[Megathread] Amazon's New World MMO

[kenn9530]

Did I read correctly that after all this time the game didn't actually have a transfer system. That's not a new MMORPG only having so much content at release problem, thats a fundamental design error. Enough MMORPGs have come out by now to know transfers should be a standard feature. It's how you sustain the game as it goes through its very stages of life and a feature enough players expect (and willing to pay damn near half the price of the game to use...frequently).

They should have had a sub team working on just that feature and how to meld it with core gameplay.


Its like cooking a nice dinner then forgetting you needed plates and silverware after the food was done. AGS is stuck with the turkey still in the over because they have nowhere to put it.

You do realise the game was designed to be a set community per server right, they didnt want players to just freely jump servers whenever they wanted, and we are still getting server transfers, server transfers should not really be a thing, they should only be available when really needed and we are still getting them when they are suitable to implement.

Even if someone says something will be ready in 2 weeks, there is no guarantee that it will be ready especially in a game, you do know things dont always go as planned especially in game development.

[rhorle]

Unfortunately, in a PVP centric game such as NW, any speed increase would give a huge advantage to whoever has it. And mounts would be a speed increase that if purchasable in the shop would be a pay to win feature in any PVP battles.

That is pretty easy to fix. Have a cooldown with mounting. Can't do it in combat, can't do it X mins after combat. Give us items to "Catch" a mounted person. It could even be limited to roads. Mounts (or any speed boost) only work when on roads.

I would love mounts, or something, to increase speed but I'd also simply be happy with a a "flight path". An auto-travel that can happen while AFK. I don't care if it takes 10 or 15 mins it would be worth the savings in Azoth to travel between a town. And there are zones you can't capture for the fast travel discount. There are lots of things they could do that would have little impact on PvP.

[Nerph-]

Thanks @kenn9530 @Fencers and @Mojo03 for the housing advice. I might wait a little bit and see how fast getting from 10 to 20 standing takes, if I feel it's going too slow (comes down to how much I play, what I do etc, all those variables) then I'll just get a tier 1 house I suppose. Nothing hurt by waiting a bit either way I guess

[Fencers]

Thanks @kenn9530 @Fencers and @Mojo03 for the housing advice. I might wait a little bit and see how fast getting from 10 to 20 standing takes, if I feel it's going too slow (comes down to how much I play, what I do etc, all those variables) then I'll just get a tier 1 house I suppose. Nothing hurt by waiting a bit either way I guess

Make sure you can afford the taxes weekly too. Also, be in a faction/company that is consistently winning the war where you want to have a house. Some of the higher level zones are not controlled by any company. Keep that in mind.

You can get royally screwed on the taxes week to week depending on where you live.

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If an MMO does not launch with compelling content to do at end game (or at least a dev post saying that said content will be releasing <4 weeks after launch to allow people to level up at their own pace) then it is an incomplete game. Period.

Nah, this is total bullshit.

[kenn9530]

Yeah, people expect content, how insane is that. Totally their fault there they are not staying for... nothing.

It's not about WoW, it's about blaming players for corporate development studio fuckups. Yeah, guess what - if you don't put content that makes people stay, they don't stay - crazy how that works.

I'd hope the studios would learn that one after so many MMOs crashed and burned exactly on this very same problem.

New World has plenty of content, you could say it has more to do than what WoW releases in a new expansion, its been weeks and most players are not max level in new world, NW is not just about what there is to do at max level and there is a fair amount to do if you want to get the best gear in the game from crafting.

[Nerph-]

Make sure you can afford the taxes weekly too. Also, be in a faction/company that is consistently winning the war where you want to have a house. Some of the higher level zones are not controlled by any company. Keep that in mind.

You can get royally screwed on the taxes week to week depending on where you live.

Good point. Right now I'm not either in a company, or a faction winning much... Syndicate on my server has a zone or 2 but it seems Covenant is the major player.

And when it comes to companies, there are no English speaking ones on either Syndicate or Covenant on my server... looks like I'll be moving off once the long awaited transfers arrive.

[Fencers]

Who the heck is doing the taxing on houses, anyway?

Even the most unexplored, savage, wild lands have bureaucrats and HOA's I guess.

Well, to be fair. The colonists were pretty bureaucratic when the Americas and Caribbean were being exploited by Europeans.

As a gaming system, this sucks. Well, I guess it sucked IRL too. But ya'know.

I wish there was a way to vote out companies in this game. There are companies that totally exploit the tax situation and don't do shit to improve the town. Windsward is a goddamn ghetto on my server. Brightwood, almost as bad. The guild that is controlling First Light are assholes too.

