New World devs go back on their proposed changes to end-game content after players threatened to quit the game. What can players expect from the revised changes?
Amazon Games initially planned to make changes to the effectiveness of high-end gear by making them less powerful if they were crafted or bought with New World gold via traders. The gaming studio wanted players to focus more on grinding watermark to progress instead of just buying them off. However, the announcement of these planned changes sparked outrage among the community.
More than a few players have found alternative ways of progressing their gear and making money out of them. Many players have already maximized their trade skills in order for them to craft high-end gear to use or to sell. With the threat of having the stats of these New World items being lowered because of the intended changes, players were furious and threatened to quit the game if the patch took effect. New World devs have since backtracked on their planned changes, but they will still be going ahead with implementing their expertise system but with some changes.
New World’s Watermark System
New World has a unique end-game system when it comes to player progression. Essentially, a watermark refers to the process of players getting tagged by the system that will allow them to loot high-tier gears. In order to progress through the watermark brackets, players will have to loot the upper limit of their current bracket. Once they have done so, the system will watermark their character, and the tagged players will now be able to loot gear on the next tier. For example, for a player in the bracket of 539 to 549, they have to loot a gear with a gear score of 549 in order for them to be allowed a chance to loot items with a 550 gear score or higher. These New World items can be used by players or sold for New World gold.
The Initial Changes that Sparked the Outrage
Amazon Games have announced that they would be making some revamps on the end game content of the popular MMORPG. One of the changes that already took place was how the POI elite zones were scaled higher and became harder to kill. These changes were very unpopular, especially since the previous changes were sudden and unannounced. The devs took note of players’ complaints that they should announce changes before they patch them, so they took the initiative to announce the next set of changes.
The changes in question were in regard to the current watermarking system or gear score of items in the game. Essentially, the devs wanted to scale down the power of items crafted by players or bought so that they are more inclined to farm high-tier equipment instead. Upon the announcement, players were outraged by this decision. The reaction comes as no surprise since many players have already devised alternative methods of acquiring high gear score items without undergoing the watermark system. This controversial decision would invalidate hours of hard work of maximizing trade skills and gold spent on buying items.
After players threatened to exit the game in the game’s official forums, the studio has since retracted their proposed idea and tweaked the changes that will occur. In one of their recent developers’ notes, the studio says, “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.”
What Tweaks will Push Through?
New World has only retracted portions of the update the players have reacted negatively to. Changes to the expertise system are still expected to push through soon. Though they did not completely remove the downscaling of crafted high-gear items, they have made the change a little less punishing. Here is what we know so far from the revised changes:
- Gear Score scaling changes will only apply to items sold or crafted after the patch goes live.
- The new system will encourage players to choose alternative ways to gear themselves. This one is still ambiguous.
- Instead of a full downscale, the nerf to gear score will only be halved. For example, if a player with a 520 gears score bought a glove with a 560 gears score, the glove will only be scaled down until 540.
- These changes are expected to hit servers within the month.
New World’s Consistency in Disappointing Patches
New World has already garnered a bit of a reputation for making unpopular moves or decisions in regard to the game. From errors with New World gold compensations to unannounced changes in enemies’ difficulties, devs of the game just seem to have a knack for annoying their player base. At least this time, the gaming studio announced the changes to get feedback before they actually rolled them out.
