This isn't how I expected to quit.
The writing for Wuthering Waves has been hit or miss since... gladiator island, really. The game lost its vibe there, real... real bad. But I gave it a chance. I gave it a lot of chances... through 5-stars I can't pull because their animations are massive motion sickness triggers... story patches that are way too long and "events" that force you to play new map content during the fresh patch phase... and a few characters the devs expected us all to like (I guess?) that I wanted to drop-kick instead because they're just toxic narcissists.
In the end, it is motion sickness that has drawn the line in the sand, but for a whole different reason... and it took me a while to figure out what the heck was going on. I tried, in 10-20 minute intervals, to do the new story quest (Mengzhou / Xuanfang Hold) over several days. Couldn't figure out why I was getting sick... it was happening during cutscenes, running around, everything. Anything. I even wondered if it was somehow the music, which has a different vibe for this patch. Maybe my long-covid was having a flare-up, and I was seeing a pattern when it was actually pure coincidence? But I could still play other games...
Today I finally pushed through the rest of the new story in three and a half hours only to end up really sick. But I'd figured out why. The new map area's environment detail level is way too high, and everything moves. Every plant, tree trunk, leaf, the stuff falling out of the sky, blowing across the screen, blowing into the camera. The fog, the heckin' air currents are all animated and moving constantly in a discordant chaos of endless triggers.
Surfaces aren't safe either. Shadows move, and way too many surfaces are extremely reflective. The reflections move. Double whammy if there are shadows on the reflective surfaces. I've been begging the devs for ages in surveys to stop making 5-star characters pull the camera around like a hummingbird on crack, and well... it seems they want to make the literal environment attack people like me too.
So fuck it. I'm done. Been playing loyally since the very early days and I really, really wanted to pull Scar... but I've also been terrified he'll be just another "nope" like so many of the other 5-stars. I guess now it doesn't matter. Maybe I'll keep an eye out for his banner, assuming he gets one at some point... and pull him with my big stash of unspent wishes because I can't pull Luuk or Qiuyuan or Hiyuki or Mornye or... and well... because it doesn't matter anymore. It's not like I can actually play the game. The graphics overhaul is affecting old content too, and even if it's not as bad there (yet), the devs have clearly decided where they're going with this game. Turning the graphics down doesn't help either, and yes, motion blur is off. As always.
Ironic that this happens not long after my main Mortefi got kicked out of my everyday team because Rebecca is a better sub-DPS. Maybe he knew it was time to go. He was the reason I stayed in the game to begin with, pulling carefully on Jiyan's debut banner purely to get pyro pistols Baizhu. Let's... just head out, mister science man. There's nothing left for us here.
