The Secret World | Superior Realities

I had a bunch of gaming topics I wanted to discuss that wouldn’t quite fill up a post on their own, so I decided I’d just jam them all together.

Let’s get to it!

Heroes of the Storm: The two queens

This week saw a big patch for Heroes of the Storm, bringing with it the long-awaited release of Sylvanas Windrunner.

Since the patch also included increased leveling rewards — awarded retroactively to those of us already max level — I had an abundance of gold, and I bought Sylvanas at her starting price of 15K gold, also treating myself to her ranger-general skin.

Initially, I found myself somewhat disappointed with Sylvanas’ incarnation in Heroes. She felt very weak, and I struggled badly.

The problem is that she is incredibly squishy, and while her mobility seems good on paper, it’s often impractical. Her teleport relies on a projectile with a travel time that is hardly any faster than normal hero movement speed, and while Withering Fire can be shot on the move, it needs talents to really be a practical choice for harassment or chasing enemies.

However, I refused to give up, and after getting some practice in and experimenting with different talent builds, I managed to achieve a decent level of success. She’s still significantly weaker than other specialists in a lot of ways — she can’t solo grave golems, for instance — but she does have her advantages. If left uncontested, her push power is incredible, and she’s excellent at countering enemy mercenaries and minion waves

Also, her team fight potential is pretty good by specialist standards, though not really much better than Nazeebo’s and Zagara’s, and she is a bit like Illidan in that she excels at finishing off wounded enemies.

Actually, she reminds me of Illidan a lot of ways. They both require extremely high APM compared to other characters, they’re both obscenely squishy but highly mobile, and they’re both heroes who can be either devastatingly powerful or borderline useless depending on the situation and the person controlling them.

I still think she could maybe use a buff to her survivability, either in the form of more health, more reliable self-healing, or a more practical escape tool. Seriously, Banshee Wave is the least practical teleport ever. You can pull off some incredible stunts with it… but you probably won’t. It’s not a good sign when a hero with a built-in teleport still needs to take Bolt of the Storm at level twenty.

The other big ticket item for this patch is the new map, Tomb of the Spider Queen. It’s not quite as bad as I worried it would be, and it’s definitely not as tedious as Dragonshire, but it is a fairly uninspiring map.

The game isn’t even out of beta yet, so I doubt Blizzard has already run out of ideas for interesting map mechanics, but that’s the impression one gets from Tomb of the Spider Queen. The map objective basically boils down to, “push lanes so that you can periodically push lanes a little harder”. It feels far more like a traditional MOBA than other Heroes maps, and it’s definitely not as exciting as rushing for a tribute on Cursed Hollow or battling over temples on Sky Temple.

There’s also less team fighting, and mercenaries play a much smaller role since any time you’re not in lane is time you’re not gathering crystals from the enemy creeps.

The map could really use some alternative sources for crystals, like merc camps or occasional crystal dumps similar to the treasure chests on Blackheart’s Bay.

I was also a bit disappointed this patch didn’t include the previewed option to permanently mute team chat — not sure if that’s still coming or not. The unending nastiness of people in this game is really starting to drive me up the wall.

Diablo III: Greed is good

I haven’t been playing Diablo III on any kind of a regular basis for quite some time, but I still pop into it once in a while. It’s a great game to just jump into whenever you have some spare time, and it’s good for stress relief.

WHAT RICHES

So I found myself running through the lands of Sanctuary again, and I came across some interesting new additions since the last time I’d played.

Since D3 launched, there have been hints of a mythical realm filled with riches hoarded by the treasure goblins, and of the demon who rules over it: Greed.

Ever since, players have longed to explore this place, and now that’s finally possible. Treasure goblins will now rarely leave behind a portal to Greed’s Vault on death, and I was lucky enough to find one.

It is everything I dreamed of. In twenty minutes, I acquired thirty-one million gold, several hundred blood shards, three legendary items, and a rough estimate of an assload of high level gems.

Granted, this was while the community buff with double gold find was active, but still. Talk about a goody room.

This also feels like a good time to mention that my wizard has a legendary item which grants her experience equal to any gold she picks up.

It culminates with a boss fight against Greed herself, who has the absolute best death animation of any boss ever. I must have spent a good ten minutes just opening and closing the chest on her head purely for the juicy sound effect.

