Wolcen Hype Release!
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Ugh, what dire days that I agree with Mr Snow. League content doesn't integrate well with the core levelling experience at all. It can be abused to break the innate difficulty scaling; it can be too difficult for the majority of builds. It's absolutely torture in SSF early on if you don't go the known meta routes.
Boem: I thought about not answering you, because all I can think is, you're not asking me because you don't know the answer. You're asking because you do but you haven't thought it through to get there. I find this inability to get there fairly common in entrenched Exiles who hit these walls erected by years of PoE. The irony is PoE was originally about thinking creatively around corners, innovating and defying convention. Now though? It's so caught up in its own convoluted solutions to convention that it's created new conventions, as rigid and restricting as any it had to overcome. Think of it like Daedalus, Theseus, and the string in the labyrinth. GGG as Daedalus; ARPG design issues as the labyrinth; GGG's obvious meta-feeding is the string. The players are collectively Theseus. The string provides the solution to getting through Daedalus' labyrinth, but it's still twisting and turning around the corners. Fine for that labyrinth, but outside that it's a mess. PoE created a new concept of a straight line through its own labyrinth, and that string became sacred. The concept of the labyrinth became immutable. The two are, for those who keep diving into the labyrinth, inextricable. Even when the labyrinth shifts and the string bends to match it, it's still the same string bending around different corners. The relationship does not change. League to league, people are doing pretty much the same thing, ad nauseum. So when someone comes along talking about actual straight lines, simplified pathing, or outright ignoring the string to just enjoy a labyrinth for its original purpose (to get lost), it might as well be a foreign language to someone who can't conceive of the labyrinth without the string to guide them. Indeed, they scorn those who try to find their own way, because it takes longer, because it's not optimal...without grasping that getting through the labyrinth is only a race because GGG, who first designed the labyrinth but then placed the string, told them it was a race. Because GGG did not trust you to find your own way to enjoy their labyrinth. A question for a question, then: tell me if you think the endgame of PoE the centre of the labyrinth or the exit, and why. Your response to this may well determine whether or not I will answer your original question directly (assuming you can't see that I already have). Because it will tell me whether or not you're able to get there by yourself, when you ask, 'why is not having a fat-free, streamlined levelling method from zero a criticism in a genre designed to be replayed?' I cannot answer that to someone who can't see that there are other ways of designing a perfectly fine labyrinth than GGG's, and other ways of negotiating it than Theseus'. https://linktr.ee/wjameschan -- everything I've ever done worth talking about, and even that is debatable.
Huh. My mace dude is now an actual cultist of Chayula. That's kinda wild. |
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^I'd say the endgame of PoE is the center of the labyrinth because you can still go back and leave or get lost and find the exit.
The meta designs in PoE are quite obvious. Even if there were some not obvious enough since there is youtube, forums, reddit, discord, etc, people would copy the most successful in days. We all type "PoE" in google search bar really often to supply the 3rd party websites/tools needs. Don't you think exiles aren't smart enough to also google the straight path through the lab too? GGG are aware the exile's hive mind can't restraint itself from googling the "ez" way to the endgame so there must be ways to make it "not ez" which can't be bypassed by google. That's when grinding and economy comes into place. Now you know what's broken, but do you have enough cash in your pocket to afford it? Can you play longer enough to acquire the money and grind all the RNG mechanics? The more people that want to play with head hunter the higher the price so rarity remains a selection mechanism which also feeds the trading speculators and gold farming bots. You play SSF? Welp, the game isn't designed just for you. About theory crafting well, game is old enough for people to have figured out most the mechanics, the presence of exiles which have read the same book for 3000+ hours makes the theory stale. That's why i mostly play standard (aka STD) because u can circle through the labyrinth without worrying to much about the existence of a single straight path. Specially because the legacy designs allow for multiple ways to navigate the mace (multiple strings?) which can feel like truly reading a good old book but feel like it's brand new. Sometimes you even rescue rotting items from your stash and discover that string still there. Also you don't have to play the tutorial every 3 months :P "In this game you're just a cow being milked, not a human being entertained" - Kiss_Me_Quick
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Its worth nothing that every other ARPG (well, at least the ones that I know of, I think there was a Korean ARPG?) except for maybe Torchlight 2 (can be rectified with mods) have ways to bypass leveling through the campaign. PoE seems to be the only popular ARPG which sticks to this archaic concept where you need to go through the acts every 3 month. On every new character you make.
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Does GDawn? Every time I try to play it I get chronically bored and distracted somewhere around what I presume is act 3. Even with a bunch of mods.
https://linktr.ee/wjameschan -- everything I've ever done worth talking about, and even that is debatable.
