The BIGGEST problem in New World right now, in my humble opinion, is the concurrent population on servers. That is not a game feature, it’s a management decision.
Transfer tokens completely reshape worlds. Making merges before transfer tokens is shooting yourself in the foot. And we are back to square one: dead worlds with a few very active ones.
Low population affects soooo many things negatively:
A single company can destroy the will to play for many players, less people on the server, less challenge to keep that company in line;
I cannot wait for the February update, but at the same time, I’m really tired that in 3 months, a simple problem, yes, simple, like population management is not been handled already.
I’ve lost many new game friends due to how a low population server can destroy the will to play.
Can AG please take this seriously, with actions, not words? With transparency, not corporate lingo?
As the biggest, in my opinion, game destroying aspect for the game, I do not see the actions telling me that is will be fixed anytime soon.
I think the structure of this games single server RVR has really driven a lot of the problems within this game.
The system flat out doesn’t work most of the time.
The big problem here is “Nothing in game forces a faction balance”. As a result, it’s far too easy for a single faction (or even a single company) to dominate a map. For all the people not in that faction, this currently results in a game experience that can range from slightly annoying to downright unplayable due to taxes and travel costs (both of which get addressed in the next patch, but don’t fix the core issue). Even for the dominate faction itself, competition in wars often disappears and can make for a poor play experience. The only people who tend to enjoy this situation in the long run are people who derive pleasure from others dissatisfaction.
The whole system snowballs and gets even worse if populations dwindle. Dominate factions become even more likely. Invasions start to be lost. Crafting and refining tables are downgraded and people can’t make items. The economy falls to crud….
Honestly they needed this game to be cross server RvR, but that’s probably to hard to change at this point. They need to figure out in game mechanisms to get balance between factions ……
I genuinely believe AGS have put zero, and I mean zero, thought into “Population Management.”
Dormant Player management? Dormant Players suddenly becoming undormant en masse? Max queue time allowable? Population allowable as a function of max queue time? Faction transfers? Company transfers? There is zero evidence AGS have ever asked any of these questions.
@Recksters I think there are 2 sides to Population Management
Getting into the game - Queue Management. How many hours is it acceptable to wait? This has never been addressed.
In the game - optimisation (lag, tearing etc) with large population. This also has never been addressed (based on available evidence).
I’m not sure “map size” is part of Population Management. I mean, sure a bigger map means less people in one place (assuming actual content all over the map). But map size/content is already roadmapped and not, IMHO, part of Population Management.
I never played on a 1500+ concurrent users server, so I don’t know how difficult it is to gather. I’m just expecting it’s no fun. And maybe it’s more laggy as well, but it shouldn’t be an issue for Amazon.
I believe they are trying to find the “sweet” spot in infrastructure cost and performance. But it’s Amazon, they shouldn’t worry about that in the first year or too. Get the damn thing going, then optimize.
But again, it’s how they managed the server population that is the biggest problem. They release tokens after merges. That screws up the the world once more.
If a player doesn’t like his world? That player can create another character elsewhere, like we have done in other games. You don’t want to lose your BIS stuff? Too bad so sad, BIS players are the top 1% of players. The game should focus on the 99%.
I believe they are losing A LOT more players with the way to handled merges and tokens, than they would lose if they didn’t allow transfers.
Imagine that your entire server is one faction. Companies no longer control settlements. Companies no longer set tax rates. These are fixed by the game (or driven by supply and demand in the settlement itself). The players do town boards to drive which upgrades occur and when. Invasions become inclusive server wide world events that anyone can participate in as opposed to exclusive instanced content controlled by a company. Basically anything occurring on your server proper is cooperative content.
Now add to that 4-5 cross server zones that are contested between factions. You step into these zones and you are flagged for PvP. You and two other servers (which are also other factions) fight to control those zones. The fights are not some lame instanced exclusive war controlled by 2 companies for the pleasure of 100 people, but an all the time ongoing non-instanced war that your entire server can participate in during any hour of the day.
Control of various points on the cross server map can give various buffs to your server (+5 minimum to crafting for example.) Control of all the points in the cross server map opens a special dungeon on your server. In order to keep a faction/server from being curbstomped their entire gaming life, after 1-3 months, swap the servers competing in the zones.
Something like this eliminates many of the issues in this game that I personally believe have driven many people away.
let’s fix what we have first lol. i love how PVP centric players seem to think that the survival of this game rests in the PVP. Or that AGS can devote the resources at this time to pander to them.
lol they could turn off all forms of PVP tommorow and not only would the game continue to function it would probably be better off for it.
To be clear… I (similar to the majority of people) like both PvP and PvE. I believe addressing the current PvP system makes life better for everyone. I know the PvP system is the direct reason several of my friends (who only PvE) quit the game. Not because they participated in combat, but because the taxes and travel costs on their server made it so that the crafting professions they wanted to pursue were unreasonable grinds.
I wonder how it would be if companies could migrate servers every 2 weeks as long as the destination server wasn’t dominated by their faction. This would allow them to choose a server dominated by a different faction, go there wage war then leave for another server after a period of time.
Town upgrades need to be taken out of the control of the owning company as well. Taxes should go into a town pot and the owning company should only be allowed to withdraw after the expenses and town boards are paid for.
