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Most poorly designed game of the year award
daveospice
Member UncommonPosts: 366
You'd think the first thing they'd do is line up all the beta testers and watch them play the game, one by one. See how they play it, see what they like and don't like and continue to make a general consensus of what is needed and what is not.
Tabula Rasa instead takes the approach of "no need to do that" and copies FANTASY game formulaes and throws in guns. The reason there's never really been a successful gun rpg in HISTORY is because guns are BORING to watch. I'm sorry, but shooting animations only get so interesting. That's why the game needed to be first person shooter style, and then the ability/class choices would make more sense.
Within the first five minutes I was unimpressed. Graphics are dated (yes, many better looking games out there that are years old). The animations weren't anything fun, the battles weren't frenzied and felt more like WoW without auto attack (instead you have to click on them and try to keep your cursor on them, except without the fun of the vicious first person shooter battles where you're jumping around and hiding behind obstacles, etc...)
The game is a flop. There's no fun to be had anywhere (for me). If a game can't capture my attention in the first two hours, then it's a waste of my time. If I spend 60 dollars on a game, and I can't enjoy myself IMMEDIATELY... then it was a 20 dollar game and I got jacked. Today's standards for games should be SO high and this game's production values are SO low. Whoever was head of production was a real idiot, and has never played a FUN gun game before.
I was really hoping for planetside with base capturing, etc and with a twist (aliens and checkpoints). I'm really disapointed right now, what game am I going to play to entertain myself for the next couple months?! 
The big thing with game design is creating content that creates content! First person shooter rpg would be brilliant, since first person battles are always unique experiences most of the time, and thus they create new content on their own. A system limited like tabula's is just going to spell eternal boredom.
Comments
I agree to a point with you. The game to me seems like it will flop, but thats just my opinion. To me the whole battle system feels a tad off. I can get jumped by 3-4 bane, and have no issues what so ever killing them taking next to no damage. Oh well, I do hope that within the first couple of months they make some changes to the game, cause I do feel this would be a really fun change of pace to a typical mmo. I also hope that later on the content gets harder!
Agreed with most to all points. Waste of my 5 bucks to even actually try the piece of shit game.
You did touch on a point that I'd like to elaborate on some here, since I have not seen it mentioned too often: shooting is boring. While I do agree that TR's implementation of shooting is very (VERY) boring and repetitive, I believe that this is somewhere that the game could have made some 'innovative' headway.
For example, there should have been special weapon attacks/abilities, depending on your class, with unique animations and graphics. Perhaps a Ranger would get Piercing Shot, that would lower a target's armor, but the shot would "charge/channel" through a weapon loading animation, the weapon would glow, the shot would animate a slicing effect into the target's armor, etc. Do this to 3-4 special abilities/attacks in each class tier, and I would probably claim that the game was beginning down the right track (for me, personally). Right now combat is fairly boring and very interactive-unfriendly: figure out which weapon damage isn't immune, shoot until reload/jam/overheat, rinse, repeat. However, dull and repetitive animations and combat are but one problem plaguing this game, coupled with many more.
Dave, you might want to poke around a bit outsde the game.... I saw a post from you in another thread saying you couldn't find anything to kill... Ahhhhh, sounds like you are missing some pertinent info on how the game is set up.
Like: There is more than one wilderess area.... And if you missed that detail? I am sure you missed a lot more. Too bad, I find it an interesting setup, myself.
well there are certain guns that give + to armor damage and crap like that but nothing really innovative.. that and it seems that all weapons use the same rounds...
Dave, you might want to poke around a bit outsde the game.... I saw a post from you in another thread saying you couldn't find anything to kill... Ahhhhh, sounds like you are missing some pertinent info on how the game is set up.
Like: There is more than one wilderess area.... And if you missed that detail? I am sure you missed a lot more. Too bad, I find it an interesting setup, myself.
Just curious what did you find interesting?It seemed like City of Heroes with Guns.
The story is amazing, but everything else seems par... average...
For a game saposed to be genre-defining, It need a lot of work... But it will have it's crowd.
Well I did get to level 5, but no I have not stopped testing / playing. Just an early observation I made. I would hope later on that there was more. As of now though it just seems to be kill x amount of bane. As far as the story I do agree that it seems to be a fast paced get in there and kill game which is what I would like to see in some of the newer mmo's
But you really should consider giving games a bit more of a trial before deciding you like or dislike them.
