I'm really hoping this thread isn't going to be drowned out by people still whining about AoC, yes it was lacking when released (I was a AoC closed beta tester of over a year and a half by the way, we did warn them), though as it stands now AoC is a pretty solid MMO.
Now back on topic, this game looks interesting and steps away from the EQ/WOW model, I'm always willing to support a development team that's willing to try something new. The PR is being managed quite intelligently and they're attempting to use a few out of the box ideas when trying to draw peoples attention, I hope this follows through into the game proper.
Like I say about almost every MMO I look forward to; I hope they have combat down right.
It's the core of most games, and while this game will seem to be focused a lot on adventure and puzzle solving, there will no doubt also be hordes of zombies and other uglies to kill, so I'm hoping the "third person system" they have is going to be fun. I've waited long and hard for an MMO with good, fun combat.
This interested me from the moment I first heard about it.
That kingsmouth trailer had me godsmacked. Although to quantify, Dark Corners of the Earth is one of my favourite games.
I too hope they get this right, where you train skills up, no classes etc very UO like as to allow max individuality as possible.
I also hope, that even if you are the grand supreme master of say, assualt rifles, a shoggoth is still going to make you have a very bad day...
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
Keep in mind that AoC was probably the money-maker for this game. It sold extremely well, despite poor maintenance post release, which would explain the poor maintenance and lack of post-release content if it was just to get funds to work on development for this game.
Secret World always struck me as the real game they were developing for long-term enjoyment anyways.
It's been in development for longer then AoC, they've been insanely hush-hush about it for awhile, and is a much more interesting and original IP compared to their other two games.
Though, if Funcom fucks it up it'll be their death knell for any games they release in the next half decade. People are already dubious about the company given AoC, and noone remembers Anarchy Online, or how they pulled it out of the gutter and turned it into an awesome game at the eleventh hour.
Anarchy Online was pretty nice once they fixed it up. Too bad Shadowlands ruined it.
I think this is the inherent problem in most MMO's these days. They are pressured to release early, and have to spend a crucial 2-3 months fixing things up. Meanwhile the player base is frustrated because they feel like they are playing an unfinished game and subsequently leave before the game truly has a chance to shine.
I really hope that this isn't the case with The Secret World and that Funcom learned from their mistakes with AoC
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My biggest hope from the info there? An ally monster. That is to say, that most of the posthuman creatures are out to kill you, but a scant few of them, while rare even in their own right, will be out to help you.
This is the vibe I get from the bigfoot entry, since it discusses the bigfoot not as a creature, but as a society that has helped mankind in the past. It would be VERY cool to be, say, running from some horrible undead THING, out of ammo and low on health, when out of the woods bounds this enormous furry THING, and now all you can think of is "Oh God, not another one, at least let me get killed by the one that will do it quickly". However, before you can fully register what's happening, the bigfoot is turning the undead thing into paste and gesturing for you to run, to get to safety because it's got this.
Unless there is a significant death penalty like a loss of face with your faction
What I mean that if this is going to be a full-fledged MMO with only an interesting setting a lot of things that made The Longest Journey amazing are not going to be translated over well.
So:
death=corpse run, loose a few minutes of gaming time
loss of face= longer rep grind
scary monsters=LFM CTHULU pst (no more rouges)
exciting riddles=alt-tab to allakhazam to read the solution
but I don't want to look up the solutions, I want to have fun!='u fukin nub we r not gunna w8 for u /kick.'
I hope they're going to look more at Uru: Myst Online than normal MMOs.
Aldo, I was just thinking about that earlier today. While combat needs to be smooth for this, they need to focus ALOT on non-combat for this to work properly.
Death needs to be SHITTY in this MMO. It needs to be harsh, it needs to be scary. I'd say it should be permanent, but I know even I would be soured on the idea.
Maybe death could cause a permanent stat debuff or something. Maybe you gain phobias or something, which debuff you when faced with that killed you.
I hate permanent debuffs as it stops people from trying things. Who the hell would want to do something that would result in their character getting gimped?
