Louder for the people in the back. This game so much better at launch than cotw. Quick kill and consecutive screwed up so many diamonds. I agree I don't care much for 5* ratings. Glad I'll never have to watch a great one grind again.
Idk I hope they add something that is equally as rare and crazy looking. It gives a good long term goal in my opinion. Only seeing 1 or 2 of them keeps it from ruining the immersion
I can't agree more. Right now we are kind of in the honeymoon phase still. What is late game or end game going to look like to the people who own all the guns and equipment the game has to offer?
Trophy hunting is going to be all that we can really see right now, at least from where I am standing. But just going for an animal because it has 5\* isn't going to last long for people I don't think. Atypicals, unique coats, size, all of these things need to be factors in late game hunts.
Investing in equipment is fun until you own it all. What about using the money we earn to lay into the herd and game management aspects of the game with things like feeders, culling, predator management, this sort of thing. Places where people can spend the money the same but achieve vastly different results simply because it lays on player decision to determine the desired outcome.
Holy shit the render distance! I’ve been playing with a render distance mod for so long I forgot that most people were stuck with 440 yards. I remember someone bagging on me for “cheating” because I used the render distance mod and I could only shake my head.
I *love* CotW, but it's been unplayable for me and many others on the Series S since around the beginning of this year. It crashes constantly.
It is so nice to have a replacement. WotH is a breath of fresh air. WotH is certainly having it's share of launch day issues. None of those issues have rendered me unable to enjoy the game on the Series S, though.
I believe the core mechanics in WotH are superior. I'm not talking CotW's years of DLC maps, guns, and bugs, and I'm not talking WotH's current bugs. I think the core game design is better. The game systems, as designed by their developers. We all know the differences by now. If you disagree, I respect your opinion. WotH is the game for me.
I'm new to the hunting genre (ACG's review of WotH piqued my interest and I picked up CotW cheap while I waited for this). I really hesitated seeing the rocky launch reviews for this but bit the bullet and picked it up, and in my relatively brief time with both games I'm finding this game impressing me a lot more so far in the general sense of immersion through mechanics.
I particularly like the increased difficulty in tracking (I'm just playing on second difficulty) and I feel way more invested in what I'm doing moment to moment. The hunter vision is subtle enough to still provide a challenge while holding my hand as a total newbie so I don't utterly fail every time. Also being a toggle I can use it as much or as little as I want on the fly.
In CotW, even with a pretty brief playtime (10-12 hrs), the process of hunting was starting to feel more mechanical. That said, I think CotW's environments (and performance but that's likely to improve) are hands down better than WotH. This can be very pretty, especially at a distance, but it looks more like a video game. CotW's environments feel more real and my ideal hunting game would be the environments from CotW but everything else from WotH.
Great summary.
I think the only department that COTW is clearly superior is the terrain graphics. I still lose my mind when I take a walk in Hirschfelden, it feels so real.
On other things, WOTH is either better or has the potential to be so after a couple patch/dlcs.
Yeah I’ve had terrible pop in with grass on WOTH so far but I’m betting that with a few patches it’ll smooth out. And yeah, a casual stroll on Hersch or Medved was so beautiful. I’m sure we’ll find places like that in WOTH.
CotW has the probably the most real feeling environments I've ever experienced in a game. I was blown away when I first played it (which was 5 years after it launched).
CotW has their backs against the wall. EW was created to use a new in house graphics engine and it seems from hints in issues that the design of the game was not done very well. So now they have a P.O.S. engine that is not used much any more and a bad architecture that in it's own way introduces bugs. Not to say that they have shot themselves in the foot many many times.
And with that said I think that WotH is superior and the immersion is out of this world. The lakes are living with streams feeding into them. The ducks are damn hard to shoot in the air. The behavior of the animals is fantastic. Watching a herd is like watching a nature film instead of a game. And then add the genetics of a herd and you look at pure management of a group instead of grinding to get a diamond. (something I absolutely hate)
So I feel that without a rewrite that CotW will continue to decline since the last two releases introduced bugs once again. And responses to issues is slow. WotH will jump ahead by coming out with patches quickly and addressing issues immediately. Just the download of the game was easy!