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Good point. Right now I'm not either in a company, or a faction winning much... Syndicate on my server has a zone or 2 but it seems Covenant is the major player.

And when it comes to companies, there are no English speaking ones on either Syndicate or Covenant on my server... looks like I'll be moving off once the long awaited transfers arrive.

Taxes will be double after the first week, btw. So be ready. Owning a house is a rich man's game. Just like the US IRL, I guess.

[Nerph-]

Taxes will be double after the first week, btw. So be ready. Owning a house is a rich man's game. Just like the US IRL, I guess.

I see... guess I'll just wait it out a bit then

[Jtbrig7390]

I will say this about NW, It may have released at the right time.

If it can hold its playerbase (or a decent amount of it) until the Steamdeck drops I can honestly see a huge chunk of the playerbase playing on that. Like on the way to work they log in and level some skills or w/e for 30mins at a time.

A perfect pick up and play MMO in small bites.

[PACOX]

I will say this about NW, It may have released at the right time.

If it can hold its playerbase (or a decent amount of it) until the Steamdeck drops I can honestly see a huge chunk of the playerbase playing on that. Like on the way to work they log in and level some skills or w/e for 30mins at a time.

A perfect pick up and play MMO in small bites.

Its release was very strategic. At the end of a quarter with nothing else in the MMO world dropping for at 2 months. Hell not too games outside of the genre either. Didn't matter if fundamental features and endgame content that's supposed to be finished were anything but ready. Amazon had the perfect window from a money making/foot in the door perspective and they seized it. New World wouldn't have survived a month with the sheer amount of releases in and out of genre from November to April. No shot with the honeymoon period ending with a lot of people only 2 weeks out while the game has an empty playing field. Imagine if they delayed again and had to face off with FF14. Amazon would have killed its returns.

For Amazon it doesn't matter if the game is empty in December, it's going to look damn good when quarterlys come out, and by the next one they would have stabilized the game into a passive money generator or found a way to actually reinvigorate it.

Not the best for long term players but the primary goal of the game is to ship their engine and woo in clients for AGS. They're also sitting on Lost Ark for their next rollout. I expect a similar campaign on Twitch like they did for New World.

[Nyel]

Not the best for long term players but the primary goal of the game is to ship their engine and woo in clients for AGS. They're also sitting on Lost Ark for their next rollout. I expect a similar campaign on Twitch like they did for New World.

I really doubt that New World is a good example for selling an engine. While the world itself looks beautiful and would make for a great simulation, the content inside is so bare bones and poorly done (enemy AI, player collision, walking underwater instead of swimming or the incredibly clunky animations for example), who would buy this engine? Again, something like flight simulator or farm simulator might look glorious, but for action adventures or RPGs this engine really isn't it.

Lost Ark will become their go to game, it's a cash machine (something which New World clearly is not). I'm just waiting for that marketing campaign where they're paying the biggest streamers again to play Lost Ark like they did with New World. It will be... massive.

[Fencers]

I really doubt that New World is a good example for selling an engine. While the world itself looks beautiful and would make for a great simulation, the content inside is so bare bones and poorly done (enemy AI, player collision, walking underwater instead of swimming or the incredibly clunky animations for example), who would buy this engine?

Many have already bought the engine. Personal dislikes are not all necessarily engine problems. It is a design choice for some things to work as they do and the rest is your personal view. This may differ from the NW designer's view, but that's not what developers care about when licensing a game engine necessarily.

Animation routines can be tweaked by any developer. They don't have to look or work to your personal liking. And no, there is nothing objective about your view on "clunky animations".

This type of argument in every MMO that comes out is just stupidity at this point. A search through every MMO-related thread will bring up some dude talking about "animations" and linking a video to a YT doing a skill action a few times. This is meaningless.

[Nyel]

Many have already bought the engine. Personal dislikes are not all necessarily engine problems. It is a design choice for some things to work as they do and the rest is your personal view. This may differ from the NW designer's view, but that's not what developers care about when licensing a game engine necessarily.

Animation routines can be tweaked by any developer. They don't have to look or work to your personal liking. And no, there is nothing objective about your view on "clunky animations".

This type of argument in every MMO that comes out is just stupidity at this point. A search through every MMO-related thread will bring up some dude talking about "animations" and linking a video to a YT doing a skill action a few times. This is meaningless.

I should have known better that clunky, stiff and not connecting animations are there at the will of the developers and that they are a design choice and not a problem with the engine. Thanks for enlightening me. Can you please do the same with the underwater walking? I’d love to know why it’s better than swimming, I’m sure you’ll already have an answer prepped.

