Wolcen Benchmark Test & Performance Analysis

[W1zzard]

Wolcen, which has been in early access for a long time, has now finally released and brings fresh wind to the action-RPG genre. Graphics and gameplay are topnotch, and the game runs well on modern graphics cards. We tested three resolutions, including 4K Ultra HD, on 26 graphics cards from AMD and NVIDIA.

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[dj-electric]

Its been a while since D3 session days dude.
Wolcen is pretty decent, and plays coop... when it does... also decently.

Feel free to ping when time is spare.

 

[bug]

This would have been right up my alley. If it weren't for the Steam requirement

 

[Frick]

Can you play offline, ie without an internet connection? And does it use Steam DRM?

 

[bug]

Can you play offline, ie without an internet connection? And does it use Steam DRM?

Yes and yes, apparently.

 

[gridracedriver]

I recommend, to put immediately in the "uber average"
These games would be left on the shelf, it is not possible to have such a poor optimization with amd cards in 2020...

 

[xkm1948]

Since AMD and Nvidia uses different VRAM compression method, could you possibly test the VRAM usage part separately?

 

[dj-electric]

I recommend, to put immediately in the "uber average"
These games would be left on the shelf, it is not possible to have such a poor optimization with amd cards in 2020...

Does 2060S topping 5700 xt in some games make users that angry?

 

[gridracedriver]

Does 2060S topping 5700 xt in some games make users that angry?

I repeat, such a poor optimization in 2020, whatever it is, is not acceptable.

 

[W1zzard]

Can you play offline, ie without an internet connection? And does it use Steam DRM?

Just to confirm what bug said. You can play completely offline, the character is stored on your pc, steam drm, no denuvo, no additional login or account needed to play offline (other than steam)

 

[ShurikN]

Just a quick heads up.
Offline and Online characters do not share the stash, nor can they be switched back and forth from one play mode to the other. An offline character is always offline. Same goes for online.
Also, a recommendation for anyone thinking of buying. Don't. Wait a couple of months, maybe even half a year.
The game is simply too buggy (Bethesda level), quite often even game breaking, it crashes a lot, performance is inconsistent, for some people offline characters got deleted for no reason whatsoever, online can work poorly (if it works at all), servers sometimes have lag even tho the ping is low, endgame content is interesting and original, but there isn't that much of it.
The game was heavily rushed out of Early Access.
The base of the game is good, the foundation is there. It just needs a loooooot of polish and fine tuning.

 

[OneMoar]

game is extremely buggy character deletions and progression stopping quest bugs are varied and frequent
save this for the steam spring sale pile

 

[Vayra86]

game is extremely buggy character deletions and progression stopping quest bugs are varied and frequent
save this for the steam spring sale pile

Yep. A new Diablo or PoE, this is not...

A fun little snack in between I think describes it better. Classless is fine, but no limitations apart from skill points are going to kill replay value, which is exactly where its at for ARPGs. Its exactly Diablo 3's big problem: interchangeable builds, never being truly locked into any sort of choice. It makes the value of a character pretty much zero, you roll one of each class and you're practically done when you hit max level. After that its a scaling game that will wear off fast.

Now, with one class... its a scaling game after playthrough one, with a skill tree that never changes. Budget bin material fo sho

Even a somewhat classless game like PoE does lock you to a specific start position on the passive tree, and later also added further class specific progress with the Ascendancies.

It dóes look nice tho.

 

[Sithaer]

So far I ran into the ACT 2 story progression reset 'supposedly fixed by now' and Bats that I could not target out with my attacks,could only kill them with AOE attacks.

No crashes on my end so far,o right the most annoying issue I found is that I can hardly pick up loot from the ground.Pretty much have to click multiple times on everything until my char decides to pick it up.

I'm playing in Offline mode so luckily I could fix the ACT 2 bug with save file editing but that still wasn't nice.

