Tabula Rasa: The Last Wormhole Home Tabula Rasa is nearly done, so two birds with one stone today, what with being rather more lazy than usual with the blog posting, and the last in my somewhat presumptuous What TR Did Wrong series, and another in my Many Faces of Van Hemlock one.

I'd imagine my own personal tale of Tabula Rasa was not so different form everyone else's. I think gave it the old Three Month Rule, and didn't start playing until early February '08, coincidentally, during my last blog-vacation, and Episode #1 of the podcast features a few of my first impressions of the title. I think my own admission of 'I'm not really playing this anymore, am I?' came around mid-July of the same year; a stint of about five or six months of Playing it Properly. I since "resubbed" in December, on the news of the whole things immanent demise, paying one month before it went free, and I suppose, I'm still playing it now, or at least for the next three days anyway.

 

Tabula Rasa Van Hemlock

Who?

My main was always a Soldier > Commando > Grenadier path character. I did muck about with the cloning a bit, but none of the other classes felt quite as gutsy. For me, it was always about the Starship Troopers of it all, and I had little truck with the pseudo-magic 'Logos' system. I loved the collection/exploration aspect of it, but the actual spellcasting...pah! I'm a space trooper, not a wizard! My sole concession to the Logos Use was the low-end Rage buff, which you basically just had to keep refreshing now and then for a 50% damage bonus, and some resistance thrown in. Very handy, I'll admit. Mostly, it was about the guns...lots of guns, and by the end, I had 'Pump V' in Firearms, Machineguns, Rocket Launchers and Propellant Guns. I also went V in Graviton Armour. And to be honest, that was all I ever needed - including Other Players.

I reached L47 under my own steam, during my time there, three short of the cap, before the Super-Crazy-Game-Over-2000%XP-Boosters went in, and I like to think I'd have made it to 50 anyway.

When?

During my active phase earlier last year, it was a once-a-week game for me, occupying the Monday booking that I now spend in LotRO. The pace of the game meant that I couldn't really cope with much more obsessive play than that, and I've rambled previously about that extra draining effect on its players that the MMOFPS will have to overcome to become mainstream. The sessions were spent mostly duoing with a long-time friend, or soloing on those rare occasions I'd dip in at other times of the week.

This recent spree has mostly been a quick hour here a quickhour there, what with my already full evening week, but enough to remind myself of it all, and take a last look at some remarkable places and sights.

Where?

My main sequence of play saw me work all the way up from Concordia Wilderness, to Ligo Ashen Desert before losing interest a bit. While the overall geography of the two planets involved tended to repeat somewhat; Foreas with its very traditional MMO-like forests and the more alien crags and lava of Arieki, both had some very well designed zones which I will genuinely miss, including:

  • The Trench Areas of Divide, an early introduction to a really wartorn bit of fighting, very well executed, with shellfire, emplacements and foxholes, very Saving Private Ryan.
  • The Geyser Chimney Area of Plains, with nearby looming Atta colony and bizarre twisted crags, a truly alien place which did the whole Sci-fi angle a service.
  • Most of Marshes, a swampy map which really lent a Vietnam slant to the ongoing bi-global conflict. I think I hated fighting in these places, which suggests that it was very well done!
  • Ortho Post CP, in Incline. A problematic mechanic at best, here was oe of the few places where enough players seemed to congregate to make it work right. I'd grudgingly admit, it was fun when it did work as intended.
  • Ashen Desert, a place of almost Dune-like surreal otherworldliness; huge alien machines rising from the ash dunes, saluting the vast boiling sun overhead. Every now and then, the game would really shine with world-design brilliance, but too often, it then relapsed into a very standard MMO look and feel to its maps.
  • Favourite Instance: Torcastra Prison. While the typical Bane Interior tileset got to be very samey after a while, that hadn't really set in at this point, on the Divide map, and in any case, this instance had a nice variety of areas throughout; canyons approach, outlying facilities, and the prison itself. The objective was interesting; a full on assault to get our guys back, the bosses were suitably challenging; a Hunter with insane reflection, and the first Juggernaut I'd ever seen among them, and in general, a hard fight and a job well done. There were even puzzles in there, in the form of coded doorlocks for the cells. All in all, very satisfying.

