Dark Days Are Coming - New Funcom Project

[Falconeer]

Disclaimer:

4. You may SAY in TEXT whatever you want about the game. In my opinion, customers have a fucking right to talk about something they can spend money on - I don't think anyone will fight me on that.

Post:

The storytelling in this game is pretty good. Outdated for a single player game, but possibly the best ever for a MMO. I mean, I swallowed SWTOR hyperbland PvE because of the cutscenes and the story, which were a first in the genre, but this raises the bar a little more in my opinion. It won't have 8 different stories (just 3 I presume) but they seem much more interesting and well told than the SWTOR ones. Can't really say about voice acting as English is not my first language so I have a harder time recognizing lame acting, but it doesn't sound worse than SWTOR to me, while I find the dialogues and the writing much better.

Now that said of course I have no idea if they drop drastically as you proceed with the game. But so far, I'd say this is the best story I played in a MMO.

[Nonentity]

I... can tolerate the cutscenes in this game. Something about the setting compels me.

The systems and setting are interesting enough to get a box sale out of me, we'll see if it persists beyond that.

[Falconeer]

Let's talk about the quests: no one prepared me for this!
What the hell, it's insane! Some riddles are mindblowing, and not always in a good way.
I'm afraid this is something that really will help the game tank, while at the same time being really commendable stuff.

Also, combat sucks. Animations are (still) as bad as advertised.

[Surlyboi]

Agree with almost everything Falc says.

"Is it safe?"

Fucked my shit up for at least an hour.

[Falconeer]

"I love Pam the Clam".

Did you get that? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU 

[DraconianOne]

Can't really say about voice acting as English is not my first language so I have a harder time recognizing lame acting, but it doesn't sound worse than SWTOR to me, while I find the dialogues and the writing much better.

So not all the NPC interaction is them talking at you for 2 minutes at a time? Just the quest NPCs they showed publicly so far?

[Falconeer]

So far, it seems to me that it's really like SWTOR, meaning NPC characters will talk to you profusely about the quest, what you are gonna do and why, but that is usually a 30 seconds to 2 minutes thing, unless it's major story blurb. They have much more to say if you want to listen to them, but that additional stuff is in an "extra" menu that you can totaly ignore since it's clearly indicated that it's not quest related, only flavour and lore. Big difference with the Bioware model is that you never talk during the cutscenes. Personal preference aside, that makes them generally quicker.

Also, plenty of quests don't really require you to interact with any NPC.

[Draegan]

With games like Tera and GW2, the whole "combat sucks" thing really makes me not want to play the game.

[Lucas]

So far, it seems to me that it's really like SWTOR, meaning NPC characters will talk to you profusely about the quest, what you are gonna do and why, but that is usually a 30 seconds to 2 minutes thing, unless it's major story blurb. They have much more to say if you want to listen to them, but that additional stuff is in an "extra" menu that you can totaly ignore since it's clearly indicated that it's not quest related, only flavour and lore. Big difference with the Bioware model is that you never talk during the cutscenes. Personal preference aside, that makes them generally quicker.

Also, plenty of quests don't really require you to interact with any NPC.

I'm not in Beta or anything (quite interested in the game. tho), but this reminds me of the Longest Journey dialogues. They were VERY verbose, maybe excessively so, but they provided a great backstory and immersion; different genre and all, but I'm just sayin'...

[Surlyboi]

So far, it seems to me that it's really like SWTOR, meaning NPC characters will talk to you profusely about the quest, what you are gonna do and why, but that is usually a 30 seconds to 2 minutes thing, unless it's major story blurb. They have much more to say if you want to listen to them, but that additional stuff is in an "extra" menu that you can totaly ignore since it's clearly indicated that it's not quest related, only flavour and lore. Big difference with the Bioware model is that you never talk during the cutscenes. Personal preference aside, that makes them generally quicker.

Also, plenty of quests don't really require you to interact with any NPC.

I'm not in Beta or anything (quite interested in the game. tho), but this reminds me of the Longest Journey dialogues. They were VERY verbose, maybe excessively so, but they provided a great backstory and immersion; different genre and all, but I'm just sayin'...

Well,  it IS by the same people. And it ridiculously fucking immersive in that sense.

[Megrim]

Have any of you guys dome much grouped play, and can give an indication on how that holds up?