Theres also some sort of a performance issue,like my game is supposedly holding a steady FPS yet I'm getting weird slowdowns sometimes like my char/camera moves in slow motion for a split second then back to normal.

Yep. A new Diablo or PoE, this is not...

A fun little snack in between I think describes it better. Classless is fine, but no limitations apart from skill points are going to kill replay value, which is exactly where its at for ARPGs. Its exactly Diablo 3's big problem: interchangeable builds, never being truly locked into any sort of choice. It makes the value of a character pretty much zero, you roll one of each class and you're practically done when you hit max level. After that its a scaling game that will wear off fast.

Now, with one class... its a scaling game after playthrough one, with a skill tree that never changes. Budget bin material fo sho

Even a somewhat classless game like PoE does lock you to a specific start position on the passive tree, and later also added further class specific progress with the Ascendancies.

It dóes look nice tho.

To be honest this does not really bother me when I'm playing ARPGs and I play them a lot. 'D3 included still'
Even back in D2 it was possible to change builds completely once they added in the respec option and the reset tokens which were farmable.

Idk maybe I'm getting lazy but I prefer to change my builds on the spot instead of leveling up a new char again.

 

[A.Stables]

Wolcen Dev process https://www.reddit.com/r/Wolcen/comments/f4mhmq like many of the comments, unfinished buggy broken. the benchmarks reflect that

 

[OneMoar]

a wise man once said two steps from greatness is still failure

 

[Frick]

Classless is fine, but no limitations apart from skill points are going to kill replay value, which is exactly where its at for ARPGs. Its exactly Diablo 3's big problem: interchangeable builds, never being truly locked into any sort of choice. It makes the value of a character pretty much zero, you roll one of each class and you're practically done when you hit max level. After that its a scaling game that will wear off fast.

Exactly my problem with many games these days, not just ARPGs. There is the argument that you shouldn't have to play the entire game again just to see different bits of it, which I sorta understand, but I also really really dislike that. That isn't how life works. It shouldn't be how anything works, unless there are some intrueging mechanics surrounding options. And if it's possible for any charachter to do everything in the game the players will all have the same experiences, defeating the notion many games has that the player experiences are different.

To be honest this does not really bother me when I'm playing ARPGs and I play them a lot. 'D3 included still'
Even back in D2 it was possible to change builds completely once they added in the respec option and the reset tokens which were farmable.

Idk maybe I'm getting lazy but I prefer to change my builds on the spot instead of leveling up a new char again.

But that farming was time consuming, which I'm fine with. Just respeccing on the fly is not ok to me.

 

[Sithaer]

Exactly my problem with many games these days, not just ARPGs. There is the argument that you shouldn't have to play the entire game again just to see different bits of it, which I sorta understand, but I also really really dislike that. That isn't how life works. It shouldn't be how anything works, unless there are some intrueging mechanics surrounding options. And if it's possible for any charachter to do everything in the players will all have the same experiences, defeating the notion many games has that the player experiences are different.



But that farming was time consuming, which I'm fine with. Just respeccing on the fly is not ok to me.

Farming gear and trying out different builds is what mainly drives me in these games and this I can do for a long time w/o being bothered. ~7+ years D2/D3,lot of Grim Dawn,Titan Quest,etc
But if I can't respec then that does bother me tbh cause I'm not a fan of leveling all over again especially when I already did it many times before in the said game.

Other than that its character customization I care about and can spend a lot of time with,this is where Wolcen gets a big +1 from me since it has a nice Transmog+color dye system.
Sure its a bit lacking now but at least its there,one of the main reasons why I just can't get into PoE for long is cause if I don't cash out 'I rather buy games' on cosmetics then my char looks like complete grabage and thats not okay with me.

 

[bug]

Titan Quest's class system was the best, imho.

You need some level of respec, if only for nerfed skills, but being able to respec everything kills replayability quickly.

 

[Lindatje]

Very very bad optimization, they need to fix that.

