a group of people I used to play eve with picked it up again after giving up on it after launch (like we all did)
they tell of some reasonable design and feature improvements, but I think ultimately the game is flawed as an MMO
if you want a bar-filler with some action combat, it definitely does the job better than it did at launch though. some people are really into that sort of thing
I still play it on and off. It's an excellent action-combat flower-picking/chest-opening simulator but not much else.
I would not invest a serious amount of time in it if you want a modern MMO or really solid PVP, but it supports a very casual gameplay loop which can be appealing. Community on servers is limited, and where there is, it's usually pretty toxic pvp bro stuff. It's also very susceptible to server population changes: markets are small and easily manipulated by big companies, resource gathering is competitive in high pop or bot-heavy servers, and dungeons are single server with a limited group finder (no matchmaking, only apply/accept group advertising).
It's very easy to compartmentalize what you like and don't like, though. For instance, I just play solo, open chests, explore and try and survive hard outdoor content using all the different weapons, armor types, and skills, collect and craft and decorate my 3 houses. Others just play 3v3 arenas all day or spam "mutations" (upscaled dungeons) for the week. The one nice thing is that gear is obtainable across all playstyles. I think only the most recent update added a mechanic (heartgems) that require dungeon visits.
I have to ask, I've noticed that a lot of New World players seem to primarily describe the process of finding loot in the game as "opening chests". Is that really the most notable part of the whole process? I play FF14 and certainly open a ton of chests there, but it feels like more of an afterthought compared to everything else that happened immediately beforehand to make that chest reachable.
a group of people I used to play eve with picked it up again after giving up on it after launch (like we all did)
they tell of some reasonable design and feature improvements, but I think ultimately the game is flawed as an MMO
if you want a bar-filler with some action combat, it definitely does the job better than it did at launch though. some people are really into that sort of thing
I still play it on and off. It's an excellent action-combat flower-picking/chest-opening simulator but not much else.
I would not invest a serious amount of time in it if you want a modern MMO or really solid PVP, but it supports a very casual gameplay loop which can be appealing. Community on servers is limited, and where there is, it's usually pretty toxic pvp bro stuff. It's also very susceptible to server population changes: markets are small and easily manipulated by big companies, resource gathering is competitive in high pop or bot-heavy servers, and dungeons are single server with a limited group finder (no matchmaking, only apply/accept group advertising).
It's very easy to compartmentalize what you like and don't like, though. For instance, I just play solo, open chests, explore and try and survive hard outdoor content using all the different weapons, armor types, and skills, collect and craft and decorate my 3 houses. Others just play 3v3 arenas all day or spam "mutations" (upscaled dungeons) for the week. The one nice thing is that gear is obtainable across all playstyles. I think only the most recent update added a mechanic (heartgems) that require dungeon visits.
I have to ask, I've noticed that a lot of New World players seem to primarily describe the process of finding loot in the game as "opening chests". Is that really the most notable part of the whole process? I play FF14 and certainly open a ton of chests there, but it feels like more of an afterthought compared to everything else that happened immediately beforehand to make that chest reachable.
There are daily lockout outdoor chests in elite zones that players often zerg that carry the same quality of loot as dungeons and the pvp battleground along with other useful items (gems, potions, etc...). Some of this loot can be upgraded to what is current max iLVL/gear score in the game now and some of it has a chance to be named gear which can go from 1-2 perks to 3. The endgame is essentially grinding through enough of this garbage to get a suit of armor for your build that can be upgraded to max iLVL and has 3 good perks and the right attribute stats. Once you do that, you can do it again for each niche gameplay requirement you have whether it's your role (heal/tank/dps), your targeted difficult dungeon (banes/wards), or your weapon loadout (life staff and void gauntlet vs. axe/hammer for instance).
Long story short, the RNG treadmill IS the endgame, not a preparation for the endgame. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it's not required to min/max, get all BiSsy about stuff, but it's definitely something that draws the heavy players and poopsockers to New World. There's just no raid/high end endgame that asks you to be so well geared - it's more just status/fun with the exception of the core land control mechanic of wars that allow companies to control regions and make gabillions of coin (which is more or less the point of the game), but almost no one on a server actually participates in wars: it's generally strangled by a group of high end PVPer's who control everything through shell companies - the average player joining New World won't get to see this mechanic in the game's current state (which is a real shame - this *could* have been a great RvRvR game).
