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StoryTime posted:Hey wow did they actually make this better? I remember trying this out back in the day, but while the setting was really cool and they had good quest ideas, the combat and everything else was just extremely MMO in a very bad way. Having played both... no. I much preferred the combat in the old version, since you could re-spec instantly and you had many more options that you could use to pull through on tough fights. Now it's too simple and if you die then you just need to grind more. Of course I wouldn't mind a modded private server with the old system that lets you stack more abilities on the status bar, so you could just go all out with "restricted" combinations of skills and just see how far you can push it. I think I got through all of the first area without ever upgrading any items just by juggling skills on the old version.
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May 11, 2021 13:34
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rastilin posted:you could re-spec instantly
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May 11, 2021 13:37
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Pilchenstein posted:Unless I'm misremembering, both games are identical in this regard - you can't ever refund spent points but you eventually unlock all the skills/abilities and you can swap what's on your bar at any time (outside of combat). That's true. Maybe I just have rose colored glasses. I remember mixing abilities on my hot bar pretty easily before. When I tried to get back into it, the system was generally the same, but I remember thinking there wasn't as much flexibility in the extent of which abilities you could chain together at the same time... and that all of the really fun powers were missing. Specifically, it was pretty easy to get some screen-clearing AOE attacks early on and just spam them, which made leveling pretty fun since you could enjoy the world and just abuse the fights. Now fighting is much more of a slog since you can't cheese nearly as much, you have to tediously grind through every, single, encounter... and they're just mobs that respawn instantly, so what's the point?
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May 11, 2021 14:45
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I bounced pretty hard off this game due in major part of just not grokking the crafting system. Wonder how that changed in this version.
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May 11, 2021 15:11
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Oh yeah, I remember the crafting system the game had. Not sure if I ever made heads or tails about how the gently caress that thing worked or not.
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May 11, 2021 15:30
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The way you deftly dodge killing rare monsters is really ticking off my OCD, they are even clearly marked on-map for the most part. Also, this game has addon support, akin to WoW. There aren't that many currently updated ones, but one of the most useful ones is called "Lorehound", and it points out lores as you walk by. Very useful if you don't want to go combing yourself. Regallion fucked around with this message at 17:01 on May 11, 2021 |
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May 11, 2021 16:57
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StoryTime posted:Hey wow did they actually make this better? My personal hot take is that any improvements made were marginal, but now the game is also just jam packed with F2P MMO poo poo that dunks the immersion directly into a toilet. If the only change had been to the combat system/controls/removal of the Aegis System, I'd say yeah, it's hugely improved, but as it is, it's very much a "one step forward, two steps back" deal.
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May 11, 2021 21:33
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I maintain there was nothing much wrong with AEGIS... if and only if you used the auto-AEGIS mods.
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May 11, 2021 21:52
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Cooked Auto posted:Oh yeah, I remember the crafting system the game had. Not sure if I ever made heads or tails about how the gently caress that thing worked or not. I didn't and I beat the game twice  . It never seemed to matter, so I mostly ignored it.Tallgeese posted:I maintain there was nothing much wrong with AEGIS... if and only if you used the auto-AEGIS mods. If it needs third-party support to function, there's something wrong with it 
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May 13, 2021 03:04
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Funny story about the old crafting system, when I basically "cashed out" my entire TSW character to get more clothes to transfer to Legends, the overwhelming majority of that money came from having just a ton of Pure (the highest level) crafting materials and runes in my inventory. If it weren't for the fact that everything else about my character was exactly the way I'd left it, I'd have been worried my account had been hijacked by some farming botnet, but apparently I was just carrying it around. Of course, rather than shrug, I just looked up how crafting worked in the old TSW and now it makes sense. You needed a ton of materials to get much of anything done. So, the way it worked was you had two types of materials, elements and runes, which came in several different quality levels (you could combine a stack of five materials to get one unit of the next level up). Elements were used to make equipment, with Metal being used for all weapons and Fire, Water, and Dust used for Talismans (the resultant Talismans would have stats geared towards DPS, Tanking, and