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The Secret World: A good but failed attempt.
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Member Posts: 52
Opinions are like… I’m not going to finish that sentence for the sake of the future of this post. But you know how it goes. So I’m going to break down a few of the ones I keep seeing over and over. And without being arrogant, condescending or having beer goggles on.
“There’s Only 7 Active Buttons”
It is said that comparing the gameplay of The Secret World and Guild Wars 2, TSW is by far a more complex and interesting game. That does not mean it is more enjoyable. When you get to play further down the road even with the flexibility of changing roles, you will notice certain builds are fixed.
In PVE there are builds specific for tank, heals and dps, in PVP there are builds depending on the situation requiring debuffs, full burn or defensive stats to stay alive and support or heal. With the possibility of maxing your gear, you can stray from the cookiecutter path, but usually just makes it harder.
Enjoyability should be the main focus in gameplay and what TSW comes down to is spamming 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2 and 3. Rinse and repeat with the option of pressing 5, 6 and 7 ocassionally for some extra options to add to the base spam. If only this all felt smooth and polished, like in GW2 or TERA. But it doesn't.
“Yeah, But….Funcom”
Funcom has a reputation to produce MMO's that have a crappy launch with a good skill setup but average gameplay. TSW is no different. People do not play TSW or stop playing because it isn't fun to play in the long run. A game gets judged on the experience. Company trackrecord only gives an indication.
TSW released in 2012 as B2P with sub and cashshop. This greedy setup already put a lot of players off, because only AAA titles get to survive a sub because of the high amount of content. At launch TSW did not even have endgame content. It still hasn't. Except from NM dungeons, 1 raid and scenario grind.
The modern day setting, flexibility in skills and diversity in quest types could not cover the antique gameplay which MMO's like Tera and GW2 did differently while still offering an interesting open world (in TSW most content is instanced). They miscalculated the market, just like with AoC.
The triple pricing for a MMO with outdated gameplay and a really small world to roam around in, made TSW tank hard. A lot is said about advertising, but TSW just isn't that good. GW2 earned a lot of awards that year, pushing TERA to the back. TSW was the little kid being left out on everything.
“Combat Sucks”
Combat is clunky. The buttonmasing 1111123, even worse combat animation and limited weapon choices make combat a choir. While other MMO's make you enjoy killing a mob in fancy ways giving you the feel you are in combat, TSW's combat feels so distached, you never get the feeling you killed a mob.
If you made it past the zombies using swords and kept using your sword only updating skills, you're doing it right because you really don't need anything else. Using a shotgun for AOE PVE is so underpowered you're a noob if you arent using a sword or chaos builders with healing passives.
You are never in awe when you use a shotgun, hammer or elemental focus. You see a toon perform a small movement which brings out a low "Psht" sound and that's it. The fun of using the skills are 90% SETTING UP the builds looking for working synergies then actual combat. It's that bad.
“The Animations Look Weird”
Good gameplay creates enjoyment and animations add to that. Any decent MMO has great combat animations. TSW has not. Things aren't quite right. You start to realize that motions are so monotone you wonder if it gets any better later on in the game. It doesn't. New attacks are all crap.
Even the normal animations are weird. Walking, running, jumping, dancing, it all has that 2000-late feel to it. It destroys the immersion and attachment you have when doing combat. The need to complain is because they are an intrical part of what your toon does 80% of the time.
Something can be said for the fact TSW is not an action based MMO like GW2 or TERA (MMO's launched at the same time), but even older MMO's have better animations across the board. Putting time and money in the cutscenes only does not make this okay.
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That post of that PR-guy Joel Bylos posted a few days ago about the Tokyo expansion is even more laughable:
"..it is just time consuming to build content to the high quality standard.."
If you think HQ urban area you might think about The Division, forget it. Take a low textured shooter co-op map, put 4 NPC's in it with a few quest locations and thats Tokyo. The area has a few rehashed mobs scattered around, but it's really empty and has no soul. Players do the storyquest and leave.
It is also a perfect example how TSW deals with story. New NPC's are introduced with a backstory and quests to help them out. While the characters are interesting, this is as deep as it gets. You should not expect any emotional attachement to many NPC's, you will see them once and then never again.
Adding a teleport to directly access Tokyo will not change people visiting. The cutscenes are the gem in this MMO but if that is the only HQ quality standard Funcom can produce, the DLC's will never become as popular as you want them to be. And you want them to be to create new income for new content.
