New World

Muligan said:

That's been the consensus I have heard thus far. I'll say that people have been pretty respectful of the NDA and such but your feeling is probably spot on. The level of hype/excitement has greatly declined and those I know are feeling pretty down but also have some confidence that they'll take some steps but not sure if it will be enough to make the game we were hoping.

Click to expand...

Alpha Boards said:

Hello Alpha Testers,
Today I am excited to share an update from our Executive Producer, Rich Lawrence:

"Hey folks,

With the upcoming updates and holidays, this seemed like an opportune time to do a general update from the game team to the Alpha audience.
First, for putting up with the bugs and incomplete systems you deal with in Alpha, thank you. We take our commitment to quality seriously and you are vital to helping us achieve that with your participation.

The purpose of Alpha from our perspective is to test assumptions we have made about game balance (we always treat them as assumptions until we've seen feedback from you the customers), validate technical systems, and provide a limited audience while we are still changing the game rapidly. We know the PC gamer audience to be passionate and well informed on how games work, and you've gone way past our estimations by providing steady, insightful feedback on the game. We have already changed course in some instances based on what we've heard.

We are just one game team, and as such we acknowledge we can't be in a two-way dialog with every customer, even though our community reps make a valiant attempt to prove that wrong. Everything you as an audience provide we do measure however - all of the forum posts, every survey, your play patterns in game are all combined to give us a steady flow of data with one purpose - make the game better. So while we can't respond personally each time, do please continue and understand that your responses are heard.
Games often have balance tradeoffs, and ours is no exception. You've already been discussing PvP vs PvE, game economy, resource availability, and how bearish a bear should be in game (we love those conversations!). It's impossible to satisfy every viewpoint when they sometimes differ, so we have to make choices in those cases - please understand those choices are never made with the intent of harming your enjoyment of the game, even when it means the bear mauls you even harder than it did last week. Rather we are striving for the best long-term value in gameplay while maintaining the integrity of the game design.

One subject has received a lot of discussion and so deserves a special mention, and that is PvP vs PvE. We believe the core of this game is driven by PvP. We've built a unique combat system to support it, and it is reflected in everything from how our world is laid out to how our animations work. The most challenging opponent, in the long run, is another player. We do think players should have a good idea of their PvP risk from moment to moment and be able to plan what they consider comfortable exposure to that risk, and that's why systems like sanctuary or criminality exist. We'll continue to work on balance for those and others so that in a general sense, players "know what they are getting into", but we would strongly prefer not to split the concepts of PvP and PvE completely. PvE is an important part of the game, and in fact, we've spent the last few updates strongly focused on it and aren't done yet, but it isn't the center of gameplay.

In short, we believe our job is to make PvP fun for all and not a negative, while also supplying PvE that is challenging and fun for many. If we split the two completely we would be giving up on a major goal to make those systems interact and be fun for each other. There are some players who believe very strongly that PvP is a negative to gameplay and they would rather not participate in any way. The honest truth is we're unlikely to completely satisfy those gamers, at least with this game. Let us know your ideas of how we might!
In terms of immediate future in Alpha, look to November to be a lot of change to the game in the form of new creatures, game system changes, balance passes, and more. December has some important game system changes, but also a strong focus on bugs and performance. In general, if you wonder where our time is going, much of it is going against bugs, that hopefully don't affect you much but still need to be dealt with to achieve quality. In our current scheduling, over half our development time is spent on bugs. Our purpose in focusing on these now is to not only get the product ready for a broader audience but also have the game in a condition where change is easier and more impactful.

Enjoy the New World, and tell us how to make it better!"

Click to expand...

Alpha Forums said:

Greetings, New World Alpha Explorers!

Thank you for your continued help testing New World! The Alpha continues to be extremely valuable. We’re grateful for all the contributions you make by playing and providing feedback.

Following from the State of the Game post, we are very excited about our upcoming November release and want to provide some critical information as early as possible.

Foremost, this update will require a server wipe, resetting all character and world persistence. This means a full restart on a fresh server. We will be removing the second server, so everyone will be playing in a single world together. We will also be expanding the game world, adding new regions, with many new areas to explore and claim. We may launch additional servers in the future.

Second, and very important to note, after this update you will only be able to create one character per server. This will place greater importance on progression decisions you make and promote collaborative and social gameplay, where you rely on others in order to accomplish all your goals.

