The Secret World

[anvi]

At least 2 companies are trying to remake Everquest right now, so no. But that's not what my point was, I didn't want AOC or TSW or SWL to be Everquest, I just wanted them to be at least competitive in terms of content and quality. And they aren't, they are a million miles off, and are all total shit in comparison, and they are a fraction of the size too. Just because you have no frame of reference and shitty standards doesn't mean I should too.

 

[Zombra]

Too late. I already drew this.

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

Finished all of the game, including Tokyo and Africa without paying anything. Bought mediocre handguns for big damage and claws for self-healing from the market with bullshit currency of which I got a lot of by just questing. My level maxed out long before the end, too. I was playing as Illuminati faction.
Played all alone except when trying out those cooperative instance missions (they mostly suck) and still almost never died. Some bosses have huge health and it takes a long time mindlessly cycling skills but from the combat point of view, game is really not hard, in the main story.
Agree though it should have been single player without the lame fetch/kill/collect monster parts quests and better combat system. Since now you barely see other players, at least the "immershun" isn't ruined by having people with clown wigs, star shaped sunglasses and rainbow suspenders riding steam punk motorcycles with horns that play "la cucaracha" around while you try to solve the mystery of the Winchester house. So that's a plus.
I really loved the puzzle solving quests, they're very good for an MMO. Again, a waste. This begged to be single player or 1-4 player co op mission based at most. But I do wish there was more of it.

 

[Late Bloomer]

I really loved the puzzle solving quests, they're very good for an MMO.

I haven't played this is quite some time. I don't really remember many puzzles. They are very lacking in most every MMO. Were any of the puzzles a real challenge? Like almost have to look it up challenge?

 

[Zombra]

I haven't played this is quite some time. I don't really remember many puzzles. They are very lacking in most every MMO. Were any of the puzzles a real challenge? Like almost have to look it up challenge?

The Investigation type missions are light years ahead of puzzles in any other MMO, worthy of a proper hardcore puzzle game.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

I really loved the puzzle solving quests, they're very good for an MMO.

I haven't played this is quite some time. I don't really remember many puzzles. They are very lacking in most every MMO. Were any of the puzzles a real challenge? Like almost have to look it up challenge?

Secret World was very much inspired by ARGs. In fact leading up to the game's launch there were several high profile ARGs. And that bleeds into the game. Now the puzzle missions are really hard to solve. If you're not using a walkthrough you'll have to find references to actual ancient texts online, learn real dead languages, and look up in universe websites that were set up for clues. These missions could take real life days to complete without a walkthrough. You really had to do your research and were rewarded for doing so.

In the original version of the game you got insane amounts of XP from the investigation missions but it felt right because you spent so long doing esoteric things to solve the quests. This was one more thing Secret World Legends completely missed the point of. Giving you the standard amount of XP for solving the puzzle quests. Because not a single person who worked on Secret World Legends actually cared about the game enough to understand anything about it.

 

[gurugeorge]

I really loved the puzzle solving quests, they're very good for an MMO.

I haven't played this is quite some time. I don't really remember many puzzles. They are very lacking in most every MMO. Were any of the puzzles a real challenge? Like almost have to look it up challenge?

Secret World was very much inspired by ARGs. In fact leading up to the game's launch there were several high profile ARGs. And that bleeds into the game. Now the puzzle missions are really hard to solve. If you're not using a walkthrough you'll have to find references to actual ancient texts online, learn real dead languages, and look up in universe websites that were set up for clues. These missions could take real life days to complete without a walkthrough. You really had to do your research and were rewarded for doing so.

In the original version of the game you got insane amounts of XP from the investigation missions but it felt right because you spent so long doing esoteric things to solve the quests. This was one more thing Secret World Legends completely missed the point of. Giving you the standard amount of XP for solving the puzzle quests. Because not a single person who worked on Secret World Legends actually cared about the game enough to understand anything about it.

IIRC they even went to the lengths of making up some fake websites in the real world that you'd find if you followed some of the in-game clues. That was pretty cool.

I think the only problem was that the in-game web browser was really slow, barebones and shitty

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

To be honest I had to look up a lot of them, especially in the beginning when I hadn't got the hang of it yet.
My cerebrum is seriously atrophied from regular MMO fetch quests, so this was an entirely different world.
You shouldn't expect to simply run around a bit and talk to a number of "!" NPCs to solve the puzzles.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

that's not you, almost all of them required extremely obscure or inhumanly specific knowledge.

