My Thoughts And Complaints About Wynncraft

I remember back in the good ol' days when I enjoyed Wynncraft the most. Their were less items, a more simplified identification system, guild wars that I enjoyed fighting in, riding players and pets, etc. Wynncraft had its charm back then, but I believe it has lost quite a bit of the charm that it once had. I'm no longer really interested in it anymore and haven't played much lately for several reasons, which is very disheartening. Please forgive me if I get anything wrong.

1) Too many items.

Wynncraft back then had considerably less items than what we have today. This made it easier to find the items you wanted from mob drops or chests, but if you couldn't find them the Trade Market is the place to go. One good thing about modern Wynncraft is the introduction of the in-game Trade Market, which makes it even easier to buy or sell items, even offline! I personally don't think adding more items is necessarily a bad thing as they could fill more roles that older items couldn't fill, however it does open up some more issues that we will get to later.

2) Identifications and Rerolls
The introduction of the ability to reroll items with identifications was a great change in my opinion. Get bad IDs on an item? Simply reroll and hope for better RNG. The one thing I dislike about this is the fact that it costs more emeralds and more emeralds for each reroll. Not every player has a near infinite amount of emeralds, so eventually it becomes less and less worth it depending on the rarity of the item and what it is. If each reroll had a much lower chance of lowering good IDs while some of the lower IDs had a guaranteed chance of becoming better, it would be considerably more worth it to reroll them and to keep the current cost per reroll system. Otherwise, I would make each reroll cost the same amount of emeralds because RNG isn't fun for anyone.

As for the identifications themselves, adding more isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's nice to see old and new items filling more roles with a variety of different types of identifications, but adding more makes it much harder to get perfect items with *** rolls. Some items depend on these high IDs to even be worth it to sell or use in builds.

3) Item identifications and rebalance instability.

I'm sure this has been argued to death a million times, but I hate it when an item gets rebalanced to be worse than what it was before. Back in the ol' days, items were usually static in terms of identifications. So once the item was identified, it essentially never changed afterwards. This made making builds much easier as the items themselves couldn't be changed at a drop of a hat.

One of my greatest fears of playing Wynncraft is making a great build, spending lots of emeralds to get gear with good IDs, and just when I get everything... an update drops and my build either doesn't work or works quite less than what it would have been before. After that, I try selling the gear I bought back on the market... only to find out that their price dropped significantly. This means more emeralds lost and I have to go buy even more gear to replace the nerfed gear that I previously bought. Great... all that time and money... wasted.

If the Item Team keeps doing these nerfs, I lose the will to even continue to play as my experience could be completely ruined because a few members of the team thought the identifications of the items were 'too OP' or something similar. I'm all for buffs to items though as it helps the player rather than hurts them.

Here is an idea to think about: Item Identifiers or whatever they are called now have a higher chance of giving better IDs depending on the area. Items identified in Ahmsord will be, on average, better than items identified in Ragni/Detlas/etc.

4) The Crafting System

When the crafting system was announced, I was ecstatic! "Finally! A way to make items that could be equivalent or potentially surpass anything the Item Team can make! No RNG necessary! No sudden nerfs to ruin my builds... I can work really hard and produce awesome item I can sell on the market!" I thought.... I was wrong. Very wrong.

I enjoy the idea of being able to create whatever items I want with ingredients, but the problem lies in the RNG. Being able to process and craft items is something the player works hard for, so the identifications and base stats of crafted items should always reflect the effort and the player should be rewarded for said effort. Having RNG just complicates things if it isn't implemented properly.

Here is how I would have done things:

At lower profession levels, RNG is more noticeable and works like the current system.
At higher profession levels, lower level ingredients and the base crafted items can guarantee their highest possible "identifications" and stats. This would make it more rewarding for players who spent the time and effort leveling their crafting and getting rare ingredients to fully bring out their potential without making them feel like they wasted their time and money.

Also, the Item Team also nerfs crafting ingredients... so... see section 3. :(

5) The Spell System

To be done.

6) The Factions... where is it?

To be done...


This thread is a work in progress, so I will edit the OP when necessary. Just wanted to post what I have now. Forgive me if I get anything wrong as I haven't played in awhile.

 

Yes but no

 

What?

