And the charts go up for Starfield. 233k+ and climbing within an hour of early access just on Steam. Can't imagine how big it is accross all platforms. Again, this is just those that paid for early access! Will be neat to check in on Sept 5th with the general launch.
I bought a copy for my oldest son's birthday that had early access. Won't get my copy until later next week; likely with a new GPU (AMD 7800XT).
This post is a placeholder for the summary of the recent Balance of Power update from the New World developers. I will be referencing back to this post for my commentary over the next few days.
Price Discover Aeternum’s next chapter for $29.99.
For Resilience, we’ve added crit reduction to all players via the equip load effects (Light -15%, Medium -20%, Heavy -25%). Current items with this perk will receive the “Health” perk instead which increases the player’s health as a certain percentage of their base health.
NEW INFLUENCE RACES
Capture new Influence Towers and strike down enemy Factions in open world combat for territorial supremacy. Each Faction will compete for Influence in specific zones during scheduled times. If an attacking Faction earns enough Influence through PvP Missions, Influence Towers, and Forts before the race ends, they’ll receive bonus rewards, plus the opportunity to declare War. If the defending Faction prevents the attackers from scoring enough Influence within the time limit, they’ll earn bonus rewards for both the Influence Race and the next War. Regardless of who wins, the attacking Faction with the most influence can escalate the conflict into War.
Anxiety about Spending Umbral Shards:
Players have anxiety about spending hard-earned Umbral shards.
Items will now drop at appropriate higher item levels based on the content being played.
No need to invest extra resources to level up items.
Expertise System Removal:
Expertise system posed an additional barrier after reaching Level 60.
Players needed to invest time and effort to increase expertise for different gear slots.
This system slowed down gear progression and caused frustration.
Devs recognized the disconnect between player experience and the expertise system.
Decision made to completely remove the expertise system in Season Three.
New Approach to Gear Progression:
Players will no longer need to grind expertise for different gear slots.
Items will drop at higher item levels based on the content being played.
Players can access higher-level gear more naturally and smoothly.
Focus on aligning gear progression with players' engagement in the game's content.
Benefits of Removal:
Streamlined gear progression process after Level 60.
Eliminates the need for additional grinding to unlock gear potential.
Offers a more intuitive and rewarding approach to acquiring better equipment.
Reduces frustration and friction often associated with the expertise system.
Player-Centric Enhancement:
Removal of expertise system reflects devs' responsiveness to player feedback.
Aims to provide a more enjoyable and engaging gear progression experience.
Allows players to focus on content rather than the grind for expertise.
Creates a more balanced and enjoyable endgame gear acquisition process.
Umbral Upgrading Changes:
Concerns about spending valuable Umbral shards.
Items will drop at higher item levels, reducing anxiety.
No need to invest additional resources for leveling up items.
Inventory Management Improvement:
Currently, players receive too much loot after content.
Goal is to provide less loot but make it more meaningful.
Introducing "Loop Biasing" to tailor loot drops to player attributes and preferences.
Chase Items and Artifacts:
Introducing impactful and unique "Chase Items."
Artifacts with unique perks can drop from various sources.
Named enemies, dungeons, PVP reward track, etc.
Crafting Changes:
Crafting process involves too much RNG.
Introducing fixed gear scores when crafting.
Adding an item called "Prismatic Scarab" for custom crafting.
Crafters can create items with specific attributes and perks.
Perk Changes:
Analyzed existing perks for usefulness and engagement.
Removing underutilized perks and adding new ones.
Making perk selection more meaningful and dynamic.
Level and Gear Score Increases:
Level cap raised to 65.
More attribute points gained through leveling and gear.
Introduction of attribute threshold bonuses.
Artifact Discussion:
Artifacts are unique gear score 700 items.
Drop from named enemies and various content.
Unique perk with a quest to unlock additional perks.
Crafting Enhancements:
Fixed gear scores when crafting.
"Asth Inductor" guarantees gear score 700.
