Secret World II: The Legend of Amiel's Monetization

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

"OUT" now. Download directly from https://secretworldlegends.com/. Steam coming in July.

State of the Game

Edit: They have a patch "fixing" a lot of the issues with the monetization and introducing some new content on July 5th. The below will be revised when we see how good that is or isn't.

Lawlicaust posted:

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.

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

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.

Welcome back to the Secret World! Funcom has spared no expense to revamp and relaunch The Secret World as Secret World Legends, a shared-world action RPG! The three interns they now have working for the game were the top of their class at online video game college Grand Canyon University and definitely tightened up the graphics on level three!

I don't know why any of us hate ourselves enough to play another Funcom relaunch but away we go!

The Changes

Let's get it out of the way, here are all the major changes:

The flow of the Main Story has been rewritten. Some quests have been added and some taken away. The overall results is both good and bad. Solomon Island feels slower and like you have a lot of mandatory content. Egypt feels significantly better (especially City of the Sun God).
Issues are now incorporated into the Main Story. For example, Last Train to Cairo is between Scorched Desert and City of the Sun God.
Levels. There were always hidden levels in the game but now they are visible. Your character can level to 50. Character level gates some Main Story quests and dungeons. You won't be going to Egypt until you are level 38 for example and Transylvania until you are 45.
New Economy. More on this later but there are three currencies. Two you earn in game and one you purchase with real money or trade for with another currency you earn in game.
You pick a starting class which gives you two weapons. Every other weapon has to be unlocked with one of the new currencies (not the real money one).
The skill wheel is gone. Each weapon has an active and passive tree now that are much simpler. All weapons have special abilities. More to be covered below...
Retcicle-based combat...kind of. You don't really have to aim most abilities. Your reticle just locks onto the last enemy you have touched with. It's basically hidden tab targetting.
Combat Revamp. New abilities, all new animations and sounds. Lots of really good improvements here.
Auxillary weapons are gone. No idea if they will return.
No Faction Missions currently. This might change.
Cross Faction Cabals
An item upgrade system that feels like it came out of a Korean MMO. (But not quite as ballbustingly miserable. You can't fail upgrades).
All battlegrounds from TSW are gone. They will be replaced by Shambala.
Aegis is not in currently and will be reworked when it does come in.
A metric fuckton of smaller changes.

So let's get into the details.

Weapons

Players can still equip two weapons but the two weapon slots are split into primary and secondary. The weapon in the primary slot generates more energy and can use some abilities that are primary weapon only. Players can pick a starting "class" which focuses on one primary and secondary weapon. Anyone with a previous TSW account get access to all weapons at the start. New players get two weapons based on the class they pick and will have to unlock more with Marks of Favor, a new currency. Weapon unlocks start cheap but increase every two unlocks.

Classes

Fist was the last weapon added in the beta and as a result, I haven't tested it at all.

Blade is no longer a tanking weapon but a dps weapon with self-heals and a focus on mobility. Blade has some of the most interesting reworks of all the weapons and will likely be one of the most frequently seen weapons.

Some assault rifle abilities load grenades that you can fire with other abilities. If you don't fire the grenade, it explodes and damages you. Grenades are not optional at the moment so this is pretty obnoxious. However, there is a passive you can take to make the explosion not damage you and deal damage enemies. On the plus side, the grenade elite ability, High Explosive Grenade, is currently the highest damage ability in the game.

Shotgun is now a tanking weapon which pairs with Hammer for the Punisher class. The ammo mechanic is interesting but because it is random you can get shells that you don't want (like 3+ healing when you really want damage ones).

Blood has a Yin-Yang mechanic that has become common in more recent MMOs. It probably needs a little bit of tuning to be as impactful as some of the others. Warlock is the class I played the most in the beta and you can really chew through 90% of the game with it. Lots of AoE, good self-heals, and solid single target. It becomes less overpowered in Transylvania but still a pretty strong choice.

Pistols aren't that different than they were in classic TSW. If you liked them then, you will probably like them now. Shotgun is a weird pairing though.

Magus is another weird pairing of Elementalism and Chaos. It is probably the mix with the flashiest animations between paradoxes and elemental abilities.

Goon favorite, Hammer/Blade, is back as the Demolisher. Features a substanial amount of AoE between Hammer and Blade as well as good defense/self-heals.

