Hello,
New world has a great foundation, but there are several issues that are obviously plaguing the game. Many of them I’m sure Amazon is aware of, but I wanted to articulate some of the big problems not being addressed and give some potential solutions.
Problem: Companies can make alt companies and own multiple territories.
Description: Currently when a company owns more than one territory, the territories share a war window, thus making it hard to defend multiple territories simultaneously. What companies are doing in order to get around this, is making an alt company, transferring people in it to push influence, declare with the alt company, and then transfer all but one person back to the original company. This is a problem because it allows the best “50 person squad” to essentially own a large number and all the best lands.
Possible Solution: Make it so a company must “field” at least 50% of the war roster (attacking or defending) and implement a cooldown on the ability to change companies. This solution would not only solve the above mentioned problem, but it would also solve another big problem: many players being precluded from wars. Currently, you essentially need to be one of the best 50 pvper’s for your faction or else it’s hard to get into a war. If a company does say “we are only going to put guildes into the war”, it is likely they will get destroyed in the war, as they are likely to go against a squad made up of the best players from multiple companies/factions.
Problem: When a company loses a war it usually results in many players from that company quitting the game and often results in a company “going into ruins.”
Description: This is rooted in many causes. There are certain territories that are so valuable (windsward and everfall on my server) that if you lose this territory it is such a detriment and blow to the company that it tends to make people quit the game after losing it. Further, people realize that if they got absolutely destroyed in the war, the chances of them ever declaring and winning the war to take it back is very low. Thus, the company often disbands and people quit the game.
Possible Solution: Make the “less desired territories” (i.e., not windward and everfall on my server) more attractive. This would allow the company that just lost the war to attack a different land and be able to take a different but decent territory.
Problem: Too large a value discrepancy between different territories.
Description: Currently there are certain towns that are a lot more busy than other towns. The recent change to the trading post will help this some, but more needs to be done. As I mentioned above, on my server, windward and everfall make hundreds of thousands of gold a week compared to the smaller towns which are often lucky if they break even. Server merges will help this some, but more needs to be done.
Possible Solution: The amount of taxes the owner of a town pays should be linked in some way to the income that town makes. Yes, there should be certain towns that everyone wants to own, and owning these towns should result in more money than owning one of the smaller towns, but owning a smaller town should still be attractive. Thus, link the housing, trading, and refining income in some way to the weekly taxes a town pays (rather than just the number of town upgrades) would solve this problem. Obviously the more “bustling” your city is, the more you should make, but right now these “bustling towns” are bringing in way too much income, which leads to a discussion of another big problem:
Problem: “The rich get richer” / The strong get stronger
Description: The best “50 person squad” on the server has most likely already taken the best lands on the server. Since those lands make so much money, the best pvper’s on the server now also have [a ridiculous] amount of income that they can craft whatever they want. Thus, leading to a situation where the strong just get stronger, and the discrepancy between the strong and weak steadily increases, making it near impossible for the weak to ever be able to contest. This results in the weak becoming discouraged and often quitting the game.
Solution: See above discussion on making towns more “even” [in income].
Problem: Diminished desire to play the game due to the discrepancy of town incomes.
Description: Currently I often feel like, “why should I spend days farming [to make money], when the owner of windsward/everfall can make that amount of gold doing nothing in an hour?” This is often discouraging. I also feel like it discourages those who own windsward/everfall to not want to farm/play either: i.e., “Why should i farm when I don’t have to do anything and ill still have more than enough money?”
Problem: Game does very little to cater to the casual player and the “pvp-only player”
Description: New world is an MMO, it should have some grind to it, I get that. However, the game does very little to retain the casual player or the pvp-only player. Some people have full time jobs and families, and others do not want to have to PvE [to be able to compete in pvp]: I.e., players should be able to play the game how they want to play it (which includes only pvp’ing if that is what they want to do). If the game wants to retain the most number of players, then more needs to be done to appease these two types of players. Yes, there is currently a daily limit on the number of high end refining materials, and there is a bonus for the first three faction/pvp quests each day, but that’s pretty much it.
