Under the weather today so just sharing a video guide for greatsword/sword and shield. Looks like a fun build.
Tuesday, November 22, 2022
Monday, November 21, 2022
New World 300 STR and the Grit problem
Grit is important in that it helps prevent a player from being staggered. Normally grit is reserved for specific attacks or abilities and thus players can plan around those specific moments and what grit brings to that moment. With grit on every light and heavy attack the nuance is gone and the power is obvious as the 300 STR attacker stays upright and doesn't suffer staggers that every other player has to either dodge or endure. There is no trade off being at 300 STR.
Compare 300 STR's grit passive to 300 FOC 300's. FOC 300 grants faster mana regen when mana is down. 300 FOC bonus mana regen in a game where there are mana potions and mana regeneration potions you can quaff! 300 FOC has a pointless bonus.
Now combine 300 STR's grit bonus and the fact it is a primary damage attribute and it gets even nuttier. Any STR weapon player is going to want to get 300 STR for the damage; grit makes it a no brainer. Throw in the Thwarting Strikes perk that gives +12% damage to attacks with grit and voila! Top damage stat and one of the best passives in the game to help you stay upright to dish out that damage? Sign me the freak up!
Obviously I am ranting on the 300 STR passive for grit but anyone that knows the weapons and builds I like to play knows that I abuse that 300 STR. In fact I've played with it so much that when I swap to any other build that is not 300 STR I feel like I am playing an entirely different game as I am stuttered across the battlefield. Grit just unlocks "smash left click" mode and without it the player has a little more thinking to do.
The question is: does grit on all attacks make sense anywhere? Actually it does: for tanks. Tanks need to stay up right and out of stagger to do their job. Grit on attacks being tied to 300 STR means tanks are almost exclusively going 300 STR. Ideally tanks would be encouraged to go 300 CON. Some tanks do because the hit points are nice and for PvP the 300 CON passive that increase duration of roots/slows/stuns can be helpful (though no where near grit on all attacks), but giving up grit on all attacks means as a tank you spend a lot of time not doing your job in PvE and PvP.
Is there fixes to the situation? Yes; two jump right to mind.
The first change that could be made is to tie grit on all attacks to 300 CON. CON is not a damage skill so it makes sense that it could gain an advantage in attacking by giving 300 CON players grit on their attacks. It fits right into tanking where this sort of benefit is a great synergy without dipping into the "it's just broken" category.
The second approach to take is to give grit on all attacks to heavy armor users. It makes thematic sense and mechanical sense. Heavy armor is penalized a huge loss in damage (30%) and gets a much worse dodge. It would make sense to reward heavy armor with the ability to not get smacked around easily. Other than PvE tanking heavy armor doesn't have much of a clear role. Giving it grit on all attacks would give it an immediate role.
The only issue with grit on all attacks being moved to heavy armor is this bridges top damage attributes with grit on all attacks (heavy armor + 300 STR) so just shifts the problem somewhere else. That is why I think the first proposal makes so much sense. In fact if I was sitting in a development meeting about balance that would be the first thing I'd question.
Hopefully AGS is listening because this conversation is on repeat in the community and most recently exasperated by the popularity of the greatsword which is a top target for 300 STR. Knowing that AGS wants to both improve heavy armor and melee in PvP I am hopeful addressing the 300 STR grit issue will be top of mind. Until it's addressed I will just keep on using it because without it this is an entirely different and clunkier game.
Sunday, November 20, 2022
Friday, November 18, 2022
New World: Obtaining Motherwell Wisher's Coin
I have used Sword/Shield for the majority of my time playing New World. I leveled up as Sword/Shield and Firestaff. I spent a long haul playing Sword/Shield + Hatchet when leaping strike + shield bash was the king combo build. I have most recently done a bunch of tanking in PvP and a bit in PvE using Sword/Shield. So it came much to my surprise to learn there was a round shield, Motherwell Wisher's Coin, that had the Rogue perk (increases backstab damage). More curious was what was required to farm for it!
The shield drops from Well Guardian inside of the Motherwell. Players that played at launch may remember the original version of Well Guardian tied to the main story quest line and it's millions of hit points creating an excessively long and exhausting fight (which meant players just exploited terrain to spank it to death). Well Guardian was brought down to normal hit point levels appropriate to its position in the quest chain.
Well Guardian also features some named item drops which now always are a minimum of 590. As mentioned one of those drops is the round shield with the rogue perk. The only problem now though is that players cannot enter the Motherwell after having completed the quest. In comes the creative players who always seem to find a way around these sorts of inconveniences.
Through some creative jumping and crawling a player can make it back into the Motherwell and farm Well Guardian. If interested you can follow this guide on Youtube. Then it's just down to farming Well Guardian over and over and over and over (as is MMO tradition!). I would recommend bringing Blight Tinctures with you as you will get blighted (damage over time and healing effects significantly reduced) and while Well Guardian is a shadow of his former self he still can smack around a level 60 (got me one time). Some spots on the rock wall will save you from blight but best to just bring tinctures (I bought a stack of 100x powerful tinctures for a few hundred gold).