Healing, respectively, based on which element you used). There was no mixing and matching, and the way it worked was you placed the materials on a grid in the crafting window in the shape of the item you wanted (or you could put an item in the "output" slot to disassemble it), taking seven to twelve units depending on the item you wanted. Runes were used four at a time to make Glyphs, which only had one pattern for construction, but here you could mix-and-match, and the combination of runes used would determine which Glyph you got, and Glyphs could be applied to your gear to provide a bonus to a specific stat (like more critical hits or higher block chance, etc.). More interesting, I think, was Gadget crafting, which let you craft reusable items that provided temporary bonuses, and came in two flavors, Stimulants (which just gave you an effect immediately, like a consumable, and could be made with either runes or elements, but it had to be a single uniform type) and Kickbacks (which could take up to two different runes, and would apply a temporary effect that whenever X condition was fulfilled, you'd get Y benefit, such as gaining Evade rating whenever you hit with an attack). This let you fine-tune your abilities a little further, beyond just the stuff you picked up with your AP/SP. Oh, right, you also needed consumable toolkits to assemble anything, and there were different kits for every type of item (though, mercifully, you could disassemble stuff and "level up" materials freely, IIRC). Anyway, as you might intuit, the process was very involved and a huge pain in the rear end, as interesting as it might seem. Also, for all the hoops you gotta jump through, the system's pretty inflexible and limited, at least as far as weapon/talisman crafting goes. Honestly, only the Kickbacks were at all interesting for me, since you got to choose two things during the crafting process and it allowed for some interesting synergies. EclecticTastes fucked around with this message at 08:14 on May 13, 2021 |
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May 13, 2021 08:11
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Well, gently caress it. Reinstalled the game, but couldn't dust off my old account since it was tied to an email address that no longer exists. Game has pretty bad framerate issues, at least on my computer. Also only one character slot to start, which is a pain. I used to be very in favor of the Templars, but with this LP covering the Templar story I may as well see about one of the others. I have, over the last few days, watched a no-commentary walkthrough of the spinoff game Moons of Madness on youtube. Pretty good little horror game set in the Secret World universe, except you're no Bee-infused hero and you're on Mars. Edit: The Dragon intro hasn't changed. To wit, the person knocking on your door has had his mouth sewn shut. He zaps you with magic and you fall unconscious, waking up as a van dumps you out the back in an alley in Seoul. After following a trail of glowing butterflies to a cheap motel, a drunk college professor gives you a quick rundown on chaos theory and a prostitute sexually assaults you (the PC's consent is, uh, dubious) and at the moment of orgasm your character has the flashback to the Tokyo incident. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 14:26 on May 14, 2021 |
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May 13, 2021 18:39
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Cythereal posted:Edit: The Dragon intro hasn't changed. To wit, the person knocking on your door has had his mouth sewn shut. He zaps you with magic and you fall unconscious, waking up as a van dumps you out the back in a valley in Seoul. After following a trail of glowing butterflies to a cheap motel, a drunk college professor gives you a quick rundown on chaos theory and a prostitute sexually assaults you (the PC's consent is, uh, dubious) and at the moment of orgasm your character has the flashback to the Tokyo incident. 
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May 14, 2021 06:13
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Yeah, I remember there being a lot of discussion in the community about the intro for the Dragon and consent and sexuality and what's great is that Funcom did absolutely loving nothing to address any of it because that might have cost money. Oh, wait, not great, what's the other thing? Ah, right, embarrassing and shameful. Like, Dragon is my personal favorite faction because I like the idea of strategically employing chaos theory, but that intro is pretty yikes and betrays that Funcom was considering literally nobody's perspective besides straight men during the development process, and not even in a healthy way, but in the toxic masculine sense of "no real man would ever not want to get head from a beautiful stranger". It's the biggest black mark on the game's writing, as far as I'm aware.
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May 14, 2021 06:25
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I mean, yes, this is an urban fantasy setting and tantric magic being a thing isn't entirely out of place. And yes, the Dragon are an Asian-based faction and Daoism has a lot of weird sex philosophy/magic stuff. But still. That is the kind of thing that probably shouldn't be in a general audiences game at all, and needs a deft and delicate hand in writing if you're going to so much as talk about it. It absolutely should not be something dumped on a player five minutes into the game without warning or the player's (and player character's) explicit consent.
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May 14, 2021 15:55
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On an unrelated note, fun funcom fact - Andy B the community manager is actually a goon. I would not be surprised if he is not the only one.
