Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
The Truth About TR
Truthstar
Member Posts: 37
I've been reading these forums for quite some time now and it is time to give my perceptions about TR.
It is a great but unfinished game. Anyone that has half a clue can admit this.
Graphics:
I wasn't so impressed with the graphics but then I purchased an 8600GT and bingo. The difference was night and day. Graphics look futuristic and very Tronish; which is cool imo. Weapons look and sound good.
Combat:
Fun. I'd love to test it in a real PvP environment...or even a PvE Battlefield environment.
When I was first going though the tutorial...I said to myself "jackpot, this is the game.". For some reason, once the tutorial ended...the same old, same old MMORPG gameplay took over.
To all the naysayers: Who here can deny the one instance(I forget where exactly-maybe Palisades) where you enter an outside compound and all of a sudden it was pure mayhem all around ya? Mechs dropping, enemies storming towards you and your NPC allies and teammates....I was jumping out of my seat. That is where TR should and always be. Great stuff...
Missions:
Yawnfest. Shouldn't a sci-fi combat mmo have Objectives instead? Makes sense. Kill this many and collect that many has its place in every other fantasy RPG on the market.
Leveling:
Anyone that maxed out their characters in a week is a punk. I can guarentee you didn't teamup 90% of the time. Now that you levelled up you cry "where's my cookie"? TR is an MMORPG...if you want to play solo go play a PC RPG. Get the difference? The sad thing is so many people out there are so stupid to even understand this concept. -Please don't bother to explain yourselves; your lot have screwed up the MMO market repeatedly.
Endgame:
I can't faithfully donate my time/money without knowing what I am getting myself into. I need a viable endgame; preferrably some type of Massive Battlefield scenario. Something.
PvP:
The year is 2008. Well coded PvP is an expectation not a privelege for most MMOs...
Teaming:
Need more of it. Increasing mob strength was a good step.
My Character: I didn't renew my sub after I hit lvl 18; this was about 2 months ago. Mostly because of: the lack of teaming and the boring missions. I may check things out when an endgame or real PvP is finalized...still have high hopes for TR and so should alot of us in this market.
Comments
Neato
You hit level 18 and quit, and you may check back when they provide endgame content.
Last time I checked 18/50 thats about 2/5ths of the games levels.
CALLED!!
You mid as well have gone to any post on this forums and just copied and pasted another persons post, but then added in a continuity error or two for flavor.
-Jive
I have to agree with Jive. It is already well established that TR is a good MMO with holes in it, some big some small, the size depends on your prespective. This site is full of post of people who played some of the game then posted what was wrong with TR. I think instead of telling people what you did not like about TR or did like we should discuss what we would like to see TR evolve into and which direction we would like to see it take.
What I would like to see in TR is more planets, vehicles, a PVP planet, more customization of armor and weapons, both the looks and the stats.
I would also like to see a spaceship exploration and combat aspect added.
TR has alot of room to expand, it has the whole freaking galaxy. So hopefully NC will take this view and listen to the players and expand TR to be the best sci fi MMO on the market.
""But Coyote, you could learn! You only prefer keyboard and mouse because that's all you've ever known!" You might say right before you hug a rainforest and walk in sandals to your drum circle where you're trying to raise group consciousness of ladybugs or whatever it is you dirty goddamn hippies do when you're not busy smoking pot and smelling bad."
Coyote's Howling: Death of the Computer
"CALLED"
Uh yea, so I went through 2/5ths of the game. I gave it a chance and stopped because there is no endgame and lack of teaming(I'm repeating myself again instead of telling you to reread what I wrote--I'm being nice today it seems). The current setup did not appeal to me however there is immense hope for TR if alittle more emphasis is put for the overall feel to it.
The point of my post was to put a halt to all the "TR is Dead" posts. It's not dead as long as the Devs address the main focus of the game..will it be PvE or PvP...apparently, PvE ain't working.
