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should i buy this game?
muttyhc
Member Posts: 10
in Tabula Rasa
been looking for a new mmo for a while and i've been following tabula rasa for a bit.
what with all the mixed comments i'm a little baffled.
What exactly is bad about the game? What are the good points?
I've wasted money on some mmorpgs before and would rather be sure this one is a worthwhile purchase.
Comments
If you like action games I think you would like Tabula Rasa.
Quests are what you see in other games with a few ethical choice missions thrown in.
Fast travel with teleporters between outposts, drop ships between major maps, wormholes between continents and planets.
Map is great you can see not only your objectives but your team mates moving around.
Each map has 3 or 4 instanced missions which is where the story unfolds further.
U.I is very FPS like. Also you have ammo and have to reload, weapons can jam, different weapon types (like EMP) have more/less effect on different critters. Also the U.I is not customizable - you cant move anything around.
Cover makes a difference to how much damage you take.
The game is not an FPS - there is no first person view, and dice-rolls control whether you actually hit, how much damage you do.
Its not a sandbox game - its class/level based.
Everyone starts as a recruit - then at lvl 5, 15, 30 you choose a branch that further defines your character.
There is no auction house. They are implementing a surplus store to fill this role.
There are no vehicles - they are talking about putting mech type vehicles in for you around lvl 40.
You can explore to find logos - some are required for skills, some arent.
The game uses instances. Main maps are instanced to hold 300 people. So if you are having trouble completing a quest because everyone else is killing your target you can swap to another low population instance.
Each main map has one or two bases that the Bane will actively attack to capture. Its fun defending a base with bane swarming the walls. If the base falls any missions that were obtained/turned in at that base are unavailable until the base is recaptured.
That's a great, unboased list Shadowmage, good job with that!
I forgot to mention cloning, crafting , cash, repairing and the death penalty.
Cloning lets you try different alts without having to repeat the starting content. The best time to clone is just before you branch in your skill tree. ie just before lvl 5,15 and 30.
Cloning can also be used to respec your character. It lets you re-allocate your skill points - but not your attribute points.
Crafting - this is done with recipes you find as loot or possibly buy. You use components that you find as loot, buy or obtain by disassembling items you dont want that have bonuses. YOu can then use these to apply upgrades/bonuses to your equipment.
Also crafting skills are at the recruit level - so anyone can craft.
Customization - at the start - pick your height, face , hair and skin colour. dont worry about armor/colour as you will pretty much replace all this by the time you hit lvl 5.
There are several variants of each type of armor in the game. You can also use paint that you buy/craft to color your armor.
There is a Death penalty. past lvl 5 if you die there is a 20% decrease in your attributes (to a max of 60% if you die repeatedly) for 5 minutes. You also get to choose which hospital to respawn at and have to hike back (unless someone resurrects you). You can buy res trauma kits at medics which will offset most of the DP.
In game cash is fairly easy to come buy. You get credits for killing enemies and for some mission rewards, and from selling loot. Ammunition costs money. Different weapons use different types of consumables from bullets to batteries to rockets etc.
At higher level you need to use higher grade consumables that cost more.
Repair often. In combat your equipment degrades as you take damage. Everytime you go past a vendor - stop and repair your equipment. Otherwise armor is reduced and doesnt protect as well, and your weapons will do less damage and jam (forcing you to reload and loose any unused ammo).
Did I mention cover is your friend and reduces the damage you take. You can also crouch to improve your accuracy / damage.
There is no dodging in game. So sometimes you duck behind a tree/rock and the enemy bullet curves around and hits you - thats because the animation is slow and the enemy rolled a hit - so you get hit even if you have moved behind a rock.
Upgrade weapons and armor as often as possible - you will find some as loot, otherwise buy. there is a big difference in damage between each level of weapon etc.
Skill points in weapon skills improve damage and have some secondary effects.
Best starting skills are lightning (doesnt use ammo and does good damage) and firearms (which covers the pistol, rifle and shotgun weapons).
