I have to say that I do not play games solo, I have friends I play with and I get bored and uninterested very quickly if I have to play by myself, but I told them all that THIS game, I would play solo. I had a great time in the Beta and intend to be in there again this weekend.
I totally agree with your wife -- the hair needs a little something for sure. The only thing I can add is when are they going to put those clothes on sale?? Cut a girl a break and give us some discounts up in here!
I have to say that I do not play games solo, I have friends I play with and I get bored and uninterested very quickly if I have to play by myself, but I told them all that THIS game, I would play solo. I had a great time in the Beta and intend to be in there again this weekend.
Hm... the solo vs team part of TSW, I'm not really sure.
To be honest, on the beta weekend I've seen very few teams running together, usually just singles.
Which is causing me a bit of a headache (or maybe heartache, not really sure as both parts have long been beyond repair), because somehow it felt like it's perfectly okay to do this solo but yet at the same time it didn't feel unique enough to be my story as e.g. my class story in SWTOR.
Maybe what's wrong is the starting place for Kingsmouth?
I mean when I first popped in there was nobody else there. Of course I met "Howdy pardner" but that was pretty much it. And yes, I didn't go straight to the sheriff's office, simple because, well, there were things out there and my trigger finger was itchin'...
Well, I definitely didn't play all of Kingsmouth - hey, look, pt2 coming our way - but what I found was the Orochi Groups post.
Now, seeing that triggered something, I had seen this before, either in my darkest midnight visions or just on youtube.
But I do remember that you are getting some sort of briefing there.
And I think that may have been what is missing from the first Kingsmouth experience: something that binds us players into a group/groups. (thinking about it don't you find it rather odd that you as the freshest, least experienced, least trained member of your secret society are sent out to investigate a completely unknown situation all by your lonesome self? No handler, no partner, nothing...)
Of course, come launch day when you step out of Agartha into Kingsmouth I'm sure there will be loads of other fresh starts... and yet (unless FC changes that) there will be no "now make a group" quest (I remember how I always skipped that in DAoC... would potentially make sense here).
was everyone playing the same game i was. I so wanted to like this game but it was so bad starting with the storyline all the way to the character models. Also i hate being hand held through games but this one didnt give you hardly any clues at all on how to play. In my opinion funcom once again failed.
The BETA is horrible in terms of the game just being plain bad... gameplay and all, its APB meets Age of Conan, a lacking Age of Conan.
Originally posted by Camthylion
Originally posted by victorbjr
This is a great write-up! I realy hope TSW delivers in the spooky department.
It don't...
Errr, Camthylion, your statements are a bit, well... thin?
Okay, as i was actually livingjust a few villages (and cheap sheep brothels) over from where the original APB was born, I figured I'd just have to test it once it got Reloaded.
I have also played AoC.
Now, in what way is TSW "gameplay and all" like APB meets AoC?
(Oh, how I wish they's still do "Abbott and Costello meet..." movies)
Unless you are uing APB just because it's set in modern times and AoC because it's also a Funcom product?
As to spooky...
you know that spooky doesn't mean chainsaw-thru-head-closeup/arms-torn-from-socket/girl impaled ten times over/head being ripped off body and eaten, etc.
Classic Hammer movies (in their days) as well as classic German Edgar Wallace movies (again: in their days) were "spooky": lone guy running thru the fog covered marshlands, strange slithering sounds hunting/haunting him, or fog on the river, strange hunchback shape glimpsed by young maiden, nobody else around... spoooOOOoooOOOoooky!
Carpenter's classics like Halloween and The Fog (I guess any fog is just spooky by default) do of course feature "hard" moments but just as well toy with simply being "spooky".
Now, wave after wave of zombies running your way: not spooky!
But creeping thru a scrapyard and hearing something move but not yet knowing what it is: definitely spooky.
But maybe you'd care to explain in what way you feel that TSW is NOT spooky?
I lost count how many times you said your wife was "lovely" ... she is a lucky woman. I do hope you write more articles like this. You focused on important issues and it was an interesting read.
was everyone playing the same game i was. I so wanted to like this game but it was so bad starting with the storyline all the way to the character models. Also i hate being hand held through games but this one didnt give you hardly any clues at all on how to play. In my opinion funcom once again failed.
