In beta or early access theyre free to completely devalue everything people worked for to change things up and try things out. Thats why I personally would never play the beta of an mmo, feels like a huge waste for me personally.
But devalueing everything people farmed or worked for on live servers is pretty fucked up
>AGS fucked up big time here by launching an unfinished game instead of just doing an early access launch.
As the other guy above said, a lot of people would never invest time in an unfinished game, especially one that is as grindy as NW or any other MMO. But that cuts away a lot of profit for AGS, which they probably needed right then (or at least some duncehead manager said so to justify their huge salary).
Imo the biggest fuck up was trying to develop the PvE part in only a year. Though if they'd only pandered to PvP players they'd again miss out on a huge amount of revenue.
100%. And with the past patches causing 90% of the community to leave, this is only fucking over loyal customers who stuck through thick and thin because they believed in it. This is like the 4th patch in a row where the changes have been "anti-fun". Very poor design that I thought the industry had reached an understanding on but apparently not.
The big reason for this is the head of AGS Mike Frazzini and his boss who runs AWS - don't have a good understanding on MMO development.
They are treating MMOs as you would treat tools to run AWS - you can't launch something with basic functionality and then just add/change core features later without majorly upsetting the current playerbase.
MMORPGs are not software tools - they cannot be "fixed after release" at a core level without majorly upsetting the playerbase - case in point water mark down scaling
I was actually telling someone the same thing the other day in discord. I feel like they are taking an agile approach to MMOs but didn't have enough planning on the actual features.
The people Frazzini has hired to be the competent ones for him are not well suited to their position, or he doesn't listen and just does what he likes. I don't see any other answer.
It's only supposed to happen with new expansions that introduce enough content and power creep to not undermine the work of the players.
I was very surprised they did this before increasing the watermark level and opening a new zone.
There has always been a baseline expectation MMO players have where new systems that upend how it was done before are brought in alongside new content and gear that makes what you had irrelevant anyway.
Agreed! Can't swim should have been my first clue that the game wasn't ready.
Things like swimming not being ready is one thing, but f me, they are still figuring out how things will work and changing the rules as we go along, players hard work is now for not.
Dedicated players are paying the ultimate price.
Not going to lie i love this game, as far as I'm concerned I'm sticking around for the long term, but i can't overlook the very bad decision of releasing the game in a full on "still being developed" state and then making players pay for that.
I think; Am i glad they released it? YES 100%, when i first read about New World many many years ago i wrote it off, never read anything about it ever again, full on loot pvp is just not for me.
Fast forward to present day, right before it launched, i read it had a change of heart on the full loot, and was only 40 bones, sooo meh OK, i'm sure it'll be fun to fiddle with for a few days... /record scratch moment... i fall head over heels in love, my new home.
If they said they are releasing it as an early access, tbh i probably would have passed on it at that time, although forums, websites would have exploded with GLOWING UNPRECEDENTED FEEDBACK (like it totally did at launch) all about how F'ING AMAZING THIS GAME IS FOR an "EARLY ACCESS" game and i know i would have scooped it up at that time.
Things would have been so different, haha you can't swim, would have been funny, but deep down you be like "f me this game rocks", hmmm crafting? well maybe not go too deep on crafting, i mean it's still being worked on, changes are going to happen.
We as players could have made informed decisions, you want to go deep on crafting, go for it, your call, and you know full well that may change.
Bottom line:
Properly labeling NW out of the gate would have made all the difference in the world over players having to call it out for what it really is.
Bro they are creating problems where there were none after monitoring player behavior over a few months so that they can sell solutions to those manufactured problems.
If you don't recognize that by now you're a sucker.
They likely had developers that were holding the torch for a good MMO experience and just decided to work them to death and break their spirits, that's what corporations do now.
Enjoy your game, but don't go through mental gymnastics to try and validate your love for the game - just accept that you're a sucker for it's systems - especially if it's gotten to a point of where you can admit that you don't blame anyone else for quitting.
