WOLCEN - Lords of Mayhem

Hahah

Kids man.

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Crackmonster wrote:

Titan quest for example, i never played it but you said it did not have ladders? Well it also attracted a different type of player, i reckon more a player that just wanna do whatever they want at their own pace and not really care too much. It never was one of the big competitive games, it was more for those who just enjoyed it in their own way. Which is why it is second grade game.

its a single player game with co-op functionality like grim dawn and torchlight. Do you go back to skyrim or witcher for the ladder reset every 3 months?

Some quick first impressions;

Camera turning needs to have a rebind function, and even then I find it personally more annoying then fun. On my list of the last things I want to do in an ARPG is turning a camera to see if there's a hidden chest.

I'm already extremely hesitant when it comes to the apocalyptic form. That's just the big cooldown from D3 all over again; such a huge power boost it's mandatory, and anything that gets you there quicker is better.

Am I hearing rumors of no ladders / resets? Fight it if you want, but this game is dead without any, as would be D3 and POE. Resets are absolutely the lifeblood of ARPGS. You might as well save time and money not creating any low level items or uinques if you don't plan on having your players experience the early game again.

Not a fan of the umbra to rage mechanic at all. Diablo 3 'failed'(read: sold tons but severely fell off) because they decided to look at D2, and do everything the opposite. One of those decisions was taking the Attack-with-a-skill / Run-out-of-mana-drink-a-pot action, and replace it with a ridiculous Spender-Spender-Generator type of rhythm. In D3, it's super not fun to have to attack with a generator that quite literally does .001% of your spenders damage, then use your spender. In Wolcen, it's not fun to attack with the skill you WANT to use, then have to use another one to dump this secondary resource you've accumulated, while also generating back your first resource.

So far Wolcen is fun to play because it's new and different, but there's some core issues that already have me concerned.

you have mana potions in wolcen tho right? you dont have to spend fury to get mana.


why would the game have a ladder reset? Did they have ladder resets in dragon age: origins? Should I start a game of fallout 4 right now or wait for the next ladder reset? Oh they dont have ladders in fallout 4? but everyones been playing for a year and they will have better gear than me, probably not worth playing fallout at all then because im so far behind? Why have gear for lvl5 characters in fallout 4 with no ladder resets?


I think its supposed to be a game, you play it start to finish, not a game you try and skip past asap in order to farm stuff after the game for items to get rich in a trade economy. I think the actual game is the actual game, its not an mmo, its a story line rpg game that you can play in co-op if you want and theres some kind of daily dungeon with its own ladder as a sort of endgame activity but I dont think theyre even trying to make this the sort of game that poe and diablo are. Its like dragon age, neverwinter nights, grim dawn, torchlight, you dont have ladder resets, you just play the game and when you want to play the game again with a different character you make a different character. Your characters have a shared stash and you can probably swap gear with ur friends in co-op I guess?

Ladder reset for what reason? If the game is mainly single player or co-op you do not need it.
Even if the game get multiplayer realms, there is no need of ladder reset if there is no competitive aspect in the game.

I would argue that POE 2018 do not need ladder reset since its competitive aspect went in the toilet.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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Crackmonster wrote:

Titan quest for example, i never played it but you said it did not have ladders? Well it also attracted a different type of player, i reckon more a player that just wanna do whatever they want at their own pace and not really care too much. It never was one of the big competitive games, it was more for those who just enjoyed it in their own way. Which is why it is second grade game.

its a single player game with co-op functionality like grim dawn and torchlight. Do you go back to skyrim or witcher for the ladder reset every 3 months?

Certainly not, but those are games that attract people who like to do things at their own slacker pace as well. For self enjoyment, and they couldn't care less about meta or being part of the ladder push, or how good they are compared to those around them, etc. Maybe this is the ideal way to game, the way most at peace with yourself.

As i said, this can also be achieved inside a game with ladders - no one forces you to ladder(although they have a nasty habbit of making ladder exclusive/early available things). But essentially, it can be made to house the player who plays at his own slow pace easily.

Game without ladder cannot house those who think ladder start is the best time to play.

I mean you can state all you want that ladder is useless, why ladder at all etc.... but that will never touch the reality of the situation really. Just look at GGG player statistics. Even if you had access to player statistics of D2 ladder resets even in period with no patches - you'd see the population booms around the reset. You should only be happy for ladders to exist as it means far more players will be playing and bring income to the game for continued development.

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Head_Less wrote:

Ladder reset for what reason? If the game is mainly single player or co-op you do not need it.
Even if the game get multiplayer realms, there is no need of ladder reset if there is no competitive aspect in the game.

I would argue that POE 2018 do not need ladder reset since its competitive aspect went in the toilet.

What a convoluted and excusist way to be in denial.

You just want the game to rule itself out as the true contender for the best ARPG don't ya. I hope for sure they don't listen to the mostly single player crowd. I personally emailed them before you people on this poe forum even jumped on this hypetrain of Wolcen to explain to them just how important it was for them to have multiplayer. And i wasn't the only one, even from the start people on their forum called for it. Luckily they listened. Luckily they increased the ambition for the game, and set out to make something greater than the small funny time mostly singleplayerish thing they had going from the start.

