Why We Fight

Wuthering Waves continues to entertain me very well and for no cost whatsoever. I am starting to wonder how much longer that can go on. I'm at something of an impasse with the game just now.

It's nothing to do with lack of content. There's no shortage of new, interesting things to do and even if there was, there's a major update with a whole new region due to drop tomorrow. I'm not losing interest, either. I'm more than happy to keep playing. I'm having a fine old time.

The problem lies in progression. I'm stuck.

Wuthering Waves is not dissimilar to Genshin Impact in a number of ways, a design choice that's absolutely fine by me. There's nothing whatsoever wrong in taking inspiration from the best. And, as Palworld's creator Takuro Mizobe said in a recent interview, "To make new things is very hard. In game development, of course, sometimes we have to do it, but, as much as possible, I try to avoid creating new things." 

Sound counsel. In most cases, originality isn't all it's cracked up to be. That's not the issue here. The problem is that, much though I enjoyed Genshin Impact, fairly swiftly the skill level required to progress proved to be higher than my personal ceiling. In plain language, the game got too hard and I quit.

I would prefer not to quit Wuthering Waves. I'm enjoying it too much. Considerably more than I ever enjoyed Genshin Impact, in fact, and probably more than I enjoyed Noah's Heart, although I have another post in mind to write about that.

The world is beautiful, charming and fascinating to explore. I like the characters. The quests are varied and often amusing. There are plenty of puzzles, games and non-combat activities, most of which I find fun. Even the main story has managed to hold my interest, despite being basically the same one I've heard in a dozen games I've played over the last ten years.

Even the combat is okay. I do like to kick a little ass in-between all the cat rescues, portrait sittings, improv and match-making. Unfortunately, when it comes to the set-piece, instanced boss fights that gate-keep both story and levels, I'm not having such a great time as all that.

It's mostly my fault. Wuthering Waves is an action rpg and by most accounts I've read, a fairly simple one. Combat relies on timing and observation. You need to read visual cues to know when to dodge so as to minimize the damage you take. You need to build chains and swap team members to maximize the damage you deal. That's about it.

All very straightforward and certainly within my capabilities to learn and execute successfully, given  sufficient practice. The question isn't whether I can do it; it's whether I want to. And thinking about it carefully, I find I don't.

Over the last couple of years two, distinct, apparently contradictory trends in gaming have emerged: coziness and difficulty. The success of the Elden Ring series has revitalized the once-common idea that games should be hard and players should learn to play them. Conversely, titles like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley have popularized the concept of chilling out in a peaceful environment as a legitimate way to play video games. 

My problem, as I've only recently come to realize, is that what I'm looking for is a combination of both. I want a cozy world with friendly characters and homely activities, but I don't want to faff around farming or romancing. I want to punch monsters in the snoot. 

Except I want that to be cozy, too, and as easy as everything else. Cozy combat. What's so hard to understand about that?

In quite a lot of games I've played there have been ways to manage those kinds of expectations. Some games actually come with difficulty settings. Failing that, you can out-level the fights and come back when they've been reduced to a difficulty you find manageable. You can improve your gear without fighting (Crafting it, buying it...) until you're able to stroll through the fights with little trouble. You can call on friends (Or willing strangers.) to come help.

None of those worked for me in Genshin Impact and I'm pretty sure they won't work in Wuthering Waves either. It's a single-player game for a start, at least at the level I'm at, although I believe it does open up to co-op play later on, Bringing in more people isn't an option, even if I knew anyone who played or I was willing to start making new in-game friends, something I've shown no inclination to do for well over a decade.

It is possible to upgrade gear to a some extent but not enough to make a big difference as far as I can tell. As far as out-leveling the fight I'm having trouble with goes, it just so happens to be same fight that unlocks the next twenty levels, so that's a bit of a Catch 22...

Still, there must be some way to deal with it. After I failed the fight (To be fair, I've only tried once, so for all I know I might have just had some bad rolls. I could win quite easily on a second attempt. That's what happened when I fought Scar, which I think may have been a tougher battle.) I did some research to see if there was a way around it. 

Most of the advice focused on how to play better. I knew immediately I didn't want to play better to beat it. I didn't want to have to deal with it at all. I didn't want to change myself so I could beat the game. I wanted the game to change so I didn't need to.

I realize this is neither a realistic nor a reasonable expectation, although it might well be what drives the economic engine that makes Wuthering Waves a commercial proposition. It is a Gacha game, after all, even though I haven't been playing it as one up to now. 

I think what you're supposed to do, when you get stuck like this, is to spend money in the cash shop in the hope of getting better Resonators. Then, when you get some, you spend more money buying the materials you need to upgrade them.

Do all of that and then, presumably, your team gets stronger and the fights get easier. Except that in my experience it doesn't work that way. I had some very strong characters in Genshin Impact and I remember them doing me not much good at all because, in the end, player skill was still the most important factor and you can't buy that in the cash shop, more's the pity.

