I know that it’s standard design to front-load your MMO with the best zone possible, but after going through half of the New England island area, I’m worried that nothing else in this game will be quite as cool or interesting as what we’re seeing here.
I mean, thus far I’ve seen:
- Zombie firemen
- Zombie track and field runners
- A genuine haunted house
- The coolest tree house ever
- C’thulu’s uncle, Bob’ulu
- A possessed amusement park ride kill one of my guildies right in front of my eyes
- A doorway to hell
- Hippies
And that’s just scratching the surface. I think it’s safe to say that The Secret World is sticking with me; I’m at least in it as far as the main storyline goes, and after that we’ll see if Funcom justifies a continued subscription by adding more interesting areas and people to meet.
If anything, TSW feels like you have to take one enormous step to the side whenever you log in. Yeah, it’s an MMO with MMOy things, but it feels like some sort of parallel universe where these similarities are coupled with bizarro tactics that shake me out of the routine. Maybe it’s the contemporary setting, which I still find vastly more interesting than a fantasy world. Putting a game in a contemporary setting saves the writers a lot of time of having to explain what any of this is or does, and frees them to focus on layering interesting, supernatural elements on top of the everyday vistas.
Combat, too, seems diminished in the sense that it isn’t the primary focus of my gameplay. Sure, I fight a lot, but usually only when I have to. Quests award way more XP, many of the mobs take a while to burn down (and are just easier to skirt around), and I want to explore instead of standing still pressing hotkeys. I find myself taking numerous detours just to see what’s around the corner or if there’s a lore or side quest object around.
Actually, the side quest objects are brilliant in a way. Since you want to do as many quests as possible and probably don’t have a large tolerance for repeating the big quests daily, finding these little tasks are a reward in and of themselves. Many times they not only give you incentive to explore, but send you out in a new direction to see a place you haven’t before.
I’m still working on my character build, having gone through so many weapons and wasted AP that I feel ashamed I didn’t figure out a plan from the start and stick to it. Right now I’m going to follow one of the templates for the Magus — a shotgun/elemental build. If nothing else, it gets me a cool outfit, and I really don’t want to feel gimped in the DPS department any more.
Above everything else, I love how this game constantly makes you think. Quests are solvable if you put on your thinking cap instead of trying to brute force your way through them, and piecing together the lore snippets to find out more about the area and motivations of NPCs is incredibly addicting. It’s like playing through a really interesting novel with you in the role of the protagonist, and I’d rather savor it than finish it in a weekend.
TSW is a rather odd anomaly.
What happens when you take the traditional ‘quest’ system, and take away the ever present gear grind or race to the level cap? Would people still do quests if the rewards are simply cash and skill unlocks? Pre-TSW, I think we would have been inclined to say no.
But make the quests interesting enough — people do them for the sake of doing them. TSW feels almost like a single-player game in that respect, because it’s more about the journey. Some bloggers have even mentioned ‘not wanting to complete an area’ because they’re not sure if they’ve experienced everything there yet. They didn’t want it to be over.
Cool mentality. I hope it has staying power, because they’ve done something undeniably good to the genre.
Whatever the amount of AP you ‘wasted’ at the start you can earn back super fast just by going to Kingsmouth and spending very little time running those missions again. When you pair up a few of the missions in certain ways you can run 3 or 4 at a time and gather XP fast enough to earn AP and even a few SP quickly. Is it a grind? … sure… but it is a more enjoyable grind then the traditional resource gathering grind of MMOs or at least that is my opinion. Plus I use this as a way to try different builds out not to mention my addiction with trying to obtain all the achievements. I will be perfectly content if I do not make it to Egypt until the end of July
@Machination I asked on the forums the other day if anyone had an exact count on the number of missions in just Kingsmouth itself and no one has a 100% positive total. Most have in the mid 50 range… I have 53 in Kingsmouth so I have been scouring looking for what I have missed. During that time I found a rare spawn monster that earned me an achievement… made all the time worth it to me.
Just be wary that as a Magus you’ll have zero self healing without grabbing the misc tree heal. It’s a very severe handicap in many of the games solo instances. The damn bogeyman in Savage Coast annihilated me half a dozen times before I sucked it up and bought a few blood abilities so I could heal and kite.
Speaking of solo instances, I feel like they’re my primary beef with the game. I always strive to play with my friends whenever possible and chugging along as a group only to hit one of those damnable things at the end of a quest line is just about the worst thing that the game could possibly throw at us. We’ve gotten in the habit of just outright abandoning those quests because they break up the flow so damn badly, which sucks after you’ve already sunk 20 mins into the quest, but is still much better than waiting around after you’ve finished the instance but someone else hasn’t or the knowledge that you’re holding everyone up because your dps is lower or you got lost in some bloody cave.