As a note I had +luck on my bags (x3), no luck on my armor/weapons, and 3x major loot trophies in my house.
Fifty or so kills later and voila!
Well guardian also drops these named items (I got several of each before I got the shield):
- Greatsword: Sword of the Defender
- Rapier: Motherwell Wisher's Wand
Thursday, November 17, 2022
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
Turkey Terror in New World
New World's annual Turkey Terror event kicked off this morning. A giant turkey, new rewards, and more await players throughout Aeternum. The team shared a neat event video via Elon Musk's new toy.
The authorities uncovered this found footage in the forests of Aeternum.
— New World (@playnewworld) November 15, 2022
The details of this case was never disclosed to the public.
Discretion is advised. pic.twitter.com/SQ2SNik97A
I journeyed out and slayed my daily quota of turkey. I found it interesting that there are weapon coatings that do extra damage to Turkulon (the giant monster turkey) instead of just giving us a use for all the "beast" related items (coatings, ward, bane). The boss turkey is also not a challenging fight so not sure why players would need the extra damage from the turkey coatings.
Also available is a turkey-specific skinning knife which gives event items when you skin regular turkeys such as the the aforementioned turkey-specific weapon coatings and also is the current way to get your daily diamond gypsum.
Probably most important though is the Feast-o-Plenty Food Trophy that increase food buff duration. A trophy obtained from the mighty Turkulon, Feathered Avenger of Death. It inspires you when you eat a meal. Only works when placed in your home. Grants +25% Food Buff Time when you eat beneficial food. I have yet to unlock the trophy but it is definitely a reward worth working towards! It also looks like you can only gain one copy of the trophy during the event so no stacking to 75% through 3x trophies.
There is also the giant turkey legs and the recipe that goes with them to create +Luck/Con food. The big change though is everyone that contributes to the giant turkey kill gets a leg compared to last year where only the person that skinned the turkey got a leg. Legs and this +Luck food will be a hot commodity!
Most refreshing is there is a pity system so if you don't get a specific reward you will be guaranteed to get it on your 16th Turkulon kill. It took me about an hour to get five kills in today and that was mostly just waiting for spawns while I did other daily tasks.
Over all the event is light weight and fun. The Turkulon fight seems either bugged or it is undertuned (i.e. its easy). Players who want the rewards will be able to get them and still enjoy other parts of the game. Another great event in the bag for New World!
Fighting Turkulon and have different opinions of the fight? Think the rewards are dumb? Maybe brilliant? Let me know in the comments.
Tuesday, November 15, 2022
New World PTR Gold Acquisition Nerfs
Pew. Pew. Pew. New World is nerfing individual gold gain in the latest PTR update. As it's a bit buried in the thread here is a full copy of the text:
First, I want to commend Amazon Game Studios (AGS) on the transparency in the change. These are the sort of changes that can sneak into test servers and create chaos if not "announced" by the developers. AGS is out front on this one letting players know and explaining the why behind the changes.In this PTR update, we added a few economic changes which help maintain a healthy balance between coin going in and out of the economy.
We’ve seen significant increases in coin generation from economy updates in our July and October updates. With many returning players impacting our world economies, we see a need to get the balance of coin generation and breadth of rewarding activities back to healthy balance. Specifically we are reducing coins earned from Lost Sack of Coins to 250 per bag, and returning Trade Post tax to 5%, the standard in player driven marketplaces in
MMOs.
We removed Lost Sack of Coins from elite chests as the chests are very rewarding on their own now, and have chosen to make Darkness Breaches the only source for players to get Lost Sacks of coin and removed them from all chest drop tables. Tuning of the economy is ongoing in New World, and we’ll make adjustments as needed to ensure balance for long term health.
We are also correcting a trend where we’ve seen a supply outpacing demand for T5 Iron Hide, making it less valuable than other tiers of hide due to it’s excessive availability. We will be cutting the quantity per Iron hide drop by ~50%. As always we are continuing to heavily monitor the economy and will continue to work towards continually improving it and keeping it healthy!
- Reduced coin in Lost Sack of Coins to 250 per bag down from 500.
- Lost Sacks of Coins no longer drop from any chests. They now only come from Darkness Breaches.
- Increased tradepost tax to 5.0% from 2.5%
- Reducing T5 hide drops by roughly 50%
I like the changes over all even though it will hit my wallet hard (I make the majority of my money on the trading post). Inflation (and deflation) was getting a bit out of hand lately on the legacy servers (not sure how its going on fresh start servers). Anything that helps drive gold out of the game is a good move at this point.
With that said this is going to be a hard one to swallow as a community because we still have the Windsward/Everfall-owning companies netting millions of gold a month. As long as these mega-rich companies exist then the top end items we are all chasing are still going to be out of reach for the average folk but laughably NOT out of reach for the rich folk (seriously 300k is no different to 500k for a best-in-slot item for the richie riches). Nerfing individual player gold rates isn't going to change that top end problem but will put players further behind getting there as we have to spend more to just exist in the game day over day.