First two hours of almost any EVE players life pretty much blows if they decide to do the tutuorial, and the game really doesn't shine until you make your way up the skill tree a bit your first week or so. (and are flying cruisers)
I can even recall when I first played DAOC many years ago I had a real hard time with the interface, and I didn't really enjoy it for quite a few weeks (after several character re-rolls as well, just hated that first Paladin)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
well id had to agree w the fact that this game aint gna have a good start... im not buying this game just because i think that for a game thats gona b monthly paid at least the client should b instal friendly instead of asking for mxl check etc etc... i have installed beta test client in 2 pcs already and still get game errors first 1 was my vid card.. ok i got into my bro's full intel 1 gig of ram 2.5 proc 256 vid card... all good and afther installing and loading i get a weird error.. i was like.. okk.. i wonder what can i expect when they release it and trow the first real patch ^^... overall.. for what ive bn reading.. this game should have been a fps since that would really make an awsome MMO...
and BTW dude.. halo 3 FTW ^^ we just gota w8 for it and if halo 3 is not ur poison .. u could buy wow new expantion ^^ wich looks kinda kewl
Once you have clicked on a target you can hit tab to lock onto that target. Its not a FPS. However keeping the cross hairs over the target on the opponent will increase your damage.
Wilderness is the new player area. They didnt want to slaughter everyone straight out the gate. That said there have been lots of people posting on the beta forums asking for the wilderness area to be made a bit more intense. Head over to the bases the bane are trying to capture - Wilderness L.Z and Imperial Valley and you will see a lot more action.
Also if there are too many players around, then yes its not to challenging. They really need some scaling in the big maps so if there are thirty people around the Bane dont just spawn in 2 bane to be slaughtered. THey should send in swarms of dropships and drop 40 or 50 bane on you.
You not liking the game doesnt make it a flop. I like the game - that doesnt automatically mean the game wont be a flop.
I totally agree - thats why I am not playing LOTRO. Thats why I try a game demo before I buy a game. If people are saying the real fun begins at lvl XYZ I think thats just stupid. I am not playing any game I am bored with for 10,15 etc hours to get to the fun bit.
If everyone liked exactly the same things - then you would be correct. Otherwise its - as you pointed out - your opinion. And so the fact that you dont personally like the game doesnt make the head of production an idiot.
Halo 3, Bioshock, Hellgate London, Mass Effect, Company of Heros expansion, Half-life 2 Episode 2, Team Fortress 2.
Wow. No offense here but that was a VERY hard read. Please spell out words and SLOW DOWN. That was worse than trying to read someone's 3-second texting attempt on a mini cellphone.
If you post, it means you want your opinion to be heard. However, it is hard to hear your opinion when someone cannot read what you are trying to say.
"guns are BORING to watch"
So the animations on the 4-or-so attacks you use in other MMOs are exciting? Even the 10 millionth time you see the same animation, but this time with blue swirly fog instead of red swirly fog?
Sorry, I really don't buy it that the game is a 'flop' due to not enough animations. Virtually all MMOGs use very few animations, and you re-use the same skills so many times that they are rather boring after 5 minutes.
"That's why the game needed to be first person shooter style"
Halo 1, 2, and 3 have exactly 1 animation per gun type. Just like this game.
"Graphics are dated"
One word: WoW. It's graphics suck compared to many other games out there (try EQ2 on max settings...you won't be able to walk, but boy is it perty).
"the battles weren't frenzied [...] except without the fun of the vicious first person shooter battles where you're jumping around and hiding behind obstacles"
Try going to something other than instance 1 of the wilderness. The game is much more interesting on a map that is not full. Go play at the Imperial Valley CP on instance 5+. The full-scale assault is quite a thing of beauty....and you'll die pretty quickly if you're not careful and don't spend some time hiding behind stuff. Even at level 15.
If this game does flop, what does that tell us about the old-school MMO developers, such as Lord Brittish and Aradune (for VG)? They've done this before, so they should be able to use their experience to create something even more awesome, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
Of course, this game might not actually flop yet, so it's all hypothetical atm.
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...
In the case of Tabula Rasa, it tells me that when an experienced game developer bows to pressure from the publisher and does a complete 360 on game design and mechanics, the game will suffer due to a lack of remaining development time.
