#oneaday Day 910: Continued Adventures in The Secret World

I’m still playing The Secret World and still enjoying it. Generally a pretty good sign for an MMO is if it can maintain my attention through the first month and convince me to continue paying the subscription fee (if applicable) past that point. The Secret World is certainly keeping me occupied and entertained, and I’m enjoying it a great deal.

I’ve progressed somewhat since the last time I discussed the game. I’m in the second of the game’s main “adventure” areas, which is another part of the Innsmouth-style Lovecraft town. Rather than the more “towny” area that you start in, the second part is more like a forested outskirts area. There are fewer houses, streets tend to wend their way into the depths of the woods, and there are creepy Twin Peaks-style lakes with mist rolling off them (and monsters lurking in the fog, of course).

The missions continue to display an excellent amount of variety. There are a few more “kill [x] of [y]” action missions than I’d perhaps prefer there to be, but they generally have more of a narrative incentive to progress than in other MMOs. For example, in one mission I completed tonight, I was tasked with killing a bunch of draugr and then burning their bodies. This attracted some more powerful draugr, which I then had to kill and impale on some spikes. This attracted a draugr queen, which I then had to kill and splay out on a pointy rock. This attracted a draugr berserker, which I… you get the idea. This process continued through several steps, with increasingly more difficult fights along the way. At the end of the quest, my “handler” and I reached the conclusion that the draugr had an organised hierarchy and chain of command that could potentially be exploited in the future. Much cooler than simply returning to a questgiver and them going “thanks for killing all those wolves”. (Praise should also be given to the fact that, this being the modern world, you turn in quests simply by phoning your handler rather than having to return to whoever gave you your quest.)

The fact that most missions incorporate something a little more than just plain killing is the best thing, though. In another one I completed today, I had to gather mushrooms from various areas around the map (guarded by horrible slobbering things from the depths of the ocean, natch) and then mix them together according to a recipe on a scrap of paper I had to remember I’d been handed at the start of the quest. The Secret World assumes a certain degree of intelligence on the part of the player, and doesn’t remind you that, say, the instructions you need to complete a quest are safely in your journal — or, indeed, that sometimes you have to use the crafting interface to complete an objective.

Speaking of the crafting interface, it’s a surprisingly cool approach somewhat reminiscent of Minecraft, of all things. Disassembling equipment you don’t need rewards you with raw materials, which can then be combined together to make various objects. The twist is, you have to arrange them into the correct formations to produce the things you’re after. You can then add things like glyphs to give them special abilities and bonuses and customize them.

I even tried a bit of PvP the other night. I normally hate PvP in MMOs because in most cases it’s a horribly unbalanced afterthought that simply isn’t any fun whatsoever. It is terrible in Star Wars: The Old Republic, for example, and I’ve never really been a fan of it in World of Warcraft, either. The Secret World has some interesting ideas, though, that make PvP well worth engaging in.

There are currently (I think) three PvP areas in the game. Two of these are instanced battlegrounds in which players take part in timed team-based matches according to whichever faction they’re on. The other, though, is a large map which has persistent PvP going on at all times. A number of facilities cover this map, and it’s up to each faction to capture (and, ideally, hold) each of these locations. There’s a strong incentive to do so, because all players of a given faction receive ongoing buffs according to how many facilities their secret society is in control of.

And people are playing it well. The chat channels in the PvP areas are full of people actually bothering to talk to each other, strategise and coordinate their efforts. The Templars appear to have a bit of a numbers advantage, but that certainly hasn’t stopped my faction, the Illuminati, from having a bit of fun — especially during quiet periods. Which is nice.

All in all, then, Funcom have done an excellent job in shaking up the very stale MMO space and creating something that it distinctive, entertaining and downright compelling. Its writing is good, its world is beautifully crafted and the whole experience is wrapped together with some unconventional but very effective game mechanics that successfully distinguish it from the million and one World of Warcraft clones out there. I strongly suggest you give it a try if you get the chance.

#oneaday Day 902: Follow the Rules (That Haven’t Been Written Yet)

I’ve been playing a bunch more of The Secret World today and I stand by my initial impressions that it’s a significant step, nay, leap forward for the MMORPG genre. My only slight criticism would be that so far I’ve had very little incentive to actually play alongside other people, but 1) this is nothing unusual for modern MMOs and 2) I haven’t tried any “dungeon” missions yet.

