So I've noticed several other threads in this forum complaining about Richard Garriot's trip into space and I know I've complained about it more than once, so I'm guessing we all know about it by now. The bum wants to go into space.

Well anyway, on to my story: I have this email account that I only use for things I shouldn't be doing. A great example is if I have to register at a website I don't like for some reason and they demand to know my email address. Instead of giving them a real email address I actually use I give them this "other" address I have that I almost never check. Its a hotmail account, so if I don't check it atleast once a month hotmail likes to shut it down. Thats a pain in the butt, so I decided I would check it today and make sure it was still online.

Well I had three new emails. Two of them were telling me that people I've never heard of had added a BS facebook account I created as a joke to their friends list. The third email said: QandA from Richardinspace.com‏ and I wondered who the hell Richard was and why I should give a crap about a "QandA" on his website. Well, suprise suprise, it was Richard Garriot's website and amazingly enough he actually responded to a question I had asked him WAY the hell back in May of this year shortly before I quit his crappy game. I didn't remember what I had asked him but considering the kinds of questions I usually have for MMO developers I knew it had to be a pretty good one so I rushed over to his website to see what his reply was (I hoped it would be something like Dan Rubenfield's famous "you can eat a d!@#" rant).

Well anyway, here was my question that was "Anwsered" by our buddy richard: *link*

Q: Why are you playing around in space when you should be adding content to Tabula Rasa that you promised before release and still hasn't made it into the game!?

His "reply"...

A: Yes, absolutely! As a matter of fact, Tabula Rasa gets a new content drop every 3-4 weeks and has been since its launch in October so hopefully keep your eye out on www.playtr.com and you can find out the details.

Oh well that makes so much sense and... wait, WHAT!?

Richard, it took you six months to reply to my question and you apparently didn't even take time to read it clearly enough to figure out that it wasn't a "yes" or "no" question!?

No wonder Tabula Rasa is so awful. Not only does Richard's space trip leave him with no time to fix his game, it also apparently doesn't leave him any time to read the questions on his own website properly. Gotta wonder why he bothers to anwser them in that case but I guess once you have put out a half-assed MMO you might as well do a half-assed job of everything else you do.

I hightly encourage all of you to ask Richard some questions. Just wait about six months for a reply.

Originally posted by Raltar

So I've noticed several other threads in this forum complaining about Richard Garriot's trip into space and I know I've complained about it more than once, so I'm guessing we all know about it by now. The bum wants to go into space.

Well anyway, on to my story: I have this email account that I only use for things I shouldn't be doing. A great example is if I have to register at a website I don't like for some reason and they demand to know my email address. Instead of giving them a real email address I actually use I give them this "other" address I have that I almost never check. Its a hotmail account, so if I don't check it atleast once a month hotmail likes to shut it down. Thats a pain in the butt, so I decided I would check it today and make sure it was still online.

Well I had three new emails. Two of them were telling me that people I've never heard of had added a BS facebook account I created as a joke to their friends list. The third email said: QandA from Richardinspace.com‏ and I wondered who the hell Richard was and why I should give a crap about a "QandA" on his website. Well, suprise suprise, it was Richard Garriot's website and amazingly enough he actually responded to a question I had asked him WAY the hell back in May of this year shortly before I quit his crappy game. I didn't remember what I had asked him but considering the kinds of questions I usually have for MMO developers I knew it had to be a pretty good one so I rushed over to his website to see what his reply was (I hoped it would be something like Dan Rubenfield's famous "you can eat a d!@#" rant).

Well anyway, here was my question that was "Anwsered" by our buddy richard: *link*

Q: Why are you playing around in space when you should be adding content to Tabula Rasa that you promised before release and still hasn't made it into the game!?

His "reply"...

A: Yes, absolutely! As a matter of fact, Tabula Rasa gets a new content drop every 3-4 weeks and has been since its launch in October so hopefully keep your eye out on www.playtr.com and you can find out the details.

Oh well that makes so much sense and... wait, WHAT!?

Richard, it took you six months to reply to my question and you apparently didn't even take time to read it clearly enough to figure out that it wasn't a "yes" or "no" question!?

No wonder Tabula Rasa is so awful. Not only does Richard's space trip leave him with no time to fix his game, it also apparently doesn't leave him any time to read the questions on his own website properly. Gotta wonder why he bothers to anwser them in that case but I guess once you have put out a half-assed MMO you might as well do a half-assed job of everything else you do.

