Since no word so far about the stream last night, I thought I drop here a short recap - and make a new thread for stream infos because putting them all around in different threads seems... chaotic, and I'm not a Dragon
The stream mostly had details of two aspects which were shortly mentioned in the previous stream (elites revamp, and Fusang), plus details about the new feature which was hinted several times over the last 2 months...
Elites: they revamp them to make them more alluring (so players would choose the others too, and not only Bombardment). Cooldown reductions, damage increase, etc. in PvE, and since it would affect pvp too much, there will be damage reduction for pvp.
There's a new mechanic concerning Elites, the Vulnerability system. It's mostly for group play and group synergies, each Elite ability will give debuffs with the other two weapon types will cause more damage. In a balanced group it will buff the whole team.
They don't plan to implement it into the difficulty (Or at least, not yet
), to make dungeon tiers which require the vulnerability to win, it will be just an extra option to play with.
These changes are in work for a while, tested on the test server too, so will go live "really really soon" as they said in the stream.
Fusang: I still don't like pvp, so... /meh
Basically they recognised that after the recent changes Fusang now is futile-sang and nobody plays it, so they will "fix" it by going back to a state of kill-fest around factions. Remove every mission in there except two killer missions (kill players while defend your facility, and kill players while trying to capture a facility). Occasionally a random facility will get an anima surge, to give one more incentive for killing (owner faction will want to keep it, while the other two tries to take it).
Another random event, the occasional airdrops, need to grab it and carry back to an owned facility (like a capture the flag play)
They will boost the world domination buff, also to give more push for the players to go and kill in Fusang.
It needs more testing on the test server, so won't go live in the near future.
New stuff: the Museum. It's like a quasi-housing slash collection showing-off mechanic, replacing the Bestiary. Well, quasi-housing is still better than no housing in my book, so...
(not to mention, it looks cool)
The British Museum of Occult, which is closed off since Issue
#2 will re-open thanks to a benefactor (the players). From our donations they make exhibits. Players can slot in, organise and customize the displays, within separate wings (one for each zone). Can also invite friends for bragging with their collection
There will be new lore pieces, new achievements tied to the Museum, rare display drops from mobs, and also a new store, so even those who don't like (quasi-)housing, will find something worthwile in this news.
Store will be similar to the current achievement store, the larger the collection, the better items will be available for purchase. There will be cosmetic, pets, glamours, and a new mechanic, Assists.
Assist: It's something like a combat pet, but very far from pokin'-a-mon like wow did
It's not a game-breaking or a controllable thing, just an effect which can proc. In the stream Tilty showed an ak'ab example, when he was in combat with the assist on, occasionally an ak'ab showed up, knocked the enemy, then disappeared. Assists can heal, root, deal some damage, etc. based on the type and the rank, which is tied to the size of the player's unlocked collection. As I see, it's just for fun, Assists won't turn someone OP just because it procs occasionally...
Museum also needs more testing, so we won't see it on Live for now.
Comments
http://www.thesecretworld.com/news/development_update
edit: messed up the link... plus missed to mention the first part, Elite revamps, will arrive with the maintenance on Wednesday.
As it was announced yersterday (and turtle made a post here as well), Scriv received a big opportunity and accepted it, so his last day at Funcom was this Friday. He will stay within the gaming industry, joining to Re-roll for a new stuff which he'll be writing. I guess it's the ultimate goal of a lead writer, to lay the foundations and then build a world right from the very start.
He will stay in touch with the TSW community, since he'll keep managing the Twitterverse (according to the stream). Also he's planning a new book
Museum. Some changes happened since the last stream, no 4+1 wings anymore, instead 12 + a hidden one. It is huge... sure, still just "quasi-housing" as I said above (hook system, instanced, and not much flexibility), but in size it's maybe the largest one out there... it's the Illuminati HQ with the warehose included, approx.
There will be a truckload of new lore for the Museum, Scriv red a couple of them. Not just regular lore pieces placed in the world, there will be secret lores too, for which you need to solve and follow hints in other lore pieces. Meta-lore hunt New achievements will arrive with the Museum too.
