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[Preview] The Secret World: Issue 11 - The Answers You've Been Waiting For
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Issue 11 is ready to be unleashed on The Secret World later today (if not already) and is something that is going to be very special for players. This is the story finale of the Tokyo storyline and the first major story since launch. In fact, Lead Designer Romain Amiel and Tor Egil Andersen called it the end of “Season 1” of The Secret World, an incredibly long season that has lasted since launch in June of 2012.
Read more of Suzie Ford's The Secret World: Issue 11- The Answers You've Been Waiting For.
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Comments
Nice and fast column, I bet you wrote it previously
since the downtime started 30, and the patch notes went up only 10 minutes ago 
Just a small correction, "Issue 11 is ready to be unleashed on The Secret World later today (if not already)" that's only for GMs I think, with their early-access boon. Everyone else it will be available on Friday.
edit: not GMs, sorry. Just typed too fast, and I'm not used to edit my mistakes
so, it will only available today for those who purchased the Tokyo pack (Issue 9-10-11 bundled together), and also current members.
"Will you be trying out Issue 11? What are you most looking forward to finding out at its end?" I will, maybe not now, but after the LotRO course
Most looking forward, besides the end of the storyline, maybe the GTAoE switch, since lately I was shotgunning a lot, it will make things smoother. Also like the removable outline option, it was an odd change during beta, and now we can make it more similar to an adventure game. Plus it's good for immersion
edit, 16:45: it's live now, patching is pretty fast, the changes are available to those as well, who doesn't have Issue 11. Issue 11 will have the usual price tag, there's a CE version as well.
I tell people this same thing all of the time. TSW also has some amazing voice acting, about on par with "WE SPENT 90328409 MILLION DOLLARS ON VOICE ACTING" TOR.
I suppose we can agree to disagree. I've played both, and ToR easily takes the cake. Just my opinion.
It's different. The writing is really good in TOR too (at least with some classes), but the narrative is much better in TSW. TOR is presenting the story as it is, the player only needs to receive it.
TSW is much deeper in this matter, probably because of Ragnar and the background of adventure games. TSW only gives you 50, maybe 60% tops through the cutscenes and quest logs, maybe +30% comes from the lore pieces and all the external web pages Funcom created for the game... but for reaching the full picture, you need your own brainwork, investigation, hints from NPCs, etc. No wonder there's a continuous discussion about the finer details and motives among the playerbase, TSW's storytelling is much more fluid and alive, than TOR's.
To put it in simpler: if you watch the cutscenes in TOR for a class on youtube, you pretty much will know the story. There are minor variations based on your conversation picks, but you get almost everything, nicely packaged and ready.
In TSW there's only a few decision points during the play (but those have more weight than a couple Light / Dark points), but if you watch the cutscenes, you have only half of the story, the rest you need to collect yourself. I think it's better, but that's just my opinion.
It's a bit similar to "real" literature vs. the new, harrypotter-esque writing where everything is spoon-fed to the reader.
It's my bad I guess, with the first post
As I wrote above with the edit, it's live and fully functional. If you purchased the Tokyo pack earlier, you already have Issue 11. If you're a GM or a member, you can purchase it as well right now.
Non-subscriber players can only buy it after the 3-days grace period for members.
It's fully functional already, just played a bit myself, so far no bigger bugs was found. Dunno what do you mean with when they get it to work correctly. All the updates are in-game for everyone, except the Issue 11 content.
"HELL YES!"
Finished it tonight, took about 3 hours to run through the tower, although judging by discussions going on I think I might have chosen the easy path through.
There was a pacman level which was a lot of fun and very well done.
I'm not sure about the claim of the ending having big consequences for gameplay, will have to run through on an alt who picked different story choices (my main picked the "evil" path) to see what the difference is.
Definitely well worth playing through the issue, the ending was pretty spectacular.
The Enlightened take things Lightly
Now, which one of you will adorn me today?
I will have to dust of my TSW gauntlets and try the game some more. maybe Ill get past to the first chapter this time!
have to agree TSW is one of the better story driven mmos. Swtor and ESO are the other two with great story. Cant wait to try the game again.
I will have to dust of my TSW gauntlets and try the game some more. maybe Ill get past to the first chapter this time!
have to agree TSW is one of the better story driven mmos. Swtor and ESO are the other two with great story. Cant wait to try the game again.
I had been playing the issue on the test live all last week...They made huge improvements over prior iterations and what finally became the live build was very clean.
The issue itself is well done with next to no bugs, However being the final in the ark it was a bit lackluster lore wise.
