Funcom No Longer Blames Metacritic for The Secret World's Problems

[maddawg IAJI]

The "It gets better" argument is never a good argument to fall back on, especially when discussing story in video games. If a game's story fails to grip the player within the first few hours and it lacks the gameplay mechanics to keep players interested, then it isn't a good game

Sorry that's just not true. Have you seen the movies Memento or The Machinist? They are very comparable to The Secret World in that they offer very little explanation "up front" and evolve the story gradually as you go along. There are many small stories in The Secret World, but the big one is supposed to be a mystery. That is the whole point of it. And if you failed to understand that before playing or don't like that kind of exposition, then you shouldn't have played it to begin with. It's not for you.

Attempting to compare a video game to a movie is like comparing swiss cheese to a monster truck. They're inherently different and require much less time to get through. Memento clocks in at 2 hours. The secret world could take anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months to reach the end game. Even then, Memento starts off and quickly grips the audience by leaving them confused as to what just occurred and also wanting for more. This is something the Secret World fails to do. People will have more patience with a movie then with a video game, simply because they don't have to dedicate a large amount of their time to watch a movie. You even said it yourself, the story is weak in the beginning and the combat isn't much better. The beginning sets the tone and you only get one shot to make a first impression.

And if the game isn't for everyone, then they shouldn't have made it an MMO. You don't enter a genre that requires a large number of people and make a game that will only keep a small number of players interested!

The Secret World is one of the better-written stories of our time in gaming, whether or not you have the patience to play through the tutorial first is irrelevant.

Well, no, it is relevant. If it wasn't, Funcom's stock wouldn't be dropping and the game wouldn't be failing to meet sale expectations. Word of mouth is what sets the tone for a starting MMO and all those people who "Didn't have the patience" to make it through are going to tell their friends to stay away.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

Except that I had no problem being engaged during the initial hours of the game. I think the problem here is that where I was attentive, searching, and soaking up every detail of what I was told as I was playing it, thousands of other players were not adjusted and played it passively like any other MMO. Anyone who actually immersed themselves from the beginning, read pieces of lore, remembered what NPC's actually said and interpreted it as they went along, wouldn't have the slightest trouble being and staying engaged in the game. Which incidentally is probably why the game still has over 200K players enjoying it today. It's a different kind of game (like no other in fact) in that without effort, everything will just go over your head.

1) Whether or not you you were engaged is irrelevant in this scenario as we're talking about the game's inability to grasp everyone (or at least a majority of people who played the Beta, which, if your number is correct, means less than 1/4th of the players who played the Beta actually bought the game).

2) Stop this phony baloney "You're playing it wrong!" bull. You liked the game, several of hundreds of thousands of players didn't. That's all that needs to be said.

3) 200K is horrible for an MMO of that size, especially when it failed to even sell half as well as Age of Conan, (For the record, AoC stood pretty at 700K subscribers at launch). The Launch is the most important time for an MMO, largely because you see a huge drop in player numbers over time for new MMOs (See Swotor, Age of Conan, almost any turbine game and Rift) and if 200K is all this game could belt out...well...its a bad sign.

 

[lacktheknack]

Secret World is a demonstrably sub-standard MMO. It's story-driven with a crappy story. The voice acting and the writing is abysmal.

You should try the game once, maybe you could qualify that opinion of yours.

I did. I played it for a weekend while it was free. I got a character to, oh, level 20ish I think? I had gone Templar. I build out the rifle and handgun powers.

I found the writing to be incredibly cheesy and overwrought, with a great deal of unnecessary purple prose, and really poor delivery on the part of the voice actors, who clearly didn't get the memo that they were reading schlock and played it completely straight. And while the monsters and atmosphere were really compelling, the way the zones flowed, and every aspect of the way the game controlled and how combat worked, was poorly executed. Character animations were clunky and uninspired, and there was no real theme to what characters could do. Everyone could just kind of do anything because of magical bees, or something. Lame.

