I played Secret World for most of the weekend. I underestimated the game. The environments, lore, quest, etc are all fun and you can tell a lot of effort was put into them. You need to put quite a bit of thought into your abilities.
The basics:
-you can equip two weapons. They can be any weapon type you have in your inventory.
-There are a total of 525 abilities, some active and some passive (you need to earn these abilities before you can use them)
-The ability wheel has three major categories. Ranged, Melee and Magic
-Those three categories are broken down into three sub categories, each representing a weapon type
-each of the nine weapon types branch off into six more focus groups
-you can equip 7 active abilities and 7 passive abilities
-only active abilities that work with one of your two equipped weapons will function
-you can equip passive abilities from any area of the ability wheel
I'm presently developing a build for Blades/Assault Rifle. My focuses are AOE attacks, Affliction and Healing
Each weapon has builder abilities that build up attack points for that weapon, and finisher abilities that use those points. In addition, there are various things like hinderance, affliction, etc. You need to find the best passive abilities that are triggered by or enhance your active abilities.
For example, many of my passive and active skills are triggered if a mob is afflicted so I open my attack with a ranged Suppressing Fire attack which is an AOE and also sets the affliction state (when combined with the passive "Shoot em up" ability that triggers off a frenzy attack). I keep tagging the mob(s) with that until they close in on me and then I use a finishing "Fire at Will" ability. I then lay down a Crimson Theater blade attack which is an AOE DOT.
Ranged attacks start out with zero/five attack points while melee start with 5/5 so you can use a finisher melee attack right off the bat while you need to build those points for ranged. Each of your weapons has their own ability points so "Suppressing Fire" for example, happens to build a point for each weapon equipped every time it's used.
Image above is part of the skill wheel showing abilities for a particular branch. You can also see the active and passive skills equipped.
There are pre made "Decks" that you can work towards. Above is the Blade/AR Deck. It will highlight the skills you need to achieve the deck. That deck is almost completely different that what I'm building using the same two weapons. I've looked over the forums and everyone has their own ideas about their perfect setup. You can always focus on single target, AOE or healing builds so that completely changes the Active/Passives as well.
You'll see in the lower left of the image what's required for that deck and it also shows the abilities I have toward the deck. You gain deck outfits for completing the various builds so even if you don't use them, it may be worth it for the outfit.
I wish the game worked out of box with an Xbox controller. I'm using my Saitek controller so it's not that bad. I guess I'm spoiled with Tera and some other games that were designed for controllers.
Secret World has a ton of puzzle solving. The quests are all deep (typical quest has at least 5 tier/stages).
I want to give an example of a quest to show how they differ from the norm.
(spoiler for this particular quest)
http://youtu.be/k0AsDuSsxfU?hd=1
The reason the video is all grey for most of the time is because this particular quest can ONLY be completed if you are dead. You need to investigate an area, and can't see the message or even get into the area unless you are dead. After you discover the first part/message, you need to track a raven and then listen for clues to figure out the quest while also examining visual media.
There are a lot of quests like this where you need to use your head. Now, I don't recommend getting frustrated over any single quest. A simple google will provide either clues or the answer so you can move on. There's plenty of quests and I applaud the developers for making things challenging so if you want, you can spend all the time you feel like solving stuff, or if you don't care for a particular quest, you can grab some hints.
The world looks great. The lore is deep. The voice acting is above average. It's different. It has it's own feel to it. There's not much hand holding in the game and the number of character building possibilities can be daunting. I recommend after a 5 hours of playing to get a handle on things, to maybe hit the forums and fan sites to read up on various builds as you'll be putting a lot of ability points into trees and may want to get an idea of the best place to put your points.
Also, while you will use your ability points fast as you are able to, your skill points probably shouldn't be used until you need them. You use skill points to advance your skill in weapons as well as advance your level for head/major and minor medallions that affect your abilities. There are no levels in the game for your character but your weapons have quality levels and your skill levels need to increase in order to use higher level weapons and medallions. What I do is keep my bank of skill points and apply them to the area that needs them when I acquire something that needs a higher level skill. Theres no need to crank your assault rifle up to skill level 5 when you won't be able to get a weapon quality level to match it. "Money" comes easy in the game so you can buy clothes, etc but to get the best weapons you need tokens when you earn in various regions of the game. You also earn different tokens for PvP.
You can see the various tokens and money window in the image above. That's me (Illuminati) on a PvP map.
Setting up some zombies for an AOE attack.
Some of the spell affects aren't too subtle. This is one of my AOEs (Crimson Theater) which creates an Octagon of doom for any mob in the area. At least it's easy to see if they're inside the area. It actually looks pretty decent in game when animated.
This game is going to be worth your time for at least a month when it drops below 30.00 or becomes Free to Play. For those that like to think a bit n their games, this one provides plenty to solve while also allowing you a ton of flexibility in creating your characters abilities. The lower core abilities are cheap for each weapon so you can eventually try anything. I don't think there's any rush in this game though. It's interesting to just wander around and pick up quests. I haven't tried out much PvP. It's not my thing but I did kill three people and only died twice! You earn PvP tokens three different ways. Can choose to help capture areas, defend wells (respawn points) or just go kill other faction players.