Downloading may as well give it a go......will be a decade at current speeds. Not sure I've got the apettite to experience it all again. Think my furthest run was the start of Transylvania. Unless the feel is quite changed I doubt I'll stay nearly that long.
Hmm, try closing and re-opening the launcher? That boosted me up to about normal speeds, I was in the kb/s range and was too slow..
Yeah thanks for the tip. It seemed to help but that might have been perceptual bias. It fluctuates pretty wildly. Sadly they appear to have taken the download servers offline with the game maintenance. /foreheadslap
Exact same game just some trivial changes that really dont change much in the grand scheme, its amazing how easily people are suckered in now adays. Most of the people who are positive just never played much TSW before or havent recently so its just a new car shine that will be long gone in about a week. Nice commercial err i mean "review in progress". They didnt need to make a "new game" for this its basically a QOL update and split an already small community up. Cash grab is a cash grab.
They took Cash Grab to new levels... If you though there will never be a worst F2P concept than Swtor, then you are wrong.
You want more than one character slot... Pay
You want more than one build (classes) ... Pay
Your old progression is lost, items like the ones rewarded in previous events gone. And not even a Thank You for buying the game before.
Hmm, i have 3 character slots since I linked my legacy account, and I have my pets and some clothes and such too, plus I think FunCom has been nice to old players, so i feel properly thanked, so to speak. I even have all weapons unlocked..
Yep, it was posted before, somewhere around page 2 or 3 (by @Winter-Hale and /me ) A very shady and below-the-belt move from FC, and even if Legends fanatics rushed in right away with yelling "surely an accident, or mistake", the facts that FC still on silence mode about it, closing tickets, and still haven't fixed the issue, these facts clearly show that it was a deliberate move.
Luckily the solution you can find on that linked thread is good, so with some extra work we still can log in to TSW - until August, at least.
Due to moves like this caused me to laugh a bit when they got their first duping in their preccious Legend yesterday, was not a nice thing I admit, but felt so good to watch the trainwreck in slow motion Well, that happens, FC, when you move out of your f2p comfort zone (of AO and AoC), and bring in methods from SK grinders, their problems will come with it as well. It was a nice lesson I hope.
Also due to moves like that patcher issue, and similar other punches against the community made me sent a F U to Scott after his letter yesterday, with the line "The TSW community is pretty amazing, and I’m sure they will be just as helpful in SWL!" Yeah, the TSW community WAS pretty amazing, until you fucked them from behind, lied to their faces for a year, and then killed their game from under them. And now you want them to help to your new mouthbreather audience in your dumbed down TSW-wannabe clone? F U, Scott.
Yeah, the TSW community WAS pretty amazing, until you fucked them from behind, lied to their faces for a year, and then killed their game from under them. And now you want them to help to your new mouthbreather audience in your dumbed down TSW-wannabe clone? F U, Scott.
I think you totally nailed the audience for this "new" game.
Funny thing is, a couple friends who already linked say that a lot of veterans are in Legends atm - not sure though how long will they stay, but many said during the previous months that they will link the account (especially the GMs) and check it but won't stay long.
Personally I haven't linked yet since I'm planning to "hand over" ( ) my GM to a buddy and I can't do it safely until they launch on steamy gabe's platform. Checked a stream of the beginning though, and the edited / cutted intro is pretty much a clusterfuck, story-wise, I don't know how much will a new player understand from it.
I wanted to like this game and even played it at launch but the optimization of this game isn't very good constant fps stuttering and fps spikes down into the low 40s. my overall enjoyment started to diminish from the well designed quests and theme of the game. The new combat overhaul seems to be better. I guess im just accustomed to ff14 and how flawless that game runs, just goes to show you how far the industry can go in just a couple of years. It wasn't as bad back then because i was gaming at 60 fps.
I wanted to like this game and even played it at launch but the optimization of this game isn't very good constant fps stuttering and fps spikes down into the low 40s. my overall enjoyment started to diminish from the well designed quests and theme of the game. The new combat overhaul seems to be better. I guess im just accustomed to ff14 and how flawless that game runs, just goes to show you how far the industry can go in just a couple of years. It wasn't as bad back then because i was gaming at 60 fps.
