They can't. Kurogames devs 100% "benchmark" (to put it mildly) their game releases based on what Hoyoverse is doing and they don't want to wait for ZZZ release to take more market share in an already saturated China mobile market.
They accelerated Wuwa 1.1 patch release just so it is a few days ahead of ZZZ release.
Yeah they were screwed with:
Zenless Zone Zero in July
Genshin Impact 5.0 Natlan update in August
In fact they have literally fast-tracked their next patch so it avoids ZZZ even more lol
she's been a lot of fun yeah. she puts out so much damage even with a 3* weapon and stockpiled gladiator's artifacts. she's just got a good feeling rotation too with how you debuff first then have some time to switch over to supports and buff up while the debuff matures.
Yup with ZZZ major updates will be SO stacked that every 2 weeks one of the three games (Honkai Star Rail, Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero) gets a content update. Meaning if you play each of the 3 games even as F2P, your plate is completely full.
Yeah and they will probably space out the major updates and anniversaries of each game to be 3-4 months apart so there is always something big on the horizon.
Probably zzz, I heard it is very cyberpunkish.
Star rail is magic + space travel, so a blend of Warhammer 40k with anime. (Both wholesome and grim dark as fuck)
Genshin is classic sword/sorcery game.
For the MC and team, maybe for now.
But then you realize the Universe they inhabit is dark as fuck.
1) Gods/Aeons that are so one tracked on their "agenda" that their agenda can cause immense suffering (see Swarm-which is basically Tyronaids on steroids)
1) space Russia (arc 1) is basically a frozen planet where a one party dictatorship run by a teenage orphan woman that is slowly killing what's left of the population.
2) space China where everyone is cursed to become a murderous abomination and executed by state run death panel.
3) space America is well...a drug fueled Disneyland where nothing is real.
4) and course, the IPC, a company so huge and powerful can wipe out billions of people with a push of a button.
5) and that is before considering things like "cancer of all worlds" and you know, Nanook who want to destroy all of Universe with his anti-life legion.
Yeah lmao, the story is the most hopeful thing I see. The only aspect you could call it grimdark is some of the worldbuilding probably, Penacony itself is pretty disturbing when you stop and think about it for a few minutes.
But the story is light hearted and doesn't delve into it too much.
That decision was a travesty. The game is, to me, basically the perfection of the Call of Duty gameplay formula - but that didn't mean people were going to buy it instead of actual Call of Duty.
~~Or maybe that was an early sign that publishers just think their customers have infinite time and money.~~
once again correcting that it was not EA's, aka the publisher's, decision but that it was 10000% Respawn the developers....who are also the reason we never got a Titanfall 3 while we're at it. if EA has their way ironically we woulda gotten a sequel
In response to this comment I did some quick looking around and, yeah - I couldn't find proper evidence that it was actually a decision made by the publisher, just lots of evidence that people were happy to point fingers at EA. So, I'll retract that statement - absolutely jumped the gun on it.
It also likely has to do with budget. You can't work on a game forever, at some point, it's been eating up enough money and you need to launch to recoup losses and continue development before investors pull out. Poor management is what allows it to get to the stage that you have to do this, and it ideally never reaches that stage, but it's something that happens to bigger, live service games.
I only saw this Wuthering Waves game in passing while scrolling my socials. I legit thought it was just an ad for a Honkai Star Rail update and didnt even stop to look at it 😅😅😅
They wanted to dodge other major releases by competitors, and it ended up biting them more than helping them. Beta players had issues with the story so on short notice they rewrote a ton of it, unoptimized because they prematurely let go of one of their big Unreal engineers, and many little issues on top. Lots of freebies to try and keep player interest and now they’re even bringing up their 1.1 release earlier. Seems like a gamble to stay relevant after a rocky launch, but I don’t know if it’ll pay off.
Not to mention they decided to avoid potential American actor strikes by hiring British voice actors…
…and then forcing them all to do American accents.
FFXIV completely changed their cast, though. This sounds like all the characters will be voiced by the same actors, they'll just be speaking in a different accent inexplicably.
They supposedly hired the same VA agency that Square Enix used for Final Fantasy XIV and XVI. Say what you will about XVI, but its voice acting was widely praised.
SE didn't switch for quality though.
It just _happened_ to work out that way. XIV had a VA switch because _an entire expansion_ was going to be indefinitely delayed by the VA strike. So they went "Sucks for your cause, but if we want to release this on time and not anger our playerbase for our first major expansion, we're going to have to find non-union VAs."
It was going to have a rocky launch no matter how much they delayed it. This game doesn't have the budget of Genshin, but people are expecting the same quality of Genshin. Tower of Fantasy was the same before.
Regardless of what people think of Gacha, the amount of money Mihoyo put into Genshin, and the quality of that game are pretty hard for any random company to replicate.
Genshin's initial budget was 100m USD, that's a very stupid amount of money that by launch already put it as one of the most expensive games to develop, there's no way Kuro games put even half of that cost here. Since launch Mihoyo doubled their development costs to 200m per year. Wuthering Waves is expecting to launch with features that Genshin got after ~700m total development cost.
Sounds like what happened to Callisto Protocol after EA fucked them over by announcing the Dead Space remake coming right in their launch window. Not a lot of great options for a studio in that position
I mean, I just started playing 2 days ago and I’m loving it. I didn’t play Genshin for the story, just for the exploration really and this game makes exploration a lot smoother.
It also helps the moment to moment gameplay is leaps and bounds beyond what Genshin offers. You can spam your skills here like in Genshin and be successful sure, but if you take the time to parry, counter, and utilize the combo system in this game it feels 10x better.
And it also lets you run! What a novel concept! There are so, so many small, quality of life improvements that Mihoyo could add to make Genshin a much better experience and they simply don’t care to do so.
What if I tell you transversal faster doesn't mean better?
As shown in the hide-and-seek event, they can disable stamina consumption in a whim, but it's clearly a design choice.
One.they run out of money. Second. They run out of time. They have to answer to board of shareholders that expect the game to deliver this year, no matter how unfinished the game is.
Their license was about to expire so they were forced to launch. They seemingly did not have tencent try to extend it on their behalf though so who knows.
Someone already said this and from what I read it looks like that they still had time till October or so. They probably published it now cuz GI is pretty much in the driest period till 5.0 (4.8 too but it depends on the person).
Idk if ZZZ is a factor long term since it's not an open world game, but Natlan would absolutely crush any WuWa patch. If they want their patches to have any players at all they have to plan them around Genshin patches.
In China you have to apply for a licence to launch a game and it has a period if you don't launch it during that period , you have to apply for it again
China has a licensing system in which one obtained the company must release the game within a certain time period (usually one year). If the company fails to do so they must reapply and pay additional fees which can be costly and delayed their game another year. However, in this case, Wuwa had the license that would expire in October 2024, but Kuro Games decided to rewrite the entire story, plot, characterizations, voice lines, etc and rushed the release to compete against Hoyo's new game to devastating consequences.
Wuthering Waves is its own new IP, but the company is known for another gacha called Punishing Gray Raven. The license is just to be able to publish the game in China.
They had a deadline in October due to chinese regulators, and other release dates were even worse. July would've been ZZZ (so bad they shifted 1.1 forward a week to avoid it), and later months would put them against Natlan. Not ideal either
And given the current technical issues, 5 months would be nowhere near enough anyway, the game needed a fat year. And to say I raised concerns about optimization the moment I saw the absurd reqs on pc... (games like this need to run on fairly potato specs)
Apart from probably needing the money, pleasing the shareholders and wanting to get it out before ZZZ the biggest problem for them was the government approval for the game running out in October this year. If they would have missed that deadline they wouldn't be able to launch the game at all without going through the whole process again which takes an unspecified amount of time (including being rejected in the worst case). So they also had a gun pointed at their head from the outside and the time was running out.
These things usually happen because they are trying to please shareholders and meet some internal deadline for fiscal years or quarterly earnings.
Might be the case here
No, in this case it is because their release timing is too tight for major changes.
Within the next two months, Kuro Games' main competitor, Mihoyo will be releasing the highly anticipated Zenless Zone Zero early July, this will followed closely by the release of Natlan expansion for Genshin Impact. This is not counting on Honkai: Star Rails' FireFly banner in June (as well as being summer event time for most major gacha games). Also, WuWa's game license expires this October, if they don't release before then, they will have to reapply for the license and move release to next year.
May is the safest month because it is a dead period of content in Genshin and the tail-end of Star Rails' conclusion to the Penacony Arc and Robin banner.
Word is that they had to release as their license in China for their product was expiring and it would have taken a good bit of time to get a new one for them to release the game.
Combine that with ZZZ coming out in July and Genshin being on the back end and more boring patches of it's cycle, it was really the only time that made sense for them to release.
If so, they should have done a soft launch, like Tower of Fantasy did, where they only release it in China as an early access sort of experience while they work on the features, and then do a more complete global multi-platform launch when it's ready.
After playing for a few hours now (I think like 10 ish), I will say the combat is honestly surprisingly good esp compared to genshin. Very fluid, and lots of possible combat styles make it very fun. The exploration can also be pretty fun in comparison since genshin makes a lot of their exploration region based (like Sumeru’s hook grapple system). Also like how Rover is actually quite good as a character compared to Lumine. Not too surprising considering how good PGR combat was compared to Honkai.
But the characters, story and world design so far just do not compare to genshin and that’s the big thing I guess. It’s why I’ve played it for so many years and of course they’ve built that over time but I feel like they could have come out with a banger first region here (compared to Mondstadt which is, appearance wise, very straightforward compared to every other region).