I agree that the storyline (or let's say the story how your character gets into his secret society) is, well, miles from perfect.
A few posts back I painted a picture of how I would have done it, not going to repeat that here now.
The character models are a bit of a moot point: FC has said that there will be "more" when TSW is released, and to be honest I do believe them... simply because the girl's red hotpants were listed as blue hotpants.
So, maybe the whole "more" will just be more textures fr the same models... which is actually okay as anybody who is working with CGI and 3D models/textures will confirm to you: just give that dude a different skin texture and suddenly he goes from white GQ model to African American Rap tattoo gangsta.
Most of the outfits seen in the TSW beta were just too unique too be representing the only choices: I loved my guy in Jeans, even though the choice was jeans with side stripes or Jeans with strange stylized design on 'em (picked the latter).
And to be honest, i do understand why maybe FC dropped loads of creation options: download filesize! Was still an 11 GB bitch, but better than some 19 GB snorker!
The same goes for the features: there may actually have been, well, let's call it "hidden" choices because I found that if you just pick the head shape the resulting look is rather race specific i.e. a typical "yellow" Asian face, a typical black "negroid features" face, a range of typical caucasian looks, but no matter whatthe skin tones yu could manually select from were a rather simple 3 shades of "white"...
again probably FC just cutting size.
Now, of course - as was said by 'The Wife' hairstyles are rather limited, as are beards (no really massive Santa beard with long surfer dude hair, but still managed to make him look hip slobby rich guy) and definitely makeup for girls. I found also that for some hair-bbeard combos the colours don't match.
But to be honest, I wouldn't really judge the character creation on beta tests, simply because textures are easy to re-work/add/remove so what you may see in the very last beta may still be different in release.
If you are a "looks whore" and you haven't found something you could work with in the beta, best advice I could give: wait until release, check the usual streams and youtube for examples of TSW character creation in the Release version.
I think with a "gamerella" like Pokket you can be sure that she'll spend hours in character creation... at least she has been doing so in other games ;-)
Where I was a bit - confused? - was the lack of any personal life to chose from. I mean in some Fantasy MMO I'm a Warrior, a Scout, a Wizard, a Hunter, a Thief, same in a more futuristic setting: I'm a Recon, I'm an Engineer, I'm a Sharpshooter, I'm a Medic, etc.
Obviously FC makes away with these class concepts and just goes skills... but does that mean that my character doesn't have a life before he became "awakened"?
I liked the Assault rifle best (though I didn't try the other options too much to be honest, the AR just seemed a perfect fit for the guy I had in mind: ex-military, back home after last tour, does have some money in the bank but hasn't yet found his way being civilian, so tries to live things up a bit - too much.)
But, well, obviously there is no indication whether he knows how to apply first aid... or drive a truck... or even a car...
and while maybe this background doesn't really mean anything for the gameplay in TSW, it could though on the more investigative side of the game if maybe clues are "background coded": some newspaper clipping doesn't mean anything to say a baker or a soldier but a banker might get a *ding* as he remembers a name in the article or an arts dealer may get a *ding* for knowing the painting shown in the photo, etc.
Now, cmann, from your last sentences it sounds a bit like the balance of freedom vs guidance in TSW is not to your liking.
Well, to some point I agree: the tier system sometimes makes no sense at all - just was with the guy to whom I have to bring that PDA. Tier 1 requires thatI go to somewhere in town where I know I won't find him but then at least it switches to tier 2 where I can go to where I know he'll be... many things could have been completed much faster if they weren't tiered.
In other cases I was left standing there going like "now what? I'm supposed to test the flamethrower?" Okay, picked up 3 loads of gasoline, equipped the flamer as alternate weapon, switched weapons, triggered the 1st action key (that still looks like the one from the AR, and yes, there seems to be something happening - I pissed yellow stuffonto the floor where my enemy stands? Right... is this thing faulty? No, no mission update. Took me a while to figure out that that you action the flamer by clicking on the gasoline icon in your inventory (sorry if this is spoiler to anybody) and apparently you can't drop that icon into your hotbar (though I might be wrong, didn't test too much). so yeah, a bit more guidance would have helped right there... at other times I found that I had access to missions given by guys that I found probably way before I should have thanks to going out on an expedition. So there were railroaded mission sets - complete mission a to unlock mission b - but also missions that could be done out of sequence. i just found it annoying that some mission types are limited to one and when you accept such a second mission it "pauses" the other mission, yet looking at the mission tracker I saw no paused mission(s)? Glitch? Me doing something wrong? If it works, if you can unpause a paused quest and thereby pause the quest you picked up later, so that you can complete that quest that is sitting right there before you, hey, niffty, would allow you to go mission collecting and then just pick as things come to light.