MMOs are very much about exploration and trying out things that might be above your character's power. Death is a common feature of the genre. You die all the time, but by some form of magic you get back to life and you can try again and/or learn from your errors.
What I expect will happen is that you do not literally die, but that you simply collapse. See LOTRO, you never really die. You just collapse on the floor until you hit the button and you get teleported to a nearby stone circle or someone blows powerful pipeweed in your face or plays a beautiful song about life to you. This gets reflected in the fact that LOTRO does not have hitpoints, but morale points.
It's an easy way to explain why you are immortal and keeps the cost of losing at a minimum (repair costs and a 10min debuff). That way we can just go and try to kill a Ring-Wraith and die five times within an hour without the whole raid having to reroll a new character.
It's really not that different from single player games, where you can just reload a save game and try again. It is only exciting to you because you forget it's just a game and you can try again later. It's like getting scared by a movie, even though you know it's all just special effects you are willing to ignore that knowledge for a while to be entertained. (suspension of disbelief I think it's called)
If Secret World allows me to feel excited about being chased by some scary looking pixels then the developers have done a hell of a job.
What about you suffer a temporary loss for the remainder of that mission?
Like say, blurry vision, or seeing things that arent there? Limping? Some sort of actual physical debuff that forces you to alter your playstyle like you see in horror movies, but resets so you aren't permanently like that?
Don't make it time based either, complete quest or abandon and go back to main base for treatment.
What about you suffer a temporary loss for the remainder of that mission?
Like say, blurry vision, or seeing things that arent there? Limping? Some sort of actual physical debuff that forces you to alter your playstyle like you see in horror movies, but resets so you aren't permanently like that?
Don't make it time based either, complete quest or abandon and go back to main base for treatment.
Didn't some singleplayer game have hallucinations and stuff as punishment? I can't remember the name of it though
Dark Corners of the Earth made you crazier and crazier the more mythos-stuff you observed, to the point where your character would keep trying to kill himself if you weren't paying attention.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
Insanity effects would be awesome in this. Especially if they could pull the bigger ones off right.
I'm picturing one guy dying amongst a group of new players, coming back to their group, looking out to sea, and seeing Rl'Yeh rising out of the sea as they fight off a new wave of monsters.
Cue horrified "holy shit!" and people wondering what the fuck is wrong with the player, or maybe, maybe, not being really sure if it's part of an upcoming instance they have to fight their way through or not, given the segmented nature of certain MMO's nowadays.
Insanity effects would be awesome in this. Especially if they could pull the bigger ones off right.
I'm picturing one guy dying amongst a group of new players, coming back to their group, looking out to sea, and seeing Rl'Yeh rising out of the sea as they fight off a new wave of monsters.
Cue horrified "holy shit!" and people wondering what the fuck is wrong with the player, or maybe, maybe, not being really sure if it's part of an upcoming instance they have to fight their way through or not, given the segmented nature of certain MMO's nowadays.
The doubt would be delicious.
It would be cool once. The first time. Unless he said, "I see R'lyeh" and everyone said, "Yeah, that's just the insanity effects, ignore it." And then, once it was ruined, it would be a meh effect to every player forever onward.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
Insanity effects would be awesome in this. Especially if they could pull the bigger ones off right.
I'm picturing one guy dying amongst a group of new players, coming back to their group, looking out to sea, and seeing Rl'Yeh rising out of the sea as they fight off a new wave of monsters.
Cue horrified "holy shit!" and people wondering what the fuck is wrong with the player, or maybe, maybe, not being really sure if it's part of an upcoming instance they have to fight their way through or not, given the segmented nature of certain MMO's nowadays.
The doubt would be delicious.
It would be cool once. The first time. Unless he said, "I see R'lyeh" and everyone said, "Yeah, that's just the insanity effects, ignore it." And then, once it was ruined, it would be a meh effect to every player forever onward.
That's why they'd need to be extremely varied. Also, more subtle things, like houses facing the wrong direction in some areas would be great for atmosphere and to confuse people. A "the veil of reality is thin here" sort of thing.
