Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
New World economy (and game) broken already
Marzzo
Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
The economy in New World is already a broken mess. In addition to this, the game has already become stale and boring for many people. A ton of people are quitting quickly. One month ago, the game had 700-900k daily players. Today, it struggles to reach 450k. If this trend continues another month. The game will have lost half its player base in less than 2 months.
How can we stop this from happening in AoC? Below I'll list some fatal flaws New World did that we must avoid at all cost.
Quest/Dungeon rewards making crafted items obsolete
Very early in the game a quest in New World reward you with a very good amulet. This amulet alone makes every other amulet in the whole game, for every single player, wortless until lvl 100 jewelcrafting. Great care needs to be put into items you get for free like this.
Early game resources being more expensive than late game resources
Since even the late game recipies still require massive amounts of early game resourses we now see Iron ores being a lot more expansive than the late game starmetal. When the demand for early game resources is so much higher than late game ores a big problem arises. It is now more worthwile to simply farm the early game iron and sell it than actually leveling up anything yourself. To counter this, late game crafting need to have balanced recipies.
Overflooded markets
You need to craft a large amount of items to level up in New World. The amount of items you need to craft dwarfs the demand for those items. This results in refined materials being worth A LOT less than the sum of the items needed to craft it.
Mid level burnout
Since you are basically uselss in New World until lategame, there is almost nothing meaningful and fair to do while leveling. A ton of people quit at lvl 30 ish because you will do the exact same thing until level cap. There really is no point in doing other content than turboleveling til level cap. In AoC we need fun things to do at all levels. Even if you are lvl 27 there should be fun events where you can help and feel relevant. Ashes need to add varied and fun activities that are avaible during the whole leveling process.
Economy manipulation
Large guilds in New World instantly started exploiting the free economy. All members of the top guild gave 1 single player all their currency and that player in turn started manipulating prices on the auctionhouse by hoarding a ton of important items and then price fixing them. This would not be so bad if servers consisted of 10k players. But 100 super nerds can easily control 2000+ casual players. If a super tryhard group consentrates all their gold on a few individuals those players have massive control over the economy, resulting in them being able to make even more gold. It is literally impossible to keep up. Without control, you can expect the top guilds to be able to buy out every single house in AoC etc in the game after just a few days, if not hours.
Faction imbalance
On my server, a very strong guild joined a faction and completly sweeped the floor with everyone else. They took over everything and raised taxes to stupid amounts that ruined the experience for everyone else. Did players rally against the tyrants? Did heroes band togheter to fight the evil lords? Ofcourse not. Everyone just joined the faction the best guild was in. There was no fairy tale scenario of other guilds competing with them. Everyone just got demolished and crushed.
And I beg you, dont start with the "someone will eventually beat them" or "in the end, that guild will die out". No, your wrong, what instead happened is that everyone that did not like this got the hell out of the server and realm changed. The server is now 95% 1 single faction playing solo on the server, every part of the map is in their control.
AOE spam meta
The most effective strategy in New world large scale PvP is to simply lag out your opponents. Everyone rushing in and just facerolling the laggiest AOE is by far the best strategy. Look at this video for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJgxIML9rfM
How will Ashes of creation create a game where even 30v30 people dont turn into a massive lagspike battle? How will we create an enviroment where a 100v100 battle even can occur? Not even New World can manage a 30v30 battle battle without the server freezing. How will we stop people from running 100+ AOE spamming classes to simply shut down the game?
Almost no collectibles
The game has no mounts, a pathetic amount of pets and other fun stuff to collect. Most cool stuff will probably come from the real cash shop. This must not happen to AoC. Whatever your stance is on the matter, a lot of people love collecting stuff in MMO:s. It can be achivments, titles, mounts, cosmetic skins, rare items etc. But the fact of the matter is that there needs to be a lot of fun stuff to collect in game. The things you collect let you express yourself in the game and this seem to be important for a lot of players. Also these things shoult not be exclusive to the endgame.
How can we stop this from happening in AoC? Below I'll list some fatal flaws New World did that we must avoid at all cost.
Quest/Dungeon rewards making crafted items obsolete
Very early in the game a quest in New World reward you with a very good amulet. This amulet alone makes every other amulet in the whole game, for every single player, wortless until lvl 100 jewelcrafting. Great care needs to be put into items you get for free like this.
Early game resources being more expensive than late game resources
Since even the late game recipies still require massive amounts of early game resourses we now see Iron ores being a lot more expansive than the late game starmetal. When the demand for early game resources is so much higher than late game ores a big problem arises. It is now more worthwile to simply farm the early game iron and sell it than actually leveling up anything yourself. To counter this, late game crafting need to have balanced recipies.
