July 2012 - Tales of the Aggronaut

On SWTOR and F2P

July 31, 2012 by Belghast

While I anxiously wait on The Secret World to patch in the background, I thought I would take a few minutes to respond to today’s big “un-news” story. Pretty much every news source from IGN to Forbes is reporting that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be going to the free to play model by this fall. I am not really sure if this was any surprise, since in mid-june there was another similarly placed article hinting that Bioware was looking at the model.

Roar of the Crowd

What is also fairly unsurprising is the immediate upwell in the gaming community, including much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth. This really should shock no one at this point, and is really deserving nothing more than a polite “I wish them well”. I know for me personally, the subscription fee was no barrier, and had nothing at all to do with my reasons for leaving the game. I completely believe in the concept of voting with my dollar, and I have no problem supporting the causes I believe in.

By that token, I guess you can state that I just stopped believing in Star Wars: The Old Republic. It was an amazing rollercoaster ride of riveting story. But at the end of the day, there just was not enough content to hold my attention. By the same token, I don’t feel a need to “Rage against the machine” and try and bring the game down. I still have several friends playing it, and reportedly they are still enjoying themselves.

Enter the Pundits

I find it annoying that this move is being treated like the sign of something bigger. On one side we have groups of players that are mad at the game, feel betrayed by it, and are already signaling this as the desperate act of a dying game. On the other side you have groups chanting “death to subscriptions”, and ushering this move in as the beginning of a brave new era. I tend to think this is the act of a company, doing what they feel is best for their product. While this might be the highest profile conversion, it is far from the first, and likely will not be the last.

While I personally find the subscriptions a much more honest business model, Free to Play is not necessarily a bad thing. I know at least in the case of the games I have played, the free to play status has done a lot to lower the barrier of entry. I’ve seen the server populations bolster in Everquest 2 since the conversion. While there are a lot more ruffians on my roleplaying server, the vast majority have been seemingly well mannered. The only thing I am uncertain of, is whether or not these players actually stick around for the long haul.

Negativity and Zealotry

I think one of my biggest frustrations with this whole situation is that there will be so much negativity in the coming days from all the camps. I realize this makes me seem like a hypocrite, because I’ve ranted about more than my fair share of games in the past. If you look back through my archives you can see many an angry tale featuring my favorite boogeyman, the dreaded Blizzard. I would like to think that over time I have mellowed.

I’ve reached a point where I am just tired of both the rampant negativity and zealotry in the community. Do we have to hate all other games just because we are playing something different? If we love a game, do we have to shove it in everyone else’s faces until they accept our choice as the “one true game”? I guess I have reached a place where I am happy to play the games I like, but equally happy to hope the other games succeed as well.

We Need More Success

We have built a zero sum climate in massively multiplayer gaming, that really doesn’t need to exist. While every game is in essence competing with the games that came before it, when did we start having to tear the others down? I feel like in order to keep the MMO culture thriving, we need each one of these games to find their own niche, and their own kind of success. Ultimately we have to redefine what success means, because there will likely never be another 10 million subscriber game.

I know personally I have stopped looking for a WoW Killer that will never exist. So long as we keep using that as the bar for success, we are setting every game up for a failure. Maybe I have grown up a bit, but right now I am just looking for some enjoyment in whatever I play. Currently that happens to be a mixture of The Secret World, Everquest 2, and World of Warcraft.

While I have joked that “If you don’t like TSW, you have no soul”, I do not literally mean that. Not every game, has to appeal to every player. I think part of what has had me so excited about The Secret World for example, is that it is a very niche game, and seems to be happy with that fact. We need more games that are OK with catering to a specific niche. We as players, need to be okay with not winning the subscription race and playing the game with the most people.

No Free Ride

So I think this announcement heralds neither the doom of Bioware or the subscription model for that matter. Players will always be willing to pay good money for good content. Free to play, simply means that these companies are giving us the game, and hoping we like it enough to give them money in return. Ultimately we the players have to fulfill that social contract and give them that hard earned money in one form or another. If you don’t then honestly you are just a drain on that games community. At the end of the day someone has to pay for it, because there is no such thing as a free ride.