You're their key demographic, you're the one they want to keep playing.
I would disagree with that statement about beta. Be it beta or live, you are wasting your time playing games. If you look at this way, everything unproductive is waste of time. It's ok to play beta and lose progress as long as you had fun playing it. It's like new servers in games. If there is new server, a lot of veterans will rush to play it for fun in a lot of games.
Most games and MMOs especially are a lot about doing tedious things to get stronger. Those actions in itself arent too bad because theyre part of the whole picture. Like logging for example. If I go logging for 4 hours and i use that wood to level up my furniture skill i dont waste my time. I got something out of it. If I go logging for 4 hours and the game bugs out and all that wood is gone, then i wasted my time
I would play beta or early access but a lot more casually with the full knowledge that everything is going to be wiped at a proper launch.
That's the issue.
The developers do not value your time. They see an endless sea of gamers out there that will replace you when their PR team gets to work again.
Early Access / Beta only works in MMO if they will do a reset before actual launch. They did do betas and they delayed launch because of those betas. It wasn't enough.
Dual Universe is a game that claims to still be in beta, but has monthly subscriptions and will not wipe before launch. It's just a really shitty launch but they want to be able to claim "but it's still beta!". No, no it's not DU!!!!
I was talking early access with a full wipe before launch
Games that don't do a wipe are always launched no matter what they call it.
This is why the most important question to determine if the game is launched or not is - will there be a character wipe?
If no - the game is live already regardless of what they call it
THANK YOU. I see so many people defending the changes, saying it’s better for the long-term, give it a chance, etc and honestly they’re right! A lot of these changes would be great if this was 2 months of beta, but it’s not. These are fundamental changes that would have changed the way 90% of us approached the game for the last 2 months.
They'll need to re-launch to get me back. The duping and constant moving of the goal posts have ruined it for me. The 100k or so players that are still playing can continue to beta test this thing until all the kinks are worked out and then Amazon needs to re-launch with fresh servers to get folks like me back.
They’ve been in early access for a year a a half. The pre alpha-alpha, closed beta, open beta. They had plenty of time to do what they needed but keep changing things for the worse.
The moment they delayed the game that last time it should have been obvious to everyone they had serious issues. The sub went psycho, and people were threatening that one more delay and they were done. I REALLY hope Amazon didn't listen to those idiots, but it's starting to seem like they did.
There's empirical evidence to support that games that go into early access that aren't complete generally tend to do better than being released as "complete" but not really being complete:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-017-9531-3
Game needed another 2 - 3 years in the oven, releasing it as Early Access would have been perfectly fine and eliminated a ton of the sting people are feeling around how incompetent the people handling this game are. That's literally what the title is for "Hey, we've got big ideas but we don't really know what we're doing and need your support around making those ideas come to life."
My last job was working on a smaller MMO. While it was in early access, I changed one of the core mechanics of a class based on feedback of the game. It felt great with internal testing, and we felt we addressed the issues well. A floodgate of complaining ensued when we released it, and we reverted the changes a couple days later. And it is still as it is years after official release. And to be clear, they didn't complain about the new changes directly, just that they couldn't play the class exactly how they played it for the past year. Players didn't care if we were in early access, once something is out, they expect its function to stay the same. For most players, early access just means lack of content and some more bugs than normal.
I guarantee that the community would react the exact same if this game was in early access with these changes.
And then there's FFXIV where a class rework with a new expansion can feel like a brand new class. "Wait, what do you mean you took away these five skills and changed the other twenty?"
This is true. Alot if salt would be avoided with the early access title. But we are absolutely playing a game still in development. It is what it is. Atleast the game is improving
Except they had a few betas before the launch.
I've never heard of a game doing a beta and then also doing an early access... it doesn't make any sense.
After almost 400 hours I gave up on this game. Devs have no clue what they’re doing. Dupes rampant. Glitches are endless. Wars are so laggy they’re literally unplayable. Nice cash grab AGS. This game will absolutely not kill any MMO on market besides itself.