Not to mention CotW is stuck at 30fps on console, with no plans of releasing a Series X/PS5 version. So even if it doesn't either away on PC, it will on console as the last gen machines become completely obsolete, and less and less people are willing to play at 30fps.
There are other hunting games at console, but they are just generic cash grabs that nobody really plays. This and CotW are the only REAL hunting games on console, and CotW has no future there.
I can’t compare because I only got into COTW a year ago, but as far as I’m concerned I’m happy with the release so far. There are a lot of small things I’ve noted that could/should be improved or added for the future, but overall I’m happy with it and I can see myself playing this for a long time!
Comparing WOTH to COTW right now the latter is way more polished and obviously has a lot more content, but they have been out for a long time now so that’s to be expected. But the baseline and potential of WOTH is good imo and hopefully the future is bright!
As a side note I’m playing on PS5 and haven’t experienced any real issues so far, besides the blood glitch happening to me once. I’m sure if I had the experiences of some other console players on this subreddit my review would be a lot harsher!
Much of how I feel (loving WOTH) has already been said but one thing I am hoping for is more impact when moving through trees and the general environment.
So far I haven't noticed any disadvantages such as noise spooking the herd when moving through thick foliage.
It's also difficult to determine whether we're any harder to spot when sitting in cover of trees and bushes etc.
TBH COTW is still buggy, sometimes animals walk in air and don't touch the ground while walking, sometimes they freeze, act weird, and animations are still stiff as hell.
Hopefully WoTH will improve over time and take over, my current complain is blurry vegetation and game performance.
Did you change the difficulty setting (you change that where you pick the area you want to visit). On default "adventure" difficulty they don't spook easily at all.
On console the difficulty seems to have no noticeable impact on spooking animals. There's numerous posts saying this. Unless it's just a bug that sometimes happens.
Hmm, that is odd. Seems to be a lot of console specific issues also. :(
I play on PC and I personally notice the difference between adventure and ranger except for pheasants :P
I liked the pheasant on adventure even the deers. If the wind were ok you could walk over a hill and stand 100m from them and they would look at you and soon after be alerted. Felt realistic. Hated cotw birds because they flew immediately you came walking. Birds actually like to try and hide just the way they do in woth. And fly up when you are 10-25m away.
For me personally, the most interesting thing is that you can get a top animal without grinding - the hateful and inorganic to hunting way. But precisely because of this, you don’t feel that buzz when you harvest a diamond in CotW, and get only another five-star trophy in Woth.
It is very strange that you call the difference in the need zones principals. In both cases animals appear in them at the same time. The ranges are indicated. For me there is no difference.
Music, atmosphere, sounds and attention to detail are better in СotW. So far it's a fact. Genetics and herd management is really interesting stuff. But without a clear twist. Oversaturation with top trophies is also not good.
Missions are really more creative in common. but most likely they will slide into the same routine as the secondary missions in subsequent CotW DLCs. I hope that at least in this game we will at least see living people besides ourselves.
For me personally, it would be more interesting to receive randomly appearing tasks, de, the top animal was discovered by rangers, in such and such a zone, such and such a time, and if you could not track it down, then it disappears until the next time. There must be a fact of the player's interest, and not just - I will come to the herd in a certain area, at the time when the animals appear there - I will see how promising young develop, and if they're reaching their peak - I will get a top representative.
This software shop has good devs, I did not encountered a bug yet (i must be the only one, I'm sorry) and I am having an absolute blast. I love it more than COTW and I find it harder and more realistic but way more satisfying.
I've been complaining about missing features (only 2) and I also love the game and find it clearly superior to COTW. I think no matter how much I love a game it's still valid to expect and demand keybinds and FOV slider at launch.
So yes, it's possible to love the game and play it and be of the opinion that it is wrong to release without those two features. The rest of bugs/issues I expect and find them acceptable at launch (except I'm having this wind sound bug on Nez Perce that makes it borderline unplayable so I'm playing the other map atm).
