Man, feels good. So many gamemodes are now open, fresh new gearing loop and I can start building my character with carefully selected item combinations on gear.
Thing is it’s a bit late for that isn’t it?
Man I do love what’s ahead of me, but I’m sure I could’ve done it faster if the road along the way was more interesting.
There’s great content updates for both PvE and PvP this year, and I can’t wait to experience more, but for the love of the game I fear there’s a huge lack of accessible content at lvl20-59.
I’ve played pretty much every popular MMO out there, and sadly New World is the only one where “It gets good after 100 hours” is literally true.
I hope there would be some updates to the mid to early game experience, like queuable “Invasions” and “Outpost Rush” minor versions, maybe PvE as an endurance survival mode and low level Outpost Rush where you can select from pre-made items to gear up.
Just some ideas, but there needs to be instanced content for the mid-game crowd too to break up the game from a constant quest running.
I’m sure the game can achieve greatness, slowly, but bleeding new players is something I feel is a priority. Thanks for the journey though, still have to venture onwards!
To be fair leveling from 1-60 was quite ok for me. Progression, new equipment every now and then from drops or market. There actually is progress player feels.
From 500- 625 expertise the experience has been a standstill. At level 60 500GS i got my armor from the market with 590-600GS, after that for months haven’t checked for new gear. Same pieces of armor that i got at 500GS have been on me since up to 620+GS with rare upgrade now and then. Not a single useful drop from mobs or chests thanks do being sub 590GS.
But you were able to participate in every content just like any other players. So saying that game starts at max IL with BIS gear is kinda strange.
MMORPGs are about progression. Once you are BIS geared you are pretty much done with the game unless you want to do some speed runs/focus purely on PvP etc. In other MMOs thats the moment when people usually play alts.
Yes you CAN participate in every content at level 60 but…
No one will want you in mutations or other top level dungeons below 600GS.
No wars for under geared players. No one will pick you.
PVP is pointless because you are fodder for 625GS players.
No Arenas, same as above.
No OPR, same as above
Just being able to list for those activities doesn’t mean you will have an positive experience from those activities. Mostly its because of GS expertise. Getting BIS is a whole second story after expertise system.
I would still remain on opinion that “The game starts at 600GS+”.
You are not fodder until IL 625, defensive difference between fresh lvl 60 with TP gear and 625 IL is up to 10% according to gear loadout, offensive is 30%.
Once you are 625 you won’t be picked into wars anyway unless you are part of attacker/defender companies core team. 95% of players can’t get into wars no matter what GS they have. On the other hand if you are hardcore PvP player who wants to participate in wars and you get into one of these companies they will boost you throught expeditions.
Mutations are for players above 600 IL, you should be running normal expeditions so you know what to do.
30%+ attack and 10%+ defense is at minimal at raw stat level. On live its roughly double damage against the new player. Imagine that bows can nearly on shot 625 players with crit, now place a new player there, bow wont even need to crit xD. Now add new player not knowing what is going on and no near BIS skills/perks on armor/weapon. They made quite a many tests and is staggering how big the cap is. Find that out yourself, make an alt, level up to 60 and join arena, thats not where you should through fresh lvl 60 no matter what.
Wars is off limits for most. So no such content regardless, you can dream that you can join a company and be at wars but the queue of players expecting the same is half a server.
Mutations and expeditons for sure should be run on step by step bases, but my point was that you would not be picked into random groups for high level expeditions or low level mutations. Being carry’d by a company group is another topic and should not be included here as you can carry even naked players through dungeons, this is not your “endgame” when you are being carry’d. You are not playing, you are just luggage for rest of the team that is boosting your sorry a**.
Instead of finding excuses you should try out fresh 60 experience on your own hand like I did with arenas and show us all how fun it is for you and for 2 other players who are matched with you against premade 625 three man group.
I agree with your assessment that the levelling process feels tedious and grindy, especially past level 20. That is when you start to realize that the majority of quests and enemies are just copied and there is not much variety. Most of my friends (mainly coming from Dark Souls and WoW) stopped playing at that time. The Amrine Excavation and the first corrupted breaches were a neat little diversion, but these activities alone were not challenging or fulfilling enough to let me forget the monotonous nature of the levelling process.
I lost interest in levelling my character around level 40, shortly after entering Restless Shore. This was the point when the carrot at the end of the looong stick to level 60 just couldn’t motivate me enough to keep playing. Combat felt boring with simply LMB-spam-deleting every NPC in my path. Dodging or blocking was not necessary and abilities didn’t need to be used carefully, but were used as soon as they were off cooldown. Open world PvP was literally non-existent on my server, finding groups for expeditions was difficult and you always had to have your own orb. Because I levelled my character rather slowly I was almost always alone on my level. No twinks, no new players. Company members just came online for wars.
I tried to stay motivated and really wanted to see OPR, wars and invasions. But I quickly noticed that every player on level 60 is also just grinding their GS in an equally uninspiring way. Big companies and their subsidiaries quickly took almost every territory and people started trading territories in chat and didn’t really fight in wars.
This is when I realized that the game does not start at level 60, but simply continues its uninspiring and lazy game design in a slightly different manner. Since Dec. 2021 I am roaming the forums to see if things got better. Maybe the next patch will get me playing again. But so far I see almost no solution for low population servers (especially low level players on those servers) and no improvements for the combat system, quest and mob variety and open world PvP.
This chart shows the attack/defense numbers are not really that bad. Or greatly exaggerated in a lot of cases. Even with the EHP mitigation numbers with 625 weapons attacking a 520GS are not bad.
I have a suspicion that what most people really see are perk differences, shirking fort/resilient ect that makes the biggest difference. Not the GS in and of itself. And of course people are not stacking ideal perks under 600 so it seems like a much larger gap.
Hopefully after this patch with ideal perks being much more available from a lot more sources this gap will be a lot less wide.
I continually see the talks about 595-625 of the difference in power. Yes there is a difference based on the numbers all be it not substantial even the smallest of % is enough.
Now Lets move to a fresh Level 60… I have been there and I have played at 525 GS vs 625… When you literally deal 300-600 a hit it is kind of sad. Yes Perks do matter as do the gems. But the fact is those items with BiS perks are wayyyyy to costly for a fresh 60 to purchase unless you scrimped and saved every coin.
I did tests myself, here is a link. 30-35% offensive difference, sub 5% defensive difference on light armor. Take whatever you want from it.
Here is another chart confirming my tests:
I won’t discuss the difference regarding GS anymore, numbers are numbers. You can check that test yourselves, its up to you. But im definitely done explaining this over and over and over again. Take whatever you want from that test and have a good day !
. Because personally I was done after playing that for like 2 weeks.