[Megathread] Secret World Legends

[Aerilius]

All the hype about GW2. At this point, if it doesn't come with Jesus and a pack of Twizzlers in the box, it's not gonna live up to the hype.

I've been enjoying the beta weekends for The Secret World. The quests are engaging and they don't spoon feed you, which is refreshing. It's actually a bit overwhelming, being able to select what I want whenever I want, without any consequence. Playing with skills can be mind boggling, but again, very interesting because you're actually custom-building a class.

[Luko]

All the hype about GW2. At this point, if it doesn't come with Jesus and a pack of Twizzlers in the box, it's not gonna live up to the hype.

As much as I love the game, this is true. There's so many people just hype jumping that have no idea what they're getting into. The hate threads will flow hard for months after its release.

[Wartide_ysera]

I have spent more money in league of legends then any P2P game ever, I think they should just stop the P2P model and go for B2P with vanity shops. I would be able to play all of them, right now I just can´t afford to pay Tera, wow, and TSW at the same time, maybe when I get tired of Tera...

How easy the world would be if everything was buy to play....

[Drakainen]

In my honest opinion this game doesn't justify a subscription fee, even if the quests are a big leap forward from most MMO's. The combat is a bit iffy, apart from melee, which works 10x better than other forms of combat. The setting is great, but overall the game is nothing groundbreaking. I feel they'd attract a much larger audience if they just had the cash shop and no subscription fee, but maybe that's just me.

(Quoted from another TSW post that got closed and redirected here)

Played the beta most of the weekend and this pretty much sums up my feelings. It's not a bad game, it's quite interesting but I don't think it's worth a sub especially with Funcoms track record atm. I have nothing against them I enjoyed Anarchy Online and Age of Conan(First month or two anyway for AoC) but given that they both went F2P eventually I have a feeling this will probably end up there anyway.

[Valeron]

I love the atmosphere and setting of the game. The missions and quests are a bit more interesting than most themepark mmos. They still have inevitable kill x or fed ex base though. I suppose there is no real way around that. I was disappointed in the character creator, mostly due to the faces, so ugly. Animations need a lot of work in my opinion but I can get past that. The combat is a bit iffy. There doesn't seem to be a lot of weight or impact in the combat. Combine that with mediocre animations and it makes for a poor combat experience in my opinion. The melee combat has improved from the previous beta play throughs I've done though. I didn't try the pvp as I never really advanced a character out of Kingsmouth in the three betas I participated. I didn't want to participate in the massive gear difference battles. Now I know this small post is mostly negative but I'll just say that the pros of the game far outweigh the negatives for me. Except for one thing, the pricing model.

A box price plus a subscription with a cash shop on top of it is unacceptable to me. That is really the deal killer for me.

[NilModern]

Edited for posterity.

[Deleted]

How have people experienced pvp? Problems I can see is combat and faction imbalance, perhaps overall balance since there are no levels how do they group people?

[Sj]

remarks in bold.

They flattened gear quality, so it's a smaller gap between QLs. The PvP is some of the most balanced I've seen.

[Cyclone Jack]

Ran into a fairly nasty bug at the end of B4. Joined a group to run Dead i/t Water and it gave me a prompt to join the same instance as another team member. I hit OK and instant-crash. From this point forward, the game would crash any time I tried to log in with any character, including a newly created character. I even did a DB Repair, and that did not resolve the issue.

Beyond that, I think I only had 1 other crash during the weekend. Game was overall quite smooth, animations still need an overhaul but I never ran into any framerate issues.

[Odeezee]

They flattened gear quality, so it's a smaller gap between QLs. The PvP is some of the most balanced I've seen.

this is one i will completely disagree on. PvP at best is just an afterthought, hell SWTOR had more balanced and engaging PvP 1-49 than TSW. the issues lie with a lack of multiple viable builds for ones playstyle and if you were in the CBT like i was then you know about the channel instagib builds and the one shot, yes i said one shot builds that were available as well. and as someone who instagibed people with Thor's Hammer i just did not appreciate the PvP it reminded me of Bearshaman dps back in AoC /shudder.

