I’m a TSW veteran who only recently got into this game, and after a few weeks of it what’s going through my mind is this: The new character system in this game has the potential to be superior to the old, but only if they add more weapons.
Basically old TSW had an absolutely spectacular system for the primary weapons. The ability wheel allowed you to create cross synergies out of hundreds of passives that all worked together, giving you an amazing array of deep and rewarding build options. It did have one big issue though: The amount of cross synergy and interdependency between various abilities was so high, and the idea of the abilities being a wheel with three equal categories so strongly built into the system that it was basically impossible to expand it. So while the ability wheel was extremely fun to play with, it was not at all scalable. Despite many people hoping for new weapons, what we got instead over the years was additional systems that expanded the character outside of the ability wheel, like auxiliary weapons, AEGIS, and an extra wheel of passives. None of those systems were anywhere near as good as the original ability wheel, though some were well liked by the community.
Now enter SWL. The system is much simpler. The passives of each weapon only interact with that particular weapon, and they don’t cross connect. In terms of depth for character building this is a massive step back. Even worse, the auxiliary weapons which were well loved by the TSW community have simply disappeared. There is however one big advnatage of this new system over the old: It’s scalable. Adding a new weapon to the SWL system does not break an intricate balance between hundreds of interlocking parts, nor does it require any kind of symmetry to keep the idea of a wheel intact. This can be a huge strength to the system, but this needs to be exploited to actually make SWL better than TSW.
I would like to see the auxiliary weapons from TSW turned into full featured weapons in SWL for one. Rocket Launcher, Whip. Flame Thrower, Chainsaw, and Quantum Brace could all easily be their own weapons, and some of the artwork is already done for them too, which makes it cheaper to implement them.
I would also like the ability to summon golems with a thaumaturgical staff, fire long range piercing shots and specialty arrows from a bow, pull some captain america stunts with a shield or mutate friends and foes with an alchemy kit.
