Still not convinced. Guess I'll have to wait when it goes F2P.

I'd say the game needs a redefinition of what, 'hardcore', and , 'casual', means, becasue this is a game designed for a hardcore fanbase.

Why? Becasue only the hardcore are gonna persevre with the broken investigation quests.  It's not a value on time it's a value on whether you buy into the concept enough you can stomach quests getting broken depending on what, 'phase', your in, or if someone in the area screwed it up just before you got there.  It was a mistake IMO to throw so many red herrings into a game that's marketing itself to typical MMO players.  Like another review said, you don't know half the time if your in the wrong or the games playing up again.  

So I'd say the game is for the hardcore, not those who put hours into it, but those who are really into the setting and can put up with usual Fun.com problems.

Lack of resurrection is a major plus in this game, resurrection dumbs down everything where in TSW you need to plan your fights and consider how to actually fight the boss instead of plough in blindly. I find the incessant need for players to demand such features shallow and short sighted. Additionally much of TSW content is only accessible while dead, imagine the griefing if you get rezzed against your will? But it seem the writer hasn't even played the basics of the game or would know this to be the case.

Typo:

"That may not bother some folks, and I know with Funcom decided on the system, ..."

should be:

"That may not bother some folks, and I know why Funcom decided on the system, ..."

I have multiple times soft-grouped to do some content that is just a bit too hard for my character. Sometimes because I had the wrong build, or because of a bug (which I noticed they fixed in the next patch a few days later).

I have created a group for Polaris on a weekday morning and after a little bit I am just missing a tank and one of the players I had recruited said he could tank - a bit. Thank you flexible build system. ;) It worked out very well and after we were done with the epic last fight one of the players wanted to group up in Savage Coast to do some questing.

I have also asked for help on some investigation missions and got 4 tells within 10 sec. So yeah, the community is very helpful. :)

Respecs MAKE no sense in this game, your character is not capped and can learn all abilities, and there is no XP devalvation -- there are no "PERMANENT" mistakes that you could possibly do. 

Originally posted by plescure

defo no respecs pls.

anyone who has played the game to the later zones will testify just how unnesserssary respecs are. in translyvania your earning upto 100 AP's an hour. it gets to the point you dont know what to spend them on anymore. respecs would mean that by the time you get to the end zones youve already tried all the builds you want which means you got less motivation to play the game.

^This..

I am still in savage coast, running about 4/5 instances daily, I currently have 56 APs sitting un allocated because I have all I need for a QL5/6 Healing and tanking build at the moment...

As someone pointed out earlier, its impossible to break your toon....all it will do is make you play a tad longer to gain the 1-20 APs you spent incorrectly, and correct your error.

Respecs are pointless in a game where you can eventually gain every skill it offers.

That, or follow one of the pre set decks they offer...

All of this really should have been mentioned in the review....this is a tad dissapointing

The main issue I got with the skill wheel at the moment, is that some abilities don't have numbers in the tooltip, well at least in Chaos Tree. They just say "high damage" etc. Makes it harder to pick and choose skills.

And while I do not agree with full respec, something like what Anarchy Online originally had, may not be too bad. That was it allowed you to reset one ABILITY (or perks as they were known in AO) every 72 hours. That would make total respecing unviable, but it would allow people to reset an ability they just bought and didn't like twice a week.

Originally posted by Ren128

The main issue I got with the skill wheel at the moment, is that some abilities don't have numbers in the tooltip, well at least in Chaos Tree. They just say "high damage" etc. Makes it harder to pick and choose skills

 

That can be changed in the ability window settings....hit K, and put a check in the box "Show detailed ability descriptions"

Like many of the reviewers gripes, a lot of player issues are actually "non issues"..if anything, Funcom doesnt spell everything out, so a lot of times what count for "bugs" or missing functionality, is actualy lack of user awareness, for better or for worse.

