How the heck can so many of you be "finished" already?

I mean, the game's been out a week. How can so many of you have finished the entire story, all the side quests, all the races, all the rampages and have 40+ finished pursuits already? I'm play far more than I should, yet I've barely even started. Pursuits? I have less than 10 finished ones. Story? Barely started. Races and rampages? Tried a time trial once, failed twice and gave up (need a faster vehicle.) I don't even have any blue or better gear yet, other than a blue grenade. So how is it possible to so many of you are finished with the game already? Don't get me wrong, I'm not jealous or anything. Far from it, I'm enjoying the heck out of this game and want it to last as long as possible. I'm just wondering, that's all.

Well the definition of "playing more than you should" is probably subjective, also you always get a default vehicle for the races so getting a better one wont make you faster (though skilling up the vehicle skills can get you bit faster) and its perfectly achievable to get gold with level 1 in every vehicle skill.

I had my weekend, so I pretty much just played all day with my clan mates and it was a lot of fun. I never rushed or anything of the sort. There were people who completed everything within the first day and that does pretty much suck for them as they know have nothing to do.

I'm just now completing my pursuits and having a blast in PvP and doing Arkfalls with my clan.

People can be incredibly efficent. Besides, you can "finish" without being 100% done. I have no interest in getting all gold in every rampage, hotshot, or time trial. Much less finishing all the pursuits. My criteria for "finish" is way different than anybody else's. It'll just end up like Guild Wars 1 and 2. People will blaze through it and come back every once in a while for new content/events. There's little reason to maximize your investment because it's subscription-free.

8 Days x 6 hours = 48 hours

Plenty of time to beat all of the missions. Honestly it might even take less than that.

Because:
Pursuits you just get as you play through, the ones I dont have are the ones that are just like grinding out kill x type of mob in place y.
Story missions: Over very quickly, perhaps 5-6 hours of main story missions.
Side missions: Didnt do the SF ones because theyre often repeats of previous missions with only different targets to shoot, boring.
Rampages/Hot shots: Easy, maybe fail once or twice to see what its about then get gold.
Time trials: Didnt even fail the later ones once, too easy.
Gear: 99% of what you find is rubbish anyway, salvaged it all. The keys you get are just for random luck lockboxes which isnt fun.

Once you get bored of the over-simplified pvp there is no pve left to do, and as such the hordes of complaints on the forums about content.

I just followed the missions and next thing I knew I was at 1000 EGO.

What Dreildrag mentioned. It's very easy to get through the game, I did all my side missions before moving onto the next mission quest, doing arkfalls and co-ops along the way. The game itself is very quick if you are having fun and talking to be people.

It just seems like you maybe not as skilled as some gamers. I am not an ego rating 1000 but I did finish the story.

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Originally Posted by Doowi

The game itself is very quick if you are having fun and talking to be people.

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The game is quick if you get tunnel vision and want to shoot that son of a ***** in the head!..or whatever counts for a crit on whatever your shooting.

By the by, just need the missing hotshot dam defense to finish all world zone pursuits >_> Almost done with Shoot from the Shadows 3 (kill 5k mobs with bolt-action sniper rifle / lvl10 semi-auto rifles). Think I hit 3k kills or near there before poking the forums with a stick.

Welcome to these types of games. People nolife them and complete everything in a day or 2

i think you can pretty much do everything in two days the point is that it just takes some ppl longer then others because either they are doing it slower or just because they do other things in between.

For example i did the Story mission and then i did all the side missions beofre moving on to the other Story Mission, that way i kept both of them at the same pace and i was able to complete the game faster.

All the Side missions aren't that much either, its most of the time picking something up or killing something and you are done, as far as the minigames, they are mostly 3-5m and then done so you could easly do every minigame in about 1 and a half hour or so.

But don't worry just take it slow and enjoy the game, when you finished everything the only thing there left for you is to do Arkfalls or PvP, and beside that waiting for the next Update/DLC for more content.

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Originally Posted by Pruney

Welcome to these types of games. People nolife them and complete everything in a day or 2

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You're so witty and original, considering people who are any good seem to be completing most of the content in under 20 hours played you could have easily spent 2-3 hours a day average to finish already with a high EGO rating.

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Originally Posted by Pheonix580

It just seems like you maybe not as skilled as some gamers. I am not an ego rating 1000 but I did finish the story.

