The Secret World

[Trivun]

Well, since there doesn't seem to be that much love here for this game, or rather not much in the way of discussion, I figured I'd start up a thread. This is just for general discussion and analysis of the game, characters, plot, anything people want to talk about regarding The Secret World.

That said, I guess I'll start. Bought the game after it became free-to-play, roughly three weeks ago, and I've been constantly playing ever since. Still on Solomon Island, I've done almost all the major missions (not including story) in Kingsmouth and a couple on the Savage Coast, and I'm pretty hooked! Though some of the investigations are pretty complicated. The morse code was just stupid (easy to figure everything out, but a nightmare to transcribe the waveform into dots and dashes - for the record, I hate cheating in things like this, puzzles and such...).

So, what are everyone's thought on the game, and how are they finding it? Which faction did you all pick? (if anyone's interested I'm a Templar on the Daemon server, username Aoibhan - pronounced 'Even', it's an old Irish name...) Any thoughts on the slowly unravelling story...?

 

[Bertylicious]

I played a free trial about a year ago and was very impressed with the stories. Lovecraftian horror, zombies and that bloke from The Frighteners who did that "I am an asshole. An asshole with an uzi!" line. Didn't realise it'd gone F2P either so I reckon I'll pick it back up.

I went with Illuminati and assault rifles if I recall rightly.

 

[Trivun]

I played a free trial about a year ago and was very impressed with the stories. Lovecraftian horror, zombies and that bloke from The Frighteners who did that "I am an asshole. An asshole with an uzi!" line. Didn't realise it'd gone F2P either so I reckon I'll pick it back up.

I went with Illuminati and assault rifles if I recall rightly.

Well, you have to buy it in the first place, but it's no longer subscription based (though if you do subscribe, which I haven't, there are a few extras as well as perks). Swords and chaos for me, going to try and specialise as a tank but if I can get into long range later then it would make me a bit more well rounded I guess...

 

[Schadrach]

Biggest problem I have with it is that it's open-ended enough that it's hard to get started again if you ever stop. I was Blood/Elemental and a member of the Dragon, and I made it up to the part in the main plot where you reestablish the wards on Solomon island (at the last altar, specifically). Not sure what exactly Loki plans on doing with Excalibur or why he's infecting Gaia engines with Filth yet though.

If the idea that that last sentence could make some possible kind of sense intrigues you, The Secret World is your game.

 

[Gameguy20100]

I think its pretty fun.

It's the reason I tolerate Steam that has to say something.

But I do have a little problem why no mounts? I mean Really why cant I have a skateboard or a motorbike or something?

 

[Trivun]

I think its pretty fun.

It's the reason I tolerate Steam that has to say something.

But I do have a little problem why no mounts? I mean Really why cant I have a skateboard or a motorbike or something?

Not saying there's any issues with Steam, I personally love Steam. But you can play The Secret World without it, I bought it direct from the Funcom official game website and run it without Steam in the background at all (I need to, actually, since to get it to run decently on my laptop I need to shut pretty much everything else down - to be fair, it does work properly then aside from a little lag in graphics that I can't do anything about, having a laptop as I said before...).

Also, I agree on the mounts thing. I mean, in Kingsmouth there are tricycles all over the place (you even use one as a makeshift bomb-transporting vessel in one mission), yet we can't just hop on one and ride around? No wonder people use the 'no death/Anima well' system as a cheap fast travel system. Personally, I'm too cheap to keep forking out for the repairs to my equipment every time that happens...

 

[Gameguy20100]

I think its pretty fun.

It's the reason I tolerate Steam that has to say something.

But I do have a little problem why no mounts? I mean Really why cant I have a skateboard or a motorbike or something?

Not saying there's any issues with Steam, I personally love Steam. But you can play The Secret World without it

I know but my friends got it from steam so I Got it from there to so we can play together.

Its great on your own but its an mmo your meant to play it with friends.

 

[Bertylicious]

I think its pretty fun.

It's the reason I tolerate Steam that has to say something.

But I do have a little problem why no mounts? I mean Really why cant I have a skateboard or a motorbike or something?

Shooting a Shuggoth with an AK47 whilst popping an ollie (I don't know, I never played Tony Hawks) sounds immense.

 

[Azahul]

Good grief, I loved that game for the month or so I spent playing it back in December. It had just dropped the subscription, but anyone that bought it still counted as having purchased the last month of subscriptions so got some perks from that. Logged, lemme just check Steam... over 100 hours on it, so far. The combat is a total and utter chore, but the setting, the story, the characters and writing in general... fantastic. If only it had been a single player RPG, or at least had gone for a less standard MMO combat. The classlessness is fantastic, but by Romania it seems that you pretty much need to be perfectly kitted out for a particular role.

