Thanks, no. I’m still receiving notices from them, but decided against playing. Glad to hear so many of you are having fun with it!
I hear ya. However, since GW2 has no sub, I feel somehow OK playing TSW until GW2 comes out and maybe even continuing to pay for TSW beyond and switching between the two (though I know GW2 is going to suck me in and eat up 100% of my time) :smack:
How well does the game do as far as permitting and encouraging you to play with your friends? If I am on one quest/story line, and a friend of mine is on a completely different one, is there any point is us trying to team up? Is it even possible to drop what I’m doing and go somewhere else to play with friends? This is part of what killed TOR and several other MMORPGs for me - it takes a lot of coordination to ensure that I even can play with other friends due to having to coordinate where on which story arc people are.
Well, you can help each other on a quest even if you’re not on it. One thing I like (though occasionally it’s a bit annoying when I want to do something myself) is that if you have to kill a mob for a quest and somebody else has already spawned it, you can wade right in and help and you’ll get credit for it (even if you’re not in a group with them).
Most quests have multiple stages to them so it would help if you and your friend were on the same stage, but that’s true of things like WoW too. But two other cool things for playing with friends: you don’t have to have both rolled on the same server (there’s really only one big server with multiple “dimensions,” and you can group up with friends in different factions except for PvP (obviously) and joining the same cabal (guild).
I am loving this game. It was everything I’d hoped it would be storywise, the quests are fun and creepy and they don’t hold your hand like WoW does, and the look and feel is just generally amazing. I am not regretting buying the Grandmaster (lifetime) pack at all.
You can also team up even if you started characters on different shards; if you want to team up with a friend on Arcadia, say, you just group with them, then use the Meet Up function to teleport to Arcadia. The only limitation I know of to this is the PvP warzone–Fusang is deliberately restricted to the natives of the dimension, presumably to prevent people from abusing the reward system too badly.
On the other hand, there are solo-only instances. If you run into one while running an arc as part of a team, you’ll have to each do your own (or hang out outside, I suppose). The group doesn’t dissolve if you enter a solo instance, though; it just shows your teammates in another zone.
It’s great, isn’t it? Since you’re only working on a few quests at a time, you become fully invested in the ones you are working on. And because the quests are designed such that you don’t pick up a ton at a hub, but instead meet a contact, pick a mission, complete it, then find a new mission near where the last one was completed, very few players experience the game in the exact same order, which seriously cuts down on theme park lines.
No two missions are alike, and there are very few ‘kill X’ missions; there’s plenty of combat, but mostly as a means to gain another objective. The Investigation missions are completely novel and neat for an MMO, although unfortunately they’re also the most spoil-able, since they rely more on knowledge than performance. More than once I’ve googled the hints the game gave me and the first 3-4 hits were walkthrough pages for the mission.
I will say that one downside is that the clever mission scripting does sometimes break apart when you introduce other players who are used to the click-everything-and-don’t-ask-questions school of gaming, which is what other MMOs train you to do. A lot of really cool missions get bugged easily when players on the same mission click your quest object, or three people are trying to click on quest objects in the same area and doing it in the wrong order and just. won’t. stop. clicking.
I’m a little skeptical of the game’s potential replay value, but at least for the first run through I’m absolutely loving it.
Yeah, I do hope they keep the content coming. But given the amount of time it’s going to take to max out all the skills on the wheel, I consider that the money I spent for the Grandmaster Pack was worth it. Plus I’m sure they’ll introduce endgame stuff at some point.
BTW, I’ve only done one instance so far (Polaris–looking forward to doing Inferno probably tomorrow) but I love the way they’re nice and quick and don’t have two tons of extraneous trash. There’s some, sure, but I remember the developers saying that was a conscious decision–they figure most people don’t like wading through acres of trash to get to a boss, so just give them enough to make it interesting but not enough to be tedious.
I think this game has learned a lot from previous MMOs about what to do and what not to do.
Thanks for the info! It’s also helpful to know wtf is up with the servers and that there are virtual separate servers known as “instances,” which makes more sense of a lot of chatter I’ve seen.
Bosstone, if you want to Google hints (well, you really have to, it’s part of the game), and avoid spoilers, you could always try adding “-secret world” to try to filter out the walkthroughs.
Even though the games still buggy as hell, I’m having tons of fun with it. I just got called to NYC to investigate a meeting in a parking garage, and I hear it’s a massively fun mission. I can’t wait!
That mission is tons of fun. You’ll love it. 
http://tswsearch.com/
It uses a customized Google search to filter out spoilers. Haven’t tried it myself, but it seems like a handy page.
…and someone has already trotted out the hoary old “but the ‘M’ is for ‘Multiplayer’!” routine to whine about solo instances. Sigh.
Awesome, thanks for that. Bookmarked.
At least the solo instances don’t break group. City of Heroes experimented with solo instances, and they’re very irritating in the way they work.