biggest issue (probably due to low FPS and self re-zooming camera, but definitely also helped by lack of clues) - spoiler - the mine course in the mining museum's basement. I could have shot the guy ten times over from range as there was nothing protecting him other than sensor lines. But of course you first have to bypass all the mines before you can fight him... *d'oh!* and that turns into a frigging "what just happened?" - run a miles you still will die *Bang!* shit course. *rolls eyes* This ain't frigging Tomb Raider! Why not trigger all traps from a distance and NOT enter the storage rooms?
So... there are some clues to some things... but there are alo "missing links" like the Slater papers that could be found anywhere: at least I found one on some street under a car's tyre (oops, soiler)
SWTOR has one problem with its cutsecens the character voices. I dont mind NPC's talking to me but after a while I just wished mt character would shut up or I could have a better choice of words.
I like TSW for this, maybe one day we will see a MMO like TSW where only your character story arc will be voiced by the character you play at the time? Then all other side missions they remain silent. SWTOR has a nice system in place though for party dialouge, but the voices for the races and classes all sound the same after a while.
well at the same experiment with mine gf at GW2 and RIFT in the same time, she prefered GW2 cause of graphics and the other players activity and cooporation ...
also she didnt had problem with the dodge, and i wonder why the journalists arent able to dodge on GW2 videos ..!
The MOST important question of all.....is there markers over npc heads?I mean once you introduce the hand holding there is no more mystery intrigue,just another same old same old.
That was the most intriguing thing i found about playing FFXi,NO markers no hand holding.
If this game does not have markers then all the power to it,it gets a solid mark up [pun] just for that alone.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I did get my gf to actually look at me a couple times (listening) when talking about the conspiracys though. I thought that was a big step forward from saying "I don't want to here about any game!" haha
Be warned... my ex gf turned into a WoW addict; was not fun.
Nice article! I was the noob gamer wife in 2007 when I bought Vanguard for my husband and I after he had mentioned he was interested in it. We'd only been married a few months and I made him almost as happy as our wedding day. I still cringe at how bad I was those first few days lol, luckily my friends were VERY patient with me. Skip to now I'm gaming much more often than he is, playing just about everything I can get my hands on. It just took me realizing that I was being a bit snooty about gaming. I had this preconceived notion that I was too good for online gaming or something, and once I decided to open my mind and just try it out I found I was a really natural fit.
And it may sound cliche, but seriously game developers - women like customization!! I have created half of my husband's characters for him because I think it's fun lol. Yes I like pwning stuff, but I like pretty hair too. So many wives/girlfriends have their first experience with an MMO by playing with a character creator!
Lots of people thought the SWTOR beta was the coolest thing ever... 30 days later they were all singing a different tune. Fast forward....
Lots of people who have played the weekend beta are saying they don't have much, if any, love for TSW... Maybe everyone will change their mind once they are able to try a version of the game that isn't stripped down and restricted like the weekend beta.
This was great. It really helped me to decide to give this game a try. I'm going to have serious issues with character creation though. When are MMORPG creators going to realize that we look at our avis more than anything else in the game and that we want them to look good and unique?
This was great. It really helped me to decide to give this game a try. I'm going to have serious issues with character creation though. When are MMORPG creators going to realize that we look at our avis more than anything else in the game and that we want them to look good and unique?
As a TSW fanboi I completely agree that character creation is pure garbage. Basically I can only choose only one charcater type because other options are big no to me. I don't remember exactly but doesn't AoC have way better character creation? With the same engine there should be possibilities to make it more complex.
This was great. It really helped me to decide to give this game a try. I'm going to have serious issues with character creation though. When are MMORPG creators going to realize that we look at our avis more than anything else in the game and that we want them to look good and unique?
