The Secret World

So much potential ruined by MMO mechanics... The atmosphere is great but ruined by retards that bunnyhop around, monsters that respawn in front of you and wait for you to come close so you can kill the retarded AI one by one. They have a great skill system ruined by the MMO combat that is standard WoW MMO, rotation based combat is unbelievable boring. Even, the story is affected by MMO mechanics, they had to invent this weird thing of bees making everybody immortal and "secret societies" that fucking everybody knows. I found a very interesting quest of a guy that wanted to investigate demons but he goes too far in his research, you go to alot of places to investigate what happened to him, excellent story that suddenly ends because it continues in a fucking dungeon. Everything scream: We wanted to make a singleplayer game but manage only to get funding for a MMO. If this game was single player, it could be one of the best storyfag RPGs. I wanted to like this game but the WoW parts of it continued to test my sanity.

 

But doesn't a singleplayer game cost less than an MMO? Anyway, you are right, I stopped playing just because of the sole reason of the game has grindy MMO mechanics.

 

Yeah, as much as I love TSW for daring to bring something different to the extremely stale MMO genre, I definitely agree with the sentiment that it could've been much better as a single-player game.

 

What's wrong with dungeons? The hell saga dungeons (all three of them) have some of the best designed boss fights and atmosphere I've seen, in MMO or otherwise (bunny hopping teammates notwithstanding).

 

Because the atmosphe and (Dare I say?)IMMERSSIUM are ruined by the only fact of having three other dudes with you. I wanted to enter on that ominous door on that scary hotel alone and see what is on the other side alone. Imagine if you played the Ocean Hotel level in Bloodlines but with people three other people that bunnyhop, say inane things on the chat and are there for nothing more than purple loot? They are better done than other standard MMO Dungeons from an atmosphere point of view but they don't come close to what it could be in a single player experience, the Ur Draugr is way more intimidating when you are alone fighting a masive beast that could kill you with one hit than when you have four dudes that already know how to fight him, filling the screen with alot of special effects while his massive HP pool is slowly drained .

 

True, although in my opinion, this game is written in such a fan fiction/homage/pastiche style with the clear purpose to stimulate LOLs, rather than to generate genuine fear or IMMERSHUN.
Take than Ur-Draug for example: you're clearly fighting some cosplay/fan service of Cthulhu rather than the real deal (nobody can face the real Cthulhu and survive). It's like visiting your local Six-Flag with your friend and enjoy a ride called "Cthulhu roller coaster." The bunny hopping friends and their lollygagging does not distract from the ATMOSPHERE much.
On the other hand, the game has plenty of semi-scary singleplayer instances. One level in a completely pitchblack rundown mental asylum was quite scary.

 

For anyone who still doesn't have it, TSW is 50% cheaper on Steam today: http://store.steampowered.com/app/215280/

 

Aquaman begs to differ.

 

It only emphasizes what people have basically been saying from day 1, that it should have been a singleplayer game. But I guess box price + subscription + microtransactions were impossible to pass up for Funcom.

 

And what is funny, is that Age of Conan and Secret World didn't worked so well for them. Funcom, suffered massive layoffs and basicaly is on a skeleton crew just to keep the MMOs running.

 

I bought The Secret World on the Steam sale and was curious to see what people here thought.

I have to say that I disagree with most of the posters here. While the game is definitely an MMO with the standard negatives that come with it, I am stunned by the quality of the writing, the voice acting, the cutscenes and the art direction. It was a pleasure just to walk through the beginning section in the streets of London.

The writing is well above, miles above, anything else I have seen in a good, long time. The mood, the quiet intelligence of the thing, the spot-on accents, everything about this game screams heart, wit and intelligence.

Is it sad that such merit had to toil to produce an MMO given the modern marketplace? Yes, it is.

But, is it remarkable, given that marketplace, that we are presented here with something with heart, soul, a vision and delivered with grace and wit?

Yes it is.

Spin this game for ten minutes and compare it to other MMOs, like, say, SWTOR for example. This game is clearly superior.

Yes, it hurts to see such talent end up with someone spamming "Top DPS LFG for farm run." Yes, it should have been a single-player game.
But one doesn't have to necessarily accept the MMO cliches to enjoy the game.

