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Learn how Amazon mix survival, crafting and PvP battles in MMO New World
We speak to Amazon Games studio head Patrick Gilmore to learn how survival, building, exploration, and PvP battles are all combined in sandbox MMORPG, New World.
It always starts the same. You, dressed in nothing but rags, washed up on the beach of a vast, unexplored land. Whether it's the dinosaur-infested island of Ark: Survival Evolved, the harsh open world of Rust, or all the way back to the heyday of Minecraft. This has been the opening moment of so many survival games we've seen soar in popularity over recent years.
Like all crazes, the rush to exploit the popularity of the survival game has spawned many imitators of varying quality. Some have gone on to see success, going through their own rags to riches stories, whereas others have floundered like a newly-created character who's barely left the shore with nothing but a poorly whittled wooden sword in hand.
Take a quick glance at New World and you wouldn't be blamed if you envisioned both of those potential trajectories for the game. As a new arrival to the recently discovered island of Terra Vitae Aeternum in the 17th century, where magic and corrupted creatures reside, those same potential fates await you once again. However, to call New World exclusively a survival game would shift the focus too far away from what it's actually trying to achieve.
See that tree? You can chop it
© Amazon Game Studios
New World is, in fact, an MMORPG – one with progression, specialisations and huge scale player-versus-player battles between guilds, as you fight to claim land. All those front-loaded survival elements of hunger, thirst, and crafting are smaller aspects of a much larger overall game, as Amazon Games studio head Patrick Gilmore explains.
"Obviously, we share a lot of features with survival and crafting, but then we make it so there's a lot to do here that's more than just surviving," he says. "Probably the most important aspect is the social systems. Players are able to organise themselves, create groups, create companies, and easily communicate with each other. You see the investment that we're making in a player-generated structure that hopefully helps us go way beyond the foundation of the features that are introduced there."
Crafting your own fun
New World is best described as a sandbox MMO. It's about taking your lowly, level one toon, and developing them through the adventures you go on and the trials you face. Instead of following quest chains and a dramatic narrative, though, the story is yours to create through all the systems that are built into the game.
If you build it, a rival guild will destroy it
© Amazon Game Studios
You may start on the beach with nothing, but from there you can craft an axe, a knife, or a sickle. Soon enough you're chopping down trees and harvesting plants to make additional equipment. You'll visit a nearby settlement and spot all the potential tradeskills available for you to master. Or you can choose to become a soldier, taking all the experience you've gathered, and skill points you've earned, to hone your combat abilities.
Gilmore describes the opening of New World as one huge learning and experimentation phase for the player, where you're dropped into this new frontier, and your first task is to find your place within it. "How am I going to choose to specialise? Do I want to be a blacksmith, or do I want to be a tanner? Do I want to be heavy? Do I want to focus on being a ranger? Am I hunting and foraging, or am I going to find a place, like a company, to belong to and settle in? A lot of those decisions are around your initial path," he says.
With these MMO and survival aspects combined, New World has the potential to offer something very new and exciting for fans of either genre. For the former, there's a break from the traditional structure of the genre, and a chance to develop your character through more freeform exploration and combat. For the latter, there’s the permanence of your character in an ever-changing world, as conflicts between guilds lead to changes in control of certain areas of the map.
Players can venture out together to explore the world
© Amazon Game Studios
After one session with New World we've seen how these ideas work together. There are huge, player-owned settlements that can be called home – places you build up from nothing where you can store the materials you've gathered, and craft wondrous new items for your character. You can set up a small farm to raise chickens and pigs to keep your belly full. You can even study the arcane arts, tapping into the mysterious magical power of the island to brew potions, and create unique equipment that can protect or heal allies.
That wholesome and peaceful existence could all be thrown into chaos at a moment's notice, though, when a rival guild declares war on yours to take over the land. At that point, it's your job to defend, assemble all of your forces, and hunker down with the hopes of holding off the invaders. Or you can meet them somewhere else on the path. Perhaps you'll be the aggressors next time, too.
March to war
As player-versus-player combat is such a big focus of New World, it was important for the team to nail the feel of battle. Swinging your weapon or firing your bow feels very deliberate, with weight and impact to each attack. You can also block and dodge to out position opponents, while special attacks can be used to deal more damage, but leave you vulnerable.
It makes for tense one-versus-one duels when you manage to square off with another player, but in the chaos of a massive all-out-brawl between two huge guilds, there's a chance for a lot of the nuance to get lost. However, Gilmore argues that with the skill-based focus of the game, there's more than enough room for strategy in the larger battles.
"It's a skill-based game, with real player collision, and that means that something like your shield is like a real collision surface," he explains. "So, multiple players with multiple shields can form a shield wall. That's a real thing, so it's not just a buff, it's a very physical style of combat. Choices like that make it much more real, and much more physical when players actually play the game."
PvP combat is a massive part of New World
© Amazon Game Studios
Further to that, Gilmore talks about a battle that recently took place during an Alpha test event in a forest. After suffering a defeat, the losing side discussed with each other how they could have better prepared for the fight, and suggest they should have had someone to chop down the trees before they engaged, as "enemies were melting out of the forest."
Those are the kinds of situations that New World is aiming for: unscripted, unstructured, and emergent. It's a massive game of multiple systems that encourage players to find their own ways to extract the most from them. For some, that's tough, as it can easily lead to boredom and disillusion if things don't click together. On the other hand, when you're invested in a guild, and see the impact you can have on the game, it's a compelling mix.
"Our approach is to lay the foundations really well, make those foundations super solid, enter into live service, and be able to build from there," explains Gilmore. "I think that's served us well because, hopefully, we'll be able to offer an experience to players that feels really refined, and ready to be added to."
Sometimes other players aren't the worst threat
© Amazon Game Studios
In terms of adding to New World, the team is full of potential ideas, as the game moves towards leaving Alpha. The island itself is going to be tapped into more, so that players can learn about some of its history and secrets. Meanwhile, new weapons and armour are going to be added and refined, plus so much more.
"It's funny, because there's almost no idea," says Gilmore. "Anything that you believe could potentially exist in a supernatural 17th century world could go into the game. For us, it's an editing process, and we're constantly managing this tension between our Alpha players desires to know where we're going and our desire to build what customers really want."
There are some solid foundations in New World. Right now, it's an unassuming-looking sandbox MMORPG that simply taps into a lot of gaming's current popular buzzwords. Amidst all of that, though, it shows some promise. It'll be interesting to see how it grows with further development, and whether enough of an audience will be drawn to it to take advantage of its potential.