Later instances showed less panache though, and toward the end, I had trouble telling one from another - especially the 'Go in this Bane Base and Blow Up A Thing, and Rescue a Dude' ones.

Why?

I know, I know...I should know better these days, but back then, I was quite excited about a Sci-Fi MMOFPS. I'll roll an elf if needs be - I need my fix after-all, but really, I'm a sci-fi person, and this one in particular interested me, as I thought it was going to be a PvE Planetside. I like Planetside, but its a shame that its only PvP - I like saving the day and killing monsters too you know! And I think I found that in Tabula Rasa - at least at first. Perhaps it wasn't what I wanted after-all and it took a project like TR to show me that - who knows? I don't feel cheated, and don't regret my time and money spent in TR, but in the end?

I think it should have been a single-player game.

Seriously; tidy up the plot and story, add cut-scenes and some interesting NPCs, chuck it on the shelf and walk away.

 

One the one hand, throughout my time in TR, I never once felt like I needed anyone else. It was nice to duo most of it, for companionship, but much of what we did together, either of us could have done alone. I was soloing Instances, where I still got xp and was getting drops I could use. I've no idea if some of the instances were designed for solo play or not, but in general, the only place I could really have used a hand, was the Control Points, and I've ranted enough about those.

With the chosen weapon and armour maxed out - Rocket Launchers in my case, there wasn't much I couldn't cope with that wasn't completely out of my level range, including red and orange type bosses, and with Launchers V, Rage V, kneeling and a few seconds to zero in, and I'd one-hit most things my own level, and some above. The challenge level of day to day play was just right - tricky in parts, but in general manageable, to the point that it simply didn't occur to me that I ought to be seeking help.

From a mechanical perspective, I'm not sure the grouping ever really worked in the conventional sense. I tried it a few times, as Grenadier and a Medic type alt, and the inter-dependencies of the group in Tabula Rasa were never very strong. A healing 'gun' that actually has to be aimed in a hectic circle-strafe firefight is probably a bit much for an MMO audience really. The Leech Gun was quite clever (combined health drain and AoE group heal), but I'm not sure I ever worked out how to taunt as a Grenadier. mostly I figured that grouping was basically just MOAR DPS and that was about it. I wasn't going out of my way to be social, true, but the few times I did PUG, the Usual Troubles (Time taken to organise/travel, mismatched mission journals, sudden disappearances, etc), weren't really offset by the benefits, so soloing was the more natural choice.

 

On the other hand, I was quite getting into the story of it all. The tale of the Eloh and Neph, Mankind's fugitive exodus, the Foreans, the Brann, the hidden power of the Logos. Interesting backstory that to be honest, the game got in the way of a bit. I wanted to collect the Logos, partly to be able to read the stories and fragments of wisdom dotted here and there on the strange monoliths. Studded throughout the game were momentary glimpses of a very good Sci-fi Ripping Yarn; the Palisades Temples and Eloh Value; the Temporal Chamber on the bridge in Plateau. Hints of the 'Neph', the real villains of the piece, whom the Thrax were merely servants of...all these moments that suddenly engaged me, drew me in, only to drop me back in the fedex missions and rat-hunts again shortly after, and it all seemed such a waste.

So yes, I think the biggest problem that Tabula Rasa had, was that it was an MMO at all. With a slightly different direction, it could have been an incredible narrative journey; a Mass Effect, a Halo, a Knights of the Old Republic, indeed, an Ultima 2025AD, instead of a problematic multi-player project that ended up bowing to the compromises required of sharing a world with a thousand other people who are all also The Hero, and breaking under the strain.

 

 

Incidentally, the inclusion of character name on the screen shot is on purpose! Tabula Rasa's last day coincides with our podcast recording day, so it would be a shame to miss the opportunity do try a bit of a live broadcasting experiment!

I've no idea what kind of last day fun and games they game itself has planned, but I'll be lurking about on the Centarus (EU) server, in the Foreas Divide base bar from 1:00pm UK time on Saturday 28th Feb, while we record the show, so do pop along if you can, and, er, sort of be on the show, after a fashion! A highly experimental kind of thing, I shouldn't wonder...