I should note that technically crafting can get you all this gear, too, but it is prohibitively expensive, and the RNG for rolling good gear crafting is much, much worse than just spamming dungeons or chests.
Not sure if I explained that super well, and this is just my take on it, but I'm hoping that explains the gist of it.
Lemme see if I can better explain 'opening chests' with how I used to do it (haven't played in months, fyi, so things may have changed)
There are certain areas which are elite zones. They have harder, elite mobs and harder, elite bosses. They're basically open world dungeons. They contain normal chests which have high level useful stuff like potions, food, and recipes (food, furniture, etc), and they contain Elite chests, which have a once a day lockout timer on them, once you open them, you can't open that chest again for a day. The elite chests have the chance to drop good recipes, rare crafting mats, actual good gear, and gear at, near, or slightly above your current 'Expertise'.
Your Expertise is the maximum gearscore you have ever obtained on a slot. Say your Expertise for your heavy armor boots is 590. You open a chest, and you get heavy boots that have the gearscore 591 (the boots themselves have terrible stats for Str, Int, and basket weaving, they're garbage). Your Expertise for heavy boots is now 591, which you get a pop up for and you are happy. Woo! You can get items from dailies that let you increase your Expertise as well, but these are limited, some of the activities are slow, boring, or require -effort- so chests are a much easier, mindless way to get bumps. If you buy an amazing gearscore 620 heavy armor boots from the auction house, it will be downgraded to gearscore 591 until your Expertise rises higher.
Also the Elite chests have a chance to drop named or gold quality items, which instead of 2 perks, have 3. These are comprable to gold quality or named items found in dungeons, and some of them are very desirable. Even if its not something you can use, most of them are tradeable, so they can be sold for a sum high enough to allow you to save for something you can use.
So you want to open as many Elite chests as you can. Groups form to open chests, but because the mobs in these zones are harder, they form into Zergs. Masses that pour through an elite zones in a wave. People die, but get rezzed by the zerg. Back before I quit, my server even had set times and starting ares for zergs of specific colors/factions so people could flag for the extra loot bonus. The zergs will start in Elite Zone A, follow a path to get every elite chest as quickly as possible, and swarm any boss in the way. Then move on to Elite Zone B, then C, then D, then E.
Since there are so many people, mostly you won't even get credit for most kills, or in many cases even fight anything if you don't want to. You are just running through the zone, following the zerg, and opening chests.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Lemme see if I can better explain 'opening chests' with how I used to do it (haven't played in months, fyi, so things may have changed)
There are certain areas which are elite zones. They have harder, elite mobs and harder, elite bosses. They're basically open world dungeons. They contain normal chests which have high level useful stuff like potions, food, and recipes (food, furniture, etc), and they contain Elite chests, which have a once a day lockout timer on them, once you open them, you can't open that chest again for a day. The elite chests have the chance to drop good recipes, rare crafting mats, actual good gear, and gear at, near, or slightly above your current 'Expertise'.
Your Expertise is the maximum gearscore you have ever obtained on a slot. Say your Expertise for your heavy armor boots is 590. You open a chest, and you get heavy boots that have the gearscore 591 (the boots themselves have terrible stats for Str, Int, and basket weaving, they're garbage). Your Expertise for heavy boots is now 591, which you get a pop up for and you are happy. Woo! You can get items from dailies that let you increase your Expertise as well, but these are limited, some of the activities are slow, boring, or require -effort- so chests are a much easier, mindless way to get bumps. If you buy an amazing gearscore 620 heavy armor boots from the auction house, it will be downgraded to gearscore 591 until your Expertise rises higher.
Also the Elite chests have a chance to drop named or gold quality items, which instead of 2 perks, have 3. These are comprable to gold quality or named items found in dungeons, and some of them are very desirable. Even if its not something you can use, most of them are tradeable, so they can be sold for a sum high enough to allow you to save for something you can use.
So you want to open as many Elite chests as you can. Groups form to open chests, but because the mobs in these zones are harder, they form into Zergs. Masses that pour through an elite zones in a wave. People die, but get rezzed by the zerg. Back before I quit, my server even had set times and starting ares for zergs of specific colors/factions so people could flag for the extra loot bonus. The zergs will start in Elite Zone A, follow a path to get every elite chest as quickly as possible, and swarm any boss in the way. Then move on to Elite Zone B, then C, then D, then E.
Since there are so many people, mostly you won't even get credit for most kills, or in many cases even fight anything if you don't want to. You are just running through the zone, following the zerg, and opening chests.