[Falconeer]

I haven't done much grouped gameplay, just a little. So I could easily refrain from commenting. But what I can tell you though is that the game relies HEAVILY on "conditions". You can inflict (or have inflicted to you) 4 different conditions: weakened, Hindered, Afflicted and Impaired, and on top of what these conditions do (like hindered are snare and roots, afflictions are dots, impaired are stuns and silences, weakened are debuffs) they allow you to apply additional effects on the mobs based on your build, abilities, etc. A huge amount of everyone's skills says something like "if target is weakened/imapired/etc. then this/that happens", and stacking seems to count.

So seems like there's room for lot of group work in applying conditions and exploiting them. But I can't really go beyond this.

Also, I like how the mobs, not just bosses, telegraph you their big attacks with a timed marker on the ground allowing everyone to move out of it. Seems trivial in the first levels, but I can imagine the timer becoming faster, the area getting wider, the room to move away without aggroing the world becoming narrower. Without being groundbreaking it's intuitive and nice.

Now if only they packed a little more punch into Assault Rifles and combat animations in general, thanks  



EDIT: Since so far my only gripe is with combat, I want to spend a few more words on it:

The idea behind it is not incredibly new but it's well laid out. What no one seems to mention is that it tries to reproduce some of the mechanics of common Trading Card Games, like Magic: the Gathering, and have play your abilities and inflict stuff on your enemies in a (dumbed down) way similar to those games. Like in Trading Card Games (and GW) you can have up to 525 abilities, but you can only equip 7 active and 7 passive. Your combination of abilities doesn't have a name, but specific ones (that grant you unique clothing) are called "Decks". From now on we'll call all combination decks if you don't mind. Basically, you can do a lot of deckbuilding, meaning that by constantly gaining new abilities you have lots to play with, and the good thing is that you can save your decks and change the setup at any given time as long as you are not in combat. So basically, you can change your setup of abilities, or your class if you want, as much as you want.

Now on the mechanics, they are not that different from your usual MMORPG combat, but they focus a lot on "resource building", "resource spending" and "synergies". As someone else pointed out it's not that different from the WoW rogue, but pretty much all classes work like that and have passive skills that produce more resources or require a certain amount of resources to be "played". You can specialise as much as you want in one weapon and get all the skills ("cards") from its tree, but chances are that you would a better job by getting some cards from a different tree too. As in M:tG where you can build a full Blue deck for example, there are plenty of builds that benefit from two colours, or more. The same is true here, and with a pool of 525 cards to pick from, the decks you can build are countless. There are 9 weapon categories in The Secret World, or 9 colours if you want to keep up with the M:tG analogy. 3 for ranged, 3 for melee, 3 for magic. You can mix them all up as much as you want.

Ultimately, it's worth saying that you can (and should) always equip up to two weapons on your character and that is what allows you to use the ACTIVE skills (cards) from that tree, but you can always use passive skills from a tree even if you are not wielding the inherent weapon. Yes you can shoot a monster in the face with a shotgun and double tap it with a point blank fireball as long as you have those two skills equipped, or in your active deck. In a way, graphics aside, you could say that the weapons you have equipped are just "enablers" for the two trees of 7 active skills that you want to use, with no limitations on passive skills (the ones that give you passive buffs, bonus, conditions or build resources).

These are just three sample decks, to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about. Mind, these are three of the Funcom-rewarded ones, meaning you earn a unique outfit if you complete it. But they are in no way better or preferred over player generated ones.

I find this all very interesting, and the potential for metagaming feels overwhelmingly good. Ultimately earning the unique outifits for all the "Funcom sponsored Decks" will be a completionist goal that reminds me even more of TCGs, but the idea of having a shittons of "cards" to play with when building your character, while as old as GW2, is presented here with even more flexibility due to the absence of classes.

I have two concerns:

1) Is the whole system functional? I can't even imagine how they managed to "balance" the potential combinations for 525 cards. Maybe they really had to do it the TCG way since those games usually deal with many more cards than that.

2) So far, and it's beta, the actual combat feels bland and outdated. "Stiff" is the first word that coems to mind. I have to say that melee plays somewhat better than ranged for me, but in general rifles and pistols don't really look or sound that good, and that's a shame. I can't really put my fingers on what's not working with it. It's in the small things, timing (by the way, Global Cooldown is only 1 sec, so pretty fast), rhythm, visual and sound effects, animations, but it just doesn't feel "right". I can even understand the complains about repetitiveness, but they are most likely based on the limited amount of abilities you have in the first few hours of gameplay. No, my gripe isn't with that. It really is in the combat flow: it's really lacking.

