Wolcen Hype Release!

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The_Scourge wrote:

Oh, the irony of a Tencent supporter sermonising on cash-grabs.

ANYWAY.

Deeply enjoying the tactical possibilities of Evasion. Kind of brilliant of them to make it dash in the opposite direction of the cursor. I've taken down much stronger enemies than I could merely facetank just by learning their attack patterns and using a mix of Evasion and the dodge-roll. Satisfying!

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Xavderion wrote:

Pulling off a cool character name is a big part of the fun of naming characters in PoE. Sense of pride and accomplishment™.

Hardly something at which I need to prove myself more than accomplished. :) I like the idea of making a Musashi, a Thor, a Legolas, and maybe even a Geralt!

Tencent invested into Wolcen Studio a few years ago as part of their Games without Border project.
Enough to pay for almost 40 people and multiple major reworks apparently.

GGG had around 30 people when they officialy released POE back in 2013.

So Wolcen Studio is not the small indie dev you (not you personally) think it is, when comparing studio size and funding.

Wolcen Studio long term plans are similar to POE's ones.
Free expansions and mainly cosmetic MTX to pay for maintenance/expansions or bigger feature patches.
Granted they implement game mechanics to entice people to come back every few months/quarters for constant revenue streams.

The honeymoon phase will be over in less than a month and i hope the initial revenue stream will be enough for their planned (have they any?) short term improvements.

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Exile009 wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

You posted the same thing in the other thread.

1. No one is forced to do anything at all, ever. That's absurd. Purchase or dont. If your patience and judgement is swayed by $10, then I'd say it wasnt worth much to begin with.

2. $30 going to $40 isnt a 50% increase. (Price for many months)

3. Many, many games, incentivize early access, beta keys, cosmetics and collectibles, and all kinds of other shit to get people to come and try, and help fund development.

You have this strange tendency to be both libertarian and not at the same time. Of course I'm free not to buy. I'm also free to buy, be disappointed and call them out for it. You're free to respond to that. You're also free to not to. So what? What's the point saying "purchase or dont"? The point is they made it such that early purchases were heavily favored (that better?). I could just turn around and say reply or don't. You're free not to, after all. It's your argument that's absurd. Because it isn't an argument at all. It's just intentionally missing the point.

And Wolcen using the same shitty tactics as other games is also hardly a defense. Did I suggest it was unique? I explicitly explained it as another example of a more pervasive problem. And it's not like Wolcen is being singled out or treated differently. No Man's Sky faced plenty of backlash when it messed up, for example (and there's plenty of other examples). If anything, companies being constantly called out for their bullshit is a good thing. It's you who's seemingly expecting Wolcen to be an exception to that rule.

Still doesnt address your points at all.

You said people were forced to choose. They were not. They made decisions. If it was worth 30 to them, maybe it would be worth 40. If not then they wait. What exactly is your problem here? People wait for sales, discounts, complete editions, all the time. No one was penalized or forced to do anything. That's a ridiculous conclusion (and it wasnt a 50% increase)

And no one is saying Wolcen shouldn't be reviewed or criticized. Cmon. All I was saying is do it fairly, and accurately.

Is the game a mess with mechanics and online server issues? Yes 100%.

Have the Devs crossed the line with unprecedented shady tactics and predatory behavior? Gimme a break.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but your seemingly presented shock and disgust with Wolcen gets nothing but an eyeroll from me. Idk maybe you are just the review-bomb type. If so, go ahead and live your best life.

I wouldn't worry. Gamers don't forget and don't forgive. If those guys want to do something else down the line there will not be such high sales because burn me once etc.

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Johny_Snow wrote:

I wouldn't worry. Gamers don't forget and don't forgive. If those guys want to do something else down the line there will not be such high sales because burn me once etc.

Lol if only that were true. See EA, Activision, Blizzard, etc..

Gamers 100% do this, and D4 for example, will sell at insane levels.

Hah, like these fools are at the same level to have decades old franchises which were good once and ready to be milked. It is one game, first impression. If it is bad you lose future sales.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Spoiler

Chris Wilson...is...well something. I love to play armchair psychologist, but I'm on thin fucking ice forum probation wise, so I will pass for now. I will say that he has "evolved" over the last few years.

Money does generally "things" with people,and if you're able to make a lot of it then it does a lot of "special things" with people :)

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DarthSki44 wrote:

You said people were forced to choose. They were not. They made decisions. If it was worth 30 to them, maybe it would be worth 40. If not then they wait. What exactly is your problem here? People wait for sales, discounts, complete editions, all the time. No one was penalized or forced to do anything. That's a ridiculous conclusion (and it wasnt a 50% increase)

And no one is saying Wolcen shouldn't be reviewed or criticized. Cmon. All I was saying is do it fairly, and accurately.

Is the game a mess with mechanics and online server issues? Yes 100%.

Have the Devs crossed the line with unprecedented shady tactics and predatory behavior? Gimme a break.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but your seemingly presented shock and disgust with Wolcen gets nothing but an eyeroll from me. Idk maybe you are just the review-bomb type. If so, go ahead and live your best life.

Now you're just being disingenuous. They were forced to choose. Calling it 'making decisions' is just being evasive. The choice wasn't between $30 or $40, they already knew that. It was between paying up early for a gamble or being penalized for being sensible. My problem is with gamers being taken for a ride by being encouraged to buy into a broken product before they could know it was broken.

And bringing up other kinds of sales and discounts is just false equivalency - non-launch discounts and sales involve a known quantity i.e. you know what you're buying into, there are already reviews, etc. Here the devs deliberately tried to use the lower price to push an unknown quantity. People were being actively encouraged NOT to wait for the best time (in terms of both price AND quality), but to cash in - the opposite of the phenomenon you're talking about.

And what makes you say the game is being unfairly or inaccurately criticized? The people are pointing out actual bugs, exploits, crashes, etc. etc. And if you're bugged by all the people who're doing nothing but pouring scorn on the game, where were you when this forum was inundated with people doing nothing but singing high praises to it? Some people post balanced reviews, others overly positive and others overly negative. The latter two are opposites, yet you're only taking issue with the negativity, not the hype.

As for me being the 'review-bomb' type, lol. Should I accuse you of being the slavish consumerist type ala your average FIFA gamer? Look at the heading of this thread. It's not about review-bombing, it's about responding to a pervasive malaise that arose on this forum as well. And that malaise is as much with gamers nowadays as with publishers. I've already written that I don't mind Wolcen sorting its own problems out eventually, indeed I wish them luck with that. But I am going to call out threads like this for being part of that malaise that gives us products like this to begin with. Wolcen isn't even the problem here (i.e. on the PoE forums), the existence of pre-release hype threads like this one is.

^ I guess no point in dwelling on it further. We will just agree to disagree.

I didn't & dont feel forced or pressured or otherwise disenfranchised by Wolcen. I dont feel victimised by predatory salesmenship.

When I mention accuracy and fairness of the mechanics, I mean that perception is a problem. If the game allows you to stack block chance and block efficeny to 100% through gear, gems, and passives, that is an error in balance, not an exploit. If a skill modifier node provides damage per aliment, but the game doesnt cap the stacking, that is a mechanic balance issue, not an exploit. Hell even the tyranny node, with an obvious typo giving you up to 2000% damage, is doing what it says. It's not an exploit. It's way out of balance. (Like Minion builds in PoE. Not balanced, but certainly not an exploit)

Duping gold & items, crashes, disconnects, player & stash deletion, progression errors, etc...are highly problematic and deserve all the scrutiny in the world.

As far as your personal crusade to call out whatever practice and behavior you deem questionable, well good luck. I'm not sure what it accomplishes, maybe you feel good? A majority of people I suspect, just say meh, and move on. But you do you.

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Tsokushin wrote:

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The_Scourge wrote:

Oh, the irony of a Tencent supporter sermonising on cash-grabs.

ANYWAY.

Deeply enjoying the tactical possibilities of Evasion. Kind of brilliant of them to make it dash in the opposite direction of the cursor. I've taken down much stronger enemies than I could merely facetank just by learning their attack patterns and using a mix of Evasion and the dodge-roll. Satisfying!

I'm chiming in here after playing about 60 hours of Wolcen.

