Secret World II: The Legend of Amiel's Monetization

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > Secret World II: The Legend of Amiel's Monetization

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Saltpowered: Apr 12, 2010; Chief Executive Officer
Awful Industries, LLC

https://wiki.crygaia.org/view/Kiss_Of_The_Revenant

# ? Jun 17, 2017 15:52

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 12:22

Saltpowered: Apr 12, 2010; Chief Executive Officer
Awful Industries, LLC

quote:

The SWL Beta will be coming to a close on Sunday, June 18th @ 0900 EDT / 1300 UTC.

We would like to thank everyone who has participated over these past couple months. Your feedback has played an invaluable role in our efforts to shape and polish the Secret World Legends experience.

We look forward to seeing you at launch!
-Erelon

The beta is coming to a close tomorrow. This means that it is probably a good time to write a state of the game update for the end of beta. The short version is:

If you've never played TSW before, then play this until you finish the story. Spend no money on the game, don't get sucked into the endgame or any of the grind. Just play the story and be done.

If you want this to be the TSW revitalization with new content so you can get back to doing TSW endgame and make it your main MMO.... never going to happen. The relaunch is a horrible Frankenstein gutted of most of the charm with a huge grind strapped on to it that makes most Korean games look sane. If there is a season 2, it will be next year and will probably suck because it was made by the three interns and one UI guy left.

The Good

All weapons given weapon unique mechanics that make them all feel different. The mechanic come with unique resource bars and animations
Skill wheel completely overhauled to offer three paths per weapon with 5 skills each: A damage path, an alternate role path (tank/heals), and a path that modifies the unique mechanic of the weapon
New/improved animations and sound for almost every ability
UI completely overhauled to have a modern feel and be less janky
Issues content interwoven into the main story and/or appropriate level ranges
Easier for new players to understand, better tutorials/introductions
Cross-faction cabals
SP being spent on Talisman leveling is gone. SP is now for passives, AP is for actives.

The Bad

Some of the new weapon mechanics are very RNG and not particularly fun. In some cases, you have to give up a skill slot to use them and/or a passive slot.
Reduction in number of skill and passive slots
All cross-weapon synergies are gone. There are no longer damage types like burst/strike and complementary passives.
The game now has a level system. This has been pitched as a way to be more understandable and approachable to new players. In reality, it just gates content and forces everyone on to a heavy on-rails experience. Other consequences of level system include massive xp nerfs to slow down progression, poor itemization, and requiring you to do all missions whether you want to or not.
XP required to gain AP/SP is related to level and not flat as it was in TSW. By level 50 (max level), it takes 10x the xp to gain AP/SP. This means you have to do 3-4 Transylvania quests to gain 1 AP and 2 SP. Each weapon has 165 AP worth of abilities and 750+ SP worth of passives. Leveling to 50 gives you about 330 AP and 600 SP. This means that any weapon you try and get abilities for beyond the first 2 takes a massive amount of XP/Time. Assuming you play 2ish hours every day, it's about 7 months per weapon
All talismans/weapons have levels. You upgrade the levels by feeding other talismans/weapons into them. While this could be a decent system, anything beyond blue takes a massive amount of xp/money to level. Upgrading Green to Blue and Blue to Epic requires you to feed another max level Green or Blue into the weapon. This is a huge grind/timesink and one of the main ways of monetizing the game. There's also this whole quality level thing too that triples the grind or makes you spend money to get around it.
Dungeon bosses no longer drop loot. Instead, there is a chest after each boss you can open with Dungeon Keys. You get 12 free keys a day (16 if you subscribe). More of keys in Monetization.
Nightmares and Tokyo come after launch (likely after steam launch). No word on raids (though there is a new raid portal in Kingsmouth that can't be used yet). They were not available to test in beta.
Aux weapons removed
Elites were not available to test in beta.
Lairs were revamped to come after Elites/Nightmares but were unable to be tested because Elites and Nightmares were not available to gear up for them. Expect them to be a hot mess.
When you start you pick a class which unlocks two weapons for you. There's a set list, you can not create your own class to get custom weapon mixes. Everyone who played TSW before and links their account unlocks all weapons (though because of the grind you really can only pick two).

