Funcom's Joel Bylos has published the latest Game Director's Letter on The Secret World site. Bylos goes into some detail about what the team has been working on over the past month, most notably the new player experience overhaul and Issue 11.
The new player experience has been undergoing radical alterations since the team began working on it. Once deployed, players going through the earliest stages of the game (i.e. pre-Tokyo) can expect:
- a reduction in the amount of time needed to kill monsters
- a downscaling of monsters to suit the zone in which they reside
- that this is not a 'sell out to filthy casuals' but more like climbing a hill via stairs or a ramp. As Bylos writes, "they still reach the same height but one of them is less abrupt along the way."
- more meaningful quest rewards with a better mix of items
- story missions will offer rare rewards
- the game's first epic will be awarded on full completion of the Transylvania story line
- tutorial pages have been updated
Players will now be able to fast travel via the world / zone map interface to any anima location at a cost. Several UI improvements have also been made.
Lastly, Issue 11 receives a bit of attention and the news that players will learn more about the Orochi Group and that this issue will bring the Tokyo story line to an end.
But in addition, we wanted to convey the sheer size of the Orochi tower. A building like this deserves some attention and the eight different companies that makes up the Orochi tower each deserve their fair share of screen time. But how to do it? We can’t simply force you to visit every floor of the tower on your way to the top.
Instead we chose to draw upon some of our favorite rogue-like mechanics and your progress through the building will be randomized. This means that there are 512 unique ways in which you will experience your journey from the bottom to the top of Orochi tower.
Read the full letter on The Secret World site.