Even if I was willing to spend money on Resonators in Wuthering Waves, and even if I thought it would do me any good, there is one more, rather unusual problem: I haven't figured out how to buy them. 

In both Genshin Impact and Noah's Heart, the games constantly pushed you towards ways to obtain new characters. They were both big boosters of the first hit comes free principle. Not so in Wuthering Waves, where the developers seem to want to keep the whole process as much of a secret as possible.

I've been playing Wuthering Waves for close on a month now and I have a grand total of five Resonators, four of which I had by the end of my second session. One is the original character I started with and two are the NPCs I met as soon as I logged into the game. The fourth is an NPC the first two took me to meet immediately afterwards and the fifth is someone I met a little further on in the story, who was given to me as a reward for logging in for five days straight.

Since WW is a gacha game, I have to assume there's some way to buy draws to win Resonators from a pool but as I write this, I still have no idea what it is. I've seen nothing in my packs that opens up to give a free draw. No windows have popped up trying to sell me a bundle. I haven't even been offered one of those starter missions, where you have to go "buy" something for free from the cash shop, just so you know there is one and where to find it. 

I googled but I couldn't find a straightforward explanation of how the gacha process works in this game. In fact, the only way I was able to figure it out so I could write about it was by logging in and clicking on every icon to see what they all did. Thanks to that, I can now claim I know how to use the gacha system in this gacha game I've been playing for a month. I'm not sure that's indicative of a sound marketing strategy.

Just in case anyone cares, this is how it works. There's a system called Convene, which is accessible through an icon like a four-pointed star inside a circle that's always on display at the top left of the screen, alongside several others. I do now very vaguely recall the game demonstrating it at some point but that was when a new mechanic was being introduced every few minutes. I paid no attention and it was never mentioned again.

If you press the icon, a window a menu with several more options appears. Two of those let you draw for Resonators. One is a "Targeted Convene" for weapons and the fourth is the same but for Resonators. What a Targeted Convene might be is not explained.

The draws use a currency called Lustrous Tides. Somehow, I appear to have acquired 72 of those, I have no clue when or how. Each draw costs ten Lustrous Tides but there's a 20% off sale on at the moment so that makes it eight. I just tried it and got a gun, not a Resonator, so weapons would seem to be in the same pool. I wonder if that means they're equally important?

I could go on - there's a button that brings up some very extensive rules and drop chances - but I won't bother with any of that because the points I'm trying to make are unaffected by the minutiae.

My main arguments are that a) I've managed to play very happily for a month so far, without even seeing the gacha system in action and b) I still wouldn't be bothering with it if I hadn't gotten stuck on that boss fight, which from all I've read isn't even considered much of a speed bump by most players.

It started me thinking about what I wanted out of the game. I'm not sure it's what the developers want me to want, which would appear to be to keep spending money to become more powerful. But to what end? I can't even claim to be able to see what the point of getting more powerful in this game is any more. 

If I do, several things will happen. It will allow me to carry on raising my Union Level from 20 to 40, after which I'll need to do another, similar fight, followed by a third at 60, opening the path to the Union Level cap of 80. 

Granted, that has a certain attraction; some instanced content is capped to various Union Levels but, most importantly, it so are some of the chapters of the main story. Less helpfully, it will cause all the mobs in the open world to level up to the new Union Level tier, making fights across the board that much harder. 

On the plus side, it will also alter the loot tables so those mobs drop the correct mats and upgrades for the new tier but that, too, is something of an escalator to nowhere. Why get tougher to fight tougher mobs to get drops so you can get tougher to fight tougher mobs if they're all still the same mobs in the same places?

As must be obvious, that isn't much of an incentive for me. I don't see the appeal of things getting harder so they can keep on getting harder still. And it's not as though I even need to do it. When I stop and think about it, I can enjoy most of what I really like about Wuthering Waves without getting caught in that endless loop.

I'd like to see how the story turns out but I can watch it on YouTube if I want. I already have it bookmarked.  I can carry on exploring the world just as I am and I won't have to worry about the mobs getting tougher. I mostly only fight the ones that aggro on me as I'm exploring, anyway. 

As for all the side quests, regional quest lines, character story arcs and so on, which are the ones I'm enjoying the most, they all seem unaffected by Union Level. As far as I know, I can just keep on doing them. There's no shortage, either. There should be plenty to keep me entertained for a good while yet.

The really weird part, though, is that the game does even have a sort of difficulty setting although it doesn't become available until you win that fight. Once you begin to raise the Union Level cap, you can always go into the settings and reset it back to an earlier tier if you want, even though doing so doesn't stop your own Union Level from rising. 

If I did the fight again and won, I could reset the world to the previous tier and carry on leveling. That way, I'd end up overpowered for everything in the open world, which I admit does have some appeal.

All of this leaves me in a state of confusion about how to carry on, which is the main reason I wrote this post. I'm basically talking out loud to myself as I try to figure it all out.

Thanks for listening. I'll let you know what I decide.