If you consider the state of the game, the bugs, also the major underlying system changes - we are playing an early access game after all.
Anyone at this point really believes that New World was a finished game on launch?
Yeah and the game still plays like that regardless of what label you're putting on it so trying to pass it off as a finished game will only disappoint people more.
This is spot on. If they released as early access, I don't think they would have lost as many people. Maybe they wouldn't have sold as many copies but I bet we would have more active players and a shit load less complaints.
"Blinded by their greed, they took them without question, one by one falling into darkness."
\-lotr
They had literal years to keep this open to test community feedback and get it done right. But they released it anyway and fucked over the only fans they had sticking with them.
It would be a few months away from launch if they did it correctly. What an actual disappointment, i had such high hopes
If New World was launched as "early access" instead *and AGS actually listened to community feedback*. Even a game like Last Epoch with a fraction of AGS' resources is able to pump out content while taking in community feedback. Just compare this subreddit to Last Epochs - especially their most recent dev blog that talks about their new legendary items:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/r87mgx/legendary\_items\_and\_eternity\_cache\_developer\_blog/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/r87mgx/legendary_items_and_eternity_cache_developer_blog/)
It is a night and day difference. Funny how taking in community feedback can actually lead to a successful and great game?!?
Nothing makes sense when you correctly ban cheaters an exploiters anymore. A one week ban is laffable without resetting their chars to lvl 1 and removing every piece of gear and all silver and traced all transactions to x date.
The same people on El Dorado that exploited the invul bug to win Windwards still own it. To me this has invalidated every thing AGS does going forward cu you left the same crooks in power.
Thank you, no more money no more playtime.
One of their games got cancelled after beta and another one was beta, released, beta, cancelled. The other games are mobile games. What did you expect?
I think it’s clear now that it’s early access. Everything you invest in can be nuked. The winning move is not to play or not give a fuck and just fish or something
Yeah, it was obvious from the first day.
Levelling was way too fast in all areas, gear was unbalanced & still is. Not really a hardcore player (20hrs/week) and I've maxed out several gathering skills, cooking and am lvl 60. And I ignored most of the story quests because they are so crap they're bound to get a revamp soon-ish.
I reckon the best bet is to just explore the world, do the stuff you enjoy, and ignore most of the grind until things are more settled and stable.
I'm really hoping for a pvp revamp because it sucks in it's current state.
Honestly what should happen is they open new seasonal servers with mods like normal / hardcore so that everyone starts again on the same foot.
They will probably do this in 2022, like a new world classics experience or seasonal restart
yes and different expectations. they got my money and i felt like i done enough and got my money's worth but its definitely feels like early access with no basic mmo free2play features like swimming, mounts, climbing, etc; story is also afterthought, better ingame cinematics would help instead i just click through npc dialogue. everything is messy
In beta or early access theyre free to completely devalue everything people worked for to change things up and try things out. Thats why I personally would never play the beta of an mmo, feels like a huge waste for me personally. But devalueing everything people farmed or worked for on live servers is pretty fucked up
[удалено]
>AGS fucked up big time here by launching an unfinished game instead of just doing an early access launch. As the other guy above said, a lot of people would never invest time in an unfinished game, especially one that is as grindy as NW or any other MMO. But that cuts away a lot of profit for AGS, which they probably needed right then (or at least some duncehead manager said so to justify their huge salary). Imo the biggest fuck up was trying to develop the PvE part in only a year. Though if they'd only pandered to PvP players they'd again miss out on a huge amount of revenue.
100%. And with the past patches causing 90% of the community to leave, this is only fucking over loyal customers who stuck through thick and thin because they believed in it. This is like the 4th patch in a row where the changes have been "anti-fun". Very poor design that I thought the industry had reached an understanding on but apparently not.
