DavPoint posted: " There seems to be a common conundrum shared by New World players and reviewers like me: Even though I haven't reached the "end" of the game and experienced all that there is to experience, I'm feeling burned out, and most players that do reach the en"
There seems to be a common conundrum shared by New World players and reviewers like me: Even though I haven't reached the "end" of the game and experienced all that there is to experience, I'm feeling burned out, and most players that do reach the end have reported that it isn't that special. I still feel obligated to "finish" the game before posting a final review, so do I grin and bear it for the sake of authenticity, or do I take their word for it and move on to something else? Holiday blockbusters are already pulling me away, so I'm posting a (mostly) final review (to compliment my New World Review Part 1 and New World Review Part 2) and move on.
DavPoint: New World is an MMO developed by Amazon Game Orange County and Double Helix Games and published by Amazon Game Studios for PC. It features the resource gathering and crafting of an open world survival game, the questing and PvE (Player vs Environment) content of an MMO, and large scale PvP (Player vs Player) battles where factions attempt to conquer each other's strongholds.
The Good: I will reiterate my previous points of praise that there are a lot of things to like about New World, including its setting and lore, its excellent combat and crafting, its gorgeous graphics and environment effects, and its intuitive controls and user interface (seriously, I think New World has the best UI, ever) and that makes it easy to recommend it to other players. I love the open sandbox design, expressed in multiple choices of leveling activities (taking on main story quests, side quests, town projects, or faction missions, or simply gathering, crafting, and fishing), and the flexibility found in the many player "classes," weapons, and armor combinations to choose from. I also found an answer to my question that yes, the most talked about aspect of New World, the large scale Player vs Player battles and faction mechanics, can be mostly ignored. After 180 hours of playtime, I can happily say that I got my money's worth!
The Bad: From my experiences, I do have a list of criticisms and suggestions to improve the game. I write this (mostly) final review with the awareness that the new update, Into the Void, just launched, and for all I know, some of my concerns have been remedied. In no particular order they include:
Azoth - As the unique resource of Aeternum and the element behind its supernatural mysteries, Azoth is used more and more as players progress through New World. Players will discover several "shrines" throughout their travels, and must spend Azoth to use them for fast travel across the map. Players are free to "respec" their special weapon abilities and their base attributes like strength and intelligence at any time, but at higher levels, they have to spend Azoth. However, collecting Azoth from enemy kills and completing quests is surprisingly slow, and players are capped at only 1,000 points for some reason. This creates weird feast or famine situations where players either have barely enough to move short distances or are hesitant to make player build adjustments, or are maxed out and are missing opportunities to collect more. I suggest that they need to either increase that cap and the rate it is collected, give players other fast travel options (like being able to fast travel to their teammates' locations or to dungeons for free), or remove the Azoth requirements altogether. It was not pleasant to learn that Azoth was required to respec my character once I reached certain levels, as that negates the feeling of freedom that I once praised about New World.
Matchmaking - Connected to the frustration of fast travel costs is the complete lack of matchmaking. There is no tool or interface available to queue up and be automatically placed in group activities like the Expeditions (5 player dungeons), PvE Corrupted Invasions (50 players vs waves of AI enemies), PvPvE Outpost Rush (20 v 20 player battles fighting against another team to capture and defend outposts, all while fighting off AI enemies), or PvP War Mode (50 v 50 player battles trying to capture or defend outposts) with other players. As it is, players have to "spam" group chat to find other players to join them to take on Expeditions, or "sign up" and wait for the large scale PvE or PvP modes to start at specified times - and during specific conditions.
Level Requirements - Connected to the frustration of missing matchmaking tools are the high level requirements for joining the large scale group activities. Expeditions can be joined as early as level 25 (or lower if you are lucky to find higher level players willing to carry you), and the War Mode can be attempted at any level (though I strongly recommend against it), but joining Corrupted Invasions require level 50, and Outpost Rush requires level 60. From what players have said, Outpost Rush is the most fun to play, but it's a max level activity!? For these activities to be gated behind high levels, especially as highly marketed as they are as reasons to play New World, is beyond my comprehension. I suggest that these activities be reworked and available to lower levels to give players more positive experiences and incentives to play, and just have more fun throughout their New World adventures. This could mean adding lower level PvP battles, calling them something like "Skirmishes," and keeping them separate from the larger territory control disputes handled by the more impactful War Mode. Combine these activities with matchmaking tools and players can get as much PvP or PvE action as they want, when they want, AND prepare them for the more elaborate, multiple-objective based War Mode.
Faction Balance - Connected to the frustrations of high level requirements and the lack of matchmaking tools are the uneven experiences of leveling through one of the three factions. I keep stating that players can enjoy playing New World without getting too hung up on the PvP mechanics, and that is mostly true, but the few frustrations caused by being part of a losing faction are compounded by the nature of it being really, really hard to regain control once it is lost. This has been one of my concerns from the start, and I'm not really sure how to address it. From what I can tell, if you happen to join a faction that just doesn't have enough high level players to even participate in the territory disputes, it sucks to be you, until the other faction(s) move on to other territories or your server population changes. I get the appeal of joining a "Company" and establishing control over territories, but unless you happen to be part of a group that has the numbers and really knows what they are doing, good luck! I think that this could be relieved somewhat by lowering the level requirements of and making it easier to join PVP matches. However, the foundation and fundamental mechanics of New World revolves around this concept of "territory control," which goes above and beyond the outcome of any PvP battles, and that means it will likely require a lot of tweaking to make it more fun and accessible to everyone.
Leveling Experience - Connected to ALL of this is the leveling experience itself, and clearly it needs to be adjusted to keep others from burning out. I really think that the QOL (Quality of Life) changes I'm recommending could help. There are some other criticisms that seem minor on their own, but become too frustrating when they keep adding up. For example, joining a faction grants you access to faction specific gear, which is generally better quality than what casually drops during regular play, and should be highly coveted as you earn higher ranks within your chosen faction. However, the steep requirements to earn those higher ranks means that you really can't complete them at the suggested level, which often means that by the time you do reach the next rank, you have likely out-leveled that coveted gear, making most of it useless compared to what you have acquired naturally by that point. This may seem like a minor complaint, but if you happen to be in a losing faction, you're probably less likely to engage in faction specific activities, which makes it even less likely that you'll get that faction specific gear at an appropriate level, and so on. As I've reached higher levels, this type of compounded frustration (missions being too difficult to complete at suggested levels, level appropriate gear getting too hard to acquire, cost of repairing broken gear, Azoth costs for fast travelling and attribute respecs, etc.) has increased in frequency, and I just had to step away from it all.
DavPoint: For some reason, this heavily-combat-focused game lacks official controller support. Using the Steam interface, I was able to find a custom controller configuration from the community, and now swap back and forth from KB/M and an Xbox controller!
Conclusion (for now): I still had/have a lot of fun playing New World, and my enthusiasm would probably be higher if I had a core group of friends to play with regularly. Some of my frustrations might be mitigated by playing cooperatively instead of by myself, as probably intended by the developer. It is a gorgeous game that is fun to play, and there are some strong, fundamental pieces that could be tweaked to make a more even playing experience across the board. The new update is adding a whole new NPC faction to the game, and I'm curious to see what effect that will have!
For more New World, watch me play on the DavPoint!
Developer: Amazon Games Orange County and Double Helix Games
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