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What is so special?
Yamota
Member UncommonPosts: 6,593
in Tabula Rasa
Not sure if Im missing something here but I've played the game for a week or so, on and off, and Im already bored. What excactly is so special with this MMORPG?
Just seems like another single player game disguised as an MMORPG. Repeteable quests in the sense that 1000 different players can do them and they have no impact on the game world and a fake conflict that noone can win. A handful of skills and a handful of different weapons. The only original thing I see in this game is the clone system and that hardly makes for an original MMORPG.
What a waste....
Comments
Well, this is what I liked about it:
- The (science-fiction) story/setting/lore is unique (among MMOs) and intriguing, both in concept and in implementation. One of its points is that there is no good vs. evil, just opposing motives.
- The Logos and missions seem to be done well. In the six levels I played, I only saw one or two missions of the type "kill # of X." Instead, there was for example a mission where the player is sent to arrest a Logos-receptive Forean who has deserted the war effort in hope of applying his abilities to peaceful pursuits. Once finding the deserter, the player is presented with the choice of whether to arrest him or escort him to his escape. As for the Logos, seeking the places to acquire them was conducive to exploration, thus IMO collecting them was fun and probably would've constituted an activity I'd've enjoyed for a long time.
- The graphics are nice, especially the animations, which are smooth and realistic.
- Spawning of Bane enemies is unlike any spawning I've seen in any other game. Instead of simply appearing out of nowhere, a "dropship" flies in and hovers for a moment, beams down a group of the enemies, then flies away. This is a nice addition to immersion.
- There is a strong atmospheric feeling of ongoing war, accentuated to a sense of dynamicism by the existence of Control Points which can be fought for and held by either the players or the Bane. Participating in the seemingly frequent battles to hold a Control Point was fun. During these battles, AFS (side the players are on) dropships occasionally arrive to deposit reinforcements in the form of NPC-driven combat mechs.
- Carnivorous animals autonomously attack herbivores; previously something I'd only seen in Ryzom. On that note, it looks like the non-Bane creatures are indeed animals rather than nonsensical monsters.
- Character customisation at creation is decent. You can choose face, hairstyle, neck accessory, glasses/goggles, outfit (either all at once or individually selecting clothing for torso, hands, lower body, and feet), colours of accessories and clothing, skin colour, and hair colour. Maybe more I forgot.
- One can greet non-missiongiving NPCs and read computer terminals, the dialogues of which are sometimes amusing, i.e. "I believe the invasion of the Bane was the universe's way of punishing us for Reality TV."
- I didn't get around to testing the crafting system, but the fact that there is one seems like a good sign.
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In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on August 13, 2008.
Arent all MMORPGs like that?
Let see what else makes it different
- Fast action
- You can concentrate on the target instead of watching health bars and skills and clicking
- Fast travel
- Casual & solo friendly
- Minimal grind
- Kill bonus
- XP multiplier for a killing streak
- Cover actually effecting how much damage you take
- Inverse skill tree - so instead of starting as your final class - everyone starts as recruit then specializes from there
- Cloning
- tactics make a difference so you can rush in with a shotgun, snipe from atop a hill, inside a tower or bunker
- Capturable bases
Sheesh - no need for the attitude - the O.P is entitled to his opinion and I thought asked reasonably nicely if he was missing something.
If you never toed the line at one of the lz's with the force field down and the bane coming through you missed the boat. if you did and still don't see what makes the game fun, you're in the wrong game, you'll never like it.
To keep the thread to the (OP)
This game has serious potential despite the nayers.
1. Its a Sci Fi MMO - not like the gazillion of other Fantasy MMOs out there now. Let's see how many other popular Sci Fi MMOs people actually play.
a. Eve Online
b. Star Wars Galaxies
c. Anarchy Online
2. They have implemented an Auction System and future Vechicles coming up next year. On the other hand, what can make this game big.
a. Factions (includes either human, bane and etc of course) - imagine the potential of PvP. There is talk about Battlegrounds being set on other planets for PvP wars.
b. Crafting (lets polish this system). Crafters would be definetly nice.
c. End Game Content
d. In game chat needs worked on as well.
Ok, before I get to carried away, TR is pretty much what you make of it. If your powerleveling yourself to 50 you may not like what you see, you will bore of it is what peeps are saying (repetitive killing, no end game content is what they are trying to get across).
Alot of the new mmo players are pretty hardcore and want to get to level cap as quickly as possible. Me coming from a EQ background, it was always about the Journey to get to the end level and enjoy the game, not rush to end content.