New Chaos feels very similar to old Chaos. Some abilities were reskinned and have different names but it is largely the same burst damage and evade spec as before. The paradox mechanic looks really cool and does provide a fun boost.

Upgrading Equipment

SWL has a very different equipment system than TSW. All weapons and talismans can now be upgraded by combining them.

The item you want to upgrade goes in the top window, the items you want to consume go in the bottom windows. Here are the rules to the system:

Weapons can be used to upgrade weapons. Talismans can be used to upgrade Talismans.
Bonus experience is granted when using the same type of item (pistol on pistol or dps talisman on dps talisman)
There's a small chance of a critical success which doubles experience gained.
Green items can be upgraded to level 20; Blue to 25; Purple to 30; etc.
When an item reaches max level, it can be combined with another max level item (Green with Green, Blue with Blue, etc.) to upgrade to the next color level.
There are also light-based qualities that determine how powerful an item is at base. The order is Faded -> Luminous -> Radiant. They are indicated by small pips on the tooltip.
Glyphs can also be leveled. Never combine glyphs with the glyph on an item to upgrade them, you get a huge xp penalty. Only combine glyphs not on an item. Later you can delete the glyph on the item and put the new one on.
At first, the system seems really, really grindy. As you reach later zones, it gets easier because you get much more loot making it level much faster. Scenarios and dungeons also drop a lot of distillates you can use to upgrade.

Economy

The new SWL features three currencies:

Anima Shards: Used to upgrade weapons and buy some items. These come from quests, selling items to vendors, and loot.
Marks of Favor: Used to unlock pretty much anything or buy items off the AH. These come from daily challenges and selling items on the AH.
Aurum: Purchased with real money and used to buy pets, clothing, unlocks, random loot boxes, etc. Can be traded for with Marks of Favor.

You can earn a max amount of Marks a day (11000 at the time of me writing this). Free players will probably want to save them for weapon upgrades.

Free-to-play

SWL is free to play with micro-transactions. Funcom has said that all actual game content (missions, story, dungeons, etc) will be free now and going forwards. No more paid issues.
The money making aspect of SWL are:

Buying Aurum to trade for Marks of Favor: This will be the most common way the game will be monetized. Players can spend real money on Aurum and trade it to other players for Marks of Favor which can buy lots of things.
Dressing Room/Costumes: These mostly cost Marks of Favor or Aurum.
Boosts: AP/SP boosts and consumables are for sale. Cost unknown at this time.
Dungeon keys: Dungeon bosses no longer drop loot. There are now chests after each boss that you can choose to unlock. Chests have randomized contents from a list that you are shown. Free players get 12 keys a day and must pay 500 Marks of Favor for every key after 12.
Cache keys: Caches are random loot boxes with lots of costumes and pets but with some boost items. It's a gamble box from most other games.
Weapon unlocks: You can pay money to unlock weapons.
Inventory Slots

There will be a Patron (subscription) status. We don't know the details of all the bonuses but some we know are:

One free cache key a day
Free leaps to anima wells
Likely xp, dungeon key, currency gain increases

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jul 3, 2017

# ¿ May 29, 2017 00:05

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:19

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

Lore and Legend

Lore/Legend are collectibles hidden throughout the world which give a small piece of lore about the backstory of ~~The~~ Secret World Legends. There are over 500 Legends to collect across the world. A change with SWL is that Legends now give experience for collecting them.

In an earlier version of the OP during beta, I suggested saving lore until 50. This is incorrect. While the experience scales with your level but so does the experience required to gain 1 AP / 2 SP. In the end, it all nets out and these no reason to save lore to 50.

Loot List

Loot List.

Form to add items

Feel free to share.

FAQ

Q: Are Factions still a thing?

A: Kind of? You join one but they currently have no faction versus faction missions, there's one PvP area, and cabals are cross faction.

Q: How do I make a cabal?

A: You have to get your first faction rank... which has changed in level every beta phase. Looks like 10ish now.

Q: I hate myself, when can I play this?

A: Now.

Q: Is it on Steam then?

A: No, there's been a steam delay. It's only downloadable from Funcom until July when it is supposed to get a Steam release.

Q: Why the delay?

A: The announcement claimed some bullshit about a competitive environment in Steam in June. The real reason is because it isn't going to be ready for wide release and they don't want the get thousands of negative reviews on Steam.

Q: What transfers from TSW?

quote:

Clothing items must be in a Dressing Room or physically equipped by a character in order to be copied. Unopened Clothing in your Inventory, unopened Item Store Claims, or unopened Delivered Items are not copied.

