Wolcen Hype Release!

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I expect we'll see cosmetic mtxes before too long. How many of those will sell after such an ungracious release may well make or break the game for real. I'd love to be wrong, but there's very little chance of them being able to go the paid expansion route, and slots for mtxes were already 'removed' from the game in a recent patch.

Wondering where the mtx's were showing, I never noticed. I didn't catch this change at all or notice there was a slot for Mtxs. Do you think they did this because they may be jumping ship or that they may be changing direction? I have the same feeling you do on them not having much money and the little they have left won't be enough to sustain for a long period of time. With the bad launch and bad taste in many peoples mouth it's going to be hard to undo the damage in the future.

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ZACHWILDCAT wrote:

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I expect we'll see cosmetic mtxes before too long. How many of those will sell after such an ungracious release may well make or break the game for real. I'd love to be wrong, but there's very little chance of them being able to go the paid expansion route, and slots for mtxes were already 'removed' from the game in a recent patch.

Wondering where the mtx's were showing, I never noticed. I didn't catch this change at all or notice there was a slot for Mtxs. Do you think they did this because they may be jumping ship or that they may be changing direction? I have the same feeling you do on them not having much money and the little they have left won't be enough to sustain for a long period of time. With the bad launch and bad taste in many peoples mouth it's going to be hard to undo the damage in the future.

They were greyed out but on the far right of the B screen on my admittedly kind of wide monitor. Stuff like cape, pets, weapon effects, footprints.

So I don't think this is because they're jumping ship or changing direction. I think it was always part of the plan. It's interesting because there was an argument once that the reason PoE was online only was because of mtxes, because people like to show them off. Well, that never really happened. We didn't get a big town hub for showing off shinies. We don't even have a forum-based gallery. And yet mtxes sell very well, which indicates that people other than me do buy them purely to enhance their personal experience. Which in turn means Wolcen could very well sell mtxes despite having a relatively robust offline mode. The issue for me is unlike PoE, Wolcen already has a built-in transmog and dye system and armour skins look pretty fucking great, so that need to 'pay to not look like a hobo' is somewhat reduced.

But as with PoE, if buying mtxes means supporting the game and helping ensure it doesn't die, I'll do it. Probably not to the same extent as I did PoE (if only because my stocks are *tanking* right now, as are everyone else's I imagine) but I do think I made off like a bandit getting this game for $20USD.

Review bombing only works for the more famous games and or F2P games where its easy to create new accounts and drop a review. Nobody is purchasing multiple copies of wolcen just to slander it. Maybe some but not enough to be statistically important. Further, it can be clearly seen when the biggest drops happen - on patch days when yet another poor attempt to fix the game (and no attempt to fix the bigger bugs) fails. Finally, from what I see the negative reviews are mostly people who are simply disappointed and wanted more. For example, Game of Thrones Season 8 wasn't review bombed, it was simply that bad.

I'm kinda getting some Kingdoms of Amalur vibes regarding Wolcen's (both the game and the studio) future, if they can't get their shit together in a hurry. A reasonably good game with the potential to be so much better ruined by various kinds and levels of incompetence at the studio. Two weeks after launch, that's not a great feeling to be having already heh.

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aggromagnet wrote:

I'm kinda getting some Kingdoms of Amalur vibes regarding Wolcen's (both the game and the studio) future, if they can't get their shit together in a hurry. A reasonably good game with the potential to be so much better ruined by various kinds and levels of incompetence at the studio. Two weeks after launch, that's not a great feeling to be having already heh.

VERY apt comparison, and I loved that game in the same way I love Wolcen, now you bring it up. Recently bought a ps3 just to replay it, in fact. But good grief was it unfinished. RA Salvatore as the writer was some hefty fantasy star power behind it, but I think they just ran out of steam.

To me the difference would be Wolcen has immediate replayability in the form of a non-story based levelling mode. Amalur had some really cool build ideas but you just weren't going to play through that story every time you wanted to try something new. Also, they abandoned some of the more unrealistic goals of Umbra in time not to be buried by them (open world, rotating camera, customisable Apocalyptic form) whereas Amalur just kept going with the big ideas until it was sort of a hollow shell of something that should have been a lot meatier.

I disagree regarding this feeling two weeks after release. The smoke has yet to settle. The reality that, as with most buy to play indie games, this won't be dramatically fixed or changed in the short term will set in, sort the players from the tourists. And then the long game of bringing things up to speed will begin. IF we are lucky. If not, we're left with a relatively functional ARPG that can be played in its entirety offline and with friends, assuming the servers don't go offline.

I've paid far more for far worse.

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Johny_Snow wrote:

Review bombing only works for the more famous games and or F2P games where its easy to create new accounts and drop a review. Nobody is purchasing multiple copies of wolcen just to slander it. Maybe some but not enough to be statistically important. Further, it can be clearly seen when the biggest drops happen - on patch days when yet another poor attempt to fix the game (and no attempt to fix the bigger bugs) fails. Finally, from what I see the negative reviews are mostly people who are simply disappointed and wanted more. For example, Game of Thrones Season 8 wasn't review bombed, it was simply that bad.

Precisely why people often do it when a video game get released. That is when Sales are most Critical. Great customer reviews can boost sales, bad reviews can hurt them. If you look at the reviews, you'll see the very mixed between very positive score and very negative score.

