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For all the complaints one could levy against Tabula Rasa, the one you almost never heard was that the game was lacking in varieties of awesome firepower. Even if you counted yourself as a heavier Logos ability user (as this blogger did with his lightning-happy Demolitionist), you could still bust some skulls with good old-fashioned lead to the head. This week's Feedback Friday revealed that they're looking to expand on this awesome firepower with the inclusion of new kinds of Incendiary shotguns, adding double and even triple barrel version for maximum Bane-blasting goodness. And that's just the first stop in a whole new line of weapon upgrades.

They're also looking to expand expand character customization to address player concerns that avatars aren't unique enough. They plan to do this by making character profiles distinct from NPCs, and adding the ability to dye armor multiple colors, to give them a more snazzy look. Good to see the team under Tom Potter finally getting around to some long-time player complaints.

There's been a fairly substantial amount of buzz surrounding Tabula Rasa over the past couple weeks. Ever since long-time designer Paul Sage was announced to be leaving the game to be replaced by designer Tom Potter, fans and observers alike have been left to speculation about the state of flux surrounding Destination Game's sci-fi MMO. To their credit, they've really stepped up to the bat, both with the recent War College meetings at their Austin studio, and with other interviews around and about the gaming media.

Adding to this steady trend is this week's Feedback Friday, penned by none other than Tom Potter himself. Potter really goes all out and addresses many of our complaints, including the hyper-active enemy aggro, buffs to Logos users, a link loot system, and a true, blue repeatable end-game. Perhaps best of all, at least in this bloggers' opinion, is his acknowledgment that the crafting system needs a near-complete overhaul.

Now, we have to emphasize that there is a serious difference between knowing what needs to be done with a game and actually accomplishing these changes in a reasonable amount of time. Now that we know Potter is wise to what's wrong with the game, we're expecting him to push the changes through, and soon!

This most recent Feedback Friday is chock full of the usual bug fixes and the announcement of Deployment 9's arrival on the live server within days, but we thought we'd address one particularly interesting response given to a question the developers received regarding the direction of the game recently.

When asked why they're making Tabula Rasa a PvP MMO, their response was, "PvP has never been and is not going to be the only direction we want TR to take. It is true that a lot of changes and additions have been made with PvP in mind and the Wargame is a good example, but in this case for instance, it is mainly because we had the systems mostly in place already and could reuse part of it in that map."

The most recent iteration of Tabula Rasa's Feedback Friday brought the announcement of a change to how the client will work in future deployments of the game. "The Bubble," as they call it, is an optimization that the developers hope to roll out in a future build of Tabula Rasa's Deployment 9. Until now, all static map objects such as rocks and trees loaded up front, but at the cost of decreased system performance. The Bubble will limit the client to loading only those static objects within a certain distance from the camera. The end result promises to be a client that uses less memory and delivers increased performance. They would, however, like help from the players with testing the bubble feature once it's viable.

As always, Feedback Friday also addressed player questions and concerns, namely that logout countdowns in PvP will stop being exploitable in Deployment 10. As it stands, players can evade combat during clan-wars by simply logging off. Another issue in the game that's being resolved is the common complaint about how difficult it is to keep track of friends. Presently each time a player creates a new character, they must reinvite all of their friends, ad nauseam. So beginning with Deployment 9, both the friends and ignore list are now user-based instead of character-based. This change alone will eliminate a number of headaches for TR players, but check out the Feedback Friday page for more details on how the game is evolving.

We've been hearing word of more exciting variations on PvP coming to Tabula Rasa soon, and in this week's Feedback Friday, we get some more details and screenshots for the new Control Point Wargame. Apparently, in this PvP zone, each team will own a fortress containing a control point. If one team conquers the other's control point, the losing team is imprisoned and subject to humiliation and ridicule, courtesy of the winning team. This battleground will be introduced to the Public Test Server with Deployment 9 and probably stay to iron out bugs at least until Deployment 10.

Also in this report, we get word of Clan Lockboxes which will be introduced as part of the Clan-Owned Control Points feature. At first impression, they seem to operate almost identically to the WoW guild banks, complete with restricted access and clan log tabs. These will be in Deployment 9 on PTS only, but will most-likely be introduced to the live servers with Deployment 10.