Clothing items are separate for female and male character models! To ensure that all clothing items can copy over from TSW, we recommend having at least one character of each gender model, with all potential items unlocked and collected in your Dressing Room.

This means that clothing items for male character models should be in the Dressing Room or equipped by a male character models. Clothing items for female character models should be in the Dressing Room or equipped by a female character model.Example: If you have only one female character on your TSW account, but own a clothing set with both male and female costume parts, only the female model outfit will be transferred to Secret World Legends. If you want the male counterpart, make sure to claim this outfit on a male character in TSW before initiating the Transfer.

Faction items are separate items! If you own faction-exclusive items, you must have them in the dressing room or equipped by characters of the corresponding factions to have them copied.

Characters with items you want copied must be active (i.e., not deleted) at the time you initiate the Legacy Transfer.

All pets you currently own in your Pet Window copy over, with the exception of pets awarded from the Museum of the Occult, as well as the Guardians of Gaia �Shem� pets.

All Sprint Styles and Mounts you currently own in your Sprint Window copy over, with the exception of the Franken-Chopper. Current owners of the Franken-Chopper instead receive the new �Speed Demon� bike in Secret World Legends. The Franken-Chopper is now a reward from a mission obtained from Moose at Level 50.
Achievements you earned in TSW do not copy over, although any clothing rewards you earned for completing those achievements do copy over.

Titles are not a part of the Legacy Transfer system and do not copy over to Secret World Legends.

Q: What about Lifetime Subs?

A: "If you are a Grandmaster (lifetime member) in TSW then you will have lifetime Patron Rewards membership in Secret World Legends, and you will keep benefits in both versions."

How can I play with Goons?

Richard M Nixon posted:

Can you stick this in the OP so it's easy to see?

Playing with goons
Cabals (guilds) are cross-factional so we can all poo poo up chat together. You can get an invite by either posting your character name here or through discord. Note that you must be online to receive an invite, so try to request an invite when you'll be online for a little bit and during primetime hours.

Chatting with goons
Since Discord is the cool thing now, come join us here.

We are a member of the Goon Discord Network which enables unified authentication and a directory of goon servers for lots of games.

After joining our Discord channel, you'll need to be authed in order to request an invite.
pre:
To be assigned a Goon role and get an invite, follow these simple steps.

Authenticate with the Goon Discord Network
type !authme SA USERNAME HERE in chat

  For Example:
  If your username in Something Awful is IAmKale then type: !authme IAmKale
  If your username in Something Awful has a space in the middle like for example Tempus Thales then type: !authme Tempus Thales

You will get a PM by the GDN bot to authenticate your account. Follow its instructions and you'll be assigned a Goon role.
Then, post your CHARACTER name in chat and someone will invite you. Note that cabals are cross-faction and are per-character.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Jul 3, 2017

# ¿ May 29, 2017 00:07

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

eonwe posted:

oh is legends out now?

June 26th. Adding that answer to the OP.

# ¿ May 29, 2017 00:11

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

Rookersh posted:

Wait, they not only removed the faction missions, but other missions have been removed as well? Which missions? Why?

It's primarily faction missions like the parking garage that are gone. Missions you got from your faction but which were shared across all factions like Virgula Divina are still in. There are a few random action missions or side missions that I haven't seen any more but that's probably a combination of some of them got rolled into the story or they just weren't good.

Many story missions got changed in one way or another. Some to be a bit simpler/less buggy. Some to have a better story. Virgula Divina is an example of a slightly reworked mission. They changed removed one part of the first puzzle (the dollhouse) which wasn't particularly clear and definitely bugged out some times. Red Sand, Black Sun was heavily overhauled to have Last Train to Cairo added to the story and the big bad from the Last Train storyline added to different parts of Red Sand, Black Sun.

I haven't seen a mission change yet that I outright hated. The level gating is annoying Solomon Island and early Egypt but not bad after that. City of the Sun God changes are very good.

Dark_Swordmaster posted:

Ground floor on this terrible idea. Loved the original release but this one.....

Honestly, there are a lot of positive changes. I don't know if there are enough changes to keep the game afloat but they made a lot of improvements that have been needed for years.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 00:44 on May 29, 2017

# ¿ May 29, 2017 00:40

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

revenance posted:

Will there be anything besides weapon unlocks that transfer from your TSW account?

