SPOILER Thoughts On 1.20 So Far

There's a lot here, so if you read it all or just a section, first, Thanks!, second, let me know if you agree, disagree or if I missed something, I haven't looked at too much discussion about the update yet since I've been writing this since the trailer came out (it's been like 6 hours of on and off again writing with lunch, yardwork and dinner in between) so I'm really curious to see what everyone else is thinking.

Spoiler: ---RAIDS & FORGERY CHEST---

Well, on the bright side, no more raid threads on the suggestions forum. Honestly though, I hate to start on a down note but I honestly think all the features that are now part of raids should have been a part of dungeons instead. Novalescent made a really great suggestion thread about improving dungeons a while ago, and raids feel like if the dev team looked at that post, thought wow, those are some good ideas, what if we make all those their own thing and make it so dungeons can never be improved again. Wow, what a great idea!

In my mind, there's only one way raids are going to be good, and that's if there's some sort of automatic matchmaker which assigns you to a party or lets you join a party who are looking. I'm thinking something like a server select screen, but for open parties. I really, really doubt that's happening since I would have expected something like for LI, but I can hope I guess.

On another note, I really hope raids have basic team features, like team checkpoints in parkour and some sort of revive system. It would be so dumb if you had to wait for your whole team to finish a parkour section (Pre Parkour Nerf EO...) or if a party member died in a dumb way and now the party and that player are both screwed. I doubt either of those things are happening either, though I guess those are probably more realistic hopes then matchmaking.

Also, if the realm of light final fight is a raid and you can't solo it it'll be really, really stupid. I don't want to do a 3+ part quest only to be told to do the final fight I need a group of people, that's just bad design.

Forgery chest time. I think I said this before, but I'll say it again. This is just so pointless. You can get 4 (let's be real, you're not getting any mythics, the odds have been confirmed to be so low it's pointless) different things; Items (Pointless), Emeralds (Pointless), Runes (Mostly Pointless) and Tokens (Entirely Pointless). Instead of getting this garbage, they should have just made dungeon shops not completely awful. The reason why people don't run dungeons for loot is because the loot you get is bad or you only need a single of the item.

The right solution is to remove fragments (there's like 20 dungeons, nobody wants to spend 20 bank spaces storing fragments which have no use for almost every dungeon once you have tools) and add in a consumable merchant to each dungeon who sell stuff like specially themed pots, prof xp boost scrolls (like gathering xp or gathering speed or something) or special crafting ingredients. Instead we just get yet another way to get items which will never be used because loot running is way too good. Also, the only reason why people run dungeons anyways is to get a ton of XP, which this thing will probably not even come close to.

Spoiler: ---HOUSING---

Wow, another blessing of not having housing threads anymore, only this time it's for a feature I'll probably like so that's nice I guess. First off, 750 Emeralds is really cheap, so I guess that's nice, though I don't really see the point of most of the listed features since why would I want a bank or item identifier in my house when I can, oh, I don't know, maybe walk like 10 blocks to those things in the local city where my house is anyways? The only cool listed feature is having a build swapping NPC, though if you can't make it reassign skill points then there isn't really a point. I think if there isn't any real increase to storage in your house, there isn't really a good reason to bother making a house. Purchasable chests to hold stuff like armor, weapons and collectable items which you don't need to use too often would be a really useful feature, though I'm sure they'll do that since it's probably the one reason why everyone wanted housing in the first place.

The big question though is how do you get blocks for building. This might be a hot take, but if gathering isn't worked into building somehow it'll be a really huge wasted opportunity. It would give players a reason to gather lower level resources, but more importantly it would make the resource grind much, much less tedious since you have something to do with the leftover resources from crafting. I wouldn't want it to cost 10 wood/metal/fish/grain per block, but maybe a 2-3:1 conversion would be a good balance. Either way, this is either going to be a really great addition or a nothing addition, there isn't really an in between.

Spoiler: ---GAVEL & GUILDS REWORK---

I honestly don't really care about guilds, but from the changes look cool I guess. Not enough to make me care about farming endless waves of mobs and being told where to go by a guild leader, but cool I guess. I wish there was more to do as a recruit in guilds, and it would be cool if there were monthly guild duel tournaments or something to spice things up but I guess this is a good start. I'm sure all the guild people will love this stuff so that's nice.