 

Haha nice joke

________________________________

Ok but now serious reply I was unable to continue the factions or hosting any events at all when I left moderator because I lost basically all of my permissions, making me unable to host events. And some other internal management stuffs so if u want events harass the mods owo

 

please finish the spells section i hate them too

 

nothing to say about how the map has changed?
also I agree stuff like player stacking and swarms was a good way to bring people together for some stupid fun

 

Ah swarms those were so good

 

*cracks knuckles*
Alright! Let's do it!
Please keep in mind that I also may say things that are wrong, so please forgive me, haha.
And I've barely read through what I've just written because I have to go, so I hope most of my points make sense.

You mention that we'll open up these issues later, but I can't really see where you do that... unless it's in an unwritten section, but I think it's more likely I've missed you point.
There is a lot of items in Wynn now, compared to the past: but this makes sense. The world has expanded. There's more types of mobs, places, areas... these all require extra content to be added on to these areas, which allows each player to have a more unique experience. This way, you aren't encountering the same sort of items you are in Gavel that you are in Wynn. I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

In a game like Wynncraft, finding a legendary is meant to be a reward in itself: it lets the player freak out a little! The RNG is fun: you put work into killing monsters, and you got a legendary as a reward. When you're first starting and you ID it, what you get is what you get. The RNG again adds to the unique experience of Wynncraft, making it ever-so-slightly different for each player: and these differences do add up to make a totally unique experience, in a subtle way.
IDing items does seem to grow exponentially: I do agree that if you reroll an item, your chances of getting something slightly better is slightly increased: this would make sense, because as you said, the amount of emeralds to reroll isn't the same. I was under the impression this was already the case, but apparently not.
The other reason I can think of these things to grow exponentially is, from a gameplay perspective: if you're spending so much money rerolling an item, there's a point where the player has to make a choice on whether to reroll again, settle with what they have, or find a new item. This choice is important! Gives the player options, and to realise maybe it's okay to just settle with what you have. This is maybe separate from high-level trading.
Randomness (combined with work) is needed to give variety and decisions to play, which makes it interesting and usually fun: you're already rewarded by receiving a good item, and then you get an extra reward if you happen to be pretty lucky. The more you do it, the more you can make a better decision in game on what to do.

As for how much items are 'worth' in player trading: To me, makes sense for the chances of a better item for rerolling to increase, but not guaranteed. If it was ensured eventually, wouldn't the economy break if everyone could just buy the best items through IDing, if they had loads of LE? (I'm not sure how easy it is to get lots of LE in current Wynn.)

I'm of the opinion that adding more IDs can make the game more confusing: conciseness is key, after all. I think Wynn does this... mostly well. I gotta play more to see.

Wynncraft isn't a complete game. There's going to be lots of buffs and nerfs until it is 'complete'. When will it be complete? I dunno. But it's definitely not a complete game right now. That's another thing that makes it interesting! Of course, there's a point where some changes are too much.
Your point makes sense, in a way, but I think that's just something that's going to be in the game. I think that's okay. It's up to the CT to decide what changes are "too much".
Even when it's finished, they'll still be adding stuff. I do believe there is a point where they will need to make most things static, and maybe even then some things will be changed: Again, that's fine: did you really waste all your time and money? Wasn't it fun doing it in the moment? Because that's the goal of most good games: to have fun.
Maybe it sucks now, because it's not fun that you suddenly can't use the item you wanted. As an incomplete, ever-changing game, that's something that's sorta expected.

The core of Wynncraft isn't market trading, after all, haha.

The fact that some items decrease in value also work in reverse: some items suddenly increase in value. It cancels out, I would think.

And better IDs in different places... you're going to be IDing a completely different set of items in those different locations. You'll be IDing high-level items in Ahmsord and low-level in Detlas. Because of that, I don't know if having a better IDer in different areas is necessary. Maybe if there were Lone Identifiers that you had to run through a dungeon to get too...? I'm not sure on that point, that is definitely an idea to think about... haha.

Alright, so, crafting is... great. I want to talk about crafting myself sometime, but in response to just your point...

