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swamp izzo posted:This game is one of the most repetitive and deserted MMOs I've played. Does the combat ever move beyond use building attack 5 times then use different attack? You're summed up most MMO's with this. There are very few classes in current MMOs that don't have a major class feature like combo points. There's plenty of other things that you will have to do in combat later. Debuffing, cleansing, staying out of lots of bad things, positioning, etc. like most other games. Different weapon types have their points work differently as well. Melee weapons build points on you when you attack, guns build them on each target, and magic builds on you but doesn't always consume every point with every attack. There are some other nuances such as blood having blood sacrifice to manage. For as much as the game excels in many, many ways (storytelling, dungeon design, quest structure), the combat is pretty lackluster at times. Things get much better with interesting Nightmare bosses but the basic builder/finisher dynamic doesn't change.
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Jun 4, 2013 02:32
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Len posted:I'm pretty sure the reason is just lack of funds/crew/time. TSW launched as a niche game with almost zero advertisements. It's almost two years later and I still haven't met anyone in real life who has even heard of the game. Then Funcom started to hemorrhage staff left and right. You would have to ask someone else where they started making the cuts but in the end I think they had to cut actual important people in their staff. How many times have we heard "This got delayed because we had to have someone re-learn that part of the game because we let that guy go"? It's happened for the Cabal interface which is STILL garbage and bug ridden and during the Issue 6 AMD bug that I know of for sure. This is pretty much spot on. Something that is important to understand about the development and testing of TSW is that there were nowhere near enough testers. It was by far the most anemic test I've ever been a part of. I'd say the number of testers even 6 months out from launch was in the hundreds maybe low thousands. Before Drink, Killsion, Rhan, and I started heavily testing the endgame, it hadn't been touched by outside testers. Lairs, world bosses, trans dungeons, none of it. When we started testing it, we were the only group testing it for at least a month. Eventually there were a few other players doing it as well but there couldn't have been more than a dozen of us doing it. The pre-launch team was really great, responsive, and had some awesome content in the works and ideas for the future. I had lots of good interactions with the devs when we were testing the dungeons and some of the endgame content. But even then there were too few people doing the work of too many. There were two main devs that did the design for most of the dungeons and they were really talented dudes but were seriously overworked. I had some decent conversations with both of them and they fixed most of the issues I reported by the next patch and even did some major redesigns of boss fights in a very short period of time. If every dev on TSW had been like those two guys, then the game could have still produced content at a rapid pace post-launch. Unfortunately, one or both of them got cut as part of the reorganization which is a large part of why any post-launch group content has been utter poo poo. Funcom got rid of the dudes that made all the good stuff. The dev that oversaw the lairs was a completely different story. Multiple times we set concrete times to test the lairs and regional bosses and his team ended up just not showing up for it. That's why the regional bosses didn't get tested until live. Last I knew, this guy is still one of their lead devs. As screwy as some of the testing was, the failure of TSW lies overwhelmingly in the hands of the marketing department. We were even talking about how poo poo they were well before launch. The game was under-marketed, poorly marketed, and got no real presence. They didn't market the story properly, the freefrom system, or highlight any of the really cool features. Whoever these guys are, I hope they never work in marketing again because they were loving terrible. Because of the complete lack of any marketing, the game sold poorly. Really, really poorly. This lead to the "reorganization" of their Montreal branch which involved firing pretty much every dev that made the game a success. If there's a dungeon or piece of content that you really enjoy in the game, there is a 75% chance it was made by one of the people that got laid off. For the last year, Tokyo has been hailed as a major area/expansion/etc. With the original team, Tokyo was just another issue leading to a much bigger plotline. If they had retained the full-staff Tokyo should have released around Nov/Dec after launch (if not before). The original plan for content was pretty massive and exciting. Here are a few things that were in the pipeline that will never happen: Shambala - Early in development it was a PvP area that was later converted to a PvE zone. There were some glimpses of it during the main story. The Lost World - Further down Agartha near the base is a prehistroic world full of dinosaurs. The Tabula Rasa - That weird little tavern in London was supposed to be the site of major developments in the future. The Tabula Rasa is a transdimensional tavern that was designed to serve as a gateway to other worlds and dimensions. Probably meant to be tied to The Host, the Twin Gods, and Traveling into the Dreaming Prison and the Cosmos. An extensive bestiary system complete with passives, skills, etc. Competitive PvP arena and another open world PvP zone The Third Age - Use of the Time Tombs and Agartha to travel to Atlantis and the technologically advanced Third Age. The rest of Loki and Excalibur's Storyline Cassi is Loki, not Beaumont and she's not with the Illuminati. The list of content really just goes on and on. There was a lot of stuff planned and partially in the files or that we had conversations about during testing. It's a real disappointment because they had some really amazing story threads going and it looks like the only one they are going to be able to resolve is the Orochi one (if even that). I doubt they'll get to the plotline that should come after that: The Host. It's a real pity because what they have of it in the game so far is really interesting but far too much work to do. I'm pretty sure they are going to wrap the story up with Tokyo and I'd be extremely surprised to see any major content after that. Edit: I just checked and it looks like only one of the good devs might remain (the guy who made Darkness War and Slaughterhouse). The rest of the good devs are definitely gone. Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 07:19 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 07:08
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I finally deleted my live and testlive client last week. Guess I'll reinstall to see it.