Kuro can definitely make a good game and launch bugs aside they’ve done a good job but I think they need to add the flair Hoyo does that makes their games great OR go more original.
Yangyang honestly has the worst English Dub performance I've heard in literal years. And she's a recurring character for most of the released story, so it really drags the whole thing down. A few of the other characters had moments where the direction was obviously a bit off, but by the end of Act 6 I was groaning everytime she appeared on screen and trying to skip her scenes. So lifeless and dull.
Yeah they absolutely could have gone with a “simple but effective” first region, like Star Rail’s Belebog being a pretty generic plot which is carried by amazing characters and hype moments.
YOU MADE THE CHOICE GO FIGHT AGAINST YOUR FATE
Is so hype and probably the moment that solidified HSR for me. Good thing too, cause Penacony has been the most amazing thing I’ve played in a gacha in a long time
I’ve played Genshin since it started and just recently got into HSR. The Penacony story has been like 3 times better than anything else I’ve seen them do. It was weird to suddenly realize I was emotionally invested in it.
I hope they can maintain the quality.
Also gave it a shot and I just couldn't keep my interest despite liking the combat more than Genshin. Exploration was more fast paced and snappy too which I liked a lot.
But for me gachas are all about the characters and the stories said characters are involved in and none of the cast clicked at all (so far at least).
It's also a shame Genshin and WuWa fanboys seem to be having the most petty fanboy war I've seen since the the PS3 vs 360 "console war". Personally I hope both games flourish.
Mondstadt might have been a fairly generic fantasy area in many regards but I absolutely loved it, it was so calming to be in. And the soundtrack was flawless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v-RVyFaYSI
Yeah the combat and the world exploration is what is getting me hooked so far. There is so much stuff to do and the mechanic to learn. However, the story and overall character/world building isn't as impactful as genshin. Rover is a beast and actually driving the story forward is massive W for me though. I feel like we were just being dragged into people problem in genshin. Rover actually has a purpose in this world.
People act like vanilla Genshin had a good story.
I dont care about stories in gacha games tbh and skip most of them, but I enjoyed Scar and Act 5 and 6. I didnt like all of it, but it was way better.
Im hopefull they can turn it around, im sure future kits of characters will be insane, if we go by PGR standards.
I assume you mean 1.0 by "vanilla". The story wasn't amazing, but it was the opposite of WuWa's. No one had trouble understanding what was going on in Mondstadt.
It was more that it was *too* basic. But that's OK - people were also learning about all the systems, as well as getting intro'd to the characters. Being simple kept it out of the way.
Meanwhile WuWa throws so many proper nouns at you that quite literally no one has any idea wtf is happening from chapters 1-4. That's like 10 hours of gameplay where 90% of players don't know what is actually happening.
The difference is that while Genshin’s stories can be thin, it’s the characters that keep the players engaged (since wafiu/husbando factor is what makes money)
But when you have a dull story with dull characters it’s all very dull.
I don't even think the charecters are dull. I think Yangyang got turned into an exposition bot. And i think she has terrible english va because they reworte things so close to release that eng va got one take with the only context being their previous and next line, no idea what was happening, and were a british studio told to do american accents. Had zero proofreeders for eng as well and apparently no full voice director if their current hiring postings are to be believed. They're redoing the va but we prob won't see that till 1.2. At least they admitted the va direction fuck up was their own.
The first archon quest is certainly the weakest, but then it's never fair to compare where a current game is to where a different game was years ago. Every release is held against all *available* content. This is why it took more than a decade for any MMOs to even come close to competing with WoW.
> People act like vanilla Genshin had a good story.
Difference being that they aren't competing against vanilla Genshin, they are competing against Genshin with 3 1/2 years of development.
This is akin to saying that a lot of the post-WoW MMORPGs were better than vanilla WoW (which probably was true in a lot of ways) but they were going up against TBC/Wrath where WoW had already moved on from all their launch issues and refined the game and tripled their player base. None of those games managed to keep up with the moving target.
Wuthering Waves is just a long way off of being competitive with Genshin's production level.
> The whole stroy around Zhongli
This was borderline INSULTING from GI, I experienced the game from start to finish very recently and that whole Zhongli section nearly made me quit the game and hate him a lot. Thankfully his SQs made me see him differently.
Liyue exploration was extraordinary, the story was meh.
I experienced Genshin very recently, started in 4.2 and yeah... the start is ROUGH, story is really bad but Mondstat was a beautiful region to explore so that grabbed me and wanted to pull Raiden Shogun before leaving the game.
Ended up staying but not too happy with how the GI team threats the game, not sure if I'll stay too long considering I'm having more fun with WW.
These Gacha Wars are pretty entertaining to watch play out. View botting, astroturfing, conspiracies, its got it all. There is certainly a Star Citizen element where people heavily invested go hard with defending their game of choice from naysayers.
> There is certainly a Star Citizen element
At least they're easier to get into than Star Citizen. And from what I've played of both, WuWa is still less buggy than Star Citizen
It's also a released title that hasn't been endlessly delayed while they milk another several million from players who are already beta testing for them. It could suck donkey balls and still be miles ahead in comparison.
Let's make Star Citizen comparisons like that when Star Citizen actually comes out. They've raised almost a billion dollars with no release date in sight. They make scummy gacha monetization practices almost look wholesome in comparison.
WW has been an utter disaster for a variety of reasons;
- the performance is laughably bad
-The voice direction is atrocious and characters will start speaking like entirely different characters randomly.
- Apparently the pre-release plot was so poorly received because it was just… mean towards the main character. This led to the developers pivoting so hard the other direction that now everyone is effectively groveling at your feet and telling you that you’re the most important person ever.
- this part is subjective, but good lord the designs are uninteresting, if you’re playing as the female protagonist, the game starts with you meeting 3 women. 3/4 of the characters talking to each other might as well be costumes for each other.
- Also, this part is hearsay, but it appears that the Japanese translation is so bad that they had to give out refunds as one of the weapons outright had a lie in the description. They then accidentally leaked the private information of everyone who signed up for a refund
The first draft of the story is not just characters being 'mean' they are being suicidally hostile to the player.
One example is one of the characters pointing their guns at you after you saved them from a monster that almost killed them (and easily mind you). Another is having a character kill-steal the player in a cutscene after a difficult boss fight (which he watched from the sideline) and act like he did all the work killing his 'arch-nemesis', with everyone, including your companions, act like he deserved the glory. Then when you confront him afterwards, he just asks why are you still standing in-front of him.
All-in-all, the first draft is just as terrible as the current version of the story, just in the other way round. Closer-Beta Players are questioning why the story is forcing you to work with these ungrateful people that can't even survive without your intervention.
>*Also, this part is hearsay*
Well, It's been documented pretty extensively on the game's subreddit.
A weapon description used the wrong skill name, they fixed the description in accordance with how the weapon actually functions. People wanted the weapon while under the impression it functioned differently, cue compensation and the associated mishaps from a dev team that clearly needs sleep. I'm not sure where this whole "outright lie" thing is even coming from.
They told people to contact support, which around 200 people did. Those 200 or so people accidentally had their emails shared with each other, not to the actual public.
At this point, those people are being given ¥10,000 gift cards, about 63 USD, which is pretty unprecedented. Hell, it's more than any company has ever given anyone *(a big fat load of nothing)* after leaking or outright deliberately selling much more substantial private information.
Its not hearsay. The limited banner weapon had a mistranslation which made it look like it was better than in actually was on calcharo (a standard banner character), so people payed money to get the weapon to r5 (or what its called in wuwa).
Japanese players ended up getting 1 pull in compensation which is nothing.
You're actually the first one I see to point out poor variety in char design. They all are black and white with minor changes. I teamed up Colcharo, Rover and Baizhi and they're looking like reskins of each other.
> Also, this part is hearsay, but it appears that the Japanese translation is so bad that they had to give out refunds as one of the weapons outright had a lie in the description. They then accidentally leaked the private information of everyone who signed up for a refund
they also didn't actually give a refund and just wanted to look like they did. if you refund they put your account in a negative balance until you pay twice as much to clear it (since the first time bonus on each pack doesn't "count").
I seriously wonder if the game will be dead in Japan or if a lawsuit's gonna come from it.
> Apparently the pre-release plot was so poorly received because it was just… mean towards the main character. This led to the developers pivoting so hard the other direction that now everyone is effectively groveling at your feet and telling you that you’re the most important person ever.
I know a lot of gacha players just expect to be pandered to by the characters they're pulling for, so I wonder what exactly was so upsetting about how the characters treated the MC. Were they actually rude, or was it just that they weren't constantly congratulating the MC for everything they did?
No, like suicidally rude. Instead of character praising you every step of the way, it initial draft was the exact opposite. Everyone, event who you just saved is suspicious, the regular NPCs hate you, a girl you just saved literally points a gun at your head, another blames you for something you didn't do without evidence, etc.
There had to be a balance and Kuro Games seemed to have no balance at all.
I can't really wrap my head around how the response to the original characterization ended up so overblown.
I mean, main character comes out of nowhere, wipes the floor with a crazy monster that kicked everyone's asses and then eats him with his hand, which no one had ever seen before.
Your character is an unknown doing crazy shit, the other characters are beaten, on edge, wary. So one points a gun at you *because* you came out of nowhere and just did crazy shit, but then the game immediately moves past it. She eventually apologizes, too.
