> [Aurora Project] What New World could become <
Greetings to all.
The so-called “Aurora Project” is a set of ideas divided into several Post, where they will be treated individually and precisely. It is very important to understand that these suggestions are my way of understanding and improving New World, and that of course any other opinion is totally valid as well. I ask for the maximum possible respect in these Posts that I am going to discuss, and if anyone wants to comment, I would ask you, please, that they read the entire Project, all Post with the Tag “[Aurora Project]” and written by me: “Lobo_Necrodes”, to understand its objective.
More Posts will be added over time and with new ideas. I accept contributions from other users who send them to me by Private Message to continue creating a “New World”.
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I want to talk about something very common in almost all MMORPGs, something that is easy to solve and something that for me is one of the things that most ruins my gaming experience: I speak of “Movement Speed”.
“Movement Speed” defines how big or small a World feels. If you move too fast, the World will give the feeling of being smaller than it really is, and if you move too slow, the World will give the opposite feeling, of being bigger than it really is. If in addition to this we add a teleportation system spread over the map, the World will feel even smaller, since you can be almost anywhere on the map almost at any time.
For me one of the clearest examples in this sense is Guild Wars 2. GW2 has one of the largest maps in the MMORPG genre, however it feels tiny, why? Because it has so many teleportation points and you can move from one end of the map to the other in a matter of seconds, so the World loses all immersion completely and this makes it feel very small when it is actually giant.
Another example is World Of Warcraft. another MMORPG with a considerably large map, but in this case, it does feel really big, why? Well, it’s pretty easy to guess, because in WoW you can’t teleport anywhere, you can only do it to capitals and then you have to go on foot (with a fairly realistic movement speed), or on a mount (with a movement speed also realistic), or with a flight route (in which you see the entire flight process, so you see the route from start to finish and that makes me appreciate, both in time and distance, all the way you have traveled by flying and know how to appreciate that the map is really big).
In New World the movement speed is realistic, but I see a pretty big problem, and that is that our PC always moves at sprint speed, ALWAYS. There is an animation for jogging, but since sprinting doesn’t cost stamina, we all go sprinting in the end. The New World map is already quite small compared to other Top 5 MMORPGs, for example, but if we add to this teleportation portals (there are enough and it also costs A’Zoth, something that I think is perfect for do not abuse them) and the fact of going to sprint everywhere, the size of the map is reduced considerably. When you are given a quest and you see that it is + 1Km away from you, it is actually a distance that is covered quite fast.
From my point of view, jogging speed should be the standard, and sprinting speed should cost stamina so as not to abuse it. It is true that at any time if you are in jogging mode and take out the weapon, you start to walk and that should be corrected, to continue to have decent mobility while in combat, but out of combat (weapon holstered), the default travel speed should be jogging. But this is very simple; this is how it currently works:
Sheathed weapon uses 3 animations:
- Speed “Sprint” uses the animation “Sprint”.
- Speed “Jogging” uses the animation “Jogging”.
- Speed “Walk” uses the animation “Walk”.
But unsheathed weapon uses 2 animations:
- Speed “Sprint” uses the animation “Sprint”.
- Speed “Jogging” uses the animation “Jogging”.
- Speed “Walk” uses the animation “Jogging”.
It would be enough to change it to:
- Speed “Sprint” uses the animation “Sprint”.
- Speed “Jogging” uses the animation “Sprint” (but slower, to keep “Jogging” speed).
- Speed “Walk” uses the animation “Jogging” (but slower, to keep “Walk” speed).
With this everything would be solved.
One of the big problems that I see with sprinting as the default method of moving is that players ignore many interactions, as they can run away from them very easily. They do not fear for their lives when entering areas with enemies because they know that they will be able to run away without further ado. They are not afraid to go into PvP combat because they know they can just run away. Nor do they stop to do many things because the fact of going to sprint everywhere gives you a feeling of constant “frenzy” that you do not realize, but it is easy to identify it when you remove the sprint to start jogging, and you you realize the peace you feel … because it’s been in “tension” all that time, and by slowing down to jogging, you release all that tension. You can do the test yourself.
On the other hand, when moving to sprint everywhere, the implementation of mounts becomes somewhat more complicated, since these in themselves would have to constantly go at a higher speed than that of our PJ sprinting. When in fact our Pj could always move in a jog and use only sprint when he really needed it, and this in turn would make the players take the confrontations, necessary and unnecessary, more seriously, and also could impose mounts that always run to the sprint speed of the PJ (maybe something more) and use certain moments of “sprint” in mount as well.
To this must be added the theme of “Exploration”. New World is a game that does not encourage you too much to explore, because beyond finding some raw material, there is nothing special you can find. There are no big deep caves for you to explore, no hidden chests with good rewards, no hidden powerful enemies, actually there is almost nothing. In addition to this, each Settlement usually has only 3 NPCs that give you missions, and at most they give you one quest more or less every 5 levels, so in the end each of these NPCs offers you about 12 quests, that multiplied by 3 NPCs there are in each settlement, there are about 36 quests only per settlement; it is very little and also all these quests are quite repetitive. None of them prompts you to explore anything or get lost on the map in the hope of looking for something special, because you already know there isn’t.
A good example of this is Black Desert Online. This MMORPG has many shortcomings, it could be a titan but it is content to be an RNG-based MMORPG and repetitive until death … but it offers some interesting things. One of them is that there are areas where you find cracks in the ground, and what looks like a small opening ends up being a cave in which you can spend 30 minutes exploring. Unfortunately there is never anything and you are wasting your time, but the players are delighted because they believe they discovered something that no one else discovered, and they hope to find something truly unique.
New World could do something similar and hide some hard-to-get raw materials in these places. Or even some hidden bosses, bosses difficult to defeat and with a good drop.
We talk about the magic that role-playing games have always had to encourage you to explore in the hope of discovering unique things or things that are very difficult to achieve. A practice that unfortunately is scarce every day in MMORPGs.
Of course the fact of being able to Swim and Dive, adds a new layer of depth to the exploration, being able to create many new ways to find hidden places.
I speak a little more about this matter in:
[Aurora Project] Is New World an MMORPG? How to really be?
Amazon just released New World and you have the opportunity to do a lot of things with your game, great things that no MMORPG has done properly so far, or you have the opportunity to be just another MMORPG with its 150K-300K of active players and settle for that. I think “Good Ideas” are what differentiates a flagship product from a mediocre product, and I think that no one has such good ideas as someone who has a true “passion” for what they are doing, so my advice to New World and Amazon, is that you do not put in command a person who knows how to command and organize, but rather put in command a person who loves MMORPGs and has the passion and illusion of doing something really special, someone who has been playing MMORPGs all his life because he loves them, because that person will be the one who can offer something really unique to the public.
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Modifications may come to this Post in the future, and will be added as an answer and / or edit.
Remember once again, that these suggestions are my way of understanding and improving New World, and that of course any other opinion is totally valid as well. I ask for the maximum possible respect in these Posts that I am going to discuss, and if anyone wants to comment, I would ask you, please, that they read the entire Project, all Post with the Tag “[Aurora Project]” and written by me: “Lobo_Necrodes”, to understand its objective.
Thanks for your time and attention, and until next time. Greetings.