The Secret World: Bees, Bugs and FunCompetence

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > The Secret World: Bees, Bugs and FunCompetence

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

So I'm planning to get back into things here soon, what's the tanking meta like these days? I assume things have changed at least a little with CtP no longer penetrating guaranteed. Everyone was moaning about that incoming change when I stopped playing.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2013 21:16

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:57

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

guppy posted:

Yesssssss come back.

Blade/Hammer is the cool thing right now because it allows the tank to be a significant source of damage. Yesterday Rev did something nuts like 2k DPS as the tank. Blade/Chaos still works and has some nice utility like Chaotic Pull, but because it isn't necessary most people have gone Blade/Hammer to contribute more to ending things fast.

Blade/Hammer? WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS

I think I still have a hammer lying around somewhere!

# ¿ Jun 4, 2013 23:00

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Phanatic posted:

I've been away for a while, thinking of starting back up again since it went FTP.

I feel sort of like I basically "won" the game, went through the main plotline, and left when it started feeling like a standard MMO with nothing to do but grind for better gear so I could do harder versions of the same instances or grind PvP for no particular reason.

But up until that point, the game was awesome. The Facility is probably the coolest story I've seen in an MMO, you could turn that into a Delta Green RPG adventure in no time flat. The investigation missions were generally fantastic, except for that one in Egypt with the light beams that were consistently broken unless you were the first one there after a server restart.

So is it worth it to download and update the client and come back? Have they added more really cool poo poo like the above, or is it just do-what-you've-already-done-so-you-can-do-it-some-more?

I unsubbed I think just about the time they announced they were going FTP, I got my rocket launcher, thought that whole addition was sort of silly and unthematic, and figured I'd take time off.

You're honestly probably not going to get a whole lot out of the game then. You can do the Issue 5 and 6 quest chains, and they're fantastic, but they're not going to take that long. All MMOs ultimately boil down to grinding dungeons to get swoler and swoler gear. There is no getting around this. MMOs are not for you in any kind of long term sense if this is a problem.

Wait til Tokyo if you're gonna come back.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2013 07:18

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Rookersh posted:

Oh man, not sure about the rest of the game, but the beginning made a hell of a good impression.

My handler is just straight insane.

Apparently I'm a beelord? Please tell me this goes insane places, and isn't just an excuse for Funcom to say "Oh yeah, all the beelords work together, that's why you can PvE with other factions! Because you are secretly all beelords, not Illuminati/Templars."

AR/Shotgun seems like it could make an interesting leech/tank build, although I haven't been able to check those skills yet. Does it matter whats my "first" ability, or will I be equally as tanky as AR/Shotgun as I would be as Shotgun/AR.

Do I only get to hang out with Geary in between mission hubs, or does she pop up to talk to me every now and then in the quest zones. Also I see Alex in that intro picture in the OP, so I assume that little group I worked with in the Tokyo subway will keep coming back.

What you are is essentially

A white bloodcell. The bee flew into your mouth and reconfigured your body from the inside out to be a white blood cell of Gaia. You are empowered because the poo poo is hitting the fan and the Divine Machine needs you to kill the things attacking it, and you are likely to do so because you live on it.

The powers conferred by this make you useful, therefore the Secret Societies took an interest.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2013 00:02

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Zephonith posted:

Yeah I wouldn't feel too bad about cheating on the investigation missions. To do them all without help, you'd need to be able to read musical notation, circuit diagrams, ISBN numbers, Futhark runes and Egyptian hieroglyphs, at a bare minimum.

Googling information relevant to the task at hand (ISBNs, circuit info, etc) isn't cheating and is how the game is meant to be played.

Googling the exact solution IS cheating and there's really no need for it.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2013 20:00

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

That being said, I do think the right way to do investigations (and play TSW in general) is as a duo. Investigation missions may well have been more frustrating if it wasn't a collaborative effort! Figuring it out together and talking it out was a lot of the fun of it.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2013 21:15

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

JayJay posted:

Except that I have a full time job, and limited gaming hours. So I prefer to spend my TSW time killing zombies and demons, rather than learning latin, music composition and a bunch of poo poo I only need to get through for a huge XP boost to help me kill zombies and demons faster. Guess I am just non-repenting cheater scum.

I do the quest steps that are straight forward, find an abandoned car, follow a GPS, follow a map using a monocle, etc. But I sure as hell am not going to spend hours trying to figure out circuits, glyphs and obscure secret access codes.

If this is what you're playing TSW for, there really are better games for you. You're basically forgoing what makes it unique and interesting in the name of things that many other games do far better. It's a bizarre choice, to me.

Cleretic posted:

This is literally exactly how I play it.

