New world at its’ launch came out as a very generic, and very basic game that seems to have been meant to have anything and everything a person could want in a game. It is past a month now from launch, a month and a half in total has passed. Steam states this game has lost roughly 40% of its’ players since launch, and seems to be losing more and more as time goes on. My guild has been discussing the game, but there is little positivity in it and nearly all are gone as of the time I am writing this (being out of 70 players, we are down to 2 and one person that might come back on after his break from nw).
This all comes to the state of the game at its current time of all the issues that have been presented while playing. Each issue will be stated here.
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They have attempted to make this game a ‘politically correct’ game in the manners that they could. Those that have been unnaffected have not seen the adverse affects of this, but our guild and some others we knew outside of it were. There is a streamer called ‘cripple’, and had his character name the same. In life I am a cripple. Did his name offend or bother me, or others in my guild that are and are not cripples no. However he had to have his name changed because his name could potentially offend cripples.
Herein lay the problem with this. The reason I am a cripple is I was once a soldier. My body took too much damage, and now I have one leg I can use to walk with and need a cane to support myself, or use a wheelchair. I also have back issues. This being said without giving details, I am not proud of everything I had to do as a soldier. However, as a case in point dealing with opening schools in afghanistan and for the first time in decades girls being able to go into schools, that means every scar I have and every single injury I suffered, and the damage done to my body is a badge of pride to me. Most everyone that has become cripples, especially sodiers, have done so because they manned up, and paid the prices to make sure the right things were done. This does not go to all of them, but this actually goes for the majority. The developers in this are demeaning and devalueing my life because it could possibly be offensive.
New world is not running for president. The developers are not. They are not running for mayor, nor is this game. To sit here and take a piece of something that is supposed to be meant as entertainment, something that helps people take a break from real life, and decide to throw in political bull**** and use that as an excuse to actively demean and insult people is not how a game developer should behave, though this goes for anyone. That one was personal to me as a cripple, but our guild also has had its’ name changed from something we earned in a game (ebola, we were called that because we went to a game, and spread like a virus killing people). That name stuck with us and used it ever since. Until this game forced us to change our name. These two facets more than any other caused most of our guild to leave, and is why I have it as the number 1 situation. -
It is far too basic. Much of this deals with the fun people have in playing mmo’s. I will say for me personally something I have fun with is the theorycrafting and building of a character, and then making it happen with lvling up and gameplay and fighting. Many games excel at this and I will give an example. The first example is one of a very successful game, called path of exile. While not typically seen as an mmo because each player has their own game with only interaction when wanted to a limited amount of people, it is still a game that has much… much more players than most games currently in existance (steam cannot fill in details of an actual count of players, given that most of the players do not connect through steam). As a person that still plays it time to time and has played it heavily in the past, I will say that the grind in that game is real. The game is repetative as @#$ and kinda sucks in that regards doing it over and over again, mapping even moreso. However of any game it has the best theorycrafting of any I have ever seen. Before you make your character you can plan it out for days, gems, gear, weapon, make modifications, class etc, on paper before bringing your new nightmare to life and trying to get it to work, and then pushing it to limits. Even without classes, everything they have would still be impressive as to theorycrafting, and this is what they do best, better than any other game I can think of out there.
Comparing this to new world - in new world you have a character. That is it. Nothing else. Weapons mean little because you get so littlle from them, and people will either use a weapon such as life staff for the utility, or traditionally what is overpowered (greataxe, hammer combo) because they have to use it to compete with the others using this combo. most people feel when playing this game, they have to play to these situations, and not make a character based on other armors / weapons because there is no use using them (especially light armor in pvp, where you are garaunteed to take more damage from a tank than you can possibly deal to them). That being said, in most aspects a game can be, this game is so basic that many people who look for fun in a game and what they can do for their characters, they come here and play this and find out there is nothing here. Comparatively, even the theorycrafting and different ways, because of different gear options, that is available in a moba like smite, leaves even a moba as a more advanced game than new world. That is an example of how basic this game is at this current time (post launch).
