f13.net

Why the fuck did they change things? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxYICjyFRJY

What the fuck is different with combat? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgMWQ1tAJ_g

I enjoyed the game for a time, and it's nice to see that Funcom hasn't lost its "turn down for what?!" demeanor. Apparently active accounts in good standing will be given beta invites today, with early access going live on the 23rd.

They say they still have years of content to add to the game that they didn't in The Secret World. They're hoping the Legends relaunch will bring people back so they can keep rocking.

I love the Secret World but can't say I am too excited for this.  I took my time the first time around and really enjoyed the world and the lore, I'm not that keen to just do it all again with a tweaked combat system.

This whole thing feels like they're misunderstanding their base to me. I'm not defending the combat system in Secret World. It was pretty bad, for sure, and most any change would be for the better, but I can't see them winning over a bunch of converts for a rapidly aging engine that was never exactly cutting edge to begin with by tweaking the combat.

Meanwhile, all the people who have supported them over the years get... nothing? We get to re-do content we've already done, possibly several times, the best parts of which (the puzzles) aren't very replayable. And in fact, we get even less content than we currently have, as Legends doesn't include Tokyo.

I've kept my monthly sub up all these years, even after they went free to play and for long stretches where I didn't log in at all just to support them, and will continue to do so, but this feels like a "Hail Mary" to try to keep the lights on which is doomed to failure. Hope I'm wrong though.

I think the combat refit is a hope to port the game to consoles and grab a slightly bigger slice of the pie. Which is going to be a really hard sell in a post-Destiny 2 launch universe.

I think what keeps it going though is the lack of games competing for it's type of content. "Cosmic terror/horror" may be getting more love these days in the indie arena, but not too many of them go as far and complex as The Secret World did/does.

I got a beta invite, and I'm pulling the client now. Will report back later.

I have a beta invite but I just don't know.  I really liked this game and played it for a good long time.  The only thing I disliked was the combat.  Still, I'm not feeling it.  Maybe because I paid a lot of attention to the story and puzzles and just about everything except combat?  I think it would feel like reading a book that I read twice just the other day.  I'll wait for Luckton's report.

Hrm. Must be doing invites based on activity instead of account status. I've been a member since beta, but no invite. It's been probably several months since I logged in though. Doesn't really matter though. I'll continue supporting them regardless of how the beta looks in the hopes that at some point they'll actually be able to put out more decent content.

It all sounds very New Game Enhancements (http://massivelyop.com/2015/08/22/the-game-archaeologist-star-wars-galaxies-nge/).

Ok, played for about an hour tonight and got to the Sheriff's Office in Kingsmouth. And yeah, what they put on the tin is what you get: the same game with a reworked combat interface, along with overhauling the ability system. Gone are the ability "circles", replaced with tabs and progress trees for each of the nine weapon types. You acquire two different types of points in order to unlock Active and Passive skills and stat boosts. Choosing a "class" is now part of the character creation, which is basically gifting you two of the nine weapon types right off the bat that compliment each other for the role in the trinity of RPGs for you to do. You can of course unlock and mix/match skills like before, you just have to grind out those points.

Agartha's been modified to act even more as a central hub for everything. You won't need to travel to the different cities to do business/trade/auction/LFG; it's all right there.

As for the combat, it kinda reminds of the way Tabula Rasa did things. Putting and keeping the reticle on the target doesn't do anything aside from enabling you to fire your weapon/skill and roll those behind the scenes dice to see if you hit the target and for how much. It's certainly makes things slightly faster than before, but let's not call it a revolution.

I'll put in some more time tomorrow. Sleepy time....

Edit: If you want a NDA-approved video of the revised character creation and tutorial/intro, click this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfyABlTLGxo

It's not NGE.  However, NDA and all, so can't say more.

I mean, I "get" the whole NDA thing, but really, if you need a NDA to cover your 5+ year old game that's barely standing on it's own two feet, you have deeper issues. They haven't changed jack-shit content-wise, and everything they are changing has already been published by them. What's left to hide?

Spent a little more time. Weapons and their passive/active skills have been retooled in that you really cannot have a "bad" combination anymore. Every weapon has a passive trait that contributes to your own survivability, along with perma-stat boosts in between passive and active skill unlocks. The video posted at the top about combat tells you everything you need to know about the "trick" to each weapon; they all have a gimmick now that add variety to your combat.

For TSW players, you'll be able to have all nine weapon trees unlocked with your new SWL characters. Brand new peeps will have to unlock every tree beyond the two you get at character start with in-game currency.

So this goes live Friday. Beta shut down last week. Not really sure how's it's gonna pan out, esp. since they're hard-set on keeping the NDA up right the bitter end.

That said, I'm actually leaning towards playing this than ESO right now. Maybe I'm just fantasy-themed out from playing WoW so long. ESO has yet to really "grab" me; I feel like drop in a vast ocean of Tam-who-gives-a-fuck-riel. Whereas TSW/SWL makes you more of the focus.

Or something.

I played this way back at launch and haven't touched it since. Will I be able to fire it up for free when the reboot hits, or do I need to buy a box/resub? I can't remember their business model.

This is essentially a "remastered" version of the original game, separate from "The Secret World". This new one will be completely F2P, no box purchase required. All 15 Issues that were released for TSW will be baked into the base game, and all old accounts can come over with all weapons/purchased clothing/gimmicks/pets/foosles unlocked and ready to go.

Subscribers will get access to more XP and loot per mission completion, and other hand-out stuff a la every other F2P game.

Today, Funcom learned that high speed real money trading mixed with a dupe exploit makes for a very extended downtime.

