Category Archives: Secret World Legends

July 2023 Gaming: Anniversaries, Summer Resorts, Empty Lakes, Rescuing Civilians, and Making it to Another Galaxy

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Guild Wars 2, Lake Doric

Summer is always an event-filled time for MMOs and who am I to turn down a good seasonal celebration? Even if the loot isn’t always great, I always try to peek into a good event to see if there’s anything at least worst chasing. So this month for me featured lots of event and game hopping, but I also made some good progress overall.

Guild Wars 2’s Lake Doric and Festival of the Four Winds

The game I spent the most time in this month, not by much, was Guild Wars 2. Currently going through the Living World Season 3 content, sandwiched between the Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire expansions. Haven’t played much of Guild Wars 2 this year as I’m trying to play all the content in both Guild Wars 1 and 2 in a relative order and I’m stubborn about doing so. However, the only Guild Wars 1 content I’ve made it through has been Prophecies, and I’d love to complete Nightfall before starting Path of Fire since the two share a lot of story. Heart of Thorns continues story from Prophecies, Path of Fire continues Nightfall, and End of Dragons continues Factions. So I’m dragging my heels in Guild Wars 2’s intermission as I complete Nightfall.

The Festival of the Four Winds is something I haven’t spent that much time in and wanted to explore a bit more, but sadly determined it’s not really the best for me. The Festival revolves a lot around mounts obtained in Path of Fire and “renting” the basic mounts only goes so far. So I completed the bare minimum to achieve the dailies and spent the rest of my time exploring and completing ‘The Head of the Snake’ story and the Lake Doric zone. That end fight, though. Not that hard but certainly ramped up the creep factor.

Elder Scrolls Online, Markarth

Elder Scroll’s Online Ascent of the Arcanist, Zeal of Zenithar, and Markarth

Elder Scrolls Online is a game that I’ve made such great progress that I’m almost caught up with new content. I’m only 3 years behind which is pretty good for me! I leveled the new green-loving arcanist class to level 10 which unlocked some account-wide rewards, like a cute yellow torchbug pet. Now I have a little better understanding, though, for why ESO players use what’s called “light attack weaving”, basically animation cancelling after an ability with a light attack to vastly increase DPS. While trying out this “weaving”, even with a brand new character, mobs just melted. Not going to lie, it feels a bit cheap and unbalanced. But since it’s basically demanded to do higher-end content the developers have been very wary about changing it, not wanting to upset their most vocal communities with, probably, long-time-necessary nerfs.

My other time has been participating in the Zeal of Zenithar event, all about, well, playing the game really. To make daily progress in Zeal of Zenithar all that is needed is to find a chest, gain a level, or dig up an antiquity. Simple. ESO’s event rewards feel so complex, though, and take multiple paths and need so many currency-capped tickets that they’re my least favorite event reward system out of any MMO. At least I don’t have to do more than just play the game, at least.

So I’ve been working through the next zone in order, which is Scotla– err, I mean Markarth. It’s basically, well, the Elder Scrolls version of Scotland. Almost too much scottish, which is weird because I never really pictured the game’s Reachmen, essentially brutal savages in the single-player Skyrim, to basically all sound like they’re from the scottish highlands. I guess it works? I mean, they’re basically working through all the rest of Earth’s cultures. The Indian Khajit, European Bretons, Aztec Argonians, Viking Nords, etc. So why not Scotland? I try not to think about it too hard. Still, I was a little surprised, is all. However, I just finished a super-cute quest with two young adults against joining in an arranged marriage but finding they have feelings for each other, which was quite adorable.

Secret World Legends, Anniversary Beehemoth

Secret World Legends 6th Anniversary and Star Trek Online’s Summer Event

Secret World Legends just passed it’s 6th anniversary and had the usual hourly golem bosses and developer-changing beehemoths in Agartha and is always a fun time to jump in and see what’s going on. To the obvious point, yes, progress is very slow in coming to the game. Note: not completely gone, though, as most imply. Just very slow. Secret World has a very loving community and the developers do give as much love as they can under their limited teams, but you can tell they are currently bound by Funcom’s other games. Namely the forthcoming Dune: Awakening and the still-strong Conan Exiles. Others may hate and have chips on their shoulders but I’m just happy this amazing game is still going, slow it may be. So it goes.

Star Trek Online’s annual Summer Event ended and I completed 20 days of doing the bare minimum one event per day so that I was able to pick up the Hysperian Intel Battlecruiser Tier 6 ship. It’s fantasy-themed off the Strange New Worlds Season 1 tear-jerker episode ‘The Elysian Kingdom’. Seemed fun and looks striking in that green and gold.

No Man's Sky, portal

Division 2’s Broken Wings and “Completing” No Man’s Sky

I spent some time in The Division 2 as well, one of the most newest games in my MMO stable, and one that I’ve played enough to hit the story-cap. Still have a hard time thinking about just what it is that draws me to it, but I find I’ve really enjoyed the Division’s story — a world dealing with an awful pandemic –, the realistic attention to detail in the environment, and the fun moment-to-moment gameplay. Currently in their Year 5 Season 1 content, the latest “manhunt” has changed to focus on rescuing civilians helpful in rebuilding one of the game’s communities that was decimated during the base game story. My build and power is just good enough to make playing it a challenge but still doable. Quite fun.