I hightly encourage all of you to ask Richard some questions. Just wait about six months for a reply.

I am constantly amazed by what they and RG call content. To me content does not mean balance fixes you missed in beta. Content is not fixing useless and broken skills, it is not optimizing armor and the female characters.

To me content means new stuff and TR has been so light on that as to have created a new meaning for monthly content. Yes TR gets updates but it does not get content. Mostly it gets fixes they missed in beta. That is what people are paying for. Now they are adding new weapons and a couple of new instances which are content, but they are not keeping up with the average players needs for new content in a game that is very small and shallow.

In light of TR being shut down, I think this thread deserves a bump so everyone can see the "anwser" I got from our buddy Richard in reguards to Tabula Rasa.

Originally posted by Raltar

In light of TR being shut down, I think this thread deserves a bump so everyone can see the "anwser" I got from our buddy Richard in reguards to Tabula Rasa.

At least we know his reading skills are top notch.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by Raltar

In light of TR being shut down, I think this thread deserves a bump so everyone can see the "anwser" I got from our buddy Richard in reguards to Tabula Rasa.

 

At least we know his reading skills are top notch.

lol yeah. he's definitely someone I'd want making games, he probably wrote all his ideas for TR down, then when he read through it while in development, all he saw was "way to make money for space trip" and forgot about endgame content and balance :P

I'm one of the "whackjobs" who should "eat dick"  (because I liked SWG's pre-CU version?) according to the world's most pathetic developer (Dan Rubenfield), and I also happened to be one of the people who left SWG shortly after the CU launched. Ironically, the link the OP provided is the first glimpse I've EVER had of Dan's blog entry... and all I can say is... wow, that guy really is a dumbass. Talk about adding insult to injury. You know, I'm really glad I quit SWG now, and I'll never look back again.

Moving on to RG.... *dies of laughter* Wow, the guy can't read, can he? It almost seemed like a canned response, kind of like the GM responses I used to get from my SOE tickets in-game (thinking back to SWG again). Oh well; at least I can clearly see why TR plummeted to its doom like it did. It's sad... I really want a sci-fi MMO to play.

NCSOFT should sue RG .. and make it a public spectacle. I would be cheering the lawsuit on from the side lines :)

I am making sure I won't buy a RG game for the rest of my life.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

NCSOFT should sue RG .. and make it a public spectacle. I would be cheering the lawsuit on from the side lines :)

I am making sure I won't buy a RG game for the rest of my life.

What would they sue him for? They sue him and watch how few game makers ever make MMOs after that. They paid him to create an MMO and he did, the fact it failed is not all his fault. The money may have been poorly spent but the ideas behind TR were good. The execution and implementation sucked.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

What would they sue him for? They sue him and watch how few game makers ever make MMOs after that. They paid him to create an MMO and he did, the fact it failed is not all his fault. The money may have been poorly spent but the ideas behind TR were good. The execution and implementation sucked.

What would they sue him for? Breach of contract would be my guess. It might be hard to prove that though, so I probably would not sue him. Rather I would have simply fired his ass and blamed the failure of the game on him. Sadly that ship has already sailed.

The reason the exceution and implementation for this game sucked was because they had no direction. The reason they had no direction was because their lead developer was off jerking off in outer space instead of giving them direction. Garriot was the lead developer. From where I stand it surely looks to me like the failure of this game is all his fault. If him getting his come uppins causes other developers to be more careful in the future... GREAT! Its about time someone in this industry had an example made of them so that the industry as a whole will start thinking twice about making a bad game in the future.

Originally posted by Raltar

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

What would they sue him for? They sue him and watch how few game makers ever make MMOs after that. They paid him to create an MMO and he did, the fact it failed is not all his fault. The money may have been poorly spent but the ideas behind TR were good. The execution and implementation sucked.

 

What would they sue him for? Breach of contract would be my guess. It might be hard to prove that though, so I probably would not sue him. Rather I would have simply fired his ass and blamed the failure of the game on him. Sadly that ship has already sailed.

The reason the exceution and implementation for this game sucked was because they had no direction. The reason they had no direction was because their lead developer was off jerking off in outer space instead of giving them direction. Garriot was the lead developer. From where I stand it surely looks to me like the failure of this game is all his fault. If him getting his come uppins causes other developers to be more careful in the future... GREAT! Its about time someone in this industry had an example made of them so that the industry as a whole will start thinking twice about making a bad game in the future.

