The New World Aeternum developers did another Community Q&A on the Official New World Discord Server answering various questions and providing some titbits of information about Season 10. We can expect to hear a lot more about Season 10 in September but in the mean time, you can read all the questions they answered on Discord below.
Highlighted questions are ones I thought were more interesting/important.
Can we get some details on the new raids coming in season 10?
[NW ChadR] A fallen kingdom. A coveted relic. Twice the fool. Royal champions. Demise of a nemesis. The new raid will be roughly similar in size and format to Hive of Gorgons with three boss fights and additional encounters and light puzzles between. I can honestly say this has some of our best visuals to date and the team has done a fantastic job creating new mechanics and challenges to make each encounter feel unique. We’re really excited to get it out to you all!
Are you planning to nerf the new GS artifact and the Void Blade in the near future? Both weapons are too powerful at the moment.
[NW Josh] Yes, in an upcoming minor release we will further reduce the damage of the void blade, and for the GS artifact, we are increasing how much melee heavy attack damage is reduced by, and slightly increasing the projectile damage.
Would you ever consider allowing for artifact duplicates so we can actually make different builds with them? For example I can have one Boltcaster with penetrating rapid shots and a different Boltcaster have Evade Shot. This would add replay-ability to old content helping new players get their first artifacts and then being able to group up to do the quests for the artifact because older players will still go out and get duplicates for different builds. It would be an easy win for the game.
[NW Josh] This is something we are looking into doing with season 10, however it is not 100% settled on due to some potential limitations, but with some new slottable tech we have we want to allow more customizable slots on items for interesting combinations. However there will still be some set in stone perks to fit the theme and balance of the items.
In expeditions, there are recurring problems with some players speed-running ahead before the group is ready, going AFK to farm gold, or starting abandon votes right at the beginning of longer or more difficult runs (hello, Tempest). All of these disrupt coordination and the experience for others, especially new players. Could you consider adding a ‘ready-up’ or other system at the start of expeditions to ensure everyone has loaded in and is prepared, possibly with a short cooldown before an abandon vote can be initiated or some kind of penalty for immediate abandon votes?
[NW ChadR] We’ve observed this problem as well and we’re evaluating ways to address it but we want to be careful to not penalize normal play.
How will gear be upgraded to GS 800 and which gear can be upgraded?
[NW Joel] We will have updates on gear changes in September leading into S10. Stay tuned!
Is there a plan to offer way more crafting materials or other in-game items that aren’t gear as drops in the game? Having to salvage 99% of what drops in game is irritating at best.
[NW Joel] We will have some new resources in s10 that are somewhat similar to gem cutting but we will have more information to share on this leading up to S10.
What steps are being taken to make sure that all the older content remains fresh and rewarding for even the most veteran players in season 10?
[NW Joel] Allowing players to level up their gear with Umbral will be a key part in ensuring that more content is viable across the board and will allow players to hunt for the specific gear or build that they want. We will have more details on Umbrals in the coming months.
Will you please integrate loadouts for attributes and skills?
[NW Joel] Attributes will be something you can save in your gear sets in S10.
[NW Josh] We are going to be allowing saving attributes to gear sets in S10, so that will make switching up attributes much easier. And we are also looking into speeding up the rate you modify attributes when holding the +/- buttons, however not sure when we can get that going for you all.
[NW Josh] We were unable to get saved mastery loadouts for S10, however we do have attributes being added to gear sets in season 10. And hope we can expand on that in the future.
What’s the chances that we might ever see an ultimate gathering/refining/crafting set? Even if we’re farming and possibly paying like 100k per item to combine them. It just feels like a much needed QoL.
[NW Joel] We agree that ultimate crafting/gathering/refining gear sets would be a good QoL addition but it is not currently on the short term roadmap.
When will dungeons be updated to provide better armor and weapons as rewards?
[NW Joel] S10 will be changing how we do gear across the board. For mutations specifically it will be one of many sources of umbrals as well as gear that is heavily customizable through sockets.
This has been asked for many times before, however; A damage meter/scoreboard for PvE would be very helpful for both new and veteran players in terms of seeing how their build is, compare damage with other builds and so on. Is there no way you guys can either make an optional one to use for groups/raids, or open the source so we can use 3.rd party meters?
[NW Josh] This has been something we have considered for a while, however it always got deprioritized due to a variety of reasons. There is also an aspect of the game that once we implement a way to see exact damage in builds, it will likely cause a meta shift focused around that being the only thing that matters due to there being a more corporeal number to focus on. And things like utility, CC, debiltating targets, etc will then be deprioritized or shifted away from the meta even though they can be equally as important as damage numbers.
When can we search for specific items by typing in perks in simplified way at storage and inventory instead of having to type [Sundering] for example?
[NW Josh] We have no immediate plans to improve upon this searching method in the inventory, however in S10 we are changing the way some perks work and more will be slottable and the slotting perk functionality will have a more verbose searching method there.