"Prismatic Scarab" for crafting custom items.
Closing Thoughts:
Introducing tournaments and mounts.
Update: After posting this the New World team also posted a news article covering tons of details. Check it out here.
Original post below...
Blaugust rolls on and today's lesson learned is: patience pays off. Yesterday there was some frustration in the New World community with a developer update that basically said "wait until next week". But they tricked us because the avalanche of information started TODAY with back to back videos from the New World team. To say I am excited is a vast understatement and I am so glad I held back any complaints about the dev update. My patience has been rewarded!
The first video is the Balance of Power update which covered a ton of changes coming to the game. I can't do justice to all of the changes in this post so I will link to the video and let folks consume it. I will be posting more about individual aspects over the next few weeks as we learn more. I am really excited for the changes though and in summary is "less, but more meaningful loot + new ways to get the gear you want".
The second video, which just a cinematic, is the real HYPE video in my book. Not only is it a great cinematic for the expansion, Rise of the Angry Earth, but it reveals some key pieces of information.
Watch the video below!
It looks like Blaugust 2023 is going to finish out before we get the big expansion news for New World. How do we know? Because the most recent developer update from Amazon Game Studios, the makers of New World, can be summed up by the phrase "next week".
There is a good summary of the video on Reddit: here. But really the answer is "next week" as the team dodged many of the pressing community questions stating that we'll get answers next week with the Season 3 + expansion announcements. I sort of give credit to the team willing to put out this video knowing that so many answers were "next week" and the community feedback wouldn't be that great.
Lesson Learned: Be patient.
Personally I think it's an odd week to try and plan any major announcements. Starfield will be dominating the gaming community buzz so it will be hard to elbow out space for any other major news. I know I'll be planets deep in Starfield and not as invested in New World next week. I imagine many others will be as well.
With that said I am excited for the announcement(s) and what the team is bringing us. We know there will be the expansion, mounts, major perk reworks, combat balance changes, and the dreaded details of the "New World gear reset". I just may be delayed getting around to viewing depending on how awesome Starfield is :)
It is done. All 9 ultimate trophies are MINE in New World! A quick rundown of what that means
So what has almost a million gold bought me? Not much to be honest but the satisfaction that crawled across my face finishing this was unmistakable. With that said here are a few benefits:
As I said "not much". There is also a big downside though: the ultimate trophies are bound to the player so cannot be resold/traded once crafted. Major trophies were NOT bound so have the advantage of being able to be "borrowed" by others or sold off if no longer being used. Personally I don't trust anyone to borrow my stuff in a virtual world and secondly I don't get rid of stuff.
Here are some screenshots to go with this.
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| Count 'em - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and 9! |
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| Trophies on my Windsward house |
This post is part of my running series: My Steam Backlog (see all MySteamBacklog tagged posts). This post is ALSO a part of Blaugust 2023's lessons learned week. Why? Because my Steam backlog is what it is.
I had set the year off to tackle as much of my Steam backlog as I could. It was part reflecting on games that I played in the past and part playing games I never played (or didn't play enough to form an opinion). The reflecting has been easier than the playing so I thought for Blaugust's "stay motivated" week I'd hit some of the "need to play" list.
I stuck to my alphabetical approach and I'm still in the Bs which meant I hit some doozies. First was The Binding of Isaac which just killed my momentum as I didn't really want to play it and just kept putting it off. I should have skipped it but felt I needed to be fair to the objective of hitting the full backlog. Putting this one off meant I put the rest off and thus didn't get anywhere and thus had to shift gears for "staying motivated" week for Blaugust.
Lesson Learned: If a game in my Steam backlog is not interesting then don't play it. Life is short; don't play crappy games.
Going forward I will be more strategic in the games I play from the backlog. This doesn't mean I won't touch on all games, but some will just be commentary like I've done for games like the Bioshock series.
I also picked up on a tool called Steam Completionist from a post on Aywren's blog so I am going to check that out to see how it can help me better track my backlog.
