Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

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Lorini
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by Lorini »

With all the problems, it's still top 10 on Steam games being played.

https://store.steampowered.com/stats/
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Jag
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by Jag »

I finally had to put it on the back burner with all the bugs from the latest patch. I've tried playing the same zone 3 times and that's enough for me.

I'll hold onto it, because there is some really fun gameplay here and it looks great. It just needs more time in the oven.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by Max Peck »

The Lamach boss fight is... charming.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by Tao »

WARNING FOR ONLINE PLAY:

Toward the end of Act 3 you will reach a waypoint called the Monolith Gate, this seems like a natural stopping point to take a break..DO NOT EXIT THE GAME. If you exit the game at this point there is a very high likely hood you will trigger a game stopping bug.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by ManAboutNothing »

I'm enjoying this one too...when it isn't being buggy as hell or having ridiculously silly, unbalanced and/or broken boss fights. Another few months, this one might be really good.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by morlac »

Lorini wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 2:13 pm With all the problems, it's still top 10 on Steam games being played.

https://store.steampowered.com/stats/
I got a feeling this is mostly due to timing. There has been nothing very compelling released in awhile so competition is slim. It is purddy and for most the cracks don't show for a bit. That is you if you mostly play offline. It certainly needs a few months of patching and I think I may just wait having fiddled around enough with it for now.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by Skinypupy »

I uninstalled it this weekend. There’s a good game there, but it’s simply buried under a huge mountain of bugs and unbalanced mechanics. Hoping to revisit it in 6 months and that it’s in a better state.

It’s the only game I’ve ever left a negative Steam review for.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by Hyena »

These two things might have been mentioned earlier, but I thought them worth bringing up again.

First of all, there is a difficulty switch you can activate at any time, and it moves the game from very challenging to "hey, this is fun again" for the boss fights. Go into settings from the character selection screen and in the upper right hand corner is Normal Mode and Story Mode. The game defaults to Normal, but Story mode is much easier. I switched it over during my fight with the Act 1 Boss, took him out the first time, then I switched it back for the regular game.

The other thing I realized is the balancing act you can do with the skills vs. spells, rage vs. willpower dance. I was a dual pistol ranged, but swapped one of my pistols out for a catalyst and picked up the Ice Spear spell. Now I can shoot my gun to generate rage, drop a few cannon shots with that resource, then use Ice Spear as my willpower builds. When you use one, the other builds, which allows you to spread constant death and dismemberment as you bounce back and forth between the two. It works the same way with any weapon/catalyst combo. If you find yourself running out of rage OR willpower, switch over to a skill instead of a spell (or vice versa) and you will refill the other resource.

Haven't hit any of the showstopper bugs, but have seen some of the annoying ones (being unable to go a certain path, like it's blocked) but there are so many alternate routes in most dungeons it's a minor, if annoying, issue.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by st_dysan »

I've been playing since release, I didn't play it in pre-release. But Im having a blast. I've played about 30 hours between offline vs online mode. I have yet to see a single bug in offline mode(with the exception of my char moonwalking) and maybe 3 minor issues in online mode but no game killing bugs.

I find the gameplay engrossing and the character development very good. They have taken the best of PoE, Diablo and Grim Dawn. The inventory system needs some work and it needs Grim Dawn's ability to compare whats on the ground vs equipped without having to go to inventory screen. Its a little unbalanced in that your Character is generally overpowered.

As someone said above, it does indeed need a little more time in the oven but it is an enjoyable game and has a lot of promise.
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rittchard
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by rittchard »

I just hit the Act 2 Boss and got my butt handed to me. Had the same problem with Act 1 Boss, but as Hyena mentions above, changing to Story Mode for the boss fight made it just right. I'm hoping this will hold for Act 2 as well. I haven't given up on my ranger/White Arrow build, which seems to handle everything but the bosses well.

A couple of things I thought worth mentioning, may have been obvious to others but I just happened upon them late. One is you can screw around with the 3 passive wheels to get some skill subsets closer to each other. It doesn't make as much difference as I thought it did when I first realized it, but certainly is nice to know. Thankfully, you can reset all passives by paying in essence (or whatever it's called). So be sure to save all the extra skill drops and sell them for essence.

I haven't encountered any game-stopping bugs (playing Online), but a few of the game quirks are odd. Like how you have to pick a reward and sometimes still fight in the background. Also playing in high resolution it's really hard to see the descriptions, particularly which number gem slot I'm getting. And when you are talking to a vendor and hit a different tab you start running away; this just seems like an obvious egregious thing that I can't imagine was not caught and fixed.

Does anyone know what the deal is with the Duplicated Skill tabs? I'm sure it's important and probably obvious but I still haven't figured it out. Also can I unlearn a skill I learned by mistake?