"..a good concept for the major plotlines and their various resolutions/twists.."
While there is a main storyline in TSW, there is no interesting plotline. You are the good guy fighting evil, help out NPC's along the way killing x mobs and fetching y items, solving z puzzles. You keep meeting new characters with no character development other then 1 weird kid you need to save.
This does not mean that the story itself is bad. The concept covers for a lot lore that gives an interesting premise but a lot of the immersion comes from your own imagination on how great the story COULD be. You will never see any depth, it sets up worldscale events the game cannot handle.
Bossfights do not feel epic and more an exchange of skill combinations to get the loot then it is an immersive story experience that gives you a feeling you defeated an intricate part of a plot. Again, the immersion comes from you imagining this secret war.
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TSW had to (rightfully so) change to a B2P only pricing. I have no confidence Funcom can make future blockbusters, although TSW deserves a spot in the enjoyable MMO list. After AO, Conan and TSW, leave that to the professionals like Ubisoft (The Division) and Bungie (Destiny).
Imho after DLC10, Funcom should focus to implement quality of life improvements on combat to increase PVE enjoyment and fix the issues that make PVP a deserted onesided mark grind. That Funcom doesn´t have resources to push big content DLC is understandable.
A lot of rebuttals are "if you don't like it, don't play it", "No valid arguments", "L2P" or the best one "You're likely part of the problem", which is rich for a game that got utterly destroyed by GW2 and TERA. Feel free to comment though, I am open for discussion.
Comments
I self identify as a monkey.
I loved the Tokyo storyline but Tokyo itself was just an empty shell.
It was about a quarter of the size of Kingsmouth with barely any quest npcs around.
And I felt it was dishonest to split Tokyo into 2 issues and (probably?) 2 quest packs. One big addon with polished content and that for a fair bundle price would have been a less shady approach.
Out of your 3 picks I have to say Tera is the worst, most generic experience and the combat is exceptionally over rated. TSW combat isn't great and is a game that should be respected for making quests more than they have been for a long time. For me it's a story MMORPG and not an action one.
Hm, I partially agree with you. It's obvious Funcom needs the money since I don't feel they have anything else lined up on "big content" except maybe a PVP area they had in the fridge..
My gripe on Tokyo is that it is empty. I am willing to pay for multiple DLC's if Tokyo was varied endgame content, but the different areas are instanced, there is no reason to re-visit.
I even skipped the event to kill the "boss" during the TSW anniversary in Tokyo. There wasn't any epic feel to it (although for some reason TSW is heavy on the PC specs).
I am sure some might argue you need to grind the "new" mobs to gain aegis upgrades, but grinding x mobs or redoing the Tokyo quests just aren't that interesting.
And I blame the bland combat system for that. I have no problem doing the boring kill x quests in TERA because it is somewhat fun. In TSW it's a choir.
And I have to agree, combat in TERA is overrated, but it still beats TSW's by far when doing the kill x mobs grind routine.
What bothered me the most wasn't the (imho) average game play and combat mechanisms. I didn't mind at all, 7 buttons + Aux was rather relaxing with then a live wire and later elemental force rotation. In fact I enjoyed the quirky get out of crap stuff and the min-maxing, and discussions on the official forums.
I came for the story-line and atmosphere. This coupled with the fact that the Game Director was the guy that wrote the lore for both The Longest Journey (Saga, to be continued shortly) and other Funcom MMORPGs.
In the end the whole thing for me seemed like they just ran out of steam when creating The Secret World.
They started of with great story-telling in single player games that then went on to become an MMORPG (Anarchy Online). Then they ran out of steam with their own lore and decided to license lore for Age of Conan (which was great in itself!).
Then they went all out in The Secret World and just decided to copy a 1000+ sources from real world literature and culture and make it their own game mixed in with subpar main story-line that felt like a rehash of the "rebooting" the world story-line from Anarchy Online (which had a way better story-line and lore imho).
The voice acting was great, but the "single-player" part of the game was again not up to par with comparable single-player games. Just look at for instance the cutscenes, lore and interplay in Dragon Age: Origins that had similar style of cutscenes and some of the same voice actors (Ser Jory, Theodore Wicker anyone?). It was much better produced and executed than TSW.
I've played through the single-player portion with friends starting out several times, and it was fun, but in hindsight it was just a mish-mash of lore put in a blender and called "it all has a meaning, it all interconnects". No, just no, I've played through the whole game 4 times and just NO, it isn't really that good a writing and many times the link between local zone missions become so weak to the overall story that its just rubbish all around.
