Being Saleh: Lagging Behind Expansions (prologue)

Expansions are one of my main problems on MMORPGs, that beside laziness which is becomes so bad that I withdrew myself from MMORPG world completely for several months after finishing FFXIV main story, after that the flood of expansions get off, Guild Wars 2 will have Heart of Thorns, their storyline seems to pick up on Living Story Season 2. Warlords of Draenor is already on patch 6.2 which let player had their own ship, or several ships. Heavensward for FFXIV is out (and everyone is a dark knight now). Pay to play (they're not free) Star Wars The Old Republic will have Knights of The Old Republic 3 as their expansion pack, they just renamed it to Knights of The Fallen Empire. Archeage, Defiance, The Secret World, everything else.has new (paid) content

So I'm starting a new series of writing to catch up of being saleh (whenever he is) the first one will be my return to Nexus on Wildstar, I know I have a lot of hate/love about the game (uninstalling/reinstalling for like 9 times) so as they're going free to play they chipped a bargain on the last humblebundle E3 sale, I grabbed it and started over, now I'm officially an Exile, ready to (re)live my dying days as incompetent tank

Coming soon!!

my original blog name

Being Saleh: The Sunless, Garuda, and Accessibility

I finally downed Tequatl last night, thanks to TTL for it. Tequatl the Sunless (level 56) is one of the hardest content in Guild Wars 2 now, this dragon requires coordination from numerous people to be defeated,  it's not hard, only need some rythm, even if you screw up you can always be the cleanup crew, you're even get rewarded even when he's not defeated based on how much HP you chipped from him. The one thing I liked about Tequatl (and Guild wars 2) is it's accessibility, even when Tequatl isn't defeated the area itself will still be accessible, you can also skipped Tequatl entirety when you're still leveling on Guild Wars 2, and skipped all the dungeons although some of their stories are pretty interesting and can give you some insight about how the main story unfolds.


 

Now let's talk about Garuda, Garuda is a four-man mid level trial instance on Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, she's apparently a real b*tch and like to wipe you in a matter of seconds, she's also  have a habit of spouting crazy murderous lines, one of the harshest I ever saw on FFXIV. The thing is: you are required to defeat her if you want to continue your questline, and she's not easy, my first try with max leveled people with relic weapons takes abut five tries, my second attempt however (when helping a friend and a PUG) takes 20 or so, since so many can go wrong with her, there are even phases where if you don't stand in a right place you'll be defeated instantly. Her max level endgame incarnation is even more deadly and requires more coordination from group members. 

Access

Guild Wars 2 doesn't have tiered content, no endgame, run vanity-based events, have dynamic combat, and freedom from your usual trinity roles. While FFXIV is gear-based, trinity-based combat and have more social interconnecting roles, it won't be right to compare those two, but I want to talk about accessibility, at least my point on accessibility:

I spent two years on Lineage 2, my first 'serious' MMORPG, where grind is daily and daily online means kill 9,809,876,454,789,432 mob just to level up, there's no significant quest, no means to obtain stronger weapons and armors, everyday you will calculate is this a lose-money day or gain day since you must make a living there by selling and buying stuff from players, you can participate on a raid which requires you to have weapon and armors... dropped on those raids. Come unprepared and pretend you're not there since you'll be stare on an empty HP bar in a matter of minutes, you will work your way slowly to the top and when you make a single mistake and/or RNG hates you you'll lose money, weapons, armors, even guild, and must start from the scratch, character deletion due to failed crafting are a common, it's one thing to level up, the other thing is how you're gonna survive and be better at endgame content after you've leveled up.

Six years has passed and Lineage 2 is becoming more and more accessible to players, they've gone f2p, improving quality of life of classes (healer have their offensive skillset on the same page as their healing skills, before that they can only heal and/or attack at a different mode), provides more means to gain money, even sells some powerful weapon on NPC in exchange of daily tokens or golds, low level character granted immunity from player killers, also: They're just announced their new expansion that brings dynamic combats to the game

Then I came to WoW, even in vanilla days I never found it to be so grindy as Lineage 2, on WOLTK days it become easier, on Cataclysm quality of life of character is improved that when I started a new character I ended up zoomed out so fast on level that I stopped my exp just to get into all Burning Crusade content, although Cataclysm heroic dungeons is not a faceroll and I'm content with not seeing Fireland Bliz gave me LFR and I can pummel Deathwing in the face :P. I have my brief fling with RIFT and CoH before Guild Wars 2, on RIFT dungeons are fun, on CoH the accesiibilty was so great I can go anywhere I want, do anything i want no matter it kills me or not. After I feel at home on Guild wars 2, I tried a couple of alternatives like Tera and The Secret World, they have their own strength and weakness, but nothing turns me off, I just decided that i'll stay on GW2

Easy

If you get where I'm heading, you'll see that all the MMO is becoming easier, in terms of soloing the content, quality of life on classes, special perks, and even ease the restriction on some endgame content, I won't have any saying on endgame content whether they should be hard or not, but putting a big roadblock prerequisite on a leveling content can be considered... unnecessary (at least for western players), and can be a real turn off for some people, GW2 have more accessibility for players, doesn't have monthly sub, and the rate of their content is more rapid, WoW has access for every kind of players with their ripping every other good feature off other MMOs, Lineage 2 still have one of the best massive PVP content out there, The Secret World has unique kriss-crossing their online world with real world, they're also DLC based and with their own gearing requirements

Final Fantasy XIV as I said before: have enticing world and story and a fresh return of the 'old-school' RPG, also great soundtracks but unfortunately their endgame battle content is the weakest link of all,  Eliot Lefebvre from Massively wrote it better than me, so I'm just gonna quote him

"Final Fantasy XIV's endgame is sometimes like a club. Once you're in, you're golden, but getting in can be really rough. 

AK, for instance, is not all that hard. You can do it in full AF with white accessories. But you'll really want to have some party members who are better geared than you are to help make up the difference. Your upgrades from AK will be substantial, but getting them the first time is rough, especially when you're learning the fights. WP is the same way to a lesser degree, as is the Ifrit fight.
While all of these fights are designed to be done at that level of gear, most people don't actually want that challenge; they want a farm. You're not doing Ifrit because you want the thrill of fighting a Primal; you're doing him because you've got full Demagogue and want your staff to match. Consequently, you get a lot more ragequitting than is strictly necessary, and the net result is that it's easy for newer players to feel as if they're not up to snuff. The other problem, really, is weapons. Getting a Level 55 weapon isn't hard; Grand Companies and WP fill that gap. But getting anything better requires slay-and-pray on either Ifrit or Garuda or spending a whole lot of money on an HQ Level 70 weapon. Considering a given Primal has only a 11% chance of dropping the weapon you want, and that's assuming no classes are doubled up... there's an uncomfortable weapon gap between Level 55 and Relics. Hopefully 2.1's dungeons address that.
Also you might get bored of doing the same few things over and over, but I'll take 40 minutes of AK over a slow slog through a raid any day of the week."

source: Massively

My free month ended several days ago, since I got sick and got some exhaustion after that I will be resubbed when patch 2.1 hits (sometimes around December) it's also a part of an experiment of mine about the pacing of the gearing process and observation of the player markets

And, my post about FFXIV aesthetics... it'll probably have to wait, but this pic can say some of it :D

A Brief Look at the Living Story

I love game stories, started with Adventures, RPGs, and now MMORPGs, well some RTS has good stories to like War/Starcraft, nevertheless it's really good to actually play in the stories rather than watching it (Xenosaga Episode 1 included, go away haters). And I also really tempted for The Secret World since the subs gone.... I still contemplating about it though, Funcom is still my number one storytelling game company (The Longest Journey FTW)

7 hours of cutscenes is the proof

 

Since last January Guild Wars 2 released updates called Flame & Frost and tied-in quests called Living Story, which tells how a whole new enemy activities threaten Tyria after Zhaitan's defeat, it started with lots of earthquakes and portals opening, Dredges and Flame Legions combining force, refugees from Diessa Plateau and Wayfarer Hills flooded the Charr and Norn's capital, and lastly on March Anet introduces new main characters: Brahm from Norn and Rox of Charr

On the first update, there's only vague clues about the events, you have to help refugees on some way (lots of it, including mend their legs and repair signs), you'll get your volunteer title for it, on the next update portals are spawned throughout the area, and stream of flame legion and dredges pour out, the next update there's an all out attack on some settlements of Tyria, and Brahm and Rox come to the picture

What I think is.... it's SLOW and borderline boring, only the last story update keep me hoping for more and I almost overlooked it because of the boredom of the last two living story updates. But I think overall Living story is a good idea, it didn't require player to do it and yet it creeps into something larger and can be felt gradually for players (the last update at least), instead adding new dailies like WoW they're just added new short cutscenes, several achievement-based quests, and two short instances, but then again... it's TOO SLOW for me and it keep me wondering whether it can ended like Karka event (forgotten and dead and buried 5000 feet under) or ended in a new content that can be enjoyed by all players (a large part of it hopefully)

The Secret World third Beta Weekend: Ugly, Shiny, Zombies!!