Finally, identifying and addressing exploits and cheats is a major priority for us at this time. We appreciate your help reporting them to us; we’ll be stamping them out more aggressively. Thank you for your patience in dealing with the exploits and cheats we have experienced.

Summary:

• Character and World Wipe
• World: Terra Vita Aeternum 2 will be removed
• 1 character per server limit for each account
• Increased focus on addressing cheats and exploits

We will post a date for the November release as soon we have a hard lock on it.
Thank you and good testing!

Click to expand...

Alpha Forums said:

Current Recommended System Spec:

Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K/AMD Ryzen 5 1400
Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD Radeon R9 390X or better
Memory: 16GB RAM
Storage: SSD
DirectX 12 and Windows 10 or better

Hi Everyone, welcome to our November release! There are a lot of changes this release. At the top of the list are three major areas: changes to War, further expansion of the World, and prevention of Exploits.

War. We refined War Declaration by adding a Conquest Phase in which you can attack your enemy's Protected Settlements. But be careful: your enemy can also attack your Protected Settlements during this window. Going forward, we plan to continue improving the War Declaration mechanic by adding player defined war windows and building in time for companies to prepare for the upcoming war. We are very eager to hear your feedback.

World. The map has gotten bigger! New land has materialized south of the Weaver's Fen and west of Windsward, including a new starter area! This land is untamed and harsh and it includes 26 new Claims.

Exploits. We made large steps in our fight against exploits by implementing Easy Anti-Cheat and fixing several issues you've mentioned on the forums. Most notably, we have removed Alternate Characters by restricting each World to just 1 character slot.

Please let us know what you think about the changes, any exploits or bugs you find, and whatever else you would like to share about your experience in the New World. We may not always reply, but we are always listening to you on the forums, surveys, and in-game. Thanks!

[GAMEPLAY SYSTEMS]

For the November release, we’ve made some changes to Trade Skills and the way that repairing items works. We've also made some significant changes to how War works. For more details on these changes, see our notes below.

War

• Added a new phase to War: Conquest. Currently, Conquest occurs during the last hour of every war. During Conquest, Protection for the involved Companies is rendered null. We made this change because we felt it was too easy to retain control of a territory ad infinitum. This is the first of several refinements we are making to War Declaration and Wars, which you can read about in this Dev Blog!
• As an additional note: we understand that this mechanical set makes War favor the declarer, and that this may reintroduce some of the pains of offline raiding. This version of War is a stepping stone on our way to a more robust feature that aims to tackle this issue. Your forum discussions and survey feedback have proven invaluable in helping us design a solution. Thanks!

Progression & Trade Skills

• Merged Tracking with the Skinning & Tanning Trade Skill. Skinning & Tanning was a bit milestone-light, and Tracking fit right in.
• Tuned the XP requirements for levels to be a bit flatter than they were before. The result will be slightly slower early levels, with XP requirements for each consecutive level seeing less significant increases, resulting in a less extreme XP curve overall. Later levels will still take more time to earn, but not nearly to the extent they do now.
• Evaluated the XP awarded for gathering resources and increased it by ~30%.
• Evaluated the XP awarded for crafting and increased it significantly for T2+ items.

Loot Tables

• Evaluated and tuned the drop rates for higher-tier items in lootables. In some cases the odds were increased, in others they were decreased. This is part of our ongoing evaluation of lootables and what they provide, so expect things to keep changing as we continue development.

General Tuning

• Increased base durability of all weapons by ~50%. This should also result in higher rarity/quality weapons having higher maximum durability. The recent tuning pass on enemies made them generally harder to kill, which was causing weapons to wear out faster than we really wanted. (Note that while this will extend the life of your weapons in combat, it will not impact the number of times you can die before a weapon breaks.)
• Ungated item repair, now any item can be repaired regardless of whether or not you are able to craft that item.
• Disabled item repair skills in preparation for a future change to how repair mechanics function.
• Removed the ability to stack Powder Kegs. We made this change to limit the total number of powder kegs that a character could secure in their hotbar.
• Repairing an item now reduces its maximum durability by a small percentage. We made this change in order to slowly "sink" items out of the world over time as well as increasing the value of our craftspeople. In light of this change, the mechanics of repair will see an update in the future, and we will make UI changes to make it more clear that it is occurring.

[SOCIAL & UX/UI]

We've made several major improvements to Social & UX/UI, with a total of 272 bugs fixed! In addition to skinning passes we did to update the art style, we've also made several improvements to permissions. See below for a detailed list of changes.

