Yeah, a training mode would be sick. Let us fight some mechanized training dummies at the Sacrament training grounds. We can get a separate food inventory so it doesn’t drain our resources, and no durability punishment for “dying.”
They can fix this in a single patch, so saying they “killed” the game is an exaggeration.
I’ve passed PoE2, and now the game is gathering dust. In no rest for the wicked, I was torn apart by ordinary mobs and bosses, with the exception of the Twins, whom I passed the first time. It made me play this game for over 100 hours, considering that it had little content.
Yes to the similarities, but personally I wouldn’t assume giving people access to a sparing partner would change how they see the game/want to play it.
It would be a nice addition tho. Crucial served that purpose for me pre breach as is but a more dedicated arena wouldn’t hurt the game in any way.
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Unlike DB4 and PoE 2 games, there are very few opponents here. This is the most important criterion for the difficulty of the game’s gameplay. The fewer opponents there are, the higher the difficulty, the more opponents your character must destroy the crowd with a simple fart. Let’s not turn the gameplay into a simple fart.
Idk, bit much friend, haha.
I think it comes down to people all wanting different things. I can’t fault someone who wants to play dynasty warriors the apex of meaningless hack n slash it that’s what they enjoy. We deserve our preferences, just as I’d never want to play that mind numbing bs.
Issue is Moon has never really figured out the combat in a way to describe to interested consumers and it shows in the game made.
Even in the interviews Thomas struggles to describe what kind of game Wicked is… And while maybe they don’t want to be shoved into a particular label/box thats fine but imo it shows in the gameplay outcome as well.
We have a weak copy of souls like, like straight up apples or apples copy. It’s not like diablo, it’s not like poe, it’s souls with 4 weapon arts and expanded weapon attack animations. Me personally, I think if they dug into the fighting game style of CC mechanics it would be amazing.
Might be time to just put the game down until combat update as hopefully they’ve refined the concept by then.
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Let’s not over react. There were come clear issues that Hotfix1 addressed. They may have over done it though. It IS early access. The Nameless Pass being 4 levels higher was probably the #1 issue I saw. They fixed it.
But let’s be real. The game was EASY prior to Breach once you knew the mechanics. There were multiple builds that easily roflstomped Echo Knight.
The game is still WAY harder than Diablo 4, POE/POE2/Last Epoch. LE current season was so damn easy I quit after 2hrs (And I went all the way to endgame before). I’ve completely quit D4, not because it’s bad but because it TOO is too easy. Never really played POE1 but POE2 combat I do enjoy relative to the other ARPGs and I hope the devs don’t cave and make it D4/LE easy.
I think some of the attitude coming from hardcore players is a bit off and fails to have empathy for other players. The same is true for players that want to one button their way through all content. Personally, that’s why I am a fan of difficulty sliders/settings. So people that want to really challenge themselves can play with AI mobs on max settings with smaller parry windows and less loot. And those that want to just experience all the world has to offer, and it is a beautiful world, can do so without all the hate they get from hardcore players. You must understand that some players will never be able to ‘Get good’.
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I think you are wrong. Nothing in this game, as it is now, is easy and accessible. You are punished for everything.
Problem is that the game is not hard in the right way, it is tedious, that is how I would describe it. And many do. What can you do if the people feel like that ? Those people are supposed to buy the game, and are reviewing the game in early access. In the end they are creating an narrative that can in the end damage the games reputation and success.
And rather than being elitist about it, one should look at the core of the problem. And here the problem is hard, just because no one is able to explain the problem it self. Most blame food system, fast travel, and so on.
For me personally i dont mind any of these mechanics, i enjoy exploring the world, it is a 10/10 game on that front. But I absolutely despise the combat. I despise the doughy feeling it has. Animations are so slow, and punishing, you have huge windup before you do dmg, you have huge windout after you do dmg, some attacks are guarantied to have you hit after them, heck, most of them are guarantied that you will get punished after, especially when fighting multiple enemies or duo bosses. And atop of the long ass animations, you have enemies interrupting your every step. This is infuriating. Chaining animations is okay, if you have no enemies around and you do it safely in town.
Only reason i finished the breach update, is my stubborn nature. And because i like the world so much.
The combat has all the right ingredients, it just needs complete facelift and polish. The game should be hard because it is challenging in a sense that you feel completely at fault for dying or failing, and not because it kicks you in the nuts every 2 seconds.
And in the end, one should not be elitist just because they had patience to go trough it all. As I or you did.
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This gamer gets it. Thank goodness someone more articulate than me hopped on the thread.
Very much agree with this post. We can’t act like the game was at a better skill ceiling last patch when it had just as many cheesey interactions prior.