Finally, despite completing No Man’s Sky’s latest Expedition 10 in June, I made the leap to just complete what I had remaining to do in No Man’s Sky. Namely, finishing off the main story, completing the Atlas Path, and making it to the galaxy’s center. Sort of. Didn’t make it to the center, but The Atlas Path story sort of ends the same as if you’ve found the galaxy’s center. So for all intents, I feel like I’ve really “completed” No Man’s Sky. As much as that can be done in such an open world game as it is. Expect more of a writeup later from me about it.

Fallout New Vegas sign

Gaming Goals for August

Anyway, lots of good gaming in July, but I enter August feeling a little blah and a bit listless. No games have currently hooked me so hard that they’re pulling all of my attention. So I feel I’ll just be continuing game-hopping until my ennui subsides. But this is, at least, what I hope to accomplish:

  • Complete ESO’s Markarth
  • Get out 15 posts for Blaugust
  • Get My New PC Built
  • Complete Division 2’s Year 5 Season 1 Broken Wings Manhunt
  • Check out Lord of the Rings Online’s Farmer’s Faire
  • Complete Fallout New Vegas — I’m so close to the end

Seems reasonable, right? At least I think so. We’ll see how much I actually get to. Hopefully most of it. So if you’ve made it this far, what have you been playing? What are your goals? I love to hear about all the adventures you all get up to.

// Ocho

P.S. – One of my longer posts. If you’ve made it this far, thank you. You rock.

Secret World’s Faction Ranking: To Gate or Not to Gate

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Secret World, car park, Into Darkness

Come at me, bro.

At the beginning of August, Funcom re-released some content that had been in The Secret World for Secret World Legends but with a new mechanic. The missions, as they were in The Secret World, were given to the players as off-shoots of the original story, missions to show that the player was making progress within the rank of their faction. What made them unique is that they were a few of a handful of missions that differed depending on which faction you played. This made them an anomaly in the game as only the between-zone missions also did that, with the lion’s share of missions having faction-flavor text only to differentiate them.

Instead of releasing them as one time faction-flavor, they were released in Secret World Legends as repeatable variable-difficulty end-game missions as a way of bolstering the end-game options for players, especially solo players like myself. Awesome. They came with a caveat, though, in that in order to even begin the missions, you had to first hit gear-rating milestones, essentially gating the content. This decision has been met with mixed reactions by the Secret World community, to say the least.

Secret World, Tokyo, Orochi Tower, Fungus

This screenshot has nothing to do with the blog post, I just *love* how great the lighting and atmosphere looks.

The first mission, Into Darkness, has the player delve into a NYC car park and needs an Item Power (IP) of 250 to play. The second, Venetian Missile Crisis, has the player once more wielding the missile launcher and needs an IP of 325. The third, Rogue Agent, I assume involves chasing somebody down. I wouldn’t know as it needs an IP of 450, and my character is still in the early 400 IP range.

And this right here appears to be the main beef that players are having. That 450 IP gate. Most players I have talked to have no problem with the 250 IP gate, as one would generally hit that level during the Tokyo zone. Even the 325 IP gate isn’t so bad as one would hit that in late Tokyo or during the South Africa zone. But 450 IP? There just isn’t the content to support that yet without grinding missions, dungeons, or scenarios. Content that not every player enjoys grinding, let alone even playing.

Secret World, Gatekeeper

Hey there, GK. Ready to rumble?

Now I’m not saying that I feel that the content should be made easier to be more accessible. Quite to the contrary, I really enjoy a good challenge. The new Venetian Missile Crisis, since I was playing it at level took quite a bit of watching pulls, puzzle-like clearing, and a few deaths. It reminded me of playing the original Secret World, where in order to take on certain mobs you had to change up your build, specialize it, and use abilities and tricks that were outside your standard build. They were a puzzle in and of themselves.

That was one of the main themes of The Secret World, though, was the puzzles. Investigation missions were researching and detail puzzles, Sabotage missions were attentive and timing puzzles, and Action missions build and dodging puzzles. As long as you completed previous missions or accomplishments, you were able to proceed, no matter your gear. You beat all the dungeons, you opened up Elite dungeons. You beat all the Elite dungeons, you opened up fighting the Gatekeeper.

Remember the Gatekeeper? The Gatekeeper was the pure test to show that you were ready for Nightmare level dungeons. You beat the Gatekeeper, it showed you were good enough to join the end-game, whether your gear was up to snuff or not. For a lot of players, he was a wall. The Gatekeeper fight was *hard*. You could fight it as a tank, dps, or healer, and the fight changed to suit your role, but each part was still hard.

Secret World, Last Train to Cairo

I threw myself against Last Train to Cairo time and time again to try to beat it, and I don’t consider that a bad thing.