As a TSW fanboi I completely agree that character creation is pure garbage. Basically I can only choose only one charcater type because other options are big no to me. I don't remember exactly but doesn't AoC have way better character creation? With the same engine there should be possibilities to make it more complex.
The character creator is also my biggest gripe with the game at the moment! I really do hope they manage to address that before launch!
Comments
I have to say that I do not play games solo, I have friends I play with and I get bored and uninterested very quickly if I have to play by myself, but I told them all that THIS game, I would play solo. I had a great time in the Beta and intend to be in there again this weekend.
I totally agree with your wife -- the hair needs a little something for sure. The only thing I can add is when are they going to put those clothes on sale?? Cut a girl a break and give us some discounts up in here!
So, if you're a chick and like to watch CSI on TV then this game might be for you. Is that what you're trying to say? lol
Hm... the solo vs team part of TSW, I'm not really sure.
To be honest, on the beta weekend I've seen very few teams running together, usually just singles.
Which is causing me a bit of a headache (or maybe heartache, not really sure as both parts have long been beyond repair), because somehow it felt like it's perfectly okay to do this solo but yet at the same time it didn't feel unique enough to be my story as e.g. my class story in SWTOR.
Maybe what's wrong is the starting place for Kingsmouth?
I mean when I first popped in there was nobody else there. Of course I met "Howdy pardner" but that was pretty much it. And yes, I didn't go straight to the sheriff's office, simple because, well, there were things out there and my trigger finger was itchin'...
Well, I definitely didn't play all of Kingsmouth - hey, look, pt2 coming our way - but what I found was the Orochi Groups post.
Now, seeing that triggered something, I had seen this before, either in my darkest midnight visions or just on youtube.
But I do remember that you are getting some sort of briefing there.
And I think that may have been what is missing from the first Kingsmouth experience: something that binds us players into a group/groups. (thinking about it don't you find it rather odd that you as the freshest, least experienced, least trained member of your secret society are sent out to investigate a completely unknown situation all by your lonesome self? No handler, no partner, nothing...)
Of course, come launch day when you step out of Agartha into Kingsmouth I'm sure there will be loads of other fresh starts... and yet (unless FC changes that) there will be no "now make a group" quest (I remember how I always skipped that in DAoC... would potentially make sense here).
The BETA is horrible in terms of the game just being plain bad... gameplay and all, its APB meets Age of Conan, a lacking Age of Conan.
It don't...
Actually the game does seem to cater to the TV watching crowd lol.
was everyone playing the same game i was. I so wanted to like this game but it was so bad starting with the storyline all the way to the character models. Also i hate being hand held through games but this one didnt give you hardly any clues at all on how to play. In my opinion funcom once again failed.
Errr, Camthylion, your statements are a bit, well... thin?
Okay, as i was actually livingjust a few villages (and cheap sheep brothels) over from where the original APB was born, I figured I'd just have to test it once it got Reloaded.
I have also played AoC.
Now, in what way is TSW "gameplay and all" like APB meets AoC?
(Oh, how I wish they's still do "Abbott and Costello meet..." movies)
Unless you are uing APB just because it's set in modern times and AoC because it's also a Funcom product?
As to spooky...
you know that spooky doesn't mean chainsaw-thru-head-closeup/arms-torn-from-socket/girl impaled ten times over/head being ripped off body and eaten, etc.
Classic Hammer movies (in their days) as well as classic German Edgar Wallace movies (again: in their days) were "spooky": lone guy running thru the fog covered marshlands, strange slithering sounds hunting/haunting him, or fog on the river, strange hunchback shape glimpsed by young maiden, nobody else around... spoooOOOoooOOOoooky!
Carpenter's classics like Halloween and The Fog (I guess any fog is just spooky by default) do of course feature "hard" moments but just as well toy with simply being "spooky".
Now, wave after wave of zombies running your way: not spooky!
But creeping thru a scrapyard and hearing something move but not yet knowing what it is: definitely spooky.
But maybe you'd care to explain in what way you feel that TSW is NOT spooky?
I lost count how many times you said your wife was "lovely" ... she is a lucky woman. I do hope you write more articles like this. You focused on important issues and it was an interesting read.
I agree that the storyline (or let's say the story how your character gets into his secret society) is, well, miles from perfect.