As you may have noticed the servers have been down for most of today. I apologize for the extended downtime. Early today we discovered an error that caused the Exchange to break which made quite an impact on the game. When you log in you will find that your character’s Aurum has been reverted to the amount it was at before this occurred. Any valid purchase of Aurum made after this point will also be applied. Marks of Favour / Cache Keys will be also be reset for some players that used the Exchange after it was broken. We have also banned a large number of players that took advantage of the broken Exchange. The Auction House and the Exchange are temporarily disabled to give us more time to test the fixes to them. We hope to have both features back and working very soon!
Yeah... they had to.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Hmm maybe I am crazy but to me the combat feels worse.
I havent played TSW in years, but I dont recall combat being this bad.
Oh well - I think the original was better with classless system. This feels just too on rails now - not for me.
Nope, not crazy. I agree, it's worse. People before used to call it 'spammy, clicking 1, 1, 1, 2", etc... and for me it never was that way at all, *because* choosing and combining skills to create effective combos was so much part of the game, if you were only pressing one or two keys the whole time, you were not using the system to its fullest.
This time? Nope. Just spammy with a linear, pre-determined set of skills for you to "unlock". No more unique builds or room to experiment. Now you play exactly the way the devs want you to, having only the skills they've chosen for you, locked to the few classes they've decided you can play as. It's about as anti-TSW as you can get.
I went in with an open mind, gave it an honest shot and *really* wanted to enjoy it - especially as my Cabal from TSW just about all moved over there, and they're awesome folks. But, nope... It's just fallen flat for me.
Another unique MMO falls victim to the rot of "better accessibility!".
Overall I like the changes, but I don't like the idea of preset classes myself. I ended up having to reroll my first character after not enjoying the skills it forced me into. The tempo of combat is faster and more fun than the old system. I have no idea if the game will hold my attention past a few weeks or not yet.
I think it's an odd way to present classes too since you can unlock any weapon combo you want. I think a combination of the old way where players could try the weapons and the new way of suggesting viable prebuilt loadouts would be better and less confusing.
If they genuinely felt there were too many "filler" skills in there, they could have just reduced the skills, and re-arranged/re-configured the Ability Wheel, and maybe adjusted the Skill Lines (though I think they were fine as they were). It could have been one ring of skills instead of two, or just reduced to 2 major categories per weapon type, rather than 3... or whatever.
They could have kept the old, open system with pre-designed "Decks" for players to choose from, if they wanted a more guided experience, maybe built on the concept.
This way, people who wanted some guidance on how to build an effective character could do that. Those who preferred to experiment and come up with their own combinations could do that. Both could be happy. But nope.
There was absolutely no reason for them to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and completely recreate the entire system.
They took one of the core things that really made TSW stand out, and gutted it. Shame.
Hmm..I'm torn and split in liking this...!! I liked the original game, and I Always felt sad that funcom was trolled by idiots who obviously woudn't be playing the classic game, the angry horde destroyd Another wonderful Funcom Product.
1 To me the "original" game didnt have "poor" combat, and honestly I do NOT see much diffrence , well I see diffrences , but are they really much diffrent ? I ALWAYS felt super annoyed that people kept complaining about this, and still is..They also kept complaing about poor animations, but they seem unchanged as far as i can tell..and the skill Wheel, well I'm guessing that could be confusing ofcourse, but also nice that you could choose/alter to be whatever you liked.
2 They made the game easier and more handholdy , I seriously do NOT like that. The game was never hard, aspecially not the Kingsmouth area.
So...Will I be playing the same game again ..on easy mode ? Well..I started it atleast, but I doubt It can hold my interesst.
So...Will I be playing the same game again ..on easy mode ? Well..I started it atleast, but I doubt It can hold my interesst.
That's exactly what you'll be playing.
I mean, they had a skill wheel that allowed you to expand out in any direction, pick and choose skills to build exactly whatever kind of build you could think up within the system, and have at it... If it didn't work out... no problem, you could go back and tweak or adjust it 'til it did. They reduced it to what amounts to a typical, linear, cookie-cutter themepark "3 skill lines per weapon, tied to pre-defined classes, with pre-chosen skills to unlock and select from".
The combat in terms of action/feel is very similar to TSW's, maybe animations are a bit 'nicer', but that's it. The only thing that's different is now you're using L and R mouse buttons, Q and numbers to use actions... with Tab defined as a quick-use slot and C as a gadget slot. So the reason it feels any different is because you're having to re-train your muscle memory. Another change that wasn't necessary.
