Razgon
1821
One thing I really don’t like, is the mob density. I love games like LOTRO where I can move pretty much where I want to, but in this game I have to figth for every inch of ground, and damn me if I DARE take a toilet break - EVERYONE is back then.
Yeah, that gets to be pretty annoying, especially if you’re trying to investigate and look for clues. I ended up yelling “Piss off, fuckers!” more than a few times while playing today. Blue Mountain in particular is solid ass in that regard.
Of course, LotRO was a little worse at Moria launch. That place was miserable under the old aggro rules, since the enemy density was high and almost the entire place was long, narrow tunnels. And while it wasn’t as bad as Stunland in terms of very damned enemy having some sort of cc/debuff(fuck you, Stunland), there were still plenty of cc and slows flying.
Wow that brought me right back to TSW. I hated the mob density.
Just like people wanting increasingly absurd gearscores to run the simplest of dungeons in WotLK, TSW has seen the “minimum” creep up as well for people forming nightmare groups. Whereas people were full clearing them with under 3k weapon power at launch, the new bar to even step in for pugs seems to be 4k. Basically, if you can use the gear, you can’t go ;) There does seem to be at least one player made channel intended to organize newer players in to runs though, so that’s something. There’s also an LFG tool but it’s that grudging, put yourself on a bulletin board style of tool, so there are only a handful of people using it.
Amusingly enough, the wrathbabies of TSW requesting this insane gear are confining themselves to the 3 easiest nightmare modes.
The inflation has made the horrible PVP even more horrible as well. Fortunately, nothing of value was lost.
Have they made anything more of the secret society stuff? My main problem with TSW was that I was totally into it for a few weeks (one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had), then my interest just dropped off the cliff suddenly, and it was mostly to do with realizing that what had seemed so promising and exciting in the beginning - the feeling of being in a secret society in the contemporary world - just wasn’t made much of, in the end.
Miramon
1826
Well, yeah, I have to agree with this. I quit after completing my first two character archetypes and felt like there was nothing left to do, and that the secret society stuff and the connection to the real world stuff was the most superficial of cheap curtains, not even a proper facade. I can stomach quite a considerable amount of grinding if some game system just delivers a certain measured amount of coolness that seems to be meaningful and somehow connected to gameplay.
But in TSW, while the regional quests were varied enough to be bearable to go through (except for some of the lamer puzzle quests) the story quests weren’t enough to convey anything interesting. Yeah, yeah, lame elder god, yeah yeah, offering cool stuff that honestly seems kind of horrible, and I can accept or reject, but who cares. It’s like when SWTOR tells you you’ve just become the top criminal mastermind in the galaxy, captain of 3 separate gigantic pirate fleets, and yet you still can’t afford a personal speeder and you’re running around letting rebel lieutenants tell you what to do. So TSW has, oh, joy, 3 “cities” that are all of an acre or two in size and pretty much no meaningful purpose at all except a bit of color. What can I do there? Buy tacos and ludicrously expensive alternate clothing sets. Woo. Or I can go back to fake Romania and kill vampires and stuff or find a group and slowly but surely improve my ability to do that dungeon again and again. Sigh.
1.5 added an enjoyable new quest in Blue Mountain that delt a bit with the more lovecraftian style lore from the first three zones, which was nice but too short. It didn’t have anything really to do with the societies themselves, and only had extremely minor revelations about the lore given what’s already revealed elsewhere. I haven’t noticed anything directly advancing the secret society story.
It’s a shame Fusong is such a complete disaster from every angle. They could have done something really different with a mass PVP zone that made you feel like you were part of a secret war.
I really wish they could do something with the PvP. I checked back in after hearing about the action combat mode only to be disappointed that the big PvP addition is battle ranks with special costumes…whoopie.
I’ve just finished the new content after taking a long, long break. The Indiana Jones on a train mission was pretty cool but at least 2 keycards and five encounters too long. I died about 20 times trying to complete it and had to swap out different weapons and armour. I’m not sure what sort of inflation has come into the game but I’m beginning to fear that some of the content will eventually be doable by people in nightmare gear only.
