HRose
02-16-2007, 10:05 PM
Since there's plenty of pointless hype about more terrible mmorpgs being released, here's some well founded and relevant hype about Tabula Rasa.
From an interview with Garriott himself (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/765/765698p1.html).
Instead of like with most MMOs in combat, you highlight a target, then you ignore the target, because he's just going to stand there and whack you—and you are staring at the interface and clicking fireball/fireball/swordswing/healing potion—Tabula Rasa is a game where you're really shooting through the reticle. You're constantly observing what's happening on the screen where you're aiming. It's still a role-playing game in the sense of when you shoot at something, it's based on your equipment and attributes as to who will be injured…but they're not just sitting there hitting you. Your opponent is moving and is aware of, say, if you're behind sand bags, he has a lower probability of hitting you, so he may instead run around to the side, kick you to the ground and start rifle-butting you as required, or however they can find their best position to engage you.
VE3D: So you have things like flanking in the [NPC] AI?
Richard Garriott: Exactly. That's one of the things we've been most pleased with. When you think about most MMOs, once you've determined your best weapon and method of distributing damage, you basically end up doing that repetitively with each opponent you encounter. We've worked very hard to make sure that each creature has an AI associated with it that will change the way you need to engage it. It goes through simple things, like damage types and resistances that will make you change weapon types or abilities you're using; but the more interesting things are those that will require you to change the way you need to engage them.
So, for example, one of the opponents is the Shield Drone. An enemy Shield Drone protects nearly perfectly the enemies protected by it, so they can shoot you, but you can't shoot them. So the only way to disrupt that circumstance is for a member of your party to essentially sacrifice themselves, run inside the Shield Drone area—which now means they're going to be hand-to-hand with every person inside that Shield Drone—and they're going to have to, once inside, take out the shield drone. And so the rest of your group will focus on keeping that person alive for however long it takes for that person to take the Shield Drone down. And so I think it makes the battlefields more interesting.
The way we tackle that in Tabula Rasa is, first of all, it has a more dynamic battlefield. First of all, along the boundary between the main human area and the Bane (which we call the enemy), we've scattered what we call Control Points, which are patterned largely after what you might see in some first-person shooters--; they are basically Capture the Flag-style outposts. When one side captures one of these outposts, the outpost converts to a support system for whichever side that captures it. For example, there're vendors that come online which you may not have access to otherwise, or the NPCs that give or finish missions come online or offline. There's a waypoint system that is accessible or not, based upon the status of that Control Point, and there's a hospital usually associated with them that is available as a respawn point [for the controlling faction].
So, the shared spaces are non-static. Enemies may start at their bases and work their way out along these Control Points. You can cut off supply lines at the source versus just having them appear in the field beside you. We think it makes a much more realistic world. So that's what I call the improvements in the shared spaces—in the group activities.
But then the instances we use for storytelling.
The elder game features include a long list of things, but first let me explain what gets you there. In most MMOs, [your progression] will be through a series of missions that lead you through the leveling process. In Tabula Rasa, each of the worlds we visit has a problem that we're dealing with. For example, the first world you're on has a peaceful indigenous population. If you just nuke the enemies, you might make it uninhabitable for the indigenous population you are there to ostensibly save. When you finish that plotline, you effectively finish that part of the story we're trying to tell; then when you've "graduated," you move on to the next chapter in the story.
In our game, we often give you multiple missions that can't be simultaneously completed, and you'll have to make the difficult decision of "who am I going to help here…what are the ramifications of helping one group over another?"
In most MMOs, the first decision you make is what class you're going to play, and that's a permanent decision for that character. And once you've started leveling, you can't really go check out the other classes without starting over at Level 1. So what I think often happens…people will focus on one character to get up to peak level. If you have to start all over again, that's what I would call one of the "opportunities to exit."
Tabula Rasa has a very different leveling mechanic. We have a class "tree" that your character goes through, and you can load and save your character state all up and down the tree. You can "clone" your character at any point along that tree. What that means is that you can, for example, once you've explored the soldier class up a few levels, you may decide what you really wanted to try was a ranger. Well, that ranger—which has more sniping and spy skills—that branch of the tree may have only been 10 or 15 levels behind you. You can go clone your character back at that branch and explore up the tree the other way. And so we think people will explore a much broader suite of all the content we provide compared to most MMOs.
you can PvP immediately…you can start the game in PvP. But the fictional basis for turf wars comes into play at the higher levels of the game.
I say well founded hype because there are some solid and innovative ideas in there that I definitely support.