My brother has gotten really into FF14 and bought it for me for my birthday. After playing for several hours and "breaking rocks" I decided to jump on MMORPG to see what the heck i'm not seeing. I come upon this article and I have a lot of respect for Bill's reviews, and I couldn't believe that the Secret World could revamp so well that it would take away from the hype of the FF train.
I went from breaking rocks and dodging sheep in Final Fantasy to killing zombies, battling cthullu minions and breaking skulls. I couldn't be happier about reading an article.
Maybe I'm just tired of the MMORPG genre, maybe I was never a fan. I loved guild wars 1, and secret world has that setup where I'm not pigeon held to doing someone's errands , I'm immediately into an immersive important story.
I was never a fan that someone MMO became a genre of the same exact game, breeding elitests who seem to want the same game with a new coat of paint every year.
When I first played Secret World I found that there was a lot of useless options with fairly boring combat. It just didn't work for the genre. With killer monsters and deaht around the corner, a faster combat system and actual levels work great.
Another great thing is the cooperative play. My wife joined me on my FF14 journey, and we were miffed that people said we couldn't do quests together until level 15.... and that was a big maybe. For a game with multiplayer in the title, it certainlly wasn't really emphasing that part.
In Secret World we jumped right in, teamed together and even completed quests working together. There was no, you get yours and i get mine. We were in the same party, we got the same credit and rewards and faced the s ame dangers. Even if one of us palys at differnet times, we're able to immediately see what part of a quest the other is on to catch up.
The quest limitation allows you to concentrate on teh story and what you have to do in a quest. That's important to this game, because its not always your typical mmo hit this 10 times, so many quests you can't just zone out on. You have to read and follow instructiosn and think outside the box.
Again, in FF14 I played for 10 hours and broke rocks... and picked up refuse.
This link doesn't say anythinga bout not being able to play dungeons with friends, again, see my post, i think its the best experience to play .. and again play in a dungeon. If carrots are the problem that's something i'm sure they willa djust as a beta bug, but the sheer variety of this game doesn't really need a carrot. Of course, i'm glad this game does market to a gamer who likes massive multiplayer experiences without the outdated tropes. I guess I'm just glad i'm not breaking rocks.
From my experience, it's a net positive. Everything seems to flow faster and better, combat-wise. It seems alot easier to know what you're getting from passives than in TSW.
On the negative side, the "you have to buy all the skills through the whole line to get to one you really want" aspect is still there. And like before, many of those are skills you'll never end up using. But points come quickly enough that it's not a huge issue.
As a welcome side effect, the reticle targeting makes clicking on "use" items much smoother, as well. It used to get frustrating trying to click on an object to use/take it, particularly thin, small items. Or worse, cases like Moose's shopping list, which was mostly embedded into the table. Now you just reticle the general area and press F.
The weapon upgrade system is very welcome, in my view. It helps eliminate the "inventory minigame" that seems to be an MMO staple, these days.
Finally... character creation is a wash. They went what seems like the easier route and eliminated much of the customization. While this has made it easier to avoid making a character who's experiencing stage 1 meth addiction(my usual TSW result), the presets aren't particularly attractive, either.
Anyhoo... I've said before, if they fixed combat, I'd be back. And they pretty much did that. So I'm back, for the moment.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was simplified in anticipation for consoles release one day. The Park, was a dry run and let them know what changes were needed, now they get to continue testing the new build on pc.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I wouldn't be surprised if it was simplified in anticipation for consoles release one day. The Park, was a dry run and let them know what changes were needed, now they get to continue testing the new build on pc.
I agree with this, I can't wait for the steam release as right now i'm using a controller to play it using Pinnacle. This process makes me much happier than every game copying the wow formula to make money. Now games are being made to be more console assessille. I think this type of game design has and will motivate more innovation in the genre. We can thank Destiny for it. </BR></BR> I know this is not going to fly well with the MMO elitists who believe that if you aren't using 20 buttons to perform 5 more hit points of damage, you're not playing an MMO, and thus throw around words like "easy", "simple" or "casual".
This is one of those games that looks good at first and then after spending time and money, you learn that the game mechanics are dogshit. The thing that really pissed me off about this game is when I killed monsters then checked my inventory or character menu the fuckers spawned right back and started attacking me. D O G S H I T !!!!! I'm gonna throw caution to the wind and give it one more try since I already blew money on 1 copy of this piece of crap.
