There, I said it! It's out now!
Boy, was I excited about New World. Boy, did I spend a lot of time playing it. Gathering, crafting, running around, exploring.
This game seems amazing for gatherers and crafters, and it is! At first. There is so much to do, so much to craft, so much to collect. There is also so much to see. And what you see looks amazing. I mean, this game's graphics are awesome! I am still amazed by the lighting.
After playing for a while, especially as a gatherer, you start to notice your bankspace is... on the small side. You fill up your bank, run around with full bags and are forced to craft and trade to make room for new things. And because everyone is doing the same, selling your stuff can be quite hard. So in the end, you just salvage the stuff you can't sell (mainly crafted armor).
You do this for a while, getting annoyed with the small amount of space you have left and you decide to drop off some stuff at another town, where the bank is still empty. Phew, that helps!
You continue gathering, crafting and exploring. Eventually, you'll get, buy or create a bag, or maybe two, or even three at the end. That really gives you some space to work with in your inventory. You can go on longer journeys now!
The bankspace though, that's still very low. Sure, you upgrade it a little while leveling up your territory standing, but that's peanuts compared to the amount you actually need as a gatherer/crafter!
So, you eventually decide to move over part of your crafting to another town. Light clothing and jewelcrafting in one, heavy armor, weaponsmithing and engineering in another town. Oh, and then a third town for arcana and cooking.
This works a little, although you start to get frustrated by having stuff you need in a bank in another town. I mean, everything needs iron. Well, almost. And you can't keep all of your linen in town number one, because your heavy armor needs a little aswell.
Even silk clothes need... metal buttons I guess!
So you drag around some crafting materials wherever you go, or you notice you miss something in one town, so you reluctantly head out of town to collect some of it nearby... hopefully.
It gets worse when your crafting level gets higher. You're starting to notice not every crafting station can make what you want. No, they have levels aswell. A tier 2/3 smelter couldn't possibly smelt orichalcum ore!
So you pick your crafting towns, based on the level of crafting stations they have. But wait! That's no guarantee!
Oh no. Towns change hands sometimes. Factions, guilds. They'll battle for towns and sometimes take over. They are the ones deciding which crafting stations to upgrade. And how high the taxes are.
And then there's the town invasions. I won't pretend to know anything about them, but I know this much: If they are not handled correctly (which happens a lot), various crafting stations might decrease in level! So if you pick your crafting town for that high-level smelter, you might run into a nasty surprise a few days later.
All I can think about now is how bad this will be once the hype dies down (which I think it already has). There will be less and less players to defend against invasions and less and less guilds willing or able to level up crafting stations. So eventually, won't every crafting station just go waaaaay back down to their starting level? What is a crafter to do then?
My crafting is at that point where I really need to look around for a good level crafting station and it is getting really frustrating. My banks are filled up, because I can't use everything right away. I even own three houses, but it still doesn't feel like it's enough. I've been moving stuff over to other towns according to the crafting station levels and I'm just hoping they'll stay this high.
I'm kind of annoyed that I had to buy three houses, just for storage, because they are expensive. Taxes are crazy in this game. Way too often and way too high, and that's while my server is cheap in taxes compared to most. I know, I checked before switching servers.
Yes, it started out as lots of fun, but the quality of life in this game is just horrible. It's making me not want to play anymore. Which is a real shame, because with a few tweaks, it could have continued to be awesome! Something like shared storage space across towns, shared trading posts across towns (on its way I think) and if crafting stations need to have levels, make them a personal achievements thing!
I'll still hop in a few times a week, but it's time for me to start checking out other games again. And just hope they'll improve on this stuff soon.
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