Recently reached lvl 60 and show a number of important issues that would really need to be fixed in order to make this game great.
-Expertise grind, this suffers from 2 major issues.
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An ideal grinding system has you gain 80%-90% of max power quickly and make the last 10% really grindy and slow. That allows players to be invested in their progress compared to now where it feels too much to even start the grind considering how little you are awarded.
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The grind honestly is NOT THAT BAD, the problem is many mmorpgs due to their story and lore going through the grind from quest to quest has a degree of immersion which makes you forget the fact that its just brainless grinding.
New world lacks story and lore therefore there is no strong sense of immersion so you are only really killing mobs and doing quests for expertise, when that is the only reason you are doing something, it gets tiring fast.
I dont know why we are in that area, why am I killing this corrupted mob or this lost mob or this corruption breach, they are just things I kill and there is 0 emotional investment due to lack of story and lore.
-OPR
A complete disaster for new players in which many arent gonna bother going through the heavy expertise grind just so they can be on equal footing with no lifers or people who have been playing since launch.
Giving maxed out players a tiny advantage like 5% more damage or health is ok, but when they start having huge advantages thanks to gear then you have a serious issue.
-Open world difficulty
The final quests lead you to the 60+ area, most casuals are not tryhards to copy or use meta or efficient builds, they might not even have resist potions/coatings. Or the fact that you can get 590 from the market so you end up with around 550 gearlvl in that area.
Going into that area with small forts, combat does become quite repetitive, especially as a void/fire mage since I want to play a mage and since void doesnt have many strong ranged attacks you have to rely on auto attack which with some passives can land some frequent and strong crits but when you have to kill like 20 mobs it does get kinda repetitive.
When I try to do those single player lvl66 corruption breaches suddenly things become a lot harder, a ridiculous amount of kiting, absolute on point dodges required because many mobs can 3 shot you as a light user and in a sense, you feel like you have to play perfectly and for what? You are not even gonna get a decent expertise bump for all your effort, you get an orb and I think you need like 7 to get a gypsum orb from it?
Again it feels you are spending too much effort for too few rewards.
-Weapons
The weapon system is quite good but I feel mages are in a weird spot, the range is pretty short so you have to actively endanger yourself unlike musket/bow and the damage doesnt feel that huge to make it worth the risk, but that is just initial impressions.
-Crafting
Done quite well overall but it slows down severely after like 100-120 due to how hard it is to get enough mats unless you farm for long long hours, and it isnt like you can compete with people who are rich from towns and can buy entire sections of the market so if you choose to use your gold to level crafting you ll reach 0 before you are 200.
More importantly, when you can go to the market and buy cheap 590s, it makes crafting not feel worthwhile for me to level, especially when many dps perks cant stuck or only exist in one type of gear so little reason to get to 200 to make that perfect perk armor since it would only be for defensive benefits.