It’s hard to believe that this studio is underperforming this much with the resources it has access to. New to the MMORPG game world, sure, us (the players) gave you a bit of leeway because New World WAS, and I can’t emphasize that enough, WAS a beautiful game.
Then it seems a few people in charge of making decisions made some poor ones. Instead of correcting it, which would have been the RIGHT thing to do, even more poor decisions were made in an attempt to justify the first ones.
At some point, someone said “why don’t we listen to our player base?” and it was like a magical land of information opened up to you. Some good changes were made, QoL improvements, and things seemed to be heading in the right direction. New content was coming out, changes that made sense to the overall playability of the game happened, and it was turning around.
Then something obviously happened again and it started to go downhill. Releasing PvP content was about the only good thing that happened in the middle of that, but now you want to kill that off too by micromanaging changes that don’t actually need to be done.
I personally am not a PvPer. I had my PvP days nearly 20ish years ago, and while it’s fun, it does get boring, even with “fabulous awards and prizes!”. The great cleave quests are a great way to still earn my PvP track rewards, and continue practicing staying alive as a healer. Now it will take 33% longer to complete those PvP tracks, and will be so slow that I foresee me getting annoyed and bored with the game.
MMORPGs are supposed to have a bit of a grind element to it, but what is being asked for now is ridiculous. Yes, attention spans are shorter than what they used to be from the days of Everquest, but even they adapted to modern times over the last 2 decades. I don’t want to slog through something, however enjoyable, just to get through to the end. That makes it unenjoyable overall. Plus, if AGS is planning to introduce a Pay to Accelerate or Pay to Win type feature… it won’t end well for you. Heed my warning.
I want the person in charge to read this, and if that person is responsible for ordering changes, you need to not only roll it back, but buff the XP for things that take longer, like OPR’s. NOW. You can even put my character name and server on it, so people can blame/praise me instead of you like!
Your loyal PvPers are the last bastion of players you have on this game, and if you piss them off, you will have nothing. Getting 10K PvP XP for a single OPR/Territory War is not unreasonable in the least. It takes up to 45 minutes for one. You can do a sliding scale of rewards if you want, shorter OPR’s give out less PvP xp, and longer OPR’s give more. This coerces participation and discourages “landslide” OPR’s.
AGS is correct to address PvP content but did the exact opposite of what should have been done, and here are the reasons for it:
No PvP players = No need for Gear crafting.
No need for Gear Crafting = No need for PvE gatherers.
No need for PvE gatherers = No dungeon runs.
No Dungeon runs = nothing but open world soft content.
NBOWSC = leveling up players cannot progress their main quest line.
No progression = No new PvP players.
You have programmed and develop yourselves into a very self-defeating cycle. On top of all that you continue to remove and reduce the working elements in this cycle which causes your servers to die at a VERY rapid rate.
This isn’t rocket science. It’s game development, and MUCH easier to pull off successfully because there are already so many good and bad examples out there.
Finally, while we are on the subject of feed back… although this was in a previous patch… you need to do 2 things for healers and we will be happy:
A. When in open world PvP, all sacred grounds and beacons are color coded to the appropriate faction. When in instances, they are color coded to appropriate team. (Red/Blue) This isn’t hard to figure out, and a very easy adjustment to a color palate under certain conditions. Very easy, should have been done months ago.
B. Restore the previous functionality of not needing line of sight for Sacred Ground group targeting. SG is AOE healing, but can be anchored to a single target. Because AGS’s coders are inept at their jobs and apparently don’t know how to test things, small objects and trees will block line of sight, sometimes even when not target locking anyone, and this is ridiculous.
In a more dire scenario, the new Depths mutations are near impossible to heal now also.
The first boss leaves the healers unable to heal unless they expose themselves to additional danger by accompanying party members to the portals, leaving the tank & 1 DPS exposed to the boss. (and the opposite portal team vulnerable on the 2nd round)
Because the damage of mobs is set a wee bit too high, single target heals and beacons are insufficient healing. A healer must run 100 to 200 con in order to survive hits even at M10 rated gear score, thus reducing the overall healing output.
Yes, mutations are supposed to be challenging for better rewards, but the M4-M6 Depth versions are nearly impossible to heal effectively on, with M10 rated gear, appropriate damage reduction gems, etc. etc. This is not even to mention the maze you teleport to where line of sight is blocked by scenery as your party weaves it’s way through.
The development team has made some very poor choices AGAIN, and is continuing to make poor choices. The path and direction headed right now will lead to an untimely demise/shutdown of this game.
There are many elements that require group cooperation at very high levels of ability and gear equipment, yet your development team takes the “fundation” (what I call a fun foundation of progression) out at the knees that will lead to players achieving this level of play.
Next… Stop catering to the “NEET No lifers”. Wish them congratulations on completing everything in New World and bid them farewell. New world has Real Life based features, party number restrictions, trading functionality, and many other things.
Also in Real Life… society has no use for these “NEET No lifer” individuals, so why are we letting them affect the ebb and flow of game development when they have not the education, experience, or training to warrant it?
Instead, listen to well spoken and experienced players that have an average amount of hours played. This is where your true data will come from, and assist in making good decisions for the future of the game.
If the NEET no lifers don’t like it, they can go bother some other game’s development. Do not cater any further to these players that whine about how “easy” or “quick” it is to do something. They will go find something else to do and New World will start to recover, albeit slowly due to the extreme damage already done.
Finally… Please scrap your plans to do away with orbs and lock the amount of dungeons you can do per day/week. The orbs are actually a good way to encourage PvP activity because they are the most commonly bought item next to gypsum and chisels/component materials.
However, I recommend reducing, or completely removing the timer cooldown on both gypsum (for the lower Tier players) and Mutation orbs. (higher tier players) I also can argue that timers in their entirety are completely redundant with the following arguments:
A. There is already a timer on the gypsum casts, so a timer on the gypsum faction vendor purchase is entirely redundant.
B. You can craft normal expedition orbs normally. If you are a 625 gear score player, it is unlikely you will be using the orb for a “normal” run. A player will also need a mutation orb.
C. Because there is already a diminishing reward restriction on more than 2 runs in place, having ANY timer restriction on obtaining Mutator and/or Normal Orbs is pointless, unless you are trying to discourage players from you know… actually playing the game?
D. To get a new gear set to 625, it takes in the vicinity of about 100K shards. At 6K per run, this would be 18 gold achievement runs. Timewise, you would need to spend approximately 12-16 hours total (extra time for bio breaks/food, salvaging/banking etc.) in order to achieve this, as well as 18 normal orbs, and 18 mutator orbs. That’s a LOT of orbs!
Even broken up over time into 2 run sessions, this means it would be 6 to 8 days of playing sessions, doing the SAME THING every night. How boring and grindy, no wonder people are giving up after getting their primary playstyle gear up. Also, if anything goes wrong in those 18 runs, or even 1 person out of 5 can’t make it one or more nights…it will take EVEN LONGER!!!
It’s really not surprising why players are giving up and playing something else.
Does AGS not see this? Nearly EVERYTHING in New World takes FAR TOO LONG AS IT IS!!!
Thank you for reading my extra long post. I hope the powers that be, lost in their own thought soup, reads this and takes this feedback honestly. Who cares if something only takes a couple nights to achieve?
There is so much to do in New World, and it’s getting to the point where it’s so lengthy of a process to do anything meaningful at the higher levels, you either play it all the time, or not at all. But it’s that very conundrum as to why people are walking away.
Sure, it’s fun to build a character, but to grind out exponentially longer for every change/improvement you want to do later on seems a bit tasteless and ultimately quite dull. I personally would rather go have a new experience somewhere else with my time.
I also personally don’t need the responsibility/persistence and commitment to something akin to a workplace job, I play a game to relax and move some pixels around and be entertained. Once it’s no longer entertaining, I will find something else I enjoy more, that’s just the way human nature works!