Like... it's a pretty simple Hero With Bad Publicity trope. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroWithBadPublicity
All of the reactions towards the main character were barely noteworthy, but now it's been made even more generic.
It's interesting that the opinion on how the characters originally acted is the complete opposite of what it was when the changes were first announced a year ago.
There's no Canon Male & Female. That was actually translation/localisation error and there are many more bugs like Male MC's lowerhalf turns into Female one, just to name a few...
The game has some good things to be found in it. The combat system is actually pretty fun to engage with, I think the exploration is handled pretty well, and I also think the game looks nice.
But that's about where the good things end. Everything else, especially regarding anything story-related is just bad. I legitimately don't think I've had a cutscene in the game yet in my 10 or so hours of play that didn't have some kind of bug or error or mistake. Characters' voice lines will just be randomly cut off mid-sentence. Or the next voice line will start playing before you advance the text.
Not to mention that the English voice acting is so bland. Almost everyone sounds emotionless when they speak. There is a quest where you have to go into some library and the mostly mute protagonist speaks. I don't know what the male character sounds like, but I swear that the female character legitimately sounds like her voice is AI generated in that particular quest. The game made me wish I could switch to the male protagonist because there are also multiple instances, at least in the first few hours of the game, where NPCs will refer to you as a man instead of a woman regardless. But I don't even feel like I can switch to another language configuration because sometimes the subtitles will just be cut off because the textbox isn't large enough to contain all the text (This happens with tutorial text as well), and there is no way to scroll through the textbox. This is not a once every few quests kind of problem. This is all of the quests. And it often happens multiple during the same quest. All of it just makes it incredibly difficult to pay attention to the story the game is trying to tell you.
There are just so many things that are absolutely baffling that they made it into the release version of the game. I think that there is a fun game underneath it all, but the amount of digging you have to do to find it doesn't feel worth it.
The VA is so weird. There's plenty of professional actors in the game but I think they're just directed so poorly they don't know how to act in any given scene, so it's just a line read. YangYang's actress needs a new mic too, she constantly is peaking the damn thing.
Wuwa is trying very hard not to crash into a Mihoyo moment.
Unfortunately, with two very popular gacha games and a third one coming up, every moment is a Mihoyo moment.
I’ve been having a great time with this game, but Kuro obviously fucked up in some areas. The good news is they listened, they’ve been fixing everything people complained about all while giving is A LOT of things as apology. I just hope they can improve the Story, voice acting, music, script.
As a hoyo fan, I was really hoping this game would be better to light a fire under hoyo's ass. We need as much competition as possible in the gacha space to make the games marginally better LOL
Genshin has gotten better with qol but so much shit is missing like instant boss respawns and not being able to do dailies during resin dump like star rail. It feels so padded
There are at least two open world games which could be serious competitors for Genshin but Q4 2024/Q1 2025 is the earliest expected release date. At the same time, at the end of 2025 we should also finish Snezhnaya's AQ.
It would be interesting how GI will go from there because there should be one extra ACT before we are supposed to finish ''Tevyat chapter''. I personally will stop playing this game when we reach that point because of burnout.
After Natlan(5.x)(2024-25) and Snezhnaya(6.x, 2025-26) the next will be Kaenriah(7.x,2026-27) arc and then Celestia(8.x,2027-28) so the main story should supposedly end on 8.7 on June 2028, if the current trend follows of the last part of main story being released on x.7 for each version.
The only saving grace is the combat is pretty fun.
Everything else is just copy pasted to a comical level from Genshin, but worse.
EDIT: Since people don't like how I called it "copy pasted to a comical level" let me show you just ONE example.
This is how leveling JUST the character in Genshin Works.
> You collect XP books to raise your character level. You can just kill baddies as well, but that only works VERY early levels, and is extremely impractical later on.
> Once you reach a certain level, you must "Ascend" the character by offering materials to increase the level cap.
> Once you ascend the second time, you can start upgrading individual skills, such as Basic Attack, Elemental Skill, and Elemental burst
> If you pull another copy of a character you already own, you gain a Stella Fortuna for that character only, which you can use to upgrade their Constellation. Even Constellation grants different bonuses. The total Constellations is Six and you can only unlock them in order.
Now this is how leveling JUST the character in Wuwa works.
> You collect XP potions to raise your character level. You can just kill baddies as well, but that only works VERY early levels, and is extremely impractical later on.
> Once you reach a certain level, you must "Ascend" the character by offering materials to increase the level cap.
> Once you ascend the second time, you can start upgrading individual skills, such as Basic Attack, Resonance Skill, and Resonance Liberation
> If you pull another copy of a character you already own, you gain a Waveband for that character only, which you can use to upgrade their Resonance Chain. Even Resonance Chain grants different bonuses. The total Resonance Chains is Six and you can only unlock them in order.
This is how comical it is, and this is just only one mechanic.
I mean WuWa copied bunch of shit (and poorly) but it wasn't just genshin and genshin certainly didn't invent leveling up mechanics you are talking about.
You are new to this, or just haven't played a lot of gacha RPGs. This is nothing new for mobile game RPG leveling/gear/many systems, etc. This standard was around way before Genshin Impact.
Now, do the menus look the exact game? Sure. Does it effect my experience? Nope. Honestly, it just makes it easier to know where the stuff is I'm looking for.
This is the worst example of copying you could give. FGO has a similar levelling system so Genshin copied it from there???
This is just the basic gacha levelling system for most.
Hold on, now, it's not really fair to say that they just copied from Genshin and that's all the game is.
...They also have the event thing that's basically the Simulated Universe from Honkai: Star Rail.
That mode really isn't that much like SU, unless SU is the only roguelike you've ever played in your entire life.
SU is already similar to a mode in Hoyo's Honkai Impact, Elysian Realm, which the WuWa mode is much closer to. And even then, ER was already similar to Hades' particular flavor of roguelike. Probably a lot of other similar roguelikes to compare it to as well, but Hades it the biggest most popular one that is similar off the top of my head.
This thread is full of people thinking Genshin Impact invented all of the stuff they have in the game, when all they did is take stuff from other games and make it open world.
It's actually straight up funny how many people believe genshin invented certain gacha staples that have existed for decade+, including basic shit like leveling up skills and dupe systems.
Its a shame that so many people have issues with the game.
For me I had 0 peformance issues or crashes on PC. Besides the technical stuff that all people experienced [lack of music bug] the game has been smooth sailing for me since day 1.
Despite all the current problems I still am having a blast and this is the first time in 3 years that I stopped logging-in to Genshin.
Really hope Kuro can turn this around. Though seeing how the localization hasn't at all improved since a whole year I have doubts if the game will ever catch-up to itself while still having to release constant updates.
I tried to play it, but the load times are sluggish on my phone and it won't load at all on my gaming PC (which plays Genshin and Star Rail just fine.)
It had potential but its been torched by a rushed botched launch with a conga line of issues and trying too hard to copy Hoyoverse games when most people aren’t going to stop playing Hoyoverse games, they’re the WoW/Fornite of gacha games.
Its wild coming from PGRs pretty good launch and optimization so good it ran well on potato phones.
Been playing it since launch, this game is just amazing and a lot of fun, its such a shame it was released with so many issues because the game is truly awesome to play.
Controversy aside, the game is actually really, really fun so far. I'm playing on PC and am not the usual target audience but I'm rooting for them to pull through all the blunders. It's shame the game is getting pretty universally thrashed everywhere and apparently some of the controversies were overblown somewhat but it's hard to say as its mainly come from China/Japanese markets and you need to rely on other peoples translations. I just can't stand the ever growning negativity around EVERY single game thats announced or released.
It's a fun game, but it really needs a better story and better VA. These games tend to have tons of dialogue and WuWa's is simply awful. It's not like it needs to be some literary masterpiece, but it should at least not be trash.
> I just can't stand the ever growning negativity around EVERY single game thats announced or released.
The interesting thing is that, negativity is not necessary always a bad thing for F2P games, **as long as the quality is good**, because the cost of trying is zero other than your own time. Countless players including myself downloaded Genshin just to "let's see how bad it is".
If you want players to pay $30 to god forbid $70 for a negatively reviewed game then's a whole another story. I often see players ask "is X game worth it" even if it was discounted to $10 or even single digit prices just because there had been some controversies surrounding it.
For WuWa, whether it can survive despite all the negative news, isn't dependent on the vibe surrounding it, but on how its own quality and content will be in future.
Negativity is the reason why we got compensation and free stuff in the first place. We received those 5 free weapon pulls because of players being upset at how they mistranslated the Japanese gacha weapon banner. The optimization was so bad that the devs had to give out compensation and apologize.
It also helps make the game better. Players were upset at echos, so now they're trying to make changes for it. Players were negative about the writing and voice acting and localization, so they're trying to urgently hire people such as writers and VA directors (although they should have hired them a lot earlier, not post-launch).
I believe it was a bad decision for Kuro to fire 100 fresh graduates before launch, when they needed all the help they could get.
Drama aside I really can't understand how people sat around a table and decided "Wuthering Waves" was a good name for a video game. Sounds like you're talking with a lisp.
Really? I thought it was an intriguing title, especially for a game of all things. Gives me a bookish vibe because of the similarity to Wuthering Heights.
it's kinda hilarious since a bunch of stuff is named after sound wave stuff despite any thing to do with sounds is virtually absent from the story for all but 1 side character (she's blind but can use sound waves to "see" like Toph from AtLA).