As opposed to uninspired and soulless clones that just perpetuate the same glaring mistakes.
From an interview with Garriott himself (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/765/765698p1.html).
Instead of like with most MMOs in combat, you highlight a target, then you ignore the target, because he's just going to stand there and whack you—and you are staring at the interface and clicking fireball/fireball/swordswing/healing potion—Tabula Rasa is a game where you're really shooting through the reticle. You're constantly observing what's happening on the screen where you're aiming. It's still a role-playing game in the sense of when you shoot at something, it's based on your equipment and attributes as to who will be injured…but they're not just sitting there hitting you. Your opponent is moving and is aware of, say, if you're behind sand bags, he has a lower probability of hitting you, so he may instead run around to the side, kick you to the ground and start rifle-butting you as required, or however they can find their best position to engage you.
VE3D: So you have things like flanking in the [NPC] AI?
Richard Garriott: Exactly. That's one of the things we've been most pleased with. When you think about most MMOs, once you've determined your best weapon and method of distributing damage, you basically end up doing that repetitively with each opponent you encounter. We've worked very hard to make sure that each creature has an AI associated with it that will change the way you need to engage it. It goes through simple things, like damage types and resistances that will make you change weapon types or abilities you're using; but the more interesting things are those that will require you to change the way you need to engage them.
So, for example, one of the opponents is the Shield Drone. An enemy Shield Drone protects nearly perfectly the enemies protected by it, so they can shoot you, but you can't shoot them. So the only way to disrupt that circumstance is for a member of your party to essentially sacrifice themselves, run inside the Shield Drone area—which now means they're going to be hand-to-hand with every person inside that Shield Drone—and they're going to have to, once inside, take out the shield drone. And so the rest of your group will focus on keeping that person alive for however long it takes for that person to take the Shield Drone down. And so I think it makes the battlefields more interesting.
The way we tackle that in Tabula Rasa is, first of all, it has a more dynamic battlefield. First of all, along the boundary between the main human area and the Bane (which we call the enemy), we've scattered what we call Control Points, which are patterned largely after what you might see in some first-person shooters--; they are basically Capture the Flag-style outposts. When one side captures one of these outposts, the outpost converts to a support system for whichever side that captures it. For example, there're vendors that come online which you may not have access to otherwise, or the NPCs that give or finish missions come online or offline. There's a waypoint system that is accessible or not, based upon the status of that Control Point, and there's a hospital usually associated with them that is available as a respawn point [for the controlling faction].
So, the shared spaces are non-static. Enemies may start at their bases and work their way out along these Control Points. You can cut off supply lines at the source versus just having them appear in the field beside you. We think it makes a much more realistic world. So that's what I call the improvements in the shared spaces—in the group activities.
But then the instances we use for storytelling.
The elder game features include a long list of things, but first let me explain what gets you there. In most MMOs, [your progression] will be through a series of missions that lead you through the leveling process. In Tabula Rasa, each of the worlds we visit has a problem that we're dealing with. For example, the first world you're on has a peaceful indigenous population. If you just nuke the enemies, you might make it uninhabitable for the indigenous population you are there to ostensibly save. When you finish that plotline, you effectively finish that part of the story we're trying to tell; then when you've "graduated," you move on to the next chapter in the story.
In our game, we often give you multiple missions that can't be simultaneously completed, and you'll have to make the difficult decision of "who am I going to help here…what are the ramifications of helping one group over another?"
In most MMOs, the first decision you make is what class you're going to play, and that's a permanent decision for that character. And once you've started leveling, you can't really go check out the other classes without starting over at Level 1. So what I think often happens…people will focus on one character to get up to peak level. If you have to start all over again, that's what I would call one of the "opportunities to exit."
Tabula Rasa has a very different leveling mechanic. We have a class "tree" that your character goes through, and you can load and save your character state all up and down the tree. You can "clone" your character at any point along that tree. What that means is that you can, for example, once you've explored the soldier class up a few levels, you may decide what you really wanted to try was a ranger. Well, that ranger—which has more sniping and spy skills—that branch of the tree may have only been 10 or 15 levels behind you. You can go clone your character back at that branch and explore up the tree the other way. And so we think people will explore a much broader suite of all the content we provide compared to most MMOs.
you can PvP immediately…you can start the game in PvP. But the fictional basis for turf wars comes into play at the higher levels of the game.
I say well founded hype because there are some solid and innovative ideas in there that I definitely support.
As opposed to uninspired and soulless clones that just perpetuate the same glaring mistakes.