RNG is not good if implemented incorrectly, which I talk more about in the paragraph below. But the RNGing in crafting seems to work naturally: if you cut down a lot of word, you'll eventually get a T2 or T3 material. That's less luck and more an inevitability, if you work for it. And then using those high-tiered items, you'll get a good item... I think that's how it works, but I could be wrong.
With the introduction of ingredients, which I assume you're more focussed on because of the random chance involved: again, it's the same point as before: RNG is needed, because then everyone would be guaranteed get that final item in the end, with less effort than what would be expected with the RNG.

More specifically, to all your points: I think all your points, right now, focus on RNG. The IDing RNGs, the buffing and nerfing being pretty random because no-one knows what the CT will do next, and the crafting system RNG. RNG is needed for a game like Wynn: there are games that use too much RNG that it becomes way too confusing unfair, and time-consuming; and there are games that have no RNG that every experience and playthrough is the same, and boring.
Wynn, I believe, tries to find that balance: the usage of RNG is difficult! Because you want the player to be rewarded for their skill, and their work, yet include RNG so each experience is different. It's a tricky thing to balance! And I think they're doing a pretty good job right now. Maybe you disagree, and that's fine.
But RNG, combined with the work put into slaying mobs and finding loot chests, getting that legendary... then IDing it and getting trash IDs. And then, later again, finding some slightly better IDs. And in a different playthrough, something completely different... Well, I think the whole process is kinda fun, haha. It adds to the experience.
I guess it depends how you look at it.

Don't worry man, we're both in the same boat. Even playing field!

 

It would be nice if the range of RNG for items wasn't so drastic. The difference between, for example, a 4/4 20 Int Third Eye (which would easily be one of the best items a player might ever find) and a 1/4 5 Int Third Eye (IDs weaker than Undertow) is monumental.

 

Yeah, I quickly wrote this because I had other things to do. I'll work on polishing it up a bit tomorrow, removing some things, etc. The "Too many items" was going to lead into a discussion on chests, Mythic items, and other things I simply didn't write yet.

As for the crafting system, I do agree RNG is needed but I want it to work with the system and progression instead of just be based completely on luck. I would think a player pursuing a profession would be able to bring out the full potential of ingredients and materials they are using if they are at a high enough level.

 

I can only agree with this to an extent.

Yea that'd probably be the exact extent I'd agree too if I can predict what you're gonna say. I'll leave it at that till you add the rest of your thoughts, but I think adding lots of items to increase build diversity and allow players more options for playing wynn is nice too. Class building with lots of varied items is very rewarding if you know how to min-max.

I'm okay with it costing more and more, but it's too much too quickly. It should be mostly additive with a slight multiplicative increase. The current system soft caps anyone from using it more than 3-5 times by price alone, especially talking about mythics. I think that system should be improved and would probably be easier than it sounds. link 3 and 4 in my signature show a broken fierte that has percent data associated with it. That and the base values of the associated stats is enough to get the values necessary to make your suggestion work. It's just a lot of math which can be done programatically very quickly, especially considering I do that in my calculator using JS. Honestly you could do a whole thread on reroll suggestions alone. inb4 that's what most of my responses are.

I like the idea of tying identification strength to progression, like setting a minimum percentile for stats when identifying from higher level identifiers, or going to specialized identifiers to get those guaranteed minimums, like going to troms to identify for poison, or ahmsord for WS, etc.

I'd think an expert craftsman would have a good idea about the quality of the weapon they're making, but in wynn, the weapons decide if they're worth anything.

@Druser that's just a "unique experience of wynncraft". @Jamer_theGamer randomness combined with work is still just randomness. Rather than using rng to limit players, the reroll system could be another way of upgrading. For instance, a player could select a stat to lock at its current value and reroll everything else. I think forcing players to make decisions about items and building goes exactly against what the item team has been trying to accomplish with recent changes. Items don't even need to be guaranteed to be perfect. Just limiting the worst of the worst is what we're talking about here. A -7k cata with 15 stars is far less useful than a -4k cata with 0 stars, just because that one stat is so detrimental. Giving players a tool to mitigate some of the RNG and frustration when identifying by improving another system would be a huge benefit to the community. I agree that items shouldn't get stacking bonuses from identifying though. That would be dangerous for the economy too. Basically trying to limit situations like @Druser mentioned would be good for identifying IMO. It sucks to waste half a stack of LE on a legend trying to get good enough rolls only to realise you may never find one with exactly the right stats because RNG hates you.