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May 14, 2021 16:01
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Kingsmouth pt2
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May 16, 2021 05:40
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The fact that you don't talk to people is just regrettable. Just about every quest-giver NPC and a few non-quest-giver NPCs have a bunch of diiialogue if you care to listen and it ranges from character building to worldbuilding to just fun stuff. Consider showing that off? As for fusion you can do that in-video, just be aware that it can be done a LOT faster, by using right-click to put items in and out of the fusion boxes, you can fuse an entire inventory in like 10 seconds once you get the hang of it. You can also use auto-sort so you don't have to pick out items manually. I can also recommend installing the auto-sprint addon. It's not mandatory but it helps a lot with not pressing X all the loving time. Fun fact - for STORY dungeons, you can make a private team and that ignores all level restrictions. Also even level 50 story dungeons still only take 3 people and can be done with 2. Regallion fucked around with this message at 12:02 on May 16, 2021 |
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May 16, 2021 11:40
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Regallion posted:I can also recommend installing the auto-sprint addon.
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May 16, 2021 12:37
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Regallion posted:The fact that you don't talk to people is just regrettable. Just about every quest-giver NPC and a few non-quest-giver NPCs have a bunch of diiialogue if you care to listen and it ranges from character building to worldbuilding to just fun stuff. Consider showing that off? Ah, but the reason I don't talk to people is stated in the LP: so you'll play the game!
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May 16, 2021 16:29
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Mycroft Holmes posted:Ah, but the reason I don't talk to people is stated in the LP: so you'll play the game! What happened to "we play games, so you don't have to" ?
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May 16, 2021 17:51
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OutofSight posted:What happened to "we play games, so you don't have to" ? That slogan is a relic of the old days, before the Something Awful Revolution. Now, we are free from the yoke of Lowtax, free to follow Comrade Jeffrey's example and chart the future of Let's Play on our own terms 
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May 16, 2021 22:34
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The single-player RPG thing really isn't that unusual. SWTOR comes to mind.
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May 17, 2021 02:54
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And in both cases it felt like they should've made a CRPG instead of an MMO but didn't because MMO's were really in vogue during time of development. Might be more true for TOR than Secret Worlds. 
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May 17, 2021 10:55
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Cooked Auto posted:And in both cases it felt like they should've made a CRPG instead of an MMO but didn't because MMO's were really in vogue during time of development. That reminds me of a joke a friend of mine made back when The Secret World had just come out, he said The Secret World was the best single-player game of 2012, and Borderlands 2 was the best MMO of 2012. It was certainly a year for games that seemed confused about their genre.
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May 17, 2021 11:53
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Pretty sure I made several comments back when I played TSW that it was a great RPG that was unfortunately, or inexplicably, made as an MMO. It certainly never had the numbers out in the field to make it feel like one and the fact that enemies respawned usually felt like a second thought. Honestly TSW would've been much, much better if it had just been a single-player RPG because it sure as hell feels like it's built like one a lot of the time.
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May 17, 2021 12:16
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Kingsmouth pt3
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Jun 1, 2021 02:38
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To be fair to hammers, you can also use the dressing room to apply skins to it, some of which are very medieval if you are into that. Also you can run all story mode dungeons solo by checking the "Private team" box. If you NEED someone to help you for later dungeons, i can lead you through any dungeon at a pretty brisk pace if needed. Regallion fucked around with this message at 12:26 on Jun 1, 2021 |
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Jun 1, 2021 12:01
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Regallion posted:To be fair to hammers, you can also use the dressing room to apply skins to it, some of which are very medieval if you are into that. I might take you up on that with my lvl50 main, so I can get that sweet, sweet lore.
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Jun 1, 2021 22:57
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The puzzles definitely are impressively done; I particularly liked they used game mechanics (i.e. dying to see the next clues and the emote systems) fairly decently in the design. But if anything though they might be a little too good since as you mentioned everybody hits the wiki to solve them. No surprise really, there's a ridiculous amount of real world knowledge needed apparently and the game seems to suffer D&D's problem with puzzles - namely that it's too easy to write one that makes sense to the writer but not the person trying to solve the puzzle and if you don't grasp the logic you're screwed. Internet legend Illuminati priest is definitely a funny idea (the shitposting must be terrifying stuff indeed), also justifies him helping members of other factions de facto rob the Illuminati's graves since he has just enough info to be a true idiot. I do love how the Templars remark the stuff you take was likely stolen from them by the Illuminati in the first place, and thanks to how the modern ones have embraced being bastards the historical murder of one of their leaders is only worth using to poo poo-talk them at the next faction meeting (and possibly wouldn't work then because they lack shame). I assume Illuminati players get some comments from their faction on the stuff they dig up here (mocking remarks most likely from what little I recall of my play attempt). Do the Dragons and/or Templars get similar zones/quests in different areas where your faction has more to say because it's related to something they've done previously? The main bad guy does need a better beard to hit evil sorcerer tier. And boy, as a bad guy he needs to learn a lot about casually antagonizing allies against him by being contemptuous, little miss sex kitten's inevitable betrayal is practically signposted now. I do like that the characterization is pretty clear that she's actually smart under the "sexy" facade; wonder if she'll pull a "replace the big bad as the final enemy" here, or just a "smart enough to hit the road when the PC comes and avoid getting beaten".