Opening up the Museum will unlock better rewards at the gift store. Store has several vendors in a separate room within the Museum. Tilty presented to us the in-game versions of the T-shirt designing contest / fan-art winners, some of them is really cool (Urbos's Revenant or the Reaper from Lucid for example... https://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?96657-The-Secret-World-s-Monster-T-Shirt-Contest-WINNERS ).
Assist, luckily they aren't called combat pets anymore since they're procs. Available at your gift store in the Museum, called Mnemonic guardians now. In the stream Tilty showed the golems (AoE burst damage, on a 20% proc by default). As the players opening up their Museums, better versions will be available, the purple golem deals much more damage than the green. Also the more displays are unlocked, the higher the proc chance of the guardians. Tilty showed a soldier too, that deals damage over a short period, and an Orochi drone, which gives a short-timed incoming damage reduction.
It seems like a nice sub-system, for spicing things up - too bad the involved grind will be massive too, not just the Museum size...
Planned launch date is June 15th. It's a free update to everyone, since it replaces the Bestiary. Museum will be available right from the start, and there will be a short tutorial about it for new players. The mechanic will have tie-ins to the game events as well, starting with the Anniversary's Golem hunting.
Revamped Elite abilities will arrive with that update too (hopefully, they were planned for last week...)
Fusang changes are still under testing, so Fusang update won't be in the 15th maintenance.
Almost forgot, there will be a statue of the player at the entrance, to show off who's the bo... the owner of that Museum. A bit weird, on the forum the peeps already saying their characters are not megalomaniacs... but since Museum is mostly about bragging with the achievements, it may fit... I dunno.
The statue can wear any cosmetics the player has, can stand in different poses, and... it's huge. Like "2-3 stories tall" huge. Think about the Revan statue in TOR's Stronghold, just with your own character, in your own outfit, posing like some tool I'm sure I will switch it off.
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Not part of the stream, just I thought drop here with the news:
next Saturday there will be a huge, player-organised world boss day event, thanks to The Forgotten cabal.
https://youtu.be/niJLF88ecjQ
Too bad twitch F-ed up for good, and the first few minutes of the audio was muted, so we missed the introduction and the name of said gorilla.
The stream started with a Q&A session (questions from viewers and forum posters alike)
-The player statue: It already has 7 poses (from achievements), if the community wants more stances, devs can add more. Saving its outfit, that's a tougher nut to crack, the code is written to simply grab the player's current appearance when entering the Museum... adding a customizing/saving option to the statue would need quite some rewrite. No promises were made, but they will look into it.
-Slow doors: Also a code necessity, Museum is huge and has a lot of dynamic data tied to the achievement system. So the wings are empty by default (Tilty showed it, peeking through the wall with a "wallhack" dev tool) and they only get populated with the exhibit pieces when the door is opening.
They will check for some optimised loading, but most likely it will stay the same, since it makes the Museum lag-free and helps on the server load as well.
-Music inside: currently we cannot change it (has only the default music) but they will look into it. Listening Bright September inside would be cool.
-Assists. Many complained that they are too weak, Tilty said they will be more powerful as one unlocks more and more of the Museum. More power, better proc, shorter cooldown. We'll see I guess, when we get there.
At the end of the Q&A session, Tilty showed the Filth wing, looks great. Spoiler alert, since not many unlocked it so far (I guess nobody yet)
Fusang. Still on Test and in the balancing process. Won't be released until they feel it is ready. There will be a new buff, for incentive I guess (it sure won't urge me into Fusang, but I don't pvp anyways ), when a faction will hold all the facilities, all players of that faction will get a buff which will be "a lot better than the world dominance buff" according to Tilty, so when a faction is about the get that, the other two should feel the urge to break off that buff with taking back at least one facility. This mechanic will be added onto the test server soon, up for feedbacks.
Eidolon raid will get some updates too, already on Test, and will go live pretty soon.
Anniversary. Game will be 4 years old on the 3rd of July. The usual Guardians event will be back, but there will be a new boss too, in a new part of Agartha, with new mechanics and a set of new drops. Players need to summon it with the golem pet dance
It was mentioned at the Q&A session, but logically fits here more: many asked for a teleport option to the Museum. With the Anniversary the teleporter will be added, available for everyone with a cheapo PAX purchase.