 

I agree with most of your criticisms, so instead of directly responding to them, let me just share my thoughts about the “lost charm” that you describe in the OP, because I have a similar problem.

First of all, I don’t think Wynn is bad or has even gone downhill; I think it’s better than ever. Every update adds content to the game and refines old content, and yes, you’re allowed to dislike an update, but they always add more things to do and I don’t see why that’s a bad thing. However, it may not feel that way, which I’ll try to explain why.

I think the server’s staff has been going downhill since 2018 or so, which is when Pretzule quit. Are these two events correlated? Probably, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, Pretzule was the best thing to ever happen to Wynn. He was nice, helpful, organized events, and was a great “bridge” between the community and staff (I consider “staff” to be mods, CT, admins; Anyone involved in making the server). The reason why I bring this up is because the lack of transparency was always a problem, but it got way worse during that year. For example, we got two ARG-like games, the potatoes and factions, and both weren’t very good to say the least. The potato hunt was neat, but had two major problems. One, it never officially ended, and we had to wait months before finding out what it was teasing, and two, it was for teasing guild banners, a feature that no one cared about a month later. The Factions was fun, and I had a great time seeing people scramble to solve the cryptic teasers that The Phone gave us. Problem is, it was canceled for no apparent reason, and the actual factions “event” never happened. We also weren’t told why it was canceled until just now, on this thread. And that’s the major problem. We’re never told things and always find out these kinds of things months later. It’s not just The Factions either, it’s smaller stuff. For example, one time, there was a missing 1-50 territory discovery. No one knew where it was, and I got tired of looking for it, so I make a thread offering a reward to whoever found it. Turns out, the discovery was unobtainable and used for testing guild wars. It would’ve really been nice to know that before spending hours looking for it. At least Pretzule told us about the 2018 Wynnter Fair being canceled before we were left in the dark for 2 months. There’s also the RTD bullshit, but I’ve already talked long enough about the lack of communication.


Next, I’d like to talk about the 1.18 beta, and how horribly it was run. There was no reason for it to run as long as it did, and no one played it after a week. I know it had something to do with the fact that only jp could push it and it was a hard time in his life (more on that later) but still.

Also, another reason why I hate what the staff team has come to is how they deal with criticism. Now, I’ve never seen any staff member lash out on anyone for criticism (and if they did, it was because the other person was being a dick about it) but I’m mainly talking about how criticism is never taken seriously. I’m sure that all criticism is read, but nothing ever changes. For example, some main criticisms of 1.18 include professions being too grindy, mostly gathering, and good ingredients being too rare. As far as I’m aware, nothing’s been done about this, even though it’s unanimously agreed that these are major issues. The grinding issue could’ve been fixed by reducing the amount of xp required to level up your professions, or having xp bonus affect professions, but nope. The RNG issue could’ve been fixed by increasing the chances of ingredient drops (I’m sorry, but a 0.02% chance for normal mobs and a 20% chance for mobs that rarely appear is way too fucking low), but again, nope.

Next, we have the 101 and marketplace controversy, which, I won’t talk about in great detail because I think we can all agree that removing XP from players was wrong and jp’s excuse for doing it was bullshit. As for the marketplace, turns out that jp wasn’t fixing it because he got married. Again, it would’ve been nice to know this before 3 months of silence.

Jump ahead to where we are now, and things aren’t much better. Item Team announced a total revamp of the current endgame items, which, many people and myself, are not very happy about. I don’t think revamping the item system was necessarily a bad thing, but the reason why I dislike it so much is because I don’t see how it fixes anything. Intelligence still dominates, and melee is still too fundamentally flawed to even stand a chance against spell builds. If the whole combat and element system was revamped, as well as the items, it could’ve been a great update and a fresh start, but no.

So far, we’ve gotten two patches in the last 2 months; One added the HIC challenge, which I tried, and...I don’t like it. I gave up because it just wasn’t fun to do, mostly due to the “craftsmen” part. The other added an “objectives” system, which, I haven’t tried yet, but it honestly looks lame. I mean, you’re given a very monotonous task every day, and the reward is basically your daily reward, which were never really all that great in the first place. Here’s an idea, Salted: Instead of adding these features that no one really wanted, why not fix your game, including 1.18, the latest update with objective flaws?

