Where winds meet holy shit

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AlvinL_#4492 wrote:

I saw the game on steam offered for free, I didn't pay attention at the time it was an mmo. The bish weighs 100gb, it better be eyecandy!

Path of Exile 1/2 is pretty huge too, especially the 2nd I guess. The game is utterly gorgeous to look at, particularly the landscape scenes from hills and the top of tall buildings. I've taken some stunning pictures. Close up it can be a lot more hit and miss, at least for us scrubs on console. We also have a pretty big issue with textures popping in, which is always frustrating, but I think they are working on it. Presumably all of this is much better on PC, with a graphics card that costs 3x what a PS5 does lol.

The main draw is the world itself though. The story, the people, all the neverending content. I've had a lot of fun with it.

That was one hell of a reply, haha. Will try to go through it step by step. Thanks a lot! :heart:

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exsea#1724 wrote:

i've been playing this game HARD (as in a huge lot). in fact, it's cure me of my mental conditioning where everytime after work i would want to go home and play games i would think "cant wait to go home to POE" even tho i would be playing a different game.

apparently the china version has even more menus. path of menus! hahaha
its one thing i dont like about the game but i guess its still organized enough that i can ignore this "flaw/feature".

The experience with this game sort of reminds me of when I quit playing poe1 and ended up playing RDR2. Instead of frankly bullsh*t mechanics layered on top of other BS ones, here I got to play a truly masterful game that respected our time and effort. POE is good for what it is, but the core of the game is engineered frustration, or "friction" as Chris Wilson used to repeat ad inf. WWM has some of that too, especially in the boss fights, but it's such a lovely experience just wandering around, exploring the world, talking to people along the roads or mountain slopes, going into a wide range of different quests. I was level 40 before tackling some of the early campaign quests ffs, haha. It was pretty weird to run into a tutorial quest in the early region now at level 51, with slowly explained features and whatnot.

As for the menus, I remarked that there are as many menus in this game as there are passive skills in the poe tree, and it's probably not much of an exaggeration tbh. It's kind of absurd, but I have heard this is par for the course for gacha games, which this sort of is. It's just much less present and "in your face" here than probably many others. I mean, I see there is some minor p2w in the battlepass, but really, there is zero reason to pay anything for anything in this game. Maybe I will later on just to support their effort, but there is no need. Apparently the "whales" fund it.

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this is a major mistake. i m a chinese dude (banana), when i first started the game i used eng voiceovers and eng subs. but my other chinese friends were telling me to use chinese voiceovers paired with eng subs to learn chinese. i quickly learned the same issue you had where the subs were just way too fast. theres a lot of dialogue in the game and the game tries to keep the narrative/story/cutscenes shorter by making the dialogue go faster. which hurts sub readers. i wholely recommend using eng voice overs, their english voice overs are actually quite decent and reminds me of sleeping dogs's english voice overs.

Thanks, then this is something I should try out at least. I've (mostly) enjoyed the Chinese voicing, it adds to the atmosphere and they have a strong emotional impact. And I read that the English VO was kinda crap with worse "acting", possibly done with AI. But I'll try it out, see if it improves the situation. Just frustrating though. It could easily be solved by a toggle in settings that allowed us to hit space or whatever to continue a conversation or transition screen, instead of it happening automatically after (quite often) 0.2 to 0.5 seconds. It's also stressing to read text, simply because too often there is too little time, and hitting the pause button (where available) is kinda iffy too, and breaks up the flow and voice acting.

"

when it comes to deflection mechanics, players tend to have wildly different experiences, either loving or hating it so its a huge hit or miss (winks).

as long as you're playing solo, theres absolutely no reason to not play using "story" mode difficulty as it gives the deflection hints and even slows down time to increase your timing window to a disgusting amount.

the rewards are the same regardless of difficulty and story mode is great to learn how to fight bosses to see what attacks can/should be parried.

but if you're serious about getting good. the game actually has a practice mode (shown at the defeat screen after being defeated by a boss). you can use this to actually learn the boss attacks. in this mode, to learn, DO NOT ATTACK. simply try and deflect everything.

...

if you're not confident on deflecting, dodging and moving out of the damage area is always an option.

the bosses really teach you not to be too greedy.

also you might want to get your oddity bonuses maxed out. they help a great deal.

Sorry for cutting down the quote, heh.

The timing for deflection seems off much of the time. I'm hitting the button, or even spamming it, but still get his a lot of the time. Right now I have assist on for power attacks and off for the rest, so it does crop up a few times. But it's really hard in my experience, and this ofc doesn't help in boss fights where we rely on deflecting to do serious damage, or drain the qi bar. I hoped it was possible to skip this Tian Ying fight when I lost enough times, because that is what happened with Heartseeker, who I also gave up on (the 2nd phase was pure cancer, with the camera going every which way, and then degen and one shots galore).

