Tabula Rasa

[Ecks]

Just curious if anyone else is playing the beta for this? A friend of mine gave me a pre-order bonus pack that automatically got me into the beta a few days ago. (He's an assistant manager at GameStop)

Tonight was my first night playing and I only really got to play for a couple of hours. So far it seems pretty solid and I can see this being a pretty fun mmo. It plays like a ..um.. Star Wars Galaxies/City of Heroes hybrid. It's a futuristic sci-fi universe, where the earth is at war with a race of aliens that are trying to take over earth. You start out as a basic recruit, but you learn you're one of the special kinds of humans who have a receptivity to learn the ancient art of logos, in other words, its like this universe's magic. And you're suppose to use your abilities to help turn the tide of the war, etc.

I can't turn the graphics all the way up, heck my computer is on the low setting, but I can get away with putting in on normal. At the moment there's not exactly a wide variety of customization options durring the character creation process, but I suppose it doesnt matter too much. I imagine most characters will eventually come to be wearing a lot of body armor.

I have to say, the little bit of time ive played on it, while mostly spent getting used to the controls while going through the tutorial area, was a lot of fun. I don't have a whole lot of other info than that. It seems like it could be a really cool mmo. I may end up buying this one to play on the side.

So, anyone else plan on playing or is already in the beta?

 

[Xalioniaf]

I know FFXIclopedia is doing a contest for beta keys.
Other than that...dunno.

 

[Eilistrae]

it looks cool, not sure how I feel about the sci-fi genre.. but might give it a shot when it actually comes out.

 

[Svina]

it looks cool, not sure how I feel about the sci-fi genre.. but might give it a shot when it actually comes out.

Sci Fi MMO? I'm so in. Better not suck.

 

[Strid]

Having played Auto Assault, I don't expect this game to get that big. Same concept but without vehicles and it's made by NCSoft so... I am lookin' forward to Aion though despite havin' hard feelings it'll just be a suped up version of Guild Wars. All of their games seem to play the same to me or rely heavily among their other titles in style, feel, and concept.

 

[Ecks]

Well I still say it feels a lot like CoH and SWG, with controls and what not (and that's not a bad thing). I haven't been able to play it too terribly much, but my character's now lvl 6 almost 7. I haven't yet been able to play with my friend who's also doing the beta, due to work schedules, but I've been having a decently fun time just doing some of the quests. It really seems like the game is more quest based as far as leveling goes. You just get a crapload of exp for certain quests.

I like how you can have 4 weapons equipped and basically cycle through them kind of like you would on a fps. Plus you have like 5 slots for ability placements, and can cycle through them as well. There's also various slots that you can put your abilities in and cycle through those, kind of like ffxi has the 10 macro pallets you can cycle through.

Armor upgrades are pretty cool looking, heck im wearing lvl 5-6 gear and it actually looks kind of cool. A lot better than the basic crap you start out in anyway. This mmo i bet would look really awesome if I could turn up all the graphical specs. The abilities (logos) are pretty nice looking on some. I only have 1 that I've worked on for an attack ability (aside from using my guns for attacking) and its what you pretty much start out with being able to expand on. Its a lightning attack and as you train the skill up you get a new level of the ability and its effect, damage, graphics, and overall awesomeness change a lot, for the noticeably better. The only thing is, with each upgrade, the new level takes more energy in order to use it, however you can still use the lower levels of that ability if you put them in the ability tray.

Really, nothing all that revolutionary. But the game plays well and, like I said in my first post, I think I could easily find myself playing this instead of FFXI for at least a little while.

