The latest content update known as Wrath of Sarisel (beta 1.2.0) was released several days ago (several hotfixes have also been issued in recent days to deal with bugs and crashes). During Gamescom 2019, Wolcen Studio announced the January 2020 release date of Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem and the following gameplay trailer.
Background: Prior to this content patch, I had tried the latest beta update 1.1.6 (the last version I played before that was 1.1.4) where the game client was even laggier than before. I’ve been playing an offline character to reduce any network latency but the game client still had these stutters and occasional FPS freezes which were nowhere as bad in the 1.1.4 patch.
Skills themselves would occasionally tend to get stuck when standing in place where I can’t stop casting it; it only ends once I am out of resource (playing a mage so willpower). When that happens during a boss fight where you have limited room, regenerating that exhausted resource (where you have enough to actually cast one of your damage dealers) was annoying because your potion bottle only recharges when you hit something with your basic auto attack (which doesn’t do much damage).
There is also no effective cooldown on the adds which bosses tend to spawn; and those often times have stun lock, crowd control (which blocks you from even attacking), or life leeching mechanics which pretty much ends in death (you have 3 lives during a session; once you use those up, you get kicked back to town and have to re-clear the path again if your destination is several points past the nearest waypoint; the entire dungeon is also reset).
I get that one of their objectives was to have difficulty levels similar to Dark Souls. Unlike Dark Souls where your timing can effectively play a big factor when dodging/parrying attacks, that same level of granularity just doesn’t exist in a fixed camera isometric game. And it doesn’t help when the client occasionally freezes or when a skill locks up and continues casting.
I got past the first phase of the fight with Edrich (final boss of Act I) with my character at level 18 with his annoying barrier shield that he puts up while he has his adds chasing you (stunning, shooting, and causing bleeds) while you try to get to Edrich’s back to get some damage in. Once he drops his shield, you have a short period to burst DPS him and his adds while you also try to get in some auto attacks to regen willpower on your bar (and potion). The 2nd phase is ridiculous though with his charges, gunfire (which includes an AoE scattershot and AoE explosion), life leeching phantom adds, and patches of frozen ground effects that slows and damages your character.
I was doing this offline (thus solo) to reduce any network latency since the game already has issues with stutter and occasional client FPS freezes. It’s also on a ranged character which feels like was in a poor place compared to melee where your preferential gear choices provides more toughness. This fight would be much easier in an online multiplayer party but as it stands (w/o much better gear or getting more character levels to get more attribute points for your character and the Gate of Fates), it’s a losing challenge that is based on overloading what your solo character can manage.
The other issue I have is the lack of dopamine when it comes to loot drops. The game drops a lot of whites (common), blues (magic), and lesser amount of yellows (rare). I’ve only gotten two lower level uniques (not my preferential weapon choices as a mage). Like Diablo III, mobs level with your character. Better drops (the same item types but with slightly better rolls) however are really low percentage where you begin to slog through these mobs (they get incrementally stronger when you inevitably level while your character relative to those mobs, is incrementally less powerful since you can only rely on the points you can allocate to your attributes and Gate of Fates nodes unril you finally get better gear to drop). Basically, I didn’t complete Act I with this update.
Beta Update 1.2.2 Thoughts: So with the above established, I wanted to see if there was a bit better balance given the changes made to nodes in the Gate of Fates. As they’ve done before, all attributes and character skill points were reset. Skill modifier points were also reset. Online characters had their storage chests cleared (unless they saved items to a characters inventory). My offline chest was untouched.
The node changes in the Gate of Fates looked promising since I saw a lot more damage increasing and resource increasing/regen nodes along with more life sustaining ones (health regen, life leech, shield reinforcements, increased resistance). The game play difference was like night and day. Some of the annoying bugs (skills locking and a lot of the client performance stutter) that I experienced weren’t present. As for the actual game play, prior to this patch, clearing out the mobs heading into the “core” (the last floor level before you enter the boss dungeon) took a bit of effort since you had to be careful about drawing too much aggro (where your character would end up being overwhelmed by either being blocked, or having life leeched from the phantasm mobs with that ability).
The extra toughness nodes clearly helped offset some of the physical hits. The additional damage nodes however made a bigger difference since my character could now knock off blocks of hit points to take down mobs a lot faster. Basically, I now could aggro and group them up to crowd control and then AoE nuke them (not one hit but maybe 2.5 rotations which is much better than before where I could only do a small group and often times, ran out of willpower which then required pulling and kiting mobs backwards until I could regen enough resources on the skill bar AND potion bottle).
The biggest test would be the final boss fight though where previously, each phase required a lot of running around (per the above). Tension wise, it was on the frustrating part of the spectrum before. With this update, I could easily take chunks out of Edrich’s life in all phases while I could stand in a lot of the things which would pierce through my shield and then health. I was able to take him out quickly enough where he didn’t have a chance to start spawning adds (especially the life leeching ones). Balance wise, it looks like it may have been overdone just a little in terms of the increased skill damage nodes. So the tension went from frustration to a little bit too easy.
Still, I can also see the easing up on difficulty in the story (via changes made to the Gate of Fates as well as skill modifiers) since this is only the first act where you don’t want to bring a players progression to a halt. Like Diablo III, the story/campaign is just one part of the game. Like Diablo III, Wolcen has a separate end game mode (Soldier of Fortune) which currently has two challenge modes; Mandates (bounty like objectives) and Expeditions (where maps have different modifiers which you can add as well as difficulty levels that you can unlock from clearing an expedition in each of those difficulties).
Both modes are similar to Rifts in Diablo III where it re-uses existing dungeon environments and requires killing mobs to fill a bar up (thankfully no timer like Greater Rifts). With mandates, you just have to complete the objective (killing the mobs to fill the bar) and once completed, teleport back to town to talk to the NPC to collect your rewards (random gear). Or it can be farmed of the mobs for loot/gold (since mobs do not despawn once the bar is filled). For expeditions, the challenge is completed when successfully killing the boss. Unlike mandates, you cannot teleport out of the map (so it is best to go in with an empty inventory and to only collect rares and higher loot. The bosses here are definitely tuned up since their mechanics easily take out chunks of shield and life. I would say this is really tuned for online co-op play.
These two modes are where you farm for better items (I managed to get two uniques from a mandate) where the objective is to unlock the most difficult expedition so that it can be farmed for the best quality drops (by having as much map modifiers up to the limit, active). This is about the only way to progress your characters power and gold (selling drops) since early access will remain at Act 1 and character level 20. This progress will of course be wiped upon actual launch of the game next year.
So after several different design iterations, it does look like the studio has finally settled on this story mode and separate Soldier of Fortune design. I’m still not feeling it with the loot though (I’m presuming part of it is them holding off on the neater stuff as well as more in-depth systems where you have more choices on what to do with them; like deciding to NPC for gold or salvaging for materials, augmenting, enchanting, etc).
