Its a good game, better than most, real sad so many over look it for things that most other mmos also get wrong...
And on people blaming animations, there certainly are major games with worse animations than TSW, blaming the animations for a better effort than some is just wrong.
As with the poster above me, I think it really boils down to people not understanding or exploring the combat system. There is alot of freedom to find and build something interesting, and really think most just try to spam one thing and actually figure out the possiblities.
TSW is hands down the best story driven MMO so far, graphics are a treat, the cutscenes are pure delight. The quests are highly innovative and challenging, the instances are extremely well made in terms of mechanics and story again.
...and then it all falls down with endless grinding at endgame and having to endure 20 minutes spam in Agartha to get a group for an 18/18 speedrun with a lot of snobs ignoring you if you're not exactly geared the right way to ensure a mindless quick run
The endgame is definitely killing it for me, I personally am excited about each new DLC coming out, I take a couple of days to experience the bliss of savouring the new content, then its supposed to be back to Nightmare grinding, no thanks
You mentioned the player has choices in weapons and there are over 500 skills but sadly each weapon has a best builder and best attack. There is no reason to use many of the skills or even rock multiple weapons since one weapon with two attacks is all you need. I have tried to play this one several times since I purchased the lifetime option but each time the combat bores me and I quit.
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
It's fairly obvious. Combat is lackluster: animations and collision are stiff and clunky, and the different spec options are similar; a builder and a finisher.
I dont play Secret World because I expected an awesome three way PvP action but instead I got a three faction PVE with woefully underdeveloped PvP, just like AoC.
That was the main reason. Second reason was that it seemed largely a single player game with more incentive to interact with NPCs than other players.
Third and least reason was that the GFX looked pretty outdated for a game that was released way after AoC, and which had amazing GFX when it was released.
It's not a Wowclone, that's even better. But not for the mass taste, needs too much brain and attention.
I agree that some quests require you to think. But the majority is just multiple fetch/kill quests combined into quest stages, which isn't any different from WoW, apart from that in WoW the stages count as seperat quests.
And that's the "best quest design in history"? Ok...
For me, having EA on the splash screen turned me off at launch. When it went B2P, I gave it a try and loved it. The game has issues, but there is a diamond in the rough when it comes to quest structure and character flexibility.
The article is spot on when it says the game has so many of the features the boards are clamoring for. Hard content? Check. Try the end game nightmare runs. Those are a degree harder than most small group content on the market.
Breaking away from the kill 10 critters quest style? Check. The missions are entertaining and the characters memorable. Far better voice acted than SWTOR.
The biggest gripe I have is how much of a grind the end game is. Very small increases in effectiveness with the way the end game currency works. To completely deck out a character, it takes around 180+ dungeon runs.
If that is not your cup of tea, the content included in the initial purchase is worth the cost, especially if you can pick it up on discount from Steam.
I can't play it because the combat and UI are incredibly clunky. No, that's not a lame nor laughable excuse, as some people like to say. Yes, I understand how the combat system works. It doesn't matter how you try to spin it, it's still spamming builders until an opportune time to use a finisher, with perhaps one or two situational skills. That's it. Even in the videos made by high-level players, that's all they're doing.
Even with that in mind however, it wouldn't be so bad if it were nicely animated, or made the player feel sufficiently badass. Guess what? It doesn't. Maybe things change with some of the late-game skills, but most of the early skills in the elementalism tree look about as spectacular as somebody using a lighter & a spray can, or a slightly overcharged taser. Hell, I've seen actual static discharges resulting from someone dragging their feet across a shag carpet in dry weather which look more impressive than the low-tier lightning abilities. The early blood magic 'shield'? Looks like the bubble from the movie Explorers, but without about 99.8% of the awesomeness and durability. Even against the first lowly zombies you face, it's good for absorbing one attack. One. Considering the fact that said zombies are flailing around like angry speds & come in packs of three or more, that makes it almost completely useless unless you spam the hell out of it... like almost every other ability in game. (On a separate note, how awesome would having the bubble from Explorers be? Controlling it with your iPhone, using it to protect yourself & knock over foes... awesomeness).
