Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem out of Early Access

[Stg-Flame]

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem on Steam

A dynamic hack’n’slash with no class restrictions. Choose your path as you level-up and play your character the way you want! Explore this shattered and corrupted world to uncover its ancient secrets and hidden truths.

store.steampowered.com

It was recently released into a full 1.0 (or at least out of early access) and I'm curious if anyone has tried it. A lot of people had nothing but great things to say about it during early access, but given their road map they posted last year, I'm hesitant to believe they actually reached all of their projected goals. Has anyone tried it yet?

 

[Aikouka]

Ah, I wish I had known that this was coming out of Early Access as I had the Humble Store page open for the game for the past week. Of course, when it came out, the price went from $30 to $40. Oh well, I picked it up anyway, and I played it for a little bit tonight.

So, my thoughts so far... I'm not entirely sure if I'm a fan of the story and such, but the game seems fun overall. It certainly has a few systems that'll take me time to get used to... especially when I came from playing plenty of Diablo III. There were two things that I noticed about the combat though. I swear my sword kept hitting the weird fish monster things, but the hit detection didn't go off. I don't know if I was just seeing things or if the hit detection is a bit weird in this game. Also, it seems like some weapons can be far more of a downgrade early on due to their fighting style being vastly different. For example, I started with a 1H sword, which had a natural cleave attack as its basic attack. (That was an interesting change given that's normally a skill in Diablo.) An affixed enemy dropped a 2H axe for me, which had more damage, but it was noticeably slower and it's first attack was an overhead, single-target attack. This made it significantly worse given the fish monsters tended to attack in packs. I don't know if this is in the game, but it made me wish the game had the ability to set fighting styles for weapons.

EDIT:

It's worth adding that there's an offline mode to the game. I believe offline and online characters are separate (makes sense).

 

[Printed Circuit Bro]

I picked it up Wednesday night and dug through the pre-release content.

Got a chance to play several hours Thursday morning and Thursday evening and the game seems really solid. I like the changes made to the game. It feels like a good combination of Diablo 3 and Path of Exile but clearly leans toward Diablo 3 for inspiration.

I'd like to see their inventory management change a bit since I wasn't over the moon about it in D3 either.

The skill tree's rotation is super interesting; will spend way too much time min/maxing that thing over the weekend planning out my builds, hehe.

The cinematic cut scenes are fantastic looking but the dialogue seems like it was written in another language and lazily translated to English. It's not terrible, but the only explanation for some of the awkward dialogue I can think of is translation issues. As such, I'm not following the story too closely ... and frankly don't care enough to do more. Will most likely just watch the cut scenes and skip all the dialogue boxes. As usual for me anyway, outside of great stories like Half Life etc.

Launch was rough on the servers but in modern gaming that seems to be the norm unfortunately. I was able to get in to a multiplayer game with some friends but the risk of disconnection every time we changed zones was real. With all the online / offline connection problems, it took us maybe 2 hours to get to level 15 last night. Hoping for big changes to server stability asap.

The weapon and/or archtype duality in combat is really interesting with the balance between rage and willpower. I really like this concept and it feels REALLY good to play. I need to find a huge rage-spender that I can use with a staff, if there is one. Would be nice to one-click all or most of the points from rage into willpower.

Combat feels really good. Map design is cookie cutter Diablo 3 so I'm already over it, but at least the scenery looks good.

Also, Loot Scarabs are great. I loved hunting these things in D3. I hope there's a bunch of different kinds of scarabs.

 

[ewdotson]

Well, this has been an unimpressive mess, even by the standards of video game launches. Having literal days of downtime is … not great.

 

[Aikouka]

I wonder if it’s a time of day problem? I tried it at about 12 AM CST, and saw no issues on the day following launch. But I haven’t tried during usual prime time hours.

 

[ewdotson]

The servers went down yesterday evening, and the devs are now saying the earliest they might come back up is 12pm UTC. Granted, offline mode still works. But they really are having severe issues.

 

[Stg-Flame]

This is the reason I never buy day-one or try to play day-one. This way, when I play the game a few months down the road, I won't have my first impressions hindered by server interruptions or the countless bugs and glitches I'm sure people have yet to find.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Phenomenal game, IMO. Graphics are jaw dropping. I know, game play is what is important, but actually their art design and use of the CryEngine is gorgeous. Great environments. Great gameplay. However, it is still very much "beta" even though it is released.

