Brooklyn in The (Real) Secret World

Just a comparison of the Illuminati stronghold in The Secret World's Brooklyn and the real world neighborhood, as near as I can figure. NOTE: The map for the Secret World is upside-down. Running toward the river is approximately running north, not south, and Manhattan is across the river.

Makes me think that the neighborhoods in Seoul and London are likely based on real places, too.

Be All You Can Be: Protips for The Secret World

In my main post yesterday, I described some things that make The Secret World different from other MMOs. My fellow bloggers continue to elaborate their views on the subject, as well. It's not all sunshine and roses for TSW, but it seems people are enjoying themselves. (Seriously, follow those links. I'll wait here.)

I don't want to sound superior here, and I am certainly no expert on TSW. But I wanted to clear up some confusion I have heard people discussing about various aspects of the game. I guess I "get" the playstyle of TSW more than some people I've spoken with. Others have no problem with the game, but may benefit. I promised a guide, it's more of a set of protips, I suppose. There will certainly be more thorough guides out there.

NOTE: When referring to weapons, I include magic abilities, because they require a "focus" which occupies a weapon slot in your gear.

The Ability Wheel:

I had a friend concerned about the number of choices available on the ability wheel. He was concerned that too much choice would lead to vaporlock as to what abilities he should use in practice. This was based partly on the notion that all the abilities would be conceivably available if you have enough Ability Points (AP) to spend. This is not the case, as you should have gathered if you've tried spending AP at all. The various Abilities build on each other. For example, Dancing Blade, a 3AP ability, will require you to have purchased (with AP) one 2AP ability and three 1AP abilities. Furthermore, the abilities seem to alternate between active abilities and passive abilities. You learn an active ability and the next ability to learn will likely be some sort of passive improvement on its predecessor. The passive abilities also affect the damage/healing/survivability of abilities in other schools of combat. That is, magic passives are likely to affect gun/melee actives as well as spells.

Decks:

Borrowing from card games like Magic: The Gathering and computer games like the original Guild Wars, The Secret World only allows you to have up to seven active abilities and seven passive abilities in play at any given time. As you're learning new abilities, those slots fill up. So once you have more than seven abilities of either type, you have to start making decisions.

To help you, the developers in Oslo have come up with some ability combos they think are effective to fill a role in the Unholy Trinity. One of the tabs on the Ability Wheel interface is Decks, on the far left of the screen. I'll go with the devs' advice, since completing a deck will give me extra buffs, and apparently a cool outfit to boot. Having pointed that out, the decks will take quite a bit of time to complete, since every deck has at least one 50AP ability. This translates into several hundred AP. (The Ninja deck that I am working for Poppyshock, pictured, is 856 AP.) So in the early game, the decks are more a goal to work for rather than an instant win scenario.

Character Skills:

Skills are all passive as far as I can tell. Each skill level costs a corresponding amount of Skill Points (SP) beyond what you have already spent on previous levels (i.e., Skill Level 3 costs 3 AP, and a cumulative 6 AP). Each weapon has two Skills, a personal DPS buff and a support buff (survivability, healing, DPS of another player). But don't forget the Talisman Skills at the bottom. To equip a higher quality item, you must have a skill level to match the item. My understanding is that you only need to build up one of the two weapon skills (DPS or support) to qualify for a given quality level (QL).

My advice is one of balance, with the Talisman Skills built up first, just so you don't forget them. Spend one point each in the Talisman Skills, then one point in each Skill for the Weapon(s) that you are currently using. Then build the second tier of skills.

NOTE: AP and SP cannot be refunded. Stop asking. The choices you make, make you. If you want to change to a different school of combat, start spending points in that school. I've put points in the wrong school myself. You can slowly but surely built up your new abilities and skills, integrating them into your combat rotation as they become powerful enough to fit the area you're in. You only have to repeat missions if you want to. Your choices matter in the short run, but given enough time you'll be able to master all 525 abilities.

