Whoever is responsible for your system design / balancing… it is horrible. Stop balancing around PvP or PvE only it is a horrible choice.
While you guys decide to nerf weapons for PvP only reasons you are also impacting PvE. The best example is the Musket. Musket has 0 entry in Speed Runs or Dungeons at all. It is the lowest DPS weapon by far. You need to double the DPS to make it maybe a choice for certain dungeon scenarios but it will never happen due to PvP. The 10% Bane won’t make a difference either. Same goes for the Bow when you decided to give Bow some love for PvE but it impacted PvP so bad that you already started nerfing it again and even with the buffs, the Bow had also 0 entry and now it is out of question again. Even with the recent Firestaff buffs on PTR it won’t have an entry as main DPS weapon either. It is a possible choice maybe for a Bleed Rapier but thats about it. You clearly need to rethink your current system because your balancing is all over the place. Your range and mage weapons serve 0 purpose they don’t add any utility like Weaken, Rend or even CC and they are not dealing enough DPS to be considered a main DPS weapon, while all your cleave 2 hands bring so much more to the table.
- Great Axe has CC + Weaken + Clump control
- Spear has Rend, Weaken, self Fortify
- Hammer has tons of CC, Rend, Weaken and self Fortify
Firestaff has… well… nothing… except a lot of self Empower… and it is dealing not enough DPS either…
Ice Gauntlet? A possible 2. weapon for Rapier with Ice Shower and Pylon… but thats about it.
Blunderbuss now sits at a viable spot to be a main DPS weapon in PvE and now you are nerfing it again to kick right back into the backline.
Greatsword was a great addition for Dungeons. It was high risk high reward due to its damage output and that you get 15% more damage and long animation lock but with the current Fortify changes, mixing even more enemy types together in the new dungeon and increasing the animation lock you are making it almost impossible to consistently DPS.
These DPS tests were done before we were able to craft with golden scarabs and we only went with Vicious and stats on the weapon.
Now with the new Dummies on PTR we were finally able to determine DPS outputs with a huge amount of work since you guys refuse to give us combat logs or implement a DPS meter because casual players feel personally insulted if they would have to deal with it. Well it is mostly used to analyse DPS / DtPS / HPS and rotations / combos / prio lists to optimise Raids and Dungeons, but if people feel personally attacked by this tool then they know they are not good enough and they play bad. This tool would just show it and thats what they are afraid of. Because why should people put in work to get better at something right? It is just too comfortable to do nothing… Here are the DPS numbers we have calculated to tons of hours of character creations and parsing on your dummies. Tell me AGS how you want to balance this in the future? Well I have a solution… Seperate Damage to PvP and PvE only.
Here is an example for the Musket:
- Player enters a crouching aim stance to enhance shooting performance. While in this stance, shots deal 100% weapon damage to players / 220% weapon damage to enemies, mobility is reduced to zero and reload time is reduced by 75%.*
Just seperate the damage so you can balance around PvE and PvP. You are adding competitive elemtens to this game but you keep messing up fundamental things that make it so unenjoyable to deal with. You can’t fairly balance both modes and put everything in 1 pot. You cannot expect that if you nerf something that is too strong in PvP that it will be fine in PvE. Ask some players who still run pugs. Ask them how many Bow / Mages / Musket players get denied to enter the lobby in M10? Yeah because they deal no damage or bring any useful utility to the table… not even as 2. weapons. Even Spear / Bow players get kicked out because they are not playing Spear / Great Axe.
Speaking of the numbers of enemy types in a dungeon and Ward gear. How much gear should we even bring now to clear dungeons? I mean since you released B&B you guys mixed so many enemy and damage types together that we have to bring so much gear that we could equip an entire war roster for a raid. The new dungeons contains Human, Lost, Beast and even Angry Earth, which is changed to Human now + these mobs deal Fire, Ice and even Lightning damage which basically 1 shots you and they do AoE attacks btw. And due to your current crafting system and the amount of gear people have to bring you are making it so much more inaccessable to play your content. Instead of going the road to make gear way more accessible but the content super challenging so people could swap loadouts way better. Now people farm forever for BIS pieces and spend millions of gold to get their gear ready and you just throw it all over board by balancing changes so people have to start the gearing process again. Your gearing progression system is bad… and the majority even says it. You made the game without classes and you can just swap weapons to play a different role but you make it soo hard to get good gear that people kind of give up on it already. A game should be fun and feel rewarding and not like a 2. full time job which disappoints you by bad rng or developer decisions.
This is not about a rant or letting air out. I really enjoy New World and the core of this game is really good, but you guys are missing out on the formula to host a succesful MMO and even if the current numbers are acceptable to you guys. Imagine how much more you will get if you have a happy playerbase and more people would play your game which also results into more purchases. Speaking of the business part of your game.