So, yeah, that’s my very messy rant on why I lost faith in the staff team. All of this, combined with the community getting more toxic and me playing for a relatively long time, made me feel like it was time to go. I know this rant kinda goes off-topic of your thread, but hey, I posted it because maybe it applies to you, and maybe it doesn’t. I just wanted to share why Wynn lost its charm for me, similar to what you described.




TL;DR: I lost interest in Wynn mostly due to the staff team because of the lack of communication, questionable decisions, and “fixing” what’s broken while ignoring everything that is. In other words, I didn’t get tired of the server; I got tired of the way it was being handled.

 

Can you elaborate on this? Melee builds largely seem competitive now, imo.

Mechanics of course can't be modified by the IMs.

 

I lacked the passion to finish the OP, but I agree with what you're saying. I'll work on finishing my post SoonTM.

 

Tier stacking is but everything else is still largely irrelevant.

Also, the IMs should wait until the combat system itself is revamped, if it ever is, to release the item revamp because the current way they’re doing it doesn’t actually fix any of the problems inherent in the system and or add anything new to it

 

Show me a non-tierstack melee build and explain why it's irrelevant.

 

https://wynndata.tk/s/y8k3ei
Simply put, not enough damage. Why would I run a build for only 7.8k damage per second on one target when I could run a build that does that much or more per bomb, which I could then spam multiple times per second pretty much indefinitely?

 

As I suspected,you're looking at the raw number and ignoring Quake. If we use the typical 6-second charge/release time (note the release hit actually starts charging again), you actually get an additional 8.5k dps from that - so this build is more like 16k dps, plus a big chunk of lifesteal - plus, with Archer, the ability to sit at the middle distance, the same way you would with a spell build. (That said, thank you for choosing one of the better slow melee builds for your example)

Note that post-revamp, slow melee is buffed even further. Consider this build: https://wynndata.tk/s/g1yr54 which gets 50k Quakes, or the equivalent of about 17.5k dps, alongside 1k lifesteal (compounded by Quake hitting multiple opponents). Also note access to Exploding, which is especially powerful in a setting with multiple mobs*.

Also, Wynndata is underestimating the dps of these builds in another way. The dps calculation includes 1 second of poison tick, but for slow melee you'll generally get two seconds (unless your click speed is 100% perfect).

So, the dps is comparable to spell builds, where for Archer you can usually estimate at 1.5-2x bomb damage. Of course, there are disadvantages - lack of continuous damage output can be problematic against certain types of mobs.

* Exploding damage is either single-hit melee damage or the damage dealt by the killing blow (if someone would please clarify...), either of which is very powerful for Stinger. In wars, you can clear large areas pretty rapidly with one or two Quakes.

 

While all of those are true, spell builds still have many more advantages IMO. A water based build, for example, gets access to curse, which boosts DPS dramatically. Missed shots are also much less punishing, and much rarer due to bomb arrow having an AoE wider than the entire map of wynn. In addition, the ability to actually hit more than one mob at a time more than once every six(?) seconds is much, MUCH more useful than quake, especially against swarms. Spell builds are just generally more flexible for combat. (Although I may admittedly be biased due to playing an assassin, which basically has access to non-stop aoe stunlocking, smoke bomb combos, and vanish, all of which are exponentially more usable with a mixed or spell build).

Also, if we're talking builds in the item revamp space, fuck if I know. Basically everything there is uncharted besides the wide-spread mana regen nerfs, so it's entirely possible melee does become viable there. It still doesn't make melee very fun to use, though, since that's a problem inherent in the gameplay mechanics.

 

Speaking of water melee: https://wynndata.tk/s/2gnosf armor is powdered for spicy Concentration boosts, and also has Curse. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from putting Courage/Curse on a tierstack melee build. Just because it'll lower the baseline dps, people don't like to do it, even though it's probably a net benefit in most cases.

Against actual Swarms of mobs, especially in guild wars, Quake is king (particularly with the exploding boosts).

You have a fair point about non-AoE archer melee. Apparently AoE archer melee is eventually going to happen maybe soonTM. Spell builds are certainly more flexible and I agree that they're more fun to play, but there are still plenty of people playing melee builds right now despite that.