You are basing it on all being his fault and none of us has the information on whether he made the decisions in the end or if NCSoft stopped them from doing things. Suing a lead developer would cause others not to be more careful but to avoid making the games and taking a risk of being sued in the future.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

You are basing it on all being his fault and none of us has the information on whether he made the decisions in the end or if NCSoft stopped them from doing things.

No...

I'm basing it on him not even being on the same planet as his game!

The guy was off messing around in space when he should have been working on Tabula Rasa PERSONALLY. He clearly wasn't doing that. So it isn't a question of if NCsoft "stopped" him from doing things, unless you are suggesting they somehow brainwashed him into thinking it would somehow help the game if he ran off to Russia to train for a space trip instead of actually being present during the development and release of the game.

And you saw his attitude and interest in the game in the way he responded to my question about it. The guy clearly was more interested in himself and his space trip than he ever was in Tabula Rasa. Even if NCsoft had a hand in messing the game up somehow (which doesn't make sense as they were the ones who lost money on this deal) RG still stood by and allowed it to happen. He sold the game to NCSoft so he could get the money to fund his space trip. Honestly I wouldn't be suprised if he never really intended to go anywhere with this game but just invented the concept of it so that he could sell that concept along with his name to anyone who would pay for his space trip. NCsoft walked right into his trap.

I think the failure of TR cannot be tacked to a single person. I'm quite convinced that RG had his share, and it was a quite large one, but one man alone cannot make or break a game, no matter what or who he may be.

TR was released about one year too early. I am not too sure whether that's RGs fault. In my experience, it's the publisher who presses for games to be released to see some ROI. It usually isn't the head dev who wants his game out the door half finished.

The lack of content is a direct result of this. If you have to dedicate a sizable portion of dev time to bugfixes and keeping the game that already exists somehow afloat, they cannot put a lot of time into new content. No matter what they had done, people would have complained. If they fix bugs, as they did, people complain about a lack of high end content. If they developed high end content, people would have complained about bugs that stay unfixed for months. Not to mention that the game had very serious balance and skill functionality issues in its early days. That this has priority is a given. If they had not put the focus on this, even more people would have quitted early on and the game would have hit the ground even earlier.

So, if there is anything to learn from this train wreck, it is that you MUST NOT release a game before it is done. TR had the potential to live and create revenue with a solid 100k players for about 2-3 years IF it had not been released a year before its maturity. That's pretty much what it comes down to. TR is unique and fun enough to keep a good amount of people playing for about 2 years. It is no WoW killer and would never have been, it would certainly not even have reached the levels of Lineage 2, but it sure would have been able to achive the mentioned goal and break even.

If it had the time to mature. Now, about a year after release, the game would be quite ready for release. Maybe it was about half a year ago, but if you really wanted a polished, finished game, now would be the time to release it. Now the bugs are mostly fixed, high end content is coming along (or would be, if they still put manpower behind it, the foundation is there, even some of the earth graphics exist already in the client), this would be a perfect time to release the game and crank up the PR volume to get people in.

Alas, someone in management got cold feet and decided a year ago that this HAS to be released. If any single person gets the blame for TRs crash and burn, it is this person. I'm certainly no fan of RG and I think he should have kept his ass down on earth and, if nothing else, start a stink upstairs in management for a lack of funds or whatever he would have needed to save the game, but he is probably not the right person to be mad at for TRs ditch.

Originally posted by Chlodwig

I think the failure of TR cannot be tacked to a single person. I'm quite convinced that RG had his share, and it was a quite large one, but one man alone cannot make or break a game, no matter what or who he may be.

TR was released about one year too early.

...

Alas, someone in management got cold feet and decided a year ago that this HAS to be released. If any single person gets the blame for TRs crash and burn, it is this person. I'm certainly no fan of RG and I think he should have kept his ass down on earth and, if nothing else, start a stink upstairs in management for a lack of funds or whatever he would have needed to save the game, but he is probably not the right person to be mad at for TRs ditch.

I agree with a lot of what you said.