Bad combat can be forgiven, however. Bad combat that's forced upon you every three steps because this 'secret world' is overflowing with veritable armies of shambling eldritch monstrosities the likes of which would've given Poe & Lovecraft nightmares (credit where it's due, the monster designs are really good for the most part) cannot. I understand that there's much more activity than usual because 'shit's going down, son!', but activity this scale warrants calling out the fucking army, not a couple dozen twenty-something college kids in trench coats and MMORPG.com t-shirts, running around with actual (opposed to he fake 'anything with a barrel shroud is EVIL' ones the media parades around) assault weapons and USB cords twisted into elemental foci (another pet peeve of mine).
Oh, and should you screw up your build due to the complete lack of any explanation as to how skills interact, tough shit. You're stuck grinding lower-tier missions and monsters until you can scrape together enough points to 'fix' your character. You see, a well-designed game would allow one to 'respec' or make modifications to a character at least once or twice for a low / minimal cost, to account for people getting used to the combat system and the way skills interact with one another. Here? Nope! Too bad, so sad, you suck... even though it's our fault for not offering up any sort of explanation.
TSW really pisses me off. It's a game with some of the best written story, best designed monsters, and most atmospheric environments I've ever played, completely screwed up by absolutely terribly designed systems (not even going to go into crafting, this is long enough already) which could honestly be easily fixed if Funcom would pull their heads out of their asses. Instead, they just seclude themselves behind the fanboy apologists who scream, "You just don't UNDERSTAND, MAN!"... which is sadly what's killing off this game. Which is a shame, because this game doesn't deserve to be killed off.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
It's not a Wowclone, that's even better. But not for the mass taste, needs too much brain and attention.
I agree that some quests require you to think. But the majority is just multiple fetch/kill quests combined into quest stages, which isn't any different from WoW, apart from that in WoW the stages count as seperat quests.
And that's the "best quest design in history"? Ok...
there is not one single quest which is not at least tied into some weird story, even the most basic packet fetch/deliver missions.
Sorry but playing titles like Gw2 (hello egg collecting) or Wow leaves zero credibility when critizising TSW.
75%+ of all missions are extremely well designed and I didn't want to miss a single one. First MMO I actually went for mission achievements, doing every single one, even the hidden ones. It feels much more like an adventure game to me than like silly hamster wheel "collect x eggs"quests, a la GW2.. oh wait, progress bar! Oh the innovation..
I got the grandmaster pack for TSW months ago and I enjoy my points and monthly stuff. Best purchase I made in a long time apart from backing Starcitizen with about the same amount of money. And I bet Tokyo expansion will be super exciting
TSW was a fantastic game for me and had some of the most memorable questing I've ever done. Even playing at a casual pace, I completed all the quests (some dozens of times), maxed out my ability wheel, worked on achievements, PVPed, did some dungeon running. Only thing I never did was raid.
Unfortunately, I felt like I hit a brick wall of things to do. Crafting was lackluster. There are no fun hobbies aside from working on achievements or lore. Slowly most of my cabal mates stopped playing along the way. Now I'm just a tourist, popping in to see any new issues. Because I'm a tourist, it is a bit hard to find a cabal that won't toss me for inactivity. I'm so rusty with the game, I go about my solo activities and then log off. I hesitate to join dungeon groups because I'm rusty and probably don't have the optimum build.
I have the lifetime so at least get any new content free.
"Then they run through mobs of zombies spamming one single attack over and over because, “slicey good.” Of course this is boring! But it is boring because the player makes it boring. In The Secret World you can have two weapons (excluding auxiliary weapons). You have options to make any sort of character you want. Have up to seven abilities at a time, and seven passives, from over 500 skills. But people insist on spamming just one over and over. The Secret World has a complexity in its combat that I feel like these people are all missing. Combat is as boring or as complex as you make it. And for that, The Secret World deserves praise."
No. The fact that you CAN just spam one skill over and over and have success is a monumental failure in the combat.
I love the game but I feel that the thing it most have going against it is lack of content. There are only eight adventuring zones and unless you take your time savouring each of them thoroughly you may find yourself having played through them too quickly.
The endgame is unremarkable, mostly consisting of grinding the same dungeons you have already done at a higher difficulty level. Don't play the game if you are one of those people who are prone to rush through content to reach some sort of endgame. Thats not what TSW are about at all.
That being said, now is probably a good time to pick up it if you haven't played it before. If you start now you'll probably get through it about when Tokyo is out giving you a more coherent experience than those of us who has been there from start.