Yeah a combination of stuff actually wrong with your character, and seeing the world slightly wrong would be an awesome sign of your character slipping.
Of course it cant be permanent, otherwise you will wind up dead real quick.
Channelling DCotE for a second, I like that phobias actually played into it, and I do hope that if they go with an advantages/disadvantages system that this is looked at.
Mix the imagined events with real, dangerous ones and suddenly "just an insanity effect" is not so clear.
Unsettling, out-of-place stuff would be pretty cool as well, if done right.
Those "you have a virus, deleting your hard-drive"-esque insanity effects from Eternal Darkness would be great since this is a PC game. I can just hear the terrified screaming now.
Imagine playing on an important work computer and having that happening.
I was thinking more along the lines of extra monsters in a fight, so you waste precious resources on something that isnt there instead of telling people they have viruses
I could maybe see a few ways around it. Having a really large pool of insanity effects would be one but that would like be a hell of alot of work.
Maybe having region specific ones, like lets say in one Kingsmouth where creatures come out of the fog and attack you, but its only an illusion... most of the time.
or having effects that muck with your vision or sound temporarily hindering you while zombies come out of no where.
subtle ones would be there for flavor and atmosphere, larger ones would be to hinder you. Cant ignore it if you cant do your job.
Posts
Basically, they should make games like Borderlands if all they want is a multiplayer game.
Why? If people will buy lifetime subscriptions...
Then they'll complain like there's no tomorrow if there's no new content coming out.
Now back on topic, this game looks interesting and steps away from the EQ/WOW model, I'm always willing to support a development team that's willing to try something new. The PR is being managed quite intelligently and they're attempting to use a few out of the box ideas when trying to draw peoples attention, I hope this follows through into the game proper.
It's the core of most games, and while this game will seem to be focused a lot on adventure and puzzle solving, there will no doubt also be hordes of zombies and other uglies to kill, so I'm hoping the "third person system" they have is going to be fun. I've waited long and hard for an MMO with good, fun combat.
That kingsmouth trailer had me godsmacked. Although to quantify, Dark Corners of the Earth is one of my favourite games.
I too hope they get this right, where you train skills up, no classes etc very UO like as to allow max individuality as possible.
I also hope, that even if you are the grand supreme master of say, assualt rifles, a shoggoth is still going to make you have a very bad day...
Secret World always struck me as the real game they were developing for long-term enjoyment anyways.
It's been in development for longer then AoC, they've been insanely hush-hush about it for awhile, and is a much more interesting and original IP compared to their other two games.
Though, if Funcom fucks it up it'll be their death knell for any games they release in the next half decade. People are already dubious about the company given AoC, and noone remembers Anarchy Online, or how they pulled it out of the gutter and turned it into an awesome game at the eleventh hour.
And AoC botched most of it
I think this is the inherent problem in most MMO's these days. They are pressured to release early, and have to spend a crucial 2-3 months fixing things up. Meanwhile the player base is frustrated because they feel like they are playing an unfinished game and subsequently leave before the game truly has a chance to shine.
I really hope that this isn't the case with The Secret World and that Funcom learned from their mistakes with AoC
Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
This shit just might be off the hook.
My biggest hope from the info there? An ally monster. That is to say, that most of the posthuman creatures are out to kill you, but a scant few of them, while rare even in their own right, will be out to help you.
This is the vibe I get from the bigfoot entry, since it discusses the bigfoot not as a creature, but as a society that has helped mankind in the past. It would be VERY cool to be, say, running from some horrible undead THING, out of ammo and low on health, when out of the woods bounds this enormous furry THING, and now all you can think of is "Oh God, not another one, at least let me get killed by the one that will do it quickly". However, before you can fully register what's happening, the bigfoot is turning the undead thing into paste and gesturing for you to run, to get to safety because it's got this.
This would be so very cool.
So:
death=corpse run, loose a few minutes of gaming time
loss of face= longer rep grind
scary monsters=LFM CTHULU pst (no more rouges)
exciting riddles=alt-tab to allakhazam to read the solution
but I don't want to look up the solutions, I want to have fun!='u fukin nub we r not gunna w8 for u /kick.'
