Wuthering Waves' difficulty and deep combat are making waves in the mobile gaming community, particularly around the point that spending money isn't rewarded as much as becoming good at it. Read on to learn more about the community's sentiments and more.
Wuthering Waves Streamers Fail to Pay to Win
And You Will Too
Wuthering Waves has been live for two weeks already. During that time, players are gradually realizing what sets the game apart from similar titles, primarily in how it’s played and how it incentivizes different things.
A great example is a compilation of content creators’ battles against Wuthering Waves’ Tactical Hologram: Calamity challenges. These field battles offer some of the most difficult fights that Wuthering Waves can currently offer. It features four different Overlord-class mini-bosses, which are the second strongest types of enemies in the game.
Without any particular order, the mini-bosses are:
⚫︎ Tempest Mephis, a fast humanoid enemy that uses its agility to create space and strike with its powerful Electro attacks
⚫︎ Impermanence Heron, a triple-headed bird that likes to use Havoc attacks with incredible area coverage to force players into the defensive
⚫︎ Mourning Aix, a serpent-like bird with human-like appendages that uses Spectro-element attacks of variable and unpredictable speeds and range
⚫︎ Feilian Beringal, an ape-like mini-boss with extremely powerful, consecutive Aero-element attacks that can grab unsuspecting players for guaranteed damage
From the video, prominent content creators such as Komemos and BranOnline, among others, could be seen reacting noticeably strongly to their defeats at the hands of the empowered Hologram enemies.
It should be noted, however, that reactions like these are entirely within reason and are not reflective of their overall opinion of the game. Actually, many of these content creators have expressed their love for it with Tectone being perhaps the most vocal.
It’s just that these enemies have higher health, new moves, and stronger attacks compared to their normal forms. Kome had even offhandedly remarked "I think these bosses are harder than in Elden Ring."
For more context, not only are they fighting empowered versions of mini-bosses, but they are also doing so ten levels beneath the latter. Undoubtedly, every player would have a much easier time fighting these opponents at the appropriate level.
As Asmongold from the beginning of the compilation put it, "You can’t just pay to win, which is kinda weird because, in a lot of gacha games, I feel like… that’s the name of the game." This is a sentiment many other Wuthering Waves players share in the video’s comment section. To them, whaling (spending a lot of money on microtransactions) would only serve to level the playing field slightly; learning the necessary skills and enemy attack patterns will still be obligatory.
A "Skill-Based" Gacha Game
In direct contrast to the Wuthering Waves rage compilation, with players getting defeated using meta teams of three, there are numerous showcases of players defeating the same bosses with only one character. One such video is by Wallensteins of Danjin, who defeated Tempest Memphis on her own. What makes it even more impressive is if one considers her combat mechanic, which reduces her health as she continues her combos. In other words, she has much fewer chances to recover from a failed parry or dodge than others.
Comments that praise the game’s ability to reward player skill, such as @ozoahameg3582’s "all the money does is that you reduce that 4 minute fight into 3 minute(s)" is a common sight. On top of that, many players express their disdain with the notion that Wuthering Waves’ mechanics are simple or easy. They often cite that some bosses have patterns resembling feints, with unpredictable attacks and heavily punishing consequences.
All In A Day’s Work For Kuro Games
Wuthering Waves’ skill-based combat regularly comes as a surprise for many players who play a variety of mobile gacha games. After all, the genre is often riddled with "pay to win" mechanics. Examples include important upgrades being locked behind getting duplicate characters or the regular power creep that introducing new characters inevitably creates.
However, one common argument favoring the game seen in many Wuthering Waves compilation videos is that this isn’t at all different from what the developers tend to do. Many commenters like to specify Punishing Gray Raven, Kuro Games’ previous title, as a shining example of their point. Particularly, the Babel Tower mode is often mentioned, which is infamously difficult to clear even by big spenders until its eventual nerf.
Punishing Gray Raven is an action RPG developed by Kuro Games that was released globally in 2021 for mobile. Later, they released a PC version featuring a much cleaner look and far better graphics. It was notable for its very difficult endgame bosses and challenges.
Ultimately, Punishing Gray Raven rewarded a player’s skill and resourcefulness when facing difficult challenges more than simply investing much money into it. This is the prevailing sentiment of its players regarding Wuthering Waves as they share their thoughts in the comments section. One such commenter is @arandomamvgmv7995, stating "As a PGR player and Souls like player I'm already used to dying in game many times and restart the whole match."
It is unknown whether Wuthering Waves will follow the same trajectory as Punishing Gray Raven by adding progressively more difficult content with each major version. However, comments such as @bruh5114’s "And this is only [Wuthering Waves'] 1.0 bosses" can at least give players an idea of how Kuro Games’ previous title evolved to set expectations.
Source:
Wuthering Rage Moment
Wuthering Waves is a Disappointment
No, Wuthering Waves Will Be Just Fine
