Overall, I spent way more time downloading the clients and giving away keys for the Secret World Beta than actually playing. I have very little interest in spending time on characters that will be wiped when I have so many characters I can keep competing for my limited time. That said, now that the opportunity is past I suppose I should write what I can.
Limited time, first impressions
I really haven't bothered to watch any of the marketing info for this game, so I picked Dragon, cause A) green and B) ninjas (I think). The second conversation my character had in game consisted of a strong implication that a female NPC was performing off-camera oral sex on my female character in order to grant access to a flashback combat tutorial. I'm not so much offended as highly underwhelmed - rather than a feel for the Dragon culture, I'm left feeling that the writers are going to be simultaneously cliche and edgy because they can.
Havin gotten that over with, it was off to a dojo to test drive all of the combat styles in the game - magic, melee, or firearms. Each weapon has a damage and a utility (tank, heals, support) role, and a new character won't have enough skill points to know what all of those skills will look like, but at least it was a good opportunity to get a feel for my choices. More games need to offer this type of option, though ironically TSW has the least need to do so since you can switch weapons without re-rolling.
The first real zone was a zombie apocalypse scenario. Quest text is delivered in fully voiced cutscenes, but, unlike SWTOR, these are not interactive and your character never speaks. Not having options makes the discussions feel less interactive, even though very few conversations in SWTOR actually matter - the choices are an opportunity for your character to have a personality in a genre that often fails to flesh out its occupants. However, it was definitely as advertised, MMO mechanics in a modern setting.
I didn't get very far into the skill tree, and I unfortunately failed to take a second type of weapon when an early quest offered me an upgrade. The skill system claims to allow two weapons per skill "deck" and it would have been interesting to see how that works out in practice. I did find it a bit odd that I had to take abilities in the one weapon I used (some sort of fists, forget if they were actually called that) in a linear order, but it looked like there would be more opportunity to branch out later in the game.
One final tidbit was the game's browser integration. At one point where a normal game would have fired up a tutorial, TSW launched its browser and streamed a video off Youtube. This does not break immersion because it is a modern setting, and it allows them to reuse work they already did for their marketing campaign to spin up players on the game. I did not reach the much-discussed story puzzles that are solved via google, so my only comment there is that I eagerly await the day the Goons launch a campaign to get incorrect answers to the puzzles onto the top of the Google search results as a way to grief the playerbase.
Outlook
I respect folks who think the game is innovative and want to support it on principle. The one place where they're not innovating, though, is the monthly fee, and that's pretty much a dealbreaker for me right now. What I've seen of the game is potentially interesting, but I don't feel like dropping anything I'm working on right now to make room in my crowded money and time budgets. Best of luck to those of you who are soldiering onwards to launch, and perhaps I'll join you someday.
Updated Fuzzy Legacy Math
SWTOR's patch 1.3 landed today. I'd previously posted about the questionable pricing of a character-specific companion affection perk, so I figured an update was in order.
The issue with these perks is that there is a relatively limited amount of total affection each character will get during their career, the perks do NOT apply across your entire legacy, and each point of affection can be assigned a value in credits based on the cost of gifts. Paying a large number of credits for an exp bonus that cannot be earned any other way - thus saving you time in leveling - is a luxury item. Paying a large amount of credits for an affection bonus when you could have just purchased enough gifts to get that much affection for a smaller amount of credits is just bad planning.
Anyway, in response Bioware tweaked the numbers - the bonus has been doubled and the cost slashed by 2.5-fold. The good news is that the entry level perks are a very attractive deal, especially for newer characters. (The deal gets worse as you complete more of the story, because you will have fewer remaining quests to benefit from the bonus.) At 10K each for 10% bonuses to gifts and conversation gains, I'm not going to spend too long worrying about whether I got the best deal.
Unfortunately, I'm still not convinced about the higher ranks. It's an extra 30K credits (per bonus) for an additional 10% affection, but my guess is that you will most likely cap out your affection with most or all of your companions before you really benefit from this increase. I guess the real question is whether +20% to conversations would allow you to slash or eliminate your gift budget - you will definitely profit from a single rank of the gift perk if you're handing out rank 1 gifts until they stop awarding points, but this will still cost you some money (roughly 30K credits per companion for the non-picky companions). Then again, the numbers are probably close enough that it doesn't really matter.
