My boyfriend and I have enjoyed this title since it's beginning ARGs. We sit in front of our own computers and interact more in this game then any other MMORPG. Together we have overcome all of the investigation missions we face.
When we were in egypt there was a mission where we had to find the pieces of a staff. The mission was called "The Binding". In order to find their locations we had to triangulate their positions with the directions that the god's statues face (even the false one's).
We printed a map out and went to each statue, determining as best we could the direction of their gaze and making a line on the map and a rough circle around the area that their gaze crossed.
We completed The Binding and we did it together.
This game is PERFECT for couples.
Most people play MMORPGs solo. If you play an MMORPG with other people and you enjoy it, the chances are that you enjoy the game mosly because you enjoy the other people who are playing it!
For your interest, Angry Joe thought GW2 was the best thing since sliced bread. However, he was playing the game with a large group of friends. In contrast, TotalBiscuit played GW2 solo and he gave GW2 a far more realistic and sober review - it was above average, and that's about all.
That so strange. For GW2 I felt the exact opposite. I loved playing GW2 solo (especially jumping puzzles. In a group I found the game for more annoying. When I started to group in GW2 I really did not hone in on the use of combos. So I was immediately called out for not using combos even on trash we were just plowing through.
Could I have learned all the combo cues relevant to my main? Sure. And maybe I would have found more enjoyment. However, in Guild Wars 2 I just liked to wander off and explore.
I'll likely feel TESO will be just like that for me as well: Preferred solo play.
I think you /almost/ have a point. I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed investigation solving as much on my own. Instead, it felt really good to share in eachother's cleverness. I think I kind of shocked him when I figured out all the math riddles in an Orochi Base.
I said this when Tera and The Secret World released.
If you had the combat of Tera with the story of The Secret World then you would have a winner. Each game had what the other game lacked.
Tera is Chocolate -- TSW was peanut butter. Together you get a candy bar.
I don't like chocolate nor peanut butter.
Also I found Teras combat utterly boring, TTK on BAMs is 4 minutes too long. Once you know the pattern its mindless repetition to kill, it's not fun its a chore.
I much prefer the original beta pre- pre- nerf AoC combat.
I find BAMs to be very challenging in TERA solo. Maybe I'm just old or something. TERA's PvE is my favorite of any MMO (I play a Warrior).
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
Blue Mountain. I remember getting to that zone and it taking forever to kill anything. I studied up on builds and tried a bunch out but nothing seemed any more efficient than the last. My last ditch effort was finally getting the highest talismansweapons I could find. I when back and it STILL took forever to kill anything. That and Akabs or whatever they were called
Originally posted by reillan I loved the Kingsport area quests... and then I went to egypt and had a "meh" moment extraordinaire...
+1
yea the 1st and 3rd areas are really well done but Egypt needs to be reworked from the ground up as it really does feel like your slogging though it.
The problem I have with TSW is that going though the content is enjoyable for the most part but once you finish the story quest line and do all the major minor story lines it just kind of ends unless you want to grind daily's/dungeons/PVP/Scenarios. I know that's just like every other MMO out there but isn't the really the point? TSW feels to much like a unique experience to impose such a rigid end game progression system on it's players.
You pretty much nailed it in the article. Its Funcom, rough launch, terrible combat. Im sorry, but it doesnt matter what the game is like now, you only get one first impression. I actually played TSW in beta, and knew immediately I would never spend a dime on the game. Honestly, I would have played at launch if it were free at the time, just because of the unique setting, lore and quests.
But to launch broken and incomplete, and then try to charge a box price and subscription...LMAO. You only have yourself to blame for its failure and dropping population. If there werent so many better MMOs out there to play, I might consider giving this one another shot, just to immerse myself in the occult setting and beautifully done environments. But unfortuantely, its just not worth the time and effort. MMO companies need to learn, sometimes its better to release a month or two later than expected, if it means keeping players around. Meeting a deadline is never an excuse to launch broken or incomplete.
And to say Funcom is working on Lego Mini Figures Online, I can already forecast a lot of disappointed kids at launch. They deserve better then Funcom screw ups. At least they will learn on how not to be screw ups in life.