Boss fights is definitely the big negative so far. All world bosses have kicked my arse too, usually in quick fashion. Miss one deflect (see above), and you're pretty much dead from one combo. Each hit does 3000+ damage, and they're flying in.

I'm playing pure solo, and yeah, can turn it down to story mode, but that impacts the regular fights, whic have been fine and enjoyable, so I don't want to do that. Some bosses were also fine, and I beat them first time, like the one in the blue Deer place, and the Void King (wherever he was lol).

As for oddities, I'm almost maxed out in Qinghe, but have almost nothing in Kaifeng, because I've barely touched the content there. Only tagged most of the waystones in the city itself, but not done a whole lot of content. Tried to go into the cavern, but the game blocked me due to low level (or story progression perhaps).

"

i would also recommend playing with a mo-blade (tank). they can actually do very well against bosses, especially when the boss's qi is exhausted. PROTIP attacking as well as deflecting reduces the boss qi (blue bar). so you can even specialize into doing more damage during exhaustion/execution and even ignore attacking bosses with normal attacks entirely. the mo-blade Q ability gives you a temporary damage shield similar to ES/Ward. but last a few seconds. you could hit q and cancel the animation by hitting deflect, or letting the animation play out and hit deflect if necessary. if you get good enough, you can start hitting enemies in between deflects as you can immediately deflect cancel any attack.

Don't think I have that weapon unlocked even. So far I've used spear + panacea fan. The latter does nothing really (I now read that healing is nuked in boss fights until you beat it once), but I quite like the spear. Using heavenquaker now. Pretty expensive (materials) to level them up, so I cannot do that with all of them.

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tian ying is currently my fav boss. he feels really epic to fight, and i try deflecting everything he throws at me.

his third phase (gasp) has a tricky barrage where he attacks, attacks, attacks, attacks, double attacks, pauses then has a finisher attack. sometimes i fail sometimes i deflect all. either way its so damn epic.

Never got to his third phase, but saw there was one when I went into the training mode. That is when I said feck this and noped out, and teleported out of there. First phase wasn't too horrible. Yeah, I died few times there too, but if I happened to connect with deflects and survive the little jumping minigame, I could take him out. But the 2nd... no idea what was going on, but suddenly I got essentially oneshot from a mile away from a giant sand jerk in the middle of the arena. Nothing I tried helped. I've beaten Elden Ring and suchlike, so don't actually suck (although it feels like it), but these fights simply feel horribly unfair, and that is never fun to me. Others get enjoyment from getting their arse kicked for 5 hours straight and then winning, but I just hate life for those 5 hours, so that isn't for me.

"

if you still have problems fighting him i guess i could lend you a hand. just pm me your details. i tend to play at night (singaporean time). in fact i m guildies with one of the forummers from POE.

i am confident you could beat the bosses. but i would say you need to put effort into either getting better gear or going hard in training mode. there even is a boss challenge mode which disable all deflect assists so you have to manually time them yourself. many people have completed these challenges HITLESS. may be some cheated, i do not know. but i can pretty much do all bosses on recommended difficulty (with varying ranges of success) i believe you can too. tho i must admit i m a persistent bugger if i m passionate about something. in wind's case i sometimes spend ungodly amount of time trying to learn boss patterns.

Yeah... I'm never going to even attempt to do this crap hitless lol. That would be a recipe for throwing both the ps5 and tv out the window. But thanks for the offer to help out, that is nice of you. I'm not in a guild nor sect, does that stuff have any benefits?

I'm leaving tomorrow morning and will be gone for almost two weeks, but maybe I can get in touch after that, provided you still play the game then.

Hopefully will be able to play some hours this evening, at least I can try to bottom out the energy, since it apparently fully refills in about 2.5 days. Recently broke through to 51, so need to grind for gear I suppose. Seems totally random what you get, at least for me where boss runs is out of the question.

"

same. i usually turn it off and KEEP IT OFF unless i m stumped at a puzzle. too many trolls. but i m glad its available as togglable option.

talking about info.... the game has TONS of hidden lore. if you check youtube, a dude covers tian yings lore. god damnn... after learning about his lore its so damn rich.