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May 10, 2014 15:33
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Is it only one of the three Tokyo zones?
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May 10, 2014 20:08
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Well, no surprise there. Not really worth reinstalling to check out then.
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May 10, 2014 22:06
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Len posted:Seriously. It sounds like they're really trying to overhaul the clunky bits but it's too little too late. This is the exact same poo poo they did with Age of Conan. Step 1: Release game with awesome atmosphere that is broken as gently caress Step 2: Minimal updates for an extended period of time (1 year+) Step 3: Fix everything that should have been fixed at launch after 90% of your player base is gone Step 4: Get enough new player and returning players because of the changes to rebuild some goodwill Step 5: Announce brand new over ambitious game with a unique setting Repeat every 3-5 years. Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 00:56
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It's a trap don't fall for it.
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May 10, 2015 03:29
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GEMorris posted:The last three posts are a beta reunion. Just need drinkfist to chime in. He's being chain probated for his drunken and offensively worded opinions about really bad games (aka being Drinkfist) so I wouldn't count on him posting. He's probably sitting there reading this with a fifth of Jack and mumbling something about goddamn Joel Bylos. Edit: I did reinstall though... God help me. Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 23:16 on May 10, 2015 |
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May 10, 2015 14:05
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Pilchenstein posted:I bought a key from a shady website for four english pounds. Result. Thought this was too good to be true. Happy to be completely wrong.
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May 3, 2017 01:12
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Here's the short of things from my perspective after playing a bit. ++ Great Quality of life improvements all over the game. Interface, quest flow, simplification etc. + Some new content (New dungeon portal in Kingsmouth that isn't open yet: Festering Maw) + Some of the new specs are more fun than the old specs -+ New skill system removes all attack types (burst, strike, etc.). There aren't really any cross weapon passives any more. Just passives that you slot to affect skills and pure passive states. -+ Reticle targeting is just a thin veneer over a lock-on system. You just auto-lock on to whatever you are pointing at. --As it is right now the monetization will absolutely kill the relaunch. There a limited currency that you can only receive about 10k a day of right now. It takes 60k of that to unlock a new weapon. 10-30k per sprint level. 20K to remove a signet or glyph. Variable amounts for clothing. There's a death penalty like repair cost (10% per death) that takes 100. You get 6 free dungeon loots a day and it's another 100 per loot beyond that. It's like the f2p system of a terrible gpotato MMO. Having the currency for weapons, sprints, appearances, etc is fine. You can save up to unlock the things you want as a free player. It's slower but possible. Having it linked to basic activity like deaths and dungeon loot is awful. Basically, there's lots of poo poo they did that should have been in the original launch. It looks, feels, and plays like a good modern game. However, the monetization will completely sink it if they don't do something about it.
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May 4, 2017 02:47
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Capntastic posted:What do you mean by 100 per loot? Like, you have to pay premium currency to pick up loot? Basically bosses drop loot chests. You get 6 free keys a day to unlock them. Extra keys are 100 marks (the limited currency). There's another currency that is the actual pay money currency (aurum). You can trade marks for aurum and vice versa through the AH. They showed this on one of the streams with detail if you want to watch it. Not sure which stream. Edit: One more thing that makes the boss loot keys a necessity. Gear works like this. All gear starts at level 1 and you upgrade it. Gear is mostly identical other than attack, healing, or tanking skewed stats and special abilities on some of it. To upgrade gear you feed other gear to it. It's roughly three pieces = one level. However, there is no random loot. None. The only items you get come from finishing missions, killing rares for the first time, or dungeons. Because missions have a cooldown there is a maximum amount of items you can get to upgrade your gear from non-dungeon sources. So you have to do dungeons. But those are locked at 6 hours too. So you have to farm heavily to get the piece you want with the right stats and special abilities then farm ~150 pieces of gear to upgrade it. All while having some pretty severe time gating due to mission timers and dungeon keys. Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 04:48 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 03:34
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It's possible that all of that will change. They've said the economy isn't fully implemented. But things definitely don't look good for it.
