[Focus Feedback] Silver Crows Storyline

Greetings Adventurers,

We’d like to use this thread to specifically ask for your feedback about the Silver Crows Storyline.

New Story: The Silver Crows

Assemble an elite team of mercenaries called the Silver Crows to help their first client, Skye the Spear-daughter, confront a powerful Warlock and the Varangian horde, and halt their ambitions amidst the flames of a brand new Expedition: Empyrean Forge.

Seasons Announcement and FAQ - News | New World - Open World MMO PC Game

The team has posed some questions; please feel free to copy and paste the following as a template:

  • What are your top 3 favorite parts of the Season 1 quests?
  • What was the most negative moment/experience you encountered?
  • What is the most compelling moment to you regarding the story?
  • Do you feel like there is a clearly directed path for players to follow? Do you understand what to do next?
  • How did you feel about the length of travel times involved in the Season 1 quest chain?
  • How do you feel about the variety in the experience in quests/activities/enemies/etc.?
  • How do you feel we can improve on Seasons quests going forward?

Thank you for your help!


You can find resources on how to leave good feedback in the How to Give High Quality Feedback post.

Please keep your feedback related to the Silver Crows Storyline in this thread. Discussion amongst players about other topics is better suited for other threads.

Thank you for helping make New World the best game it can be!

See you in Aeternum!

3 Likes

We’ll considering they put a dungeon as the 2nd unlock, nobody runs dungeons on PTR, this is going to be a major roadblock.

Nevermind it’s not in order :slight_smile:

Quest: The Silver Crows
score: 2/5.

The score would be 1/5, but Grace O’Malley is my favourtie character in game, so funny and oryginal. Well done!!! t’s almost as if her quest lines are a stand-up comedy

Such a cool idea to build a camp, but there is no depth to it, and the whole process is short, meaningless, and not fun. It’s like, “Go get this stick, so we can build a camp.”

I would imagine this quest to be so much bigger and more elaborate, with the camp having different tiers that provide access to more quests and unique challenges.

With each new tier of the camp, its appearance would change, and we would have to embark on missions to build certain parts of the camp. This would make the process more engaging and rewarding, as we would see the fruits of our labor and have a sense of accomplishment as we progress through the tiers. It would also give us a reason to continue playing and exploring, as we would be unlocking new content and experiences with each new tier of the camp.

Quest: The Best of Aeternum
score: 5/5
Funny, light, new storytelling technique.
Maybe new recruits could help build the new camp?

Quest: Zander the Undying
score: 3/5
Cute storyline
If he is a cook, there should be more cooking equipment around his house. If he is a warrior, as he looks like one, there should be more gear. The bed is frankly way too small for him, and the house as well.

Quest: Canon and Coin
double icon glitch
Great idea with sneaking to look for the thief. It would be great if in some other quests we would have to climb a watchtower to spy with a spyglass, facing similar obstacles as with the goat challenge in Brimstone Sands.

3 Likes

Loved the cinematic when interviewing candidates. It was a nice surprise.
My only issue is that music kept on playing at the same volume and I couldn’t hear grace very well.

1 Like

*What are your top 3 favorite parts of the Season 1 quests?

  1. Spear maiden story
  2. Grace
  3. The Best of Aeterum-made me laugh!
  • What was the most negative moment/experience you encountered?
    Fetching stuff in Edengrove, tedious run travel
  • What is the most compelling moment to you regarding the story?
    Felt like it was building a merc company, story, recruitment, and a bit more.
  • Do you feel like there is a clearly directed path for players to follow? Do you understand what to do next?
    Yes
  • How did you feel about the length of travel times involved in the Season 1 quest chain?
    I used teleporters throughout. Running edengrove took too long.
  • How do you feel about the variety in the experience in quests/activities/enemies/etc.?
    Enjoyed the variety
  • How do you feel we can improve on Seasons quests going forward?
    Keep mixing in short/fast/quick fetch quests, with npc nearby at end-along with the combat as a purpose.
    Would enjoy seeing an npc hired to the camp -build up the camp that way…getting choices of npcs to the camp for interactions, visuals, more goals & storyline.
    Like a cook, that gives quests for various ingredients-similar to a town quest.
2 Likes

I will only be talking about the negatives and what can be improved upon, I’ll also be very nitpicky to set the bar even higher.

If I don’t mention something, assume that it’s fine.


Introduction Quest: The Silver Crows

Burn the Corrupted Tents: animation is lacking and I’ve suggested so many times including in the re-vamp, that the game would benefit so much from a igniting torch animation. There are so many quests where you have to lit things on fire.