That's cool. I've not looked into online material much, just some tutorial guides to get a grasp on mechanics and features. But I've done quite a bit of content in-game, and noticed a few names pop up a lot, of which this bloke was one of them. I suppose it's a bit like in Elden Ring, where you piece together the lore over time. And these people on youtube are able to put together everything in one place and go super deep into it. Maybe I will look that up later, but for now I want to enjoy the game world and explore it on my own terms and pace. It's so much fun to delve into a new game world like this, and I especially enjoy it being a non-western culture and setting. I remember seeing Romance of the Three Kingdoms many years ago, a Chinese TV series, and loved it. This is sort of along the same theme.

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EDIT: final note, to add, i read you played it on your PS5. if you ever plan to play on a different console (mobile or PC) make sure to use your PS5 account to login. from what i read online, its a bitch to login using PS5 account. many players prefer to use their steam credentials on their ps5 instead.

and yes. the game has extensive crossplay capabilities which allows you to continue where you left off on your PS5 on your mobile device.

it really makes me have low/zero interest for poe mobile, where a giant game like WWM can be ported over to mobile. TLI and undecember allows players to do the same too.

Will never play games on mobile, especially a game like this. It needs a proper platform. Snake was fine, but that was 30 years ago lol. Battery will probably drain out in an hour too, haha. But I read that if you do want to crossplay like that, you need to bind the accounts before starting, otherwise they will technically be on two different accounts, and at that point you can't connect them.

Small addendum I saw somebody post in the discord (text flies by so hard to follow anything there, grr). But looks like a pretty decent overall guideline.


Immerse with the menus

1. Explore and collect oddities (butterflies)
2. Pet any cats you see and pick up everything
3. Unlock treasure seeker passive to search for chests
4. Do main story
5. Choose weapons from same path
6. Choose inner ways that support the weapon and playstyle. General advice to get Morale Chant which is good no matter tank, healer or dps role
7. Lvl stuff
8. Grind gear for set bonuses
9. Get all mystic skills and choose the ones based on pvp or pve
10. Joining a sect: perks, access to weapons and outfit skins but have requirements
11. Joining a guild: perks like more jade, shop and +1 weekly trial
12. Commit crimes to make friends
13. Ask for help if character has any illnesses
14. Max weekly 10k jade fishes by doing co-op stuff so can buy 1 premium pull and other boxes from season shop
15. Lock useful martial tips and convert useless ones to upgrade inner ways levels

"

Pangaearocks#9280 wrote:

Don't think I have that weapon unlocked even. So far I've used spear + panacea fan. The latter does nothing really (I now read that healing is nuked in boss fights until you beat it once), but I quite like the spear. Using heavenquaker now. Pretty expensive (materials) to level them up, so I cannot do that with all of them.

one thing that i especially like about the game is if you're missing something, you can hit the "obtain" button. it will give you a list of options on how to obtain the thing you're missing. be it upgrade materials or even skills. sometimes the game does be coy by just giving you a general hint on where to find it. but at the very least it points you in the right direction.

as for materials to level them up, yeah. it can drain resources if you branch out too much. from what i read, you should be able to specialize in 3 different weapons. and should have enough to specialize in 4 at the very end (based on china servers). but sticking with 2 is a safe bet.

on another note. when you upgrade an equipment slot, such as weapon1/weapon2/chest/helmet etc, you are upgrading the SLOT. not the item. so you should always upgrade all your equipment slots whenever possible.

"

Yeah... I'm never going to even attempt to do this crap hitless lol. That would be a recipe for throwing both the ps5 and tv out the window.

lol i do plan to try but not expect to accomplish hitless runs. i brought up hitless runs just to illustrate that if other people can do it hitless, we probably can kill the boss just with varying degrees of difficulties. LAG can be an issue too, so if your internet connection is not stable, that can actually contribute to why your deflects seem off.

"

I'm not in a guild nor sect, does that stuff have any benefits?

being not in a sect will put you as sectless. sects, can unlock different weapons, but its possible to learn the weapons without being in a specific sect. sects does have some minor benefit but for the most part i find them pretty bothersome. personally i see sects as a good way to earn sect specific mtx. which look pretty cool.

since you're sectless you can still have access to a sectless mtx set. in the menu hit the sect button and check one one of the buttons. i forgot which. it gives you a few tasks which you can earn points with a weekly cap. you can reroll them freely. normally i just run the group cultivation one and the hit 60 notes on the musical instrument one to get a few daily points.

personally i would recommend doing these daily quests IF you want some cool "non paid" mtx. the sect currency is shared between sects so you can keep doing the dailies even while sectless. sectless has a cool hat you can buy. while the moral 9 or something has a wierd armor but comes with a cape which you can wear separately. fashion is the true endgame lol

as for guilds. being in a guild does come with some bonuses. i dont feel theyre too good but it does give more bonus "guild quests" which can help you gain more resources/xp. if you want to guild up with me i guess i could ask the guild master for you. the more the merrier.