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May 4, 2017 13:08
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Dark_Swordmaster posted:Barring the lovely new drop/upgrade system, does the loot finally make sense? One of my biggest complaints about the original game was that after finishing all the content that was in at launch I STILL had very little idea of how the gear system actually worked because it's so horribly tutorialized. The itemization is the exact same except for the upgrade mechanics. And the upgrade mechanics have replaced crafting. Just like in TSW, there are three main item types that determine the stats (tank, dps, healer). Some items have secondary effects (20% chance to refund energy or 2% chance to reduce cooldowns, etc.) The upgrade system has multiple tiers: Green: Level 1-20 Blue: Level 1-25 Purple: Level 1-30 ??? Going up from one tier to the other either requires an upgrade kit (which you seem to only get one free one) or 2 maxed items of the same tier. I.e. Green -> Blue requires 2 Level 20 Green Items. It's like 250 xp for each item level and every item you feed it is 100 xp * a bonus for matching the items type (waist talisman = waist talisman) and maybe role (dps = dps)? The upgrade kits are probably a cash shop item so get ready for a severe grind or pay-to-win. Really, they could solve most of the horrible currency poo poo by just bringing back random drops. Random item drops, mark drops, upgrade kits would allow you to have things to sell, let you more quickly upgrade items, and let you save upgrade kits. Without random drops literally everything is a time or money gated grind. There are lots of people complaining about it on the forums but the line they get right now is "the economy is not fully implemented."
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May 4, 2017 13:57
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For anyone skeptical about the reality of how bad the loot system is... Most of the time you get a weapon or talisman upgrade item. Sometimes they are blue but usually not. These upgrade items just give xp though not the green to blue upgrade.
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May 4, 2017 14:25
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Dark_Swordmaster posted:Holy gently caress, they seriously took the loot box mechanic to its most ridiculous level yet. Pretty much. There's one you can unlock after every boss. 6 free keys a day. 100 marks per key after that. 100 isn't a lot but considering how many things cost marks and that you can currently only earn about 10k a day, it's incredibly stupid. Tacos cost marks now too. As do potions and other consumables.
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May 4, 2017 15:14
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Oh my mistake, dungeon keys are 500 marks not 100. Lol. Which means if you never die, never upgrade equipment, have all the sprints and weapons you want, don't need consumables then... you can get loot from 4 dungeons a day.
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May 4, 2017 16:25
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Exmond posted:Hopefully since it's in beta they just slapped on some numbers for the monetization stuff.. But it's not sounding good. I can't see it launching before July.
I could go on but in reality, this probably needs another 6 months in the oven. In Funcom fashion, it might get 2 at best and release a half-finished mess. CoffeeBooze posted:Now this feels like a Funcom game! Which is a bit of a shame too since it really did seem like they were starting to turn things around. I think the most disappointing things isnt the lovely business model, but that the combat improvements seem so half assed. I was really hoping the game was going to get ESO style combat. The combat actually doesn't feel bad. It feels much better than the old combat and much more like ESO.
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May 4, 2017 17:29
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Len posted:I plan to dive in for real this weekend but I have been looking through the forums. Apparently dungeon keys started out at 500 units of whatever and dropped to 100 recently. So before we start hitting all the They are still 500 for one as of today when I took that screenshot.
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May 4, 2017 17:37
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maybe just assume numbers are literally thrown out and being altered by the phases of the moon?
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Len posted:Weird. this thread is people saying 100 Yeah I have no idea why he thinks it is 100 because it definitely isn't: From a few hours ago. I tested it and it took the 500.
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May 4, 2017 17:58
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I'll keep checking in on it to see if they make any major changes but I'm not super enthused to play much more of the beta now. Once you get to BM+ things get very slow and very grindy. I got a few items to blue so here's more on itemization.