The estimate is they could have sold between 500,000 - 1,000,000 copies. 34,990 reviews is a small percentage of the sales. Most people don't post reviews. The normal lazy people at least.

1. It is next to impossible for the game to be review bombed by customers on their own. It costs, as of now, 35 dollars. Nobody in their right mind will organize a massive campaign to purchase copies for the sake of dropping a bad review.

2. There is no prominent competition that will benefit from review bombing Wolcen. Blizzard don't care, Diablo 4 is far away. The other ARPG companies are either too small to afford that or don't particularly care like in Grim Dawn's casee, where the game has ran its course.

Which means the only credible source of review bombing would be PoE as the only active ARPG game which is big enough to afford it. Are you accusing GGG of paying for negative reviews?

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aggromagnet wrote:

I'm kinda getting some Kingdoms of Amalur vibes regarding Wolcen's (both the game and the studio) future, if they can't get their shit together in a hurry. A reasonably good game with the potential to be so much better ruined by various kinds and levels of incompetence at the studio. Two weeks after launch, that's not a great feeling to be having already heh.

VERY apt comparison, and I loved that game in the same way I love Wolcen, now you bring it up. Recently bought a ps3 just to replay it, in fact. But good grief was it unfinished. RA Salvatore as the writer was some hefty fantasy star power behind it, but I think they just ran out of steam.

To me the difference would be Wolcen has immediate replayability in the form of a non-story based levelling mode. Amalur had some really cool build ideas but you just weren't going to play through that story every time you wanted to try something new. Also, they abandoned some of the more unrealistic goals of Umbra in time not to be buried by them (open world, rotating camera, customisable Apocalyptic form) whereas Amalur just kept going with the big ideas until it was sort of a hollow shell of something that should have been a lot meatier.

I disagree regarding this feeling two weeks after release. The smoke has yet to settle. The reality that, as with most buy to play indie games, this won't be dramatically fixed or changed in the short term will set in, sort the players from the tourists. And then the long game of bringing things up to speed will begin. IF we are lucky. If not, we're left with a relatively functional ARPG that can be played in its entirety offline and with friends, assuming the servers don't go offline.

I've paid far more for far worse.

Hence the "if they can't get their shit together in a hurry" part. And yeah, we've discussed KoA a bit previously.

But to be fair, Flagship Studios and Hellgate might be a slightly better comparison. KoA was already dead before it even launched, due to the spectacular implosion of Big Huge Games/38 Studios. Even good sales, well over a million, couldn't save it or them.

I loved Hellgate and still play it from time to time (not the bastardized, Korean mishmash though lol). But it launched with more than its fair share of technical problems, gameplay shortcomings, and content limitations. They also had the misfortune of launching a very sci-horror ARPG ahead of its time.

Unlike BHG/38 though, Flaghsip at least had a reasonably lengthy window of opportunity to improve and expand the game--which they did. It was just too little too late before they ran out of money and had to liquidate.

Money has to have already been a big issue for Wolcen to launch in the state it did. And although it saw decent and quite possibly good sales, there were almost certainly a good number of refund requests. Money is likely to be an ongoing concern.

The game has nothing to offer to attract whales and their support.

All the streamers capable of attracting more than a few dozen viewers, thus helping build or maintain interest in the game, have already abandoned the game.

And while the game does have potential for solid replayability, it only takes 2 or 3 expeditions to realize you've already seen just about everything you're going to see for now. And there's minimal incentive for your average player to keep replaying the same 4 or 5 tilesets they already played through the whole campaign, and facing the exact same 2-3 dozen enemy types they already faced through the whole campaign. The difficulty curve is too steep (even steeper now that some of the most broken builds are broken in the opposite direction) and the rewards for sticking with it are few and far between.

Then there's the gameplay. There's really nothing to see that hasn't already been done in other games and mastered by those who developed them. It's fine that they pulled this from D3, that from GW 1/2, some of this from PoE, and so on. That's the way the wheel turns, and it doesn't need to be re-invented. So much of Wolcen, however, just feels like more of a retread than a new replacement.

It's certainly a prettier wheel than all of those others, and prettier (from what has been shown so far) than both the upcoming D4 and PoE "2" as well. But both the beauty and that non-story based levelling are currently quite shallow.

I'm just not sure that time and money are on their side here. They'll be in Grim Dawn territory player-wise very soon, but unlike Grim Dawn that's not likely going to be able to sustain them in the long term. Crate Entertainment had many distinct advantages that Team Wolcen simply doesn't have.

But all that said, I still find myself generally enjoying the game overall. I can see the potential it has if they can manage to flesh it out properly. I'll get my money's worth out of it regardless, however much it was I pledged (that was about 5 years and many other kickstarters/early accesses ago lol).

But I still hope for more... ;)

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Johny_Snow wrote:

1. It is next to impossible for the game to be review bombed by customers on their own. It costs, as of now, 35 dollars. Nobody in their right mind will organize a massive campaign to purchase copies for the sake of dropping a bad review.

The Chinese do it. All. The. Time.

No reason for them to do it to a game like Wolcen, though. Their review bombs are politically motivated more often than not. Just saying they absolutely can and do do it.

I still get some light-hearted scolding by a couple of my in-laws in mainland China if they happen to see me playing "Devotion" on Steam. It's a Taiwanese-made game (and a pretty good one, though "Detention" by the same studio was better IMO) that was review-bombed off of Steam by mainlanders because of a single in-game asset referring to Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh.

They have enough money to do it?