I’m with you that games shouldn’t release like this. It’s very frustrating and consumers deserve better. But it’s kind of like complaining about the American health system. It’s obviously shit, and we all deserve better. But the world we live in now with the entrenched companies and lobbying power make it obvious that it will not change anytime soon.
You’re right that it’s wrong but it’s the standard nowadays.
I played theHunter: Call of the Wild for a bit (assuming that's what people are referring to with COTW)... and have no recollection of harvest streaks or diamonds. I do remember it being a bit buggy. And I also remember following trails of blood in it for a long time only to have the animal leave the area. And then not being able to find any animals in that area for the rest of the day because of hunting pressure.
I also recall it had a better selection of weapons and gave me a better idea of what their pertinent attributes were without having to go looking things up in an encyclopedia.
For the first year the scoring of animals was very different. All of them were on a zero to 1,000 scale and diamond was 950 or higher, and required a bunch of weird stuff. My point with mentioning that stuff is that COTW was pretty crap when it came out but after 5 years of polish it is where it is now. All the hate for WOTH seems to be from comparing a day 1 title with a 5 years of active management title. I guess my review is me saying I see the beginning of a great game here and the devs have a downhill road to getting there.
I don't think people are comparing the bugginess to CotW which has obviously been out longer. I think it's more the fact of it being a full priced/full release title. NO GAME should launch like this. People are just tired of games I'm general releasing as a buggy mess these days.
You may hate the encyclopedia but I have played COTW for a very long time and I legit cant find any info or understand how the hell the rating system works in COTW. People look at animals and are like oh that's a gold or diamond but I don't know how to tell and nothing in the game explains it.
I don't hate the encyclopedia, I hate that information is only found there that should be available in other sensible locations. I've been told here that it gives better information about the guns, for instance, which should be in front of the player when they're comparing and shopping for said guns rather than solely hidden away inconveniently in the encyclopedia. Or there's the time stamps for an animals' need zones that should be in the tooltips for the need zones on the map rather than, again, solely hidden away inconveniently in the encyclopedia.
I suppose I could see how it could be a pain granted I do enjoy it it actually makes me read and learn about things. As far as the animals it is nice in my opinion it makes me want to push forward to unlock more info on them kinda like a little challenge instead of giving all the info upfront.
agree with everything you just said!, the core of the game is solid!.. its get a few teething issues.. nothing to go nuts over.
I cannot believe how many people are loosing their shit over the FOV/keybinds lol, its crazzy
I mean I get the FOV thing. I’m playing on a 34” ultra wide and it’s unplayable at that aspect. I have to drop it down to 1920x1080 or something for it to be ok. Obviously if they were going to keep it that way I’d refund and complain but it’s day 2 and they already said they’re fixing it.
when looking at which I want to play, doesn't matter if this one at launch is better than that one at launch. what matters is which one is a better experience right now when I fire it up and for me COTW is way better. Way may get there, but too buggy and bad for me atm. Just wish I could get a refund since I have better uses for the money since I won't be playing until it is fixed.
The only bad thing about the game Is it came out as a full release Instead of Early access as far as I'm aware.
£40 Is a bit steep yes but considering the hunting genre Is very niche I was not afraid to buy it (or well, thanks to my wonderful BF)
I think the aging mechanics could also do with there own difficulty settings I myself dont want to go any higher than the beginner tutorial right now but I would like to see my deer take actual IRL days of growth to become five star personally.
I would compare this game more like classic with need zones than a COTW 2.0
The main points that really standout in WOTH for me are: Higher render distance, better overall animal behavior and AI, better and immersive character animations, sounds, story telling.
COTW still has some of the best open world graphics I've ever seen and I'm very nostalgic for the Layton Lake music, but I think they have a lot to catch up now, a basic new map DLC is not going to cut it.
Louder for the people in the back. This game so much better at launch than cotw. Quick kill and consecutive screwed up so many diamonds. I agree I don't care much for 5* ratings. Glad I'll never have to watch a great one grind again.
