New world was presented as a PVP game rather than a PVE game. After the testing period, the plan changed and it went to a PVP plus PVE game, with all the classic features you would expect from MMORPG including dungeon Quest Random Encounters and loads of farming. At the same time it also did not have any of the features you would expect to find in the class again memo RPG.
Some of those features included:
- The ability to open your inventory while you are moving
- Change skills while you are not in combat
- Arrange your inventory in a way you like
- Share quest with party members
- A company / Guild Vault or Bank
- Tooltips to inform you what your stats mean
- Tooltips that inform you whether you know or you don’t know where recipe,
and many many other things that a lot of people will take for granted in an MMORPG in 2022
However, with the decline of population from 1 million to 12 thousand players, a little bit of panic has struck the dev team, or the management team, I am not sure which one over the two. The identity of New World is changing and is changing rapidly, in my opinion. I also feel that the changes are happening under the false pretense of we are listening to our community, when in reality I believe they are happening in order to maintain the population of the players and try and put a plug to the leaking of players that are going to other games.
The original planning of the game had a lot of open world PVP, instance PVP and of course a lot of politics when it came to controlling the territories which would give you a lot of benefits, once controlled. This was the main idea and the identity of New World, making it a little bit different from all the other MMORPGs we have played recently.
Some of the benefits for controlling a territory included:
- Reduction in traveling costs
- XP bonuses
- Housing tax reduction
- Move items from your storage in one territory to another you controlled
These are some of the basic benefits when you were controlling a territory. These features made New World different and the politics to matter. In the latest updates and in the upcoming March update all these and more are changing, altering the identity of the New World that was launched on 28th of September 2021.
These changes are presented as changes that the community has been asking for a long time, which they were, but they’re not part of the original planning, making you think that the company itself did not have a well thought plan and they just make it up as they go along.
Let’s see some of the changes in more detail in order to understand how the plan has failed and we’re looking for a new plan, according to what the players want. I think this is a good moment for me to point out that it is good for a company to listen to its player base and make changes in the game while maintaining the original planning and staying true to the idea with the game THEY wanted to design and the reason for this, is that a lot of people ask for things but most of the times people just don’t know what they want and of course we can never please everybody.
Changes that will affect open world PVP negatively and the control of territories.
The reduction in Azoth costs
Azoth is always being a bit of a problem in this game. Azoth is a versatile item in the game with many uses. In order to maintain a high stock of Azoth, so that you could travel or craft, you had to participate in PvP, farm dungeons, mobs and many more activities in the game.
Now all these are changing with a base cost for traveling been reduced to 20 Azoth, no adjustments for distance or weight and with the reduction in cooldown times for housing followed by the resetting fast travel cooldown on houses from 50 Azoth to 20 Azoth, it feels like now you have to participate in less activities in the game than before or for less time since you will not need so much Azoth.
Some may say that this is a good thing because you have to grind less, but at the same time someone can argue that now you have no reason to do anything in the game until you need to get some Azoth provided, that the trading post does not have any at a very cheep price, which will be cheap, now that most players will have an abundance of Azoth bottles accumulating over time. With this change controlling a territory to reduce the traveling course is no longer one of the primary goals, making the control of the territory less desirable for this feature.
The reduction in housing Taxes
In addition to these changes, a further reduction in housing taxes which always has been a problem for players to pay taxes, of course no one likes to pay taxes in games or in real life, they are making the control of a territory even more useless. Having a house in a territory your faction controlled- and especially your company control- was giving you a reduction in those taxes making you want to fight and acquire the territories and hold them as long as you possibly could, promoting PVP at any given day. If the taxes are kept low then there’s no point for you to keep the territory under your control if you don’t have to pay a lot of money. The only actual reason to hold the territory right now would be to own one of the two main hubs in order for your company to make money without caring for any off the other benefits.
50% Return when abandoning a house
In the upcoming updates when you abandon your house, you will receive back 50% of the amount of money you paid to buy it. We always wanted and said that we pay money to buy a house when we sell it, we should get something back. This is a change a lot of people wanted but at the same time it also creates another problem in the game, changing a lot of the politics. In order to receive a crafting buff you need to own a house in the specific territory. This does not mean that you have to own an expensive house just A house. So a player of max level buying a house with 5000 gold he can sell it and take back 2500 gold (50% return) paying only 2500 extra for the next house. The player can easily move a house from one territory to the other without making it a necessity to own a territory for discounts or buffs. Again owning a territory has become less important.
