Tabula Rasa

[Rayne]

Originally Posted by Draegan

Gamespot says Q3 2007. So, "soon"?

"Soon". The universal "catch phrase" of the digital millenium!

[Rhaze]

"One important note about leveling in Tabula Rasa is that the team has implemented what they call a "Cloning" system. You can create exact copies of your character, at any time you wish, which allows you to go back and play another version of your character - possibly allowing you to choose a different path from what you may have on your first character. This was designed so that players never have to start over at level one, unless by choice. For example, let's say you reach level fifteen; if your class is Specialist, you now have to choose to become either a Sapper or a Bio-technician. Before choosing is a good time to create a clone of your character; this will make another level fifteen version of your Specialist, so you can play both a Sapper and a Bio-technician, without having to start over. "


That's ^ ^ awesome.

After reading that review im definately itching to play this game.

[Draegan]

Yea the cloning system looks great. I wonder how that will be organized. I'm sure it will be painless. Lets see. It might suck if you forget to clone and then you're stuck.

[Zerai]

Ranger looks awesome. Stealth sniper? Yes please.

[Draegan]

Engineer and Grenadier look cool. Engineer for all the little toys of destruction, and Grenadier for mass destruction.

[Kodylan]

Originally Posted by spentmotiff

Great write-up Kodylan.

Since you played that Sapper character, any news on what the "Hacking" skill does? Are you able to hack into the Bane's computers and do fun and exciting things? If they do that hacking skill correctly and there is use for it in the game, it looks like it could be tons of fun...

I didn't get a chance to try out the skill myself, but yes, that's the gist of it. You'll be able to hack into various technical and mechanical things in the game.

Originally Posted by Draegan

Yea the cloning system looks great. I wonder how that will be organized. I'm sure it will be painless. Lets see. It might suck if you forget to clone and then you're stuck.

It's a fairly painless process. There's a cloning option in-game, and what you do is essentially log out to character select when you click that option. There's then a "Clone" button; select your character and click clone, then you're prompted to create a name, and that's that.

Oh and, the gameplay trailer is now up: June 2007 HQ Gameplay Trailer Video | Curse

It took us a bit longer than we'd hoped to get it up, since our video section is still in beta, so we had a compression bug that caused some problems last night.

[Zerai]

Sending tells, does it use your surname or your character name that you're online with?

[Kodylan]

Originally Posted by Zerai

Sending tells, does it use your surname or your character name that you're online with?

The chat system uses surname, from what I saw. Whenever I'd type something it'd show the surname I selected, so I'm not sure how they'll differentiate between characters just yet.

[Mkopec1]

How do the mechanics of the game look and feel? Tight? Still lotsa work?

The classes, how do they intermingle, are there healers like Doctors? How do they handle healing ...etc..

[Kodylan]

Originally Posted by Mkopec1

How do the mechanics of the game look and feel? Tight? Still lotsa work?

The classes, how do they intermingle, are there healers like Doctors? How do they handle healing ...etc..

The mechanics feel very solid as of our hands on session. I can't speak about max-level content as we didn't really experience any of it, but it was a very tight, fast paced style of gameplay. It truly felt like an action game in some cases, rather than your typical MMO.

There are healers, yes. Specialists are the first healers - they can heal and also repair armor. The health/armor works very similar to PlanetSide. Armor absorbs a portion of the damage until you're out of armor, then you take full damage in health instead. Armor/Health regenerate by themselves as well, but Specialists are capable of speeding that up.

When I looked over the healing skill, I noticed that at higher tiers you can actually fire off AE heals, but most are targeted heals. So it's again similar to PlanetSide or other FPS games - you mouse over someone and click your fire button while your Healing Disc is out, and it heals them.

Something I forgot to mention is their hotbar system. You have two hotbars and they're assigned keys. Q cycles through the left bar, E cycles through the right bar. So you can place different weapons on your left bar and hit Q to cycle through them fairly quickly. Same for the right bar; put some skills there and you can cycle through them to change your active skill.

[Aedosen]

Originally Posted by Kodylan

The mechanics feel very solid as of our hands on session. I can't speak about max-level content as we didn't really experience any of it, but it was a very tight, fast paced style of gameplay. It truly felt like an action game in some cases, rather than your typical MMO.

I´d be really interested in hearing what is it exactly that you do at max-level. Anyone got info about this ?

[Rhaze]

my only concern with this game is how much depth will there be? Is it basically just these action paced missions, wouldn't just mission running get repetetive?

PS: how do i make it so threads show more then 10 posts per page?

[tjac]

Originally Posted by Kodylan

To summarize: the game is awesome.

"Overall Tabula Rasa feels and plays like a new experience in an otherwise creatively drab, aging generation of MMOG's. It's a welcome addition to the market, and should add a little spice to the bland after-taste that recent MMO releases have left in everyone's mouths. With the game, NCSoft has what truly appears to be the first in the second generation of MMOG's - a title that doesn't rest on laurels of the past."

In the wake of the Vanguard debacle, I would be wary of such bold statements. There are NDA-gagged people on these forums who play/have played the game for hours, and their critiques would be much more substantial and accurate.

[Draegan]

Nice video, game looks great.

I am interested in the equipment. I've been playing a lot of different MMOs recently, cycling through a bunch. Since the first of this year I've played LOTRO, WOW, EQ2 and VG. I've noticed something in the trends of how you gain equipment. WOW has progression in rarity and slots (i.e. you don't really get head gear until the 20s normally).

How does TR do equipment? Do you have legs, head, shoulders, weapons and ammo etc? How did they do gear? I noticed in the article you wrote about gearing up in the first instance. How did that work out for you? Can you share what kind of gear you found and what kind of stats were on it?

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by tjac

In the wake of the Vanguard debacle, I would be wary of such bold statements. There are NDA-gagged people on these forums who play/have played the game for hours, and their critiques would be much more substantial and accurate.

I took it as that the game doesn't take from previous games. Different game mechanics, different class mechanics, different UI mechanics, different style/theme/lore mechanics.