The popular action RPG Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is facing many issues. The developers are now posting on Steam with a list of improvements.
What is the problem? Developed by a small indie studio, Wolcen had a huge launch on Steam in February 2020. The servers were overwhelmed and the game even achieved higher player numbers than the established action RPG Path of Exile.
However, the hype around Wolcen was overshadowed by many bugs and balancing issues. The Steam rating dropped from 93% to 56%.
In the weeks since the game’s launch, many critical bugs and exploits have already been fixed, and updates with balance changes have been released. These include:
- The disappearance of characters and items
- A severe item exploit
- Balance update to extremely strong builds and a overpowered crafting method
In the official bug report forum (link leads to the Wolcen forums) of Wolcen, new reports are still coming in regularly. According to the developer Wolcen Studio, this should change in the coming weeks and months.
Improvements in gameplay as a focus goal
In a post on Steam, the developers spoke up and listed measures that should improve the player experience of Wolcen in the future.
They emphasized that initially the top priority was to release new content, such as the first league and the next chapter of the action RPG.
This has now changed. Due to the many bugs and balance issues, they want to first improve the community’s gameplay experience before the new content is released.
This is supposed to be achieved with the update “Operation: Second Dawn”, with which the developers want to create a second ascent of Wolcen.
Operation Second Dawn aims to enhance the quality of Wolcen
What is “Operation: Second Dawn”? It encompasses a series of measures to improve various areas of Wolcen. These include:
- Improved testing: To make testing of new patches more effective, the developer has enlisted an external QA team for help. This is intended to allow problems to be detected and fixed faster before they go live with patches.
- Balancing: The focus of the balance patches will be on abilities that are currently underused. Therefore, there will be few nerfs. However, the team will continue to intervene immediately if severe balance issues arise.
- Server issues: The team is currently looking for additional ways to improve server capacity and efficiency. It is a top priority for both the singleplayer and multiplayer modes.
- Improvements to the story: Chapter 3 of Wolcen is set to undergo several revisions. These include new enemies and enemy types to bring more variety to the chapter.
- “Quality of Life” improvements: This includes a whole range of different gameplay elements that are not pleasant to operate in the game. Examples mentioned include: the key mapping for the left mouse click, notification windows that pop up in the middle of the screen, and many others.
The developer has not provided a specific date for the improvements. However, they are expected to be rolled out “within the next 4 months”. The first patch 1.0.10 will be released next week and will implement some points from the list.
This is what will change in support: The team also apologized for the lack of communication with the players. They explained that communication during the alpha and beta phases was handled by one person.
Since the community of Wolcen has grown significantly in recent weeks, the support team will also be expanded. The team assured that they will continue to read the feedback and respond whenever possible.
The time after “Operation: Second Dawn”
At the end of the statement, the team emphasized that Wolcen will receive new free content over the years. The next patch that will bring new content will be 1.1.0 and will introduce the first league of Wolcen.
It will include gameplay mechanics typical for such leagues:
- Players will need to create a new character for the league.
- This character will be separate from the characters created before patch 1.1.0.
- With the release of patch 1.2.0 and thus the next league, the 1.1.0 character will then be added to the “standard version” of the game. And so on.
Additionally, further chapters are planned. However, the developer warns that the chapters take much longer to develop than the rest of the content. Therefore, they will come later than the leagues.
What do you think of Wolcen’s plans? Is it good that the team focuses on bug fixing or should they pump out new content instead? Let us know in the comments!
While you wait for the updates and improvements, you can take a look at our Wolcen guides:
