However, Ragnar argues that even by minimising The Secret World in your start bar, you won't be truly leaving the universe it weaves – because it is our world. Other players might just say, 'I'm going to wait for this and jump into another mission in the meantime.' Our missions are checkpointed, so you can put them on hold.”Īt a structural level, Funcom are currently toying with the idea of including an in-game browser. “Some players, they'll immediately want to go out of the game and start investigating. Won't that make play sessions stilted? Ragnar says otherwise. That conjures up images of halting your raids to Alt+Tab over to Wikipedia, before ducking back into the game. “It's about really digging into the mysteries and using knowledge of either the real or fictional Secret World in order to solve something.” He refers to the investigation missions as having an 'adventure feel', and namechecks The Longest Journey as the closest touchstone for comparison. Ragnar's gaming background (he worked on both The Longest Journey and Dreamfall before The Secret World) bubbles up as he's explaining the concept behind these fresh puzzley interludes. “We're not trying to create arbitrary puzzles in a world: presenting you with sliding blocks or something.” “Investigation missions are about solving puzzles and digging deeper into the mysteries of the world.” Wait a second, puzzles? In my MMO? Kill ten puzzles? Pick up a puzzle and take it to the village elder? I'm confused. “They're the most different from everything else out there,” he says. Even more intriguing are The Secret World's 'investigation' missions – described as “the most interesting” in Ragnar's opinion. Sabotage missions will have you using “secret agent-type game mechanics” that I hope involve gluing some kind of fake moustache to your face and speaking in a bad French accent. Action missions are closest to standard quest models, but involve tasks such as “infiltrating a building, or setting off a bomb”. Our missions are longer and more involved than the quests in most other games.” The Secret World's missions are about rewards, XP and progression – but they're also about the storytelling and the characters. “In a lot of MMOs, quests are there in order to feed the level treadmill. The Secret World's quests are known as 'missions' to better fit the game's contemporary aesthetic, and Ragnar sees them as different animals to their MMO peers' questy counterparts. More standard quests fill out your journal – each player having a story, main, and secondary job at one given point. People can just flock to you, and you'll all get credit for that.” The beauty of it is that when the siren goes off, everybody in that location hears it. The siren goes off, and you basically get tasked with holding off this attack. There's a mission called Elm Street Blues – an assault on a police station. “Most of our world is completely open, and live and massively multiplayer. The game caters for groups of up to five, but doesn't rely as heavily on instances as its peers. You can play the game like that, but we're also creating very specific encounters where players have to think a little bit outside the box: where they're going to have to bring two weapons on their character, they're going to have to blend play styles a little bit.” “Some players will definitely fall into the pre-prescribed roles. Ragnar still expects the RPG holy trinity – healer, tank, damage-dealer – to work in combat scenarios. Funcom are keen to make sure both approaches work – though points sunk into a skill-line you later come to shun can't be won back.īut this classless, level-less MMO won't be ditching all the genre's trappings. We also have something called a Base Gear Manager, which basically allows you to create this prefab deck, a combination of weapons and equipment so you can switch really quickly.” Funcom's playtests have shown that some people – Ragnar terms them 'power-players' – switch decks at every logical opportunity to get the kind of deliciously nerdy stat boost that makes us all sigh contentedly, whereas others are content to stick with their favourite skillset. Without set classes, players instead choose a 'deck' of skills – seven active and seven passive – that can be switched out depending on the job at hand. It's very occult, very oldfashioned magic that has a lot of really cool effects.” “I like to kill vampires with a shotgun or an assault rifle, but some of the cooler powers I've seen so far belong to Blood Magic. Ooh, or grenades! I, uhh… like the sound the gun makes.” There's a sheepish giggle, and I notice him near-audibly click into the world he's helped create. So I really like playing with the shotgun or the assault rifle.
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