8/10
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
Started playing through the issue yesterday. This is one of those things where I don't know if I should be optimistic or a bit let down. Will this be the last update for a while? Will recent team departures impact anything?
I loved TSW from day one. However, it has grown into a love-hate relationship for me. Love the ambience, love the thought and effort put into each and every one of its updates. Love the fact that the development team also fans of the game and its community.
However, I feel like the game's flaws have really dug deep for me. The flaws in the combat system are only highlighted by the aegis system. Some combat encounters which should be thrilling, exciting, intense are instead drawn out. So they aren't so much challenging or difficult as they are boring.
Do look forward to future updates and do hope to see the end-game revamp they've been talking about. The game could afford to become more "sandboxy" in the end-game.
Well I decided to have a break from trying Wildstar and jumped back into TSW which I ditched way back when.. I'm loving the quests and story but I'm looking at that skill wheel again and noticing the skills on the T2 layer are of equal strength (sometimes weaker) than the noob skills...
Aint those skills supposed to be mnore powerful? Its what out me off last time along with needing to buy every T1 skill before unlocking T2... Buying crap I will never use to get to good stuff irks me a bit... Buying half from each noob group to get T2 should be enough..
Anyway still enjoying myself although im still only running around in Kingsmouth...
Wish someone would explain what im missing concerning the skill wheel though...
P.S. The forum engine for posting comments is utter crap on this site mods.. You tried editing a post lately??
Scuse my double post peeps.. SItes fault..
agreed.
this is always my home to mmo. iam so glad i disovered this game. iam also looking forward to see what the new game director will bring to the table.
fair to say this cover kinda art immitates life...for her.
I am currently playing through my first time, and I loved Egypt. The City of The Sun was probably one of the best zones I've been to in any game. Combat doesn't seem to have a ton of depth, but I get to tank with a shotgun. I've been pleasantly surprised at how well the voice acting is; and the comments on my character not talking crack me up. I'm looking forward to finishing up Transylvania and moving on to Tokyo.
My huge issue is with the launcher. That thing has been a nightmare.
I'm a MUDder. I play MUDs.
Current: Dragonrealms
Then we had the same experience but even that bit of combat made me feel like: Omg spare me, let's skip this nonsense and get straight to the story.
And I played first as bad (because of that infamous "I didn't understand how to reject them" thing) and then good.
So.. I don't understand the final judgement. Have I been punished? Have I been rewarded?
I don't know because your choices have zero consequences so they are making this extra vague.
Bah
Remember that the power is not in the abilities themselves but in the synergies between them. Find abilities that exploit the conditions (e.g. Weakened) that your passives trigger. It's all about finding the combos in your deck and finding abilities that work well together, not the individual abilities themselves. You may want to look over the beginner guide at TSWDB:
http://www.tswdb.com/miscellaneous/the-secret-world-beginner-guide/
So far you're missing nothing, if you're in Kingsmouth
and yep, unlocking the entire inner wheel is a decent and viable strategy as well, if you don't mind to repeat some missions here and there for the extra xp. By that you'll get all the starter decks, with their outfits and titles, and what's more important you can try every weapon and playstyle to see what are your favourites.
But after a while you'll meet some obstacles, and there's the time for synergies as Ortwig mentioned. You can see it as a second layer, or "advanced" mode. You're right in that outer wheel abilities are similar in strength to the inner wheel ones. You may even say, "what's the point taking them?" And that's a well-defined border between the newbie and the experienced player
See, ability strength can get you only half-way, after a while it simply won't be enough. You can push that point further by "brute-force", as in keep chasing the best gears available, but without honing your deck, that's not enough either. And what a lot of folks don't see, deck slots number is the main limit. There's no power management in TSW, gear is very flexible and moddable, and every abilitiy will be available to you (in time) - the only thing limits you is the limited number of slots.
And if you bump into a wall (with your current deck you can't deal more damage or more heal or survive long enough for example), since all the abilities have mostly the same strength, you need to dig deeper. States, triggers, sub-types, finding abilities which can build on each other... with those you can increase your efficiency even if the "strength", the actual numbers on the abilities are mostly the same.
In short, while in Kingsmouth experiment with the weapons and playstyles. Then by the time you reach ql6 and Blue Mountain, start to work on those weak, outer wheel abilities, and try to build some synergies
That's like the advanced course. And when you are familiar with building nice decks, will come the expert level, when you need to optimise your "dream decks" to fit within the limited deck slots 
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile