Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by Arkain

Thank you for the info, very helpful. 

Another thing I might add, and I'm sort of on the fence about how to interpret it, is that when I panned my camera around, it was pretty smooth but on occasion the game with freeze up for a nano second as if it needed to load something.

Additionally, there were a few times when I panned the camera around where I felt the computer that the game was running on wasn't quite up to snuff. Not sure how to describe it but its' as if the scene "shook" with the rendering.

The camera was smooth but the passing scene was a bit "jagged" as if the computer couldn't quite render the scene smoothly.

 

I dont know the specification of the Rig the gameplay was tested on, but I expect it to be high end.  This does not bode well for for what I consider middle of the road or even low end, say a Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit, Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     E4600  @ 2.40GHz (2 CPUs), 2048MB RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce GT 440 (1760 MB).

If the game "occasionly will freeze up", on what I expect to be near perfect conditions (network and machine both high end).  My past experience is that at this poingt in development, all optimization has been done.  That is to say, little has been done to an out of the box game engine.  Maybe it wasn't optimal conditions.  Also understand, TSW is in my top 3 games I am looking forward to playing and I am not a hatter.  But I am worried.  BTW, Heavy lean toward Templar, with a urge for Dragon.

Originally posted by Arkain

Originally posted by Connmacart

Originally posted by Arkain

Originally posted by Cthulhu23

Very disappointing news about the game being heavily instanced.  :(

Have you played Age of Conan, the world is instanced, but it is by zone and they feel quite large.

Did you play when AoC supported a large enough playerbase that zones had multiple instances? That the only reason you won't see much instancing nowadays in AoC it lacks the playerbase to enable them. That doesn't mean it's not in the game.

The way AoC world was setup was also one of my bigger gripes about the game. The world is disjointed and as such doesn't feel like a world to me. TSW is the same from what I gather.

No I did not play AoC till the F2P.

It seems as if you might mean fazing (as WoW does now) or do you mean what Aion did where you has to realy shift servers? to be with a friend in the same zone? 

Could you give me an example please.

Aion would be similar yes. 

But you can still see it yourself, go to poitain and stand on top of a respad. Press the orange triangle next to the minimap to see all the different instances.

Originally posted by Konfess

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by Arkain

Thank you for the info, very helpful. 

Another thing I might add, and I'm sort of on the fence about how to interpret it, is that when I panned my camera around, it was pretty smooth but on occasion the game with freeze up for a nano second as if it needed to load something.

Additionally, there were a few times when I panned the camera around where I felt the computer that the game was running on wasn't quite up to snuff. Not sure how to describe it but its' as if the scene "shook" with the rendering.

The camera was smooth but the passing scene was a bit "jagged" as if the computer couldn't quite render the scene smoothly.

 

I dont know the specification of the Rig the gameplay was tested on, but I expect it to be high end.  This does not bode well for for what I consider middle of the road or even low end, say a Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit, Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     E4600  @ 2.40GHz (2 CPUs), 2048MB RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce GT 440 (1760 MB).

If the game "occasionly will freeze up", on what I expect to be near perfect conditions (network and machine both high end).  My past experience is that at this poingt in development, all optimization has been done.  That is to say, little has been done to an out of the box game engine.  Maybe it wasn't optimal conditions.  Also understand, TSW is in my top 3 games I am looking forward to playing and I am not a hatter.  But I am worried.  BTW, Heavy lean toward Templar, with a urge for Dragon.

 More than likely the network is not near perfect. The backend server infrastructure is probably in their data center and not at PAX. 

Originally posted by gitawego

Originally posted by Rohn

Nice to have some firsthand gameplay information about the game.

You may not be able to answer fully, but from a character development perspective (skills, gear, any other development systems), did it look as though it would be particularly deep and interesting to develop your character in the long term?

IMO, character development is pretty interesting, you have a lot of combinasons as you can learn all the skills (magic, rifle, pistol, shortgun, blade, etc.), which means you don't need to reroll another character in order  to learn another skill (classe).

about gears , I don't get any for now, but I noticed that you can build custom presets to be able to switch quickly depending on situation or you combat style (close combat, magic, etc.). 

and you have the items of chakra to enforce your abilities such as health,attack rating, etc. these items can be found from loot or quests.

 

Thanks for the insight.

I really like to have a lot of depth in character development, and a lot of avenues to travel in doing so.  I know crafting is supposed to be pretty involved, and supposedly has a good synergy with the skill-based design of the game.  Hopefully there are a good range of worthwhile and fun activities available to the player in developing a character.

It's hard to determine all that without a comprehensive test of the entire game, but this is good information nonetheless.

Originally posted by cutthecrap

Originally posted by Vesavius

Originally posted by Sovrath

I'll assume that discussing what my experience at PAX entailed is "ok" since they didn't have us sign anything.

