New World

Kresslack

Using Shroud as an example of playing a game 24/7 to rush to max level after release is absrud. Most of these people, like your friends, that are rushing to lvl 60 without break and then complaining about "lack of content" aren't getting paid to do so. There's plenty of content if you take the time to enjoy it and explore it.

Saonji

https://forums.achaea.com/discussion/comment/453138#Comment_453138

Nowhere in anything I said, did I mention a lack of content.

eta: Jesus fucking christ what is with these forums and their whitespace boxes that randomly happen on quotes/pictures.

Kresslack

If you read what I wrote, you'll see that I said most people rushing to level cap and considering that end game. There are even things and quests that don't become available until one reaches 50 and 60.

Jakiro

I watched a streamer last night who was helping out people by clearing bugged areas that had multiples of elite mobs stacked. Like 10+ of the same npc stacked plus the minions around it too. Something is bugged with the spawn mechanics right now, I guess? At least on the end-game side it seems. The mobs they were clearing out were 59+ and apparently them stacking was preventing a few quests to be done. They had to make two groups, I think, to clear them with warhammer guys stunlocking and a lot of healers... And they still wiped out a lot.

I'm still pretty far from that and haven't encountered any gamebreaking bugs though. The most annoying one I've encountered was when I'm shooting at a mob with my bow to near death and they randomly decide to retreat and healing fully leaving me to have wasted 5+ arrows.

Kresslack

There were a couple of other areas that were bugged like that. I heard rumour (not sure how true) this is due to some 'dynamic spawn' system some areas have, where it's supposed to ramp up the respawn timer for certain mobs if more players are concentrated in the area, so they don't have to wait as long to complete quests. Boarsholm and a bear cave were spawning insanely quickly and people were using those as xp and weapon mastery farms until they got fixed.

Jakiro

found a video of the bug I was talking about. this is the exact place the streamer I was watching was helping clear out -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kn3PASouBM

Kresslack

Yeah, have seen a couple of those, like with the boars in Boarsholm in north of Restless Shore, but those have been fixed already. Spots like that make for great XP and weapon mastery farms though if you go with a group.

Saonji

I bit the bullet and paid the $65 for the game, because friends wouldn't stop nattering on about it and I had nothing better to do anyway. Currently lvl 40, a bit under a week in. Have all my trade/gathering skills at 110-145 or so except furnishing and fishing (only 50/80 respectively rn).

Been bouncing back and forth between greataxe / life staff, SnB / warhammer and rapier / musket depending on what I was doing. GA/LS for soloing and healing (with amber gemmed axe), SNB/WH for tanking when needed, Rap/Musket for pvp if friends didn't need a healer.

Went into a war over First Light where half the people (on both sides) got the loading bug, so couldn't participate whatsoever. So that was fun, ended up losing because of it. It's nice being able to participate even at level ~35-40 despite 3/4 of them being 50+ ... Loads of server drama too, which is to be expected for a new game. Including two of the top companies jacking taxes on all of their areas then fucking off to another server when they opened up. Which meant we all had to wait for wars to start/resolve, and it was in 'main' hubs that most of the server used as well (Windsward and First Light)

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Comments so far...

Game is alright for a new game, but nothing it does is particularly innovative or special (not necessarily a 'bad' thing per se?). Kinda feels like they took a bunch of things other MMOs did well, and merged them together. But given the funding it got, the lack of character customisation (in the char creator) is kind of depressing. I hope they have plans to expand that soon.

So, so many bots and gold sellers already. They've at least been quick in taking steps to help mitigate the issues, but every MMO players know just how persistent these fucks are.

There's a lot of bugs, with varying degrees of severity. Again, to be expected, and they'll hopefully get fixed soon. But between the duping issues and the war loading issues, a bunch of people have already stopped playing which sucks. Some lesser things too, like certain mobs being completely unhittable with melee weapons sometimes (not ahuge issue since I just swap staff/musket, but still), gathering nodes frequently bugging out and just staying there not able to be harvested. Skills going permanently on cooldown (which prevents changing weapons/respeccing), and forcing you to restart your game. Those are the main three for me, personally.

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Good things (albeit with mentioned downsides, too)... Hmm.

This is probably the first MMO I've played where fishing has actually been a decent thing to do. A bit tedious, but that's tradeskills for you. While I hate fishing IRL, it's cool how they managed to somewhat emulate it in-game.

Lower level dungeons actually being worth running as a high level, is great. It means grouping up is super simple and quick.

Healing actually requires a semblance of a brain in this game, and not just playing whack-a-mole with healthbars. As a healer main for nearly two decades, this is a welcome thing. We'll see if it lasts (outside of PvP) as people gear up.

Corruption portals/trains reminds me a lot of RIFT. I miss when RIFT wasn't a dogshit, run-down game. Damn do these mobs hit like a truck though on light armour.

Actual world pvp, that isn't just dogpiling. Jesus I hope they address life staff being nigh unkillable though. I say that as someone maining LS currently.

