Yes, the list of changes is ASTOUNDING. Mostly just crap but ASTOUNDING. But not for the reasons you think. 1.3.2 was another update that had nothing of import.
Actually this is what you call the 950k players who realized this game does not respect your time a single iota. The New World grind is somewhere between 500x and 1000x too long and defending it makes you an obtuse moron. There is zero justification that after over a thousand hours I’m not fully capped on the one build I’ve been working towards that entire time. It’s just insecure devs that don’t trust that once I cap out one build I’ll want to try different perk and resistance combos, let alone different weapons, or even if I don’t that I’ll want to keep playing my capped out character because it is inherently fun (which I would). Instead I will eventually reach my own breaking point and quit, because I don’t have the level of self-hate necessary to start on a new loadout. The grind in this game is so absurdly long that it literally blocks out 90% of its own content for the vast majority of players.
Also active player count definitely matters. Fucking what? The game experience is trash once server populations dip too low and the game is not going to continue to have funding poured into it if it’s not profitable, which it has not been and will not be off of box sales alone. The financial model of the game is to sell cosmetics, and unless every remaining player is a whale they aren’t going to sustain that model with a handful of players. Whales also don’t want to blow cash on a game where they have no one to show off too. The entire point of F2P with microtransactions is that you have a large playerbase of free players and that creates a quality game experience in general, which acts as a large net to nab the whales that you actually make your money off of.
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We do not have the stats of active players. 90%+ play 1h or less per day, but are daily active.
Concurrent players do not reflect daily active players.
Server population is the only way to judge if a world is healthy. If it takes forever to start expeditions, OPRs, if enough people are online to defend invasions, wars, etc…
So, it could be great on 10% of the servers and bad on 90% of them. Like it is now.
That’s the only way I see that we can measure the game’s health.
Wait, just found a free ori vein
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What will matter with this game is amount of box sold just like ESO. ESO brags about having 20 millions new player each year but it’s a lie it’s all about the amount of box sold and the cash shop.
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I always wonder if this is just a new generation of MMORPG players. I played a ton of AC and DAOC. In DAOC it would take almost 5-6 months for the average player to hit max level. We would grind for 3-4 hours in a single spot to a single bubble. AC was the same way.
When WOW first came out the grind to max level was insane. The grind for gear in MC raids was absolutely bonkers.
New world is completely opposite. I have leveled 4 toons now to lvl 60, each one took me about 8 days. Within about 300 hours of playtime I was in full voidbent.
I have actually wondered if the game was marketed to a lot of people that don’t really like this type of game.
Also, this isn’t a free to play game.
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I’ve played MMOs since the original Runescape. This isn’t two decades ago. Grinding is not a virtue. It has its place in certain circumstances to achieve specific purposes, but it is not some immutable good of the universe. The original generation of MMOs were atrocities of game design and should never be held as a model for any modern game.
4 toons now to lvl 60
Wow, no joshin’? You’ve progressed 4 seperate toons about 5% of the way through the process of getting a full set with two live perks? Gee golly mister that’s wild!
Within about 300 hours of playtime I was in full voidbent.
Nice, you acquired an irrelevant, shitty set, that only exists at all for a fraction of the builds in the game. Let me signal the parade.
Also, this isn’t a free to play game.
Buy to play. Fucking whatever. The financial model it’s using remains the same: it makes the money to justify active development through cosmetics rather than a sub. The box sales merely recoup a fraction of the development cost of the game.
Thank you for not listing your resume before your post!
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Lol you just said we don’t have stats for active players and then made up a stat for active players.
Anyway, active players are irrelevant for the player experience. If people are not logged in and are engaging in the community it doesn’t matter how many “active”players there technically are.
But you are correct that it’s not the same as concurrent players. The active player population are probably 10 times higher than the peak on a weekly basis. On top of this you have a lot of people lurking around waiting for updates/fixes like me. I don’t login but also I haven’t quit.
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During the betas and previews…the point is that getting to max takes almost no time.
I hit VB at 300 and kept grinding for better stuff, there is always a grind for better stuff… that’s kind of the point… See above. The grind is the point.
Yes and that’s a very unpopular direction for the game as shown by the countless complaints and increasingly negative feedback every time a new grind and time gate are added.
People don’t want to have to feel obligated to log in and do their pre-prescribed chores so that they don’t “feel like they’ve fallen behind”.
They want to hit some milestones of player and character development and be challenged by content, both PvE and PvP. People who go sweaty on the grinds finish and complain there’s nothing to do, and they’re right. Too much of the focus was put on the grind.
And how is that fucking relevant?
