The Secret World

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Dibria
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The Secret World

Postby Dibria » 21 May 2012, 12:20

So...
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Anyone planning to give this a shot?

I preordered it blind just based on it being a Funcom game (they did make the Longest Journey and Dreamfall after all) and have been impressed by the beta's even if they are a little buggy at the moment.

The game seems to have mixed a lot of other things into the WoW clone formula and I'm impressed, the modern day setting is interesting and the central story seems to be up to Funcom Standards.
Last edited by Dibria on 21 May 2012, 14:26, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Merrymaker_Mortalis » 21 May 2012, 14:03

GW2 has stolen my soul sorry :(
I have interest in it however.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Fenrir » 21 May 2012, 23:28

Same as Merry at the minute sadly. Though it does certainly look interesting and I'd definitely consider giving it a shot at some point. The plot interests me most of all. Plus....can't really go wrong if it's by the people who made The Longest Journey.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Merrymaker_Mortalis » 22 May 2012, 00:58

I'm sceptic despite my interest. Mainly because I haven't play any of their franchises so I am not lead along by blind optimism.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Exachix » 22 May 2012, 02:03

It looks interesting. Anarchy Online (Their MMO before Age of Conan.. I think it's still running *scuttles off to have a look*) was alot of good fun, I should play Dreamfall and the Longest Journey.

Any information on what The Secret World is about?
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Dibria » 22 May 2012, 04:32

My favourite quote on what the game is about goes along the lines of "all those conspiracies you hear? You know the ones, secret societies run the world, Asian mystics with strange powers, the government is hiding secret weapons research? ...you know the ones? They're all true, every last one of them."

There's a ton of plot info in their trailers etc over at darkdaysarecoming.com - from the beta weekends it certainly looks interesting.

Even if you decide not to play it I [highly recomend playing Dreamfall and tLJ - they ate some of the finest adventure games ever made.

@Merrymaker_mortalis it's not blind optimism it's track record, like buying the album of a band you like before you hear anything off it, sure you occasionally get burned but chances are youll like it as much as there other stuff, after all, isn't that why your getting Guild Wars 2?
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Geoff_B » 22 May 2012, 04:40

The Longest Journey was great. I didn't like Dreamfall though. Maybe it was that action-combat element they put into it.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Dibria » 22 May 2012, 04:48

Granted Dreamfall had the problem of both Terrible (with a capital T) controls and some crowbarred in fighting game style combat sequences but it was primarily about problem solving and the plot, both of which were excellent.

Also you only had to do those fights maybe 3-4 times in the whole game.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Geoff_B » 22 May 2012, 04:54

Anyway, the big question I have is this: why are Funcom not doing a sequel to Dreamfall?
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Dibria » 22 May 2012, 04:59

They are, 'Dreamfall Chapters' the episodic sequel to tLJ and Dreamfall has been free lit but the team is otherwise engaged working on the Secret World, Dreamfall Chapters will enter production once the team is finished with the Secret World.

Or so goes the official line anyway, I have mixed feelings, if the Secret Workd is a success then the team may just end up creating more content for it for the foreseeable future, if it flops there's a good chance it will take Funcom with it.

Basically it looks like it will either be a looooooooooong wait or never.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Merrymaker_Mortalis » 22 May 2012, 08:13

@Dibria

That's what I meant. I just put a negative spin on everything I type on the internet, I can't help it. I think I pay more attention to things not quite living up to expectation than things that live up to it.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Dibria » 22 May 2012, 10:29

I didn't assume you were being deliberately provocative but I couldn't leave it be - them be fightin' words.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Dave-O_Boy » 22 May 2012, 18:09

I played a bit of the closed beta and honestly hated it. It feels really old. I will say that it has some nice music, UI, and world/monster design, but the gameplay itself was not fun or interesting. Especially after playing the GW2 open beta.

It's basically an old fashioned MMORPG with some interesting basis that doesn't quite pull it off. It's a shame because if it had more active combat, better controls, and nicer looking models I would have enjoyed it.

OF course, that's all closed beta stuff where they were testing server loads (I believe) so for I know is that the final game might be very different. However judging from the beta forums I didn't get that impression.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Dibria » 23 May 2012, 04:45

The game play doesn't feel to be any worse or better than any other MMO to me, the responsiveness is comparable to WoW or the Old Republic and the combo system is one of the better Implimentations I've seen in an MMO. Fast changing between classes is nice and the ability stacks are clear and simple to use.

I never had any interest in Guild Wars so I can't compare there.

Models wise I can only assume its improved since you played, I have only played one better looking MMO and that's Final Fantasy XIV, I hear Tera is pretty but I haven't looked into it. The Secret World certainly competes with the Old Republic in visuals, plus if you can run it on max settings the draw distance is amazing, you can see other players hundreds of in game metres away.