[Mazinger-Z]

They flattened gear quality, so it's a smaller gap between QLs. The PvP is some of the most balanced I've seen.

Beta is beta. But...

The game lacks coherence. Played the beta this past weekend and...

1) I didn't know what the character icons meant. I eventually realized that Boone had a quest that would give me new guns or another weapon of higher quality, but I didn't pick that up. I went to town, like he said. I was wondering why I was so underpowered halfway through Kingsmouth and why I didn't have any damn weapon drops.

2) I went with pistols. I felt incredibly weak, even after upgrading. There is no kiting and I feel silly blasting away at something at point-blank range and not even getting any stopping power.

3) Ability and skill progression were not explained well. I had spent SP in pistols before realizing I needed SP in talismans to equip ANY of the crap I got. Severely hindered my killing ability until I could grind up the SP.

4) Crafting is not intuitive. I was throwing things into that silly damn window with nothing clicking.

5) I spent several hours in Kingsmouth and tried to work over to the Savage Coast. Was grossly "under leveled" for lack of a better term. There was nothing left to do in Kingsmouth though. I had done everything except for the locked investigative missions. Everything else was on CD.

6) I felt silly having to run through and avoiding zombies. Just their aggro radius. There was no stealth whatsoever. Even the stealth missions were about evading sensors and lasers and didn't feel stealthy ala 'Thief' or 'Batman: Arkham *"

This game is better quality than AoC. The setting and story are engaging, but I wouldn't pay a subscription fee. F2P with clothing/cosmetic shop.

And for a game coming out in a week, the game seems very unoptimized.

I'm hoping the Vampire game is better.

[Sj]

this is one i will completely disagree on. PvP at best is just an afterthought, hell SWTOR had more balanced and engaging PvP 1-49 than TSW. the issues lie with a lack of multiple viable builds for ones playstyle and if you were in the CBT like i was then you know about the channel instagib builds and the one shot, yes i said one shot builds that were available as well. and as someone who instagibed people with Thor's Hammer i just did not appreciate the PvP it reminded me of Bearshaman dps back in AoC /shudder.

I've been in the beta for over a year. I was there for all that. They just recently made the changes to talismans and it made it much better.

---------- Post added 2012-06-25 at 09:52 AM ----------

Beta is beta. But...

The game lacks coherence. Played the beta this past weekend and...

1) I didn't know what the character icons meant. I eventually realized that Boone had a quest that would give me new guns or another weapon of higher quality, but I didn't pick that up. I went to town, like he said. I was wondering why I was so underpowered halfway through Kingsmouth and why I didn't have any damn weapon drops.

2) I went with pistols. I felt incredibly weak, even after upgrading. There is no kiting and I feel silly blasting away at something at point-blank range and not even getting any stopping power.

3) Ability and skill progression were not explained well. I had spent SP in pistols before realizing I needed SP in talismans to equip ANY of the crap I got. Severely hindered my killing ability until I could grind up the SP.

4) Crafting is not intuitive. I was throwing things into that silly damn window with nothing clicking.

5) I spent several hours in Kingsmouth and tried to work over to the Savage Coast. Was grossly "under leveled" for lack of a better term. There was nothing left to do in Kingsmouth though. I had done everything except for the locked investigative missions. Everything else was on CD.

6) I felt silly having to run through and avoiding zombies. Just their aggro radius. There was no stealth whatsoever. Even the stealth missions were about evading sensors and lasers and didn't feel stealthy ala 'Thief' or 'Batman: Arkham *"

This game is better quality than AoC. The setting and story are engaging, but I wouldn't pay a subscription fee. F2P with clothing/cosmetic shop.

And for a game coming out in a week, the game seems very unoptimized.

I'm hoping the Vampire game is better.