 

[Frick]

Farming gear and trying out different builds is what mainly drives me in these games and this I can do for a long time w/o being bothered. ~7+ years D2/D3,lot of Grim Dawn,Titan Quest,etc
But if I can't respec then that does bother me tbh cause I'm not a fan of leveling all over again especially when I already did it many times before in the said game.

I think that's basically what classes are good for. If they're different enough, and if there is lot of variety within the classes to boot, there's replayability right there. Respeccing is fine (to a degree) but if you can change everything on the fly that goes out the window. Look at D2 for instance. That still works very well because the classes are fun and different. Grim Dawn/Titan Quest too. The classless games I've played have never stuck with me, and as you say early game has a tendency to be the same in those games.

 

[Sithaer]

I think that's basically what classes are good for. If they're different enough, and if there is lot of variety within the classes to boot, there's replayability right there. Respeccing is fine (to a degree) but if you can change everything on the fly that goes out the window. Look at D2 for instance. That still works very well because the classes are fun and different. Grim Dawn/Titan Quest too. The classless games I've played have never stuck with me, and as you say early game has a tendency to be the same in those games.

Classes are fine on their own but at the end it doesn't really matter to me if its a class or classless system as long as it works and I'm not forced to level up all the time when I change my mind about my builds. 'I'm already thinking on completely changing my build in Wolcen since I kinda regret my original choice and I just finished the Story,lol..'

Back in the D2 days 'Battle net' we used to boost our chars trough the early levels to ~end game as fast as possible cause after years of playing and leveling tons of chars the replayability was already gone anyway and all we cared about is the high level gameplay.

To this day I still have only 1 max lvl char in Grim Dawn since I just can't be arsed to go trough the whole game again and do everything,even tho I agree that TQ and GD has one if not the best class system in general.

Might be an unpopular opinion around here but I actually like how D3 does this,every new Season I can level up a new char to max lvl in ~3+ hours depending how much I get distracted and tbh after ~2500+ hours thats all I can stomach with the leveling part of the game.
Then I can jump right into the part I like and play 50-100+ hours each Season until I feel that my char/build is done then put the game away till the next Season.
Maybe too simple/dumbed down? Probably but it sure worked for me and it keeps me coming back unlike most other ARPGs I've played or play.

'GD is my go to ARPG after I'm done with D3 seasons but now Wolcen is kinda fun/fresh,idk how long its gonna last tho'

 

[bug]

Classes are fine on their own but at the end it doesn't really matter to me if its a class or classless system as long as it works and I'm not forced to level up all the time when I change my mind about my builds. 'I'm already thinking on completely changing my build in Wolcen since I kinda regret my original choice and I just finished the Story,lol..'

What people are trying to tell you is this is the essence of role-playing and a desired feature, despite of your (toally legit) preference.

Back in the D2 days 'Battle net' we used to boost our chars trough the early levels to ~end game as fast as possible cause after years of playing and leveling tons of chars the replayability was already gone anyway and all we cared about is the high level gameplay.

Yes, you would boost. But you wouldn't boost to 99, so you weren't skipping all that much. And it didn't take that long to go though the first two difficulty levels anyway.

 

[Sithaer]

What people are trying to tell you is this is the essence of role-playing and a desired feature, despite of your (toally legit) preference.


Yes, you would boost. But you wouldn't boost to 99, so you weren't skipping all that much. And it didn't take that long to go though the first two difficulty levels anyway.

I see,well thats a fair point and I can't argue that.
I guess I was never really into the role playing part of these games,that I keep for story based games like Witcher and the likes where I do care about my decisions and whatnot.
Divine Divinity original sin is also a good game for role playing. 'yet to play it properly'

Ofc we did not boost to 99,more like 80 but that was doable within a day.
Like we started sometime in the morning and we were at Hell Baal around night,that if everything went according to the plan.

 

[mouacyk]

For those unware, this is a CryEngine game and will melt your GPU.