The game even had torches at 1 point, so please consider making this animation,
it could be used on AT LEAST 10 quests right now.

Collect Supplies for Crow’s Nest: Building a camp is suppose to be very engaging and satisfying sadly I did not feel this while doing it. The main reason is because the contribution and engagement is very low.

Stealing a bunch of sticks to somehow magically create a camp is just odd.

Building the Camp:

Personally I did not find it make a lot of sense how the camp was designed.
It’s suppose to be a company of heroes doing bounties, but this looked like a festival camp in peaceful land that has 0 threats.

What made me giggle a little bit was the dialogue as well.

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There is literally nothing safe about this camp, no walls nothing.
I also didn’t understand why we have 3 of the exact same camps, cut this down into just 1 for identity purposes and just add wayshrines instead of the others

I highly suggest redesigning the camp into a medieval keep/crow’s nest tower, you could even make crows fly around it, like in Brightwood POI’s.

Revamped Crow’s Nest Sketch

It also makes more sense from a lore perspective and creates more identity than the camp, from a gameplay aspect you could potentially make people use stone, wood etc and make creating Crow’s Nest more satisfying.

Especially considering stone is quite useless and will become more useless, since PVE Trials should have their keys removed due to having them as tasks in the season stamps.


Skye the Speardaughter Quest

Once you start approaching her proximity you should activate her yelling HELP!
Right now she just vibing, sitting on the floor and doesn’t acknowledge you

What would be even better is seeing a cutscene where Skye and her spearsister, that’s Aidyn right? are ambushed and Aidyn get’s captured. while you fight and save Skye, this has way more impact and better gameplay.

I also don’t like how mobs spawn out of thin air, especially in scripted encounters.
Try script boxes from a distance to activate the event, and have events be slightly out of the players vision, example crevasse, caves, walls, bushes, trees preventing you from seeing it clear as day like it is now.


The Curse of the Faceless One Quest

The NPC Shailyn placement is odd, this is quite a common theme in the game, everyone is just standing in the open doing nothing. Almost like they are just T-posing. Character development has been upped a lot on main characters, I feel like random characters are neglected hard. This is a sorceress have her sit in a decorated tent interacting with a Old World Globe furniture piece.

She is also aware how dangerous Varangians are and talks about it in the dialogue, yet she is standing almost in open terrain close to a Varangian camp.

Very nitpicky, low quality 3D model of Bone Talisman being put on the table,
lowest priority of the lowest.


The Best of Aeternum Quest

Cutscene interview dialogue is quite low audio compared to the settlement music,

Also Adolfo de Acutis is right about the ancients, they came from the future and can control time. :wink:


Zander the Undying Quest

Enjoyed the script box when near that starts the interaction of him and DOG, I mean the Lynx. So the dialogue is about them fighting, I suggest having a scriptbox right before entering the shack, where the Lynx spawns and you can see him walk away grumpy and jump on top of the table.

I do have some critique regarding his shack, that it doesn’t have much identity, you learn more about him later. That he enjoys cooking/baking and such, so most won’t catch any of the lacking detail here.

Once you recruited him into Crow’s Nest, put him near/in the kitchen, and give him a daily quest so we can try those delicious lemon cakes and potentially other recipes?

Addition feedback on Zander as a character, it’s the same voice actor as Yonas Alazar, since Zander is swole and probably on the natural herb steroids, adjust the audio file to be a little deeper toned. It’s really noticeable that it’s the same voice actor.

NPC Eynon Voyle the same principle as the previous quest, he is just standing there doing nothing. Since he’s a druid healer give him a very small pathing route around a tree and let him collect plants with a sickle on certain spots.


Canon and Coin Quest

This is the part of the season story where a lot of the NPC’s have double quest markers.

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Climbing up the church have the quest marker here easier indicator on where to climb up!

After you look through the Church roof and spot Dicun stealing the money, let him stay in this animation below of searching the chest, then after you interact with him he stands up and turns around.

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when you catch him his dialogue sounds like he got jumped on.
But he’s just standing there.

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So this is where I get confused, I did the entire story on 2 characters so far. He says How did you escape from there? but there was nothing to escape from.

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Is he suppose to shut the doors on you a classic Dark Souls Patches moment?
And you have the destroy the doors and escape?
Or is there nothing, which would be very odd, considering the dialogue.

Also having to go through an elite area and this part of Brightwood having god awful traversing map design was pretty bad but I assume the re-vamp will change that. You can’t get onto the island from the norther part since the cliff is too steep.

Another typical NPC placement moment here, Granny chilling on the road with dangerous wolfs and ghosts nearby, going outside of the Brightwood settlement should be not advised for most NPC’s, since the nature of how dangerous the area is.