Nah...I think you nailed it with..."It is a great but unfinished game." I played until about level 25 and found it, well, unfinished.
Seems like I've been watching this game develop for almost 3 years now and had high hopes for it. After all, they had no competition in this genre. I quit playing after about 1 month for reasons I'm sure have been thoroughly covered by other posts. I just concluded that it was incomplete for even a fresh release. Yea, people make excuses and imply that incomplete is standard for MMOs, and that's just BS. Maybe 10 years ago, but no more. After all, would you lease a car knowing it won't have seats for 9 months? Didn't think so.
Regardless, I'd love to see the game in about 1 year. See if they bring it up to the magnificent MMO it could be. I really like the concept, there's just not enough game.
As for me, I played a little prelaunch, then played a few weeks of the box-month before reformating my harddrive to remove every smelly trace of this crappy game.
This game is weird because there really isn't much talk about it on the sites. Mostly because there isn't much to say, shallow characters and boring missions are already understood to be the foundation of this flop. But for some reason I was still curious about why this game was such an abject failure and wanted to see for myself its continued downward spiral - I resubscribed for a month to take a look. I have three weeks left on that month and I have once again already seen enough.
In order - Tabula Rasa is not even close to a great game. It isn't even a good game. It might just slide in under a label of "fair' game. It runs, it has far too many bugs, not for a game, but for a game that is so empty and shallow. Any game of this mudpuddle depth should be completely bug free. It isn't. It has no character development, no skills that are interesting, no teaming controls, horrible chat options, a joke for a map, MIND/SPIRIT/BODY Stats that are so rediculous that even the devs can't see any point in fixing them anymore. It is far from a good game.
In the first 28 level in four characters (One of each branch, saving clone credits for godz only know what.) I have really only seen Pizza Delievery Missions or Kill X missions. They should be perfectly bug free because there isn't anything to them.
Sound - I don't quite know what they could do to fix this horrid problem, beacuse there is nothing in this entire game but shooting frogs. This is the first MMO game in ten years of playing them, that I have muted the entire game's sound. I can't stand the sound in this game BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG ad nausium. I listen to The New England Skeptical Society podcasts while I play instead.
Fun Combat - This is some of the slowest repetative combat I have seen in a modern MMO. Killing even-level mobs now takes so long I have to wonder if anything is coming out of my guns. The devs are idiots, simple fact. They didn't know how to make a game, made a bad one and now want to slow it down in the most pathetic way known... reduce player DOT by slowing down rate of fire and damage combined with raising mob health and rate of healing. Oh yeah, that leap of gaming industry genius is sure to bring a solid 45 people back to this dead game.
This was done to force people in to teams. But the teaming system in TR is horrible. Why would anyone want to strap themselves into a broken game mechanic such as teaming just to sloooowly take out even mobs?
Well, my return to Turd-bula Rasa was interesting. I wanted to see what it had become after a few months of post-launch 'effort' from this dev team. I was actually suprized at how it had changed. Now the population is spiraling down to zero (and the best coding done by the devs since launch is the blantant lie Orange-Medium Population change they did to server status) All of this and the devs are running blindly into the walls of the cubicals wondering why they didn't go in to food service careers.
Yep, five months out and this game is worse than it was at launch.
"The reality of the poor in America isn't the difference between The Haves and The Have Nots, it is the difference between The Haves and The Have Lots."
So a fairly subjective opinion from someone who doesnt like the game.
Why did you bother resubscribing if you disliked the game that much - you should have known that the game wouldnt go through a radical enough change to make it acceptable to you.
For a subjective opinion from someone who likes the game - Five months out and I find the game a better product that it was at launch. Plenty of bugs fixed, additional missions added, some classes / skills tweaked, auction house, hybrids, portable wormholes added.
Great - fun fast stable casual play. Without the timewasting you find in other MMORPG's.
Resubscribing is the best way to gather real empirical data on the state of a game that was so terrible that most people stopped playing before their pre-paid month had expired.
