new-world.html
Exploiting the economy
If you’ve played new world you’ll see the money spam bots that are in chat. You can pay real money for gold, and it’s sketchy but usually works.
There was an exploit though where you could double your gold for you and one other person, and you could keep doing this.1
To say the least, in a game where the economy is based on the players, this is catastrophic. The rich get richer, and players legitimately trying to make money lose out to the big swingers because they can outbid everyone else on the marketplace. Then the players that earned cash from this can do basically the same thing even if they didn’t use the exploit.
To be unfair and fair, this exploit has been know since the beta. To be fair amazon has deleted the characters that used this exploit. And that sucks, but we’re not stupid. People that use this exploit know what they’re doing, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when your character gets deleted.
Still sucks, because Amazon knew about this DURING THE BETA, WHEN YOU FIX GAME BREAKING BUGS but didn’t do anything about it until it became a problem. Because why fix a game unless it’s profitable.
Crafting and the Tradesman’s Bible
If you use a guide, are you pressuring your friends to use a guide and ruin their sense of progression?
Josh Strife Hayes
Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of any mmo in my opinion is the reliance on other players. That’s the reason I play atleast. If I wanted to grind out resources for my friends, why wouldn’t I just be playing valheim or minecraft where the world is unique and can be molded by us however we see fit?
INCOMING TANGENT
The journey of an mmo is about crafting things over and over again, doing the same things over and over again to optimize your build. I can have a lot of health and reduce a lot of damage. I can heal a wide area and heal a lot. I can do a lot of damage and crit more often. But you’ll run into a roadblock eventually where your level exceeds your crafting level.
So you start crafting random things, new world will show you below how much each thing you craft is worth so you’re not wasting your time. Excellent. I can base it off what I have.
But… now I’ve run out of resources. That’s ok I’ll just go out and get some more, what’s the harm in that?
So you get the same resources to craft things but you’ve noticed some of the resources you must have just stumbled upon, they are far harder to find. Oh well, you got back to craft the resources you’ve obtained. Only… you’ve crafted far less than you wanted. And because of the xp climb, while you haven’t lost xp in your crafting, it takes a lot more to level.
Optimize time. If all I’m doing is grinding out resources why wouldn’t I go for the most efficient route. I just listen to music or podcasts anyway, let’s see what people think online for how to craft this quickly.
And you find it. And you craft it. It takes time but at least it’s less time.
The point
So what is my problem with this? Let’s take arcana as an example. For me, it’s hard to level it because I don’t have a lot of alchemy resources for it. But I do have a lot of iron. So I can make life staff’s and fire staff’s. This still needs alchemy but a little less of it.
When I make a staff though it doesn’t increase my xp gained if I use better materials, so why would I not just use basic iron, basic greenwood, and basic fire motes to craft it?
The answer is gearscore, but as a player shouldn’t that also be taken into account? If I spend the time to use timber instead of green wood, if I spend the time to use steel instead of iron, if I spend the time to use fire essence shouldn’t that up my xp gained for arcana crafting?
But it doesn’t. And this is my problem. The most efficient way to play the game is using base resources, even though it takes more time and effort to do the latter. The game doesn’t greatly reward you for taking time getting better resources, it just rewards players for basic, thoughtless grinding.
Goofballs and lowballs
Let me be clear, this section is less about playing with friends and more about playing with randoms.
If I go out and I want to experience the mmo by interacting with the social aspect, should I not put in the effort? Playing with people around your level, doing similar things, similar quests, similar areas.
I’ve had this happen a few times where I’ll go to do a dungeon and the dungeon level is rank 25 (as an example), but the players are rank 21 because they’ve been grinding out the main story and doing nothing else. Though they’re also running their rank 16 and rank 18 gear, so their gearscore is actually quite low as well in addition to the stat bonuses accompanying them.
Why? Why would you go out to play with people, looking to do high level content when you yourself are not high level?
Did you craft potions of lost so you can do more damage against enemies in this dungeon?
no
Did you spec the right weapon so you can do more damage against lost?4 (this one less because you have to read the lore to understand which weapons are best against which enemies or, again, google it for optimization)
no
Did you spec focus so you can atleast be a decent healer?
no
And while most players aren’t like this, some are. And to be honest this game doesn’t punish you for being a little bit low, but I feel it’s acceptable to expect the party you’re working with is at least in the ballpark range of 2-3 levels of the content being played.
And while it’s intimidating the best way to experience content in this game is to join an active guild, or “company” as they’re called, I’d argue it’s second best or sometime even better than playing with your friends.
It’s all about finding a group of people that think the way you do, that put in the effort you do. Because if everyone is sitting on the cart while you’re pulling it uphill you’re gonna get burnt out.
The bloodborne crusaders are the group that I hang out with and honestly wouldn’t mind joining. Sometimes we’ll just be in voice chat talking while we’re all out doing our own separate things. and it’s fun, because while it would be nice to quest together just knowing that these people are at least putting in the effort makes the grind more bearable. So when you call for a starstone expidition the people you’ll play with are at least doing their best to be specced for the their roles, they’ll do the best to be around the correct level. If they aren’t they won’t ask to be apart of the expidition. And it’s that understanding and respect of “I’m not the right power level and wouldn’t want to be a hinderance” that makes the higher level player pull them through anyway. Because expiditions are big xp caches. Why wouldn’t you push harder on the cart for someone else?
That’s all I think though, swim beside the people going in your direction at your speed.
Combat
Not a lot to complain about here, it’s about what I’d expect.
The combat is trying to be a little dark soul’s esque. Or a little more action focused someone might say. And that’s fine, but theres no animation cancelling and the enemies don’t telegraph too much except their large attacks.
The rolling I feel could be a bit better for light weight classification, as atm you can do better dodging if you’re skilled enough and use medium weight.
The blocking is terrible at the start, as good or less than dodging. So players won’t understand how utterly overpowered it is by the time you get to the end of the game. Once I forced by brother to craft me a starmetal shield I could tank the end dungeon boss of amrine and he could hardly reduce my block stamina. It was crazy, but I suppose important by the time you get to the end game. Might be a little difficult by then.
sources
1 https://www.reddit.com/r/newworldgame/comments/qkjsko/new_dupe_fix_your_game/