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Jun 2, 2021 00:58
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From what I remember there aren't any faction specific questions in the various game zones and the game will tell you it's time to head back to your respective headquarters for the faction specific quest. Regarding the last part I'll just say you're going to be in for a pleasant surprise. The first zone actually builds up a lot of plot that is going to be relevant much, much later on.
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Jun 2, 2021 01:13
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MadDogMike posted:I assume Illuminati players get some comments from their faction on the stuff they dig up here (mocking remarks most likely from what little I recall of my play attempt). Do the Dragons and/or Templars get similar zones/quests in different areas where your faction has more to say because it's related to something they've done previously? While it's mentioned that each faction's unique quests all generally start (and end) in their respective hub areas, I'll add that the post-mission texts for the Dragon are almost universally about how their chaos theory models let them manipulate poo poo through your involvement to obtain vague long-term advantages above and beyond whatever the Templars and Illuminati were squabbling over, or how some small detail within the quest was actually very important to their long-term plans, etc. More generally, for post-quest commentary, Illuminati tend to focus a lot on immediate gains and generally being the most overt "winner" of a situation, Templars tend to focus on moral victories and just being better people than the other factions (whatever that means in the context of TSW), and the Dragon is all about smugly declaring victory due to indistinct strategic benefits that are supposedly worth more than short-term gains. This is another way the writing is really well-executed. The writers clearly understood the reasons a player would choose a given faction based on how each presents itself, and the way those factions' quests are written reinforces that, tailoring the experience to the players' assumed preferences.
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Jun 2, 2021 02:38
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If you're desperate to know what the other factions say on mission complete, there is a wiki. However, you will most likely be tempted to just read everything before I get around to doing it.
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Jun 2, 2021 03:19
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The ones I remember the most (and screenshoted in some cases) were the ones where Kirsten is just riffing on things with thinly veiled glee. As well as just going full in on "yeah so and so conspiracy is real, deal with it".
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Jun 2, 2021 11:00
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On the subject of more TSW content, there's been a couple of spinoff horror games. The Park (2015) is a prequel exploring the backstory of an area we haven't seen yet in the LP and a minor character. Moons of Madness (2019) is a sci-fi game set decades after this game on Mars, in an Orochi Group research outpost. Haven't played The Park, but Moons of Madness was a pretty good little horror game.
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Jun 2, 2021 16:49
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The Park made for a decent playthrough, though I did prefer the execution of Moons of Mars.
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Jun 2, 2021 20:34
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tbh I cannot wait till we get to the park so I can rip into it hate it so much
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Jun 9, 2021 03:18
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what, you don't like the Boogeyman?
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Jun 9, 2021 07:42
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Mycroft Holmes posted:what, you don't like the Boogeyman?  Okay, we’ve built a game about the weird and supernatural that pulls on a mixture of ancient myths, obscure folklore, urban legends, and our own mythos that combines Lovecraft with biblical themes, something utterly unique and unlike anything else on the market. What do we add next! I know! Let’s throw in a haunted amusement park that hits every cliche right down its creator having a name a couple letters off a Scooby Doo villain, then tie it into the lore just enough that it only clashes thematically. Perfect! And we can promote it instead of everything else we’ve made and make a spin-off based on it, the least original part of the game! Wait, I was joking, that runs against everything we’ve - APPROVED! Let’s get it storyboarded.
Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Jun 9, 2021 |
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Jun 9, 2021 14:40
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Falconier111 posted:
Eh, if you're familiar enough with the genre, everything in TSW can be seen as derivative, since each major plot point is paying homage to something, and this is never more blatant than on Solomon Island. Each area is basically a little theme park based on a different kind of American horror writing. Kingsmouth is packed to the gills with Lovecraft references, Savage Coast is literally a patchwork of Stephen King references with a dash of modern internet-based horror (seriously, each sub-area is based on a different Stephen King novel with a slight twist; the amusement park is basically just It combined with Slender Man*), and Blue Mountain is a mix of cryptids and indigenous ghost stories. *This is also what The Park was made, it was naked trend-chasing, trying to cash in on the success of Slender.
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Jun 9, 2021 23:53
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I mean one of the characters in second zone is a successful horror-writer.
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