Bets are on a rollback.

Hearing a lot of angst over the severe lack of loot, and that dungeons and even the loot crates are dropping crap loot.

I thought the new idea was that you were meant to slowly build everything up from green junk, so all drops were along the lines of "Oh, another 2 levels to my weapon. Maybe soon I can fuse it into a purple". I haven't had any complaints thus far. I mean, the loot isn't *interesting*, but it never really was, so it's just status quo from my perspectiv, which pretty much sums up how I feel about the revamp in general. They spent a lot of effort taking an aspect of the game that was a D and turned it into a C- and kept everything else the same. Can't really see that opening up the player base very much, but I'm thus far glad to re-experience the content again.

Ya. I'm considering doing it again because everything right up to Tokyo was very very good... just when you stepped into Tokyo it became boring as hell. So it would be nice to re-experiance all that.

The loot thing would not bother me. It was the same in the last game, you pretty much had to deconstruct and craft everything decent.

I've almost finished the Savage Coast again and the underwhelming loot and grind associated with it is becoming more apparent.
I've seen maybe two 3-dot weapons so far (both weren't a weapon I'm using) and once you start fusing for blue quality items you get a peek into the abyss that upgrading items now is.
Sweet loot was never the reason to play this, but this feels like they actively set out to 'update' itemization into the most uninspired snoozefest imaginable. Why even have statted items like this?

Everything that was great about the game still is though (maybe a tad more handholding, but it hardly matters), but the changes are somewhat baffling.
It feels like FC trying to goad annoy their old whales into spending a few more sheckles.

I'm enjoying it so far.  The combat is far better than the original, the streamlining they have done hasn't hurt what was great about the original game. 

Friends of mine that couldn't get into it the first time around are enjoying it now, so I'm having fun guiding them through especially the investigation missions that I already solved years ago, making it a little fresh for me again.

The new loot system is pretty boring but it was never very good to begin with.  I did the Polaris dungeon yesterday and got some sort of xp boost for improving talismans each time after killing a boss.  It doesn't come close to getting that awesome Titanforged item in WoW but they did improve my gear quite a bit at the end.  Overall, I think the game itself is probably better than the original, though not by a huge margin.  Combat is better but nothing great and nowhere near to other MMOs that have action combat, like TERA or Blade and Soul.  It's closer to Neverwinter, which I also like, than anything else.  Maybe GW2, as well.  The UI is biggest improvement IMO.  It's a lot less cluttered and easier to use.  I'm not a huge fan of taking away the skill wheel but I can see why they did it.  You can still put points into another skill line if you don't like the class you picked (at a cost) but rolling an alt is probably more necessary now if you want to change both skill lines.  Also, having character levels, and mobs with levels, make it much more clear where you should be leveling up than it was before.  I remember leaving the starting area of Kingsmouth in the original game for the next area and getting my ass handed to me because my gear wasn't upgraded enough and I didn't have enough of the advanced skills.

The biggest issue is probably the way Funcom has monetized the game.  There's almost no reason to have a sub (Patron) and there's a shit load of restrictions on f2p players that can make SWTOR's model seem generous in comparison.  The rng chests in dungeons really are kind of lame, esp. since you only get 10 keys a day to open them (a few more if you're Patron).  You can't trade with another player unless you're both Patrons and you have to wait 3 days to do repeatable quests if you're f2p compared to 8 hours for Patron.  I don't know what Funcom was thinking when they came up with this business model.  People are already leaving because of it.  It's way too restrictive and even if you do pay you don't get much for your money.  The video below explains all of this pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiEKJ0_K9nY

Thank you for linking me to the Smack Talk. That dude is funny.

I'm curious, did you go into Tokyo when it was first released, or did you wait until they actually patched in the quests?

Seriously, it released without major questlines and characters, and that lack combined with AEGIS made it something of a boring grind. After it was completed it has some of my favorite areas/quests/NPCs...

You should check out his Rogue One review.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWqTj-LuXCs

I went into it after all the quests were in. I guess I just loved the folklorist aspects of the other zones, and Tokyo just felt soulless to me. if you enjoyed it, great.

No argument, I was just interested in the different perspective. Personally I loved Ricky Pagan, and I thought John's backstory to be satisfying. That said, the slant of Tokyo was more cyberpunky than folklory, and I can see how that might not appeal.

I know it's heresy to not bash an MMO's writing, but I really thought TSWs story, for the most part, to be exemplary. After a while, I felt like I was playing it more as one of those Japanese Visual Novels than a video game. Solve some puzzles, kill some wamadoodles, unlock the next chapter.

Unfortunately, Joshua Doetsch has moved on, Joel Bylos is involved in other things, and Ragnar left in the first week, so I don't have much hope for the new content.

Some of the writing really is quite good... it often barely connects with the mechanical details of the quest it introduces, but it has a complexity of mood, character and content that is really shocking in an MMO. Trying to implement 'mysteries' in a game still doesn't work, it's either pointless if the solution is obvious or frustrating for at least some players if it is not. There's not a lot of fun in the execution either way, though it can help fill out a story beat.

The combat still feels floaty and un-responsive (especially with high latency), and the mechanics have been dumbed down quite a lot. With so little synergy between energy builders and consumers, attacks and conditions and so few slots for a lot of powers many of which have 20s cool-downs it feels difficult to even find "builds" that deserve the name. On the positive side the gearing grind is still there but feels more obvious in which direction to go, and it seems quite a bit easier. Which is good, because I just want to explore the maps and mood. The quality of some of this content almost certainly means it runs out long before the game ends.