The Secret World
- Thread starter Dr.Retarded
- Start date
I see now how your incredible imagination is rewarded in a game where you can earn every skill anyway
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As the kind of person that tends to research all of a game's information with regards to classes and builds, it never felt that daunting to put a decent build together. The smartest addition to the UI in this game is the ability to search by skill name, effects and triggers. Still, I can see how "just jump in and play" types might miss the finer points of the system, or just not want to have to worry about synergies, and get frustrated.
But the thing that ended my enjoyment the most was the lack of respec. Sure, I can put a decent/functional/synergistic build together pretty easily, but that doesn't mean I won't get tired of it, or want to explore a totally different one.
The "you can learn every skill in the game" argument is conveniently parroted as the reason why respecs are unnecessary, but that's bullshit. I like taking my time in a game like TSW, so that usually ended up with me questioning my build choices, and wanting to explore different builds, usually while in the middle of the game's asshole, aka Blue Mountain. My choices are either to go back to Kingsmouth/Savage Coast to farm easy AP/SP (beyond boring), keep using my current build while saving up points for the new one (monotonous), or shoehorn in skills from the new build as I go (tier 1 skills in BM, yay!). I find nothing fun about any of this, and I don't understand what downside there could be to allowing respecs. Aren't cash sinks relatively nonexistent in this game?
bixxby
Molten Core Raider
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TSW servers have never done anything outside pvp and guilds AFAIK. They use some kinda megaserver setup.
Korrupt
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 4,832
- 1,228
You used to be able to group and port around by right clicking peoples names I'm pretty sure but could be wrong. Maybe I'm using the wrong term server and should be saying shard?
Going to log back in this week and try the aux weapons and continue the end game questline.
Going to log back in this week and try the aux weapons and continue the end game questline.
It's probably a highly subjective issue, but for me, the thing TSW did really well was encourage puzzle and story based gameplay. Even the most bland "Kill the zombies!" quest in the game had *some* elements of discovery or puzzle solving. If someone played the game with a browser window open just blindly keying in the answers to all of the puzzles from a spoiler, then yeah, I could see why it seemed like the same old, same old, except in a sort of buggy Funcomy package. I'd also argue that they were doing it wrong.
The MMO elements of TSW were a mixed bag. It definitely was a theme park. I'm sure that as I type, there are still zombies mindlessly rushing the Kingsport sheriff's office. The difference for me is that I actually care about the characters inside that sheriff's office. I mean, hasn't Deputy Andy been through enough? It definitely was buggy. It was still holy trinity, but to a neophyte, not obviously so, so you had enough rope to hang yourself with a bad build (of course that was why the pre-built decks existed)
On the bright side, even with the rug pulled out from under them financially speaking, it still has some of the best and most frequent content patches. Assuming you knew what you were doing, you had a fair amount of play in what sort of character you wanted to make. It had *the best* instance design philosophy of any MMO in my mind. Nobody has ever managed to make trash encounters so interesting that I don't just resent them the 10th time through the dungeon. Trash pack-boss-trash pack-boss-trash pack is the way to go. When they weren't just flat out broken (did they ever fix the Engine Tyrants in hell fallen nightmare?), nightmare modes were actually difficult 5 man content and satisfying when you saw them go down.
I think that TSWs core problem was that it desperately wanted to be an MMO adventure game, and those are two genres that don't actually mash together very well. Adventure games lose all integrity if you have everything spoiled for you, they just become movies with strange pacing. And of course the modern MMO crowd has absolutely zero patience for figuring things out on their own, so they just spoiled their way through everything and failed to see the one thing TSW did incredibly well and was left with the things it only did tolerably. C'est la vie. I don't regret a cent I spent on the game or a minute I've invested in it thus far(well, maybe some of the minutes bashing my head on bugs...)
You can still do that. Server has never mattered very much in TSW (another thing they did pretty well). Whenever you log in to a zone you end up in whichever server's version of that zone is least congested (unless you manually teleport to a groupmate in another zone)
Other than some stray holiday ones that were limited time, I don't thiiiink so. I actually haven't gotten around to checking out the most recent issue yet, so I might be missing something there. Oh. There is the raid that they added. My friends had pretty much all given up on the game by the time that came out, so I never got to see it. All of the dungeons have their nightmare modes available now though. Not sure when you stopped playing, but they were steadily rolling those out over the first several issues.
And agree re: the quality of the dungeon encounters (if you ignore bugs). The early nightmare mode bosses were all a pretty good challenge with some fun mechanics.
Caliane
Avatar of War Slayer
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I liked the puzzles in GW2 far far more. The vast majority operated in the context of the game. so they were solvable if you were smart, and paid attention. they didnt force you to resort to google, with vague out of game references. All the clues you needed to solve a puzzle in gw2, were IN gw2.
Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
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When the raid came out there was a way to kill the boss over and over again with no threat of dying and no lockout timer. It was designed by the same guy that created Hell Fallen, which was always a terrible buggy mess that was virtually unbeatable without exploiting.
Outside of those 2, the dungeons are very well done. Ankh might be my favorite dungeon in any mmo and The Facility is definitely the most unique. I don't think there's a single fight in there that the trinity works on.
Outside of those 2, the dungeons are very well done. Ankh might be my favorite dungeon in any mmo and The Facility is definitely the most unique. I don't think there's a single fight in there that the trinity works on.
I promise I'm not being sarcastic here, but ... Guild Wars 2 had puzzles? Do you mean the jump puzzles, or am I just completely blanking on something? Or is this something added post release? I actually didn't play much beyond getting my first character level capped.
The thing with TSW and its puzzles requiring "real world" knowledge is that the world of Secret Wars *is* the real world to a large extent. As such, everything that comes up in a google search (with the exception of things that directly reference the game itself) is within the context of the game world. And every time you opened the in game browser window, you as an Illuminati/Dragon/Templar agent were googling on your smartphone or the like. The problem of course being that all you needed to do was add "The Secret World" to any particular web query, and your in-game persona would discover they lived in a virtual world and the whole metatextual house of cards would come crashing down along with your suspension of disbelief. You'd also receive a complete spoiler about how to solve whatever you were trying to research as well, obviously.
As an aside, there were several puzzles that required interacting with fake websites created entirely for the game to help blur the lines further between the real world and The Secret World. Personally, I loved stuff like this. I loved having to download a morse code cracker app for my phone. I loved poring through obscure bible verses trying to crack puzzles. I thought all of that stuff was great, but then I'm an old school pen and paper role player, and TSW is about as close as I'm likely to get to Unknown Armies: The Videogame. I am definitely their target market, but I am not in the least bit surprised that it wasn't popular with those who weren't.
I suddenly want to experience it much less.
That dungeon was so broken it was almost impossible to tell if you were doing something as intended or just accidentally exploiting it.
Caliane
Avatar of War Slayer
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Yep. half the puzzle was finding them most of the time.
one of the more well known.
quaggan hums the theme to gw2. there organ nearby lets you play it. play the song. opens the clam for the chest.
The game is littered with this kind of stuff.
There are quite a few chests, etc, that are found by you talking to people, reading various things in the world, then doing something specific at a location.
I do wish the vistas were a bit more challenging though.
sakkath
Trakanon Raider
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What was wrong with Hell Fallen? The end guy was definitely bugged and didn't change phases properly but I don't remember any specific issues with any of the other ones. That bugged end guy was so much fun. The whole purple void phase thing where you run around avoiding the patterns on the ground was great stuff. The boss mechanics in TSW instances in general were very good..
I'm looking forward to trying them again soon! Just need to find some other Aussie TZ people to run them with.
Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
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We're talking about HF Nightmare. People still refuse to run it even with full 10.5 everything. It really comes down to everything having shields that make everyone do 5-10% normal damage for a minute or two until they wear off. They also do a shit ton of damage, so the healer gets raped immediately because heals still generate full aggro while the tank's is cut by 90% since it's based on the damage you do.
It has been beat, but it takes everybody having a lot of stuns, 3-4 stuns each, and ridiculous coordination. It's difficult to the point where it's not fun for anyone involved and is a lower tier dungeon so you only get 10 bullion.
They should have expanded on The Facility and made a raid based on that. Its easily the most unique dungeon in any mmo
Ninen
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Well, to be fair, hidden puzzle's whose only purpose is to provide bonus loot are quite different from puzzles in quest lines (which you will never fail to find and can cockblock you if you're stupid and/or can't google).
It really is an apples and oranges comparison.
sakkath
Trakanon Raider
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Ahh that's a shame. I remember we did try HF Nightmare and found the first boss to be excessively difficult and went back to farming Polaris, Darkness War and Hell Raised. The end boss of HF Elite though was really great fun.
There were a lot of bugs in the instances but very few show stoppers. Like it was very easy to bug out some of Ur-Draug's mechanics so they didn't work.
Facility was indeed great but so were many of the bosses. I liked Recursia, the mage in Darkness War who summoned explody adds, the golem in Ankh where you had to break the doors down to get away from him, the robot in facility that kept reactivating other robots. I guess they have't added any new instances yet.. .Hopefully they will eventually, and they'll have the same quality of mechanics as their existing content.
nu_11
Avatar of War Slayer
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I remember this one fight in the Facility where tank was useless. Most people went something like 4 dps 1 healer, but, since I had skills and gear for dps or heal, I would rather go 3 dps 2 healers; it was noticably easier and every time my group mates were surprised how well it worked.