The Monetization

Marks of Favor (MoF) and Aurum are the two primary cash shop currencies.
Aurum is purchased outright with money.
MoF can be earned through dailies (10K a day) and earned through selling items on the AH.
You can exchange MoF for Aurum and Aurum for MoF through a exchange. The prices are not fixed but rather set by players with a maximum of 300 MoF per Aurum.
Additional inventory and bank slots cost MoF or Aurum. The first few additional slots (now purchasable in increments of 5 instead of 10) cost MoF. The ones after that cost Aurum.
AP/SP can be bought for Aurum. Considering how slow the post-50 AP/SP gains are, most people who want to unlock more than two weapons will have to buy AP/SP or grind for months per weapon.
All clothes that you can buy are either MoF or Aurum. Some clothes are achievement-based.
Loot boxes drop pretty frequently that you can unlock with keys that cost Aurum. They are like GW2 loot boxes. They contain a mix of upgrade items, cosmetics, and weapons. They also contain currency called Third Age Relics which can be used to purchase unique sprints, costumes, and epics.
Bosses in Dungeons, Scenarios, and Lairs no longer drop loot. Instead, the loot comes in a big chest after you kill them. The box has random contents and unlocking it takes keys. You get 12 dungeon keys, 3 scenario keys, some amount lair keys per day. More dungeon and scenario keys cost 500 MoF per key. Unsure how raids fit into this. The loot is also primarily upgrade mats with the very rare green level 1 item with a special effect that you will then have to dump tons more items into to level.
Sprint levels cost MoF at the start but Aurum shortly afterwards
1 character slot: mo money, mo slots. Considering how bad AP/SP gains are, alts are desirable to level other weapons. Leveling a character to 50 takes a fraction of the time that unlocking new abilities do.
All consumables cost MoF
You can buy weapon upgrade materials with Aurum

Adding to OP. I will probably play it a little on launch day to see if they actually changed any of the above. If not, it's definitely an uninstall and never touch again.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Jun 18, 2017

# ? Jun 17, 2017 20:22

poptart_fairy: Apr 8, 2009; by R. Guyovich

Man that sounds awful, but I will undoubtedly sink hundreds of hours into the game regardless.

# ? Jun 17, 2017 20:36

phosdex: Dec 16, 2005

I didn't get into the beta but I'll check it out on release to see how it is.

# ? Jun 17, 2017 21:38

TracerM17: Mar 1, 2012; Nap Ghost

One good thing about the weapon grind, I guess, is that it will give people reasons to start new chars and see the story and quests from other secret societies. I may finally see what all the fuss over Kristen Geary is about.

# ? Jun 17, 2017 21:56

Rookersh: Aug 19, 2010

I'd be interested to see how it goes for nongoons.

12 dungeon keys a day is pretty hefty for people who don't plan on grinding dungeons. Even in base TSW I'd rarely do more then 1-2 per day.

Weapons depend on how egregious it is to get another 1-2 weapons for nongoons, as well as how many skills actually matter. Even in TSW base I gravitated to about 3ish core weapons and a 4th weapon I was mainly just loving around with. Also in TSW base I skipped 90% of the actives/'passives for each weapon type. If I can get roughly 60% of the actives for 3 weapons, and a solid enough chunk of the passives that do what I care about buildwise for those 3 weapons, I'm probably not going to be that bothered about the weapon unlocking system solely because I just won't use other weapons. Roughly how much would it cost to unlock 1 additional weapon for a nongoon using real money? Roughly how much MoF would it cost through doing dailies? How about 2 weapons.

It looks like the two biggest bulletpoints new players would get stuck up on are the forced two starter weapons rather then getting to choose ( especially with how expensive it is to get other weapons ), plus one character only.