Classes - the soldier line does more damage, the specialist are your support line (healers, turrets, shields etc). Specialists are great for soloing as they can heal/repair their own armor. Soldiers can use medi-kits for healing.
Grenades - I just discovered how fun grenades are to use (expensive though).
It all depends on what you're looking for. If you just want to log in, shoot some stuff, and log out, then you're going to be ok. It's just a bit much to ask $15.- a month for. I played from closed to open beta, but couldn't bring myself to log in anymore in the last week before beta closed. Graphics are OK, but nothing spectacular. Combat? Meh, hold down mouse to autofire (including auto-reload). Your main challenge is learning what mobs are immune (no, not resistant, immune) to what weapons.
As of 2 weeks ago, I'd say for me the following are the negatives:
- Classes are not sufficiently different. Also, FINAL class is reached at 30, after which you're just distributing skill and attribute points, but getting no new abilities.
- Skills are often useless and in some cases still rather broken. Worse, your level 1-5 skills are pretty much enough to run the entire game on, barring the occasional skill point in a new type of armor.
- Storyline is trite and derivative (alien invasion, some humans escape earth to regroup and fight, now learning to use abilities Aliens left in our genes - Star Gate, Hubbard, Erich von Daniken etc. already covered that, and did it better)
- Crafting is nothing more than adding looted mods to existing weapons , assembling loot into ammo etc. Pretty no-brain stuff. Everyone can make a crafting toon, and be pretty much self-sufficient.
- The kill quests (e.g. kill x miasmas) encourage kill-stealing. XP may be shared to an extent with those not grouped, but loot rights/kill credit are not. There are a lot of kill quests.
- I got to 36 while levelling in beta. At that point, I had yet to see any effects of the 'moral choices' some quests make you take. This may sound trivial, but they ARE promoting the game with these 'moral choices' , and I had rather expected to notice effects.
- HUGE negative: the Dell advertising all over the place. Every single computer, whether in field camps or in bases, had the name DELL prominently hovering above it. I do not know if this made it into live, but it was obnoxiously the case in open beta.
- Quite a lot of the landscape is 'pathed', forcing you to follow invisible paths. They use different techniques to do so, but to me, it always ruins the illusion of having an open world to wander in. Sometimes it's an impenetrable wall of forrest, sometimes it's a slope that looks climable, but is not (and irritatingly enough, there will be slopes with the same angle in other places that you CAN climb). Some zones are more open that others in this regard.
- There's an annoying amount of places where an exploring player can get stuck in (and sometimes UNDER) the landscape.
- Mob variety is pretty disappointing after a while. You basically keep running into the same old mobs, with an upgraded efficiency level.
- Replay value isn't really all that high. You need pretty much all available missions to level through most zones after the first one, so after the first time, there's nothing new to explore. Missions themselves are mostly the well-known 'Kill x amount of y / loot x amount of y by killing z', 'excort x to y', 'carry object x to y', 'get object x and bring to y' and of course 'go to waypoint x to find logos y'.
- Defending / retaking outposts from NPCs doesn't really do it for me.
- The combat was going through so many rebalances (weapon damage changes, ammo changes, armor changes, mob damage output) in the last 2-3 weeks of beta, PVP wasn't even in the cards: we had our hands full with the PVE. I somehow suspect that PVP is anything but balanced at this point.
- Armor customisation is pretty much limited to painting kits, as the set you start with, will be replaced by loot of a different style in no time. Those painting kits, incidentally, only paint certain surfaces on the armor. Effects can be very unsatisfactory. Face customisation is limited to 30 or so faces that all look the same, some truly horrible hairstyles and the ugliest sets of glasses/goggles ever. Length... well, I never did see much of a difference between my minimal height toon and my maximum height one. Just consider customisation non-existent.
Others can no doubt give you the positives, but the above is pretty much why I'm not playing in live.
Linna
so i've got two sides of the coin. Thanks to those who posted.
I've played WoW as my main mmo prior to this, with some dabbling in EQ2 and LOTR:O both very short.
However I was a huge Ultima Online fan, that is really what I played for about 2 years before I got into WoW which tbh is something I regret, but thats another story.