Solo instances get an official Black Mark in my book. Still, game is much more fun than garbage like Diablo 3, TERA, and SWTOR ever were or will be. Good game beyond that trash and the per-requisite buggy quests. I just wish there were more investigation missions. It seems like they mostly dry up after Kingsmouth.
It took several tries to refine a good strategy to kill the Bogeyman and in the end I killed him with no healing ability and no potions and that was also using a Shotgun and Elemental abilities.
Different things work or may not work for different players. The one huge variable is that we all have individually different playstyles in how we may all play the very same game. Deck I’m building is actually the Magus of which I’ve pretty much completed the Shotgun skills for that part of the Deck. Yet many variation of skills in any Deck or individual builds can yield very good results.
Funcom probably put in Deck builds to give players a guide somewhat in learning how to build their characters probably without a guide being available As well reward those that do with an achievement and cool outfits to go with the builds as something also to aim for. I dear say it seems to be working as players aim for whatever Deck their play style like and eventually in the end with varying amounts of custom variations.
The boogeyman fight was awesome. Never expected to find a boss like that in a quest that had me think like if I was raiding. I want moar!
First time I post, but I really like reading your blog!
I was wondering if you could tell me if TSW is a game that would suit my current play-style and available time. Is it possible to play it as a single player? Is content easily soleable? And is it possible to enjoy it with minimum playing time (1-3h per week at maximum) and short playing sessions?
Thanks a lot and keep up the amazing blog you have!
Wopz,
I think TSW actually sounds like a great game for your current play-style. It is certainly soloable (many of the main story quests include solo-only instances). You will probably not be able to do the dungeons alone, even after you get better skills and weapons, but the rest of the game should be pretty accessible. A friend and I tried to go back and duo the first dungeon after improving our stats, but that did not go so well. Ouch.
It is also a game that you want to take your time playing – for me, at least, most of the pleasure I get from this game (and I get a LOT of pleasure from it) comes from taking my time, exploring, talking to everyone, working my way through puzzles, etc. You may not WANT to quit after an hour or so, but you can get enough done in that time to make it worthwhile. Missions are broken into sections (tiers), so even if you only have a short time to play, you can easily finish one or two tiers of a mission, if not the entire thing. And it is always worth taking a spare half hour just to explore. So much to see!
This is not a game where you need to spend huge amounts of time grinding gear, etc. In fact, all clothing is purely cosmetic. You can equip talismen (jewelry, basically) for some stat bonuses and improve your weapons, but It really is all about the story.
The beauty of the Ability system, IMHO, is the fact that you can switch and try to find something that fits better, without rerolling and sacrificing time spent. You will have a head start when you do back to those other abilities. I’ve heard a couple people clamoring for an AP refund/respend option, but I think that kind of defeats the purpose of the Wheel. You may find the perfect set of abilities for soloing, then suddenly realize it’s not optimal for groups. MMOGC and I were discussing potential synergies between Player Characters on my blog this morning.
My broader approach to characters in MMOs is best described as “Outlast.” I almost always take some healing option, because all I really need to do is stay alive longer than my opponent. I’ll sacrifice damage per second if it means I survive more fights.
http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=42532
If you are worried about running out of things to do, read this.
Aerynne,
Thank you very much! It was really helpful and the confirmation I needed to start playing it
every time I play “TSW” I am feeling like Indiana Jones – solving secret codes, fighting againstthings never seen before and so on ^^
You forgot a bus full of corpses spread across a bridge. Running across the bridge gets you a nice zombie train. Don’t stop running. Don’t look back.
As for the bogeyman fight, it took me more like two dozen tries before I gave in and watched a video for the fight. Simple rule: melee when he’s casting the green spells, go ranged for the white ones and watch where you stand and run like hell when the big blue spell comes up.
Hah, what’s especially fun is running amongst zombies that are chasing some sap ahead of you.
I am in love with TSW too
I am really enjoying not feeling pressured to get to endgame, not caring about gear, and having a new and interesting world to explore. I love not having levels and I love being able to switch weapons (I’ve had the same issue with not finding something I love straight away). I’m also in agreement that it’s less about combat and more about solving the puzzles, figuring out the quests and exploring – although when I get to aoe down some zombies with my chaos magic claws, that is brilliant too.
Really enjoying it