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Post by Grok on May 12, 2012 8:34:36 GMT -5
Oh and voice acting is one sided. The people talk to you but your guy is mute and stands stiff as a board. No reaction whatsoever to what they say. Hehe, this was the only thing I liked about the game. I prefer to have my OWN reactions to the things the NPCs say rather than have a few choices dictated to me. I still have trouble understanding how people can feel immersed in a game where your voice is not your own. I know I'm in the minority, but I really hope Bioware's approach doesn't catch on.
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Winin
Deathbringer
01/2004 DAoC
[insert witicism here]
Posts: 6,045
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Post by Winin on May 12, 2012 9:40:11 GMT -5
I don't like voice overs at all. I read waaaay faster than they talk, and the acting is never good. Maybe a quicky here and there, or once and a while big cutscene, but I don't want it for every quest.
I love the theme and the quests are interesting for the most part, but yeah, it is designed around the single player experience. I'll wait for free-to-play. I think it would be good to log in from time to time and work my way through it, but I don't see it as a sit down and saturate yourself (subscription) kind of game. Fun in small doses. I don't want to pay for it when I'm not playing. Like STO.
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Maeve
Rampager
Posts: 2,389
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Post by Maeve on May 12, 2012 22:44:46 GMT -5
It's definitely different. I agree that the animations are pretty meh and I am just spamming the same stuff over and over. Considering it's due out next month, it seems kind of rough around the edges still. I really hated it for the first few hours.
Then it sort of grew on me. I've liked the puzzles I've run into so far and haven't had anything I couldn't figure out yet. But, I haven't gotten that far into it. I do like the premise and I've never really played any kind of MMO in this setting. So it's different in that regards. You can make your character into any type you want, mixing and matching from the skills. I'm spell casting elemental and have a blade as well. It remains to be seen how this works out in the long run of course.
But I'm definitely not sold on it by any means. I've seen no need to group and the way it's made so far with the puzzles and such, it seems more fun to explore alone. If it were free to play, I'd probably give it a go for sure. As a pay to play, I'm lukewarm at best and it will probably depend on my level of gaming boredom at the time it comes out.
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Winin
Deathbringer
01/2004 DAoC
[insert witicism here]
Posts: 6,045
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Post by Winin on May 13, 2012 9:28:09 GMT -5
I agree. I put a few more hours into it and I love exploring around. The quest system is frustrating, and the illuminati path from the church was frustrating. Click on paintings randomly, run around, back to paintings, give up quest. There is a lot of retreading your path. Maybe to compensate for small zones?
I'd get it if it were pay once and play when you like, or F2P, but not as a subscription. I don't see any value in a subscription, unless you had a bunch of friends playing together or maybe you were in love with the setting.
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Post by Wrasse on May 13, 2012 10:33:50 GMT -5
I still had a hard time getting past the boring combat, confusing quests and repetitive animations to really have any fun exploring. I love the atmosphere, the factions and the setting...really, really do. I guess that is where FunCom invested all of their time/creative energies. I was very excited about the game at one time...this is one of those titles that I could see really shining after about another year of polish/development.
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Maeve
Rampager
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Post by Maeve on May 13, 2012 15:07:32 GMT -5
The animations are definitely blah and the combat was pretty drab. The telegraphing of the NPC "big attack" was so slow, my grandma could get out of the way. It isn't easy, per se. I died often. Mostly because I had no idea what level I was or what level the mobs were. But hello, kiting. I have never been a big fan of kiting. And I have to do it all the time in the game. It may be my spec.
I found the quests incredibly confusing initially as well. Then I sort of figured it all out and where to go next. Sort of. It's not as frustrating as it was initially at least.
I do like the quest system in that you can get quests by exploring and finding objects lying about. Like a box of stinky squids. Follow the trail, open the last box and a special mob is spawned. And at the end of major quests, you get to call in your report to the Templars, getting your points and choosing your reward. So there is a little less running about in that regards.
There is three faction PvP to be had I suppose, although not available in this beta test as this has only the Templars playable.
If they have another beta event or if I manage to get to Secret Agent in the Secret War, I would like to give it another go. But I don't really see this, at least in the state of this beta, as a game I'd want to play long term and invest a lot of time and money.
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Post by Scarybooster on May 13, 2012 15:12:26 GMT -5
I deleted it off my hard drive. Maybe in the future but the combat is slow and bland. Not really interested after seeing GW2. It's cool they have 3 factions but it's just a bunch of WoH type senarios with slower combat. If I want an awesome 3 way PvP I'll wait for GW2.
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Post by Wrasse on May 13, 2012 18:42:05 GMT -5
One other concern that may just be due to the fact that it is beta and some zones may not be open is the fact that I played Illuminati and I was in the same zone with the zombies and squid quest...which means the beginning experience for the different factions save for the tutorial may be the same (as some played Templars and saw the same thing). I'm more a fan of the WAR/WoW experience where you at least encounter some new content for the first few levels that ties you in more with your race/faction/etc.
It could have been due to beta though...my gut tells me everyone gets the same 1-5 level newbie zone.
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Winin
Deathbringer
01/2004 DAoC
[insert witicism here]
Posts: 6,045
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Post by Winin on May 14, 2012 13:13:34 GMT -5
I found these bits of info... Re bland combat: the base level (which is all we had during beta weekend) are the generic, bland base combat. The interesting stuff happens when you get to the advanced options. forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=30282You are meant to do a quest, call it in, then a new quest should be right near where the last one ended. Do that one and repeat. Eventually you make it through all the quests, but with a different path than someone else. And without any tedious running back to turn in/get the next one. forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=29419That still screams single player game to me, but at least it alleviates some of the tedium of running back and forth. I believe you are right, Wrasse, about everyone doing the same zones.