Possible Solution(s): I haven’t thought all of these out, and I would urge Amazon (and forum users) to find some potential “easy ways to help solve this problem.” A few ideas that come off the top of my head include: “rested” gathering XP, “rested” refining XP, daily [territory standing] bonuses for town board quests, increased luck for say the first [35?] nodes farmed each day. I do feel that a daily outpost rush quest would significantly help both groups and should be implemented ASAP. For pvp-only players, ultimately the goal is to add a cross-server arena with rankings and pvp [gear] rewards, but in the meantime either introducing an outpost rush currency that can be used to buy good pvp gear, or increasing the rate and breadth of gear drops from outpost rush cache’s would be a start.
Less pressing issues:
Problem: Attacking company is often “spawn camped” for ~20-25 minutes during some wars.
Description: Sometimes a company who’s very outmatched attacks another [stronger] company. This can often result in the attacking company essentially being spawn camped for the majority of the war. When a company gets spawned camped for an extended period of time, it can really hurt the morale of players, causing players to quit or a company to disband soon after.
Solution: Give say 15 (or 20?) minutes for the attacking company to capture at least one point, and then give an extra 5 minutes to the total war time after each point is captured. This would make it so if the attacking company is completely outmatched, they are “only” spawn camped for 15 minutes. Adding time to the total war time by capturing a point would also just be a cool and “rewarding” addition to wars.
Problem: Number, respawn time, and location of nodes do not change at all with the number of players on a server.
Description: I am sure Amazon is aware of this issue and [to me at least] it isn’t as pressing as the above mentioned issues, but there are certain servers where it is very hard to find nodes to farm and there are certain servers where there is no excitement when the node is up because they are always up.
Solution: Again, I haven’t thought this one out 100% and urge amazon and forum users to think more about it, but I think the easiest solution would be to change the respawn time on nodes depending on the number of players playing on the server. If it’s too difficult to change the respawn time depending on concurrent players playing, then adjust the respawn time by server population (i.e., If server A is medium population it has X respawn time on nodes, and for server B it has Y respawn time because its low population). Other suggestions for this problem are welcome.
Additionally, I think it would be great if nodes respawned at “random” locations (or at least have several different locations they can possibly respawn at). I know amazon wants players to not use any type of map for finding nodes, I get that and I think ideally that would be the case (it’s more fun to be immersed in the world and not at looking at maps), but the truth of the matter is pretty much everyone uses a map when farming. There is no real way to prevent this, BUT if the nodes spawned more random in their locations this would immerse players more (i.e., need to look around more for the nodes) and make using a map much less useful.
A final note:
I know Amazon mentioned that they want to make friendly and enemy aoe’s recognizable from each other, and I just want to urge the importance of this for the combat system. I also believe that doing diminishing returns on aoe skills (i.e., 1st cast of sacred ground/ice storm does 100% healing/damage, second does 50%, and third does 25%.) would be better than the current situation of simply having the last cast cancel any prior casts. This would allow players who use the same weapons/abilities to group up and still be pretty effective playing with each other.
Summary of most urgent fixes/changes needed:
-Make it so companies must “field” at least 50% of the war roster (attacking or defending) and implement a cooldown on the ability to change companies.
-Make the amount of taxes the owner of a town pays linked in some way to the income that the town makes. I.e., link the housing, trading, and refining income to the weekly taxes a town pays (rather than just the number of town upgrades)
-Cater more to the casual players. Possible suggestions include: “rested” gathering XP, “rested” refining XP, daily [territory standing] bonuses for town board quests, increased luck for say the first [35?] nodes farmed each day.
-Cater more to the “pvp-only player.” Short term: Introduce a daily outpost rush quest. Introduce either an outpost rush currency that can be used to buy good pvp gear or increase the rate and breadth of gear drops from outpost rush cache’s. Long term (not urgent): Cross-server arena with rankings and pvp [gear] rewards.
-Make gathering node’s respawn timers depend on concurrent active players, or if that’s not possible, at least dependent on the server population.
Summary of Less Urgent Changes:
-Make friendly and enemy aoe’s recognizable from each other. Make friendly aoe’s have diminishing returns.
-Give say 15 (or 20?) minutes for the attacking company in a war to capture at least one point, and then give an extra 5 minutes to the total war time after each point is captured.
-Make gathering nodes respawn at “random” locations (or at least have several different locations they can possibly respawn at)
Thanks for your time reading this all and if you have any comments or further suggestions please post below!
Cheers,
Mykr0 (Celadon)