Yes, there will be some cosmetic things that transfer but the details have not yet been released. Likely anything you bought with real money/came from issues. Achievement gear is not transferring. Whether Pangea gear is transferring is still up in the air.

# ¿ May 29, 2017 02:32

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

Hello Sailor posted:

Is the "resurrections consume time-locked (or RL money-locked) currency" thing still a thing?

Nope, that got removed with the most recent patch. Now the only annoying thing about time-locked currency is buying dungeon keys. Though they did double the number of them you get for free.

# ¿ May 29, 2017 02:58

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

Rookersh posted:

Have they talked about bringing back the faction quests?

And can you link any of the quests that got removed? I mean even the stuff like the phone on the ground of the laundry lady in Kingsmouth had some decent worldbuilding to it.

Have seen nothing concrete on faction quests.

I don't have a list or anything like that. Beta is very, very small. There isn't a lot of concentrated lists of anything. Most of the quests I've seen gone were sidequests at the start of Kingsmouth. Pyramid Point sticks out because it used to have a lot of sidequests on it. Now there's just the Wendigo one, the idol of Nergel, and the Fireworks.

Drinkfist posted:

What about my Dev Killer T Shirt or my Initial Launch ARG Everything is True honeycomb jacket set. This is important to know because the loving icons disappeared off my TSW account page when they did cleanup. Also I got five bucks saying I can bring the filth rain to Agartha and get someone fired.

That's the precursor to them deleting your account. They hate you.

Drinkfist posted:

On a separate note here. You are telling me that after all this work they did revamping the game not only will it have literally no new content but it is rolling back to the state of the original release with a new combat system? I loving love Funcom.

Are all the fun DLC missions in? By that I mean the Train mission in Egypt and the Vanishing of Tyler Freeborn. Please tell me that dumbass loving simulation area for the Venetians got the loving axe.

Original release with some of the issues integrated with the story. I haven't seen if Vanishing is in but Last Train and some of the others are in and part of the main story. Carter Unleashed is another one that's part of the story now. The DLC missions that gave Aux weapons have all be changed to no longer give the Aux or require them as part of the mission.

Also, Venice is definitely still in and Scenarios are a really great way to get loot now!

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 03:21 on May 29, 2017

# ¿ May 29, 2017 03:18

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

Len posted:

Are they still criminally unfun?

Do you really expect otherwise?

# ¿ May 29, 2017 03:27

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

Len posted:

They made combat faster paced I was kind of hoping they dropped it from 15 minutes of playing defend the point to anything else.

There are some new events and they are streamlined some. But they still turn into a circlejerk of get the gently caress out of the ground effect after a while. Really good rewards though so get ready to farm them!

# ¿ May 29, 2017 03:30

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

Len posted:

Yeah going by what I gathered from the beta forums before I stopped getting to read them they don't care about us at all.

Yeah, focused at new players. They aren't that interested in retaining old players.

quote:

The Company expects the majority of players after launch to be newcomers to the
game that have never been exposed to The Secret World before, but is also
working to make it worthwhile for as many veterans of The Secret World as
possible to continue playing Secret World Legends

Due to the high uncertainty regarding a free-to-play business models the Company
expects the development team to need to tweak the monetization mechanisms of
the game in the months following launch.

# ¿ May 29, 2017 03:57

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

Drinkfist posted:

How exactly is this a MO without the Massively part. Do you still see other players in the over world locations? In what way did they make this not an mmo anymore.

Limited the amount of people in a single instance of the overworld. Scaled down the majority of group content to be focused around 5 or less people.

# ¿ May 29, 2017 04:26

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

Richard M Nixon posted:

Ground floor. I started playing with a friend just a few months ago so we're waiting for the relaunch to get back in. I've enjoyed the beta so far, though I've stuck to Kingsmouth. They've made it more visually appealing but I hear that other zones didn't get the same treatment.

I can't say I'm a fan of the level restricted quests and the hand holding done by the main story, but I was doing every quest anyways so as long as the plot is intact, I guess it doesn't matter.

Fixed reticle combat works great in some games and I don't mind it, but man I wish they reworked the ui to actually play nice with it.

Also, ground floor first page. Let the excitement turn to disappointment in the first 20 pages.

There's excitement?

# ¿ May 29, 2017 16:01

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

Richard M Nixon posted:

Maybe add to the OP that Lairs are now late-endgame raids (presumably regional and world bosses are going to be fuckoff hard).

