This week's Feedback Friday has been posted and there's some suprising news from lead designer Paul Sage:
This Feedback Friday includes some bittersweet news for me. I have decided to pursue another very exciting opportunity within NCsoft, which means I will be handing the Lead Design reigns over to Tom Potter. I joined NCsoft in 2001 as a designer on a completely different game named Tabula Rasa. After seven years, and several iterations of TR, I do feel the need to stretch out a bit. It was an exciting time in my life, and I have definitely had many great experiences working with the Tabula Rasa team. I must also say that I have truly enjoyed the great people of the Tabula Rasa community. I have found them to be considerate and intelligent with their feedback. Thank you for taking the time out of your life to enjoy TR. Though my feelings are mixed about leaving, I feel the game really is going the right way now, and that this is a good time for me to pursue something new. Obviously I cannot discuss anything too early on what I am moving on to, but if things go well, I hope to do so one day in the not-too-distant future.
And speaking of the future, this is where I would like to introduce Tom. Tom has been a great addition to the team since he was hired in 2007. He came to NCsoft from Iron Lore, where he was the Lead Content Designer on Titan's Quest. Again, I would like to thank the community for their loyalty and involvement in the game, and I know you are in very good hands with Tom as Lead Designer. But, I don't want to speak for Tom, so I will let Tom speak.
-Paul Sage
Hi, Tom here. Thanks for the intro Paul. The TR community and the team will miss you! Although you are really just down the hall now :). And thanks to all the players that have been active in the TR community.
I joined Destination Games/NCsoft and the TR team almost exactly a year ago today. I joined as a Senior World Designer and worked on the creation of shared maps and instances. So in a way this is a very exciting 1-year anniversary for me at NCsoft Austin moving from that position into my new role as lead designer. Prior to coming to DG, I was Lead Content Designer at Iron Lore Entertainment. While there I worked on Titan Quest, Titan Quest: Immortal Throne, and a little bit of Dawn of War: Soulstorm. Iron Lore was a relatively small company so I was very fortunate to be able to wear a lot of hats while I was there, juggling different tasks like level design, and story and mission design. I had the utmost respect for the talented people at Iron Lore and I have the same respect for the TR team at Destination Games.
OMG what does this mean for TR? Will players equip magical harps and fight alongside unicorns?!? While I have my own design goals for the project let me assure you there won't be any left-field departures from the established design. We won't mess with the core features of TR that make the game fun, specifically the fast and furious pace of combat. Several months ago our internal goal was defined as having LFS and clan-owned Control Points ready to go for Deployment 10 (formerly known as 1.10). Much of our effort is devoted towards achieving those goals, and you'll likely see features beyond Deployment 10 resulting from this momentum. We just want to make sure what we release is rock solid. There is a lot of other work going on that you may have noticed in updates that is generally in support of these tasks. Like what sorts of things? Some of this has been covered in prior posts but I think this is also a good opportunity to provide a status update about each of our features.
Clan-owned Control Points
Currently this is the core focus of the TR team and will be for the next couple of deployments. We felt that player-owned control points were a big win for many reasons. First, control points (CP) are arguably the most popular feature in TR and adding clan ownership made it even more compelling. We want players to feel like their actions have an impact on the world. Clan-owned CPs are also attractive because they force the team to improve class balance to make PvP a compelling experience. Some player feedback has indicated that TR does not have enough in the way of social content, so we think this will encourage players to join clans and be active in the game community. The CP design has also spawned the concept of prestige which will be coming in Deployment 8, just a few weeks away. This system will have a huge impact on players downstream as more features utilize this new form of currency. And we will continue to add features to the CPs over time. We're considering other options as well, such as allowing solo players and small clans to be "hired" as mercenaries during CP battles. So this whole concept will continue to evolve over time in part because of your feedback.
Class Changes
The ongoing class changes are all part of an effort to balance the classes so that PvE, PvP, and group play is fun. Obviously we don't want any one class to dominate battles so we've got to tune some of the skills. This is a large task so we need to do the work in small increments. The result for you is that it may look like we are giving too much attention to one class over another, but in reality it is part of a larger effort towards the goal of better class balance. Giving more options to players and really defining each class as a unique play experience is one of my long term goals for TR so this is just the beginning of that work. And we definitely know the danger of making large changes to your favorite skills, and we are being as sensitive to that as we can be while getting the job done.
PAU's
This has been a top-requested feature by players and members of the dev team for a while now and work on it will be continuing shortly. We've already completed some of the work, but we want to ensure that PAU's are a unique play experience which definitely takes time and, above all, we want to get it right. This means making content like new missions and instances designed to take advantage of PAU gameplay.
LFS Tools
Playing in a squad is fun and we want to give players the tools they need to form squads easily. This is really a win for the entire player base. Most of this has been finished already and will be in the game shortly.
Avatars
I can see why on the surface changes to the avatar rework might look like a questionable allocation of resources, especially when it's clear we've got many other things in our queue. But the truth is this is actually very important towards reducing the overall video memory footprint. What does that mean? For the short term it means higher frame rates in areas of high player density, like control points. But it also creates room in our memory budget to add new things, like PAUs, without taking a hit in performance. And I'd say that's pretty important! I want to give credit to our visiting Korean artists for their remarkable work on this task. They have reduced the memory footprint significantly without affecting the visuals at all. Also the avatar group is working to further differentiate the male and female avatar profiles so you'll be able to recognize one from the other at a glance. For me this also adds more options for making players feel unique. We've been releasing this content as it is finished as small increments, so it might be hard to see the immediate benefits, but trust me, they are significant!