Membership upgrade went live 6 months ago, so it's time (at least for the lifetime members since they got the 12 months right at the start) for the 18th months reward. It will be a (semi-)casual faction outfit. The Templar headpiece looks funny...
At the end of the stream Tilty showed the in-game version of a couple t-shirts from the competition winners. Andy mentioned that a lot of them winners still not responded with their pick of colour (their reward is a t-shirt in any colour they want, while the other players can only have them in black or white. That's a cool reward imo... having a game-unique item on them :waving: plus their names are displayed in the item description as well)
But it wasn't an informative stream anyways
So, Streaming Ones, last Friday. It was a "slower" stream this time, focusing on the Anniversary, reciting memories from the past 4 years, answering questions, etc.
No new announcements or info leaks, just having fun and enjoying the celebration. The only info was that all the former event boxes will return for a short time, so anyone who likes to spend real money on virtual gambling, here's the chance! (/sarcasm)
http://cdn.funcom.com/billing_files/tsw_shop/banners/carousel/en/anniv_16.png
Third streamer was the stuffed gorilla again, maybe that's Scriv's replacement in the writer position
The whole stream was placed in-game this time, a giant Tilty danced in Agartha, presented the new pet from the raidboss, gave away fluff items to everyone - until eventually crashed Agartha by the huge crowd showing up there.
Then Tilty jumped over to the new raid, was a fun sight since giant Tilty was almost as tall as the new raidboss. He wasn't there for help the players though, just danced and flew around in GM-mode for aerial shots to the stream, while answering questions about the new raid, where the idea come from, that kind of stuff. (on a sidenote, GM skills are OP...)
Two lucky players got the new pet through a raffle giveaway (otherwise it's a very rare drop from the boss).
Towards the end, as an answer to a question they've listed community achievements they think were the greatest: Andy mentioned the Secret Buzz, both cited RFG and Gridstream, plus from RFG they highlighted Psywarrior's contribution to the Malala project.
And of course they mentioned #Sanctuary awesome peeps in there. :waving:
Overall, it was more like a happy birthday TSW stream, than a regular one... in July there will be vacations, so most likely the next "info-tainment" stream will be a month from now.
Tilty played / covered the Black House, a great mission from the early game. That section contained spoilers for those who missed the lore pieces and the backstory of it (in case you plan to watch the stream later).
He mentioned his addiction of Bloodlines ( :waving: awesome game indeed, a lot of TSW players love it), and that the House is a kinda hommage for VtM: Bloodlines' mission in the Hotel.
There were questions about new raid (since Eidolon NM is already beaten by a couple players lately), Tokyo, new Aux weapons, but the answer was for all of those is "not in the near future", because they're working someting quite big, but they won't tell hints about it until close to the release.
However, current Aux weapons will get an update, and it's still in the queue to fill the Aux wheel with the rest of the missing weapons.
SP will get some more use, which is cool, because it caps currently pretty soon.
Fusang. Tests are done apparently, the changes will arrive to the Live server next week. So they detailed the two new "modes" which will replace the current Fusang missions (the anima boosted facilities and the supply drops).
Also detailed the new buff which rewards the domination of Fusang, it's a quite powerful one... Plus there will be a new daily challenge category, just for Fusang. Overall the changes are coming to revitalize Fusang and give more incentive for pvp. I don't pvp so presonally /shrug.
But I have to say, rather this kinda incentive, than Wildstar's version of merging the pvp into the pve server
At the end Tilty showed the upcoming new outfits and the overall theme, which will be the '80s. It's a cool theme, I loved the '80s personally... a great era. Except the clothes. Let's face it, the outfits back then were quite funny, so it's an odd choice to give us '80s clothes...
But there will be a new "sprint" too, roller skates, so maybe there will be roller derby matches in the Fight club, with lady characters in Jane Fonda aerobic outfits
Then for the closure a couple players "trolled" Tilty with their flutes. Was a fun sight.
edit: Fusang changes went live as planned, with the infos detailed in the previous streams. Patch notes: https://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?96441-Issue-15-The-Sleuth-s-Gallery-Game-Update-1-15&s=5f02cdfc82b5aca0ea90dfc93da098c6&p=2016898&viewfull=1#post2016898
After the first day it can be said the changes revitalized Fusang, it is mostly full, and the domination is switching constantly among the factions.