They were having players play on a multitude of maps. I got the play in the "Maine" map (Innsmouth? something like that) and didnt' get to make a character, just used what they had at hand

/snip for clarity, though I enjoyed the read.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Over_Innsmouth 

Nice to see Lovecraft influence in any game :)

The game is full of Stephen King and Lovecraft influences: town's called Kingsmouth, it has streets like Lovecraft Lane and Arkham Avenue. Some of the monsters also look decidedly Lovecraftian, as if coming straight from the Cthulhu Mythos world.

All regions seem to have a theme though: The New England/Maine region has Lovecraft and King influences, while the Egyptian region is more about the good old mummy stuff and curses and such.

What are some of the King influences?  What you mention are all Lovecraft related except changing the name of Innsmouth to Kingsmouth.   But that's not realy an influence.  It's more of a tip of the hat.  Is there anything that actually seems to be inspired by King, or maybe even Clive Barker, which would also be very cool?

Originally posted by Cthulhu23

Very disappointing news about the game being heavily instanced.  :(

The game is just as instanced as Age of Conan, but because of a design descis...Grsssh! *NDA - sorry* ..it doesn't even get close to breaking the immersion as in AoC. I for one couldn't stand the instancing in AoC, but in The Secret World it actually doesn't really bother me - though I'd still prefer it to be seamless :)

Originally posted by Konfess

If the game "occasionly will freeze up", on what I expect to be near perfect conditions (network and machine both high end).  My past experience is that at this poingt in development, all optimization has been done. 

And one more little NDA-leak; They just revamped the entire network-architecture a little month ago, while they admitted that it would result in worse performance than before, till they would have optimized the new architecture. Something they're still working on. Myself for instance, still have much worse performance now than before the architecture update.

The map I was on was pretty large. There was a road that I "should" have followed but I decided to cut across and see what I could see.

I ended up running into mobs that were pretty tough. Then again, I'm unsure of the character I was using and whether or not it needed better gear or I was using the skills correctly.

But yeah, this is not an "open world let's see what we can find game" or at least from what I gatherd from my 20 minutes with the game.

It's more like SWToR with the cutscenes and voiced quests, though as I said earlier, there are quests that dont' ahve cutscenes.

I liked the feeling of the game and the atmosphere so  I don't see a problem playing it. Also, isn't there supposed to be a metagame where you have to find clues outisde of the game?

Originally posted by Unlight

Originally posted by cutthecrap

Originally posted by Vesavius

Originally posted by Sovrath

I'll assume that discussing what my experience at PAX entailed is "ok" since they didn't have us sign anything.

They were having players play on a multitude of maps. I got the play in the "Maine" map (Innsmouth? something like that) and didnt' get to make a character, just used what they had at hand

/snip for clarity, though I enjoyed the read.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Over_Innsmouth 

Nice to see Lovecraft influence in any game :)

The game is full of Stephen King and Lovecraft influences: town's called Kingsmouth, it has streets like Lovecraft Lane and Arkham Avenue. Some of the monsters also look decidedly Lovecraftian, as if coming straight from the Cthulhu Mythos world.

All regions seem to have a theme though: The New England/Maine region has Lovecraft and King influences, while the Egyptian region is more about the good old mummy stuff and curses and such.

What are some of the King influences?  What you mention are all Lovecraft related except changing the name of Innsmouth to Kingsmouth.   But that's not realy an influence.  It's more of a tip of the hat.  Is there anything that actually seems to be inspired by King, or maybe even Clive Barker, which would also be very cool?

well, King himself is pretty Lovecraft influenced, look at It for example, and he has used Yog Sothoth and the Necronomicon, though he has been citical of him at times as well.

I'm not sure if there are a lot of specific King influences a much as influences that he also shares, including using the same area a a stage for a few stories.

Originally posted by Vesavius

Originally posted by Unlight

Originally posted by cutthecrap

Originally posted by Vesavius

Originally posted by Sovrath

I'll assume that discussing what my experience at PAX entailed is "ok" since they didn't have us sign anything.

They were having players play on a multitude of maps. I got the play in the "Maine" map (Innsmouth? something like that) and didnt' get to make a character, just used what they had at hand

/snip for clarity, though I enjoyed the read.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Over_Innsmouth 

Nice to see Lovecraft influence in any game :)

The game is full of Stephen King and Lovecraft influences: town's called Kingsmouth, it has streets like Lovecraft Lane and Arkham Avenue. Some of the monsters also look decidedly Lovecraftian, as if coming straight from the Cthulhu Mythos world.

All regions seem to have a theme though: The New England/Maine region has Lovecraft and King influences, while the Egyptian region is more about the good old mummy stuff and curses and such.

What are some of the King influences?  What you mention are all Lovecraft related except changing the name of Innsmouth to Kingsmouth.   But that's not realy an influence.  It's more of a tip of the hat.  Is there anything that actually seems to be inspired by King, or maybe even Clive Barker, which would also be very cool?