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Skill has nothing to do with it. I've been playing video games for thirty years, so I'm more than skilled enough for these types of games. But I enjoy the game, really take my time and try to see all there is to see. I do the grind-pursuits, I activly chase the exploration pursuits and try to get gold in races and all those. I even do the side missions. :)

But anyway, it seems to me the people who "finished" the game already haven't finished it at all. Most just breeze through the story, ignoring everything else and say they are done. That's definitely not my style, fortunately. Besides, I was just curious. It's not a big deal to me how you play your game. :)

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Originally Posted by SonicBoom

Skill has nothing to do with it. I've been playing video games for thirty years, so I'm more than skilled enough for these types of games. But I enjoy the game, really take my time and try to see all there is to see. I do the grind-pursuits, I activly chase the exploration pursuits and try to get gold in races and all those. I even do the side missions. :)

But anyway, it seems to me the people who "finished" the game already haven't finished it at all. Most just breeze through the story, ignoring everything else and say they are done. That's definitely not my style, fortunately. Besides, I was just curious. It's not a big deal to me how you play your game. :)

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Nah, I was actively going around trying to find things to do but unless I want to do the exact same arkfall on repeat I'm all done :\

I took a 1 week vacation on release so I have been playing 100+ hours.
Finished all the quests and about half of all pursuits
Still playing every day

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Originally Posted by Anim

Nah, I was actively going around trying to find things to do but unless I want to do the exact same arkfall on repeat I'm all done :\

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Heh, I did a minior bug arkfall three times in a row, simply because I was having so much fun with my mass cannon. :p I also chase Major Arkfalls whenever I can, and don't really give a darn what we are supposed to do. Tons of people, tons of enemies, tons of mayhem. What's not to love? ;)

Because there isn't much to do in the first place.

I've only just finished all the main and side quests, been ignoring a lot else of the game I'm looking forward to get into now. Guess I get a bit obsessive when it comes to quest content. :P

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Originally Posted by SonicBoom

Heh, I did a minior bug arkfall three times in a row, simply because I was having so much fun with my mass cannon. :p I also chase Major Arkfalls whenever I can, and don't really give a darn what we are supposed to do. Tons of people, tons of enemies, tons of mayhem. What's not to love? ;)

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So in a weeks time after your 50th exact repeat of the minor arkfall is it going to be as much fun? Theres no gain from doing them and they sure as hell arent interesting after only a short while.

Never been one for rushing through. If you squint in parts, you can play as an RPG. Sorta. Now wheres my Fus Do Rah perk. Oh yeah. Shotguns.

There isn't much rushing required.

The main story is around 12 hours total if you do it and ignore the side missions. Even if you "casually" play that (3 hours a day) you'll be done with that in 4 days. From there, there's another 4 Episode missions and that's another hour tops. At this point you got two main decisions:

1. Do the side missions which give 1-2k XP and 100-200 scrip
2. Do pursuits which give 100's of Ego ratings while earning vastly more XP and scrip

Most people chose 2. Now understanding Ego rating is critical. At 1408 Ego rating 650 of that is skill points, another 250 is skill points (4 ego/lvl) and the rest is all pursuits (around 500). In general this means if you see anyone who's Ego above 1000 they've either been grinding a lot of Pursuits or they've been grinding a lot of XP at Major Arkfalls (which when fully done yield around 17k XP). Anyone who's 1250+ most likely has done most of the Pursuits and grinded quite a few Ego levels at that point. Anyone 1500+ has started to really grind XP levels and has done most of the pursuits.

The reason why side missions are mostly a waste of time is that their rewards are trash by comparison to just about anything in the game. For the same time and effort I could go do a Major Arkfall and make literally 10 times the rewards and much more loot. Why bother other than the few needed for zone completion?

Pursuits are easy to gain as well once you have the guides, which there's already plenty of guides for Data Recorder locations (which are honestly the hardest part). Even then there's quite a few bugged, such as PvP ones resetting and Dam Defense being taken out so there's another 100 Ego or so that's currently impossible to even do.

Even if it takes you a month to reach that stage, the chances of there being some mythical content update in that time frame is likely slim. At this point in the game (again around 1300+) your game play devolves into:

1. Contracts. Once per day. They go fast. They let you buy terrible gear.
2. Major Arkfalls. The only reliable way to gain large chunks of XP to continue to advance. Also the best source of loot with multiple white/greens from the minors in the Major and sometimes Blue/Purples from the Major.
3. Driving around tagging events with your car but not finishing them but then getting full credit when some other shmuck finishes them giving you free XP/Runes/Scrip.
4. Chain running instances to grind out weapon skill gains.
5. Checking the vendor shops every hour on the half hour to see if anything decent is in the special of the day.
6. PvP if you like one shotting and getting one shot by Shotguns while cloaked.