Basically, it's a terrible f2p mobile game/Korean MMO treadmill. Most of the revamp seems designed to make the game as much of a cash grab as possible which is disappointing because the quality of life changes are great and the new combat is really fun.
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May 5, 2017 04:03
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Len posted:This is why we get subpar experiences Yeah, the very small pool of testers they currently have are overwhelmingly broke-brain white knights who will defend the terrible decisions to the death. I don't have much hope for change.
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May 5, 2017 17:54
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But don't take our word for it. Let's go to the responses:quote:Until we see the full economy for Favor, I won't decide on whether I like it the system or not. quote:just need to see the full game and all the ways of earning MoF, before I can say, "this sux" Don't worry guys, it's not complete. Funcom will fix it! (This is the sentiment of a lot of posters). quote:Just to be really clear here - nobody owes you anything. You don't get a cookie just for showing up. They are offering a game that you can choose to play or not. If you don't like what they offer, you don't have to play it. There are lots of games I don't play for a myriad of reasons and not one of those games or their developers owes me a drat thing. I don't get to demand that they make a game I like just because I showed up. We're all really entitled because we expect feedback to be listened to in beta. quote:As I'm a TSW GrandMaster I won't have any F2P problem myself  quote:I'm not assuming anything. I don't think the system is broken or needs to be fixed, I think it's fine as is. Maybe I'm wrong and the developers agree with you, I don't know. However, as it stands, if the system is meant to manage and pace your power progression, then its working. 
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May 5, 2017 18:15
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CoffeeBooze posted:This is probably good enough for me and a lot of other people. I am not particularly interested in TSW's end game, I would however like to play the game's story through without being bored to death by the tedious combat system. Im totally ok with throwing a few bucks Funcom's way if they can manage that much. You are probably the demographic that the revamp is going to work for the most. There will be some annoyingness with mandatory quests and level gating but it's really not that bad. I would absolutely recommend the revamp to someone who wants to see the story and play through the game with no intention of playing long-term.
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May 5, 2017 20:27
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So I went and unlocked another weapon today for 60K marks. For reference 9.5k marks is 10 dailies that take about 3 hours to do. So 7 days of dailies assuming you don't spend marks for anything else. Turns out, I only unlocked the active skills. It's another 60k for passive skills. So it's 14 days of dailies per weapon. Or 89 days for all 7 assuming you don't buy anything else. So between the cost to unlock a weapon (120K) and how long it's going to take to get new gear (since there are no drops), level that gear, get AP and SP (which are obtained significantly slower than in live TSW), casual players aren't going to switch weapons. What you start with is all you'll use. Even for more serious players, it will be at least a month to get a new weapon fully unlocked (Active/Passive), have enough points in it to not be poo poo, and have it upgraded enough to be useful. So you better hope that one of the starting classes has two weapons that you want because you are pretty stuck otherwise. Edit: Also regarding gearing, someone posted the stats of fully leveled items. It goes:
Fully leveled Red weapons are literally 10x-15x the power (depending if you've upgraded them from Faded -> Luminous - Radiant) of fully leveled green ones. Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 18:46 on May 6, 2017 |
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May 6, 2017 18:39
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A. Beaverhausen posted:Thought you might like this from the OF The beta forums are full of that garbage. In every thread about how lovely the new progression systems are there are several people yelling "Nu-uh, just grind harder." Some of their suggestions include: 1) making more characters to farm more dailies, 2)grinding dungeons that give no loot in order to get money for upgrading, 3) selling items on the AH for more marks to buy keys (when you are using the keys to open boxes with items???).
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May 6, 2017 19:26
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In a thread requesting that dungeons have challenges that give marks:quote:That would be too much and hamper monetisation opportunities. The overarching goal of MoF is generate real world revenue by tempting players to buy arum so they can trade that into MoF to buy items/weapons/keys. I do agree that a Small MoF reward would be nice. SOmething like 1 to 2 thousand for three dungeons. The dev team and marketing people don't have to defend the monetization. The players will do it for them. I get it, they have to monetize a f2p game. But leave that to them to figure out. Don't defend lovely systems because that's going to just reinforce it is a good idea and acceptable.
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May 7, 2017 02:51
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macnbc posted:Funcom has announced that SWL will be launching on June 26. Yeah, they aren't going to get everything properly tested and fixed by then. Transylvania will be a shitshow. Wonder if they will even have elite and nightmare modes in a launch.