I wasn't actually upset that their servers went down. I suppose if I was single, had no other games to play and had that queue up for the weekend, I would have been annoyed. But these days I am much more relaxed... You know? I guess that comes with age.

I think people are a little hard on the devs, but whatever.

 

[Aikouka]

I wasn't actually upset that their servers went down. I suppose if I was single, had no other games to play and had that queue up for the weekend, I would have been annoyed. But these days I am much more relaxed... You know? I guess that comes with age.

It doesn't really bother me because I have plenty of other games to play in addition to that. Although, I think they probably could've saved a bit of face with one or both of the following features:

1. The ability to create a copy of an online character as an offline character. Now, this has an obvious downside of being unable to copy the character back to online status, but it means that you could at least play a bit offline if you wanted.
2. The ability to play in an offline setting with friends. In this case, all the game does is allows players to connect over Steam, but in that situation, one player would be the host. Although, in this sort of "Online-Offline" mode, you'd still be restricted to using offline characters only.

I think people are a little hard on the devs, but whatever.

Oh gosh, I saw the replies on Twitter from the angry man-babies that were complaining about the game. It seemed like a good number of the people were clamoring for refunds after just a day or two.

 

[Printed Circuit Bro]

Well, this has been an unimpressive mess, even by the standards of video game launches. Having literal days of downtime is … not great.

The problem they tackled over the weekend was 1) multiplayer was released when 1.0 was released and was not tested. Not great indeed. 2) DB problems resulted in players losing characters and stash contents. The DB had to be recovered and, for some reason, the old and the new DBs needed to be merged and tested. They sent out a tweet (and an email IIRC) explaining point #2. Not great indeed.

I haven't had problems connecting since launch weekend.

 

[Stg-Flame]

So far my friends online have been hounding me to jump online with them. They all say it's everything they've been wanting and we're all huge D2:LoD, TQ, and Grim Dawn fans. I really don't want to drop what I'm playing now and jump in, but so far, everyone seems really pleased - despite the rocky start (which is expected anymore).

 

[thestrangebrew1]

Yea my brother has been trying to get me to pick this game up. I missed the sale, it's $39.99 last I checked. Not sure I want to drop the cash on it just yet.

 

[ibex333]

Anyone who wants to play add me on steam!!! "ibex333"

 

[Stg-Flame]

Played it for a few hours tonight and I'm definitely hooked, though I'm not entirely sure I enjoy the Path of Exile style passive skill tree, though I do enjoy the fact you can rotate the rings so you're not wasting precious skill points on junk just to get to a passive skill you really want. There's a lot about the game I don't understand, but that will come with playing.

So far, it's a solid game that runs oddly well on older systems.

 

[Aikouka]

I'm not sure if my issues are because I'm playing online (my ping is fine at about 30-40ms) or because I need to tweak my graphical settings, but I'm having a rather poor time playing. The problem is that my framerate is extremely erratic and I have a ton of small stutters/freezes. I'll usually see drops from around 140 FPS to about 60 FPS and then back up again... and I'm playing on a 9900K with a 2080 Ti at 2560x1440. I made a few adjustments in the graphical settings, so I'll have to see if they help -- they required a restart.

EDIT:

And apparently, I couldn't turn a framerate limit on because I turned V-Sync on. Although, I have V-Sync turned on, because I have G-Sync, and V-Sync will only affect me above the refresh rate of my monitor.

EDIT 2:

I'm not sure if it was removing V-Sync or turning down things like volumetric effects, but the game runs so much better now. Now I'm wondering if my problem could've been using V-Sync with two monitors that have a different refresh rate.

 

[Aikouka]

A couple interesting tidbits that I've sort of stumbled across that might be helpful to some...

• Green stairs on your map mark entrance to a mini-dungeon. These are usually just one level and typically have a simple objective. I originally ignored these thinking they were the way to go (I wanted to explore instead of progress), but area progression stairs on your map will be in a blue color.
• In addition to being able to equip two rings, you can also equip two different hand and shoulder items. By default, the game will only compare a single item at a time, so don't forget to upgrade both shoulders/hands!