PS: Yep, I missed beta one and two

You're awake in the middle of the night, sweating and coughing, just like you've just swallowed something, really? In your sleep? Strangely you're also feel so cold so you reach for your coat, as you tried to, it burst into flame, a blue flickering one, you're stunned, you tried to reach it again and the flame dissipated, leaving your coat seems untouched. Three days after that you're sitting in the corner of your room, this new 'power' is getting out of your hand, it ruined your daily life, and also your room, as you tried to suppress your building emotion it burst into life again a form of splash, a burst, also a breeze, it seems growing... and you begin to recognize it. Two days after you're already spinning a ball of the unknown energy into yourself, you're in control now, the newfound power begin to grew again, you feel stronger, and you begin to realize the power it yours alone but (un)fortunately it is not because tomorrow someone will be knocking and your door and you'll be part in something bigger than just juggling a ball of light...

This is what happens when you sleep right after eating

In Funcom latest real world stage MMORPG: The Secret World, you play the role of an agent from one of the three secret societies, the proud Templar, the hedonistic Illuminati and the chaotic-controlled Dragon, in the universe of the secret world all of your urban legends and myths come true: your neighbour is a zombie, real life fire breathing dragon existed and they don't like you, Vampires really sucks your blood dry and they're not even handsome or pretty, that seemed abandoned ship on your coast? No the government didn't seize it, it's filled with spirits that a certain hellspawn is brought to wreak havoc on your city, so yeah above all that secret organizations are trying to get something whether it's pride or profit from these bizzare events, by cover-ups, government infringement, and also media controlling, when you're not part of the secret world you'd better be because you probably won't survive it when you saw it.

Hello :)

Combating Evil

Remember those light balls? They're called anima, and they're your powers on The Secret World, it can be extended by weapons whether it's ranged (Shotgun, Dual Pistols, or Automatic Rifle), Melee (Fists, Blades, and Hammers), or just plain magic symbol (Blood, Chaos, and Elemental), there's no class on The Secret World (although you still have to pick a role on dungeons, trinity is bad, bad, why Funcom?) and also you can mix and match every weapon you want, but you can only carry two at a time, and can only equip seven active and passive abilities at once.

Although The Secret World works on 'no level' jargon you still gained experience when you killed mobs or completes a mission, if the experience bar below you is full you gained Ability Point (AP) and sometimes Skill Points (SP). SP is used to power up or learned new rank of an ability which determine your power on using that weapon/item and also restrict your equipped item level (don't expect with no level you can zoom straight into a flesh golem and taking it down solo), mission and mob difficulties is determined on your equipped weapon and ability's quality, so yeah even there's no level, there's still Ilvl system in this game.

Shotgun and zombies, typical but effective

Ability Point is used to learn new ability of that weapon, the ability system is called ability wheel which describes all of your passive and active abilities for all of your weapon and magic, although there is some misc ability which describes some PVPy stuff, the system works this way: on the outer circle all weapons have two set of abilities, they have different names but the idea is one of them is offensive and the other is defensive/support, you have to learn all abilities in this portion to unlock the next set of inner circle which breaks down into four or five type of ability set (each set contains like seven abilities) so a LOT to learn and only fourteen can be equipped, so...happy mixing

The combat itself works like this, move a lot, yeah it's like Guild Wars 2 but still feels clunky on some portion, you can dodge once everytime your active dodge bar is full to avoid nasty AOE (ground marks) or charged attacks, mobs came on you on groups (like SWTOR), luckily the two foremost of your ability is AOE based so have fun slaughtering horde of zombies (although like Guild Wars 2 you'd best do it with groups), you can heal yourself but it came from an ability in which you have to learn so if you don't learn it prepare to die a lot, most of the mobs are unforgiving and battles can be exhausting if you do it solo, I started with pure blood magic type but later switched to shotgun and feels my AP and SP spent on offensive blood magic are wasted since I ended up using all offensive abilities from the shotgun, wonder what the cost to respec is, probably a cash shop item.... okay, that'll be bad, don't do it Funcom. And I was mistaken, there's no all rezzing type like Guild Wars 2, when you die you just have to corpse run but there are perks from being dead, which I'll be covered below, it is a different world after all.

Questing is Believing

There's only two area open in the BWE, Kingsmouth and Savage Coast, and it crawled with zombies, also the town is covered with strange fog, the coast is filled with icky wet humanoid things, the Innsmouth Academy is infested with ghosts and hellspawns, how's these things connect one another? This is your mission Agent of Pride/Opportunity/Chaos, in The Secret World quest/mission are split into some parts, the story quest is why you're there, in the area, it consists on several chapter and lots of cutscenes, the second one is the Main mission, usually provided by NPC (yeah you still have to talk to NPCs), the third one is the side mission which you can find scattered on the area in form of objects, NPCs, or even dead things, last one is the dungeon mission which can be used to enter an instance dungeon. You can have one story quest, one main quest, one dungeon quest and three side missions at once, when you accept another type of mission while the type of your mission is occupied you'll be prompted if you want to 'pause' the old mission and replace it with the new one, missions are broke down into 'tier' (sub-quest) and when you pause a mission you can take it later in the same state/tier as you previously pause it, so no more cancelling missions when your quest journal is full, HURRAH!!! (Okay, I like dynamic event more though) :D 