Supply Chains Quest

After freeing the 3 civilians, Grace O’Malley spawns out of thin air nearby, the next quest requires you to be in Crow’s Nest.

There is no need for her to spawn nearby, just let the player deliver the quest in Crow’s Nest and accept the next quest from her right away.


The Possibilities of Fire Quest

This was the first moment in the story so far where I was like hmmmmm,
this map design is really lacking. And honestly I don’t even know how to fix this.

It would need a theme, why are there roots? Maybe add a giant dead tree,
and reskin the mobs into stone/rock theme, could also be used in future content.


Dearly Beloved Quest

Big W, God tier, more of this.
Maybe add some veins to mine, and add audio to the floating ancient ball?
Makes it more mysterious, and that’s what anything related to ancients should be.


Faceless Quest

POI location
I found the location a little bland and boring, this is suppose to be the highlight of the story, infiltrating the Faceless Keep and defeating him to end it all.

Acadia Keep Click to Open)

Front Keep

Back Keep

Boss Room/Platform

I’d like to compare this to Corbenic Castle, also a closure on a questline.

Corbenic Castle (Click to Open)

Front Castle

Middle Castle

Back Castle

Boss Room

As you can tell you difference in quality is astonishing and it lacks identity.
Faceless is using these Bone Talisman’s.
How does he create it?
Does he use a incantation?
Does he gather the bones from the Ancients?
So many questions and no visual story telling in map design.

If he’s a Warlock why does his keep look like a warrior fortress?
Why does he not live in a tower or dungeon, where he creates these talismans.
The entire story is related to fire, but you don’t go to a single location that has lava, even mobs don’t have fire. The mage mobs use Ice spells of all things.

Face-off with the Faceless

The fight was easy, but I was 600 GS, I assume it can be though at 500 GS.
Either way you can just zerk down the boss, since it’s not instanced.
@Gallus_Lars Made a solid point about the Brimstone Sutekh Soul Trial.

I would like to see a similar instance, and call it the Fire Trial.

Now let’s talk about the fight and boss identity itself, there were no mechanics, and nothing was unique, Upscaled player model mob with Light Rusher OPR armor and Void Gauntlet abilities.

The abilities could’ve at least been changed visually to represent the lore and the theme of the season better by adding a fire tint over it.

It could even be a phase 2 mechanic, where he goes from Void Warlock to Fire Warlock by using the power of the Talismans and all the fire he sucked out of people.

I highly suggest making sure the closure of this quest is going to be satisfying, and put full effort into improving this quest in particular.
You still have a month before launch, you got this!


To Be Continued? Quest

If you go from the north direction and walk to the quest location you will pull Angry Earth mobs if you keep walking and trigger the cutscene you will be attacked and knocked out of the cutscene. You can’t trigger the cutscene again.

Make the cliff a little more steep so you have to clamber, and this Angry Earth mob cannot reach you.


Good job, basically just fine tuning left at this point :clap: :clap:

I hope the necessary changes can be done in a month time, really need to make a good impression on this season styled content, otherwise people will not come back and play, or keep on playing the game.

6 Likes

Quest: the Possibilities of Fire
I arrived at the quest area as the second player and didn’t manage to kill all the required mobs mentioned in the quest description. It took me a long time to wait for the respawn. I can imagine this being a difficult situation for players without dynamic respawn.

Started doing some season missions to level up in the season pass, the lore seems to be funny and interesting, but having to go there, go back, got there again, and go back again, just make me remember the old days where doing missions in new world was a pain in the a**. I loved the camera angles while the NPCs are talking, it is like a cut scene, but moving around the map to just click on something is boring as f***.

I hope you move the NPCs closer to the objectives for all season missions

Quest: Faceless
The Dog is actually a Lynx cat, as for previous quests description: kitty cat :slight_smile: :cat2:

It’s a joke, because Grace called it a dog, and now the lynx’s name is dog.

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3 Likes

and many more…

  • What are your top 3 favorite parts of the Season 1 quests?
    1 - The new ingame cutscenes are really cool.
    2 - The history and characters are interesting and made me pay close attention at all times.
    3 - Grace

  • What was the most negative moment/experience you encountered?
    The Edenglove part was kind of a chore because of the travel distance between objectves.

  • What is the most compelling moment to you regarding the story?
    The moment we find Faceless for the first time and confront Aidyn in that new cave was the best moment for me.

  • Do you feel like there is a clearly directed path for players to follow? Do you understand what to do next?
    Yes.