Perhaps it was a bit naive of us to have assumed that the Destination Games crew was going to fix all the problems with Tabula Rasa's Sniper class on the first pass in patch 1.6. Despite the increased rate of fire more than compensating for the nerf to Torqueshell Rifle damage, Snipers as a group still felt like their DPS wasn't up to snuff and their role as a "one shot, one kill" nuker was compromised by confusing or underwhelming buff mechanics.

In a spin on the usual feedback format, this week Critters picked the brain of developer Lee Ridout to ask him how he goes about playing his sniper. He goes through everything from what he feels the best Sniper builds are, to how he sets up his toolbar trays, to what situations he uses Shredder Ammo. This blogger has a feeling that some Snipers will take affront to this sort of pandering, but it could be a pretty handy guide for people only just cresting that Tier IV milestone.

In this week's installment of TR's Feedback Friday, we get some information on a needed improvement to the Public Test Server and a change to the Shredder Ammo skill that players have come to love since the last patch.

For the last few Public Test Server proliferations, a game master has been on-hand to give players an instant boost to level 30 in order to check out the Tier 4 class changes. This only seemed fair since the majority of changes happened to these high-level classes. In the spirit of convenience, the developers have created a PTS Level Command NPC who will do that dirty work for them.

In addition to this, they mention their awareness of the problems with the Sniper's signature weapon -- the Torqueshell Rifle -- and how players have resorted to the Chaingun/Shredder Ammo combo with their Snipers. They state their intentions to re-balance this in order to make the TSR more effective, and lower the extremely unbalanced power of the Chaingun/Shredder combo.

In this week's installment of Tabula Rasa's Feedback Friday, we get quite a shock. It seems the game's lead designer, Paul Sage will be relocating within the company to a new project. This promotes Tom Potter to a new rank as Lead Designer, and this announcement is our first glimpse into his visions for the future of TR.

To be quite frank, most of what he tells us is what we've been hearing for a long, long time. We'll have PAUs, we'll have Clan-owned Control Points, we'll have better AI, and crafting, and truly balanced classes, etc. We just wonder if this change of the guard is going to end up being good or bad for the game. It seems change would be a good thing at this point, considering the level of disappointment we hear from players in the major forums, but are Tom Potter's ideas going to be enough?

Though some have been quick to write off Tabula Rasa as already dead in the water, the Destination Games crew has been brewing up a whole host of new changes that will hopefully breath new life into their sci-fi world. Not least of those changes is the new Prestige system outlined in this week's Feedback Friday, which promises to rock our collective world when it's implemented in the forthcoming patch 1.8.

To put it as succinctly as possible, Prestige will reward players for a whole host of different in-game achievements. These rewards will take the place of the existing CP token system for individual players, but will also be the cornerstone of the long-discussed Clan Control Point system. It's difficult to explain all the changes they're planning to make succinctly, so definitely make sure to check out the in-depth write-up over at the official TR website.

As rich as we've always found the Tabula Rasa universe, we've always felt like they've stopped precariously short of fully fleshing out the universe as inhabited by the AFS and those nasty Bane. The reason for this is likely practical; they don't want to write themselves into a corner and have to resort to strange retcons or deus ex machina to be able to shoe-horn in content for the expansions down the road.

Perhaps in an effort to assuage our fears of floating lore-less through life, this week's Feedback Friday explores many of the questions players have had about Tabula Rasa's universe. Many of the items are easily to explain and hammer down, like the AFS chain of command and the reasoning behind the credit system for soldiers in a time of war. More ambiguous are questions about the size and nature of the larger Bane forces and their Neph overlords, which lead us to the logical conclusion that these are avenues that the game will explore further down the road.

In a welcome change for Tabula Rasa's Feedback Friday, we got a little pep talk and look at the future from lead designer Paul Sage. The stately Sage ruminated about many common points of interest for Tabula Rasa players, including clan-owned CPs, personal armor units, and multi-squad instances. From the tone of the discussion, we get the vibe that none of these things are going to see the light of day in patch 1.7, as we might have hoped, but they're still being worked on internally. It's definitely required reading if you're a fan.