I am only level 32 and having a grand ole time still. If your casually getting to 50, you will enjoy the game more.
Playing with guildmates or friends while using any type of TS/Vent or Skype makes this game even better. Better yet, talking to total strangers in the game (using the in game voice) is great as well.
All in all, the game as I stated has serious potential to be one of the greats!
Agree with : katriell, Shadowmage and HiGHPLaiNS, only want to add
The impact when hitting a target either with skills/bullits/weapons/melee, so basicly seeing your target REALLY get hit, drop to the ground or pushed back in a realistic way can be added to what those 3 players have said
Basicly TR has done REALLY MANY things CORRECT what most MMO's lack.
And yes for me (a oldschool player) it's NOT about getting top lvl asap but the journey, and fully agree on seeing those very new to this genre to rush thru it's content, hardly taking their time to get immersed, as yes then the game would be seen shallow when people play it shallow
.
So YES OP you are missing out on somethings
What I am missing is a persistant world where your actions impact said world. I mean wasn't that the original idea with an MMORPG? If everything is instanced and the quests has no bearings on the world then why have it like an MMORPG? It is just a single player game with thousands of people running pararell story lines which dont affect the other or the world at all.
And its true that MMORPGs are like that but that wasnt always the case. UO, which was partly Garriots work, tried to mimic a real world with a real economy and territorial control through PvP. But somewhere that got all lost and we are continually being fed worthless WoW clones with linear progression and instanced quests. I was hoping that Garriots vision of a MMORPG would be something like the original idea but this is just another WoW clone with simplistic leveling, skillsystem and no player-world interaction that leads to a persistant change at all.
I mean this game could be it. They could have designed it in a way that the bane could actually conquer areas and were you could actually get defeated but noooo its just scripted attacks and volleyballing the control points back and forth. To have a war you have to have the possibility of victory or defeat, there is no such thing in this game.
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Immersed in what excactly? Tell me how this game is any different from a single player game? The "world" is fake. You are sharing this world with thousands of other people but the quests you do and the mobs you kill has no effect on any real conflict or on other players. Particulary since everything is instanced. How can you be immersed into a world were there are 20 instances of a territory that looks excactly the same? Or control points that get flipped back and forth without any effect on the overall conflict.
The only thing that shows some promise is the PvP but since clans really cant control anything then conflicts between clans are pretty pointless. Like FPS team death matches, whoever kills most people win. Win what excactly? A territory? A resource? And what do you lose? Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
And that is probably how you can sum this game up. You dont risk anything in the conflict, flipside is that you wont gain anything either. This has nothing to do with the fact that you can get to level 50 and then get bored, if you think thats what Im saying then youre not getting my point.
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Well let's get a list of other games that have persistant worlds where your actions impact said world and let's compare. I expect it to be a relatively short list.
Not everything is instanced... the majority of missions aren't instanced, just the dungeons, which is pretty common in MMOs. UO was a piece of crap. Yeah I know it had a strong following but that was primarily because it was the first game of its kind and it gave people power to do what they want; and they totally trashed it.
I agree that the game could be it.. there is tons of potential, but it seems to me like you've made up your mind about the game. Why don't you come back later when they add more content/features?
Oh, and when you find that persistant world where your actions impact said world, let us know... that's what we're all waiting on.
- I t hink Yamota is talking about how there are multiple instances of each area, divide 1, 2, 3, 4, ect.
- I have only felt I was fighting a war when the bane took down the force fields and we had to fight like no tommorow to keep them from taking over the outpost, but other than that no quest has made me feel like I am fighting a war. However after my 20th base defense they getting repetitive. If the bane had some different tactics it would be more fun.
I think the lack of affect on the world is a big problem. If the bane continually pushed further, and took over more than the occasional control point and if what I did helped us win against the bane I think it would be a lot more fun.
- There are few persistant worlds and it is a shame.
Reklaw it seems like you fail to grasp what the idea of MMORPGs were. It is a game, I dont think anyone is doubting that, but they are or rather were supposed to simulate a world with real economy and ecology where your actions impacted the thousands of other people playing the world. In that sense its a fake world since nothing, except your character, is really persistant.
Im not talking about games in general, Im talking about MMORPGs. How can yo be immersed in a game where the conflict cannot be won, lost or even influenced by what you or your fellow players do? Hold your hand to feel immersed? What the hell are you talking about? If you want to pretend that your soldier or whatever can influence the conflict where in fact they dont then that isnt immersing yourself, its pretending to play a game that you dont. And if it works for you then by all means do it, Im not saying you cant.