Is there a plan to rework green (or other super common drop rate) craft modifications that there are hundreds of thousands if not millions per server that are redundant and clogging up peoples bank and inventory space?
[NW Josh] We are looking into ways of handing all of these in the future, however we are unsure of what the exact solution to this would be at this time.
Is there a plan to have pots/foods not be spent when in OPR and CTF like it is in 3v3 arena?
[NW JR] Currently CTF behaves like 3v3 Arena in terms of providing infinite consumables while in the mode. For OPR we are maintaining consumables as not being infinite for the time being as it supports the crafting economy built around the consumables. We’ll continue to evaluate the effects on the economy and could make changes in the future.
Lately, players and streamers have been returning to the game. And it can be so awkward when they encounter bugs that were in the game several years ago. For example, the scoreboard in the arena does not appear in 50% of cases. I don’t want to ask why it’s so hard to get rid of them once and for all. I want to ask, do the developers themselves understand how much such small, insignificant errors spoil the image of our favorite game?
[NW JR] I completely agree that issues like this that have been with us for a long time should be prioritized. The scorecard issue in particular has been difficult to track down the cause of, but we are working on resolving this in the next season.
Any plans to add some boss in the FFA island to drop rare items artifact….
[NW JR] We have no current plans for this, but this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this suggested. It’s a good idea and we’ll consider it for future improvements to the FFA zone.
What is the best thing in season 10 in your opinion? (Question for whoever responds)
[NW_17thCenturyCableGuy] We’re honestly hoping S10 gels together and adds up to something more than the sum of its parts. PVE players will get the most out of it in terms of new content, but we feel that’s fair enough as PVP players have been getting bunches of new things in the last couple of releases. But even PVPers will have a whole new gear ecosystem to figure out.
[Lydia] I will jump in and say for me personally, I love the new zone. I can’t wait for everyone to see it!
Is there a plan to make significantly more gear drops Bind on Equip instead of on pickup so we can actually do something with it?
[NW_17thCenturyCableGuy] No, we’re going to continue to leverage BOP for most endgame rewards. The reason for this is because we feel that the ability to get everything you want or need from the TP is actually one of the main ways in which the feeling of there being an endgame is eroded. The gear and rewards are meant to be rewards for doing content. We do want to support a crafting trading economy, so we will continue to do a mix of both, but for S10 our intent is to lean more toward BOP so that the gameplay involves doing the endgame gameplay content instead of just farming coin for the TP.
While I’m grateful for new instanced content such as OPR maps, the open world feels really neglected, both for PvP and PvE. I know Umbrals v2 will help this some, but do you have some specific things planned that are both rewarding as well as challenging? The open world is amazing – please don’t let it languish.
[NW_17thCenturyCableGuy] There will be lots of PVE content in the open world in S10. We agree that NW’s open world is one of our key pillars, but we have also seen first-hand over the years that many types of content just don’t translate well to an open world format (i.e. anything that requires control/tuning on number of players). So we must continue to balance between both content types.
[NW_17thCenturyCableGuy] Not anytime soon, no. If we ever do it, we’d want to tread carefully and avoid toxicity, which is easier said than done.
When can we see new mounts added and new mount features? Or are there anything of the sort planned beyond new travel mechanics in general?
[NW_17thCenturyCableGuy] There will be new mount offerings in S10!
Please give us the ability to test out dye colours in the store preview so we can see what the transmogs look like in different colours. The dyes are so inconsistent across different materials and it’s impossible to know what you’re buying until after the fact.
[NW_17thCenturyCableGuy] Great suggestion. Nothing anytime soon, but we agree and we’ll keep it in mind.
On the roadmap from last month, I saw something that caught my eye. Influence Tower Claim/Siege System with Building. Can you give us any type of hint as to what direction you’re thinking? I love building in games and would love to see building return to Aeternum.
[NW_17thCenturyCableGuy] The fun of the stuff ‘in exploration’ is it’s still living in the fun idea stage, and we haven’t begun to tear it to shreds to make it a functional design yet. Having said that–the general idea is to take the Influence Towers that exist throughout the world, and convert them from pre-built combat playgrounds, into free-building zones, like the ones that used to be in the Alpha New World long ago. Then influence races would involve sieging those pre-built forts, sort of how war used to work in New World back when it was open world.
What is your long term plan for end game content and keeping content at the end game coming in a way that lends itself to people playing the game more consistently?
[NW_17thCenturyCableGuy] This has been our primary goal for this year, to prove out what content types we can actually deliver reliably on a seasonal basis. We believe Modes has been very successful, whereas Seasonal Servers didn’t quite meet our goals. We’re excited about Procedural Expeditions, because we think we could create seasonal content drops for that format which we can’t do with traditional static Expeditions. In addition, we want to continue to invest in perks and meta-shifting new gear every season. So, it’s a huge priority for us, and we’ll be continuing to refine it and discover what works for us as we go.
