The Secret World beta

[Arkadrel]

1 forum post that i'll never forget from the age of conan forums:

"this game is funcommed in the funhole"

LMAO

AoC had horrible balanceing issues... and some game mechanic issues.
Apart from that I rather enjoyed playing it though.... liked the idea of doing combo's by arrows.

The HoX was my favorite class to play.

 

[crownjules]

Well I got as far as you can progress in the main storyline in the beta (~6 hours of playtime). Many aspects of the game impress me. Combat is a little bit better than games like WoW in that it's a little more dynamic, you move around a bit, and you chain effects from various skills. I will say that the game seems very well polished so far.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

What is there as far as cities, places you congregate in between missions, how is that?

 

[crownjules]

You start off in London which is the Templar's main hub. Then you get shot off to Solomon Island which is some island of the New England coast. You only get to explore one section of it - Kingsmouth - and they did a good job IMHO of constructing a believable town under siege. There's a lot of Lovecraftian influence used in this area. A ship came back into the port and the crew slowly began going crazy and then this fog came over the town bringing with it horrors from the ocean. In the full game, there's also Egypt, Transylvania, and Tokyo that you'll explore.

Graphics are very well done and DX11. Voice acting is very good quality too for the most part.

Also there's no NDA on the beta weekend.

 

[mingsoup]

Its interesting following the back and forth on this game. I *really* want to love this game. I've had it up to _______ (here) with high fantasy. I played AO for a long time and had a lot of fun with it. I really hope they can pull it together. However, I'm afraid its just gonna go F2P like 3 months from now.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Unfortunately, the beta required a FB account so, no fun for me.

 

[KaOTiK]

The game looks neat, but I wont play it due to monthly fee and micro transaction store. To me, it is one or the other, you can't have your cake and eat it too Funcom.

 

[imaheadcase]

Unfortunately, the beta required a FB account so, no fun for me.

I hate when companies do that. It alienates lots of people.

 

[Gigglin]

I was a big Anarchy Online fan back in the days. It was my first mmo, and loved the futuristic setting with insane amounts of class customization. I tried the Secret World demo this weekend, and it's the most disappointing beta that I have played in a while. Some of the things I disliked:

1.The combat has no soul at all. Even with the 7 active and passive skills, you are constantly mashing buttons 1-7 and it gets old super quick.

2. Looks like they have spent a great deal of time on the quest system. Each quest giver has a cutscene when you accept a quest. Some people might like this, but I honestly don't care about a cutscene for a quest to go kill low-level mobs. These cutscenes might make sense for a boss-mob or something. Waste of resources.

 

[SunnyD]

I really don't know what to think of this game. I played for maybe an hour... at first it was okay in terms of gameplay. Seems to be lacking a little polish. But the story - or lack thereof - the backstory of the game has SO MUCH potential, but the intro to it just was flat. There was nothing. The zero-explanation thing just doesn't work.

As far as the game mechanics, they're okay. Nothing terribly special. They work, they're sort of unique. The "classes" have little to no differentiation (other than melee and ranged). The animations and dialogue are clunky at best. The overlayed windows are a nice touch, but when too much is on the screen it's unusable. And... the interface sucks.

The only bright point is that the game directly interfaces with my G13.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

You start off in London which is the Templar's main hub. Then you get shot off to Solomon Island which is some island of the New England coast. You only get to explore one section of it - Kingsmouth - and they did a good job IMHO of constructing a believable town under siege. There's a lot of Lovecraftian influence used in this area. A ship came back into the port and the crew slowly began going crazy and then this fog came over the town bringing with it horrors from the ocean. In the full game, there's also Egypt, Transylvania, and Tokyo that you'll explore.

Graphics are very well done and DX11. Voice acting is very good quality too for the most part.

Also there's no NDA on the beta weekend.

I mean, how do those cities look, what are the MMO expected functions they will have? Is there a physical auction house you can trade items, or has that been placed into some kind of automatic process like SW TOR?

 

[crownjules]

I mean, how do those cities look, what are the MMO expected functions they will have? Is there a physical auction house you can trade items, or has that been placed into some kind of automatic process like SW TOR?

The cities look very believable IMHO. Not your standard MMO fair where they feel empty and lifeless aside from a few NPCs. You're only in a small section of London where I presume the auction house and other faction related vendors will be in the full version. I only was in there long enough to do the tutorials and then get sent on my way to Kingsmouth. They were probably not even enabled for the purposes of the beta.

 

[Beev]

If this game is coming out in a month and five days (per Wikipedia) then I'll almost guarantee the beta client is the final version, and more specifically, ALL of the beginning game content is, and has been, DONE.

So the OP's post about his first few hours not gripping him is very telling.

Pass.

 

[SunnyD]

If this game is coming out in a month and five days (per Wikipedia) then I'll almost guarantee the beta client is the final version, and more specifically, ALL of the beginning game content is, and has been, DONE.

So the OP's post about his first few hours not gripping him is very telling.

Pass.

I doubt that, considering I saw an awful lot of "placeholder" stuff in the game. From text to dialogue to graphics.

