New World Previews
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Thanks to the ongoing preview event for Amazon Game Studios’ upcoming MMORPG New World, we can now check out a number of articles that tell us how the game looks and plays now, after its relatively recent pivot to a more PvE-friendly experience. Admittedly, the previews mostly focus on the game’s PvP War mode, but they can still give us a decent idea of what to expect.
Combat, then, is much less about playing hotbar piano and more about being physically present in the battle. Come to think of it, physicality was an overriding theme of the demo I played. Everything had tangible impact: arrows, meteor fragments, melee weapon swings, projectiles from siege weaponry - there were literally massive machine guns and cannon you could pummel the enemy with - and in the heat of battle I was knocked around like a pinball, recoiling from projectiles and being knocked over by huge two-handed hammer swings. Yes, sometimes it was annoying, but I think this had as much to do with my adapting to it, and blocking and dodging, as it did the design of the game itself. Also, war is chaotic.
The character customization is pretty standard fare, with plenty of cosmetic options at your disposal. The real meat resides in the weapon skill trees, in which you use mastery points to learn new abilities and become more proficient with each weapon type. Even though there aren’t character classes, you can quickly switch between weapons on the fly, and with each weapon comes a completely different buildout, essentially. Combining weapons with different pieces of armor and equipment deepens the customization further and means players can create a super-specific buildout catered to their playstyle.
I don't have a slouch of a PC and can run most games at high framerates at my native 2160p. My i5-9600K and Gigabyte Waterforce RTX 2080 GPU PC is well within a higher range PC, yet I found myself even on medium settings only seeing about the high thirties, low forties in the framerate department. New World looks fantastic, especially at very high settings - and even at medium it was an attractive looking game. However, the low framerates made each movement feel sluggish and unresponsive - something I hope will get cleared up as the team goes back and polishes the experience with each test leading up to its launch.
In the world beyond the fortress walls, players will encounter magical beasts and natural forces that are none too happy with the new neighbors. That’s the PvE layer, which I saw none of. We also didn’t see any of the game’s 16 trade skills at work. Developers said the gather-refine-craft trade skill layer will provide a very long context for role-players to sink their teeth into. The skills have a 1-to-500 level cap, any player may pursue one or all of them, and the items they craft may be sold or traded in a town’s marketplace.
In our battle, I stayed back and tried to shoot as many enemies as possible from a distance. I had a decent range with my magic staff attack, but it wasn’t very powerful. The best I could do was distract some enemies and divert them from their tasks. If someone wasn’t paying attention, I could do some real damage. But I found myself the target of plenty of fatal attacks.
The server-based physics system is pretty good, and that benefits combat precision. My staff was pretty accurate, so long as a character wasn’t moving. There was a slight lag to it that meant that my fireball would hit where the player used to be. Timing and position really matter if you want to demonstrate your fighting skill. I felt like I wasn’t good at moving and shooting at the same time.