Overflooded markets
You need to craft a large amount of items to level up in New World. The amount of items you need to craft dwarfs the demand for those items. This results in refined materials being worth A LOT less than the sum of the items needed to craft it.
Mid level burnout
Since you are basically uselss in New World until lategame, there is almost nothing meaningful and fair to do while leveling. A ton of people quit at lvl 30 ish because you will do the exact same thing until level cap. There really is no point in doing other content than turboleveling til level cap. In AoC we need fun things to do at all levels. Even if you are lvl 27 there should be fun events where you can help and feel relevant. Ashes need to add varied and fun activities that are avaible during the whole leveling process.
Economy manipulation
Large guilds in New World instantly started exploiting the free economy. All members of the top guild gave 1 single player all their currency and that player in turn started manipulating prices on the auctionhouse by hoarding a ton of important items and then price fixing them. This would not be so bad if servers consisted of 10k players. But 100 super nerds can easily control 2000+ casual players. If a super tryhard group consentrates all their gold on a few individuals those players have massive control over the economy, resulting in them being able to make even more gold. It is literally impossible to keep up. Without control, you can expect the top guilds to be able to buy out every single house in AoC etc in the game after just a few days, if not hours.
Faction imbalance
On my server, a very strong guild joined a faction and completly sweeped the floor with everyone else. They took over everything and raised taxes to stupid amounts that ruined the experience for everyone else. Did players rally against the tyrants? Did heroes band togheter to fight the evil lords? Ofcourse not. Everyone just joined the faction the best guild was in. There was no fairy tale scenario of other guilds competing with them. Everyone just got demolished and crushed.
And I beg you, dont start with the "someone will eventually beat them" or "in the end, that guild will die out". No, your wrong, what instead happened is that everyone that did not like this got the hell out of the server and realm changed. The server is now 95% 1 single faction playing solo on the server, every part of the map is in their control.
AOE spam meta
The most effective strategy in New world large scale PvP is to simply lag out your opponents. Everyone rushing in and just facerolling the laggiest AOE is by far the best strategy. Look at this video for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJgxIML9rfMHow will Ashes of creation create a game where even 30v30 people dont turn into a massive lagspike battle? How will we create an enviroment where a 100v100 battle even can occur? Not even New World can manage a 30v30 battle battle without the server freezing. How will we stop people from running 100+ AOE spamming classes to simply shut down the game?
Almost no collectibles
The game has no mounts, a pathetic amount of pets and other fun stuff to collect. Most cool stuff will probably come from the real cash shop. This must not happen to AoC. Whatever your stance is on the matter, a lot of people love collecting stuff in MMO:s. It can be achivments, titles, mounts, cosmetic skins, rare items etc. But the fact of the matter is that there needs to be a lot of fun stuff to collect in game. The things you collect let you express yourself in the game and this seem to be important for a lot of players. Also these things shoult not be exclusive to the endgame.
2
Comments
A lv 1 to lv 3 guild should have 10-30 members and not be able to own a castle.
A lv4 guild should require effort to lv up from 3.
Organized guild quests required. 50 members at lv4. Can own castle
Only a lv5 guild can form alliances. Hard guild quest (let it involve open world raiding and crafting. PvP can be exploited so dont make it a requirement). 70-80 members only.
If someone is willing to level up multiple guilds in order to commant a thousand players then that person trully deserves to be an emperor.
Dont help guilds recruit members. Dont make it easy for players to swap guilds.
This is the only way to avoid domination problems.
As for PvP, AoE should have high MP high CD low impact in order to avoid ballgroups and aimless mindless fighting.
Fine tune it.
For the rest I am not too worried. The AoC economy model wont allow the NW, ESO, FF14 mess. Crafting gathering and openworld raiding (Raid with the constant danger of PvP) will be the way to obtain gear. Not the effortless crap seen at the above mentioned games.
I worry about the state of the industry constantly.
They didnt even care to make a swimming animation. They thought their "super skill-based" 6 button gameplay would carry the entire game when it just came off as an even worse version of dark souls pvp.
Well, may it serve as a reminder to all, to not take things for granted.
My heart goes out to all those people who almost certainly spent time on their feedback forums and reddit telling them that this stuff was going to break.
For today's standards, 100k constant concurrent players is a pretty good number for an MMORPG. I don't think NW will be able to maintain even half, but that's irrelevant: that game was poorly made and I'd bet the people calling the shots do not enjoy MMORPGs.
As for AoC, it's difficult to tell what the numbers will look like because we don't know a lot of things yet: will AoC launch on Steam? will they pay streamers to play the game? will the pre-launch testing phases be a huge success (unlike NW's which caused that game to be delayed for another year)? how many "demands" made by casual players (not in a pejorative way, because hopefully we can all agree Ashes will be considered as "hardcore" by many people, which in turn means less players) will Intrepid give in to once they start pouring in after bigger Beta phases start?
