TSW roll call

[Zavon]

Don't worry about Vkhaun, Landon, he's just being snippy over the fact that diablo 3 is the peasant compared to the prince that was diablo 2.

And for the record, the secret worlds skill system is ALSO not encouraging of replayability. Fortunately, though, its an mmo and there are a ton of other things to do.

[Sillywilly]

Irony.

Indeed lol.

[Valec]

PS- I added you Zavon. I actually made an Illumanti for RP reasons.. his name is Cubberz.

I lol'd.

[VKhaun]

You are locked in to the purchases you make with your ap.

Yeah but you can just change which ones you use from that big list trivially, and you eventually have all of them.

[Landon]

Yeah but you can just change which ones you use from that big list trivially, and you eventually have all of them.

Which allows your to be different than everyone else. To use DAOC as an example, you pretty much knew everyone that was a warden would be using PBT... in TSW 2 sword users could be standing next to each other and have VERY different skills even though they have the have skills.. I really do not see much difference.

[Zoobi]

Which allows your to be different than everyone else. To use DAOC as an example, you pretty much knew everyone that was a warden would be using PBT... in TSW 2 sword users could be standing next to each other and have VERY different skills even though they have the have skills.. I really do not see much difference.

Just ignore Vkhaun, the very same thing he is praising Blizzard for he's hating on this game for.

[Zavon]

You guys realize he was being sarcastic right?

[Zoobi]

You guys realize he was being sarcastic right?

Hard to tell, considering the way you earn skills in both games is completely different. If that's the case, you've got to choose your battles more carefully because you actually have to make a decision on skills you want in TSW, whereas in Diablo 3 you get them all for free with no attachment to any skill, i.e. they're removing all player decision(or misstep in the case of making character builds in diablo 2) from the game completely. Let's not get into a discussion about diablo 3 in this thread though please.

[VKhaun]

I apologize for confusing Landon, but I was basically pointing out that the two systems are identical except for the way you view them. They both give you a ton of skills to make a build from that you can change at any time. You say 'make a decision on skills you want in TSW' but we both know that's shallow. There are a finite number of skills to pick, in a finite number of directions, and must be taken in a set order by direction. No argument anyone here has ever made against D3 would change in the slightest if you got to pick the order you unlocked your skills in anyway.

TSW is the D3 skill system taken to hyperbole with full freedom and no penalty for change even at the highest level. Only your gear selection is a difficult to reverse choice in either game. Only D3 actually has a system where you need builds (NV). You have simply chosen to spin D3 as bad, and TSW as good, because you like one and dislike the other. I won't hijack though. Tell me how dumb I am and I'll let it go because either I'll never get it or you'll never get it. Probably both.

Regardless, I have learned a valuable lesson.
When I want to talk about skill systems I'll point to TSW as my example instead of D3.

[Zavon]

I apologize for confusing Landon, but I was basically pointing out that the two systems are identical except for the way you view them. They both give you a ton of skills to make a build from that you can change at any time. You say 'make a decision on skills you want in TSW' but we both know that's shallow. There are a finite number of skills to pick, in a finite number of directions, and must be taken in a set order by direction. No argument anyone here has ever made against D3 would change in the slightest if you got to pick the order you unlocked your skills in anyway.

TSW is the D3 skill system taken to hyperbole with full freedom and no penalty for change even at the highest level. Only your gear selection is a difficult to reverse choice in either game. Only D3 actually has a system where you need builds (NV). You have simply chosen to spin D3 as bad, and TSW as good, because you like one and dislike the other. I won't hijack though. Tell me how dumb I am and I'll let it go because either I'll never get it or you'll never get it. Probably both.

Regardless, I have learned a valuable lesson.
When I want to talk about skill systems I'll point to TSW as my example instead of D3.

No, I won't disagree with you on "system builds". You are correct that they are similar. What you are failing to take into account (and this is fairly critical) is that one of these games is an action rpg, and the other is a MMO. Being able to swap skills at will is *still* the root issue with re-playability. It is why Diablo 3 is a cluster fuck that everyone burned out on in mere weeks, whereas Diablo 2 was played for years.

So, what does this mean for TSW? It means that: You don't have much incentive to start a new character in it either.