This is one of those games that looks good at first and then after spending time and money, you learn that the game mechanics are dogshit. The thing that really pissed me off about this game is when I killed monsters then checked my inventory or character menu the fuckers spawned right back and started attacking me. D O G S H I T !!!!! I'm gonna throw caution to the wind and give it one more try since I already blew money on 1 copy of this piece of crap.
I remember those days. The Ak'ahb(?) in the treehouse area were especially obnoxious with their constantly spamming charge moves. I haven't gone that far in SWL to see what they're like now, but they cut monster pop and respawn in many areas of TSW a couple years back.
This is one of those games that looks good at first and then after spending time and money, you learn that the game mechanics are dogshit. The thing that really pissed me off about this game is when I killed monsters then checked my inventory or character menu the fuckers spawned right back and started attacking me. D O G S H I T !!!!! I'm gonna throw caution to the wind and give it one more try since I already blew money on 1 copy of this piece of crap.
I remember those days. The Ak'ahb(?) in the treehouse area were especially obnoxious with their constantly spamming charge moves. I haven't gone that far in SWL to see what they're like now, but they cut monster pop and respawn in many areas of TSW a couple years back.
There was one zone. It was a forest and I had to laugh when the loading screen had a hint to try kiting mobs. The mobs were so tightly packed in the area there was no room to kite. Add to that a fast respawn rate.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
This is one of those games that looks good at first and then after spending time and money, you learn that the game mechanics are dogshit. The thing that really pissed me off about this game is when I killed monsters then checked my inventory or character menu the fuckers spawned right back and started attacking me. D O G S H I T !!!!! I'm gonna throw caution to the wind and give it one more try since I already blew money on 1 copy of this piece of crap.
I remember those days. The Ak'ahb(?) in the treehouse area were especially obnoxious with their constantly spamming charge moves. I haven't gone that far in SWL to see what they're like now, but they cut monster pop and respawn in many areas of TSW a couple years back.
There was one zone. It was a forest and I had to laugh when the loading screen had a hint to try kiting mobs. The mobs were so tightly packed in the area there was no room to kite. Add to that a fast respawn rate.
That was the one, I think, though mobs were thick everywhere. I remember the Ak'ahb(giant moth-like critters) would spawn out of nowhere and you'd pick up a couple more just trying to get some distance, and the "effect zone" for all 3-4 using their stupid "charge" ability at once would paint a big * on the ground where you were standing. Add to it all that TTK was about 30-ish seconds back then, and they would literally chase you from one end of the map to the other...
The changes are good, the old tree was 70% filler talents that nobody who knew what they were doing used.
Terrible generalization, very close-minded and typically only believed by people engaging in confirmation bias and self-validation, wanting to prove (at least to themselves) that the way they play is the right and correct way ...and anyone who does differently is doing it wrong. It's an incredibly ego-driven mentality that is often demonstrated by people who don't really know as much as they pretend to, becuase they're just following the same cookie-cutter templates everyone else is.
I saw this mentality all the time in FFXI. Some new build would come along, and be deemed "THE One And Only Correct Way To Play", with anything else deemed inferior and useless. Then some rare person whom didn't just follow the cookie-cutter builds, but actually experimented and tried different things, all while being told they were doing it wrong and needed to "learn to play". They'd end up finding a new setup that worked even better. Word got around, and suddenly that became "THE One And Only Correct Way To Play", with anything else deemed inferior and useless. Then someone whom didn't just follow cookie-cutter builds, but experimented.... and you get the idea. I saw this happen over and over again over my years playing that MMO.
And people never learned. They never saw the pattern. They never stopped and thought "You know... we keep finding better builds... maybe the one we're using now *isn't* the ONE build to end all builds. Maybe I should try experimenting and see if I can't find something even better..."
It was no different in TSW.
Many gamers have this amazing conceit that when they find something that works better than anything else they've tried, their immediate belief is "there can't be any better. This is it". They then dogmatically preach that everyone else must follow that same build, or they're doing it wrong. Anyone who dares to try something different is told they don't know how to play.... 'til they find something that works, and prove they do.
Ironically, it's almost aways the people who like to tell others how they're supposed to play who know the least about how things actually work. The people who experiment, and are told "they're doing it wrong", are the ones who actually know what they're doing, because they're actually doing hands-on experimentation and trying things.. not just dismissing them outright, because "so and so's cookie-cutter template Number 13934 says to do it differently".
TSW's skills opened up a variety of different options people could try. Many were good bridge skills for people to use until they were able to unlock better/final skills for a certain build. Some people like to experiment with different things. Some people like to find the most improbable-sounding builds and see if they can make them work. Some people simply find their own style that doesn't fall in line with "what everyone else says you should do".