Wars remind me of BDO, except a bit more organised and less about just overwhelming with sheer numbers. I hope they do something about attacking, though, it feels like 10x harder than it ought to be. Cannons -shred- even 600gs people, let alone lower players. Other than that, they've been pretty fun.

Crafting actually being meaningful. Both in terms of things produced, as well as to level. It's not an easy road to 200, but boy is it a profitable one (and should remain such, so long as they don't neuter it to fuck). I'm glad it's not practically given to you like WoW/FF14's tradeskills are.

Think that's enough for now. I need sleep.

Saonji

Another thing that's been worked out, which I also can't say I'm particularly a fan of (and just further shows a bit of a lack of foresight on their end)...

If your aim is simply to level tradeskills, it's more cost (and time) efficient to spam Tier 1 things than it is to do Tier 2+

Linen Gloves for Armoring

Iron Skinning Knives for Engineering

Iron Greataxes for Weaponsmithing

Of course your profit will be almost negligible since you're unlikely to sell them. But it will save you a -shitload- of mats (and time gathering) in the long run. Can still salvage them back, at least.

Kresslack

Leveling tradeskills is easy enough if you find the right stuff to batch make. It reminds me a lot (in regards to weapon/armour smithing anyway) of how old Achaea forging used to work. Hammer out a hundred longswords, keep the best ones to sell, salvage the rest.

There difference is, you still have to eventually put a lot of time into forging with the other ores in order to increase their potential maximum, as proficiency seems to be divided by material type. The more iron gear you make the more it increases the potential gear score towards the max. When you switch to start making steel or starmetal though, you have to start that process all over again.

While I like how they set up the forging process, I'm disappointed in it because there doesn't seem to be any real benefit in training and maxing these out. The exception to this is Engineering so that you can make better tools. As far as weapons and armour go though, the better stuff you can eventually learn to forge requires about 150+ smithing (where the cap is 200), where you can just grind dungeons and quest for the same or better gear anyway.

Also, in regards to Gear Score, the only way to increase your GS cap is by using/equipping items you get from quests or dungeons; forged items don't count. So essentially the only way you're going to get better drops, is by wearing/using items with a higher GS, even if the attributes or perks aren't specifically what you want. Eventually you can grind out the ideal gear for your build in time, and I guess that's where the trade-off with forging is to where you can just pay someone to make you stuff with high GS and specified perks using craft mods (of which there are an abundance) and azoth infusion.

Saonji

As far as "release state" games go, New World is pretty okay I suppose. But there's a lot that needs to be addressed, so I really hope they have their priorities set properly.

While the game definitely needs more endgame content (idk why Outpost Rush STILL isn't opened), they sorely need to address a bunch of pre-60 stuff as well. Primarily the ridiculousness of mat requirements...

A single steel great axe for instance, requires 156 iron ore, up from 48 for an iron great axe (as well as 3 timber/2 leather)...

Up from that, a single starmetal great axe requires 14 starmetal ingots (84 starmetal ore, 28 steel ingots (which is 84 iron ore) + flux and charcoal which steel ingots ALSO require), as well as some leather/timber as well... Won't even get into those, and if you want to craft "sellable" items you need to use not-low-rank timber/leather, since that lowers the base possible gearscore if you do...

Up from that, a single orichalcum great axe requires 15 orichalcum ingots (120 orichalcum ore, 30 starmetal ingots---DOUBLE the starmetal that a starmetal axe takes...) ... You see where this is going. The amount of mats needed to craft a single 500+ gs item is absolutely fucking ridiculous. Other gear-crafting tradeskills follow similar patterns. Not even BDO goes to this level of grind. Hell this isn't even a korean mmo.

I enjoy how their crafting is setup, and how good crafting actually is ... I dislike just how ludicrously absurd it is, to start crafting anything remotely worthwhile. Especially since you have to craft a lot, to raise the possible gs on your crafts.

New Path of Exile league started, though, so I think I'm gonna take a break where I am and hope things get adjusted soon. Endwalker is right around the corner, and a few servers are already becoming barren. I hope things change, because so far the game has been fairly decent all things considered.

Kresslack

They opened up Outpost for a brief moment over the weekend, but apparently it was pretty unbalanced so they quickly shut it down again. I really hope they get it sorted soon because it's great practice for war efforts. I think they're also looking to make it harder to declare war, or otherwise extend the time it takes to push a territory to conflict state, because right now you can put any territory into conflict and declare war within a day. This is causing too many wars and people are getting burnt out on them trying to keep up.

Another issue is Invasions, which are require lvl 60 to participate in, are apparently impossible to win. At least on my server no one has ever won an Invasion, which is essentially about 8 waves of AI being thrown at a fort defense. Apparently the first couple of waves are fine and then it gets turned up to 11, metaphorically speaking. So when an Invasion is lost, it downgrades the workbenches in a territory significantly, which causes all sorts of crafting headaches.

I've had a lot of fun with it though, for what it is. I'm hoping they not only quickly address the current issues, but have plans for a lot of new content to release in the future. Here are some shots I've gotten.

Spoiler Warning

Kresslack

Lot of good updates in this:

https://forums.newworld.com/t/dev-blog-update-on-current-issues/504297