New Instances and Maps
The mission designers continue to refine PVE spawns throughout the world based on systems changes and player feedback. We will continue to listen to your feedback about the new Bring-A-Friend and aggro changes and make tweaks where necessary. We're confident that our changes in the next 1.7 iteration will address many of your concerns about the system. World designers are already working on upgrading some of the existing control points to handle the clan-owned control point changes. We also have several new instances nearing completion. You should be seeing Velon's Hollow (previously Howling Maw Death Burrow) for Deployment 9. This instance is to be a level 30 instance to benefit the majority of our player population. We're also nearing completion on the high level instances Dybukkar Garrison, Runi Valley and Omega Labs.
Pets/AI
Ever had an escort mission go horribly wrong? Ever wonder why the AFS troops are kind of dumb when fighting the Bane? Have you ever heard a Sapper complain that her Crab Mines will run up to a target really fast and then not know what to do? Or why an Engineer's EMP turret keeps shooting at that Boargar that doesn't have shields? Well we hope that with a new AI system the TR team can fix problems like this. And those changes have a direct impact on class balance as well. A new Minion System will allow players to issue simple commands to pets, giving even more options for using them intelligently. With so many of our classes in need of pet improvements this will hopefully fix a large number of bugs in the game, and make the game much more fun for Exobiologists, Engineers, and Rangers. And for you Exobiologists out there that feel a little left in the cold, Paul and I play an Exo on live so the design team is well aware of the problems that class faces and they we are working on solutions in the next few Deployments.
Command Opportunity
Since you just read about the Pet and AI improvements coming I think it's understandable why Command Opportunity was something we put lower on the list. The team agrees that if we are going to release a new feature it should be the most fun, and polished it can be. Honestly, would you want a bunch of AFS soldiers following you around if they were incapable of following orders?
Crafting
I think the entire team agrees that the crafting system needs a major overhaul, and I don't think many of you would disagree. We have a preliminary design of the improved crafting system, but to be frank we haven't had the resources to implement the changes yet. But rest assured, there is a plan to make the crafting system more accessible and rewarding.
The Future of Tabula Rasa
So that's what we're currently working on, and my take on how it improves the game. It's a ton of stuff really. But what does the future hold for TR? What new features can you expect? While I can't get too specific, I can outline the areas that I personally would like to address.
Some of my high level goals for TR:
- End game content
- More avatar customization options
- Class differentiation and balance
- Adding more PVE creature types and expanding creature-to-creature relationships in combat
End game content is nebulous concept and a real sore spot for players, and understandably so. End-game content can take many shapes, from a robust PvP system, to repeatable content, to all new play modes. The bottom line is that it has to feel fun and engaging for all players and provide motivation for reaching the level cap. Ideally everything that we do will affect the "end-game" content. Whether it's better loot which encourages you to play certain areas again and again, the excitement of seeing new creatures with new abilities, more PvP options, new maps, or repeatable instances, each will add more reasons to continue to play TR into the wee-hours of the morning.
Avatar customization can be accomplished in a number of ways but it really boils down to having more options to differentiate my character from your character, even if we use the same class. Generally I want to feel unique and powerful in the world. I also want people to see me and wonder where I got all my cool stuff. These concepts could be satisfied with a number of things: improved armor and weapon upgrades, enhanced crafting options, or even new and improved skills. We're currently exploring options to see how we can best accomplish these goals.
Class balance is like pulling that loose string on your sweater. If you aren't careful, tugging on that one string can unravel your whole sweater. Clearly it's a risky endeavor but it is essential to defining class roles and making PvP a fun experience. With clan-owned control points forcing an examination of PVP combat, class balance will continue to improve over the next few updates. But I think we can take it even further, and begin to make each class a totally unique play experience. Skills, too, should provide some level of feedback for all players. As I become higher level, I want my skills to be more effective and further define who I am as a player.
Once players reach level 30 they have really seen most of the creature group dynamics in the game. An example is how Caretakers heal group members. Or Technicians and their repair skills. The existing relationships need to be communicated better to players - some are a little too subtle. There also needs to be brand new creature relationships to add variety and additional tactical decisions to combat. An exciting way to do this is to introduce brand new creatures with new abilities!
On top of all this we will continue to listen to you to find out what everyone really wants. We'll continue to utilize the successful ambassador program as well as garner feedback from the Public Test Server before patches go live. But we'll also be looking for other ways to openly communicate what we are working on, and more importantly why we are working on those things. I'll try to give you the big picture as much as I can.
And this doesn't even address the numerous quality of life issues that we fix on an ongoing basis. Hopefully I'll be able to speak more about these new features soon! But in the meantime we will continue to evaluate our priorities based on player feedback and internal resources, and will continue to improve TR for everyone.
Thanks for reading my first (gigantic) post! Let me know what you think by sharing your thoughts on our Feedback Form.
Tom Potter
Lead Designer
Tabula Rasa
Whew...get all that?
