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[Forrestern]

This topic has been removed

[Jaq]

The original Secret World put the company tens of millions of dollars into debt. After Conan Exiles brought the company back from the brink, Legends was made by the American office as a last gasp attempt to make the game profitable by changing the business model. It failed.

What went wrong would require a multi-page essay. The ultra short version is: They made the game for the wrong genre. The Secret World does some things great and some things poorly, but the things it does poorly are precisely what MMOs need to succeed, whereas the the things it does well are useless for MMOs, and in some ways even a detriment. For example, having high production quality story content is actually a bad thing, because it both slows down and increases the cost of producing new content, which is expected regularly in MMOs. Also, creating fantastic puzzles is a bad thing, because they're useless as repeatable content, and MMOs survive on getting people to mindlessly play the same content over and over.

On the other hand, had they not made this a MMO, they'd never have gotten as large a budget as they did to make it, because MMOs were all the rage back when this project was greenlit. So had this been the single player RPG it should have been, it'd have been a lower budget game with either lower quality graphics, less content, or both.

Bottom line: It's too late the salvage this as a MMO. There are some things past the point of fixing, like the ancient clunky engine, while other things that could conceivably be improved wouldn't have enough of an impact to be worth the investment. The game will be a decade old in two months. Nothing is going to create a sudden surge in popularity at this point.

The best thing to hope for is that they someday make another game set in the same world, that isn't a MMO. But again, that'll need to be a lower budget game to keep it in line with expected revenue. If it isn't Final Fantasy or The Witcher, a single player RPG isn't going to get gigantic sales, especially in a non-fantasy setting. And to get a chance for this to happen, Funcom will have to do well in their other games so they can hire a larger dev team that will have time to make another game on the side in between the Dune game and Conan updates.

[Forrestern]

Originally posted by Jaq:

The original Secret World put the company tens of millions of dollars into debt. After Conan Exiles brought the company back from the brink, Legends was made by the American office as a last gasp attempt to make the game profitable by changing the business model. It failed.

What went wrong would require a multi-page essay. The ultra short version is: They made the game for the wrong genre. The Secret World does some things great and some things poorly, but the things it does poorly are precisely what MMOs need to succeed, whereas the the things it does well are useless for MMOs, and in some ways even a detriment. For example, having high production quality story content is actually a bad thing, because it both slows down and increases the cost of producing new content, which is expected regularly in MMOs. Also, creating fantastic puzzles is a bad thing, because they're useless as repeatable content, and MMOs survive on getting people to mindlessly play the same content over and over.

On the other hand, had they not made this a MMO, they'd never have gotten as large a budget as they did to make it, because MMOs were all the rage back when this project was greenlit. So had this been the single player RPG it should have been, it'd have been a lower budget game with either lower quality graphics, less content, or both.

Bottom line: It's too late the salvage this as a MMO. There are some things past the point of fixing, like the ancient clunky engine, while other things that could conceivably be improved wouldn't have enough of an impact to be worth the investment. The game will be a decade old in two months. Nothing is going to create a sudden surge in popularity at this point.

The best thing to hope for is that they someday make another game set in the same world, that isn't a MMO. But again, that'll need to be a lower budget game to keep it in line with expected revenue. If it isn't Final Fantasy or The Witcher, a single player RPG isn't going to get gigantic sales, especially in a non-fantasy setting. And to get a chance for this to happen, Funcom will have to do well in their other games so they can hire a larger dev team that will have time to make another game on the side in between the Dune game and Conan updates.

Really really sad honestly. It's odd that the games biggest strength was also it's weakness according to what you said. A high quality and production story. Maybe they keep these up and running for that slim chance at salvagement. Like maybe one day they'll have the funding for a larger dev team etc. I want to have a hope for this game and say one day it will be brought back but I guess that's not realistic. Most of the people I knew who played this are long gone as well. With that being said I think the only other option for this to ever come back is someone else getting the rights to it and making it the correct way... if there is a correct way at all with this game.

[Nain]

personally, at this point, im thinking the chances of getting a fanmade game set in the universe is bigger then funcom doing anything with their original ip.

if it comes to outsourcing the ip, maybe they could throw it at piranha bytes or however theyre called nowadays. those people that made the gothic, risen, and elex games.
i could see them make a decent singleplayer experience in the sw setting. it would also be a "aaa but not aaa" game, more on the budgety side of things. that would be more realistic then having a real big studio doing something with sw.

but then, it would be even more niche.

[Handoiron]

If anything I could see them maybe jumping genre to FPS / Survival game with TSW theme like TSW should have been to begin with but I seriously doubt they'll invest in developing another game in the franchise after being burnt so hard by TSW.

