New World has stolen headlines for weeks now thanks to its launch problems, which have been compounded by its parade of exploits and communication problems. Amazon seems aware of this, which is why last night it dropped a dev blog on the official forums focusing on its high-level goals for PvP.
“We want to create a game where PvE and PvP not only co-exist but support each other,” Amazon explains. “We also want ‘wars not ganks’ – meaning we want to support meaningful PvP in War and the open world conflict between the three Factions.”
World PvP, the studio believes, is in an “okay position” with “room to improve.” It plans to improve endgame rewards for flagging in the open world with multiple approaches, including boosting luck for flaggers, reducing durability damage for flaggers, and boosting rewards for PvP kills at the level cap, as well as more open-world PvP activities in the future. Players can also expect some visual tweaks so it’s more obvious that enemies are flagged in the first place.
As for Wars, the team is apparently happy with the current two-day cadence but will be “continuing to review balance” and bolstering player communication for the mode as defenders currently have the upper hand.
And in territory control, in spite of some servers being a wash of all purple or all green, apparently most are more or less even with a “good spread between factions on most servers.”
“We do have two systems in place to help with Faction balance. We allow players to switch Factions, but don’t allow them to switch into the dominate Faction. We also increase the influence underdog factions earn for PvP faction missions to give them a better chance at earning the right to declare war., but we may need to do more. We are watching Faction balance on all the servers and if it becomes a general problem we have a few ideas to help resolve it in interesting ways.”
Amazon does plan to fix some territories, like Everfall, that are significantly more expensive to maintain than others; it’ll also add some new PvP mission types to add variety and spread out the zergs.
The studio does note that it is still working to fix multiple exploits. “We’ve made an initial set of changes to address some of the issues, and are working on some higher impact changes that need more testing,” the team says. Perhaps it could also tackle the problem of banned players being able to sneak back into the game?
Amazon also sent out a sweet CM to apologize for its communication and promise that it’s working on a better bug tracker. “We know we have a ways to go, but I appreciate that our work is making improvements.”
Last night’s update did manage to get wealth transfers back online last night following a brutal exploit. Some players reported it the exploit was still working, but Amazon says nuh-uh: “It does not look like the dupe actually exists in the way folks are reporting, but to be sure, none of you should attempt using this because even an attempt, once it hits our exploit threshold, will trigger a suspension/ban. […] We are confident we can address the gold and the items, as well as take action on those who used the exploit.” Compensation for players is still incoming, as is the regular weekly update.
