Dear AGS and fellow NW gamers,
Having spent the entire last year dedicating my free time to playing this game and experiencing all aspects that the game has to offer. I would like to share some of this experience and offer my constructive feedback. My goal of this post is to help provide ideas that will improve the gameplay and increase the fun overall for the entire player base when it comes to all facets of the territory control system.
Let’s start with where we are currently at. Briefly just a very quick overview of the current system and why it is still flawed and doesn’t satisfy the overall needs of the player base at large.
#1. Influence Push. In order to access the war content of the game you need to be a part of a large enough company that actively participates in pushing influence for wars and has a large enough membership to field at least 25 to 40 players. this immediately segregates the player base into players who have the necessary social acumen to be a part of a larger group and those who prefer to just play solo or with a smaller group of friends.
#2. The War declaration. So you have a large enough company to push enough influence to be able to declare war, congratulations! Now you have to randomly roll against all the other companies in your faction that also pushed 10% influence just to maybe have a chance to participate in a 30 minute piece of content. Wow so exciting this makes me want to go out and waste 3 more hours of my time to push another territory into conflict. roll eyes
Everyone hates this system as it is boring to push influence and the payoff for everyone who doesn’t win the random roll for the war is nothing… Okay now imagine a system that actually is rewarding and engaging for everyone involved in your faction no matter what level your company is at or how many players are in your friend group. A system that whenever you log on there is something that actively engages you and you can feel like you contributed your part to the war effort. However small or large that may be.
What I’m talking about is a major shift in how we categorize territory control. Switching the system from a selfish narrow vision system that pits Company Vs Company for a piece of 30 minute content to a Faction Vs Faction type system that engages everyone no matter who you are. I’m talking about a War Campaign style system that has influence pushing and instanced war PVP matches all wrapped together. Here’s how it would break down.
War Campaigns would last for 3 days maximum, but could run shorter if a faction meets the total point threshold required to win the campaign in said territory. Whatever that point threshold may be, but it would be really high. You would earn points for multiple PVP activities all at once while that territory is in a conflict state. There would be multiple groupings of territories that go into conflict every 6 days all together. Since there is 12 territories total that can be owned currently there would be a rotation of 3 groups of territories with 4 territories each on those groups that would be in conflict all at once together. In each group there would be at least 1 tier 1 income earning territory and a combinations of at least 1 of all the lower tier territories in the groupings. This way there would always be at least 1 top tier territory up for grabs and in conflict.
For example:
Group 1 would be Brimstone (Tier 1); Ebonscale (Tier 2); Monarchs Bluff (Tier 2); & Cutlass Keys (Tier 4).
Group 2 would be Windsward (Tier 1); Reekwater (Tier 3); First Light (Tier 4) & Restless Shore (Tier 4)
Group 3 would be Everfall (Tier 1); Brightwood (Tier 2); Weavers Fen (Tier 4) & Mourningdale (Tier 4)
These three groupings would rotate with each group being put into conflict for war campaign automatically every 3 days. This would make it so that after you win a territory for your faction your faction gets 6 days owning that territory. All proceeds that are earned during that time from that territory are distributed among everyone in the faction.
How do you win a war campaign? By participating in multiple wars going on at once during the campaign window of course! There is no longer just one war for 30 mins to determine who owns a territory but a war going on every hour on the hour or until the queue fills up with the necessary amount of people for the war to start.
Of course you may say what about slotting for the war who is going to be in charge of that. Well that’s a good question that isn’t fully worked out yet, but one suggestion is to just have a base set of rolls for each war group that at minimum needs to be fulfilled before a war instance can start. If there is not enough healers then you need to put the call out to the faction for healers to fill all the healer roles. Not enough of any type of roll you need to get more people to sign up. But at least this way people who are war junkies can get in as many wars as they like and have their 5 man or 10 man or whatever group sign up together as a group and can war all night if they like.
Each battle that is won will earn your faction a set amount of points. With the attacking side and defender side always switching each hour. The points earned in these battles will be the biggest contributor to deciding which faction wins the overall war campaign.
How else do you earn points? Well to encourage open world PVP during war campaigns there will be key faction control points spread out in different areas of each territory. Holding down these control points adds a set multiplier for how many points you earn in the mini war battles. The more control points you hold the higher the multiplier that is applied in the war for your faction. So you can increase the overall amount of points earned and try to end the campaign sooner before the 3 days are up. If your faction does win the war campaign before 3 days are up then your faction will earn a bonus day of income to split among the faction as well as bonuses for top performers in wars that are top 10 in different stat categories.
Other minor ways you earn points for your faction in open world PVP during war campaigns. Kills in open world, hitting certain thresholds for gathering resources while flagged, example mining 10k ore, wood, fibers or skins. These would all be totaled up and given a point value to add to your overall factions war influence during the campaign.
Overall I think putting Faction vs Faction for territory control would help bring more players together to work together towards a common goal and would stop a lot of the company vs company toxicity you see in Global Chat, even amongst companies that are in the same faction. Imagine logging in each day knowing that any aspect of the PVP game is open to you whenever you decide to play. Not having to wait for a specific time window to play in a war, which only lasts 30 mins and after its over win or lose is really not that satisfying at all because it is so short and you know that in order to do it again you either have to be lucky enough to be in a large company that regularly holds down a territory to defend it or you have to be in a company large enough to push a territory into conflict in a reasonable amount of time. If the system I described above was implemented you would see player engagement #'s go up immediately and it would satisfy the itch of every type of PVP player there is that plays this game. People would be excited to login and see where their faction was at in the war campaign and be communicating directly with each other across all companies within that faction towards the total war effort. I think this would foster a much better community amongst all the players in New World and this system would also scale up or down really well based on larger or smaller server bases. It wouldn’t need to have a minimum or maximum amount of players to make it work.
Anyways if you made it this far please give yourself a pat on the back for reading all my long winded explanation of a better war system that this game could have and we all deserve. Please hit the little heart button and thank you for coming to my New World Ted Talk. 