And as for being a true gamer who have played games for 100 years you sure sound immature. I dont care how long you have played games, because apparently you have no idea what the original idea of a MMORPGs were and how they were different from single player games. You seems to have a single player mindset when talking about MMORPGs which isn't quite surprising since 90 % of current MMORPGs are nothing but single player games with no persistant world that you can impact. So people really dont know what made MMORPGs special and we can all thank Wow for that.
People seem to think that MMORPGs is all about connecting thousands of players together and thats it. But that is not enough, those thousands of players should be able to impact that world, not running around in scripted quests and fake attacks that dont lead the conflict in either direction.
But all this is nothing new but one would think that someone that had a "vision" of how MMORPGs should be done would atleast make an MMORPG with a persistant, evolving world where the players, not the devs, control what happens to the virtual world. This is not easy to do, UO tried and in many peoples eyes failed, but nothing that is good is easy.
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Why this game is rated like it is, is beyond me. Good lord it sucks.
If it ain't dead you're not pressing 2 hard enough.
it helps if you actually have an arguement instead of saying it sucks and thats it. it seems like you just played it for 5 minutes.
Yamota,
I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for in MMOs ever again. They've become mainstream now, and mainstream means WoW clones. WoW's subscriptions and $$$s are going to make all the developers follow suit. It's all about the $$$s in the end anyways.
The closest you can come to a UO type of game (IMO of course, as I never played UO) will be EVE Online. Players have a huge impact on the gameworld, and player interaction is the #1 focus of the game. Just look at 0.0 warfare and the player economy as examples.
Bashing TR for being like WoW doesn't accomplish anything though. Many MMO players like the WoW model so there's no point ranting how TR follows that same design (aka. SP game feeling). Though Garriot did design UO he never said that TR was going to be the next UO, or even follow in its footsteps. I think you expected the wrong kind of game when you started playing TR. Hence your dislike of the game.
My advice would be to try EVE Online, if you haven't already. Failing that, just give MMOs a wide berth for a few years. That's what I'm doing. I don't see anything promising on the horizon, so I've gone back to gaming on my PC and 360. And surprisingly, I've found it far more enjoyable than my last year or so of MMO gaming (or "hopping", to be more precise). All the people I know who quit MMOs altogether recently (surprisingly, there's a lot of us) have said how much more they're enjoying their non-MMO gaming as well.
Just my thoughts,
The Rev.
__________________________________
Playing - Waiting on GW2
Formerly played - Aion, CO, CoX, EVE, GW1, LotRO, RIFT, Ryzom, SWG, SWTOR, WAR, WoW
Trialed - AA, DDO, EQ2, L2, MxO, RYL, TERA, VSoH
Beta'd - HGL, GW2, PotBS, SWTOR, TCoS, TR
Anticipating - GW2, PS2
My thoughts exactly, I have stuck it out mainly enjoying it, but for me there was way too many bugs, not enough content and now I have hit the mid 30's there doesn't seem to be enough quests to get me through to until I am ready to go into the next zone.
I have suspended the account and hoping for more mid+ content and a lot of the bugs removed.
Also I am giving up of MMO hopping until AoC and lets see if the "next best thing" is just that.
ZOMG!! repeatable quests?!!! fake conflict?!! doing things that have no impact on the game?!! a single player game disguised as an mmo?!! sounds like every mmo out there, bar none.
pally...........you just wake up or what?
can you smell that?!!...............there is nothing quite like it.....................the smell of troll in the morning............i love that smell.
ZOMG!! repeatable quests?!!! fake conflict?!! doing things that have no impact on the game?!! a single player game disguised as an mmo?!! sounds like every mmo out there, bar none.
pally...........you just wake up or what?
Well ya it is IS just like most other mmo's out there. I think what he is wondering is why this one is so special seeing how its always rated #1.
Well ya it is IS just like most other mmo's out there. I think what he is wondering is why this one is so special seeing how its always rated #1.
And that this is supposedly Garriots "vision" of how an MMORPG should be. I guess his vision is a sci-fi WoW clone. But I guess The Rev is right, MMORPGs are not and wont be what the original MMORPG devs envisioned them to be. Not for a long time atleast, until atleast all these WoW rejects find another game genre to simplify and dumbify.