#TSW Automatically Join Custom Chat Channels

July 31, 2012 by Belghast

Today is the big patch day, and I am having to pacify myself by listening to The Secret World soundtrack while at work. We’ve had report from in game, that custom chat channels are now working again. You have to rejoin the channel when you first log in, and then reportedly the tab stays bound. That said, it is probably still safest to use the Auto Join script.

This won’t be a “real” post, but I wanted to throw together a quick howto for setting up the Auto Join scripts. Credit goes to Scopique of Levelcapped for tipping me off to this existing in the first place.

Creating Auto Login

Find your Secret World install directory, this is typically “C:\Program Files\Funcom\The Secret World”.
If you do not already have a scripts directory, create one aka “Scripts”.
Inside the “C:\Program Files\Funcom\The Secret World\Scripts” directory, create two new files: “auto_login” and “auto_teleport” with no extensions.
Edit each file so that it contains the following lines:

   1: delay 5000
   2: /chat join channelname password

I’ve found that in order to get this working correctly, you do not need the normal chat channel # sign. When you log into the game auto_login gets executed, and when you zone auto_teleport gets executed. If you have a chat tab bound to this channel, it should automatically pick up on the newly joined channel.

If I figure out a way to automate the re-binding of the Cabal tab on zone, I will update this post to include it. For the time being it looks like 1.1 has not fixed that problem yet.

#TSW Fun with Shotguns and Blades

July 27, 2012 by Belghast

It has been several days since I finished the main storyline in The Secret World, and I have neither had the strong desire to play an alt, nor any sense of boredom and lacking things to do. So far so good, if anything I feel even more fanboy-ish than I have been to this point. Today I listened to the second of the Secret World live developer streams, and I am really pumped about the 31st update.

So while I am geeking out as a fanboy, I am trying really hard not to do so in an offensive way. Honestly one of my biggest turnoffs with Guild Wars 2 in general, has been the army of militant fans that appear to bludgeon down anyone who might question that title. I really want the TSW community to be different than that, so I feel hyper conscious about how my current love of the title might translate to the “un-initiated”.

So while I might joke that not liking the game, means you have no soul… I completely understand that the game is not going to be for everyone. The Secret World is this awesome niche title, that a year a go I would not have thought could exist in the modern MMO market. It is this odd intersection of Harry Dresden, Harry Potter, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, Clive Barker and James Bond. The world is almost tailor fit to the type of stories I love reading, but it will not be right for everyone.

Of Shotguns and Blades

There has been a lot of talk about builds lately amongst my group of friends. For the most part everyone is branching out and trying to figure out what works best for them. Overall the faction template decks seem nice, but in practice each of us ends up fiddling with things to suit our own needs. Each of us seems to be building towards the deck we want the costume for, while creating our own custom made mix of abilities.

Personally I chose both Shotguns and Blades for pure geeky reasons. I love using shotguns in any game that allows it, in Doom I made a beeline for the double barrel shotgun each time and never looked back. In fantasy games, I must have a sword in my hand, and I am never quite happy until I am wielding one. So giving me a game where I could do both, pretty much meant I knew exactly the build I would be going towards. Even if it sucked, I would likely be playing this combination… but oddly enough it works really well together.

How the Deck Works

One of the cool synergies between both Blades and Shotguns is that both have a good number of abilities that either increase your chance of landing a penetrating hit, or doing something really cool when you do. In addition to this, I have built pick up some claws abilities that make it really easy to drop a target into an afflicted state, which mixes nicely with a swords finisher that exploits this condition. So essentially this deck is all about landing a penetrating blow, that starts a cascade effect.

The build works around three abilities for the most part. First is Twist the Knife, that you will see below. Essentially when you penetrate your target gains an ability that stacks to three, that increases all damage dealt by 3% for 10 seconds. Each time you penetrate, it resets the stack timer. To make sure we keep penetrating, I throw in the next ability: Fatal Flourish. Each time you apply afflicted you gain +30 Penetration for 8 seconds, which stacks to 10. Finally I have thrown in the Bloodsport ability from the Claws tree, that sets and afflicted state anything you hit the mob.