So, what do you do with your one play through in TSW? You spend tons of time going through the paced content and running instances. You spend time crafting. You spend time looking for the hidden lore. You spend THREE HOURS brushing up on your fucking Morse code to solve a puzzle. You purchase costumes for your character. You role play on the role play server.

What does this mean big picture? This kind of system works for an MMO. It does not work for an action RPG.

Edit: If it makes you feel better, D3 has way better combat than TSW. And, yes, I realize you can do some of those things in Diablo 3. There is just exponentially more content available in an MMO.

[Zoobi]

I apologize for confusing Landon, but I was basically pointing out that the two systems are identical except for the way you view them. They both give you a ton of skills to make a build from that you can change at any time. You say 'make a decision on skills you want in TSW' but we both know that's shallow. There are a finite number of skills to pick, in a finite number of directions, and must be taken in a set order by direction. No argument anyone here has ever made against D3 would change in the slightest if you got to pick the order you unlocked your skills in anyway.

TSW is the D3 skill system taken to hyperbole with full freedom and no penalty for change even at the highest level. Only your gear selection is a difficult to reverse choice in either game. Only D3 actually has a system where you need builds (NV). You have simply chosen to spin D3 as bad, and TSW as good, because you like one and dislike the other. I won't hijack though. Tell me how dumb I am and I'll let it go because either I'll never get it or you'll never get it. Probably both.

Regardless, I have learned a valuable lesson.
When I want to talk about skill systems I'll point to TSW as my example instead of D3.

The skill system itself isn't the reason I don't like Diablo 3. The reason I personally do not like Diablo 3 is because of the way loot works in relation to build. Beyond that though I'm not going to clog up a TSW thread with more on Diablo 3, if you really want to discuss it with me then you can PM me.

[VKhaun]

Okay so my graphics card has advanced to the next stage of failure and is overheating when I try to play D3. Going to try playing TSW again, see how things are going and if it overheats my card. Guess I'm headed to the Arcadia server when it's finished patching?

[VKhaun]

Downloaded the EVGA app to stabilize my card a bit better. Turned down the clock and maxed out the fan. Able to play TSW without it overheating! Haven't done much but look over the skills. I think I know where I'm headed, but Acadia isn't showing up in the server list. I've been playing around on Cerberus waiting for it to show up if perhaps it was down or full, but I haven't seen it all night.

EDIT--
Nevermind, I'm dumb. Beta client updated to a 'testlive' version. I swapped out a file and now I'm patching to the real deal.

[Zavon]

I just cant bring myself to log on anymore. Part of it is that I bought a bunch of games on steam, but the bigger issue is the shitty combat.

I made it through the blue mountain area, right before egypt, and it became so monotonous I had to give up. I loved the puzzles and the mysteries when they were there... But it just wasn't enough. In blue mountain I died constantly. Mobs are everywhere, and each battle is a chore. I switched weapons/specs multiple times, but alas, I have no more to give.

Guild wars 2, I await thee.

[VKhaun]

Well you're ahead of me, but so far I'm enjoying it far more than in beta. I've restarted three times as I've learned how the live servers work and made a mistake I didn't catch back in beta so I'm a bit tired of Kingsmouth at this point, but I don't mind the combat at all. In three restarts and doing the kingsmouth investigation quests three times (very fast once you know what to do, and give the best xp... so I started there each time) I have never seen a bug, never seen something not work, and have had no problems.

I'm kind of stuck on the skill wheel. Now that the really high level enemies have been put in around the Kingsmouth airport I notice for the first time that some enemies are entirely immune to certain states. That just turns me upside down. All the builds I liked on paper were based on controlling states by cleansing myself and rapidly reapplying a certain state I exploit. So I've slowed down and started looking at the wheel fresh. I've only done hammer past the inner wheel, and a few points in chaos abilities. SP is entirely in hammer and talismans. Trying to carefully pick a good second weapon for tank. I want Close Quarters from Shotgun, but I don't really see a ton of synergy there. High end I could see Hammer/Shotgun stacking turret mitigation, but not for leveling up. I need clickies and defensive passives for leveling as a tank.