I have heard quite a few times in many posts that it isn't fair to discuss the failures of a game that either -
1) Just came out, because they released it too early and didn't have time to add depth or content, or
2) Discuss a game that you personally have not played since a horrid first month where there was no content, poor game dynamics, terrible character developement and boring repetative Frog-shooting missions.
I resubscribed because I am one of the few people that have seen pre-launch, post launch and now about a half year worth of "fixes" and addition of "Content" without suffering from what is known as cognitive dissonance after six months of playing a terrible game.
The truth about TR is that it stunk. It was poorly made and poorly done. It had great, and I mean GREAT!! ideas on paper... I love the background story, I love the idea of making a Sci-fi MMO that delved in to hidden human potential and alien frogs croaking the Earth.
But what the back of the box said about the game and what the steaming pile of code that stinks up my harddrive share is scant at best.
Somewhere the background story never made it to a game. There are no interesting character developments, few interesting missions and no real sense of purpose to logos, battles, leveling, gear, crafting, personal stats, teaming, clans on and on and on...
I think whatever failure of a company made this thing should sell the background story for as much money as they can get and perhaps a group of kids can take a few months write a game based on it. Because if there were a game that allowed you to...
"Explore alien worlds,immerse yourself in deep storylines, and face the consequences of the choices that you make."
...or that allowed me to "Take Role-Playing to the Battlefield!" with...
"Fast tactical RPG combat combines character growth and development with skill, stealth and strategy."
...and...
Wrest control of and hold hotly contested battlefield control points on dynamic alien landscapes"
...while I...
"Learn the alien language and harness the very fabric of the cosmos to unlock new powers and abilities."
Ummm... I would love to play that game! But strangely all I have done in about 120 levels worth of playing is shoot frogs.
"The reality of the poor in America isn't the difference between The Haves and The Have Nots, it is the difference between The Haves and The Have Lots."
I recently cancelled my subscription and am returning to a different game, but I take issue with this statement. You mention both power-levellers and solo-players as though they are intrinsically linked; they're not.
I'm a solo-player (for the most part) because I tend to play at irregular times and for short bursts and don't want to waste my playtime looking for groups because the content isn't soloable. Thankfully TR didn't enforce grouping during the levelling process, so I made it to level 50 by pretty much soloing.
As for who has screwed up the MMO market, that's easy to define: the hardcore 60 hour a week gamers who complete all the quests/grinds then whine and bitch that there isn't enough content. Casuals/soloers who take months to get to the max level are probably the MOST benign type of gamers.
In conclusion: Soloability = good, Enforced Grouping = bad, Casual = good, Hardcore = bad.
How can you honestly get on someone... for someone quiting cause of end game content at level 18.
What's the fun in knowing theres nothing to do when your 50... besides really farm striders for purples or do PvP.. which in it state now is boring. Plus with the lack of people at the level.
As most people with 50's will just make a new toon and level with the lower level majority. Then higher level areas ... lacking quests and having a over abundance of enemies. Makes it feel like your everyday grinder.
Then most instances later end up feeling like. Whoa!!! I've already done this... but the enemies are higher lvl AWESOME!! <sarcasm>
Then most people quit 30-35... when they realize this game doesn't have much to offer in content right now. Then due to the lacking population... areas feel like ghost towns around then.
Now i will agree this game on paper is damn good and should be treated a hell lot better then it is by the people that run it. Still as it's state now... it's not even worth playing. It's especially not worth spending 15 bux a month... knowing your getting jipped in the end.
As far... saying "well let's help the game". Well this game need's ALOT of help. It needs lot more content... especially end game. Theres jobs that need a good overhaul.. not just tweaks. And other thing's like making it so the Military Surplus is worth using. Making crafting actually good.
It's going to take a long as time to fix most of this. Maybe in six months ... it will be worth to come back to. Then AoC and Warhamer will have come out and i'll hate to see TR's population then actually.