The builds in Wynn have always been a strong point, so I'm not really surprised that it all looks nice, but it's still great to see. Cinfras actually looks nice now, which is a huge pro since you spend a lot of time there (it also looks a lot more in line with Detlas which makes a lot of sense if you think about it). I'm sure the more we see of the new builds, the happier I'll be with them, so there's at least something to look forward to.

New quests are always good I guess, I kinda hope they aren't Combat XP rewarding quests and instead give you something more interesting since there are already so many quests in the level 40-80 range, I guess 50-55 is a little shallow but you can still make it through that whole range without grinding at all so more Combat XP rewarding quests are kind of pointless at this point.

Boss alters and early game improvements might be nice too, I've saved my shaman playthrough for some more early game updates so I'm sure it'll make playing that a little more fun.

I think the most important thing to me here is all the new mob models. I think the SE tried to do its own thing with the custom mobs, some of them worked (all the eyeball monsters come to mind) and some of them looked dumb (the eye comes to mind) but I'm glad to see we're getting more minecrafty looking monsters, especially that fox, it looked glorious and I hope the person who made it is really proud of themselves. I would love to have something like that as a pet, though maybe not that big...

In addition to that, I know I shit on raids a lot, but I'm glad to see more "Eye style bosses" where the monsters are block built. I know some people don't really like it, the eye was a fairly controversial boss after all, but I think if they improved from the Eye by giving them more dynamic attacks and more interesting minigames and phases we'll have some great bosses on our hands.

This isn't in the post at all so I guess I'll tag it at the end, but I think the void looks really nice too, glad to see a previously useless quest area is getting a rework to make it a real area. Hopefully they'll do the same with the moon and the corrupt dungeon hell world in a future update, though I doubt it'll ever happen.

Spoiler: ---CHAMPION RANK---

Possibly a big yikes from me. I have quite a lot to say about this one so I'll break it down, first pricing, then features we know about, then what I want and don't want to see. Here's your warning, this will probably be a long section.

I know I bought Hero so I shouldn't really be complaining, but Hero is already 80 dollars which is like 100 Canadian for me. I could have bought a few AAA games off steam for that much money. That being said, we don't know how much this rank will cost, I started as a VIP+ a couple years back when I turned 18 to test my credit card and paypal and bought hero a year later when it was half off (maybe 30%), so I'll probably do the same for champion when it comes out since it'll probably be a relatively small cost to upgrade again (like 20-30, hopefully...). I've been playing Wynn since I was 13 so I'll happily support a game I put hundreds of hours into in and out of game by spending a little money.

Anyways, payment aside, I think the big point here is that if they want to add a new rank they need to improve the other ranks to make people who already bought into them feel better about it. One feature which I've seen requested a few times is the ability to change the color of the rank to lower colors, so if you're Hero you can be purple, blue or green, if you're VIP+ you can be blue or green, ect. I'll talk about this more later, but I think adding something like this would probably make a lot of people happy. It does say there are other perks for lower ranks on the website so I think they understand that adding a new rank is a little bit of a sore spot and they'll need to be careful about it, so that's good news, at least to me.

Anyways, now to get into what we know;
Starting simple, merchant booths on map are cool I guess, don't really know what they are but I think it it's a way to buy cosmetics that'll be cool. If somebody knows what they are and I missed it please let me know.

Getting a little more out there, class backups and instant class deletion; I guess that's cool, I probably won't use the instant class deletion, but the backups are cool in case I somehow get hacked (please don't :( ). Two factor authentication will make that reality less likely, like a lot less likely, but it's still cool to know my main 5 classes are safe from the worst. I know it's hard on the server to have this, so I honestly think this kind of thing is perfect for the highest rank, no real gameplay advantage, especially to the average, but great for a player who has played enough to drop $120 (Probably) onto the game.