But keep in mind it is not the "ditching" of Tabula Rasa that I blame on RG. I don't "blame" anyone for that. As I've said in several other threads I think it was actually a smart move on the part of NCsoft to shut this game down. They paid RG 40+ million dollars just to buy the concept of this game from him, then spent another 70+ million to develop it and the end result was an unfinished product which came no where near living up to the hype. From their perspective this game was nothing but a giant money pit and a bottomless one at that. Despite what some people say this game was NEVER going to mature to the point where it could be conisdered a decent game, atleast not with the dev team it had. It needed to be shut down.

But what I'm trying to "blame" RG for is being a general purpose liar and thief. This has become far too common of a problem in the gaming industry these days. MMO developers are prone to these abusrd ego trips where they talk a big game about how great they are and go the extra mile to hype up what awesome features their game is going to have. But then on release day while we are all playing their shit game and wondering what the hell went wrong they are already on their way to some foreign country with all the money. RG pulled the same stunt and the only impressive thing about his game is that he managed to get paid and escape with the money before development was even half finished. And THAT is what I blame him for. He allowed this to happen to Tabula Rasa even if he wasn't directly responsible for it.

Originally posted by Raltar

Originally posted by Chlodwig

I think the failure of TR cannot be tacked to a single person. I'm quite convinced that RG had his share, and it was a quite large one, but one man alone cannot make or break a game, no matter what or who he may be.

TR was released about one year too early.

...

Alas, someone in management got cold feet and decided a year ago that this HAS to be released. If any single person gets the blame for TRs crash and burn, it is this person. I'm certainly no fan of RG and I think he should have kept his ass down on earth and, if nothing else, start a stink upstairs in management for a lack of funds or whatever he would have needed to save the game, but he is probably not the right person to be mad at for TRs ditch.

 

I agree with a lot of what you said.

But keep in mind it is not the "ditching" of Tabula Rasa that I blame on RG. I don't "blame" anyone for that. As I've said in several other threads I think it was actually a smart move on the part of NCsoft to shut this game down. They paid RG 40+ million dollars just to buy the concept of this game from him, then spent another 70+ million to develop it and the end result was an unfinished product which came no where near living up to the hype. From their perspective this game was nothing but a giant money pit and a bottomless one at that. Despite what some people say this game was NEVER going to mature to the point where it could be conisdered a decent game, atleast not with the dev team it had. It needed to be shut down.

But what I'm trying to "blame" RG for is being a general purpose liar and thief. This has become far too common of a problem in the gaming industry these days. MMO developers are prone to these abusrd ego trips where they talk a big game about how great they are and go the extra mile to hype up what awesome features their game is going to have. But then on release day while we are all playing their shit game and wondering what the hell went wrong they are already on their way to some foreign country with all the money. RG pulled the same stunt and the only impressive thing about his game is that he managed to get paid and escape with the money before development was even half finished. And THAT is what I blame him for. He allowed this to happen to Tabula Rasa even if he wasn't directly responsible for it.

No doubt he shares part of the blame, but suing him could have a very bad effect on the MMO industry.

RG distanced himself from this disaster quite early as the appearances of him and Sara Morrison became scarce, I think(have no proof of course) that he was planning his escape since January. My guess is he really did not want to release what NCSoft pushed out the door last year. AT one point RG thought he was building a WOW competitor and obviously this game is not it. So I have to think NCSoft stopped the devs from putting in some of the really innovative things they have mentioned over time or they simply lacked the talent to do so.

Lets remember this is the same group that made sniper rifles work at under 100m because they could not get the draw distance to work right. They blamed it on hardware not being advanced enough, yet Planetside got snipers distances right years ago, they had no draw distance problems.  100m is nothing, you have baseball players who can throw a baseball that far and here we have a game telling us that is sniper rifle distance?  

To me it was a collective failure, but somewhere the great ideas went into a meeting and came out as Meh.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

So I have to think NCSoft stopped the devs from putting in some of the really innovative things they have mentioned over time or they simply lacked the talent to do so.

Lets remember this is the same group that made sniper rifles work at under 100m because they could not get the draw distance to work right. They blamed it on hardware not being advanced enough, yet Planetside got snipers distances right years ago, they had no draw distance problems.  100m is nothing, you have baseball players who can throw a baseball that far and here we have a game telling us that is sniper rifle distance?  

To me it was a collective failure, but somewhere the great ideas went into a meeting and came out as Meh.

