Wayfinder is a game from Airship Syndicate that came out last year in early access. You could purchase a “Founders Pack” to get into the beta but the game was designed to be Free to Play when it eventually released for real. It’s been a rough ride for Wayfinder but some massive changes to the game have made it a much better experience in my opinion. Let me break it down for you.
Originally Wayfinder was going to be published by Digital Extremes, the folks behind Warframe. You can hear about the details of what happened directly from Airship in this interview with Skill Up. Essentially DE was working on some new technology (not what they use for Warframe) that they could use to publish all sorts of online games, not just Wayfinder. However, anyone who was there for Wayfinders original launch will tell you, that technology didn’t work. Just getting into the game took hours thanks to long queues and once you were in, there was no guarantee you would stay connected. It was a brutal launch and people were mad before they even got their hands on the game. Digital Extremes eventually decided to nix their plans to publish the game and Airship was left in a tight spot. Instead of scrapping Wayfinder, what they decided to do was strip out all of the free to play mechanics and release it themselves. Wayfinder Echos is the result and I can tell you it is a significantly better game.
My friend Jerry says that regardless of the genre of your videogame, if it is F2P then that becomes the genre, and he is correct. The systems required to extract money from players are so invasive that they infect the healthy parts of the game and overshadow anything else the developers might be trying to do. Once server stability got worked out and you could actually play Wayfinder, this became my biggest problem with it. I was excited by the beautiful world, the characters, and the combat but all of that was riddled with dreadful free to play mechanics. In the almost ten months since Wayfinder first released I played about 12 hours of it. The new version, Wayfinder Echos, came out last Friday and I played another 12 hours just over the weekend because it’s actually a real video game now. Loot drops like a normal AARPG and you are consistently getting new weapons and armor with varyinging stats and rarity. That simply could not happen before because in a F2P game rewards have to be obfuscated behind layers of time sink mechanics. All of the gear, outfits, mounts, decorations for your house, accessories, cosmetics and even the Wayfinders themselves just fucking drop now or can be discovered by exploring the amazing world!
The basic structure of Wayfinder has not changed; You will play as one of six unique heroes as you hack and slash your way through gorgeous randomly assembled dungeons and a huge overworld. Now, instead of the game being a sort of MMO, it’s an action RPG that you can play alone or with two of your buddies. The end result is something that feels more like a co-op Darksiders game than Genshin and as the kids say, I am here for it!
Anyone who purchased the Founders Pack for the original Wayfinder now has access to the Wayfinder Echos beta on Steam. This new version will go on sale again June 11th in Early Access for $24.99 with no in-game purchases or microtransactions. It will now be Pay to Play which I have to say is my favorite genre. All of these changes will hit consoles later this year it looks like.
There are a few things I’d still like to see make it into the game before a 1.0 release but they are all things Airship has already said they are working on. The big one is a party finder or some way to connect with other players who are not already on your friends list. The second is the ability to expand your player housing. Especially now that I’m getting all kinds of kick ass stuff for my house, I need more rooms to decorate. Not since Wildstar have I been this excited to kill a boss and see a nice credenza drop. There are some other little bugs I’ve noticed but overall I can’t believe how well the game works now having had all the bullshit stripped out of it. With their publisher backing out, Airship could have scrapped the game. Certainly it has happened before to other developers, but they have built an incredible world here with legitimately fun combat and I’m so glad they did not give up on it! The reality is that even if the game had launched and come out as originally intended I was not going to play it. Despite my affection for the games these devs have worked on, I wasn't going to play Wayfinder because I found the F2P hooks too annoying.
Now I have no problem recommending Wayfinder Echos. There are some people who bought Wayfinder early under the assumption that it would be an F2P MMO and those people are not happy but from what I have seen on Reddit and in the official Discord for the game, the overwhelming majority of players are excited by the changes and happy to have unfettered access to this game and its rewards. I think most people want real videogames where when you open a treasure chest and something cool you can use immediately comes out, instead of some inscrutable currency that has to be laundered through a never ending series of NPCs and diabolical menus designed to frustrate you until you just give up and pay real money for them. Obviously this didn’t work out the way Airship intended, but I truly hope this pivot to save the game works out for them. I know that for me at least, they have managed to make something I’m much more excited for.
-Gabe out
