New World Will Shed Systems That Are Creating Friction For Players

Early in its development, New World was a multiplayer title more focused on crafting and survival. Eventually, the game morphed into the MMORPG that it is today. In a new developer update, Amazon states that it's time for New World to lose some of those holdover survival game systems that are creating friction and preventing players from fully enjoying what the game has to offer.

"We think there are numerous things getting in the way of people playing the game that they want to play," New World creative director David Verfaillie said. "Fast travel, mutation orbs, storage, a lot of things differently making it difficult for people to experience the game they want. That's something we're definitely looking at and we're going to be taking a look at. The game has gone through a long history and some of these things are from past iterations of the game, when it was a little more of a survival/crafting game, and I think we've held onto those. I think now is the time to start shedding that, and letting people experience the game."

Game director Scott Lane said that "over the next two to three months," that philosophy of "reducing player friction" will lead to various quality-of-life changes for the game. Some of those changes can already be seen in the game's latest update, which reduced things like fast travel costs. Small improvements will come more quickly, while larger changes--like improvements to trading posts and territory mechanics--will take longer to come to fruition. But Lane said that he wants players to know that the team is listening.

"It may not seem like we react as fast as you want on everything, but we are reacting as fast as we can safely," Lane said, in reference to some of the game's prior updates bringing major bugs and technical issues along with them. The game's February update was dedicated solely to balance changes and bug fixes, with more than 700 fixes overall.

As for what's next for New World, the developer update teases what players can expect in terms of the game's story. The game's main villain, Isabella, is still at large, and New World story lead Rob Chestney said a confrontation with her is coming soon. After that, the game will focus on uncovering more mysteries across the island, such as what happened to the Ancients. Chestney also teases new villains and returning characters.

When it comes to the economy and PvP Wars, Verfaillie said the team is aware of large companies on many servers dominating economically. Changes will be coming to help incentivize smaller companies taking on larger ones, along with adjustments to Wars to make it so attackers have less of a disadvantage when attempting to claim territories. Verfaillie said that, currently, defenders in a War win more than 80% of the time, so adjustments will be coming to make sure territories change hands more often.

The update dives into all kinds of additional details, such as the Hatchet being the most used weapon and the Musket being the least used. There's also a detailed explanation on how the game's luck stat functions (it increases the probability of loot being a named item, but does not actually affect the chance for items in general to drop or the rarity) and more, so fans will want to give the full video a watch.

Alongside releasing New World, Amazon recently published and localized Korean MMORPG Lost Ark, which has become one of the most played games of all time on Steam with more than 1.3 million concurrent players.