There are (supposedly) tutorials on a lot of these things being added in. They're making good progress on things, but I doubt very seriously the game is going to get significantly better than it is right now before launch. But I'd rather play a buggy unpolished game with substance than the polished turds we've been thrown over the past few years.

[procne]

Am I the only one who feels that despite all those, supposedly unique, abilities and all those trees, combat looks the same in every spec?
generate resources by spamming one ability, spend resources. Repeat. With some cooldown abilites used here and there. And like that in every spec. After this beta I felt as if I was playing some kind of rogue-like class with combo points, but with many, many abilities, which differ only in visuals. Sure, you have to figure out which abilities will work well with which others.

Maybe I didn't play long enough, maybe I just built wrong spec (tried pistols with elemental or blood magic, bit assault rifles as well), but all I did was spam 1 ability to generate resources, then spend those with 4 other skills with 2 cooldowns to help. And every tree seems to work this way. Seems boring...

[Buckwald]

this is one i will completely disagree on. PvP at best is just an afterthought, hell SWTOR had more balanced and engaging PvP 1-49 than TSW. the issues lie with a lack of multiple viable builds for ones playstyle and if you were in the CBT like i was then you know about the channel instagib builds and the one shot, yes i said one shot builds that were available as well. and as someone who instagibed people with Thor's Hammer i just did not appreciate the PvP it reminded me of Bearshaman dps back in AoC /shudder.

An afterthought? If you were in the CBT then you'd clearly note that they were (and still are) doing mass PvP events every single day. They know about the "instagib" channel and that's why they are allowing people to be boosted to QL10 and have all the skills and abilities, so they can catch this sort of thing. Also, beta is beta, unfortunately rings true. .9 started off terrible and had some glorious patches. Before 1.0 was release I thought the game was just short of release. 1.0 has been a bit of a let down and a step backwards, but then I remembered the dev post that said:

Please keep in mind that this is a Beta. There will be missing and incomplete content and features, as well as technical issues, some more serious than others.


This is a TEST server, and as such you should expect that from time to time we may place a new version on the Closed Beta server that has some really major known issues. Sometimes these known issues may prevent you from normal character progression, or they may just be really annoying to you.


The reason we choose to approve new versions with known issues for you to test on anyway is because it is deemed much more important that you receive the new version. New versions contain other changes and features that we need to have tested ASAP.


Sometimes code changes we make to support a feature may impact what seems like a totally unrelated area of the game, and cause unforseen bugs to pop up. But that is the nature of beta testing - things like this will definitely come up during the beta development cycle. And we want these issues to show up now during the Closed Beta, so we can get them fixed before the game is released! And we also hope you are able to look past these issues and continue testing in the spirit of helping us to make the entire game at launch as bug-free and fun to play as possible!


The bugs you encounter and report will be fixed. The known issues in certain new versions will be fixed. And again, the current known issues in newer versions are by no means a reflection of what the finished product will be like. This is a beta server, and you are beta testing an unreleased game.


We thank you for your continued efforts and feedback!


So please remember to be patient when beta testing The Secret World!


Thanks!

To think that they don't know about issues is absurd, they just want to make the best possible fix and not just nerf/buff everything ever other patch like some companies do.

[Mazinger-Z]

I was trying to trick out the Gunslinger deck for the Illuminati. There is some synergy. Such as generating a predictable crit with 'Elemental Mind' or 'Mind over Matter' or something. 8th hit is a crit. But other than that, yeah. Stack resources, burn resources.

But I'd rather play a buggy unpolished game with substance than the polished turds we've been thrown over the past few years

I'm not paying a subscription fee for a buggy, unpolished game, nor would I pay for a shallow one. Is it really so hard to optimize an engine these days? They're using the same engine as AoC. That thing is eight years old.

