Ok.. Good finally 3 faction PvP craze.. They have certainly waited long enough before showing it. But hope it will be good :D

http://www.thesecretworld.com/news/the_secret_world_to_launch_july_3rd_beta_weekend_roadmap_revealed

Awesome. Can't wait to try it out.

This is kind of the thing that could make this game really good if done well. We shall see.

Let's see how they'll pull it off.

The zone is supposed to be 50vs50vs50.

Maybe they have multiple instances/servers.

As I understand it the warzone is not "instanced," there is one persistent copy for each shard (or virtual server).   This was actually the stated reason for having multiple shards (even within a shard there is likely to be some dynamic use of channels, confusingly called "instances" by many players, to stop zones becoming so crowded that there aren't enough mobs to go round).

Balancing all this numbers-wise is going to be tricky: set the player limit for a shard too low, and warzones could end up nearly empty most of the time; set it too high and queues could get insane.

There won't be multiple instances of fusang, its a persistent pvp zone, like one of the gw2 WvW maps.

I hope they get the 2nd one out asap. Having 2 half full zones is preferable to one permenantly full one, for variety, tactics, not having to queue and for well fun. Ideally I would like 3 or 4, but have them get "contaminated by the filth" during hours of low population.

They really needed to do this. 

There is no way I would pay for this game without it due to the way AOC sieges were handled until they gave some sort of proof this would work ok.

Originally posted by gestalt11

They really needed to do this. 

There is no way I would pay for this game without it due to the way AOC sieges were handled until they gave some sort of proof this would work ok.

PvP it will be and from people that have been in it already it is apparently very fun because of how those skill deck stuff..

People get really competetive about that and who that can put together the best deck :D And sometimes people change to a particular specialized deck to defeat a particular deck they know another guy is using etc.. etc... Very complex and fun PvP.

 

Anyways I just hope that we get to do the WE in that persistent was zone and not in those smaller battleground. Regardless though, this should be fun and the make or break if I buy the game or not. If TSW pass this WE as great for me I'm going all inn.

 

Originally posted by gestalt11

They really needed to do this. 

There is no way I would pay for this game without it due to the way AOC sieges were handled until they gave some sort of proof this would work ok.

They have done a total rewrite of the engine to fix this problem. For AoC the load increased exponentially for each additonal player that did AOE, while in TSW the increase is linear.

Anyway, I can see where you are coming from, because the siege performance in AoC was... less than stellar? Setting up a siege was also ridiculessly longwinded and boring and all the players had to travel through a open PvP zone to get to the siege and so on.

I had the opportunity to talk to one of the devs in january about this because I knew how much trouble they had in AoC. He talked quite a lot about how they did the above mentioned rewrite and how they had tested it with several hundred bot players AoE-ing each other to verify that their new solution worked. Anyway, you will see how it works before launch. ;)

This game is a sleeper PvP hit. Fusang has awesome design. It's what Ilum could have been if it worked, but with 3 factions!

Yeah its hot the gw1 build meta game too, but taken to even more extremes

What I'm wondering is if they 're going to have pre-loaded templates for characters to PvP with, given that the devs said in the live game you won't be ready to PvP until around Egypt in the PvE progression, and we won't have access to that much content over the course of the beta.

Also wondering if the PvP will be Templar-heavy since the Templars will have 2 weekends' worth of SP/AP gain on the Illuminati and Dragon.

Originally posted by sidhaethe

What I'm wondering is if they 're going to have pre-loaded templates for characters to PvP with, given that the devs said in the live game you won't be ready to PvP until around Egypt in the PvE progression, and we won't have access to that much content over the course of the beta.

Also wondering if the PvP will be Templar-heavy since the Templars will have 2 weekends' worth of SP/AP gain on the Illuminati and Dragon.

Word is they might be giving some sort of boost. so I would assume all faction will be open. 

PVP like this always sounds great on paper...i have my reservations on this being a pvp based game...specifically if the first rounds of beta are any indication...people would rather be playing the pve side, since fight clubs were not a draw in any way for the people playing.

