Summary
As far as gacha games go, HoYoverse has been firmly placed on the mountaintop sinceGenshin Impactdebuted in 2020. Naturally, competition is forming to knock the industry leader off its perch, with Kuro Games’Wuthering Wavesleading the charge through its unique take on battle mechanics. However, all hasn’t been rosy forWuthering Wavesin the months after its May launch, facing recurrent issues with its performance and crashes. WithGenshin Impactstill going strong, the spotlight on a title trying to surpass its notable exploits was always going to be bright, andWuthering Waveshas to clear these hurdles to stand any chance of competing seriously with HoYoverse’s franchises.
BeforeWuthering Waves' launch, the title generated substantial interest with its different approaches to fighting dynamics. Kuro Games has a reputation for building engaging battle systems stemming fromPunishing: Gray Raven’s stellar reviews. It didn’t disappoint in this regard, asWuthering Waves' parry systemplayed its role of making combat more interactive and leveling the field against higher-ranked bosses. However, its performance problems are hampering it from reaching the lofty goals it set. To get back on track, it needs to fix these to make its experience smooth before attending to the superficial.
Wuthering Waves Has to Right the Ship Amidst a Wave of Stability Problems
For starters,Wuthering Wavescaused stability problemsat launch for PC, eating up RAM allocations and forcing players to turn settings down to suboptimal levels for gaming. Merely opening menus would cause memory leakages and frustrating crashes, and although this has been fixed to an extent, there’s still more work ahead. On the gacha playing field, it’s not unusual for players to run into some issues performance-wise. Hence, games of this caliber attempting to compete with the likes ofGenshin Impactshould be near perfection.
That’s why it’s particularly eyebrow-raising for memory issues to plagueWuthering Waves' gameplayon this scale. Mobile devices aren’t left out of the equation either.Wuthering Wavesisn’t necessarily the heaviest game available on the market, and yet, it runs more sluggishly on phones than other titles. FPS drops plagued it in its initial state on both PC and mobile, although, like its memory leakages, this has gradually improved. Changing graphic drivers can sometimes fix these problems on PC, but its very existence translates to poor optimization on mobile that essentially eliminates lower-end devices.
Anti-Cheat Tech Might Be to Blame for Wuthering Waves' Woes
The poor optimization has also birthed the problem of excessive battery consumption and overheating, a phenomenon that most mobile gamers avoid like the plague. Shedding the battery-killer reputation is a tough road to climb, andWuthering Waveshas a long way to go to fix these issues for good. Admittedly,Wuthering Waves' updatesand bug fixes have brought it a long way from its comparatively messy launch, but more needs doing. Several technical explanations have been offered to make sense of the issues besetting the title, perhaps most prominent of all being that the anti-cheat system is responsible for its PC struggles.
In simple terms,Wuthering Waves' anti-cheat technology reportedly uses as much CPU power as the base game code and rendering effects combined. If the claim is correct, the onus is on Kuro Games to figure out a cohesive and less intensive approach to nullifying hacks instead of tanking system performance. Until these issues are addressed in totality, it’s hard to envisionWuthering Wavescompeting withGenshin ImpactorHonkaiin terms of popularity, and the developer is on the clock to change the narrative.