I mean that's your game and what there is to do in it. Like I tell people, the game is the polar opposite of EVE. It has amazing game play (EVE has boring game play) but is shallow as a kiddie pool (EVE has amazingly deep consequences to everything). As they stated, most of their first few major patches will likely be directed at focusing on fixing the glaring issues like the broken just about everything (matchmaking is broken, pvp is broken, chat/voice is broken, many missions are broken, etc) so expecting a content patch to beef up the end there likely won't happen till month two and by then I think a lot of people will have moved on (because grinding the same 4 major arkfalls over and over gets boring pretttttttttty quick).

I laughed when I read another thread that people were going on about "I didn't rush the game, I'm ego 1100+ and I just San Francisco!" and they don't realize all they did was reverse the order others did the game. They started their Major Arkfall and Pursuit grind BEFORE they finished the story, which honestly doesn't matter. The only thing the main story matters is in unlocking San Francisco and side missions for zone completion.

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Originally Posted by KodiakX

The reason why side missions are mostly a waste of time is that their rewards are trash by comparison to just about anything in the game. For the same time and effort I could go do a Major Arkfall and make literally 10 times the rewards and much more loot. Why bother other than the few needed for zone completion?

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I found the vast majority of side quests take a mere fraction of the time of a minor arkfall, let alone a major. It's just drive somewhere, kill a couple guys and pick up something. The arkfalls I've done take a significantly longer chunk of time.

*edit: some do have you do an event/public quest but then the event has it's own reward on top of what the side quest offers anyway

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Originally Posted by Shima

I found the vast majority of side quests take a mere fraction of the time of a minor arkfall, let alone a major. It's just drive somewhere, kill a couple guys and pick up something. The arkfalls I've done take a significantly longer chunk of time.

*edit: some do have you do an event/public quest but then the event has it's own reward on top of what the side quest offers anyway

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I've found around 50% of them in the later zones are all go to X place, and then do the event for the area which is the major source of the XP not the 1000 reward you get at the end. Also considering minor arkfalls you just need to kill any mob and then walk away you can spend that time tagging a mob, then running off and doing other events in the game for double or triple the XP of the people who sit there and actually do the Arkfall itself.

It's pretty poorly designed system for credit and really lets you optimize your XP time if you want. Consider yesterday where I drove around for a half hour tagging side events throughout all the zones and then went off and took a shower. Came back 20 minutes later and had half my XP bar filled (35k at the time) and 20 key fragments.

I will say the Major Arkfalls are actually well designed for credit, however and in general you want to do them start to finish to get the full reward they can yield.

MMO players are strange beasts.

They either take off the entire week from work or (usually) they have no job or are still in school so they end up playing like 8-10 hours a day and grind. Then, once they complete everything at an abnormal rate, they flock to the forums and complain there's nothing to do.

It's even funnier in this game because the TV show didn't even start yet so of course content and things to do for the first week pre-show is gonna be slow.

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Originally Posted by Remag Div

MMO players are strange beasts.

They either take off the entire week from work or (usually) they have no job or are still in school so they end up playing like 8-10 hours a day and grind. Then, once they complete everything at an abnormal rate, they flock to the forums and complain there's nothing to do.

It's even funnier in this game because the TV show didn't even start yet so of course content and things to do for the first week pre-show is gonna be slow.

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People are complaining that theres nothing to do in comparison to pretty much every other MMO release ever. Even global agenda had more to do and it only had 3 PvE missions. The TV show will make absolutely no difference to the state of the game bar 1 or two episode missions so stop clinging on to that excuse.

I just play a few hours some nights. Not rushing it. I play The Secret World on Friday nights when I am drunk in TS3 doing dungeons and I play MechWarrior Online as well with some people. And every Sunday I do Guild Missions in GW2 and usually stay on and do my daily.

Mixing it up a bit.

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Originally Posted by KodiakX

There isn't much rushing required.