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May 9, 2017 13:14
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Piell posted:How does the "you have to pay to resurrect" thing interact with the quests where you have to kill yourself? You still take damage and pay the fee. And it isn't really pay to "resurrect". It's basically repairs per death but you pay with a limited currency that you can buy with real money. Which is definitely still lovely but you don't have to pay to literally Rez. Just after 10 deaths you do absolute poo poo damage until you pay the toll. Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 05:39 on May 10, 2017 |
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May 10, 2017 05:33
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DancingShade posted:The loot definitely needs to be something other than tiny icons that all look the same. Needs a pleasing 'ding!' and some sparkly crap to give people that pleasing positive reinforcement sound. Good example: Diablo. Loud ding noise, big colored beam emitting from the item, star on minimap. Funcom went the exact opposite direction with this. No random drops. I don't think they understand how mmos work. Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 13:07 on May 11, 2017 |
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May 11, 2017 13:05
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New beta patch today with Transylvania. Patching servers don't appear to be up yet. I'll go check things out when they are and see if any of the monetization is unfucked.
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May 13, 2017 00:15
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Changes (To be updated as I test). Positive
Negative Unclear:
Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 02:46 on May 13, 2017 |
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May 13, 2017 00:40
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Amante posted:Sounds like they're making some promising changes with the monetization and such. Now if I could just get in any beta earlier than the last two weeks... It's still a little early for me to say the changes are promising. Right now they've only doubled the dungeon keys and removed one of the monetization sinks. You still only get two free dungeon runs and additional keys still cost 500 marks. It's also unclear whether the reduction in price for new weapons is intentional or not. Character created before this phase got the reduction. All new characters didn't. In true Funcom fashion, they answer no questions on the forums outside of bugs related to abilities. I'll have a better idea if things are better or worse when I get through Transylvania. Right now Egypt is a major slog. Levels take a huge amount of xp and lots of the main quest is level gated. You pretty much have to do every mission in Scorched Desert (all side missions, investigation, etc.) to hit the level requirements to move on. Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 22:50 on May 13, 2017 |
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May 13, 2017 22:48
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Dreadwroth posted:Just got in, holy poo poo this downloader is crap. The forum just got cleared today so it's going to be kind of poo poo right now. Honestly, I think this will probably end up being a fine relaunch. There's some annoying choices they've made with progression and monetization but they will probably be fine once you get through the story once. Whether I play long-term depends on whether 1) the endgame isn't super limited by the monetization or 2) there is a sub which removes a lot of the bullshit limits. Once the next phase hits with hopefully all the major changes final I'll make a new op with all the info. Also, send me a PM on here if you want an invite to the beta cabal. It's cross-faction. Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 01:59 on May 14, 2017 |
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May 14, 2017 01:56
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Funcom posted:
One of the UI devs broke the code of silence and started responding to feedback. Maybe we can hope for small things.
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May 14, 2017 02:19
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They seem to have made no cabal changes other than cross-faction so far. Once I get some people in, I'll test it.
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May 14, 2017 15:15
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thwoompa posted:I can't wait to hear what a clusterfuck the nm dungeons end up being especially doing them all master planner and getting outfit. We won't find that out for a while. NM are post-launch content. The higher-level dungeons are a clusterfuck right now for targeting aND managing mechanics. Going to be quite an experience when/if we get NM. We're 1 month out and here's what's not in that are reasonably supposed to be in launch:
Going to be a shitshow. Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 23:45 on May 22, 2017 |
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May 22, 2017 23:35
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Delaying the Steam version is basically the same as delaying the whole thing. They'll get a limited set if non-steam user to open beta with from June until July and then release a hopefully more polished product to Steam. It's a way to still meet the unrealistic goal they set without poisoning the well too bad.
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May 23, 2017 18:07
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Gnooble posted:Why would they not just delay the whole launch? Funcom makes no sense with the decisions they keep making here. To use the sad pathetic people who are still playing TSW to test SWL (off steam) without tainting the population at large with a broken game. But who am I kidding, it will be broken regardless.
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May 25, 2017 00:23
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Len posted:Not true. They also added a traditional level system and level gated content so now you have to more or less drain zones before you can continue the story And don't forget the gear upgrade treadmill!
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May 25, 2017 18:27
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Drinkfist posted:I feel like we did this before. Who let you out of your cage?
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May 25, 2017 23:35
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