There's a reason why there were so many different skill builds you could link and import through the viper addon. They were builds people had worked on, tried out, and found to be useful, whether in early game, mid-game, or end-game.. in PvP, PvE, normal dungeons, NM dungeons, etc. There's a variety of builds that could do the job just as well, and they didn't all use the same "30%" of the skill wheel.
Comments
A very shady and below-the-belt move from FC, and even if Legends fanatics rushed in right away with yelling "surely an accident, or mistake", the facts that FC still on silence mode about it, closing tickets, and still haven't fixed the issue, these facts clearly show that it was a deliberate move.
Luckily the solution you can find on that linked thread is good, so with some extra work we still can log in to TSW - until August, at least.
Due to moves like this caused me to laugh a bit when they got their first duping in their preccious Legend yesterday, was not a nice thing I admit, but felt so good to watch the trainwreck in slow motion
Also due to moves like that patcher issue, and similar other punches against the community made me sent a F U to Scott after his letter yesterday, with the line "The TSW community is pretty amazing, and I’m sure they will be just as helpful in SWL!"
Yeah, the TSW community WAS pretty amazing, until you fucked them from behind, lied to their faces for a year, and then killed their game from under them. And now you want them to help to your new mouthbreather audience in your dumbed down TSW-wannabe clone? F U, Scott.
~~ postlarval ~~
Personally I haven't linked yet since I'm planning to "hand over" (
This little utility worked wonders for me..
The Auction House and the Exchange are temporarily disabled to give us more time to test the fixes to them. We hope to have both features back and working very soon!
Yeah... they had to.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
This time? Nope. Just spammy with a linear, pre-determined set of skills for you to "unlock". No more unique builds or room to experiment. Now you play exactly the way the devs want you to, having only the skills they've chosen for you, locked to the few classes they've decided you can play as. It's about as anti-TSW as you can get.
I went in with an open mind, gave it an honest shot and *really* wanted to enjoy it - especially as my Cabal from TSW just about all moved over there, and they're awesome folks. But, nope... It's just fallen flat for me.
Another unique MMO falls victim to the rot of "better accessibility!".
They could have kept the old, open system with pre-designed "Decks" for players to choose from, if they wanted a more guided experience, maybe built on the concept.
This way, people who wanted some guidance on how to build an effective character could do that. Those who preferred to experiment and come up with their own combinations could do that. Both could be happy. But nope.
There was absolutely no reason for them to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and completely recreate the entire system.
They took one of the core things that really made TSW stand out, and gutted it. Shame.
1 To me the "original" game didnt have "poor" combat, and honestly I do NOT see much diffrence , well I see diffrences , but are they really much diffrent ? I ALWAYS felt super annoyed that people kept complaining about this, and still is..They also kept complaing about poor animations, but they seem unchanged as far as i can tell..and the skill Wheel, well I'm guessing that could be confusing ofcourse, but also nice that you could choose/alter to be whatever you liked.
2 They made the game easier and more handholdy , I seriously do NOT like that. The game was never hard, aspecially not the Kingsmouth area.
So...Will I be playing the same game again ..on easy mode ? Well..I started it atleast, but I doubt It can hold my interesst.
I mean, they had a skill wheel that allowed you to expand out in any direction, pick and choose skills to build exactly whatever kind of build you could think up within the system, and have at it... If it didn't work out... no problem, you could go back and tweak or adjust it 'til it did. They reduced it to what amounts to a typical, linear, cookie-cutter themepark "3 skill lines per weapon, tied to pre-defined classes, with pre-chosen skills to unlock and select from".
The combat in terms of action/feel is very similar to TSW's, maybe animations are a bit 'nicer', but that's it. The only thing that's different is now you're using L and R mouse buttons, Q and numbers to use actions... with Tab defined as a quick-use slot and C as a gadget slot. So the reason it feels any different is because you're having to re-train your muscle memory. Another change that wasn't necessary.
I went from breaking rocks and dodging sheep in Final Fantasy to killing zombies, battling cthullu minions and breaking skulls. I couldn't be happier about reading an article.
Maybe I'm just tired of the MMORPG genre, maybe I was never a fan. I loved guild wars 1, and secret world has that setup where I'm not pigeon held to doing someone's errands , I'm immediately into an immersive important story.