Huh. My mace dude is now an actual cultist of Chayula. That's kinda wild. |
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" It's hard to take your argument seriously exactly because of the thing you pointed out. PoE is seven years into live development and wolcen is a month in. And you have to be willfully ignorant at this point to not already realize that wolcen has a formed meta a month in. As for the centre, middle it all depends which kind of exile/wolcen player you are and where you find yourself on the game-knowledge spectrum or community engagement angle. It should be fairly simple for people to realize that the upcomming passive jewels are not so much about adding build diversity but a ploy to deprive power of the community to communicate succesfull builds to one another. This is relevant because it was the adoption of things like PoB that created the fast paced meta changes since they could be communicated so easily and quickly between its members. I remember posts from you praising the story line in PoE, the passive tree ingenuity and its gem system. I see absolutely no difference with your "praise" posts about wolcen a month into its release. Your critique's seem perfectly fine in about seven years time and then comparing wolcen with todays PoE, because at least the discrepancy of time would be accounted for. Since you don't seem to compare PoE at release with wolcen at release but use this untenable standard of comparing one game seven years into development and the other a month in having the benefit of the formers public display of tactics to deal with certain issue's. My glasses simply aren't as rose colored as yours, for better or for worse i think wolcen is fine but lacks the assets that makes these genres great on replay-ability and i would take PoE's "forced story" content any day of the week since it results in a far broader and more diverse "end-game". I also think the story content in PoE is actually very great for racers and speedrunners etc, without it we would have a whole community that is active now and enjoying themselves simply gone. I tend to not be jaded by stuff like this because i recognize others find happiness in them and that in itself makes me quite happy as a part of the community. All of this to say, no you don't need to be entrenched in PoE to find the current flaws in wolcen obvious and far outweigh it's gift of not having to do a story mode. I would take a forced story mode if it enabled a more diverse endgame because just like in PoE it ends up being the majority of your play-time. Peace, -Boem- Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes
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Grim Dawn has a "born in ultimate" feature where after you first complete ultimate difficulty on a character you can buy a stone or whatever for like half a million gold from an npc and use it on a new char and you get all the passive points from the normal and elite quests and have ultimate difficulty unlocked. It was added not long ago though. Jumping to ultimate with a level 1 char also not a good idea there.
"In this game you're just a cow being milked, not a human being entertained" - Kiss_Me_Quick
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In Grim Dawn you can level up in the crucible.
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From what I can see, The Crucible is paid DLC and not built-in, but so is Adventure Mode (being a feature of Reaper of Souls). So I'd argue Wolcen might actually be unique as an ARPG that has a consistent, story-independent levelling method accessible from level 1 built into its release.
Boem: Alright, I see I don't have to answer -- you got there! Thanks for that. I didn't mean to imply that Wolcen might not have a meta. It is new and has outright broken skills and mechanics. Of course that passes for a 'meta'...except that I'd argue a 'meta' requires something Wolcen doesn't have as a game: online competition. When you can just cheat a game with mods, 'meta' is sort of a moot point. And where TencentGGG encourage people to use meta skills, for now at least Wolcen Studio are trying to discourage it by nerfing/balancing. In the terms of the metaphor I presented, Wolcen Studio do not want people relying on the string. This means NOT turning their story mode into a cakewalk, and thus replaying it is something of a drudgery; it is not designed to be played over and again. Hence CoS' superiority as a bespoke levelling method from scratch! :) https://linktr.ee/wjameschan -- everything I've ever done worth talking about, and even that is debatable.
Huh. My mace dude is now an actual cultist of Chayula. That's kinda wild. |
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^Your free to argue that but it doesn't make much sense.
First of all it doesn't align with the definition of meta. Secondly in todays day and age there is so much online connectivity that a game hardly requires an online component to be considered an online community event. It only seems like a personal rationalization to back up your earlier statements. For example, the fact that wolcens "meta" was already figured out a solid week after launch in the absence of a ladder or an online competitive environment illustrates this. Youtube,twitch and other platforms automatically import games into their inherent competitive environment and exploit them. The first one to figure out the "meta" is going to get clicks and views by a tremendous amount of eager people on the hunt for that dopamine rush even if technically they don't deserve it.(= in the sense that they didn't "figure it out" on their own merits) As for your second and third point, somewhat related to one another. The notion that GGG doesn't want to discourage "meta" seems foolish, they have been actively trying to do that and considering a game like wolcen which was entirely new in every way being figured out in a week should give some credence to GGG where the meta usually takes longer to evolve in a new balance patch even with the tremendous amount of tools to distribute it once found. That doesn't mean they will ever be succesfull, neither will wolcen, it's simply a factor of numbers similar to how hackers always beat out the security programs. Nothing really surprising about either of these things. Then there is the observation that PoE's story mode is a cakewalk, which is far from the truth and simply seems like the perspective of somebody that has played the game for a long time. And even then, racers show us exactly what is possible in the PoE story content and i doubt even 1% reach that potential of speed and trivializing. This demonstrates the different layers of people playing this game, some racers kill act10 kitava in 2hours 30 minutes +-, others do it in 4 hours with all trials and skill points and are "endgame ready" and most regular people probably do it in 6 to 10 hours. I would argue that wolcen lacks the inherent toolkit to formulate such a distribution of player-experiences which means there is very little to improve upon past a modicum of differentiation. But we will see if this bears out in the future. Also im only using the comparison method because these threads seem to demand them from participants, im much happier looking at both games individually and judging them on their own merrits. I think its foolish to compare wolcen to PoE because it has a seven year lead on it, similar to the reverse appearing foolish to me because wolcen has the benefit of that lead to draw conclusions from. Peace, -Boem- Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes
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" I mean, eh, depends on definition of torture. GGG been trying to make many archetypes playable for masses while leveling, so player power in the beginning is super strong. its not like invasion (my fav league btw), where in some rng cases you had no shot at beating league content in the beginning. like, Ive 'practiced' for this league start by running a wander shadow through first three acts before you get all the gems in library. just looking at wand skills and quest rewards and such. wander leveling is pretty much one of the slowest leveling techniques you can do in poe (next to bow leveling). and it wasnt so bad with metamorph content. was it slow ? oh yeah, slower than a lot of builds, but it was still fun. good ol power siphon does work. player power is too damn high. " this is written extremely well, and I agree with this as a concept, a lot...but somehow, I don't agree with your conclusion. I dunno, I guess I just dont mind the campaign in poe...the story is nonsense and most tilesets could be randomized a lot more, but aside from that I like it more than 'adventure mode'. In fact, Id rather play wolcen campaign again than play their adventure mode or whatever it's called. Mini-missions with rewards in the end don't appeal to me. Maybe it's just me. |
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