I'll be honest, I am not good at working out the mechanics in the Secret World. Even Guild Wars 2 tends to confuse me with its stats. I quite like the Elemental/Pistol role I ran with for most of the game (lots and lots of chain attacks with a high crit chance, tore groups of enemies to shreds), but to this day I have very little idea what I was doing with my gear and my build. Made the difficulty really quite schizophrenic. Sometimes I'd breeze through a quest rated "Hard" or "Very Hard" without an issue, but there are quests still listed "Easy" that kick my ass every time I try to do them. The story is great, but the utter bewilderment I feel when faced with the game mechanics (not to mention how generally boring the combat is) eventually put me off the game.

Incidentally, if anyone would be kind enough to tell me how the game's stats work, I might finally get around to finishing the game's story.

 

[barbzilla]

Good grief, I loved that game for the month or so I spent playing it back in December. It had just dropped the subscription, but anyone that bought it still counted as having purchased the last month of subscriptions so got some perks from that. Logged, lemme just check Steam... over 100 hours on it, so far. The combat is a total and utter chore, but the setting, the story, the characters and writing in general... fantastic. If only it had been a single player MMO, or at least had gone for a less standard MMO combat. The classlessness is fantastic, but by Romania it seems that you pretty much need to be perfectly kitted out for a particular role.

I'll be honest, I am not good at working out the mechanics in the Secret World. Even Guild Wars 2 tends to confuse me with its stats. I quite like the Elemental/Pistol role I ran with for most of the game (lots and lots of chain attacks with a high crit chance, tore groups of enemies to shreds), but to this day I have very little idea what I was doing with my gear and my build. Made the difficulty really quite schizophrenic. Sometimes I'd breeze through a quest rated "Hard" or "Very Hard" without an issue, but there are quests still listed "Easy" that kick my ass every time I try to do them. The story is great, but the utter bewilderment I feel when faced with the game mechanics (not to mention how generally boring the combat is) eventually put me off the game.

Incidentally, if anyone would be kind enough to tell me how the game's stats work, I might finally get around to finishing the game's story.

Well I'm rusty as I haven't played since January, but I'd happily try to help you out. I'm thinking about logging back on and leveling my Illuminati character anyhow. The thing is just synergizing, provided you manage to synergize well, you should be fine. It can go even further if you have friends to play with. For example I played with my g/f and my m8, and we were set up in such a way that we complemented each other's powers, by managing to keep constant status effects on enemies, allowing for the proc effects to perpetuate themselves. It also didn't hurt that we had a tank/healer/dps setup, so that we only needed to pick up 2 more dps for any dungeons we ran.

The thing is though, it is so hard to keep a small group like that organized as far as schedules go, so we petered out after the savage coast.

 

[Aeshi]

Haven't played it, but given what you guys are saying about it, I'm definitely gonna have to give it a look.

 

[Gameguy20100]

Haven't played it, but given what you guys are saying about it, I'm definitely gonna have to give it a look.

Its worth a shot plus its decently priced these days you can get it from Steam or Origin for about £25.

 

[Zantos]

I really like it, though I'm not very far. Problem is I don't know anyone that plays it and I don't like new people.

I went Illuminati with Chaos/Handguns and I'm finding it pretty fun. Although one of those weapons hardly gets used, and it's the one that doesn't have chaos in the title.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

The Secret World married a strong and genre-unique setting to some interesting and (again) genre-unique investigation missions, then blew the whole thing up by stapling it to the side of a truly terrible MMO. It's one of the great failure stories of the last several years, and arguably the single most disappointing MMO I've ever played. I'm a big fan of The Longest Journey, and had high hopes for a Tornquist headed project. There was a point in time I viewed TSW as a dark horse contestant to be the next big evolutionary step forward for the genre. Hoo, brother, was I off base.

Had Funcom shown a little more vision (or...any vision) they never would've shoehorned the game into a traditional MMO format to begin with. Let me be frank...for a veteran developer, Funcom has repeatedly shown a poor grasp of what makes MMOs "work". Almost everything that forms the base line of a strong MMO experience is terrible here...most notably in the combat mechanics, but going right down to basic presentation/investment elements like having a halfway decent character creator.

The Secret World could've worked beautifully as a co-op investigation/survival horror game. Drop the MMO pretensions and all the headaches that come with them. No need to design raids, no need to design and attempt to balance a plonky latency friendly combat system, you could do something cleaner and more responsive. No need to horn in crafting and loot tiers and a laughably bad PvP system. Take those developer resources, double your investigation/story content, and make a set of player characters with interesting, vibrant personalities that can bounce off one another in-game. Release episodic content every couple of months in the form of new mission packs, in place of trying to tie people in-game with loot treadmills and piss-poor MMO game play. Duck GW2 and MOP, and release the game in late October, to coincide with Halloween and the upswing of people's interest in the supernatural. Make sure the game is on Steam for launch.