"Dual Wielding" Weapons:

Yes, yes, YES! you can carry two weapons and use them! Do it! Do it NAO! There are no two-handed weapons in the traditional sense, only in the animation of your avatar. The assault rifle, for example, only occupies one slot on your gear, as do the pistols (which you appear to dual wield). So you could conceivably have a slot each of a rifle and pistols, or pistols and a sword, or a sword and a chaos focus, etc. As Syp pointed out, having two weapons means you can have two "finishing" moves where you can do big damage or healing. I've decided the best strategy is to settle on two weapons before I train during the tutorial, based on the deck I chose, then pick my secondary weapon in the training chamber, and get my primary weapon from the first QL1 green weapon mission reward. This will require spending at least 1 SP in the primary weapon right off the bat.

A couple of points to consider regarding weapons abilities:

• Some abilities build power, others spend it.
• Abilities that build power do it for both weapons.
• Guns build "combo points" power on the target.
• Melee power starts full, then drops.
• Magic power starts empty, then builds.

So other than pulling mobs to you, if you have an ability that spends all your melee power, use it as soon as possible. Then lay enough power-building abilities to pop off a major magic or gun ability. Then pop the melee "finisher" again. If you don't have a melee weapon, I would prioritize building the combo points, then spending the gun finishers before the magic, since the magic finishers can be used on new targets, where the gun finishers cannot. These are general guidelines and I could be totally mistaken.

Missions:

You can only have one Main Mission (the red, green, or yellow ones) at a time. If you accept a new main mission when already on one, the first will pause at the current tier of the mission (i.e., 3/5). You'll have to return to the original mission giver (e.g., Sheriff Bannerman) to pick it back up, but you'll be at the same tier.

Research may be required on your mission, there is a built-in internet browser for a reason. You can search Google. Also, there are sites (set up by Funcom) representing many of the organizations found in the game that may be of information value. While there are plenty of kill-ten-rats type quests, this is not a mindless hack-and-slash. You will need your thinking cap. It's one reason I really like this game.

Yokai and Sarcan have an incredibly thorough set of guides that I am only beginning to scratch the surface of. If you are interested in indepth theory-crafting, I recommend you check in with them. If anyone has any more protips to share or wants to clear up confusions they've heard, feel free to leave a comment or question.

Quote of the Day: Antisocial? No, Just Immersed

OK, it's the second QOTD, sue me. Here's MMO Gamerchick on The Secret World:

Playing in a dim environment with headphones on, it’s easy to become entirely immersed in the world without realizing that you’ve unwittingly ignored general and cabal chat for the last half hour (so I hope my guildies will forgive me for being anti-social).

MaeveMP, GeeCee, and I were discussing the value of a darkened room on Twitter, not only for The Secret World, but in my opinion all computer games. Much like the 1979 penny in Somewhere in Time, any distraction in the Real World will pull me out of immersion faster than any in-game glitches or flaws.

As far as being anti-social, I have a tendency to ignore general chat and have to consciously pay attention to guild-chat. In WoW, I would start chatting during idle times like the taxi flights. I haven't seen much downtime like that in The Secret World.

A Different World: The Secret World

Partly because I am not easily scared by horror movies (honestly can't remember the last time I was more than startled in a movie), I don't really find The Secret World scary, and don't think I ever will. However, the atmosphere is fantastic. I've only been a little past Kingsmouth (the first real adventure zone), having spent so much time creating my characters, and looking for lore entries in the hubs. But goodness gracious! The town is literally steeped in mood. The mix of zombies and Lovecraftian abominations—with a touch of X-Files conspiracies thrown in for good measure—is phenomenal. Notice the sunlight in the screen shot. As Ysharros pointed out, the mood is dark, the environment is not necessarily.

That is the first thing that is awesome about this game. Yes, this is a cheerleading post for The Secret World. Sorry, I'm not as cynical about the games I play as some are. I realize I do get ranty and can aften digress. But you can keep up. Right, Dear Reader?

