**The Secret World**

Lol at these type of comments.

So if one company repeatadly makes sub-standard products you'd be happy with it and keep giving them money? FunCom have been producing MMO's for ages and, even from thsi thread alone, I can still see people having to use /stuck, etc.

Sorry but if people make rubbish products or put **** in the games that I don't want (i.e. EA's draconian DRM) then I won't buy it.



M.
 
So if one company repeatadly makes sub-standard products you'd be happy with it and keep giving them money? FunCom have been producing MMO's for ages and, even from thsi thread alone, I can still see people having to use /stuck, etc.

Sorry but if people make rubbish products or put **** in the games that I don't want (i.e. EA's draconian DRM) then I won't buy it.



M.

Ignore him, im having issues with the game, apparently its because people have **** machines how he puts it in his post above :rolleyes:.

Other threads he talks **** all the time and picks fights with other users here..
 
RAGE. Left it overnight to download the whole beta, managed to log on for a few mins when I woke up and just got back from work and there's another 2GB+ patch. Looks like it will be tomorrow when I finally have an afternoon to test it out.
 
I ended up using Pistols for AoE and pulling and a Hammer for single target damage. Worked out quite well, only just found out it fits the Crusader template.

Pistols' sound really weedy though and it's a bit strange when dual wielding pistols only being able to fire off 1 shot per second. Hammer does the job when endlessly circle strafing round a big monster though.

Once you get past the usual beta problems I think this'll be an excellent game, a lot of good writing (although obviously heavily influenced and borrowing from previous works by Lovecraft etc) keeps it interesting for those that take the time and some of the quests seem a lot more involving than the usual mmorpg fare of kill this, fetch that.

I much preferred it to the latest Star Wars mmo anyway, which I preordered, played in open beta and then never actually played after official release :) Although maybe that just means I'm more of a fan of HP Lovecraft and Cthluhu mythos than Star Wars. Although I'd still rather have SWG back like it was the first few months after release over any other MMORPG
 
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I've spent the whole day playing it at this stage, and I've gone from "this is rubbish" to "wow, this could be really good" :p

There's a ton of stuff that isn't explained well at all, like the one-of-each-quest-type thing. It was hours before I realised I could wield two weapons, because the tutorial gives you the impression you're stuck with the one you take from the training room. And I spent half the day avoiding investigation missions because they were marked as 'hard' - I assumed they were group missions.

The cutscenes blow TOR out of the water, really well acted, and the general voiceovers have some laugh out loud lines. Kingsmouth is huge and dangerous and stuffed with quests. I seem to have covered only the smallest portion of it so far. Never been so interested in a story either, you uncover what happened very gradually from a dozen different sources, it's pretty cool.

It's still stuffed with bugs mind you, it's very definitely a Funcom game :)

I found this snippet very useful from one of the devs :

The mission (quest) system in TSW is *very* different from nearly every other MMO. If you approach missions like you do in other MMOs, you might be disappointed. If, on the other hand, you *understand* the mission system and the design reasons behind it, you might find that you really enjoy it.

Don't think in terms of "quest hubs". Don't try to finish all the missions that are available at the first apparent "hub" you come to. That's not how this game is designed.

Instead, understand that the multiple missions available at given "hub" are meant to *spread out the players*. They're not a laundry list of quests to complete first. If there are 4 different possible quests at a given hub, take your pick of one and follow it to the end. Meanwhile, other players are making different choices and the end result is that 25% of you go to one part of the map, another 25% go to a different part, and so on.

The next important thing to understand is that when you finish the last tier of a quest, STOP RIGHT THERE. Do not run back to the hub. Just phone in your reward right where you're standing, and then start looking around the current area carefully. In most cases, you should find some other "mission starter" of some sort very nearby. Usually within 50m of where you ended the mission you just finished. Take THAT quest and follow it to the end.

Now keep rinsing and repeating. Eventually you'll end up near that first "hub" again, and since it's nearby, that's the logical place to pick up the next mission.

LET the quests give you a tour of the zone. Your tour will be different from other player's because you're making different choices.

If you find yourself running back to a hub to grab the next quest from that hub, *you're doing it wrong*.

If you don't find a new mission starter within roughly 50m of where you ended the previous mission, report it as a bug. Seriously.

