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Lessons learned from Tabula Rasa???
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I know yet another game to compair STO against, but I have a point.
If you don't know what Tabula Rasa was then this is for you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Rasa_(video_game)
I played this game, and it was fun for the 1st couple months. Then it got boring once the hype wore off. It was a game based around a war, and you pretty much just shot everything in site. You got armor and better weapons, and gain levels to high content. In the end Tabula Rasa didn't have the staying power to keep up with other MMOs, and the plug was pulled on it 14 months later. I lasted about 6 months into that game, then I cancelled my account. I didn't play it much after the 5th month, so what was the point.
Now I look at what I was hoping would be a great game in STO, it still can be one, but my fear is it might not learn from the mistakes Tabula Rasa made with their game.
In my mind I find it funny how Richard Garriott, who made The Ultima series and MMO, could make a game that lacked so much in Tabula Rasa. But I guess you have your good and bad times in life.
So what does this have to do with STO?
Well STO right now reminds me so much like Tabula Rasa, with the plan out of the box of having this huge war, and not having much else to fall back on. I was hoping we would have the following at least setup in the game.
1. Exploration - Not the zones we see now, were you fly in and do 3 missions, then drop out to once your done. But exploration were you found new things in the game, and you got to report your findings to your faction. Missions were you have story arcs start from them, and you started new arcs to other stories. Missions were you studied pre-warp worlds, and the Prime Directive had a part to play in what you did.
2. Diplomatic - You handle talks between groups, and try to keep the peace. Mission were you handle 1st contact, and how you do would pick if you gained a friend or foe for your faction. Shooting would be the last choice when doing these types of missions.
3. Crafting - I said this time and time again. You need true crafting to keep people happy. Building shuttles/ ships, making workstations, weapons for both ships and personal, etc etc etc. Yes we have replicators, but they don't make whole working units. You get parts from them, and that's only if the design is in the computer to make it. I never understood the arguement against having Trek like Crafting in STO from day one.
Now I understand we will see a change in the near future, and maybe they, the DEV team, will get it like WE want it.
My main point is this, look at the failure of games like Tabula Rasa. Then ask yourself are we as a company going down that same road? It's not too late to stop the slide towards that path, with the right fixes and changes, you can still turn this ship around, and I know your making plans to do so. Just remember this much if nothing else.
WoW was built with a vision: to make the world of the Warcraft RTS games comes to life in a vivid, fully 3D manner, and to create a game that the widest possible audience could enjoy.
What is STO vision? Is it still on track, or have you sacficed parts to bring it out sooner?
I don't want to see this game getting axed in 14 months, I want to see it be all it can be.
If you don't know what Tabula Rasa was then this is for you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Rasa_(video_game)
I played this game, and it was fun for the 1st couple months. Then it got boring once the hype wore off. It was a game based around a war, and you pretty much just shot everything in site. You got armor and better weapons, and gain levels to high content. In the end Tabula Rasa didn't have the staying power to keep up with other MMOs, and the plug was pulled on it 14 months later. I lasted about 6 months into that game, then I cancelled my account. I didn't play it much after the 5th month, so what was the point.
Now I look at what I was hoping would be a great game in STO, it still can be one, but my fear is it might not learn from the mistakes Tabula Rasa made with their game.
In my mind I find it funny how Richard Garriott, who made The Ultima series and MMO, could make a game that lacked so much in Tabula Rasa. But I guess you have your good and bad times in life.
So what does this have to do with STO?
Well STO right now reminds me so much like Tabula Rasa, with the plan out of the box of having this huge war, and not having much else to fall back on. I was hoping we would have the following at least setup in the game.
1. Exploration - Not the zones we see now, were you fly in and do 3 missions, then drop out to once your done. But exploration were you found new things in the game, and you got to report your findings to your faction. Missions were you have story arcs start from them, and you started new arcs to other stories. Missions were you studied pre-warp worlds, and the Prime Directive had a part to play in what you did.
2. Diplomatic - You handle talks between groups, and try to keep the peace. Mission were you handle 1st contact, and how you do would pick if you gained a friend or foe for your faction. Shooting would be the last choice when doing these types of missions.
3. Crafting - I said this time and time again. You need true crafting to keep people happy. Building shuttles/ ships, making workstations, weapons for both ships and personal, etc etc etc. Yes we have replicators, but they don't make whole working units. You get parts from them, and that's only if the design is in the computer to make it. I never understood the arguement against having Trek like Crafting in STO from day one.
Now I understand we will see a change in the near future, and maybe they, the DEV team, will get it like WE want it.
My main point is this, look at the failure of games like Tabula Rasa. Then ask yourself are we as a company going down that same road? It's not too late to stop the slide towards that path, with the right fixes and changes, you can still turn this ship around, and I know your making plans to do so. Just remember this much if nothing else.
WoW was built with a vision: to make the world of the Warcraft RTS games comes to life in a vivid, fully 3D manner, and to create a game that the widest possible audience could enjoy.
What is STO vision? Is it still on track, or have you sacficed parts to bring it out sooner?
I don't want to see this game getting axed in 14 months, I want to see it be all it can be.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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I'm not a crafter at heart, so I'll leave point 3 alone.