I wonder how this plays out. I get the feeling reading this thread a lot of goons/old TSW players appreciated the do anything approach to the original TSW, so the idea of not unlocking every single weapon/skill seems a bit heretical. Mixed with having to restart and levels and it's probably going to be a tough sell getting the old TSW playerbase back in. But for new players, or people who just heard it's got a good atmosphere, they'll probably be more accepting of a 2-3 weapons ever system, and likely won't care of the levels.

The question is though, what is anybody buying in this game. If they weren't making enough off selling Issues/Cosmetics before, is this really going to fix it?

# ? Jun 18, 2017 00:16

Pilchenstein: May 17, 2012; So your plan is for half of us to die?; Hot Rope Guy

Lawlicaust posted:

New battleground named Shambala was added. I hear it's pretty fun but the queue was broken all beta. All other battlegrounds were removed.

Shambala's been in the original TSW for ages now. It's by far the best PVP map - 10v10 deathmatch with environmental hazards, where you only get 1 life and the arena keeps shrinking. They kept it because it was the only cross-faction battleground and all the others were generally dominated by a single faction, depending on server populations/time of day.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 00:31

Saltpowered: Apr 12, 2010; Chief Executive Officer
Awful Industries, LLC

Pilchenstein posted:

Shambala's been in the original TSW for ages now. It's by far the best PVP map - 10v10 deathmatch with environmental hazards, where you only get 1 life and the arena keeps shrinking. They kept it because it was the only cross-faction battleground and all the others were generally dominated by a single faction, depending on server populations/time of day.

Good to know. So no new PvP content!

Rookersh posted:

I'd be interested to see how it goes for nongoons.

12 dungeon keys a day is pretty hefty for people who don't plan on grinding dungeons. Even in base TSW I'd rarely do more then 1-2 per day.

Every boss you loot takes a key. So you use them all in 2 dungeons.

Rookersh posted:

Weapons depend on how egregious it is to get another 1-2 weapons for nongoons, as well as how many skills actually matter. Even in TSW base I gravitated to about 3ish core weapons and a 4th weapon I was mainly just loving around with. Also in TSW base I skipped 90% of the actives/'passives for each weapon type. If I can get roughly 60% of the actives for 3 weapons, and a solid enough chunk of the passives that do what I care about buildwise for those 3 weapons, I'm probably not going to be that bothered about the weapon unlocking system solely because I just won't use other weapons. Roughly how much would it cost to unlock 1 additional weapon for a nongoon using real money? Roughly how much MoF would it cost through doing dailies? How about 2 weapons.

Actives and passives are 20k each for the first new weapon so 40k or 4 days. 60k for the next set so 6 days. The MoF cost isn't bad at all and makes sense. The issue is how long it takes to get the AP/SP for the third weapon. Playing casually, you are looking at months. Unless you only get one or two lines of actives and passives on your first/second weapon. At that point you could have three weapons with only a few skills apiece. But you'd really have to know exactly which skills you want. And some of the skills that synergize the most are in different skill lines. It might work for healing/tank weapons where you could ignore the healing/tank skill line. Either way, it's pretty rough.

Rookersh posted:

It looks like the two biggest bulletpoints new players would get stuck up on are the forced two starter weapons rather then getting to choose ( especially with how expensive it is to get other weapons ), plus one character only.

I wonder how this plays out. I get the feeling reading this thread a lot of goons/old TSW players appreciated the do anything approach to the original TSW, so the idea of not unlocking every single weapon/skill seems a bit heretical. Mixed with having to restart and levels and it's probably going to be a tough sell getting the old TSW playerbase back in. But for new players, or people who just heard it's got a good atmosphere, they'll probably be more accepting of a 2-3 weapons ever system, and likely won't care of the levels.

The biggest issue with the system for new people is that it is going to penalize exploration or non-optimal skill builds because every wasted point is a significant amount of play time. If you decide you hate a weapon at 50, your options are rerolling your character, spend a bunch of cash on AP/SP, or grind for weeks/months. This is probably the deal breaker for me. I don't mind the marks of fate or dungeon keys or anything else. The huge AP/SP grind just kills it though.

Rookersh posted:

The question is though, what is anybody buying in this game. If they weren't making enough off selling Issues/Cosmetics before, is this really going to fix it?

They are basically taking the mobile game route by making progression a slog and having people buy their way around it. It will probably make them some money in the short term but as more people hit 50 and really how bad the grind is going to be without spending money, they are going to lose players. I actually think the steam launch being a month off is much worse now. They will have a month of bad press/complaints going into the Steam Launch and it will be dead in the water.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Jun 18, 2017

# ? Jun 18, 2017 01:18

dmboogie: Oct 4, 2013

I liked the original secret world a lot, even though I only made it to Egypt. I'll probably try the reboot out though, just because I never bought any of the issues and it'd feel kinda stupid to buy them now when they're free in the rerelease. :v:

# ? Jun 18, 2017 01:37

Breidr: Jan 9, 2016

Cool, so it's going to be like Neverwinter and I can stockpile loot boxes I never intend to open.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 01:52

Drinkfist: Aug 2, 2005

Lawlicaust posted:

*Lairs were revamped to come after Elites/Nightmares but were unable to be tested because Elites and Nightmares were not available to gear up for them. Expect them to be a hot mess.

You know you told me the same loving thing last time around and I walked in there like a goddam champion that I am. Any problems that may arise we can just pour goons on it.

It will only be a matter of time until I find dynamite or filth rain to totally gently caress the game up with.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 03:59

Ossipago: Nov 14, 2012; Muldoon

I haven't looked into what the real world costs are, but I honestly don't mind paying a little real money to skip grinding, as long as it's not exorbitant. I pay for character level boosts and XP boosts in other games.

Funcom has been surprisingly responsive (i.e. slightly responsive where they were expected to be not at all) to correcting some of the terrible things in the beta, so I think it will just need a little time to tweak. I'll create my character at launch and then play super casually while the kinks are worked, then dive in when it's better. Like I did with SWTOR, which turned out fine.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 05:22

Avalerion: Oct 19, 2012

Lawlicaust posted:

If you've never played TSW before, then play this until you finish the story. Spend no money on the game, don't get sucked into the endgame or any of the grind. Just play the story and be done.

Which class seems to be the best suited for just doing this?

# ? Jun 18, 2017 06:50

Celebrity Ghost: Sep 26, 2007

I bought this back in January during some Christmas sales and got up to... whatever the second area was with the Hell Hotel and amusement park. If I don't really care about end game stuff and just want to see the story, would I be better off playing TSW?

# ? Jun 18, 2017 14:54

Richard M Nixon: Apr 26, 2009; "The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker."

As someone who played a bit back when it first released and then maybe two months worth of gameplay early with year as a girlfriend duo game, I'm excited for new content and a few tweaks but disenchanted with the tone of the revamp. I get what they're trying to do, but I don't know how much staying power this game will have. I'm actually surprised that so many people kept playing after finishing the story, since pvp was not novel in any way and pve was very shallow. This is a story driven experience that works best as a "drop in, play new content, drop out for a few months" kind of thing. If they could package it like gw2 with its living story, I think there would be a lot of people lining up every time content is released.

I'll definitely be there on launch day with the gf and we'll both be subscribed and probably dropping a bit of cash here and there for gadgets and gizmos and maybe even some in game boosts. As long as the game is able to attract a steady stream of players and retain a few of then, it'll probably live a good 4-5 more years. If there's a revamping expansion, who knows. The cash shop will definitely work in their favor and bring in some decent revenue. I know swtor still gets me spending a few hundred a year just on dumbass boxes.

See you goons on Friday.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 15:06

Richard M Nixon: Apr 26, 2009; "The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker."

Avalerion posted:

Which class seems to be the best suited for just doing this?

Literally any of the dps classes will be fine. Everyone has a base self heal and some survivability talents so you'll be able to clear through story content with minimal trouble. Even playing a tank of heal class will get you there, since they all deal dmg at a reasonable level. Just pick whatever weapon pair looks fun to you. It does kind of suck that they took out the training area where you could test every weapon and decide what you want.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 15:08

Saltpowered: Apr 12, 2010; Chief Executive Officer
Awful Industries, LLC

Avalerion posted:

Which class seems to be the best suited for just doing this?

