The launch of New World has been bittersweet for Amazon Game Studios. While the game has been quite popular, especially at launch, it was filled with many bugs and glitches that turned away almost half the player base after a few weeks. The November update was supposed to fix many of these issues, but that wasn’t the case when players started to reach the endgame and found that the core mechanics were drastically changed.
Amazon changed the difficulty of endgame battles and reduced chest drops’ effectiveness. These changes were added to make New World’s progression feel much more linear and were just a tiny part of Amazon’s larger plan to adjust New World’s various systems. This is evident in the December patch notes.
Much to the annoyance of many players, the High Watermarking System will be replaced with the Expertise system. The reason behind this was to decrease a player’s Gear Score if it was below the Expertise value with another patch that would be dropping next year.
There was a lot of public outcry about this decision, given that even already existing items would have been affected by the change. However, in a somewhat fortunate turn of events, Amazon has decided to abandon the idea of lowering Gear Scores for items acquired before the patch drops, something that would have made buying new gear from trading posts virtually pointless.
On the New World sub, Redditors praised Amazon’s admittance that the decision was flawed. Players will now be able to safely purchase better items, even if that items’ Gear Score is much higher than the current gear, and still reap the many rewards it offers.
The current progression system is in no way perfect, as many players would get to level 60 just to buy Gear Score 580 items from the trading posts and boost their progression. But it wouldn’t have been fair to those players who have already increased their Watermark and Gear Score. However, items acquired after the patch will have their Gear Score reduced by the player’s Expertise value.
New World’s December patch is also bringing a bunch of new perks to the game, and getting new armor with them would also mean your Gear Score would fluctuate. Players should look at farming the highest Gear Score items they can now and then go for the best ones they can find once the patch drops to mitigate the losses.
About New World
New World is an upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) by Amazon Games set to be released on August 31, 2021. The game was previously scheduled to release in May 2020 but was delayed to its current date.
Set in the mid-1600s, players colonize a fictional land known as Aeternum Island, modeled after North and South Americas in the Atlantic Ocean. The game will be using a buy-to-play business model, meaning there will be no monthly subscription fee.
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