Wishing so bad for a "combat animations" miracle patch, cause while I am loving everything else, for real, combat being bland often ends up being a dealbreaker for me.

[Kageru]

Thanks for the write-up. It actually sounds quite fun. I love the ambience of the setting but at the same time I do worry that making it work requires fairly rich content and that's quite a challenge to delivery on an ongoing basis. Though I guess like GW2 it has a minimal power curve so content remains re-playable?

[Falconeer]

I agree on the fact that we won't be seeing that much new content often. Hell, if EA/Bioware couldn't deliver it I doubt Funcom will. So in a awy I see this game as cursed with limited longevity, no matter how cool what's already in might be. But this is pure speculation. EDIT: PvP might play a part in that, as their three-way big warzone seems to be what SWTOR's Ilum wasn't. But at the same time I'm under the impression that PvP is an afterthought here, especially with balance being pure hell, so I won't be surprised if the zone will turn out to be empty most of the time. Especially with combat not being that compelling (at the moment).

The biggest replayability factor is almost certainly in the character progression system, which is virtually endless, and according to what they say, yes, allows to keep gaining XP and skill points from pretty much all kind of old content (not just higher level areas, dungeons, etc) due to the flat-ish progression curve .

[HaemishM]

2) So far, and it's beta, the actual combat feels bland and outdated. "Stiff" is the first word that coems to mind. I have to say that melee plays somewhat better than ranged for me, but in general rifles and pistols don't really look or sound that good, and that's a shame. I can't really put my fingers on what's not working with it. It's in the small things, timing (by the way, Global Cooldown is only 1 sec, so pretty fast), rhythm, visual and sound effects, animations, but it just doesn't feel "right". I can even understand the complains about repetitiveness, but they are most likely based on the limited amount of abilities you have in the first few hours of gameplay. No, my gripe isn't with that. It really is in the combat flow: it's really lacking.

This is SO spot on correct, it's absolutely the reason I've never been able to maintain interest in it long enough to clear the first adventure zone, Kingsmouth.

[Draegan]

Correct me if I'm wrong, I noticed at PAX that essentially everyone played like a WOW rogue, except you had three different sets of combo points to play with depending on your skill choice.

[Falconeer]

I don't know much about WoW rogues so I can't answer that. What I can tell you is that if I got this right you have "resources" generating for each weapon you are wielding, so either one or two. And you spend those resources (up to 5) on abilities coming from the trees of the two weapons you are wielding. As I wrote in the previous long post, I think you can only equip in your 7 active abilities slots the abilities that are related to the weapons you are wielding, but you can equip as your 7 passives any skill that you learned regardless of the weapon you are wielding (since they don't require resources or activation).

So, if you are using a shotgun and a sword at the same time you generate 1 to 5 resources that you can spend on shotgun and sword active abilities. Mind, when I say "you generate resources" we are talking of "pips" that you accrue with every hit and things like that, so the whole process is of course very fast. Not sure how that relates to the WoW rogue. Not sure what a combo point is either, but I'd say you have one or two sets... can't find a third one so far.

[Draegan]

Its a typical combo points system.  Ability X generates X pts.  Abily Y does Z damage depending on the amount of points you have.

Instead of having a singular resource, in TSW you can have up to three resource pools that are independent of each other.

[HaemishM]

Yeah, at least for shotguns and assault rifle, you are working a bit like the rogue. Normal abilities add pips that you have to spend on other, better abilities. For instance, on the assault rifles, I have my normal might-as-well-be-autoattack which generates 1 pip. I have another similar attack that also heals my defensive target (1 pip), a bigger damage attack with a longer cooldown and longer attack animation that adds 1 pip, and an ability that generates an extra pip on the next attack. If I trigger my ability that uses the resource pips, the more I have stored (up to 5), the more damage it does.

[Miasma]

It is difficult going back to being a mute protagonist after swtor.

[Surlyboi]

It is, indeed. Especially since I want to tell a few of these people to shut the fuck up.