One thing we were really surprised to see was that attack and defend tokens as they currently exist are going to be merged together and expanded to be used as a reward for a whole array of different achievements. The principles will likely remain the same, with certain respec and crafting rewards available for purchase with a certain number of tokens, but you'll soon be rewarded for new things like certain missions, killing certain world bosses, or even just reaching a full experience modifier.

We're pleased to report that this week's Tabula Rasa Feedback Friday is uncharacteristically juicy. The decision was made in the Classes and Combat teams that Rangers and Spies needed a serious looking at in patch 1.7. Their logic was that the two Ranger classes, Spies and Snipers, are too narrowly restricted by their class-defining weapons. Snipers have been struggling with this recently with the changes to Torqueshell rifles. And while Spies have been anything but hindered by their spectacular Blade damage, their effectiveness discourages Spies from trying different tactics.

Among the changes that will be heralded in patch 1.7 (it's worth reiterating here that patch 1.6 is still in testing and has no confirmed release date) is a new ability called Fire Support, which will take the place of Carpet Bombs in the Ranger repertoire. It's different effects at different ranks should give it increased utility for single-target DPS. Another ability with the potential to be quite cool is Tactical Evasion, which, at pump 5, would give the Ranger player the ability to set up a temporary beacon that you will teleport back to after a given amount of time. It sounds like a near way to rush into a crowded area, take out an important target, and get away quickly. To check out the full range of changes, make sure to check it out on the official site.

Critters and the TR dev team have used this week's Feedback Friday to address the recent uproar that's risen up over the change to the Torqueshell rifles in patch 1.6. In line with our hopes, it seems like the development team has seen the light, and has decided to cede a little room to player feedback. They're working on another build for the test server that will change the nerf in Torqueshell damage from the 55% wollop that it was originally down to only about 75% of the pre-patch damage. With the increased rate of fire from the change in the shooting mechanic, this comes out to a far more favorable DPS number in the end.

Critters goes on to explain how the development team's vision for the Torqueshell weapon and the Sniper class is one where players really have to know their class and have all their buffs and abilities in order to be able to achieve the one-shot one-kill scenarios that most Snipers have been clamoring for. The increased speed of attack also means that players will have more maneuverability and capacity to adapt during battle, instead of standing static waiting for their shot to go off.

Another Friday, another Feedback Friday brought to you by the folks responsible for Tabula Rasa. Critters and crew have come out swinging this week with a genuinely bitching preview of some of the changes we can expect to see in patch 1.6. Chief among those is a change to the experience modifier that will see the maximum modifier go up in a tiered manner based on level. The maximum multiplier in the game now is set at 250% of the base experience, but with the patch it will go as high as 6x base experience at the highest levels. Players will also get significant experience boosts based on group size.

In addition, they'll be offering an item to boost experience gain by 50% (stackable with the multiplier and group XP buffs) as part of the cache of items that you can buy by accumulating Global CP tokens. They will join the respecs we've mentioned previously along with a stock of other goodies to choose from like the old-fashioned weapon modifiers. With all these buffs to experience gain, it looks as though getting to level 50 in Tabula Rasa may change from the near-impossible test of patience and stamina to something a lot more amenable. We'll have to see for ourselves when patch 1.6 hits the PTS.

It's a PvPers delight today, as Tabula Rasa's Feedback Friday features a cameo from designer Chris Strasz. He's stepped in this week to reassure players that the design team is paying attention to the complaints about TR's fragmented PvP system, and there are fixes on the way that he hopes will improve the experience considerably. A big portion of the fixes he talks about have to do with the way that clans function. They're looking to fix many of the smaller problems that have plagued clan participation in the past, such as fixing the problem of leaderless clans and improving the clan roster window to allow players to see when clanmates were last active, as well as providing new incentives to participate like passive buffs.

They're also looking to overhaul the nature of PvP itself. They're hoping to roll out a new system of "PvP contracts" where players, squads, and clans can map out a set number of rules before engaging in Wargames. As the system exists now, squads had to sort of amiably agree to rules before fighting, and with this new system, hopefully they'll be able to write the rules in stone instead of relying on voluntary cooperation. And of course, they're looking to more ably integrate PvP into the main part of the game with clan-captured CPs and the like. While I welcome these sorts of changes, the PvP crowd is notoriously hard to please, and one wonders whether their efforts might not be better directed somewhere where they're more likely to be appreciated... like, I don't know, PvE?