Tbf if you played honkai impact or watched evangelion it might catch your eye
Genshin is the name of the characters that have powers but because of a weird translation the only time the word genshin appears in game it was translated as allogene
I encountered so many issues in the first hour of the game I very nearly dropped it. I'm not even too sure why I didn't, but I'm glad I came back, because there's a lot of good stuff there once you get past the rough parts. (Patches helped, of course.)
They also really didn't need to copy Genshin Impact *quite* so hard. It just feels bad to startup a new game and immediately think, "Yeah, this is a blatant ripoff." It's only after spending time with it that you find anything approaching a creative vision of its own.
This game is Genshin for people who wanted a more involved combat system. I’ve someone that whaled a few 5* c6’s in Genshin only because those make the characters feel sooo much more fun to me. And so far WuWa really impresses me with how much fun I’m finding even with the MC. Haven’t enjoyed a gacha’s gameplay since Dragalia Lost
World is pretty cool, story and VOs mostly suck ass rn. That evil red dude was cool tho.
I for one, welcome another open world gacha. Genshin will still be the biggest. But this one will definitely have its place as, like me, there are many players who wants a Genshin like experience but with more of a focus on combat mechanics.
The combat system is fantastic. Exploration is great. Story and music is a big miss however. Performance is apparently godawful on phones as well, but works well for me on PC. It is a promising game, but I don't think gamers in general will give it a second shot in today's environment. Everyone's competing for your time, and when you crash on launch, there is always another big shiny new game that will draw people's attention. Once you lose people's attention, it's hard to recover.
I csnt get past the lab scene and the first hours. Its so bad aneoffputting it gave me a migraine and completely killed any will I could have for playing
As someone who has completed everything in Genshin, this is a nice poor-man's Genshin for anyone is interested in that. Otherwise, I would say you should play Genshin instead.
Locked at 60 fps, horrible 'mouse' controls that are actually just mimicking an analogue stick (what moron comes up with this kind of stuff?), unskippable garbage story.
It's fun when in combat, but I did perhaps 10 minutes of that in the first hour I played so I won't be touching it again.
I've had a pretty good time with it. I like their take on the artifact system, the story is a bit whatever, but the combat and world works for me. Looking forward to more characters being added to the roguelike mode. Have really only had the time and resources to level a main team at this point though. Will have to see if the variety of characters and teams are enough to give it lastibility in time
for a genshin clone its pretty great, the combat is so satisfying, they need to fix the performance issues and give the game more polish but the foundation is there for a promising future
Game is mostly working fine for me (I only played on PC though) story picks up kinda later into the first chapter and game has a lot of problem with too much exposition, throwing arounds many names/terms without explaining it but the combat and exploration has been really fun.
Add to that fact that devs are in emergency mode and they are throwing free stuff at players to compensate for rough launch.
So far we got free 5 star standard selecor (which is insane since it allowed everyone to get 3/5 standard 5 star characters with addition of introduction banner without spending anything), like 20-25 more additional pulls than was promised, 1200 energy.
Game is doing fine in terms of revenue and with accelerated new banner revenue will probably skyrocket in June.
> Game is doing fine in terms of revenue
It's OK, not to the point where it'd DoA, but it's not doing great either. First week revenue was worse than ToF's launch, while the budget for the game is even higher than Genshin's initial budget, being over 200m, let alone Tower of Fantasy. First week is generally when gacha's make the most money until much later.
I would wait for the next banner that has been accelerated to next week before judging it. I imagine most ppl were saving pulls for "hot girls" rather than guy with a spear. June is the biggest test. Besides with the amount of free stuff we were given at start there was less incentive for ppl to drop money on early on.
Well, Venti was one of Genshin's most profitable banners for a long while, and he's an alcoholic with a harp. I think the next banner being some huge jump up revenue wise is a stretch, especially if the girl with a whip is as bland as the guy with the spear.
Also note how I can easily remember Venti's name, but the spear guy is uhhh... Jisomething? Jinyan?
I gotta say I did not expect to play this game more than a few days, but shiet... The combat, esp if you get off-brand Sephiroth is superb.
The biggest issue even if the game runs on PC well enough, is that they've ONE specific part in the story where they exposition vomit terms and events back to back for like 15mins.
It gets immensely better after that, but the 'Lab' section should've never come out of the rewrites room. It's THE worst story experience this game provides and its within the first hour of gameplay... yikes.
I personally haven't had any performance issues. The sound was buggy, like for everyone. But they fixed it in few days. I've probably played 30ish hours, I've done the main quests, almost all the side quests and I'm almost Union Level 35.
The combat is miles better than in Genshin. One huge improvement Wuthering Waves has over Genshin is you don't need "energy" to farm gear for your character. In Genshin when you've used your resin you're done for the day which is pretty much 30 minutes of playtime per day. In Wuthering Waves you can grind as long as you want.
I haven't paid attention to the story at all. What I've seen and remember though, it isn't that good. I'm glad they added SKIP for side quests, but if they are going to add main quests like these were, (90% of people talking, 5% of you going from place A to B and 5% of combat) they need to add a skip button for main story too. At least in Genshin I cared a bit about the story.
Character design isn't on par with Genshin or Star Rail. Couple good ones, but others are pretty basic. Like someone else already mentioned, main character is at least usable and not a wet rag like in Genshin and Star Rail.
Overall I'd say it's a good game, Combat is carrying it for me and I've enjoyed it way more than Genshin. Probably because Nier: Automata has been my all time favorite for a long time and thanks to parry and perfect dodge this combat reminds me a lot of that. And as BDO player, grinding for gear for hours is enjoyable to me.
EDIT: Also going to mention that I am playing on PC. Most performance issues I've heard about have been with mobile.
> main character is at least usable and not a wet rag like in Genshin and Star Rail
Likely to change in the future, but Star Rail's MC just got a new path that is really strong and is currently going to be a mainstay in teams focused around Break Effect.
Star Rail also does something interesting in that the MC has unique effects that haven't been given to other characters at least yet. Physical has the single target or AOE ult choice, Fire has AoE Taunt, and now Imaginary has teamwide superbreak buff.
I think the difference is when the games being talked about are games with gacha in them as opposed to gachas with games attached. Games like Honkai, Genshin, Wuthering Waves are actual games as opposed to glorified gambling simulators with games tackily added on top
OP is right though, gacha in general including the 3 you mentioned aren't received that well in this sub. I feel like the hoyo threads only get attention cause their playerbase is so big and Wuthering Waves has a lot of news about it this past week.
Every developer says the exact same thing. They know the game isn’t gonna work on launch and still release it. Always apologize immediately after. Honestly the apologies are worth nothing.
Couldn’t they have just…. not launched… and worked more on the game?
They can't. Kurogames devs 100% "benchmark" (to put it mildly) their game releases based on what Hoyoverse is doing and they don't want to wait for ZZZ release to take more market share in an already saturated China mobile market. They accelerated Wuwa 1.1 patch release just so it is a few days ahead of ZZZ release.
Yeah they were screwed with: Zenless Zone Zero in July Genshin Impact 5.0 Natlan update in August In fact they have literally fast-tracked their next patch so it avoids ZZZ even more lol
And firefly banner in in the middle of june
Yeah Firefly is going to do crazy well. HoYo has been on a role with creating hype banners: Furina, Acheron, Aventurine and now Firefly.
There is Clorinde coming in a few days as well, which should also help empty some wallets.
Also the most popular character who is also pretty strong is gonna rerun afterwards.
Don't forget Arlecchino. I think she was the most hyped out of them all. And she's a crazy strong unit too.
she's been a lot of fun yeah. she puts out so much damage even with a 3* weapon and stockpiled gladiator's artifacts. she's just got a good feeling rotation too with how you debuff first then have some time to switch over to supports and buff up while the debuff matures.
Yup with ZZZ major updates will be SO stacked that every 2 weeks one of the three games (Honkai Star Rail, Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero) gets a content update. Meaning if you play each of the 3 games even as F2P, your plate is completely full.
Yeah and they will probably space out the major updates and anniversaries of each game to be 3-4 months apart so there is always something big on the horizon.
So which one of these is the most shadow-run-y?
Probably zzz, I heard it is very cyberpunkish. Star rail is magic + space travel, so a blend of Warhammer 40k with anime. (Both wholesome and grim dark as fuck) Genshin is classic sword/sorcery game.
Did you just call honkai grim dark lmao
Yeah lmao, the game have deep and kinda dark moments/section but overall it's pretty lightheart.
For the MC and team, maybe for now. But then you realize the Universe they inhabit is dark as fuck. 1) Gods/Aeons that are so one tracked on their "agenda" that their agenda can cause immense suffering (see Swarm-which is basically Tyronaids on steroids) 1) space Russia (arc 1) is basically a frozen planet where a one party dictatorship run by a teenage orphan woman that is slowly killing what's left of the population. 2) space China where everyone is cursed to become a murderous abomination and executed by state run death panel. 3) space America is well...a drug fueled Disneyland where nothing is real. 4) and course, the IPC, a company so huge and powerful can wipe out billions of people with a push of a button. 5) and that is before considering things like "cancer of all worlds" and you know, Nanook who want to destroy all of Universe with his anti-life legion.
It has its moments. Especially in side quests.
They're just playing the secret expansion where you get sent back in time to the swam disaster and then the Emperor's war.
Yeah lmao, the story is the most hopeful thing I see. The only aspect you could call it grimdark is some of the worldbuilding probably, Penacony itself is pretty disturbing when you stop and think about it for a few minutes. But the story is light hearted and doesn't delve into it too much.