I disagree with the above advice. Blood isn't in a particularly good place especially later on. It can do a lot of damage but it's pretty easy to kill yourself while doing it. The mechanics don't work that great with soloing Champs or large groups either.

Neither is AR. AR is a bit weak on the damage (probably half your damage or more is tied to High Explosive Grenade every 20 seconds) and while it can self-heal you gimp a lot of damage to do it.

Most of the other weapons are pretty good. Blade and Shotgun are the two standouts in my mind. Blade has a fun mechanic after the revamp and can be played as a stand alone weapon. Shotgun also has one of the better mechanics and can do good AoE and single target damage. It's slightly weaker on the heals than Blade but still good with healing shells.

Celebrity Ghost posted:

I bought this back in January during some Christmas sales and got up to... whatever the second area was with the Hell Hotel and amusement park. If I don't really care about end game stuff and just want to see the story, would I be better off playing TSW?

Maybe. SWL does have a simpler and better experience for new players. But there's much less optional content and your experience is very much on rails. It will take you more time to see all the story but might be a better experience.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Jun 18, 2017

# ? Jun 18, 2017 15:24

Capntastic: Jan 13, 2005; A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

http://www.mmorpg.com/puzzle.cfm

Low-effort tie-in ARG but with in-game rewards, give it a shot I guess. It's ongoing apparently, I was only able to solve the first two.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 22:15

Saltpowered: Apr 12, 2010; Chief Executive Officer
Awful Industries, LLC

Capntastic posted:

http://www.mmorpg.com/puzzle.cfm

Low-effort tie-in ARG but with in-game rewards, give it a shot I guess. It's ongoing apparently, I was only able to solve the first two.

Only two available currently. The others are added as players "collect souls." The link at the top of this page has the solutions.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 22:55

Capntastic: Jan 13, 2005; A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

Lawlicaust posted:

Only two available currently. The others are added as players "collect souls." The link at the top of this page has the solutions.

Oh whoops, didn't see that, heeheehee.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 23:04

Breidr: Jan 9, 2016

Capntastic posted:

http://www.mmorpg.com/puzzle.cfm

Low-effort tie-in ARG but with in-game rewards, give it a shot I guess. It's ongoing apparently, I was only able to solve the first two.

I literally have no idea what the gently caress is going on. I could hardly understand the man who I can only assume is the ghost of David Carradine.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 23:22

Capntastic: Jan 13, 2005; A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

Breidr posted:

I literally have no idea what the gently caress is going on. I could hardly understand the man who I can only assume is the ghost of David Carradine.

I had to skip it because the video was just hanging there before it completed

# ? Jun 18, 2017 23:25

Dark_Swordmaster: Oct 31, 2011

1) Do I get rewards for other people doing it? Like just for overall community progress?

2) If not, how do I get all the rewards without actually doing all the work that comes with lovely ARGs?

# ? Jun 19, 2017 03:02

Richard M Nixon: Apr 26, 2009; "The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker."

I don't think we know how it works yet. It seems to keep your progress with a cookie, so I'm assuming that once everything is unlocked you just go through all the phases and get a key to enter. It suggests that you get all nine weapons, which is cool.

# ? Jun 19, 2017 03:22

Dark_Swordmaster: Oct 31, 2011

Richard M Nixon posted:

I don't think we know how it works yet. It seems to keep your progress with a cookie, so I'm assuming that once everything is unlocked you just go through all the phases and get a key to enter. It suggests that you get all nine weapons, which is cool.

Not to us it's not....

# ? Jun 19, 2017 05:01

Richard M Nixon: Apr 26, 2009; "The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker."

Dark_Swordmaster posted:

Not to us it's not....

What? It's not cool getting free poo poo or...

# ? Jun 19, 2017 18:01

Dark_Swordmaster: Oct 31, 2011

As players of the original game we already get that.

# ? Jun 19, 2017 19:19

M_Sinistrari: Sep 5, 2008; Do you like scary movies?