Deputy Andy though, I wanna hear more of his fucked up history...

[trias_e]

Got into beta weekend.  I really enjoyed playing tonight.  Combat was average, but considering the complaints I'd heard I came away feeling alright with it.  Not worse than say Rift.  Unlike most MMO's, combat doesn't seem to be the main selling point for me so it's not a big concern that it's not spectacular.  It's certainly not bad enough to stop me from playing, and I would assume it gets better as you can flesh out some interesting builds.

The writing/atmosphere/character design/quest design is simply fantastic.  At least in kingsmouth, TSW far surpasses SWTOR on those fronts.  Especially in quest design, simply night and day.  TSW asks you to think and doesn't hold your hand, and I really like it.  Instead of grinding I'm puzzle solving, and I find actually myself having fun in an MMO again!  Hell, they somehow managed to even get better voice acting than TOR.  I just worry that this game will go the route of Tortage in AoC.  

Am I the only person who dislikes voiced protagonists?  Makes me feel like a weird puppet master or something.  I like the Vampire: Bloodlines style best, where you have your pick between options but your character isn't voiced.  I can pretend like I'm the one that actually said whatever I picked.  I like that immersion.

[Falconeer]

I gotta say, I think Kingsmouth is simply a fantastic zone. For all the action shortcomings, this game offers probably the best starting zone of any MMORPG I've ever played. Also, the different kind of quests and how they are scattered around, the lack of a "first village" or quest hubs really makes it feel like a theme park where you just stroll around signing up for different rides in any order you like.

Combat still feels wonky but hammers are about ten times better than any ranged I tried. Still, what keeps complelling me to go back to the game is Kingsmouth. So beautiful. I don't even want to progress to the next zone cause for some reason I'm afraid it'll disappoint me after so much goodness.

EDIT: In the patcher news for the beta weekend they state they are still working on combat animations and effects. While I have really no trust in that, I can hope.

[palmer_eldritch]

I’ve made a short film of my experiences running around the weekend beta event, which is currently taking place. This event does not have an NDA.

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

I agree with Falconeer pretty much. The game world is certainly fun to explore and it’s looking pretty polished now.

The “real world” setting makes a change and the world is beautifully realised. It looks fantastic and it’s full of detail. The game does succeed in creating the creepy atmosphere it ought to have.

The voice acting isn’t as good as SWTOR but the characters and what they have to say are far more interesting. Certainly on the Sith side of SWTOR, the personalities of the NPCs seemed to be limited to “I’m very evil”, “I’m insane” or “I’m both insane and evil”. The Secret World definitely has personality.

The combat skills seem to be insanely complicated. For example: “When you apply hindered you gain the minor critical chance effect, which increases your critical chance by 10 per cent for eight seconds.” Imagine half a dozen of them all doing different things if an enemy is “hindered” or maybe “weakened”, or triggering if a player uses a “cone” attack or maybe a “chain” attack. And what is a “a persistent GTAoE”? I get the impression from this thread that smarter people than me are able to figure this out but so far I’ve been mashing buttons.

But, it is fun choosing which skills to learn next. And it looks like it will be pretty cool when you have a large number of skills and experiment with different combinations. As others have said, you can load up seven active and seven passive skills at a time. You can also save loadouts (“decks”) and swop between them when you want to.

I’ve always been a bit of a fanboy for this game but I’m not disappointed now I’ve seen it and I certainly think it’s worth looking at.   

[Falconeer]

And what is a “a persistent GTAoE”?

Ground Targeted Area of Effect over time buff/debuff/damage :)
Took me a while to figure that out.

I must say, combat is slowly growing on me since I met lots of mobs in the Edgar's scrapyard with timed/telegraphed abilities that you are supposed to avoid before they fire off but you don't have the room to. It's not rocket science, but keeps you on the move. Appreciated.

Another thing that is cool is to loot a weapon you don't use and think "mmh maybe I should start using it, this looks pretty cool. Lemme take a look at its tree... yeah I can invest a few points in it and wield this badass thingie too!".

[bhodi]

The game is reasonably fun. I expect it'll go free to play a few months after it's released, since they already have a cash shop in the game. Won't be a day 1 purchase for me, but I'll probably play it once it goes FTP or if I can get a coupon/discount/sale.