Is there a solution to this problem that doesn't upset the community? Probably not. It's needed change to fight inflation which erodes the economic foundation, but its going to cause debate in the community and put the have-nots even further against the companies-that-have-everything. Sure there are recent changes that affected the bottom line for companies, but it also brought up other companies into the ranks of "making more gold than a company really needs".
Really the only change that will change this is to get rid of gold as a reward for territory control or spread the gold reward out to the entire faction. As long as the tax money funnels into a single company it will continue to cause problems for this game and drive changes to nerf individual gold acquisition. Seriously if they just caused tax gold to disappear millions of gold would just poof out of existence.
In it's place could be some alternate form of currency specific to upgrading towns and forts or maybe, and I know this is crazy, something that benefits the entire faction. Maybe I'm just crazy factions should have more of a purpose and reward for being in them?
Anyways; pew pew pew to your money bags. What are your thoughts?
Monday, November 14, 2022
Is Ashes of Creation over complicating systems?
Before I jump into where I see issues I want to say I am optimistic that
the approach Ashes is taking will combat the problem of bots. Simple
systems are easier for bots and complex systems are harder for bots. If
any change Ashes makes helps drive down bot activity then it may be
worth keeping. Note: "we'll just ban the bots" is not a plan and has not worked to solve the bot problems for any MMORPG or other type of game... ever.
The main changes that Ashes is layering on top of their gathering system are surveying and variability based on world conditions (time of year, node status, etc). Surveying will be a skill players improve that helps them survey the landscape and identify resource nodes and details about those nodes. This combines with the nodes being variable based on world conditions; complimentary systems to drive engagement for gatherers.
My first concern with complexity comes from surveying. Instead of going off what a player sees it seems like players will be encouraged to "stop and smell the roses" so-to-speak (i.e. survey first to find the good nodes to then harvest). I like but don't like this concept. Sometimes (actually most times for me) players just want to smash rocks, chop trees, and not have to think about it all too much. Adding in a pre-system to gathering feels like it takes away from that feeling that drives a player to want to chop down a tree in the first place.
Surveying also has me worrying more and more about bots. Is surveying go to be fun enough in itself for a player to want to do over and over (and over and over and over and over - as is the tradition with MMOs)? I think there is real risk it just becomes something either a player "sets and forgets" while they get a coffee refill or worse it becomes a reason to encourage botting even more as in theory it will highlight to a bot the nodes to go harvest. I need to see more from the system to tell me this will be fun and engaging for players otherwise it will fall into bot-category in my opinion.
The variability based on world conditions does have some promise to combat bots as resources will not always be in the same spot in the same area in perpetuity like they are in games like New World. It will also reward players that stay knowledgeable on the state of the world and what is going on. Combined with the "open world PvP" (which I honestly don't think will stick, but for argument we'll assume they do) this could really set gathering as a job players can be known for.
However, I question how this complexity may discourage players from just sitting back and enjoying the actual activity. There is something to be said for the simplicty of New Worlds gathering; see a rock - hit a rock - get smaller rocks and maybe a gem. See a tree - hit a tree - get logs and maybe some sap. Maybe the blue glowing tree requires a higher skill level to chop and it tells you that when you approach. No pre-scanning an area, no needing to break through a top layer to see whats underneath, and really no wasted time or movements. Players just chop one tree to the next and it is ever so satisfying!
Sometimes simple is just better. What do you think?
Sunday, November 13, 2022
Saturday, November 12, 2022
Crowfall: Going Dark on Nov 22nd
Crowfall is going offline Nov 22nd (what a birthday present for me!).
Hello Crows!Not surprising to be honest. The game launch was lackluster and struggled to find an audience. I don't feel the game was unplayable but it really didn't offer anything to your average player. To be honest if you wanted to enjoy any part of the game you needed to be part of the in-crowd and the in-crowd had all sorts of exploitation to game the system which made it irritating to be part of. I had an enjoyable run but as a mostly-solo player being forced into waiting around for guilds to do something meant there was nothing for me in the game.
Over the past few months, we’ve been evaluating the current state of Crowfall. One of the biggest challenges has been the sheer amount of development effort required to build new campaigns and keep the game running daily. In order to refocus our efforts from live operations to development, we have decided to take the Crowfall live service offline for the time being.
On November 22, 2022, at 11 AM CST, Crowfall will go dark, and the game servers will be unavailable. Until the service goes offline, take this time to try out all of the cool buildings, mounts, and emotes for free in the Crowfall store.
We're going to use this time to map out the future of the game. We have yet to determine what that looks like, but we are investing in and rethinking every part of the game - from the core technology and tools to art, design, and gameplay. Nothing is off the table.
We'll share the plan with the community as it shapes up.
We want to thank Crowfall players for their support, feedback, and patience since Monumental purchased the game.
The Crowfall Team
I will be curious if Crowfall comes out of this dark period. I could see the cost to re-develop not being worth it, but that would really make me wonder why it was acquired in the first place. As an early backer on Kickstarter I do want to see Crowfall realized into a live service game so hopeful they are taking the down time to make a serious development effort around the game. If they do relaunch I'll be there to give it a try.
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