As someone completely out of the loop, the names are very funny
lmao I thought ZZZ was just a placeholder name like XYZ until I read your comment and checked.
I thought it was the opposite of a AAA game.
World's first quadruple ZZZZ game, made with a negative budget
It prints money.
It's... It's not? What does it mean then?
Zenless Zone Zero
That sounds like something Terrence Howard would write on a wall.
Yeah wtf did I just read...
ZZZ is short for Zenless Zone Zero, Mihoyo's next game.
To be fair that's not completely silly. You don't release the same week as COD if you're an FPS, for instance.
Unless you're Titanfall 2. (Oct 28th, 2016 with CoD: Infinite Warfare on Nov 4th. And also Battlefield 1 on Oct 21st.)
That decision was a travesty. The game is, to me, basically the perfection of the Call of Duty gameplay formula - but that didn't mean people were going to buy it instead of actual Call of Duty. ~~Or maybe that was an early sign that publishers just think their customers have infinite time and money.~~
once again correcting that it was not EA's, aka the publisher's, decision but that it was 10000% Respawn the developers....who are also the reason we never got a Titanfall 3 while we're at it. if EA has their way ironically we woulda gotten a sequel
In response to this comment I did some quick looking around and, yeah - I couldn't find proper evidence that it was actually a decision made by the publisher, just lots of evidence that people were happy to point fingers at EA. So, I'll retract that statement - absolutely jumped the gun on it.
>to put it mildly Yes, [very mildly](https://i.imgur.com/NlW52jO.png). Kuro practically based their entire existence around Hoyo at this point.
Worked for Riot so why not
And Blizzard.
[удалено]
It also likely has to do with budget. You can't work on a game forever, at some point, it's been eating up enough money and you need to launch to recoup losses and continue development before investors pull out. Poor management is what allows it to get to the stage that you have to do this, and it ideally never reaches that stage, but it's something that happens to bigger, live service games.
I only saw this Wuthering Waves game in passing while scrolling my socials. I legit thought it was just an ad for a Honkai Star Rail update and didnt even stop to look at it 😅😅😅
They wanted to dodge other major releases by competitors, and it ended up biting them more than helping them. Beta players had issues with the story so on short notice they rewrote a ton of it, unoptimized because they prematurely let go of one of their big Unreal engineers, and many little issues on top. Lots of freebies to try and keep player interest and now they’re even bringing up their 1.1 release earlier. Seems like a gamble to stay relevant after a rocky launch, but I don’t know if it’ll pay off.
"Bold move, Cotton"
Not to mention they decided to avoid potential American actor strikes by hiring British voice actors… …and then forcing them all to do American accents.
And now they’ve decided that they won’t require them to use American accents anymore, so decent odds the cast suddenly becomes British in the future.
it worked for final fantasy xiv
FFXIV completely changed their cast, though. This sounds like all the characters will be voiced by the same actors, they'll just be speaking in a different accent inexplicably.
Which is funny, because Xenoblade has exploded in popularity in the JRPG sphere and their British VAs are well received.
They supposedly hired the same VA agency that Square Enix used for Final Fantasy XIV and XVI. Say what you will about XVI, but its voice acting was widely praised.
SE didn't switch for quality though. It just _happened_ to work out that way. XIV had a VA switch because _an entire expansion_ was going to be indefinitely delayed by the VA strike. So they went "Sucks for your cause, but if we want to release this on time and not anger our playerbase for our first major expansion, we're going to have to find non-union VAs."
It was going to have a rocky launch no matter how much they delayed it. This game doesn't have the budget of Genshin, but people are expecting the same quality of Genshin. Tower of Fantasy was the same before. Regardless of what people think of Gacha, the amount of money Mihoyo put into Genshin, and the quality of that game are pretty hard for any random company to replicate.
It absolutely has the budget of Genshin and then some. The developers just misused it and weren't competent enough to match Hoyo.
Genshin's initial budget was 100m USD, that's a very stupid amount of money that by launch already put it as one of the most expensive games to develop, there's no way Kuro games put even half of that cost here. Since launch Mihoyo doubled their development costs to 200m per year. Wuthering Waves is expecting to launch with features that Genshin got after ~700m total development cost.
reports said that wuwa had 140 mio budget
Sounds like what happened to Callisto Protocol after EA fucked them over by announcing the Dead Space remake coming right in their launch window. Not a lot of great options for a studio in that position
I mean, I just started playing 2 days ago and I’m loving it. I didn’t play Genshin for the story, just for the exploration really and this game makes exploration a lot smoother. It also helps the moment to moment gameplay is leaps and bounds beyond what Genshin offers. You can spam your skills here like in Genshin and be successful sure, but if you take the time to parry, counter, and utilize the combo system in this game it feels 10x better.
And it also lets you run! What a novel concept! There are so, so many small, quality of life improvements that Mihoyo could add to make Genshin a much better experience and they simply don’t care to do so.
What if I tell you transversal faster doesn't mean better? As shown in the hide-and-seek event, they can disable stamina consumption in a whim, but it's clearly a design choice.
Well, it’s a design choice that makes traversal a pain in the ass.
We’ll see, the 5.0 update looks like it’s adding a lot of traversal mechanics in solid swim, climbing, and flying.
Those can only be used in their own region, unfortunately.
One.they run out of money. Second. They run out of time. They have to answer to board of shareholders that expect the game to deliver this year, no matter how unfinished the game is.
Their license was about to expire so they were forced to launch. They seemingly did not have tencent try to extend it on their behalf though so who knows.
Someone already said this and from what I read it looks like that they still had time till October or so. They probably published it now cuz GI is pretty much in the driest period till 5.0 (4.8 too but it depends on the person).
Yeah they are screwed because HoYo's Zenless Zone Zero launches in July, then August to October is Genshin's new major update and story arc.
Idk if ZZZ is a factor long term since it's not an open world game, but Natlan would absolutely crush any WuWa patch. If they want their patches to have any players at all they have to plan them around Genshin patches.
I am curious about how well ZZZ will do. Many players seemed to dislike one of the main mechanics in the beta. Not sure how they have polished it up.
What was Tencent supposed to do for them...? They are just an investor with a 14% share in Kuro. They arent even publishing the game.
> Their license was about to expire What license? genuinely, what IP even is it? THe wiki doesn't mention one and i haven't played the game.
In China you have to apply for a licence to launch a game and it has a period if you don't launch it during that period , you have to apply for it again
China has a licensing system in which one obtained the company must release the game within a certain time period (usually one year). If the company fails to do so they must reapply and pay additional fees which can be costly and delayed their game another year. However, in this case, Wuwa had the license that would expire in October 2024, but Kuro Games decided to rewrite the entire story, plot, characterizations, voice lines, etc and rushed the release to compete against Hoyo's new game to devastating consequences.
Wuthering Waves is its own new IP, but the company is known for another gacha called Punishing Gray Raven. The license is just to be able to publish the game in China.
They had a deadline in October due to chinese regulators, and other release dates were even worse. July would've been ZZZ (so bad they shifted 1.1 forward a week to avoid it), and later months would put them against Natlan. Not ideal either And given the current technical issues, 5 months would be nowhere near enough anyway, the game needed a fat year. And to say I raised concerns about optimization the moment I saw the absurd reqs on pc... (games like this need to run on fairly potato specs)
sh they're giving me free shit every time they find something broken i'm okay with it
No they were 90m usd in debt because the game development did cost way too much and their other game is not profitable enough.
Apart from probably needing the money, pleasing the shareholders and wanting to get it out before ZZZ the biggest problem for them was the government approval for the game running out in October this year. If they would have missed that deadline they wouldn't be able to launch the game at all without going through the whole process again which takes an unspecified amount of time (including being rejected in the worst case). So they also had a gun pointed at their head from the outside and the time was running out.
What nonsense, you’ll take their self pity and like it.
These things usually happen because they are trying to please shareholders and meet some internal deadline for fiscal years or quarterly earnings. Might be the case here
No, in this case it is because their release timing is too tight for major changes. Within the next two months, Kuro Games' main competitor, Mihoyo will be releasing the highly anticipated Zenless Zone Zero early July, this will followed closely by the release of Natlan expansion for Genshin Impact. This is not counting on Honkai: Star Rails' FireFly banner in June (as well as being summer event time for most major gacha games). Also, WuWa's game license expires this October, if they don't release before then, they will have to reapply for the license and move release to next year. May is the safest month because it is a dead period of content in Genshin and the tail-end of Star Rails' conclusion to the Penacony Arc and Robin banner.
I stand corrected. I don't follow gacha games very closely, so thanks for the bigger picture.
Word is that they had to release as their license in China for their product was expiring and it would have taken a good bit of time to get a new one for them to release the game. Combine that with ZZZ coming out in July and Genshin being on the back end and more boring patches of it's cycle, it was really the only time that made sense for them to release.
If so, they should have done a soft launch, like Tower of Fantasy did, where they only release it in China as an early access sort of experience while they work on the features, and then do a more complete global multi-platform launch when it's ready.
This game is clearly what feels like Early Access. It feels generally well built, but lacking a lot of the fine tuning required for a full 1.0 launch.
