Some Key problems I see
In the beginning of the game the player is leveling up and unlocking things regularly. It’s exciting. After a while this slows down significantly. At level 60 it feels like a lost idea sometimes. At 60, as far as progression goes, you’re trying to build out your ideal gear set(s), increase your expertise and level up your crafting. However, crafting that ideal gear is expensively RNG; raising your expertise is underwhelming as the item that raised it is salvage fodder 99% of the time; and leveling up crafting is so overwhelmingly time consuming and expensive that you question if it’s even worth it every time you manage to raise the skill by one unrewarding level.
I also see a struggle to offer meaningful rewards while not invalidating other content. For example: If the loot found in expeditions is too good (BIS) then it invalidates crafting. If it’s not good enough then it’s not worth chasing and players won’t do the expeditions.
I haven’t had a chance to dive into the mutations too much yet but it seems that all the players will get their gear score up to 625 in the mutations of the first dungeon. The problem then is when the next expedition opens ups with mutations, the players wont need to upgrade their gear anymore to climb the ladder and will instead just be throwing orbs away until they can get back to the appropriate difficulty again. The best thing, in my opinion, that came out of the mutations was the ability to upgrade your existing armor.
I think the game consists of too much grind currently. To the point that the game practically is nothing but grind. Once you finish the grind, there’s nothing left. The game needs content to chase outside of a lateral grind.
My suggestions
Progression
Unless New World intends to be like WoW where each new content cycle invalidates the grind of the last cycle, it should focus on horizontal progression, and content-specific progression.
Horizontal progression would come in the form of story and cosmetics. I think cosmetics are important because it gives players control over the way they look in game while offering something for the players to chase and collect. It can provide a welcome grind for players interested in the reward while not forcing players who are not.
The whole cosmetic system would need to be overhauled for this and in my opinion should be regardless. Players will have multiple gear sets and will want to look different with each one. Having cosmetics affect the slot and everything in it is limiting and annoying. Only allowing players to use the look of items from the shop makes it even worse. Players would much rather be able to change the look of individual items to tailor the look of each set of gear. There are many good looking items in the game already. Let the players use them.
Content specific progression would be like added progression to each trade skill where players can unlock new gear skins by completing quests or achievements unique to that skill. Or when a new territory is released, maybe a player would have to level up a reputation to gain access to different parts of the territory and content within it. Or maybe a resistance or attunement to the elements of that territory to access the deeper areas. Another example would be mutation attunements which I will talk about shortly.
Crafting
I think crafting should be more than just a long, expensive, time-consuming, tedious process. In fact I’d prefer if it wasn’t at all. I don’t think the journey to 200 needs to be quick or easy but players level it because they want to craft, not because wasting time and materials is fun. The number of items required to be crafted to level each level after 100 should be reduced. Players leveling at 60 get no rewards but have to throw away tons of materials. It feels bad. Can a player even realistically craft level appropriate gear at later levels with how much is required to level up a trade skill?
It’s important that there is a material sink in the game though. To solve this I would suggest adding horizontal progression to crafting. Allow crafters to unlock skins and apply unlocked skins to items when crafting. Crafters would unlock these skins by accomplishing certain achievements like “craft 500 round shields” to unlock a unique round shield skin, etc. This takes a chunk of the grind out of the leveling process and makes it optional and rewarding for players who want to unlock the most desirable skins.
Additionally, I think players should get rewarded with relevant materials and skins when leveling up trade skills pre-200. Similar to the aptitude system but only awarded at each level up (not 3 points).
Mutations
I think raising the gear score and using it to scale the difficulty is the wrong approach. It makes stat points meaningless and just adds superficial grind where there’s already too much wasted grind. I do think earning rewards to upgrade armor is exceptionally exciting, however!
I would instead suggest a system where players increase their attunement for each dungeon. They would unlock an attunement charm for their azoth staff (for example) by completing the expedition. Then increase it’s attunement by completing each mutation at silver or better, allowing them to enter the next mutation level.
Higher mutation level would increase the amount of loot dropped by bosses, increase the chances for chase items to drop as rewards as well as introduce new rewards to the loot tables including armor and weapons skins unique to that expedition
The amount of umbral shards would increase slightly too but not so much that players wouldn’t bother with other expeditions once they got one to max attunement. The umbral shards would be used at the gypsum forge to upgrade player gear:
- Increase a 590+ GS item to 600
- Random reroll of unwanted stats or perk (non-named items only)
Players in new world have access to all weapons and armor types with one character. They can experiment with creating new builds for PvE and PvP with different weapons and perks. However crafting that gear can be expensive and time consuming. The addition of perks that come over time and with the addition of new weapons only make this worse as the perk pool grows. This hurts crafting.
Having expeditions reward players with the ability to better upgrade their armor gives the content meaningful rewards without invalidating crafting. Instead it actually bolsters the value of crafted items and creates a balance between crafted items and named items as crafted items offer more flexibility. This could also bring value back to craft mods that don’t get used as players prioritize perks like keen or resilient.
PvP
PvP currently has very little content and near zero rewards. There are wars, which is largely inaccessible to players unless the player is available at the time of the war and in the company that is going to war. There’s also OPR but OPR takes a while to fill up and is muddied by PvE elements. PvP shines most in small encounters which both wars and OPR don’t really support.
I recommend adding a colosseum!
A large colosseum where players can:
- Solo or group horde mode (PvE) - Fend off waves of enemies
- Solo or pre-made group ranked PvP duels /arenas
- Solo or pre-made Group private PvP duels /arenas
Features
- All matches can be spectated
- Private duels can be open or closed to spectating
- Horde mode and ranked duels have a leaderboard
- Matchmaking pairs up players and groups of similar bracket and rank
- Horde and ranked duels reward tokens and coin based on performance
- In Private duels players can put up coin to be awarded to the winning team
- Players can schedule tournaments with auto calculated buy-ins based on winnings
Rewards
- Reaching new ranks in ranked solo or group arenas gives the player access to a new tear of unique armor and weapons or skins
- Horde mode also unlocks new tiers of unique skins at different wave thresholds
- These rewards would cycle out and be replaced in seasons
If you read my novel, I applaud you. Let me know what you think. Thanks!