Tabula Rasa Interview

MPOGD was able to track down Tabula Rasa community manager April Burba for a short Q&A about the soon-to-be-released sci-fi MMORPG.
Q: At least on one occasion, we've seen people bring up the issue of both running out of bullets and not having the money to buy bullets to resupply. Typically, only the bow and arrow players have had to constantly worry about an issue like this, with regards to having arrows, but now everyone has to rely on bullets/projectiles. Are there any safeguards in play to try and minimize or keep this problem from not happening at all, and why did you choose not to focus on melee combat really for Tabula Rasa?

A: Actually any player can melee. There is a trainable melee skill you get at Recruit and there are filament swords and staffs in some classes. We also encourage melee with our '˜finishing moves' for critical hits. It's just the melee focus is more based on (would you bring a stick to a gunfight' type mentality. Spies use filament swords they can get into melee and do damage because they are sneaky and thus do a killing blow from behind. Staffs are ranged + melee for the best of both worlds.As far as ammo goes we are tweaking ammo drop rates/cost/credit earning to find a good balance of wise ammo use (no you can't just turn your chaingun on and walk around blasting everything in sight) and making sure troops never really get into a situation where they can't get enough ammo to get the job done. Little hint if you run out of cash and need ammo, check your footlocker. General British stored a little extra cash in there for you just in case.