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Tabula Rasa is a peculiar game compared to many in that the difficulty of enemy encounters usually isn't measured by enemy strength, but by their numbers and composition. Man to man, your typical AFS soldier is more than a match for even the toughest units the Bane can throw at them. While that would seem to make the game a cakewalk, this is balanced by the fact that the enemy usually travels in roaming packs, containing enemies of different types that complement and balance each other. The difficulty of the game is largely derived from finding ways to pick apart these units before they can burn you down.

Among the many changes to come to Tabula Rasa in the most recent patch on the public test server is a new, enhanced enemy AI. For whatever reason, the Destination Games team decided to amp up the difficulty of enemy encounters by increasing so-called "aggro sharing" between enemy monsters. Having given the new build some time on the test server, we've got some thoughts and criticisms.

When we reported early last month that the Destination Games team was looking to give a serious buff to Tabula Rasa's experience modifier system, it was then largely regarded as something to be happy about. Too many players were suffering from the attrition of climbing from tier 3 at level 30 to the so-called "elder game" waiting at level 50. Not only do the incentives to continue leveling dry up around that point, but the quests themselves become sparse and hard to link together.

Well evidently, the fan community has decided in all of a week that the buffs to the modifiers are simply too much, and some have called for them to be scaled back, or changed so that anything more than 3x experience is restricted as a veteran reward or unlocked after leveling one character to 50. On this, we have to disagree. Allowing for the majority of players to finally make that push through to 50 will go a long way towards pressuring the TR team to finally implement a real end-game to draw people back into the fold. If they can't succeed at that charge, than they deserve to fail. We're OK with putting them on notice.

Ever since patch 1.6 dropped, we've been diving back into Tabula Rasa, milking that sweet sweet experience modifier for everything it's worth. Scanning the air-waves though, we've been hearing about a few wonky things from the patch. Nothing big, mind you, and nothing serious. Just a few things that have stuck out to players that any enterprising player would probably be keen on knowing.

• Blades now do physical damage with their alt attack. - Players in general chat have been emphatic about this one, noting how the Spy's alt attack (hitting F while wielding a blade) still does type damage, and not physical damage as promised. Evidently, this is already being looked at.
  
• Powerful Kael can now leap long distances in pursuit of their target. They do not utilize this at close range, but will do so to prevent their enemies from escaping. - Be prepared to be a little frightened by this one. Kael have gotten a fairly substantial buff. Kael used to be big brutes who you could kite around and destroy with a pistol, but with this and the addition of a new stun attack, they will close distance in a blink and make quick work of you.
• The only circumstance where you cannot interrupt a reload is when you manually reload a weapon that still has some ammo left in it. - With this thread as our witness, this is not true. You can still interrupt a manual reload. For our money, this seems like a good bug to keep in - who wants to die while reloading?

All in all, a pretty good patch with some neat new tricks and no game breaking unfun.

The Tabula Rasa crew has sent down another missive from the heavens today, instructing everybody to give themselves a big pat on the back for the rigorous testing that made patch 1.6 a success. Looking forward to patch 1.7, they've stressed that while the changes to the Ranger sub-classes are their first and primary focus, they will be making an effort to look into every class to see what needs to be changed. Specifically, they mention making a global pass on all abilities for every class sometime between now and patch 1.8 and 1.9.

In the immediate short term, they're looking to make changes to the minion system, which should give classes like the Exobiologist a little more utility than they have in the current build. Pets will also now receive a damage bonus from the mind attribute, giving them some added reason to spec something other than body for a change. In addition to some other, smaller UI changes, they also sought to make it apparent that the current costs for redeeming items with CP tokens is not set in stone, and can and will be tweaked if they're not seeing the desired results server-side.

With all the flack NCSoft has been receiving lately concerning a supposed lack of end-game content for Tabula Rasa, we're pleased to announce a brand-spanking-new gameplay video, thanks to our friends over at Ten Ton Hammer. In this video, we see Mission Designer Jason Ford demonstrate some of the features in this level-48 instance being revamped in Patch 1.6. In it, you must defeat Patch, an ironically-named robot boss who has recently become self-aware and is targetting the AFS. The video gives us some insightful tips on the instance's storyline, ultimately defeating Patch, as well as getting bonus rewards for being speedy about it.

We're very excited about this newly remodeled instance as it means there is hope for high level content in TR. So be sure to wax up your Polarity Gun, throw a new coat of armor paint on your boots and check out this exclusive video over at TTH.

(Thanks RadarX)

Happy news from the Tabula Rasa development crew. Patch 1.6, which has been sitting on the hotplate for a good long while, ostensibly as penance for the bungles surrounding patch 1.5, is officially in the queue to hit the live servers either late tonight or sometime early tomorrow. The update also mentions that they're hard at work on a last-minute hotfix to cure some minor bugs with Wargame results and schematic drops. No hard deadline on when we can expect to see that hotfix, though signs point to the next couple days.

For those who have been out of the loop, or who have only just returned to the game courtesy of the Amazon deal earlier this week, there have been a number of big changes to come along in patch 1.6. Torqueshell rifles got a new look, and then another new look, in an attempt to increase their effectiveness. They've also reworked the utility behind capturing and defending capture points, adding new goodies like respecs to the list of rewards that players can get after redeeming tokens. It's an exciting group of changes, and we'll be keeping our eye on the live servers.

