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We're excited to report that Tabula Rasa's patch 1.8 will be on test some time today. Among the changes, and this time it appears there's a real smattering of different stuff, is a new target lock-on system that allows you to set both friendly and and hostile target locks. Also, this blogger is excited about the changes to the Demolitionist class, which could finally prompt him to get that Sapper over the hump from level 28 to 30. We don't have full patch notes at the time of posting, because the patch isn't up yet, but we'll update with further details as they become available.

And as an added bonus, Harley Quin will be hanging around Alia Das, just like with patch 1.7, to level players to 30 so they can test out the changes that are only available at a higher level. According to CuppaJo, they're looking to make this process automatic in the near-future, but for the time being this is how it'll work. This service is only available today and tomorrow, so make sure to get on sometime soon if you want to give the new patch a full look and you don't already have a character on Orion, which is the server being copied over this patch.

What's this? A Tabula Rasa patch surprising us on a Monday morning, filled with goodies for all! We thought this day would never come! The cake was getting stale and the candles had all burned out, but it was well worth the wait.

According to the official patch notes, the Rangers were especially blessed this time around. Tactical Evasion is the newest strategic method at getting the Ranger into and out of a fight while suffering minimal damage. We've known about many of these changes for awhile, referring back to the Public Test Server notes from what seems ages ago, but we now have a few other goodies thrown in as well. The anticipated AI changes to make creatures more aggressive and more intelligent when returning fire are now in effect. This is something the community has been clamoring for, and simultaneously dreading. But most importantly, more so than any other tactical, strategic or skill-based change to the game (as is apparent by its top-of-the-page placement in the patch notes), the female avatars have been refined to create a more beautiful weapon stance and body shape in Motor Assist Armor! Huzzah!

Over the weekend, we took up developer Kagasumi's call to try out Tabula Rasa's new patch 1.7, and the enhanced, killer AI that came along with it. You can read our impressions of the change here, but the short version is that the wider aggro sharing on test takes away all the strategy and decision-making of combat and replaces it with an unsurvivable zergfest.

While we assumed the only choices were between a smaller or wider aggro sharing radius, Planet TR poster Line has written up a pretty thorough post exploring another possibility. It doesn't make sense, Line says, for enemies to be able to locate a player the instant he gains aggro of one enemy within a certain radius. Enemies should at least have to use an ability (which could be stopped by the player) to draw the attention of nearby allies, and that attention should be drawn to the threat's point of origin, not the player. What Line is describing, in essence, is the sort of AI routine more commonly seen in the shooter genre.

Is it feasible to see this sort of code-heavy change this far into release? Maybe, maybe not. We do know it'd make the game considerably more engaging. And it'd be better than being zerged.

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.

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.

Word on the street is that Tabula Rasa's patch 1.7 should be hitting the public test servers as we speak. As you probably already well know because you follow our coverage religiously (right!?), patch 1.7 should herald in some hefty changes to the Spy and Ranger classes. We've been hearing good things about Fire Support, the new skill replacing Reinforcements. Evidently, these spawnable AI allies for Rangers actually have the capacity to kill enemies now! What a pleasant surprise.

An even better surprise is that, perhaps hearing our prayers, dev team member Harleyquin will be on the test server all day at Alia Das, leveling players to 30 so they can test out the new class changes. This is an extraordinary boon to the player base, because their existing testing procedures only allowed players with characters on a given server (and it's Centaurus this time around) to run through the changes and report feedback. It's certainly not a long-term solution, but it shows that they've been listening. So make sure to go poke Harley if you've got the time to log on.

For the full patch notes, check after the jump.

With the recent announcement that, once again, our favorite servers weren't going to be part of the testing process (no offense Centaurus) for Tabula Rasa's new patch 1.7, we're reminded of how horrible this system has proved to be over the last several months. For the uninitiated, the TR development team generally chooses only one of the game's four servers to copy over to the test server. If your server is picked for that patch, all of your characters are copied over and you can log in and test things out a couple weeks before the patch goes live. If yours doesn't get picked, you're stuck rolling a new character from scratch.