I was tempted to look at PvP but it’s been a blue lake for the last 24 hours. The irony is, back in the old days it was exclusively red and I spent a lot of time bitching at Templars who were determined to crush any fun out of the game by camping enemy spawns for hours at a time. Guess it’s payback time.
Yes, this is my feeling. Yes, it was pretty cool to be recognized by some people as a “superhero” and part of the secret world, but the best part of the game was in those beginning bits where you were interacting with people who didn’t know what you were, or didn’t fully know. I remember on the forums at the time, people calling for missions where you are actually amongst normals and doing infiltration or something actually secret. That would have been better and more commensurate with grinding up levels, rather than having the elder god thing as a sideline.
I’ve always wished the game well though, and I hope they do manage to flesh the whole concept out eventually. I’m sure I’ll revisit the game again, on and off.
Oghier
1831
Play El Dorado or Stonehenge, not Fusang :) The former two are a lot of fun, even if you’re not completely geared up. El Dorado, in particular, is probably my favorite PvP scenario anywhere now, given how many ways it can unfold. Three factions fighting over four relics on a complex map is just awesome. It also has the best tangible rewards per time spent, even if your faction loses.
Fusang is a mess, and it probably needs a complete rework.
Yeah. It’s not broken in a “I would fix these X things” way, it’s broken in a “What the fuck is this, why does it even exist?” way.
Picked up an instance group to get back into the groove of things. It wasn’t too hard to find a group for Elites (Nightmares are another story), but watching the endless spam in LFG makes me want to play WoW instead. People spamming a chat channel for an hour just to run a dungeon (or not, if they never find a group) seems beyond archaic, and especially so when they have to physically gather in a central hub to do so. There are a handful of people using the primitive bulletin board LFG tool, but not enough to attain critical mass; whenever I glance at it, I notice no one has moved out of it and into a group since last I checked.
I will praise the dungeons again though; low trash, interesting fights. When you can get in one it’s a lot of fun.
I still find the endgame model of PVE loot only coming from srs bznss nightmare dungeons and raids a little weird in a game that was all about story and missions though. It feels like two different games slapped together just because they use the same engine. Most MMOs suffer from that problem, but it seems especially striking here.
I really cannot fathom why any MMO shipped with a chat channel as their LFG mechanism since City of Heroes came out in 2003. I mean, come on.
Miramon
1835
Yeah. I have no idea why they typically don’t allow some sort of endgame progression through solo or small-casual-group stuff instead of the same dull grind-the-dungeon thing. Not that everything in the game should be accessible through any easy path, but you shouldn’t feel like you are an order of magnitude different from other players because you didn’t take the one path they provided for achieving that final growth stage.
Miramon
1836
But of course there is a reason for the lame endgames in most MMOs. Two really.
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No one has come up with a good endgame yet, really, at least not for games based on content.
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The higher level you go in a MMO, the less work was put in prior to launch. Because, obviously, there’s not enough resources, ever, for any game, and the reviewers and early closed betas that create the buzz will only see the low level stuff. So for example in LOTRO, the game launched with Bree and the initial intro instances having been redone over and over and over again, but Angmar only being half-assed with hardly any resources, for just that reason. I’d say that the Breeland zone got approximately 20 times as much work put into it as Angmar – not an exaggeration. Of course after launch the reverse is true, because after a single month in one of these modern “easy leveling” games, half the player base is now at the level cap and is yearning for new stuff to do, but the live team has fewer resources to invent new game systems, so the crappy at-launch endgame model may hang around for quite a long time until something is invented to extend it.
I was surprised to see a Secret World ad on youtube today. I guess they realized it would help if people knew the game existed. Unfortunately the ad is not great.
Some of the new investigations are amazingly shitty. Obstructive Persons was pure video game logic, rather than any sort of reasonable investigation. By about halfway through I was thinking about The Death of Adventure Games: Gabriel Knight 3 http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/79.html
Giaddon
1839
The investigations have always had their head-scratchers. That’s part of the charm for me, really.
I recently started a new character and am back in Kingsmouth. So I pick up the Kingsmouth Code for the third (!) time. But this time I can’t solve it! Did they change this quest? It’s kind of fun working against my own half-memories.
Giaddon
1840
OH MY GOD I forgot how much I love this game. There went five hours of my day. So glad they dropped the subscription.