And yes it’s very much just in EA but I’d add I think what a lot of players are expressing in not so many words is the changes make them afraid of what else is to come.
Thomas has in the past been very straightforward that they do not wish to have multiple difficulties and imo all that will do is lock up their player base. Even BG3 huge commercial success had modes that offered real over the top challenge but also just a walking story mode.
While I can understand they want to protect the identity of their game I take a hard line against controlling player experiences because I think it’s a pipe dream. People play games for different reasons and enjoy them for just as many different ones. The notion that we can control the players emotions and cultivate a narrative from their in-game experience is on a case by case basis, nothing more.
What deflates me on this patch is the lose of potential because I see the ship sailing on a line where I don’t like the destination and I believe some players feel the same way. We’re arguing over what will/could happen instead of waiting for the combat update which is probably the play here.
You have to realize that the average person isn’t that smart.
You have to also realize that the average person isn’t that coordinated.
You must also realize that having both of these is relatively rare.
This is what a developer has to contend with when making a game like this.
It will take time. I think the devs will make a great game in the end. I think more constructive criticism may be in order rather than ‘the world is falling, the game is shit’ that I’m hearing.
Because if you are claiming that the game is suddenly easy after The Breach I’m not so sure. It was pretty easy before The Breach once you learned the game and satisfied the first two points I made (being smart and coordinated).
I think there are some black and white kind of thinking. Appeal to casuals don’t necessarily mean dumbing down, and making the game generally easier.
Imho for a completely new average player the early game is just ridiculously hard, until they get to know the mechanics and have a usable build. After which the game can actually become too easy in time with some outlier builds like heat-rune-one-shot-even-the-bosses mage.
So I think they should make early game a little bit easier by nerfing a little the early enemy damages and/or attack speeds (except for the bosses), and give meaningful quest rewards, that help players create a nice basic build with their favorite weapon in a way, that they would understand why those builds work. Nothing crazy, just basic stuff.
Also the “cheating”, unfair, cheap elements like no inertia homing stuff and action queueing absolutely MUST GO. Oh, and falling off a cliff… ffs give us some grab mechanics! My #1 death cause by far is dodging or action queue locked attack chain into the abyss. Ridiculous.
And balance definitely needs a lot of work.
But after these steps, endgame actually could get even harder, so hardcore players can have a proper blast too.
Yes, I think we need to let them cook. Maybe give them more constructive criticism. I think those that want an extremely difficult game have to realize that may not be the ultimate vision. It may fall somewhere between a true souls-like and D4/LE. And that could be fine.
Perhaps accepting that and perhaps asking for options to toggle on difficulty may be a better play for those that really want it. Sure, Thomas has been against that in the past, but perhaps he will come around. Or perhaps when the final end game is in we will all be laughing about how concerned we were.
Again, this is EA. I think maybe 1/4th of the story has been revealed? We only have access to the first step of the crucible. There are so many ways that they can scale the difficulty.
Y’all just fearmongering and gatekeeping. The game will remain challenging because that’s the vision. We don’t even have the full content yet and you guys are afraid of a few tweaks. Sure some people ask stupid things that remove the challenge almost completely in some aspects but I trust the Developers know that certain things are not actual problems.
That being said, the game does have some problems and some things could be better designed. Just because you’ve spent time and now it’s a kind-of muscle memory thing about how challenging something is in your head, doesn’t mean it’s correct or the right amount of challenge. This game will probably challenge you, everyone; but some things simply are overturned, broken or need rethinking. It’s early access get used to change.
I think the argument over hard and easy is a circular one that leads nowhere.
Hard and easy aren’t real. It’s like when people describe water as wet when it’s the other way around… Water makes the things it touches wet.
The only reason the game feels “easier” as you play is because you’ve spend time absorbing information and acting on it .. aka learned something.
This cycle will never go away no matter how “easy” or hard they make the game. If people have no experience in the game they will likely not understand it and not be successful in it. And when they not successful they cry it’s too hard if they’re the type of player that doesn’t want to improve (ignoring outliers like physical limitations).
The time it takes to go from not understanding to understanding is all upon the individual. And the only thing that drives players to improve is that conflict to begin with if you don’t like getting your ass beat. The thing is everyone will make this distinction for themselves. But if you also remove all the sharp edges there’s little to no pressure for people to improve as well.
So commercially it makes very little sense to me not to cater to a wider audience. If people want walking story mode, ok. Simple enough. If people want to walk in he’ll and be doom guy, let them. Or… I guess we could just keep having the same conversation every patch where people describe what hard and easy means to them xD
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Ultimately the effect matters not the cause. I haven’t gotten into details, but yea I meant exactly this by “until they get to know the mechanics and have a usable build”, and we are in complete agreement. But “going from not understanding to understanding” can be anticipated, and the enemies can become stronger accordingly. If done right, the players will have constant positive feedback if the are doing ok or pressure to tinker and git gud if not.