Recksters you have a good point as I have seen this happen on two servers now - my original and the one I was transferred into. A faction (or two) dominates the map, people get discouraged (or bored) and either quit or move to another server in large groups. The remaining server population can no longer maintain stations after invasions. The greedy few have lowered the standard of living for the many.
At the same time, the server that everyone is moving to becomes overpopulated and there is a new wave of forum gripes in response. AGS tries to be accommodating with the transfer tokens but underestimated people’s impatience for immediate results.
I don’t place blame on AGS for the current outcomes but they do need to creatively address the imbalances that are occurring over time. We should be patient and allow things to evolve for the better - spring is coming for those of us in the northern hemisphere.
While I don’t place the blame, the decision on giving free transfers after merges, on developers, I do put it on the NW Director of allowing this to happen.
Free transfers should not exist. Pay 50$ to transfer, like buying the game at double the price (40$ for 2 accounts). Sure, why not, but a minority would do that.
They keep replying in other threads: “Population is not the only criteria”
It freaks me out. It should be the MAIN criteria. As in:
WARNING, WARNING, WORLD BELOW 750 CONCURRENT USERS!
Merges should be an automatic decision for worlds below 750 concurrent users. The question would be with whom. Not if. Not when.
And that is the underlying problem. AG does not have the same view on how to manage the world population as many players, and mostly, many that left due to the problems they, AG, doesn’t seem to value as much.
Don’t forget after the game launch servers were greatly overpopulated and new players were directed to newly added servers without long wait times. The transfer tokens were a way for people on different servers to regroup with friends after things settled down - so AGS was doing the right thing for people who wanted to move.
Charging $50 (or any amount) for a transfer would be met with outrage from the community.
The unfortunate consequence of unused transfer tokens is that now people are transferring to the “hot” server and may soon regret the move unless they are looking for daily wars and massive OPR turnout. For casual players lower pop servers do have advantages.
Mergers are taking place and I prefer that AGS takes their time to properly merge servers that need one and also consider faction balance which addresses your original point of faction domination on the map.
You can always regroup with your friends: create another account.
But it seems some people will use this “excuse” cuz in reality they care more about their gear and achievements than really going to play with their friends.
No transfer, create another account.
That’s the beauty of this game, we don’t have to do like in other games and create multiple accounts. One account can do it all, on a whim, so much flexibility.
But creating other accounts in a game has been around since online games exists.
Good Afternoon - First I would like to state that I am a HUGE fan of New World. I personally love the game and believe it has great potential. That being said - New World has seen a steady drop in population ever since launch. I believe an initial drop in population can be expected with any game, especially once all the hype wears off. Sadly New World’s numbers continue to fall. One could attribute the decline in population to any number of things. Excessive queue times at launch, in game bugs, quest or storyline (Lore), the grind… (I personally enjoy the grind - but I couldn’t tell you how many trees I had to chop to get to 200 & fishing…ugh), I often hear the term “walking simulator” - which I naturally assume is a reference to the lack of mounts in game. I think the dungeon mutations was a brilliant idea!!! The expedition that will be releasing soon “Tempest’s Heart” another brilliant idea!!! New weapons are always cool - If Brimstone Sands is complete it might be time to open that up…the game really needs hype again…it needs some excitement. I feel the population on my server is so low - that I just cant do anything to progress my character. I’m in a 70+ person company and every time I log on I dont see more than 5 people on. Lately I find myself logging on …scanning recruitment chat for a group, something to do - A Laz or Gen run, Elite chest run, portals, anything…but it seems so dead, nothing being spammed - so I tend to just log off and spend time playing Lost Ark.
The game needs busy servers …we need people to group with and experience content. We need better ways of making gold - I can craft my brains out …and sell items on Trading post but if my server isn’t active who’s going to buy? We need mounts in the game - it’s great what you did with Azoth and reducing travel expense - but we still need mounts. Questline and voice over needs a lot of work, 10 man raiding would be really nice!!! Bottom line - we need active people in order to progress - I pretty much feel static at this point - unable to run content due to lack of players, unable to earn gold due to low population (Thank God property taxes were lowered …I would be in foreclosure if they hadn’t) - why not just eliminate property tax all together? Unable to progress my character. Maybe work in more solo content that will allow you to progress the same. Grouping with friends is what its all about - but with population dropping off - either create more solo content to progress to Endgame, merge servers again, or find a way to bring back the hype and entice new players!!! Sorry to ramble on …but it’s just what I notice as of late and I fear it will continue unless some changes are made. Now I’m off to play Lost Ark …but I am truly hoping NEW LIFE is breathed into New World!!!
based on the forms in LA its starting to suffer the same as well, lost half its playerbase (Normal) but after the last patch lost 200k players and every one is pissed about Honing.
Hopefully doesn’t see the same decline but you are right a healthy server is key to New World, since transferring from a low pop 200 players to 1100-1500 pop server the game feels great again.
What server are you on? Wish we could see server population (#'s). Well - the good think about LA - alot of the content can be solo’d …but I suspect even that will hit a barrier at some point where you will need to group. AGS just needs to let people freely move/transfer - I can see how this could create problems but just set hard caps on server limit.