The main story is around 12 hours total if you do it and ignore the side missions. Even if you "casually" play that (3 hours a day) you'll be done with that in 4 days. From there, there's another 4 Episode missions and that's another hour tops. At this point you got two main decisions:

1. Do the side missions which give 1-2k XP and 100-200 scrip
2. Do pursuits which give 100's of Ego ratings while earning vastly more XP and scrip

Most people chose 2. Now understanding Ego rating is critical. At 1408 Ego rating 650 of that is skill points, another 250 is skill points (4 ego/lvl) and the rest is all pursuits (around 500). In general this means if you see anyone who's Ego above 1000 they've either been grinding a lot of Pursuits or they've been grinding a lot of XP at Major Arkfalls (which when fully done yield around 17k XP). Anyone who's 1250+ most likely has done most of the Pursuits and grinded quite a few Ego levels at that point. Anyone 1500+ has started to really grind XP levels and has done most of the pursuits.

The reason why side missions are mostly a waste of time is that their rewards are trash by comparison to just about anything in the game. For the same time and effort I could go do a Major Arkfall and make literally 10 times the rewards and much more loot. Why bother other than the few needed for zone completion?

Pursuits are easy to gain as well once you have the guides, which there's already plenty of guides for Data Recorder locations (which are honestly the hardest part). Even then there's quite a few bugged, such as PvP ones resetting and Dam Defense being taken out so there's another 100 Ego or so that's currently impossible to even do.

Even if it takes you a month to reach that stage, the chances of there being some mythical content update in that time frame is likely slim. At this point in the game (again around 1300+) your game play devolves into:

1. Contracts. Once per day. They go fast. They let you buy terrible gear.
2. Major Arkfalls. The only reliable way to gain large chunks of XP to continue to advance. Also the best source of loot with multiple white/greens from the minors in the Major and sometimes Blue/Purples from the Major.
3. Driving around tagging events with your car but not finishing them but then getting full credit when some other shmuck finishes them giving you free XP/Runes/Scrip.
4. Chain running instances to grind out weapon skill gains.
5. Checking the vendor shops every hour on the half hour to see if anything decent is in the special of the day.
6. PvP if you like one shotting and getting one shot by Shotguns while cloaked.

I mean that's your game and what there is to do in it. Like I tell people, the game is the polar opposite of EVE. It has amazing game play (EVE has boring game play) but is shallow as a kiddie pool (EVE has amazingly deep consequences to everything). As they stated, most of their first few major patches will likely be directed at focusing on fixing the glaring issues like the broken just about everything (matchmaking is broken, pvp is broken, chat/voice is broken, many missions are broken, etc) so expecting a content patch to beef up the end there likely won't happen till month two and by then I think a lot of people will have moved on (because grinding the same 4 major arkfalls over and over gets boring pretttttttttty quick).

I laughed when I read another thread that people were going on about "I didn't rush the game, I'm ego 1100+ and I just San Francisco!" and they don't realize all they did was reverse the order others did the game. They started their Major Arkfall and Pursuit grind BEFORE they finished the story, which honestly doesn't matter. The only thing the main story matters is in unlocking San Francisco and side missions for zone completion.

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I think you summed it up pretty nicely. I do the side quests to get rid of them off my map. It also forces me to explore.

How is TSW these days? I regret not having many friends playing it in the end because it was a really awesome game :(

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Originally Posted by Anim

People are complaining that theres nothing to do in comparison to pretty much every other MMO release ever. Even global agenda had more to do and it only had 3 PvE missions. The TV show will make absolutely no difference to the state of the game bar 1 or two episode missions so stop clinging on to that excuse.

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Exactly. I don't think people understand that no one is complaining that there's nothing to do, it's that the stuff to do is so limited and shallow most of us can't possibly see how this game will hold anyone's attention for very long once they do reach the same point. It doesn't matter if you spend a week hitting that point or a month but everyone seems to keep clinging to thise same tired rhetoric.

Other than yesterday and today I haven't taken any time off of work and haven't lost any sleep and easily got through the game's content. If I had done all that I would have been Ego 2000+ already from grinding XP. The only conclusion I can come up with is either spend more time posting on forums than playing in game or they're so bad at the game they can't figure out how to play the game properly.

same reason some people plowed through skyrim or ME3 in a day, hell, what was the record for first D3 win, 8 hours or something for max level?

I'm 30 hours in and haven't even made it past muir processing, taking my time, stopping to clear dynamic events sometimes, helping people when I see them run into an area, rushing to arkfalls when they pop.. this game isn't about getting to the "end".

