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Richard Garriott, NCSoft Finally Reveal Tabula Rasa
An anonymous reader writes "GameSpy has released the first concrete details on Ultima creator Richard Garriott's PC sci-fi MMORPG, Tabula Rasa, after years of development at Destination Games and NCSoft. The game promises to do away with MMO annoyances such as excessive 'travel time', indicating: 'one of the first elements added to the game was the ability to teleport to a friend - not as a power, but merely as an ability inherent to anyone in the world.' The combat system (in which the developers 'took inspiration from console titles like Soul Calibur II') and level structure is also more unconventional: 'The bulk of the game outside of the Hubs and the Estates is focused on squad-based cooperative gameplay in instanced missions that are available to anyone.'" GameSpy also has first in-depth details on another NCSoft title, Auto Assault, offering "[massively multiplayer] car combat in a Mad Max-type universe."
I'm gonna form a clan consisting entirely of Subaru WRX's and 1974 Dodge Darts..........
NCSoft is building up quite a stable of MMORPGS. While it remains to be seen how many of them are going to be high quality, I think should consider an "all-access" pass (like Sony, only with different games to play). I can see players being really into Lineage II or City of Heroes - but also enjoying an occasional car pileup.
The market will only support so many monthly subscriptions at once - but they could ensure themselves a bigger slice of that pie by offering a bit of a buffet.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
I am of mixed opinions on this ... Sci-Fi tradionally doesn't do as well (gameplay-wise, financially, etc) as historical / social settings (i.e.Age of Empires, Sims, etc), because of the lack of familiarity and ability to relate to the material. i.e. techno-babble.
Hopefully I'll be proven wrong, and the game will be a lot of fun.
Can anyone comment on the strengths and weaknesses of KOTOR ?
Anyone else see this "teleport to friend" as an insane battlefield advantage? I haven't read up on their game, so perhaps there's no PVP going, but imagine sneaking a thief into an enemy city then a whole clan of players "teleporting to friend". Boom! an invasion force! That'd be sweet! (or... devastating.)
Good to see Garriot learning about game design, and admitting it.
"Dramatic Compression" is otherwise known as "dead-time." If the player is bored, then your game is missing the elements of fun.
i.e. Why is the player bored ?
Paraphrasing Sid Meir "You want to present the player with interesting choices - problems and offer solutions - none which are the only correct answer, as they work towards the over-riding goals."
It's interesting to note that card & board games typically don't have dead-time.
Movies have learnt this ages ago -- keep the story moving. Of course that doesn't mean you can't have slow buildups, or build the tension, but if the tension it is never resolved, you just don't feel right. People want completion. That's why games have goals. The devil is in the details as they say -- How you get there is just as important as the goal itself.
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So when America has 2 buildings bombed, that's called Terrorism.
But when America genocides another nation, that's called ending the War?!
Are morals Relative? Absolute? Both? Neither?!
I recall that being a very popular 'paper' game back in the day - and we used to use micro machines to portray our vehicles. A MMO with that background might go over very well.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Here's Garriott's take on Tabula Rasa about a year ago.
I believe that the market will force the MMOG industry to abolish the up-front fee within a few years. Some publishers are already doing that (and more), but the majority seem dead-set on requiring me to pay $49.95 to test the waters. This has kept me away from some that I might otherwise enjoy. Those that offer free trials are in the minority, and should do more to tout their low-barrier-to-entry. Horizons, made by the same folks who brought us the excellent Mordor, might be good, but until about ten minutes ago, I had assumed that they, too, required the initial investment to try out.
Commercial and shareware demos exist because there's so much competition there -- consumers can usually overlook a title that doesn't allow them to kick the tires. Given the sheer number of MMORPGs that exist, I think it it won't be long before their publishers follow suit. Guild Wars' model -- free play, with sales generated from expansions -- is a great way to differentiate it from other games. And what better way to hook someone? C'mon, man. The first one's free.
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Amusing trivia: Will Wright on his first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay: "I found that I was having more fun actually creating and editing these islands than I was actually bombing them in the game."
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
id released Quake 3 on Win32, Mac, and Linux. That was years ago. Probably before S2Games was even around. If I remember correctly there were also Linux versions of Quake 1 and 2 released for download. All you had to do was copy the graphic files off of your regular CD to the right directory.
Don't get me wrong, Savage is hella fun, but the first big name multi-OS release credit goes to id.
There were some real forgotten classics from Origin in that time, Moebius and Ogre for instance. Well worth looking into.
Hah, Garriott made my favorite RPG of all time, Ultima 4. Now it seems he is the only one who "gets it" and wants to cut the boring parts out of MMO's. He's going to get my money just to see what he does. Ah, and for those who are concerned with the sci-fi format, Origin put out a pretty good Sci-FI RPG game back around the Ultima 4-5 days called 2400AD. Check it out.
It was an early Steve Jackson game that Origin licensed.
As someone else suggested, there are lots of ways to get around the travel time in Morrowind.
You can purchase transport at all of the major cities in the game. If you complete the Boots of Blinding Speed quest you can increase your speed 200 points whenever you feel like it. If you collect the Propylon indices, you can teleport between the various Dwemer fortresses. If you have any magic skills, you can learn Mark/Recall, Divine Intervention, and Almsivi Intervention. There are two handy magical items (Amulet of Levitation and Blade of the Wind(?)) that let you levitate basically as much as you want to get over mountains.
The skill system is awesome, IMO. I am usually not a fan of RPGs at all, but basing levels and skills on how much you use them made me really interested in Morrowind.
The only complaint I had about the game was the over-abundance of Cliff Racers.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Reading this article, a lot of the new gameplay dynamics, (such as reduced travel time to meet with friends, persistent "hubs" that give access to instanced areas, and focus on group co-op missions) sounds a LOT like what Guild Wars is doing. Only this will be Sci Fi. Not that I'm complaining, it sounds like a lot of fun. Hopefully, this will be the new standard for MMO gameplay. Seems NCSoft is all over this too...
like the one in Soul Calibur 2?. That would mean that, no matter how much time you played, or which level you are, some annoying kid mashing the keyboard could give you a good kicking in the ass.
3D fighters = button mashing = suckiness.
It's very interesting the way they approached the design of the game. Instead of pouncing on a smattering of ideas and play mechanics and pushing them together, Long and Garriott whent back to basics and tried to figure out exactly what makes games fun, and how they could narrow down gameplay to these specifications. Instead of making "just another MMO game", they're trying to do something newish and somewhat untried by combining many styles of play and interaction from various different genres. While it's not completely free of derivation (*grin*), the concepts just may work - perhaps not altogether, but overall the game sounds like a pleasure. I suppose in a way, this sounds like those cross-genre titles that've been failing to dominate sales in the past decade, but the problem with them is that [I suspect oft-times] the developers took discrete and traditional modes of play [for those genres] and tried to cobble them together with narry a thought about how players would appreciate them and how the game experience would be altered according to the mindsets that came with them.
There are specific design processes that they are utilizing here that are significant, irregardless of their knowledge of them - they're trying to focus on how users experience and deal with/enjoy games instead of just trying ideas out in a shotgun approach.
I think I'm going to put my money on it when it finally debuts.
----- Wtcher Dragon, UDIC