But to be absolutely fair to The Secret World, it's way better than other MMOs mind-numbing "Hunt for X items of Y and deliver it to Z", then again it's absolutely subpar to story-lines and cutscenes such as Dragon Age: Origins which it resembles to some extent.
I only have one character end-game and I wouldn't put myself through the nightmares, raids, scenarios, signet/aug etc farming again. It's absolutely ridiculous how grindy this game becomes after Transylvania, when you remember that I really came for the story-line and atmosphere initially promised and delivered.
So they try to compensate the grindy end-game nature by adding Mission Packs. I respect that, and thank you. But if I haven't had bought the GM pack from the very start I would have avoided those missions packs in protest to their price. Has nothing to do with affording, just the fact that now new players that didn't get the GM pack from pre-purchase are going to support the game? I think they need to re-think this.
All in all, I loved the "idea" of The Secret World, but gamespot.com was right, it's not worth more than 7.5 no matter what the mmorpg.com and metacritic score says. The only reason it is a niche game is because it's better than the average mindless grind MMORPGs with a useless journey to end-game.
I think in conclusion they should have made The Secret World a single-player game with the option of co-op.
--- End of Rant ---
All DLC+sidestories cost ~56$, even less if you add free 1200bp for 30 missions. And you protest for their price?
Currently on Steam without a sale it's: Massive Edition 59,99€ (up to issue 7), say you don't spend the 1200 by accident on socials but on Issue #8 as a new player that's great. Then if you want the The Secret World: The Black Signal CE it's an additional 24,99€ then you have Tokyo split into 3 Issues and this doesn't include the Side Missions. I protest even though I have GM from the start so I shouldn't even care. So it will be easily over a 100,00€ with Side Missions and the remaining Tokyo issues, and without a discount, and this assumes you purchase 0 things from the social shop.
Yes, I write one liners to support my argument and game so it will be the last reply too.
Ok, see...
Steam massive is overpriced. Why? let's see...
Member get 10% discount in IS.
#5 cost less than other issues - 750 points.
so 750 + 2(1200) = 3150 points. It's around 26$/€ , with membership discount it's 24 $/€
Currently #9 is discounted 50%, Black Signal for 600 points / 5 $/€
Sum it up.
Game - 30 $ and membership for 30 days. Membership can be bought as sub, 1200 points included. And some veteran vanity itamz.
Issues #5-#9 - 5550 points / 46 $/€
3 side stories - 2880 points / 24 $/€ (the newest one included)
7587 points / 63 $/€ for member
93 $/€ for full game, as of day 09/13. It can be lowered by 10 $/€ from first 30 missions. And another 5 $/€ for discounted issue #9.
I think it's good deal.
TSW is one of the most innovative MMORPG's on quest design these past years. But the combat system is terribly outdated and even if heavy focus is on (non-inspiring) story, gameplay in a MMO also matters.
Hence, to say TSW is one the best MMORPG's on the market is NOT correct. It isn't for reasons mentioned in my main post. That does not mean it's a bad game. But it certainly fails in a few areas.
If I want to read a book, I'll pick up a book. I understand the story should support the gameplay elements and scenarios you need to put in a game, but seriously, TSW's main story isnt that interesting.
What makes it interesting is the refresing setting and new quest types you can not find in any other MMORPG. Do not make this about social gameplay because endgame is just solo grinding.
Once you're done with NY and lair raid what you will be doing is scenarios and aegis grind. And you do that with as LESS people as possible, I think not even Love Hotel will change that.
I really, really wanted to like the game but: -
the clunky combat. It just killed it for me.
Has there ever been an MMO that hasn't failed in a few areas? Even with taste being subjective, I've never known a single player in any MMO who was happy with every design choice and gameplay system. Your perfect MMO is different from my perfect MMO, which is different from the next person's, and even if we've played dozens of them over the years, have any of us ever found our perfect MMO?
While I agree with most of your points...I see the above frequently, and it drives me up the wall. This is a self-imposed problem, not a problem with the game. When I was first starting out, sure, a lot of my rotations looked like that. But once you get a decent portion of the skill wheel filled out, that should not happen. If you do and that's still the case, then you have a poor build.
The stories and the world keep pulling me back...
And then each time after a week or so, the combat chases me off again...