Yesterday they've postponed the stream to next Friday, and posted instead a short video. There was only 2 things in it: the '80s bag will arrive next week, and also from the same date there will be a timed challenge:
An account-wide unlock, a hoverboard with Hell theme and flames.
I believe this is mostly for the new Fusang challenge after the update, since for veteran players who complete 20-25 challenges every week through regular play, getting this is just "business as usual".
Newcomers, however, it will be more difficult, since they don't have access to "endgame" stuff, which is a large chunk of the challenge list rotation (NM dungeons, NM raids, Tokyo, even Scenarios).
What they do have access for, is pvp, right from the beginning (there's an Equal Footing buff for newbies). So, with the daily pvp challenges, and the additional mission challenges from here and there, they too can get this hoverboard.
Seems they really want to keep Fusang populated all the time...
Andy took Tilty's character for the stream, presenting the doom board in game (and bragged about world first easy with a dev account). Also he picked up a lore piece on the go, so there's a chance he's out of job already
Because of the doom board, the main theme of the stream was Hell and Wicker. Andy played through the Hell and Bach mission, and to be honest, he was kinda... lame, even with a cheat sheet
Viewers voted that next time he should play Cost of Magic, that will be epic based on his performance.
He also was chased and "trolled" during the play by fellow players dancing and using flutes, in '80s outfits from the latest bag, and by fellow GMs whom Andy killed off with his GM powers.
So yep, no new info or updates this time, just some in-game fun. Plus obviously lots of spoilers for those who skipped the Hell and Bach investigation mission so far.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Info part first, they apologise again for the golem event, there will be a new one without the cooldown, fairly soon, but no actual date decided yet.
Halloween is near, so far every year brought a new content/event for that, no exception this year, more details about this soon, maybe in the next stream.
Besides those info morsels, the stream was mostly just Andy playing the CoM mission, accompanied with Dennis from QA (though he's working on Exiles currently, he knows the mission well). Andy did some test runs before to prepare, but to be honest, we couldn't see the result of it He failed... a lot.
Someone kept a fault count on chat, the final number was almost a 100 fails during the hour. He never finished the achievements of the mission so far, so that was the goal for today. Not much progress on that dept. either
The first part he just ran through, so the achievement had no chance at all.
At the second he vowed to aim for the achievement, spent half an hour in the poisonous lake, once or twice almost reached the end - and then failed. Quite a crowd gathered meanwhile in-game, cheered at him,
someone hindered him (the troll...), so the others started to heal and cleanse, which of course added to the lag and made the task even tougher. So finally he gave up and just finished the mission stage without the achievement.
(on a sidenote, if you wanna see why jumping puzzles in an mmo isn't a smart idea, especially with achievements tied to them, just watch his struggle during this part )
Then came the toughest one, the timed jump section. Surprise, but he barely fell off at this part, and when finished the mission even the achievement success was only 1-2 seconds away (but still a fail).
Maybe that's why, for the last part the crowd went in for the help, sacrified themselves on the traps, tripwires and mines, thus cleared the path for him. So at least one achievement succeeded... in return he gave away gifts to the players in-game, and 1200 bonus points among the twitch chatters.
It was a fun stream, watching him fail over and over... At a point he even sent in a ticket (from the GM, to the GMs ) about that this mission is a nightmare. At the end chat suggested next time he should do Bank Heist or the Lava game champion, but personally I think he's not ready for those
I self identify as a monkey.
Lava game, Chris said it was added just for the fun and because of the scrapyard seemed a perfect fit for some parkour. The original layout was almost complete for it, only had to add a couple elements (like a plank, or a wrecked car here and there). Minor spoiler alert, if you want to explore and discover the route to earn the achievement for yourself, skip this part, since Andy shows one of the routes, accompanied with some hints from the dev... though it is the easier path, and it still took for him 36 fails until managed to grab the achievement at the end
(on his defence, he was trolled by the players. As Andy said, watching an FC employee failing at jumping puzzles must be satisfying for some folks - and actually... it is.) When finally reached the end, there was a party on top of the schoolbus, with fireworks and some bag openings.