The Removal Of Character Alts

• Starting with the November wipe, all public servers will only have 1 character slot available.
• This is a decision that we know will generate some amount of controversy, but we are deeply committed to group play and making choices matter in New World.
• Group play: In order to have access to every path of progression in New World, you must work together. Coming together as a team is central to our vision for New World. Unfortunately, the primary usage for Alt Characters was to bypass this intended limitation.
• Making choices matter: For both chosen specializations and criminal/honorable activity, we want to deliver an experience that’s all about persistence and impact. Again, unfortunately, we were seeing alt characters being used as a tool to avoid Criminal tagging.
• We have been delighted to see so many members of the Alpha community coming to the same conclusion we have—that access to alt characters was ultimately doing more to compromise the experience than enhance it.
• We know that the downside of this decision is that it limits every individual’s ability to experience all of New World’s specialization content, especially as we continue Alpha testing with only 1 world (server). Long-term, there will be multiple Worlds, which will be the primary solution to this problem.

War 1.1 UX

• With the addition of the Conquest phase, it’s very important that you are not caught off guard. There is a new Conquest Timer element that will appear 15 minutes before a Conquest window begins above the Compass, and the new Company screen flow should make War status very clear. Please let us know how we can improve the UI around War moving forward.

Companies and Permissions

• Declare War permission added, given to Governors and Consuls.
• Architects can set access level on structures, unless the access level has already been set to a level higher than Architect.
• Access level can now be set on Protection Wards
• Access level can now be set on Azoth Wells
• Players with ‘promote’ permission can only promote members to one rank lower than their own rank.
• Planning Mode now indicates when you leave the territory.
• Better visibility of online/offline status on Roster
• The name of Governors visible on All Companies screen (the names of Consuls will come in a later release)
• Better organization and legibility of ranks and permissions
• Better visibility of War status# of
• Claims always visible for your Company
• Company Rank now displayed in player nameplates
• More feedback-based improvements are coming in later releases, for now our focus was on trying to complete our skinning pass of the UI.

Nameplates

• Thanks to everyone’s assistance a couple of weeks ago with the ‘attack the devs’ event, we had a lot of great data and metrics on large-scale combat. It was very clear to us that we needed to make some short-term optimizations to nameplates, in order to ensure that when surrounded by players you can easily tell friend from foe.
• This will continue to be a big area of focus for us, but we did make some quick wins and now feel much more confident that in large-scale combat, there should be a lot fewer players onscreen without nameplates.
• Bugs fixed around AI nameplates staying on screen incorrectly.
• Nameplates have been optimized and you now should see many more nameplates for players within your field of view, lessening confusion around friend/foe in large battles.
• Pro tip: Something I’d like to point out that’s not new to the November release, but isn’t widely known: if you aim downsights with a ranged weapon, you will see a nameplate for a player you’re aiming at no matter how far away they are.

Social Improvements

• Global Chat Toggle is now in the game - NOTE: There is a known issue with the filter at the moment where you need to click the text and not the box, but we plan to have it fixed by the next patch.
• Social Menu (upper-left screen corner) consolidated as your one-stop shop for searching for players, managing invites, friends, and groups.
• Groupmate nameplate skinning pass—simplified when offscreen, distance added when looking in Groupmate’s direction and they are far away.
• Group Health HUD assembly simplified.
• Personal avatar images updated and visually improved
• Muting players now correctly mutes their VOIP audio
• Hovering over avatars in chat correctly displays the Social Actions menu even if the chat input field has focus.

In-Combat logoff delay lowered to 2 minutes

• Previously this was set to 5 minutes, which felt about 3 minutes too long to us.

Crafting

• Crafting screen Tier columns now auto-open on Hover, making the screen require less clicks. FEEDBACK WANTED on this, as it has pros and cons.
• Crafting menu now correctly displays gathering stats for Tools instead of damage.
• Crafting screen statistics preview now updates as you hover on different material configurations.
• Can now correctly craft using materials in the Quick Bar.

