I just recently got a beta invite for Tabula Rasa.  I had heard some bad things about it but decided to go ahead and download it and try for myself and I’ve been pleasantly surprised.  It’s not the best MMO ever, but it’s still a lot of fun.  Reminds me a bit of E&B.  The interface could use some tweaks.  It’s functional, but looks too “blocky” for a sci-fi and could use some additional functionality like being able to move stuff around, resize it, minimize or whatever.  I don’t know if it’s customizable thru add-ons like WoW’s is, but that would be the best solution. 

The main complaints that I have heard is that it’s just too much of a grind.  Well I have only played to level 7 with 2 different characters, but I haven’t really felt like it’s been a grind at all.  There have been lots of quests to do and reasons to explore the map and the world seems big enough.  The other complaint that I have heard is that the mobs you fight at level 1 are the same mobs you fight at level 50, they are just a different level.  If that’s true than that’s a letdown.  I’ve seen a few different mob types already, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of variety.  Course they could continue to add new mobs all the time and that would help.

I do like the combat model.  It’s fairly fast paced although it takes a bit of getting used to.  I don’t know why people are complaining about the “sticky” targeting, it works really well in my opinion.  When your crosshairs get close to something, the target’s “info” pop’s up so you know you can hit them and when your crosshairs get too far off the mark, you lose the target.  That’s not all that different from how targeting works on consoles in a lot of games, so I don’t really see what the fuss is about.  You can move about freely while firing, but you’ll want to stop and crouch down a lot to get better accuracy.  You’ll also want to use cover when appropriate.  I’ll hide behind sand bags and stuff to make it harder for them to hit me and I’ll stand next to trees and when I have to reload, duck behind the tree till I reload and then pop back out to fire, so it’s more like an FPS than an RPG.  Most mobs have both armor and health and armor can come in a couple different types which are more/less resistant to certain types of attacks.  For instance there’s reflective armor that is good against physical attacks, so sometimes it’s better to switch weapons to chew through armor and then use your primary weapon to finish them off.  It’s sorta along the same lines as E&B where different types of attacks worked better/worse against shields/hull and so on.  It can be a bit annoying trying to figure out what works best flipping through your weapons, but I imagine that the more you play you get to know the mobs you’re up against and how to fight them best.

The graphics/sounds are pretty good.  There are some voice overs at the beginning of some missions and explosions sound pretty powerful and weapons sound good.  The environments are pretty interesting and really have a 3D feel to them as you will have to run around mountains, swim thru rivers, spelunk thru caves and whatnot.  Not all of it is as polished as it should be in my opinion, but the great thing about MMO’s is that they’ll have a chance to clean some of that up and it could be that it might look better on a better PC.  I was getting only about 10 fps on the normal settings, so I switched to low settings and my fps jumped to about 30.  A guy told me that it was much better up until recently when they added some anti-aliasing code, so maybe that just needs to be fixed or perhaps they’ll remove that code for better performance and things might look better.

Pointing, aiming and movement takes a little getting used to.  Your mouse is used to aim so basically to move around you point the mouse in the direction you want to go and you use the forward and back buttons.  You can move left and right with the keyboard, but since your direction and aim is decided by the mouse, it’s more like strafing left and right which works well for combat, but not that great for moving around.  The hardest thing to get used to though is whenever you want to interact with the interface by clicking on something onscreen, since the mouse controls your aim and direction, you have to press a button to bring up a cursor to be able to point.  That’s not too bad, but doing that also brings up a radial menu right in the center of the screen and it’s a little annoying seeing it all the time when seldom do you really want to use it, you just want to be able to click on something in the interface.  It would have been better if that was kept as a separate keystroke.  Perhaps that can be adjusted in the key bindings but I couldn’t figure out how to do it.

It’s added a few twists the MMORPG genre as well.  First off, there’s a whole teleportation system in the game and I believe you can jump from any known teleportation spot to another instantly no matter what zone it’s in.  So no more running around for long periods of time trying to get somewhere, just head to the nearest teleporter and bam you’re there.  I’m not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse as part of the fun of WoW is flying around and seeing things, but it can be annoying when you have a long way to go and have traveled back and forth a hundred times already and since you can’t use the teleporter in an area until you have visited it, you have to at least explore new areas once. 

