My beta impressions post of Richard Garriott’s game is still one of the more popular posts here on the site. (Especially with Foton’s recent love; thanks, man.) That said, the game has changed quite a bit since July. There’s a lot more polish on almost every single system. Since this is launch weekend, I decided I’d take some time to catalog the good and the bad of this first weekend of retail.

I’ve put in about eight hours of gameplay since Friday evening, and have reached the ripe old age of level 12. Obviously this is nowhere near ‘high end’ content, but I’ve already gotten a lot of mileage out of the game.

I have much the same overall impressions as I did back in July. “In short: Tabula Rasa is a fun, fluid, and un-samey take on the Massive genre. There are a ton of familiar signposts for the Massive gamer, but they’re couched in ways that are going to feel just different ‘enough’ that people are going to take notice. … I’m particularly concerned about the game from a business standpoint. Just the same, the short time I’ve had with this title has convinced me there are going to be a lot of people who will really enjoy this.”

Oh, and I still don’t think this game is worth $15 a month … but it might be worth $10.

First up, lets look at the good bits. I have a number of frustrations, but they do a number of things really very right.

I love the ‘holo-aesthetic’. I know this is just a question of art style, rather than a gameplay element, but the logos elements, the way that the repair tool looks … they’re all really neat. This is a sci-fi game, obviously, and this attractive component really slams home some of the coolness of this genre vs. fantasy. There’s even a nice ‘afk clock’ that shows up after you’ve been idle for a time. It counts down how long you have until you log out automagically, letting teammates and yourself know how long you’ve actually been away from the game.

I love the achievement-style quests. Many quests in the game show up unbidden, just by doing something cool. Kill you first Thrax solider? Bam, you get a quest. Kill a shield drone? Bam, get a quest. These are just simple kill quests, but in context they feel more like achievements in the Steam/Xbox Live model that your typical MMOG grinds. The Thrax solider one, for example, requires you to kill 200 soliders. That’s obviously not going to happen very quickly, but it’s one you can work at regularly just by adventuring in the area surrounding Alia Das, your first base of operations. The whole experience reminds me of what we’ve been promised for Warhammer Online - and that makes me mighty cheesed.

I love quest waypoints on the map. If a quest has a ‘go here’ element, the map will show you where to go. No guessing at directions from slow-bus NPCs, no wandering aimlessly … you just track your quest, follow the arrow, and go. It’s great. This game does waypoints as well as Star Wars Galaxies does, and these two games are essentially the only two games I think waypoints are done well. They also show available quests on the mini-map, a feature from EQ2 that I just lurve.

I love the inventory system. It’s a fixed space (at least at the beginning - they may allow you to expand it later), but it’s roomy. More importantly, there are four tabs on your inventory, each with an equal amount of space. Each tab is for a specific grouping of items: one tab is for weapons and armor, one is for equipment like ammo, medkits, one is for crafting supplies and schematics, and the last is for ‘random stuff’, like quest items or dropped junk off of enemies. It’s a simple organizational scheme, and I always know where my stuff is. It’s really nice. I completely wish we could but filters like this on bags in other games.

The dynamic spawns just work. The distinctive sound of a Thrax ship coming in, and the vibrant red glow of teleporting soldiers, quickly becomes something like a dinner bell for the Tabula Rasa player. This lore-sensitive way of spawning enemies not only looks cool, but really makes you feel like you’re in the middle of a war zone. A few times I’ve been present for a big rush on the control point near the memory tree, and it’s incredibly impressive to see. Four or five or six drop ships appear over head, the entire forest is limned in red, and then a giant Thrax brute rushes at your from behind his coalescing companions. It’s a sight to see.

I have a number of frustrations that feel like they’re just launch weekend quibbles.

Needless instancing. Probably in anticipation of a busy server weekend, they’ve slotted in a whole bunch of instances of lower-level zones. That’s fine, but it looks really stupid to have Instance 1 at High population, Instance 2 at Medium population, and Instances 3-10 at Low population. Why not just spawn new ones only when you need them?

Lag leading to death. Some people are having it way worse than I am, but lag is a problem on this launch weekend. Every launch displays this differently (the rubberbanding when Galaxies launched, WoW’s infamous server queues), and TR’s lag-form of choice is particularly frustrating. The most common example of this is what feels like a disconnect. The world around you will stop reacting to your inputs, other PCs will stop moving, but you can still keep pumping shots into your opponent. Then everythingwillspeedupsuperquickandcatchup. Several times I’ve caught up just to find I’m dead. The Miasma under Pinhole falls are especially bad for this, and seem to be suffering from some animation glitches on top of the lag problem.

I’ve visited a couple of vendors that were offering me plenty of stuff for sale, but it was all labeled “Unknown Entity”, with different prices. A question to the general chat resolved the issue (just head to a new instance to reset this), but it popped up a couple of times over the last few days.

Beyond that, I have a few more core annoyances.

There’s no compass. I’m some hardass military dude and I didn’t think to invent a HUD-based compass? C’mon. In fact, in general, I think the feel of the user interface could use some love. You’ve got the game up and running guys; now it’s time to prove to us that you can make the experience feel-good as well.

My character moves like a tank. Jumping is incredibly fun. There’s a poetry to the jump in Tabula Rasa, and once again reinforced the message Damion has been harping on. Actually moving, though, like walking and swimming, feels crappish. There’s a lumbering quality to your character, even if they’re a female (omg).

I hate the paperdoll. It’s too damned small, and I can’t zoom in that window. I play games at high resolutions for a reason … don’t penalize me for that by making it so that I can’t see my little man. The chat text is well sized for my resolution, why not my paperdoll?

Lack of item information. What is the difference between standard and premium ammo? I had to ask in the chat channel, because the highlight tooltips on most equipment is completely useless. Weapon and armor tooltips give you what you need, of course, but some attention along those lines to other stuff would be great. It’s especially annoying for stuff like pharmaceuticals. Howabout a tooltip saying something like ‘used with the medical tool’?

Low level impotency. After you get a few levels under your belt, killing stuff gets pretty fast. At the really low levels though, you feel like a gun-tard. It takes many bullets pumped into one Thrax before it will go down. Given the “FPS feel” this is initially offputting. Once you get better weapons and stuff it starts to feel better, but there’s still some disconnect there.

Judging opponent difficulty is too hard. Chat text may be appropriately sized, but the titlebar over an opponent’s head gets sized strangely at high resolutions. This makes the level and color of the enemy’s name hard to judge. TR is also the kind of game where tab-targetting isn’t always required. I can swing my targetting reticule past a critter, swing back, and blast away in a fraction of a second. The color variations on names (to indicate difficulty relative to your level) could be make more obvious, as could the titlebar itself. Even better would be an instantly recognizable symbol to indicate relative difficulty.

Weak explanatory elements. The initial tutorial that teaches you how to do basic stuff like move is quite good. It satisfyingly explains how to use the basic elements of the game. Once you’re in the game proper, you do get some tutorial elements, usually by doing something for the first time. Open your footlocker, and you get the footlocker tutorial. Open the crafting station, and you get an explanation of how to use the crafting station. The problem is that there’s no explanation of deeper concerns. What do the class differentiations *mean*? The tooltip on each one is weak sauce. Once you’re in a class, what do the abilities do? The ‘tools’ training on the specialist class is especially weak. How about an explanation of what your tools do?

Overall, annoyances aside, I’m enjoying this more than I thought I would. I still don’t see it as my long-term squeeze, but it’s been a fairly entertaining weekend.