The 2 Huge Mistakes made by the devs;
Mistake 1: Not making TR primarily RVR-PVP.
Mistake 2: Not making TR an MMOFPS (or 3rd PS Combat system.
This game would of been a legend if it had been a RVR type gameplay, with manual targeting FPS/3PS style shooter.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
I agree entirely
Somehow i keep reading posts made in Tabula Rasa's forums. It's probably in hope something decent can be salvaged from, well this.
-Would you like cheddar or swiss cheese?
-Yes.
-...
One can dream...
I was thinking why so many relatively recent MMOs have flopped and couldn't come up with a viable excuse. It doesn't take a genius to pick a consumer market and cater to them...so why all these failures? Possibly they are intentional as corporate tax writeoffs pertaining to a "bad investment"? You hear about all the millions they supposedly put into devlopment..I bet its all bs.
My online history began with AOL's pay to play. MPBT, Mage, Aliens Online...those servers were packed and lets be honest; their content was a joke. They were still successful though at least.
You hit level 18 and quit, and you may check back when they provide endgame content.
Last time I checked 18/50 thats about 2/5ths of the games levels.
CALLED!!
You mid as well have gone to any post on this forums and just copied and pasted another persons post, but then added in a continuity error or two for flavor.
-Jive
I don't understand why people fail to see the flaw in this argument: "you only played the game for a short time, you have no right to say it's bad!!"
If a game is fun, you'll keep playing it. Some people can just pick up on the suck-factor of these games faster than others.
If it's not fun to being with, then why continue playing? How is this a difficult concept to grasp?
I think my major dissapointment can be put down to a few things right now.
Firstly the tutorial is great, as are the instances, as someone mentioned, running through a warzone with shells landing, NPC's yelling, guns blazing, its an adrenaline rush and great fun. But then once back out in "the field" of everydayness there just isnt that feeling of involvement, of being there in the battle. I'm not sure how this could be altered/fixed and dont claim to be a games developer.
~Warning: Grumble about lack of european servers follows!~
Secondly the lack of space on the euro server is another off putting point. My current character (15 ranger, have a 14 alt soldier) killed Rotting Sal 3 times last night but didnt complete the quest. Mainly because after engaging the target a machinegun wielding AFS type would run up and blitz RS taking the kill and the quest loot. After the third time I got kinda bored and logged off. I'd love another euro server, though must admit it was strange last night seeing the load being only medium and not high.
My last grumble is with something which as yet I havnt played enough to really comment on. Perhaps I was spoilt playing SWG many moons ago I lvoed the variety of planets and their different environmetns / habitats. I'd love a nice ice world or something to play on! Again "These will be coming in the future" applies, as well as with vehicles etc..
I just hope future patches bring this content!
~wibble~
Well, to the people actually reading for an opinion on this game... you probably shouldn't read here lol, almost every game I've ever read about here gets utterly bashed in the actual forum. Note the 8.2 user rating (I can't imagine the flaming if anyone ever made a 2.8 rated game!). So you have to take what you read on this site with that grain of salt. The fairly nice user rating is actually quite an accurate score I think.
The second grain of salt you should consider is the WoW syndrome. No, not THAT one (trying to be like WoW/dumbing down/dead horse)... a different one. Just stop and consider this for a moment (and apply to any game after you do, not just TR). I didn't play WoW from the VERY beginning, but I do remember joining before they had cracked the 2 million mark... I remember the website announcements and such. And when I joined, they had just added what is commonly considered engame type material. So... take it further... somwhere more than 8 million people (more than the subscribers for any other game... and just call it a "buttload of people" if you must to avoid derailing this thought with accurate sub number arguments) started playing a game that already had plenty of endgame. A huge amount of people started MMOs, or played an MMO after taking a break from the EQ days, whatever the case... a HUGE amount of people got talked into playing a game that already had everything there. This is what the vast majority of todays MMO players know.