A single player game would be nice but probably pretty short like their other SP spin offs.

A MMO FPS / Survival would most likely never happen simply because of the investment required to build essentially from scratch. Though there would be some investment saved in the basic lore, at this point they'd need all new voice acting (if they even use it) and would likely want to run a completely new story line.

[MrGlav]

The biggest issue that i have with this game is the clunky combat system. I love and hate the puzzles, but my problem with them is that you need to have prior knowledge to some of them or use external ways solve them (morse code and sheet music notes comes to mind).
Dunno if you guys have played Remnant from the Ashes, i really like the combat system they use. Imagine unreal engine 5 and with that combat system.

[Selphea]

The story and characterization is great. The aesthetics and atmosphere too.

Trouble is the actual game part isn't that good. Characters' feet don't really touch the ground in some places, the animations don't look imapactful, enemies don't really react to getting hit, there's a teeny bit of lag in queueing attacks, jumping feels floaty and so on.

Then SWL came in and made it worse by removing the customization and adding gimmicks. Meanwhile the pseudo action gameplay which has none of the benefits of an action game, like skill-based parrying or precise hit detection, hitstop, grabs/backstabs and enemy flinches. And everyone has to start from scratch!

TSW was fun to play through once and immerse in the world and try out different builds. But on a replay it's pretty bad.

Ironically if TSW was thought up a few years later, the Soulslike genre would have been a much better fit, since Soulslikes are all about the atmosphere and interesting enemy design.

[>< V ><]

Originally posted by Jaq:

The original Secret World put the company tens of millions of dollars into debt. After Conan Exiles brought the company back from the brink, Legends was made by the American office as a last gasp attempt to make the game profitable by changing the business model. It failed.

What went wrong would require a multi-page essay. The ultra short version is: They made the game for the wrong genre. The Secret World does some things great and some things poorly, but the things it does poorly are precisely what MMOs need to succeed, whereas the the things it does well are useless for MMOs, and in some ways even a detriment. For example, having high production quality story content is actually a bad thing, because it both slows down and increases the cost of producing new content, which is expected regularly in MMOs. Also, creating fantastic puzzles is a bad thing, because they're useless as repeatable content, and MMOs survive on getting people to mindlessly play the same content over and over.

On the other hand, had they not made this a MMO, they'd never have gotten as large a budget as they did to make it, because MMOs were all the rage back when this project was greenlit. So had this been the single player RPG it should have been, it'd have been a lower budget game with either lower quality graphics, less content, or both.

Bottom line: It's too late the salvage this as a MMO. There are some things past the point of fixing, like the ancient clunky engine, while other things that could conceivably be improved wouldn't have enough of an impact to be worth the investment. The game will be a decade old in two months. Nothing is going to create a sudden surge in popularity at this point.

The best thing to hope for is that they someday make another game set in the same world, that isn't a MMO. But again, that'll need to be a lower budget game to keep it in line with expected revenue. If it isn't Final Fantasy or The Witcher, a single player RPG isn't going to get gigantic sales, especially in a non-fantasy setting. And to get a chance for this to happen, Funcom will have to do well in their other games so they can hire a larger dev team that will have time to make another game on the side in between the Dune game and Conan updates.

Production cost has no relevance to why TSW couldn't attract a larger player base.

TSW on release had a peak player count of 459 and that's because the story content was expensive to make? The entire franchise has never reached a peak player count of 4,000 and that's because TSW has puzzle missions?

TSW got mixed reviews on release. SWL has mixed reviews on Steam.

If you're a musician and produce a song that few people like and then re-release that song to find that still, few people like it, then the fact is, few people like your song.

The Secret World franchise is a niche game, kind of like opera music. It has it's fans, but most people don't enjoy it. It should be clear that even with the changes SWL made, that none of those changes affected the root cause on why people don't enjoy this franchise. Hence, why people like me consider SWL a cash grab, because it did nothing to change the root cause of being a niche game. It's still an opera song but with some different instruments thrown in. SWL was only going to attract the same people that were attracted to TSW. More opera music is going to get the metal heads and rappers onboard.

TSW may be my favorite MMO. I like the modern atmosphere, weapons, occult, conspiracy theory adventure, but I think it's exactly this that makes it niche. For whatever reasons, the MMO genre seemingly needs to be fantasy with Elves and Dwarves and such.

I think the truth is, that you need to simply accept that you like opera music, when most people don't. And there is nothing wrong with that...unless you're a business trying to make money.