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@Op
If you don't like the grind MMOGs might not be for you. A MMOG typicly requires a big time investment and while the early stages are fast paced and rewarding, such pace can not be sustained through the whole game or you'd finish in over a weekend.
EDIT: reread your first post and it seems the only thing i took in was that you were bored. Oh well, post count +1
-Would you like cheddar or swiss cheese?
-Yes.
-...
to the OP - I'll just say this.
The MMORPG you want does not exist. and due to the way MMORPGs work, with thousands of other players, playing the same game, at the same time, it never will.
there will never be a game that does not have quests that are repeatable, where once you do a mission it goes away forever and the result of the quest is permanently scarred onto the game for everybody, and nobody else can do it, where once you kill a Boss, he is dead forever. It just is not possible, because that takes content away from all the other players that pay to play the game. every player pays for that content, and they have a right to partake in it. therefore such content is repeatable, and it respawns. if that is your idea of being immersed in the game, then the MMORPG genre is not what you are looking for.
MMORPGs have ALWAYS been like this, it did not just start with WoW, contrary to popular belief. EQ was like this. AO was. DAoC Was. Shadowbane Was. City of Heroes was. Asheron's Call was. quit trying to make WoW your own personal scapegoat for the inherent faults of the MMORPG genre. WoW may have "dumbed down" the MMORPG, but it did not REINVENT it. MMORPGs are what they are, and are what they always have been.
you can feel free to take out your general angst and frustration about the MMORPG genre as a whole out on Tabula Rasa(as if it is solely to blame, though it isn't) if you want. but the fact is, the closest thing you will find to what you want, is a 100% Instanced Game like Guild Wars(and that doesn't even do it, because once you exit the Instanced portions, the game world is static and unchanged.), Planetside(which is 100% PvP, and isn't even a RPG), or a single-player game.
have a nice one!
Thats a very black and white way of seeing things. True that all MMORPGs had elements that were repeteable but they had also elements were you as a player could affect the world. Most noticably in PvP games such as early Asherons Call, DAoC, Shadowbane and early UO where guilds fought for control of areas, towns and quest areas and as such could influence the world. Also those games had no instances and did not focus so much on repeteable quests. Furthermore it is possible to have repeteable quests without destroying the immersion. For example if one quest required you to go out and hunt a particular monster and returns its claws or whatever then that could still work in a persistant world. However if a quest was about saving some named NPC from some danger then it would seem quite weird that thousands of people are saving the exact same NPC from the exact same danger over and over again and this is what is happening now with MMORPGS and it started with WoW and its quest driven advancement.
And WoW did dumbify and simplify MMORPGs by making level progression linear and easy and it introduced questing as leveling, destroying any sense of immersion that you could have in MMORPGs by having thousands of pararell, identical quests running in the same "world" but not affecting each other. In effect WoW is a single player game but run on a server where everyone is running their own single player plot line so to speak.
It also introduced a very weak death penalty system making dying and as such leveling very easy and quick. You could say that WoW is the fast food of MMORPGs. Quick, easy and cheap. And same as fast food is bad for your health, WoW has been very bad for MMORPGs in general because now all devs think that it is some kind of winning formula to make things easy and noncomplicated.
What they fail to realise is that Blizzard use its existing, huge player base to become succesful and that they will never reach the height of success that they did just by copying their game concept. LOTR is a fine example of that and Tabula Rasa will be the next one. Not saying that they are failures but they will never get even 1/10th of the player base of WoW.
But anyway I digress, this thread is not about WoW. A game where you could fight with NPCs over control of the world have not existed, to my knowledge, but from reading the description of Tabula Rasa one could get the impression that is what you can do but it is all fake. The war effort is not affected by player actions since no real war exists, just scripted attacks against control points which change hand now and then. Fighting over these control points has no effect on any bigger conflict.
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A fake conflict noone can win !
That's a very interesting point, you're so right.
The silly conflict is just an excuse to start the usual run-of-the-mill concept of quests/power/gear addicting (supposedely) scheme of mmo's World of Warcraft commenced
For shame, Ncsoft.
(i willingly said WoW because it was the first to provide user-friendly quests scheme to level all the way to cap)
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oh yes sounds like every mmo out there, alright...
Wait... did you actually mean it as an excuse to make a clone-game, a game poor of content and creativity, just because "they're all like this" ?
Are you serious ?
The problem is simple: mmo players don't want truly original games, they couldn't care less. All they want is farm for gear, grind-level and powerplay. And SH's give 'em what they want. It's a genre for casual-gaming.
End of the story.
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