The Secret World

[Bigg Boss]

I figured as much. Illuminati are all about the pedophiles instead.

 

[DeepOcean]

Speaking of quests, I really liked Solomon Island, Egypt felt unfinished and was unsatisfying, the annoying backtracking of the Valley of the Sun God crushed my will to continue last time, can Transylvania quests make up for that? And the DLC? Are worthy it? By the end of the Valley of the Sun God I felt I could strangle someone that gave me yet another kill bad cultist guys on the other side of the map quest. I abandoned kinda at the start of Transylvania.

There are some really interesting quests on Solomon Island, not so much so on Egypt. Only two things good on Egypt is Nassir and that melodramatic demon guy on the Valley of the Sun God.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Well... ~93% of content is soloable (including the main storyline) and I'd argue game's more enjoyable that way.

Can you romance anyone in this game?

I think this is the heart of Codex: It's better to avoid real people, but romancing NPCs is important.

 

[Ludo Lense]

"We own stocks in hell!"

The cheese overload right here!

Dragon seem like the "For the lulz" faction and the Illuminati annoy me since they are supposed to be about Enlightenment not power, they just seem like pricks from the get-go. So Templar it is then, if for no other reason that I actually agree with their goal even if they have somewhat fascist vibes.

So far I am liking it but now that I am older and have so little free time on my hands, doing the sequential "kill x creatures" quests annoy me greatly. Kill this type of draugr, then this one, then that one. Ugh.

 

[bozia2012]

"We own stocks in hell!"

The cheese overload right here!

Dragon seem like the "For the lulz" faction and the Illuminati annoy me since they are supposed to be about Enlightenment not power, they just seem like pricks from the get-go. So Templar it is then, if for no other reason that I actually agree with their goal even if they have somewhat fascist vibes.

So far I am liking it but now that I am older and have so little free time on my hands, doing the sequential "kill x creatures" quests annoy me greatly. Kill this type of draugr, then this one, then that one. Ugh.

Choosing faction is choosing vanity clothing and your favourite brand of cheese. You'll see later on that they are just a bunch of pompous fools.

There's a good dose of simple quests, but they always gave a bit of lore - needed to figure out the shit yourself. Hopefully you'll stay a bit longer and get to the cooler quests.

For me the game goes on the highest gear in Transylvania.

 

[Ludo Lense]

The investigation quests are really cool but some of these steps are complete

I am going with "google after 10 minutes" rule because going through trash mobs all over the place on hunches annoyed me.

The last part of the vision quest is just spiteful. The walkthrough says "if you read the lore..." but I haven't seen one piece of the lore that indicates the history of the place you are supposed to be going to

 

[Humppaleka]

I may be shit at adventure games and lore tidbits but for the life of me some investigation missions go way over my head. I still like them, even with a walkthrough.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i was able to solo only (most of) the first 2 maps' investigation missions. past that they're truly insane for my little brain.

 

[DeepOcean]

i was able to solo only (most of) the first 2 maps' investigation missions. past that they're truly insane for my little brain.

Wait until you find investigation missions where you have a code where you need to discover an obscure book then get a passage of the obscure book, translate through an obscure code that the first time you will even know about it is on google. It is too much work, just google and watch the cutscenes.

 

[Fatty]

Bought this off Humble. Jesus Christ the Kingsmouth Code was fucking brutal.

 

[thesheeep]

My "favorite" two from the starting area are one where you have to be able to read musical notes (which I claim most people can't) and one where you have to get Morse code from an audio file.
That second one I could never get, it's just all one big ......... for me.

But yeah, try for 10 minutes, then just look it up is pretty much mandatory for this game if you want to proceed faster than snail speed.

 

[Lhynn]

The one with the musical notes i did with a professional musician, so that made it easier.

 

[Nael]

Just wait until they have you transliterating Japanese, Latin, and Sanskrit.

 

[bozia2012]

Just wait until they have you gathering ritual components from:
- a werewolf carcass hidden behind a trail of bear traps and tripwire grenades (and a hidden pit just when you thought you're clear to run)
- a totem placed in the middle of an acid lake and guarded by unkillable ghouls
- the center of a vampire military compound with uber-sentries and proximity mines
- a rock that is only accessible by jumping through about 20 magical platforms that can be summoned only for a short time (you know by now that this game's controls are made for that!)

...all in one quest and one mistake requires repeating the whole segment.

Ah, The Cost of Magic - such sweet memories. I even got all achievements for it.

 

[bylam]

In hindsight, The Kingsmouth Code was probably too brutal (and slightly ambiguous due to the fucking changes that were made to the map), but you have to hit people in the face with something in order to get their attention.
When I was designing it, it was the equivalent of "Wake up! You have to pay attention to shit in this game because other MMO's have been letting you play half asleep!"

