This is a comprehensive list of my thoughts as a player on what New World could implement/ change on existing systems while the teams are working hard on their redemption chapter. First, I’ll begin with a little bit of introduction. (I apologize beforehand if my writing is confusing at times because English is not my first language.)
It’s been awhile since I hang around NW forums. I can totally understand the “lack of patience” among player feedbacks as I’ve had my fair share of it too. The only reason I’d write this post is because I truly liked the game and its concept. While there’s fair chance this post is going to be drowned or go unnoticed, I’d still prefer to keep my optimism up and take a shot hoping it could at least, reach a dev or CM. Sometimes a tiny abstract idea is all it takes to change course, I hope my words can be one of the healthy seeds planted on the discussion table of developers.
PvP vs PvE
I will not debate which aspect is superior. The game’s already leave the shore, hence I will try my best to give suggestions of improvements based on a PvPvE mmorpg.
PvE AI (at least on named mobs/bosses)
There’s a reason why PvE focused games like Souls series and Monster Hunter have received so much love, the enemy AI! In New World, none of the CCs work on big mobs/boss. The only stagger mechanism is running down the stamina bar.
The AI combat rhythm in New World is easily controlled due to the nature of AI’s slower and repetitive move sets which could work in a tab-target game but it takes away the meaning of “action combat”.
In the aforementioned titles, reading the AI’s move set actually matters because of the consequences. The AI works better in disrupting players rhythm (blocking, active movements, aggression during player’s animation lock) which prompts the player to be actively engaging in the combat, constantly making decisions to take control of the rhythm whereas in New World, the AIs often has “subpar” movements, huge windows and mechanisms that don’t really matter. This would result in NW’s AI being more of like a dps sponge trading blows, you learn the move sets once, then you can stand at the right place and left click away. Repeating such content will very soon turn into a stale chore because it does not provide dynamic combats and challenges.
Mobs Variety and Open World POIs
Mobs variety is one of the huge turn off for me and also one of the biggest concern for the upcoming Brimstone Sands area. The mobs player faced from 1 to 60 are basically the same with just a little bit of reskin. Dogs/Wolves, Big Dudes with Great sword, Giant humanoid (Simon-liked), Ghosts with 3 colors rotation and the list goes on.
New World has really beautiful open world but there’s almost no incentives on exploring it except running for resources and chest cds (script bots smh). The ruins, villages, towers, caves, camps etc are there but not worth to deal with except the dreadful questing which you will only visit it once and done.
In my opinion, what AGS could do is “Elden Ring” it. Small areas with interesting lores/ mobs & rewards. I know this is a long shot due to huge resource sink in creating assets hence I won’t dwell on this one for too long, knowing the game isn’t in a healthy thriving state to do that right now. On to the next one! :’)
Territory and Company System Rework
Remove the 3 major faction system. Instead, implement a Company and Alliance based system. Faction lore has nothing to hold on and is not cohesive with the current Aeternum lore anyways. PvP content are often generated by the player base, without being tied to a faction it’s easier to generate politics and drama for both small and big companies.
The current territory/ fort bonuses are really negligible and used to be imbalance. Hence I propose “territory based resource gathering”. For instance, the controlling company will get 100% of resource when gathering within their territory, Alliance 80%, “outsiders” 50%? Whatever works the best based on statistics. This would also require balancing in resource distribution throughout the map.
Remove optional flagging, rework leather bags and introduce cart & escort party system. PvE/ bot camping resource node is horrendous. This is different from a full-loot pvp, make it so players will only able to carry certain weight limits for raw mats with leather bags. If player wish to gather in huge amount, use a cart (valheim flashbacks…). The cart will attach to the player and if the player dies, the cart remains for a FFA loot. Afraid of going out now because dying sucks? Find a escort party! Escort the gatherer, it’s up to players choice whether they want to turn it into a deal between gatherer and the escort (like the orbs). If the escort party is hunt down by “outsiders”, the outisder gains territory influence (more open world pvp incentives). Indication for territory influence will now be shown as Alliance with percentage numbers.
Warboard adjustment to align with the above suggestions. Only the company and alliance members can participate in invasion and wars. Participants will receive war fatigue debuff (30% dmg/ armor reduction?) for 3 hours(?). If the war master wish to have outsider for fill-ins, a recruitment post can be put up in open world war camps with coin rewards provided directly from the company bank.
Townboard rework. The controlling company has to actually bear the tasks of upgrading towns and forts. Shows materials required for each upgrades and the company has to manually post on townboards with customizable coin rewards directly from the company bank.
Company features. Company housing (for members to chill and work on something together), company inventory, company inventory logs, company bank logs, Company recruitment list. I couldn’t comprehend why most of these features did not come on launch given New World’s pvp is such a company oriented game.
End Game
The way New World develop content now is very dependent on frequent updates for new experiences. This is due to lack of dynamic gameplay in itself. I wish the developers tackle the idea of “dynamic” very carefully as throwing things into the world is not always equivalent to being dynamic.
Kudos to the environment art and sound team doing a great job but those things will only become a beautiful canvas that players pass by without the dynamic of the gameplay to bring it alive.
Make contents meaningful to go through that respect player’s time. Throwing in convenient repetitive contents that can be sped through is ultimately dropping a hammer to developers’ toe to pump updates for player retention.
PTR
While PTR is a good effort to test things out and make sure the changes are in good state before going live, I strongly suggest any changes that has to deal with economics should be internally tested instead. This is to prevent pre-live market meta and provide fair ground for everyone in the live servers, avoid PTR turns into another “pre-game” or “must have” for competitive players.
With that being said this is the end. I wish I can elaborate more but knowing my writing ability I have to stop before it becomes a huge spaghetti mess. I appreciate anyone that took the time to read until this point. If anything above resonates with you feel free to interact/ discuss to bump it into the light 
Please refrain from “disruptive behavior” as I intend to keep the thread constructive to consume. Thank you!