But it's what you like I guess, everyone here seems giddy over Guild Wars 2 and I don't really have any interest in that at all.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby ANeMzero » 23 May 2012, 10:38

I had some fun with the first beta weekend, but the patcher seems to do weird things to my router (as many things do) which caused it to start refusing connections to any web server that wasn't secured (https://).

Being that circumstances restrain me from being able to reboot the router manually, I couldn't really play much as I was unwilling to lose internet access for an indeterminate amount of time after playing.

I'm certain this is more the routers fault than the games, but still, it makes me hesitant to invest any real interest in the game.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Dibria » 23 May 2012, 11:29

Fair enough, I've not played as much as I would like due to the combination of work leaving me exhausted and the client freezes - they've gotten better since the first beta weekend I played but they're still there.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Dave-O_Boy » 23 May 2012, 11:58

When I played it was last week.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Dibria » 23 May 2012, 12:07

Ah miscommunication there - if you played a beta weekend those aren't closed betas they're open, when you said you'd played closed beta I assumed you had played a while ago.

In which case I can only assume your issue with the models is due to your system, as I said before graphically it's one of the better looking MMOs, that's pretty objective to judge as well. Watched some footage of Guild Wars 2 and I have to say it is probably prettier, but the difference is not massive, the aesthetics are different though, the secret world is going for a grimier darker look which shows off the engine less than Guild Wars 2's bright colour palette.

Gameplay wise I'll just have to disagree, it's not a fantastically innovative system but it's responsive and combat is enjoyable enough.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Dave-O_Boy » 23 May 2012, 14:31

No. There's a separate closed beta going on as well. I didn't pre-order. I got in by volunteering. It uses a different client and build. As for my comment on the models, their polycount was similar to the original Deus-Ex (aka pretty blocky) and I assume they were placeholder.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby empath » 24 May 2012, 16:51

Funcom wrote:Please note that The Secret War uses Facebook to power its social networking features and fuel the battle for the power to control the world. A Facebook account is required in order to participate.

:|

Several years of patient waiting rendered an utter waste.




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Re: The Secret World

Postby Dibria » 24 May 2012, 22:18

Simple, don't take part in the Secret War, it's just a social media advertising campaign anyway, the game itself does not require Facebook as far as I've seen.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Merrymaker_Mortalis » 19 Dec 2012, 02:19

Well I am downloading it as it's now F2P (£24.99 initial cost).
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Re: The Secret World

Postby RedNightmare » 19 Dec 2012, 07:29

How are the accounts without additional costs afterwards? Are they good or is it impossible to enjoy the game without adding money?
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Merrymaker_Mortalis » 19 Dec 2012, 07:59

As far as I know it uses the GW2 system.
You have full access to the game with the inital fee (game purchase).
From then on you have the option to buy cosmetic things. I wouldn't be surprised if extra character slots was included in that.

(It was evil that GW2 had 8 classes and only 5 slots. GW1 did have 6 classes and only 4 slots, but you could hybrid two classes together so you effectively only needed 3 slots and the 4th was for pissing about with.)

I will finish downloading tonight so hopefully will be able to offer a 'first impression opinion' tomorrowish.
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Re: The Secret World

Postby Dibria » 20 Dec 2012, 10:38

Well after playing a while I have to say, I love this game.

That said however I didn't actually play it for quite a while after my initial purchase (bar the beta and early access stages) as I had other games higher up my list and didn't want to waste my free 30 days access. In November I got around to giving it a go and... didn't like it.

This is not a conventional MMO, if you are used to 'go to area, grab quest, scan journal for how many of 'x' you need to kill, go do it, grab next quest' you will either need to adjust or you will get bored. The secret world is about lore and story, every single quest has a reason behind it, need to kill 10 of X? Ok well you also need to figure out what they are, how they got there and how to send them back.

It takes a while to get into but now it's free to play I certainly think it's worth the cost of admission, sure it has flaws but every game does, it more than makes up for them. I especially enjoy the investigation quests, things such as being told to investigate a murder that happened in 2002 and having to work out with no guidance that you need to check the town hall records from that year, then getting a name and having to work out for yourself to search for it using the sheriff's office computer and so on.

It's just generally something different, when is the last time you entered an instance in WoW, GW, tOR or any MMO and had to make use of light and shadow to stealth through an area? Carefully dodging security cameras and trip wires all the time looking over your shoulder in case an enemy has been sneaking up behind you.

Combat is a little lacklustre at first but improves as you go along, both as you unlock more skills and get the hang of them. Unfortunately combat lag never quite goes away, you still do damage but every now and then an enemy seems to be invulnerable for a few seconds before it's life hops down and all the effects you were trying on them appear at once. That said the concept of the combat is great, and I especially appreciate being able to say 'I'm not enjoying pistols... didn't an enemy drop an elementalism focus earlier.' and switching without too much difficulty.




TLDR; It's something very different, a fantastic experiment in the MMO genre and well worth the price of admission, but requires some patience and will occasionally infuriate.
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