Now as to your queue:

There are three "activity mission" types: red (action), yellow (sabotage), and green (investigation), you can have only one activity mission in your queue at one time. These are typically given only by NPCs, and most (all) such NPCs are marked on your map.

There are also "item mission" types, which are a grayish green with stripes along the bottom. You can have up to three of these in your queue at any one time. These do not appear on the map, and they can be anywhere in the environment. You might want to mark them with a map marker when you find them, in case you want to repeat them again later.

Finally, you can have only one "storyline" mission (blue) in your queue at a time, and only one "group instance" mission (purple).

Don't see the limited queue as a detriment. See it as a reminder to really follow the story of each quest instead of treating things as a mindless laundry list. And remember: where one mission ends, there is usually another mission to start *very close by*, and if not that's actually a bug worth reporting. Although be aware that you might have to look carefully for it like many of the "clue hunting" mechanics of the game in general.

One last note: you cannot "drop" a mission. You can only *pause* a mission by taking another one of the same type. To resume a paused mission you *will* have to find the original place it started from and "start" it again. However, when you do this you actually resume the mission at the tier you paused it at. Be aware, though, that if you did not fully complete that tier before pausing it, you will have lost all progress *within* that tier and be starting at the very beginning of the tier again.

Some pics :

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Lol at these type of comments.

Those types of comments are valid.

FunCom have a history of being totally retarded at times. They have been promising an engine update in Anarchy Online for years. They post screens every other week but I reckon it is just a ruse to keep current people subbing in hope of an engine that will never turn up.

In other news a silly TSW related clip!


Got a few hours worth of footage that I might chop up a little and upload, if anyone is interested in some gameplay stuff who does not have access.
 
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Love the setting and the gfx have a nice style to them.
It runs well and looks nice on max settings, just a few hard drive thrashes now and then.

I played the swtor closed beta (didn't buy it) and the cut scenes annoyed me so skipped most but I have enjoyed watching them all so far in this game.

I like the skill based system and I am just starting to understand it :)
Combat feels ok now I have a skill that slows the mobs down a bit !

I like the quest system and I was doing as the devs intended and not going back to the hub but just exploring.

I think I will buy it and see how it develops as at the moment it is quite polished for Funcom :)
 
Yeah, the more I play it the more I'm starting to like it, I really enjoy it when you don't skip stuff and listen to the lore and do the puzzles, take in the scenery.

There's one thing they've done right is the attention to detail, sharp textures and text, not just mumbo jumbo copy pasted all over. Riddles in this are cool too, like having to die to meet a ghost and then reading some text, which goes on to some other stuff... won't spoil that much.

A purchase definately, but not pre-purchase nor at full price, I have other games to keep me busy. Maybe once Max payne, D3, (Gw2 if it's out in the next few months or so) will keep me busy enough.

If you let yourself get immersed instead of skip-skip-skip, you might catch the bug and like it, I did find in my group of 4 (hi sin_chase!) that we went a little too fast compared to my later play through with just another person.
I even started using a pen&paper to write down notes and try figure out some things, although it's a shame a lot of stuff still has quests markers. "Go to the church" DOIIIIII really? It's on the map, do you really have to point it out with a 3d marker?

Hopefully starter area shenanigans.

What swtor has taught me is a early game with lots of polish and content doesn't mean the elder game has, swtor pretty much threw the whole idea of flashpoint with much story after the first one.
I'm trying to say I hope tsw can keep up these cut-scenes and stuff right up and until I "reach the end" so to speak, and then some.
 
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Yep it's defiantly one that the more you play the more you appreciate it. Admittedly when i first loaded the game and got moving i was like WTF?! movement is a step back, but it's got a lot of interesting ideas and the setting / theme is unique and seems fresh for a MMO.

It's one to watch, but i'm not too sure i'd be willing to pay a sub for it. Wish it was fp2.
 
Based on the beta I'll probably pick it up for the month's entertainment at least, Don't know how long it would last as an mmo though -hard to tell without seeing the rest of the game and what constitutes end-game. It seems to have tons of detail in places - wandered into a restaurant in London, and there's this guy in the kitchen in the back. Doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to add colour :

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I am loving this, sunk over 20 hours in it so far, this has really grabbed me the atmosphere is like nothing ive played before, the quests are very well done, great voice acting and require you to look very closely at your surroundings, not skip them only to level up. The story arc is very intriguing and I really want to know how it deveplops! I can ignore the bugs (there are many) as the game is just so well thought out for the most part. Its one of those games where an hour feels like 5 mins.
 
