Interviews// Richard Garriott - Tabula Rasa Interview

SPOnG: What about the UI (User Interface) – you’ve said that this has been overhauled quite considerably in Tabula Rasa. How?

Richard Garriott: I’ll demonstrate here, on the first planet in the game, which we call Foreus – and you can see a bunch of Forean warriors here, that are the intelligent indigenous race on this planet. As I head over to the battlefield I can show you our aim, which was to have this very minimalist user interface on the screen. Most MMOs have a big short-cut tray along the bottom of the screen and what you often end up doing is ‘playing your short-cut tray’. In Tabula Rasa we have a weapon mapped to your left mouse button, an ability mapped to your right mouse button – and you can very easily rotate through weapons and abilities mapped to each button – you also have a radar screen, the ability to track your missions, a text window and a health bar.


SPOnG: How do you make the combat in the game feel less like ‘whack-a-mole’ then?

Richard Garriott: As we move across the screen you will notice this other UI piece is a targeting reticule in the centre of the screen. What you will notice is that when I touch something with that, the targeting reticule sticks to the opponent we last touched. Now, this is not a first-person shooter or a shooter game at all in the arcade sense, but this gives the feeling of ‘immediacy’ the feeling of pressing a button and immediately firing. The targeting is aided by this sticky targeting.

You will also notice that positioning on the field makes a big difference in combat. So, as we engage foes on screen you will see on the targeting reticule that it indicates how exposed my character is to attack – so it comes up red if I am very exposed (and taking a load of damage), or yellow or even green if I am well sheltered, behind some sandbags or whatever, which means I’m not taking so much damage. So whereas in most MMOs players are too concerned with the minutiae of ‘how do I get +2 % more damage out of my weapons’ – that is far less important in Tabula Rasa than is using the geographical space around you to its optimal effect. So, instead of just standing there playing ‘whack-a-mole’ you really are much more actively involved and participating in the results of combat.


SPOnG: What character classes are in the game and how are these worked into the structure of the overall experience?

Richard Garriott: Well, another thing that we have that is a little different to most other MMOs is the way we deal with the character classes. In most RPGs in fact, one of the first decisions you are asked is ‘what class do you want your character to be?’ So you are required to decide if you want to be a fighter, a cleric, a wizard or whatever that might be. But when you make this decision you make it before you have ever played the game – so you really have little idea if playing a particular class will be a fun experience. Also, it’s a permanent decision, so once you have made that decision you have to stick with it. So if you want to try another class you are starting over from level one again and repeating a lot of the level grind you have already been through once, twice or more before.

The way we deal with this is that we start everyone in the game as a recruit. After five levels in the game as a recruit you can decide how you want to specialise – you can be a soldier, a front-line guy; you can be a specialist, more of a support class. Then ten levels after that, say, if you are a specialist, you can decide if you want to be a sapper or a bio-technician. Then fifteen levels after that you can decide if you want to become an engineer or a demolitionist.

Unlike other MMOs, in our game all the way through your levelling journey you can load and save and clone your character. So you might give a new clone a new name, change his physical attributes or whatever and then anytime you want to go down a different branch of our ‘skill-tree’ then all you need to do is to load the clone that you made at that particular branch and play the game from that point. So, basically, you are always exploring forward through our character class tree – never having to start back all the way at the beginning at level one.