Wolcen Lords goes official beta in September

Most people complain there isn't any other games out really that can compete with POE. I been following this game and my biggest gripe was that it wasn't multiplayer and it didn't seem to ever be going beta. I checked on it today and saw they have made huge strives towards being a finished and polished product. Do you think these games would compete with one another in the very near future?

I think Wolcen may be a fine diversion from PoE some day. Hopefully better than Grim Dawn. I don’t think it will truly compete given the massive head start PoE has.

very off-topic. I have it but not finding it overly interesting as it is at present.

It's going to be really hard for a game to compete with PoE imo, as long as GGG keeps churning out updates at the same rate. I think most of them will be "filler" games inbetween leagues when there is a little bit of downtime. I personally enjoyed Grim Dawn the little I played it, but it just doesnt have the same endgame and lack of any ladders/online feature makes it really boring to me. There is 0 competition and you can import any item in the game with a mod etc which makes nothing really matter in that game compared to PoE. This is just my opinion of course.

I dont think so personally. Its not really a community trade based game like this right? Its like grim dawn, torchlight, titan quest, even games like dragon age origins or skyrim... essentially just a single player game possibly with a co-op function. I dont think those games ever hold players in the same way, theyre fun for a few 100 hours but theyre an isolated individual experience for the most rather than a game based around a trading community.

Maybe the games will eventually share a space, diablo has dissolved its trade and with poe item drop rates so out of control the trade economy aspect has become worthless, it dies within a couple of weeks every league, ssf is increasingly becoming the way serious people play the game regardless of if theyre actually in the ssf league or theyre in the main league where they can party with friends. So who knows, but in the foreseeable future I dont think any of these other games are even in the same design space to compete with poe.



I own wolcen, grim dawn etc, I have all these games. Theyre good, I like em. I hear a new torchlight is coming, and that its a proper online community game? Ive been told about it but not actually seen it myself yet so not quite sure.

It looks interesting. I would love it if POE had more direct competition though. Grim Dawn is a giant snooze-fest for me and not in any way directly competitive with POE (again, for me) so hopefully this is better than GD.

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CrazylikE wrote:

It's going to be really hard for a game to compete with PoE imo, as long as GGG keeps churning out updates at the same rate. I think most of them will be "filler" games inbetween leagues when there is a little bit of downtime. I personally enjoyed Grim Dawn the little I played it, but it just doesnt have the same endgame and lack of any ladders/online feature makes it really boring to me. There is 0 competition and you can import any item in the game with a mod etc which makes nothing really matter in that game compared to PoE. This is just my opinion of course.

Ya this is kind of what I was thinking too. With the stuff there showing in this next update in POE its like wow they're really trying hard to make this game better.

Wolcen will "compete" without a hint of a problem.

why?

Because it's not a F2P or anything close at the moment, thus allowing the developers to design it very differently than POE.

POE is about "milking" people with addictive personalities (like all F2Ps, mobile gaming, etc..). Everything is about artificially lengthening the game as all studies (phD's and such) found that it's the key aspect in maximizing profits.

Non FP2's have the "luxury" to get their income upfront and from all the players. As a result the objective is more to make the game "good" (bad word, read "different" perhaps?) rather than focusing on "time constraints".

To conclude, POE is a very interesting game, I like it a lot. This forum is probably the worst place to ask though, as people tend to be overly protective regarding any activity they are "currently" doing. So the feedback your'e going to get will most likely be negative toward Wolcen. Personally I love Wolcen and I have great expectations (the engine for starter puts POE to shame).

./peace

Edit: To clarify and exemplify, our stash, trading system, and item drop system and all shit because they achieve two objectives at once for (now) Tencent. They maximize time spent (as those activities are all necessary to play the game, and heavily time consuming), and thus revenues (profit) AND they minimize the cost of operations as the company doesn't need to invest in it. (Hope it helps, kinda hard to summarize the global picture in few words, source: My MBA)

Edit

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Mischief67 wrote:

Wolcen will "compete" without a hint of a problem.

why?

Because it's not a F2P or anything close at the moment, thus allowing the developers to design it very differently than POE.

POE is about "milking" people with addictive personalities (like all F2Ps, mobile gaming, etc..). Everything is about artificially lengthening the game as all studies (phD's and such) found that it's the key aspect in maximizing profits.

Non FP2's have the "luxury" to get their income upfront and from all the players. As a result the objective is more to make the game "good" rather than focusing on "time constraints".

To conclude, POE is a very interesting game. This forum is probably the worst place to ask though, as people tend to be overly protective regarding any activity they are "currently" doing. So the feedback your'e going to get will most likely be negative toward Wolcen. Personally I love Wolcen and I have great expectations (the engine for starter puts POE to shame).

./peace

You're def right about the differing priorities. On the flip side, the upfront pay models don't really have incentive to add more content until they can get another upfront cost from you (DLCs). So even if the final release is MASSIVE, you're talking a couple hundred hours of play before people want more. But chances are expansions/DLCs will be once a year if not less. Probably less.

This is the advantage F2P games have. They are under constant pressure to reinvent and keep the game interesting somehow or the revenue stream dies.

I am def looking at Wolcen more like a single player, witcher-like game experience in terms of expectation than expecting it to compete with PoE's league model where every 3 months I am motivated to come back and no-life again.

~Myth

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Mischief67 wrote:

Wolcen will "compete" without a hint of a problem.

why?

...reasons having to do with financing...

The counterpoint to that is that if you have a paid game and it's not fun and is over too quickly with no replayability then you get bad reviews and lower future sales. I don't think funding is what will make it successful or not. There are plenty of well funded flops out there.