Hello everyone!
So I’ve really enjoyed my time in Aeternum between the Alpha, Beta, and release of New World. A quick backstory of my time with the game; I’ve logged around 120 hours in the Alpha, 100 hours in the Beta, and roughly 90 hours since release. It’s certainly not the most hours logged by any means, but I feel it’s safe to say that I have a decent understanding with regards to most aspects of the game.
Overall, the changes being made to this game have been absolutely incredible, especially considering that in just 1 year the game has been changed in so many drastic positive ways. That being said, I had a few ideas (ideas myself as well as discussion between friends and youtubers/twitch streamers) to help push this game even further:
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Traversing the map/fast travel: One complaint I’ve seen time and time again through all phases of this game is the travelling. Many have complained about wanting mounts or allowing easier fast travel, however I truly think mounts would diminish a lot of New World’s content. One of the most intriguing parts of New World is the world itself! The vast world gives such incredible aesthetic pleasure to players no matter where they go. Fast traveling easily would eliminate a huge factor of why this game (at its core) is so appealing. Adding mounts would cause the world to feel so much smaller! For a brand new MMO (without any major added content so far), the world feels big! After much discussion with my other friends who logged around the same amount of hours as me, I think the best way to keep the game feeling sizable but allowing for a faster overall map traversal is adding a “sprint” function to the game. I know there is a walk and run, however the game itself has a stamina bar which diminishes from the use of dodges. Adding a sprint mechanic to either make your movement speed 1.25x-2x as fast but also cause your stamina to drain could allow you to get where you need to go much more efficiently whilst still allowing the world of Aeternum to feel large. To not make Haste buffs insanely powerful with this mechanic, perhaps only make sprinting available outside of combat. Making it a flat sprint speed of 1.5x or even for those who love the more “realism” elements of the game, perhaps making it so sprinting changes with the armor load you have on; heavy armor = 1.25x speed, medium = 1.5x speed, light = 2x speed. I personally think the flat rate would be best however it is something to consider!
- TL;DR - Rather than make fast traveling easier / adding mounts, create a sprint function that drains your stamina bar over time providing 1.25x-2x movement speed [only usable when outside of combat].
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Mob Stealing: Another issue I have run into when talking with friends is the mob stealing. When trying to complete a mission (such as quests to hunt & collect animal hide, town missions to hunt and cull animals, or even faction PvP missions like hunting wolves), it can be very very irritating when someone runs up and yoinks your stuff. For those who are melee you need to run up to it before the mob is killed, and for those that are healers / support who lack significant damage, not dealing enough damage can often cause you to not be able to get the kill. Even when you finally get the kill on the mob, you then have to be the first person to spam “E” hoping to reap the rewards of your hunt. One way New World could fix this issue of “mob stealing” besides increasing spawns or decreasing spawn timers is to factor in a percentage threshold for the weapon you’re currently using. Each person who damages it the most given their current weapons damage/gearScore/characterStats all get factored into a threshold, and for those who hit it the most determined by this threshold get priority to hunting the animal first. This threshold takes into consideration the weaker damaging weapons (life staff) vs high damaging weapons (great axe). Let’s say two people of different parties attack a bear. User1 uses a great axe. User2 uses a life staff. They both hit the same amount of basic attacks (no abilities). Who would win in damage? The User1. Now let’s say User2 attacked it 1-2x more than User1. They still lose the most damage dealt since life staff has a significantly less damage output than a great axe. Using this factor threshold, it takes into consideration that User2 attacked it way more yet put out less damage due to the weaker weapon. User2 still receives the priority of skinning the animal. Another idea is perhaps it splits between factions? Whichever faction is doing the most damage to the mob receives the priority. This can become a larger issue when there is a lack of one faction or the other on a server which I totally understand…but just sharing ideas!
- TL;DR - Rather than increasing mob spawns or decreasing spawn timers, implement a damage threshold that takes into consideration the player’s weapon type, damage, weapon’s gear score & character’s stats (life staff has a larger mod to passing the “priority threshold” vs a great axe user). That or perhaps whichever faction did the most damage/killing blow gets to prioritize skinning the animal. After 1 minute of not claiming the animal, it goes public for other users to skin.
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PvP Quests: Open specific parts of the world up to be “PvP Only” areas. Add on or change certain checkpoints in the game to where in order to enter specific areas, you must trigger PvP on. Allow for rare items or special drops in these areas to push people to participate in the PvP Quests. Require the PvP quests to kill or assist in killing 5/10/15/20/etc enemy faction players.
Maybe even allow random times where a “flag” or “area” will open up for PvP and for whichever faction holds the area the longest, award that faction with a minor buff (2% less taxes in all Settlements for 30 min or like 2% faster harvesting/mining/logging speed for 30 min, etc). -
Company Chests/Shared Chests in Housing: Allowing players in a company to open their housing chests to other company members. This would allow for friends to craft other company members items when they are offline and drop it off in a “company”/“community” chest.