The “point” killed the game. There doesn’t have to be an endless treadmill, and certainly not to the cataclysmic degree New World has it set. Players should be able to identify a particular set of perks, armor class, resistance weights, and weapons, and then achieve that set within a reasonable time-frame. “The grind” should be a matter of then identifying new sets to work towards. Or if they are fine with the one set that’s also fine. An OTP of a particular build should be able to easily be “done” with their character.
damn the level of cope on these forums from the true believers is truly unbelievable.
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I would think in time the game will provide more ‘side’ content, which will offer additional time sinks compared to now, where the content is very narrow/limited. I remember for example they asked if players would prefer mounts to just be added as a simple means of transport, or whether players would like to see an actual skill line attached to it, like raising and improving the mount.
Not sure what they will do, but these things are nice content fillers, offering variety instead of just grinding for gear, and once such content enters the game, the gear grind might lessen some, dunno, we really can not tell at this stage of the game.
I generally agree with the op as in this is a buy to play game, just like ESO, which works with their dlcs or a sub. Obviously ESO now also has a very beefed out cash shop, but it was not always like that. To start the shop was very meh in ESO.
All games have grinds, even GW2, just that GW2 has managed to fun wrap their grinds and it is a horizontal game. Your gear was the same 2 years ago as it is now, it does not outdate, but if you want legendaries, you will grind as well, and anyone saying ‘old games had grinds - it was awful!’ - many of those games are still around and players happily grind along. Runescape, the King of Grind, is still thriving, and heavens… even PWI is still going, even with new players joining, and you haven’t seen BiS gear grinding until you have played PWI…
Doesn’t have stats for active players but knows 90% of players play 1h a day or less… impressive. In my experience a good MMO is one I only play 1 hour or less a day lmao
I’d rather they add new weapons, gear perks, even gear sets, and we grind for that stuff.
True, but nobody expected that the time sink involving gear would be moved up so far so fast. The game has been out less than 5 months and they already added the mutators and increased GS to 625. Both things require SUPER long time sinks to what was already a long time sink for most players. I don’t think anyone with half a working brain expected to be fully maxed out in BIS gear in every slot in 4 months, and 95% of players were not. Which is why this change so early after the release was frustrating.
Let me explain this another way. I have been trying to convince several people I know to come and play this game. Before the newest changes with mutators and umbral shards, they were already a little iffy on coming because they felt like they were going to be forever just trying to catch up to where everyone was. Also, the systems were so complex to explain that it made them feel like they would never catch up or even fully understand how this stuff worked. After those changes came out they significantly increased the amount of time needed to be at a good place on your character. By “good place” I don’t mean BIS in all gear slots and 625 GS on all items, I just mean being 60, having decent gathering/refining/crafting, having some money in the bank, and having 600 gear with some 600+ GS stuff so you can enjoy most aspects of the game. For new players coming in, that is a TON to ask of them. Every person I know that was considering joining has already closed the door after the newest changes. They know they would have to put in 5-10 hours days every day just to be able to slightly catch up.
I’ve put in over 500 hours since the launch of the game and I am just now getting to the latter part. How are new players or casual players supposed to maintain when after 4+ months they are already adding crazy amounts of new grind?
Well, l definitely hope to see a bounce of active players. I play on a server that was always near the most populated on the east coast. Been only getting 300-500 players the last few days. People waiting an hour for OPR. Very few players available for runs or for dungeons. Not going to bother logging on until patch is released. This is from someone who actually likes the game, but it’s bleak at the moment.
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There are 278 people on my server right now. It’s off hours, I suppose. But its still a far cry from the 1800 on when i first joined.
This I will say is one of the biggest issues that I think they need to figure out. The servers population cap is so low (2000) that if content gets stale it drops below survivability and if a really exciting patch comes out, it could easily surge to queues.
Specific to OPR I assume that they would open it up cross server at some point.
In a few years the game will likely be a great success and a lot of fun.
Right now, it isn’t.
Player numbers don’t matter, until you are on a server with 150 active players and the only way to get an OPR is via dedicated scheduling from the community. I played like this for awhile pre-merge, and now post-merge the server is almost back here again.
Time-Gating is in every MMO, but the extent of the time gating in NW is way, way to heavy. I forget now, but there is something in the ballpark of 36 different time gated cooldowns, many of which don’t even have an active way of tracking them in game. This took the freedom to just play and turned everything in scheduled play dates.
Bugs will always happen, but when you release a patch and for weeks your server can no longer do the previous content (Lag Detected, Roster, Movement bugs) this destroyed servers. Invasions were being lost because we would get Lag Detected and fail, or only be able to fill half the roster (duplication bug). The demoralization that this created was painstaking.
Wars and towns were being handed back and forth every other day because the Lag became so insane nobody could do anything to stop it. You cannot stop attacking forces when they are rubber-banding all over the map between A and C points. Or points were being taken by “invisible” players on the points.
New World in a few years will likely be a MUCH better product than it is today, unfortunately those of us playing today won’t be the ones playing then.
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