aurelius wrote: ↑Wed Sep 15, 2021 7:57 am
Anyone excited about Amazon's New World?
It looks interesting, but I'm not sure it has the legs to go the distance as an MMO. I evaluate MMOs for 3 characteristics, monetization, society, gameplay loops.
1: The monetization model scares me. It's buy to play, but cosmetics are purchased, and maybe fast travel, XP boosts and a battle pass in the future. This is giving me Archeage flashbacks, and not in a good way. Sustaining an MMO requires regular income, and unless they have some new way to build out paid expansions super fast I think it'll slowly creep towards "must buy" battlepass territory. Monthly sub not a deal breaker for me, but I don't like to get invested into a game that has a changing monetization model.
2: Society looks ok, but not good or great. Lots of open world and group content, unclear if it will actually be hard enough to require building relationships and plans or if any 5 idiots can clear most of it. MMO society is built around requiring competent other people to do stuff (imo) and it's hard to tell if this is going to exist for average game play. Of course almost any MMO is super fun at the beginning if you have time to jump in both feet, and I'm sure launch to 2 months will be fun. Even with questions about monetization and society looks like there could be a lot of fun to be had in the start, especially from the game play footage.
Economy probably the 2nd or 3rd most important part of building society into a game, and I couldn't get a good handle on the economy features to have an opinion one way or another.
PvP being fully optional, not a fan but understand why. It's a hard call to make, but with it being optional I think it'll tend towards everyone not godly going around noPvP flagged. They'll probably have to implement some FFA zones with high rewards or something, but could be cool. From what I saw I have little to no opinion on the vibrancy of the pvp.
3: Game play loops aren't super important, Eve and Naval Action both fun games with terrible basic game play, but if you're going to be spending 40 hours chopping trees down you want that to somehow be compelling game play. The combat looks above average for an MMo, with the caveat that lag/netcode could make it super frustrating to play (especially in pvp). Also, the downplay to no-targeting combat is trash clearing/routine combat is still moderately taxing and could become a frustratingly boring chore. I feel like a dick for this complaint, because for a long time I complained the ESO wasn't simply multi-player skyrim combat with better spells. A lot of this is going to come down to the tuning and abilities, but if I was planning on playing this would worry me.
The gathering loops look rock solid, very minecraft/valheim-ish but in an MMO. Could be a lot of fun, especially if they provide appropriate reasons to go around pvp flagged and/or the world stays dangerous enough to make group gathering a worthwhile activity. I didn't see high-level gathering videos, but from what I did see it looks like there's a good enough curve to your gathering speed that you won't hate yourself. On the other hand, success of gathering is tied to economy and I have 0 understand of the game wide eco and if it will support or destroy society.
Given my current time constraints I'm not really looking for an MMO I can't idle during work, and learning a new MMO is certainly not that, so I'll be passing, but it could turn out to be better than average.
