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New World’s had a rough go of it the last few months since launch, and while the game isn’t dying like many would have you believe, it is going through some major growing pains. One major source of contention has been the endgame gear changes that Amaozn has implemented. Responding to feedback, the development team has detailed what they are doing to address the concerns, admitting that it’s “clear” the team was wrong in how they approached them.
The major source of contention comes from the news earlier this week as part of the PTR notes about a controversial change to the High Water Mark system. This change would see the current system renamed to “Expertise,” and see a reduction in power right away for players.
In response to feedback from the community, the developers posted an update on the official forums, talking about the changes and how it will be approached now moving forward. The team started off admitting that they were “wrong” in how they approached the change.
In response to the changes, Amazon has announced that they will not be touching any crafted gear, quest loot or anything bought from the Faction shops.
“Before diving in, I want to be clear that we are dedicated to not reducing the power of players in the world (other than cases addressing bugs and imbalance problems),” the post by Developer Zin_Ramu reads. “The rest of this post details how we are achieving that while retaining the benefits of the Expertise and Gypsum system.”
They continued:
“When these changes are implemented, Gear Score scaling will only apply to items sold or traded after that patch. So any items obtained prior to this patch will not be impacted or reduced in any way. When we thought about it more, reducing power for existing players is just unacceptable and something we will not do. We initially thought it being only temporary and giving a new path with to gain back that power with Gypsum would be acceptable, but it is now clear we were wrong.”
As a result, Amazon believes this will give players “alternative ways to equip themselves if they don’t want to engange in the Expertise system.” Zin_Ramu also talks up crafting’s importance since the system will not touch crafted gear, which could in turn have a positive effect on the economy.
Amazon does acknowledge, however, that players who have not yet reached level 60 might feel that New World has become “harder,” though they are hoping the new Gypsum currency introduced with the Expertise system could help offset that some.
You can check out the full post on the official forums here. In case you missed it as well, alongside the Expertise changes, New World’s first real festival was officially unveiled on the PTR, called the Winter Convergence Event. This new festival will change how Aternum looks and give players the ability to collect tokens for rare and cosmetic items in the MMO. Additionally, the first of the server merges have happened, with the EU’s Brittia and Mardi servers being merged yesterday