My character's not a very nice person face-to-face, she by default hates pretty much everybody, but she's also entirely about helping out humanity, not herself; she runs a charity devoted to providing education supplies to the masses, because she thinks that proper education would solve most of the world's problems.

She's with the Illuminati for exactly this reason: They're by far the most open to actually not being a lovely person, which I admit is surprising. The trick is knowing that 'profiteering' and 'beneficial for most people' aren't actually mutually exclusive. The Illuminati are totally on board with altruistic plans, just as long as they can sneak in something they can use to some capacity in the sixth paragraph of section 17. The Templars have a vested interest in keeping everyone as far under their bootheel as possible, so they're sure as gently caress not going to help a single goddamn person out of the kindness of their hearts; the only reason they're seen as 'the good guys' is because they're the only ones with the sense to lie about it.

The Dragon are hard to work with both in and out of character. Their methodology is so profoundly hosed up and overly complicated that it's hard to get a read on them in any capacity. I actually consider it a bit fortunate that they just come right out in their introduction and mark themselves as kidnapping rapists, so if all else fails there's some pretty sound evidence to hate them right there.

The Dragon is kind of impossible to roleplay because the Dragon is a plot device. They require information and skills no player character could possibly have to accurately do their thing, which is to say, manipulation on a grand scale by way of events so small as to make their involvement imperceptible.

The Dragon are totalitarians, even moreso than the Templars, in a manner of speaking. The difference is the Dragon is determined to achieve complete control in such a way that no one is aware they're being controlled. An illusion of freedom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbinE6bx8xM

Edit: I GUESS you could roleplay a Dragon character more along the operative lines, playing up the "forget your own name, ultra zealot for the cause" angle but that's not really...something that would have much reason to interact with people so again, hard to roleplay. But again that's kind of a failing of MMORPG roleplay is you're trying to roleplay in a static environment, so you ultimately pretty much have nothing but "tavern RP" and if your concept doesn't support "tavern RP" it's a no go. Have I mentioned that MMORPG roleplaying is terrible?

Captain Oblivious fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Jul 3, 2013

# ¿ Jul 3, 2013 18:20

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

The glowing eye thing, will that be available until the 15th?

# ¿ Jul 6, 2013 23:20

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

xanthan posted:

Black bullion, what is it? I've gotten it twice from boss drops.
The other one was a healing signet.

You spend it on end game purple gear.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2013 01:44

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Reverend Dr posted:

I've always like the theory that Beaumont is Cassandra's patsy. She is actually Loki but made Beaumont think that he was Loki. Specifically such that he would do all of the work and if anyone looks back on the evidence only Beaumont shows up and she never does. That seems more like a Loki move to me.

Though ultimately that bit is currently "unwritten" so trying to nail down certainties is a bit silly.

I liked this theory too but

Recent evidence is shoring up the "Cassandra is Morgan le Fay" theory pretty hard, specifically from the Morninglight Datapad from Besieged Farmlands talking up her dicking around in Scotland inexplicably.. I'm forced to concede defeat.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2013 06:02

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Cleretic posted:

Most RP that goes on on TSW is actually pretty high-quality, especially compared to other RP scenes.

That said, there are two big problems:
Primarily, elitism. All this RP is generally pretty good, but good luck getting into it without knowing people. I lucked out by going pretty well in essentially gatecrashing RP events, but if you can't manage busting the proverbial door down and going 'I'M A COMPUTER HACKER WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEED RIGHT NOW', you're gonna have problems.

And while the game's setting is really good for RP, the way things are presented generally... isn't. Everything is defined so nebulously in writing, but this includes things that really shouldn't be just left ambiguous. Factional disputes get the brunt of it; you have to do so much digging just to get things nice and straight about the Illuminati, but the truth of those things are really quite plain and understandable, and really shouldn't have that high a barrier for entry. Similarly, the Templars are so often painted as the super-heroic Good Guys in RP, despite it being a very thin veneer in lore. That's because however thin that excuse might be, you still need to exert some specific effort to realize 'oh, hey, these guys are full of poo poo', which most people just don't.

EDIT: Another thing kinda hosed over by lore nebulosity is the specific nature of bee-regeneration. Okay, everyone's pretty much unkillable, we get that, but the nature of that just wasn't made clear unless you read Lilith's words very carefully in the Transylvanian DLC (specifically, amputations will stick unless you fully die; as long as you're in one piece, you'll heal up).

OTHER EDIT: Oh yeah, and a bunch of people are really stubborn and don't get when they're wrong, but you can't really blame that on the RPers, everyone's like that.