[Angel Phoenix77]

What went wrong is simple imho, they gave up on it. They should have re-released it as a single player game. And have ai npcs.

[KukulKahn]

Revive TSW is the best move to make . Even if it will go to maintenance mode and only bring Events ...
It will have more players than the current SWL for sure , but i know that its not goin to happen .

[Organic Trash]

This game is very dear to heart and nostalgic to me. It sadly didnt get the hype it deserved, but at least it had players, nowadays the servers are ghost towns. I hold the unpopular opinion here that it should not be made single player. I really enjoyed having other players who could interact in the same environment I was, and all the cool show-off items/pets. The mix of solo only quests to multiplayer dungeons was super fun and added variety. I would absolutely love to see a reboot of this, the team seemed pretty passionate about the first reboot in interviews. Not sure what went wrong though...I think if they touched up some things like the graphics/animations/models, refined the complicated UI, and added more variation to combat, this game would get the love it deserved. The story was captivating, but I felt it lose its momentum and got very loose at the seams as you go further into the game. I adore the different regions with various stories and side quests/challenges, so you can take a break from the main story. I was pulled into the game by the appeal of having different myth creatures based on regions, and also the horror in the start of the game, with the black goop corrupted monsters. I just feel like that storyline started going all over the place..

[Dr.Abscondus]

Having the original game not require a subscription was a mistake that was compounded by having it go F2P. They had no idea how to monetize it and paid too much attention to the people who constantly complain about paying for anything in an MMO. ESO is how you monetize a game to raise the funds to create new content on a steady regular basis, yet all you see on the forums are people moaning about 'greedy companies'. Ragnar Tornquist, the creative genius behind the original game left to found his own company, Red Thread Games, where he creates wonderfully innovative games that also make no money. Dreamfall Chapters, which is an amazing game, required Kickstarter to even get made. You need creative people and you need business types to make successful games, and Funcom have never managed to do that.
Allowing the creative people to run the show often leads to disaster just as it did with the final entry in the Bioshock series when the publisher had to step in and take over the game from the guy who created the first two games in the series. He also went on to found his own company which has, so far, produced nothing.

[Firehammer]

TSW combat mechanics were convoluted. You needed a franken-build to solo the game but during group content you needed tank-dps-healer, so solo frankenbuilders were woefully unprepared for group content. And PVP was a whole other beast to wrap your head around.

Solo, you'd get to Blue Mountain and be rofl-stomped at the zombie bridge with no way to continue on with the game because you had a gimped franken-build that was only viable in the first two zones.

The build system had a lot of flexibility, but you more often than not would gimp yourself. It wasn't until years later that you could look at TSW fan sites to look up proven viable builds.

Their lead game mechanics designer, the one that created this convoluted combat system, was one of the first people laid-off after the failed go-live. But by then the damage was already done.

TSW is a brilliant single player story narrative game shoe-horned with awkward MMO and combat mechanics. Its best to just play the game to experience the story.

[JazzyJet]

I actually think that this games success is pretty amazing. The fact that it's still around is really cool. Considering the MMO aspects are not very good, and that the game engine and combat is also not very good, it's kind of amazing that it's been as successful as it has. I'd argue that it proves story telling and puzzles can work in an MMO. I think if another game of this type ever happens in the future it would need a clearer vision for the MMO aspects and flow of the game. I get more nostalgic when I think about this game than any other single player game or MMO that I've ever played, and I think that's pretty interesting.

[Nain]

storytelling does work in mmos, just look at ff14, regardless of what you may think of it. even lotro has a nice flow of storytelling as it guides you trough the epic story (the mainquest spanning all the zones). even eso, as fragmented and broken as their storytelling is, works.

what all those games have in common tho is investment. they have devs that put money into their product so that they can get more money back in return. i know, its an oldfashioned way of thinking, but it seems to work.

tsw/swl doesnt have that, and my big guess would be because the game lacks a big enough community to warrant investment from the devs to get something in return. case in point, theres not even new cosmetics in the shop or during the events. it almost looks like they do not want to get anymore money, while even dead games like rift for example that have zero devs manage to put in some odd battlepass or something with new cosmetics now and then into their game to milk the remaining playerbase.

the relaunch was good in the ultra-short-term, but then funcom just stopped caring, or the beancounters looked at the numbers and said after the release of south africa, that its simply not worth the return. but thats just a guess.

[DeadlyKitten]

For me it was the loot being locked behind keys in the dungeons.
That is the most stupid idea iv'e ever seen, and it just made it seem like a mobile game feature.
The original game had everything out in the open.
And in this travesty they made limitations.

Just download and play the original.
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