**Dark2Phoenix **took up the game too, and last night we joined a group in the Polaris. It was tons of fun. None of us knew what we were doing, but it was still very entertaining.
I wish they would iron out the numerous bugs already. They did such a beautiful job on the environments, monsters, and story - they deserve a game that works. Still, I’m having fun and keep coming back for more.
I’ve got a healer on Arcadia named Elledritch, and he’s Dark2. Get in touch if you want to play together!
Coming back to this thread I have to mention something. I still very much love this game, so I hate pointing out the bad stuff, but it does deserve a heads-up:
I was in a group last night with a couple of strangers who happened to be on the same mission chain as me. One of the missions happened to take place in a rather large solo instance. So I fought my way through the instance to the boss, who was pretty tough and I died once. In the middle of the fighting him the second time, the group disbanded; apparently the others had finished their instances and completed the mission.
In doing so, the boss was no longer seen as belonging to me: its HP bar took on that orange color that shows someone else has claimed the enemy. I guess it ‘belonged’ to the group which I was no longer a part of. I finished the fight and got zero credit for the kill. I had to leave the instance, restart the mission, and do it over again before it would let me complete.
Between that and the fact that every other mission in the Savage Coast appears to be gamestoppingly bugged (in that it’s impossible to complete the mission), I’ve had my share of frustration over the past few days. Again, though, I still love the game to death and think it’s totally worth playing, and will be even more so once the bugs are ironed out.
My character is still focused on Pistols/Elementalism, but I’ve started filling out the inner ring of abilities before going to the outer. I have a QL4 version of every weapon now (though I don’t have the skills to use them), and I’ve got nearly all the inner ring filled out except for Assault Rifle and Chaos Magic. At this point I’ve got the resources to make a basic build for every occasion, though so far Pistols/Elem is still doing the job magnificently.
I’ve got a basic build of one Pistols single-target builder, one Pistols ST consumer, one Elem ST consumer, one Elem chain builder, one Elem chain consumer, and one Pistols chain consumer, along with an Elite Pistols AOE skill that does enough damage to be useful against a single target. Passives are generally complementary and focus on crits and damage. I don’t have any healing abilities, but the build burns down nearly anything that gets in my way, and it’s very easy to switch between attacking one target and attacking multiple with no loss in DPS. It manages to be very fun despite using only 3-4 skills at any one time, and the various enemies and shaped attacks that require dodging keep things interesting.
I’ve started a small Templar cabal, Ordo Ophidia Cecilius (feel free to resolve the references as you see fit), and provided details up in the Doper guilds sticky thread if anyone is looking for a place to hang their hat. Cabals don’t do much at this point besides provide a chat channel, but it’s a start. If Dopers join in, it will probably end up being much like CECIL in City of Heroes–mostly chat and some common conveniences.
Hopefully, the upcoming patch will resolve the problem with the missions that keep getting stuck. I suspect it’s a tricky bug to track, though–since it doesn’t always happen, and missions get stuck on some shards but not others, I suspect it’s related to the number of people trying to do the quest.
I’m mostly running a fairly deep Elementalism/Blood build, with a couple of passives picked up from Fists and Chaos, and Turn the Tables from a miscellaneous pool for an emergency heal. It needs some tweaking, though–I think I’ve pushed too hard for survivability, and now it doesn’t kill as fast as I’d like. It does have quite a sucker punch, though–I like to lead with an Anima Charged Thor’s Hammer, with the passive that makes it auto-crit; a clean hit usually deals around a thousand damage. After that, though, I’m kind of plinking at them until it recharges. I may need to drop Turn the Tables for a single-target consumer.
I started experimenting with an AR/Blood healing build last night, using the healing-focused talismans I’ve been stockpiling. It seems fairly effective, but I was only using it for drive-by healing, not in any serious fights. (Actually, I was mostly amusing myself by finding improbable locations to hang out and heal people from. I logged out with my character perched on a telephone pole near Red’s.)
After a few false starts, I’ve been playing a Hammer/Elemental guy (Ironforge), and I think I’ve stumbled onto an interesting power combination. I geared him to crit as often as possible, because when he makes a critical attack, he:
- Heals a small amount
- Applies a small DoT (affliction, as they call it in TSW)
In addition, whenever he criticals on an afflicted target, the damage chains to five more targets. Just about everything he does is area-effect, or eventually becomes so due to the chaining side effect. And those chained attacks can crit, as well…
Basically, the more targets he fights at once, the more he heals and the more damage he does. I’m now working on getting a pistols passive (Mad Skills), which gives you a progressive bonus to crit chance whenever you get a crit.
One thing I really don’t care for is the way ground-targeted attacks work. You have to activate the power, then click where you want it to go. I find this to be really difficult and annoying, so I’d prefer if it always fired off on my selected target. Supposedly there’s a way to do this, but I’ve been unable to get it to work more than once.
