It’s been a couple of months now, and it’s been about as expected.
Six months down the line, and the game have basically degraded into “here, take everything and have fun”. While expected, that was not the hope atleast I had for the time that was left.
I wanted to play the game as it had always been – you play, you find something, you upgrade it, you invest in it.
Now? They added Soulmarks to the game, and put them in, you guessed it, another chest run. Which means that you just run the same route, loot the same chests, and that’s the bulk of the endgame.. But then they updated the amount you find each time, by ten times as much. And you used those Soulmarks in a sort of forge, you craft boxes, which you opened to get random loot. Which ended up being 80% of the gearing grind nowadays.
But I kept trucking on. The people I used to play with stopped playing months ago, which meant that I had to find others to play with. It was fine – they werent as good players as the ones I had been playing with for so long, like Mojito, Andicus, Bogdan, JD.. But they were pretty decent, above average. And they invited me to their speed group, so I’ve been running speeds with them.
Except for the fact that AGS decided to hand out more houses. Before, there was a max three house limit, and in these houses you could hang up five trophies in each house. These gave you benefits, such as added to your skill for crafting, let you find more stuff when gathering, or deal more damage in combat to the ingame enemies. And about a week ago, AGS decided, that instead of three houses with a maximum of three combat trophies, they went with five houses. And thus, five trophies. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Except, while the bonus damage from trophies changes from +15% to +25% and it doesn’t sound too bad, it is. It’s too good, as those extra ten percent just breaks the balance. The game balance was tuned for +15% at endgame, and suddenly having +25% means that you do so much damage that..well, mechanics were completely skipped. It was skippable before, by the very best players, but now? Even mediocre players managed, and speedrunning was kind of pointless. Especially when the devs says that they’re contemplating one house in each zone. That’s thirteen houses, or a grand total of +65% damage – as long as they fix “the bug”, that is. As it is now, these trophies aren’t giving as much as they “should”, because while AGS said they guaranteed the trophies stacked, they aren’t really.
But what was the nail in the coffin for me, was the fact that there’s a bug in the game, where if you upgrade the gear you have on you while in an instanced gamemode, like Wars, OPRs, Raids.. the perks stuck with you, even if you changed your gear. Which meant that effectively, you could run around with two armor-sets on you at any given time.
I believe it works like this. Every time you put on a piece of armor, weapon or jewelry, the game unequips the piece you already have on you as you drag it off of your character or add another piece on your character. This makes the game not only unequip the piece itself, but it detracts all the perks and such that your character have – like if you have a health bonus on your amulet, and unequips the amulet, you lose the health bonus.
But when you do this perk-exploit, what you’re essentially doing, is that you’re equipping a piece with perks, that the game adds onto your character. Then as you upgrade it, the game effectively aren’t changing your item, it creates an entirely new item that is on you. The perk on the piece before upgrading stays on you, even after you upgraded the item, as that is the intended way – the new piece still have the same perks, after all. But when you unequip that new piece, either by dragging it off or equipping a new piece, the piece that gave you the perks added to your characters in the first place doesn’t exist anymore, and thus cannot be unequipped, which means that whatever piece the game unequips from you aren’t the piece that can subtract the perks added to your characters, as it wasn’t that piece that added it to your character to begin with. Which means, when you put on something, it adds perks. You upgrade that piece, which “detaches” the item from the perks, the perks stays on you, and you equip another piece which have its own set of perks that it gives you.
Now you have two different gears of ten pieces – five armor pieces, three jewelry and two weapons, each set – all adding defensive, offensive and skillbased perks onto your character. Which makes your character insanely strong, compared to someone who’s not using said exploit.
And while that is an issue, we’ve all waited for the devs to come out and fix this. But just the other day, one of the devs that is still working on the game came out and said this.
Which, as we all know, in “Gamer-speak” means, that everyone will now interpret this as the devs green-lit this exploit to be used from now on.
And honestly, considering the competetive integrity with which we all are running for world records under, all with the same circumstances.. this is completely unacceptable. What is the point of running legitimately, just so that someone else “gets a better time than you”, while they’re at the same time using more trophies than originally was intended for the game balance that exists and are using this Perk-Exploit?
I’m not saying that the current WR-holders have been using either more trophies or used the exploit. I’m saying that I don’t find it enjoyable to run speeds in an environment like this, where someone, or an entire group could run with these exploit and bonus trophies, without disclosing this information, and pretend that they got the WR-time.
