KickStarter Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem - open world isometric action-RPG

[Metro]

When did you become an apologist? You're supposed to criticize games p. much.

 

[Excidium II]

If it was me I'd work on whatever the fuck I wanted.

 

[Metro]

If it was me I'd work on whatever the fuck I wanted.

That's the Bethesda method. The irony here is that they're apparently doing this because it was demanded by the Kickstarter backers. It's certainly not a deal-breaker for me but I always prefer development time/money goes into core gameplay versus fluff.

 

[Renevent]

I believe the housing was part of the original pitch, they even have footage of the housing component working in their kickstarter pitch/video.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

If I recall right, the housing thing lets you design dungeons and shit for multiplayer. Or was that some other game?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Fucked if remember Metro bro, probably was in a KS update.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Update 0.2.8 : Female Character !

Hi everyone!
Today we are happy to present you the female character!
It was a stretch goal during our Kickstarter, and one of the most demanded feature, so here is a small video presenting her, and her customization options:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OuGnvXCIpk

This update comes with lots of fixes and improvements, including localization for weapons and armors, and some some new cool weapons :

Here is the full changelog:


GENERAL:
New: Female character !
You can now customize your character with following options :
Skin color
Morphology using 5 parameters : Fat, Muscular, Thin, Skinny and Bust
6 haircuts with customizable colors
11 eyes preset
Fixed: Mouse double click ignored
Fixed: Various rare issues that would override player’s character customization options
Improved: Character list & character selection camera
Modified: The location of the saves is now in “User/savegames/”
Improved: Performances improvement related to skill use & damages
New: Localization for Weapons and Armors!

ENVIRONMENT:
Improved: Greatly improved visual quality of Mountain Cave architecture
Improved: Rendering of character selection
Improved: deleted annoying vegetation
Fixed: the prefab in the oblivion dungeon
Fixed: reconnect navmesh at the driller location
Fixed: Playerlight not disabled when going to character list from a dungeon

CHARACTERS:
New: Female character !
Improved: feet of player entering in the ground in the menu
Improved: Butcher behavior
Improved: Spider behavior

ANIMATION:
New: Animations for new character female

UI & VISUALS:
New: Exit to desktop (community suggestion)
New: Match hair & beard colors (community suggestion)
Improved: Slightly modified the appearance of the loot
Fixed: A bug where magic trails weren’t going all the way along the weapon. It also should fix a few visual artifacts with dynamic weapon trails.
Fixed: Rare bug where the equipment wouldn’t morph according to player’s morphology
Fixed: Rare save rollback
Improved: small adjustments on the main resource HUD
Improved: The Innkeeper is now displayed on the minimap
Improved: New way to show the framerate

GAMEPLAY:
New: 11 Cool weapons
Fixed: amulets and rings that increase Power now modify your current Umbra value and not just your max value.
Fixed: Crash when player reaches level 30
Modified: the way loot is balanced and calculated
Modified: the way magic affixes are rolled, and their level calculated
Fixed: Dungeon keeper not appearing at the beginning of the last quest
Fixed: Bug with the luthor’s quest

LOCALIZATION:
Improved: The localization files are now splitted into different .xml for better editing. They will be internally cleaned and organized in the future.
New: Localization for Weapons and Armors.
Fixed: English typos
Fixed: Missing strings EN / FR. Thanks again for all the community translations!

Known issues:
-There is still white flashes at the end of the first cave
-The player can get stuck, you can use the “stuck” command in the console if it happens
-Some animations are slow down

As we modified the location of the save (this was necessary) and changed a lot of things, the saves are wiped again, sorry

We are working on a very exciting game-changing feature, and we can't wait to present it to you! See you soon on the next update!

 

[Villagkouras]

Great here's something to put in the kitchen of the house I'll build.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Work in Progress : New Passive Skills Tree !

Hi everyone !
This is a very exciting day for us, as we have been working hard on what lead up to today’s reveal. We are proud to present you the brand new Passive Skills Tree of Wolcen : Lords of Mayhem, which will be added to the game in the next update. In the video below you’ll see some WIP footage (containing some placeholders) but most of the Tree is already done and working, so enjoy



As you can see in the video, handling of the Passive skills will be fun and will, we think, add a necessary depth to the entire gameplay experience. We are planning on releasing hundreds of Passive Skills at once so balancing things will take a little time, but this way you will be able to test a functional version of the PST real soon.

The design phase of the new Passive Skill Tree started soon after the launch of Early Access, and went through many iterations before we decided on the actual rotating version. We knew from the beginning that we needed a system that allowed a considerable amount of freedom when it comes to builds and gameplay variety, as there is no class system in the game.