A lot of people are going on about defects in the game, which would be a reason for lots of people to leave the game, but not a lot of people bought the game to begin with. They were expecting something like a million copies to sell, and only sold about two hundred thousand. They had a good retention rate though. Had they actually sold a million copies, TSW would be a major contender.
So I think the question is not, why are more people not playing the game, but why did the game sell 20% of the total copies they expected it to? We all know that new games will sell as many copies as people who are interested in the game's ideas, regardless of the state of the game on release. We have seen people pre-ordering games when the only thing known is the game's name. Where did the disconnect happen?
I think I know. How many X-Files like shows were on television when TSW released? How many conspiracy shows like the History Channel's "Aliens" show were on the air? How many of those people actually want to play MMORPGs? How many people in general were really excited about this game, outside of the conspiracy people? Not many. ESO's subforum here has as many threads as TSW's subforum and ESO hasn't even released. The game's content was niche and the audience that they appealed to was really small compared to most other MMORPGs. Combine that with mechanics like the combat that aren't strong enough on their own to appeal to people who aren't interested in the content, and you get very few people playing the game.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Combat. It is the bane of almost all MMO's. Single player games can get away with mediocre combat (Bioware has been doing it for years) because you play them for 40-100 hours and that is it.
But I played 100+ hours of TSW and I just can't deal with its combat mechanics anymore.
It is okay in the starting area were you are fighting groups of weak zombies and feel powerful at times.
But later on each fight is a long slog where you never feel as if anything you do is doing anything more then slowly chip their health away while they chip away at yours and it the challenge is in staying awake rather then finding the right tactics or strategies.
I played TSW. I enjoyed it. Then the combat got old and I left.
The game has a lot going for it but combat is what most of actually playing the game consists off and it just isn't fun enough.
A lot of people are going on about defects in the game, which would be a reason for lots of people to leave the game, but not a lot of people bought the game to begin with. They were expecting something like a million copies to sell, and only sold about two hundred thousand. They had a good retention rate though. Had they actually sold a million copies, TSW would be a major contender.
So I think the question is not, why are more people not playing the game, but why did the game sell 20% of the total copies they expected it to? We all know that new games will sell as many copies as people who are interested in the game's ideas, regardless of the state of the game on release. We have seen people pre-ordering games when the only thing known is the game's name. Where did the disconnect happen?
I think I know. How many X-Files like shows were on television when TSW released? How many conspiracy shows like the History Channel's "Aliens" show were on the air? How many of those people actually want to play MMORPGs? How many people in general were really excited about this game, outside of the conspiracy people? Not many. ESO's subforum here has as many threads as TSW's subforum and ESO hasn't even released. The game's content was niche and the audience that they appealed to was really small compared to most other MMORPGs. Combine that with mechanics like the combat that aren't strong enough on their own to appeal to people who aren't interested in the content, and you get very few people playing the game.
Well also remember that GW2 was releasing the following month. At the time, the hype surrounding that was something to behold. Not saying thats the only reason, but merely a contributing factor, how much? who knows?
Also, people still remembered the AoC/AO launches and took a wait and see approach.
I keep seeing people say how difficult the combat was in Blue Mountain. Maybe I just had a super efficient build but I never had much problems. But then again Assault rifles was all about leeching health and doing dmg at the same time.
I can only tell you why I don't play it anymore. It all comes down basically to two issues: combat difficulty and "world design".
First, the combat is not only clunky and boring, after the early, easy content, it simply got too difficult for me. Since you can pick from all skills, it made good balancing virtually impossible. It permanently cured me of any esteem I had for class free systems. TSW just proves and "pick from everything" is impossible to balance. Or simply said: at some point I died more often than I could stomach, and I quit because the combat difficulty killed the fun.
Second, slightly connected to it: the world is FILLED to the brim with MOBS, MOBS, MOBS. I just hate worlds where I have to wade through mobs every damn centimeter! When I followed the early idea, I was very exicited about the idea of a mystery game. I thought you'd be more a detective or what. With all the ideas of mystery and conspiracies and then in the actual game ALL you do is kill entire LEGIONS of mobs! That isn't mystery! That's isn't conspiracy! That's just bullshit. Sorry, but the idea was good, but the execution - making a mystery game SO heavy focussed on combat by littering the world with mobs was just a horrible thing to do.