[Sillywilly]

Is anyone still actively playing this game? Would love to hear something about it now that it's a month out.

[Zavon]

My advice is to hold out til GW2.

[VKhaun]

Is anyone still actively playing this game? Would love to hear something about it now that it's a month out.

It has some good ideas, but funcom wasn't any good at implementing them. Investigation quests are disconnected and badly done. there was one where you are in an area with trash all over the ground and it gives you a path to follow. The path leads to nothing and you basically have to wander around the whole area it until you realize one particular spot of trash is an interact point and then you know what's going on, except I randomly found what that interact point was supposed to lead you to before I found the interact point itself and threw the whole quest out of order. There was even a boss with one shot kill move you can avoid, that don't look like you can avoid. It's graphic effect went through walls and obstacles so I assumed the damage did as well, and I tried running out of it but died anyway. Turns out the effect is just shitty. You CAN run out of it, it's just bigger than it looks by a good bit, and you CAN break LoS to take no damage... I thought about both options and still had to look it up because they suck at implementing the idea.

I've also been dead-ended at raw paperwork many times and I'm not even halfway through the PvE yet. I've had an 'archaeologist's notes' where are basically a 'Harry is taller than Sally but not as tall as Jimmy' type puzzle that, while very solvable, made no goddamn sense because who writes notes like that? I've been lead to morse code not once but TWICE, where they actually want you to take it down raw from the sounds/lights and decipher it. Anything you need to investigate is painfully simplistic, but just leads to annoying paperwork or wandering around looking for things to click. Sadly I've started looking up every quest on an FAQ/Guide. Not because I can't figure it out, but because after I figure it out I don't feel like doing the bullshit parts. I have the goddamn answer, let me move forward, don't make me count the letters in names or take down morse code by hand. Seriously WTF.

The quests aren't even set up right. You get random pick-up missions that are harder than investigations, fighting quests that only involve a small amount of fighting required so you're dodging aggro like a sabatoge mission (because mobs are worth jack shit... 600-1,800exp, vs quests which start at 100,000 and go up from there in the same zone). You get sabotage missions where the only penalty for not doing the stealth part is mobs come after you which are easy to solo, so it's faster to just slaughter you're way directly up to the objective.





All that said, I'm having fun. Most of the time combat is just three or four fights instead of fifty 'pulls'. The stories are decent and grounded to the point I want to read lore. The whole world is very well laid out and dense with stuff happening that you can interact with. Find an explosive on a building? Grab the side quest off of it and go disarm bombs while you're doing your main quest. Find cultists in a trance with balls of fire floating past? Pick up the quest and figure out wtf they're doing. Despite all the fail at the advanced stuff, you still end up with a less repetitive, less grindy, more customizable MMO than usual.

Some of the extra pick-up quests are super grindy like kill 30 things in an aggro field where that means killing 30 other things to get around, or super grindy that's disguised like 'follow and observe the thing/guy/animal/mob/spirit' and it wanders an aggro field making you fight an assload of stuff, but they are worth low xp and completely skippable.


I hear PvP is shit, but we'll see how that goes when I get there. A lot of gear imbalance right now with people trying to play in quality 8/10 drops vs people in 10/10 raid gear with a full build. Lots of skills people haven't figured out standard counters to like sniper shots people don't know they can break LoS on and such. Maybe it'll be better by the time I reach it.

[VKhaun]

Oh yeah, and the niche community they hoped for is no where to be found. Everyone around is running right through the content with FAQ's in hand not trying to figure out a damn thing. I've had to walk away from quests several times now because randumbs will run up and just solve the thing all in a row and give it away. They set up half a dozen chat channels and everyone just blabs spoilers, LFG spam, and trade in /general.

The only thing they've managed to do on a community level is give everyone an ego. If you try to ask for help for something, ten people will send you tells stating the obvious parts of the quest you already got past or the solution (code/order of clicking/coordinates, etc.) that they think they're so clever for knowing. No one I've spoken with to date has been able to have an actual conversation about any given puzzle or story. They just want to give you the answer that they looked up or give you some BS like 'you have to figure it out' when they have no freaking clue where the answer is from.