There are several problems with this. For one, the active hardcore fan base (that is, the kind of people who would actually log into a test server to report bugs and forgo any progression on their actual character) is precipitously small to begin with. So when they take this active player base and divide them by four to test new patches, everybody loses. Only a fraction of the community leaders get to contribute input to class changes, patches don't get as thoroughly tested as they might be if the full community was brought to bear, and poor writers like those at Massively only get to cover patch changes in earnest when their servers are chosen.

Is it really too much to ask to be able to copy a character to test on demand? Let your hardcore fans do your work for you!

The Tabula Rasa community team sent out another bulletin this Friday, specifically concerning the changes that should be coming to the public test server some time between now and next week. Among the tweaks they mentioned for patch 1.7 are tweaks to the way enemy spawns and high-level AI is handled. In the Palisades, Torden Incline, and the Plains, they're looking to smooth out enemy spawn patterns, in addition to alleviating some of the tougher spots in Divide and Wilderness, where enemies that you just finished killing will often pop right back in and shoot you in the back.

They also mentioned some exciting changes the group mechanics, including the clan owned CPs (finally!) and some a new LFG system that should make the quest to find a group considerably less arduous, or so we hope. Tabula Rasa still strikes us as a solo-centric game, so we'd like to see group play pushed to the forefront, even if it means they have to beat us over the head with it.

Also, one final announcement for the especially dense among us: the Skitterin hybrid class was an April Fools' joke!

The good folks over at TR Vault have reportedly gotten their hands on an early preview of some of the goodies we have in store for us in patch 1.7, and boy will these changes knock your socks off! They went way beyond the Skitterin hybrid class Destination Games announced today, going all out with three additional hybrids, three new PAUs (check out the Exobiologists' sweet ride!), and a whole slew of weapon and class changes that should make any Tabula Rasa die-hard chuckle.

Among my favorites were changes to the Spy's blade that would increase both damage and range (!), the reduction in damage and increase in threat for the already woefully useless grenade launcher, and best of all, a new "poledance" emote for Exobiologists' clones to make them actually worth a darn in PvP combat, even just as a distraction. All we can say is poor, poor Exobiologists. Barbie cars and poledancing? April Fools' Day has not treated them kindly.

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.

If you're anything like most members of Tabula Rasa's Spy class, you were first intrigued by 2 things: the chance to scare noobs in Alia Das disguised as a Thrax, and the immense power of the blade. Seriously, does it get any better than that? In a recent announcement for patch 1.7, we're informed of a reduction in the blade's damage coming soon. It was inevitable that this would happen, as it is general knowledge that the blade is extremely overpowered. It is also inevitable that many people who play the spy would get upset about this change.

Fortunately, the good folks at Destination Games have offset the cons with some pros. For one, we have the wonderful new changes to most of the Spy's best abilities, as well as complete revamps of old, under-used abilities. Cloak Wave will now... well, it will now work. This includes the intriguing concept of the spy's entire squad actually being invisible to other players when in a PvP situation.

So will a high percentage of spies completely ignore the ability buffs and concentrate on the blade's damage reduction on this upcoming patch? Yes, probably, but not this spy. I look forward to the class being more about real stealth and strategy, and much less about hack and slash.

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.

If ever we wondered whether the Tabula Rasa dev team employed a staggered development schedule (and we have), I think we can finally put that question to rest. No sooner do we get our hands on the patch notes for patch 1.6 then we find out that many of the changes for patch 1.7 are already sketched out. The Alphas over at Tabula Rasa Vault recently took a number of community concerns to the developers and published the findings in a Q&A format. Much to our surprise, these include several things that are scheduled to be included in patch 1.7. We're all about aggressive content development schedules, but we're hoping they remember what happened the last time they pushed a patch out the door without letting it simmer in test for long enough.

In any case, some of the fixes coming in patch 1.7 include a fix to Controlled Fission in PvP, some tweaks to the UI to encourage more player interaction, a nerf to some high level abuse of the Medic's Reconstruction ability, and the addition of repair tools (which are now affected by item rarity) to the loot drop tables. One last juicy detail was the development team is currently working on overhauling the ailing crafting system, but the timetable for release is slotted for a nebulous "future patch."