OH YEAH!
I almost forgot one of the cooler(COOLEST so far) aspects that I'm really starting to like about the game. When you're fighting a monster/alien/whatever, a lot of the time they'll get a red skull over their head when they're almost dead, and stop attacking. At this point, you've basically already killed them and if you don't do anything they just fall over in die in a little bit of time and you get regular exp....but..
Guess what.. YOU CAN DO FREAKING FINISHING MOVES! You run up to them and hit your melee button (yes there is a melee button, you can run up to an enemy and whack them with the butt of your gun.. for damage, and the melee damage is listed in each gun's specs) and basically do a roundhouse that makes them go squish and you usually get like double exp when you do it. What's really fun, is that sometimes when I use the lightning attack, they'll get shocked and have the red skull over them. When I do this finishing move they practically fucking explode and leave a little crater after I've delivered my Chuck Norris roundhouse kick. It's fucking sweet.

Apparently there are melee weapons in the game as well, I saw some high level player with some kind of electric sword type weapon yesterday. Looked pretty cool, plus there is an unarmed combat skill you can level up if you wish to do that. There may be several weapon types and skills that I don't know of due to my level. *shrug*

 

[Xalioniaf]

Wait.
Is this the one where the monsters don't spawn, but are beamed down from the sky?

 

[Ecks]

Wait.
Is this the one where the monsters don't spawn, but are beamed down from the sky?

Yes and no.

There are normal monsters that roam the planets surface, kind of like wildlife. But the alien enemy however, is periodically being beamed down by little escort dropships, which you actually see come down and beam the aliens down if you're there when it happens. And they beam them down everywhere that I can see so far except in the middle of bases. However.. right outside the bases is apparently an okay exception.

-added- Oh and also, some of the wildlife, if really viscous, doesn't care what it's attacking. The monsters will attack other monsters if that other monster roams near it.. so sometimes it's advantageous to assist the lesser monster. From what ive seen there are some non-aggressive mobs that were being attacked by an aggressive one, but there was more than one non-aggro so they came to assist the other one however they weren't doing a whole lot of damage so I 'assisted' them. And no, they didn't turn around and attack me after the aggressive mob was killed. They just kind of disbursed and started to roam like normal.

 

[Mistra]

Saw a preview for this, and it looks fun. I may pick it up. How do you play the Beta?

 

[Oracle]

Hey, if its sci-fi, and a mmorpg MADE BY THE SAME PEOPLE THAT ORIGINALLY DID ULTIMA... I'm in

 

[Mooshywooshy]

Engineer? Im in

 

[Kylion]

I've been in the beta a while, I think it's interesting. We need more good sci-fi MMOs.

 

[Svina]

I've been in the beta a while, I think it's interesting. We need more good sci-fi MMOs.

QFT (letters)

 

[Ecks]

D: I haven't played the beta in like 2 weeks. But.. I still say it's shaping up to be a pretty fun mmo. Last time I logged in I was like.. level 17 or 18 and Ranger job class, I think (unless They've already done another wipe which wouldn't be too suprising) I'll definately be checking out Spy. It just screams fun assassin.

And sorry I haven't really checked qcdn out in about a week or so too, so I didn't know my thread had more replies. When I get more spare time I think im going to put up a diagram of the job class system and how it works for those who aren't in the beta and curious. Complete with the same 'definitions' of the classes how the game has it. To give those interested an idea if they're wondering.

As far as how to get into the beta, um.. I'm not sure. I got in simply because my good friend who happens to be an assistant manager at GameStop kinda.. gave me the Pre-Order Bonus Pack (which obviously I would have gotten had I pre-ordered the game) with which i could install the game and automatically be in the beta plus have access to the 3 day head start. :3 He's an awesome friend. Just handed it to me after we saw a movie one day and was like "here check this out, I'm playing it too".

I'm not really sure if it's too late, but perhaps, maybe going to plaync's website or perhaps the Tabula Rasa website would help you to perhaps find a way to DL the beta. I 'think' its still open beta so.. that should mean anyone can join.

 

[asiamise]

I'm on Orion.

Characters :
Edward (Commando 16), Sylvia (Recruit 2) and Thomas Platt (Recruit 1)

I pretty much left my Elf on LOTRO sitting at the Forasken Inn since I started Tabula Rasa lol. Something about the way this game rolls that has me hooked.