I was never a fan that someone MMO became a genre of the same exact game, breeding elitests who seem to want the same game with a new coat of paint every year.
When I first played Secret World I found that there was a lot of useless options with fairly boring combat. It just didn't work for the genre. With killer monsters and deaht around the corner, a faster combat system and actual levels work great.
Another great thing is the cooperative play. My wife joined me on my FF14 journey, and we were miffed that people said we couldn't do quests together until level 15.... and that was a big maybe. For a game with multiplayer in the title, it certainlly wasn't really emphasing that part.
In Secret World we jumped right in, teamed together and even completed quests working together. There was no, you get yours and i get mine. We were in the same party, we got the same credit and rewards and faced the s ame dangers. Even if one of us palys at differnet times, we're able to immediately see what part of a quest the other is on to catch up.
The quest limitation allows you to concentrate on teh story and what you have to do in a quest. That's important to this game, because its not always your typical mmo hit this 10 times, so many quests you can't just zone out on. You have to read and follow instructiosn and think outside the box.
Again, in FF14 I played for 10 hours and broke rocks... and picked up refuse.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SecretWorldLegends/comments/6jf1i5/dungeon_rewards_need_a_rework_asap/
I uninstalled
On the negative side, the "you have to buy all the skills through the whole line to get to one you really want" aspect is still there. And like before, many of those are skills you'll never end up using. But points come quickly enough that it's not a huge issue.
As a welcome side effect, the reticle targeting makes clicking on "use" items much smoother, as well. It used to get frustrating trying to click on an object to use/take it, particularly thin, small items. Or worse, cases like Moose's shopping list, which was mostly embedded into the table. Now you just reticle the general area and press F.
The weapon upgrade system is very welcome, in my view. It helps eliminate the "inventory minigame" that seems to be an MMO staple, these days.
Finally... character creation is a wash. They went what seems like the easier route and eliminated much of the customization. While this has made it easier to avoid making a character who's experiencing stage 1 meth addiction(my usual TSW result), the presets aren't particularly attractive, either.
Anyhoo... I've said before, if they fixed combat, I'd be back. And they pretty much did that. So I'm back, for the moment.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
</BR></BR>
I know this is not going to fly well with the MMO elitists who believe that if you aren't using 20 buttons to perform 5 more hit points of damage, you're not playing an MMO, and thus throw around words like "easy", "simple" or "casual".
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I saw this mentality all the time in FFXI. Some new build would come along, and be deemed "THE One And Only Correct Way To Play", with anything else deemed inferior and useless. Then some rare person whom didn't just follow the cookie-cutter builds, but actually experimented and tried different things, all while being told they were doing it wrong and needed to "learn to play". They'd end up finding a new setup that worked even better. Word got around, and suddenly that became "THE One And Only Correct Way To Play", with anything else deemed inferior and useless. Then someone whom didn't just follow cookie-cutter builds, but experimented.... and you get the idea. I saw this happen over and over again over my years playing that MMO.
And people never learned. They never saw the pattern. They never stopped and thought "You know... we keep finding better builds... maybe the one we're using now *isn't* the ONE build to end all builds. Maybe I should try experimenting and see if I can't find something even better..."
It was no different in TSW.
Many gamers have this amazing conceit that when they find something that works better than anything else they've tried, their immediate belief is "there can't be any better. This is it". They then dogmatically preach that everyone else must follow that same build, or they're doing it wrong. Anyone who dares to try something different is told they don't know how to play.... 'til they find something that works, and prove they do.
Ironically, it's almost aways the people who like to tell others how they're supposed to play who know the least about how things actually work. The people who experiment, and are told "they're doing it wrong", are the ones who actually know what they're doing, because they're actually doing hands-on experimentation and trying things.. not just dismissing them outright, because "so and so's cookie-cutter template Number 13934 says to do it differently".
TSW's skills opened up a variety of different options people could try. Many were good bridge skills for people to use until they were able to unlock better/final skills for a certain build. Some people like to experiment with different things. Some people like to find the most improbable-sounding builds and see if they can make them work. Some people simply find their own style that doesn't fall in line with "what everyone else says you should do".
There's a reason why there were so many different skill builds you could link and import through the viper addon. They were builds people had worked on, tried out, and found to be useful, whether in early game, mid-game, or end-game.. in PvP, PvE, normal dungeons, NM dungeons, etc. There's a variety of builds that could do the job just as well, and they didn't all use the same "30%" of the skill wheel.