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The Secret World: The Innovation Two-For
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 today beginning with a look at the notion that The Secret World is the thinking man's MMO. Check it out!
Like my cohorts here on MMORPG.com, I spent a good chunk of time over the past few days playing Funcom’s The Secret World beta. And while I’m of the mind that certain things are a little rough around the edges, a few specific parts of the game really stood out to me as “holy crow, this is genius!” Those things are what Funcom’s been touting all this time: the unique take on questing, and the skill-based character development. Both have the potential to put TSW firmly in the camp of the most innovative games category. There’s a whole of “let’s do it different” here, but the quest design and character development are most notably what grabs me initially to keep logging in.
Read more of Bill Murphy's The Secret World: The Innovation Two-For.
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Comments
Yep, number one reason I'm enjoying the questing was having to actually use my brain again to solve them. Love it. This is definitely going to divide the type of players that will enjoy the game, but I think that's a good thing. Much like Eve caters to a certain player, TSW will be catering to it's own and I'm proud to be a member of that crowd.
gogo TSW!
I might pre-order. Really enjoying the beta. This is a good game, heck its just different, and veterans like different hehe. I really like the "deck" system they are using. 500+ skills you unlock, but can only run 7 active and 7 passive at a time (you store all your setups in "decks"). That's a LOT of group spec for PvP....
To put things into perspective Rift allowed 3. This game allows infinite.....
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I'm interested.
But how does this game fair regarding interaction between older and newer players? In particular, are new players capable of providing anything of interest (ex. materials, recipies) that makes cash flow and progression go both ways?
Also, does it have areas that you "level through" and then later have no reason at all to revisit? Something I consider a waste of game world.
Thanks for the information, I'm getting more interested in TSW the more I learn, looking forward to the future articles and reading what people in the beta think.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Use your brain how??....Every quest I have done has a meter showing exactly where to go and how far away it is.
agree, granted im not that far into the game but not once yet have I really found a quest puzzling if you will:) mostly just go here and there and follow the indicator but still enjoying it, atmosphere is great
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
You must not have gotten very far. Every investigation quest I've done has had parts of the quest that required me to look online for the answer. Let me know what you think when you come across the Kingsmouth Code and The Vision quests.
There are a few quests without markers. For example in Kingsmouth, there is a quest wherre you have to follow some crows as they fly away. If you lose site of them or get turned around you have to find them, as there is no quest guide to get you to the right place. Also, there's the 2nd part to the overall zone/story questline that gives you the clues you need in a cutscene and then no follow up markers or anything. If you miss the clue (as I did due to being distracted by my 2 year old wanting a drink) you will be lost until you either ask someone or you stumble across the person you need to talk to (which you will eventually do since that person has a couple of quests to give themself). Also as part of that same questline you have to figure out somones password on their computers using the clues it gives you and google (yes, I'm serious). There are a few other quests like this that I have come across.
Yeah I just started playing a few days ago. Some of the quests are pretty standard stuff. Other I have had to look online, or search for clues to solve and progress.
The atmosphere is actually what I am enjoying the most. Plus the fact that it is something different. I agree the animations could use some work. Combat gets alot better as you progress and gain more abilities. I am going with shotgun and elemental build, started off slow but now with advanced abilities in each its much better.
IMO dont judge the combat based on someone elses 1 hour " review". Actually get into the game and play for a few hours at least. It still may not be your type of game, but judging something like combat on the 1st hour or so is silly. That would be like judging WoWs whole game based on your goldshire experience.
Not to be a troll... but you use your brain to solve quests by going online to get a walkthrough? Or do you mean you need to go to wikipedia to research history or something?
Did I mention walkthrough? No. You look up various real world info, like passages in the Bible, or famous composers that the game gave a hint on their music. So yeah, wikipedia will be your friend with this game. That and patience, as sometimes I found clues to a quest I paused later as I was exploring the zone.
Yeah, that's what he ment, like in an adventure game, although TSW uses real-world references.