The story was good, the voice acting was good, quests are okay. Animation is bad, combat feels like city of heroes level 1-15, skill system seems overly generic (though later skills are locked in open beta). Could not figure out crafting.

The quest limitation is incredibly annoying and my one serious problem with the game. Way to make a quest hub and only able to accept one quest at a time so you have to run back through areas a thousand times! At least nothing felt 'far away' like in SWTOR so it was less annoying that it could have been.

This game makes me realize how shitty SWTOR was. When you go into a world that feels alive and crafted, generic tropical/desert/city fantasy planet #12 with carefully placed groups of 2-3 mobs all equidistant is really garish. A few hours playing the beta, even though some elements just aren't that good, has just made me stop logging in.

[Tyrnan]

That pretty much sums up my feelings on the game too. I actually went into the beta not expecting to like it, but combat animations (and the general spammy nature of the combat itself) aside, I'm quite enjoying it. Oh except for not being able to bind mouse buttons ingame. Seriously, why is that stupid fucking limitation still in the engine? The setting and the atmosphere do a lot to make up for the shortcomings though. I'm just worried that FunCom will pull another Tortage and the rest of the game outside the starting areas will be blah.

With regards to the quest limitation, I found this thread on the beta forums that sheds a bit of light on it.


I'm not entirely sure why they've gone with the limitations they have as it seems needlessly complicated, but I found that following the above advice to not treat it like a hub system and instead just following it as a chain made it more tolerable and I was actually having fun wandering around looking for items that triggered quests.

[Falconeer]

About quest limitations, that's a hard one to get used to. The idea, according to them, is that you really have to get rid of the "quest hub" or "first village" mentality. Meaning that you can take up as many side quests you want, but for the bigger/longer ones you really are supposed to focus on it and do it to completion. The trade in for that is higher experience. The quests that you are not supposed to interrupt (but you can, they don't get dropped, they just get "paused" and you can resume them by visiting the quest giver again) usually pay a lot of XP as opposed to the side quests, and a dev specifically said on the forum that if they had to go the usual MMO way then they would have to lower the experience, hardly giving any sense of achievement by completing the longer ones. It is questionable, but I think they have a point given the way they built those quests and the zones. In fact, there isn't a specific path to follow in the areas, so you are going to stumble on different quests as you explore and complete others, having to eventually put markers on your map to remind yourself to go back there (yeah they really want you to use the markers).

This is what a Dev replied to someone with your some complain on the beta forum a few days ago:

If you are going back and forth, back and forth - you are still trying to play the game like WoW and that is not how this works.

It's all meant to support exploration and immersion, which is big in this game, and after the initial disappointment I am getting to like it. There's not the usual handholding in this game, and there's no rushing to the endgame. Obviously it's not for everyone, which is probably why it will fail. The running back and forth is quite silly and the byproduct of bad habits we picked up elsewhere. Sure you are going to run left right up and down in a zone to complete the quests, but certainly not to turn them in (you do that with your cellphone) or to keep close to your initial hub. Another thing people seem confused about (and they admitted it's partially their fault) is that you should not try to complete all quests that a NPC has to offer before moving to the next NPC (hub). That is a big mistake since the second or third quest they have is often much harder than the first and not meant to be tackled until you've done much more in the area. Sure they could lock it, put requirements, but that would take freedom away. Instead they put a difficulty indicator next to it that seems to be pretty ignored so far since it's easier to assume you have to finish an NPC before moving to the next.

Again, while the whole thing could and should be clarified much better before the player gets confused and frustrated, I like how they want you to focus on some missions -without taking away from the multiple side/small ones you can have in higher numbers- instead of just running them as chores that has to be performed as more efficiently as possible. They made a statement by going this way: "quests are important and the soul of this game, and so it's the exploration of our theme park zones". We both know 95% will hate it and 5% will love it to death, but I can't blame them for not going the usual way which would have earned them a "the quests are the usual kill X fetch Y turn in...".

But again, it's important to notice that you can actually take up all the quests you want. If you pick up another "story" one, that will pause the other you have upon saving all the progress. It doesn't really drop it and it will resume from the step you paused it at.

EDIT: Tyrnan covered it better. It's funny how they want the customers to *understand* the design of their quest system instead of making an effort at explaining it.. you know... in game. Hope this will get fixed in release. It would be sad to see this game pick up more shit due to a misunderstanding and failure to communicate on their part.