I guess that’s where my main disconnect with the new faction content in Secret World Legends lies. How would I even know if the final 450 IP gate mission is hard to beat or not? I’m not allowed to play it yet. I have to grind dungeons, which I don’t enjoy, or scenarios, which have improved since The Secret World but they’re still not my cup of tea, or just replay the same missions over and over and over again (and if the choice is replay the same content in one game or play new content in another, guess which I choose?).

It’s not like the gate is accomplishment based like The Secret World was, it’s purely gearscore number based. Heck, The Secret World let you play content well above your level all the time! I remember throwing myself time and again against the Last Train to Cairo mission, and I just couldn’t survive the fire section, but I was playing it at the same time I was making my way through the Egypt zone, and it was supposed to be post-Transylvania content.

I could still try it, though! It wasn’t gated just because my gear wasn’t up to par or hit some target yet. Same with the Gatekeeper. Your gear, in any game, is only a fraction of your character. Your own playing skill is the human element that goes along with the numerical gear/levels to round out your character. This is why we love our characters, they’re not just two dimensional, they include a large part of us as well. If we don’t have the gear yet, our own skill can compensate.

Secret World, Hell dungeon

I mean, running dungeons is a lot more fun when you know those around you, but I’m still not the biggest fan of them.

So, I haven’t played the 450 IP Rogue Agent mission yet, and I’m not going to grind to get there. It’s not like I’m going to give up on the game entirely, though, I’ll finally play it when there’s enough Secret World Legends content to support it, which hopefully will be when the next Congo zone is released. This may even be designed this way on purpose. I’m still disappointed, though, that I’m not even allowed to *attempt* the mission as it shows a shift in philosophy from The Secret World, a philosophy that is sadly taking the Player out of the Player Character equation.

 

// Ocho

Information Satiation

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Have you ever seen the cut-scene in Secret World for the Illuminati introduction to the Tokyo zone? No? Well, take a minute or two and give it a watch. I’ll wait.

…

I mean, amazing, right? What’s going on here is that the figurehead of the Illuminati faction, Kirsten Geary (voiced by Kari Wahlgren), is informing the player of their need to head to Kaidan, Tokyo, the fictional location of the ‘filth bomb’ explosion that sets in motion the reaction of Gaia and events portrayed in Secret World, by way of Venice. So Venice first, then Tokyo, which is a pretty big plot location. But did you catch that part in the middle there?

This is the age of information. Stealth is not about hiding; it’s about inundating.

We leak the truth. Then we leak whole zettabytes of other junk. Opposing data, Similar data. Nonsense data. Ad nauseam. Mesmerism by cat memes. Hypnotised. Apathy for the win.

The human brain has only so much bandwidth. Critical thought can actually O.D. on input. Bury the ultimate secret of the universe in the shallow grave of the 5th page of a Google search and no one would ever find it. Cover-ups are so passé.

This was penned by the incomparable Joshua Alan Doetsch and in a word it’s just… Brilliant. Did you catch these thick layers of meaning that solidly attach this to the real world? What makes the fiction we consume so compelling is how much we relate to it. If we can’t relate to it, we can’t make a connection to it, and it passes right through us. But, this? Who *can’t* relate to this?

Give or take a year or two...

Okay, so according to my calculations I should be totally caught up by… 2023.

It just may be that I’m starting to feel the effects of age, but I’m constantly finding it harder and harder to keep up with all of social media. Remember in the early days of Facebook when you could scroll back to the last post you viewed and then catch up quickly with every single thing your friends posted? And I mean every single post? I won’t lie, I’m part of a few Discord channels, as Discord is the new hotness, and I can’t keep up with any of them. I’ve tried. But that’s a LOT of text, most fleeting, and, to quote the above, my brain has only so much bandwidth.

Same goes for Twitter, same for the current version of Facebook, same with Feedly, and the same goes for Discord. There’s just too much. In trying to be as well informed as humanly possible, we hit a staggering wall of data. I remember when I first started getting involved with blogging and keeping up with a whole bunch of blogs and news sites are what helped to keep me informed, but I gave up on reading novels in order to do it. It was the same amount of text and ideas as full-blown novels, but one by multiple authors and multiple topics. I’ve since learned to balance, but still.

After a point we just become satiated. You ever hear or type the same word so much that after a while it stops being a word and just becomes garbled? The world these days just feels… garbled. People are lost, clinging onto what they *hope* is the right information. There is so much out there. From my mother wanting me to read up on hydrolyzed proteins, me trying to figure out what this rash could be from, or the constant stream of world news detailing the horrific events in our current anthropocene extinction epoch. Watching cat videos or seeing pics of bunnies frolicking with a deer end up being truly therapeutic.

“But Ocho,” you may ask. “Aren’t you just adding to the bandwidth?” I am. I totally am. That’s what blogging is all about, after all, adding your individual notes to the constant stream of background noise.

“But… why? Why keep adding to it?” Simply put: Fighting Back. The simple act of creation is sometimes enough to control the tide of information. To coalesce our thoughts and to stake a claim on a thought, to delineate what we know from what we don’t know, and to make a stand for truth.

After all, it’s ‘apathy for the win’, and we can’t just let apathy win without a fight.

 

// Ocho