Originally posted by Torak

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

 

To me at least Vanguard you gain skills and abilities past 30. In TR 30 is he last level you get new skills.

There is no winning but there is endless debate.

 

Well I gotz me 30 more free dayz.

I winzors! For now anyway...

 

I would play too if I had free days. They should have went GW style and had no monthly fees.
 

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by Torak

Hmmm...no Vanguard is ten times the mess this game is. In fact from what I saw, this game really isn't all that bad just not really all that MMOish, its more like an action game like GW but it doesn't have any real technical issues.

Vanguard is a frickin mess of game that hardly runs and even if you can get it going with decent FPS, its just a "10 rats" grinder with nothing else to really do. Yeah they have "diplomacy...but it doesn't really do anything, you can grind out crafting but..loot is better and there is no one to buy your stuff. You can get a boat but it doesn't do anything at all but let you ride around empty water...you can get a flying mount but again, it doesn't offer any real benefit except you get to fly around an empty landscape.

There are not enough players in VG to support an economy, not enough to group with at any level besides cap so its a long lonely trip, the world is enormous...and deserted.

How you guys even get remotely close to comparing the two is beyond me. I strongly suggest you download both the TR free trial and the VG free trial and play them back to back. Then rebutle my post. I was a beta tester of VG and played it on and off for about 8 months. In fact I wrote a bunch of player profiles until I ran out of active players to write about.

 

IMHO the base issue with many posters here on this site is that RG promised a next generation MMORPG but delivered a SciFi Guild Wars instead. (what did they call that an MMO action game or something?)

 

 All things being equal the main issue with this game appears to be that it has the playability of a normal PC game. You basically "play it through" and then you are "done", I'm est it has maybe 1 or 2 months of play before you esentually "finish it"? In the big picture of Video gaming thats actually pretty good (most games you are lucky to get 40 hours out of them). For an MMO, thats pretty bad. To do an action MOG it needs to have a lot of content and an open ended aspect like GW. You grind out to level cap in GW in about 1 - 2 weeks but you have so much content AND basically an unlimited amount of gameplay in the PvP portion. TR shoulda followed this more closely.

To say this game was "poorly" made is a stretch. It was poorly and incorrectly marketed and not filled out enough at launch and then RG lost focus and went to play Spaceman Spiff instead. It needs an open ended aspect and like I've posted here a few times, IMHO more emphesis on "Control Point" gameplay (with impact) and Humans vs Bane in a PvM style set up would have given this game the edge it needed.

Other then that it would have helped if it was correctly marketed, the wrong people totally bought into this games hype lol.

 

I have been playing VG 3 months and compared to TR it is worth my $15 a month. There are more people on now than  you might have been used to and finding groups at different levels is far from impossible. VG has issues no doubt, but compared to TR it is a true MMO. TR would have been a decent PC game if it had no fees after purchase. Should have went with the GW buy it and no monthly fee system, then maybe it would have been worth the total money I spent on that tiny MMo with so little to do.
 

Agreed I am currently in my 6th day of the Free trial for Vanguard and I plan to go out and buy it some time next year. I am having a great time. Quests have a good story behind them, not all quests are kill quests its very much a world of warcraft quest style with a variety of quest objectives but all quite simply and uninspired. The world is massive, and there are tons of things to explore. If feels like it draws you into it and you are part of this great big world. The classes play really fun and the character customization is top notch.

Tabula Rasa could not even keep my attention at Comic con 2007 when they first showed it to me. Honestly I picked it up 2 min later I was already tired of the game play. I checked it out again this year because a friend of mine got it, he got into it for about 2 weeks then quit it. I didn't see anything fun about Tabula rasa other than the monster encounters are much more entertaining than most typical mmorpgs. There is a bit of strategy in the combat but thats it. If I had to choose Vanguard would get my 15 dollars a month because its less buggy than EVERYONE thinks. (or maybe its just because I have a super computer). Runs fantastic, and plays like WoW with much better graphics and special effects.

For now FFXI FTW for me at least. I love how they force you to group up to get stuff done. The community there in my server is very warlm and welcoming. I am level 75 DRG 75 WHM and have a total blast helping out new players. The only problem in XI is the end game which is dominated by obsessed Jack asses who are unfair and selfish. So Dynamis and Story gear FTW.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta 

In TR 30 is he last level you get new skill

That statement is pretty disengenuous.  Level 30 is when you unlock your top tier skill class but actually choosing and enhancing the effectiveness (what TR players refer to as "pumping") of your skills continues all of the way to 50.

