The Secret World

P

poopypoo

Veteran
Is anybody else interested in this MMO from funcom?

My wife was a big fan of Longest Journey and Dreamfall, so she's gotten this one too. The cutscenes are pretty horrendous, despite decent voice acting. But I just logged my first four hours of gameplay and it's pretty fun so far. Even though I have no clue what is going on, the combat is decent, character progression looks moderately deep for now but might need more depth in a few months... crafting syatem is promising, but seemingly not specialized. My build is Assault Rifle/Chaos magic. I have no idea what is good or not, yet.
 
Yeah my wife and I got lifetime accounts for it as we were really impressed during closed beta. Quite a different MMO and not dumbed down like most. The investigative quests are really quite fun as you really need to pay attention and do research sometimes.

It takes some adjustment from your standard MMO since you don't have armor and equipment as such, just your weapon and various talismans etc. The skill system is also interesting in that there are no classes or levels, just earning extra skills/abilities. You can keep going until you have learned everything and can swap roles or combinations easily. Leaves your character free to customize how they look with their clothes. Which of course where their store comes into play ;)

The setting and background is also what drew me, not just another fantasy MMO. That and being AO fans for the past decade :)
 
Cool, glad to hear someone else is into it. Gimme a PM if you feel like putting up with a noob, or maybe I'll catch up with you later. I am digging the challenging but manageable difficulty so far. And yeah the writing can be really great; it's so odd that the main plot scenes feel like they were done by two twelve-year-old boys staying up all night drinking mountain dew and watching the matrix... but the game itself seems solid! can't wait to figure out... lots...
 
I've gotta say that this game has really grown on me. The writing, aside from the very first, awful, quest (way to impress!), is fantastic; some of the best writing in any video game, really. Not totally consistent, but generally worth the price of admission. On top of that, the character system is excellent. The game is pretty deep, and it's one of the most SP-friendly MMOs I've seen. Not a game for your guild, at this point. But an excellent SP with a little coop game. They're giving away free one-day passes, if anyone needs a code, PM me.
 
It's available on Origin since it's published by EA, but that's where the connection to EA ends. You can buy the game in box or directly from Funcom as a download and it doesn't require Origin (thank god...)
 
I'm really not certain. My wife downloaded it via Origin because their Asia pricing is quite good. I haven't had to actually login to Origin since.
 
Built my new PC last night and damn this game looks good. Has a good use of Tessellation, not over the top, subtle in places. Able to run it completely maxed out on my 7870 + 3570k (neither overclocked yet).

Lighting is great, really moody use of fog in areas though god rays seem to flicker a little bit. The FXAA HQ option is quite decent and performs well.
 
poopypoo said:
The game is pretty deep, and it's one of the most SP-friendly MMOs I've seen. Not a game for your guild, at this point. But an excellent SP with a little coop game.
Click to expand...

That's my problem with the game. I'm really interested in it, but they are basically charging monthly fees for (according to just about anyone who played it so far) a single player game here.
 
yeah, we were lucky to get a free month with our preorder copy. I'd say that's long enough to enjoy a pretty good time with it, but we'll probably pay for a couple more months before moving on. I'm not wven scratching the surface of a maxed out build yet.
 
Anyone with a 600 series GPU, latest beta drivers and TSW latest patch want to post some comparison screens of TXAA?
 
TXAA: interesting read and nice vid + performance tests:

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/the-secret-world-txaa/

TXAA is exactly what I want, exactly what I hoped for. Wonder how this will work in other game engines?
But I already see those people starting to moan about the softness of the picture.
For me, softness is much prefered compared to shimmering or jaggy edges.

It seems that I need to upgrade my GPU...

EDIT: thinking about it: I miss comparison (quality+performane impact) with standard MSAA
 
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...and now it seems they are folding up the design team for this game. I stopped playing awhile ago, so obviously I don't feel it was a flawless game, but... honestly I think 99% of its flaws were just being an MMO and being paced like one. I don't know the truth of the matter but it feels like every one of these MMO money grabs to fund a dying company is a huge mistake. The suits choose and the creatives lose? Or did Ragnar decide he has enough money for Longest Journey III now? ;) pah. I'm probably reading too much into it. Just seems sad.
 
What do you mean folding up the design team? They had layoffs overall where needed as Funcom weren't doing so well but they're still creating their episodic issues bi-monthly for new content. This is Ragnar's baby, he wants to keep TSW going for as long as possible. Look at Anarchy Online, a game that never had big subscription numbers, yet is now 11 years old and had several expansions and content updates over the years.

I really don't see TSW as a money grab, since it's a very different and was a rather gutsy experiment for MMO world and character progression design. A money grab would be sticking with basic mechanics, tried and tested design and a big franchise? (ala SW:TOR).

It is sad that Funcom isn't doing so well and the staff behind this brilliant game has to be reduced because of it, and I dearly hope they can keep it going for a number of years. I think some of their design decisions may cause them problems in the long term though.
 
my only complaint is that it's paced like an MMO. i mean some of the graphics are a bit wonku but mainly I just don+t have any interest in waiting MONTHS to max out a character. Anyway, I hope they keep the team together and the best of luck. Funcom games are well above-average! And sometimes excellent.
 
Maxing out a character in TSW is like maxing out every single class in WoW, so yes it will take months. You have many different skill sections for all the different weapons and magic types and you can actually learn them all as opposed to having a class restricted to certain skill branches. So it's not really the same thing as a normal MMO.
 
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