Let me tell you something: there are no NORMAL NPC on The Secret World!!! By the power of the ESRB M rating the colorful casts of character made me fall in love with the storyline, for example: Deputy Andy seems normal although when you follow his storyline you'll find out that he has some serious daddy issues (involving a really nasty story), that's just a fraction of Kingsmouth. NPCs offer you quests in form of a color bubble near them and when clicked  start a cutscene that gives you background about the mission (GTA style), there's also regular speech bubble where you asked the NPC about themselves or something else, just an idle talk? No my friends, this is where the fun begins.

I can't remember this guy name but let's call him Dante :P

 There are several type of Main Mission, beside the regular whackjob where you run around collecting items and killing mobs, there's also Stealth Mission where you have to infiltrate a place and you have to avoid guards and traps (which resulted in instant death when triggered), I tried them all in beta, they're aren't too hard IMO unlike some certain game :D. The other one is the Puzzle Mission, yes, all of you Point and Click Adventure Games Veteran behold your future!!! Puzzle Mission is where you will spend all of your time in game running around looking for clues, there's no arrow, there's no area indicator, only cryptic words from the mission itself, so yeah all of you who skipped cutscenes, not reading pop up messages, and didn't do idle talk with NPCs are screwed, this is the shiniest part of The Secret World, for example there's a mission where you have to find a serial killer from several years ago, up until one point you realized that the suspect is already killed himself in the sherrif office cell and leave a will that his ghost will answer all things, so how are you going to communicate with him? He's dead, sure Kingsmouth crawled with ghosts, but how are you going to find him? If you truly are puzzle solver you can find the asnwer at the end of my sixth paragraph :)

If this happens to you it's not my fault!!

Puzzle mission deals with codes but sometimes the clue can't even be found in game, so what are you going to do? Easy, press B, it'll bring up a browser window, a REAL BROWSER, with Google (damn you Google), yes some of the puzzle requires REAL world interaction, since some of the puzzles modeled after the real world, even some symbol and quotations. This brings a new approach to quests, blending real world and the virtual, also your own memory of a scene or words or a place, the quests make you THINK and deduct some of the answers. Well of course there's also some people who choose to asks about them on general chat, and in a few months the wiki will be filled of answers and walkthroughs, but who like spoilers right? Not me, although I admit I have to browse several answers just to cut my game time so I can do something else, it is beta after all but IMO again: Puzzle Missions are awesome.

In addition some of the townsfolk have twitter accounts.... and they're updating....(ominous music)

The answer... to all things...

Polishing Everything Else

The Beta runs smoothly, no random disconnect, stable server, there is still some bugs on the Savage Coast missions and the subtitles disappear from some of the dialogue, but The Secret World is probably the most Resource-Hungry monster that takes away some of my enjoyment of battle and exploring, I can see people also complains about it on their forums and Facebook page, the fps drops, the lags where there's a huge open area with lots of objects that affect the visibility of spawning mobs, but something that didn't appealed to me is the crafting system (called assembly) because I really have no idea how to assemble things, there's no tutorial or quest on that although some of the Innsmouth quests used it,  through trial and error I finally found out that I must lined the ingredients into the shape of a weapon and item... WTH??? I also can upgrade and downgrade several materials on the same assembly window, attaching glyphs which gave some iem and weapon attribute boost, they really should give this thing a decent tutorial of 'what can be done on this window'.

The battle can be a bit sluggish though but the design of the mobs are grotesque enough to feed your own horror lusts, the visual appearance of the game is over the top although your character is probably the ugliest part of it, Funcom needs to add more options on their character creation and fixed their movement so it doesn't feel too 'robotic', voice acting is good, cast of NPCs are colorful enough to gave them a bit of personality. I really can't complain, it's a good game although I must whine... why? why there's still a trinity system???!!

The game has potential, for me it gives a refreshing feeling about the quests, it's been a while since I'm really 'exploring' a game, looking for clues, writing it with a plain pen and paper like my old Myst and Gabriel Knight days, but my big nagging question is whether it can appeal to the crowd, the majority (a.k.a the 'WOW' crowd)  I don't think my friends will pay $15 a month for a combat mission interceded with puzzle, as for me, I won't buy the game even if I give the storyline and the quest 11 from the scale of 1 to 10, because Guild Wars 2 is already taking the spotlight, although I must admit... I want those puzzle mission...  on Guild Wars 2 =))

And there's the last beta weekend this week, Funcom inviting everyone, so grab your key by registering at their site