Turns out its was so buggy and should revert to alpha testing state. It was a shameful release. The devs will take that as a failure on their resume.
Basically the issues were the skills were poorly optimized, calculations were off, and they shot themselves on the foot with the skill customization feature.
They marketed it as a revolutionary system but it turns out that they bit more than the can chew,. The number of possible combinations overwhelmed their capability to do fixes and address the bugs generated by this system. Some bugs that were cited by testers in the beta phase were still present in the final release.
This is a parallel to what Last Epoch is presenting: skill customization.
I fear that this will boil down to another Wolcen blunder, but my hopes are up when I found an article in pcgamer.com praising Last Epochās skill system.
Also, an alpha tester for both Wolcen and Last Epoch praised the EGH team and said that the technical abilities of EGH is so much better than the Wolcen devs.
I just hope its true and that quality will be maintained.
Please donāt end up like Wolcen. (a freaking disgrace to the aRPG genre)
Donāt be afraid Thereās pretty good evidence the devs know what they are doing here.
The skill system, while complex and deep and offers huge variety, is also a lot more streamlined than Wolcen (where āanything goesā). Between classes, masteries, skills and skill specialisations, it gives the devs a lot of levers to pull when it comes to both variety and balance.
By contrast, in an āanything goesā system, when one thing goes out of whack, the problems multiply. Then, fixing that problem causes dozens of other problems down the line. That basically canāt happen here because the reach of any one skill or spec is finite.
Plus, the devs appear to be engaged and listening to the community, which is always a plus
LE is work in progress. And despite of being at a very good state there is a long way to go.
You surely can have a lot of fun with LE right now and also play Wolcen parallel when it gets fixed / proved.
I donāt share your opinion about Wolcen being absolutely bad and LE will be 2000% better at release. Bugs will happen, balance will always have a need to be adjusted as long as the game is live and content is being added.
And despite of the release issues of Wolcen there is a nice game. LE can profit from the cons but also of the pros of Wolcen. And there is a lot of stuff Wolcen does really nice.
I was finally able to make the type of character I wanted to play! A Diablo 1 Lightning Sorcerer type of adventure. Possible in LE that I couldnāt comfortably build in Wolcen due to the wonky willpower/rage mechanic and having to constantly chug potions all the time to build up resource (and many other factors).
Thank God for LE as it really gave me the ARPG āfixā I was desperately looking for.
I really enjoy the ability to build the character that you want to play with āTRUEā customization - imagination to reality.
Wolcen was pushed back to completely redo the game multiple times, even going so far as to change the game engine they were using. That takes a lot of time.
The game I got into in its alpha is not the one I played in the last week. Not even remotely.
The delays were not to fix problems, but because they kept changing what they were doing and so, ran out of money. That means they had no clue how to manage what they were doing.
EHG is pushing back the release of LE this late, not because of changing their minds constantly, but the game is just taking longer than they thought.
It happens in even the most controlled and experienced companies. With those larger, publisher controlled, companies, they will have to release at a specific date no matter what. Hence, all the bugs and bad balance we have seen from companies of late.
I am happy for the delay because of the timing of it. Not everything is in the game yet. They are still adding everything in at a good pace and most importantly, it is being TESTED. They acknowledged there is a need for a delay and did it. THAT shows a company that wants to do better for the player and has managed their time and money as best they could.
To sum up, delays due to no cohesive plan is bad; delay to finish a set plan is good.
Iām currently on my second playthrough of Grim Dawn, and I took a break to play Wolcen when it came out of Early Access. I have to say, I have had a lot of fun with it so far. I wasnāt following its development from when it was supposed to be āopen world,ā but Iāve got no real complaints so far, except that I sometimes canāt strike at enemies if there are too many on screen, and thereās something that feels a little ālackingā when pointing-and-clicking. And Iām still confused by āduplicating skills.ā But itās worth the $15 I paid for it in early access.
But Last Epoch does look better (havenāt had the chance to download the game yet)ā¦
Iām in this boat. Iām not saying Wolcen is perfect (just had a nasty crash last night that made me hard-shutdown my PC because the game refused to close, lol) but it has promise, and itās starting to feel like the ācoolā thing to do is just spew hate. Iām enjoying the game for what it is and Iām okay with what I spent on it.
That said, I really need to get back into LE. I last played in November so I know Iām missing out on a lot. Need more hours in a day for games
Wolcen is a fun game and a good game, but I agree it has WAY to many bugs. But this is a different team with different developers.
So far what I have seen seems promising, and much more up my ARPG alley. I think weāre all afraid and excited, but the feedback on this forum is like primaries in an election. If we donāt speak up now and share our likes/dislikes the game will not turn out as we had hoped. So keep providing feedback and they will get there.
This game is cool, but is still waaaaaaay too raw.
There is no option to save/backup your characters, and there is no multiplayer, I cant see an arpg single player nowadays with good eyes.
But I have really high hopes.
Btw, Wolcen is not bad as people are saying. Its a very fine game, and their release was way better than D3 and PoE.
That is not even close to true with PoE. It did have some steam issues when poeple transfered there accounts, but the server was never down as long as wolcen. There were no game breaking bugs, endless item duping and gold duping.
LE is far from release. Still only in phase 2 out of 4. Multiplayer is coming soon.
I have so much faith in LE that i have gifted it to a friend on his birthday. he loves it ^^ as far as i can tell the Last Epoch Devs communicate quite well with the community. They stick to their plan and polish things up. if you have followed wolcen for awhile then you know thats not true for them. I also have to admit when i have heard that karvarousko is doing QA for LE that made the decision easier for me to buy this title in early access because then i knew theres atleast one very capable guy working in this position (for those who know him from poe)
Thereās pretty good evidence the devs know what they are doing here.
