Future of TSW - 2016Q4 report

www.funcom.com/investors/funcoms_fourth_quarter_financial_report_for_2016

The Secret World will be relaunched during the first half of 2017. The goal of the relaunch is to broaden the appeal of the game through:
– Redesigned new player experience
– Major improvements to gameplay including combat.
– Introduction of new retention systems such as daily rewards.
– Adjustments to the business model, including allowing access to the story content for free.

• Relaunch activities will begin in late March.
• This relaunch has the potential to have a significant impact in the game and company’s revenues.

Thoughts??

For me:
No new content, or at least not mentioned here. I might move on from this game entirely if we don't get new missions. I'm serious: I will uninstall the game, I will be that disappointed. Last new storyprogression was in 2015 and the last new mission was in April 2016.. I don't see the point in keeping my hopes up any longer, staying in a game that might be heading towards maintenance mode. Let's hope there will be more things revealed in the official anouncement. At least some nice things for the more veteran players.

Switch to F2P was the obvious conclusion ever since you said about planned "retention" update in cabal chat some time ago, DeForestt. From that I expect more inconveniences for myself as not subscribing player and general decrease of enjoyment in any activity involving grouping with others. At least it will be lively for a while; I'll be probably playing on my not developed characters helping F2P newbies in early normal dungeons when it comes (if dungeons will be available for free).

For daily rewards we already have challenges, so any addition must be just login rewards. Hardly exciting.

Previous several rebalancing of combat made me stop caring about builds, decks etc., so I'm indifferent to new "major improvement" as well. As you know, my dream is death and oblivion of everything Aegis-related, but I doubt it's the improvement we will get.

And of course, no signs of new story and North Carolina office switching to a new project after Secret World relaunch... I think we all understand what that will mean. At least story of Secret World will be remembered ending with a relatively solid conclusion in issue 11 (even though I didn't like issue itself compared to previous ones).

At this point I'm actually ok if they go to maintenance mode. Grinds and achievements I can get at Playstation (trophiehunting!), which I never looked into until last month and I'm enjoying that atm. But I do hope that they won't drop the TSW-IP and keep making TSW related games. It's doubtful their next project is a (major) TSW sequel wherein they continue the story, but I kind of hope that's their plans.

They are going full F2P it seems, by the looks of it they will be copying all the standard f2p features we see in other games. This is unimaginative and has little appeal to current player base. This leads me to speculate that they wish to dip unto the general F2P player pool in hopes to retain them long enough to get a few bucks, likely at the cost of current players who already have parted with their money. If that is correct we will see degradation of TSW community, slow at start but then accelerating.

That is not because it's gong f2p per say, but because players previously not playing TSW, but playing F2P titles in general, are used to much more hostile communities in general. And they will bring that with them. And if we do not see new content with those updates, more old players will leave.

If this generates money for FC, TSW will receive content updates later. There are plenty of f2p games with content updates coming out on regular basis. However I'm not sure it will as TSW did not have mass appeal even at its height.

As for TSW story, creating a series of single player games, will likely generate more income for FC. Simply because they can ignore 4 years of baggage.

Other than seeing what they change with the combat system, this is just depressing. I worry that the ability wheel is going to get culled hard - there's so many skills on there which have never been competitive, and I could see this as an excuse to reduce it drastically.

My char wants people in agartha, need faces fending off filth back to oblivion, or else how he's going to roam free in kaidan, and do pax run through Transyl....apart from that looking ahead to what funcom brings to table either in-game, standalone spinoff, or collab work...still unclear about relaunchThough..I know launch with HD patch does that count.