I hope they're going to look more at Uru: Myst Online than normal MMOs.
Death needs to be SHITTY in this MMO. It needs to be harsh, it needs to be scary. I'd say it should be permanent, but I know even I would be soured on the idea.
Maybe death could cause a permanent stat debuff or something. Maybe you gain phobias or something, which debuff you when faced with that killed you.
Something needs to be permanent and debilitating.
MMOs are very much about exploration and trying out things that might be above your character's power. Death is a common feature of the genre. You die all the time, but by some form of magic you get back to life and you can try again and/or learn from your errors.
What I expect will happen is that you do not literally die, but that you simply collapse. See LOTRO, you never really die. You just collapse on the floor until you hit the button and you get teleported to a nearby stone circle or someone blows powerful pipeweed in your face or plays a beautiful song about life to you. This gets reflected in the fact that LOTRO does not have hitpoints, but morale points.
It's an easy way to explain why you are immortal and keeps the cost of losing at a minimum (repair costs and a 10min debuff). That way we can just go and try to kill a Ring-Wraith and die five times within an hour without the whole raid having to reroll a new character.
It's really not that different from single player games, where you can just reload a save game and try again. It is only exciting to you because you forget it's just a game and you can try again later. It's like getting scared by a movie, even though you know it's all just special effects you are willing to ignore that knowledge for a while to be entertained. (suspension of disbelief I think it's called)
If Secret World allows me to feel excited about being chased by some scary looking pixels then the developers have done a hell of a job.
Like say, blurry vision, or seeing things that arent there? Limping? Some sort of actual physical debuff that forces you to alter your playstyle like you see in horror movies, but resets so you aren't permanently like that?
Don't make it time based either, complete quest or abandon and go back to main base for treatment.
I mean, 10 minute debuffs just aren't scary. Corpse runs are just annoying at worst.
Scare me, Funcom.
Dark Corners of the Earth made you crazier and crazier the more mythos-stuff you observed, to the point where your character would keep trying to kill himself if you weren't paying attention.
Insanity effects would be awesome in this. Especially if they could pull the bigger ones off right.
I'm picturing one guy dying amongst a group of new players, coming back to their group, looking out to sea, and seeing Rl'Yeh rising out of the sea as they fight off a new wave of monsters.
Cue horrified "holy shit!" and people wondering what the fuck is wrong with the player, or maybe, maybe, not being really sure if it's part of an upcoming instance they have to fight their way through or not, given the segmented nature of certain MMO's nowadays.
The doubt would be delicious.
It would be cool once. The first time. Unless he said, "I see R'lyeh" and everyone said, "Yeah, that's just the insanity effects, ignore it." And then, once it was ruined, it would be a meh effect to every player forever onward.
That's why they'd need to be extremely varied. Also, more subtle things, like houses facing the wrong direction in some areas would be great for atmosphere and to confuse people. A "the veil of reality is thin here" sort of thing.
Of course it cant be permanent, otherwise you will wind up dead real quick.
Channelling DCotE for a second, I like that phobias actually played into it, and I do hope that if they go with an advantages/disadvantages system that this is looked at.
Unsettling, out-of-place stuff would be pretty cool as well, if done right.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
Those "you have a virus, deleting your hard-drive"-esque insanity effects from Eternal Darkness would be great since this is a PC game. I can just hear the terrified screaming now.
Imagine playing on an important work computer and having that happening.
I could maybe see a few ways around it. Having a really large pool of insanity effects would be one but that would like be a hell of alot of work.
Maybe having region specific ones, like lets say in one Kingsmouth where creatures come out of the fog and attack you, but its only an illusion... most of the time.
or having effects that muck with your vision or sound temporarily hindering you while zombies come out of no where.
subtle ones would be there for flavor and atmosphere, larger ones would be to hinder you. Cant ignore it if you cant do your job.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
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(NSFW, as there is one solitary boob somewhere in there)
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
they don't it be like it is but it do