Shotgun and Blades Deck

Blades Abilities

Four Seasons

Four Seasons is the epic ability I have chosen for this deck. Essentially it serves two purposes. Firstly since this deck is all about starting a cascade effect when you penetrate, this allows me to land four guaranteed penetrates. The second purpose, is this doubles as an interrupt, since the fourth hit stuns the target.

Bamboo Cutter

Since most of this build is AOE based, I went with Bamboo Cutter as my melee builder. This is essentially a low threat version of the Blade Torrent ability from the inner blades wheel. This is pretty much my spam button when I can be near a target.

Clearing the Path

There are multiple good AOE and single target resource dumps in the blades trees. I have friends that swear by Chop Shop, but for the purpose of this build, since I will be setting the afflicted state I chose this ability. If you notice, this attack will automatically penetrate any afflicted target. Which only services to keep the cascade effect going.

Flight of Daggers

Going along with the AOE theme, this epic passive causes 3 enemies near you to take a direct damage hit, and gain an affliction that deals damage over time. This ability procs on every fifth hit, so you will be throwing out a ton of “daggers” as you go.

Twist the Knife

This is really the ability that started the theme of the deck. When you penetrate, you gain a stacking buff that when fully stacked increases all of your damage by 9%. We want this stacked to three as quickly as possible, and to always maintain a full stack.

Fatal Flourish

This is the ability that is going to make sure that you are penetrating by stacking a buff each time we apply afflicted. It stacks up to 10, and each stack grants 30 penetration. Since Bloodsport is making us apply afflicted each time we hit the target, by the 10th time we have struck the mob we will have +300 penetration.

Sudden Return

This is one of those no-brainer fillers. Each time I penetrate I deal a small bit of extra damage. Build is set up so that I penetrate constantly, so this is just free damage. When I need to swap things around for certain fights, this is one of the abilities I can easily drop without losing any real effectiveness.

Martial Discipline and Regeneration

You might be asking yourself… “Bel, I thought you were DPS in this game, why do you have a tanking ability?”. One mantra I have always lived by regardless of the MMO, is “Dead DPS do no damage”. While this combination takes up both an active and passive slot, it is completely worth it. Essentially every 45 seconds you can hit an ability that will greatly reduce the amount of damage you are taking, and heal yourself. This ability has saved my ass more times than I can count, and often times is the reason why I can solo nightmare content.

Shotgun Abilities

Striker

This is my shotgun ranged builder of choice. There are many builder options in Shotgun, but so far this feels like one of the better picks as it has a really good range. Raging Bullet seems like a great pick, but in order to get the maximum effect you have to stay close range. If I can be in range, I tend to be using swords attacks.

Sure Shot

This is my all purpose ranged dump. It does slightly less damage than Out for a Kill, the basic single target ranged dump. However when I am grouping it comes in handy, since it has the added benefit of purging 1 detrimental effect from you, and 1 beneficial effect from the mob if the mob is in a hindered state. I have other abilities that I can swap in and place the mob into a hindered state, namely swapping Flight of Daggers for Close Quarters that causes me to apply hindered each time I hit within close range. When grouping, someone is usually applying hindered.

Scattershot

This is my favorite AOE builder so far. Essentially it will hit your target, and 5 enemies within 5 meters of the target. This is really useful for packs of mobs, and often times I can have the pack dead before they reach me if I am kiting them. At the very least within a sword AOE or two they die. Found this super useful in instance fights where packs of mobs spawn that the DPS needs to handle.

Fist Abilities

Bloodsport

This ability is one of the three that really make this build work. Anytime you hit a target, it becomes afflicted with a DOT that stacks up to 3 times. Several abilities in the build rely on either applying afflicted or hitting an afflicted target. This is the easiest way to make sure this happens.

Salt in the Wound

This is another no-brainer filler ability. Bloodsport causes me to constantly be applying afflicted, and this ability deals extra damage when this happens. Once again this is basically free damage to the target. Just like Sudden Return however, this is one of those slots that I can freely swap in other abilities as needed without losing build effectiveness.

Why I Love This Build

Aside from simply liking both Shotguns and Blades, and the visceral feel of using both, this build gives me a good deal of both survivability and versatility. The Secret World is a game about constant movement, and during most fights I find myself shifting back and forth between needing to be close to the target, and needing to be at a safe distance from any point blank AOE. This build gives me the ability to shift back and forth between ranged and melee without every having to stop attacking.