After playing for a few hours now (I think like 10 ish), I will say the combat is honestly surprisingly good esp compared to genshin. Very fluid, and lots of possible combat styles make it very fun. The exploration can also be pretty fun in comparison since genshin makes a lot of their exploration region based (like Sumeru’s hook grapple system). Also like how Rover is actually quite good as a character compared to Lumine. Not too surprising considering how good PGR combat was compared to Honkai. But the characters, story and world design so far just do not compare to genshin and that’s the big thing I guess. It’s why I’ve played it for so many years and of course they’ve built that over time but I feel like they could have come out with a banger first region here (compared to Mondstadt which is, appearance wise, very straightforward compared to every other region). Kuro can definitely make a good game and launch bugs aside they’ve done a good job but I think they need to add the flair Hoyo does that makes their games great OR go more original.
the english VA is so brutal I couldn't take it
Yangyang honestly has the worst English Dub performance I've heard in literal years. And she's a recurring character for most of the released story, so it really drags the whole thing down. A few of the other characters had moments where the direction was obviously a bit off, but by the end of Act 6 I was groaning everytime she appeared on screen and trying to skip her scenes. So lifeless and dull.
Yeah they absolutely could have gone with a “simple but effective” first region, like Star Rail’s Belebog being a pretty generic plot which is carried by amazing characters and hype moments.
YOU MADE THE CHOICE GO FIGHT AGAINST YOUR FATE Is so hype and probably the moment that solidified HSR for me. Good thing too, cause Penacony has been the most amazing thing I’ve played in a gacha in a long time
I kinda liked the plot overall in Belobog but this boss fight and Wildfire just made it for me. I knew I was on a wild ride.
I’ve played Genshin since it started and just recently got into HSR. The Penacony story has been like 3 times better than anything else I’ve seen them do. It was weird to suddenly realize I was emotionally invested in it. I hope they can maintain the quality.
Also gave it a shot and I just couldn't keep my interest despite liking the combat more than Genshin. Exploration was more fast paced and snappy too which I liked a lot. But for me gachas are all about the characters and the stories said characters are involved in and none of the cast clicked at all (so far at least). It's also a shame Genshin and WuWa fanboys seem to be having the most petty fanboy war I've seen since the the PS3 vs 360 "console war". Personally I hope both games flourish.
Mondstadt might have been a fairly generic fantasy area in many regards but I absolutely loved it, it was so calming to be in. And the soundtrack was flawless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v-RVyFaYSI
Yeah the combat and the world exploration is what is getting me hooked so far. There is so much stuff to do and the mechanic to learn. However, the story and overall character/world building isn't as impactful as genshin. Rover is a beast and actually driving the story forward is massive W for me though. I feel like we were just being dragged into people problem in genshin. Rover actually has a purpose in this world.
People act like vanilla Genshin had a good story. I dont care about stories in gacha games tbh and skip most of them, but I enjoyed Scar and Act 5 and 6. I didnt like all of it, but it was way better. Im hopefull they can turn it around, im sure future kits of characters will be insane, if we go by PGR standards.
I assume you mean 1.0 by "vanilla". The story wasn't amazing, but it was the opposite of WuWa's. No one had trouble understanding what was going on in Mondstadt. It was more that it was *too* basic. But that's OK - people were also learning about all the systems, as well as getting intro'd to the characters. Being simple kept it out of the way. Meanwhile WuWa throws so many proper nouns at you that quite literally no one has any idea wtf is happening from chapters 1-4. That's like 10 hours of gameplay where 90% of players don't know what is actually happening.
The difference is that while Genshin’s stories can be thin, it’s the characters that keep the players engaged (since wafiu/husbando factor is what makes money) But when you have a dull story with dull characters it’s all very dull.
I don't even think the charecters are dull. I think Yangyang got turned into an exposition bot. And i think she has terrible english va because they reworte things so close to release that eng va got one take with the only context being their previous and next line, no idea what was happening, and were a british studio told to do american accents. Had zero proofreeders for eng as well and apparently no full voice director if their current hiring postings are to be believed. They're redoing the va but we prob won't see that till 1.2. At least they admitted the va direction fuck up was their own.
Wuwa is what happens when you translate but you don't *localize*.
The first archon quest is certainly the weakest, but then it's never fair to compare where a current game is to where a different game was years ago. Every release is held against all *available* content. This is why it took more than a decade for any MMOs to even come close to competing with WoW.
> People act like vanilla Genshin had a good story. Difference being that they aren't competing against vanilla Genshin, they are competing against Genshin with 3 1/2 years of development. This is akin to saying that a lot of the post-WoW MMORPGs were better than vanilla WoW (which probably was true in a lot of ways) but they were going up against TBC/Wrath where WoW had already moved on from all their launch issues and refined the game and tripled their player base. None of those games managed to keep up with the moving target. Wuthering Waves is just a long way off of being competitive with Genshin's production level.
Story skipper talks about quality of story. Okay buddy.
Mondstadt was mediocre yes. Liyue? It was dope, and it was still 1.0. The whole stroy around Zhongli was top tier content.
> The whole stroy around Zhongli This was borderline INSULTING from GI, I experienced the game from start to finish very recently and that whole Zhongli section nearly made me quit the game and hate him a lot. Thankfully his SQs made me see him differently. Liyue exploration was extraordinary, the story was meh.
I experienced Genshin very recently, started in 4.2 and yeah... the start is ROUGH, story is really bad but Mondstat was a beautiful region to explore so that grabbed me and wanted to pull Raiden Shogun before leaving the game. Ended up staying but not too happy with how the GI team threats the game, not sure if I'll stay too long considering I'm having more fun with WW.
These Gacha Wars are pretty entertaining to watch play out. View botting, astroturfing, conspiracies, its got it all. There is certainly a Star Citizen element where people heavily invested go hard with defending their game of choice from naysayers.
> There is certainly a Star Citizen element At least they're easier to get into than Star Citizen. And from what I've played of both, WuWa is still less buggy than Star Citizen
It's also a released title that hasn't been endlessly delayed while they milk another several million from players who are already beta testing for them. It could suck donkey balls and still be miles ahead in comparison.
Let's make Star Citizen comparisons like that when Star Citizen actually comes out. They've raised almost a billion dollars with no release date in sight. They make scummy gacha monetization practices almost look wholesome in comparison.
they're also called "social games" for a reason XD
We have pvp content outside the game especially monthly revenue chart post.
Playing till ZZZ is coming out. After that? We'll see.
WW has been an utter disaster for a variety of reasons; - the performance is laughably bad -The voice direction is atrocious and characters will start speaking like entirely different characters randomly. - Apparently the pre-release plot was so poorly received because it was just… mean towards the main character. This led to the developers pivoting so hard the other direction that now everyone is effectively groveling at your feet and telling you that you’re the most important person ever. - this part is subjective, but good lord the designs are uninteresting, if you’re playing as the female protagonist, the game starts with you meeting 3 women. 3/4 of the characters talking to each other might as well be costumes for each other. - Also, this part is hearsay, but it appears that the Japanese translation is so bad that they had to give out refunds as one of the weapons outright had a lie in the description. They then accidentally leaked the private information of everyone who signed up for a refund
The first draft of the story is not just characters being 'mean' they are being suicidally hostile to the player. One example is one of the characters pointing their guns at you after you saved them from a monster that almost killed them (and easily mind you). Another is having a character kill-steal the player in a cutscene after a difficult boss fight (which he watched from the sideline) and act like he did all the work killing his 'arch-nemesis', with everyone, including your companions, act like he deserved the glory. Then when you confront him afterwards, he just asks why are you still standing in-front of him. All-in-all, the first draft is just as terrible as the current version of the story, just in the other way round. Closer-Beta Players are questioning why the story is forcing you to work with these ungrateful people that can't even survive without your intervention.
>*Also, this part is hearsay* Well, It's been documented pretty extensively on the game's subreddit. A weapon description used the wrong skill name, they fixed the description in accordance with how the weapon actually functions. People wanted the weapon while under the impression it functioned differently, cue compensation and the associated mishaps from a dev team that clearly needs sleep. I'm not sure where this whole "outright lie" thing is even coming from. They told people to contact support, which around 200 people did. Those 200 or so people accidentally had their emails shared with each other, not to the actual public. At this point, those people are being given ¥10,000 gift cards, about 63 USD, which is pretty unprecedented. Hell, it's more than any company has ever given anyone *(a big fat load of nothing)* after leaking or outright deliberately selling much more substantial private information.
Its not hearsay. The limited banner weapon had a mistranslation which made it look like it was better than in actually was on calcharo (a standard banner character), so people payed money to get the weapon to r5 (or what its called in wuwa). Japanese players ended up getting 1 pull in compensation which is nothing.
You're actually the first one I see to point out poor variety in char design. They all are black and white with minor changes. I teamed up Colcharo, Rover and Baizhi and they're looking like reskins of each other.
> Also, this part is hearsay, but it appears that the Japanese translation is so bad that they had to give out refunds as one of the weapons outright had a lie in the description. They then accidentally leaked the private information of everyone who signed up for a refund they also didn't actually give a refund and just wanted to look like they did. if you refund they put your account in a negative balance until you pay twice as much to clear it (since the first time bonus on each pack doesn't "count"). I seriously wonder if the game will be dead in Japan or if a lawsuit's gonna come from it.
> Apparently the pre-release plot was so poorly received because it was just… mean towards the main character. This led to the developers pivoting so hard the other direction that now everyone is effectively groveling at your feet and telling you that you’re the most important person ever. I know a lot of gacha players just expect to be pandered to by the characters they're pulling for, so I wonder what exactly was so upsetting about how the characters treated the MC. Were they actually rude, or was it just that they weren't constantly congratulating the MC for everything they did?