It was the investigation quests that sold the game to me. The feeling I had when I realised that I would have to do things like decode morse code messages to solve them was wonderful.
TSW is a nice game. The story and atmosphere really do it justice. Everything else is missing polish, though. The animations could be better (cut scenes have better animations), the combat could be more fluid and believable and the UI could use some bug fixing. I have submitted my bug reports since the start of beta and nothing is ever done in regards to these areas. I don't know if they just don't care or they toss it into the lowest of lowest priorities of things to get fixed. Somehow I get the impression they're just trying to please "end gamers."
Someone else had said before that "While playing TSW I feel more like I am fighting the system than actually playing a game". The controls, UI, and animations are so terrible...it's like trying to build a sand castle with dry sand.
Originally posted by Arskaaa "when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
"Then they run through mobs of zombies spamming one single attack over and over because, “slicey good.” Of course this is boring! But it is boring because the player makes it boring. In The Secret World you can have two weapons (excluding auxiliary weapons). You have options to make any sort of character you want. Have up to seven abilities at a time, and seven passives, from over 500 skills. But people insist on spamming just one over and over. The Secret World has a complexity in its combat that I feel like these people are all missing. Combat is as boring or as complex as you make it. And for that, The Secret World deserves praise."
No. The fact that you CAN just spam one skill over and over and have success is a monumental failure in the combat.
Actually that's called freedom spamming one "slicey good" attack all the time is boring and also ineffective, you'll be facing different mobs during your play... but of course there's the freedom (not the failure), you CAN, if you want.
Apologise in advance for the lame example, but let's say you have a screwdriver. Yay, you start to use it everywhere, because you can. There's a small hiccup when first bumping into a torx, but muscle and will combined you beat the obstacle. ( )
Then you get the task, to make some holes. True, you CAN achieve that with turning around your trusty screwdriver (a lot), but wouldn't be more effective and much less boring to simply switch for an electric drill?
Comments
Its a good game, better than most, real sad so many over look it for things that most other mmos also get wrong...
And on people blaming animations, there certainly are major games with worse animations than TSW, blaming the animations for a better effort than some is just wrong.
As with the poster above me, I think it really boils down to people not understanding or exploring the combat system. There is alot of freedom to find and build something interesting, and really think most just try to spam one thing and actually figure out the possiblities.
It's almost tragic:
TSW is hands down the best story driven MMO so far, graphics are a treat, the cutscenes are pure delight. The quests are highly innovative and challenging, the instances are extremely well made in terms of mechanics and story again.
...and then it all falls down with endless grinding at endgame and having to endure 20 minutes spam in Agartha to get a group for an 18/18 speedrun with a lot of snobs ignoring you if you're not exactly geared the right way to ensure a mindless quick run
The endgame is definitely killing it for me, I personally am excited about each new DLC coming out, I take a couple of days to experience the bliss of savouring the new content, then its supposed to be back to Nightmare grinding, no thanks
i was playing TSW, i stopped it because:
1) few players for dungeons
2) few players in order to have some kind of help with hard quests
3) few players at all
4) if u have a wrong build u are unable to have fun.
Solutions:buids must not be so important at all, some quests at solomon island'd be nerfed.
My blog about (no more)MMORPG Addicted - a bog about videogames, cinema, politics and other things (in Italian)
I dont play Secret World because I expected an awesome three way PvP action but instead I got a three faction PVE with woefully underdeveloped PvP, just like AoC.
That was the main reason. Second reason was that it seemed largely a single player game with more incentive to interact with NPCs than other players.
Third and least reason was that the GFX looked pretty outdated for a game that was released way after AoC, and which had amazing GFX when it was released.
My gaming blog
Ok, after my last post in this thread, I decided to try out the game once more, haven't played it since June.
It's worse than I remembered. Piss poor combat system, poorly designed quest hubs, a LOT of running back and forth, and so on.
Some issues about the quest hubs:
If I could permantly delete games from Steam, this one would be the first to go.
Edit: typo
Uhmm.. I'm playing. my friends are playing every weekend.
We are all looking forward to the Tokyo expansiom
Best quest design in history.
It's not a Wowclone, that's even better. But not for the mass taste, needs too much brain and attention.
I like it that way.