The fact is, no game has ever, EVER been released with endgame yet. None. Zero. Mostly because of the WoW syndrome, people for quite a while now have been ruthlessly gashing games for it. Is this wrong? Well, not necessarily... I mean, perhaps companies SHOULD change the modus operandi and release WITH an endgame. Or perhaps publishers should stop forcing release deadlines. But nobody has. No other option that you have to try did either... and TR is no exception to the "released without an endgame" rule. The next big release, AoC, near as I can tell doesn't have one either... reading as much as I can about it, they seem to use the word "raid" with normal dungeons AND future large group excursions... they say 8 raids at release, but reading beta feedback and such it sure SOUNDS (I may be wrong, but hey I'm not the one writing the feedback :P) like it's 8 normal dungeons and again... 0 REAL raids.
If you are one of those scared by no endgame... hey, nothing wrong with that. The most ACTUAL useful suggestion I, or anyone else, could really offer you in regards to TR or any other game would probably be... STOP LOOKING FOR NEW RELEASES. Start a calendar and start looking at games after they've been out for 6 months. Because if you are looking for a game that will drag you forever away from your current MMORPG addiction and keep you occupied from day 1 including a superb endgame... such a game has never been released. As far as I know, it's not slated to be released either. Some games, on the other hand, DO/WILL have more pvp oriented things to do right off the bat. Unfortunately, TR was originally slated for pve only and had pvp added too late to ship with objective/battleground type settings.
That said... TR is quite nice. Like I said, the actual user rating on this site is pretty spot on in my opinion. As far as buying it... consider the WoW syndrome certainly... this game is closer to an endgame, but no, it probably can't sustain a hardcore assault towards max level that will tear you away from whatever you are playing now, if endgame is your thing. There are a few points in TR's favor, however. It doesn't play like any other MMO out there... part is sci fi, part is simply the gameplay (which is certain to be just WEIRD at first it's so different)... so if you DO pay multiple sub fees, or you wouldn't mind if you found a second game you thought was fun to play alongside your favorite... well then TR is a very very good title to try. If you are tired of waiting for an upcoming game that you hope will be your main addiction (AoC/Warhammer et al), I would again call this game a safe game to play in the meantime, simply because it DOES fit naturally as "different enough to play alongside", so you can still plan on picking up whatever you are waiting on.
I would absolutely recommend grabbing this game for a month, or at least the trial (sucks it's only 3 days now though). This is certainly different enough and good enough to be your MMO number 2, even if it isn't enough to tear you totally away from your main squeeze, or make you stop waiting for whatever you are waiting for. It certainly sounds to remain different enough for a long time to come as well, once the endgame features ARE added. Imagine pvp OR pve with upgradeable squad command and mechs once those are added with endgame... TOTALLY different than anything else out there.
Some people will play ANYTHING, and I mean ANYTHING. Some people will even PAY monthly to play ANYTHING...
These people play games like TR, SWG, MxO, Vanguard, and a number of other piles of gaming garbage. TR is fun for a day or 2, then you realize the game has NOTHING else to offer, and I mean NOTHING.
TR is one of the most shallow MMO games I have ever seen. CoH has 10 times the depth that TR does, and I had high hopes for this game when I followed its development...
A VERY poor job was done developing, implementing, and fixing this game. Anyone who subscribes to this game for more than a month has very low expectations of what a publisher/developer should deliver to them in an MMO. Perhaps the only game WORSE than this one is SWG.
Tecmo Bowl.
Wow, on the one hand this thread is a serious flame fest and on the other hand there are actually a lot of really good points being made, both about TR and MMORPGs in general. I barely know where to start and I'm going to have to resist the urge to quote every single person.