You make it sound like at 30 you're character's skill template is complete, done, and finished and you just spend the next twenty levels doing nothing but increasing attributes.

And as far as class systems go I thought TR's was really, really well done.  There just weren't enough skills/classes.  But in all reality TR's quasi-skill/class system was much more dynamic than the traditional class structures used in pedestrian MMOs (not that TR isn't pedestrian but there were a few things it did very well IMO).

I'm currently playing CoX and once you select your secondary and primary powersets that's it.  Thems your skills aside from a few you might choose out of the "general" power pools that are available to every toon.  But it's not like once I hit level X I all of the sudden have five brand new skills waiting for me.  It's still the same pool of skills I was looking at when I created the toon.

Kinda reminds me of Hellgate: London, where servers will be closed down forever in January 2009, although Tabula Rasa probably will have a few months more than HG:L.

Tough times for MMO(RPG)s. Ever since the WoW era began (which also was the beginning of more and more Asian f2p games flooding the market) I saw one MMO dying after another. Only a few could survive at healthy numbers in the long run (for example GW, because of its business model), but most struggle with low populations.

Some get shut down, others just try to survive. Just look at SOE's graveyard of failed MMOs (as somebody put it so eloquently and fitting). Vanguard, EQ1, EQ2, SWG, MxO, Planetside, PotBS... failure after failure, all pretty much dead (EQ1+2 probably being the strongest brands in the failboat... but still both severely underpopulated).

Once an MMO had a bad start, losing a huge chunk of its population right after launch, it never recovers. No matter how good the game gets afterwards, in the WoW-era you are DONE and out of the business with a bad launch. I have yet to see a game with a dying population recovering.

EQ2 is a perfect example. Very flawed game at launch, developed into one of (if not thee) best MMOs currently on the market, but the users don't and won't come back, neither can they retain their numbers. Sad.

[e] And I think that WAR might be the next victim falling to the monopoly. First server merges 1 month after launch are more than just a bad omen, and Mythic unimpressed a whole lot of people with empty worlds and 99% of the players bunching up in instanced GW-PvP-minigames...

Originally posted by lkavadas

Originally posted by Rokurgepta 

In TR 30 is he last level you get new skill

That statement is pretty disengenuous.  Level 30 is when you unlock your top tier skill class but actually choosing and enhancing the effectiveness (what TR players refer to as "pumping") of your skills continues all of the way to 50.

You make it sound like at 30 you're character's skill template is complete, done, and finished and you just spend the next twenty levels doing nothing but increasing attributes.

And as far as class systems go I thought TR's was really, really well done.  There just weren't enough skills/classes.  But in all reality TR's quasi-skill/class system was much more dynamic than the traditional class structures used in pedestrian MMOs (not that TR isn't pedestrian but there were a few things it did very well IMO).

I'm currently playing CoX and once you select your secondary and primary powersets that's it.  Thems your skills aside from a few you might choose out of the "general" power pools that are available to every toon.  But it's not like once I hit level X I all of the sudden have five brand new skills waiting for me.  It's still the same pool of skills I was looking at when I created the toon.

Did not mean to come across that way at all. But at level 30 you get you last skills. Can they be enhanced the rest of the way? Yes they can. Does that make them so different you feel like 30-50 was worthwhile? Not in my opinion.
 

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by lkavadas

That statement is pretty disengenuous.  Level 30 is when you unlock your top tier skill class but actually choosing and enhancing the effectiveness (what TR players refer to as "pumping") of your skills continues all of the way to 50.

You make it sound like at 30 you're character's skill template is complete, done, and finished and you just spend the next twenty levels doing nothing but increasing attributes.

And as far as class systems go I thought TR's was really, really well done.  There just weren't enough skills/classes.  But in all reality TR's quasi-skill/class system was much more dynamic than the traditional class structures used in pedestrian MMOs (not that TR isn't pedestrian but there were a few things it did very well IMO).