After that, the Unbound. A much larger spoiler alert here, if someone missed Issue 14 so far (or at least HiveLeader's Issue14 video ) maybe it's better to skip this part, since Chris (the designer of the encounter with the Jinn and his "awesome" shoes) pointing out mechanics and design ideas behind them while Andy does the fight. (On a sidenote, Tilty also covered some overall ideas behind the whole story of Issue 14 in his interview two weeks ago http://holosuitemedia.com/romain-amiel-interviewed-by-jeux-online/ )
The few infos revealed in the stream:
there will be activities for Extra Life this year as well, new Halloween event is coming, the smaller TSW-related project they've mentioned in the quarterly report will arrive before the end of the year, and for those who prefer steamy gabe ( ) they will add all the Issues to steam as well (since currently the Complete Edition is only available directly from Funcom), and they will add an AoC bundle as well, all the Conan DLCs and Godslayer packed in one, with 40% off for the week. *
Hopefully the next stream will be a more informative one, they promised details about the new stuff for this Halloween...
* edit: this one is on already: http://store.steampowered.com/app/530690/
Samhain will bring new rewards, large monsters, the main theme will be a big investigation. Lot of thinking and brainwork will needed for it, plenty of things to find out, as Tilty said "easter eggs inside easter eggs inside etc."
Quite ambitious, and they're still heavily working on the final strokes to finish everything till the launch. Since this is the "main" festival of TSW content-wise (updated every year with a new story, it's better even than christmas or the anniversary) I'm really looking forward to it, hearing all these marketing talk
Andy played the first Jack mission as a preparation for the halloween mood. Spoiler alert obviously, since it's an investigation mission. Meanwhile talked about the plans for Extra Life, there will be a new t-shirt, also they have a TSW-branded PC case, up for either a giveaway or using it at Extra Life.
There's a 66% sale due to their sale matching "policy" (backing up external sales), Andy put an emphasis on the Complete Edition, which is still only available at them exclusively and can't find it on external sites.
At the end there was a funny episode, he tried to show the Hide and Shriek trailer video, but it wasn't at him currently, so tried the one on youtube. Which of course is not very supported by those with twitchy eyes After a couple failed tries got the suggestion from the players: No worries, the game has modern day setting and every TSW agent has a browser on his phone (aka the in-game browser).
So, while he streamed the gameplay, he opened the browser, and played the trailer from there. (both contents owned by FC, before someone cite here the twitchy TOS )
There were a couple infos shared about H&S during the stream, but I rather dropped those under the news entry of Suzie. (http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/comment/7048040/#Comment_7048040 )
Last was a funny stream, but not much on the TSW info side unfortunately, most of the stream covered Hide and Shriek, even the raffles were for HS copies instead of bonus points.
Special guest (and comic source) was Joel, lot of jabs back and forth between him and Tilty
So, as last time, I just dropped HS stuff here http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/comment/7057010/#Comment_7057010
TSW was covered only during the last few minutes of the stream. Samhain is coming, they're still doing the finishing touches, but it arrives next week. Will be great and something quite new.
A big event, with a large, community-wide investigation, players need to work together, help each other out. Lots of clues to find, riddles inside riddles. If we manage to unfold everything, down to the deepest one on the riddle chain, everyone will get a reward, meaning a game-wide reward to all TSW players (and also to all HS players).
Community effort feels similar to the early years' ARGs, but it is NOT one, everything will be inside the game (Andy stated it specifically, it is not an ARG).
There will be a new bag too, with new rewards. Joel loved this part, "you add a new bag, for an event?" (since he was the game director when bags appeared in TSW, and on forum the peeps ripped him a new one for it, quote his very words from earlier about "no bags, ever, in TSW". So this time he could play the devil's advocate).
Joel also said at the end, that soon they will start streaming Exiles, from the Oslo office. Too bad it's from Oslo, they should put those two more frequently together, Joel-Romain Power Hour is a very fun show to watch
edit:
not stream-related, but didn't want to necro an old thread this year's cabal pride will be held tonight, soon (19:00 GMT). Those new hoodie-owners from the giveaway, who decided to stay in the game, and seek a cabal (guild), visit the park in London, lots of big cabals will recruiting there.