First off, let me just say that I played this game with several members of my guild and while we will probably leave this game in the next few days we won't be bad mouthing it like many other MMORPGs that have dissapointed us down through the years. Its true the game didn't deliver exactly what we were expecting but it was atleast fun for a few weeks, it was mostly free of bugs and it actually WORKED without massive lag, crashing frequently or installing spyware on my computer. Thats a hell of a lot more than I can say for most of the MMOs I've played over the last 10 years.
Maybe like "Thunderous" said, my expectations of MMO developers these days are simply very low. But that could very well be a result of the fact that I was present for the launch of Shadowbane, Dark and Light and Anarchy Online.
Anarchy Online was a good game, but at launch it was so bogged down by lag and crashes that it was almost totally unplayable. I quit that game within one week.
Then came Shadowbane, which was 10 times worse. Lag to high holy hell and back, but even worse was that it was the most unstable piece of software I've ever seen. It crashed every two minutes no matter what you did. Looking at your monitor caused it to crash. Touching your keyboard caused it to crash. Everything caused it to crash. It was a completely unfinished game in every sense of the term. The developers knew it too, but they lied to us about the game for years then released it anyway when they knew it wasn't finished and was in a completely unplayable state.
For years I thought Shadowbane was the worst game of all time. Then I played Dark and Light. Long story short, I was lucky it was just the open beta I was playing in (A.K.A. "Settlers of Garenth") and not the full version of the game. I was able to get a refund on my pre-order and cange my credit card info before the publisher started charging montly fees from people who never even signed up to play.
So yeah, I guess after going though all of that I'm probably pretty forgiving when it comes to Tabula Rasa because it atleast runs on my computer without crashing constantly, has minimal lag and was actually halfway fun to play for the first few weeks. Endgame content aside, its a pretty solid bit of software.
Agreed.
WAY back in the day when I played Asheron's Call I was a casual/solo player as well. I mostly enjoyed the game because of its large world, unique dungeon designs and potental for exploration. I did sometimes travel with my fellow guild members and I enjoyed it a lot when we did that, but most of the time I was a solo player when it came to leveling my character and earning money for equipment.
I never made it past level 45 because I was a very casual player and mostly just enjoyed playing to explore the world and communicate with my friends. But after a few years a small but VERY vocal monority of level 100+ players started complaining that the game wasn't "challenging" enough for them anymore. This was due to the fact that they were exploiting the magic system to buff themselves to outrageous levels before every fight to become more or less invincible. I would have been fine with it if the developers had simply added new ultra hard content for these players to "challenge" them. Instead though they changed much of the existing content in the game to counter the buffs those high level players were using. Many low level creatures in the game vanished and were replaced with much higher level creatures with powerful debuff spells. It got so bad that I couldn't even leave town anymore without being killed by some monster I didn't even know existed. When I finally had to start using portal magic to travel directly to and from any dungeon I wanted to visit, I knew I wasn't going to enjoy the game anymore.
In my opinion, power levelers and obsessive gamers ruined Asheron's Call by making it too hostile for anyone under level 60.
That was a long time ago and now I'm a member of a guild with members who I have a lot of fun with. I enjoy grouping and I take the games I play seriously. But I still feel that soloing is critical and that forced grouping is a bad thing. Low level players and solo players should be able to enjoy the game just as much as those players who can dedicate their whole life to the game. Nobody should get special treatment just because they can make more noise on a forum or happen to be closer to the developers than the average gamer.
Actually, I think 8.2 rating is probably NOT completely accurate. That rating is probably mostly made up of people who rated the game during their first few weeks of play before they discovered the lack of endgame content. Most of said players have probably not returned to downgrade their reviews accordingly, as such the high rating still stands. Over time I believe it may drop quite a bit as more players review the game and those who previously reviewed it revise their scores.
In fact, part of the reason I'm making this post is to get my own "rating" on this site up enough so that I can edit my previous review of Tabula Rasa. I think its kind of silly that this site is so paranoid that they take away my ability to edit a review I already made just because I went a week or so without logging into their site... But I guess thats a post for a different forum.
The History of the Order of The Golden Shields