New World has many approaches to being a truly social MMO, where you venture out in groups and with a guild to conquer cities and have fun together. However, MeinMMO editor Alexander Leitsch has had some bad experiences in recent days. He finds that there are still too many things in the game that sabotage playing in a group.
What makes New World a social MMO? Basically, New World has many aspects where players need to team up, reminiscent of old school MMORPGs:
- There are many elite mobs, bosses, and world events in the world that can be difficult or impossible to handle alone.
- The dungeons do not have an LFG tool; instead, players have to actively seek out their group.
- Crafting and trading play an important role.
- There is a proximity voice chat that allows you to communicate directly in-game.
- In the endgame, you conquer and defend towns and fortresses together with your guild/faction.
The company that controls a settlement can even impose its own stamp on it by taxing and expanding the settlement according to its own priorities.
Then what’s the problem? While it is worth being out with a group and company for all these aspects, the game otherwise sabotages the group experience on several levels.
Some of these elements have personally frustrated me quite a bit.
The start is unnecessarily complicated for groups
What is the problem at the start? The starting areas in New World are randomly assigned to each player after the tutorial. So if you want to start in a group, you often find yourselves in completely different locations on the map.
If you don’t stop the quest line early enough, you’ll be stuck in that area for a while. Only at the moment you decide on a faction do the quests come back together.
I was already aware of this issue from the beta and thus arranged to meet up with a friend in Everfall after joining a faction. Before that, we completely quested separately, which simply goes much faster and easier.
The solution to the problem would actually be quite simple. Players could be allowed to choose in which of the areas they want to start after the tutorial. This way, playing in a group would be much simpler.
Faction missions, but everyone gets their own
What is the problem with faction missions? Once you have joined one of the 3 factions, you can complete the so-called faction missions. But here it becomes artificially complicated.
Each player is offered their own missions. While they sometimes overlap with those of group members, often they do not. Then everyone in the group must embark on different missions. Not exactly conducive to group play.
Here too, a solution would be quite simple: sharing quests with the group. But such a feature does not currently exist. It would be useful not only for faction missions but also for general side quests.
These are sometimes simply accepted in the world, and you don’t even remember where they came from. It would be so much easier if you could share them directly with the group.
The struggle for materials and a dreadful quest
What is the problem with materials? All resources in New World spawn at fixed locations. But only one player can gather them. When a group sets out and wants to level crafting together, they steal resources from each other.
This is particularly a problem with the annoying quest “The Weakness of the Ego”. Unless you purchase the materials directly from the trading post, you should split up in different directions for this quest and begin searching for materials.
My experience was similarly frustrating in a faction quest where I had to kill and skin a mini-boss. The magnetite grizzly is a rather grim fellow, not someone you want to tackle alone. The problem is that only the player who skins the dead grizzly fulfills the quest.
This led to a situation where my four random allies were actively fighting but suddenly stopped in the last third of the bear and were already pressing the E key to skin the dead animal. Similar scenarios occur repeatedly in the “kill and skin” quests.
An MMO where group members work against each other is quite challenging in my opinion. Thus, to level crafting, I separated from my group and set out alone. Here New World could take a cue from Guild Wars 2, where every player gathers materials just for themselves.
A user interface that is only somewhat suitable for groups
What is the problem with the user interface? At this point, I have several small issues that personally annoy me greatly:
- I would like to see mana and ideally even stamina in the interface.
- I can’t see the name tags of my group behind buildings or plants. This makes it incredibly easy to lose sight of your allies.
- For world events and PvP in the open world, a group size over 5 players would be useful. Then several 5-player groups could team up for a raid.
If you really want to set out effectively with more than 5 players, you are essentially forced to sit in voice chat on the side.
The user interface itself also has several other issues. This is also acknowledged by Twitch streamer shroud:
Battles for fortresses fine, but not everyone can join
What is the problem with wars and invasions? The battles for fortresses – whether PvP wars or the invasions in PvE – are designed for 50 players. A company, however, can accommodate up to 100 players.
If such a fight occurs and all players want to participate, half of the attendees are excluded. I have personally applied for New World wars several times and have not been taken for any since the release – other players, sometimes from my own guild, have had priority so far.
It becomes especially difficult when streamers like Entenburg or Ares have several companies under them. When 200 or even 300 players are waiting for wars, a planned rotation becomes almost impossible. This can quickly become frustrating and create bad feelings in the guild.
The problem with the servers
What is the problem with the servers? The current issues with queue times and full servers greatly disturb group play. No one would argue with this. But even if the hype dies down and enough servers are available, I see some problems.
On the one hand, I fear that on the large servers, the queues will remain permanent. There seems to be a fixed server size of 2,000 to 2,500 players, and some streamers or a community alone brings that many players.
On the other hand, this fixed limit could mean that a faction quickly dominates on a server. Because theoretically, only 833 players per faction can be online. However, if one faction constantly has 1,000+ players on the servers, it can quickly become boring for the opposing factions because they are always outnumbered.
Here, Amazon will need a solution in the long run.
Questing and crafting as a solo player, dungeons and wars in a group
How best to play New World? I have had the best experience so far by solo questing and crafting. But as soon as it comes to world events with the corrupted or dungeons, we team up as a group, as long as it’s possible with the queues.
Later, when it comes to the battles for settlements, I am practically forced to play in one of the large companies. Otherwise, it becomes very difficult to get into those contents.
Anyone who doesn’t want to miss out on PvP still has the new Outpost Rush PvP mode ahead of them. You can find out what it’s all about here:
A mode makes the new MMO New World look like a survival game for 40 players
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