I'm also not sure if I'm making a terribly great build, but I feel like that's sort of just how it works in the beginning. When going from sword-n-board to dual-wield, I noticed a staunch decrease in survivability, but I didn't notice much of a damage increase. I'm looking to go more of an Assassin/Duskglaive route, but in the beginning, it seems like melee should act more like tanks to survive better. I almost wonder if part of the problem is that the game doesn't really seem to have meaningful armor types, which could help separate playstyles better. For example, your rogue-ish character using leather is able to move faster, has a shorter stamina refresh timer, etc, but of course, the rogue would also take more damage. So, in his case, it's more imperative to dodge or roll out of the way where as the tankier brute would just take more hits.

 

[Stg-Flame]

I've had zero issues with performance, but without G-Sync or a 144 monitor, my FPS stays at a constant 60FPS at 2560x1440.

My only gripe right now would be how little things are explained in the game and trying to sell items. Half of the items will act like they are trying to equip from my inventory when I right click to sell them. Kinda wish they had a sell-all button for various rarities.

 

[Printed Circuit Bro]

A couple interesting tidbits that I've sort of stumbled across that might be helpful to some...

• Green stairs on your map mark entrance to a mini-dungeon. These are usually just one level and typically have a simple objective. I originally ignored these thinking they were the way to go (I wanted to explore instead of progress), but area progression stairs on your map will be in a blue color.
• In addition to being able to equip two rings, you can also equip two different hand and shoulder items. By default, the game will only compare a single item at a time, so don't forget to upgrade both shoulders/hands!

I'm also not sure if I'm making a terribly great build, but I feel like that's sort of just how it works in the beginning. When going from sword-n-board to dual-wield, I noticed a staunch decrease in survivability, but I didn't notice much of a damage increase. I'm looking to go more of an Assassin/Duskglaive route, but in the beginning, it seems like melee should act more like tanks to survive better. I almost wonder if part of the problem is that the game doesn't really seem to have meaningful armor types, which could help separate playstyles better. For example, your rogue-ish character using leather is able to move faster, has a shorter stamina refresh timer, etc, but of course, the rogue would also take more damage. So, in his case, it's more imperative to dodge or roll out of the way where as the tankier brute would just take more hits.

The major nodes on the skill tree do this. This is what the skill tree is for.

 

[Printed Circuit Bro]

I've had zero issues with performance, but without G-Sync or a 144 monitor, my FPS stays at a constant 60FPS at 2560x1440.

My only gripe right now would be how little things are explained in the game and trying to sell items. Half of the items will act like they are trying to equip from my inventory when I right click to sell them. Kinda wish they had a sell-all button for various rarities.

I have this clicking / selling problem too and it drives me nuts.

 

[ewdotson]

I haven't had any performance issues since the big downtime release weekend. Balance is wonky and there's still a fair amount of bugginess (broken passives, things like the aforementioned clicking issue while selling, etc), but those probably aren't overly surprising. On the whole, I'm having fun.

 

[rstrohkirch]

Bought this when it came out. Stopped playing the next day after all my progress in act 2 disappeared when the game crashed at the last boss of the act. I think the game has a lot of potential but I'll just try again near the end of the year. Hopefully most of the big bugs and balance changes will be done by then.

 

[Aikouka]

The major nodes on the skill tree do this. This is what the skill tree is for.

I'm talking about early gameplay as I'm still around level 15-20. Essentially, even though I'm looking to play more of a Rogue character, I don't have any of those talents that boost my sneakiness or dodge capabilities (I'm pretty close to picking up some good ones though), which means I have to play more like a face-tank. That seems a bit counterintuitive because I'm literally picking passives that don't really support my current play style (i.e. the face-tank warrior setup).

Honestly, I think it's mostly due to the game being a class-less game and to facilitate depth and choice, the more defining passives are further into the tree. This means it takes effort to define your character; however, that also means it takes time.

I've had zero issues with performance, but without G-Sync or a 144 monitor, my FPS stays at a constant 60FPS at 2560x1440.

This isn't the first time I've had issues with having multiple monitors with different refresh rates. Albeit, the last time I had a major issue with it was with Google Chrome, and the only fix there was to disable hardware acceleration. I might try to turn some of the other settings back to see if V-Sync was the issue. If I recall, the only other settings I changed was putting both Volumetric Effects and Shadow Detail down from Very High to High.