We sat down and spent time planning each section of the rings, making sure every one of them adds a layer of fun and fantasy to the gameplay and offer interesting skill combinations with other skills.
We even made a real world rotating tree made of cardboard !
We want players to be able to craft their gameplay experience by finding their path through a series of templates inspired by various archetypes. Sections that are closer to the center of the Tree represent broader and well known fantasy archetypes, while sections situated farther away from the center are more specialized and advanced.

Designing the PST also was the catalyst of many other changes in the game’s systems. We remade and refactored most of the formulas in the game from scratch, added countless new magical effects, changed how loot and loot drops work. Because some passives depend on them, we added features like dashing, combat stances and weapon enchantment spells.
Our Gameplay programmer went from skill to skill for weeks until we had at least 200 hundreds to present you, crossing giants lists on his desk, and will continue for a long time after the first release, as we have two more rings with some really cool archetypes coming up.

As we are still nailing down the details about the integration of the Passive Tree in the lore of Wolcen, we can’t yet reveal the name of the object itself but we can tell you a little about what lead us to design it that way.
Did you notice the three statues surrounding the altar ? They’re inspired by the three Moirai (or Fates) of the ancient Greek mythology.
They were goddesses who decided the course of destiny of each human being at the time of their birth, and in our case they assist and watch over anyone who wish to take its destiny at hand. But unlike the mythical Moirai, our deities will let you handle the threads of fate and change paths at will.

We hope you’ll have as much fun experimenting with the new passive skill tree as we had designing it, and can’t wait for you to get your hands on it !
We of course absolutely expect players to break the game through crazy builds, that is why we want to release it soon. This will be the very first working iteration, so the tree and its skills will grow along with the community’s feedback and suggestions.

Thank you for your support, and see you on the forums !

 

[ArchAngel]

As long as this game will have proper teleport and fireball like D2 did I will be happy.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

State of the game #1
Hi everyone!

It has been a little over six months since Wolcen released in Early Access, so we thought it would be a good time talk about the development of the game, and where things are headed.
When the Kickstarter debuted SolarFall Games was comprised of 4 people, and Umbra (oh, nostalgia) was just a playable prototype. Back then, the goal was to make a cool but smaller hack and slash using CryEngine.
But that had to change when the game was funded with almost twice the goal reached in pledges. It was clear players craved for a Hack and slash with deep character customization and beautiful graphics.

Just as the team grew in size, so did the scope of the project. Wolcen is being made into a bigger, and ambitious game than what we had initially planned. We are working hard to turn old mechanics into innovative features like our new passive skill tree, the resource opposition system or the housing system.
Our goal is to make a really great game that can keep players engaged for years to come, the kind of game that we would like to play.

Because of that, as many of you already guessed, the game will not come out in October as it was announced a year ago. At the time we did not fully realize the sheer volume of work that was to come. Videogames are often delayed, and this time is no exception.

We would also like to address the state of the Linux port. Yes, it is still planned, but at this time, the team has to focus on a single platform in order to improve the current alpha. Our small team does not currently have the manpower to maintain two platforms at the same time and we still have to implement core features, fix bugs and improve the game’s stability on the PC version before we can move to Linux.
We will try our best to release a working Linux version as soon as we possibly can, but we might have to migrate to CryEngine V first.

The team is getting ready for the release the biggest patch to date, which will contain the new passive skill tree among may other cool things!

We want to think our backers for their support, they made this game possible, and we hope to accompany them through the journey ahead of us.

Cheers!

I'm looking forward to that patch so I can make a new video.

lol @ kickstarter comments

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Created a video showing off some of the new features like the character customization and passive skill tree.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Update 0.3.0 : New Passive Skills Tree, Housing, Dashing and much more !

Hi everyone!
After a period of experimental testing we are happy to finally deploy version 0.3.0 to everyone !
The update brings the long-awaited passive skills tree, the housing system, dashing, 14 new rooms for the randomly generated dungeons as well as many reworked room, a lot of gameplay improvements and bug fixes. Many of you already saw the presentation of the passive skill tree, but for those who missed it, here it is

Melee-dashing is here! You can toggle it via the button near your health globe, or by pressing the F key. And it is of course possible to improve it with passive skills.

You can now build your own house! After completing the 'stalkers' quest, you'll be able to talk to the House Master and let your imagination do the rest! (As long as you can afford it, of course)

We can't wait to see what you'll do with this system, please share your house!

There are 14 new rooms for you to explore in the dungeons, and the 3 cave architectures have been hugely improved. We reworked them to get a better read on the path to follow. We plan to have a minimap too

You can read the full changelog here : http://steamcommunity.com/games/424370/announcements/detail/805408658850124219

Have fun !