I'm currently playing CoX and once you select your secondary and primary powersets that's it.  Thems your skills aside from a few you might choose out of the "general" power pools that are available to every toon.  But it's not like once I hit level X I all of the sudden have five brand new skills waiting for me.  It's still the same pool of skills I was looking at when I created the toon.

Did not mean to come across that way at all. But at level 30 you get you last skills. Can they be enhanced the rest of the way? Yes they can. Does that make them so different you feel like 30-50 was worthwhile? Not in my opinion.
 

 

Just out of curiousity....Rokurgepta...when was the last time you played this game and what are you playing now and why aren't you participating in that community?

Just kinda wondering what your motivation is for hanging around repeating the fact you don't like the game...even though you apparently played it quit a bit.

Originally posted by Torak

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by lkavadas

That statement is pretty disengenuous.  Level 30 is when you unlock your top tier skill class but actually choosing and enhancing the effectiveness (what TR players refer to as "pumping") of your skills continues all of the way to 50.

You make it sound like at 30 you're character's skill template is complete, done, and finished and you just spend the next twenty levels doing nothing but increasing attributes.

And as far as class systems go I thought TR's was really, really well done.  There just weren't enough skills/classes.  But in all reality TR's quasi-skill/class system was much more dynamic than the traditional class structures used in pedestrian MMOs (not that TR isn't pedestrian but there were a few things it did very well IMO).

I'm currently playing CoX and once you select your secondary and primary powersets that's it.  Thems your skills aside from a few you might choose out of the "general" power pools that are available to every toon.  But it's not like once I hit level X I all of the sudden have five brand new skills waiting for me.  It's still the same pool of skills I was looking at when I created the toon.

Did not mean to come across that way at all. But at level 30 you get you last skills. Can they be enhanced the rest of the way? Yes they can. Does that make them so different you feel like 30-50 was worthwhile? Not in my opinion.
 

 

 

Just out of curiousity....Rokurgepta...when was the last time you played this game and what are you playing now and why aren't you participating in that community?

Just kinda wondering what your motivation is for hanging around repeating the fact you don't like the game...even though you apparently played it quit a bit.

 

 

 

I am currently playing Vanguard. I do participate in that community. As said before I stopped playing TR for the second time in mid August. I did like TR, it just faded quickly and nothing the devs have done since I have left has made me want to play it again. As a matter of fact the killing off PAUs after claiming they were on internal testing and then making them just a basic MECH killed off any desire I have to ever play again unless the return to Earth sounds amazing.
 

My motivation is I have the same right to discuss the game as anyone else on this site. My opinion of it is generally negative, these days. Due to the facts I have posted before. I am sorry if my presence offends people who want to gush about the game like it was the second coming.

If people want to make fantastic claims of the games amazing uberleetness, someone has to be the opposite side of that coin and bring a ray of reality into the mix. If I believed half of the fanboys I would think this was a WOW killer(not that I liked WOW or think it is the game of games) instead of the barely hanging on resume stain it seems to be. Or do you think 2 lead dev changes, 2 community leaders, the head GM and the guy who has his name on the box all leaving were good signs?

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by Torak

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by lkavadas

That statement is pretty disengenuous.  Level 30 is when you unlock your top tier skill class but actually choosing and enhancing the effectiveness (what TR players refer to as "pumping") of your skills continues all of the way to 50.

You make it sound like at 30 you're character's skill template is complete, done, and finished and you just spend the next twenty levels doing nothing but increasing attributes.

And as far as class systems go I thought TR's was really, really well done.  There just weren't enough skills/classes.  But in all reality TR's quasi-skill/class system was much more dynamic than the traditional class structures used in pedestrian MMOs (not that TR isn't pedestrian but there were a few things it did very well IMO).

I'm currently playing CoX and once you select your secondary and primary powersets that's it.  Thems your skills aside from a few you might choose out of the "general" power pools that are available to every toon.  But it's not like once I hit level X I all of the sudden have five brand new skills waiting for me.  It's still the same pool of skills I was looking at when I created the toon.

Did not mean to come across that way at all. But at level 30 you get you last skills. Can they be enhanced the rest of the way? Yes they can. Does that make them so different you feel like 30-50 was worthwhile? Not in my opinion.
 

 

 

Just out of curiousity....Rokurgepta...when was the last time you played this game and what are you playing now and why aren't you participating in that community?

