Funcom hints at Secret World death penalty, sabotage missions

All is very hush hush around Funcom's The Secret World. While a good bit of new info surfaced at last month's GDC, there are still more questions than answers regarding the firm's followup to Age of Conan.

That said, occasionally the devs will dangle a tasty morsel, and in a new interview at Game Snafu, Funcom designer Martin Bruusgaard does just that with regard to TSW's death penalty mechanics. "We will not implement a death system that can be exploited as a fast travel system, because dying in The Secret World should be a sign of failure, and not optimization in any way. We don't want to punish the players in a form where they can lose stuff, neither items nor experience, but rather penalize on time," he explains.

Designer Joel Bylos also chimes in with some interesting bits about the game's questing mechanics, chief among them a hint about new sabotage missions. "These missions share a similar gameplay style to the original Deus Ex game -- avoiding security cameras, disabling traps and hacking computers, etc. Generally the traps are dynamic only in the sense that players can disable/enable them in the world. This becomes interesting when other players can accidentally trigger an alarm in the camp you are sneaking through," Bylos says. Check out the full interview at Game Snafu.