If you're curious, here's an update to my numbers on how much you can save on rank 1 and 2 vendor gifts with the 10% bonus.
Total Saved on Rank 1 Gifts: 6+6+8 = 20 x 200 creds = 4000 creds saved per companion (assuming non-picky companions)
The issue with these perks is that there is a relatively limited amount of total affection each character will get during their career, the perks do NOT apply across your entire legacy, and each point of affection can be assigned a value in credits based on the cost of gifts. Paying a large number of credits for an exp bonus that cannot be earned any other way - thus saving you time in leveling - is a luxury item. Paying a large amount of credits for an affection bonus when you could have just purchased enough gifts to get that much affection for a smaller amount of credits is just bad planning.
Anyway, in response Bioware tweaked the numbers - the bonus has been doubled and the cost slashed by 2.5-fold. The good news is that the entry level perks are a very attractive deal, especially for newer characters. (The deal gets worse as you complete more of the story, because you will have fewer remaining quests to benefit from the bonus.) At 10K each for 10% bonuses to gifts and conversation gains, I'm not going to spend too long worrying about whether I got the best deal.
Unfortunately, I'm still not convinced about the higher ranks. It's an extra 30K credits (per bonus) for an additional 10% affection, but my guess is that you will most likely cap out your affection with most or all of your companions before you really benefit from this increase. I guess the real question is whether +20% to conversations would allow you to slash or eliminate your gift budget - you will definitely profit from a single rank of the gift perk if you're handing out rank 1 gifts until they stop awarding points, but this will still cost you some money (roughly 30K credits per companion for the non-picky companions). Then again, the numbers are probably close enough that it doesn't really matter.
If you're curious, here's an update to my numbers on how much you can save on rank 1 and 2 vendor gifts with the 10% bonus.
| Affection Range | Affection/Gift | Total Gifts |
| 0-1999 (base) | 96 | 21 (to 2016) |
| 0-1999 (+10%) | 105.6 | 19 (to 2006.4) |
| 2000-3999 (base) | 48 | 42 (from 2016 to 4032) |
| 2000-3999 (+10%) | 52.8 | 38 (from 2016 to 4012.8) |
| 4000-5999 (base) | 19 | 104 (from 4032 to 6008) |
| 4000-5999 (+10%) | 20.9 | 96 (from 4012.8 to 6019.2) |
| 6000-7999 (base - rank 2 gifts) | 19 | 105 (from 6008 to 8003) |
| 6000-7999 (+10% - rank 2 gifts) | 20.9 | 95 (from 6019.2 to 8004.7) |
The Uncharted 3 Spinning Ring of Doom and the Upside to Digital Downloads
We've seen a lot of commentary about the quirks associated with Blizzard's decision to take Diablo III online only. Downtime prevents players from accessing the single player game. Digital download purchase of the game are now being subjected to restrictions intended to prevent fraud involving stolen credit card numbers - though apparently the limitations were more severe than Blizzard intended and will be relaxed. And, of course, there's the ever-convenient side-effect that an online-only game cannot be resold. All of these things are true, but let's not over-romanticize the offline physical media era.
A cautionary tale
I purchased a physical copy of Uncharted 3 for my 2.5 year old PS3-slim and was shocked and disappointed to find that it would not load. All the other disc-based games in my library play fine, so I assumed I was looking at a defective disc. I was technically beyond the exchange policy at the retailer at this point, but my wife fears no customer service agent and she was able to convince them to swap out the disc for a new copy.
I brought the new copy home and was shocked to find the same symptoms. The PS3 clock icon spins ineffectually long past when the game should have loaded, but the game never kicks in. A trip to Google revealed that the PS3 forums call this phenomena the "spinning ring of doom"- convinced that it is an issue with either the coding or the manufacture of the physical game discs. They may or may not be correct, but it appears that I am not amongst them.
I called PS3 technical support - not seriously expecting a solution to the problem - and at least came away with the real culprit. My system will load all the other game discs I have handy. It will load all the downloaded games on the device's hard drive. Then the rep told me to load up a Blu-Ray movie and sure enough, the same problem emerged. My 2.5 year old system apparently has a broken disc drive.