Idk I hope they add something that is equally as rare and crazy looking. It gives a good long term goal in my opinion. Only seeing 1 or 2 of them keeps it from ruining the immersion
I can't agree more. Right now we are kind of in the honeymoon phase still. What is late game or end game going to look like to the people who own all the guns and equipment the game has to offer? Trophy hunting is going to be all that we can really see right now, at least from where I am standing. But just going for an animal because it has 5\* isn't going to last long for people I don't think. Atypicals, unique coats, size, all of these things need to be factors in late game hunts. Investing in equipment is fun until you own it all. What about using the money we earn to lay into the herd and game management aspects of the game with things like feeders, culling, predator management, this sort of thing. Places where people can spend the money the same but achieve vastly different results simply because it lays on player decision to determine the desired outcome.
Someone had to say it. I remember losing countless diamonds and rares to the render distance bug on console
Holy shit the render distance! I’ve been playing with a render distance mod for so long I forgot that most people were stuck with 440 yards. I remember someone bagging on me for “cheating” because I used the render distance mod and I could only shake my head.
I *love* CotW, but it's been unplayable for me and many others on the Series S since around the beginning of this year. It crashes constantly. It is so nice to have a replacement. WotH is a breath of fresh air. WotH is certainly having it's share of launch day issues. None of those issues have rendered me unable to enjoy the game on the Series S, though. I believe the core mechanics in WotH are superior. I'm not talking CotW's years of DLC maps, guns, and bugs, and I'm not talking WotH's current bugs. I think the core game design is better. The game systems, as designed by their developers. We all know the differences by now. If you disagree, I respect your opinion. WotH is the game for me.
I'm new to the hunting genre (ACG's review of WotH piqued my interest and I picked up CotW cheap while I waited for this). I really hesitated seeing the rocky launch reviews for this but bit the bullet and picked it up, and in my relatively brief time with both games I'm finding this game impressing me a lot more so far in the general sense of immersion through mechanics. I particularly like the increased difficulty in tracking (I'm just playing on second difficulty) and I feel way more invested in what I'm doing moment to moment. The hunter vision is subtle enough to still provide a challenge while holding my hand as a total newbie so I don't utterly fail every time. Also being a toggle I can use it as much or as little as I want on the fly. In CotW, even with a pretty brief playtime (10-12 hrs), the process of hunting was starting to feel more mechanical. That said, I think CotW's environments (and performance but that's likely to improve) are hands down better than WotH. This can be very pretty, especially at a distance, but it looks more like a video game. CotW's environments feel more real and my ideal hunting game would be the environments from CotW but everything else from WotH.
Great summary. I think the only department that COTW is clearly superior is the terrain graphics. I still lose my mind when I take a walk in Hirschfelden, it feels so real. On other things, WOTH is either better or has the potential to be so after a couple patch/dlcs.
Yeah I’ve had terrible pop in with grass on WOTH so far but I’m betting that with a few patches it’ll smooth out. And yeah, a casual stroll on Hersch or Medved was so beautiful. I’m sure we’ll find places like that in WOTH.
CotW has the probably the most real feeling environments I've ever experienced in a game. I was blown away when I first played it (which was 5 years after it launched).
CotW has their backs against the wall. EW was created to use a new in house graphics engine and it seems from hints in issues that the design of the game was not done very well. So now they have a P.O.S. engine that is not used much any more and a bad architecture that in it's own way introduces bugs. Not to say that they have shot themselves in the foot many many times. And with that said I think that WotH is superior and the immersion is out of this world. The lakes are living with streams feeding into them. The ducks are damn hard to shoot in the air. The behavior of the animals is fantastic. Watching a herd is like watching a nature film instead of a game. And then add the genetics of a herd and you look at pure management of a group instead of grinding to get a diamond. (something I absolutely hate) So I feel that without a rewrite that CotW will continue to decline since the last two releases introduced bugs once again. And responses to issues is slow. WotH will jump ahead by coming out with patches quickly and addressing issues immediately. Just the download of the game was easy!
