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Wayfinder is the latest and most ambitious product from Airship Syndicate, the makers of Darksiders Genesis and Ruined King: A League of Legends story. While this marks their first foray into live service games, they are backed by Digital Extremes, the developers of Warframe. The game has been out for public Early Access for a while now, albeit paygated behind founder's packs.
After a rocky start, thanks to huge server issues, complaints regarding its long queue time have subsided. If not for the server stability issues, Wayfinder Early Access is overall a fun MMO-lite at its core. However, there are still a number of rough edges that hold it back.
5 biggest problems with Wayfinder Early Access that need fixing
1) Balance issues
Wayfinder is meant to be a hero shooter in tandem with Warframe, the flagship game from publisher Digital Extremes. Like Warframe, Wayfinder has its share of both ranged and melee weaponry. There are 20-odd weapons in the game as of writing this article.
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The combat is largely against melee and mage archetypes, as the ranged fighters among mobs seem to be in the minority. The only exceptions are Shrike enemies, one of the first factions you meet, who do not scale over level 10.
With the developers of Darksiders Genesis at the helm, a higher attention to melee combat is not surprising. In the melee, you can evade attacks by dodging, chain up combos to gain damage, and even parry enemies when equipped with the dagger class.
However, ranged weapons let you completely bypass all these systems. Picking up a Tempest or Arclight brings too much power for little tradeoffs or downsides. You do not need to chain up combos to keep up the highest damage output.
The current system makes the meta largely favor ranged weapon builds for raids and end-game content, which let you engage in a remarkably safe and non-commital playstyle.
2) User Interface issues
A great deal of Wayfinder's unpolished air is owing to its user interface. The design itself feels highly inspired by Fortnite and more fitting for a Mobile port UI than for a PC or PlayStation experience.
While the design itself may be polarizing, the issues can be pinned down to two broad problems. Firstly, the UI has huge scaling issues. Different prompts on the screen will often overlap, which, while not a gameplay deterrent, is too frequent. The game also has little to no ultrawide support.
The second broad problem with the UI involves a general inadequacy in inventory management options. There is also a good deal of oversights within the menus that exasperate players. Most of it stems from unintuitive and/or clunky menu elements in plain sight.
Once you go to the style menu to change the appearance of a certain weapon class, for example, the option to revert it is tucked away at the bottom of the list.
3) Enemy AI
Wayfinder places some emphasis on the melee combat, as discussed earlier. The dodge mechanic and telegraphed enemy attacks often click together - especially in boss battles like Archon Commander and Argent Hand. However, in the midst of a horde, it is often a dysfunctional mess.
Enemy AI will often freeze, and mobs will stand in place, leaving it unresponsive in times of melee fights. While you are using a meta-ranged weapon like the Tempest, this issue becomes even more readily apparent.
The worst-case scenarios generally seem to crop up with an increased concentration of enemies. The game is quite conservative with the number of spawns it throws at you on average.
However, a number of situations can create big hurdles, such as a Gloom Ambush event with the Phoenix Eggs mutator. These are scenarios where the brittle AI coding really falls apart. Respawned enemies from the eggs will not only be irresponsive but clip through the ground or be stuck in the air.
4) Map and minimap
While the user interface itself could do with another coat of polish, the map and minimap in Wayfinder are particularly in dire need of an overhaul. It is unacceptable for a game in 2023, Early Access or not, to not have the minimap rotate to align with the direction you are facing.
Instead, the minimap maintains a pre-aligned compass, and the player is left to navigate their way through it, much like the diegetic map in Far Cry 2. The main map itself is barebones and minimalistic, as critical icons in the hub city are bereft of map legends.
This is coupled with a general issue with finding objectives. If you do not pay attention to the dialogue during any staple MMORPG fetch quests, you are left at the mercy of the clunky in-world objective pointer. It will only vaguely point you toward a direction and remain missing from the full map more often than not.
5) Exposition dump
Wayfinder has a great deal of lore-building and background for the mysteries of the Gloom. However, a great deal of it has some heavy-handed delivery.
The prologue itself conveys the idea of its shattered world and lost zones somewhat decently, but the quality of its delivery has a steep fall-off. Predominantly, the backstory and world concepts are narrated through both voiced and unvoiced dialogue with many of Wayfinder's characters.
Some of this gap can be filled in with cinematics, but the cut-and-dry manner of storytelling does not help its gameplay loop. A parallel can be made with Warframe, admittedly its biggest inspiration, as a good deal of its story beats and interpersonal dynamics between characters are played out during gameplay.
Instead, Wayfinder takes a Path of Exile-esque approach of characters delivering the brass tacks before you gear up for the action. This system is common in MMORPGs, but the extended bits of dialog in Wayfinder are often tortuous.