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Maeve
Rampager
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Post by Maeve on May 14, 2012 14:36:50 GMT -5
Doing the same zones kind of sucks, especially if you are doing a story driven MMO. I suppose it is nice if you are wanting to group with friends. But who groups up much during the tutorial?
It does not make a good first impression, that's for sure. Oddly, I sort of wanted to like it. I say oddly, because I knew next to nothing about it before I played it and had no hype regarding it. But it was different enough and interesting enough story wise that I wanted to like it more than I did with the initial beta weekend.
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Sarsi
Firenewt
SWTOR CotNS
Posts: 18
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Post by Sarsi on May 26, 2012 19:32:50 GMT -5
I agree. I put a few more hours into it and I love exploring around. The quest system is frustrating, and the illuminati path from the church was frustrating. Click on paintings randomly, run around, back to paintings, give up quest. There is a lot of retreading your path. Maybe to compensate for small zones? I know I'm late on this but I just want to make a few points. The paintings for Kingsmouth Code are all red herrings except for one. The game is FULL of red herrings. This is an investigative mission that requires you to use the internet to research and find the correct path. Googling the name you saw on the plaque in the harbor would have led you to the correct painting. Kingsmouth Code is simple in comparison to the investigative missions in later zones. They intentionally designed the investigative missions to be "punch you in the face" hard but most of them can be skipped if you do not care for them. They are the only missions besides the main story mission which cannot be repeated. There is not really a lot of retreading unless you are playing it as we would swtor or wow. There are no quest hubs, each mission is designed to lead you into another area with another mission that will lead you to another area and another mission. Eventually you will find yourself having done all of them just by following the missions where they take you. Some will bring you back to the Sheriff station or the the church but there is no need or reason to specifically run back after completing one mission just to pick up another. The zones are not really that small. Kingsmouth is bigger than it appears. I don't know why they had some missions and Polaris closed off for the first beta weekend and then opened up the last few missions (7 total I think) for the 2nd weekend. The next weekend will be Savage Coast and Hell Raised (dungeon). Every faction does start adventuring in Kingsmouth but they each originally start out in their respective cities. There will be faction missions added to hub cities at launch. Most people who like Tera or GW2 do not care for TSW and vice versa. I was extremely disappointed in GW2 for their first beta weekend after playing TSW. I prefer having the freedom to play how I want without having to lock myself into a class. I absolutely hate having to make alt after alt just to find a class I thoroughly enjoy enough to play long term. It truly is a niche game and will not appeal to everybody. TSW is not a pvp game so anyone who spends a massive amount of time enjoying pvp will not be happy. TSW is the first game since DAOC where pvp has been fun for me but I generally do not care for pvp and will only expose myself to it in small doses. Pvp will be in the last beta weekend so you guys can see for yourselves what it is like. I personally love the game but I have had seven months with it. You guys have to keep in mind, what you see in the beta weekends is not the final product and is not the same client the closed beta testers are using.
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Maeve
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Post by Maeve on May 27, 2012 8:58:59 GMT -5
Sarsi, I'll be interested to hear more once the NDA drops for you. The game still intrigues me, but I didn't really see enough in the weekend beta events to make it something I want to buy right now. I liked the way they did missions and I liked the different feel to it. But I have such limited time to game these days, I'm not ready to commit the money to it yet.
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Sarsi
Firenewt
SWTOR CotNS
Posts: 18
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Post by Sarsi on May 27, 2012 23:39:46 GMT -5
Sarsi, I'll be interested to hear more once the NDA drops for you. The game still intrigues me, but I didn't really see enough in the weekend beta events to make it something I want to buy right now. I liked the way they did missions and I liked the different feel to it. But I have such limited time to game these days, I'm not ready to commit the money to it yet. I completely understand! I pre purchased immediately based on my beta experience and how incredibly great the devs have been. If I were not in the closed beta I would probably be hesitant to put the money into it. I will say, this is the first game I have played since original EQ back in the day that invaded my dreams and kept me excited to log in for several months. You guys are free to pick my brain on anything that was in the beta weekends since there is no NDA for that. I can say this, things have changed since the last beta weekend so it is definitely worth logging in on the next weekend event to see if some of the things you guys did not care for have been changed.
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Winin
Deathbringer
01/2004 DAoC
[insert witicism here]
Posts: 6,045
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Post by Winin on May 28, 2012 9:24:03 GMT -5
Re the paintings, the annoying thing was not the puzzle, but that you couldn't check out a painting before committing to it. So to see what was on the painting, you had to click, and then you were stuck investigating it before you could go back and try a different painting. Very annoying. You should have been able to click on it then choose 1) follow this painting or 2) look at a different one. I tried shift clicking, alt clicking, etc to preview paintings, but nothing obvious worked.
I liked the customization, environments, and quests. It seemed like a good game for now and then play, but not my style for a subscription "gotta log in to get my $ worth" kind of game. I'd put it in the same category as Star Trek Online. I'd play for a month, take time off, come back later, etc. Or when it goes F2P, I'd keep it on my drive and play once a week or so.
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Sarsi
Firenewt
SWTOR CotNS
Posts: 18
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Post by Sarsi on May 28, 2012 14:31:21 GMT -5
Re the paintings, the annoying thing was not the puzzle, but that you couldn't check out a painting before committing to it. So to see what was on the painting, you had to click, and then you were stuck investigating it before you could go back and try a different painting. Very annoying. You should have been able to click on it then choose 1) follow this painting or 2) look at a different one. I tried shift clicking, alt clicking, etc to preview paintings, but nothing obvious worked. If you check it out in the next weekend, it should be a bit easier to see the paintings without having to click on them. They definitely had it set way too dark in the town hall.
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