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Endgame/Lategame Items Leaving Economy: Another idea to make the incredible crafting system even better: at skill levels 175-200 you can craft some incredible stuff. These items at first will be scarce, super rare and extremely fun to show off the hard work and dedication you made to get it. However, the longer the game exists, the less rare they become. To keep these items from becoming flooded throughout the world and oversaturated in the market, have these items have an unrepairable durability. Either that or make those specific late game items require specific hard to get components to keep them durable, forcing dungeon/raids to keep them usable but also making it high risk if they die with the item or use it alot. Personally, I prefer the first option. Perhaps after a certain gear score (500 or even 550+) the item durability becomes unrepairable and requires a new craft once it’s broken? Just another idea!
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Endgame/Lategame Craft Masteries: Perhaps when the first DLC or major update comes out for New World, crafting cap gets buffed to be above 200. If that’s the case, what about possibly choosing one specific crafting mastery (of the main crafting skills). When you reach a max level in a specific crafting skill you choose a skill to become a “master craftsman”. This mastery could go 50-100 levels over the cap. Choosing this mastery actually locks the mastery with your character, so you can’t just change it whenever you feel like it. Or perhaps if you change your “mastery craft skill”, you reset your previous mastery to the game’s default cap and must then level up the new skill. Maybe you get locked in and cannot change masteries for x amount of days (similar to faction selection). Each time you change your mastery, the skill resets to the skill cap you previously were. These items would truly be the rarest of rare and very limited to how many there are in the real world. It would essentially only be able to be made by the hardcore fans of crafting! This could allow for even better, more iconic armor and weapons to hold onto and show off to your fellow players in the server!
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Dungeons: So far we’ve gotten a wonderful nibble (not really enough where I’d call it a full on “taste”) of dungeons in the New World in the Alpha & Beta tests. The increase of mob damage (since actual release) definitely has made it more difficult however my friends and I still found it too easy. I have a small company of about 15 friends who are playing the game, and at first being level 20 running around the first dungeon (recommended level 25) was difficult. As we progressed through level wise and got to level 25-30 it became significantly easier. So easy mind you, that with a 4 man party consisting of: lvl 22 life staff, lvl 21 great axe, lvl 22 sword/shield and a lvl 26 bowman, we beat the entire dungeon with ease only having 1 death. When we got to the starstone dungeon, things got noticeably harder but even in the Beta & with game release we ran it through just fine once again being under leveled. The corrupted dungeon definitely got even harder after that, but…I don’t know, I just feel like there could be even more. Don’t get me wrong, these dungeons are beautiful, however I’d like to see much much larger, 1-2 hour long dungeons where difficulty becomes incredible at mid-late game levels.
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High Difficulty Bosses: This ties into the dungeons, as well as possible future open world bosses. I find that the overall bosses in the dungeons and the few smaller “area” bosses aren’t too difficult. I agree overall combat is certainly more difficult than a handful of other MMORPG’s, however I still think the actual bosses need to be a little more difficult. Difficult not just in damage output, but even having more unique moves instead of just a rinse repeat of the same 2-3 attacks. As I said in the above paragraph, I had a party of 4 easily defeat the level 25 dungeon boss when we were all levels 21, 22, 22 and 26. The fact that we could 4 man the dungeon pre-level 25 is a bit too easy in my opinion (i knowwww this is the beginning dungeon and I have to take into consideration that we had spent hours crafting our gear so we were definitely around or slightly above average with gearscore vs the dungeon item drops but it still shouldn’t have been that easy!).
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Life Staff: Actual combat is fantastic (especially since the alpha) and I’m really enjoying the combat changes, but as a Life Staff user & main healer, I found even I was doing more damage then I felt I should have been. I think Life Staff needs to be nerfed even more. I enjoy the idea of people playing off-heal roles or “2ndary healer” roles but I feel that a game which uses the trinity system needs to require the healer to pretty much only be…a healer. I think the fact that you can still wield a great axe or warhammer and do massive damage then swap to a life staff and dump a considerable amount of heals not too far off from someone spec’d into being a full healer is pretty OP. They made it better than it was in the Beta however I feel like it needs to be tweaked a bit more.
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Unlimited XP / Gathering Skills Spawners: There have already been a few spots in the world where a mass amount of players will stand around and unlimited farm killing area bosses and skinning their bodies. My one friend spent 1 hour there and got his skinning from level 100 to 200 which is absolutely bonkers. On top of this broken farm issue, it also is leading to flooded markets. Thick Hide which is a mid-late game resource is now selling for 0.10 gold in certain settlements, when it used to be more than 100x as much. This along with a few other resource farm issues has caused many settlements in many servers to have a flipped or broken market. A bad market in an MMORPG can have a major negative butterfly effect on the longevity of the game.
I really enjoy this game at its core and really want to see it flourish, however the server capacity issues, game breaking skinning/gathering XP farms, and broken community markets are issues that need to be addressed ASAP. I’m super excited to see where New World goes, it has so much incredible potential to truly become a contender for a top tier MMO. Let’s hope for a bright non-pay-to-win successful future for this enjoyable game! Hope you enjoyed my thoughts and ideas, thanks for your time everyone!