Im not against this being a good pvp game, i just think the population might not be fully interested in camping pvp, which may make it somewhat of a fizzle since the pvp crowd also tends to be a crowd that dislikes waiting for pvp...should be insteresting.

 

Also, my largest concern, and something no ones mentioned...how on earth is a game like this going to preform with 150 characters on screen?  How "graphically fancy" is the persistant battleground? 

For anyone who remembers ilum...that place died and was programmed to be obsolete due to the fact the only people who were able to play with an enjoyable level of lag was the people running i5+580+ rigs...which wasnt a lot of people.  Mostly due to the horrible hero engie that always seems to choke in situations like that...but also they made ilum with a whole lot of graphical bloat and the inablity to turn off others animations.

Ive noticed that at least the beta client had no options for removing things like shadows and other graphical strains.

 

My worry is that its going to be a very fun pvp setup but unplayable for a large portion of players, due to high system requirements of the game and cramming 150 people and all their animations (perhaps a lack of flashy animations that are drawing complaints might have a benefit here?)

Originally posted by Crunchy221
...and cramming 150 people and all their animations (perhaps a lack of flashy animations that are drawing complaints might have a benefit here?)

They have actually reduced the "bones" used for animations from 150 down to around 70 with TSW compared to AoC to get higher performance with massive amounts of people on screen.

The persistant PvP zone is a zone specifically designed for PvP as well with five equally important objectives spread around the playfield to get less people at the screen at a time and they have probably as you mentioned designed the graphics specifically to improve FPS in that area.

People have been complaining about there being little effects when you fight in TSW, this is probably also done partially to keep it a bit more "realistic", but also to reduced the number of particle effects they need to render in massive PvP.

The PvP will be HOT in this game!!!

Originally posted by Blackbrrd

Originally posted by gestalt11

They really needed to do this. 

There is no way I would pay for this game without it due to the way AOC sieges were handled until they gave some sort of proof this would work ok.

They have done a total rewrite of the engine to fix this problem. For AoC the load increased exponentially for each additonal player that did AOE, while in TSW the increase is linear.

Anyway, I can see where you are coming from, because the siege performance in AoC was... less than stellar? Setting up a siege was also ridiculessly longwinded and boring and all the players had to travel through a open PvP zone to get to the siege and so on.

I had the opportunity to talk to one of the devs in january about this because I knew how much trouble they had in AoC. He talked quite a lot about how they did the above mentioned rewrite and how they had tested it with several hundred bot players AoE-ing each other to verify that their new solution worked. Anyway, you will see how it works before launch. ;)

I understand and I hope it goes well.  I just would never pay for this game until they proved that they learned from their mistakes.

The fact that they were going to release before doing this was making me very suspicious.  I wasn't gonna write some troll thread to re-hash all the AoC failcom stuff.  But the fact of the matter is they HAD to do this.

People complain all the time "Why can't I see the whole game in Beta".  Come on that is not gonna happen almost no one does that in MMOs or in single player and that is not what I am saying.

I am sure the GW2 devs will not show large portions of their game.  And based on the release of various MMOs companies those area could be FUBAR.  But since I have seen how Anet does things in the past I am not that worried about that.

This is one reason having a reputation like Blizzard's is so valuable. And one reason I think Diablo 3 was a terrible mistake for them.

Sadly Funcom is in the opposite position they really need to prove to the customers certain things are ok.  Not just test it.  I mean they should probably test it too.  But even if it was perfect internally they still needed to show it.

ok so we get both battlefield PvP and massive persisten PvP

"The fourth and final Beta Weekend will begin on June 22nd and run until June 24th. This event will focus on the player vs. player experience in The Secret World, and players will get to sample both the Eldorado battlefield experience as well as the massive warzone gameplay where over a hundred players clash together in persistent battle. Here the Illuminati, the Templars and the Dragon will get to duke it out and hone their battle skills on each other before the real conflict begins when Early Access opens on June 29th. ""

http://www.thesecretworld.com/news/the_secret_world_to_launch_july_3rd_beta_weekend_roadmap_revealed

Good news that's was up.