I like the feel of the cascading effect of Twist the Knife and Fatal Flourish working together. As the fight goes on, I keep dealing more and more damage until the mob dies. This has allowed me to burn through many encounters I just should not be able to take on. I’ve managed to solo a good deal of the lair and nightmare content, so long as I take it carefully and stick to single and sometimes double pulls.

No amount of damage dealing however could really account for that. The fact that I put Martial Discipline in the build gives me enough survival to be able to stay up long enough to finish off the mobs. Last night in Elite Darkness War, I kited the boss for the last 50 seconds of the fight after everyone had died, and managed to pull out the victory. I had to hit Martial Discipline twice, and take a healing potion, but I was able to stay up long enough to whittle down the bosses health. Basically the build lets me tackle pretty much whatever I want to do, and with some careful planning survive.

#TSW: The Atmosphere

July 24, 2012 by Belghast

The Secret World has been out just shy of a month now, at least for those of us who pre-ordered. At this point I have racked up roughly 170 hours, including some played when Raptr was not watching. As of last night, I have completed the main storyline of the game. I still have a good chunk of Romania to complete, but as we got into the last bits of storyline it was like reading a book that you just couldn’t put down. I had to keep moving the main quest along to see the conclusion.

I am not sure what all I can say without giving anything away, but I will suffice to say I am looking forward to the monthly episodic updates. To point if you divide it out, I’ve put in a bit longer than 20 hours of gameplay per zone. All through Solomon Island, I was running about 35 hours per zone. So why did my time spent in a give zone get shorter? Well honestly the story just kept getting better, and I felt the drive to see the next tidbit all the faster.

As a result I’ve left a good chunk of content to go back and experience in every zone since and including Blue Mountain. I have lore and quests to find, places to explore, and buckets of AP to earn. I am still extremely happy with my shotgun/swords build, and as a result I am pretty much chasing down the various other decks now to get the outfits unlocked. Currently I have Paladin and Puritan, and will likely finish out Executioner tonight if I get the time.

Normally this is the point at which I get the desire to start an alt. Odd thing is, this time, the way that Secret World is set up, I feel like I still have so much more of the world to see and do. I’m slowly working on getting the various Elite dungeons done with some friends, and am still miles away from being able to challenge the Gatekeeper and unlock Nightmare modes. One of my guilty pleasures right now is running around the world, soloing Lair and Nightmare content.

I think more than anything the thing that is keeping me absolutely hooked is the lore and atmosphere. This is the first time in a long time, that I want to know everything I can about the game world, its settings, and the characters. So much of the game feels familiar to me, as I spent years playing the various World of Darkness games, renting B horror movies, and reading up on as much occult lore as I could get my hands on. Stepping into The Secret World has been like discovering an old friend that I somehow neglected along the way.

I completely blame MMOGC for this post, because she talked about going back and watching the various trailers that were released for the game. Of course I had to go back and do the same. What shocked me the most is just how accurate a view of the in game atmosphere they give you. Looking back I found myself noticing little places like the Horned God Bar in London, that how have become rather familiar. This is the first time in a long time that a series of pre-launch videos give a really accurate portrayal of what the player can expect.

So now I will break for the gratuitous videos!

Everything is True Trailer

Dragon vs Hellspawn Trailer

Templar vs Revenant Trailer

Illuminati vs Failed Experiment Trailer

Tokyo Incident Trailer

Pre-order Trailer

Blue Mountain Trailer

Launch Trailer

If these videos don’t make you want to go home and play, then nothing likely will.

If you still want more of The Secret World, you should totally check out the Enochian Frequency podcast. I’ve long been a fan of Petter Mårtensson and his podcasts Claims of the Normal (with Breki Tomasson and Arkenor Oakshadow) and The Three MMOsketeers (with Arkenor Oakshadow and Teppo Tastic), and this one brings the same kind of “not too hardcore, not too casual” mix to The Secret World. You should add it to whatever podcast program you use and listen frequently (as well as to the other podcasts, though Claims is winding down sadly). These are pretty much the only podcasts I try and make a point of listening to each week.