Complete patch notes, taken from the test server, are available after the jump.

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.

Tabula Rasa players have had some reasons to complain recently. As we reported a few weeks ago, the Tabula Rasa team pushed out patch 1.5 without giving it enough time to sizzle on the test server, and the result was a PR headache that was only resolved in ensuing days when they were able to throw some hotfixes together to address the game-breaking bugs. As exemplified by the recent patch to the build on the public test server, they're actually looking to take in player feedback this time around, and the result is a much happier community and a much more refined build altogether.

The new patch, which went live on the PTS on Tuesday, put into effect the changes to the Torqueshell rifle that Critters mentioned last week. It also addressed a number of other bugs, like RPG damage not being affected by item rarity in addition to adding some tweaks to Necromites. One unforeseen change was a dramatic increase in the number of CP capture tokens required for a respec. Players had been complaining that the relatively low cost of the respec token, originally at 100, trivialized the process and made it too easy to shift between builds. In response, their cost has been upped to 600, which should make them a more substantial item. We'll see how it turns out.

MMO players, of which I count myself a part, are an interesting folk. While we profess to play our games of choice out of the pursuit of fun, many of us scarcely hesitate to flagellate ourselves (figuratively, I hope) for some new piece of gear, or stay up far later than good sense would have dictated to finish a raid, or stop playing our game of choice altogether because some hot new patch is coming down the pipeline that will change the way we play.

I can now count myself in that last category, as the word that patch 1.6 was going to render profound changes on Tabula Rasa's experience modifier system has caused me to seize up and stop playing the game altogether. Perhaps it's a bit misguided to just forfeit playing the game on account of a patch with no concrete deadline, but then, who wants to spend all that time fighting enemies and grinding mobs with a paltry x2.5 experience modifier when the patch is going to be bringing down x6 multipliers with 30-minute boosters that bump it up an additional 50%? Setting aside simple quest experience, you could be looking at a whopping three times the experience gain pre-patch! Who wants to grind now when that's coming down the pipes? Not me, that's for sure.

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.

Personal Armor Units, or PAUs, are one of the most highly anticipated features coming down the track for Tabula Rasa. In lieu of a mount, Destination Games is looking to give higher level players a boost in prestige by letting them tramp around and scare the newbies in giant mechanical robots. Most players have already grown accustomed to the intimidating AFS mechs, but one imagines that actually being able to pilot a similar hulking death machine will be a new and exciting experience.

As it turns out, a PAU is making an appearance in patch 1.6, in unassembled form in a garage in Foreas Base. From what we can tell, it looks to be a Grendel, the Grenadier-class PAU that is one of the few to have actually been fleshed out by the devs so far. If you check out the video we've made of the new mechanized monster after the jump, two uniformed ladies appear to be conversing in front of the half-unpacked crate, but some sort of bug is speeding their dialog along at such a clip that all we can do is pick out random words like "coolant," "duct tape," and "human flesh." PAUs powered by human flesh? Confirmed.

With patch 1.6 having sunk in a little bit over the weekend, ardent Tabula Rasa players are starting to emerge with some feedback from the new build on test. While the changes to experience modifiers were a welcome change for many people stuck in the pre-30 or pre-50 doldrums, one group we weren't expecting to hear griping were Snipers. We had been told that the Destination Games crew were working on the line of sight problems that had been largely hindering their long-distance damage, and the patch notes mentioned reworking their oft-bemoaned charge-up firing mechanic.

According to a number of players on Planet TR's Sniper forum, while Torqueshell rifles, the Snipers' tier-4 class-defining weapon, have seen a modest 25% increase in their rate of fire with the firing mechanic change, they've also experienced a massive 55% single-shot damage reduction as well. This coming at the same time when most other weapons experienced modest damage increases, usually around 17%. The sad consequence is that many Snipers will end up shirking their Torqueshell rifles for regular rifles or chainguns to maximize their damage, effectively making them a squishy Commando-wannabe. It's not too late though – this is why things go on test, so they can be fixed? Right? Right?

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.

With Tabula Rasa already on the ropes with recent reports of financial failure, the last thing the TR community wanted or needed to have to deal with was the awfully-implemented patch 1.5 that rolled out onto live servers yesterday. Pushed out of testing a scant five days after it was revealed on the public test server, the patch was bugged by resolution issues and big changes to the Spy class weren't accompanied by a respec to make them worth the trouble. Morale among the AFS-faithful was not terribly high this time yesterday morning.

Evidently, the developers actually paid notice and took a rare opportunity to break their usual Monday/Friday announcement schedule to address these concerns. They're working on a hotfix for the resolution problem, and suggest in the meantime that players run the game in windowed mode. Not that doing so addresses the fact that the resolution resets every time you load the game, but at least it doesn't crash. They've also revealed that part of their plan in patch 1.6 is to make respecs a more readily available resource. Instead of the crummy awards players currently get for defending and attacking CPs, players will soon be able to collect talent and attribute respec credits for their trouble instead. It's a good idea, and enough of a distraction that most of the doom and gloom has abated, albeit temporarily.