If I had to guess, I would say that Richard Garriott invested his creativity into the original design of Tabula Rasa. This current incarnation just seems completely uninspired.
Abbatoir / Abbatoir Cinq
Adnihilo
Beorn Judge's Edge
Somnulus
Perfect Black
----------------------
Asheron's Call / Asheron's Call 2
Everquest / Everquest 2
Anarchy Online
Shadowbane
Dark Age of Camelot
Star Wars Galaxies
Matrix Online
World of Warcraft
Guild Wars
City of Heroes
Here's the thing... the animations aren't any better than any other mmo; in fact they're worse. Most mmo's have multiple abilities, in fact a big long line of say 12 abilities that you "time" when to use based on the situations, and you usually get a couple of the abilities right off the bat. This usually consists of a "Kick" ability, which is essentially a power shot, or does 2x+ more damage than a normal attack.
A game like Tabula Rasa needs LOTS of abilities... and if not abilities, it needs something that keeps you interactive, like making the fighting fast and furious through actions you take; jumping over cliffs as the bane chase after you, dodging bullets by running in circles, zig zagging, etc... hiding behind logs when one throws a nade... doing these things, and implementing it in a way that makes each fight experience unique would make this game a sell out.
Instead, the best thing to do is to stand there, shoot the guy until his shield meter goes down. Then, shoot him some more until he dies. Wait for more to spawn, and hope others don't beat you to the spawns.
I don't play other mmo's because I hate this set up of kill, wash and repeat with no difference in each fight. I think most of us think the gaming market is saturated with this lazy way out of development. Most people play WoW because it has a lot of abilities, believe it or not, that most games don't. This makes fighting interesting and when you add in instances, where you can mix lots of different abilities and try to achieve common goals things are different and fun each time.
The games chat system just bytes. I hate it, and it still seems buggy! What sales a lot of crappy MMORPG's is the community, and if the chat system limits that... then this game will be a flop.
I would love to sit here and guess what Richard Garriott had planned and what he didn't. When it comes down to it, we all know Richard Garriott is taking a flight into outerspace because at some point in his life he made MUCH money. Perhaps he's making a lot of Tabula Rasa? I highly doubt he'll stick around after the game launches to see it die, unless it dies early.
I can't believe no one payed attention to Will Wright, he had it all right when he said that creating content that creates content is a sure fire way of winning the player over!
He used the following examples;
physics engines; they create unique experiences and new content each time. They can add to the immersiveness of play.
Vehicles; players in battlefield 2 made game of running people over, that's content that creates content.
Flying Mounts (WoW); allows the player to experience a different view of scenery, depending on the height that you fly. This adds a huge amount of more content.
PVP; allows players to fight each other for usually some sort of goal, which can change each time and each experience is unique.
Quests are NOT content that creates content. Quests are static, they are not dynamic. With the exception of a few Barrens quests in WoW, which were pretty dynamic and a few quests that are based around Game Master Events.
Man I can't wait for Spore.
Up until july 3rd TR was amazing, the pacing fast and furious, the servers stable, no kill-stealing or griefing. It was addictive as hell and I really hated the end of each play session because I was having so much fun.
All that changed 7/3, and those changes have persisted and (for the most part) increased since then.
Yes, they have added quests, yes, they toned down the weapon overheating and jamming rates, yes they stopped making dayglo armour out of tissue paper, but they left a barren skill tree in place, with skills costing %60 more while granting 40% less skill points. Yes, they added crafting, though that is an unbelievable joke. They've been 'balancing' the weapons and classes constantly, but all that has done is to make more classes and skill-sets functionally worthless.
Hell, all t1 and t2 armour sets are functionally useless and not worth investing more than a single, costly, skill point into. Most t4 weapons and skills have only just been added to the game, so expect them to get 'balanced' well into the first several months of live. What is worse, they've jacked up the overall difficulty level and touhness of the mobs to the point where it is a struggle to survive bootcamp without dying at least once (this I can see putting a lot of people off right there, I mean really, who the hell wants their ass handed to them in a tutorial? sheesh)
what else? the lack of a functioning auction house renders the in-game economy missing in action, they've just instanced the logos in order to try avoif the massive queues that were forming previous to this patch (wonder how they are going to get around the spawn-campers for the quest bosses? forced grouping won't work there, nor will instances). PvP has been grafted on, more as an afterthought than anything else
and what is even worse, this close to live and all the maps are still not available again (the higher level areas have been offline since early september), and a lot of the missions are still bugged.
the beta community has provided a lot of really good feedback on which direction the devs should be taking the game in order to make it a success, but almost all of these have been marked Not For Ship, or just No F*g Way. The biggest bugs and crappiest decisions in how they've changed the game mechanics have also been pointed out, rather stridently too (when you can get a word in edgwise between the rabid fanbois), but the overall feeling has been one of talking to the wall. You know you are making noise, but no-one is listening.