Everyone complains about the combat, yet they never even tried to repair the dullness of their system, how can this be, these same people developed the awesomeness of AoCs combat system...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I agree that nothing is perfect. You can take Destiny as a prime example. Good gameplay, don't like the zones you beam down to and it seems their chat interface is bugged. But no shitty gameplay, thats NOT subjective.
Going back to the 7 skills, I couldn't care less we only have 7, it was also meant as a jab to the article by Shannon Doyle. It's not just story, killing mobs is a big part in what you do in TSW, combat doesn't hold up.
I think the reason they didn't fix it is because they dont have enough resources and put their priorities in new content and fixes rather then implement QoL improvements on the combat system or animations.
Storywise, I hope they have a fixed plan for the story that will see some development in plot that can evoke some emotions. If they don't im sure the lazy writers will just keep introducing new NPC's.
Take these new Tokyo sidemissions. The NPC's and their quests are not bad. But do you care for that Japanese Rockabilly? Or what happend to his friends? Big chance you already forgot his name.
The "writing" in this game is just all over the place and is shitty when you look at the main plot. No character development, no emotional attachment, do the writers even know the word "pacing"?
I have to agree with the OP, it's hard to make a case that TSW hasn't failed.
I don't see it as a failure from the start but rather as a failure that's been built over time, and a failure to meet their own goals.
Look at the history of the game
Heavily story oriented and billing itself as having monthly updates.
--Reality: Managed it for the first few issues now looks like its in Bi-annual or less often issue updates. Having the devs flat out lie about delivery time didn't help at all. Tokyo was promised for december 13 in sept 13, didn't arrive till jun ? 14 anyone who pre bought funcom points for that had to be pissed.
Combat billed as flexible promotes the 525 skill wheel and having creative flexibility in play
--- Reality: The devs didn't seem like they were very comfartable with players actually having choices. In the early days of the game virtually all trees were viable for dps and many more of the subtypes were viable. You don't have to look far for that changing blaze got the nerfhammer burst got the nerfhammer, untill all that is left is combinations of elemental force and channeled abilities. Pretty nice if you enjoy that kind of play, not so much if your playstyle wasn't amongst the anointed.
Endgame options.
Nightmare Dungeons, Raiding, PvP, Augments/scenarios.
Looks like a nice set here but not when you actually get into it.
Nightmare dungeons are the jewel in TSWs midden heap of an endgame. Unfortunately while they are still quite a bit of fun they aren't as much fun as they used to be. What made them fun ? Well for me, they had variety, challenge and nice tangible rewards that made you feel you got something for your trouble in doing them.
Unfortunately Funcom has repeatedly "Fixed" nightmare dungeons. Hell Fallen, and Facility particularly have been fixed so well that it's now near impossible to get people that can manage them to run them.
Still a big thumbs up here. The rest of the dungeons are all very good and funcom has only screwed over new players who are also achievement hunters and pvpers with the changes. Achievement hunters will find it significantly harder to get the Complete all nightmares achievement (Mostly because it's now a matter of repeating HF till the bugs break lucky for them) and PvPers will have a very hard time getting the karma curio trinket losing a pretty big advantage in pvp.
Raiding- Nice Start no follow through.
TSWs first raid was well done. More than good enough to overlook the horrible loot drops and just play for the fun and social aspect. I used to play 8 times a week on this raid split between my four characters, If there were still the groups happening I would still be doing that.
Unfortunately: There isn't the interest there used to be. Not everyone is comfortable with a next to nothing chance of getting a non tradeable astral fuse.
Lair Raid: Where the follow through ended. I have no idea what their thinking was with this. Just can't construct a plausible thought process that lead up to this. Lairs were already a largely avoided portion of the game apparently someone at Funcom thought if you tried to force people to do them more they would suddenly become enjoyable ?
Anyway for those not familiar lair monsters/lair bosses/regional bosses are all pretty much group only content that need to be farmed to get puzzle pieces (theres no effective in game way to organize the pieces so you usually wind up spending lots of time waiting around on the puzzle). The puzzles lock relatively easy bosses that drop relatively crappy loot, and a puzzle piece for the next boss up.
Oh the problems: 1 You really don't want to do this with people you don't game regularly with. The temptation for them to screw you over is just too great, and seeing as the only loot even remotely desirable are the puzzle pieces (on average) and you will need several outings over several weeks to get anywhere, well even a blind man can see the problem with joining with a group that has a master looter who isn't your friend.