Just kinda wondering what your motivation is for hanging around repeating the fact you don't like the game...even though you apparently played it quit a bit.

 

 

 

I am currently playing Vanguard. I do participate in that community. As said before I stopped playing TR for the second time in mid August. I did like TR, it just faded quickly and nothing the devs have done since I have left has made me want to play it again. As a matter of fact the killing off PAUs after claiming they were on internal testing and then making them just a basic MECH killed off any desire I have to ever play again unless the return to Earth sounds amazing.
 

My motivation is I have the same right to discuss the game as anyone else on this site. My opinion of it is generally negative, these days. Due to the facts I have posted before. I am sorry if my presence offends people who want to gush about the game like it was the second coming.

If people want to make fantastic claims of the games amazing uberleetness, someone has to be the opposite side of that coin and bring a ray of reality into the mix. If I believed half of the fanboys I would think this was a WOW killer(not that I liked WOW or think it is the game of games) instead of the barely hanging on resume stain it seems to be. Or do you think 2 lead dev changes, 2 community leaders, the head GM and the guy who has his name on the box all leaving were good signs?

Best damn way to explain why us non fans or sometimes called "Trolls" Stcik around We have the right to, we do like the game, and we want to give the other side of the story. For me personally I hate when a new player asks "How is this game" And people give the new player all the good points leaving out the fact that..oh idk example... "You need to spend 120 dollars in cash shop to be a good player at end game (PW international) or... (The entire game world is instence and there is no sense of immersion GW). Both games which I think are Good, but they also have bad points as well as good points. and People who are going to put their money into something deserve to get the entire truth not just part of it.If a player asks a question like "So how is the community currently" A fan will say "Well its small people know eachother a lot more, and its still possible to get a gorup if you join a clan or a guild" Fans will say this even if the damn game only has like 300 players left per server.

Well what I would say is "The community is almost dead, There are X number of players on at Peek times, Finding a group is possible but very hard, The majority of people left for X and Y reasons, the main reason why the community did not come back is X, and this is the way it is.

very different ways of describing things.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta 

Did not mean to come across that way at all. But at level 30 you get you last skills. Can they be enhanced the rest of the way? Yes they can. Does that make them so different you feel like 30-50 was worthwhile? Not in my opinion.

Heh, and this response implies that all you can do between 30 and 50 is pump skills which have already been earned.  You still have to select the skills you want from the pool you've unlocked at level 30.  I'm not sure why you're acting like level 30 unlocking your final pool of skills is some horrible sin.  In most class based MMOs the pool of skills you see at level 1 is the same pool of skills you see at the very last level.  TR at least provided decent sense of skill progression even though overall there was a general lack of skills.

Grinding levels beyond 30 wasn't pointless because there weren't more skills to unlock; it was pointless because nothing worthwhile awaited you.

Originally posted by lkavadas

Originally posted by Rokurgepta 

Did not mean to come across that way at all. But at level 30 you get you last skills. Can they be enhanced the rest of the way? Yes they can. Does that make them so different you feel like 30-50 was worthwhile? Not in my opinion.

 

Heh, and this response implies that all you can do between 30 and 50 is pump skills which have already been earned.  You still have to select the skills you want from the pool you've unlocked at level 30.  I'm not sure why you're acting like level 30 unlocking your final pool of skills is some horrible sin.  In most class based MMOs the pool of skills you see at level 1 is the same pool of skills you see at the very last level.  TR at least provided decent sense of skill progression even though overall there was a general lack of skills.

Grinding levels beyond 30 wasn't pointless because there weren't more skills to unlock; it was pointless because nothing worthwhile awaited you.

In TR it was a horrible sin because there was not much else going on and gaining new skills was one of the few highlights. More skills past level 30 would have been worthwhile.
 

Originally posted by lkavadas

I'm currently playing CoX and once you select your secondary and primary powersets that's it. 

You must be new to CoX then if you think that claim makes any sense.  You continue to pick new powers from your Primary and Secondary power pools all the way to 49.  You can select up to 4 other power pools and pick and choose powers from those.  And around level 40 you get to choose an Epic power pool. 

Comparing the limited power choices available in TR with the almost endless choices available to CoX is disingenuous.  In fact, you do get your last power choice in TR at 30.  "Pumping" a power from 30 to 50 is like getting nothing but the option to add enhancement slots to your powers after you reach 30 in CoX.  That would be very boring.  Having no new powers to look forward to once you reach 30 in TR is a major downside of the game.
 

Originally posted by indiramourn

Originally posted by lkavadas

I'm currently playing CoX and once you select your secondary and primary powersets that's it. 

You must be new to CoX then if you think that claim makes any sense.  You continue to pick new powers from your Primary and Secondary power pools all the way to 49.  You can select up to 4 other power pools and pick and choose powers from those.  And around level 40 you get to choose an Epic power pool. 

Comparing the limited power choices available in TR with the almost endless choices available to CoX is disingenuous.  In fact, you do get your last power choice in TR at 30.  "Pumping" a power from 30 to 50 is like getting nothing but the option to add enhancement slots to your powers after you reach 30 in CoX.  That would be very boring.  Having no new powers to look forward to once you reach 30 in TR is a major downside of the game.
 

Way to miss my point.  Answer these simple questions for me.

1. CoX: The list of powers you see when you create your toon; are they not the exact same list of powers you see once you make your very last power when you're 49?

I'll go ahead and answer that question for you: yes (exceptions being VEATs and Khelds).

2. TR: The list of powers you see when you create your toon; are they different than the powers you see when your attain last skill points at level 50?

I'll go ahead and answer that one for you too: no.

Do you understand the point I'm making?  While no new powers technically "unlock" to you post 30 you can still pick and enhance as many skills as you have points for as opposed to CoX's wretched and rigid AT structure where you stare at a completely unchanging list for the entire life of the toon aside from secondary stuff in the general pools (most of which are either terrible or just various flavors of transportation).  You can do more than just "pump" your existing powers from level 30 and beyond.  You can use those skill points to select any power you don't already have as well.

Ugh, y'know what, I've typed too much already.  Your a moron, please stop talking, and this is my last post on a board for one of the worst MMOs ever made that will inevitbaly be shut down in less than a year.

Have fun while it lasts, dingus.

Edit: Furthermore CoX is a terrible game that is only propped up by it's unique theme.  It's combat system sucks, the missions suck, the AT system sucks, the PvP system sucks, there is absolutely no crafting (TR's original crafting system was more in depth than CoX's and that's embarassing), no type of actual player possessions, and the IO system is completely lackluster.

In principle, I'm not disagreeing with you on 99% of your comments about TR.  But please keep the irrelavant comparisons of an ultra-shallow failure-of-a-game like TR with a content/feature rich successful game like CoX. 

You want to compare TR's shortcoming with another game's shortcoming, try Dark and Light, or Pirates of the Burning Sea, or Roma Victor, or AoC, etc.  Leave CoX out of it.  CoX is an example of a successful niche MMORPG that other games can aspire to.  I appreciate your opinion, I do.  But I can't stand by while you diss the CoX. ;)

Vanguard>>> Tabula Rasa, so badly.  Population in VG  isn't great but i always found people to do shit in the game. The game is actually playable, and has more content then Tabula Rasa dream's on ever having.

 TR, I went back for a month on my 50 Guardian, 45 Grenadier. It took forever to get squad's. The game was deserted... i would have zones all to myself. Dev's had a year to actually put some solid content in the game... which it reallllllllllllyyyy needed...... but yet they went back on promises... and never followed through on anything.

They were more worried giving enemies worthless new moves... or nerfing/fixing the same two jobs over the last year... rather then put in anything meaningfull.. like end game content. I just hope going back to Earth is coming out.. cause i might actually give that a try....maybe.

Tabula Rasa problem in the end is... piss poor content, and crappy dev  team who listened to fanbois... who destroyed a should've been great game.

I just finished a month sub to TR.  I think TR has a good and fun combat system and is a pretty good game for what it is.  The problem in my opinion is that it's like a one trick pony.  The game play is fun but gets boring since it is almost always the same.  Running around shooting the shit out of stuff.  I had fun playing for the month I played.

Vanguard is totally different then TR.  Where TR is very linear and rather simple without a lot of gameplay otions of then fighting, VG is non linear and has a huge number of game play options.    VG has a lot more staying power then TR.  That said I think TR was better at launch by a lot then VG.  VG had major bugs and problems where TR at launch worked pretty well and didn't have major issues.  A few broken quests, some class imbalances etc.