Both appalled me and while I am sad it didn't work out, it is why TSW is a failed game for me.
I know some people very vividly always shout they want no other WOW. And here I beg to differ. As I see it, some things in MMOs work, and some simply don't. It's like inventing the wheel; once the wheel is there, differing from the wheel can only make it worse. WOW defined a few standards and ideas, and falling back behind them is not progress, but regress. I know a lot of MMO nerds here won't like to hear that. But I haven't seen a single case where entirely straying from the MMO basics worked. I want to fight the mobs or the fellow players if it's PVP, I do NOT want to fight with the game system! So I do not understand that call to make things different just for the sake of. Evolution is something that must be made slow and carefully, step by step, and not by breaking the entire basics apart.
A WOW developer once asked how they developed WOW said: we looked at everything and asked ourselves, is doing this fun? And if the answer was "no", it was out. Now this may sound mundane. But when I look at games lik ESO, SWTOR and a lot of other recent MMOs, there is a whole of of stuff that seemed to never have been tested under these preminses and making stuff only difficult for the sake of. Like ESO and the lack of Auction House and Minimap. Complication for the mere sake of, causing chat spam and people opening their full map every 5 seconds. Yes, that is different as in WOW, but it is a pointless alteration as I see it. Some basic functionalities are better left untouched.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Because I will NEVER play a MMO about our present time real world, even if it's many of the facts are changed. Far in the past yes, far in the future (STO is far enough) yes, another galaxy, world, universe, yes......but not Earth here and now, not even from a conspiracy theorist's point of view.
It doesn't matter how good the MMO is. I will not touch this.
Because I will NEVER play a MMO about our present time real world, even if it's many of the facts are changed. Far in the past yes, far in the future (STO is far enough) yes, another galaxy, world, universe, yes......but not Earth here and now, not even from a conspiracy theorist's point of view.
It doesn't matter how good the MMO is. I will not touch this.
Eh, just think of it as an alternate reality/dimension.
Because I will NEVER play a MMO about our present time real world, even if it's many of the facts are changed. Far in the past yes, far in the future (STO is far enough) yes, another galaxy, world, universe, yes......but not Earth here and now, not even from a conspiracy theorist's point of view.
It doesn't matter how good the MMO is. I will not touch this.
Eh, just think of it as an alternate reality/dimension.
Because Funcom still owes me 59 Euro for the AoC ripoff. I preordered it after i watched some videos in which Godager and Ellingson praised many awesome features they never delivered.
Must say I love the story of this game, and some of the characters just makes the day. The more modern day setting is also a nice break from some of the others out there.
I waited until aoc came out and read a couple reviews before deciding to not shell out. Seems like a safer strategy than paying before you know if a game is any good.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
I played it and finished it. I'm guessing many others played the game and effectively finished it. It's not like it was a virtual world. It had great quests and settings but was extremely limited as a "world". I thought the combat was quite action packed but it was the builder component should have been ditched. I think a lot of people hate the builder combat but they don't realize that and say it feels clunky/everything else.
Good parts about the game were the quests and the setting. Also the open world PvE difficulty was refreshing after so many faceroll open world PvE MMO's.
I played TSW for a while, maybe 6 months? The combat outside of dungeons isn't that great, but I really enjoyed it inside dungeons. Much more of a challenge. And I enjoyed the quests. I stopped playing after my guild regressed on the NY Raid. We had been one-shotting him semi-regularly, then some people stopped showing up and the fill-ins weren't getting it done. I didn't feel like having to go through the learning process again with another group and, really, there wasn't much else I really needed gear wise. Some stuff for alternate builds, but that's it.
I went back for a bit after they introduced scenarios, but they got old pretty quick. When they release Tokyo, I'll probably go back and see how it is.
Comments
That so strange. For GW2 I felt the exact opposite. I loved playing GW2 solo (especially jumping puzzles. In a group I found the game for more annoying. When I started to group in GW2 I really did not hone in on the use of combos. So I was immediately called out for not using combos even on trash we were just plowing through.