 

[Ecks]

I actually havent played since the beta ended. ^^; Though i did enjoy the game while I was in beta. I just havent fully made up my mind whether or not to really play it. The only issues i had with the beta was that the game didnt seem stable, as in, the servers lagged a lot.

Oh well, i may decide to get it sometime. However, I've been getting back into ffxi lately. Trying to work more on getting my drk completely merited like I want it plus leveling Sam, along with doing dynamis like usual.

 

[Bedwarmer]

Servers still lag a lot. Development is tragicaly slow. The quest "Predatory" was bugged all through Beta, through Pre-Order and remained bugged through Public release. That's about 3 months to fix a quest in a starting area that would have been reported as bugged at least 1,000 times.

The zone Mires is a fucking joke. Worst lag I have ever seen on any platform, any PC, any location, or in any dream anywhere. It once lagged so hard my chaingun fired for 15 minutes non-stop and actually overheated even with 5/5 into heat dispersion (ergo it's impossible to overheat) I once was magically warped to an invisible floor high above the zone where I remained, stranded, with an open GM ticket for over 7 hours, and 3 more the next day.

Collision detection on Guardian staffs is the worst fucking effort I have ever seen. 90% of the time you just stand there spamming "F" while your charater appears to be doing nothing. When you get sick of it and move on to other things the monster will suddenly fall dead. It's almost impossible to tell if you're attacking or not unless you use the projectile launching feature, in which case, if that's all you can do to confirm attacks, why even bother playing the class.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game. It's a hot idea, a pretty cool delivery concept, and a much needed break from sword n' board games with axes and shit. It really needs some major overhauling in the equipment department though. At 34 I've yet to see any form of "Must have" equipment that remains relevant for more than 1 level. There's no Emperor Hairpins or Lil' Timmy's Peashooter to really aim for and celebrate having in your inventory. Base values seem to double on every gear slot just from vendors every 5 levels. It's really sort of lame when you acquire a Purple at 29 and it's trumped shitless by a vendor purchased gray 45 minutes later at 30.

Speaking of 30, the game seems, to me, to plateau (no pun intended) here. There's no more class upgrades from this point and all the abilities you want can be obtained very easily via cloning. I've found myself going back and putting pumps into rifles and shit just to have something to do with said points. I've run every instance there is to run, up to 34, save 1 in Plateau and found only one that cannot be easily swept with rage and a shotgun. Some balance with weapons and jobs is needed badly.

All-in-all, great idea, horrible delivery. 2 patches thus far on public release and there's still massive instability across all servers. I really enjoyed this game up to 32-33-34 but now find it pretty boring with nothing to really aim for save a mindless grind to 50. I did enjoy the fast paced action though the weapon swaps have become buggy, and the last patch screwed up the use of logos while on the move. The crafting system was pretty shitty to begin with, and the last patch made it even shittier by requiring pumps in crafting categories to even use a recipe, any recipe on an item. With no central hub to acquire wanted recipes (like an AH or whatever) you're now left to getting a desired recipe via random drop, having the proper pump in the proper category, and having the proper gear slot to drop the entire thing into. With no landmark equipment to obtain, crafting just seems like an useless aside.

I'd love to see some developmental effort applied to this idea. I'd love to see 30-50 retain the same excitement and fun that 1-30 did. I'd love to see some banner equipment break the monotony (and honestly, the simplicity) of the level grind. I'd love to see crafting actually mean something. I'd love to see a game with integrated voice support provide a need for it by making the instances a team effort (By Team I don't mean 6 guys lol'ing through with shotguns) I'd love to see Guardian have stable collision detection, and some form of enmity control tool. I'd love to see all of this and more, but it did take them 3 months to fix Predatory, so I'm not gonna hold my breath.

Here's some random screens for those curious:

In before tl;dr

 

[Elemmire]

So I tried the 3 day trial, I must say it's got potential. It's fun but I don't think I'd wanna pay monthly for it. Imo they shoulda done something Hellgate London did Single Player campaign and then Multiplayer (free) and then "advanced" Multiplayer (pay)