There is a smack of this in some other quests as well, but they are usually quite easy to understand, but does add a bit to the quests.
Okay that's pretty cool then. Sorry, whenever I hear 'I went online to solve a quest', I'm usually thinking WoWHead/TORHead or the equivalent.
So far, the combat system and the investigation quests are what assure me I will pick up this game. Though the effects and animations for combat are somewhat lame, the system itself is incredibly deep. I know Im just scratching the surface of what it can do, and when I think about how it could affect group comps, it get more and more exciting to me.
Investigation quests are the first I've played that don't assume Im a moron. They give you nothing to work with except a line. Plenty of times I was not sure if I was going in the right direction, and I was thrilled when I actually succeed.
The thing that surprised me most, is how good progression feels. I get a constant drip feed of skills stats and whathaveyou, and it is so much better than grinding up to the next few levels to get X new awesome skill. The sideffect is that its hard to tell if I can succeed at cetain content, but thats a small price to pay for haveing an enjoyable leveling experience.
Overall I feel that this is a niche title, but its MY niche.
How long before all of the mystery content is put into a TSWiki? A week? A month? Thier ideas are to be respected but unless they plan to come up with something new every week those quests will get familiar fast.
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy.
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Currently waiting for the BWE to open up in roughly 15 minutes, i wasn't expecting much but then again i haven't researched much on this game because youtube gameplay videos haven't got me that interested. After reading these posts and finding out you about investigation quests and such i'm actually a bit excited, sounds good... hope it turns out to be =]
When did MMORPG's get a free pass to throw away all the appeal of a weapon, just because it's an MMORPG?
I feel it important to mention, that assault riffles are horrible in this game (and to a lesser extend shotguns and pistol). They feel nothing like they should. With an assault rifle in this game you don't aim manually, you don't fire a shot when triggering the weapon (no, in this game, you have a fun second of nothing before your standard shot), you can't fire with the left mouse button (!), pressing the trigger can somehow magically tranform the effect of the bullet, there's no recoil or need for precision, it takes 6+ shots to kill an unarmed zombie. This is just MMORPG mechanics burying any feel of actually using the weapon. And all the fun along the way.
Why is there such a stupid assault rifle in this game? Funcom has literally stripped the weapon of every thing that has ever made it cool, and still given it to us. To what point? It doesn't even have it's own type of combat resource.
Then you have the claim of "no levels", but the game still gives you xp for each kill and ties the unlocking of new skill points to the same activities that gives you xp. This "no levels"-claim is just delusional.
No matter how the story might be, the game still starts you out with making you collect 3 of this and 6 of that, even though the NPC giving you this quest just stands around and does nothing. It's always nice to know that the threat of monsters attacking our world can always take a back seat to being somebody's errand boy for no reason at all. And can somebody tell me the point of a quest tasking me to find surveillance equipment and at the same time clearly marking every piece of surveillance with a red outline?
"You jump on some hoods, the alarm sounds, and you kill a few more. Then you realize that fire kills them quicker, so you explode some gas cans, and pull the zombies into them to burn them to further death. All the while, you’re making your way to the police station. " We could do that in Left 4 Dead year ago (or most id Software games, apart from the car bit more than a decade ago). Are MMORPG's to be recommended for not being completely static now? Why is the general acceptance level so low, as long as an MMORPG promises not to completely suck?
And can someone tell me the point of the training room in the beginning, when the two skills you get for each of the nine weapons are EXACTLY the same across the board? One to build points, one to spend them. Why does the game have this? You get absolutely no clue about the "fun" of the weapon, apart from seeing a few animations.
This post sounded all ranty, but with so many previews completely ignoring the game's obvious flaws, people might get the wrong idea about this game.
wow you creatd a new account just to bash a game you haven t played
))))))) its an mmo not a first person shooter.