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Originally Posted by ironhands

same reason some people plowed through skyrim or ME3 in a day, hell, what was the record for first D3 win, 8 hours or something for max level?

I'm 30 hours in and haven't even made it past muir processing, taking my time, stopping to clear dynamic events sometimes, helping people when I see them run into an area, rushing to arkfalls when they pop.. this game isn't about getting to the "end".

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The irony is you're doing the "end" by spending time doing that instead of doing your story yet somehow you think you're not rushing things. All it'll mean is by the time you actually do get around to doing the main story the XP will be a drop in the ocean of XP needed to level.

I got gold on all challenges, all data recorders, all co-op maps complete etc in 6 days real time and I work 8 hours a day.

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Originally Posted by KodiakX

The irony is you're doing the "end" by spending time doing that instead of doing your story yet somehow you think you're not rushing things. All it'll mean is by the time you actually do get around to doing the main story the XP will be a drop in the ocean of XP needed to level.

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I'm not rushing anything, nor am I concerned about the XP or reward. I'm not playing this game to max out everything and "win", I'm playing for casual enjoyment.

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Originally Posted by Anim

How is TSW these days? I regret not having many friends playing it in the end because it was a really awesome game :(

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I don't have a sub since I quit when GW2 came out. The game is still fun though. Only got so far:

http://chronicle.thesecretworld.com/character/Ngamok

it's a dev made content driven mmo, not a player driven mmo, so it CAN be beaten, and there are people who will do so very quickly.

now the mark for beating it varies by person.

story content?
level cap?
gear cap?
100% on achivements(pursuits)
some other arbitrary marker for completion?

it will vary by player and play group/clan/guild.

but it can be beaten. as can all "mmo's" that are based on devs releasing content every so often for players to beat.


sadly, the mmo's that can't be beaten, at least in recent years, are absolutely terrible in most regards that make a game good at all, and even as sandboxes/player driven affairs, they tend to be rather poor compared those old by gone standbys of yesteryear which gave way to the wow clone era.

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Originally Posted by dirtyklingon

it's a dev made content driven mmo, not a player driven mmo, so it CAN be beaten, and there are people who will do so very quickly.

now the mark for beating it varies by person.

story content?
level cap?
gear cap?
100% on achivements(pursuits)
some other arbitrary marker for completion?

it will vary by player and play group/clan/guild.

but it can be beaten. as can all "mmo's" that are based on devs releasing content every so often for players to beat.


sadly, the mmo's that can't be beaten, at least in recent years, are absolutely terrible in most regards that make a game good at all, and even as sandboxes/player driven affairs, they tend to be rather poor compared those old by gone standbys of yesteryear which gave way to the wow clone era.

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Hope you arent knocking EvE which is the absolute epitome of player driven content.

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Originally Posted by Anim

Hope you arent knocking EvE which is the absolute epitome of player driven content.

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eve has great player driven game play. and absolutely **** poor controls.

it's also below average for the era that spawned it in teh regards that it's now "the epitome of that".

it's also about 9 years old so i'm not sure it quite qualifies as "at least in recent years". btu make sure to keep that chip on your shoulder oh spreadsheet warrior.

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Originally Posted by Ngamok

I don't have a sub since I quit when GW2 came out. The game is still fun though. Only got so far:

http://chronicle.thesecretworld.com/character/Ngamok

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I really did pick & choose with the talent trees :) http://chronicle.thesecretworld.com/character/Animbly did really good dps for when I was playing back then though, lots of stacking effects and thinking up new ways to be more effective was really fun.

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Originally Posted by KodiakX

The irony is you're doing the "end" by spending time doing that instead of doing your story yet somehow you think you're not rushing things. All it'll mean is by the time you actually do get around to doing the main story the XP will be a drop in the ocean of XP needed to level.

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The game has no sub so for me the $60 is pretty much what a game will cost me to play through. One of the shortest games I played was Space Marine. Still pre-ordered it because I love the Warhammer 40K setting even though the story was short. This game reminds me a lot like Borderlands. I loved BL1 and spent tons of time farming weapons and stuff from red chests and doing the red worm boss dude. Played both play throughs. BL2 only went through 1 because I had other stuff I was doing at the same time, GW2 mainly.

If there was a sub to this game, I probably would not have purchased. Yes, the DLC is like a sub but I got it for $30 on Steam with the tier 3 unlocks.