In an MMO things that peeve me off would be,
Having to group to get alot of the game done. Maybe just running about with my mate would be good but I am tired of the LFG monotony that WoW presented me with.
Don't like raiding either.
I like to PVP, I know it isn't properly in this game yet so we can leave that one alone.
Traveling, I dislike loads and loads of traveling I must admit. I like to jump into the action.
I like the game to have a good feel, if there was a positive I got from WoW it had great feel. Character movement and the surrounding area was great, how does TR compare? It's something I disliked alot in EQ2 and LOTR:O that the characters felt very cumbersome and not free flowing. Some may say WoW is just the same but not from my point of view.
Are there any 'boss' type monsters in TR? That give extra loot? Like a Balron in UO or ofcourse end of dungeon boss in WoW. Are they solo'able?
What are the sniper rifles like on this game? I must admit I love to use a sniper, can I just sit there and pick off mobs that are quite a distance away then go and pick up all the loot?
In the end you keep coming back to an mmo because it gets new stuff, right? Are there any concrete details on new stuff being added? I mean this game doesn't require an 'overhall' of anything does it?
That's all my questions for now I guess, I
THe other thing I forgot to mention is the kill multipliers and grouping.
If you get overkill (not sure how its calculated) a red skull appears above your dead opponent for a few seconds - you can then run in and whack them with a melee attack to get double XP.
The other kill multiplier is when you kill a certain amount of enemies in a short time you get an XP bonus. The more you kill the bigger the bonus upto 200% xp (so double).
The game is very solo friendly. To the point that groups arent required for missions. Sure its fun to group and play with people, and in instanced missions there are larger spawn numbers if you group.
However the kill multiplier isnt shared across the group (when I grouped in beta - I hope this has changed). Also XP from a shared kill is given out to the 3 people who do the most damage. With the many area of effect attacks soldier get it can be hard to get XP as a specialist from killing stuff.
Other things that annoy me in groups - if you play a healer role there is no XP from healing.
Looking for group functionality is currently limited to a seperate channel.
There is no housing. The game could definitely use some sort of clan shared bunker and armory.
Travelling is pretty quick with the teleporters between outposts.
You dont have to go very far to find some action with the base assaults / defences. These seem to happen every 10 to 15 minutes.
Havent tried the sniper rifle yet, but the normal rifles are great. You can sit up on a hill above the frontlines in divide and snipe the bane caretakers (healers) to stop them healing their allies.
You can get up on the walls of bases to shoot from behind cover, up in the second story of towers to shoot out the windows, and there are bunkers around where you can hunker down to do some shooting.
EMP rifles are great for taking out pesky shield drones that protect their allies from damage. Sonic rifles have a knockback effect, and electric rifles strip shields really quickly.
There are no raids as yet - although there is talk of putting something similar in for high level characters.
No real bosses - although there are named critters that can be a lot tougher.
And some really nasty mechanical critters walking/flying around.
It's hard to say how the solo friendliness is at this point. They have been making a LOT of sweeping changes in the last weeks of beta, and as I was testing the high level content, I haven't really been back to the lower stuff.
I mostly played as a Sniper (Soldier (5) -> Ranger (15)-> Sniper (30), got to 36. Your signature weapon is the torqueshell rifle, with optimal firing distance 80 meters. At the point I stopped playing, they had just reduced the rendering distance to 50 meters to reduce lag. The torqueshell is a very powerful rifle but also very slow weapon (4 seconds warmup, 2 seconds cooldown, single shot), that can oneshot minions. With the nerf in effective range, it became very hard to play, especially since they simultaneously did a dramatic reduction in the effectiveness of your signature armor, both in armor rating and in special ability (stealth armor, lowers your agro range, currently by a maximum of 50%) AND upped the mob difficulty . In the high level zones (Ligo), playing a sniper solo was almost impossible at that point, even when falling back on the tier 1 weapons.
Linna
Any voice chat integrated into the game?
I support Belgiums efforts to get noticed ... at all.
Linna