They’ve also added something called clones.  At any point you can make a fully playable clone of your character, just give them a new name and off you go.  They start off with no money nor equipment, so you’ll have to supply them with that and you have a footlocker that is accessible by all your characters to do that.  But why would you want to do that?  Well the answer is in the way that the class system is setup.  You don’t pick your class when you start the game, everyone starts out as a rookie or whatever it’s called.  When your character reaches certain levels you can then choose between 2 different paths to continue your journey.  You’ll do this 4 times and since you have 2 options every time you choose, the end result is a total of 8 different classes so to speak.  I’m not sure I like that system since you effectively don’t have access to all the different classes until you reach a high enough level so in effect you have to go thru several different intermediate classes until you finally reach your destination, but there is an up side.  Since the game gives you the option to clone your character before each split you can choose one path for your current character and choose the other path with the clone.  And since once you clone your character that becomes a full playable character, in effect you can play all 8 classes all from 1 initial character, you never have to go thru basic training again.  In fact when you choose your characters name you choose both a first and last name and from then on, all characters will have the same last name on that server, you can only change the first name.  It’s different, just not sure I like it yet.

I haven’t done a lot of crafting yet, but again it reminds me a lot of E&B’s system.  You can find/buy schematics and components for lots of stuff and put them into a crafting machine and out pops the item.  You can also use the machine to deconstruct items into their components and I think you can also get the schematics for items by using the crafting machine much like E&B.  I haven’t played around with it enough to know how useful it is, but the big thing that is missing to me is something like an auction house to buy/trade your stuff.  The developers have said that is coming shortly though.

All in all, I’d say it’s good enough to warrant a look.  I don’t think I’m going to be buying the game at this point since I already have too many games I play, but if I were wanting to try something new, this wouldn’t be a bad choice.  I don’t know that it would hold my interest as long as WoW has, but it could be good for a couple months of solid gameplay I think.  It’s a damn site better than EVE for me which is the only real sci-fi MMO out there right now.

Did they remove the NDA?

Also, I'd suggest playing past 7 in ANY game before you comment on it.  TR was fun for like 3 hours, then you realize its the same exact stuff for the rest of the game.  That gets old quick....for me it was less than 2 weeks in.

I was in beta a while ago, month or two ago I think, and I didn't really like it.

Got back into beta and started playing again the other day and I really like it now.

Finding some of the logos can be a pain, but that's good. You don't want everything handed to you on a silver platter.

The combat is fast, fun, and interesting. I love the multipliers to experience gain for killing multiple enemies in a row.

Maybe I'm a noob, but I didn't know that you could still put points into skills from previous classes after you leveled. I originally though, "what's the point of using my skill points up if I lose everything when I level to a new class change?"

Guess I'm just dumb. With all the tiers of classes and the fact you can keep working on skills from earlier classes, there is a LOT of options for really customizing your character to fit your play style.

I think if I can figure out how to hook up a xbox 360 controller to my PC to play this game, that will probably be just about the coolest thing ever and make this game a 100% sure-thing purchase for me.

Originally posted by oronisi

Did they remove the NDA?

Also, I'd suggest playing past 7 in ANY game before you comment on it.  TR was fun for like 3 hours, then you realize its the same exact stuff for the rest of the game.  That gets old quick....for me it was less than 2 weeks in.

And yes I know that 7 is not too far into the game, but first impressions are pretty important I think.  I've played enough games where I didn't even want to play past level 7 because the first 7 were so bad.  This game isn't one of those.  The game has lots of potential.  It may not all be realized just yet, but there's plenty of time for that to happen.

And I've already logged more than about 12 hours and it's still plenty of fun for me.  Some people rush thru things and it get's old for them quickly.  Some of us like to take our time and enjoy what it has to offer.  Even if you only play for a month or 2 it might be worth the money you put into it.  Just because it's an MMO doesn't necessarily mean you have to play it for a year.

Teleportation is not really new to the genre.  They just leave it out of a lot of games because there are players who throw hissy fits if it's included.

I was never under the impression that the game was a grind, exactly -- that would imply that it takes to long to level up.  If anything, I'd heard that leveling up was too easy.

