I agree your general sentiment, however if this statement were true SWL would be failing as much as TSW did.
I honestly don´t know.
Feels a little bit like an alternate reality because i knew and liked TSW and some important details are missing in SWL.
I was very optimistic when SWL was announced and launched but after the new-ish feeling wore off its rather “Meh”.
I miss PVP and having the possibility to progress my character with playing PVP.
(I´m not a PVE/Dungeon-guy … only once for the story.)
I miss the Faction-Missions and some awesome NPC-Cutscenes/introductions like Brigadier Lethes speech in the crucible.
It feels like there has never been a “secret war” between the factions and therefore they have a lack of identity in SWL compared to TSW.
Also making new builds isn´t really fun anymore because it feels too restricted.
I know the TSW-Skillwheel was confusing for a lot of people but it had more possibilities of making interesting builds to play with, especially with the passives not beeing bound to specific weapons.
The weapon gadgets were an interesting idea but i don´t like how much they restrict me when choosing my weapons.
It´s now about choosing the weapon with the gadget wich annoys you the less because it doesn´t overheat (ele) or makes you kill yourself (blood), while you can completely ignore the gadgets of other weapons (Hammer, Fist) etc. .
Also: Why the heck did it seem like a good idea to restrict an elite-skill to only work while “Having a grenade loaded” ? I´m looking at you, assault rifle …
But I still like the concept of Action combat and i have no problem with the reticle-aiming.
I still like that.
Also SWL feels way more grindy than TSW, especially with the restricted progression because proper PVP is missing. I earned all my first purples in Fusang in TSW and it never felt like a grind.
I´m curious for the continuation of the story, but i think it is the only reason for me to play the game again, when it arrives.
So when it comes to SWL:
Curious about new Story-content: Yes!
Motivated to progress / play in general: Not really.
Optimistic about things changing for the better (for me personally): When it happens it is good. But i won´t wait for it.
In terms of TSW:
No reason to return to a basically dead game with no future. R.I.P.
EDIT: Uhm … Weapon-Gimmicks … not Gadgets …
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I’m interested, but I already lost most of my hope months ago when noticing even the relatively modest roadmap starting to slip.
I think SWL set a new lease on life for SW, but that life may be no longer than 2018-2019 and with very spaced out content releases, for all we know.
Once it seemed clear that there’s no new dungeons, scenarios, raids, in the shorter term (few to several months), I stopped that content, at least until I get less busy. Tokyo lair is a plus, but it only encourages me to check out lairs later, not plan to grind them. (I never did lairs.)
Story content is hothothot. For all the problems, I have to generally agree with Funcom if they’re truly prioritizing releasing the story content first/early. Ideally (though SW rarely deals with ‘ideally’) it would have released with SWL itself or shortly after.
If SWL has stuff happening every 1-2 months (ranging from important gameplay tweaks to large content releases), restores almost all to all ‘missing’ TSW content, improves events, and doesn’t seem like it is entering maintenance mode, by the end of the year, then sure the hope may be restored and even excitement added in. If they do it right, this year is the return of all the old, and something of a clear progress into the new. If they do it wrong, it’ll be the decline period of TSW all over again, but this time without a SWL incoming.
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I think it’s because in the financial report that preceeded SWL relaunch, they said that they were expecting the vast majority of the playerbase to be “completely new to the IP”, that they would do a few things for the vets but they were not the target audience of the game. Which is normal since the TSW playerbase was small and not able to sustain the game. But nowadays we see that we’re pretty much the same players and have the same playerbase size (which should be expected since it’s a niche 6 years old game). We’re just all they’ve got, besides us there aren’t many players interested by this aging game. Especially since we’re moving out of the MMO craze era (probably why they tried to rebrand).
So SWL is currently at the same point as 2016’s TSW (in terms of playerbase and release capability). While it needed to have much more than just what it already had.
Well, it’s possible there’s more silent ‘casual’ players in SWL that don’t engage with #sanctuary, forums and so on than there were in latter-day TSW. Of course, even if this were the case (which based on SteamCharts I’m not willing to bet on), I’m not sure how the monetization system would actually draw those in. (My first cache opened gave me a signet and glyph distillate in Kingsmouth. But at least I sort-of-knew what the point was; a legitimately new, casual player wouldn’t. BAD.)
I do not miss TSW. I miss mature and fun people who played TSW.
Those peoples dont play much of SWL, so SWL is meaningless to me.
I do miss Fusang, and people in Fusang. SWL has no Fusang, so SWL is meaningless to me.
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I miss:
- The complexity of the wheel (but apparently the majority found it too confusing, so I understand why it’s gone)
- The challenging combat (but apparently so didn’t the people quitting the game in BM, so I understand that it’s gone)
- The Gatekeeper
I don’t miss:
- The game being dead (it was)
- The P2W Woodcutter
- The frenzy of clothing bags
- Tab target combat
All in all, I understand why they did what they did and I truly believe that we’re better off now. Is SWL perfect? No, but the game is here and there are people playing it.
TSW is gone, long live SWL. Be part of making it good, not dreaming of going back to TSW.
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That’s it. That’s the best take I’ve heard on it yet.
