Wolcen humiliated Path of Exile

I'm currently in the mid of the act 2 in Wolcen and boy, this game made me appreciate everything Chris and GGG does even more now.
Wolcen is a hot garbage, literally no amount of content and polishing will fix this game.
Can't wait for new league!

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angelobiancofaithpride wrote:

- the game that nobody knew anything about, except that it was called "umbra", got 62k online users during release, which is like half of league start population of path of exile. considering wolcen is b2p game, we can see how hungry people are for a good arpg.

- graphics make poe 2 look like outdated trash, not talking about the current version.

- combat has better animations, much better sounds, better flow, not only bosses but monsters actually have interesting attacks that require player to use dodge roll etc. no flask piano shit, no one-shotting shit. you can use gun+spells etc so implementation of hybrid builds is actually the best ever.

- you can select the gender of your character (can you believe it??? sounds crazy!), hairstyle etc., and have wide transmogrifications/dye options.

- release version has less bugs than usual new league release of path of exile. lol.

arpg players got an actual GAME, not a lawn mower simulator + casino + trading simulator and "one new microtransaction per day" shit.

wolcen team is small, less expirienced, but they did a good job. i wonder whats next. i suppose they will implement seasons.

Everyone that played PoE any time over the course of the last 8 years and were interested in ARPG's would have known about it, in fact a lot of the players here would be playing it...given it is near the end of a league.

I've found the graphics to be a bit meh, some times nice other time muddy.

Gender select is fluff that idiots obsess over, and there are only 3 "classes" to worry about not 7

Bugs? less? not what i hear...steam page is full of QQ and rage about how many bugs there are including people demanding refunds...OHH that's right it COSTS $30

It's an ARPG it IS a lawnmower simulator.

FYI PoE was a small team and they put together a less buggy FAR more responsive and deep game that wolcen has so far.

But feel free to jump ship...you won't be missed.

Don't get me wrong...i WILL play wolcen through possibly multiple times BUT PoE has it nailed, and i WILL go back even after a year or more not playing ans spend months of my life on it.

^ ok pump the brakes here just a bit.

PoE has PROBLEMS all over from power creep, item bloat, performance issues, memory leaks, audio issues, half-ass trade, massive balance pendulum swings, a passive tree that looks big and complex, but totally isnt.

Not to mention our Tencent overlords have ramped up mtx and bottomline requirements to the absolute max.

Not only that but PoE's core game is stale as fuck. The leagues get your attention for 6 weeks or so (on the high end), but no way I'm playing standard.

*also I'm not looking forward to redoing the whole atlas again next month...

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DarthSki44 wrote:

^ ok pump the brakes here just a bit.

PoE has PROBLEMS audio issues,

Going to go out an a limb here, but are you using Win10? because i had a problem (not even playing PoE) with some realtek audio application (not drivers) which cause the PC to stutter hard and freeze for several minutes...i don't know what the fuck it was trying to do but it failed hard and i would not be surprised to hear that the problems people are having with audio are related to this (and why disabling audio works as a performance boost)

This was on a pre build RoG desktop (fairly new with the 3700x)

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lagwin1980 wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

^ ok pump the brakes here just a bit.

PoE has PROBLEMS audio issues,

Going to go out an a limb here, but are you using Win10? because i had a problem (not even playing PoE) with some realtek audio application (not drivers) which cause the PC to stutter hard and freeze for several minutes...i don't know what the fuck it was trying to do but it failed hard and i would not be surprised to hear that the problems people are having with audio are related to this (and why disabling audio works as a performance boost)

This was on a pre build RoG desktop (fairly new with the 3700x)

Oh not for me really. I've got a beefy rig. That doesnt mean I'm blind to the help forums, console forums, and GD where it's well documented. (Not to mention GGG updating skill sounds on skills the past few leagues)

It's a problem. (One of many)

Edit: I do understand that even the best rig suffer issues, I just dont notice them as much The only issue performance wise that I did notice this season was Aspect of the Spider, and a few Baran mob maps.

Gonna give them a month to patch shit and then if it's not at least at the bare minimum of playability (here's looking at you Blight League), it's safe to say we can move on and keep looking.

Since the modern programming paradigm is "better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission", and that hasn't proven financially disastrous for publishers, I guess we're stuck with it for now and it's not going anywhere anytime soon.

A few months ago I played the last beta version of Wolcen, and I'm not ashamed to say it, I didn't pay a penny. Yesterday the official version was already launched in "unofficial" sites, so I went back to play without paying a penny. And I'm so glad I didn't lose my money on this shit. I arrived at the caves (act 1) and began to see the same annoying bug that I saw for months in the beta. Immortal bats that cannot be targeted. Soon I gathered 6 bats chasing me and I could not kill him because it is impossible. So without thinking twice I uninstalled Wolcen and did not lose a penny. Months with the same problem in the beta and they did not solve it and release the game with the same bug? No thanks.

No Man's Wolcen, or Wolcen's Sky...

Tbh, I don't have anything against Wolcen. But all these threads still annoy me. Why? Because this is an example of what is wrong with gaming these days - pre-order and Day 1 purchase bullshit. This what enables so many companies to so often screw us all over. Wolcen could end up being a good game. It could be trash. Either way, I'm happy to wait a few weeks or even months to find out. But all these release hype threads are showing me that even years after these practices started very few gamers seem to have learned that lesson.

I don't mind PoE having competition, in fact I welcome it. But I absolutely mind this kind of cancerous, impatient and short-sighted consumerism as hurting us all, including those of us who do wait and see (as it affects gaming publisher priorities and business models). To the extent that people post threads like "Wolcen humiliated Path of Exile" when it has just barely fuckin' released!

And yes, Wolcen's price hike upon release to encourage this behaviour is a definite red flag in that regard. But I'd still rather pay $45 for a game that I know is good (from doing my research i.e. check out a variety of reviews / user scores - AFTER release) than $30 for a game that could be trash.

Yeah Wolcen is currently an abomination but if they can survive for a few years without abandoning ship they can salvage something great out of it.

For how bad the game is it's definitely "overpopular" which just goes to show how desperate people are for a quality online ARPG.

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DiabloImmoral wrote:

Yeah Wolcen is currently an abomination but if they can survive for a few years without abandoning ship they can salvage something great out of it.

For how bad the game is it's definitely "overpopular" which just goes to show how desperate people are for a quality online ARPG.

An abomination is probably too harsh.

There is no chance they expected 120k+ concurrent users, and their servers & service just melted. It was easily 3 to 4 times what was expected, and it's not like this is some huge company that just has servers they can get on demand.

The major bugs are related to this (stash, character, progression, duping)

Offline mode works just fine, and minus some bugs/errors in the passive tree & mechanics not linking, you can play unhindered.

If you look what PoE had at launch, it does give you some perspective. (I was there, btw and played through closed beta). Desync & pathing were nothing short of horrific. Rubberbanding, lag, stutters, crashes, it was bad. Some skills were totally unusable. How soon we forget.