[PACOX]

this is one i will completely disagree on. PvP at best is just an afterthought, hell SWTOR had more balanced and engaging PvP 1-49 than TSW. the issues lie with a lack of multiple viable builds for ones playstyle and if you were in the CBT like i was then you know about the channel instagib builds and the one shot, yes i said one shot builds that were available as well. and as someone who instagibed people with Thor's Hammer i just did not appreciate the PvP it reminded me of Bearshaman dps back in AoC /shudder.

You no like Thor's Hammer?

Thor's Hammer was the reason why I went Elementalist/Blood Magic. Crit + Penetration + Thor's Hammer = GG. I was getting 2k hits on the Cthulu boss for free. I didn't PVP enought to pay attention to how hard it hit players.

[Odeezee]

I've been in the beta for over a year. I was there for all that. They just recently made the changes to talismans and it made it much better.

fact still remains that the PvP in TSW may now be better than what it was before does not make it good enough to compete with other PvP games available or coming out. like i said SWTOR PvP 1-49 > TSW as far as balance and engaging combat goes. other big issues for me are the animations for combat, they are just so unnatural and don't feel as impactful as they should and the sound design makes it even worse. the "dodge" they put in is so stupid as it does nothing but move your character, you can't even use it to evade attacks, so really why even have it there? just because GW2 has it? the dodge is a perfect example of half-assing a design choice that has little bearing on actual gameplay as a means to say, "hey we have dodging too".

Am I the only one who feels that despite all those, supposedly unique, abilities and all those trees, combat looks the same in every spec?
generate resources by spamming one ability, spend resources. Repeat. With some cooldown abilites used here and there. And like that in every spec. After this beta I felt as if I was playing some kind of rogue-like class with combo points, but with many, many abilities, which differ only in visuals. Sure, you have to figure out which abilities will work well with which others.

Maybe I didn't play long enough, maybe I just built wrong spec (tried pistols with elemental or blood magic, bit assault rifles as well), but all I did was spam 1 ability to generate resources, then spend those with 4 other skills with 2 cooldowns to help. And every tree seems to work this way. Seems boring...

that is pretty much combat in TSW.

---------- Post added 2012-06-25 at 10:22 AM ----------

An afterthought? If you were in the CBT then you'd clearly note that they were (and still are) doing mass PvP events every single day. They know about the "instagib" channel and that's why they are allowing people to be boosted to QL10 and have all the skills and abilities, so they can catch this sort of thing. Also, beta is beta, unfortunately rings true. .9 started off terrible and had some glorious patches. Before 1.0 was release I thought the game was just short of release. 1.0 has been a bit of a let down and a step backwards, but then I remembered the dev post that said:

To think that they don't know about issues is absurd, they just want to make the best possible fix and not just nerf/buff everything ever other patch like some companies do.

yes they are trying to catch up now, but do people forget that this game is releasing in like a week? people are no longer forgiving or going to give devs "time" to fix issues after release, just look at SWTOR. at the very least they should have all PvP encounters be about skill and not QL or skill unlocks otherwise the PvP will have little hope. remove the barriers of entry and allow just skill and tactics to be the deciding factor in PvP outcomes and you have a PvP game on your hands. the devs need to make meaningful balance choices and synergies and for the love of God fix combat animations. and the fact still remains PvP is an afterthought seeing as the most meaningful changes they have made to PvP come 1 month before release (starting on 06/14), they really don't seem serious about their PvP to me.

You no like Thor's Hammer?

Thor's Hammer was the reason why I went Elementalist/Blood Magic. Crit + Penetration + Thor's Hammer = GG. I was getting 2k hits on the Cthulu boss for free. I didn't PVP enought to pay attention to how hard it hit players.

it's a great damage skill and i like it, it's just very cheesy.

[Buckwald]

yes they are trying to catch up now, but do people forget that this game is releasing in like a week? people are no longer forgiving or going to give devs "time" to fix issues after release, just look at SWTOR. at the very least they should have all PvP encounters be about skill and not QL or skill unlocks otherwise the PvP will have little hope. remove the barriers of entry and allow just skill and tactics to be the deciding factor in PvP outcomes and you have a PvP game on your hands. the devs need to make meaningful balance choices and synergies and for the love of God fix combat animations. and the fact still remains PvP is an afterthought seeing as the most meaningful changes they have made to PvP come 1 month before release (starting on 06/14), they really don't seem serious about their PvP to me.

