New World Is Now Even More Of A Grind, And Players Aren't Happy

New World doesn't shy away from the grind, especially when it comes to farming for better gear at max level. But the game's recent Into the Void update made changes to many of New World's elite enemies and elite points of interest (POIs), making the grind even worse.

The update reportedly has made elite enemies out in the game's open world much stronger, making it so players need a large group to be able to effectively farm elite POIs, where higher-level gear has a better chance to drop. It also looks to have made chests in the elite zones less rewarding.

While the grind becoming even more difficult is disappointing, especially for solo players, many players are more upset by the fact that no mention of the changes were in developer Amazon Game Studios' official patch notes. Instead, players had to discover the changes themselves over the weekend, forcing Amazon to eventually respond.

"Recently changes were made to the Elite POIs in the end game zones and it's clear to us that proper context wasn't delivered on why those changes were made," a New World developer writes on the game's official forums. "Our goal is to have a variety of areas that players can go to for crafting materials and gear. But with new gear and equipment, we want players to be challenged."

Endgame in New World largely consists of farming enemies and chests in elite zones for the hope of better gear. While there is technically other endgame content, such as the dungeon-like Expeditions, they require far more effort, thus leading players to largely focus on farming elite zones out in the open world to upgrade their gear.

Amazon doesn't seem to be happy with that, thus the changes. That being said, it seems like some of the changes may have been unintentional, such as elite chest drop rates. Amazon says it is looking into the issue. The post goes on to state that the developers want players to engage more with different types of endgame content, like Expeditions, and will be taking steps to better incorporate them into player's endgame loop.

Players so far aren't impressed with Amazon's response, and the elite zone changes are a hot topic on the New World subreddit. It's just the latest issue to plague New World, which has seen its in-game economy shut down on multiple occasions due to coin and item duplication exploits and, more recently, has seen servers traveling forward in time. New World recently received a public-test-realm, where players can test upcoming changes to the game.