I Love/Hate New World (part 2)

Here is the Part 2 article involving my love and hate relationship with the New World MMO (read Part 1 here). Screenshots and videos were contributed by my friends namely kimikimkimster, neverw1nter and Foxseiz. There are three video snippets in the article. Let me be clear that I want to support this game, because I’m enjoying what I love in the game.

I LOVE THE SENSATION OF LIFE IN THE GAME

New World has a sense of a routine life. Buy a house. Sleep at night. Wake up when it’s bright. Go to work. Hunt, fish, mine, chop. Sell the goods. Come home. Then Do it again. I can make a living in the game to pay for my keep.

We certainly appreciate how to thrive in the game. There is no cookie cut way to earn coins. Watching and seeing other characters go about their business through my home is another example of a living sensation. All while settlement background music is playing. I sit on the front porch sometimes while planning my next mission. Take a break. Daydream somewhere picturesque too.

I LOVE THE PLAYER PERSPECTIVE

The close third person camera adds immersion. Player perspective is important on immersion especially when the game is about thriving in a fantasy place. The closer we see the life on the ground, the better the immersion. The third-person camera shows a grounded player on Aeternum.

An isometric view in an MMO (or even RPG) makes it hard to be immersed. The camera is far away. Lost Ark and Path of Exile focuses on the avatar and treats it as a center piece while the world acts as a backdrop. The character feels disconnected. YOU feel disconnected. Maplestory 2 has a non-existent immersion and it feels more like a platform game instead; such as jumping over obstacles. Seeing my character in New World through third person makes me appreciate the world close up and it complements the roleplay aspect on Aeternum. Perhaps they can add a first-person view photo mode?

I HATE THE DEAL BREAKING BUGS

Yes, bugs are to be expected. BUT I HATE GAME BREAKING BUGS. And game breaking bugs should not be on the production version when there is a New World PTR. I have had a few instances where I couldn’t finish a quest, nor would I be able to trigger the next event. I needed to defer these quests until they were fixed. Sometimes they had to disable a dungeon (involving the main story) while they fix a bug too.

A couple of bugs that I had to report were issues with the player home: 

1. My Barkimedes pet disappeared after storing it into my Windsward shed. 

2. I could not place items on my second floor for one of the houses in Weaver’s Fen which left me in a dilemma whether to wait or spend another 10k for a new house.

The faction gypsum timer was the most recent bug. Gypsum Orb is used to craft a 500+ GS equipment which also raises your overall watermark (i.e. the gear score). It also gives you Umbral shards for an equipment with 600 gear score. After purchasing a Gypsum Orb with faction tokens, you’d have to wait for 22 hours to buy another. After the Heart of Madness update, players had to wait for 2366 years before buying another gypsum. HOW COULD AGS MESS THAT UP?! Was that ‘timer’ tied to another code in the game? Note that this was hotfixed, but I was without a gypsum orb for two days.

Now you know why we call an update ‘a bug release’ as well.

AGS has to deploy hotfixes more often. Their game design or strategy may be to pool up the bugs and deal with them in one fell swoop, but quest related bugs have to be hotfixed immediately. While most of the bugs I’ve encountered have been fixed — I am still missing Barkimedes. Come back, boy!

I HATE FATAL ERRORS DURING COMBAT!

One occasion of CTD (crash-to-desktop) is understandable. But I’ve had at least three CTDs during combat! These fatal errors prompted unnecessary deaths to low level mobs. And damaged my equipment! Weapon repairs are expensive especially while I was still grinding!

To think that all those CTDs occurred during combat! These were not a good first impression at all. And it’s not an exaggeration to say that I haven’t experienced a CTD from past MMOs. There has to be a fail-safe, AGS. Perhaps freeze the character if disconnected during PVE?