Try it yourself if you get the game. Go to the first town and pick any quest that asks you to think. For example you could ask for the code to the buried vault in front of the church. Everyone will tell you 'it's on the wall' or just give you the code. Then ask them what that number is and you'll get silence. They have no idea. They either tried all the numbers they saw in the area or they looked it up with google. My personal favorite is the end of Kingsmouth Code, where a priest is asking you to investigate some things about when the town was first built (1666) and plaques and things about it's history.


Highlight for spoilers---
Turns out the quest dead ends in a bible passage. You are directed to looking it up, but it doesn't say anything useful. It's just the queen of sheeba giving king solomon some gold. Turns out you use the amount of gold in that bible passage as the fucking electronic code to another keypad thing ON THE CELLAR DOOR OF THE PRIESTS OWN GIANT NEW HOUSE
---


Seriously watch the reviews and guides for 'Kingsmouth Code'. This quest has been in since beta and you can hear in people's voices when they get to the end, they have no idea what is going on and have reverse engineered it. AFTER someone told them what to do with the bible passage, they went and did it, then tried to figure out... how they were supposed to have figured it out...

[Sillywilly]

Oh yeah, and the niche community they hoped for is no where to be found. Everyone around is running right through the content with FAQ's in hand not trying to figure out a damn thing. I've had to walk away from quests several times now because randumbs will run up and just solve the thing all in a row and give it away. They set up half a dozen chat channels and everyone just blabs spoilers, LFG spam, and trade in /general.

The only thing they've managed to do on a community level is give everyone an ego. If you try to ask for help for something, ten people will send you tells stating the obvious parts of the quest you already got past or the solution (code/order of clicking/coordinates, etc.) that they think they're so clever for knowing. No one I've spoken with to date has been able to have an actual conversation about any given puzzle or story. They just want to give you the answer that they looked up or give you some BS like 'you have to figure it out' when they have no freaking clue where the answer is from.

Try it yourself if you get the game. Go to the first town and pick any quest that asks you to think. For example you could ask for the code to the buried vault in front of the church. Everyone will tell you 'it's on the wall' or just give you the code. Then ask them what that number is and you'll get silence. They have no idea. They either tried all the numbers they saw in the area or they looked it up with google. My personal favorite is the end of Kingsmouth Code, where a priest is asking you to investigate some things about when the town was first built (1666) and plaques and things about it's history.


Highlight for spoilers---
Turns out the quest dead ends in a bible passage. You are directed to looking it up, but it doesn't say anything useful. It's just the queen of sheeba giving king solomon some gold. Turns out you use the amount of gold in that bible passage as the fucking electronic code to another keypad thing ON THE CELLAR DOOR OF THE PRIESTS OWN GIANT NEW HOUSE
---


Seriously watch the reviews and guides for 'Kingsmouth Code'. This quest has been in since beta and you can hear in people's voices when they get to the end, they have no idea what is going on and have reverse engineered it. AFTER someone told them what to do with the bible passage, they went and did it, then tried to figure out... how they were supposed to have figured it out...

This was one of my primary beefs with the game in beta. The quests didn't make a whole lot of sense and they were often times hard to notice in that it was hard to tell they were lighting up when hovered over.

And yeah the community was horrible in that one. It's obvious you're surrounded by asspie retards who have done a quest with a walk through and think they sound smart by being smart ass in global chat about the solution. One of these guys even made as ass out of himself because there was a glitch that was causing one of the quest items to be in the wrong location and he smarted off about "just read the damn clues lazy ass" and someone reminded him the item wasn't in the right spot. He just read a walk through that said where it was in game and didn't know the clue wasn't any help because of the glitch. .

Those are the kind of people I absolutely hate online. I'm sure people in global think I'm a complete asshole for it but when someone does something like that I absolutely taunt and harsh the shit out of them for it. I got a warning from a CSR the other day on SWtOR for it.

[VKhaun]

Work went from HOLY SHIT to chill very abruptly tonight.
Came back and re-read my posts and I feel like I came off really negative.