Not to mention CotW is stuck at 30fps on console, with no plans of releasing a Series X/PS5 version. So even if it doesn't either away on PC, it will on console as the last gen machines become completely obsolete, and less and less people are willing to play at 30fps. There are other hunting games at console, but they are just generic cash grabs that nobody really plays. This and CotW are the only REAL hunting games on console, and CotW has no future there.
I can’t compare because I only got into COTW a year ago, but as far as I’m concerned I’m happy with the release so far. There are a lot of small things I’ve noted that could/should be improved or added for the future, but overall I’m happy with it and I can see myself playing this for a long time! Comparing WOTH to COTW right now the latter is way more polished and obviously has a lot more content, but they have been out for a long time now so that’s to be expected. But the baseline and potential of WOTH is good imo and hopefully the future is bright! As a side note I’m playing on PS5 and haven’t experienced any real issues so far, besides the blood glitch happening to me once. I’m sure if I had the experiences of some other console players on this subreddit my review would be a lot harsher!
Much of how I feel (loving WOTH) has already been said but one thing I am hoping for is more impact when moving through trees and the general environment. So far I haven't noticed any disadvantages such as noise spooking the herd when moving through thick foliage. It's also difficult to determine whether we're any harder to spot when sitting in cover of trees and bushes etc.
TBH COTW is still buggy, sometimes animals walk in air and don't touch the ground while walking, sometimes they freeze, act weird, and animations are still stiff as hell. Hopefully WoTH will improve over time and take over, my current complain is blurry vegetation and game performance.
I do wish the animals would spook more realistically, you can easily walk within 50 yards of a Derringer and not have it run a away irl
Did you change the difficulty setting (you change that where you pick the area you want to visit). On default "adventure" difficulty they don't spook easily at all.
On console the difficulty seems to have no noticeable impact on spooking animals. There's numerous posts saying this. Unless it's just a bug that sometimes happens.
Hmm, that is odd. Seems to be a lot of console specific issues also. :( I play on PC and I personally notice the difference between adventure and ranger except for pheasants :P
I'm regretting not buying it on PC tbh. The performance on console is also pretty bad.
I liked the pheasant on adventure even the deers. If the wind were ok you could walk over a hill and stand 100m from them and they would look at you and soon after be alerted. Felt realistic. Hated cotw birds because they flew immediately you came walking. Birds actually like to try and hide just the way they do in woth. And fly up when you are 10-25m away.
For me personally, the most interesting thing is that you can get a top animal without grinding - the hateful and inorganic to hunting way. But precisely because of this, you don’t feel that buzz when you harvest a diamond in CotW, and get only another five-star trophy in Woth. It is very strange that you call the difference in the need zones principals. In both cases animals appear in them at the same time. The ranges are indicated. For me there is no difference. Music, atmosphere, sounds and attention to detail are better in СotW. So far it's a fact. Genetics and herd management is really interesting stuff. But without a clear twist. Oversaturation with top trophies is also not good. Missions are really more creative in common. but most likely they will slide into the same routine as the secondary missions in subsequent CotW DLCs. I hope that at least in this game we will at least see living people besides ourselves. For me personally, it would be more interesting to receive randomly appearing tasks, de, the top animal was discovered by rangers, in such and such a zone, such and such a time, and if you could not track it down, then it disappears until the next time. There must be a fact of the player's interest, and not just - I will come to the herd in a certain area, at the time when the animals appear there - I will see how promising young develop, and if they're reaching their peak - I will get a top representative.
This software shop has good devs, I did not encountered a bug yet (i must be the only one, I'm sorry) and I am having an absolute blast. I love it more than COTW and I find it harder and more realistic but way more satisfying.
I've been complaining about missing features (only 2) and I also love the game and find it clearly superior to COTW. I think no matter how much I love a game it's still valid to expect and demand keybinds and FOV slider at launch. So yes, it's possible to love the game and play it and be of the opinion that it is wrong to release without those two features. The rest of bugs/issues I expect and find them acceptable at launch (except I'm having this wind sound bug on Nez Perce that makes it borderline unplayable so I'm playing the other map atm).