I figured it would be the first investigation that most people did, and therefore needed to set the standard. Lessons learned.

 

[Ludo Lense]

Honestly the biggest design mistake I've seen is the fact that investigation quests do not have their separate slots. It is painfully annoying to simply stop the game for a puzzle, especially the ones about exploration.

Let us say

Spoiler

you figure out the 120

in the Kingsmouth Code but have no idea where to use it. Doing the other Run/collect kill quests while thinking and searching for clues is much better than running around in circles. I know you can stop and take another quest but you have to backtrack to another quest giver and then back again to the investigation quest giver to pick things up. Most people will also just simply forget and not think about it in the back of their heads without reminders.

Also, current pet peeve, there isn't a single investigation quest in the damn Innsmouth Academy with the giant library? Really? Just a familiar/ghost slaughter fest? Shamefur Dispray.

 

[Zombra]

Well - I feel that the issue with Kingsmouth Code isn't really in the design itself, but in the fact that it was dropped into a larger world designed and populated by committee. For example the "illuminating the path" clue with a picture of a giant lighthouse doesn't really imply to go to the Town Hall but the giant lighthouse in the town. I felt like the designer didn't know there was a lighthouse, and therefore didn't realize he was confusing his oblique reference with a huge red herring. In general, the landscape was so cluttered that interpretive references didn't really work. In Gravity, you learn that "only a small piece of Henderson's farm remains", but if you go to the farmhouse marked in black and white on the map as "Henderson's Gate", you screwed up - you were supposed to be looking for a random unmarked barn. Stuff like this made me very annoyed with the devs, and at the same time I felt stupid for not doing what I was supposed to do ... which I guess was ignore obvious clues? In total the package can be very frustrating.

The Investigation designs weren't bad, and sometimes they worked beautifully - generally when isolated from other, distracting elements. Once again I lament that this was an MMO and not a single-player adventure game.

 

[bylam]

Well, as mentioned, the ingame map wasn't there when most of these were designed. Unrelated art team adds stuff that breaks the logic...happens all the time.
Actually if I recall correctly, the entire amusement park in that area was added during one 3 week period when the designers were on holidays. We had to remake the entire design of the area.
Though I object to the lighthouse comment. The clue, as with any riddle, should only have one true answer. No shit the lighthouse is a red herring.

 

[Ludo Lense]

And done. I can't go on. Finished Savage Coast but the MMO parts got to me.

I have no idea who this game was for and looking at the design even on paper I am not surprised it didn't live up to the expectations.

Non-MMO players that were intrigued by the premise and puzzles have to fight against the MMO parts.

The MMO addicts have a sort of flavour of the month subpar MMO experience that was outclassed by others even before it was released.

It is an MMO with innovations that grind against the genre it is in.

That being said it was worth the time for me since I am interested in design, seeing ideas go wrong is equally important to seeing them go right.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Well, as mentioned, the ingame map wasn't there when most of these were designed. Unrelated art team adds stuff that breaks the logic...happens all the time.
Actually if I recall correctly, the entire amusement park in that area was added during one 3 week period when the designers were on holidays. We had to remake the entire design of the area.
Though I object to the lighthouse comment. The clue, as with any riddle, should only have one true answer. No shit the lighthouse is a red herring.

I hope you had absolutely no hand I designing the remaining banal kill and fetch quests or the fucking atrocious worse in the genre combat system...

 

[Zombra]

Weirdest Steam recommendation I've seen yet.

 

[bozia2012]

Didn't even get to The Blue Mountain Noob Filter and went all floppy.

 

[Humppaleka]

My "favorite" two from the starting area are one where you have to be able to read musical notes (which I claim most people can't) and one where you have to get Morse code from an audio file.
That second one I could never get, it's just all one big ......... for me.

But yeah, try for 10 minutes, then just look it up is pretty much mandatory for this game if you want to proceed faster than snail speed.

For the morse one I recorded it with mb Audacity and played it through to some online morse decoder, worked pretty well and I was darn impressed with myself.

 

[bylam]

I hope you had absolutely no hand I designing the remaining banal kill and fetch quests or the fucking atrocious worse in the genre combat system...

Combat was nothing to do with me, but I'll own the quests (even the shitty ones) as I was responsible for approving them even if I didn't design/write them. The "bad" quests are standard MMO shit tier, the quests that mattered were everything not labelled "item quest".

 

[Kem0sabe]

Combat was nothing to do with me, but I'll own the quests (even the shitty ones) as I was responsible for approving them even if I didn't design/write them. The "bad" quests are standard MMO shit tier, the quests that mattered were everything not labelled "item quest".

Yeah, the game really shines during a lot of the story quests, which only brings more focus to the uterly Mediocre mmo quests.

While I played I was always thinking 'this would make an fuckingly awesome single-player rpg.