I grabbed this over Christmas, I’m pretty hooked right now. The setting is terrific, the story’s intriguing (even if the writing feels a bit forced a lot of times.) Yeah, combat’s pretty rote but the character progression is satisfying enough that I find myself grinding even when I don’t need to (and not optimal.)
Some annoying bits of pixel hunting aside, the investigation quests are great. They’re mostly obvious but just different enough to make you feel clever. Two quests so far had me running to spoilers – the part with the jail cell and the “time is the province of kings and God” bit. I might have gotten the latter eventually if I wasn’t so impatient, but a bit more hinting might have been better with those two (especially since the “written by Kings” is not correct!) Pretty neat puzzles in hindsight, and not completely unfair or in the cat hair mustache category.
The stealth quests I’m less fond of. It’s just odd “sneaking” past a guard 10 meters away with direct line of sight.
I haven’t tried the dungeon quests yet. I’ve never done any kind of MMO raids, so it’s kind of intimidating. Any fellow qt3 newcomers to The Secret World?
If there were some sort of qt3 event I’d probably hop back in to check it out, if I can remember my password.
Very unfair comment about the investigations charmtrap. The fun is in the journey, not the destination. They are inventive and atmospheric, there is a lot of variety, and many of them require substantial amounts of brain-wracking to overcome.
An example is the one where you have to figure out which medication to give various patients based on their symptoms. All real-world stuff that you need to investigate by researching on the internet about the ailments and the chemicals (unless you are clever enough to already know it).
In the end, mechanically you are just clicking something in your inventory and then clicking a target a few times, but that was hardly the point of it. The satisfaction was in having succeeded at working out the puzzle, not the joy of the physical dexterity needed to enter the solution.
Oh yeah, who here actually deciphered the morse code on their own? I just said screw it, I get the gist of it, and looked up the answer.
Don’t be afraid. I’ve played plenty of MMOs but this game was my first ‘raid’ experience as well. And it was awesome, the dungeons are some of the best content. You should do each one when you complete it’s associated map, and the rewards will help you when you move onto the next map. They generally consist of a linear sequence of little boss fights, with a big boss at the end, that test your team work and build load-outs. Each also serves to wrap up some story threads from that map.
Just advertise in chat when you are ready, mention you are new, you will find plenty of friendly helpful people. At least that was my experience back when I played. Once you have taken that hardest first step you will be fine and probably keen to go back in straight away.
I did, but I had real trouble with the speed so ended up capturing the sound and analysing the waveform visually with some audio software instead. :)
I couldn’t make out the code myself but I found an iOS app that took the sound and autotranslated it, which is better than looking up the solution, right?
My wife and I spent over an hour on it. We recorded it on cell phone, played it slowed down and translated it together. We tried to keep it to resources our char would have access to.
It felt very satisfying by the time we solved it.
Same for the prison cell riddle. We stuck at it until the lightbulb. Best way to play this game. Spoilers are for wimps! :)
Wendelius
The morse code quest was (IMO) one of the worst investigation quests because it expected everyone to know or learn morse code to complete it without just looking up the answer (which nobody wanted to do). So, the 99% that didn’t have the time or willpower to commit to it just looked it up and that was that, ruining the experience.
I tended to try to give the hard puzzles a go, but usually gave up and used the cheatsheets on the interwebs if I couldn’t get them in about 20 mins, as overall I was more impatient to see the stories unfold. I’d say I probably cheated for maybe a third of the puzzles.
One of the most fun moments I had in the game was doing that one with the mirror aligning in Egypt. I was doing it for a bit on my own, then someone else came along, we struck up a conversation, and had great fun (hoots of laughter) doing the puzzle together.
Oddly, I found TSW a very social game precisely because of the somewhat higher-than-average difficulty (for an MMO). While I was playing it, players often helped each other out and spontaneously PUG-ed in dangerous areas. I was always surprised to read about people having the opposite experience on the forums.
Hmm, must reinstall soon :)
There was a site that had hints rather than direct solutions; I used that a few times to get some pushes in the right direction.
Your experience with the social aspect mirrors my own, I was always getting into spontaneous pick-up groups with friendly people, and solved a few investigations that way as well, brainstorming together in chat.
Razgon
1812
Heh, I found a sound capture program that could translate morse code on the internet after a while and used that to translate it - So much fun!
Razgon
1813
Or, you know, use the internet to find the solution , which is what most of those investigation quests leads you to do. it wasnt that hard to find a morse translation software program
How is having a program do everything for you to get the answer that much different than just looking up the answer itself?
Razgon
1815
oh wow, if thats your take on it, then I understand why you find the investigation missions frustrating.
The difference is, my in-game character can find the morse program on his phone (Which is what I did at first) and work it out from there. To look up the answer to the quest is an outside-my-character option.
There is a HUGE difference.
Wait, there’s a morse code program on the phone your character carries in the game? I can’t believe I missed that!
Razgon
1817
no no, you misunderstand me :-)
I used my real phone, where I downloaded a morse dechiphering program to translate the morse code.
The difference is, this is something my in-game character could have done as well, as well running it through a computer somewhere.
Looking up the solution on the net to the quest itself, isn’t something my ingame character could do. Thats outside the scope of the his world, and just something the player does, and not the character ingame.
I hope I’m making the difference clear!
The next issue is going all Indiana Jones!
I have to say that TSW continues to impress with its setting and storylines. If only all those solo instances hadn’t extinguished our desire (my wife, myself and regular, small MMO gang) to play it as a group. :(
Can’t say I can think of any other MMO’s where you are fighting on a moving train while a tank fires at you.
Wendelius
Yeah, the missions are great. Not so sure about some of the new additions to the item store. Like the ability to straight up buy AP. (once a week, but still). Or the ridiculously skimpy new “Snake Charmer” outfit.
I fired the game up again today, and it looks like they’ve made some decent improvements, and added some entertaining content. It’s not radically different, but they’re doing a really good job for a game that didn’t bring in all that much money. I did hit a minor quest bug right out of the gate, which was tedious, but overall it was fun.
It looks like my dungeon buddies are long gone, which is to be expected.
They seem to be taking a reasonable approach to the in game store. It’s mostly cosmetics, with the ability to buy past grind to an extent. They’ve also started charging for the content updates. At a glance, it looks like you get quite a lot of value without the monthly sub.
They’ve also taken care of some of the most egregious skill imbalances, so that’s nice. I do miss my 100% crit blaze for solo grinding though :(