Point 1, I agree with. I like the idea of having a series of missions sometimes evolving from the general "explore the x nebula." How you handled the 2nd mission will either give you x or y story paths.
Point 2, could tie up with point 1 nicely. I support this thread because I want to see more subplots that evolve from patrols and exploration missions.
at the start the was NO PVE endgame
and the PVP endgame crashed the servers
and yet that games somehow still lives
I initially rolled a tactical officer, which i have no glaring dislike for, picked that class so i can use melee, and thats fun. Got that character to RA5, and found i basically had 2-3 hours of entertainment a day on him, not to mention tacs just dont compare to engineer or science officers. So i rolled an engineer next, now he's ra5, both characters ships are decked to the hill, as are they, and my bo's.
At this point i can do dailys, and infected. Infected is fun and all, but outside of the entertainment factor, theres no reason for me to go there, with the exception of the badges i may use in the future. I have all the gear that can drop in there already, with the exception of a weapon i may or may not use.
So now i have the klingon character left. Which i have a few options with
-Kahless expanse (why does it have a 5 minute universal reset timer, when fed enemy contacts can change instances after one is completed?)
-PVP which is fun, but initially the reward for doing it as a leveling aspect is a little ridiculous. Outside of the daily pvp quest, you're talking maybe 70-90xp per game as a reward. That adds up to about needing 40 games to go from lt 5 to ltcmdr 1, which doesnt sound bad. But the queue times are really long, and the fastest ones are KvK. For ground games thats fine, but in space, its a cloak fest. Not to mention the way teams are organized, why is it when theres 8 players in a game it sets up the team to be 5 on 3? I will say at lt cmdr the queues times go down a little bit and i see more feds pvping.
The problem is at the end of the day, im playing the same games at every rank with the only thing new being a ship and bo abilities. Theres nothing new.
Long story short it seems the game's more designed for stuff you don't do then stuff you actually do do. Granted klingons get pve next patch which from what i've seen and heard is basically explore missions.
I typed to much, and i may be complaining, but my complaint is i want to play the game.
I dunno, I dont think Id call that living per se...
Existing maybe.
Limping along definately. I took a free trial offer up a while back and either I was in an unpopular starting area or thgere was NOONE on. I didnt see one Player Character.
It had issues getting people to beta test it. For free. Garriot essentially decided to ignore what made UO good and start from scratch. That was risky. It was unfocused and plagued with development problems.
STO had people paying to beta test it. For money. The devs took parts of other games that worked and attempted to use those(not always successfully). It has a tight focus(to a fault, tbh), and, while released too early, hasn't had the kinds of development problems that hit TR.
As someone who's played and tested both, it's sort of annoying that a bunch of late-to-the-party armchair developers feel like lumping the two together.
Honestly, STO is more like an early WoW in terms of issues.
A game like STO that goes with a two year development cycle can put things in after launch based on what they subscribers are asking for. A game that invested four years putting in material in the hopes it will be what potential subscribers want is taking major gambles with their financial resources. If people don't like what has been put in the game, devs will have a hard time giving players what they do want since they've already spent a fortune on putting in what wasn't wanted.
I like the STO philosophy. Granted I mainly like it because I've seen so many four year projects fail in one way or another and I like the idea of players having much more influence on the game then they do in four year projects. I have no idea whether the two year model will work better than the four year models have but it is the best hope of the industry at the moment, imo. And when anyone asks me why, I point to games like Tabula Rasa.
Yep. Also as a person who was there and tested both, this is total truth. The only thing STO has in common with TR is that their Sci-Fi MMOs, but that's about where it ends folks.
My lesson learned? Avoid Garriot games. I'm one of the very few that honestly didn't care much for UO. I should have avoided TR, but dammit I wanted a decent Sci-Fi MMO to play and gave it a shot anyway.
This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Cryptic Studios Forum Usage Guidelines ~Dionaea
With this game Cryptic were given a deadline by Atari, so the question is will Atari realise that by gving Cyptic time and money for extra content/revamping they can have a long lived cash cow or do they want to take the money and run.
I am not tracking?
btw, What the OP says about Tabula Rasa is bollox.
The combat system was inovative. The missions told stories. The instances were challenging without being stupidly difficult. And the battles for control points were the most fun I have had playing a game.
Pity Garriot chose to spend the months after launch farting about in space rather than pushing his game.
Yeah, but.... dude... space. That's pretty sweet. Probably not $20 million sweet, but I'd drop a few grand on it if they had a sale.
Not to mention that in his contract he told them he was going to be in space during that time. Everything I have read on the issue points to PlayNC TRIBBLE him.
He's suing them, so yea something went down between them (who's wrong? who knows.) Which is bizarre because his brother was CEO of NCSoft North America at the time.
As far as STO goes, I just hope they being the DEv team, doesn't miss the boat on this one, and pass off something calling it Star Trek. Yes, I understand there are limits to what can be done, but you can do a Hell of a lot more than what we see today.
they over nerfed everything and made the support tree near-useless. they listened to the wrong people wanting the net gun as root. (fyi you dont give a dps class a root wepond.) they nerfed and nerfed the sniper class. (imo they should have never had a sniper class. why becuase in real world. thier motto is 1 shot 1 kill.) they had the perfect patch in the earily sept. nothing was over powered nor was under powered.