Would've been a GOTY contestant, IMO. Instead of a catastrophic flop that almost buried the developer.

 

[purplecactus]

I haven't got it yet, I've been waiting until I got all of my end of year uni work out of the way before I even thought about it. My brother's got it though, and it looks pretty awesome, I have to say. I like the overall idea, and what I've seen of the game play seems pretty good too. All I need to do now is actually find a space to put my desktop so I can actually switch it on and get back to gaming...

 

[Azahul]

Well I'm rusty as I haven't played since January, but I'd happily try to help you out. I'm thinking about logging back on and leveling my Illuminati character anyhow. The thing is just synergizing, provided you manage to synergize well, you should be fine. It can go even further if you have friends to play with. For example I played with my g/f and my m8, and we were set up in such a way that we complemented each other's powers, by managing to keep constant status effects on enemies, allowing for the proc effects to perpetuate themselves. It also didn't hurt that we had a tank/healer/dps setup, so that we only needed to pick up 2 more dps for any dungeons we ran.

The thing is though, it is so hard to keep a small group like that organized as far as schedules go, so we petered out after the savage coast.

I kind of got the basics of synergising within my own build, if I remember right. After picking pistols and elementalism basically because they seemed cool, I noticed they both had a decent number of chain attacks so focused primarily on that, with gear that boosted my Crit chance and passive effects that increased the damage of my crits/set the afflicted state (and then one or two that fed off the afflicted state, or something).

 

[Trivun]

Kind of reviving this thread a little (hopefully), but has anyone managed to get a group together at any point to do the Hell Raised dungeon? I ask because whenever I'm in Kingsmouth half the messages on chat are asking for people to join groups for Polaris (which seems a pretty popular dungeon), yet when I tried to get a group for Hell Raised so I could complete the mission there given by Daniel Bach, there was almost nobody interested at all. Is that just a 'dead' dungeon at this point, or was it just a bad time?

 

[Tactical Pause]

In response to OP's latest post, the non-nightmare dungeons (aside from Polaris as it's the starter dungeon) are all a little low in demand, but the hell ones more than most. They can be lengthy and a little trying at times.

That said, this thread started as being about The Secret World as a whole, and I will take every opportunity I can to put this forward the brilliance that is Sam Krieg (the writer in the lighthouse) and his monologue about what it is to be a superhero. Enjoy.

Spoiler: Here's the video.

The first time I saw this, I just had to sit back for a moment and think about what he was really saying. Quite rare for an MMO.

Nearly every cutscene in The Secret World absolutely oozed atmosphere, and almost all of them actually managed to be interesting enough for me to still care after zone after zone of them (something TOR failed to do).

I had picked up the game hoping for some good customization options, but ended up loving it for the story even more. Despite the fact that I knew it was an MMO, and my decisions wouldn't change a thing, I still paused for a good fifteen minutes to debate the final choice you are given in the story mission:

Spoiler

In the end, I chose to repair the prison and keep the filth contained. Not because it was "good", but for another, more complicated reason. Both the anima and anti-anima (filth) had claimed humans as vessels to wage their war, but where the anima being left those it touched with free will and a sense of self, the filth did nothing but corrupt and dominate. Whether or not this was the intention of the anti-anima was not important, it was clear that it could not peacefully coexist with the other creatures of the secret world, so I had no choice but to contain it.

(One thing that made it a difficult choice was asking myself if I really had the right to decide that this being should be locked away.)

Maybe I read too much into it, maybe it was just straight up good versus evil, but I choose to believe otherwise.

 

[Trivun]

Something new for everyone, not sure if it'll be well received, but even if it's not I'll carry on with it because I think it's a nice little idea. I've been writing some fanfiction for another title recently (well, for quite a while, some of you may even have read it), and I thought, what about a Secret World fanfic? Specifically, something that gives a fan's perspective on one of the more interesting (if under-used) characters in the game. So, I present to you, part one of...

Spoiler: Diary of a Sixteen Year Old Doomsday Weapon - Part 1

October 5th, 2013

I never used to keep a diary before, so this is kind of new to me. I suppose it's mainly down to Ms Usher, she suggested that a record of all this crazy stuff would be useful if someone comes to help us. Maybe the guys from New York? They own the place after all, surely they'd want to find out what happened to everyone here?