 

[4249]

These guys are following the classy trend of discounting the game before it's even out. Daily deal on Steam for -25%. http://store.steampowered.com/app/424370/

 

[vortex]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wolcenstudio/umbra/posts/1806024
Mage Staves and Hit Animations

Each Staff comes in four variety, depending on its elemental type. As you’ll see, each element has a different attack style ! We’ve included Fire, Frost, Lightning and Umbra staves, and more elements will be added in the future. Using staves will let you damage the enemy while letting your umbra regenerate. Because of this, Unlimited Power has regained its status as a proper spender.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

I was about to make a video of the new tutorial area and town, but after the town accidentally clicked on one of the random dungeon people and immediately got stuck in a dungeon (at level 2) that took me like 30 minutes go complete, so I just said fuck it and stopped recording.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

I finally made it. W/VO btw

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

2018 Roadmap for Wolcen
Hello everyone !

The last year has been significantly important for the development and the evolution of Wolcen. From version 0.3.5 to 0.5.0.4a we released a dozen patches and pushes at least as many hotfixes. 2017 was about giving our players substance to start enjoying the content of the game and the core features of Wolcen and we worked hard to update the game twice every month.

2017 also was the one-year-anniversary of the Early Access of Wolcen:


And our first trailer !


Finally, 2017 was the year we also learned and grew.
Although we originally planned to release the game much faster, our ambition for Wolcen increased and we’re now moving forward with the idea of making an even Greater game. With a big G. We know that this will cause some delays, but in the end we want you to feel it was definitely worth waiting.

We learned a lot from our previous year thanks to the feedback of our Community and from the experience we gathered.

But for now, let’s go back a little bit on this 2017 year and remind what happened, before we move on to 2018’s plan.

2017, the year of Birth
Scenario
2017 saw the introduction of the universe of Wolcen with a new world map and new quests presenting the first area of the game and some elements of the lore. We didn’t add anything more so far to use this testing ground for the core features of the game. We had to choose between the lore content and the core features and since we want players to enjoy the gameplay and experiment different game styles, it felt more important to focus on the implementation of the core features of the game.

Gameplay
Focusing on the Gameplay allowed us to implement lots of new features, even some we didn’t originally planned for 2017 :

Spoiler

• New map and quests
• New quest system
• The Online mode, first step to the multiplayer
• The dungeon traps
• The DoT system refactored
• The Character Sheet revamped
• We added more than 120 new skills
• The daily dungeon
• The bounties
• The arenas
• New enemies, bosses and AI behaviors (Skull Crusher, Bandits, Orc Warlock, Grave Keeper…)
• The Fog of War
• New weapons, armors and items including uniques
• New potions and elemental poisons
• Permanent effects on potions
• Gems and the Jeweller
• The active skill tree
• The Archivist and active skill currency
• New spells
• The Signature Skills
• Sigils (semi-passive spells)
• Charged spells
• Improved the targeting system
• Revamped the Defense and Resistance mechanics
• The cadaver mechanic (introducing the necromancer)

And last but not least, we made tons of balancing. That’s it for the major stuff on the Gameplay for 2017.

Localization
Thanks to our great Community, we were able to add and improve localization of the game for :

Spoiler

• French (of course !)
• German
• Spanish
• Chinese
• Russian
• Czech
• Hungarian
• Finnish
• Korean

Wolcen is proudly expanding in the world today thanks to all your support and effort. We’re really really grateful about that.

Audio
The audio has also been improved. We added a lot of new sounds from inventory to PST to quest or enemies and some new musics as well. The game now has its theme, as well as some areas in the game. We didn’t implement as much music as we wanted but focused on the sounds to make the gameplay enjoyable.

Environments
2017 saw the growth of the team to improve the workflow, speed and quality. The whole world was updated with the 0.5.0, with a lot of new areas, assets, dungeons and more. It seems that everyone was happy with this update, but let me reassure you, a lot more is coming. To give you a brief overview of what have been done:

Spoiler

• We remade the main menu, it is now a bit more sexy than a black background
• We remade the tutorial area
• We reworked Amarth, with higher quality models and textures, as well as a better space organisation to welcome our new NPCs
• Dhur evolved from a small village to a big city

We added new areas:

Spoiler

• Evergrave
• Huntsman vale
• Hailstone bay
• Silvercrown
• Ravengard
• Ashenrock temple
• Ashenrock bridge
• Dungeons
• Orcs architecture
• Corruption architecture
• Black old civilisation architecture
• Necromancer architecture
• Pithus architecture
• House Caves

We also improved the existing ones. With a new world and many improvements in our workflow, 2017 leads the path to a greater 2018 year.

VFX
The development of the particles continued, and many changes have been made to improve existing effects, create new ones for new spells, and optimize everything. We also developed a new system to optimize all the environment particles. Particles in 2017 were not made by a particular department, but this is about to change for 2018

Concept art
Regarding the art concept work, 2017 was about exploring and testing new designs for the foes and factions, a lot of time refining the UI and design the UI for the new features. There also was a lot of efforts made to improve the workflow for future productions such as environments, characters, weapons and mods. Alexandre did an amazing work and agreed to show some exclusive artwork made this past year.