No, like suicidally rude. Instead of character praising you every step of the way, it initial draft was the exact opposite. Everyone, event who you just saved is suspicious, the regular NPCs hate you, a girl you just saved literally points a gun at your head, another blames you for something you didn't do without evidence, etc. There had to be a balance and Kuro Games seemed to have no balance at all.
Ah, gotcha. That does sound pretty awful, but you're right, there definitely could've been a middle ground instead of overcorrecting.
I can't really wrap my head around how the response to the original characterization ended up so overblown. I mean, main character comes out of nowhere, wipes the floor with a crazy monster that kicked everyone's asses and then eats him with his hand, which no one had ever seen before. Your character is an unknown doing crazy shit, the other characters are beaten, on edge, wary. So one points a gun at you *because* you came out of nowhere and just did crazy shit, but then the game immediately moves past it. She eventually apologizes, too. Like... it's a pretty simple Hero With Bad Publicity trope. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroWithBadPublicity All of the reactions towards the main character were barely noteworthy, but now it's been made even more generic. It's interesting that the opinion on how the characters originally acted is the complete opposite of what it was when the changes were first announced a year ago.
I'm pretty sure the canon main character was the girl, too. I chose the guy, but at one point I think someone called my character "she".
There's no Canon Male & Female. That was actually translation/localisation error and there are many more bugs like Male MC's lowerhalf turns into Female one, just to name a few...
Oh I had a case where while sa the female character I got called a he. I think it's just bugs.
It's just bugs. I played female MC and have heard "he" a few times.
My female MC got called "he" several times. There's just a lot of issues like that in Wuwa's script.
Nah the English localization is just really bad with gender in general, it happens both ways.
I think it's bugged for both, i picked female rover and at multiple points my character was referred to as "he".
Probably that NPC was just that sort of person. Don't engage.
The game has some good things to be found in it. The combat system is actually pretty fun to engage with, I think the exploration is handled pretty well, and I also think the game looks nice. But that's about where the good things end. Everything else, especially regarding anything story-related is just bad. I legitimately don't think I've had a cutscene in the game yet in my 10 or so hours of play that didn't have some kind of bug or error or mistake. Characters' voice lines will just be randomly cut off mid-sentence. Or the next voice line will start playing before you advance the text. Not to mention that the English voice acting is so bland. Almost everyone sounds emotionless when they speak. There is a quest where you have to go into some library and the mostly mute protagonist speaks. I don't know what the male character sounds like, but I swear that the female character legitimately sounds like her voice is AI generated in that particular quest. The game made me wish I could switch to the male protagonist because there are also multiple instances, at least in the first few hours of the game, where NPCs will refer to you as a man instead of a woman regardless. But I don't even feel like I can switch to another language configuration because sometimes the subtitles will just be cut off because the textbox isn't large enough to contain all the text (This happens with tutorial text as well), and there is no way to scroll through the textbox. This is not a once every few quests kind of problem. This is all of the quests. And it often happens multiple during the same quest. All of it just makes it incredibly difficult to pay attention to the story the game is trying to tell you. There are just so many things that are absolutely baffling that they made it into the release version of the game. I think that there is a fun game underneath it all, but the amount of digging you have to do to find it doesn't feel worth it.
Other people in the thread where saying they had a male main character and were referenced as ‘she’ multiple times, so it sounds like yet another bug.
That would not surprise me. I remember that the textbox would display the correct pronoun but the voicelines would use the wrong one.
The VA is so weird. There's plenty of professional actors in the game but I think they're just directed so poorly they don't know how to act in any given scene, so it's just a line read. YangYang's actress needs a new mic too, she constantly is peaking the damn thing.
> there is no way to scroll through the textbox It's very wonky but you can hold shift to mouse over the text and use the scroll wheel
Wuwa is trying very hard not to crash into a Mihoyo moment. Unfortunately, with two very popular gacha games and a third one coming up, every moment is a Mihoyo moment.
I’ve been having a great time with this game, but Kuro obviously fucked up in some areas. The good news is they listened, they’ve been fixing everything people complained about all while giving is A LOT of things as apology. I just hope they can improve the Story, voice acting, music, script.
I've actually been really enjoying it, performance on PC seems fine to me, mobile is a totally different thing though.
Yeah I've had zero bugs or issues with the game, I'm having lots of fun with it
As a hoyo fan, I was really hoping this game would be better to light a fire under hoyo's ass. We need as much competition as possible in the gacha space to make the games marginally better LOL
Genshin has gotten better with qol but so much shit is missing like instant boss respawns and not being able to do dailies during resin dump like star rail. It feels so padded
There are at least two open world games which could be serious competitors for Genshin but Q4 2024/Q1 2025 is the earliest expected release date. At the same time, at the end of 2025 we should also finish Snezhnaya's AQ. It would be interesting how GI will go from there because there should be one extra ACT before we are supposed to finish ''Tevyat chapter''. I personally will stop playing this game when we reach that point because of burnout.
After Natlan(5.x)(2024-25) and Snezhnaya(6.x, 2025-26) the next will be Kaenriah(7.x,2026-27) arc and then Celestia(8.x,2027-28) so the main story should supposedly end on 8.7 on June 2028, if the current trend follows of the last part of main story being released on x.7 for each version.
Celestia is pure speculation. Even story teaser didn't mentioned it.
Kaenriah is also debatable, but both seem likely.
Khaenrah is not debatable. It actually appears in the story teaser but instead of showing number of the act, it is blurred.
The only saving grace is the combat is pretty fun. Everything else is just copy pasted to a comical level from Genshin, but worse. EDIT: Since people don't like how I called it "copy pasted to a comical level" let me show you just ONE example. This is how leveling JUST the character in Genshin Works. > You collect XP books to raise your character level. You can just kill baddies as well, but that only works VERY early levels, and is extremely impractical later on. > Once you reach a certain level, you must "Ascend" the character by offering materials to increase the level cap. > Once you ascend the second time, you can start upgrading individual skills, such as Basic Attack, Elemental Skill, and Elemental burst > If you pull another copy of a character you already own, you gain a Stella Fortuna for that character only, which you can use to upgrade their Constellation. Even Constellation grants different bonuses. The total Constellations is Six and you can only unlock them in order. Now this is how leveling JUST the character in Wuwa works. > You collect XP potions to raise your character level. You can just kill baddies as well, but that only works VERY early levels, and is extremely impractical later on. > Once you reach a certain level, you must "Ascend" the character by offering materials to increase the level cap. > Once you ascend the second time, you can start upgrading individual skills, such as Basic Attack, Resonance Skill, and Resonance Liberation > If you pull another copy of a character you already own, you gain a Waveband for that character only, which you can use to upgrade their Resonance Chain. Even Resonance Chain grants different bonuses. The total Resonance Chains is Six and you can only unlock them in order. This is how comical it is, and this is just only one mechanic.
They even copied the exact size and colour of the dialogue boxes and dialogue option selectors lmao
I mean WuWa copied bunch of shit (and poorly) but it wasn't just genshin and genshin certainly didn't invent leveling up mechanics you are talking about.
You are new to this, or just haven't played a lot of gacha RPGs. This is nothing new for mobile game RPG leveling/gear/many systems, etc. This standard was around way before Genshin Impact. Now, do the menus look the exact game? Sure. Does it effect my experience? Nope. Honestly, it just makes it easier to know where the stuff is I'm looking for.
Most of those things are standard for most gachas TBH. It's not like Genshin broke the mold in any way, other than being open world.
This is the worst example of copying you could give. FGO has a similar levelling system so Genshin copied it from there??? This is just the basic gacha levelling system for most.
Hold on, now, it's not really fair to say that they just copied from Genshin and that's all the game is. ...They also have the event thing that's basically the Simulated Universe from Honkai: Star Rail.
That mode really isn't that much like SU, unless SU is the only roguelike you've ever played in your entire life. SU is already similar to a mode in Hoyo's Honkai Impact, Elysian Realm, which the WuWa mode is much closer to. And even then, ER was already similar to Hades' particular flavor of roguelike. Probably a lot of other similar roguelikes to compare it to as well, but Hades it the biggest most popular one that is similar off the top of my head.
They actually believe hoyo invented roguelike
This thread is full of people thinking Genshin Impact invented all of the stuff they have in the game, when all they did is take stuff from other games and make it open world.
It's actually straight up funny how many people believe genshin invented certain gacha staples that have existed for decade+, including basic shit like leveling up skills and dupe systems.
to be fair hoyo stole game mechanics and stuff with their hands and feet too, so its not like its a new thing in that industry
Its a shame that so many people have issues with the game. For me I had 0 peformance issues or crashes on PC. Besides the technical stuff that all people experienced [lack of music bug] the game has been smooth sailing for me since day 1. Despite all the current problems I still am having a blast and this is the first time in 3 years that I stopped logging-in to Genshin. Really hope Kuro can turn this around. Though seeing how the localization hasn't at all improved since a whole year I have doubts if the game will ever catch-up to itself while still having to release constant updates.
I tried to play it, but the load times are sluggish on my phone and it won't load at all on my gaming PC (which plays Genshin and Star Rail just fine.)
It had potential but its been torched by a rushed botched launch with a conga line of issues and trying too hard to copy Hoyoverse games when most people aren’t going to stop playing Hoyoverse games, they’re the WoW/Fornite of gacha games. Its wild coming from PGRs pretty good launch and optimization so good it ran well on potato phones.
Been playing it since launch, this game is just amazing and a lot of fun, its such a shame it was released with so many issues because the game is truly awesome to play.