Could I have learned all the combo cues relevant to my main? Sure. And maybe I would have found more enjoyment. However, in Guild Wars 2 I just liked to wander off and explore.
I'll likely feel TESO will be just like that for me as well: Preferred solo play.
I think you /almost/ have a point. I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed investigation solving as much on my own. Instead, it felt really good to share in eachother's cleverness. I think I kind of shocked him when I figured out all the math riddles in an Orochi Base.
I find BAMs to be very challenging in TERA solo. Maybe I'm just old or something. TERA's PvE is my favorite of any MMO (I play a Warrior).
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
+1
yea the 1st and 3rd areas are really well done but Egypt needs to be reworked from the ground up as it really does feel like your slogging though it.
The problem I have with TSW is that going though the content is enjoyable for the most part but once you finish the story quest line and do all the major minor story lines it just kind of ends unless you want to grind daily's/dungeons/PVP/Scenarios. I know that's just like every other MMO out there but isn't the really the point? TSW feels to much like a unique experience to impose such a rigid end game progression system on it's players.
And to say Funcom is working on Lego Mini Figures Online, I can already forecast a lot of disappointed kids at launch. They deserve better then Funcom screw ups. At least they will learn on how not to be screw ups in life.
A lot of people are going on about defects in the game, which would be a reason for lots of people to leave the game, but not a lot of people bought the game to begin with. They were expecting something like a million copies to sell, and only sold about two hundred thousand. They had a good retention rate though. Had they actually sold a million copies, TSW would be a major contender.
So I think the question is not, why are more people not playing the game, but why did the game sell 20% of the total copies they expected it to? We all know that new games will sell as many copies as people who are interested in the game's ideas, regardless of the state of the game on release. We have seen people pre-ordering games when the only thing known is the game's name. Where did the disconnect happen?
I think I know. How many X-Files like shows were on television when TSW released? How many conspiracy shows like the History Channel's "Aliens" show were on the air? How many of those people actually want to play MMORPGs? How many people in general were really excited about this game, outside of the conspiracy people? Not many. ESO's subforum here has as many threads as TSW's subforum and ESO hasn't even released. The game's content was niche and the audience that they appealed to was really small compared to most other MMORPGs. Combine that with mechanics like the combat that aren't strong enough on their own to appeal to people who aren't interested in the content, and you get very few people playing the game.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Ok.
TSW isn't the perfect mmo, but then which one is ?
I've played quite a few mmo's over the years, and TSW has something that none of the others had.
Atmosphere
I had never experienced the feeling of "I don't want to do the next part of the quest, bad things will happen if I do"
until I played TSW.
my reply its easy, i cant play it because they are not solving the problem with some Gforce Vcards and i cant play it even in minium graphics.
On beta it worked like butter, all maxed, i dont know what they did but really... damn them
It is so easy and the problem of every other MMO: clunky movement, clunky skills, poor character graphics....
Combat. It is the bane of almost all MMO's. Single player games can get away with mediocre combat (Bioware has been doing it for years) because you play them for 40-100 hours and that is it.
But I played 100+ hours of TSW and I just can't deal with its combat mechanics anymore.
It is okay in the starting area were you are fighting groups of weak zombies and feel powerful at times.
But later on each fight is a long slog where you never feel as if anything you do is doing anything more then slowly chip their health away while they chip away at yours and it the challenge is in staying awake rather then finding the right tactics or strategies.
I played TSW. I enjoyed it. Then the combat got old and I left.
The game has a lot going for it but combat is what most of actually playing the game consists off and it just isn't fun enough.
Well also remember that GW2 was releasing the following month. At the time, the hype surrounding that was something to behold. Not saying thats the only reason, but merely a contributing factor, how much? who knows?
Also, people still remembered the AoC/AO launches and took a wait and see approach.
I keep seeing people say how difficult the combat was in Blue Mountain. Maybe I just had a super efficient build but I never had much problems. But then again Assault rifles was all about leeching health and doing dmg at the same time.
I can only tell you why I don't play it anymore. It all comes down basically to two issues: combat difficulty and "world design".