But maybe by "grinding" you just meant "lack of content."  (That's why I sort of hate gamer shorthand-slang -- people always bring their own meaning to the words, and you can never be sure what someone really intended to say.)  In this case, I will be interested to read your impressions on the content once you are in your 20s or so.  I'll also be interested to hear if you find that the combat has grown tiresome and repetitive by then.

sounds too easy, like autoattack and sleep..

Originally posted by kingj0n

sounds too easy, like autoattack and sleep..

So, you could have added any comment here and had trouble being further from the mark than you were, something about killer rabits maybe?

Originally posted by Hexxeity

I was never under the impression that the game was a grind, exactly -- that would imply that it takes to long to level up.  If anything, I'd heard that leveling up was too easy.

But maybe by "grinding" you just meant "lack of content."  (That's why I sort of hate gamer shorthand-slang -- people always bring their own meaning to the words, and you can never be sure what someone really intended to say.)  In this case, I will be interested to read your impressions on the content once you are in your 20s or so.  I'll also be interested to hear if you find that the combat has grown tiresome and repetitive by then.

If I continue to play the beta long enough to get into my 20's, I'll certainly come back here and update this.

I wanted to make a few comments for the OP.

1. "The main complaints that I have heard is that it’s just too much of a grind.  Well I have only played to level 7 with 2 different characters, but I haven’t really felt like it’s been a grind at all."

I will say that the Wilderness is the best zone they have. Once I moved past the Wilderness the missions and mobs were all over the place and didn't seem nearly as well thought out as the Wilderness. I made it to lvl 15 and then decided on getting the game, don't like bringing up a character for nothing (thats not true, I had submitted at least 5 bugs).

2. "The hardest thing to get used to though is whenever you want to interact with the interface by clicking on something onscreen, since the mouse controls your aim and direction, you have to press a button to bring up a cursor to be able to point.  That’s not too bad, but doing that also brings up a radial menu right in the center of the screen and it’s a little annoying seeing it all the time when seldom do you really want to use it, you just want to be able to click on something in the interface."

Your tilde key "~" switches between mouselook and clicking, no need to bring up the radial menu.

The only thing that really worries me is that some players may judge the game solely on the tutorial.

Originally posted by mrw0lf

 

Originally posted by kingj0n

sounds too easy, like autoattack and sleep..

Which is kind of odd really considering it's one of the only MMO's with NO auto attack at all.

 

So, you could have added any comment here and had trouble being further from the mark than you were, something about killer rabits maybe?

Actually i would say that the hold the left button down till something dies is worse than an auto-attack. Even in Galaga you had to repeatedly tap the button.

Originally posted by eris0023

Originally posted by mrw0lf

 

Originally posted by kingj0n

sounds too easy, like autoattack and sleep..

Which is kind of odd really considering it's one of the only MMO's with NO auto attack at all.

 

So, you could have added any comment here and had trouble being further from the mark than you were, something about killer rabits maybe?

Actually i would say that the hold the left button down till something dies is worse than an auto-attack. Even in Galaga you had to repeatedly tap the button.

We obviously have different views on what was meant by 'auto attack'. I took it to mean something along the lines of 'an attack' that was 'automatic' and no buttons needed to be pressed/depressed whatever ala... pretty much every mmo wow, eq's, lotr, ao, coh, swg stop me when you get the idea. As for Galaga, you probably need to see a doctor for that.

Originally posted by mrw0lf

Originally posted by eris0023

Originally posted by mrw0lf

 

Originally posted by kingj0n

sounds too easy, like autoattack and sleep..

Which is kind of odd really considering it's one of the only MMO's with NO auto attack at all.

 

So, you could have added any comment here and had trouble being further from the mark than you were, something about killer rabits maybe?

Actually i would say that the hold the left button down till something dies is worse than an auto-attack. Even in Galaga you had to repeatedly tap the button.

We obviously have different views on what was meant by 'auto attack'. I took it to mean something along the lines of 'an attack' that was 'automatic' and no buttons needed to be pressed/depressed whatever ala... pretty much every mmo wow, eq's, lotr, ao, coh, swg stop me when you get the idea. As for Galaga, you probably need to see a doctor for that.

