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The Secret World: Removing Mystery's Shroud
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
This week, we have had the opportunity to get our collective grubby hands on Funcom's The Secret World. We've got a slate of articles for your viewing pleasure starting with a general overview of our experiences in The Secret World. Check it out and then leave us your thoughts in the comments.
Funcom developers are finally getting ready to let The Secret World and all its attendant mystery out of the proverbial bag. During this past week, we’ve had the opportunity to put the game through its paces to see how TSW is going to stand up to other MMO juggernauts that are either already on the scene or are imminently ready to hit the stage.
Read more of Suzie Ford's The Secret World: Removing Mystery's Shroud.
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Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
So long as the primary issues are aesthetic , besides the bugs that are inevitable with any fresh MMO, I can seem myself overlooking them and having a great time with this game. Moreover, if indeed the animations are mostly placeholders this issue should be remedied easily enough. That there is only one body type seems weird , but as the author pointed out TSW uses the same engine as AoC which allowed for various body types, could this be changed as simply as the animations when it comes time to swap out the place holders for the real deal? Im know next to nothing about the technical possibilities of that so late in the game , but I would think that it would be a fairly simple matter. Anyway, I will be counting the minutes until the beta goes live, stoked!
I thought I read something (now I cant find) that all the animations were place holders for other better animations. That may very well be Funcom double speak but I know the articel I read stated that. Wish I could find it now ;P.
The combat animations are indeed the main issue right now, the game itself has the right ideas, and Funcom seems capable of implementing them in an interesting way.
However the combat animations are simply not good enough for a 2012 MMO, I really hope what we are seeing is placeholders, but only time will tell.
Dare I say this but....WHY would you keep placeholders in the game for its first showing with massive numbers of people? That just does NOT make sense to me.
And, yes, animations and sound are my biggest issues but, IMO, those are HUGE issues. Most of us are sensory beings and to -see- crap combat/movement and -hear- sounds that are just off is...disconcerting.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I played assault rifle this week as well and had no issue with sound and animations...while you are correct in how they are in the current build, I didn't personally notice them due to being so thoroughly engrossed in the game world and questing and storylines. For me, this game hit all the right spots and I WILL be buying the grandmaster package.
That's cool.
I'm just a more visceral player I guess. Sound and movement matter to me equally as much as the story and questing parts.
That said, the environments are terrific so visually, TSW is quite nice.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
well if all the issues you had was some sound animations then i really cant wait until i get home form work tonight
Infact jsut watched that video with combat in and the animations dont look terrible.. sure no where near the best ive seen but nothing that would put me off from playing..
Also you mentioned zombies and that every MMO had them... yeah thats true but not in this context..From what i have seen the kingsmouth area is more like some kind of survival horror, infact all the zones come over that way in the different vids..
I am hoping the story and lore captures me in a way that I may overlook the cheesey combat animations, similar to how Tera's combat system was so engrossing that I overlooked its art direction (I am not a big anime fan).
As for the sound, well combat sounds are a big deal for me. It is all part of the "experience." One of my biggest gripes with LOTRO was its rather lackluster combat sounds.
I think one of the biggest dangers to how these beta turn out is the developer willingness to name the dates for the beta weekend months in advance. In the case of TSW, they're locked in with a start date and even if they want to change some of the animations or sounds, they are very limited in what they can do with 5 weeks to launch.
Animations and sounds are overall important to me but are things i can overlook in a beta if it has potential, however this close to launch and when funcom is the dev it does become concerning that those "placeholders" could end up being permenant...
Regardless i am looking forward to giving this game a go this weekend...
Playing GW2..
Btw, you can have three item missions at the same type, not one. These generally lead you between the other missions.
"Once you’ve completed the Tokyo Flashback, you’re on your way to London (Illuminatis begin in NYC). This is the first time that you are actually working your character and game mechanics are taught through a group of quests that occur in the London Underground. You are accompanied by several other Templar wannabes, or at least that’s what I assumed they were. You travel through the underground facing off against monsters and practicing your combat skills in the subway system.
There were some pretty weird bugs during this particular set of quests, the most jarring being when my character was passed out for some reason and my character model kept flashing back and forth with someone else's other character model. It was intentional in the Tokyo Flashback, but not here. That’s a pretty big oversight in my book."