 

[mingsoup]

I personally really like the graphics. The shadows and light beams through the fog in the Maine town is really fantastic. Love the Halloween setting. I *love* Halloween. If they could get behind this and make it quality, they'd have a lifer.

 

[itzbiff]

I could not push myself to play the Secret World beta all the way through.

Horrible animations. Everything felt stiff.
Did not like the limitations of having around what 5-6 quests at a time. Made me run around more than needed. Only could track 1 quest at a time.

It felt like the game wasnt even close to finished. And it comes out next month.

I have a feeling its gonna be like AoC release. Where people pay to play a beta.

 

[gladiatorua]

So I got the invite to the last BWE. Less than two weeks before release. Are they seriously going to release this? It's buggy.
UI is pretty good but there big flaws. Like inventory. It's a long window three items wide. That does not properly resize. So when you fill up the part you can see on screen problems start.
Terrible memory leaks. 32 bit process. When 2gb of available memory are close to full it starts to lag horribly and eventually hangs. How long does it take? Depends on the pace of your traveling.
The skill, level and class system is an 80% copy of GW1 system. The difference is that you have to grind for ability points. To get abilities you want, you need to get tons of abilities you don't need first. The absence of levels is an illusion because to equip the gear of quality level you have to spend certain amount of skill points which you get by getting exp.
The combat system is dull. Spam one or two abilities to get combo points, spend combo points. For every class. With slight differences. Some times use ability on a long cooldown.
The crafting system is horrible. Get weapon toolkit of certain quality level, open crafting window. Arrange seven metal pieces of appropriate quality in certain shape in a 5x5 grid. Get your new weapon. It's hard to get metal of the needed quality level because you get metal from disassembling of weapons you don't need. The metal is of lower quality, so you need 5 useless weapons to craft one useful of the same level. Same goes for "armor" and upgrades.
The animations are some times bugged or even missing.
The locations are the same for all factions. So twinking is very boring because the differences in story can be seen only at certain points.
The customization of the character is not very good. At the beginning of the game you create a character with some customization of the face and hair, choose out of very limited amount of clothes, almost all of which I didn't like. You can buy some from vendors. Haven't seen any of them yet. Good stuff is in the RM shop.
Monetization is not very good. Monthly subscription. Funcom thinks that 1 euro = 1$(VAT included). Even if I don't live in the euro zone and their VAT does not concern me. And there is RM shop. The combination of the two is not very nice. You can pay 200 euros and never pay subscription. Ha-ha.
The character you are playing is mute.
The only big advantage of this game is the setting. Modern Lovecraftian world.
Dear Funcom, I know you wanted to make a good game but try to learn from your mistakes next time.
Dear EA, I know you had a hand in this as a publisher. Go die.

 

[Gordon Freemen]

Ugh...I had high hopes for this one due to it's theme but after a few hours of play I uninstalled it. the game is terrible, clunky interface, combat is boring as hell, and there's so much that is unexplained on how to do stuff.

Ya it ran like shxx on my rig even on med/low settings but it looks great but it really really needs much more optimizations and you would think FunCom would have learned there lessons after the Age of Conan nightmare LOL. I think mabey is a couple more years TSW has the postential to be a great game depending on if the fix it but right now it's a busted ass game for sure IMHO.

 

[fo0k]

love the settings, love the story, love the art direction.

i like the use of modern weapons (guns) while still retaining a classic "mage" class.

i like that everyone runs around in whatever clothes they want (reminded me of SWG pre-composite armor trend)


.......

that being said, everything else is disappointing. it's too "complicated" for a newbie to pick up and get sucked into without being frustrated. the interface doesn't seem polished and inviting. i don't remember age of conan giving off the same vibes.

the game may be interesting and fun once you get the hang of it, but i think it will fail miserably.

 

[KaOTiK]

Almost forgot I had the beta invite for this weekend if it wasn't for this thread. Took longer to DL and patch it then I played it. I like the idea, look, setting of the game, but my god, I would have sworn this is alpha still. Also the whole lets have microtransactions while we charge you a monthly fee was a no go anyways.

 

[Pandora's Box]

Funcom games are always in Alpha stage

 

[KaOTiK]

Age of Conan at launch felt like a polished gem next to this though.

 

[Gordon Freemen]

Age of Conan at launch felt like a polished gem next to this though.

AOC was far less than playable the TSW both at launch beta but AOC is all good now and it's optimized.

 

[KaOTiK]

I didn't have many problems at all with AoC at launch. It was rough around the edges and was beta still but overall it was fine and didn't turn me away from it and I wanted to keep playing. TSW? none of that

 

[Nintendesert]

If this game is coming out in a month and five days (per Wikipedia) then I'll almost guarantee the beta client is the final version, and more specifically, ALL of the beginning game content is, and has been, DONE.

So the OP's post about his first few hours not gripping him is very telling.

Pass.

If this were a single player game and DVDs were being shipped and that was it then maybe, but being an MMO they'll add content and patch right up to the day it goes live.

They aren't restricted to the old timelines for completing and finalizing content for distribution.