(Aside: The rep then attempted to give me the strong-arm hard sell for Sony's repair service, which cost over $100 - I don't remember if that included shipping or precisely how long I was going to be without my system as a result. I pointed out that I can get a new system on sale for around $250 with a game and a controller that collectively MSRP for around $100, and the guy tried to put the scare tactics on me that my game and movie downloads would not work on a new console. I pointed out that the PSN service specifically markets game downloads as tied to your account, and - caught - he said that they should but that he's heard that sometimes they don't.)
Vestigial Points of Failure
Don't get me wrong, I'm not thrilled with how this experience played out, and the results do not leave me eager to spend more money on the PS3 platform. I'm now out of pocket for a game that I can't return because it's been opened and can't play because my system won't load it.
However, the part that failed is not some fancy computing hardware or exotic cooling solution or even the machine's hard drive. The point of failure is the optical drive - a vestigial appendage whose sole contribution to the endeavor of letting me play games is to load physical media from a physical store which is taking a substantial cut of the sale price for the privilege.
Can I hypothetically trade in my working disc for something else that may or may not run on my hobbled system? Perhaps. Somehow that's not a lot of comfort right now.
A cautionary tale
I purchased a physical copy of Uncharted 3 for my 2.5 year old PS3-slim and was shocked and disappointed to find that it would not load. All the other disc-based games in my library play fine, so I assumed I was looking at a defective disc. I was technically beyond the exchange policy at the retailer at this point, but my wife fears no customer service agent and she was able to convince them to swap out the disc for a new copy.
I brought the new copy home and was shocked to find the same symptoms. The PS3 clock icon spins ineffectually long past when the game should have loaded, but the game never kicks in. A trip to Google revealed that the PS3 forums call this phenomena the "spinning ring of doom"- convinced that it is an issue with either the coding or the manufacture of the physical game discs. They may or may not be correct, but it appears that I am not amongst them.
I called PS3 technical support - not seriously expecting a solution to the problem - and at least came away with the real culprit. My system will load all the other game discs I have handy. It will load all the downloaded games on the device's hard drive. Then the rep told me to load up a Blu-Ray movie and sure enough, the same problem emerged. My 2.5 year old system apparently has a broken disc drive.
(Aside: The rep then attempted to give me the strong-arm hard sell for Sony's repair service, which cost over $100 - I don't remember if that included shipping or precisely how long I was going to be without my system as a result. I pointed out that I can get a new system on sale for around $250 with a game and a controller that collectively MSRP for around $100, and the guy tried to put the scare tactics on me that my game and movie downloads would not work on a new console. I pointed out that the PSN service specifically markets game downloads as tied to your account, and - caught - he said that they should but that he's heard that sometimes they don't.)
Vestigial Points of Failure
Don't get me wrong, I'm not thrilled with how this experience played out, and the results do not leave me eager to spend more money on the PS3 platform. I'm now out of pocket for a game that I can't return because it's been opened and can't play because my system won't load it.
However, the part that failed is not some fancy computing hardware or exotic cooling solution or even the machine's hard drive. The point of failure is the optical drive - a vestigial appendage whose sole contribution to the endeavor of letting me play games is to load physical media from a physical store which is taking a substantial cut of the sale price for the privilege.
Can I hypothetically trade in my working disc for something else that may or may not run on my hobbled system? Perhaps. Somehow that's not a lot of comfort right now.
SWTOR Ding 50
I was originally going to hold off in favor of working on alts, but I changed my mind because I was close to the cap and having a hard time figuring out how many of my credits I needed to save for when I got there. (Answer: 110K+ in training alone, and I haven't decided how to spend my commendations versus what item mods to purchase.)
Meanwhile, the Jeutrémie legacy is sitting at level 6, and currently grants the following benefits:
- 150 presence (human racial plus 5 companions)
- All five Companion archetype buffs (1% each HP, accuracy, crit, surge, and 2% healing)
- Heroic moment ability duration doubled, cooldown reduced by 25%, one Trooper legacy Sticky Grenade per cycle
- All classes get the trooper/bounty hunter buff (5% endurance)
- Cyborg race unlocked for Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular, Sith Inquisitor classes, also additional cosmetic options available
Anyway, with these benefits in hand, it's off to work on my first alt, a Sith Warrior. And perhaps return to the trooper from time to time to blow things up for the Republic and/or credits in support of my Legacy. The trooper was not a class I was that interested in until I played it, but I'm glad that I did, as its medium range melee/tanking niche was different and fun. If I'm similarly surprised by other specs, I've got a lot more fun left to have with this game.
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