I have just over 1000 hours in New World. I have played since launch day and currently still play. I want to focus on the PvE side of things for this post.
The PvE in OPR feels weak. What I mean by that is, for the time I spend getting resources to make a forward spawn point/upgrade gates/build and upgrade camps to help my team, it doesn’t really seem to make much of a difference for the time investment. I am going to break this down below by available upgrades and my thoughts on each one.
Gates
The gates are far too easy to destroy. 1 player can destroy a T1 gate in 10 seconds, T2 in about 20, and T3 in about 30. To get a gate to T3 for example, it takes at least 5 minutes of solo gathering both wood and metal because of how the resources are spread out and the mobs that are placed(I have very good tools for gathering). Put simply, it isn’t even worth the time investment to collect resources for upgrading gates by doing some simple math. Most players know this already.
Since the prevailing strategy that I see on my server is to Zerg the gates, this makes them virtually useless unless you want to blow everything you have in your bag to repair the gate while its being attacked. If you do this, you are only buying another 20-30 seconds until its down.
My suggestion would be to either raise the defense or hp of each gate tier by at least 2x and increase the resources needed by 50% or add additional tiers of gate upgrades like a T4 and T5 that requires increasing amounts of all 3 resources to upgrade to.
Being able to repair the gates while they are being attacked makes very little sense to me. There should be a cooldown on repairs to a gate after being attacked or a requirement to repair it from the outside. The current repair mechanic feels bad to me from both sides, attacker and defender.
Camps
The camps are probably the only thing worth upgrading for the team damage reduction at face value. With that said, because of the gates being so weak, the outpost can be easily broken into by a small group of 3 or 4 and the tent destroyed within 2 or 3 minutes. The camps as they are now are fine in my opinion, there just needs to be better defense options.
Summons
The Bear summon is decent, and currently the only summon worth placing for the time investment. I often find myself purchasing the bear because there are no other good options.
The ghost is far too weak to even be worth taking the 1 minute it takes to acquire it and summon it. I rarely ever use these because the bear is just far better and just as easy to obtain. I could see the ghost as an offensive summon at contested outposts if it hit harder and had more hp.
The demon takes about 8-12 minutes to acquire enough azoth and to go to the location to summon it. While being a strong attacker/defender, it takes so much time to acquire it that focusing getting two demons for your home base takes you about the entire length of the match by yourself. I think the demon should only be able to be purchased from your home outpost. Having to run out and spend 3-4 minutes alone just to get the summon and bring it back is far too much time. The other option would be to just remove it completely since I rarely ever see players summoning it.
There is so much room to play with here. An option to add archer npc defenders on the outpost walls and melee defenders on the inside of the outpost would be awesome. It would make it feel like more of an outpost and less of a control point with weak doors.
Summon options for npc attackers to send forward towards the next outpost would be awesome as well. It could add a whole different dynamic to the game than the “run here and fight tirelessly over this point” pvp that goes on now. Doing something along these lines would allow pve players to help the pvp players. Push strategies could emerge involving both the pvp players pushing the points and the pve people supporting them with summons.
Turrets
While turrets do decent damage, they are really not worth using. You can get about 10-20 seconds of firing in before a musket or bow player knocks you off of them and destroys them. They should really just be removed from the game mode or changed since they do not offer much as they are now.
Siege Turrets
With the current state of OPR, these just aren’t used and really don’t have a purpose. Perhaps if the gates themselves were stronger, they would actually have a purpose. These should be removed or kept depending on how gates/summons are changed.
Door Lava Vats
These are just about as useless as Siege Turrets. I have never seen them used, and no player is realistically going to stand under a giant vat of lava that they know will damage them. Similar to the Siege Turrets, if the doors were stronger, they may have a use. As the game mode stands now, these have no application in the game mode.
Conclusion
It feels like the pve side of OPR is balanced around the damage that players could deal and take at the 600gs mark. With the way that the game has progressed over the past year, the PvE just seems outdated and weak respectively. If some changes like the ones I suggested above were implemented, I could see myself queuing for opr with a group of friends playing the support role to my team and having tons of fun for months on end. Realistically there would need to be balancing done so that the PvE side of OPR does not overpower players but does add a layer of defense to break through.