Of course, there is not a single improvement we add without the implication of the animation team. All the various postures, the way your pistols make you look that cool, the characters and enemies movements, the specificities linked to your character looks, all goes through them and their hard work.

2018, the year of Rebirth
We’re putting a lot of hopes in 2018 and made the proper arrangement to make these hopes come true. We are still in the process of planning the additions to the game and calculating the time and efforts needed to achieve our goals, but we plan to sweat a great deal this year. And not only because we’re on the French Riviera.

Updates status
With the team growing and the development reaching a critical point for the future of the game, we plan to apply updates every 2-3 months with major and quality content addition. The pace we had didn’t allow us to optimize the game and reduce significantly the amount of crashes as well as making the proper testing. We want to provide more quality to Wolcen, we heard the need for more optimization, content, and less crashes despite the Alpha status of the game and we want to improve on that. This will lead the next patch to be pushed in March.

Linux version status
Wolcen has proven to be a very challenging game to make and maintain, and we’re all highly motivated to lead it to its release and even more. Despite that passion, we’re facing the real problem of time required by all the corrections and additions we must make to make this game great. Knowing that, having a second version of the game for created content as well as maintenance would present a very high difficulty with our current staff, specially without penalizing the PC version itself. As much as we would like to provide the Alpha and Beta version to Linux users, we must face the fact that this will be more time consuming than productive for the game. Therefore we have decided that the Alpha and Beta version will not be implemented on Linux.

Scenario
The last month was very productive and we anchored the core elements of the 5 acts storyline. Regarding the way we’re going to tell the story, we want to innovate on the narrative style, and we hope that you will enjoy what we plan. We will also use the social networks to introduce the main characters, villains, and areas, without spoiling too much of course ! Wolcen Studio now has a hero fully dedicated to that side of the development and we’re confident things will move forward much faster thanks to him.

Gameplay
There will be a lot of improvements in the Gameplay as well. Here is a non-exhaustive list of what we plan for this year:

Spoiler

• Shrines
• Crafting
• Multiplayer
• New act I and more !
• Minions
• New PST sections
• New skills in active skill tree
• New spells
• New monsters, bosses, and AI behaviors
• New NPCs
• New item types including weapons (bows!), armors and trinkets
• More new music and sounds
• Combo improvements
• Apocalyptic form !

We will also internally work on the future content of the game’s scenario but so far we don’t plan to release it for the Alpha or the Beta to provide a testing environment for spoiler sensitive players.

Animation & FX
Addition to the team will allow us to improve the animations, characters and FX in the game to make it even more epic and enjoyable. We want to keep the same visual quality for Wolcen and even improve it if we can. We also plan to work on the player's characters, both male and female, to improve their looks and behaviors, as well as providing cool options to personalize your experience of the game.

Environment
With the development of the scenario, we plan to create a lot of new environments that will support the story of the game and allow players to explore the world of Wolcen, including new areas for the Republic faction and new corrupted zones, as well as other new areas we prefer to keep silent at the moment to avoid spoiling.

Audio
We plan to add voices in the game to improve the game experience and the immersion. They will not be implemented until we’ve finalized the content, but they are planned. New musics are also in the pipes.

In conclusion
The 2018 calendar for Wolcen is very fraught with content. We will continue to focus on the gameplay content more than the scenario release. The gameplay elements need much more testing than the story, and we don't want players to refrain from testing because they're worried of being spoiled. We will then focus on the endgame content to allow player to have fun while testing the game and its features. Patches applied less often will allow us to add more content in a more stable environment so our Community can enjoy the game while testing it.
Don't forget your feedbacks will always help us to make the game even better so do not hesitate to provide them to us, it’s really important for us to know how you feel when you play Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem.

Of course, we didn’t cover everything you should know regarding this year, but we will continue to update you on the status of our team, so you will know soon enough

Once more, thank you all for your support. This means a LOT to all of us.

The Wolcen Team

 

[udm]

Glad to see they're still going strong . Grim Dawn's good, but still very conservative in its approach. I really hope Wolcen can be the answer to an offline Path of Exile.

 

[Sykar]

Same here.

 

[Metro]

What are developers' fetish with these wacky sprawling talent trees?

 

[Perkel]

Just noticed it exists. Graphically it looks waaaay above any arpg right now.
Does any dexer tried it ? Is this alpha playable ?

Looks like they are going for POE tree:

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Just noticed it exists. Graphically it looks waaaay above any arpg right now.
Does any dexer tried it ? Is this alpha playable ?

Looks like they are going for POE tree:

The alpha is playable, I haven't made a video on it in a while. But you can watch the ones I made previously.

 

[Sykar]

It moves along slowly though.