I’m running a hammer/shotgun build right now, which gives me some great flexibility. For dungeon groups, I can go full-on damage (I’m most effective in melee range due to the hammer, and I’ve specced my shotgun to do more damage the closer in I am, but I can still perform decently if I need to keep my distance) or I can tank, and for running missions solo I have a good mix of survivability + damage. I just stepped foot in Transylvania and already I’m loving the ambient music.
Also, if you’re a Templar, the third faction mission (Virgula Divina) is probably the best mission I’ve ever played through in an MMO.
If anyone needs help with missions or a tank/dps for dungeons, give me a shout. My main toon is named Amaranth, though I may not be around much till after this weekend (Guild Wars 2 BWE!!).
I went wide instead of deep; I finished the entire inner ring a night or two ago, more as a point of pride than anything else. I only have one outer ring skill trained, but I’ve found the inner ring has been more than sufficient thus far for my soloing needs.
Unfortunately, Skill Points haven’t kept up; while I’m in QL5 gear right now and all my weapons are QL4-5, I only have the skill to equip a couple of them beyond my main Pistols/Elementalism set. I’ve also gotten so used to Pistols/Ele that trying to set up any other build leaves me confused. 
I’m always surprised at how quickly others go through MMOs compared to me; I’m still only in Blue Mountain right now and not very far in at all.
The thing about the inner ring abilities is they scale really well and are great for general use. The outer rings aren’t necessarily more powerful, just much more specialized. If you’re going to be a tank or a healer in a dungeon, you definitely need to go down the outer rings and grab one or two of the green misc skills.
As a dps or soloer, the outer rings will allow you to really narrow your focus (such as building synergies with applying weakness/affliction, or using only strike or blast abilities and loading up on passives that buff those attack types), but certainly aren’t required to be effective.
PvPers will probably want some outer-ring control abilities as well.
Balance, do you have a consumer skill equipped for each weapon? That may help to address your damage issue … I know blood and elem work a little bit differently, but most builds revolve around using 2 finishers for every 5 builders for general use. I’m not sure how that factors in for blood/elem since both those weapons have 2- and 3-point consumers as opposed to big-damage 5-pointers.
I don’t usually advance all that quickly, either–I’ve only touched the beginning of Blue Mountain. I tend to spend a fair amount of time doing stuff that doesn’t yield xp. I explore, try to get into places that are designed to be unreachable (like on top of telephone poles), read fluff, sneak around (Did you know that ak’ab have terrible peripheral vision?), and do drive-by healing and buffing. None of that results in much tangible progress, but I find it fun.
That’s why I mentioned dropping a heal for another consumer–I will probably go with Cardiac Arrest from Blood, which offers minor control as well as damage. I currently have two Elemental consumers, one of which is on a cooldown, and frequently have extra Blood resources despite using a lot of them on shields. I should be able to spare enough to pop Cardiac whenever it’s recharged. I will likely replace it with Plague once I unlock it, but that’s a while off.
Only some weapons use 5-point finishers. I’m deep sword and full first circle blood and shotgun. Each plays differently for building and finishing.
Solo, I run sword/blood. Blood plays very much like you describe, and I generally build 5 points before using a 5 point exanguination finisher. There are other finishers that use fewer points, but the idea is build N points, use an N point finisher, and N is never 1. Most (all?) sword finishers, however, only require 1 point and consume them all. I end up alternating build/finish.
A typical rotation will be blade torrent (AoE sword builder, inflects, which triggers a +penetration buff), destiny (sword finisher, exploits affliction), BT, destiny, BT, destiny, BT, destiny, BT, stunning swirl (sword inner circle elite AoE attack, impairs enemy), exanguination (blood 5-point finisher, exploits impair), bamboo cutter (sword builder, exploits affiction - I switch because my +penetration buff is maxed and alternate between BC and BT to keep an affliction on the enemy so destiny hits for the full force), destiny…
Things in the field are never that clean, but that should give the idea. It’s frequently 10 attacks before I hit my second weapon finisher.
Tanking is even crazier, since my finishers are on short CD. I build with pump action, since that weakens the enemy, and dance sword finishers to keep up Crimson Theater while hitting brandish frequently. I’ll probably also be throwing matador in the mix as another builder soon. I use buckshot as the main shotgun finisher, but have both barrels available if needed. I’m more concerned with hitting my sword finishers than my shotgun finishers because they offer defensive bonuses.
Tanking in TSW is significantly more dynamic than other games I’ve tanked. I can take a static position and only move to dodge telegraphed attacks or to move out of AoE, but it’s very feasible to approach some bosses as a mobile tank and reduce damage through kiting. As DPS, I find myself moving in and out to use melee vs ranged attacks frequently. In some cases, melee is fatal, but it seems that some bosses encourage mixing it up. the trinity of tank/healer/DPS is still there, but it’s more varied.
I’m in Egypt, and I’m souring on some of the investigation missions there. There are a couple of cyphers and codes to translate that are more annoying than interesting. The investigations in Kingsmouth seemed much more about detective work and less about cryptography.