You're assuming that the patch you last played will be released. As far as we know the CBT could be 1, 2, 15 patches behind. Or hey, it just might be the patch that's released. Beta testing ... oh sorry Beta is over so now it's "testlive" will continue through 28 June. Headstart on 29 June.

---------- Post added 2012-06-25 at 09:35 AM ----------

Am I the only one who feels that despite all those, supposedly unique, abilities and all those trees, combat looks the same in every spec?
generate resources by spamming one ability, spend resources. Repeat. With some cooldown abilites used here and there. And like that in every spec. After this beta I felt as if I was playing some kind of rogue-like class with combo points, but with many, many abilities, which differ only in visuals. Sure, you have to figure out which abilities will work well with which others.

Maybe I didn't play long enough, maybe I just built wrong spec (tried pistols with elemental or blood magic, bit assault rifles as well), but all I did was spam 1 ability to generate resources, then spend those with 4 other skills with 2 cooldowns to help. And every tree seems to work this way. Seems boring...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8TjtBrH2fs

Combat looks pretty much the same to me ...

[PACOX]

Am I the only one who feels that despite all those, supposedly unique, abilities and all those trees, combat looks the same in every spec?
generate resources by spamming one ability, spend resources. Repeat. With some cooldown abilites used here and there. And like that in every spec. After this beta I felt as if I was playing some kind of rogue-like class with combo points, but with many, many abilities, which differ only in visuals. Sure, you have to figure out which abilities will work well with which others.

Maybe I didn't play long enough, maybe I just built wrong spec (tried pistols with elemental or blood magic, bit assault rifles as well), but all I did was spam 1 ability to generate resources, then spend those with 4 other skills with 2 cooldowns to help. And every tree seems to work this way. Seems boring...

The trees are not the same, basic gameplay mechanics do not make them the same. Yes, they "work" the same but if you think any build is just build five resources, dump 5 resources, you are limiting your effectiveness.

My build was built around causing 'Affliction" and building up my crit and penetration from passives for my Thor's Hammer nuke. Just from reading the Elem skill tree, it seemed like you could make support builds, builds that focused on single target abilities through 'Strike' damage or AOE builds.

As you unlock tiers, your builds tend to vary and become a lot more specialized. In the beginning I had to play like a WoW rogue simply because I didn't have enough abilities. In the end, combo points did not matter to me. What matter to me was have my passives continuously proccing so I could nuke whatever happened to be alive when my CD was up. IIRC (all from the Ele tree) Shock trigger Affliction which trigged a penetration passive. My hindering ability also triggered my penetration passive and set up my crit passive. When I acted a hindered target I got a stacking crit buff, which I used Lighting Manifestation to stack it quickly. With my two buffs, I used *whatever allowed me to cast abilities without using resources) and then Thor's Hammer which would hit from 1.2k-2.1k. My entire build was CD based, resource points were irrelevant.

[dulcheshammie]

You want more realistic human anatomy I don't see the problem, remember this is a video game set in a fantasy world yes its in a modern setting but please remember its not real, we aint here to watch human anatomy and check to see if Bigfoot's walk cycle is a guy in an ape costume, you are over analyzing for the sake of finding something to pick at.

Now the voice acted dialog I will agree with on some points, yes its strange and awkward but you need to understand what you are viewing is the answer to a question its called "listening" Essentially all that is missing would be the dialog of your character asking the initial question, you would still see the same cut scene after that of your character looking brain dead. if anything your character lacks emotions in most of these scenes and at the time I played a lot of them were out of synch, but cut senes are the least of my issues with a game, we all remember swtor "watch it once then have fun spamming 1 & spacebar"

Ability's ability's ability's, clearly you didn't play it for any length of time, or didn't read fully what things do and how they interact with one another, you argument about the ability's is complete nonsense to anyone who has actually played the game for more than a couple of hours in Kingsmouth or scanned over them briefly. its like saying a warlock is the same as a mage in wow, "ohh i played to level 10 they both cast some kind of energy balls and they both wear cloth armor they are all the same" this is what your comment comes across as.