The game delivers on none of it's greater promises IMHO, but underneath those is still a standard MMO. As MMO's go, I would put TSW above anything else that's come out recently including RIFT and SWTOR. If you're looking for one to play now and have a fifty to burn, it's not bad. I am getting more play time out of this than any of my previous purchases and I'm still excited to log on next week when I have free time again. Hell, I'll probably be online tonight between 12hr shifts instead of sleeping as much as I should.

[Graveworm]

Work went from HOLY SHIT to chill very abruptly tonight.
Came back and re-read my posts and I feel like I came off really negative.

The game delivers on none of it's greater promises IMHO, but underneath those is still a standard MMO. As MMO's go, I would put TSW above anything else that's come out recently including RIFT and SWTOR. If you're looking for one to play now and have a fifty to burn, it's not bad. I am getting more play time out of this than any of my previous purchases and I'm still excited to log on next week when I have free time again. Hell, I'll probably be online tonight between 12hr shifts instead of sleeping as much as I should.

Rift at launch or Rift now? I haven't played recently but I heard it's gotten really good.

[VKhaun]

Rift at launch. I beat Rift's first zone and was well into it's second, and it was just standard MMO crap. The random zone events were interesting at first, but were just more 'kill X' quests and didn't add up to enough to make me play a standard crap MMO.


TSW is less grinding, less fetching (assuming you don't opt to do the low xp fetch and grind quests), and a refreshing bit of thinking and story telling. Where a standard MMO will give you a WP to a field and a counter of stuff/enemies to do/kill and a journal somewhere you can open to read about why, TSW will involve you in ways that are not annoying and make the game better.

There was a pickup quest for example, where a delivery truck was broken into and boxes of seafood were strewn about. An open box had a quest marker on it. When you take the quest, your log says to figure out who or what wanted the seafood. From where you are, you can see two more boxes laying along the street and a third stuck to a fence post. Following the trail will get you aggro adding in the combat element that is so crappily standardized in other MMO's, and reaching the end will show you what's up with the seafood thievery and give you a mini-boss fight.

Another from a missing person's poster has you traveling the town to small marked areas where they were last seen to check if they are zombies, hiding, or whatever. You don't even have to actually kill them if they're zombies! Just highlighting them and getting the name over their head will complete the objective... but I mean come on... I probably half the list just because I could. I can't remember the last time I was like that in an MMO. Even my beloved CoH has me grinding and wishing I didn't have to fight sometimes.

Unlike AoConan, the second zone has only gotten better so far.


When TSW -DOES- make you grind the counts are low (outisde of some obviously grindy pickup quests with low XP) like having you kill six of two mobs, and fifteen of another... then you get to the area and see that the two types you need six of walk around in pairs, and the ones you need fifteen of come in groups of five weak mobs, meaning less than ten actual pulls, but also meaning nine interesting fights against duos and groups, which will call for different skills or a flexible build if you're not over leveled.

[Zavon]

Have you made it to the Blue Mountain area yet? The sheer number of mobs, combined with the weak combat makes it feel incredibly grindy.

[VKhaun]

Have you made it to the Blue Mountain area yet? The sheer number of mobs, combined with the weak combat makes it feel incredibly grindy.

I'm in Egypt.

I didn't find Blue Mountain to be any trouble. It felt like the smallest of the three zones and it's border had a wide open road going around it so you could kite anything forever, with 'safe' areas at both edges (Mansion and Reservation Gift Shop) that have calm areas around them. If you're a high enough rank that the zone cons, you can upgrade your sprint speed before going in for traveling without getting stopped and nothing slows in BM that I recall except the stationary brood marks.

Savage coast was the grindy-feeling one to me. The safe zones and mission givers were right in the middle of the worst aggro fields, especially the Academy, so you could run IN but not run out to your mission, because it was so close you wouldn't lose the attention of what you were kiting... but there were some real gems in there to make up for it. The Octotron. Watching people try to get into The Black House through the front. The League of Monster Slayers initiation. Then again I'm probably holding a grudge because of how bad the carnival investigation quest was (aside from the Octotron XD).

I did get tired of the Akk'ab (SP?) in both zones pretty quickly. They will chase your bacon for MILES. They won't ever catch you because they stop and do the dash move in the wrong direction all the time, but you can't stop when you get to your destination. You have to overshoot it by a mile then walk back or fight like three Akk'ab lol.