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

I remember somewhat vividly the first instance of this happening when I just got into Not-Innsmouth and had to follow a series of hidden Illuminati symbols all around the place on manhole covers and what have you, and that was pretty easy even though there's NO quest markers and you run all around town.. But then it leads to a museum or so where you find a riddle on a picture frame, and to solve it required actual background knowledge on the real works of art displayed in the museum.

Legends is what I played so I didn't know about the lowered XP thing, but maxing out level was still easy and doing those puzzles was already its own reward (like I'm playing games to have fun, yeah right haha what a novel concept).

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

that's not you, almost all of them required extremely obscure or inhumanly specific knowledge.

At worst you went online and learned something new. Oddly enough in the real world you don't stop learning and aquiring new skills and knowledge.You got out what you put in. You could choose to learn ancient alphabets to solve a riddle or you could ignore the puzzle quests and do the other quests. They were designed for people who liked researching and finding out conspiracies. Actual occult knowledge you had was rewarded and researching and learning new knowledge was also rewarded. The puzzle quests were meant to take days to solve and require collaboration with friends and community members.

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

Tho I have to say, it felt they got progressively weaker. In the "Lovecraft county" they're still numerous and very intricate, in Egypt it was like mhhnyeeeh, I remember more roof jumping puzzles actually, and Transylvania went mostly full on WoW and I started to skip quests here and there for the first time ever.
Maybe I'm misremembering, but anyone who's interested should at least try Act 1, it's the best one imho.

 

[Zombra]

that's not you, almost all of them required extremely obscure or inhumanly specific knowledge.

I looked up spoilers on the first two and was very mad about how hard and unfair they were. By then I had learned the "language" of the game and solved every Investigation afterward with zero spoilers (until I got bored and abandoned the game somewhere in Transylvania). Yes, this involved doing external research sometimes but I didn't need to go to graduate school for any of them.

 

[Delterius]

the fucking morse code fucked me up more than once

 

[rusty_shackleford]

having to research it outside the game was part of the point of it, your character has access to the internet therefore any (non-meta) resource is obviously fair game

 

[Zombra]

the fucking morse code fucked me up more than once

That one was messed up but fun. Can't quite remember what external tools I used. I think I recorded the audio into Audacity so I could look at the pattern visually while transcribing? Good times.

Actually I lied above. There was one mission in southwestern Blue Mountain (I think) that involved these super elaborate chunks of visual code. I never had any idea where to start on that. So I just walked away from it because I couldn't figure it out. To this day I have no idea what I was supposed to do. So yeah maybe that was a graduate school one, I don't know and I'm 100% okay with it.

 

[J1M]

Graduate school means you paid more for things you could learn from the library for free. It is not a hallmark of intelligence.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

"oh no, you don't need specific knowledge, you only need to go online and look for someone else who has it".
i swear, the retardation of some people...

 

[Delterius]

googling bible passages for puzzles in the illuminati island is fine and, in fact, good

 

[Zombra]

"oh no, you don't need specific knowledge, you only need to go online and look for someone else who has it".
i swear, the retardation of some people...

It's not just looking things up, dumbass. It's using critical thinking to determine what you need to look up. It's mentally stimulating beyond pressing the jump button at the right time or even calculating the DPS of two different swords.

It's OK if you don't enjoy having to actually think when playing a game, but don't pretend that makes you somehow smarter than people who do.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

"oh no, you don't need specific knowledge, you only need to go online and look for someone else who has it".
i swear, the retardation of some people...

I'm sure you're a pollymath who's never had to look up a single querry online. You just have all the knowledge you ever need at one time.

 

[Bigg Boss]

People talking shit about the quests in this game...

 

[rusty_shackleford]

some guy is archiving the entire game in video format
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmUGEQyC9qp75zrmZ7p4JQw/videos

the eventual emulator will owe eternal thanks to this man

 

[Bigg Boss]

Well shit. Not a reason to really beat it now.
hello friend We have been defeated.

 

[Delterius]

some guy is archiving the entire game in video format
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmUGEQyC9qp75zrmZ7p4JQw/videos

the eventual emulator will owe eternal thanks to this man

awesome. i wanted to show a scene to some friends and i was shocked it wasn't online at all.