It’s in the Investigation missions that I mentioned yesterday where the game truly distinguishes itself. I shall try and resist spoiling specifics at this point, but completing one today involved searching for something in the game world, finding a laptop (password-protected, natch) and then having to break into it. The clue on the computer was vague at best, and there was nothing in the immediate vicinity to help. A little exploration was required, and then some actual honest-to-goodness deduction and lateral thinking on the part of the player. It was a true case of “I wonder if this works… holy crap, it does.” As I say, spoiler-free, but it involved the sort of shenanigans normally reserved for “alternate reality games”. Which is impressive stuff.

What all this clever puzzle-solving leads to, though, is something of a dilemma for the community. In other MMOs, the General chat channel is the home for people asking how to do things — when it’s not the home of teenage boys soliciting sex from hot female Night Elf avatars, of course. It’s sort of expected that if you ask a question such as “where is quest objective x?” that you’ll get a straight answer. And that’s fine — a lot of MMOs are still a bit clunky on the whole “user-friendliness” part and thus often forget to point the player in the right direction, necessitating either a lot of tedious searching the game world or simply asking other players.

In The Secret World, however, the confusion inherent in these Investigation missions is part of the appeal. The sense of satisfaction when you unravel one of the game’s cryptic clues is unprecedented in the usually rather predictable MMO genre. Assuming you worked it out yourself, of course — and herein lies the problem.

Players coming to The Secret World straight from titles like World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic will come to General chat or the dedicated Help channel and pose the usual sorts of questions. One of two things then almost inevitably happens — 1) someone posts the answer and everyone then yells at them for spoilers. 2) someone posts a vague clue and the new player then gets annoyed at not being able to get a straight answer.

Actually, this is an exaggeration — so far, from what I’ve seen, the vast majority of the community is on the side of “give hints, not answers” and only a few people ruin that. The trouble is, if you happen to glance at General chat when one of these people is spoiling a quest solution — perhaps unintentionally — then you can’t unsee it. You’ll know forever that Dr Bannerman’s computer password is — wait, hang on, you won’t get it out of me that easily!

Funcom’s GMs are apparently being pretty strict about those they catch posting spoilers in the chat channels, so hopefully the community will be “trained” out of that particular practice sooner rather than later. The trouble is, tempers often run unchecked online, meaning that some people will fly off the handle to a disproportionate degree at these spoiling types — who, in many cases, simply hadn’t yet got a handle on the game etiquette. Sure, it’s common sense that in a game with a heavy puzzle-solving component that people might not want to just hear the answers blurted out, but it’s entirely possible for the reasons I mentioned above that people may not have considered this. Getting yelled at and verbally abused by people isn’t going to help them change their behaviour — it’s simply going to make them defensive and often lash out back at their “aggressors”, thereby perpetuating a cycle of people bitching and complaining at each other unnecessarily.

In many ways, it’s the same as in teaching. In the classroom, if you spot someone misbehaving — or if another child comes up and “tells on” the miscreant, the worst possible thing you can do is yell, shout, scream and otherwise draw attention to their inappropriate behaviour. In many cases, the child was simply seeking attention, so to succeed so completely — even if it’s with negative attention — will not train them to behave more appropriately in the future. Instead, a more assertive approach is the way to play it — take the child aside and discuss quietly and discreetly with them why what they did was wrong rather than encouraging them to get upset and strike back.

Now, obviously most of the players of The Secret World are a little older than primary school children (hopefully), but this approach is still a sound one. If someone behaves inappropriately — such as by posting spoilers — it may be easy to simply publicly shame them in General chat with an “FFS” and a few choice expletives, but all that will do is make them call you a “moron” (or worse) and ensure that you both end up on each other’s Ignore lists. Instead, a simple, polite private message explaining why what they did was inappropriate or unacceptable is the way forward. No malice, a simple — but assertive — desire to help them out and make the experience more pleasant for everyone involved. Easy, right? Well, it should be. In practice it doesn’t always work that way, but people will settle down over time as the “norms” of the game community are established.

The way online communities interact with one another is something that’s always been fascinating to me, and the fact that The Secret World is even running into this issue at all shows what a big shift away from conventional, predictable MMO thinking it really is. The community is going to have tom come up with established conventions and ground rules — perhaps policed by GMs in the early stages — and those used to a different set of norms will have to adjust and adapt appropriately.

Anyhow. That’s that. If you haven’t figured it out already, The Secret World is most definitely worth your time and money, particularly if you have the slightest interest in Lovecraftian horror, or if you enjoyed Funcom’s adventure titles The Longest Journey and Dreamfall. While it has its flaws and its bugs, it’s certainly a far more interesting experience than the vast majority of other online titles out there, and I recommend you give it a shot — even if you’re not normally into MMOs.