If this is anything like the game I played this information is totally wrong. Did you even listen to the story Suzie? The Tokyo Flashback is just that; a flashback. You inhabit another person and fight in the Tokyo underground with NPC members of all 3 factions. It tells a story, lets you get a feel for combat, and lets the player know that all 3 factions have to work together against a greater threat.
Please don't spread misinformation. This great game has enough naysayers without giving them false information to disseminate.
Nice article i hope to see some videos soon xD
Oh yes! I will be playing in a short bit. After the fantastic beta weekend event #1 of Guild Wars 2 though, I believe that my expectations will not be met, but we will see.
Trying to keep an open mind, however, the lacking character creation will probably scar me for a while. The lackluster sound effects have me nervous, not to mention combat animations, but I am cautiously optimistic that the rest can carry it for a bit?
I wish that the Illuminati area was open, but I will take what I can get.
It really sounds like they are rushing to get it out. Who woulda thought it from Funcom? I guess we'll all find out in 10 minutes. I wonder what it's like when you get past Tortage?...erm I mean London/Seoul/NY.
From those videos the character creation looks like you only make a different shaded Asian male. The ethnicity looks didn't really change at all.
The combat looks flat and boring.
Thats what she said. To use the same tone 'Did you even read what she said'.
So from your post Suzie I guess you havnt heard this ;(. I wish I could find where I read it. Sound and animations are very important to me too. Maybe it was just a poster talking out his rump that I remember ;(. With the slick animations in AoC I was hoping for more ;(.
Gorilla what he means is what she calls Tokyo Flashback is really just a cut scene of you getting your powers. The first part you play, First Steps in London is really the Tokyo Flashback, thats where you flicker between yourself and the person that was really there. I sounds like to me she has the no voice over bug that a few people had so she did not know what was really going on.
Emissary of Istaria
It was what she did not feel that was extremely important -
She didn't feel scared.
She didn't feel suspense.
If you play the game (really play not for testing purpose) and you still notice the animations you prolly arent playing the game right lol
My wife watched me playing and was complaining all the time about the animations (she works in a similiar industry so she is picky) yesterday she played it herself for the first time and after 20 minutes told me she doesnt even notice the animations anymore it was the same for myself (even tho i never would have said the animations are that terrible to begin with tho).
Now i am not saying that the animations are awesome but if they really still bug you once you started playing and really dived into the world and atmosphere of the game well than the game prolly isnt your cup of tea anyway.
First off, i enjoy the tier quest system and the story so far is pretty decent for an mmo. The character creation is defintley lacking u pretty much cant make anything but a asian dude lol, well i kind of made a asian Charles Bronson. I noticed right away that the shotgun combat was fun as heck, then when i got to the other weapons and magic i became sad inside. The animations are defintley lacking and the sound is terrible. The world also feels very linear. Framerate is also an issue. In the Rift beta i was running around 120fps on max in TSW i run about 30fps, it doesnt matter if im on low or ultra it stays around 30fps, the memory leak is horrid as well. Also i noticed the game controls feel a bit slow and almost GTA'ish not saying its a bad thing just weird for an mmo. I do not believe, taking into consideration funcoms track record, TSW will launch anywere near polished or playable, I mean animations and sound are the easy things what happens in large scale coding i dont even want to know.
I was very excited for this game and that's why i'm disappointed so much now.
Everyone is saying overlook the animations and sound but come on are you kidding me, this is a game, you interact with it and visuals and sounds are just as important as the gameplay itself. If i can't interact with it properly or without being annoyed, i cannot enjoy the gameplay. No one can tell a gamer to overlook the animations and sound, those are the means we interact with the damn thing itself.
After seeing these god awful animations, dull uninspired art direction(imo) and hearing that god damn shotgun sound over and over again, i'm sure as hell not buying it even if it has brilliant quests/story whatever. This is 2012 people, no game company should hope or expect it's customers to overlook the animations and sounds -that'd be a big LOL- unless it's doing something stylized or not very mainstream.
Besides, giving players walls of textses during the action is not a good way to do a tutorial.