I’ll definitely be casting about for folks to try scenarios with over the next few weeks!
They’re fairly scalable, which is nice. I believe lowbies (I’m hopefully at least a mid-bie) can set the scenario for solo–and then still play with a full group which mitigates the difficulty (and the rewards, natch.)
Giaddon
2042
I’m down. My main is Rainstar.
Damn. The new stuff sounds interesting. Now I’m gonna have to install this again.
I might be interested. I’m at least mostly in blue QL10s (from veteran rewards) and have several capstone skills, so that should help some. That said, I find TSW’s combat decent but the story’s the draw, so I’m not convinced these scenarios will really do that much for me.
My hope is that they don’t turn into copies of the Lord of the Rings Online’s skirmishes, where you were forced to do about a thousand of them to get any decent reward.
I can’t speak to whether the rewards were decent, but when Chris and I did one of the scenarios with the developers, the field was absolutely littered with drops. Even if just for crafting mats, it seemed awfully profitable in terms of how little time it took and how much stuff you could collect. Which is probably why there’s a day-long cooldown timer for each difficulty level on each map.
But it’s probably worth noting that the augment systems seems to be designed for the long haul (i.e. grind). It’s not like you’re going to be suddenly equipping legendary items. It’s very much a system of gradually incrementing tweaks on the skills you’re already using.
-Tom
Tried the scenarios last night and was surprised by how much fun they were. I was worried that they would be similar to the boring “wait for next wave” (More enemies are coming…) mechanic that you sometimes find in missions, but they turned out to be interesting challenges with little downtime. It could just be the lustre of a new toy, but for now I’m really looking forward to getting the DLC with the extra maps and nightmare mode (non-subscribers have to wait a few days.)
As for augments…the grind is comprehensive and steep. But still a good addition for end game players who had pretty much eaten all the carrots and swallowed the string.
BTW, I’m going to be on Friday evening and a decent amount of Saturday and Sunday as well. Would love to get a few folks together and just bang bang bang on the Halloween Stories chain of quests to finish them before they go away Monday morning.
Friend me up in the game, Triggercutt, PM me, email, or drop a line here.
I finally finished the three solo scenarios and they were HARD, taking several attempts. I managed a gold, silver and bronze so either I get worse as I play or the hotel, mansion and castle go that way in difficulty. The main keys are mobility and an ability to get aggro- you may need to develop a few passives to help you in that regard. I thought maybe one strategy was to only look after one group of survivors but that went rather… poorly.
In one evening I managed to get 37 Aureus just soloing. The shop sells purple 10.0 armour for 144 so it means 4 evenings to get one piece (and 216 needed to get the 10.1 belt piece- so put aside another 6 days for that and another 5 days for the matching signet). I like that you now have a way to get purple stuff without grinding dungeons or gaming the awful PVP but like the LoTRO experience it’s going to get very old very quickly.
Also like LoTRO, it’s time for the rise of the cash shop. Successful scenarios have an 18 hour cool down unless you buy some tokens from the shop to refresh it. I’m just waiting for the garish ‘BUY IT NOW!!!’ signs that LoTRO used to shit up the gaming experience.
Genuinely curious (honest!) if you can recall or remember any areas of the game once you’re in the world where you brush up against the paywall, or where the game basically billboards you with a “Buy this!!” message. I’m not talking about the out-of-game website or the little ads when you log in on the patcher screen, but actually in-game stuff.
Anyone, can weigh in on this, too, not just Peter! Thanks in advance.
I assume that if you try to take one of the pay missions without buying it it will let you know you need to buy it. (I immediately snag them every time, though, so I can’t help with that.)
Not sure if you’re talking about LOTRO or TSW, but in TSW the only time you notice the paywall is at certain quest givers who hands out the DLC quests. There is a little icon and a message saying that you need to purchase issue #X to accept that quest. Afaik Tokyo will also be available for free, although I assume most of the quests will be gated off the same way.
Ah, I didn’t realize they were selling refresh booster. That’s pretty sneaky. I guess it’s a way of basically selling augments, since you can only get augments from scenarios.
Speaking of which, I’ve been spoiled by other games’ looting systems. I’m used to Guild Wars and action RPGs like Diablo and Marvel Heroes, where everything I see dropped is mine. So I did a group scenario last night and dutifully clicked “need” for every augment dropped. I think there were about eight. I got zero of them. :(
-Tom
The purple 10.0 equipment is a bad deal though. 4 evenings through the nightmare dungeons will probably get you a few better 10.1/10.2 drops. Even if you are not interested in grinding for the best gear, the dungeons are fun and worth going through a few times.
Right…but Issue 5 with Tyler Freeborn…you don’t see the start of things until you’ve purchased it.
Same with issue 6 (Cairo). It’s (no spoilers) just noninteractive scenery until you buy that mission pack.
Can’t speak to 7 or 8 just yet, but at least those first two mission packs you won’t know to start the mission until you’ve bought them. I’ve found missions that are walled off, but it’s faction rank or pre-requisite walling that’s keeping them unavailable, not purchasing.
Am I missing the paywall signs?
Giaddon
2056
Yes. But it’s very very subtle.
And going back to the NGP system after a bunch of Guild Wars 2 is really frustrating. I don’t really care about getting loot, but it’s such lousy design.
Triggercut, the LoTRO obnoxiousness comes from the redo of the UI after the pay for play conversion, I think they may have reduced the size of tabs since then but it felt that every time there was a flash of blue and gold anywhere on the UI, it would be a reminder that you can also get more from the shop. Even now the shop tab is openly placed to the far right of your skill bar rather than hidden discreetly like the Secret World in a menu. Then they send you a Hobbit gift which you of course open. What happens immediately after that? Of course, a friendly reminder that you can open more with the help of the shop. Grind up your reputation and there’s always a friendly reminder that you can shorten it with the help of the shop. I’m hoping that TSW doesn’t decide to up the grind and then allow the shop to mitigate it.
And Tom, I feel your group loot pain as well. The first roll, 4 of us rolled ‘greed’ and of course the last guy rolled ‘need’. After that, it was just a long needathon with the usual amount of bitterness going on. I picked up one piece out of five but it wasn’t what I actually wanted. Guild Wars well and truly spoiled me and my sense of entitlement.
The other thing I’m concerned about will be the auctioning of the augments. TSW’s economy is FUBAR already, a quick check shows the cheapest augments at 400,000 and the DPS ones start at 5000,000. I lucked out and only have the cheapies so I can’t even try to make a profit.
Egad, I didn’t even think of the auction house effect. I’ve literally never used the auction house in Secret World, and that’s not for lack of playing. I just don’t feel there’s anything I need, or any need to sell anything I find. But, yeah, the augments will probably change that dramatically now that there’s a whole new gear system gated by loot drops rather than player crafting. I guess signets are kind of a precedent, but the augments are essentially a whole other gear set disguised as a skill system. It makes me wish they’d hurry up and move the augments out into the wider world.
-Tom
I suspect the main people using the auction house are crafters and people selling crafting materials. Certainly that would be what I would use it for. I kind of hate their crafting system but this addon makes it substantially less painful: http://www.curse.com/tsw-mods/tsw/autocrafter
If you check out the prices for signets, you’ll see the strange economy of the Secret World.