There are now daily login rewards like Guild Wars 2 where the days are simply "logged in x days total divided by the number of total rewards (x mod d)" and not "logged in x consecutive days".

Current rewards are:

Yeah once we know exact which pieces of endgame will be in at launch I'll add it. Right now we know scenarios, elites, and lairs but no idea about when we're getting nightmares and if the new Solomon Island raid will be in at launch or not. A quest got added for it this round but you can't click it to see the details.

Also new Blade is rad and will probably be the most played weapon by far. You could probably play it as a solo weapon it's so good.

Edit: This loving nudity thread. How the gently caress does it have the most posts of any thread on the forum? I hate everyone who plays this game.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 23:48 on May 29, 2017

# ¿ May 29, 2017 23:26

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

Drinkfist posted:

Did they remove that dumbass escalation debuff (Exposed) that made it so that only thing that mattered was that someone had escalation? There is also the leech life effects from Rifle that were pretty much required to kill Dr Klien on the bridge. A great deal of the boss fights are gonna need to be reworked if they changed the skills as heavy as they sound. If the Aux weapons are not in yet then they can't put in the raids because they pretty much require rocket jump for beginners to clear it.

Half the weapons have a 20 second cooldown ability to apply Exposed (single stack damage taken debuff now) and half the classes have a 20 second cooldown to apply Debilitated (single stack damage dealt debuff). Pistols has an elite that applies both. You can't stack leech that much any more. Even the good leech abilities now are only a few %. Many of the bosses have gotten reworked to account for the lack of debuffs/interrupts. However, we haven't seen how this translates to Nightmare yet.

# ¿ May 30, 2017 00:01

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

Probably not as much as it was. There are't really spammable debuffs anymore and most weapons are decent at single target and aoe. There will still be optimal setups that some people want but I don't think it will be weapon swap heavy like TSW.

It will also be pretty hard to weapon swap with the way upgrades and weapon expertise works.

# ¿ May 30, 2017 01:01

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

prefect posted:

Does this mean Kirsten Geary is gone?

No, all the faction leaders are still in and they still give you flavor text for missions. However, the faction versus faction missions like Parking Garage are gone. The missions you would get whenever you got a faction rank. Devs have been radio silent on why.

# ¿ May 30, 2017 12:32

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

Avalerion posted:

Great, making up character concepts in these games tends to be fun. Shame about no pistols/fists gun kata starting class but a bunch of those combos look neat.

The first weapon unlock is pretty cheap: 20k for actives, 20k for passives. That's only 4 days of challenges. So you could swap to pistols/fists pretty quickly.

Or find some cheap boxed copy of TSW before SWL releases and then you unlock all weapons.

# ¿ May 30, 2017 15:51

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

There's now a 3 person story-mode for dungeons that doesn't really require a trinity. It's basically face roll to see the story.

# ¿ May 30, 2017 18:03

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

DancingShade posted:

I hope the new faces are good enough that I can make a TSW version of Zoe or Kian from Dreamfall Chapters.

They've been steadily adding more each phase do the are a decent number of faces now. Females have some good ones. Males not as much especially with how bad beards currently look.

Arivia posted:

So are there still a bunch of standard MMO fetch/kill quests mixed in with all the really good stuff?

There are. Though most of them still have some sort of story. Kingsmouth is probably the place with the most traditional quests like get some supplies, find survivors, and kill a bunch of zombies.

One of the unfortunate results of the new level system is that you have to do most quests in each zone to stay ahead of the level gate on the story missions. Doing all of Kingsouth puts you about 1 level ahead of the starting level requirements in Savage Coast. All of Coast is 2-3 ahead of Blue Mountain. This means you'll probably end up dking some quests you hate. If you do almost everything from Kingsmouth to Sun God, you'll hit 50 and can do Transylvania as endgame. If you go to Trans before 50 (I think 45 is the requirement for Besieged), it can be a little rough.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 12:34 on May 31, 2017

# ¿ May 31, 2017 12:28

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

angerbeet posted:

Ugh I'm going to end up playing this, how large is the client download clocking in at?

43 GB. That might just be because beta though.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2017 02:56

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

Dreadwroth posted:

Man they are so bad and lazy the menu still says "Skill Wheel" on it, kill any hope this isn't going to be a gigantic shitshow.
Also unlocking the first additional weapon after the free two first ones is 60,000 marks, I can see that taking a long loving time.