Did I mention the loot was bad ? It's exceptionally bad. You do better farming weaker monsters solo.
The lair raid: After you have gone through the trouble of defeating all the zone bosses enough times that you have complete set of pieces for the regional boss, you can now defeat it and get a puzzle piece for the world boss.
World Boss aka Lair Raid: Need a complete set of puzzle pieces to unlock and if you want halfway decent loot you have to burn your pieces. Oh if I didn't mention it, you have to burn all the pieces on the way to here so if you want to do this again get farming.
This pattern of making you waste your time on low probability random drops is IMSHO what killed the popularity of the lair raid.
Lair raid: Failure to follow through, too much emphasis on "Making the customer work for it", too much holding out the carrot and yanking it away.
Why Didn't the Lair raid hurt the game more ?: Well I consider this a proof that "it's smarter to be lucky than lucky to be smart" The lair raid didn't introduce anything that couldn't be avoided. You could get almost all the loot in other places in the game except for one thing. That one thing is something Funcom claims will be Epic, most of the players read that as Epic troll of gullible players. So people just avoided the lair raid and kept on playing the parts of the game they liked.
It's a shame Funcom didn't look at this and take to heart that players don't like being forced to do horribly annoying things.
PVP- PvP in TSW has at times been pretty good. Unfortunately there is no matchmaking, changes to the combat system have rendered power equalization a joke, and the one venue where you could ninja through (Can you say spy like ?) has been rendered into a bad diorama of WW1 trench warfare.
There are other problems in pvp but really If I start I won't know where to start. Oh before anyone does the usual pvp rebuttal of bad badoe can't win. Before I stopped I was in the top 100 for player kills and that was before people started farming each other for uniforms. (oops there is another problem)
Augments and Scenarios: Really the latest nail in the coffin. Instead of learning lessons from Lairs and the Lair raid Funcom decides to double down on it's mistakes. Horribly repetitive content, very poor random loot drops that insure most people playing won't be "winners" just overall bad. Outside the TSW forums I have never seen anyone say anything nice about these things, on the TSW forums the people that defend the content usually do it by getting threads locked.
TSW is one of the better games that has come out in the past 10 years.
As for combat, it's RPG like with movement. It's much more spreadsheet than it is twitch, which is how RPG's should always be made...if you dont want that play Diablo or Action games...so tired of people that like action combat wanting to infest MMORPG's with it.
Sorry if you have to read what each skill does and how the synergy works with the other skills you have.
Haha, no it's not. It has innovative quest design and a modern day setting but that's all it has going for it. GW2 is what won all the awards that year for best MMO, hell even best game of the year. TSW? Too busy trying to change to B2P.
It's not just the action combat that made other MMO's a lot more popular. TSW feels like a game that should have been launched 5 years earlier. Just compare pulling up a map in GW2 and do it in TSW. The fact GW2 encourages teamplay whereas TSW stil has the outdated shared loot system. All endgame items are RNG grind. Worse customisation, combat and animations. A small mostly instanced world.
GW2 has a storymode that has different paths and outcomes thus making replayability an option. It has a plot with a start, middle and end (although the story itself isn't worth mentioning). TSW makes you go from one place to the next, why? Not even because the plot demands it, there is none.
Already explained in the main post why looking for working synergies isn't that enjoyable as you want to make it sound.
Funcom expected an initial adoption of the game similar to Age of Conan and got about a third or less of the people to buy the game that they expected. TSW did not hit any performance benchmarks other than the smooth launch and the player retention ones. They may be hitting many post-launch goals with reasonable expectations though.
I think their initial showing could be attributed to two things:
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
A lot of people think GW2 is a good but failed attempt.
Who is right?? Who am I to believe??
Oh woe is me!
Edit: Excuse me, I meant a lot of people on these forums , LOL!
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
All you had to say was GW2...the twitch based, actiony zerg grind game of the year. Comes with standard awful and 6th grade reading level story, no trinity and a huge giant void at endgame. GW2 was made for those that don't appreciate the "RPG" in an MMO.
Figuring out the synergies, doing the puzzle quests and choosing skills might not appeal to you all that much, but it does appeal to people that want a game that forces them to think a little. It's actually one of the most essential parts of a good RPG game and should be for MMORPG's as well...unfortunately, the term MMORPG has been deformed and mangled to mean actiony zerg grind with no trinity, linear progression tree for skills and weapon swap on the dime...makes no sense to me.