Shortly thereafter, I encountered another new addition: a rainbow treasure goblin whose death opened a portal to a version of the infamous pony level. Although I’ve never visited the original Whimsyshire, I have encountered Nephalem Rift levels based on it before, so the joy of butchering rainbow ponies was not entirely new to me, but I still couldn’t resist pausing my bounty farming to explore the full map. Was a nice break from the usual grind.

I’m really impressed that Blizzard continues adding meaningful new content to D3 post launch. Sure, these aren’t huge additions, but this is a game that has absolutely no monetization beyond box sales. Blizzard doesn’t get much, if anything, from adding these new Easter eggs. It’s just a gift to the players.

Whatever issues D3 may have had at launch, it has earned a lot of respect from me.

TSW shoves its bag in our face:

This week has also seen a return of the golden golem event in The Secret World. Between a certain degree of burnout and still being a little unhappy with recent events, I haven’t participated all that much, but I did log in long off to buy the latest loot party bag.

Yes, yet another.

It’s starting to feel like Funcom has gone a little mad with power with these things. They started as a special holiday thing, but now they’re taking any excuse to churn them out.

A lot of people are getting fed-up, and there’s a big backlash from certain members of the community. For my part, I am a bit fatigued on the bags myself, but mostly just because they don’t feel exciting or special anymore.

I’m certainly not as bothered as some others. As far as ways to monetize the game goes, this one is relatively harmless. All the rewards are cosmetic, most can be traded, and it can create fun social events. I’m in the habit of running to Kingsmouth and dumping the loot on newbies — seems like they’d enjoy it the most, and I figure if I can give them a positive experience early on, it might encourage them to keep going with the game.

And I do really love the /dance_rockabilly emote from this most recent one.

“Gatecrasher, know that you stand before one charged by Amaterasu and blessed by Gaia!”

…It’s funny how Firefox’s spell check is lacking all kinds of everyday words, but it has “Amaterasu.”

Anyway, on the whole, I don’t think the loot bags are a problem for TSW, but I can sympathize with feeling a bit fatigued by them.

Skyforge’s class reveal:

I’m still not sure what to make of Skyforge, but a recent reveal of their full list of launch classes nudged me back towards the “excitement” category.

Firstly, there are a lot of them. Thirteen to be precise, which is a pretty huge number, especially for a new MMO. World of Warcraft only has eleven, and it’s ten years old.

There’s also a very interesting mix of standard archetypes — paladin, cryomancer, archer — along with more unusual concepts. There’s an alchemist class, which is a very rare archetype that intrigues me. They’re also launching with a monk class, which is an archetype I feel deserves much more attention than it gets.

But by far the most interesting one to me is the kinetic, which uses special gloves to manipulate gravity, hurl boulders, and generally wreak havoc.

That sounds awesome.

I’m still wary of getting excited about Skyforge, though. Word of mouth from the beta is decidedly mixed, and supposedly the developer’s parent companies has ties to the Kremlin, which is rather unnerving given recent world events. I’m not sure I want to support something like that… though I’m sure it wouldn’t be the first product with a shady pedigree I’ve supported. Nobody’s hands are totally clean in this day and age.

Sigh… I’m so conflicted.

As regular readers know, I love The Secret World. It’s my favourite game at the moment, and in my opinion, one of the best games of all time. It may have its flaws, but it’s probably about as close to perfect as I can ever reasonably expect to see.

But this week has pushed my love for the game to its limit. In the space of three days, we’ve gotten a tidal of bad news, bad decisions, and poor behaviour, and for the first time ever, I feel an echo of doubt over whether my support for this game has been deserved.

Joelzilla is no more:

This week, game director Joel Bylos dropped the bombshell that he has been transferred away from The Secret World, and from the sounds of it, he will not be replaced.

TSW has been hemorrhaging staff since launch, and just when the bleeding seems to have stopped, we hear of more losses. It wasn’t so long ago they let the much-beloved developer known only as Quokka go, and his absence is still felt keenly by the community.

But losing Joel is the worst news yet. Joel is The Secret World. He has spent years working tirelessly on the game, and he’s always been a bright spot in the community. He has a level of honesty, engagement, and humour that is unmatched in the gaming industry. He also provided much of the creative talent for the game, writing some of the most beloved characters, lore, and missions.