It's boring as all fuck unless you're yucking it up with friends. A lot of the content if "follow the zerg, barely contribute, profit."
the daily chest thing resonates with me because its, probably coincidentally, carbon copied from a very very very old online rpg i used to play (VERY old, like Ultima old)....
which had a bunch of "mystic chests" in dungeons with daily/weekly lockouts and you had to fight your way to them for a chance at a good item, and your loot table was based on something tantamount to what new world is calling expertise
but in that game is was cool as fuck because A) it was the 90s and B ) that game world was cool and the combat was fun and also the *gear* itself was awesome as fuck and not just the same piece of platemail with 2 more str or whatever it is they're doing
Lemme see if I can better explain 'opening chests' with how I used to do it (haven't played in months, fyi, so things may have changed)
There are certain areas which are elite zones. They have harder, elite mobs and harder, elite bosses. They're basically open world dungeons. They contain normal chests which have high level useful stuff like potions, food, and recipes (food, furniture, etc), and they contain Elite chests, which have a once a day lockout timer on them, once you open them, you can't open that chest again for a day. The elite chests have the chance to drop good recipes, rare crafting mats, actual good gear, and gear at, near, or slightly above your current 'Expertise'.
Your Expertise is the maximum gearscore you have ever obtained on a slot. Say your Expertise for your heavy armor boots is 590. You open a chest, and you get heavy boots that have the gearscore 591 (the boots themselves have terrible stats for Str, Int, and basket weaving, they're garbage). Your Expertise for heavy boots is now 591, which you get a pop up for and you are happy. Woo! You can get items from dailies that let you increase your Expertise as well, but these are limited, some of the activities are slow, boring, or require -effort- so chests are a much easier, mindless way to get bumps. If you buy an amazing gearscore 620 heavy armor boots from the auction house, it will be downgraded to gearscore 591 until your Expertise rises higher.
Also the Elite chests have a chance to drop named or gold quality items, which instead of 2 perks, have 3. These are comprable to gold quality or named items found in dungeons, and some of them are very desirable. Even if its not something you can use, most of them are tradeable, so they can be sold for a sum high enough to allow you to save for something you can use.
So you want to open as many Elite chests as you can. Groups form to open chests, but because the mobs in these zones are harder, they form into Zergs. Masses that pour through an elite zones in a wave. People die, but get rezzed by the zerg. Back before I quit, my server even had set times and starting ares for zergs of specific colors/factions so people could flag for the extra loot bonus. The zergs will start in Elite Zone A, follow a path to get every elite chest as quickly as possible, and swarm any boss in the way. Then move on to Elite Zone B, then C, then D, then E.
Since there are so many people, mostly you won't even get credit for most kills, or in many cases even fight anything if you don't want to. You are just running through the zone, following the zerg, and opening chests.
It's boring as all fuck unless you're yucking it up with friends. A lot of the content if "follow the zerg, barely contribute, profit."
It could occasionally be interesting, like when the Flagged Green Zerg that started at 8pm moved faster than the Flagged Purple Zerg that started at 7pm, and ended up running into their back end, resulting in a PvP skirmish. Or when a portion of the Green Zerg broke off from chests to hunt down and destroy the Yellow marksman hiding on a roof and pulling Thorpes (super hard minibosses) onto the zerg. Basically runnign chests was fun when you stopped running chests for some reason.
Could be worse though. Could be farming weaponsmith pants. Which were a pair of pants needed to be a top end crafter, were a rare drop so they didn't drop often, were impossible to buy unless you had a 5-6 figure in game bank account, and only dropped from one mob in the entire game.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Posts
I have to ask, I've noticed that a lot of New World players seem to primarily describe the process of finding loot in the game as "opening chests". Is that really the most notable part of the whole process? I play FF14 and certainly open a ton of chests there, but it feels like more of an afterthought compared to everything else that happened immediately beforehand to make that chest reachable.
There are daily lockout outdoor chests in elite zones that players often zerg that carry the same quality of loot as dungeons and the pvp battleground along with other useful items (gems, potions, etc...). Some of this loot can be upgraded to what is current max iLVL/gear score in the game now and some of it has a chance to be named gear which can go from 1-2 perks to 3. The endgame is essentially grinding through enough of this garbage to get a suit of armor for your build that can be upgraded to max iLVL and has 3 good perks and the right attribute stats. Once you do that, you can do it again for each niche gameplay requirement you have whether it's your role (heal/tank/dps), your targeted difficult dungeon (banes/wards), or your weapon loadout (life staff and void gauntlet vs. axe/hammer for instance).
