The problem with Expeditions is that there are only 5 of them and only 2 of them are relevant once you hit level 60. So all that was needed for this mutations was to add a “hardmode” version of the expeditions which did the following:
Amrine, Starstone, Depths and Dynasty - Scale all the mobs up to the same level as the normal versions of Laz and Genesis. And at the same time improve the gear drops to the same level as well.
Laz. and Genesis - Scale the mobs up a step level above the current levels, more or less requiring close GS 600 to be able to finish them. Increase the gear drops with higher chance to drop legendary items and expertise bumps.
Then reduce the cost of orbs significantly as well as remove the time gates, except for Laz and Genesis mutation orbs. This would include reducing the cost of arena orbs, to make them worthwhile.
This way all the Expeditions would be made relevant again, post level 60, and not create another gap between hardcore and casual players as well as reduce the boring grind for orbs.
Sure, but one trip to the auction system and you can, or rather could before the expertise patch, get 580 GS gear, which is enough to finish Laz and Genesis, at their current levels.
Problem is that all the other expeditions are irrelevant since they dont drop any level 60 gear. This is what mutations should have addressed but instead they just did that for one single additional Expedition and left the others, Amrine, Starstone and Depths, continue to be dead content.
It’s obvious you put alot of thought into this, which I appreciate!
There is always the struggle to trying to balance things. Especially with a game where we’re trying to balance the love between all different types of playstyles.
Could we maybe also look at this from a different point too? With there already being complaints with things getting harder, it seems to be that you’d like this to be harder too? How would you have the community be okay with it?
if i could of gotten a dedicated group to run hard core Armine to boost hwm to 525, then ran starstone to 550, then depths to 575, followed by dynasty to 600, then get shards in laz gen would of been perfect
that sort of progression makes a ton of sense.
lays out a ground work for people that need to catch up too.
it would still take time but the path would of been fairly straight forward.
Well, in pretty much any RPG, ranging from UO to Diablo to WoW, the rewards you get are proportionate to the difficulty of the challenge. So just raising difficulty without also raising the rewards would be a bad idea but that is not what you are doing.
You are making the content harder but also giving better rewards, by upping the GS to 625 and I dont see why majority of people would have an issue with that. Specially since most of us, who are doing expeditions now, have done Laz and Genesis so many times, that they are becoming easier and almost like routine and it will eventually just get boring.
So greater difficulty will keep things more interesting as well as increasing the rewards. All win in my book but what I think a lot of people are complaining about is that raising the GS cap will increase the gap between the hardcore an casual players but that is the case for every MMORPG that I have played and I dont think that is ever going to change. That is just the nature of how these games work, in contrast to games like MOBAs and CS where it is all about your player skills. But those are not RPGs, New World is and in RPGs, developing your characters gears and skills is a core aspect of the game.
Also, if we see New World as a competitive, game then you need to increase your skills to stay competitive. Having the game be in easy-mode will not make it competitive and I don’t believe that would be any fun.
That being said, I consider myself a casual player and started playing a couple of weeks after launch and I have now an average of around 575 Expertise of my equipped gear. So this is not like Lineage 2 where it takes a year to reach the cap, so I think the current pace is fine.