This is an issue, to be sure. Honestly, if you want to enjoy the game at its fullest I suggest NEVER checking those pages. I've been able to do fine using google, wikipedia, etc. and it is quite rewarding. But, then again, this goes true for any game - the BOT and WIKI pages for a game are just cheat mode.
I agree with you. I think the fun of seaching for answers has been fun. This game makes me think of the fun that I have missed with MMOs for a long time. The combat is meant to be one where as you go and advance to find what synergy you like best and use. That I might look at online to see what people say about builds but if I can avoid sites that tell me how to complete a quest over giving a hint (heard about one that says to think about who you need to talk to that is enough to give most the way to figure it out it seems) or being able to use the clues on the search. The danger I see is that the sites that give away the information will be the first things that google finds.
If you want the questing to be fresh you don't have to go find the wiki, it's a choice on you the player if you want to take short-cuts or not, if you ruin your own enjoyment who do you blame?
I mean as an example all the voice dialogues for SWTOR companions can be found online, I know they are there, but I have avoided them specifically so that I can enjoy them first-hand.
Don't abdicate your responsibilities to your own enjoyment, enter into the spirit of the game & you get more out of it, if you take short-cuts you only cheat yourself.
I've played this game for a bit longer now. I have warmed up to it more, the more I play it. I still think the combat is poor and the animations are really rough and clunky. But those are my biggest gripes (which are big due to how much you are engaged in combat). However, lots of little things such as figuring out a way to get through traps and having to look up passcodes through google make the questing much more interesting than any other mmo I've played. And I do agree about the skill system, it is great.
If they can smooth out the animations and make the combat a bit better then I really this game could do quite well.
this was my impression, too. i would not call this an open free skillsystem, like you see it in sandboxes like e.g. EVE. it is more like an extended trait-system, where they have put all the level-based spells into the trait-tree.
in addition the chain of skills you have to unlock in a row is 7 skills long. and they mix up skills of different nature. it is not just sword 1,2,3 or snare 20%, 30% 40%. it is a wild mix of skills which enforces you to waste points on skills you might consider useless for your intended playstyle.
this plus the low versatilty of the combat-system makes me most likely cancel my pre-order. the atmosphere is great, even though they need better character creation badly (annouced already for launch). also the quests are different and interesting. but without a versatile and tactic-oriented combat & skill system, i dont see, that i will play this game.
played: Everquest I (6 years), EVE (3 years)
months: EQII, Vanguard, Siedler Online, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2
weeks: WoW, Shaiya, Darkfall, Florensia, Entropia, Aion, Lotro, Fallen Earth, Uncharted Waters
days: DDO, RoM, FFXIV, STO, Atlantica, PotBS, Maestia, WAR, AoC, Gods&Heroes, Cultures, RIFT, Forsaken World, Allodds
Indeed, I remember a while ago some people where saying it would be like UO's skill system, I thought then that those people where delusional. It's not going to break the holy trinity as a min/max build will always trump a jack of all trades, and the abilities naturally lend themselves to the trinity as well. Even the weapons have built in styles, for instance assualt rifles are Damage/Healling, Hammers are Damage/Survivability. If you hover the mouse over the weapon in the skill interface it tells you that weapons role. What it does do great is allow diversity. A player once he has collected enough AP can fill different roles on the fly (it's like a natural evolution of Rift's multi build system, only 1000 times better as you are class locked and no where near as limited.)
As far as the quest go, there is standard fair, while others are really cool and a breath of fresh air. I guess the only thing I don't like is that it's still a theme park at it's most basic level and I tend to get very bored with themeparks and the quest don't make it feel like it's not. For me theme parks are much more like single players games with a multi player component (seriously they don't even fit the full definition on wikipedia). But alas I grew up on UO and that's the style I love (here's to hoping pathfinder online comes out like the devs want in their lofty blogs).
But in the end as theme parks go, it's really a cut above many. So if you enjoy that style I'd say buy it. I may still buy it myself some time in the future as every once in a while I do enjoy jumping into a theme park game for quick thrills.