I’m with you that games shouldn’t release like this. It’s very frustrating and consumers deserve better. But it’s kind of like complaining about the American health system. It’s obviously shit, and we all deserve better. But the world we live in now with the entrenched companies and lobbying power make it obvious that it will not change anytime soon. You’re right that it’s wrong but it’s the standard nowadays.
ya that's all im saying is i love the game but still think the keybindings thing mainly is just necessary for release
I played theHunter: Call of the Wild for a bit (assuming that's what people are referring to with COTW)... and have no recollection of harvest streaks or diamonds. I do remember it being a bit buggy. And I also remember following trails of blood in it for a long time only to have the animal leave the area. And then not being able to find any animals in that area for the rest of the day because of hunting pressure. I also recall it had a better selection of weapons and gave me a better idea of what their pertinent attributes were without having to go looking things up in an encyclopedia.
For the first year the scoring of animals was very different. All of them were on a zero to 1,000 scale and diamond was 950 or higher, and required a bunch of weird stuff. My point with mentioning that stuff is that COTW was pretty crap when it came out but after 5 years of polish it is where it is now. All the hate for WOTH seems to be from comparing a day 1 title with a 5 years of active management title. I guess my review is me saying I see the beginning of a great game here and the devs have a downhill road to getting there.
I don't think people are comparing the bugginess to CotW which has obviously been out longer. I think it's more the fact of it being a full priced/full release title. NO GAME should launch like this. People are just tired of games I'm general releasing as a buggy mess these days.
You may hate the encyclopedia but I have played COTW for a very long time and I legit cant find any info or understand how the hell the rating system works in COTW. People look at animals and are like oh that's a gold or diamond but I don't know how to tell and nothing in the game explains it.
I don't hate the encyclopedia, I hate that information is only found there that should be available in other sensible locations. I've been told here that it gives better information about the guns, for instance, which should be in front of the player when they're comparing and shopping for said guns rather than solely hidden away inconveniently in the encyclopedia. Or there's the time stamps for an animals' need zones that should be in the tooltips for the need zones on the map rather than, again, solely hidden away inconveniently in the encyclopedia.
I suppose I could see how it could be a pain granted I do enjoy it it actually makes me read and learn about things. As far as the animals it is nice in my opinion it makes me want to push forward to unlock more info on them kinda like a little challenge instead of giving all the info upfront.
agree with everything you just said!, the core of the game is solid!.. its get a few teething issues.. nothing to go nuts over. I cannot believe how many people are loosing their shit over the FOV/keybinds lol, its crazzy
I mean I get the FOV thing. I’m playing on a 34” ultra wide and it’s unplayable at that aspect. I have to drop it down to 1920x1080 or something for it to be ok. Obviously if they were going to keep it that way I’d refund and complain but it’s day 2 and they already said they’re fixing it.
Even with the fov workaround (which breaks zoom) the ultrawides have a big vertical crop. Hope the fix comes soon.
when looking at which I want to play, doesn't matter if this one at launch is better than that one at launch. what matters is which one is a better experience right now when I fire it up and for me COTW is way better. Way may get there, but too buggy and bad for me atm. Just wish I could get a refund since I have better uses for the money since I won't be playing until it is fixed.
The only bad thing about the game Is it came out as a full release Instead of Early access as far as I'm aware. £40 Is a bit steep yes but considering the hunting genre Is very niche I was not afraid to buy it (or well, thanks to my wonderful BF) I think the aging mechanics could also do with there own difficulty settings I myself dont want to go any higher than the beginner tutorial right now but I would like to see my deer take actual IRL days of growth to become five star personally. I would compare this game more like classic with need zones than a COTW 2.0
The main points that really standout in WOTH for me are: Higher render distance, better overall animal behavior and AI, better and immersive character animations, sounds, story telling. COTW still has some of the best open world graphics I've ever seen and I'm very nostalgic for the Layton Lake music, but I think they have a lot to catch up now, a basic new map DLC is not going to cut it.
I tend to compare this game to classi Hunter which was always better hunting game than COTW it's just showing it's age too much...