I have been a big champion of New World throughout all of the problems that have presented themselves with since launch. I have been optimistic about coming changes and the development team, telling people that they would figure it out and MMOs are always rocky at the start. There have been constant glimmers of hope that we were through the worst of it, but yesterday’s patch confirmed that we are not.
End game is currently a disaster. Pre-patch there was almost nothing to do. Tuning orbs were exceedingly difficult and time consuming to make, so expeditions and arenas were off the table. Portals were not particularly rewarding, so no one ever wanted to do them outside the ones that appeared in Myrkgard. Arenas were (and still are?) buggy, either over-tuned or with bugs that cause members of your party to crash. OPR was plagued with broken builds and bugs, which made it frustrating to play, or even impossible on some low population servers. Wars had a similar issue, but other problems on their own given that the content is more or less “exclusive” meaning the majority of players will rarely participate in a war.
The only “end game content” (and I use this loosely) was chests for HWM farming, because that was the only way to reasonable get it. You weren’t even getting good gear very often… most of the time it was junk. You did it because it was something you could band together with people and easily do. It was enough to keep a lot of people logging in.
Yesterday’s patch was supposed to make end game better because of the tuning orb changes, but it turns out it’s still awful, and stealth changes made it much worse. To your credit, you fixed expedition chests. Fine, that’s great.
Tuning orbs are too time consuming to make. Even with the lodestone reduction, tuning orbs still require a tremendous amount of materials. Stop gating this content. We need content. We want content. I will run the same content over, and over, and over. I don’t care. You need to run this content over, and over, and over anyway because there is no way to trade loot nor are yo EVER guaranteed to get what you need. MY FRIENDS AND I WANT TO PLAY YOUR GAME, PLEASE LET US.
Add another boss to Lazarus. While we’re on the topic of expeditions, the zone is insanely long. It’s longer than GoG and has considerably more trash. It only has two bosses for some reason. Please add at least another boss to this zone so it actually feels more rewarding as you progress.
Fix elite outdoor zones. The changes you made are an insult to every player that has stuck with you through the ups and downs. It shouldn’t require a zerg to go to these zones, but making it require a zerg so that they roll over them is not the answer. Figure out a better way, or leave it as it is. I would prefer to run these areas with the intended 5-man groups, but welcome to outdoor zones… people will conquer things with brawn instead of brain if it’s an option… and it is. The chest changes are the worst though. If you want to reduce the number of drops, that’s fine, but make all armor share a HWM value and weapons similarly.
I see friends that had so much hope for this game logging in less and less, myself included. I keep trying to convince people to come back and do things. Despite the healing nerfs that impacted me in this most recent patch, I took them in stride and made the best of it. Then I was presented with the only content I have available being nerfed into oblivion.
Please… people want to love your game. You’re killing it by making these changes, especially without notification.