I am now considering if i should do the same with ladders - as the game is in danger from influences of people who just don't care. But i will give you this, there is a real chance they won't make ladders because they don't seem to be going for the best arpg of all time title, they had to be pushed out of their own limitation of initial ideas which just indicates that this hasn't really been their drive all along. They more wanna make a good funny little game which is what you want. With housing system etc. Even now i see troubles on the horizon with their rage/umbra system which seems to be limiting gameplay a lot unless you can create a build where you can just ignore it. At least it was like this the last time i played which was before the latest big patches.

yeah u need ladders for the sort of arpg path of exile is, it wouldnt be the same game without them.

I dont think wolcen is even trying to compete with poe and diablo, I think they see it as just a single player side game. The sort of ppl who play poe buy it, maybe 2 or 3 times a year they get bored of poe, go do a playthrough, maybe some co-op with their poe guildmates, lasts maybe 3 days, then they go back to poe. Its not designed to be a game u live in like we live in this game.


The guys who made grim dawn said the same thing, that they like poes model and maybe they want to progress to that eventually. But grim dawn is like a prelude to it, they want to make a game and just be happy they have made a game, people play it, it makes some money and then they can move on to a bigger project like a grim dawn 2 where maybe they have servers, ladders, resets, economies etc. But its a big step for an indie dev team to take on, your game needs a certain level of integrity etc, u cant let people mod it, hack it, got to invest in servers, support. Plus theres only so much room in that market, not many ppl play multiple games like that non stop for years, typically u got your main game u give a shit about and then the others end up being little side hobby games.

Anyone taking on poe right now is gonna get fked, lets be honest lol. Even if blizz release d4, whats the chances of it pulling us over there? Itll get its own crowd as long as its a sort of childs bash em up shallow blizzard thing like d3 was, so if its a bit shit it can work cause ppl who like shit games will prefer it, but if they want to take the serious arpg ppl away from poe its gonna take something i dont even think blizz are capable of.

I see no indication that Wolcen is trying to compete with PoE. Indeed, I think they'd be fucked if they attracted too much attention from PoE players, who, being for the most part a collective of arseholes, would demand the game be more like PoE but WITHOUT ALL THE THINGS THEY HATE IN POE....Which is stupid.

D4 vs PoE will provide you lot with all the drama you need on that front. Let smaller efforts like Wolcen just do their thing as they see fit.

This thread was a lot more interesting before it turned into a ridiculous 'this game isn't doing what PoE did, it's dead already' argument. I'll be back when you lot get over it. Thanks, Crackhead. Thanks a bunch.

Honestly, I enjoy Wolcen very much. It's something DIFFERENT, and that's GOOD. PoE, Wolcen, Grim Dawn, Torchlight 2... I enjoy all of them for their own reasons. Heck, I enjoy D3 aswell, even if it's only for motivating me to play PoE again.

I still gotta try out them pistols and two-handed dual wield. Melee is a lot of fun in Wolcen, thanks to the dash. Building around that one is pretty awesome and makes for really fluid clearing, jumping from pack to pack. So far I've noticed though that crossbows and dual daggers are VASTLY superior to pretty much everything else I tried though.

And that one fire elementalist mechaninc on the skill tree is pretty awful at the moment... the fire nova it triggers either deals no damage at all or pretty much oneshots you unless you are full tank. And even in that case it gets you dangerously low or the resulting ignite kills you. Then again, it's only alpha. Getting knocked out of the arena into the town and falling through the ground when coming back reminded me of that.
Still a lot of fun :D

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The_Scourge wrote:

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Querne wrote:

And I don´t consider Wolcen a typical fastpaced H&S like TL, TQ or D2/3 - it rather reminds me of Dungeon Siege or Sacred.

I find that a fairly strange distinction you've drawn there. The only game in that list I'd considered fast-paced in its early stages is D3, which is an action game first and foremost. All the others are from a different era and have pretty much the same pace for the majority of the game. If anything I'd place Wolcen much closer to D3 in its current pace than TQ or Sacred.

Well - I don´t.
I´m mainly comparing mob density/killspeed and RPG-elements/questdesign.

I consider D2/3,TL & TQ (and PoE) to be classical linear Hack&Slays where quests serve mainly the purpose to send the player to the next killing-area and usually don´t have any aims besides "kill boss x/get key y to boss x" at the end of it. The mob density is very high, you hardly will pass three screens without killing at least two dozens of enemies.

Sacred und Dungeon Siege´ towns are quest hubs usually holding multiple quests and besides kills often demand the collecting of helpful items or talks to other NPCs aiming for a more "rpgish"approach, likely in open world.
PoE has some of these elements in the new chapters (fireflies), but it would still be impossible to cross half of the world map without killing a single mob like it is possible in Wolcen.
In Wolcen/Sacred trash mobs are mainly positioned statically due to open world waiting for players approach, while there are proactively chasing the player in Hack&Slays because there is simply no reason to travel from A to B without clearing them anyway.

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At a larger remove, if you're talking about world exploration, I'd put Wolcen closest to Sacred 1/2, which were much more open from the get-go than the pseudo-dungeon layouts of D2 or TQ, or the blatant dungeon layout of TL1.

Both. But yes, this is one of the reasons.

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The_Scourge wrote:

On the other hand, Dungeon Siege was also party-based tactical play which I always found...quirky in an ARPG and much closer to shit like Neverwinter Nights than Diablo. Somehow it still got classified as an ARPG though.

I guess this happened due to the origins of PC-RPGs beeing transformations of table tops and following rigid rule sets, usually turn-based.
D1 was liberating because you got what you see. And yes, Dungeon Siege was tactical but one of the interesting points was, that stats were increasing when used.

So the classification might come from the (more) direct approach - what is funny, considering we are playing Path of Excel.