And before anyone comes along and points to the 3:37 Worm time we got; No. That’s not the same thing.
Because yes, we did that time during the Rendbug of the Worm, and yes, we jokingly claimed it was a world record time. Jokingly claimed it. Fully admitted, from the beginning, that it was a Rendbug. We never tried to pass this on as a legitimate thing. We didn’t actually claim the world record place.
But this?
People will be running, get a time, claim it is legitimate, and having run with five trophies and perk exploits, because who can prove they didn’t?
Or, people will have been running legitimate, gotten the WR-time, and then being accused to have run with exploits and trophies.
Regardless of whether or not my team will be the accused, or one of the other teams that got the World Record be the accused ones….it’s an environment that is toxic as hell, one that I do not want to run in. It took the competetive joy out of it for me.
So I withdrew the other day from the team. I wish them the best, but I have my doubts of whether or not they will get to claim the WR-time and then have it kept – because there will always be someone who cheats, expects others to cheat or just insinuate the cheat. Always.
But I stuck around in the game for a few days extra, knowing there’s community runs going on. Decided to join in on some of them, especially the Worm run that was going to happen today. It would be fun to go back to Worm one last time, after not having played it for over half a year.
We ended up getting three kills, and JD even managed to finally get his first Silken Cocoon. In an era that made the point of Silken Cocoon useless, as you now can have Keen on any piece – it’s not limited to that Silken Cocoon anymore. Not to mention, most builds are using Nimble Coat anyway, and it competes with Silken Cocoon as a chest piece slot anyway. Cheers for that Cocoon, JD – now you need to find yourself a new company name!
But yeah… whatever little that was left in the game for me has already been played out. Moji, Andicus, Bodgan and those guys, we were all talking quickly a couple of weeks ago about everyone coming back to the game and hang out, but it seems like nothing actually comes out of that. I even made a post, saying that I’d hop on voice call an entire afternoon and evening, in order to “be there” incase anyone else wanted to hop on and hang out… but during those roughly seven hours I was online, only one person came online. Moji came online at 21:30 to ask if I wanted to play League of Legends.
As much as I love this game, the devs way of treating this game during “end of life” feels more of trying to make this into a sandbox testing tool, rather than the MMO it was. And some people prefer this, as they get everything they ever wanted tossed at them, so they can try out everything, all at once, without any sort of gameplay to reach this. It’s like playing Monopoly, but instead of playing the game as intended, every player around the board are given ₩2’000’000 at the start of the game. Everyone can buy any square they want, they can all pay rent – but what’s the point in playing the game then?
But these players are loving it – they can do in three days, what otherwise would’ve taken them three months. Which is the entire problem. Instead of playing the game for three months, they’re going to get everything they wanted within days, play to their hearts content….and then leave. Along with all the top players who are the ones running speeds, hosting community runs to teach new players the raids and other things not intuitively known to the players, who now will also leave due to the pointlessness of these trophies and perk-exploits..
The only ones that will be left after the “top players” and the “mediocre”-players leave, are the ones that don’t want to play to get what they want – it’s the players who just wants everything handed to them, so they can do whatever they want until they get bored and leave as well.
By doing this, the devs effectively shortened the games lifespan from months still, to just a few weeks.
And, honestly.. I think I might be done with the game. With no real reason to play – speed is out the window, many of my old friends aren’t coming back, and the “Quality of Life improvements” that have changed the game from what it was to this “hand everyone everything sandbox testing tool” – I don’t really have any reason to come back online again. Sure, I can stick around and play with the friends that have yet to leave. But I’m fairly sure they will too, eventually. And what am I supposed to do meanwhile?
Farm gear? No point – I’ve gotten all I need for all the roles I’ll ever play, for any content I want to play. Any improvement will be to just upgrade it in gearscore or add runeglasses to it. What for? All I’ll ever do with it is to play Community Runs anyway, and the gear I have already.. is way above what is needed for something as simple as a Community Run. Some roles are minmaxed to ridiculousness, others are still above average for the role that is needed for something as casual as that. The “worst” build I have, is currently still better than what most casual players will ever try to get.
Which means that any and all reason I would have to log on going forward, is to just join and play these Community runs. I don’t know..
I think it’s time to log off. Maybe for good. And I’ll do it where I feel is most appropriate.
I climbed the Great Azoth Tree.
This will be my “Memorial” for the character I played for five and half thousand hours of my life.
Good Bye, New World. You were an important part of my time. Shame corporate greed had to do what it does, but there’s nothing to be done with it now.