OPR Changes or lack off…
Outpost Rush used to have a PVE component into them. They still do, but no one is really participating in the PVE aspect of this game mode. Most people will join an outpost Rush to kill other people while ignoring the farming for brutes, killing the baron, making turrets, guns, building doors or upgrading the Outposts themselves.
These mechanisms give variety and interest in this type of gaming mode. At the same time most of the PVP Community want all these PVE mechanisms to be removed completely. This would make the PVE players not want to join this Outpost Rush gaming mode therefore reducing the population and in result reducing the amount of outpost Rush scenarios popping as often as people would want.
Additionally having one map for six months also doesn’t help people to go in and play this mode, as you can understand, you get bored of playing the same map for six months with no announcement of something else coming out anytime soon.
PVE Crisis / Professions
Time to move on to PVE changes which are also affecting the identity of New World. PVE in MMORPG’s it is something that you doing in a daily basis because you love it or when you don’t have a lot of friends online, a lot of guildmates online, to pass the time until your friends login. MMORPGs are by many considered to be a marathon rather than a sprint which means you need to have things to do for a long period of time. Taking a lot of time to complete tasks, achievements, professions in an MMORPG also shows that you have achieved something and gives you a sense of completion.
New world had that aspect from the beginning where you had to level up your gathering professions, your refining professions, your crafting professions and you had a lot of things to do in the crafting / gathering area of the game. All these professions took a lot of time to complete to maximum level and then start making good use of them in order to make money in the game. Now in several of those professions the experience required to level them up is being reduced therefore making it a lot easier and a lot faster to level up and complete them.
The point here regarding the identity of your world is that new world had a lot of professions which required a lot of time to level up like you used to do in old-style MMORPGs and now it’s been changed to the point that it resembles every other modern MMORPG which is based on let’s level up fast and then move on maybe to the next game.
Furthermore having a profession specifically a crafting profession it seems to be counterproductive in this game. It is counterproductive because RNG in crafting a so high that you only have a 6% chance of crafting a legendary item and 1% chance of crafting an item that will have all perks perfect making a best in slot item. This also requires a massive amount of time and a massive amount of resources in the game just to keep crafting and crafting until you get that perfect item.
You may be wondering how does that creates a new identity for New World? Well the reason is that these features we just mentioned above make crafting really undesirable to people and they don’t like to craft because of this aspect, however, you could also say that this is how the game was from the beginning, which is very true.
Nevertheless with the recent updates more items are dropped from the mobs which have better stats from the crafted ones and especially named items which have combinations of perks you cannot craft not to mention it’s a lot easier to acquire and require less time and resources. Talking about resources, also in every patch seems like they are reducing the requirements for crafting specific items which are required for some PVE activity such as dungeon orbs making the value go down making you wonder why would I need to have a profession and spend all the time and resources.
Additionally for crafting orbs to gain access to Arenas will now also be dropping from creatures making crafters less useful in the game. So if you can get everything from killing mobs why do you need to have a crafting profession and spend so much time and resources? We are moving towards a farming MMORPG (eastern style) rather than a variety MMORPG that you have to do a little bit of everything. Having more ways of acquiring an item is desirable in an MMORPGs rather than been gated behind a specific game style, but it has to be done with perfect balance so that one way of acquiring an item does not hurt the other way just makes it an alternative way and not the way most people going to choose because it simply so much easier.
to be clear – the identity change here is from a Crafting PVE / PVP game to a PVP /PVE game.
Umbral Shards, Dungeons, Casts & OPR
Umbral Shards is the way you can level up your weapons from 600 gear score to 625 and the only way of getting them was to run mutated dungeons or use your orbs to craft casts and use them on a 600 gear score item and when you use them you are rewarded a certain amount of shards. The amount of shards was 3 to 200 making the method of the casts to be of little help and mostly used as something extra on leveling your gear.