It’s very hard to imagine the game having much of a future without Joel, and even if it does, it’s even harder to think it will maintain the same high quality. They’re already enacting sweeping and largely unnecessary difficulty nerfs (more on that in a moment), and Joel’s departure makes me worry this is just the first step towards a major change in direction for the game, and not necessarily for the better.

Joel is supposedly moving on to a new project within Funcom, but one has to wonder how many more games than can handle. They’re struggling to keep their current roster afloat, and the recently launched LEGO game seems to be under-performing. Is spreading themselves even thinner really wise?

To make matters worse, the most recent financial report shows TSW as the best-performing game in Funcom’s roster. Why would they divert resources from it to take a chance on yet another new project?

I have a lot of respect for the developers of TSW, but the upper management at Funcom just doesn’t seem to know what they’re doing. Add to this the Mankini Incident, and it’s difficult to have any faith in Funcom management.

And they’re not the only ones wearing clown shoes.

Community mismanagement:

I had a big rant written here, but it seemed like airing my dirty laundry in public, and that doesn’t feel right. I don’t want to say, though, that I have really lost faith in TSW’s community and those who manage it.

And I am not only saying that because I’ve gotten into some disagreements. I’m a pretty ornery and unpleasant person, so that’s only natural, but I’ve seen people far nicer than me — who are true and ardent supporters of the game — be given some truly shabby treatment.

Funcom’s community team doesn’t seem to value the game’s fans, and for a game this small, that’s dangerously reckless.

To the ground, baby!

Today saw the launch of TSW’s ominously titled “Enhanced Player Experience.” This was their attempt to make the game more approachable for new players. It’s a noble goal, but a lot of the methods they’ve chosen to attain are likely to do more harm than good.

Going in, we were told this was an attempt to smooth the difficulty curve. The jumps in difficulty between zones — which in my experience have always been greatly exaggerated — would be smoothed out. Pretty unnecessary, but probably not too harmful in the long run.

But that’s not at all what ended up happening. Instead, the “Enhanced Player Experience” is an across the board nerf to everything before Tokyo.

This is a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I’ll be the first to admit TSW was far too intimidating for the average player, but that’s because it’s a complicated game with very poor tutorials. The problem was never the difficulty; the problem was the game didn’t teach people how to play.

And to Funcom’s credit, they did improve the tutorials a lot, and that’s a good thing. But it also means the massive difficulty nerfs were utterly unnecessary. The game isn’t unreasonably hard if you know what you’re doing.

TSW needs a certain degree of challenge to be interesting. It’s a horror game, after all. If mobs aren’t scary, then it loses much of its ambiance, its fear factor, and its soul.

What’s worst about all this is that most of the game’s nightmare missions — especially in the Besieged Farmlands, which was a beloved place for endgamers to farm — have been downgraded to normal missions.

For solo players, nightmare missions were a cornerstone of the endgame. That endgame has now been gutted. TSW was one of the few MMOs offering a meaningful endgame and options for progression to people who quest, but now our options on that front have shrunk dramatically. From the sounds of things Tokyo and scenarios are now pretty much the only relevant content for solo players.

The really bizarre thing is that several ability tweaks also included in this patch have indirectly made Tokyo significantly harder, which seems rather at odds with their goals as of late. Seems like instead of preventing players from hitting the wall, they just delayed the point at which they hit the wall, and made that wall much harder.

There are some good things in this patch. They’ve added a normalized fast travel system, which is way overdue and extremely welcome. They’ve made Tokyo much easier to access, and players can now enter the zone without buying issue nine. The improved tutorials and starter decks are obviously a positive. I’ve heard tell there’s some new clothing, and that’s always welcome.

But are those enough to compensate for all the game has lost from this “Enhanced Player Experience”? It’s too early to say for sure, but it definitely doesn’t look that way right now.

* * *

TSW and its developers have built up a tremendous amount of goodwill with me over the years, and it will take a lot to burn through it all, but the events of the past week have certainly taken a heavy toll on it, especially since much of that goodwill was invested in Joel.

Superior Realities

Tag Archives: The Secret World

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