(a post with videos from the last one: http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/comment/6592187/#Comment_6592187 )
Meanwhile, they're working on christmas, but can't say any details on it either. Except that details on this one will be spilled much sooner™
But since Samhain is over, that can be discussed - during a couple fun Hide&Shriek matches, against people on the stream. Basically the stream was a Q&A session while Tilty and Andy scared and spooked the players/viewers. (and they mostly won, only Andy lost a match. Maybe the players were too honest, or, were without a second display to watch the current Tilty/Andy location ).
So, it was mostly just a Q&A. (tried to collect the ones which seemed important)
-More community investigation in the future: they said high chances for it, they'd love to do more, it was fun to watch us the players running around and working together, chasing clues. They've learned from the datamining issue, they already have plans to address it in future investigations. Also, they presented the rider skull mask in H&S which was unlocked by the TSW players during Samhain.
-Rider will be back next year (and maybe sooner too? was hinted, but nothing stated)
-Somehow reptoids are connected to the lore, there's allegedly a hint hidden somewhere in H&S (?? not really got that part, but at least it explains the reptoid mask cosmetics dropping during the Samhain event. We just assumed it's for an Illuminati joke )
-Some asked about the latest flash sale, they said there will be a few more sales like that towards christmas.
-The new merchandise store was updated with H&S figurines, and they will keep adding new stuff in there, from AO, etc. Viewers dropped tons of ideas (like "you should add ... I'd totally buy that"), some of them were pretty good and Tilty agreed on those, taking notes. Mostly posters and additional t-shirts / hoodies. Then ideas went to a bit weird, with body pillows of Inbeda, Carter, Geary... so I rather just watched the gameplay for a while
-Where's the secret wing? it's somewhere in the Museum (well, that wasn't an informative answer...)
-There is work on some kind of an upgrade to the cosmetic system. Some asked for argyle stuff to the lady characters as well, they will look into it.
-New playable factions are not in the plans currently (was a sneaky question about the upcoming upgrade, so it's not about an added faction )
-A similar tricky question, will the upgrade be for everyone, or aimed for the geared players only? At first Tilty said it will be for all players, but then he said stop asking questions like that and trying to pry some answers from him about the upgrade...
At the end there was a big thanks for the Extra-Life participants, a lot of donations were collected and the community was very supportive.
Exiles had its very first stream last night, was kinda bumpy, newbie twitchers so they had a couple of issues, for example to stream the in-game audio
It was mostly the character creator, and the early gameplay. Presented the gathering and crafting, a slight pinch of combat (mostly just running away from the crocs), and after that the builder mode (since shelters are important against sandstorms). Plus a short Q&A session at the end, where they stated again the "not an mmo, it's a survival game" part.
Joel added quotes from the books to the item descriptions, there are lore pieces around and there's a backstory for your characters too, so personally I'm psyched about it, a singleplayer crafting/building survival game with some story... what's not to love, sounds awesome (and the optional PvE with buddies just makes it even more awesome, just as the totally ignorable pvp )
I don't think I will follow/cover the streams though, since I'll rather wait for the non-steamy version, and others will probably, there's a thread about it already in the Exiles subsection.
TSW started with a welcome to the newcomers through HumbleBundle and to the Exiles viewers. Humble was a great offer, and plenty of players grabbed it apparently, the early zones became really crowded and the chat as well with lots of questions.
For that reason the theme of the stream was early gameplay with a Q&A session, for the new peeps, while Tilty is playing a fresh character through KM and speaking about design, the ideas and the past.
Fistful of zombies was the very first mission they've developed, when the game was still in prototype phase. They (Tilty and Joel) both were on AoC at that time, and it was a nice opportunity to do something different than the regular mmo killquests and testing the storytelling aspect through the mission tiers and cutscenes (funny, but the first thing you need to do is still killing zombies )
Joel did the writing and Tilty was implementing it. Fistful... is a mission serving a nice blend of tutorial (environmnent and effects, main/sidemission mechanics, mood) and story.
At Bannerman it was up to vote which road should he pick, it was Andy and Elm street Blues. (you can have only one main mission, and the design is to follow the story, not playing the "questhub" like in other games)
Elm street Blues is displaying the office as a fort, under constant siege, and reveals some coordination behind the zombie attacks, due to they're being controlled by the draug. After that Tilty followed the story mission to Norma, and did the Q&A while cleaning up zombies around her house.