General UI Improvements

• Improvements to interaction and feel of Inventory item dragging and tooltip interactions
• Landing screen reskin including region selection and server queueing
• Compass icons simplified and cleaned up. Outpost icons no longer permanently tracked, tracking icons have been updated.
• Salvaging items now requires a confirmation pop-up.
• Loot Bag item previews re-added.
• There is now a confirmation pop-up when demolishing a Protection Ward
• Mana stat added to the Attributes screen
• Damage numbers now appear for the killing blow on an enemy.
• Alternate mouse buttons can now be re-bound.
• Item tier changed back to roman numerals on inventory/quickbar, lessening confusion with Quantity and numkeys
• Users cannot interfere with other users ability to respawn by standing on the location of their body.
• Shield tooltips no longer display stats about attack damage.
• When in windowed mode, user can now interact with the Windows Title Bar of the application.
• Respawn Activation icon on Outposts on the Map no longer interfere with the tooltip for the Outpost.
• Correctly able to repair equipment that is currently equipped.

Coming Soon: Player Reporting

• Reporting players and chat messages is NOT in yet, but is coming very soon.

[WORLD EXPERIENCE]

New World's World Map expands for our November Release! We've made several changes to the world including enhancements to the North. See our full list of changes below.

New World Expands

• On the southeast coast a new starting area offers new players a choice of expedition. One road leads to East Windsward, while another heads into the expansive marshlands of Weaver’s Fen.
• In the west a new land has emerged with many new territories to claim and untamed marshlands to explore. An outpost and abandoned villages are all that is left of what was once a bustling trade route.
• Just south of Windsward new roads lead down the mountain to a set of large islands where beaches are littered with shipwrecks and several new territories to claim.
• In total, 26 new claim points have been added to the world, for a total of 81.

The Corrupted Capital Changes

• The Shattered Mountain and the pass leading up to it got a massive face lift, with brand new atmosphere, more snow and more corruption!
• The layout of the entire Corrupted city at the foot of Shattered Mountain has been updated.
• Several new and more challenging encounters have been added throughout the pass and the capital.

AI Updates

• More of the enemies in the world now can cause afflictions such as Curse and Frostbite on their targets. Players who come prepared with the proper resistance builds will have a larger chance of successfully exploring the northern areas of the world.
• Numerous bug fixes and balancing changes for the enemy characters, we appreciate the feedback and please keep it coming!

[PLAYER EXPERIENCE]

We've made several changes to Player Experience including major changes to Afflictions. Afflictions are now more impactful and have been given more distinct roles.

Afflictions 2.0

• Changed the affliction effects to give them more differentiated roles.
• Wound: 75% stamina regen penalty that lasts for 180 seconds
• Frostbite: no running or sprinting for 10 seconds
• Disease: will quickly deplete your food and water
• Poison: long, slow painful damage over time
• Corruption: insta-kill
• Increased amount of affliction damage AI do so afflictions are a real threat in PvE now
• Increased the amount of affliction damage player coatings do to make them more dangerous
• Adjusted player affliction coatings so they have a use limit (5 hits or 5 minutes)
• Adjusted elemental coatings (magic/fire/lightning) so they now do flat damage instead of a percentage of your attack

Deflection Improvements

• Added new and improved deflection reaction animations
• Reduced deflection ratings on shields, so you will need higher tier shields to get a deflection
• Increased deflection reaction duration, to give players more time to punish someone who is deflecte

Balance Changes

• Reduced Straight Sword strength scaling, so you get less additional damage per strength point (scaling was too strong due to dual attribute scaling from strength and dexterity)
• Reduced block stun on all sprint attacks. Blocking a sprint attack should give you even more opportunity to punish now
• Fully charged heavy attacks now do 30% more HP damage, GRIT damage and stamina damage. But they cost 50% more stamina

Miscellaneous Improvements

• You can no longer jump, dodge or sprint attack in deep water
• Target lock camera behavior has been smoothed for very close targets
• Camera movement is now one-to-one with raw mouse input

[PERFORMANCE & SCALE]

• We’ve added the ability for you to return to New World’s Main Menu from in game.
• We’ve improved the game’s performance around placing ground cover in the world.
• Depth of Field effects no longer affect the look of the sky.
• We’ve fixed a common driver issue with Nvidia cards that would cause a crash.
• We’ve improved the look of structural blueprints when placed next to one another.
• Added connection queuing to support larger invites of players allowing players to enter a queue in-place of receiving a server full message
• Added region selection to support servers around the world
• Fixed some issues with placing building or other objects in the world causing them to disappear on server restarts.

[SECURITY]

• Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) was added to help prevent exploits.
• Internal telemetry was added to identify people who are trying to cause exploits.

Click to expand...

moai13 said:

What OS, Chanur?

Click to expand...