It should be said, as that affects everything in the game to pvp in both small extent, and a huge extent, as far as the playabilty of the game. Open world pvp is effected only in a small scale. Open world pvp is pvp meant for either the young whom are just starting pvp for the first time or is all they can really compete in, or those that do not have time / the drive or ability to compete in competative pvp. Case in example one of my guildmates (now no longer playing) would have his two little girls be able to play as treats and rewards for good behavior. Their favorite thing to do was to find a city with pvp outside of it and attack them. Did they die alot of course, did they kill alot also on some days they definately killed more than they died. P.S. dont teach a 7 year old how to chain chug your top end honing stones. Dear god I thought she would remember to use some maybe. I didnt expect her to use an entire stack of 100. Anyway. In open world pvp even a 5 year old can mash buttons and kill people, and feel really good about themselves. Other times even I will take a break just to gank some fools because it clears out aggrivation of the game. But this is only the basic foundation of pvp - throw bodies at each other and something will happen. Noone matters other than there be bodies. So basic or advanced theorycrafting, game, no amount of skill matters because there is so much damage all the time from so many people that nothing can actually live or have counter play from tactics as you can find in small scale competative pvp. That is why this is affected less.
Competative pvp however is another situation. On new world there is little variation and variety in the game. a 5v5 here against five different people than last time, are almost 100% garaunteed to be the exact same as the last match, and the match before due to same armor (heavy is mandatory), and same weapons because two are the best hands down, aside use of a life staff to mitigate / outheal the entire enemy team.
With exception of open world pvp, or extremely basic level of pvp, this number two position of a basic game and gameplay leaves every aspect of this game feeling majorly unfinished / lacking.
It is also responsible for most non guildies of mine leaving the game, i.e. there is no substance to this game.
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General annoyances - not everything in a game will be fun and some things will always be annoying to players. This is something that goes to all games. Something we can all agree on, is people have wants when it comes to the time they spend on a game. Travel for example is a huge topic when it comes to new world, they do not want to spend their hour of playing time, running from city to city constantly. A game will lose players that don’t want to deal with some annoyances. Not always a bad thing it is a matter of course for all games. However new world has an exceptionally large number of annoyances compared to every other game I can honestly think of.
Want to go fishing? Well then how about every time you catch a fish, we will turn your monitor in circles for you. Thats what you get for fishing haha! Sure you can cancel the animation each and every time you catch a fish, but dangit you are still going to have to reset your screen each time to cast again. That will teach you to go fishing in this game.
You want to bring 1k weight of items to another city to sell there? That will be 500 azoth, half of your ability to travel / craft etc. Thank you, now it will take hours of portal farming, or mindlessly gathering herbs or hemp to gather azoth at the fastest rate just for you to regain what you lost. That will teach you not to spend 20 minutes travelling across the map.
You want better luck trophies? Any trophies? Well then let’s do this. After you buy / get together a magic find set of luck, bags, minor trophies and start your trophy gathering adventures, we will make sure you can only get elite chests once per day in each elite area, you need help in those elite areas, and non elite areas you have even less of a chance not only to get items, we will limit what can drop these items to an insignificant amount of chests per hour you have a chance to get from. On average with this much luck at a start, even on weapon you might… might get 1 trophy item per 10 rl hours. That will teach you to want things like upgraded trophies.
The list of annoyances goes on and on that it isnt so much that you have to grind, it comes anymore expected in games, but it is that that you have to have an investment just to grind and then still have that investment and grind come out to be nearly worthless. This affects all aspects of pve in this game to basic harvesting.
I am reminded of a conversation I had with a complete idiot once. He said to me he wanted it to take me time and prove a challenge of dedication for me to get what I am after, so that I can appreciate and be proud of my accomplishment. This was in crafting my god tier weapon for the build I wanted (after a month i left the game). A person feels pride and accomplishment, and values based on themselves and their own wants / goals. For my guildmates and myself this is always based on competative pvp, and how far I have brought my character. Other people cannot and do not dictate what I do and do not appreciate, and to hear something like that out of a grown person’s mouth was so devastatingly stupid I could only just stop speaking to them and leave.