[Tyrnan]

It's funny how they want the customers to *understand* the design of their quest system instead of making an effort at explaining it.. you know... in game. Hope this will get fixed in release. It would be sad to see this game pick up more shit due to a misunderstanding and failure to communicate on their part.

That the only bit I really have an issue with to be honest. If I hadn't happened to see that thread on the forums, I'd still be doing the hub>quest>hub dance and wondering why picking up certain missions pauses others etc. But now that I understand what's going on, I'm fine with the system. Feels somewhere inbetween WoW-style questing and GW2's "off you go an explore" style.

[bhodi]

The problem is having to go back to the first quest giver in order to 'unpause' really implies "you should finish what you're doing first!". Walking into a building with 4 quest givers implies a quest hub. If they didn't want people to think that, they shouldn't have designed the game the way they did.

Requiring a 5 paragraph explanation on instructing players / how they intended for the quest system to work is a failure at multiple levels.

[Falconeer]

This is a FANTASTIC post on how "deckbuilding" and synergies work. And manages to explain some basic stuff in the process.

It's probably beyond everyone here at the moment, or the scope of the beta, but it's interesting to get a taste of how deep the whole thing is.

Sarcan’s Philosophy on Weapon Choices and Deck Building

After reading the Blog: Lead Designer: Martin Bruusgaard Explains Character Development and playing, I came to the conclusion there is a lot of confusion on how do you choose your weapons as a new player and the resulting Deck once you have unlocked all the abilities available to those weapons. I have seen a good number of posts discussing and even some with charts, I still found myself confused.

This is what I came up with to make it clearer for me and hopefully others.

In Basic Terms
For those of you that have played or still play Collectable Card Games (CCG’s) like Magic the Gathering (MTG), the concept of two weapons and building decks should come very naturally. Simply put, each weapon represents a color of a Deck. In MTG, Green Was Life, Black was Death, Red was Fire, so on and so forth. You would pick two to three colors that represented your particular play style as each color had theme or mechanic that made it work. Then you picked cards from between the colors that played off each other to produce combinations. This was the synergy between the colors. The only limit on your ability to build the deck of your dreams was the ability to get all the available cards either through luck of the booster packs you bought, buying them or through trade.

So now let us bring that concept into TSW. Rather than luck or money to get all the available cards in to build your deck, you will just have the time needed to earn all the AP needed to open all the tiers for your chosen weapons. In TSW you get two weapons to build synergy between and once you have unlocked all the abilities, you get to make your deck of seven active and seven passive abilities. As you journey and slowly unlock the abilities for you two chosen weapons, you will learn what plays well together, what matches you play style and give you the most enjoyments. As you can change the 7 active and passive at anytime outside combat, this allow you to adjust to any situation and group requirement, within the scope of what the weapon skills allow you to do.

That is the basics; stop now if you don't want to delve into detail on how to make decisions as to what weapons to choose.

Still here, ok....

As every Does damage, this post addresses the aspects in choosing you weapons beyond damage or the DPS Role.

In Advanced Terms
1. Weapons –
a. You need to find the synergy between your weapons based on what your play style is as all weapons come with the ability to do Single Target and AoE damage. The difference in weapons is the ability to spend SP to buy skill ranks. You have two types of skills, Damage and Survivability for each weapon type.
b. The Survivability Skill of each weapon drives the Role that you will fulfill in group settings. Since you have two weapons, you can fill two roles or be very specialized in one. This chart gives you a quick summary of the weapons and their roles.



c. As you can see, the trinity of roles is intact within your Survivability roles. Every does damage and may have abilities that cross over the other roles in an individual basis, but the stacking of abilities is where you get your focus and the capability to fulfill that role fully.
d. So know knowing this you can start to home in on the weapons that you think may get you to your niche play style. I generally play the Caster DPS or the Tank, so right now I am doing a Chaos Hammer build as it give me my sense of the Caster role combined with Tank, having a lot of fun with it.

But we are not done, now that you have the concept of which weapons you may like to use, let’s look at Synergy.

2. State Synergy –
a. State synergy comes from secondary effects happening when you put or hit a target in a certain state. The synergy between weapons is when both weapons effect and amplify of the same state (Hindered, Afflicted, Impaired or Weakened.



