Wolcen Hype Release!

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Sadaukar wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

I love it when others do the legwork for me. Especially when I've done it ad nauseum in the past.

^_^

Well I was getting ready to shit on the guy for calling Zelda an ARPG instead of Diablo... but I had to educate myself beforehand and thought it would help him aswell :D

yw btw.^^

Except No. Zelda and Diablo are in fact both ARPG.

But pointing out ARPG is a poor description of that entire genre and the ARPG genre include vast majority of games including Zelda, Skyrim and Dark Soul. That classification is not meaningful in that sense but rather more useful as marketing and publicity tool.

actually, nvm

For all of the game's many flaws, I still find act 3 the most epic chapter in any 'Diablo-clone' isometric ARPG. Not that this is a high bar to clear -- most ARPGs focus on the micro-experience rather than the macro, so you rarely see full-pitch battles from high above or in-game cut-scenes of sieges. Blizzard always went for the contextually detached cinematic providing background to the larger picture rather than background in a literal sense, and most other ARPGs are made by developers who can't afford to be so extravagant in the own home-cooked engines.

In that way alone Wolcen is a gift, if you can tolerate the bugs. Which, understandably, is a huge ask. The sound slowly cutting out bug wrecks immersion pretty hard. And in Wolcen, the immersion factor is pretty high: mobs are constantly saying things, there's on-the-fly dialogue between characters, the music is consistently high quality. Oh well, they'll fix it...at some point. Won't be an issue once I'm running expeditions.
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Starting fresh on the post-game mode was always tough but it's especially hard now. Drops have been nerfed a little, certain common enemies have been buffed from 'ineffectual' to 'terrifying', and the Hunt mechanic is squarely aimed at well-geared characters. Even at level 1. But it sure is rewarding to finish a low level mandate from scratch. That's when you know you're onto a solid build from the get-go.

People still play this? Last time I checked on steam, it had so few "People playing" that it didn't even list a number, which puts it under about 300 or 400 people.

There's more people playing Titan Quest Anniversary Edition than Wolcen on average. As far as the most epic campaigns for a diablo-style ARPG, I'd have to say Titan Quest for me.

I watched a video review of the new Wolcen content. Not enough to get me to come back given the events going on in PoE + WoW expansion, but I'm liking what I see enough to definitely try it again the next time they release a Chronicle that is during the 'off season' of other games I play.

I'm pretty disappointed at just how many bugs they've introduced given how long they've had to play/test it, but as usual it's a lot smoother in the shorter 'post-story' game mode, where you're not going from zone to zone but instead do a run here, a run there. Some of the Hunts can get quite unusual, with minigames like area defence or portal closing peppered throughout rather than just accumulating clues (i.e. modifiers) along the way until you face whatever you're chasing down.

Seeing the Crimson keep in the random dungeon subset sure made me smile. What a cool area. Plenty of areas are still locked to the story mode, so I'm guessing they have some trouble turning those into randomised dungeons somehow.

It's a lot harder to skill-twink now. Used to be able to buy enneracts and mule them down for a quick early boost, but two things have changed that:

1) skill enneract exp for selling is now based on their drop level, so you have to just hunt and mule them on your dedicated 'story' character

2) spell damage is now derived from equipped gear rather than the level of the skill, so you can't just overlevel a new character's prime skill -- and good early game drops are VERY sparse in post-story game mode for new characters.

Digging all the new damage permutations though. Rending (bleed) lightning strike? Fiery (burn) annihilation? Some interesting unusual build potential there.

Lastly, item quality really matters now. The base damage jump from 1 star to 3 star is such that I've seen a level 11 3-star sword outpunch a level 33 1-star one. This should encourage more usage of the quality boosting building function.

Sound bug and skin bug already fixed. They shouldn't have deployed with them, but eh, further proof this was never a 'scam' as so many people want to say. Grossly incompetent, sure. But I'm mildly impressed at two hotfixes in a few days from a dev that says *nothing* for months on end.

Also, how many other ARPGs have a skill that is literally blood rain?

...a lacerated sky
Bleeding its horror
Creating my structure
Now I shall reign...

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Also, how many other ARPGs have a skill that is literally blood rain?

Unfortunately, that reminds me too much of the time I mistakenly watched BloodRayne.

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LennyLen wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Also, how many other ARPGs have a skill that is literally blood rain?

Unfortunately, that reminds me too much of the time I mistakenly watched BloodRayne.

Funny, I was thinking almost the same thing, except it was, 'damn, this reminds me of that terrible Uwe Boll movie I never watched'.

So we'll go with Slayer rather than Half-Vampire Slayer, shall we?