Well, the NDA on Tabula Rasa is lifted. So... what is TR? TR is a sci-fi based MMO-shooter. The setting: an alien race, the Bane, almost extinguished mankind - and several other races on other planets. The humans main allies are the somewhat shamanistic Eloh who teach the survivors the use of logos, some sort of language which letters (logos) you can find spread around the different planets. Futuristic human and Bane (an alien race that almost terminated humanity and several other planets / races, the main enemy) structures, weapons, dropships etc.
With the combination of firearms and logo abilities, you fight the Bane, the animals corrupted by the Bane, and other enemies in mostly medium-sized quest-driven (instanced) zones and small very story-driven instances.
Your main source of damage are your firearms. There are three basic weapons (pistols, rifles, shotguns) and one specific firearm per career tree option (however, most of those career tree weapons use way to much ammo to be efficient). You have to target your enemy FPS style. However, it's not completely FPS-style, you rather get a bonus on your hit chance and I think also damage when you correctly aim at your target. The upside: it's different. The downside: it's kinda hard to control what you are shooting at because the interface displays all health/armor bars of the direction you are looking at.
Additionally, you can use logo abilities that you can learn and improve by spending training points. Speaking of character advancement: all players start with the same class. At lv5, you can choose b/w soldier (damage-oriented) or specialist (support-oriented). There are other career choices at lv15 and lv30. Each lv-up, you get 2 training points for skills and 3 attribute points. Increasing a skill by one rank costs previous rank +1 training points. So to skill up to rank 5, you have to spend 1+2+3+4+5=15 of 100 available training points. That means you can max out not more than six abilities of which two or three are passive and not active-use.
The problem (currently?) is: there are some skills that are way superior compared to other choices, e.g. 'firearms' greatly increases damage of all three basic weapons (pistols, shotguns, rifles) vs. an armor type that increases your run speed by up to 5%. So differentiation b/w characters actually starts at lv15 or so, from lv1-14 they somewhat all feel the same because of certain "must-have" skills (lv5 firearms, lv3 tools for medi-kits + rez / lv3-5 rage, lv3-5 lightning --> 15+6+6=30 of 100 training points are somewhat pre-defined).
Due to the lack of character difference in early levels, there are also no different roles or something like 'control of the enemy'. When you group, there are (almost) no synergies, instead of one player it's several players shooting at (many) health bars. That enhances egoistic behavior, plus you can just overrun enemies with your combined firepower without the use of any tactical planning. So you basically see a lot of comparably large bars. Quite confusing. Because of that, it's also quite hard to control or focus or assist mobs / enemies, instead of "I control the situation" you rather have the impression of shooting at bars until there are none to shoot at any more.
Only at lv15, the basic archetypes / roles start to flesh out: commandos = heavily armored brutes, rangers = stealthed damage dealers, sappers = use of mechanical and explosive support, biotechnichian = healer. I playtested a biotechnichian and it was pretty senseless: the most effective tool for healing were still the armor repair and heal discs I already acquired as a specialist. At lv30, those archetypes flesh out even more - I hope in a better and more unique way... However, you don't get the impression of making meaningful choices in the early levels which makes it quite hard to delve into the TR world in the beginning due to the lack of personification / identification b/w the player and the character.
The crafting also doesn't contribute to character individualization: you can loot crafting recipes to enhance your weapons / armor, craft colors to customize your character appearance or tools like medikits and ammunition. However, as soon as you use one of those recipes, it's gone forever - you don't learn it, you have to find a new one to craft it again. Not very achiever-friendly and rather tedious. Plus, the weapon enhancements are quite costly and it's way easier to find new and better weapons then improve your current one for tons of credits / gold.
In short: there are some new and nice elements / ideas (FPS style fighting, logo language, career choices), but they could have executed them a lot better / more appealing. Destination Games has one more month to fix those issues. If they don't, I'd guess TR aka Destination Games will have the destination of being Sigil'ed: famous person + crappy game design = epic failure.
With the combination of firearms and logo abilities, you fight the Bane, the animals corrupted by the Bane, and other enemies in mostly medium-sized quest-driven (instanced) zones and small very story-driven instances.
Your main source of damage are your firearms. There are three basic weapons (pistols, rifles, shotguns) and one specific firearm per career tree option (however, most of those career tree weapons use way to much ammo to be efficient). You have to target your enemy FPS style. However, it's not completely FPS-style, you rather get a bonus on your hit chance and I think also damage when you correctly aim at your target. The upside: it's different. The downside: it's kinda hard to control what you are shooting at because the interface displays all health/armor bars of the direction you are looking at.
Additionally, you can use logo abilities that you can learn and improve by spending training points. Speaking of character advancement: all players start with the same class. At lv5, you can choose b/w soldier (damage-oriented) or specialist (support-oriented). There are other career choices at lv15 and lv30. Each lv-up, you get 2 training points for skills and 3 attribute points. Increasing a skill by one rank costs previous rank +1 training points. So to skill up to rank 5, you have to spend 1+2+3+4+5=15 of 100 available training points. That means you can max out not more than six abilities of which two or three are passive and not active-use.
The problem (currently?) is: there are some skills that are way superior compared to other choices, e.g. 'firearms' greatly increases damage of all three basic weapons (pistols, shotguns, rifles) vs. an armor type that increases your run speed by up to 5%. So differentiation b/w characters actually starts at lv15 or so, from lv1-14 they somewhat all feel the same because of certain "must-have" skills (lv5 firearms, lv3 tools for medi-kits + rez / lv3-5 rage, lv3-5 lightning --> 15+6+6=30 of 100 training points are somewhat pre-defined).
Due to the lack of character difference in early levels, there are also no different roles or something like 'control of the enemy'. When you group, there are (almost) no synergies, instead of one player it's several players shooting at (many) health bars. That enhances egoistic behavior, plus you can just overrun enemies with your combined firepower without the use of any tactical planning. So you basically see a lot of comparably large bars. Quite confusing. Because of that, it's also quite hard to control or focus or assist mobs / enemies, instead of "I control the situation" you rather have the impression of shooting at bars until there are none to shoot at any more.
Only at lv15, the basic archetypes / roles start to flesh out: commandos = heavily armored brutes, rangers = stealthed damage dealers, sappers = use of mechanical and explosive support, biotechnichian = healer. I playtested a biotechnichian and it was pretty senseless: the most effective tool for healing were still the armor repair and heal discs I already acquired as a specialist. At lv30, those archetypes flesh out even more - I hope in a better and more unique way... However, you don't get the impression of making meaningful choices in the early levels which makes it quite hard to delve into the TR world in the beginning due to the lack of personification / identification b/w the player and the character.
The crafting also doesn't contribute to character individualization: you can loot crafting recipes to enhance your weapons / armor, craft colors to customize your character appearance or tools like medikits and ammunition. However, as soon as you use one of those recipes, it's gone forever - you don't learn it, you have to find a new one to craft it again. Not very achiever-friendly and rather tedious. Plus, the weapon enhancements are quite costly and it's way easier to find new and better weapons then improve your current one for tons of credits / gold.
In short: there are some new and nice elements / ideas (FPS style fighting, logo language, career choices), but they could have executed them a lot better / more appealing. Destination Games has one more month to fix those issues. If they don't, I'd guess TR aka Destination Games will have the destination of being Sigil'ed: famous person + crappy game design = epic failure.
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