#oneaday Day 901: Lost in The Secret World

Well, I’ve spent a great deal of today playing Funcom’s new MMO The Secret World and… and…

Well. Wow.

You remember how everyone hailed The Old Republic as a massive step forward for MMORPGs — before everyone realised it was actually just World of Warcraft in space, that is? Yeah. The Secret World actually is a significant step forward for MMORPGs.

Why, you ask?

Well, let’s consider its thematic content for starters. The Secret World is a lush, rich combination of all manner of influences, including, among other things, Illuminati/Templar/some Asian dudes conspiracy theories, The X-Files and the work of H.P. Lovecraft. The early stages of the game feel very much like what a hypothetical Arkham Horror Online would play like — you’re an “investigator” for one of the three factions in a town called Kingsmouth (which, in the “creepy American small town” stakes is in the unenviable position of being somewhere between Lovecraft’s Innsmouth and Silent Hill‘s, uh, Silent Hill), you wander around trying to get to the bottom of what has caused a zombie apocalypse (I KNOW, ZOMBIES, but bear with me) and the mysterious fog that has come in from the sea. Also, big slobbering tentacle monsters. And people going “a bit mental.” Apparently Cthulhu is involved at some point, but I haven’t got that far as yet.

So The Secret World eschews the usual fantasy or sci-fi tropes of the MMORPG genre in favour of a modern-day setting dripping with Lovecraftian atmosphere — at least in its initial stages, anyway. And it actually bothers to tell a fully-realised story (with full speech and cutscenes) rather than a limp, loosely-connected set of questlines. But it’s not just the theme and the strong narrative that distinguishes The Secret World from its numerous competitors. The game systems are also an impressive breath of fresh air.

Let’s start with the quests. While some quests do include objectives such as “kill [x] [y]s”, these are usually part of a longer chain of events. Where things get interesting are when you break away from what the game refers to as “action” missions and you get to take on “sabotage” and “investigation” quests. While “action” missions, as you might expect, involve killing things, “sabotage” and “investigation” challenges are a little different.

In a sabotage mission, stealth and environmental puzzle solving is emphasised. In an early example, you have to retrieve a number of security cameras from abandoned businesses around the town and set them up in strategically advantageous places for both the police and your faction. Many of the cameras are out of reach from ground level, necessitating a bit of exploration as you figure out how you can actually reach them. As the mission progresses, you eventually find yourself exploring an instanced “mini dungeon” in which you have to avoid security cameras and laser tripwires while working out a route to disable various control panels without being spotted.

Investigation missions, meanwhile, are a lot more elaborate. The current one I’m working on has 18 steps in it. If you consider that your average MMO quest has 3 steps at most (get quest, kill/collect shit, return to questgiver), this is pretty impressive. When you look at what some of these steps involve, it’s even more impressive.

In investigation missions, the fourth wall is broken slightly as the player has to put their own intelligence to the test. Clues are given for various challenges, and it’s up to the player to figure out how to solve them. An early, simple example involves working out the password for someone’s computer using a couple of hints they’ve left around the place, but later ones see you doing everything from deciphering morse code messages to making use of the in-game web browser to research real-world things. (Of course, you could just cheat using said web browser, but the community is already rather sensitive about spoilers, so you’ll be surprised at how few “answers” are out there already.)

This brilliantly diverse questing system is coupled with an excellent levelling mechanic. Players level up at a consistent rate throughout the game and can eventually unlock all the skills from all the disciplines — but it’s only possible to equip seven active and seven passive skills at once, much like how Guild Wars does things. It’s possible to save these “decks” of skills, however, allowing you to easily switch your character build on the fly according to the situation you’re in or what the group you’re with needs you to do.

Combat, too, is quite interesting. While it’s the usual “hotbar and cooldown” approach, there’s a much more “action game” feel to it here, thanks in part to the fact that positioning is important — particularly when baddies start doing area-of-effect attacks. You can take on a lot more enemies at once than in many other MMOs, giving the game a much more exciting, dynamic feeling rather than simply getting into the rhythm of pressing the number keys that titles like World of Warcraft offer.

In short, The Secret World is evidence that there is still some creativity among those who make MMOs. Not everyone wants to make a World of Warcraft clone, and Funcom have succeeded in creating an experience that is very much its own thing — and very much worth your time and money. C’mon. You can’t say the prospect of doing a raid on Cthulhu doesn’t appeal just a little bit.