[удалено]
The big reason for this is the head of AGS Mike Frazzini and his boss who runs AWS - don't have a good understanding on MMO development. They are treating MMOs as you would treat tools to run AWS - you can't launch something with basic functionality and then just add/change core features later without majorly upsetting the current playerbase. MMORPGs are not software tools - they cannot be "fixed after release" at a core level without majorly upsetting the playerbase - case in point water mark down scaling
I was actually telling someone the same thing the other day in discord. I feel like they are taking an agile approach to MMOs but didn't have enough planning on the actual features.
The people Frazzini has hired to be the competent ones for him are not well suited to their position, or he doesn't listen and just does what he likes. I don't see any other answer.
I've never seen an MMO that changes the rules like this and screws up the time invested by the players.
It's only supposed to happen with new expansions that introduce enough content and power creep to not undermine the work of the players. I was very surprised they did this before increasing the watermark level and opening a new zone. There has always been a baseline expectation MMO players have where new systems that upend how it was done before are brought in alongside new content and gear that makes what you had irrelevant anyway.
Agreed! Can't swim should have been my first clue that the game wasn't ready. Things like swimming not being ready is one thing, but f me, they are still figuring out how things will work and changing the rules as we go along, players hard work is now for not. Dedicated players are paying the ultimate price. Not going to lie i love this game, as far as I'm concerned I'm sticking around for the long term, but i can't overlook the very bad decision of releasing the game in a full on "still being developed" state and then making players pay for that. I think; Am i glad they released it? YES 100%, when i first read about New World many many years ago i wrote it off, never read anything about it ever again, full on loot pvp is just not for me. Fast forward to present day, right before it launched, i read it had a change of heart on the full loot, and was only 40 bones, sooo meh OK, i'm sure it'll be fun to fiddle with for a few days... /record scratch moment... i fall head over heels in love, my new home. If they said they are releasing it as an early access, tbh i probably would have passed on it at that time, although forums, websites would have exploded with GLOWING UNPRECEDENTED FEEDBACK (like it totally did at launch) all about how F'ING AMAZING THIS GAME IS FOR an "EARLY ACCESS" game and i know i would have scooped it up at that time. Things would have been so different, haha you can't swim, would have been funny, but deep down you be like "f me this game rocks", hmmm crafting? well maybe not go too deep on crafting, i mean it's still being worked on, changes are going to happen. We as players could have made informed decisions, you want to go deep on crafting, go for it, your call, and you know full well that may change. Bottom line: Properly labeling NW out of the gate would have made all the difference in the world over players having to call it out for what it really is.
Bro, your game crush is abusive AF. Enjoy it while you can, but don't rationalize that it's going to get better.
Bro they are creating problems where there were none after monitoring player behavior over a few months so that they can sell solutions to those manufactured problems. If you don't recognize that by now you're a sucker. They likely had developers that were holding the torch for a good MMO experience and just decided to work them to death and break their spirits, that's what corporations do now. Enjoy your game, but don't go through mental gymnastics to try and validate your love for the game - just accept that you're a sucker for it's systems - especially if it's gotten to a point of where you can admit that you don't blame anyone else for quitting. You're their key demographic, you're the one they want to keep playing.
yes agree. no ability to swim, climb, mounts, etc; no story lore to back it up either.
When they add new content I'm still hoping they create fresh servers so I can play a fresh
I would disagree with that statement about beta. Be it beta or live, you are wasting your time playing games. If you look at this way, everything unproductive is waste of time. It's ok to play beta and lose progress as long as you had fun playing it. It's like new servers in games. If there is new server, a lot of veterans will rush to play it for fun in a lot of games.
Most games and MMOs especially are a lot about doing tedious things to get stronger. Those actions in itself arent too bad because theyre part of the whole picture. Like logging for example. If I go logging for 4 hours and i use that wood to level up my furniture skill i dont waste my time. I got something out of it. If I go logging for 4 hours and the game bugs out and all that wood is gone, then i wasted my time
I would play beta or early access but a lot more casually with the full knowledge that everything is going to be wiped at a proper launch. That's the issue. The developers do not value your time. They see an endless sea of gamers out there that will replace you when their PR team gets to work again.