If you are indeed Charan, I remember your post from way back that spoke along the lines of PoE failing in combat because it doesn't really scratch that itch in a one vs many type combat. I may be misremembering some details of the post, but I do remember walking away with that type of understanding of it, how combat feels against many targets in PoE compared to Wolcen.

And I can say that after Wolcen, I completely understand and agree with you 100%. Combat is just amazing in this game. The absolute highlight of the game for me. I myself am an Anvil of Woe man. It's very interesting coming up with your own impromptu combos like taking Pugilistic Momentum for the stun on basics, Intravenous Neural Cord for attack speed, and the Charge talent on Anvil of Woe.

The second highlight of the game though has got to be the game structure itself and the capacity for offline play. It's a liberating feeling when I can boot it up, and not have to worry about a single thing like busted mechanics, currency/hr, if I'm going to lose a character to a stutter on a $1600 machine or ping, or the RNG^RNG^RNG based loot/progression involved. I just can't stand the RNG treadmill for PoE, I think one of my first posts on this account was about the 6L system.

I'll split my post because I doubt everyone will agree with my next points.

And this is why I uninstalled PoE the day Wolcen came out. That and for some reason it kept crashing or disconnecting every second or third time I zoned. Because everything I wanted from PoE, Wolcen does. Everything I wanted from D3, Wolcen does. Does it do them better than either? No, and in some cases it does them worse, but it's sort of like a meal with just two of your favourite dishes done well versus two meals with just one of your favourite dishes done really well, but that one wedged between courses you can't stand. Ha, now you know it's me, because I just can't resist a food analogy when it comes to ARPGs. And yeah, the supremacy of aoe/ranged over single target/melee? Not even a thing in Wolcen, given every attack and skill has some form of logical, appropriate AoE. If anything, the opposite is the case, because the vast bulk of clearing mandates/expeditions is focussing down very durable big bads while managing adds. Several of my builds have come undone due to insufficient single target burst. Go figure!

The big shame of Wolcen right now is the meaty game play, the real 'gotta keep going' mode, is locked behind a clunky, unbalanced and in some cases outright broken story mode. As I noted earlier, I personally enjoyed the experience but I was one of the lucky ones -- few crashes, and no walls other than the difficulty jump of Chapter 2's boss. I had to help a friend of mine *edit his character's file* just to get past the last boss of Chapter 3. We neither of us like cheating, but when said boss goes invulnerable due to a bug, well...that's that, really. Awful thing is you can only do that offline, so we can't even play together yet. Which sucks because we're both local and that Australian server is awesome ping. Better even than PoE's.

And that meaty game play, Champion of Stormfall, is as difficult (and diverse) as Maps, if not harder, *from level 1*. I like to mule down a bunch of enneracts to give a new character a bit of a boost (and access to the more interesting forms of their chosen skill) but this is hardly potent tweaking. Especially for casting, which tapers off as you level due to poor scaling right now.

Anyway, glad you're enjoying! So much fun. And I agree about exiles. Reluctantly. This past week has been a real eye-opener.

edit: just so you know what passives not to touch right now, in case you have avoided the reddit (and who'd blame you?):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Wolcen/comments/f5plgd/can_we_make_a_list_of_broken_skillspassives/

Most of them are either carry-overs from beta or rushed-out-the-door third wheel game-changers. I don't think it's large enough a list to declare the game 'broken', but it's definitely going to keep Wolcen Studio busy for the coming months, given they're looking at one patch a week right now.



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86,992 right now. That's a lot of people not refunding so far. Maybe they gave up and just decided to enjoy the game they were stuck with. Heh!

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I never did check the character slot limit online during beta, but right now it's 6. That's really disappointing. I smell mtxes...and before you get all uppity, Wolcen would hardly be the first buy-to-play with character slot mtxes. Even the sacred, untouchable Guild Wars 1, without which you wouldn't have some of PoE's biggest innovations as an ARPG, had them.

I defended GGG for years for their utterly terrible desync issues, so I can't shit too much on Wolcen. It would be hypocritical. But I'm definitely waiting for a couple of patches until I dive deep into the game. Probably until I get bored with PoE 3.10, so around 6-7 weeks from now. Godspeed devs.