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Well … i for example sadly can´t code Fusang back into it … only the devs can. ^^
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There’s no hiding that TSW was going down the tubes for lack of time and money investment; the last six months or more consisted largely of sitting around in Agartha, watching paint dry. So there was no alternative to jumping into SWL. I’m in two minds about it. On the minus side, huge chunks of content, dungeons and raids, seem to have vanished down the plug-hole forever; I resent the dumbing-down of combat, particularly the loss of Aegis and of the ability to cross-use passives; and I hate the way grind has become the slow, infinitely tedious increase of a single numerical parameter. On the plus side… well, at least the game is still there, and we are at last about to get some actual new content, as opposed to yet more fluff. As for the future, I’m neutral; I don’t think the game is about to go pear-shaped, but I’m not holding my breath either. And I’m unhappy about the executive decision to apparently cut off, or severely scale back, end-game content. Reasonably regular updates that are more than a flash in the pan would be nice, if they happen.
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[quote=“Nordavind”]I don’t miss:
- The game being dead (it was)[/quote]
The game was dead because of the annoucement of SWL. Otherwise TSW had many more players than SWL has at this moment.
I am just curious now to know if this content will bring back players, but honestly I have strong doubts. For my part, even if I would have liked playing the new storyline content, redoing the all content with the new combat brainless system is still a plague.
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Emphasis mine.
You have made a claim. You need to back it up with numbers.
(PS: Steam charts won’t back up your claim.)
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I’ve (and others too, I’m sure)) played games where once they died, they were gone forever. Now I never played TSW so I cannot fathom your pain there, but perhaps becoming SWL has exacerbated the wound, instead of letting it heal.
I say, honestly, be grateful its around in some form or other at all. Yeah they missed 3 dungeons, raids… yada yada, but at least the essence of the game is still alive.
Now obviously it depends heavily on why you loved TSW, if it was for the unique combat and the skill wheel, you are out of luck, that’s gone. If it was for the pvp on the missing maps, stick around, you might get lucky in a year or so. If it was for the story, well whoohoo, its finally being inched forward.
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I wish i could believe that …
But even if it does: Most of the PVP-Veterans already left the game. It´s not sure that they will return after such a long time. PVP was always the most unimportant point when it came to updates or new content back in the old game. So as a PVP-Player i am highly sceptical by nature when it comes to TSW / SWL .
There’s a Sonnac (mis)quote that sums things up quite well for me: “To say it’s largely the same game is such a backhanded compliment, is it not?”
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Steamcharts could be a valid tool though as SWL had been promoted largely on Steam.
But if you want numbers, you can go to Agartha, or you can check the list of connected players on the usual chats with the command /chat list [chat_name]. On my side, I regularly checked the numbers of players connected each month on the usual well-known channels. There is no comparison with TSW. For example, the last time I checked (2017-11-23 evening Europe time) 71 players in the channel ‘event’ while only 11 in the french channel. FYI in end of 2016, the french channel hosted more than 100 players each evening the week.
@BombShelley below: Feb 2018 - 354.6 players (average) / Feb 2017 - 303.4 players (average) The gap is just ridiculous. And if you take in consideration SWL has more Steam players than TSW had, and the fact that many players had already left, I do not think it is something to be proud of at all.
SteamCharts, of course, says SWL had more players in February 2018 than TSW did in February 2017.
Addendum: I never said the SteamCharts numbers were anything to be proud of. They’re not a tool to back up the claim TSW had more players than SWL, though.
The original statement I was commenting on said (paraphrase) “the majority of SWL players seem to be TSW vets”. If that is true then there was little growth from the playerbase that was not big enough to support new development, which would mean failure. I guess it can be a bit more complicated if you want to call people “vets” who only played for two months after TSW first released then dropped it.
Probably most people who are drawn by story content (apparently the target audience atm) will be binging for a month or two around content releases and you won’t see them much between releases. Relying perceptions from who you bump into between releases likely won’t tell you much about this audience.
The big question is: if that audience picks up say 3-4 months of patron a year (or equivalent support) is it enough for further development?
Actually I would include people who played the game then dropped it, if only because there were so many of them. There was a much-touted figure of 750,000 people who had signed up for the TSW beta. For reference, Age of Conan had 500,000 signups. And yet despite all the interest, in the TSW launch year Funcom saw only half the earnings of the AoC launch year.
To my mind the relaunch was aimed at addressing a lot of those launch era criticisms and bring some of those people who tried TSW and didn’t like it to give SWL a shot.
I think we will see a whole lot of people come back for Season 2, both because of the usual bump of player base for expansion type stuff and also because I feel like a lot of people were waiting for new content to actually exist before they invested time in SWL. The best thing would be to see the Steam population exceeded the relaunch numbers.
Less than a week away. I’m excited and optimistic. How about y’all?
I guess I should have clarified that, as I do see players new to the game every day and I SINCERELY hope they’ll stick around and play not treat it as a one time RPG. BUT the backbone of those I see in Agartha; chat channels; organizing runs; filling the forum; maintaining the independent websites; writing the guides; RPing… vets from TSW.
My point was that FunCom flat said SWL was NOT aimed at the TSW vets (paraphrasing), so I hope they will not devalue our contribution to the success of SWL again.
And I really really want SWL to succeed if that’s the basket we’re putting all our eggs in!