A few posts back I painted a picture of how I would have done it, not going to repeat that here now.
The character models are a bit of a moot point: FC has said that there will be "more" when TSW is released, and to be honest I do believe them... simply because the girl's red hotpants were listed as blue hotpants.
So, maybe the whole "more" will just be more textures fr the same models... which is actually okay as anybody who is working with CGI and 3D models/textures will confirm to you: just give that dude a different skin texture and suddenly he goes from white GQ model to African American Rap tattoo gangsta.
Most of the outfits seen in the TSW beta were just too unique too be representing the only choices: I loved my guy in Jeans, even though the choice was jeans with side stripes or Jeans with strange stylized design on 'em (picked the latter).
And to be honest, i do understand why maybe FC dropped loads of creation options: download filesize! Was still an 11 GB bitch, but better than some 19 GB snorker!
The same goes for the features: there may actually have been, well, let's call it "hidden" choices because I found that if you just pick the head shape the resulting look is rather race specific i.e. a typical "yellow" Asian face, a typical black "negroid features" face, a range of typical caucasian looks, but no matter whatthe skin tones yu could manually select from were a rather simple 3 shades of "white"...
again probably FC just cutting size.
Now, of course - as was said by 'The Wife' hairstyles are rather limited, as are beards (no really massive Santa beard with long surfer dude hair, but still managed to make him look hip slobby rich guy) and definitely makeup for girls. I found also that for some hair-bbeard combos the colours don't match.
But to be honest, I wouldn't really judge the character creation on beta tests, simply because textures are easy to re-work/add/remove so what you may see in the very last beta may still be different in release.
If you are a "looks whore" and you haven't found something you could work with in the beta, best advice I could give: wait until release, check the usual streams and youtube for examples of TSW character creation in the Release version.
I think with a "gamerella" like Pokket you can be sure that she'll spend hours in character creation... at least she has been doing so in other games ;-)
Where I was a bit - confused? - was the lack of any personal life to chose from. I mean in some Fantasy MMO I'm a Warrior, a Scout, a Wizard, a Hunter, a Thief, same in a more futuristic setting: I'm a Recon, I'm an Engineer, I'm a Sharpshooter, I'm a Medic, etc.
Obviously FC makes away with these class concepts and just goes skills... but does that mean that my character doesn't have a life before he became "awakened"?
I liked the Assault rifle best (though I didn't try the other options too much to be honest, the AR just seemed a perfect fit for the guy I had in mind: ex-military, back home after last tour, does have some money in the bank but hasn't yet found his way being civilian, so tries to live things up a bit - too much.)
But, well, obviously there is no indication whether he knows how to apply first aid... or drive a truck... or even a car...
and while maybe this background doesn't really mean anything for the gameplay in TSW, it could though on the more investigative side of the game if maybe clues are "background coded": some newspaper clipping doesn't mean anything to say a baker or a soldier but a banker might get a *ding* as he remembers a name in the article or an arts dealer may get a *ding* for knowing the painting shown in the photo, etc.
Now, cmann, from your last sentences it sounds a bit like the balance of freedom vs guidance in TSW is not to your liking.
Well, to some point I agree: the tier system sometimes makes no sense at all - just was with the guy to whom I have to bring that PDA. Tier 1 requires thatI go to somewhere in town where I know I won't find him but then at least it switches to tier 2 where I can go to where I know he'll be... many things could have been completed much faster if they weren't tiered.
In other cases I was left standing there going like "now what? I'm supposed to test the flamethrower?" Okay, picked up 3 loads of gasoline, equipped the flamer as alternate weapon, switched weapons, triggered the 1st action key (that still looks like the one from the AR, and yes, there seems to be something happening - I pissed yellow stuffonto the floor where my enemy stands? Right... is this thing faulty? No, no mission update. Took me a while to figure out that that you action the flamer by clicking on the gasoline icon in your inventory (sorry if this is spoiler to anybody) and apparently you can't drop that icon into your hotbar (though I might be wrong, didn't test too much). so yeah, a bit more guidance would have helped right there... at other times I found that I had access to missions given by guys that I found probably way before I should have thanks to going out on an expedition. So there were railroaded mission sets - complete mission a to unlock mission b - but also missions that could be done out of sequence. i just found it annoying that some mission types are limited to one and when you accept such a second mission it "pauses" the other mission, yet looking at the mission tracker I saw no paused mission(s)? Glitch? Me doing something wrong? If it works, if you can unpause a paused quest and thereby pause the quest you picked up later, so that you can complete that quest that is sitting right there before you, hey, niffty, would allow you to go mission collecting and then just pick as things come to light.