But the game seriously needs an immersive housing feature and the promised animation backend improvements.
I don't play mmos for cut scenes and voice acting, that's all these games are anymore.
The way mmo's were: Community, Exploration, Character Development, Conquest.
The way mmo's are now : Cut-Scenes,Cut-Scenes, solo Questing, Cut-Scenes...
www.CeaselessGuild.com
How about:
- mobs tend to have a bazillion HP and take forever to kill
- can't easily navigate through the world without aggro-ing trash mobs, refer to item 1
- although they did get some starter builds together and help new players get started it just wasn't enough
- many time when i try to activate an ability nothing happens - that miss causes me to lose the rhythm and that just makes the fight taste bad
I agree that some quests require you to think. But the majority is just multiple fetch/kill quests combined into quest stages, which isn't any different from WoW, apart from that in WoW the stages count as seperat quests.
And that's the "best quest design in history"? Ok...
For me, having EA on the splash screen turned me off at launch. When it went B2P, I gave it a try and loved it. The game has issues, but there is a diamond in the rough when it comes to quest structure and character flexibility.
The article is spot on when it says the game has so many of the features the boards are clamoring for. Hard content? Check. Try the end game nightmare runs. Those are a degree harder than most small group content on the market.
Breaking away from the kill 10 critters quest style? Check. The missions are entertaining and the characters memorable. Far better voice acted than SWTOR.
The biggest gripe I have is how much of a grind the end game is. Very small increases in effectiveness with the way the end game currency works. To completely deck out a character, it takes around 180+ dungeon runs.
If that is not your cup of tea, the content included in the initial purchase is worth the cost, especially if you can pick it up on discount from Steam.
I can't play it because the combat and UI are incredibly clunky. No, that's not a lame nor laughable excuse, as some people like to say. Yes, I understand how the combat system works. It doesn't matter how you try to spin it, it's still spamming builders until an opportune time to use a finisher, with perhaps one or two situational skills. That's it. Even in the videos made by high-level players, that's all they're doing.
Even with that in mind however, it wouldn't be so bad if it were nicely animated, or made the player feel sufficiently badass. Guess what? It doesn't. Maybe things change with some of the late-game skills, but most of the early skills in the elementalism tree look about as spectacular as somebody using a lighter & a spray can, or a slightly overcharged taser. Hell, I've seen actual static discharges resulting from someone dragging their feet across a shag carpet in dry weather which look more impressive than the low-tier lightning abilities. The early blood magic 'shield'? Looks like the bubble from the movie Explorers, but without about 99.8% of the awesomeness and durability. Even against the first lowly zombies you face, it's good for absorbing one attack. One. Considering the fact that said zombies are flailing around like angry speds & come in packs of three or more, that makes it almost completely useless unless you spam the hell out of it... like almost every other ability in game. (On a separate note, how awesome would having the bubble from Explorers be? Controlling it with your iPhone, using it to protect yourself & knock over foes... awesomeness).
Bad combat can be forgiven, however. Bad combat that's forced upon you every three steps because this 'secret world' is overflowing with veritable armies of shambling eldritch monstrosities the likes of which would've given Poe & Lovecraft nightmares (credit where it's due, the monster designs are really good for the most part) cannot. I understand that there's much more activity than usual because 'shit's going down, son!', but activity this scale warrants calling out the fucking army, not a couple dozen twenty-something college kids in trench coats and MMORPG.com t-shirts, running around with actual (opposed to he fake 'anything with a barrel shroud is EVIL' ones the media parades around) assault weapons and USB cords twisted into elemental foci (another pet peeve of mine).
Oh, and should you screw up your build due to the complete lack of any explanation as to how skills interact, tough shit. You're stuck grinding lower-tier missions and monsters until you can scrape together enough points to 'fix' your character. You see, a well-designed game would allow one to 'respec' or make modifications to a character at least once or twice for a low / minimal cost, to account for people getting used to the combat system and the way skills interact with one another. Here? Nope! Too bad, so sad, you suck... even though it's our fault for not offering up any sort of explanation.