First, the combat is not only clunky and boring, after the early, easy content, it simply got too difficult for me. Since you can pick from all skills, it made good balancing virtually impossible. It permanently cured me of any esteem I had for class free systems. TSW just proves and "pick from everything" is impossible to balance. Or simply said: at some point I died more often than I could stomach, and I quit because the combat difficulty killed the fun.
Second, slightly connected to it: the world is FILLED to the brim with MOBS, MOBS, MOBS. I just hate worlds where I have to wade through mobs every damn centimeter! When I followed the early idea, I was very exicited about the idea of a mystery game. I thought you'd be more a detective or what. With all the ideas of mystery and conspiracies and then in the actual game ALL you do is kill entire LEGIONS of mobs! That isn't mystery! That's isn't conspiracy! That's just bullshit. Sorry, but the idea was good, but the execution - making a mystery game SO heavy focussed on combat by littering the world with mobs was just a horrible thing to do.
Both appalled me and while I am sad it didn't work out, it is why TSW is a failed game for me.
I know some people very vividly always shout they want no other WOW. And here I beg to differ. As I see it, some things in MMOs work, and some simply don't. It's like inventing the wheel; once the wheel is there, differing from the wheel can only make it worse. WOW defined a few standards and ideas, and falling back behind them is not progress, but regress. I know a lot of MMO nerds here won't like to hear that. But I haven't seen a single case where entirely straying from the MMO basics worked. I want to fight the mobs or the fellow players if it's PVP, I do NOT want to fight with the game system! So I do not understand that call to make things different just for the sake of. Evolution is something that must be made slow and carefully, step by step, and not by breaking the entire basics apart.
A WOW developer once asked how they developed WOW said: we looked at everything and asked ourselves, is doing this fun? And if the answer was "no", it was out. Now this may sound mundane. But when I look at games lik ESO, SWTOR and a lot of other recent MMOs, there is a whole of of stuff that seemed to never have been tested under these preminses and making stuff only difficult for the sake of. Like ESO and the lack of Auction House and Minimap. Complication for the mere sake of, causing chat spam and people opening their full map every 5 seconds. Yes, that is different as in WOW, but it is a pointless alteration as I see it. Some basic functionalities are better left untouched.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Awesome game, but:
1)The constant puzzles did not work for me.
2)The fact that you ressurect, and need ot walk for kilometres does not work for me.
3)The open-world is too quiet, and open to ganking.
4)PVP was not really balanced
I am willnig to accept that I just suck at PVP, and also that playing a game is not about intense thought for me, but rather about switching off.
Why won't I play The Secret World MMO?
Because I will NEVER play a MMO about our present time real world, even if it's many of the facts are changed. Far in the past yes, far in the future (STO is far enough) yes, another galaxy, world, universe, yes......but not Earth here and now, not even from a conspiracy theorist's point of view.
It doesn't matter how good the MMO is. I will not touch this.
Eh, just think of it as an alternate reality/dimension.
this.
or
1. fail
2. com
NO.
Because Funcom still owes me 59 Euro for the AoC ripoff. I preordered it after i watched some videos in which Godager and Ellingson praised many awesome features they never delivered.
Never again Failcom.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I played it and finished it. I'm guessing many others played the game and effectively finished it. It's not like it was a virtual world. It had great quests and settings but was extremely limited as a "world". I thought the combat was quite action packed but it was the builder component should have been ditched. I think a lot of people hate the builder combat but they don't realize that and say it feels clunky/everything else.
Good parts about the game were the quests and the setting. Also the open world PvE difficulty was refreshing after so many faceroll open world PvE MMO's.
This^^
+1
I played TSW for a while, maybe 6 months? The combat outside of dungeons isn't that great, but I really enjoyed it inside dungeons. Much more of a challenge. And I enjoyed the quests. I stopped playing after my guild regressed on the NY Raid. We had been one-shotting him semi-regularly, then some people stopped showing up and the fill-ins weren't getting it done. I didn't feel like having to go through the learning process again with another group and, really, there wasn't much else I really needed gear wise. Some stuff for alternate builds, but that's it.
I went back for a bit after they introduced scenarios, but they got old pretty quick. When they release Tokyo, I'll probably go back and see how it is.