biggest issue (probably due to low FPS and self re-zooming camera, but definitely also helped by lack of clues) - spoiler - the mine course in the mining museum's basement. I could have shot the guy ten times over from range as there was nothing protecting him other than sensor lines. But of course you first have to bypass all the mines before you can fight him... *d'oh!* and that turns into a frigging "what just happened?" - run a miles you still will die *Bang!* shit course. *rolls eyes* This ain't frigging Tomb Raider! Why not trigger all traps from a distance and NOT enter the storage rooms?
So... there are some clues to some things... but there are alo "missing links" like the Slater papers that could be found anywhere: at least I found one on some street under a car's tyre (oops, soiler)
SWTOR has one problem with its cutsecens the character voices. I dont mind NPC's talking to me but after a while I just wished mt character would shut up or I could have a better choice of words.
I like TSW for this, maybe one day we will see a MMO like TSW where only your character story arc will be voiced by the character you play at the time? Then all other side missions they remain silent. SWTOR has a nice system in place though for party dialouge, but the voices for the races and classes all sound the same after a while.
Thank you to your wife for her view on this game.
well at the same experiment with mine gf at GW2 and RIFT in the same time, she prefered GW2 cause of graphics and the other players activity and cooporation ...
also she didnt had problem with the dodge, and i wonder why the journalists arent able to dodge on GW2 videos ..!
You play TSW?
You must be female and married!
The MOST important question of all.....is there markers over npc heads?I mean once you introduce the hand holding there is no more mystery intrigue,just another same old same old.
That was the most intriguing thing i found about playing FFXi,NO markers no hand holding.
If this game does not have markers then all the power to it,it gets a solid mark up [pun] just for that alone.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
There are only markes if you mouse over the NPCs. But there are various quest starters that have small markers by them. No huge glowing ! however
Excellent write up. I really enjoyed it.
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.
Be warned... my ex gf turned into a WoW addict; was not fun.
Nice article! I was the noob gamer wife in 2007 when I bought Vanguard for my husband and I after he had mentioned he was interested in it. We'd only been married a few months and I made him almost as happy as our wedding day. I still cringe at how bad I was those first few days lol, luckily my friends were VERY patient with me. Skip to now I'm gaming much more often than he is, playing just about everything I can get my hands on. It just took me realizing that I was being a bit snooty about gaming. I had this preconceived notion that I was too good for online gaming or something, and once I decided to open my mind and just try it out I found I was a really natural fit.
And it may sound cliche, but seriously game developers - women like customization!! I have created half of my husband's characters for him because I think it's fun lol. Yes I like pwning stuff, but I like pretty hair too. So many wives/girlfriends have their first experience with an MMO by playing with a character creator!
Next question to ask her is "Are you willing to pay $$ to see that?" since its a subscription game.
Lots of people thought the SWTOR beta was the coolest thing ever... 30 days later they were all singing a different tune. Fast forward....
Lots of people who have played the weekend beta are saying they don't have much, if any, love for TSW... Maybe everyone will change their mind once they are able to try a version of the game that isn't stripped down and restricted like the weekend beta.
Great write up but as of right now I tried playing TSW for 2hrs and couldn't stand the controls and the story was like a low budget tv show.
Like your wife said, I wish I could pick what I say.... or say anything at all
(I know it's beta but as of RIGHT NOW I dont like it)
This was great. It really helped me to decide to give this game a try. I'm going to have serious issues with character creation though. When are MMORPG creators going to realize that we look at our avis more than anything else in the game and that we want them to look good and unique?
A Voice From Within
As a TSW fanboi I completely agree that character creation is pure garbage. Basically I can only choose only one charcater type because other options are big no to me. I don't remember exactly but doesn't AoC have way better character creation? With the same engine there should be possibilities to make it more complex.
The character creator is also my biggest gripe with the game at the moment! I really do hope they manage to address that before launch!