With the new changes now when you use your casts the shards will be rewarding you 100 to 400 making it a much better way of leveling your gear. Of course you can also get shards by doing Outpost Rush scenarios and mutated dungeons. Although dungeons can provide you with a lot more shards they also take a lot more time and require dungeon orbs to enter them as well as the right gear score. You can only get a dungeon orbs every 3 days with a new changes.
We all know how a lot of people like to play MMORPGs, but solo, so now with this new changes that you can simply do some PVP scenarios and kill solo bosses to get the orbs to make the casts for the weapons and your other gear it’s a lot easier to level up your gear and you don’t have to spend the time finding a group and doing dungeons which take anything between 30 to 40 minutes each.
The dungeon is by far the most rewarding way of acquiring shards however a lot of people like to play alone and they do not mind taking a little bit longer to do the leveling of the gear, given the option. This is a move that’s going to hurt the population of the Dungeons and the PVErs are looking for more people to play with, they might come short and the reason for that is that a lot of people that play games only for the PVP, they will not go and do dungeons since now they have easier ways of getting their gear upgraded including PVP.
I will not be surprised if soon they announced some solo dungeons going more into an eastern style MMORPG which has a lot of solo content rather than group content. Or even start introducing arenas 1V1, 2V2 and other modes alike changing the identity of this game even more.
Conclusions and final thoughts
New World’s PVP was something we all look forward to, especially the politics and the fact that it had three factions so one could not overwhelm the other, and even in case that happened the two factions could join forces in order to counter the stronger faction.
The control of the territories would play a vital role in empowering your own faction with discounts on traveling, discounts on housing, crafting bonuses, making those territories to be vital for the survival and rise of your faction. This would also promote open world PVP sieges of towns and exchange of controlling in an almost daily basis making a very dynamic environment PVP wise.
As we have seen, all this looks good on paper but in reality it doesn’t work very well in the game. Theses changes have made open world PVP non-existent, the changes on the bonuses from the territories making the control of a territory not vital, you could even say is not even worth putting the effort on fighting for one, at least not anymore.
Even if you did want to fight for an area don’t forget that the system only allows 50 people to fight. 50 Defenders and 50 attackers and they are handpicked by the guilt attacking or defending the specific territory. So the only true PVP option you have is Outpost Rush when and IF it pops according to the population of your server and the time of the day.
This is the direction that the game is taking and therefore the PVP identity is changing from an open world PVP, territory controlling game with politics into an instance PVP game that you could call it an arena game – login – do an arena or Outpost Rush and then call it a day. Especially now that at the end of an outpost rush you also receive more PVP orientated gear giving you the option of not farming anything or crafting anything.
On the PVE aspect of new world we all looked forward to do the professions, the crafting, refining, gathering to become an expert to your profession and start crafting things for your guild or for your friends, to sell on the market, make a name for yourself and feel that you have accomplished something for the amount of hours that you put in.
Unfortunately with a reduction in XP you can level up everything really fast and on top of that, crafting something at the end game fields counterproductive since as I’ve mentioned you can get better items from drops in dungeons or from named mobs.
Taking away the pleasure of accomplishment that you’ve made it and now you can be useful and enjoy crafting things for your friends and guild. So the PVE is reduced to an endless grinding mode as in every other MMORPG out there with no true purpose. Without crafting to spice up the variety of PVE and the lack of many dungeons gives you nothing to do. Not to mention the infinite bugs and exploits out there and the slug like speed at which AGS is dealing with them is disheartening.
This lack of activities both on PVP and PVE is also leading the community to be stagnant. Having nothing truly interesting to do in the game it leaves you only one option and that is to sit around and chat until something, if something, interesting happen and you can do it.
Sitting around could be good if you like to chat with other people or help them on the help Channel or the advice Channel. However most people become toxic, not helpful in any way and they are just looking ways to entertain themselves by annoying other people or start finding exploits while annoying everybody else when using them and creating a very unhealthy environment.
All things in life change and especially an MMORPGs needs to change and adapt to the ages and times and the requirements of the player base but it should also maintain its core intact, that main idea should be intact the way it was when it was conceived and not to change its core design every few months, especially to change from a unique game to one of the mass games out there. Marketing has really destroyed the gaming experience.
This is not the MMORPG I personally signed up for. Is it the one you signed up for when it was launched on September?