The Community. According to MMO Compendium, even during downtimes, the forums have not blown up in nerd-rage. I haven't investigated this myself, but the chat in game seems reasonably helpful and not full of Chuck Norris facts, etc. Is this a result of the Mature Rating? I don't know, but it's a pleasant change. It helps that I am for the third game in a row on an RP server—oops, "dimension." To think I used to shy away from these types servers because the people were "weird." Turns out weird means not 13.

With the game server down for maintenance this morning, I took the opportunity to organize this post and watch Gamebreaker's blurb on the subject. I'm going to borrow liberally from them for my outline, but the comments are my own.

Set aside your differences. OK, remember how when you played WoW and you wanted to be a an Orc or Tauren, but all your friends were rolling dwarves and gnomes? So you had to roll Alliance, or you wouldn't be able to play. It sucked. Not so with The Secret World. Feel free to group up with those of opposing factions for PvE content, dungeons, etc. After all, some serious shit is goin' down, and unlike Telara or Azeroth, we need to stick together to tsake care of it. Then, when the pressure's off, we can fight amongst ourselves again in the PvP areas. Yes, I say again cross-faction PvE. Hopefully soon we make form cross-faction cabals (guilds), wheels-within-wheels.

One world, different dimensions. Oh and remember how you would meet someone who played WoW like you; what's the second thing you'd ask (after Alliance or Horde)? "What Realm are you on?" Inevitably, because there are a gajillion people playing WoW your new friend played on a different server. It would be costly to transfer, and you'd have to leave all your guildies and other friends behind, so you stay put. With TSW, you can reach out across dimensions (sort of like instances of the game, but more massively multi-player) to talk to friends group up, even join same faction cabals. (I dunno if you can be in more than one cabal.) Your "nickname" is unique across the entire server. As I discussed on Twitter earlier today, there are other games that have similar population strategies, like STO, EVE, Champions Online, and more. Even Rift makes it easy to jump servers. The thing is, more games should have this feature or something like it. Otherwise, when you have the inevitable contraction of player population, you force server mergers. And some unlucky players lose all their character names, which can be gamebreaking for many.

No elves here. Rather than a fantasy or Sci-Fi setting, this is our world, tweaked a little. All the myths and legends of old are true—all the conspiracy theories, all the political machinations. This makes it very immersive, in my opinion. I knew this was gonna be cool when one of the NPCs told me this wasn't some "Dan Brown paperback". Heck, I got a kick out of the details like the road signs in Kingsmouth. The references to New England horror/mystery pop culture are great, too.

Leave no stone un-turned. Along those lines, everything in the world could be important. The shops around town aren't just decoration; they have meaning, they could be part of the mystery, part of a puzzle to solve. There's a built-in web browser with Google as its homepage. You're gonna need it. Not to get the boss fight guide, but to find out who that 18th-century composer was, to find out what that one guy looked like. You may know some of the answers, but you won't know them all. And hey, this is the 21st century, FunCom knows you're gonna be looking stuff up. Just like that open-book test in school, this game's just that more challenging because the answers are readily available.

This next item is going to lead into my next post, one of the few advice posts I've ever done. I think maybe the first for a game itself. But there seems to be some confusion about gameplay that is dissuading some people from appreciating the game fully. Or turning them off completely.

More abilities than you can shake a stick at. Because the game is classless, eventually every weapon and ability in the game will be available to every character. You can be that shotgun-wielding healer. Or the fireball-throwing tank. Or the whatever-shooting/swinging/casting DPSer. But only seven active and seven passive abilities at a time. The freedom of choice can admittedly seem overwhelming, but that is an item for the next post.

QOTD: Hooray for Colorful Metaphors

From Ysharros:

Our internet has been up and down like a tart’s knickers for the last 2 days. More off than on.

I know it's a little old, but it had me rolling.