I don't know how anyone can have the reading comprehension to roleplay, and yet fail to grasp this.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2013 13:08

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Yes.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2013 13:22

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Cleretic posted:

It might also be willing denial, or internal compromise ('well okay the Templars aren't perfect, but they're clearly the best of a bad lot' (they aren't)), but a lot of people seem genuinely unaware that the Templars are dishonest as all hell. Probably because they 'look' like the most honest, and that it's the Illuminati that lie with every breath they make; the fact the opposite is true just never occurs to them, because it seems so outside of their preconceptions.

There's one thing everyone can agree on, though: We have no goddamn clue what to make of the Dragon.

I love the Dragon but they are really kind of antithetical to roleplaying. The amount of stuff they should know is impractical to roleplay as a PC, and is really best left to the realm of GM fiat.

Edit: It's like trying to roleplay a Sidereal Exalt in Exalted. Some things are better just left as an NPC.

Captain Oblivious fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Sep 26, 2013

# ¿ Sep 26, 2013 23:43

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Cheston posted:

Dragon agents don't know anything. It's seriously canon that the handler who was sending us the good poo poo got 'disconnected,' and every mission report since has been just been space-filling "chaos, bro."

Most of the good poo poo is from Bong Cha and she's still around :v:

# ¿ Sep 27, 2013 00:34

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

The Issues that you can pay for are basically irrelevant to end game content. They're still very worth buying because they're very well written, voice acted, just plain good stories.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2013 01:17

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

There's evidence that the Dragon, not as its current organization but as a movement, goes back as far as the Second Era.

They're not all knowing by any stretch of the imagination, but they're definitely not full of poo poo. Something is guiding them

# ¿ Sep 27, 2013 01:45

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Brackhar posted:

Yeah, I'm near the end of the story line with Dragon and I still don't understand them. I wish I had rolled Illuminati.

It's pretty basic really. The Dragon are fascists, the same as the Templars, their end goal however is ruling you without you ever knowing you're being ruled. The ultimate illusion of choice, where all your choices are manufactured.

There is no such thing as chaos. Only systems sufficiently complex as to appear to be chaotic.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2013 11:03

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Jesus. Logging in today I've never seen Agartha so...empty.

I love this game to bits and sights like that make me a bit afraid for it :ohdear:

Captain Oblivious fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Oct 1, 2013

# ¿ Oct 1, 2013 22:25

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

I wish there was a coherent list of things you can buy with Veteran Points somewhere. I've found this and that hidden throughout the store and it's damned frustrating.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2013 21:27

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Len posted:

No change to eleforce though.

Eleforce is eternal! Cut off one head and two more will sprout in its place! :unsmigghh:

# ¿ Oct 3, 2013 21:39

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Cheston posted:

Interview about 1.8.

Hee.

Calling it now, the Dragon is going to destroy the "Secret" in the Secret World.

No one has less to lose and more to gain. Evolve or die, the end of days is coming.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2013 00:54

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Orochi could still conceivably win. It's only 10 votes shy.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2013 03:36

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

I'm not too worried about this augment stuff and just think that the scenarios sound like a lot of fun :shobon:

# ¿ Oct 6, 2013 03:06

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Clairetic posted:

I thought I was good at tanking in this game until I went up against Archaean Seismocratist (nightmare of course) and had to juggle multiple impairs.

"Pick ONE thing to die to, jeez!"

"Yeah this isn't working."

"I think I'm going to go do something else."

You know why you're ditching? Because you can't do it either, assholes!!!

Everyone needs an ability to remove Rot Iron, impair Fissure or Seismic Burst or whatever it's called.

That's really all there is to it. You shouldn't need to interrupt anything else.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2013 03:32

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Clairetic posted:

Because there were only 3 other goons online at the time! (judging by the in-game chat channel #awful)

And it was me getting killed by Caldera or Shadow In Blood due to not interrupting it in time or trying to interrupt one of his other spells and stacking rising vigour or putting my interrupts on cooldown and pressing one that wasn't cooled down yet and by the time I noticed and pressed another one it was too late or I GLANCED because it's a hell dimension even though I have fever pitch and 689 hit and and or or and or

As for the name/pun/thing, it IS clever. So clever that two different nerds came up with it independently!

Are you using Viper's Castbar Relocator? Because it really makes impairing poo poo borderline effortless.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2013 12:48

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Kessel posted:

I bought this - or someone bought it for me, I honestly don't remember - a long time ago and never actually played it. I have a week off so I'm looking to just dive in and see the story; probably have no real intention of grinding anything in endgame.

Are goons still on Grim, and are there any MUST KNOW FACTS that I... must know before starting? I read the first few and last few pages of the thread and didn't see anything in particular.

edit - jesus christ how big is this client?

