Well I’ve been slacking on the blogging. Part of that is I haven’t been playing MMOs too much, probably half the days I just jump in to LoTRO and/or SWL and grab the daily login reward.
But, I did progress in SWL, zipping through Transylvania (Besieged Farmlands, Shadowy Forest, Carpathian Fangs) following the storyline. Now I’m in Tokyo!
I also hit level 50 somewhere along the way in Shadowy Forest or Carpathian Fangs.
I’m enjoying the storyline but I do have a few (minor) criticisms about the game.
One is that many quests are overly padded. A typical quest in this category had this template: perform some task X times, say 5, where 2 or 3 would be just as good and not merely drag out the mission. Examples include Venice Is Sinking, where much like the Last Train to Cairo mission that bridged the storyline advancement between major zones, it was a lot of repetitive “pursue/run/climb, fight, click gizmo, repeat 4 more times”.
In Tokyo one offender is Hell of a Blow, where you plant 5 bombs, which is concurrent with The Right of Way, which is double tier repetitive mission because for tier one you have 4 mini-boss fights to get to tier two where you have 5 or 6 “pursue, fight, get by puzzle, click gizmo, repeat” sequences to get to the final showdown.
Usually after finishing one of these type quests I stop for the day, needing a break.
The other is that combat is a bit dull, however that may be due to my build. I’m a pistol main with fist secondary, but I typically only use 3 skills during a fight: Controlled Shooting, Trick Shot, which are bound to LMB and RMB; and Kill Blind, my stun/interrupt. So it’s a lot of dodging/kiting while rhythmically clicking the mouse, and occasionally using a heal skill (Clean Slate). I’m going to mix it up and take 2 fist skills (Beserk, Feral Growth) to make better use of my secondary.
So I’ll try Beserk, Feral Growth, Kill Blind, Controlled Shooting, Trick Shot, and maybe Ricochet. Ideally I’d start using more skills per fight and use fist abilities more often as well.
My third criticism has to do with gear advancement. I now have all purple gear and I’m seeing the complaints from other players about how tedious it is to advance/grind up. It takes 2 max level green items to make a blue item, 2 max level blue items to make a purple item, and so on for purple->orange, and orange->red.
Multiply that by 2 weapons, 7 talismans, 9 glyphs, and 6 signets (I think) and you’ve got a massive amount of stuff required to advance.
I get the need for a throttle, but a side effect here is you are effectively locked into a weapon past a certain point, since switching from say a high purple or better weapon means a serious amount of stuff just to get back to where you were.
And one thing I miss from TSW is the variety of skills available and builds possible. Granted many builds weren’t effective but now with 2 purple weapons and around 30 skills total to pick from for those 2 weapons, I’m kind of locked in going forward. Which is why I want to revamp my build from 6 skills that I only use 3 of 80% of the time.
I’m not sure how much more storyline there is but I’ll be one of those players that takes a break after reaching “the end” since Funcom hasn’t released any new content yet.
MMO Juggler 