My thoughts exactly. I’ve been following Wolcen for nearly over an year now, and considering how they handled their EA up until now, they seem to be pretty disorganized and are very lacking in the communication department.
First they said they’d keep throwing updates twice ore month, then they started to do montly updates only, which then started to go bi-monthly, up until they decided to scrap everything and went into a 6 month hiatus to focus on their Beta…
They also seem to not know in what to focus first… they added a housing system and an Arena to their Alpha, when these features are hardly important at the moment, considering the game is still in development and unbalanced, when they should’ve focused on adressing the core features of the game, like new skills, new areas, new quests, new gear, etc…
I mean, just look at how Crate handled their EA experience, and on how the Wolcen Team is handling theirs… Crate has always been communicative with us since the beginning.
Honestly, I’m not even hyped about this game anymore, and even uninstalled it ages ago. I was looking forward to try this Beta, but after the constantly delays and lack of communication and respect with their playerbase, I gave up on it, and will only install this game again, after their game is fully completed… Developing a game is no easy task, and the biggest problem here is not even the delays, but rather their poor communication with their playerbase!
yeah, i will be honest. Before that “we are more ambitious than before we will deliver something playable for 10 years” announcement i tought they were just slow and with messed up priorities, now i don’t know what to think anymore.
But i have a bad feeling.
I’ve been following for more than three years as I backed during the KS.
During the KS, they sold Beta and Alpha access.
Then, one year later (without much news), they announced that the game will enter Alpha state and that it will be available in Early Access.
So people who took the Alpha access during KS and people buying the EA on steam could start playing the game, but the people who backed the game during KS without alpha access could watch everyone but them play to the game (those with Beta access would have joined in when the game entered Beta state and other would finally get to the game at release).
Strangely, nobody liked that idea, so they finally decided to give the EA to every backer and improve rewards of those with Alpha/Beta access.
At start, the game was frequently updated. Tech fixes as it was crashing every 10-15 minutes.
When it became more stable, they reduced update to twice a month.
Without warning, it became whenever a patch was ready (and sometimes the content of the patch was quite disappointing for the months you waited).
Finally, they officialised the fact the patches were less frequent, announcing that from now on there would be a big patch every 2-3 months.
It was in january or february this year.
We got a patch in march introducing the bow (with guns and crossbows already present, I wouldn’t have prioritized that over other content and core features).
Then, in april, they said “next update of the game in september, with the release of the Beta” (the promise of an update every 2-3 months was already forgotten, they didn’t said a word about it).
I think it means it will take 10 years for them to deliver the game.
With a few “restart everything from scratch” during that period.
That’s exactly what I am wondering.
30 employees that’s at least $30k/year/per employee = $900K/year but the kickstarter only gathered $400K, so they must have found another source of funding because the game has been in development since 2015.
Steam sales might have bring money but it won’t be enough to cover the costs.Even if they earned as much as the kickstarter they would have $800K, behind what they already spent.
So maybe they have some loan and are betting on the beta bring more players?
I think the game needs at least another 12 months to be completed so I hope they will have enough money.
They want to “create something big”, and I hope they succeed, but how can they make this with so little money ?
I really want to like this game, because it does look like it could be very, very good. But I really do wonder wtf the devs are thinking sometimes. They seriously need to get their priorities in order.
Wolcen makes me smad. Sad/mad, a feeling I never knew existed! :undecided:
Every time they release yet another “gameplay preview” video, I wanna grab the devs and punch them in the face. They have time and money to do that? Maybe they should rather work on the game. We´ve seen enough videos to get us hyped, thank you very much.
I don´t even want to think about what the Crate team would have coughed up by now, with a team of 30 (?!) people and the CryEngine.
Looks like Last Epoch and the Diablo Projects are going to be released before Wolcen. That´s probably not going to boost sales.
Wolcen seems like a bad apple to me right now: Looks nice on the outside, but when you bite into it, it´s just rot.
Oh lordy, the salt levels that announcement is going to trigger…
Oh and a point about Cryengine - it was made for making first person shooters, so to get it to do any thing else requires a lot of fucking work, per the ur example that is Star Citizen. Combine it with amateur, indy devs and you’ve got a recipe for “fun”.
Pretty much where I am at, I doubt we ever see a release before they fold. They had screwed up priorities and confusion in the KS already and it seems to never have gotten past that point. If they can’t get their heads out of your behinds, then I have little hope for them, and apparently it has been stuck for three years by now…
I agree, it’s obvious that there is significant risk involved with such a decision. Given their track record it’s even more risky, but hopefully they understand the risk and wouldn’t have made it without a solid plan. Let us hope…
Wow, it seems like they might be trying to fly too close to the sun. Indie companies with big promises and slow updates are a recipe for disaster. Fortunately I ended up spending my bucks on Last Epoch. The devs from that game seem way more focused and are constantly showing tangible progress.
This reminds me of the mmorpg Horizons that had promised to deliver all kinds of stuff. From Faction v. Faction v. Faction world pvp to Dragon pcs that grew in size/powers as your character leveled. The towns were supposed to be player controlled, etc etc etc… housing, dynamic world shaped by player character achievements… yadda yadda yadda.
In the end, I’m not even sure if this game was ever released. I did see some Horizons game, but it didn’t resemble the promised mmorpg at all.
Wolcen was a very attractive looking arpg that was combining elements from various other successful games. But now I’m afraid they will die a horrible death from scope creep.
Well that, and I think this playable Early Access stuff is getting out of hand. Instead of spending time fleshing out an entire game, they are stuck polishing a tiny ‘demo-game’ because the early access supporters demand something playable.
Grim Dawn got lucky in this regard because a) they had experience in developing an entire game, with TQ and b) the majority of their EA supporters were TQ fans and had a little more patience and trusted the devs. Although I do remember seeing some people complaining about polish and replayability in the those months when all we had was Warden Krieg to constantly kill
Well of course people want something playable, when the PAY MONEY for EA. :rolleyes:
I joined GD EA around build 28, Cairn was much smaller back then, but it worked and was fun. Sure, the game crashed a lot on me for a while, but that´s ok. It still worked. And there was a lot of communication between the players and Crate.
If you take money for EA, you gotta deliver something playable, otherwise it´s just a scam.
I already mentioned that GD did it properly. Wolcen got too bogged down in polishing something that wasn’t ready for polish. There’s playable, and then there’s catering to every complaint made by your EA players about skill balance, loot drops, not enough content, etc.
This now shows all the signs of failure. Delayed deadlines, feature creep, message from the ceo of the company to reassure people, team size growth probably funded by debt… yeah I’m so glad I did not pay for this. Honestly it’s showing signs of a ponzi scheme, likely unintentional but still, that’s alarming.