Susie Ford:

"The one troubling aspect about combat that I have discovered, however, is the unforgiving nature that the Ability Wheel embodies. We are encouraged to discover new ways to combine skills to make the most effective use in combat. We are encouraged to create new and unique builds to use interchangeably depending on a given situation. Believe me, I want to experiment and discover new ways of putting my skills together to make my character more useful or a more brutal killer. Yet I hesitate. Players are penalized in a way, for making poor or less-than-optimal decisions when it comes to point allocations. If a player makes a poor choice when spending points, there is no way to go back and fix it. There is no respec in The Secret World. To get more points, you simply have to keep playing. That may not bother some folks, and I know with Funcom decided on the system, but it still bothers me." 

I agree and have complained about the low amount of SP we get, since beta. We could try more weapons, more builds. As it is now, it you don't like your choice, you have to start over. I think Funcom may be surprised when it's time for subsciptions to start and many players will leave. The fanboys won't agree, but Funcom's bottom line is financial.

Originally posted by arieste

Originally posted by Dakirn

 While inside the training area you can buy/reset as much as you want.  

This is not true.  You can't buy or reset as much as you want.  You can only buy whatever your current unspent APs allow and your unspent APs are limited to 175 (iirc).   This isn't enough to try out even the cheapest pre-designed deck (i think cheapest deck is around 250 APs.)

 

This is nice for testing out whether the next ability in the tree is worth it, but it doesn't really help you decide whether you're going to like the build or deck that you're going to spend 350 APs to build.

 

My post was accurate but you're confused when I said "as much as you want."  I meant this in the terms of the AP you already have.  Obviously you can't buy every ability in the game while in the training room.

Her point was somehow nerfing yourself early in the game.  This doesn't include 350+ AP builds.. it's ones that have very few AP that you can easily store and test... or testing ONE ability you aren't sure about, which is mostly what she's talking about.

Combat and Animations in TSW:
The only thing that i allways find looking a bit weird is jumping.
The jumping animation is sort of disconnected to the game and looks artificial.

I have absolut no problem with the combat and animations at all.
In fact, when i played my Dungeon-Tour with my friends yesterday in WOW i found that WOW feels unresponsive, slow, static, has weird animations that more fit into a Loony Tunes show than a MMORPG.

To me it looks that the comic like animations of other mmorpgs have make people become used to it and now a more "normal" approach looks foreign to them.

Buttonwise i use as much skills as i usually use in WOW - you dont need more than 7 per encounter and it increases the need for combat preparation.

Where i feel the need for some change is to have a consumables/auxiliary weapon hotkey/hotbar - that is bcs i do not like to click any ability with my mouse, i want a hotkey for it.

I am amazed at how many players do not know this:

Save up a ton of AP, head to training room in your major city, train skills like mad and test differing combo's, untrain them all before leaving or keep the ones you are sure you like.

Pretty simple really. Granted there is no reactionary responses from the dummies so I hope that changes eventually.

TSW already has 29 critic reviews on Metacritic, with a score of *71*.

You have to wonder why we are still getting a 'Review in Progress'? This sort of hype review, drip fed to us, keeping the games name in the articles section, is now the default method MMORPG.com 'review' any big name MMO, Yes they may mention a problem or two, but they are always minor amongst praise for the rest of the game.

When we do get a score, somehow I think it will be over 71 as they always are in the 80's, which is by total coincidence the bench mark score that gaming companies regard a game as a success.

I dont like the way i am forced to change skills / weapon .. yes i like the fact that if i want to be a meth infused spinning mass of sword play i can or dishing out hammer time etc.  but messing around with a build just for one quest gets to me ,finally i have something that seems to work all round. As for the social side well for instances, it seems to take so long to find a party. thanks to an over whelming amount of hipster elitist dungeon nazi's. They boot players whom its their first time in a dungeon or slightly geared the wrong way and they are many .. i was in a party where this happened a few times. I simply left the party from guilt. how is anyone meant to get a chance in a dungeon if this is the growing atittude. One big thing that gets me is the world.. cars etc etc so many things in the world you can not interact with .. crashed car cool ,a few tanks in a room of vampires, hell why cant i use the tank to blow a few away lol  i guess using the rifle keeps me thinking im in BF3 lol

@Scot and TSW has a metacritic user score of 8.5/10 from over 500 users. TSW might take some time to get into and that might be why the critic reviews are worse than the user reviews.

