New New World: Umbral Shards

 Holy patch notes Batman!  I don't have the time between now and 10/3 when the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion launches to cover all the details, but without a doubt we are truly getting a NEW New World!  Today though I wanted to zero in on the change coming to umbral shards as we've all been waiting to know what would happen to them.

 Umbral Shards

•     Removed the ability to upgrade gear with Umbral shards.
•     Umbral shards can now be salvaged for coin at a rate of 0.1 coin per umbral shard.

 First I want to say "told you so" to everyone that thought the original information was false when it was reported by Massively OP that umbral shards would be converted to gold.  It was clear that Massively OP reported that correctly from the developer Q&A they were part of and good to see it validated now.

 Next; I don't think there was any "winning" consolation prize that could be given for umbral shards.  New World needed to reset gear and gear progression for it to have a more meaningful end game loop and to do that they needed to shutter umbral shards.  Any compensation was going to be only a half measure.

 Personally I think 0.10 gold per shard is a fine compromise.  Its not enough gold that you would race out to gather a bunch before launch, but it's enough that if you have some laying around you'll cash them in and feel good about it.  Also it's a small enough amount that I don't feel terrible about cashing them in now to upgrade some "fun" gear sets to play around with before October.

 And honestly this is how I really feel...

New New World: Only ONE New Zone?

 I wanted to start covering the myriad of changes coming to New World for it's expansion and season 3 balance changes.  There is a ton to unpack and no particular order to cover it in so I came up with this serious of posts titled "New New World: <topic>" because we are in fact getting an entirely new and fresh version of New World!  Today I want to talk about the "just one new zone!?" feedback for the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion.

 

 There has been a small uproar in the community about the expansion only having one zone and there is an argument to be had that it's not even "new" since it is just the First Light zone redone as the Elysian Wilds.  That doesn't seem like much for an "expansion"; especially when we received all of Brimstone Sands as a free update last year.

 I can somewhat see the argument that it is not an "expansion" as we are used to in the MMORPG space.  Normally an expansion means an actual "expansion" of the game on the size and scale of the original game.  With that said, based on Brimstone Sands last year, and what we've seen so far from Rise of the Angry Earth it seems like this will be New World's annual "expansion" size: one new zone and a bunch of new features.

 I am good with that.  I dislike when games add too much new landmass and invalidate all of the old.  While there will be a period of time where the Elysian Wilds is the zone to be in I expect players will fall back to Brimstone Sands, Reekwater, Shattered Mountain, and other current end game zones along with Elysian Wilds.

 Also we can't forget about the other zone receiving a makeover with Season 3: Edengrove.  With the angry earth taking over First Light they have left Edengrove open for the taking.  Edengrove will now be a capture-enabled territory with multiple changes to go along with it.  So technically we are getting two "adjacent to new" zones for the Season 3 and expansion.

 Combine two reworked zones along with mounts, level increase to 65, gear score increase to 70, reworked mutations, and a new weapon with the Flail and it is silly to think $30 is too high a price tag for the expansion.

Sunday 9/10/2023 Post

The Jordan Love era has begun in Green Bay!  Let's freaking go!

Starfield: In one sense, you do have a vehicle, you obviously have your spaceship

 Todd Howard, overlord of Starfield development, gave a surprising answer recently when asked about the lack of land vehicles in the game.

“In one sense, you do have a vehicle, you obviously have your spaceship so you can go around space, but then on the surface, you do have a jetpack which you can upgrade,” Howard continued. “Obviously, planets have different levels of gravity, which makes that (travel) unique for many planets.”

 I am wondering what game Todd is referring to.

 In the Starfield I've seen you can't actually fly your ship; it's just a series of loading screens.  If I could take off in the ship, hover over the planet's surface, and then fly it to a new location then I'd get his comments, but thats not how the game works... at all.  Your ship is a static element once landed and everything else is hoofed out on foot. 

 And NO; having a boost pack/jet pack is not a sufficient replacement to having land vehicles.

 We need land vehicles in Starfield!

