The Action-RPG which has been plagued by years of poor development issues finally landed on something great but that doesn’t mean there aren’t things to fix.
In a world where ARPG’s are becoming more and more common, it was vital that Wolcen set itself apart from the competition. Initially it did this with an announced list of incredibly innovative features but as time’s arrow marched forward and budgets were cut thinner and thinner, Wolcen was forced to adapt to its situation. It’s been through so many changes over the years, but the recent build launched out of early access was met with some incredibly positive responses from players. People were pleased with the direction Wolcen had taken, landing in a place where the game itself was a pretty enjoyable time. Yet despite that, fame is a fickle friend and Wolcen is just not holding up to scrutiny as players have grown tired with the endless barrage of technical bugs plaguing the game.
The reviews have begun to skew towards negative as following the game’s launch last week players have grown more and more irritated by the state the game. Players have reported everything from hard crashes to losing items stored in their stashes. These turned out to be so prevalent that the developers were forced to turn the game’s servers off over the weekend which meant that multiplayer wasn’t possible and even adventuring solo was barred because it’s currently impossible to transfer characters between online and offline accounts. Yet even after the servers were back online, connectivity issues were still rampant.
Yet that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Looking over at the game’s subreddit, one of the most popular posts discusses a game-breaking bug that sees players unable to start the game properly after interacting with certain upgrade options in the endgame. After using The Forge or the Dark Market, it’s possible to trigger a bug that prevents the game from properly launching next time you start it up. While the issue has been identified and a patch is expected to fix it, Wolcen Studio is only able to patch the game once a week due to having to coordinate with their networking partners. Yikes.
Beyond the more technical bugs, Wolcen is just not an especially well-designed game. Item and gold duplication are currently a huge exploit within the game and the passive skill tree has been built in such a way to make some blatantly overpowered characters. Yet even some of these skills and abilities, twenty-four by the last count, don’t even work properly. Bugs that have existed in the game while it was still in Alpha still exist in the released game and the whole thing just seems like an absolute mess. Riding on an initial wave of positive because players are so starved of Diablo-esque content can only take you so far but when the product satisfying that itch is subpar itself, then you’re never going to keep your fans around for too long.
Last Updated: February 20, 2020
Yozzie
February 20, 2020 at 15:51
The clunky online lag is getting to me the most.
MaSeKind
February 20, 2020 at 16:28
Yep I’m getting ~140ms ping to London but there’s at least a 500ms or more lag between input and seeing action on screen. And I get over 200ms ping on Diablo3 and there’s no noticable lag.
So it seems like the servers are taking too long to compute on their side.
Hammersteyn
February 20, 2020 at 16:08
Get Wolcen go Brocen?
😛
Llama In The Rift
February 21, 2020 at 07:05
https://media1.giphy.com/media/tkndGHrse5sWc/giphy.gif
Alien Emperor Trevor
February 20, 2020 at 16:08
I’ve played about 5 hours now and haven’t encountered anything game breaking, granted I’m playing offline. A minor graphical glitch that resolved itself & one where I ran into an invisible wall that a quick town portal & back fixed. My biggest problem with the game is not naming my character Matilda.
It’s got the handiest feature I never knew I wanted though – a clock under the mini map.
Pariah
February 20, 2020 at 16:18
I don’t understand why people are so hung up on the Online thing. So many people just want to play solo, yet complain “online is broken”. Like, it’s an offline game, with online if you want to party up.
Also, ditto. Finished the campaign, am in end game a bit, no major bugs for me.
Yozzie
February 20, 2020 at 16:18
Mostly because offline cant play with others online, and I mostly play with friends. And they slide and pop around like crazy. If i could swap between offline and online with one char I would not have any qualms.
Pariah
February 20, 2020 at 16:18
Yes I understand if you’re going to party up. That’s why I mentioned solo play. A good 70% of the people I’ve seen complain are playing solo with no intention of playing with friends, but complain that they “can’t play because online is broken”. Like, what?
Also, Diablo 2 worked like this. SP character vs MP character. Can’t swap between them. This just has different names for the same thing.
MaSeKind
February 20, 2020 at 16:24
Well we don’t really know what their plans are for the future regarding things like ladders and seasons. These things will probably all be online and people will want to participate in them even if they don’t play in groups. I’m a solo player but would obviously play online if there were seasons and stuff.
Pariah
February 20, 2020 at 16:24
Yeah that is 100% valid. But as it stands, there’s none of that. Not sure if this game needs seasons though – I feel like it fits more in the Grim Dawn side of the ARPG market.
MaSeKind
February 20, 2020 at 16:24
True, but the devs don’t want it to be a Grim Dawn. So we’ve got to try and convince them. Also the hardcore ARPG players and streamers want online games. And having Twitch viewers is more important these days than just having normal fans
MaSeKind
February 20, 2020 at 16:24
The problem isn’t just online is broken. It’s the whole state of the game. I’ve been defending the game since it came out and still playing and enjoying it. But the more you look into it the more you realise this shouldn’t have been released. At least not as a finished game. I’m at a point now that I don’t even trust that the game systems are functioning as they should because there are a lot of skills that don’t work at advertised and some of the maths are a bit funky and doesn’t make sense.
Yes it’s a small indie studio. Yes it’s their first game. But a broken buggy mess is still a broken buggy mess. At this stage we just need to wait and see what they do and how they handle the game going forward.
Pariah
February 20, 2020 at 16:18
I think it’s also important to note: this is this developer’s first ever game and it’s a small team of devs too. Relatively speaking, anyway. Yeah, there are bugs, that’s expected.
MaSeKind
February 20, 2020 at 16:18
Yeah this is a sad situation. Have played about 45 hours since last week and I must say I really am enjoying the core gameplay. And it looks amazing. I also didn’t really encounter any bugs that I was aware of initially but after starting to actually look into things you start to realise there are some major issues with the game. Yes offline is a bit better but the list of things broken in general is crazy.
The game should be taken offline and they need to focus on balancing and fixing the game breaking issues. Then come back with an online beta or something later. The real worry is that they are going to start adding content before fixing the actual game. In that case they can just as well close up shop now.
There is huge potential for Wolcen to become an amazing game but then the devs will need to take immediate action and make some difficult decisions.
Pariah
February 20, 2020 at 16:24
By offline you mean remove the MP element while they fix the broken stuff? Tbh many games have had game breaking bugs that took a while to fix. But I do think that they should’ve just released it as a SP only game and did the MP stuff after release. Would’ve been much better for it.
I agree with almost everything you said though. Wolcen honestly has the best combat of any ARPG on the market. Something sorely missing from the number-pushing D3, and the “If it’s not evaporating the whole screen instantly it’s bad” PoE.
MaSeKind
February 20, 2020 at 16:28
Yes remove the MP side because if things continue going the way they are now, no one will be playing this anymore just because of the issues around online. And as you said yourself the offline experience is fine. Fix and polish that first
Pariah
February 20, 2020 at 16:28
The funny thing for me is that this doesn’t feel like an online game at all. Like even a little. But seeing how the fans expected it, it’s hardly surprising that they included it – fan pressure.
MaSeKind
February 20, 2020 at 16:33
Apparently they only added the online about 6 months ago. Yes I agree they should just have kept this as a singleplayer game. Just think of the awesome stuff they could have added it they didn’t waste their time implementing MP
Pariah
February 20, 2020 at 16:38
Well, it’s still early days. I’m sure they’ll fix the issues and make it as awesome as it should be.
MaSeKind
February 20, 2020 at 16:43
Well they are French and they have a history of giving up easily XD
ReverendFunk
February 21, 2020 at 10:13
World War 1?