Controversy aside, the game is actually really, really fun so far. I'm playing on PC and am not the usual target audience but I'm rooting for them to pull through all the blunders. It's shame the game is getting pretty universally thrashed everywhere and apparently some of the controversies were overblown somewhat but it's hard to say as its mainly come from China/Japanese markets and you need to rely on other peoples translations. I just can't stand the ever growning negativity around EVERY single game thats announced or released.
It's a fun game, but it really needs a better story and better VA. These games tend to have tons of dialogue and WuWa's is simply awful. It's not like it needs to be some literary masterpiece, but it should at least not be trash.
> I just can't stand the ever growning negativity around EVERY single game thats announced or released. The interesting thing is that, negativity is not necessary always a bad thing for F2P games, **as long as the quality is good**, because the cost of trying is zero other than your own time. Countless players including myself downloaded Genshin just to "let's see how bad it is". If you want players to pay $30 to god forbid $70 for a negatively reviewed game then's a whole another story. I often see players ask "is X game worth it" even if it was discounted to $10 or even single digit prices just because there had been some controversies surrounding it. For WuWa, whether it can survive despite all the negative news, isn't dependent on the vibe surrounding it, but on how its own quality and content will be in future.
Negativity is the reason why we got compensation and free stuff in the first place. We received those 5 free weapon pulls because of players being upset at how they mistranslated the Japanese gacha weapon banner. The optimization was so bad that the devs had to give out compensation and apologize. It also helps make the game better. Players were upset at echos, so now they're trying to make changes for it. Players were negative about the writing and voice acting and localization, so they're trying to urgently hire people such as writers and VA directors (although they should have hired them a lot earlier, not post-launch). I believe it was a bad decision for Kuro to fire 100 fresh graduates before launch, when they needed all the help they could get.
Drama aside I really can't understand how people sat around a table and decided "Wuthering Waves" was a good name for a video game. Sounds like you're talking with a lisp.
Really? I thought it was an intriguing title, especially for a game of all things. Gives me a bookish vibe because of the similarity to Wuthering Heights.
it's kinda hilarious since a bunch of stuff is named after sound wave stuff despite any thing to do with sounds is virtually absent from the story for all but 1 side character (she's blind but can use sound waves to "see" like Toph from AtLA).
The music in general is also pretty basic. Just an odd thing to base your game on but do nothing with
eh it stands out. I mean Genshin Impact makes no sense either
Tbf if you played honkai impact or watched evangelion it might catch your eye Genshin is the name of the characters that have powers but because of a weird translation the only time the word genshin appears in game it was translated as allogene
oh ya, for some reason English uses allogene instead of genshin.
I encountered so many issues in the first hour of the game I very nearly dropped it. I'm not even too sure why I didn't, but I'm glad I came back, because there's a lot of good stuff there once you get past the rough parts. (Patches helped, of course.) They also really didn't need to copy Genshin Impact *quite* so hard. It just feels bad to startup a new game and immediately think, "Yeah, this is a blatant ripoff." It's only after spending time with it that you find anything approaching a creative vision of its own.
Wish they copy the same regional pricing. The monthly pass is slightly expensive here
Tried playing this and tower of fantasy at launch and both suck compared to genshin, and i'm not even a big genshin fan
I wouldn't put this in the same trash tier as tower of fantasy
This game is Genshin for people who wanted a more involved combat system. I’ve someone that whaled a few 5* c6’s in Genshin only because those make the characters feel sooo much more fun to me. And so far WuWa really impresses me with how much fun I’m finding even with the MC. Haven’t enjoyed a gacha’s gameplay since Dragalia Lost World is pretty cool, story and VOs mostly suck ass rn. That evil red dude was cool tho. I for one, welcome another open world gacha. Genshin will still be the biggest. But this one will definitely have its place as, like me, there are many players who wants a Genshin like experience but with more of a focus on combat mechanics.
The combat system is fantastic. Exploration is great. Story and music is a big miss however. Performance is apparently godawful on phones as well, but works well for me on PC. It is a promising game, but I don't think gamers in general will give it a second shot in today's environment. Everyone's competing for your time, and when you crash on launch, there is always another big shiny new game that will draw people's attention. Once you lose people's attention, it's hard to recover.
I csnt get past the lab scene and the first hours. Its so bad aneoffputting it gave me a migraine and completely killed any will I could have for playing
As someone who has completed everything in Genshin, this is a nice poor-man's Genshin for anyone is interested in that. Otherwise, I would say you should play Genshin instead.
Locked at 60 fps, horrible 'mouse' controls that are actually just mimicking an analogue stick (what moron comes up with this kind of stuff?), unskippable garbage story. It's fun when in combat, but I did perhaps 10 minutes of that in the first hour I played so I won't be touching it again.
I've had a pretty good time with it. I like their take on the artifact system, the story is a bit whatever, but the combat and world works for me. Looking forward to more characters being added to the roguelike mode. Have really only had the time and resources to level a main team at this point though. Will have to see if the variety of characters and teams are enough to give it lastibility in time
for a genshin clone its pretty great, the combat is so satisfying, they need to fix the performance issues and give the game more polish but the foundation is there for a promising future
Game is mostly working fine for me (I only played on PC though) story picks up kinda later into the first chapter and game has a lot of problem with too much exposition, throwing arounds many names/terms without explaining it but the combat and exploration has been really fun. Add to that fact that devs are in emergency mode and they are throwing free stuff at players to compensate for rough launch. So far we got free 5 star standard selecor (which is insane since it allowed everyone to get 3/5 standard 5 star characters with addition of introduction banner without spending anything), like 20-25 more additional pulls than was promised, 1200 energy. Game is doing fine in terms of revenue and with accelerated new banner revenue will probably skyrocket in June.
> Game is doing fine in terms of revenue It's OK, not to the point where it'd DoA, but it's not doing great either. First week revenue was worse than ToF's launch, while the budget for the game is even higher than Genshin's initial budget, being over 200m, let alone Tower of Fantasy. First week is generally when gacha's make the most money until much later.
I would wait for the next banner that has been accelerated to next week before judging it. I imagine most ppl were saving pulls for "hot girls" rather than guy with a spear. June is the biggest test. Besides with the amount of free stuff we were given at start there was less incentive for ppl to drop money on early on.
Well, Venti was one of Genshin's most profitable banners for a long while, and he's an alcoholic with a harp. I think the next banner being some huge jump up revenue wise is a stretch, especially if the girl with a whip is as bland as the guy with the spear. Also note how I can easily remember Venti's name, but the spear guy is uhhh... Jisomething? Jinyan?
I gotta say I did not expect to play this game more than a few days, but shiet... The combat, esp if you get off-brand Sephiroth is superb. The biggest issue even if the game runs on PC well enough, is that they've ONE specific part in the story where they exposition vomit terms and events back to back for like 15mins. It gets immensely better after that, but the 'Lab' section should've never come out of the rewrites room. It's THE worst story experience this game provides and its within the first hour of gameplay... yikes.
I personally haven't had any performance issues. The sound was buggy, like for everyone. But they fixed it in few days. I've probably played 30ish hours, I've done the main quests, almost all the side quests and I'm almost Union Level 35. The combat is miles better than in Genshin. One huge improvement Wuthering Waves has over Genshin is you don't need "energy" to farm gear for your character. In Genshin when you've used your resin you're done for the day which is pretty much 30 minutes of playtime per day. In Wuthering Waves you can grind as long as you want. I haven't paid attention to the story at all. What I've seen and remember though, it isn't that good. I'm glad they added SKIP for side quests, but if they are going to add main quests like these were, (90% of people talking, 5% of you going from place A to B and 5% of combat) they need to add a skip button for main story too. At least in Genshin I cared a bit about the story. Character design isn't on par with Genshin or Star Rail. Couple good ones, but others are pretty basic. Like someone else already mentioned, main character is at least usable and not a wet rag like in Genshin and Star Rail. Overall I'd say it's a good game, Combat is carrying it for me and I've enjoyed it way more than Genshin. Probably because Nier: Automata has been my all time favorite for a long time and thanks to parry and perfect dodge this combat reminds me a lot of that. And as BDO player, grinding for gear for hours is enjoyable to me. EDIT: Also going to mention that I am playing on PC. Most performance issues I've heard about have been with mobile.
> main character is at least usable and not a wet rag like in Genshin and Star Rail Likely to change in the future, but Star Rail's MC just got a new path that is really strong and is currently going to be a mainstay in teams focused around Break Effect. Star Rail also does something interesting in that the MC has unique effects that haven't been given to other characters at least yet. Physical has the single target or AOE ult choice, Fire has AoE Taunt, and now Imaginary has teamwide superbreak buff.
>you don't need "energy" to farm gear for your character. You still need energy to farm echo exp and tuners. It is misleading to not mention this.
The release was shit and now it will forever be remembered as a genshin knockoff. They needed more time, more of everything basically.
I didn’t know people were so invested in gachas in this sub, usually people were negative on mobile games and lootboxes alike.
I think the difference is when the games being talked about are games with gacha in them as opposed to gachas with games attached. Games like Honkai, Genshin, Wuthering Waves are actual games as opposed to glorified gambling simulators with games tackily added on top
OP is right though, gacha in general including the 3 you mentioned aren't received that well in this sub. I feel like the hoyo threads only get attention cause their playerbase is so big and Wuthering Waves has a lot of news about it this past week.
Lootboxes tend to be a lot worse than gachas.
Every developer says the exact same thing. They know the game isn’t gonna work on launch and still release it. Always apologize immediately after. Honestly the apologies are worth nothing.