WarCry sat down with Tom Potter, lead designer of Tabula Rasa, to talk about the game's present, its future and Richard Garriott's impending spacewalk.
WarCry: First off, what's your name, and what's your role on Tabula Rasa?
Tom Potter: Hello! I'm Tom Potter and I'm the lead designer of Tabula Rasa. I help determine the future direction of feature development and maintain the overall design vision of the game. So I mostly wander around the office and cause trouble.
WarCry: How have players responded to the veteran's rewards?
TP:It seems that this round of veteran rewards (6-months!) was well received. Overall, I think players enjoy recognition for their loyalty and we plan to continue rewarding players for their dedication to Tabula Rasa. Players really seem to dig the emotes, but they also want something that is cool and functional - something they can show off and use to make players envious. From a design perspective, veteran rewards are actually more complex than you'd think. The hardest thing is trying to top the previous reward package (which I think we've done, and we plan to do each time). On the design end, we want to balance the fun stuff with the useful stuff and avoid rewards that force them to swap out their current equipment. It's a tightrope walk, really. The brass knuckles are a good example of something players can use, but something that has a specific time and a place to use it. We're exploring a number of options that are similar to this currently for our 9-month rewards.
WarCry: Have many players been interested in Logos? Are they using it as Richard Garriott originally intended?
TP: Conceptually the idea of "Logos" has been pretty consistent with Richard's initial vision, since as you may know, he invented the whole system. For those who aren't familiar, Logos is an alien language that players encounter throughout Tabula Rasa in various forms. We currently use Logos as prerequisites to owning skills, as keys to open specific locked doors, and as keys to unlock reliquaries full of loot. Logos can also be found imprinted on various artifacts throughout the world. Some players may have discovered that these artifacts tell stories about the Eloh and the world around them. So I think Richard's initial vision of Logos as a way to convey information about an alien society through discovery and as a code breaker minigame of sorts has been realized.
But I think there is still a lot of room for exploration. Actually we're considering ways to use Logos in a some of Tabula Rasa's other game systems so that they have an even more important role in the game. I think there is a lot of mileage here.
WarCry: Obviously, the game didn't sell as well as NCsoft would've liked. Do they have a plan to help the game grow on a different curve, similar to how EVE did after its launch?
TP: You learn a lot about your game once it's unleashed for public consumption, and we've definitely learned a lot since launch. I think now, perhaps more than ever, the team knows more about what they need to do to both keep existing players happy and to acquire new players. The importance of polished releases is constantly on our minds. As the service has evolved we have learned much from the community about what features are most important to them and what keeps them coming back for more. We knew control points would be popular, but it wasn't until the game went live that we truly appreciated the potential for elaborating on the design.
Our general plan is to a) continue regular updates to the game to improve quality of life issues and refine the existing design and b) add new features that enhance the existing game. For example we're currently working on a number of PVE, PVP, and group play balance issues, improving general performance, improving pet AI, and adding new instanced maps. We're also working on new features like the clan-owned control point concept, where members of clans can own territory within the game and acquire gameplay bonuses for that ownership, and the looking for squad system to allow players to find groups more easily. And then of course we have a ton of new features that we are working on, like personal armor units (PAUs) that will come online in the future.
Next Page: Richard Garriott's space travel plans.
