I have seen a lot of the feedback in this game that centers around loot, RNG, and enemies. Among the feedback I keep seeing one theme returning again and again.
People compare Wicked to POE, or they suggest making the systems more similar to POE.
I would like to discuss my thoughts on the matter, and share some relevant information. To start, I will describe POE to the best of my abilities.
POE is a quintessential Diablo-like. The game refines the essence of the genre to an extreme level. There are some key elements of the Diablo-like genre that are explored to exhaustion in POE that I will briefly list here.
- LOOT
In most Diablo-likes (starting with the origin of the genre Diablo) there is a clear design intention with loot. This design seems to be the structure where a vast majority of loot is worthless, and a small percentage of it is worth looking at to see if itās good for your build.
This reminds me of Gacha games and casinos, where people are gradually addicted to the chance of āwinning bigā while whittling away their time and resources grinding through piles of ālosersā and trash.
Some people really crave that addictive loop, while others are disgusted by it. This seems to relate to the individual, and their brainās response to the stimulus of winning a roll occasionally.
- BUILDS & DIFFICULTY
POE is kind of special in the way it allows the player to build almost anything, but it follows the same design paradigm as the loot listed above. Most of the nodes you can claim on the tree are weak/trash compared to the few really good nodes you chase after.
Gear is also part of your build, so everything said about gear also applies here. The best gear is highly sought after to complete your build, just like how the best nodes are rushed towards because they are the only things worth having. Everything else is trash.
One of the key elements of the Diablo-like genre that encourages chasing those pinnacle builds is the difficulty. This also ties into the loot cycle, since higher difficulties provide better loot. This just pushes players further into that need to keep gambling for gear.
Better builds mean access to higher difficulties which give better gear, and the addictive gambling cycle continues. As the ceiling for better gear rises, the floor remains the same. Because of this, you need to find exponentially more drops to get anywhere near the same chance to find those rare drops that are even worth checking. Most of those drops you check will still not be good for your build.
This loop encourages long term play, since it takes more and more time to chase those slightly better items that enable the higher difficulties which drop slightly better loot . . .
- ENEMIES
This point is important, since everything above relies on it and it relies on everything above. They are tied together irrevocably.
You need lots of loot, so you need lots of enemies. Even in the very early game you seldom see less than 10 enemies on screen at once, and in the late end game there are so many enemies you canāt count them. (Even though they typically die off screen.)
Because you need such a high volume of enemies, the enemies need to be very simple and essentially take the role of pinatas. They exist so you can delete them and spawn that tasty loot. As such, if an enemy is challenging itās typically optimal just to ignore them and fight the ones that are easier to kill en mass.
Bosses are a different story, since they are essentially your reason to build strong in the first place. Bosses are a āstat checkā to see if you invested enough into the rng to deserve to be at the difficulty you are on. Bosses are also a key source of special loot that only exists on higher difficulties. If you meet the check, you get a chance to roll that special loot.
Enemies are not supposed to be mechanical challenges in POE, they are supposed to be an opportunity to roll for drops.
No Rest for the Wicked diverges from the quintessential Diablo-like in nearly every way. Letās start with the thing that is the most similar right now.
- LOOT
Most of the loot you get in Wicked could be considered ātrashā but there is one real distinction.
The difference between ātrashā loot and āgoodā loot is very small. Itās not like the vast majority of the drops you get are not even worth looking at while those rare exceptions might be useful. Rather, most of the trash is worth looking at to see if it was actually good.
This is not like POE at all. You want to check most of your drops just in case thereās an enchant you want to move or a facet you want to keep. Even selling loot is worth it, since thatās the primary source of silver in this game right now.
I fully expect the enchantment system to be reworked at some point, but I anticipate that the design philosophy will go even further from the typical Diablo-like formula, defining Wicked as a different genre entirely.
- BUILDS & DIFFICULTY
In Wicked, even a bad build can make it through the game under one condition. If you, as a player, actually learn the ins and outs of the combat and the enemies. In this sense, Wicked is more of a Souls like game.
Some builds in the current state of the game absolutely destroy the current content, kind of like how a āgoodā build in POE will destroy the base difficulty. The difference is, in Wicked the difficulty is not part of the game loop.
There is no intention for a player to finish a build on one difficulty and then clear the next difficulty afterwards. In fact, it seems like the intention is for a player to get comfortable in one difficulty and just stay there. Having changeable difficulties seems like an afterthought feature, rather than a core design element.
- ENEMIES
In Wicked, this is where the meat and potatoes are. Enemies are challenging and interesting, requiring the player to pay attention and engage in the combat to be successful.
There are usually only 1-3 enemies involved in a single combat, and as such they cannot be reduced to simply being a loot pinata. In fact the most rewarding enemies are the ones that can truly threaten you, and the reward is the satisfaction of defeating them when your life was at stake. The loot is just a happy byproduct.
Bosses are just an extension of this. Itās not a matter of very weak but numerous trash with a stat check boss. Itās a matter of dangerous enemies that teach you mechanics, and bosses that test your application of that knowledge. This is, again, more like a Souls like game than an Diablo-like.
Wicked is not like POE. I would go so far as to say Wicked is not even a Diablo-like.
Wicked is something completely new. A fusion of elements from multiple genres, trying to find their place in the landscape among other games that exemplify their genres.
If Wicked were more like POE, it would lose that novelty. It would lose those Souls like elements. It would lose that new footing that itās trying so desperately to stand on.
I hope the future updates make Wicked even less like Diablo, so the comparisons are even more divergent.
If, for example, the enchantment and crafting systems were completely overhauled and replaced with something novel. This would make the āat a glanceā comparison of POE to Wicked impossible. They would have nothing in common anymore, except the camera angle. (Which might be changing too? I could go either way on that.)
I feel I have made my point clear, but I am sure I will have to explain further as people provide their own thoughts and opinions.
(So what do you think. Should wicked even be called an arpg? Or should we come up with a new genre tag for the uncharted territory between that and a Souls like?)
EDIT: I have been told that Souls-likes are also sometimes referred to as arpgās. As such, I have changed every instance of arpg in this post to say Diablo-like, except my closing statement, which is in parenthesis to show itās no longer really apllicable.