I'm still in the 'not sure' phase on the revamp. I'll likely still play around with SWL, but if I'm still able to play around TSW with my old characters while transferring some version of them over to SWL, I might just end up playing around with both casually.

# ? Jun 19, 2017 19:46

angerbot: Mar 23, 2004; plob

Yeah I love an ARG but I'm not excited enough about this to deal with Funcom's bullshit.

# ? Jun 19, 2017 19:51

Capntastic: Jan 13, 2005; A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

Dark_Swordmaster posted:

As players of the original game we already get that.

They meant the reward item from the ARG puzzles, which is either one special weapon or nine weapons (the page is unclear)

# ? Jun 19, 2017 19:53

M_Sinistrari: Sep 5, 2008; Do you like scary movies?

Not sure if I'm doing something wrong since this is kinda new to me, but trying to log into the beta after the last wipe and it's not letting me back in and saying my login credentials are incorrect. Did things get wiped to where I have to make a new beta account or am I screwing up somewhere?

# ? Jun 19, 2017 20:07

novaSphere: Jan 25, 2003

Beta's officially over, that's why you can't log in.

# ? Jun 19, 2017 20:55

Amante: Jan 3, 2007; ...

Beta ended yesterday, so that would probably be why.

e;fb

# ? Jun 19, 2017 20:55

M_Sinistrari: Sep 5, 2008; Do you like scary movies?

Ah, okay. It just threw me off that it did a patch update and everything as if it was still loginable.

# ? Jun 19, 2017 21:07

Pryce: May 21, 2011

So here's a dumb question, as someone who only played a little bit of the original (and is kind of excited for the relaunch):

The "weapon grind" past the first two starting weapons makes it sound like they'd rather you just roll a new character to experience a new class? If the game had launched from scratch using the new systems, wouldn't it just be a standard class-based MMO, with a (very difficult) opportunity to cross-class via a grind? Is there any reason not to just roll a new character in order to play a new class rather than force yourself through that grind?

I get (and agree) that this is a completely lovely change compared to what it once was, but as someone who barely played the old version, I'm not sure I understand how this is any different from a standard MMO where you can't cross-class spec.

# ? Jun 19, 2017 21:19

mike12345: Jul 14, 2008; "Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries."

Steam copy started updating. So basically when I log in again the old game is gone?

# ? Jun 19, 2017 21:26

Schubalts: Nov 26, 2007; People say bigger is better.

But for the first time in my life, I think I've gone too far.

The original game is not going anywhere.

# ? Jun 19, 2017 21:40

SkullMuffinz: Jan 31, 2011; I like things that are dumb.

Schubalts posted:

The original game is not going anywhere.

This.

"Secret World Legends" and "The Secret World" are going to have their own separate clients.

# ? Jun 19, 2017 21:51

Richard M Nixon: Apr 26, 2009; "The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker."

Sounds like he's saying that if steam manages the install, it's nuking the old version and installing some other client. If you're on steam, can you grab the client from the tsw account page?

# ? Jun 19, 2017 22:32

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 12:22

Saltpowered: Apr 12, 2010; Chief Executive Officer
Awful Industries, LLC

Pryce posted:

So here's a dumb question, as someone who only played a little bit of the original (and is kind of excited for the relaunch):

The "weapon grind" past the first two starting weapons makes it sound like they'd rather you just roll a new character to experience a new class? If the game had launched from scratch using the new systems, wouldn't it just be a standard class-based MMO, with a (very difficult) opportunity to cross-class via a grind? Is there any reason not to just roll a new character in order to play a new class rather than force yourself through that grind?

I get (and agree) that this is a completely lovely change compared to what it once was, but as someone who barely played the old version, I'm not sure I understand how this is any different from a standard MMO where you can't cross-class spec.

2 reason: 1) Each weapon has passives and a capstone in the active tree you unlock that have Stat boosts. A character with multiple weapons maxed will be significantly stronger. 2) You get 1 character slot. Every additional slot costs money.

# ? Jun 19, 2017 22:58

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > Secret World II: The Legend of Amiel's Monetization

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