For one, there is no such thing as "level". There is quality levels of gear you can wear, which is proportional to your skill level in weapons or talismans, and they only go to 10. I'm going to assume you meant "skill level 2". If that is the case, you haven't even left Kingsmouth, and Kingsmouth is completely unrepresentative of the game's expositional quality, as the entire place is one big parody of every zombie and splatter movie ever. This is true for the first three areas, Kingsmouth, Savage Coast and Blue Mountain. (And joke's on you for not getting the humour) It is after Blue Mountain you get your first faction unique story mission and you go to Egypt. This is where the game's deep mysteries begins to unfold. Oh, how sorry I feel for you that you didn't even get this far.

People really need to stop scraping the surface and deliver bilious opinions off-base about games. You wouldn't whine about how bad a movie is after watching only 10 minutes? Because comparatively, it's exactly the same.

"It Gets Better" is not a valid argument in a game after the first hour. I can understand missteps at the beginning from a lack of budget, poorly executed idea, of running out of time to finish, but after an hour, it generally won't get better, and I'm actively wasting my time.

And yes, I WOULD accept walking out of a movie after ten minutes if it was unpleasant, and telling people you didn't like what you saw. I don't know why you'd think that was unacceptable...

 

[lacktheknack]

The "It gets better" argument is never a good argument to fall back on, especially when discussing story in video games. If a game's story fails to grip the player within the first few hours and it lacks the gameplay mechanics to keep players interested, then it isn't a good game

Sorry that's just not true. Have you seen the movies Memento or The Machinist? They are very comparable to The Secret World in that they offer very little explanation "up front" and evolve the story gradually as you go along. There are many small stories in The Secret World, but the big one is supposed to be a mystery. That is the whole point of it. And if you failed to understand that before playing or don't like that kind of exposition, then you shouldn't have played it to begin with. It's not for you.

The Secret World is one of the better-written stories of our time in gaming, whether or not you have the patience to play through the tutorial first is irrelevant.

You misunderstand the difference between "I don't understand what's going on!" and "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?"

Hint: You don't want the one in all-caps.

And no matter what you think of the main story, if someone's thinking "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?", or their patience is tested in the tutorial and it drives them away, then they're going to dislike the game and tell people that it's bad.

And that is, in fact, the game's fault. Especially the lack-of-patience problem. Unless you're directly marketing your game as a test of patience, any test of patience in your game is a major flaw.

 

[Lunar Templar]

is it just me or that thing that girl is looking at look like a lame Glas Ghaibhleann wannabe?

 

[weirdee]

i hope we can somehow excavate the good from the project

frankly they need some drastic oversight/haul

 

[unacomn]

Actually, just a toggle mouselook button and mappable powers to the mouse would be enough.
But I guess it's never to late to add orcs and elves.

 

[LadyTL]

I think every MMO out there suffers from the same problems as TSW. There is always those who are turned off by a particularly MMO before the starter areas are done, always those who think the story/art/animations/voice acting are poorly done and always those who say a person's problem is they aren't playing it right. and you know what? That's all true.

I love playing TSW but on the same hand I can see how people might get frustrated at the story particularly in the starter areas. I can see how someone used to playing MMOs one way would be messed up by having to play it differently to get the best use out of the skills. I can see how compared to some MMOs the art and animation and voice acting aren't that great. The thing is to me and my playing, that doesn't matter. It does to other people though and I'm not wrong in my opinion and neither are they.

That's exactly what was shown on the Metacritic scores and from people's comments on the game. However I feel trying to make something that appeals to everyone is doomed to failure since nothing will ever make everyone happy. Not everyone likes playing WoW, doesn't stop them from being successful and to be honest the world does not need two WoWs. That's why MMOs keep failing, instead of being something unique and fun for their game, they just try to shoehorn WoW into some other kind of MMO.

So how about instead of saying this game sucks because of my opinion, how about saying I didn't like this game because of my opinion? Would get much less hate unless that's what you are trying to get in the first place.

 

[Dandark]

I never really had that much interest in it, it sounded kind of cool but any interest I had dissapeared the moment I heard it was subscription based. Any interest that somehow survived that nuclear blast(assumedly mutated into interest mutants) was then killed when I heard that you also had to buy the game for a set retail price as well.

I think it also had microtransactions? I just couldn't bring myself to be interested after hearing about that which is too bad as it actually looked like a pretty good world, if it ever goes Free to play or at least gets rid of the subscription then I may get it at some point but im not going to bother with it right now.