"

least I can try to bottom out the energy, since it apparently fully refills in about 2.5 days. Recently broke through to 51, so need to grind for gear I suppose. Seems totally random what you get, at least for me where boss runs is out of the question.

if you're going off for sometime, try and finish all/as much energy as you can.
energy regens at 1 energy/9 minutes. 160/day. so if you reach the 500 energy cap, spending all of it would be a good idea.

"

ill never play games on mobile, especially a game like this.

i tried it on mobile too but as a pc gamer, i cannot bring myself to play it on mobile. i think the game genre plays a part too. TLI/d-likes which are isometric seem more natural to play on mobile.


as for additional tips.

1. check the seasonal shop, it is recommended to ALWAYS buy all profession books, as well as all inner ways/weapon tip books (forgot what theyre called). these refresh weekly

2. rank up a profession. either healer or scholar. practically costs "nothing" but allows you to level up healing/debating (gift of gab) which lets you do relevant side content that can grant rewards. you can level both up or focus on one before doing another. your choice.

3. try engaging in side content they usually give some bonuses. side content further away from your "home" (where you first started the game after prologue), tend to be harder as they may require higher stats. such as gift of gab/healing/pot challenge. so if you keep doing them your base stats would be high enough that you can complete all of the ones you encounter (thus more rewards). not necessary to do but more rewards....

4. whenever you see a "cook" (bowl icon). buy food from them more than you need. check the "relationship progress bar" try and buy enough to max it out. once maxed you can get 2 inner way boxes as a reward.

5. MAYBE learn how to play chinese chess. the chess in the game are not real matches but are instead more of chess puzzles where they give you a preset board state and you have to continue from that state to win the game. there are ways to cheese this such as using some ai chinese chess solver, but i learned how to play the game and treated it like an elaborate puzzle. npcs that can be challenged, also have reputation such as the cooks. play enough games with them and max out their reputation can earn you a few inner way boxes.

6. dont forget to upgrade your medicine capabilities at the medicine lady. something like in d4 where you need to upgrade your potion slot for more powerful healing potions. killing story bosses reward you medicine scrolls for this upgrade. you can end up with 5 potions per battle.



P2W considerations

1. the battle pass can increase your max potions per battle.
2. battle pass allows you the option to access certain main npc shops from anywhere.
3. one of the most expensive horses allow you to gather resources in an unethical manner. 1 button large aoe vacuum iirc.
NOTE, so far there are no real seasonal content but the game sells "seasonal battle passes" anyway. if you DO buy the battle pass, you keep everything you earn even after the season is over BUT you lose the p2w max potion increase as well as the ability to access the shops from anywhere.

other Paid considerations
1. one of the items in the shop right now is the kungfu hustle run. its a "horse replacement". you can find horses in game with better stats, but this one looks hilarious and has a very short "mounting time" (since you dont mount a horse its almost instant). roughly 1 usd. its mostly for the cool factor but i heard it can be valuable in arenas that you need to move around faster. the fact you dont need to mount up balances out the fact that the movespeed bonuses are less than a f2p horse.
2. there are several mtx thats also "1 usd".
3. gacha mtx are predatory and have unclear purchasing info. i dislike this but its cosmetic so i can live with it.

I've never played a game with time gating as aggressive as what I ran to in this game. I don't like time gating enough to where it's a complete deal breaker for me, even for a game I might otherwise enjoy.

Last straw for me was running into a 9 day time gate for the 50-55 breakthrough. The one prior to that was 4 days, and I almost quit after the 4 day one.

What do you even do if you're time gated? Why would you grind for gear upgrades when a new gear tier is right around the corner, and all you have to do is just log out and not play until the next breakthrough? And your upgrades are handed to you on a silver platter. The first bunch of gear from the new tier is gonna be better than what you were using unless you hit the RNG lottery and got god rolls on the previous tier.

I guess you could grind manuals, but you're limited on energy. The most optimal way to play would be to login and play for 30 minutes a day and burn some energy on rolling for inner core manuals? Just to keep from over capping? That's basically the game, and while I understand why that might be convenient for someone who's only got 30 minutes a day to game, there's not enough here to be a main game for a serious gamer, because putting extra time in is worthless due to the time gating.

If purchasing a battle pass let me circumvent the time gates, I might have bought a battle pass instead of quitting the game.

The game is extremely well optimized, I never had so much as a minor frame rate hitch the entire time I played the game, and no crashes either.