There menu hasn't been changed yet. They have like one guy doing the UI dev and he is rolling out a few changes each phase. There is still a lot of placeholder poo poo though.

60k is a bug that affected some characters, especially those from previous phases. The last accurate numbers i knew were 20k for 2 unlocks, 30k for 2 unlocks, 40k for 2, 60k for 2... not sure after that.

There probably isn't much point in even trying to unlock actives for more than 4 total weapons. Passives absolutely for the Stat boosts. But between weapon mastery and the upgrade system, you'd be gimping yourself pretty hard by trying to use more than 3 or 4 weapons.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Jun 1, 2017

# ¿ Jun 1, 2017 23:28

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

quote:

Hey guys!

I�d like to take a moment to thank everyone for helping us test out Secret World Legends. We have come a long way since we started beta earlier this year and we would not be where we are without all the feedback and testing from you! So, huge thanks from us to you

On Monday, we will be will be migrating to the launch servers/database which requires us to wipe all existing characters. This will be the last character wipe before we launch Secret World Legends. This downtime may be substantially longer than most so check the forums for updates/announcements on the downtime. We will also be inviting a lot more players to the beta so you should see a lot of new people playing.

A new version will be patched out on Monday that includes Shambala, the �Aurum economy�, and a reduction in mob time-to-kill for mid to late solo content. All characters will receive a rather large amount of Aurum to test the various features/UIs that use it. There will be a few other fixes but we will post those on Monday.

Thanks again for all the hard work and enjoy the weekend!

# ¿ Jun 3, 2017 01:02

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

Nita posted:

Is there any word on what cosmetics will be transferred? I have a bunch of unused funny money that I want to spend on unicorn heads and such.

Post #2:

quote:

Q: What transfers from TSW?

A: All store cosmetics including those that came from bags. Veteran/End of Month rewards. Achievement related items DO NOT transfer. You have to earn them again. No confirmation on whether clothing from vendors transfers or not.

Also before anyone asks the dumb question that was asked so many times on the beta forums:

Nophex posted:

And to clear up some confusion, beta characters won't carry on to the live servers when we launch. You'll have to start over again when we officially release.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jun 3, 2017

# ¿ Jun 3, 2017 04:07

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

Tallgeese posted:

Is that official or?

I'm going to be upset if I lose my Pale Horse.

We aren't sure about drops or purchases for pax yet. They've said in general that achievement related cosmetics won't transfer and people will have to get them again.

The Pale Horse is a weird one because it's a drop and from a bag and a temporary event. So who the gently caress knows.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2017 16:45

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

Closed beta has been updated with the Launch patch (or pretty close to):

quote:

Along with the migration, we've also pushed out an update, which brings a few things of note:

* Shambala is now available! Players can queue for Shambala from the group finder starting at level 10.
* Lockboxes will now start dropping, and can be opened using a Cache Key.
* More items are now available for purchase using Aurum, including AP, SP, Cache Keys, and Fusion upgrade items! Each of these items are available for purchase from from their respective UIs.
* Reduced the fight duration for solo content in the mid and late areas of the game.

Lastly, we've given all accounts another round of 1000 Aurum for use on the Exchange, and for some of the new items available for purchase.

We look forward to hearing your feedback, and thank you all for your efforts as we near the launch of SWL!

Off to a great start:

Patron Bonuses are garbage:

Looks like faction missions are back in.

AP/SP Purchase:

Lots of UI changes. Every skill has a new icon.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Jun 6, 2017

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 00:38

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

General Maximus posted:

I dunno about garbage, the free lockbox key every day covers the cost of the patron status on its own if you play often enough to get most of them in the 30 days. Assuming they're $1 worth of aurum each and patron is $15 for 30 days like such things are in most games, you'd only need to play every other day for patron to be better value than buying keys outright.

Yeah, after spending some of the test aurum on keys, I agree that the free lockbox key is actually really good. You get 2 distillates that give you either 4k or 25k item xp. For reference, 4k item xp is 40 items. That's enough to get a green item from 1 to 20 or a blue item from 1 to 10.

Anything you get lucky enough to get after that is just gravy.

Len posted:

Do the keys stack? Or do I get x per day and gently caress you if you want to bank them?

Yes they stack but I don't know what the max is. I bought like 5 with the free aurum.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 02:40

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

Rookersh posted:

Faction missions are back in? Sweet.