 

well, King himself is pretty Lovecraft influenced, look at It for example, and he has used Yog Sothoth and the Necronomicon, though he has been citical of him at times as well.

I'm not sure if there are a lot of specific King influences a much as influences that he also shares, including using the same area a a stage for a few stories.

Yes, I know King was heaveily influenced by Lovecraft, I was just wondering if any of his own work might have been given a nod in the game. 

Not that Lovecraft wouldn't be enough, of course.  I'm not all that interested in playing the game, but if someone told me Hastur featured prominently in it, I might choose to ignore all the reasons I have not to play it.  As a devoted King in Yellow cultist, it would almost be a duty to try it.

so anyone know if i can play this game solo or am i dependent on teams and such ?

can i take down a boss by myself or do i have to get a team?

Originally posted by bakabröd

so anyone know if i can play this game solo or am i dependent on teams and such ?

can i take down a boss by myself or do i have to get a team?

 

Technically, you can play any MMO "solo", how much of the content you'll be able to enjoy if you plan on playing the lone wolf is another question altogether. To answer your question about TSW, you can probably take on some tougher-than-your-average mobs, but I wouldn't expect to take on the major bosses by myself...hence why it's a multiplayer game

Originally posted by Connmacart

Originally posted by Arkain

Originally posted by Connmacart

Originally posted by Arkain

Originally posted by Cthulhu23

Very disappointing news about the game being heavily instanced.  :(

Have you played Age of Conan, the world is instanced, but it is by zone and they feel quite large.

Did you play when AoC supported a large enough playerbase that zones had multiple instances? That the only reason you won't see much instancing nowadays in AoC it lacks the playerbase to enable them. That doesn't mean it's not in the game.

The way AoC world was setup was also one of my bigger gripes about the game. The world is disjointed and as such doesn't feel like a world to me. TSW is the same from what I gather.

No I did not play AoC till the F2P.

It seems as if you might mean fazing (as WoW does now) or do you mean what Aion did where you has to realy shift servers? to be with a friend in the same zone? 

Could you give me an example please.

Aion would be similar yes. 

But you can still see it yourself, go to poitain and stand on top of a respad. Press the orange triangle next to the minimap to see all the different instances.

For me, not a big issue. In Aion at release, that was very helpful, it alowed you to beable to get the quest in the starting area done without having to wait to long to get the kill/item drop.

Were the combat animations as clunky, boring and generic as most of the youtube vids I see.  Right now everything about the game looks amazing but the combat animations are as close to a deal breaker for me as you can get.

I dont mind instances, but the cutscenes might ruin it for me.

Good information. Thanks for the hook up..

Originally posted by Zylaxx

Were the combat animations as clunky, boring and generic as most of the youtube vids I see.  Right now everything about the game looks amazing but the combat animations are as close to a deal breaker for me as you can get.

Sorry Zylaxx, that's very subjective. I can't answer that.

How was the combat like? Was it standard WoW-hotkey style, or AoC AoE?

Were there combos, like in AoC, or other interesting mechanics you can share?

Originally posted by plzignoreme

How was the combat like? Was it standard WoW-hotkey style, or AoC AoE?

Were there combos, like in AoC, or other interesting mechanics you can share?

 

 

The character I had was pretty low level. So there wasn't much on the hot bar.

I had a shotgun blast, an attack that I believe slowed the attacker, some sort of "leap back" ability, an ability to fire some sort of semi- automatic weapion that had a longer cooldown. And something that had a medical "+" that never actually seemed to heal me so I wasn't sure if that was only usable out of combat.

I'll be honest, since I had fogotten that it was tab targeting so I immeiatly aimed and fired using my mouse button only for "nothing to happen".

then when the zombies were bearing down on my and I realized I wasn't it wasn't shooter mechanics, I started using the toolbar. Kept having to fight the urge to find the appropriate toolbar number on the mouse as I use a razer naga at home.

It seemed fairly standard fair. The demo I saw showed higher level characters mixing attacks, some seemingly incongruent with one another so that spoke to the ability to mix your skills. I did find that wheel of "abilities" when I was searchign around for what each key did. But was more interested in exploring the world than checking out all the details.

Overall I enjoyed it but the actual fighting seemed pretty standard.

@ Sovrath: Thanks for the reply. Very disappointing how they chose WoW-style instead of innovating like they did with AoC

Originally posted by plzignoreme

@ Sovrath: Thanks for the reply. Very disappointing how they chose WoW-style instead of innovating like they did with AoC

Innovation does not result in Devs getting paid.  Until it does, they wont support it.  If you want to see more of a certain game mechanic, answer these questions.

1. Are you subscribed or actively using the cash shop of a game that has these game mechanics?
2. If not, then why not?
3. If you are are you promoting the game and its mechanics around the web?
4. If you are are you promoting and suporting whatever means the devs use to get payed?