And now onto the big controversy, the bomb bell, instant server changing and reserved spots. Just going to say it, that's really dumb. I know that there's a bomb discord (I'm a member of it) but the fact that the server is actively supporting bomb seeking behavior is something I just can't support. Maybe if they made professions less awful to the point where bombs don't help all that much (along the lines of how Combat XP bombs kinda got nerfed by quests being the best way to progress 99% of the time). I would be a lot more accepting of something like this, but as the game currently is, this is a massive gameplay advantage which I just can't get behind. I think the fast server changing is fine, but the bomb bell just needs to go, and that's coming from somebody who plans on buying the rank eventually. I'm split on the reserved server slots, but I guess I want to reserve judgement. The bomb bell is the clear problem and I think without it I would be more accepting of the reserved slots.

Character nicknames are cool, neat feature, but I wish there was some transition between having no customization at VIP and a completely custom name at Champion. Maybe adding the ability to add prefixes to a name or change its color would be a nice touch so you can have some flexibility at lower ranks. Overall though, I think this is a positive addition, especially so HICH'ers don't get sniped (assuming they don't talk in public chat).

The pets leveling is another issue I have. I know past level 20 is just cosmetics, but calling it level 21-40 just feels bad. It should really just be experience milestones past 20 (call it 20+ or something) where every x amount of xp you get gives a cosmetic. Locking levels 21+ beyond the highest rank is also really, really dumb. I don't see why VIP doesn't get to go to 25, VIP+ to 30, Hero to 35 only 35-40 are for Champion only. It feels like they're screwing all the other ranks for no real reason, just lock the best cosmetics behind 35-40 like we know they were going to do anyways.

Okay, with all that out of the way, here's what I want for the Champion rank;

With Tier 4 crates being added, I feel like Champions should get a T3 daily crate and VIP+ should get a T2 at least once a week, maybe up to every other day. It might be a bit extreme, but with all the new cosmetics, it's making it harder and harder to get what you want. I think the idea behind the champion shop is to try and fix this issue, but until we know for sure I think giving people more high level cosmetics to scrap is important.

I also think we're getting to the point where we need collections with less cosmetics each so you have more control over what you get. Sorta like CS:GO, you would get a random collection crate when you get them and when you scrap, you would only get stuff within the collections the materials are from, so if you really want a specific item, you have a lot more control to get it.

I also think black market scraping is a step in the right direction, however, I'm concerned about the cost. In a perfect world it would be a 1-1 transaction and there would be a daily cap, though I have a feeling it's going to cost 2 or 3 to get a black market item, which kinda sucks when you think about how much effort it takes. The alternative would be giving the player the ability to chose a godly item when they scrap a black market item, which I think would be a lot better since there are a lot more godly items which I like compared to black market, but that's probably not a super popular opinion.

I don't want champion to get more mob totems. I think Hero already gets too many, I think champions getting 8 would be brain dead. Maybe an ability to stockpile 2 from a previous day would be cool so you get some additional functionality, but just flat out getting two more per day is too much of an advantage to me.

Anyways, the big thing I want from champion is the ability to change the color of the rank name to any of the 16 Minecraft colors. I skipped VIP since I hate the color green and blue is my favorite color. I upgraded to hero because it made sense and I was fine with the purple, but I think the yellow is just gross. This might sound insane, but the biggest reason for me to not upgrade at this point is I like how my name in game looks now and I don't want to ruin it with a big ugly yellow blob in front. I really, really hope this gets added.

Spoiler: ---PETS---

Finally, getting to something we know very little about, pets. There isn't much to say here since I already spoke about in the rank section, though in terms of functionality, I think it's cool. I'm a little concerned it's going to be a P2W feature if you can use multiple pets for gathering stuff (what that stuff is we do not know) and fight, though again, I think it's good that pets are getting some use, hopefully renaming them gets fixed and there are more pets than Wybels and Cybels in crates to spice things up.

Overall, I think I'm a little sad about this update. There's some really cool stuff here for sure, but I was really hoping for another gameplay update level update with real fundamental changes to the game, especially since 1.18 and 1.19 were kind of disappointing and I just don't see it. I guess I was hoping for more after what was 6 months of radio silence followed up by a small number of small insignificant spoilers. I know I keep saying this, but I wish they would stop making major updates and just improve the game every 4-6 months with more minor things. I get that this stuff takes a long time, but there are some more minor additions like the forgery chest and the pet stuff which really shouldn't take a year to make it into an update.