New New World: Gear Progression Changes

 I wanted to start covering the myriad of changes coming to New World for it's expansion and season 3 balance changes.  There is a ton to unpack and no particular order to cover it in so I came up with this serious of posts titled "New New World: <topic>" because we are in fact getting an entirely new and fresh version of New World!  Today we are going to talk about the new gear progression system.

With Season 3 and the expansion there is an overhaul of the gear progression and acquisition systems.  

• Expertise is being removed.  
• Upgrading gear via umbral shards is gone.  
• Gear score cap is now 700.  
• Max level is now 65.  
• Loot will now drop at an intended gear score and not require upgrading.
• Loot bias will now be applied; loot will match the type of gear you have equipped when looting in.
  

 First, it is fan-freaking-tastic that expertise is being removed.  It was a pointless grind gating players from using items they acquired or making items they acquire effectively useless because they were not yet high enough expertise to get end game drops.  This also means no more having to run new players through content to get "expertise bumps".  

 In the place of expertise gear will simply drop at it's intended gear score level.  Thus if you do the hardest of hard content you can expect gear to drop at or close to the new max score of 700.  Progression in gear score will be based off acquiring better gear.

 The only thing I worry about with this new model is how fast crafters will be able to start making 700 gear score items.  Once crafters are making them then players will immediately be at 700 gear score.  I expect well funded companies having crafters cranking out gear fairly quickly after launch.  I hope this doesn't trivialize all the other methods to acquire gear.  I love crafters having a role to play but not at the expense of everything else.

 The last piece is "loot bias" whereby loot that drops will now be biased to be close to the gear you are currently wearing.  Playing a tank? Expect tank drops.  Play a healer? Expect healer drops.  The developers did state for chest rewards that you can change your gear before opening the chests/caches to influence what will drop.  So as a healer you could change to DPS gear before opening a series of chests to get DPS drops or vice versa a DPS could swap to healer gear to get healer drops.  I am hopeful this will work as advertised because I play oddball builds and if I can get more rewards targeted more at that oddball build then it's a win!

 Also a brief mention that the new level cap will be 65 and the extra 5 levels should go by fast.  I am fine with this change but it will be locked to those that own the expansion so players that don't buy the expansion will be left behind.  I hope AGS reconsiders that and lets everyone reach max level regardless of expansion ownership.  New World is much closer to Guild Wars 2 than it is games like World of Warcraft; it doesn't make sense here to tie level ranges to expansions.

New New World: Influence Changes

 I wanted to start covering the myriad of changes coming to New World for it's expansion and season 3 balance changes.  There is a ton to unpack and no particular order to cover it in so I came up with this serious of posts titled "New New World: <topic>" because we are in fact getting an entirely new and fresh version of New World!

 With that said the first one I wanted to hit on was the changes to the influence mechanic for territory control and war declaration.  Summary of changes we know so far:

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.

 The first aspect is that the influence races will be scheduled.  This is a good change from the current state where a territory could be pushed any time on any day.  The only issue with scheduled content is that you are out of luck if you don't play during those times so I am in "wait and see" on this change to determine how good of a change it is.  At a minimum it will concentrate open world PvP to specific time windows and areas on the map.

 The next aspect to discuss is the towers.  This adds more capture points than just the fort on the map.  This should help spread out the players and create interesting combat instead of just running around in the open fields or forests.  Anything that brings players together to fight is a win!

 PvP missions are mentioned as well which is a little disappointing.  These missions are boring and I had hoped they would be removed entirely and replaced by the open world objectives like the tower.  From follow up videos it sounds like the missions are now much shorter distances and with mounts that means they should be fast which worries me that whoever shows up with the most players will win as it will not be practical to defend against a bunch of players doing PvP missions (its about impossible today even with long range missions).

 The last note I will end on is the talk of "faction" vs company.  I may just be reading too much into "Faction with the most influence can escalate the conflict into War." but that reads like companies may not be the one's declaring war anymore?  And there would be a faction-wide declaration?  Is there more changing with war that we don't know about yet?  Probably just reading into it too much but would be cool to see more changes that are faction-based vs specific company.