I agree with eris -- Diablo-style click-attacking is even worse than auto-attack.

I have found some bugs with TR, overall I think it is a game that has a future.  I turned off my sticky targeting and it's great! Adds a bit more of a skill level to the game.

I think this game is great. Id take press and hold over whack-a-mole anyday. This game has pointenial i think in a few months hopefuly after at least 1 major content update this will be a amazing game.

Originally posted by heerobya

I was in beta a while ago, month or two ago I think, and I didn't really like it.

Got back into beta and started playing again the other day and I really like it now.

Finding some of the logos can be a pain, but that's good. You don't want everything handed to you on a silver platter.

The combat is fast, fun, and interesting. I love the multipliers to experience gain for killing multiple enemies in a row.

Maybe I'm a noob, but I didn't know that you could still put points into skills from previous classes after you leveled. I originally though, "what's the point of using my skill points up if I lose everything when I level to a new class change?"

Guess I'm just dumb. With all the tiers of classes and the fact you can keep working on skills from earlier classes, there is a LOT of options for really customizing your character to fit your play style.

I think if I can figure out how to hook up a xbox 360 controller to my PC to play this game, that will probably be just about the coolest thing ever and make this game a 100% sure-thing purchase for me.

The secret is to use Pinnacle Profiler...where you can map the keys to buttons..

The left stick is WASD, right stick is mouselook...Right Trigger is left mouse, Left trigger right mouse..

Also, mapped Inventory, map, and skill/ weapons changes etc...to the pad, face buttons were A for jump, X for use, B for reload, Y to holster unholster..,

In so may words, I would never need to touch the keyboard...worked great.

Check it, and good luck

I use a 360 controller...works AWESOME...the game is sorta "meh"...but, with the controller, it feels kinda like a console game..

 

The above quote is the absolute essence of the problem with Tabula Rasa.

He basically says that the game is bland but he can sort of make it fun by using a console controller and pretending it's a console game.

What is wrong with that picture ?

Why would anyone want to pay a subscription fee to play a game that is "meh" and "feels kinda like a console game" if you use a 360 controller ?

IMHO:

Bargain bin console game, yes.

Full priced, subscription fee MMO, no.

Decide for yourselves, get into the beta before it ends and take it for a quick ride before you have to toss $50.00 to try it out.

Originally posted by oronisi

Did they remove the NDA?

Also, I'd suggest playing past 7 in ANY game before you comment on it.  TR was fun for like 3 hours, then you realize its the same exact stuff for the rest of the game.  That gets old quick....for me it was less than 2 weeks in.

Erm.... hello?   If you don't even know that the NDA was lifted *over a month ago* then you have no business posting about the state of the game as it has undergone radical changes since even 3 weeks ago. 

Originally posted by Taram

 

Originally posted by oronisi

Did they remove the NDA?

Also, I'd suggest playing past 7 in ANY game before you comment on it.  TR was fun for like 3 hours, then you realize its the same exact stuff for the rest of the game.  That gets old quick....for me it was less than 2 weeks in.

 

Erm.... hello?   If you don't even know that the NDA was lifted *over a month ago* then you have no business posting about the state of the game as it has undergone radical changes since even 3 weeks ago. 

Could you kindly point out the "radical changes" that have occurred since 3 weeks ago ?

I'm sure that everyone here would like to know about these "radical changes".

Originally posted by Ichijo

 

Originally posted by Taram

 

Originally posted by oronisi

Did they remove the NDA?

Also, I'd suggest playing past 7 in ANY game before you comment on it.  TR was fun for like 3 hours, then you realize its the same exact stuff for the rest of the game.  That gets old quick....for me it was less than 2 weeks in.

 

Erm.... hello?   If you don't even know that the NDA was lifted *over a month ago* then you have no business posting about the state of the game as it has undergone radical changes since even 3 weeks ago. 

 

Could you kindly point out the "radical changes" that have occurred since 3 weeks ago ?

I'm sure that everyone here would like to know about these "radical changes".

I am interested to hear the major changes that equals radical...may log in again if it looks good...

Cheers!

haven't seen any radical changes since they ripped the fun out of the game in June

every patch since then has only increased the 'meh' factor