About PVP: It's extremely laggy due to no proper region match making/locking. I got less than 20ms of ping to the server, but if I'm matched with someone in China, it's gonna be 250ms of latency. There's no option for me to only match with players from the eastern USA. I might have liked the PVP, but with the lag, it's a waste of time. It's a pure slop fest, you can't rely on more intricate mechanics when there's a 1/4 sec of latency.

The few PVP matches I did, and I did about 5 of them, 2 of them were with bots? The 3 that I'm pretty sure were players were laggy matches, and it took more than 5 minutes to get a win. I prefer a quicker PVP match, something closer to a Dark Souls PVP match, first guy to make a serious mistake loses. PVP in this game is a slug fest, just do more damage to the other guy than they do to you over a long period of time and you win. With less lag, it might be better?

"

MrSmiley21#1051 wrote:

I've never played a game with time gating as aggressive as what I ran to in this game. I don't like time gating enough to where it's a complete deal breaker for me, even for a game I might otherwise enjoy.

Last straw for me was running into a 9 day time gate for the 50-55 breakthrough. The one prior to that was 4 days, and I almost quit after the 4 day one.

What do you even do if you're time gated? Why would you grind for gear upgrades when a new gear tier is right around the corner, and all you have to do is just log out and not play until the next breakthrough? And your upgrades are handed to you on a silver platter. The first bunch of gear from the new tier is gonna be better than what you were using unless you hit the RNG lottery and got god rolls on the previous tier.

I guess you could grind manuals, but you're limited on energy. The most optimal way to play would be to login and play for 30 minutes a day and burn some energy on rolling for inner core manuals? Just to keep from over capping? That's basically the game, and while I understand why that might be convenient for someone who's only got 30 minutes a day to game, there's not enough here to be a main game for a serious gamer, because putting extra time in is worthless due to the time gating.

If purchasing a battle pass let me circumvent the time gates, I might have bought a battle pass instead of quitting the game.

The game is extremely well optimized, I never had so much as a minor frame rate hitch the entire time I played the game, and no crashes either.

About PVP: It's extremely laggy due to no proper region match making/locking. I got less than 20ms of ping to the server, but if I'm matched with someone in China, it's gonna be 250ms of latency. There's no option for me to only match with players from the eastern USA. I might have liked the PVP, but with the lag, it's a waste of time. It's a pure slop fest, you can't rely on more intricate mechanics when there's a 1/4 sec of latency.

The few PVP matches I did, and I did about 5 of them, 2 of them were with bots? The 3 that I'm pretty sure were players were laggy matches, and it took more than 5 minutes to get a win. I prefer a quicker PVP match, something closer to a Dark Souls PVP match, first guy to make a serious mistake loses. PVP in this game is a slug fest, just do more damage to the other guy than they do to you over a long period of time and you win. With less lag, it might be better?

Appreciate the review.

Game's a nonstarter

"

MrSmiley21#1051 wrote:

I've never played a game with time gating as aggressive as what I ran to in this game. I don't like time gating enough to where it's a complete deal breaker for me, even for a game I might otherwise enjoy.

tbh this is something that dampens my enjoyment of the game.

but then again, i think it really depends on how we frame the game.

for people who play poe they are used to grind a huge lot as theres always the nagging issue of falling behind and the "league could end".

wwm caters much more to casual audience. theres a lot of story/side/extra content to do as a casual so even if you run out of energy OR you get time gated, you get to complete a huge lot of things.

horizontal progression one would say.

the aggressive time gating, i have to admit i m torn between liking and hating it. on one hand i want to get to max level asap. on another it actually encourages me to engage and complete all side content.

the grinder within me finds it frustrating that i cannot grind for gear as gear drops are also capped. after dropping a certain number of equipment from random mobs, equipment stops dropping. this is due to some hidden daily equipment drop mechanic.

the "plus" is mainly for newer players. a friend of mine started the game perhaps 1 month earlier than me but now we're same leveled all thanks to the time gate. and also "thanks" to the time gate i actually didnt feel pressured to chase level aggressively and actually engage with all the side content.

tho this can be seen as a positive, there definitely is a cost. once you've completed all side quests, the game can feel empty as you arent able to grind/acquire newer gear.

in that sense it can feel very front loaded. all that said. the devs are constantly releasing more content to international server. and if i m being real, its more catered towards the casuals. for a casual they have plenty of time to fully enjoy the game rather than feeling like they have to quickly push to max level and get all the best gear asap.

more content is coming. the chinese community of players have been hyping us up for the content that is to come.

if you are hard set against time gating. i think you would not like this game. personally i HATE anything time based. and i thought i would hate it. but so far i m loving it and i've learned to take the time gating as a minor annoyance. i guess i m pretty casual now lol