There are three of us left in the building, everyone else either died or left. I don't know what happened to them. Maybe they got away, but looking outside I kind of doubt it. It's just me, Ms Usher, and Mr Montag now. I suppose I could have worse people to be stuck with, but the principal always scared me. It's not because he's a scary guy, he tries to be nice. I just don't think he's very good at it. Last time he tried to give the school a pep talk, I couldn't sleep all semester. Ms Usher keeps him in check, a little, but I can see things getting pretty awkward pretty quickly.

I should probably start at the beginning, I'm getting way too ahead of myself. My name's Carter. You don't need to know any more, Carter will do just fine. I never really liked the rest of my name anyway. This hell hole (almst literally) is Innsmouth Academy, and the place outside is a mess. That's not what it's called, but I reckon it'd be an apt renaming. And for lack of a better word, we study magic here.

I know, it sounds really corny and stupid. Like Hogwarts, right? That's pretty much what it is, except instead of learning charms and potions we learn how to fight wendigos and summon spirits and all kinds of crap like that. I wish I could say it was interesting, but for me, it's not so much. I never asked for any of this, and truth be told I'd be happier without any of these powers. I just want my life to be normal.

I'll be turning sixteen pretty soon. Andy and Danny said they'd try and make it special. Andy even said he'd try and bake a cake, up at the sherriff's office. I don't know if Mr Montag will let me out to go celebrate, even though he knows I can take care of myself. We're holed up in the admin office, though I said we should be in the headmaster's room instead on the upper floor, much easier to defend. Mr Montag shot that down, apparently it's haunted by something and he didn't want to trap a bunch of ghosts in the wards with us. So, the admin office it is.

Maybe I can sneak out to the precinct instead. I don't want to be stuck in here with nothing to do on my birthday, and the familiars running around don't make great party guests. At least Danny will be there. I don't like it when he tries to visit me here. It's too dangerous in the woods, but he never listens. Oh well, hopefully I'll see him on my birthday. That'll definitely be something...

 

[Trivun]

Well, since I posted the first part here, figured I may as well post the second part as well . Also, does anyone have any tips for the Faction mission (can't remember its name) where you have to track down the rogue Templar agent through Agartha and end up in that snowy place? I've made it there but can't beat him in the fight (to be fair, the mission log still says 'Devastating' - I'm on an average of 5/6 QL equipment).

Spoiler: Diary of a Sixteen Year Old Doomsday Weapon - Part 2

October 14th, 2013

My birthday was yesterday. There was cake, sort of. I don't really think Andy's ever tried baking anything before, so what was supposed to be a sponge cake with chocolate icing ended up a gooey mess with some kind of brown coating that felt pretty sticky. To be fair though, I'm surprised he even managed that with the rations. Sheriff Bannerman mentioned there were supply shortages again, and she's had to send some of the newcomers out to help gather stuff.

Oh yeah, I meant to say, there are newcomers to the island. I have no idea how they got here when the bridge is closed (Danny was spouting some crap about men in black and superheroes), but they seem to be like me. I can sense something about them, anyway. They keep themselves to themselves, mostly, but there seem to be a few in three groups, kind of like five apiece, wandering around just looking for something. They don't talk to each other but I know exactly who they are. Headmaster Montag taught us all about them, telling us we had to pick a side when we graduate.

I don't want to choose sides. I never asked for any of this, I just want to control what I have and live a normal life. Then again, Ms Usher said I could probably get a fast track to college through the Templars, some magical college, so maybe I could...

No. I can't let myself think like that, it's just going to cause trouble. Just like Danny does. He wanted to go out with me to the woods again and I told him no. Again. I think he's great, I really do, but there's just too much of him that's fascinated by this whole side of me and it gets on my nerves, a little. We spent a bit of alone time together anyway, when we could. Sheriff Bannerman sent Andy to 'chaperone' us but we managed to give him the slip. We ended up hiding in the church while Reverend Hawthorne was busy eating the sloppy cake mix. I'd say he should really get those wards seen to, but they seem to be holding for a while (I'll at least let Ms Usher know later...). Kind of sacrilegious in a way, but ever since I found out what I could do I guess I never really saw the point of religion. Strange since the guys from New York are all over that kind of stuff, at least the older ones were.

Maybe the groups have come to try and sort things out here? I didn't get any answers from them (truth be told I was a bit scared to ask questions), but they seemed pretty interested in me. I overheard someone say they were waiting for the other one though, so maybe someone else is on their way? Danny says they've come to cover it all up, but he goes through so many theories so quickly it's hard to keep up with any of them. Anyway, we spent all afternoon hiding in the church with our cell phones off. It was nice just being together without having to worry about what was outside.

Except the occasional piles of ash appearing by the main doors. Bit of a downer, I suppose.