Originally posted by Blackbrrd

@Scot and TSW has a metacritic user score of 8.5/10 from over 500 users. TSW might take some time to get into and that might be why the critic reviews are worse than the user reviews.

I think you're probably right there, to get a proper understanding of the game you really need to play it far more than other more standard form MMO's, this is why I like the review in stages that MMORPG has been doing.  

I made a thread about the resurrection, or lack of, option. I can understand their thinking but I still think having a rez option, even if it was a 30 min cool down, would give players a chance to get back into it but knowing that another rez isn't coming.

We have talked about this, in many threads before .. TSW is a great game that´s fully worth playing, however, it is not the revolution that will save the genre and get 8s and 9s in reviews. Many major sites have already given their rate and it is always around 7-7.5 .. the same for the Metacritic Score ..

Gamespot: 7.5 

Gamespy ( powered by IGN ): 3.5/5, which is a kinda of 7/10

eurogamer: 7/10

GT: 7.3

Metacritic Score: 71 [ 7.1/10 ] ..

The media is rating the game as a 7 game in other words, which is a kinda good score in my opinion. I can´t really see the game reaching anywhere near 9 and and an 8 would have been good if the game didn´t come with all these bugs and lack in some concepts. 

PS. To the guy talking about user score, it is fully the opposite .. the users just think of their playing-time right now and that´s why the game is getting high score, because it is good and also new. Critics on the other hand rate different aspects of the game, not only how great it is playing right now. TSW is a really great game however, the story and the big missions are the two biggest things, which will be done sooner or later. When these are done, the game lack in many different aspects and there are many games out in the market nowadays that offer better end-game experience, combat and content other than story.

Originally posted by s1fu71

None of the problems mentioned bothered me at all, except the ability wheel. Yes, you definitely get penalized by a poor choice or combo. You really do have to read about your choices carefully. While they boast of so many possible combinations for skills and abilities, it's a little misleading. There really are many combinations. But, not all of those combinations are necessarily optimal / valid.

Here's the thing though, "optimal/valid" is really in the eye of the beholder up to a point. Valid is especially so. For some people - many people, really - it's more about "which build is going to be the most fun for me to play", or at the least "what's the best build I can put together that will be effective, but that I'll still enjoy playing".

Not everyone has "Optimal" as Priority 1 when building out a character, in any game. Many people have "Will Enjoy This Playstyle" up there, with "optimal" being several spots below that in rank of importance.

Now, I know a common response to that is: "Well if they want to get into raids and succeed, they need those optimal builds". No they don't. They need a build sufficient to do the job.

Typically, there's a lot of wiggle room between "sufficient" and "optimal". People demand "optimal" in their groups. The game doesn't. Personally, I think the people who require "optimal" in everything aren't as good at the game as they like to believe. "Optimal" is a crutch for them. I think it's the people who can take the "less-than-optimal" builds - ones they play for enjoyment, rather than a sense of obligation - and still succeed who really know the game better.

They're the experimenters and the "what if I did this..." people who are testing and learning the ins-and-outs of different combinations. The "optimal" types are forever playing the game on a "by the numbers" basis, following cookie-cutter templates to the letter. It's no wonder so many of them are burnt out and bitter when they finally reached their limit and are ready to quit.

I've never been an "optimal" type, and I've always done just fine. Did I accomplish things with "the optimal group" in "the optimal way"? Nope. But then, considering all the condescension and insults I received from "that group" for "not playing the game right", I never wanted to anyway. I play a game to have fun, not to treat it like a "serious business" job.