I can only suspect that they need to shove this gilded turd out the door as fast as possible so they can pay for garriott's trip to orbit on the soyuz
But you really should consider giving games a bit more of a trial before deciding you like or dislike them.
First two hours of almost any EVE players life pretty much blows if they decide to do the tutuorial, and the game really doesn't shine until you make your way up the skill tree a bit your first week or so. (and are flying cruisers)
I would agree on giving a trial. but I tried the beta, got to lvl 20 and there was nothing in the game that really had me juicing to come back to the game eager to kill something. eve i agree you wont see much action if any til u hit cruisers skill even then ur kinda isolated til you get into a corp preferrably an established one. i got to Battleships and that is where I found a bulk of my fun being had, i ran into a few skirmishes here and there using my cruiser, but not until i was able to load up a Dominix and my drones, and head off into 0.0 space did i see a bulk of where the game is set and really prevails.
TR doesnt really push or innovate anything. it get kinda repetitive, and and to some degree, boring, Im a FPS junkie so part of me likes the idea of shooting. but i cant ignore the shallowness and lack of depth tothe game right now. maybe 3-5 months from now itll have more changes, and pertinent gameplay features that are more established and therefore give us a reason to want to log on. until then Ill probably pass this game up for now. but its definitely good to have a scifi MMO than all these High fantasy elf orc MMO's frankly Im stressed tot he limit with so many high fantasy MMO's what we need is some good competition and a company to really push the enevelope on the scifi genre of MMO's. we got STo(which i lost hope in for right now) and Star gate which is too early as well to say what is going down with that. but its a good start nonetheless. or hell maybe even a Cyber punk scifi MMO (has been done before, just horribly)
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
Well Brad Mcquaid just always seemed like he stuck to his "The real EQ2" line of thinking too long. Even if Vanguard had released without a single bug and the performance of the source engine behind it, it would have still wound up with the small numbers imo. Simply because though many of us have good memories of the EQ beta and early release days we really don't feel like repeating them, at least I don't. The game just released in a day and age when we've progressed beyond some of those mechanics.
Far as Richard Garriot. Has he ever actually designed a mmo yet?. Raph Koster (designer dragon back in those days) was the lead game/world designer of Ultima Online. Pretty obvious when looking at the two games Koster designed, UO and SWG...he's quite the fan of the Sandbox formula for MMO's. Paul Sage is the current game designer of Tabula Rasa. Can't say his is a name I'll be keeping track of. I'm not really sure if anyones certain what exactly Garriot even does game development wise. I picture this dude being more of some whacked out boss that makes comments in interviews that make you cringe inside if you're a part of his team. Shows up to work in "costume" and basicaly causes the still single female working staff at NCSoft to consider lesbianism that much more by the day.
Meh, Garriot seems alright. Who doesn't dig lesbians?
I'm not really sure if anyones certain what exactly Garriot even does game development wise.
He does magic tricks, and gives many cool parties. He's always willing to talk about himself to his adoring fans. He'll show you around his mansion, and let you watch him play with his cool toys. He hangs around Lord's Boxing Gym and bought himself a pet boxer and went around to boxing matches until somebody got killed. He participates in Mardi Gras every year and has his own float in the parade. He has his own merry-go-round--just like Michael Jackson! He takes a zero-G flight just about every month. He rides in submarines. He rides in hot air balloons. And he's heavily involved in Space Adventures (and other space tourism companies) and is determined to ride the Russian space shuttle.
It's a lot of work and time to be that cool.
And you expect him to work on video games?
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=23653 ...... richardinspace.com
Until you spread your wings, you have no idea how far you can walk.
I hope they will fix it before the launch!
Whoever fears death, dies everyday. Who doesn't, dies only once.
don't hold your breath