Asked a friend to do a runthrough of missing quests outside of those, and it sounds like it's mainly just those really boring repeatable gather quests I ignored anyways. She couldn't find the laundry quest though, was that also removed? Near the fire station in Kingsmouth, where there's a phone on the ground and it ends with Geary telling you not to stick your nose in Illuminati business? Maybe I just described it poorly to her, or maybe she just wasn't high enough level to see it yet.

That quest was pretty banal, so if it's still there, I imagine most of the smaller story quests are as well.

Laundry quest is still in. So is squid. The only things that I haven't seen in this phase is the postal quest to deliver to Norma (the main story replaces this), the pirate one way out in the water, one of the quests on pyramid point (though it was so forgettable that I can't remember which). A few side quests have been moved (severed hard, trapped survivor, postal truck). There's probably a few other dumb sidequests that are so forgettable that they are better off gone.

Doorknob Slobber posted:

are they updating the graphics at all? My biggest gripe with the game was how stiff all the animations were.

Lots of animation updates, lots of changes to the ui (icons look professional and less like something they put together in 2 minutes on paint). The engine is the same but some updates were made to rending, shadows, etc. The animations still aren't amazing but they are significantly better in almost every case. There's still some floatiness to combat but it's better.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 22:36

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

Empress Theonora posted:

Do faces look less awful than they used to?

Worse because of less options. Beards are awful.

Pryce posted:

So, someone has never built an F2P game before, I guess. The whole point of the bigger packages is to offer a bit of a discount so that you're incentivized to buy the biggest one with the best value. This is...not that.

Well, I would imagine that the RMT discount comes from buying the Aurum (the gold bars) and not from the item transactions with it. All of the things you can buy with Aurum are priced like that where more does not equal less per unit.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 23:38

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

The relaunch will be a success. They brought back the Mankini.

Launch outfit found:

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Jun 7, 2017

# ¿ Jun 7, 2017 00:45

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

Ossipago posted:

I have that bike in TSW. Does that mean it transfers? GOTY if so.

Not sure. I bought it with some of the free cash shop currency they gave us. If you bought it in TSW it probably transfers.

Mr Hootington posted:

I got a beta code. lol doesn't this come out in 2 weeks?

Yeah.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2017 03:01

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

Mr Hootington posted:

What a joke. And the character probably gets wiped. I'll wait now.

It definitely gets wiped. You can give the key away though, it's not linked to your email or anything.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2017 03:43

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

General Maximus posted:

If it works like similar things in other games do, you can claim a key each day and they'll sit in a stack (Most games I've played that have them they stack to 100 or so?) in your inventory until you use them. But if you don't claim it on any given day, you don't get to then claim two the next day. The one you didn't claim is just gone, lost forever. Ultimately, it's mostly meant to keep you logging in each day.

On the other hand if Funcom decided to be different and do their own random thing, then who the hell knows.

You get it as part of your daily login rewards so this is probably the case.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2017 13:19

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

BexGu posted:

For any one playing the beta are there any fun combo of weapons besides the starter suggested classes? Are the outfit sets for unlocking weapon combo still in?

I haven't gotten to test much other than the starters due to the frequent wipes and the time it takes to unlock and level others. Blade, Hammer, and Shotgun are all really fun weapons and any combination of them would be good. You can actually get away with a blade only build that works really well (because of the special effect of blade). Blood was interesting for people who like casters. I liked AR when it was the first weapon I played but after playing any other weapon I can't recommend it any more. Chaos is interesting but I didn't do a lot of testing there. Pistols seems strong with all the debuffs so Pistol/Hammer, Pistol/Blade, or Pistol/Chaos will probably be strong dps builds.

And yes the outfits are still in.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2017 16:42

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

Rookersh posted:

Would Pistols/Shotgun be worthwhile or no?

Also who all plans to jump in on release vs Steam release? Seems like it'd be a safer bet to jump in at Steam release, so that's when I'm coming back.

You could probably run a pretty strong debuff build with pistols and shotguns. Shotgun is a tanuking weapon now so one ability line is pure tanking (5 abilities in a line), one is utility, and one is damage. The damage line has really strong single target and AoE. The shells give you a lot of versatility on whether you wnat to heal, dot, or debuff the target.

In addition to the Shell mechanic, shotguns has some really good passives like Evens and Odds: When you have an even number of shells remaining, 15% bonus damage to your next finisher; when you have an odd number remaining, 70% bonus damage to your next basic attack. Combine that with some other passives and the right shell type and you poo poo out damage.