Anyway, quirks aside, I'm still glad to have another viable game in the ARPG space. It seems like the developers are going to support the game for a while, hopefully they will be like the Grim Dawn folks and keep improving the game.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by Skinypupy »

rittchard wrote: Tue Feb 25, 2020 6:03 pm Does anyone know what the deal is with the Duplicated Skill tabs? I'm sure it's important and probably obvious but I still haven't figured it out.
It’s so you can duplicate a skill but assign a completely different set of modifiers to it. So two skills with the same basic functionality, but a completely different set of effects (one does big damage, the other applies status effects, for example).

It’s fascinating to me that some people are playing with almost no issues at all, while others see nothing but bugs piled on top of bugs.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by infinitelurker »

rittchard wrote: Tue Feb 25, 2020 6:03 pm ... One is you can screw around with the 3 passive wheels to get some skill subsets closer to each other. It doesn't make as much difference as I thought it did when I first realized it, but certainly is nice to know.
:shock: What?! I had no idea about this! Thank you!

I wish there was (or is there?) a way in-game to mess with what-if scenarios for passive reset/changes and how they would affect my character stats/damage before committing the gold or essence.
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Tao
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by Tao »

From the developers, I bolded the ones I would consider game breaking, several of these were repeatedly reported during beta and there are quite a few missing but they do say it's not all inclusive;

1.0.4.0 known issues
Hello everyone,

Here is a list of some known critical issues we’re already working on:
Spoiler:
  • Players can sometimes lose items in their personal chest.
  • Players can lose dyes and appearances previously unlocked.
  • Some players still can’t enter the Monolith during Fury’s Ascent quest.
  • Some Offline characters don’t appear on the character selection screen.
  • Act I Boss can sometimes become invulnerable.
  • Act III Boss can sometimes freeze.
  • Unwanted behaviors from stackable items, trading, productivity, and magic find in specific situations.
  • Players can have their quest progression locked if they join a friend who is further in the progression.
Players' animations can be desynchronized in Multiplayer.
  • Fixing multiple passive skill nodes issues (Attrition Strategist, Static Transferral, Safe from Afar, Intravenous Neural Cord, Eagerness, Mass evasion, High Evasion, Sparking Dart, Blessed Silver, Captured Velocity, Academic Fieldwork, Primordial Insights, Faith Leach, Plague Bringer, Virtuose Stance…).
  • Summoners need some love and they will have some.
  • Uniques can be altered.
  • Helmet and Boots can have 2 sockets at certain item levels.
  • The Block Efficiency cannot be rolled on shields after level 90.
  • Some skills (ex: Bleeding Edge, Winter’s Grasp, Bulwark of Dawn, Flight of Gaavanir…) deal much more damage than they should with some modifiers or don’t function the way they should.
  • Genesis unique item can malfunction and lead the game to freeze
  • Black screen issue.
  • Crash reports.
This is a non-exhaustive list of critical issues that we’re currently working on for Patch 1.0.5.0 and Patch 1.0.6.0.
We are aware of many other issues that need fixing and we’re also working on them. If any other critical issue is raised, we'll start working on it as soon as possible.

Thank you for your support.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by Hyena »

One of the things I've seen is that there don't seem to be many items with the "dodge" affect after lvl 9. It might be because it's a bit OP, but I love it on my dual-wield character, because 40% of the time I take zero damage from hits, no matter the source. AOE, melee, range, elemental, whatever.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by rittchard »

Update: looks like the game has been patched numerous times since release, I think they are at 1.0.8 or something now. I hadn't encountered mosts of the bugs people mentioned, so I can't comment on whether they were fixed. I do/did have a disturbing issue with the game freaking my computer out and driving the fans crazy. I kept lowering quality and shutting down graphics features 1 by 1 until it finally abated. The bad news is I think I had to limit the FPS to 30 to get it to stop kicking the fans in. The good news is the game still looks pretty darn good with everything at Low and all the bells and whistles off. The only thing I really noticed was when I shutoff Vsync, it's definitely not as smooth. Unfortunately I had to do that to be able to control the FPS. All in all it was worth the sacrifice but it's still kind of weird.

As far as gameplay, I took my ranger through the full campaign, ended at lvl 41 I think. Yes, I had to switch to Story difficulty to beat the Act bosses. I'm a little disappointed that I wasn't able to do them on Normal, but given that there doesn't appear to be higher difficulties that were unlocked, I guess this is fine. Overall the campaign was pretty good, I didn't pay too much attention to the story but I think they did a good job on the cutscenes and presentation.