It really seems as if the developers wanted to make a game based on what they wanted players to value to have some chance of reward, rather than have a fun, rewarding game worth playing. This is the reason there is so many complaints on the forums and constant complaining (and whining yes it is true but the words are synonymous)… nearly every aspect of this game is freakin annoying.
Yay you caught a fish now I will spin your screen around in circles… every single time!! sigh. -
The customer service - typically this is a non factor in many games because… take gamigo for example. Anything they deal in is going to be heavily influenced on making money only. You try to speak to any developer anywhere in a gamigo game, and you know you may as well not even try. You submit a ticket and everything is automated with nothing happening in any instance. Expect horrors. Most games are like this… as a player I am used to if a problem arises and I need to speak to someone, or I found something potentially game breaking, I know nothing will happen from it. Take crowfall - they have something game breaking and months later they may decide to fix it, if enough people constantly get on their ass about it (or in most cases of theirs, try and fail with game breaking issues extending from years before launch, to after launch) with some of the worst customer service you will ever see.
However, new world came with expectations of better. As a player, I expected not only better in this situation, but in the game overall. This is because it came out of amazon studios. The company of amazon is known as a high quality company, with exceptional customer service and service in general. Not to mention the owner is a very proactive not just community wise, but a proactive person in the world. Very well respected person, and a very well respected company.
The developers of this game have treated the customer service like I would a toilet, and that is monsterously bad. The game is not of any quality but is a base game that looks and plays like it is only starting to be developed after putting a graphics engine together which is not something also to expect from amazon. This game… just because it was made from a company like amazon, is why it had an extreme start of nearly a million players. However by game design, and treatment by the development team the toilet has been flushed, and there has been nothing but a huge downward spiral with its playerbase, that is one of the worst in the history of games on steam. Not as owner, or even a worker of amazon… but as a person that has dealt with amazon on a few different and unique situations, I am honestly ashamed at amazon studios and its’ performance for not for only not meeting the standards of the company, but comming nowhere close. Never should this amount of wrongful bans occur especially in a game, never should these situations presented even on the forums go in the manner that they have. What you have left on the game is fans of amazon and people willing to try the game out. Even these are leaving in droves.
The only positive thing I can say of new world, is when it comes to these forums they are spot on. The forum moderators are doing an exceptional job and to them I say well done. That is the only thing I can honestly say well done to.
So to that end, the present state of new world is as a game that is in a barely playable state with little flesh and substance to make any impact in any category among our guilds’ ratings, and though I cannot speak of the gaming community as a whole, I would go as far as saying still among the gaming community.
It is not the worst game out there, and had a far better start (though because of amazons’ reputation) than crowfall had, at its’ current situation it is not a game that at present is worth playing on.
To the future of the game, it would take at least another year maybe two in development to have a game that is a high quality game in and of itself, something hard to do with the massive amount of bugs that it currently has and most focus on, as well as all the banned cheaters it lets back into the game needing rebanned for yet more cheating. There is far too much work needing to be done with the game to have a future while remaining live.
Amazon has fired development teams before, including the last team that worked on new world. Our guild has been speculating this is what will happen again, and that new world will be taken down.
Our hopes will be that the code at least is kept and used as the base of a game with development being made before being released once more, and this being giving amazon, the company, a second chance it more than deserves for how good of a company it is.
However there is also a bad history with amazon studios even getting games to launch, which makes us worry that amazon may scrap this entire section of their company.
The question to the community would be, where do you think new world will go to from here? if we had a chance to speak to the ones in charge of this development team, what should be said? What even would we request? With crowfall the general consensus of almost 10k of us (in people) was to let it finish dying on that game as it was unrecoverable… new world is not in the same situation though it needs ALOT of work. If we had a chance, what could we present the owner / higher ups of amazon?