At the end of the stream there was the xmas hints section. They will plan to start the event early this time, not like the Samhain event. They're dressing up zones for the moods, Agartha was displayed with snow, pines, and snow walls / barricades for a small social event, snowball fights (more just for the fun, not a mission or such. Well, LotRO has that, if you want a pvp snowball fight... just sayin )
New cosmetic items were presented too, a moose mount with a matching outfit (looked like a Mountie uniform), a reindeer mount with matching outfit (elf costume, as in Santa's helper elf, not LotR elf ) and there will be a new dance too.
Since next Friday is also a TSW stream, probably they will announce the event launch date then.
At least you can expect this kind of ass-fuckery if you've bought a fc product before.
Po_gg do you work for FunCom, if so what is your nickname there? Remember, if you lie, you can be sued.
And since they stated at the very start that they still can't talk about 2017 (infos will start to leak only after the Exiles EA launch in January), the stream was mostly just a Q&A session, while Tilty played his lowbie character in Kingsmouth. The design plans and ideas about the dimensions, layering, even moreso the structure of the investigaton missions were nice though.
A couple random answers:
Respec option, lots of new peeps ingame after the weekend sales, so respec is a frequent question again, but the answer is still a solid no (eventually the whole Wheel will be unlocked anyways, and if in doubt, can test the abilities in the HQ before spending the AP on them).
Next tier of loyalty reward, it's done already, will be presented after the holidays.
New mount type is coming, but they can't discuss it yet (hinted as part of the next year's update)
More cosmetic options and customization, in the queue as well (like above, vaguely said it's up for next year)
10k flares and scarves achievements - ok, that was just a joke (I seriously hope...)
Pretty much that's it, the most informative part was the section about designs. Never thought that the toughest part of the investigation mission design is to properly translate it, and choose hints and clues for all 3 client versions which move the solution forward.
Next week is for Exiles stream, so TSW will return on the 23rd, before the holidays. I guess it will be a festive stream
So, as the last stream of the year, and before Christmas, it was a festive one with lots of gifts in-game, and Point giveaways on the stream. Andy's gameplay had 3 sessions, at first he faced his nemesis, the Bank Heist - and succeeded. Sometimes it was on a split of a hair, but he grabbed the achievement at the end :waving: Of course it is full of spoilers, and there are walkthroughs on the web already, but if someone is stucked or need a hint, watch his run, it was very entertaining.
Then it was a snowball fight, the new element added for this current event. I don't like pvp so I'm kinda against the idea of dropping down some snowballs and start throwing at each other (luckily can't do that in dungeons and raids...), but I admit it was fun to watch as he couldn't even stand up from the debuffs of the incoming swarm of snowballs (everyone aimed at him, obviously).
Last part was pvp too, but a more real one than snowballs, he went into Fusang (where during the event the Krampus minigame is turned on), he took Krampus, enlarged it and dressed up in Santa clothes (GM powers... cheater ) and started to beat people. Pretty soon all factions were ganged up on him (with a few "true" pvp'ers who started to taking kills from the crowd... yeah, even in a great community there are some bad apples I guess), so after a while his gear couldn't handle the load of too large crowd and incoming attack effects, started dropping frames, etc. (you shouldn't play world boss without a decent computer ). Eventually he fled back to Agartha for a last couple presents to drop, saying the good wishes to everyone, and that was it.
Next week is vacation, so the Exiles stream will be on 6th of Jan, and next TSW is only after that. They will present the new Loyalty reward, but probably still no more info about the update - have to wait the Exiles EA launch with it... (pretty stupid business decision imo)
Funcom’s latest financials have been released today, and while much of the presentation focuses on Conan Exiles, they haven’t forgotten about their other games such as The Secret World.
A notable addition to the results is that Funcom plan on relaunching their MMO The Secret World in the first half of 2017. They are redesigning the player experience, adding improved combat and gameplay, daily rewards, and access to story content for free.
Funcom will start pushing the revamped version in March which they hope will boost company revenues. The Secret World is by all accounts a decent MMO, it just never took off despite being more than a little different to other titles in the same space.
https://www.pcinvasion.com/the-secret-world-relaunching
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey