Disclamer: I tried to be organized as possible but given it’s a forum I apologize if anything feels disconnected in any way.
Some generalized feedback on the current state of the game and the development direction and timelines and why in my opinion players are rightfully justified to be concerned about what they are seeing with the release of mutators and the state of end game in New World vs balance, bugs, etc. broken down by major subject.
Current State of End Game
You can’t really start talking about development without first looking at the current state of end game for PvP, PvE, and Crafting.
PvP
PvP end game be it wars or OPR is unfortunately a mess of missed opportunity. While there is some decent foundations of concept the actual execution feels sloppy and under cooked. Specifically I’m talking about the clumsiness of weapon swapping and the lack of ability and weapon design to create a rewarding experince.
Weapon Design Issues
Weapons lack the right balance of crowd control and anti crowd control resulting in an all or nothing feeling to PvP. Either weapons such as IG/VG/GA(espeically pre nerf) are able to stick to players to a degree they feel helpless…or with weapons like Hatchet you feel like you couldn’t hit your enemy in a million years if they choose not to engage you because of your inability to slow/hold them or close gaps.
While some of this can in theory be solved by having weapons compliment each other there is simply not enough middle of the road Crowd control and or Anti-Crowd Control abilities in the game to create a semblance of choice.
Because of this if say for instance you are running melee right now in OPR you continuously get obliterated by VG/IG users, but those same users can get obliterated by glass cannon bow/musket users leading to a rock paper scissors helpless feel to pvp where you either obliterate someone or die to them easily…in my opinion and seemingly others this is a bad state for PvP to be in as any major shifts in meta can force you out of your desired gameplay style less you be victimized over and over again. So as an example right now if you are a melee user you are having a bad time because of the VG/IG meta currently being prevalentwhich no doubt will shift the moment VG or IG or both get adjusted leading to someone else having a bad time and not fixing the inhrent issue with PvP…the lack of more middle of the road CC and Counter CC to make all playstyles viable at all times even if they aren’t the strongest in the meta.
What do I mean by middle of the road? Slows not roots, Everyone having non damaging abilities that remove slow/stun affects, so that there is more play and counter play regardless of your class…as of current some abilities will get you out of a grav well but not a scream, some will get you out of a scream but not a grav well and it’s clumsy and awkward…just have abilities that slow your opponents and get you out of slow/stuns/roots so that the play counter play leaves players feeling like they are in control of pvp and their skill not an arbitrary rock paper scissors rolls determines their fate.
Lack of Interesting PvP Options
End game PvP options are lack luster, OPR without the ability to make a pre made and the auto team forming systems inability to balance team size, healers, etc makes OPR lopsided with the player much like the weapon design system having little control over the outcome. Wars are exclusive to companies with the money and time to shift constantly to the meta and dominate, and are a 1% of population on a given server activity.
suggestions for war
- Address lag
- Double the size of capture points (maybe triple) to make it less about spam AOE damage and stuns and more about strategy to hold areas.
- Address exploits and list exploits and warn of bans for players that abuse them
suggestions for OPR
- Reduce team sizes to 10 and allow pre made
- Add team rankings based on company or a sign up system
- Add individual rankings for solo ques
- make all this cross realms for a server cluster to support solo and team ques
- Give weekly or monthly rewards based on your rankings
suggestions for other PvP
- Arenas could be fine but with a proper OPR not necessary (we don’t have to clone wow)
- World pvp motivations need looked at, maybe better rewards? I don’t mean for just being flagged i mean for killing other players to make flagging more dangerous, I shouldn’t be able to run around on a high pop server flagged and wave to other flagged players as I farm chests because the motivation to fight is minimal.
PvE
Dungeons
Lets start with the most glaring issue outside of it being repetitive…why is the lazurus boss such a joke? Seriously if Dynasty, Laz, and Genesis are going to be the only things to do plus their mutations (a system I fear will be like mythic plus for bad reasons) can we make sure the content isn’t completely laughable. Especially when you look at earlier dungeons and feel like the effort put into them was far far far greater than the effort put into these end game dungeons (the lack of finish for end game is obvious and reminiscent of SWTOR and it’s failure).
Mutators won’t save dungeons…the whole way the system is being rolled out caters to a 1% of the population sitting around at 590 expertise with 600 gs items which is absolutely not the bulk of your players and it’s why you are seeing the absolute outrage on the forums.
How to fix and save mutators and dungeons?
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Reduce the GS increase to say 610 for the initial roll out not 625…625 will create way way way to much disparity between the rich players who play 24/7 and your bulk of players who are already feeling alienated by the steep content curve.
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Significantly reduce the cost to get into dungeons…it should not cost more than the amount of gold you can make in an hour to get into a dungeon ever…the fact a genesis or laz run on most servers runs 1.5k-2.5k (i’ve even seen 3k) locks the bulk of your players out of the content they’d love to participate in if it didn’t require them to quit their job to do it…if this content was a raid lair 3 tiers removed from the initial entry level raid lair (see something like Naxx in wow) that would be ok…but it’s not its the entry level dungeon lair at 60 it shouldn’t be locked behind so much cost in order to create arbitrary time sinks which is Anthem bad level of game design.
Gold Influence
I’m giving this it’s own header as gold has FAR to much influence on the end game for both PvP and PvE and it needs resolved. Right now if you own everfall, windsward, brightwood or in some cases all 3 you have a stranglehold on servers because of your ability to use the power of a max bank company with max bank players to instantly adapt to meta changes by rolling endless gear etc…and much like trickle down economics trickle down crafting doesn’t happen it’s a myth. A powerful company crafting doesn’t lead to almost as good of stuff getting anyone’s hands but theirs anything remotely good stays in company only garbage rolls make it to the TP. Past that their players can spam run dungeons by purchasing orbs, they’ll have full sets of mutator gear ready to go…and you best believe they’ll be hitting 625 with their PvP wings within a week of the new content in order to stretch that power gap even further. So how do you address this?
- Reduce the importance of Everfall, Windsward, etc. as a gold faucet by reducing the taxable income they can generate compared to less populated areas. To achieve this my suggestion would be to have the taxes to maintain stations and the TP be proportional to the traffic through them. The more people who trade and craft in your town the higher the tax cost to maintain becomes…the less traffic you have the less your cost…this would balance a high traffic town as far as company profits go compared to lower traffic towns. The goal would be that owning a territory and maintain tier 5 crafting would be profitable for the company owning it but not ridiculously so regardless of what territory it is. In my opinion no company should be generating more than a few hundred thousand in profits for owning a town in a week if they maintain tier 5 crafting…but they also shouldn’t lose money because they don’t have much traffic so much as not generate much income.
Current Game Development Direction
This game is leaning way to heavily into developing for the top 1% of players and that is the slippery slope WoW got into with mythic+ etc that has caused it to bleed subscribers for years. Take cues from a game like FF that caters to all playstyles where you have people who literally don’t even engage with end game dungeons because there is so much other stuff they can do.
None of that means you can’t create content for the hardcore top 1% of PvP and PvE players but you can’t do it at the exclusion of the other 99%…this in my opinion is why you are seeing very LOUD feedback about the mutators and the 625 GS increase. The system feels geared to give more content for a 1% subset of players and ignores the fact that the other 99% of players are still bored with what end game currently offers.
Systems need to be rewarding without high gold costs and arbitrary constraints that take months to achieve for a player playing 5-10 hours in a given week…the grind for your upper 1% should be things like ladders and rankings and being on top of them not being the only people to have the time to engage with the end game content.
Again a bump to 610 would of been sufficient to keep people at end game busy with something to do for a time…if it takes 625 to do the highest tier of mutators you have created an Anthem like grind that is just arbitrarily long for your 5-10 hour per week people and that’s just silly…your top tier PvE and PvP players will consume the content to max GS within a week or two regardless of how steep the treadmill is you are only punishing the other 99% of players.
Closing thoughts
Whoever is in charge of game direction needs to start rethinking how they go about things in terms of the bulk of the player base and what will keep them playing. Creating steep expensive grinds to max is only alienating the bulk of players and is absolutely going to foster and environment that has New World shrinking over time not growing in player base as people get sick of the treadmill and get off of it.
A player like myself 791 hrs played might be able to barely keep up but players with half my time are going too just quit, and I don’t blame them. Refocus on creating systems accessible to the majority with some blingy accolades for the top 1% of exceptional players (ranks for pvp, pve, cosmetics to go with that, titles etc.) and you’ll have new world in a longer term healthier state then creating content that only 1% of your population can reasonable access.