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Fair enough. I think that’s what I’m trying to express when saying the game should be playable from level 1 to max.
Difficulty being irrelevant and just discussing the combat flow.. its feels like shit to pull mobs because you have no resources to fight, things of that nature. Like it’s not a question of difficulty but feel for the game and the flow it has in general.
I disagree that it’s just a matter of understanding.
Try Clair Obscur Parry vs. this game’s Parry vs. Khazan parries vs. dodging windows.
Twitch reflexes and vision also vary by people and age. It’s not as simple as “just spend enough time to learn”. Some people will never be able to get certain timings down regardless of time invested, while others like the famous ONGBAL can spend a single day on a game and get the parries nailed down.
You can take a Calculus class and clearly tell who is gonna struggle and who is gonna watch the class and take no notes and still ace the test.
You can tell a person that they can play basketball all they want, but they’re always going to be disadvantaged against someone taller.
The range in abilities and advantages people are born into and age into needs to be considered when tuning and designing. Games are not just obsessive 20-30 year old and teenage boys playing them.
Don’t know those games but I can get on this train.
I’ll add…
I read re really stupid quote from the ArrowHead dev on “a game for everyone is a game for no one”. IMO it’s a pretty disingenuous rephrasing of the emotions a chef might have with a catered menu and someone wants to make alterations, etc. while I can get behind the chef depending on the kind of restaurant you’re at (if you’ve ever worked in service you know the grind I speak of). I take issue with the notion we can’t be inclusive in ways that don’t impact the entire player base all at once, especially in a limited multiplayer RPG like wicked. It’s not intended to be live service, it’s not an MMO so you have all this freedom to let players dictate their gameplay experience (should Moon allow it). Again looking at what BG3 did with custom rules. Realms could have their own rules, simple as that. Do I want to play an oversimplified version of the game? Fuck no, but my experience shouldn’t prevent others from playing to their level when we’re secluded to our own realms. This also opens up the door to making realms where the game is harder and even more punishing…
I’m reminded of an interview with Quentin Tarantino where he mentions leaving obscure items in his movies intentionally because people will speculate and each carry different meaning of what was in that box, etc which means each of those individuals will also have seen a different movie and take from it a different experience. This level of intentional creativity I found very profound. It leans into the notion that we all interpret the world in our own way/lense. I don’t think you can perfectly replicate an intended experience for everyone just by having one version of the game. No matter the situation, medium, etc we’ll all have our own POV.
All that said… I don’t think a difficulty meter would be something we’d see until release or leading up to it at least. The game as they intend isn’t even finished so I’m sure that is a higher priority.
They managed to put one in Ori, who knows.
But I’ll add that I like my games to stay single player and balanced as such as a focus, and would hate for my single player enjoyment be negatively impacted just because they want to balance for multiplayer features I will never use and have no interest in.
I prefer single player precisely because I don’t have to deal with toxic nerds like you do in MMOs or MOBAs. I get to progress the game at my pace, roleplay my character how I want to play it, partake in relaxing fishing and woodcutting and talking to NPCs and reading their dialogues at my pace that I want, without being rushed ahead by someone else or being trolled or passive aggressively berated by some online brat.
Let there be multiplayer realms and different rulesets for multiplayer if you want for people who enjoy it, but don’t ruin my single player experience just because you need to hamstring design and balancing to account for multiplayer or some awful PvP gimmick.
Oh yeah don’t even get me started on the Multiplayer pvp. Since we’re playing little more than Wicked Souls when it comes to combat I imagine it will be just as imbalanced as the souls games.
Which is ok, I’m just not going to bother because if I wanted to play PvP I’d go play a game MADE for pvp.
Which brings me to… Getting out the rest of that thought out, on the arrowhead dev. One thing I do think is clear is that to do anything well it needs to be done with intent. Again another random quote I heard once was about art. That art can serve no other purpose than to be art. Now however true or false that claim to be it always reminds me of engineering principles.
The reason the design for a hammer hasn’t improved beyond fulcrum positioning with better handles, head shape, and alloys, is that there is no reason. Hammers serve a singular purpose that which they were designed for and without moving parts there’s not much of anything to reduce from the design before it fails to function as intended. Problem, simple solution, done.
IMO you do need intent behind anything from designing a hammer, creating art, or making a game. But the digital single player medium does facilitate much more leeway in giving players a… choice.