. If this description scares you,
then you'll understand my skepticism. They claim they're going to eliminate
the pain of death consequences, but if there's no consequence for death then
there's no reason to fear it and I think that can have a devastating impact
on gameplay. I've no idea how they're going to resolve that one.

They separate the world into two spaces, a persistent shared spaces for
community interaction and private instanced combat zones. The community
spaces include the usual kinds of shops and things but the most interesting
thing is your own personal real estate. You start the game with your own
place and you can customize it and invite others. I always thought this was
a fun idea and I guess Raph Koster does, too, because it was a key component
in both UO and SWG. It was brought I think to its highest point (don't
laugh) in The Sims Online but no one else has achieved what TSO did with
personal real estate. I hope TR fully exploits this cool feature, they seem
to be placing a lot of emphasis on it.

I like the somewhat spiritual side of the game (classic Garriott) and how it
translates to game mechanics like weapons that bond with you over time to
enhance damage output. I like the instant action bias (think City of Heroes)
but how they implement this is to let you start playing immediately without
having to make many character choices and later, after you've leveled up a
bit, you can start to define your character's attributes, abilities, and
appearance. While this sounds nice and flexible, this kind of world where
everyone looks and acts the same in the early levels reminds me of killing
rats for ten levels with other EverQuest players who all look exactly the
same. Big yawn. One of the coolest things about City of Heroes is that even
in a world with thousands of players, you are not likely to ever see two
players who look alike. The diversity is just excellent, and people actually
talk positively about spending an hour or two just in the character creation
system.

TR puts a big emphasis on the ability to create character templates and
branch characters off in different directions, then bring them back to
previous "save points" to try something different. They claim that when you
want to try something different, you don't have to throw out your existing
investment and start over. Star Wars Galaxies also tried to give players the
unlimited ability to change professions and attributes at any time (this
reached a nauseating and ludicrous "high point" with the Jedi System, which
at one point required a player to become a Master of all 32 game
Professions). The result, in my opinion, was that you wound up with no
investment in any character, and no identity. I was constantly having to ask
my friends what they were today, and there was virtually no ability to
depend on your circle of friends to provide the usual sort of character
interdependence that you see in a game like EverQuest. There's a good and a
bad to that, but mostly it was a bad in SWG. So I'm not optimistic that it's
going to work well in TR, either.

Overall, I'm skeptical but mildly interested. The thing I like most about
it, it's ambitous scope, is exactly what I fear is going to be its biggest
problem unless they are able to come up with some really creative designs.
We'll see.

--
Bob Perez

"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they
quit playing."
- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

news:10dmj6iife05b81@news.supernews.com...

Hmmm See this is what FFXI did and why I find it not boring as hell... well
there is no CR, but the death penalty is pretty steep none the less. The
game is challenging... without being instant death. Travel is dangerous. The
world is huge at the speed you travel. Even the boats are dangerous (I got
killed by pirates). The only way to travel faster is by Port (similar to
velious circles, you have to go there first and get a key item to be able to
be ported there), being gated to bind, 'blood gating' (change job level 1,
go pick a fight), riding a boat, riding the airship, which is not an option
till you are in your 30-40s, as it requires a pass you get for gaining rank
5, or can buy for a measly 1 million Gil... That's a lot of gil, btw, or
riding a choboco, which is an ostrich that is transport that is a cross
between EQ's and DAoC's horses: You can't fight from it, when you get off it
it disappears, but you can control where it goes. Also it only lasts a
limited time. You must be 15th level to ride, and must reach 20th to be able
to get a choboco license.

It does. See SWG for months before they put decay in and reinstated
insurance. Heck, see SWG even now. Insurance is cheap, and decay is rather
pathetic except where it eats away your highly valuable tools.
When you had to run halfway across Tat after a death, even if you didn't
care to go back there, it was much more challenging. Big critter fights in
SWG today are 'keep the doc backed off a bit and zerg it'.
Hmm isn't 'There' big on real estate and personal creations?
I'm still not completely sold on instanced zones being the only way to go.
Yes yes, it makes all the jerks go away, but part of the game is when 3
people have been soloing an hour and decide to make a party, and competeing
with others for spawns. Yes at times it's frustrating but...

well we shall see.

Thing I hate the most about Final Fantasy. Everyone looks the same.  There
are exactly 16 different Mithra. From a distance every Mithra monk looks
just like me, until they get over the 30-40th level area and start getting
distinctive gear.  I expect to upgrade my body slot at 24, and not change
till 39th. My pants are good till 35.  Gloves and shoes don't change
appearances much. My head item is a headband that my bangs cover... that
won't change for another 10 levels either.