TSW really pisses me off. It's a game with some of the best written story, best designed monsters, and most atmospheric environments I've ever played, completely screwed up by absolutely terribly designed systems (not even going to go into crafting, this is long enough already) which could honestly be easily fixed if Funcom would pull their heads out of their asses. Instead, they just seclude themselves behind the fanboy apologists who scream, "You just don't UNDERSTAND, MAN!"... which is sadly what's killing off this game. Which is a shame, because this game doesn't deserve to be killed off.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
2,3,1,1,1,1,1 repeat (if melee)
or
1,1,1,1,1,2,3 repeat (all others)
there is not one single quest which is not at least tied into some weird story, even the most basic packet fetch/deliver missions.
Sorry but playing titles like Gw2 (hello egg collecting) or Wow leaves zero credibility when critizising TSW.
75%+ of all missions are extremely well designed and I didn't want to miss a single one. First MMO I actually went for mission achievements, doing every single one, even the hidden ones. It feels much more like an adventure game to me than like silly hamster wheel "collect x eggs"quests, a la GW2.. oh wait, progress bar! Oh the innovation..
I got the grandmaster pack for TSW months ago and I enjoy my points and monthly stuff. Best purchase I made in a long time apart from backing Starcitizen
with about the same amount of money. And I bet Tokyo expansion will be super exciting
QFT.
"Quest hubs"? The game is out since almost 2 years (if counting betas), and still, quest hubs? Lol.
That's maybe one of the best feature story-wise, but I don't even go there, it was addressed way too many times since launch.
"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." (from Yokai's blog)
TSW was a fantastic game for me and had some of the most memorable questing I've ever done. Even playing at a casual pace, I completed all the quests (some dozens of times), maxed out my ability wheel, worked on achievements, PVPed, did some dungeon running. Only thing I never did was raid.
Unfortunately, I felt like I hit a brick wall of things to do. Crafting was lackluster. There are no fun hobbies aside from working on achievements or lore. Slowly most of my cabal mates stopped playing along the way. Now I'm just a tourist, popping in to see any new issues. Because I'm a tourist, it is a bit hard to find a cabal that won't toss me for inactivity. I'm so rusty with the game, I go about my solo activities and then log off. I hesitate to join dungeon groups because I'm rusty and probably don't have the optimum build.
I have the lifetime so at least get any new content free.
"Then they run through mobs of zombies spamming one single attack over and over because, “slicey good.” Of course this is boring! But it is boring because the player makes it boring. In The Secret World you can have two weapons (excluding auxiliary weapons). You have options to make any sort of character you want. Have up to seven abilities at a time, and seven passives, from over 500 skills. But people insist on spamming just one over and over. The Secret World has a complexity in its combat that I feel like these people are all missing. Combat is as boring or as complex as you make it. And for that, The Secret World deserves praise."
No. The fact that you CAN just spam one skill over and over and have success is a monumental failure in the combat.
you could have put a little more variety in your hotbar
ever built different decks and build presets and switch as you like?
http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=48938
you don't get this level of freedom and variety in any other MMO I've played
I love the game but I feel that the thing it most have going against it is lack of content. There are only eight adventuring zones and unless you take your time savouring each of them thoroughly you may find yourself having played through them too quickly.
The endgame is unremarkable, mostly consisting of grinding the same dungeons you have already done at a higher difficulty level. Don't play the game if you are one of those people who are prone to rush through content to reach some sort of endgame. Thats not what TSW are about at all.
That being said, now is probably a good time to pick up it if you haven't played it before. If you start now you'll probably get through it about when Tokyo is out giving you a more coherent experience than those of us who has been there from start.
It was the investigation quests that sold the game to me. The feeling I had when I realised that I would have to do things like decode morse code messages to solve them was wonderful.
Gimmicky content and game really..
When your updates continue to involve generic stuff like platforming and avoiding mines again and again..
Combat is also pretty much a snooze fest to top it off...
Originally posted by Arskaaa
"when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
Actually that's called freedom
spamming one "slicey good" attack all the time is boring and also ineffective, you'll be facing different mobs during your play... but of course there's the freedom (not the failure), you CAN, if you want.
Apologise in advance for the lame example, but let's say you have a screwdriver. Yay, you start to use it everywhere, because you can. There's a small hiccup when first bumping into a torx, but muscle and will combined you beat the obstacle. (
)
Then you get the task, to make some holes. True, you CAN achieve that with turning around your trusty screwdriver (a lot), but wouldn't be more effective and much less boring to simply switch for an electric drill?