However, regarding all the points you raised which are legitimate and which definitely will kill NW if Amazon doesn't fix their shit: I hope that the testing phases show these issues and that they're acknowledged by Intrepid, which will then need to decide which ones will be addressed.
NW forums after the 2019 beta tests and after the 2020 "New World Preview" were flooded with issues that are still in-game today. From bug abuses to basic bad design, from the no-swimming to the unbalanced and boring combat. Most of the issues you pointed out here were already reported almost two years ago in NW's private forums.
I believe Intrepid already expects all of this to happen, much better than I do, and they will have some of their Scrum or Kanban teams' hours reserved after the testing phases working exclusively on gathering, debating and addressing issues raised in the forums, Reddit, by streamers, YouTube videos, etc. If they don't do that.... well I'd rather not think they won't.
AoE spells, melee attacks, or heals... All treated the same. If you want to throw a grenade, make sure your friends are not where it will land.
It's depressing to say the least. I saw so many well thought out posts with feedback, solutions, etc. And it all got sent to the moon by jeffieboi. Never to be heard from again, as they deleted both the closed and open beta forum threads. "they were taking in our feedback" people said. What a joke.
The abundance of gear that drops , and gathering every where in my mind was made for loot drop on dead and always pvp on, they removed both but didn t touch in drop rates or crafting/gathering system, now you have everything in abundance and almost free , now is everyone farming 24/7 without any penalty or danger
I never really believed in player created PvP in open world as it has never really worked in mmorpgs as it just turns extremly toxic unbalanced zergfests and most players see no worth in doing it.
3 Sided Realm/Faction based PvP has proven to be the best type of PvP.
I hope AoC proves me wrong.
0dbea148-8cb8-4711-ba90-eb0864e93b5f
Look at WoW when it launched end of 2004. It reach 1.5 million subs by end of first quarter 2005 and kept rising until it reached 12 million in 2010.
WoW had a dip in subs a month after launch.
Every MMO with a subscription has this - people buy the game often not even realizing that it required a subscription (especially true in the case of WoW in 2004). Or perhaps people get the new game as a gift, and are unable to maintain the subscription.
There are of course people that just don't like the game enough after that first month or so to carry on paying.
Point is, it used to be true that every game had a dip in subscriptions a month after launch, when the access that people got with the box ended.
That said, New World is losing players due to currently being a shit game.
Last year I popped into WoW Classic to get a nostalgia fix after being away for 13 years. Eventually I went to the auction house to buy some materials to help level blacksmithing. While shopping I saw something unexpected but in retrospect is totally understandable. The price of copper ore was higher than a copper bar. Since there is no cost to refine the copper ore into a bar (no coal to fuel the smelter, no tax to use the public infrastructure, etc.) the ore was more valuable since you could use it to level up your smelting skill. This trend did not continue into the higher level materials, but I do not this this is an anomaly.
I like the idea of requiring some low level materials in higher level items. It provides a revenue source for the newer players. I would more than happy to make a <fantasy metal> sword with a cross guard and pommel made of bronze, but I would expect to use about 5 <fantasy metal> for every 1 bronze. It sounds like NW over did it, though.
The insane thing about new world is that everyone can see how to easily fix the problem with their gathering/crafting. Higher tier resources should be much rarer and require more raw material per "processing" to create the crafting material.
so for the metal ingots i think iron and steel are fine, but it goes out the window the second we move to starmetal.
It requires 6 star metal ore, 24 iron ore, 2 Flux, and 4 charcoal to craft a starmetal ingot. (this is the accumulation of materials crafting from iron ingots and up to the starmetal ingot.)
The reality is that star metal ore is just way too easy to obtain. It would need to be extremely rare for the metal to have any real value. Instead they should do both, reduce the amount found in the world and increase the cost per bar.
10 per bar seems a good start, while reducing the amount found in the world by 75%.
I am crazy, so maybe this is a drastic change, but thats kind of what would be needed to fix this sort of issue. A drastic reshaping of all the gathered material conversion rates and drop rarities/percentages.
I really like the local markets of New World towns, the way each town kind of has it's own community. Ashes is going to be the same but on steroids. So it's kinda given me a taste of what Ashes is going to do so much better.
Most of the rest of New World is a shallow, soulless mess.
though what you get is a wee bit weird. And the respawning of fishing spots....
Well, it is said that if you cant say anything good, you better stay silent. (LOONG Awkward Silence)
Oh, there is one thing. I really did find a few nice players there with the right set of mind that did join our small guild. But I guess that was only an "accident" O_O.
Fenloh