If you have a buddy you can duo this game with I honestly can't recommend it enough. The investigation missions are some of the most fun I've ever had in an MMO and going in with a bro blind and bouncing ideas off each other prevents you from getting frustrated and makes the whole process that much more rewarding.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2013 20:13

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

RhandomAccess posted:

So I tried to like this game but failed.
it reminds me of beta.

Alright.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2013 22:06

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

I've been out of the game a long rear end time. Last time I played, I realized that the old EleForce Pistol/Shotgun tricks didn't really work anymore.

Any alternative builds somebody can recommend me for Pistol/Shotty to make getting back into this easier?

# ¿ Jun 11, 2014 03:18

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Brave New World posted:

Not trying to be an rear end in a top hat, but you sound like you're completely new to MMOs or maybe even computer games in general(or maybe I'm misreading you). Always play MMOs, FPS, etc using the superior WASD + Mouse setup. Anything else is complete poo poo.

Always keybind your powers to very convenient keys that you can access while WASDing your way around the battlefield. For example, I have every key anywhere near WASD bound to a power, with the exception of CAPS.

Use a mouse with more than 2 buttons + wheel. Side buttons are a must for not sucking at MMOs. Bind those to your Bread & Butter attacks.

Avoid activating powers by mouse clicking as much as humanly possible. For the most part, the only powers that you point & click with should be out-of-combat buffs and rarely used Oh poo poo buttons like your heal pots.

In TSW, you dodge poo poo by double-tapping your movement keys(WASD). You don't have to be facing the direction that you dodge in.

Everything here is sound but the gaming mouse stuff is kind of superfluous and not equivalently important to the rest. People play at the highest tiers of content in games far harder than TSW without using MMO mice. It's not even hard.

Efficient hotkeying and WASD+mouse is a must though.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2015 21:09

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Jenx posted:

Well, you sort of succeeded at not sounding like an rear end in a top hat. No, I am neither new to MMOs, nor to video games. However I just find the default set up for TSW a bit annoying, especially when compared to most third person games I've played. After a lot of fiddling around with the thing, I managed to make it make some drat sense (for starters by just unbinding the the turn left/right keys from the keyboard entirely, because screw that noise) and the whole thing is playable enough right now.

I am not saying I have no idea how to play the game, okay? All I'm saying is the default set up was basically useless. And while this might seem like a "well duh, just change it!" situation, most games are usually set up properly from the get go.

He's kind of right though. Everything in this post pretty much says "I am new to MMOs or at the very least never learned how to play them". Turn left/turn right are a trap option in every MMO ever and yet they're still bound by default every time. TSW is not unusual in that.

MMO default set ups are garbage and it's standard procedure to change them as soon as physically possible.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2015 22:14

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Propagandist posted:

I have forgotten almost everything about the story since I started. All I'm remembering at the moment is
I ate a bee and he made me immortal and now they whisper to me
The Filth is like anti-life or something
The Orochi Group is like Umbrella Corp or Abstergo
Kingsmouth is hosed, Egypt is hosed, and Tokyo is really hosed

I feel like there's probably a lot more enjoyable detail in there that I've forgotten, and I have an itch to read up on it. For instance, I don't know what the Black Signal is, I don't remember who Lilith is, I don't know who the dreamers are, and I don't remember even doing Issue 7. Is there a good resource somewhere to catch up or get an involved synopsis? All I can find while googling is just Lore entries, which are the buzzing entries you pick up in game.

A lot of of the lore on this game relies on inference and personal reading comprehension so the solution is clear:

Make an alt, replay everything :getin:

# ¿ Dec 10, 2015 20:19

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

Hello Sailor posted:

Turning to a MMO for your RP fix is like turning to krokodil for a drug fix; the only worse thing you could do (in both cases) is LARP. Start a local group or find an online group through something like Roll20 or a PBP forum. You might also look into Unknown Armies as an alternative to WoD.

This is the best answer you're going to get. Seriously. Do not do MMORPG RP.

Brave New World posted:

2) Never ask goons in MMO HMO about RP. You'll only get laughed at. The goon demographic is pretty much the antithesis of the RP demographic.

MMO RP is maligned for good reason. MMORPGs are pre-scripted worlds in which nothing unexpected ever really happens and everyone has identical experiences. The net result is that "roleplay" such as it is tends to devolve into Pocket D/Goldshire style "lets all bum around in a bar hooking up for ERP and moping about how hard it is being superheroes/gods/whatever".

Captain Oblivious fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Dec 16, 2015

# ¿ Dec 16, 2015 01:14

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:57

Captain Oblivious: Oct 12, 2007; I'm not like other posters

If the original writers are gone, it's hard to muster much enthusiasm for a reboot much as I'd like to. I love TSW but the story and world and characters are the majority of why.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2017 19:53

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > The Secret World: Bees, Bugs and FunCompetence