[rhorle]

I should have known better that clunky, stiff and not connecting animations are there at the will of the developers and that they are a design choice and not a problem with the engine. Thanks for enlightening me. Can you please do the same with the underwater walking? I’d love to know why it’s better than swimming, I’m sure you’ll already have an answer prepped.

Amazon has shifted a lot of Lumberyard over to "Open 3d Engine" and at least one AGS game seems to be going with that version rather then Lumberyard if the two are even different at this point. I still think New World is a poor tech demo given the easy AoE lag but that could be a fault of the the version of Lumberyard they are using and any modifications they built on to it. Some of the game design seems to be to not over load the servers though they certainly are not sparse with all the nodes. But I bet a node is little stress for the engine. Or maybe that is why the rest has trouble because of all the rendering/tracking/whatever.

Bioware bought Hero Engine rights with out even having a released game for that engine so maybe a released game is good enough for a lot of developers who then modify or get specific support for their product after the fact.

[Fencers]

The design choices in this game piss me off at times.

Why are goats like this?

Why is cinnamon the rarest resource on the server?

It's just bizarre to get a quest at level 12 that can only be completed in 3 possible areas total, literally half the entire world map away. In a level 55-60 zone. For 4 coin.

You can sell cinnamon for 10x the price of Starmetal or shadow fur.

No thinking at all.

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I should have known better that clunky, stiff and not connecting animations are there at the will of the developers and that they are a design choice and not a problem with the engine.

Not an engine problem. All this is your feeling too; "clunky" and "stiff" are not a quantifiable metric. Those are subjective qualifiers.

It's fine to think or feel combat is "clunky", and I do personally think combat is "bad", but that is not a measurable quota.

Thanks for enlightening me.

Np. I love talking about game design.

Can you please do the same with the underwater walking? I’d love to know why it’s better than swimming, I’m sure you’ll already have an answer prepped.

They just decided to make water traversal like that- if they wanted to spend the time to animate swimming routines they could have. The only barrier was time & money and they pretty much had both. This game is old as fuck. They decided not to- that is a choice.

Asking whether it is "better" is meaningless and dumb. Better to whom? What metric is better being compared to and in what quantity? It's just subjective that you think a swimming animation is superior.

But if the movement and mechanics of walking, sprinting, or swimming are the same the animated difference is pointless.

[rhorle]

It's fine to think or feel combat is "clunky", and I do personally think combat is "bad", but that is not a measurable quota.

Using that reasoning nothing can be measured because everything is just our feelings about the entertainment product. Clunky, bad, or any other descriptor can be used to measure how well received something is by the consumers. It might not be specific and usable to pinpoint exact changes. But it is a good tool for broad metrics. It is why games send out broad surveys (or how Blizzard has exit surveys when you stop subscribing). Subjectives are still important to analyze.

[Fencers]

Using that reasoning nothing can be measured because everything is just our feelings about the entertainment product.

Correct. There is no such thing as an object qualifier for the enjoyment of entertainment products.

[rhorle]

Correct. There is no such thing as an object qualifier for the enjoyment of entertainment products.

So if there is no such thing then giving subjective feedback is the only type of feedback to give. And yet you are saying that can't be given for some strange reason.

[BeepBoo]

So if there is no such thing then giving subjective feedback is the only type of feedback to give. And yet you are saying that can't be given for some strange reason.

I think it's less about giving subjective feedback and more about people always thinking they're giving OBJECTIVE feedback and thinking their opinion is "more correct" than someone else's that's tiresome.

[Garymorilix]

I think it's less about giving subjective feedback and more about people always thinking they're giving OBJECTIVE feedback and thinking their opinion is "more correct" than someone else's that's tiresome.

People think that something being "subjective" means that there is literally no objective basis for anything regarding that item/product/whatever and that it's all opinions.

In reality, most subjective things are compared not to themselves but to other things which fulfill the same role or genre.

I can go down to the street right now and start randomly smacking away on trash cans and call it music.
Then someone will come by and tell me that it's not music it's just smacking on trash cans and it sucks.
In itself, I can call this "music" and be offended that "oh, but it's just, like, your opinion, dude" when someones calls it shit but in reality they are objectively correct.
Smacking away randomly on trash cans hardly qualifies as music to anyone that's why it's not the top charter on spotify or whatever.

This is of course an extreme example to demonstrate the point.

While subjectively anything can be "good enough" or "good for X" it doesn't mean that it's objectively servicable compared to similar things.
Especially when we are talking about a gaming genre that had many decades to evolve and refine its systems.