 

Havent read the entire thread

But mmm implementing professions into housing sounds like a great idea, would give professions more purpose while still maintaining their position an optional thing to do rather than compulsory

 

It would also boost the prof markets giving player more of a monetary incentive to grind them out, which may or may not be a good thing for the markets.

 

Mmmm yea

I do agree that the bomb notification might be a bit overboard, but I also do feel like a new rank needs new perks aside from cosmetics so some new perk should be added if bomb notification gets removed.

Also, idk about giving additional perks to the lower ranks because there's really no reason to do so. If you're content with the perks you have, then so be it; if you want new perks, upgrade your rank. Nothing more, nothing less, people with existing ranks shouldn't have really any reason to be upset

 

I understand that perspective for sure, but at the same time I think that if you're going to ask for more money it's important that you offer some sort of reward to the people who previously supported you. I guess the best analogy in my head is something like dividends on a stock, when the company does well they pay forward some of their earnings to the investors. In the case of games, it really isn't needed (it isn't in business either I guess), but it just makes the sour taste of them asking for more money for some really, really powerful features more palatable to those who have already contributed money.

 

I don't take as negative an opinion as you, but I liked anyway because you wrote out stuff in detail.

 

I respect your take.

If it's any consolation, I think I really over hyped 1.19 and the disappointment put me off Wynn for a long time. I would rather be a pessimist now and be amazed by the update when it drops then go through the process of being let down again, especially when there's so much to potentially get excited about. I guess I just wish they would spend less time on new stuff when there's already so much underdeveloped stuff in the game as is.

 

What? Still would be mindless grind...

Actually it saves your last 5 deleted classes

 

I believe that you will be able to quick travel to your housing using the rainbow bloons. We saw one in some random place in the void after all.

 

That's fair, though once somebody controls your account completely I think it would be easy enough to make 5 new characters and delete them. That being said, I doubt they made this because of two factor auth (probably been working on this a little longer than a month) but the devs are probably happy Mojang is releasing something around the same time which makes their addition infinity more useful.

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If the balloons are in good places, that would be great and would probably make houses more useful, the one balloon I saw was just outside Nemeract though and I believe one of the houses was above Detlas, the post also said something about accessing them through towns, so I guess I assumed they were only accessible in that way. Thanks for pointing that out!

 

The backup replaces the timer. It is not in case someone would hack your account, but rather if you misclicked and deleted a class accidentaly

 

Can't somebody overwrite the que though? like if I took a month long break and my account was taken without me knowing they could just delete my mains, followed by my level 1 bank classes. It would take some time but I think it could be done given enough time (10 days I think).

 

1.19 was a disappointment? Personally, I thought it was kind of amazing with new class and all. I'd say 1.18 was way more of a letdown tbh

 

Here's why I think 1.19 was a dissapointing;

CUR/UR rework - Good dungeon, not amazing but the parkour is decent
EO - Good, not great boss, really awful dungeon, like possibly the worst dungeon in the game, I get they wanted to focus on the boss but it just doesn't work out
SE/Area reworks - Nothing too great, some of the gavel stuff was good but the SE is just not a great area, it's basically just a straight line.
Quests - There weren't really that many, the SE quests are kinda bad (minus the final quest) and Grookwarts is just an unfun grind for a couple good items
Shaman - A new class which I just don't find fun to play, it feels too slow to me, I get why people like it but it just isn't for me
Resource pouch - Something which should have been part of 1.18, really good though
Hunted - PVP in Wynn is garbage, I said when it was announced that nobody would use it for anything other than grinding and I was right, it's basically just a way to get 50% more gathering xp.

And that's basically it. Sure there were some new items, some reworks and whatever but that's the core of what changed. 1.18 might have had less stuff, but at least it gave players something to do, even if it was a mindless grind, plus crafted items are a huge part of the current meta. 1.19 just didn't have any long term impact on how the game is played. It came out at a time when I was looking for something to do in Wynn and it just didn't offer anything new. I was really hoping this update would be the one to finally fix some of the more fundamental issues with the game and focus more on improving old stuff, but that's clearly not going to be the case.

 

am I the only one who completly disagree with this?

 

The great thing about opinions is that you're free to agree or disagree with them :)

It would also be helpful if you were a little more specific on what I said you disagreed with.