I can't for the life of me see why NCsoft would stop them from putting features into the game. NCsoft may have pushed for release by a certain date but considering how much money NCSoft put into this game and how many years it was in development I think they allowed more than reasonable oppertunities for the developers to get the features into the game. Unless of course, as you said, they simply lacked the talent. But wasn't talent the part of the deal that Richard was supposed to bring to the table? Thus we return to the theory that the talent was lacking because Richard was in space or Russia at the times they needed him and his talent the most.

As for the whole sinper rifle thing, don't even get me started on that again. As I was telling our buddy Kavadas in that other thread I played a sniper and I found the mechanics of combat in this game to be totally lacking. I think the reason why Planetside got it right and TR didn't simply boils down to TR not bring a real FPS. In planetside the draw distance wasn't an issue because the projectile has its own physics, meaning it does damage when it strikes a target no matter what distance it may have traveled to do that. But in TR damage was all based on some math equasion and the projectile was just for show. Obviously their game engine or their math was somehow unable to handle distances greater than 100m. That is if they were even telling the truth about it being a technology problem. I think its equally likely that they simply lacked the talent to balance the game if combat could take place at distances greater than 100m and thus choose to limit the game to suit their own limited skills.

Obviously their great ideas died in some meeting somewhere as most great ideas do but my arguement is that would not have happened (or alteast would have had some chance to be averted) if RG had been doing his job properly and not been off messing around on his ego trip into space.

Originally posted by Raltar

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

So I have to think NCSoft stopped the devs from putting in some of the really innovative things they have mentioned over time or they simply lacked the talent to do so.

Lets remember this is the same group that made sniper rifles work at under 100m because they could not get the draw distance to work right. They blamed it on hardware not being advanced enough, yet Planetside got snipers distances right years ago, they had no draw distance problems.  100m is nothing, you have baseball players who can throw a baseball that far and here we have a game telling us that is sniper rifle distance?  

To me it was a collective failure, but somewhere the great ideas went into a meeting and came out as Meh.

I can't for the life of me see why NCsoft would stop them from putting features into the game. NCsoft may have pushed for release by a certain date but considering how much money NCSoft put into this game and how many years it was in development I think they allowed more than reasonable oppertunities for the developers to get the features into the game. Unless of course, as you said, they simply lacked the talent. But wasn't talent the part of the deal that Richard was supposed to bring to the table? Thus we return to the theory that the talent was lacking because Richard was in space or Russia at the times they needed him and his talent the most.

As for the whole sinper rifle thing, don't even get me started on that again. As I was telling our buddy Kavadas in that other thread I played a sniper and I found the mechanics of combat in this game to be totally lacking. I think the reason why Planetside got it right and TR didn't simply boils down to TR not bring a real FPS. In planetside the draw distance wasn't an issue because the projectile has its own physics, meaning it does damage when it strikes a target no matter what distance it may have traveled to do that. But in TR damage was all based on some math equasion and the projectile was just for show. Obviously their game engine or their math was somehow unable to handle distances greater than 100m. That is if they were even telling the truth about it being a technology problem. I think its equally likely that they simply lacked the talent to balance the game if combat could take place at distances greater than 100m and thus choose to limit the game to suit their own limited skills.

Obviously their great ideas died in some meeting somewhere as most great ideas do but my arguement is that would not have happened (or alteast would have had some chance to be averted) if RG had been doing his job properly and not been off messing around on his ego trip into space.

When the devs were questioned about RG spending too much time with his space project they claimed he was involved every step and in constant contact and leading the team but from afar. To me it seemed they as a whole lacked direction since the begining of they year and yes RG has to take blame for that. But I can see NCSoft stopping them from adding features if those features A)cost more money. B)might have taken time that NCSoft did not want spent on something they may not have seen as a big want.

As much as the devs spent time on PTR with the players and listened(supposedly) to them it seemed that when some projects got put aside they were said to not be that wanted by the playerbase, but as someone who was on the same forums I did not see what the devs saw. That leads me to think those projects were put aside for other reasons and the players sort of used as the scapegoat. Command opportunity was said to not be that wanted, but you never heard people really against it, seemed on the forums people were looking forward to it. I would guess they saw the cost and decided not to put it in and that would be an NCSoft decision most likely.

I agree they had the funding to start to more than create a great game, they as a group failed and RG as the head of that mess is at fault and as we have all seen his name and reputation have taken a big hit and deservedly so. In the end this game was a huge waste of money and nothing is going to change that.