What it did unlock was the "endgame" content, which is pretty much a copy of Diablo 3 adventure mode, but with a bigger emphasis on the metagame. There are a ton of upgrades you can work on to the castle, and completing these takes gobs of resources and grinding of randomized dungeons/areas. There's the quicker, simpler task mode and then the deeper "expedition" mode. The castle upgrades cover all sorts of things, including unlocking individual stuff like more stash space and a 5th skill slot, as well as all sorts of other goodies for crafting, etc. It's basically a completely separate game that uses the mapping engine to create the content. Like PoE, you can also use other items and methods to make the maps even harder to get better loot, etc. It's a pretty cool system that is derivative of D3 but also gives you a bigger sense of purpose if you are the type that wants to unlock everything. Another piece of good news is that you can bring characters straight into this mode (similar to D3) and completely ignore the campaign if you so choose. The only caveat is that you must make it to level 15 before both types of content are available.

If you like this sort of content, and liked the basic combat/skill engine, it's a fantastic way to keep the game entertaining.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by coopasonic »

What's the current state of the game and is the online co-op good? Asking for a... me.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

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coopasonic wrote: Thu Jun 25, 2020 2:58 pm What's the current state of the game and is the online co-op good? Asking for a... me.
Well since nobody would tell me I bought it and finished it. For the record the game still has some serious rough edges. The post-game part that I think I was most excited about is completely underwhelming to me. I don't think I will bother messing with it. The game itself was ok, but other than the insane passive skill tree (wheels) it's such a diablo clone.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by Lorini »

New Diablo season starts Friday, play the real deal :)
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by coopasonic »

Lorini wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 12:02 pm New Diablo season starts Friday, play the real deal :)
Oops I missed a season completely! Part of the reason for trying Wolcen was that we have done sooo much Diablo 3. I needed something different and Wolcen isn't really different enough, in my opinion.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by Lorini »

coopasonic wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 12:34 pm
Lorini wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 12:02 pm New Diablo season starts Friday, play the real deal :)
Oops I missed a season completely! Part of the reason for trying Wolcen was that we have done sooo much Diablo 3. I needed something different and Wolcen isn't really different enough, in my opinion.
But you know, that's what I like about D3, anytime I want to monster bash, I can come back choose a class and get right to it. None of this story stuff or rough edges or whatever, it's just what I'm looking for in an Action RPG.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by Sudy »

The collective thanks you for your sacrifice, coopasonic.

I'm similarly burnt out on D3. I'd actually be fine with a clone... I just want a different setting and perhaps a slightly different gameplay loop. I've followed Wolcen on and off for a couple of years and the gameplay looks fantastic, but there always seem to be major kinks needing to be worked out, and at this point it seems like that isn't going to happen.

I've bounced off of PoE, Grim Dawn, the Torchlights, Titan Quest, the Van Helsings, and Victor Vran. None of them felt right. Victor Vran does some different things and the gameplay is tight, but I tired of it eventually. Grim Dawn has a fantastic setting, but the combat is less refined and the character building is too old school for me. Really disappointed the new Torchlight is being panned in Early Access, as it looked great early on.

Maybe I will give the new season of D3 a go, though. Maybe I can finally get a Monk all the way to 80+, which I've never been able to do for some reason.

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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

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Sudy wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 1:13 pm I've followed Wolcen on and off for a couple of years and the gameplay looks fantastic, but there always seem to be major kinks needing to be worked out, and at this point it seems like that isn't going to happen.
I think there is supposed to be a big patch in July.
Our team is currently working on two fronts: the final Second Dawn patch(1.0.16.0) with its bug fixing and balancing review, which will be delivered in late July, and the first Chronicle(1.1.0) for which we’re currently aiming for Autumn 2020.
The Chronicle will bring additional content, gameplay changes, performance improvements, and we will start to communicate in more detail about it around early September.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by Tao »

I bought Wolcen in early access and was one of the many folks sorely disappointed when it released. I have been following patch development and according to the interwebs it's still not good. In particular, reports are that many of the passives still do not work and the Boss fights are still poorly balanced and designed. Seems the developers fix item A with a patch and that breaks item B. Still hoping they get it right at some point.

A little off-topic but not too much, Torchlight 3 quietly released as early access on Steam about two weeks ago. Just wanted to offer folks a warning that it's not ready yet and I would not recommend jumping in to EA at this point. The developers released a fairly big patch yesterday and it broke a fairly large portion of the game, stuff that was actually working really well now doesn't. Again from what I have played so far I am hopeful they will get it all sorted out eventually but it's going to be a while yet.
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Re: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (diablo clone)

Post by rittchard »

If you don't mind playing a game that's still in beta, I highly recommend Last Epoch (I started a thread on it somewhere). Unfortunately you can only play it single player for the moment, and there is noticeable content missing. But... the core of the game is solid and very fun, and in general it seems like people like it more than Wolcen. I actually thought Wolcen was pretty good, I'm not sure why it got a lot of negative feedback later but oh well.
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