In the MMORPG New World (Steam), Amazon intentionally adjusts the loot and drop rates so that players are more likely to get the equipment they still need. This system is called “Loot Biasing” and is now introduced in a blog post.
How is New World doing on Steam?
- At release in October 2021, New World had a huge impact on Steam with a peak of 913,000 players.
- Afterwards, it went down for a long time until the MMORPG recovered in November 2022, reaching a peak of 137,000 players.
- The highlight last year was in October 2023 with a peak of 77,642 players. Currently, the game is again in a quieter phase. We have presented you the plans for New World for 2024.
The last highlight of New World:
Amazon wants to reduce frustration moments in New World
What is Amazon doing with the loot? In a blog post, two designers present “Loot Biasing”: The system ensures that players receive items according to their current equipment. It pays attention to:
- Attribute Properties
- Item Type
The aim of the system is to reduce players’ negative feelings about loot. Someone who only uses an ice glove shouldn’t constantly find axes. It does not feel good when you are melee and then find items for wizards or vice versa:
“We found that our item system was great at giving people a ton of stuff but not so good at distributing the items that players really wanted.”
This is how it works in practice: In practice, the system removes certain items from the loot table if they do not correspond to what a player is wearing.
If a player is wearing a large axe and a warhammer, the loot list is weighted in that direction, so that more large axes and warhammers drop.
What’s the problem? Farming “Named Items” caused difficulties because there were only a few of them.
Due to the weighting in the loot, items that players wanted to farm would have disappeared from the list: This was something to avoid, so they completely excluded Named Items
and artifacts from the system.
They also considered the following:
- At low levels, players are allowed to find different types of weapons because it is assumed they may want to experiment with which weapons they use.
- At high levels, it is assumed that players have found their favorite weapon and are given more of that type.
Despite all the difficulties, they believe that “Loot Biasing” has had a positive effect so far.
In the future, they would like players to be able to specify exactly which items they are looking for – regardless of which items they currently have equipped. However, they currently have no concrete plans to communicate regarding this.
More about New World: The MMORPG New World still has nearly 20,000 players on Steam: Announcing something big for 2024
