This post is basically a followup to my last TSW post on the third beta weekend event: Hell Raised.

During that post I tried to articulate my thoughts on combat in The Secret World and why it didn’t really pop for me.

What I should have done was get some FRAPS footage of my own experiences in the beta but, as often happens with me, I only realise I need screenshots and footage after the beta events have ended.

Which makes me feel really dumb.

So this evening I’ve spent thirty minutes or so scouring YouTube for pieces of footage that best illustrate what I want to say. I’ve not produced any of the following videos, but I have selected them specifically because they happen to show similar types of gameplay.

TSW: Blade Gameplay

Video uploaded by MilanRE

As you can see, there’s very little impact from the weapon on the enemy mobs. It doesn’t feel or sound like the blade is connecting. Also, you’ll notice that the player’s hit points are going down but the character itself doesn’t seem to react like it’s being hit. These two things form the basis of my issues with the feel of the combat system: I’m not going to talk about the resource system here, though you can clearly see it working if you watch the player’s resource bar in the bottom left.

At about 3 minutes in you’ll notice that the player does use the active dodge ability, which incurs a short recharge before it is ready for use again. I mentioned in my post for the first beta weekend that something more active like this was needed. However, despite its inclusion for BWE#3 it really doesn’t feel all that great: it feels tacked on, a late addition, rather than something combat has been designed around from the get go. It only really feels useful when dodging out of the way of the larger AoE attacks like the fiery explosion at 3:05.

To end on a slightly more positive note, I really like the dramatic music shifts and cues from entering combat. The musical sound design is very impressive throughout the game, in fact, but they really need to work on those impact sounds for different substances and weights of weapons — the swisssssh swissssssh sword sound from Blade Torrent (ability #2 on the player’s bar) gets very repetitive and lacks any real feel of heft and weight.

GW2: Sword Gameplay

Video uploaded by MilanRE

The initial impression of Guild Wars 2′s sword combat is that it is much meatier. While the opening of this particular video doesn’t show it to best effect, it soon shows a chunkier, weightier combat. Animation quality and sound contributes equally to this.

There’s more variety in the basic swing animation: compare the canned swipe motion of Blade Torrent (draw blade left, swing right in arc) which is pretty much the default attack used in AoE situations in The Secret World with the more robust 3-strike chain skill Sever Artery > Gash > Final Thrust.

Sure it’s pretty much the same three motions over and over again, so it’s no less repetitive that constant Blade Torrent spam, but the sound of the impacts goes a long way to making it feel like you’re actually hitting someone with a two-foot long chunk of tempered steel.

Speaking of impacts, it is much more obvious when the player is getting hit. Subtle screen shaking, the obvious depletion of the big red health orb in the centre, and different kinds of on-screen border effects for different conditions all make it very easy and visual to see when you are taking damage.

BONUS: After much searching, I found some footage of some Blood Magic in The Secret World and some Necromancy in Guild Wars 2, which I feel are reasonably analogous for a ranged caster style of combat.

(Bonus) TSW: Early Blood Magic

 Video uploaded by GW2guild

I spent a lot of time doing this in my beta experience. The two abilities this player has for #1 and #2 are the staple of the Thaumaturge deck which I was working towards. As you can see in this snippet, there’s so little feedback on enemies and the character itself from hits. As I mentioned in my previous post this does improve later on, but I mean much later, when you get into the outer ring of the skill wheel and a much higher gear level.

Compare this to:

(Bonus) GW2: Necro Scepter

Video uploaded by BeowulfProd

Took me ages to find a video from the GW2 BWE#2 that showed scepter gameplay on the necromancer. I specifically chose this particular combination as, in my opinion, the necromancer is the most similar in style/feel to the blood mage in TSW. I could have pulled out some elementalism footage from TSW and some elementalist footage from GW2, but that proves my point about the differences even more.

I chose scepter because it is the closest thing GW2 has to the style of ranged combat the blood mage offers in TSW in the sense that you aren’t physically hitting with a weapon, unlike axe and dagger gameplay. Perhaps it is a bit unfair to compare the two considering GW2′s focus on weapons, but regardless you can definitely see the difference: even with ranged magical attacks like the scepter abilities, there’s a real sense of hitting and weight behind those attacks.

Final Thoughts

I don’t want anyone to think that I’m hating on The Secret World. I really enjoyed my time with the game over the last three beta weekends, despite the many bugs, optimisation issues, and lacklustre combat. It does some things better than GW2, at least based on what I’ve seen: Kingsmouth is much more atmospheric than anything I’ve seen in my admittedly limited time with the GW2 beta client, and TSW’s cutscenes are above and beyond what GW2 does too.

But man, that combat… Even with The Secret World‘s focus on puzzle solving and investigation, there’s no escaping the fact that for most people, combat is the thing they do the most of in an MMO, and it just doesn’t feel right in TSW. It’s not bad… y’know? It doesn’t suck horribly.

It’s just not on a par with Guild Wars 2‘s combat (yet?).

Did you play in The Secret World‘s third beta test? If so, what did you think of the combat? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

~Demajen