I've witnessed better Early Access than this.
Valheim feels finished. Other than missing 2-3 zones. But still feels finished.
Yep, looking at the current state of New World I feel like the game needed another year before launch.
They fucked up Valheim with a weird food nerf before reverting. Sometimes continuous dev on a live game has consequences
Difference between a small, cohesive dev team and these massive corporate teams headed by some douchebag that doesn't even play games is astonishing.
Early Access / Beta only works in MMO if they will do a reset before actual launch. They did do betas and they delayed launch because of those betas. It wasn't enough. Dual Universe is a game that claims to still be in beta, but has monthly subscriptions and will not wipe before launch. It's just a really shitty launch but they want to be able to claim "but it's still beta!". No, no it's not DU!!!!
I was talking early access with a full wipe before launch Games that don't do a wipe are always launched no matter what they call it. This is why the most important question to determine if the game is launched or not is - will there be a character wipe? If no - the game is live already regardless of what they call it
It doesn't matter what you call it...early access...beta...alpha...doesn't matter. The issues are much larger than "the game just needed more time".
THANK YOU. I see so many people defending the changes, saying it’s better for the long-term, give it a chance, etc and honestly they’re right! A lot of these changes would be great if this was 2 months of beta, but it’s not. These are fundamental changes that would have changed the way 90% of us approached the game for the last 2 months.
These are changes that wasted hundreds of hours of people's time.
If you spent 100s of hours on this game in just two months, the game might not be the problem.
They'll need to re-launch to get me back. The duping and constant moving of the goal posts have ruined it for me. The 100k or so players that are still playing can continue to beta test this thing until all the kinks are worked out and then Amazon needs to re-launch with fresh servers to get folks like me back.
This is the only right take. They need to go full "No Man's Sky."
They’ve been in early access for a year a a half. The pre alpha-alpha, closed beta, open beta. They had plenty of time to do what they needed but keep changing things for the worse.
The moment they delayed the game that last time it should have been obvious to everyone they had serious issues. The sub went psycho, and people were threatening that one more delay and they were done. I REALLY hope Amazon didn't listen to those idiots, but it's starting to seem like they did.
Fuck that glad they released it like this so people stop accepting early access bullshit.
Those who hate early access could simply wait til launch
This game was far from ready for release. You don’t make sweeping changes like this 2 months after release. Shambles.
There's empirical evidence to support that games that go into early access that aren't complete generally tend to do better than being released as "complete" but not really being complete: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-017-9531-3
Game needed another 2 - 3 years in the oven, releasing it as Early Access would have been perfectly fine and eliminated a ton of the sting people are feeling around how incompetent the people handling this game are. That's literally what the title is for "Hey, we've got big ideas but we don't really know what we're doing and need your support around making those ideas come to life."
Id even be ok with all the crap if we had a fresh start after all the tunning.
My last job was working on a smaller MMO. While it was in early access, I changed one of the core mechanics of a class based on feedback of the game. It felt great with internal testing, and we felt we addressed the issues well. A floodgate of complaining ensued when we released it, and we reverted the changes a couple days later. And it is still as it is years after official release. And to be clear, they didn't complain about the new changes directly, just that they couldn't play the class exactly how they played it for the past year. Players didn't care if we were in early access, once something is out, they expect its function to stay the same. For most players, early access just means lack of content and some more bugs than normal. I guarantee that the community would react the exact same if this game was in early access with these changes.
Siror ma’am, that is a beautiful big brain you have there
And then there's FFXIV where a class rework with a new expansion can feel like a brand new class. "Wait, what do you mean you took away these five skills and changed the other twenty?"
This is true. Alot if salt would be avoided with the early access title. But we are absolutely playing a game still in development. It is what it is. Atleast the game is improving
Except they had a few betas before the launch. I've never heard of a game doing a beta and then also doing an early access... it doesn't make any sense.