My only gripe right now would be how little things are explained in the game and trying to sell items. Half of the items will act like they are trying to equip from my inventory when I right click to sell them. Kinda wish they had a sell-all button for various rarities.

I keep having an issue with tooltips not showing up for items when I hover over them.

there's still a fair amount of bugginess (broken passives

I was poking around the Wolcen sub-reddit, and apparently, there's an entire list of passives that don't work.

 

[Stg-Flame]

I'm talking about early gameplay as I'm still around level 15-20. Essentially, even though I'm looking to play more of a Rogue character, I don't have any of those talents that boost my sneakiness or dodge capabilities (I'm pretty close to picking up some good ones though), which means I have to play more like a face-tank. That seems a bit counterintuitive because I'm literally picking passives that don't really support my current play style

That's how pretty much every ARPG is at the start though. I can't think of a single ARPG where you start off as a certain character and you don't end up playing a different style for the first levels. Even as a mage I have been forced to tank a few times when my spells weren't as effective or I didn't have any decent spells. I stuck to using a staff the entire time, but there were plenty of times when I had to change up my play style for a boss. Though ever since level 15 I've been steamrolling the game as a pure mage, so there's that.

I keep having an issue with tooltips not showing up for items when I hover over them.

Yeah I get this too and any time I alt-tab out of the game, I am forced to click on my inventory when I open it, or else the info cards aren't displayed.

This game's launch reminds me a lot of Grim Dawn's 1.0 release. Little lacking on content from previous beta builds, tons of glitches and bugs, performance issues, and hundreds of entitled kids raging on the discussions and leaving "literally unplayable" reviews all over the place. I'm going to reserve judgement on this game for another six months to see what the devs come up with. For now, the game is fun, but it definitely has some issues that need addressing.

 

[Aikouka]

So, I played a bit more last night. I can safely say that I understand the complaints that people had about certain flying mob hit boxes. I think it was the insect creatures that just had this tiny hitbox, and maybe that explains some of my earlier complaints about it seeming like my sword would go through enemies and not hit them. (I recall it happening with flying enemies.)

Although, I think the worst thing that I ran into last night was in the Necropolis. I ran into a sound bug where it seems like a bunch of sound effects got stuck in the queue and just kept playing over and over. The only way to fix it was to restart the game.

I beat the boss that's definitely an homage to The Butcher, and I couldn't help but notice just how... easy he was. Although, I don't know if he had a centered AoE, but I swear I kept taking damage from his frontal attack when I was technically behind him due to my character model kind of being inside of his. I'm assuming it could be related to AoE cones starting at the model's center rather than at a distance? Anyway, I think the boss could use a more effective AI. It just kept attacking in front of it after I would roll out of the way, which made it fairly trivial.

I'm not sure if this already exists in the game or not, but I'd like an indication for when a skill will gain a new skill point.

That's how pretty much every ARPG is at the start though. I can't think of a single ARPG where you start off as a certain character and you don't end up playing a different style for the first levels. Even as a mage I have been forced to tank a few times when my spells weren't as effective or I didn't have any decent spells. I stuck to using a staff the entire time, but there were plenty of times when I had to change up my play style for a boss. Though ever since level 15 I've been steamrolling the game as a pure mage, so there's that.

I don't disagree that you'll usually switch up your play style as you progress -- especially if you have gear that orients you a specific way. I guess it's more of a complaint that as much as the game wants to promote an unhindered class setup, starting a melee character seems so pigeonholed into running sword-n-board. I don't think this is a bad thing, but more or less I was wondering if there was a way to make certain gear layouts more effective from an intrinsic standpoint. That's why I suggested the idea of heavier gear making you more defensive but it causes you to move slower. (Yes, I know there is passive that plays this way too.)

I think part of it came from how I was looking to go with a Rogue-like character, but that dual-wielding -- something I typically attribute to Rogues -- felt so weak. I've watched some YouTube videos and I've seen some players using those items that let them cast spells on a melee character, and I didn't know if that would be something that I should consider.

 

[Printed Circuit Bro]

I'm having a great time playing in the end-game with friends. One of them was using some melee skill that was unbalanced to a broken degree and was having a blast mowing down everything. Apparently the balance solution that was just implemented was to add a cooldown timer to the skill he was using and now his build is completely broken. HA. RIP.

I'm currently playing Ziggy's gun/occult build and loving it.