You say its a clever way not to have to design gear and people wearing regular clothes is stupid against giant monsters, do you know how ridiculous that sounds.
First off I would have thought seeing as you being an artist and all, that all the little tank tops in game are actually made by someone same way as they would make any armor yes even re-colours need a model to begin with. You then complain about non realistic human anatomy, you complain about tank tops and short skits but your are fine with fighting giant monsters but only if you have some kind of armor on. hmm hang on a sec let me find an armor smith in this modern setting, "can thou please craft me up some titanium armor blacksmith of New York I have some giant monsters to slay in Kingsmouth in the morn"

Now let me set one thing straight before the fanboy comments come out, I will not be playing this game at launch but for other reasons, I have played it enough over the past months. my conclusion about you from your review is you never really played the game for more than an hour or two, which is the equivalent of watching 30 seconds of a movie trailer and automatically saying the movie sucks. There are puzzles in this game in the first area that take the average player a good 30 minutes to an hour to complete. and no, asking for the solution or goggling the solution doesn't count its not playing the game, it cheapens the experience and robs you of what the game is about. that is as much of what the game play is as killing mobs or pvp or even grouping for dungeons.[COLOR="red"]
.

Ok First off, I played the game for about 8 hours total throughout a weekend. Here is essentially what you said, "I DISAGREE WITH YOU THEREFORE I KNOW YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED THE GAME." Ok bro, that's a winning argument.

What does bad anatomy, their facial structure being off, as well as the joints and ratios, have to do with it being a fantasy game? It just has to do with bad modelers, there are countless games out there with the same realistic style they're trying to pull off but with great models that are anatomically correct, Mass Effect to mention one. The character models in TSW look and move awkwardly, in my opinion, and being that it's MY CHARACTER that I have to look at throughout the entire game, I hardly see how that bothering me is just me "arbitrarily finding something to pick on."

"Yes it's strange and awkward but," enough said. There is no 'but'.

First of you seem confused about the plural of ability, it is abilities, "ability's" is a possessive of ability as in "this ability's power". With that out of the way, obviously the skills between the different weapons look different, work differently, and have different synergies. But they all boil down to just a couple of resource mechanics, as opposed to let's say if you look at a game like WoW where you can find dozens of markedly different resource mechanics in the game. There is ONE skill wheel, so my standards for the depth and complexity of it will be naturally much higher. And when I compare TSW with a game like Rift, I see more interesting synergy and variability within a single class in Rift than I see with the entire ability wheel in this game, and then Rift has three more classes. If it's enough for you great, for me there isn't enough to chew on and I know I'd be bored with it within a month. The ability icons also look pretty terrible, which doesn't help.

No it's nowhere as difficult to design a piece of modern clothing than a fictional full set of armor. The reason being the hardest part of design is not creating the model is coming up with a concept. You can find all the "gear" in this game by flipping through a Macy's catalog, which from a design standpoint, makes it very easy to create. Your argument that it "doesn't make sense" for them to have armor I can't follow at all. So these super powerful and wealthy secret organizations you just got recruited into don't have the means to provide proper armor to their recruits? That's what doesn't make sense.

Yes, the puzzles were ok, the only thing in fact, I found interesting throughout my beta experience. But overall, my opinion, is that they took a lot of shortcuts with the development of the game, it does not feel polished, the animations are awkward, the dialogue is awkward and the skill wheel is boring. That's my opinion, try sharing yours without repeatedly stating I'm simply wrong because I didn't play the game, which I did or I wouldn't have written a review of it, or just because you say so.