So in the above chart there is Synergy between Pistols and Shotguns and they both utilize Hindered, causing it and or reacting to the state of hindered to add damage or other action to you or the target. There is no synergy between Elementalism and Hammer as they have no shared State Synergy.

b. If both weapons do not have a shared State Synergy, this does not mean that they shouldn’t be used together; you just will not have as many abilities to choose from that play into each other in building your final deck. In fact some of the Deck templates for each faction have some where they do not have a shared State Synergy. We will look at this in a bit.

3. Trigger Synergy –
a. Trigger synergy is when abilities have synergy between them based on the outcome of a hit roll. A hit roll outcome can be a normal hit, critical hit, penetrating hit, evade, etc. This synergy comes from have multiple triggers available to you. When a roll occurs and you get a Critical hit and neither of your weapons has Critical hit, nothing extra occurs because of your trigger synergy. When you have a weapon that has Critical Hit and the other has Penetrating Hit, you have just increased your odds of benefiting from a Trigger Synergy event.



So looking at your State and Trigger Synergy, you should be able to decide which weapons play to how you wish to play you character. You could also choose based on aesthetics, up to you.

4. Subtypes –
a. Subtypes are special types of attacks grouped in a category, and this enables the player to modify all attacks done in a specific category. For instance, a cone attack can be labeled with the [Blast] subtype. The players can then modify these with passive abilities that might read, “All [Blast] abilities now apply a DoT to all targets hit.”
b. I understand that subtypes effect you animation and how targets are hit. Though subtypes are import in your play style and weapon choice, I am not listing, but there is an image attached as reference as I would not base my weapon choice off them.

Decks –
a. So now let’s talk Decks. Decks are the collection of all abilities in a paired weapon set and the abilities you use.
b. Currently each faction as a list of Decks to help guide you in your journey if you chose to pick the two weapons for that Build by showing the recommended 7 active and passive abilities to put on your bars. These are giving an example of how you can build synergy between the weapons and abilities. I believe that if you build a Template as shown it opens up some kind of bonus, like the outfit, but don’t quote me on it, it is just speculation.
c. The names of the Decks are faction specific and below are the charts of each faction. I put them together to understand the Synergy; which in turn helped me understand everything else I wrote above. Once you study a particular Deck, you will quickly understand how they work and allow you to forge ahead and make your own.



Refer to Seki’s post http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=25719 for the breakdown of how much it will cost to open up your deck fully. All he presents other ways to look at the skills and abilities.

I know it is a long read, but I hope if you took the time to read it all, that you found it beneficial.

Also remember, we are in Beta and anything here is subject to change. I will do my best to keep it up to day. See you in game......

Sarcan the Warlord

[palmer_eldritch]

Crikey.

Actually I've had a minor epiphany. I'd struggled to get my head round the references to "hindered", "impaired" etc in the skill descriptions because I couldn't work out what being "impaired" or whatever actually did to an enemy. The answer seems to be that it does nothing (edit - well not much), in itself. But it does leave them vulnerable to an effect which can, in theory, be created by your next attack. In the case of "impaired", it would mean that my opponent is ready to be hit by an attack which could stun it.

[Shatter]

So anyone here think this game is worth box price + sub?  Im going to bet on no

[Xilren's Twin]

Also got in the beta and my observations match pretty much what has been discussed; like the setting but the combat seems lackluster.  I chose blades on my Templar so i just spam my 2 PBAoEs on the zombie hordes.
Like the inital NE town zone but it appears the actual character progression to play with different "decks" is going to take quite a while.  I appreciate them trying to at least do something a little different but with that many skills and interactions i would have rather seen a slower paced combat so you can actually intelligently use the synergistic skills, especially with team mates.  Why take the complexity of a MtG like deck building skill system and then make the combat over in 5 seconds with barely time to identify what is going on?

In between D3 and GW2 i think many folks are going to have a harder time justifying paying a monthly sub for this.

As a sidebar, a lot of the cool setting stuff seems like it would work much better either instanced or in a non mmo game.  Like following the neat "we dont hold your hand" clues to the last stage of a flavorful quest only to fine 10 other folks standing around also trying to summon the end boss just breaks whatever immersion/storyline you were trying to build.  I think SWTOR did that part better.

[Furiously]

So anyone here think this game is worth box price + sub?  Im going to bet on no

I do not plan on buying this game.