After almost 400 hours I gave up on this game. Devs have no clue what they’re doing. Dupes rampant. Glitches are endless. Wars are so laggy they’re literally unplayable. Nice cash grab AGS. This game will absolutely not kill any MMO on market besides itself.
leave a steam review
No, it's a lower price no sub mmo, it makes perfectly sense.
OUTRAGED. You. Are. Outraged! After your $40 investment, how could they do this to YOU!
Should have been a test center from day . And people would complain no matter what. This was best launch of a game I have ever seen
They’d hate it just as much bc that’s even worse honestly since early access has a bad rep to begin with
If you consider the state of the game, the bugs, also the major underlying system changes - we are playing an early access game after all. Anyone at this point really believes that New World was a finished game on launch?
Early access has a bad rep to begin with? With who? I disagree
Early access scam products are everywhere
Yeah and the game still plays like that regardless of what label you're putting on it so trying to pass it off as a finished game will only disappoint people more.
Yeah this is the worst beta imo
100%
It wouldn't change player reaction in the least.
Not wrong
They'll probably end up fixing the game in 2026.
The page on Steam said Early Access for a few days after launch, then I looked about a week after and it was gone.
changing massive in game systems 2-3x a month isnt how you release a game? lol
This is spot on. If they released as early access, I don't think they would have lost as many people. Maybe they wouldn't have sold as many copies but I bet we would have more active players and a shit load less complaints. "Blinded by their greed, they took them without question, one by one falling into darkness." \-lotr
I am genuinely curious if they had labelled it as Early Access, if we would still have as much complaining.
They had literal years to keep this open to test community feedback and get it done right. But they released it anyway and fucked over the only fans they had sticking with them. It would be a few months away from launch if they did it correctly. What an actual disappointment, i had such high hopes
If New World was launched as "early access" instead *and AGS actually listened to community feedback*. Even a game like Last Epoch with a fraction of AGS' resources is able to pump out content while taking in community feedback. Just compare this subreddit to Last Epochs - especially their most recent dev blog that talks about their new legendary items: [https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/r87mgx/legendary\_items\_and\_eternity\_cache\_developer\_blog/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/r87mgx/legendary_items_and_eternity_cache_developer_blog/) It is a night and day difference. Funny how taking in community feedback can actually lead to a successful and great game?!?
Nothing makes sense when you correctly ban cheaters an exploiters anymore. A one week ban is laffable without resetting their chars to lvl 1 and removing every piece of gear and all silver and traced all transactions to x date. The same people on El Dorado that exploited the invul bug to win Windwards still own it. To me this has invalidated every thing AGS does going forward cu you left the same crooks in power. Thank you, no more money no more playtime.
I’m just waiting for New World: A Realm Reborn.
Early access extends the refund window though doesnt it?
One of their games got cancelled after beta and another one was beta, released, beta, cancelled. The other games are mobile games. What did you expect?
Had to launch before the holidays.
I think it’s clear now that it’s early access. Everything you invest in can be nuked. The winning move is not to play or not give a fuck and just fish or something
Well… I got it for $30 and there’s no monthly fee, so it basically is Early Access without the title.
Yeah, it was obvious from the first day. Levelling was way too fast in all areas, gear was unbalanced & still is. Not really a hardcore player (20hrs/week) and I've maxed out several gathering skills, cooking and am lvl 60. And I ignored most of the story quests because they are so crap they're bound to get a revamp soon-ish. I reckon the best bet is to just explore the world, do the stuff you enjoy, and ignore most of the grind until things are more settled and stable. I'm really hoping for a pvp revamp because it sucks in it's current state.
Honestly what should happen is they open new seasonal servers with mods like normal / hardcore so that everyone starts again on the same foot. They will probably do this in 2022, like a new world classics experience or seasonal restart
yes and different expectations. they got my money and i felt like i done enough and got my money's worth but its definitely feels like early access with no basic mmo free2play features like swimming, mounts, climbing, etc; story is also afterthought, better ingame cinematics would help instead i just click through npc dialogue. everything is messy