I solo'd one of the level 15 Kingsmouth group bosses last night because of the shotgun healing and damage.

I'm probably going to go Shotgun/Hammer or Shotgun/Blade at launch.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2017 19:12

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

BexGu posted:

Is there any place to read up on the skills for each weapon? Or is it basically just wait until release before a skill builder is released.

There's nowhere that has them due to NDA.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2017 23:24

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

There are definitely less trash abilities. Each weapon gets three skill lines now. One line is pure damage, the other improves the weapon special effects, the last is more about the role of the weapon (damage/tank/heal). For passives, there are several lines that improve abilities, several for role, and several for weapon special effect.

You will probably change builds depending on whether you need more self-sustain, debuffs, role change, etc within each weapon. Some also to playstyle. I haven't done a tone of testing of build versus build but there is good variety. There are very few abilities now that I think are absolute trash.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2017 22:55

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

Cabals are now cross-faction. Funcompetence was blocked last time I tested it.

Also beta update just went live. Caches were nerfed for anyone under 50. Ghost was updated. And everyone that was in game before this phase got Patron status.

Edit: They have given Raging Shot for shotgun the worst loving sound effect. It sounds like a dog coughing.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Jun 10, 2017

# ¿ Jun 10, 2017 00:07

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

Tallgeese posted:

I can't imagine that Patron status is permanent.

Just for the beta.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2017 00:32

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

General Maximus posted:

If you're a grandmaster in TSW it supposedly is, otherwise I'd imagine it's just a renamed subscription.

Correct. Everyone who is in this beta phase that was in previous phases gets Patron though.

Edit: Investigation missions now give bags that have vanity items in them. I've gotten shoes and an eye patch so far.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Jun 10, 2017

# ¿ Jun 10, 2017 03:22

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:19

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

Who feels like seeing some crazy obsessive beta posts? Or maybe just one crazy post:

quote:

#1 Character creation: Alright Funcom, what's the deal. Why does a Templar character, which is from London, look asian. I don't care if you are an Asian Developer, or that 90%+ of all games come from Asia, at least make character creation realistic if you are going to have characters based in different regions of the world. The only Asian characters in this game should be Dragons...period. Plus, you did a reboot, yet the character creation got WORSE. It went full potato. The options for hair are atrocious. The faces are ridiculous. The fact that everything is Asian is just stupid, and the characters look the same, if not worse than TSW. Plus, you screwed up one of the greatest parts of TSW.

quote:

#2 Class System: WTF! Part of what made TSW great was there was no classes and no leveling. Players loved that, and what did you do....you turned the skill system into some jacked up version of the "wheel" which was amazing, and you added leveling into the game. Now 80% of the quests that used to be there don't even show up until your a certain level. Why? This didn't need to be changed, the old system was perfect. If new players are too stupid to read the wheel system skills and figure out what goes good with what then they need to not play the game anyway. So many games screw up the games for their true players by catering to fucktards who have no common sense and no concept of how to actually play a game. Congratulations Funcom, you have now thrown your game into the trash and lost all the true TSW fans. Need an example of how badly you screwed up, look at what happened to Ultima Online and WoW. They sold out, started catering to noobs who don't understand how MMO's should work and don't want to work hard to earn their gear and places in raids.

quote:

#3 New upgrade system: Okay, I actually was digging this new system. Until I realized a really major flaw with it. It, like the new class system/skill system caters to new players who don't want to work hard. The old system was perfect. You had to get purples from raids/dungeons/and quests, then farm...GRIND out the BB to get it upgrade, plus go farm glyphs and signets until you got the right one just to get the gear good enough. Now, everyone on their dog can get the same level of gear for absolutely no hard work whatsoever. You took the fun and satisfaction out of the game for those of us who worked hard to get our gear up to max and have the best glyphs and signets possible. Just like WoW, who now hands out epics/legendaries like candy to every player who logs in for an hour a week and has ruined the game for all the people who put hard work into getting geared enough to do normal raids just so they could spend months waiting for that perfect drop that would catapult them to heroic level and repeat.

quote:

Anyone who agrees with me, I'm going to be giving Black Desert Online a try.

quote:

The fact that everything is Asian is just stupid

quote:

I'm going to be giving Black Desert Online a try.

Saltpowered fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Jun 10, 2017

# ¿ Jun 10, 2017 05:15

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

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