Long story short, the RNG treadmill IS the endgame, not a preparation for the endgame. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it's not required to min/max, get all BiSsy about stuff, but it's definitely something that draws the heavy players and poopsockers to New World. There's just no raid/high end endgame that asks you to be so well geared - it's more just status/fun with the exception of the core land control mechanic of wars that allow companies to control regions and make gabillions of coin (which is more or less the point of the game), but almost no one on a server actually participates in wars: it's generally strangled by a group of high end PVPer's who control everything through shell companies - the average player joining New World won't get to see this mechanic in the game's current state (which is a real shame - this *could* have been a great RvRvR game).
I should note that technically crafting can get you all this gear, too, but it is prohibitively expensive, and the RNG for rolling good gear crafting is much, much worse than just spamming dungeons or chests.
Not sure if I explained that super well, and this is just my take on it, but I'm hoping that explains the gist of it.
But yeah I totally agree. RNG treadmill was the endgame to collect full sets for different uses and level them up to max gear score
There are certain areas which are elite zones. They have harder, elite mobs and harder, elite bosses. They're basically open world dungeons. They contain normal chests which have high level useful stuff like potions, food, and recipes (food, furniture, etc), and they contain Elite chests, which have a once a day lockout timer on them, once you open them, you can't open that chest again for a day. The elite chests have the chance to drop good recipes, rare crafting mats, actual good gear, and gear at, near, or slightly above your current 'Expertise'.
Your Expertise is the maximum gearscore you have ever obtained on a slot. Say your Expertise for your heavy armor boots is 590. You open a chest, and you get heavy boots that have the gearscore 591 (the boots themselves have terrible stats for Str, Int, and basket weaving, they're garbage). Your Expertise for heavy boots is now 591, which you get a pop up for and you are happy. Woo! You can get items from dailies that let you increase your Expertise as well, but these are limited, some of the activities are slow, boring, or require -effort- so chests are a much easier, mindless way to get bumps. If you buy an amazing gearscore 620 heavy armor boots from the auction house, it will be downgraded to gearscore 591 until your Expertise rises higher.
Also the Elite chests have a chance to drop named or gold quality items, which instead of 2 perks, have 3. These are comprable to gold quality or named items found in dungeons, and some of them are very desirable. Even if its not something you can use, most of them are tradeable, so they can be sold for a sum high enough to allow you to save for something you can use.
So you want to open as many Elite chests as you can. Groups form to open chests, but because the mobs in these zones are harder, they form into Zergs. Masses that pour through an elite zones in a wave. People die, but get rezzed by the zerg. Back before I quit, my server even had set times and starting ares for zergs of specific colors/factions so people could flag for the extra loot bonus. The zergs will start in Elite Zone A, follow a path to get every elite chest as quickly as possible, and swarm any boss in the way. Then move on to Elite Zone B, then C, then D, then E.
Since there are so many people, mostly you won't even get credit for most kills, or in many cases even fight anything if you don't want to. You are just running through the zone, following the zerg, and opening chests.
It's boring as all fuck unless you're yucking it up with friends. A lot of the content if "follow the zerg, barely contribute, profit."
which had a bunch of "mystic chests" in dungeons with daily/weekly lockouts and you had to fight your way to them for a chance at a good item, and your loot table was based on something tantamount to what new world is calling expertise
but in that game is was cool as fuck because A) it was the 90s and B ) that game world was cool and the combat was fun and also the *gear* itself was awesome as fuck and not just the same piece of platemail with 2 more str or whatever it is they're doing
It could occasionally be interesting, like when the Flagged Green Zerg that started at 8pm moved faster than the Flagged Purple Zerg that started at 7pm, and ended up running into their back end, resulting in a PvP skirmish. Or when a portion of the Green Zerg broke off from chests to hunt down and destroy the Yellow marksman hiding on a roof and pulling Thorpes (super hard minibosses) onto the zerg. Basically runnign chests was fun when you stopped running chests for some reason.
Could be worse though. Could be farming weaponsmith pants. Which were a pair of pants needed to be a top end crafter, were a rare drop so they didn't drop often, were impossible to buy unless you had a 5-6 figure in game bank account, and only dropped from one mob in the entire game.