  • How did you feel about the length of travel times involved in the Season 1 quest chain?
    Very good except for the Edenglove bit.

  • How do you feel about the variety in the experience in quests/activities/enemies/etc.?
    Also good, the variety in quest and enemies within this questline was really good.

  • How do you feel we can improve on Seasons quests going forward?
    Making the final boss like the Faceless a Soul Trial just like Apophis, I think that way the encounter feels a lot more pessoal and engaging.

1 Like

Big agree on this.

1 Like
  • What are your top 3 favorite parts of the Season 1 quests?

a) The story line is good enough (Sorry could always use improvement)
b) Great to hear Scottish voices :slight_smile:
c) Nice Armour on Skye (We need this for our characters) :wink:

  • What was the most negative moment/experience you encountered?

a) Not getting class fitting rewards. For such a short story line playing as a Mage I was exceedingly disappointed by receiving Strength and Dex equipment. The game should be able to recognize what class I am and assign rewards appropriately or at least allow a selection of rewards rather than shoving unwanted rewards down my throat.
b) The length of the story line was very very short!
c) Dog/Cat/Dog/Cat/Dog “Meow!” - Identity crisis!

  • What is the most compelling moment to you regarding the story?

Compelling, as in want to play it? Well it would be the new NPC’s. (Varangian Knights)

  • Do you feel like there is a clearly directed path for players to follow? Do you understand what to do next?

Yes

  • How did you feel about the length of travel times involved in the Season 1 quest chain?

It is moderately OK. With mounts it will be fine

  • How do you feel about the variety in the experience in quests/activities/enemies/etc.?

It was OK

  • How do you feel we can improve on Seasons quests going forward?

a) More appropriate Rewards.
b) Longer Story lines.
c) More challenging NPC’s.

What are your top 3 favorite parts of the Season 1 quests?

  • The little cutscenes (special mention for the casting in the tavern)
  • Grace
  • Going back to Edengrove, underrated zone

What was the most negative moment/experience you encountered?

Huge disapointment regarding building the camp : i was so ready to take my axe and my pickaxe to REALLY build a REAL camp. Please make it so we do something more than pressing a button.
Also, the complete story is really, really short.

What is the most compelling moment to you regarding the story?
The recruiting process gave me some old school RPG vibes (even if sadly it was not to form my own group)

Do you feel like there is a clearly directed path for players to follow? Do you understand what to do next?
Yes and yes, pretty easy to follow everything

How did you feel about the length of travel times involved in the Season 1 quest chain?
It’s ok, running through Edengrove can feel a bit long because of the structure of the map, but not really a big deal

How do you feel about the variety in the experience in quests/activities/enemies/etc.?
Not much to say, it was okay (but again, let us build a real camp with materials)

How do you feel we can improve on Seasons quests going forward?
I know it involves a lot of work, but make the story longer. I know there is and will be some other content during seasons, but a 2-3h questline every 3 months (if i understood well how it’ll work) is really disappointing.
Also, something a bit more challenging.

1 Like

I was reading through these posts and I get to yours, and think “All of these are great points and I couldn’t agree more.” Then I noticed your name lol Great to see you on the forums and in the PTR! :slight_smile:

2 Likes

How do you feel we can improve on Seasons quests going forward?
How do you feel about the variety in the experience in quests/activities/enemies/etc.?

Now that everyone wants everything streamlined, quick, instant, and sweet, the World of Warcraft attunement quests might be considered too long. But from my point of view, the first few quests could be light and not so much of a hassle. Once you want to go deeper into the story and get better rewards, the quests could become much more difficult, involving dungeons, trials, and participation in corrupted invasions to gather specific information, acquire items, and save people. Some quests could reward inferno chests and free levels in the season pass (or XP equivalent) or very cool skins. They should be more time-consuming than difficult, so if I want to play along and enjoy doing quests, I could sink in, and the storyline might take much longer than 2 or 3 hours.

I would imagine the following story quests: You have to save the princess, but in order to do that, you need to get parts of the key to the magical cage she is locked in. The evil warlock hid the fragments, and there are seven of them hidden in different locations. For example, one key fragment could be swallowed by a fish, and in order to catch it, you need to cook special fish bait from herbs and wolf meat. However, the meat can only be obtained with a special knife that needs to be forged in a special forge with specific materials.

You could add six other locations and make them into chapters with sub-levels of difficulty to make it a challenging and rewarding journey.

I referenced Burning Crusade Classic Attunement as an example of an elaborate quest chain, not as a barrier to more difficult content.

1 Like

:hearts: :hearts: Since 2020 been providing that feedback :ok_hand:

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1 Like