I would enjoy this game if all I got out of it was the wonderfully Lovecraftian New England town beginning, let alone the rest.

 

It's good, but the MMO mechanics harm it for me a bit. The combat is completely boring. I do agree that it's one of the better MMOs I've played, but the problem is the MMO mechanics feel like they get in the way, seeing as 95% of the game is played like a singe-player game.

Also, I fucked up my build and now I have to either start over or grind for hours to get enough SP to fix it.

 

I really hope singleplayer MMOs like this and TOR get offline versions eventually with the grind removed somewhat. Officially or unofficially.

Anyway some people here selling me on Secret World, so let's see what happens...

 

I don't see any chance for that. It would need a lot of work, redoing the quests, monster population, balancing.

 

Not really, you can completely solo both as it is. Well you can for TOR I know 100%, and I hear the same for Secret World.

I don't like the idea of such story focused games dying forever. Other MMOs have been brought back like Earth and Beyond. Star Wars especially would have the fanbase for it. It's possible.

 

Yeah you can solo Secret World, but it needs a lot of grinding. As a single player game, I think it would be better to change this to make it more interesting.

 

What really kills Secret World for me is the floaty,unresponsive and clunky combat with attacks that auto-aim making position almost irrelevant (characteristic of all WoW clones), if this game had a combat system like Tera, it would still be a popamole MMO but at least the combat wouldn't be so mind-numbing boring. The skill system needs a little work too because things like evasion, defense, block, penetration rate, crit rate, magic and physical resist are barely explained in the game and when I was forced to read their forums to understand how shit worked, I discovered that they work in a highly unintuitive manner and only really start making a difference at really high levels, making soloing with a low level character a pain in the ass. The starting area is kinda okay but when you get to the second area and beyond the enemy HP bloat and damage start to ramp up so fast that you need a really good build and a little grinding is recommended, that is why getting at least one person to play with make a world of difference in the enjoyment of the game. Soloing is possible but boring as shit because if you can defeat the monsters it become an exercise o clicking on the hot bar to damage the enemy health bar for 15s on an enemy that can't defeat you or being murdered by some really powerful zombie that can kill you very fast, auto-hit you and can't be out runned so any tactic is irrelevant.

 

Well I don't expect a lot from it. Basically I would want either EA or a dedicated group of modders to remove the server shit and plop you in as-is, just to preserve the story and game world. WoW has unofficial servers and that would work as well, but still time limited. I wonder how much work it would be to literally just rough-shot it out there as a historical piece, not a real new game or anything.

I was always fine with MMOs vanishing because they were so focused on online interaction and such, but now that they're so story-heavy and everything it seems like a real shame to let them die.

 

I should actually get around to finishing the story in SW. I doubt it's going to be around for much longer than another year, if it's even up that long.

 

Same here. I'm interested in the story, but the combat is so tedious that I can't bring myself to play anymore.

 

Yup, me too. With all those 500 skills it's still dull and simplistic.

 

You guys definitely have to team with a bro, the game is much more enjoyable that way. The combat is still a tedious grind, but it is bearable with a teammate.

 

If I can just cut down the time I have to spend on combat, I'll play a lot more. Right now, due to shit skill allocation my fights take extra long because I'm underpowered for the area I'm in.

 

You cannot team up on solo instances and there are a lot on this game and they are the worst, I quit this because at some point (likely at start) I made the wrong choice and my choices were hellish grindan to get points or force my way to continue.

I taken option to wrap this up as a bad decision on my part, I gone into Egypt and its not going to get better ... just worst.

 

Fuck yeah. The writing in the lore is on par with Lovecraftian mytho fan fiction of the highest caliber, like Neil Geiman, Charles Stross and Clive Barker.

And the stand-alone stories of several dungeons are among the best Lovecraftian/weird-tale stories I've read, e.g.:

"Darkness War": Indians and Vikings team up to fight Mayans that worshipped inter-dimensional gods and domesticated Byakhees.

"The Facility": Soviet trained "cosmonauts" that delve deep into the human mind in order to open inter-dimensional portals.

"The Hell Saga (three dungeons)": a human warlock leads an revolution in Hell.

I actually think Funcom did a really lousy job selling this game's strength in story writing. But on the other hand, a lot of the stand-alone stories in this game are so "out there" that they're really difficult to explain to the average Joe.