The biggest problem, imho, with the SWG system was not the flexibilty, but
the ease of swapping around. I mastered Smuggler, Artisan, Bio Engineer,
Droid Engineer, Bounty Hunter, Pistoleer, Carbineer, Medic, Scout,
Entertainer, and Marksman. Bounty hunter, mastered pretty much from scratch
(requiring mastering both marksman and scout), which is probably one of the
top 5 toughest professions to master, took me 7 playing days (not 24x7
hours, but 7x 3-5 hour nights.. they were scattered over about 3 weeks
though)
I really really like the Final fantasy system.. though even it needs some
improvement.
You can have two jobs (main job and support job). Support job acts at a
maximum of half the level of the main job. Only the main job gets
experience. At any time by going to home, you can switch to any job you
qualify for. (advanced jobs are 'unlocked' with quests).  I am currently an
11 warrior/ 5 monk. Monday when our group gets together I will be a 21
Monk/10 Warrior... I've also got 11 levels of Thief, 10 of Red mage, 4 of
white mage, and am a level 1 black mage. There are no experience penalties
for any of this swapping around. But leveling the jobs is hard on par with
(or perhaps beyond) EQ pre-kunark.

news:40db6a4b$1@news.vallnet.com...

Well, it's a proven model because it's well known that there are plenty of
players out there who are willing to pay for this type of game. The
interesting and unanswered questions are how many other players out there
would pay for something different and how many of these have been lost
because of this model, and how does the size and economic power of that
group compare to the one above?

Yep, I remember when Insurance was broken and the amnesty was in effect, and
then when it was turned back on. It makes a difference. SWG epitomizes to me
the game that tries to be all things to all people. Infinite character
mutability (hell, you can even change your starting attributes),
simultaneous mixed consensual PvP and PvE environment, mission-based
instanced adventure intermixed with dynamic and static spawns, schizophrenic
policy making on the topic of where the best loot comes from: players or
mobs; and a bizarre combination of instantaneous intergalactic travel with
some ridiculously hard to get to spots. Some of these options are nice to
have, but the game loses a lot of its personality because of it,
particularly on the character issues.

Yeah, I think so. I haven't really check out "There", I got the feeling from
discussions with players that it's the AOL of MMOGs and after playing The
Sims Online, I'd had enough of that. ;-) City of Heroes is on the
serious-MMOG side of the scale, but closer on the cusp than any of the other
big MMOGs.

The thing that the Sims Online did *right* was that it went beyond letting
you customize your home. SWG gives you great customizability in your home.
Hell, I paid an interior desiger a million credits to design the Ultimate
Home for my Master Weaponsmith (who was filthy rich). She spent weeks and
hundreds of thousands of credits making the most gorgeous furnishing and the
most elaborate design and in the end, I had an incredible palace, a showcase
of the game's ability to create a beautiful home. But who ever saw it? LOL,
why would anyone want to come over and look at your house? They did it as a
courtesy, and occasionally you'd have some meetings there and it might
provide a social environment while everyone was waiting to go hunt, but
mostly there was no reason to visit anyone's house and so these elaborate
constructions wound up all dressed up with nowhere to go.

What TSO did -- in addtion to giving you oustanding tools a la Sims for
creating your house -- was give you a great system for bringing people TO
your house. All that work paid off with a ladder system that actually rated
popular homes on the basis of how many daily visitors they had, and the game
offered tons of ways to attract people TO your house, and you got paid
credits for the number of visitors to your house. I had the most popular
Cooking Academy on the server because my place was well-designed, beautiful
to look at, highly functional, lots of fun and as a result turned into a
social gathering point where people could level and meet others of their own
kind in a fun, good looking place. THAT is a good use of personal real
estate.

Now, TSO sucked as a game, but man, they sure got that element right. No
other MMOG that I know of has ever approached that level of value with
personal real estate.

I like the idea the first time I saw it in Anarchy Online, but opinions are
pretty divided on it. This is one case where I think SWG made the right
choice being schizophrenic, offering a combination of both instanced and
static combat arenas. Both have their benefits and if you can design a game
world where it makes sense to have both, that's fine.

Have you taken a look at City of Heroes? Love it or hate it, this is a game
that takes character customizability to new highs and in the 2 months that
I've been playing, I've yet to see two players who look alike (unless
designed to, like the characters my wife and I play).

Well yeah, you can regard "flexibility" as a compliment or as a sin, and in
the case of SWG it's precisely that ease of swapping that gives it both the
"flexibility" and simultaneously robs characters of any enduring identity.

--

Winterfury Thunderwolf
Elder Barbarian Prophet of The Tribunal
Retired Citizen of Firiona Vie

--

news:10dp1stdga0vt0b@news.supernews.com...
That's the group playing  The Sims...they have a lot of economic power, but
are not interested in the online aspect it would appear.

I played it for about 3 hours on a friend's machine. I'm not a big hero buff
anyway, and it just didn't hook me.
I agree very customizable.

SWG had a lot of customization in it, but everyone seemed to go for the same
15 looks...

Well I have flexibility in FF... I can be the tank (warrior) one week, and
the healer (white mage) the next... if I work at keeping both sets of levels
up. But being a master tank or master healer requires an enormous amount of
work. I was talking (haltingly) with a Japanese Hume player, who is a level
75 Ninja, Dark Knight, White Mage, Black Mage, and Paladin. He also has
every other class at least to level 40. But he's been playing since release,
and is very hard core in his playing (He claimed an overall average of 2.5
hours a day, including when he'd not play for vacations and stuff, since he
started at release)