It's great watching the people plead in general chat for Dr Bannerman's PC code. Engage your brain for 20 seconds, look around, use Google if you have to. Just stop whining :)

Best dialogue so far :

"Once I realised I could start fires with my mind, that was the end of the ballet school dream. Actually, it was the end of the ballet school."

It is riddled with bugs though. If they do an age of conan / anarchy online on it and release it in a half finished state it'll tank big time, which would be a great shame. It's never stopped them before mind you :(
 
I like the look of the game a lot, but there's two issues:

The sub, I am far from a F2P enthusiast, I love my P2P MMOs, but I can't picture the game having a very fast content release schedule, which for me is the primary reason you pay a subscription for an MMO.

The combat, I've certainly be spoiled by Tera somewhat but even compared to other 'whack-a-mole' MMOs, the combat feels laborious, which is strange considering the steps forward AoC took, this game's gone backwards :s

If it wasn't by Funcom I'd probably buy a lifetime, but as it is I'll wait and see how they perform over the ~6 months after launch.
 
" Word from a Dev: The combat

Hi guys!
First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to test our game and provide us feedback. We read everything and we really appreciate it. I've seen some discussion about the combat. Some love it, some find it trivial, and some find it difficult to get into.
I want to give you some of our thoughts behind the design of combat and on the way forward.

The base abilities:
When we fist sat down to design this we were afraid that a lot of people had not played a classless game before. Our biggest fear was that some players would buy the wrong abilities, and thereby gimp themselves. Our solution to this was to make the first two cells in every weapon into a very basic build. The result is that every weapon will have a builder, some form of single target finisher, some form of aoe, some form of extra resource giving, a self buff and a very basic crowd control elite. We did this so that we knew if a player bought a full weapon in the base abilities, they would at least be able to play the game. This is the reason why playing only with the base abilities feels a bit sameish.

The base abilities vs the advanced abilities:
It's in the advanced wheel the weapons' personalities starts to shine a bit through. Out in the advanced wheel you'll find:
Elemental's manifestations
Blood magic's different types of barriers and spreading DoTs
Chaos magic's invulnerability
Sword's teleport to target
Fist weapon's combo attacks
Hammer's knockups
Pistol's gunkatas
Shogun's traps
Assault rifle's Snare-backflips

While the base wheel gives a small sampler on the flavor of the weapon, it's in the advanced wheel you can specialize. Each weapon have two roles, where the one role is always damage dealing. The other role is "tanky", "healy" or "supporty". There are 3 cells per role per weapon. Some cells focuses on single target, some one AoEs and out here you also find the abilities that don't require any resources to cast. We will make more and more of these advanced cells available as we move forward in this beta phase.

Fighting in TSW
I've seen some comments that some players play like this: builder+builder+builder+builder+builder+finisher, and then repeat. It is possible to play like that, but it's not necessarily fun, and definitely not efficient. Each builder build a resource for both your weapons. That means that when you have built to 5 you can use two finishers. There are also lots of abilities which will make resource building faster, in different flavors for different weapon types. Keep in mind that already in the base, shotgun and pistols can build resources on multiple targets at the same time. After that it's just to tab+finish+tab+finish etc. Also, remember that all melee weapons start with 5 resources, and that gives a nice burst damage.
My protip to you: Get 2 weapons and two finishers as quickly as possible. You won't regret it

In conclusion
We know that combat in TSW can be a bit difficult to get into, but please look under the hood. The base abilities are what they are - basic. When we open up more of the wheel, look for trigger synergies (crit, penetration, evade, block etc) and look for state synergies (afflicted, hindered, weakened and impaired). You can make some really cool things happen

Again I want to thank you guys for your feedback. I've seen some great threads about mouse mapping and different key mappings (I use 1-4,q,e,f myself). We will look into mouse mapping going forward. I can not guarantee you that it will be in for launch, but promise we will look into it."
 
Again I want to thank you guys for your feedback. I've seen some great threads about mouse mapping and different key mappings (I use 1-4,q,e,f myself). We will look into mouse mapping going forward. I can not guarantee you that it will be in for launch, but promise we will look into it."

Well it's Funcom otherwise I might believe that, but I'm not talking about the skills and more just the actual experience, it feels clunky, slow and unreactive.
 
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