New World Heart Of Madness Full Patch Notes SPOTLIGHT MAIN STORYLINE FINALE QUEST & TEMPEST’S HEART EXPEDITION
You can read the full patch notes for the Hearts of Madness update below. Verfaillie said looking ahead at the next six months, the New World team will be focused on continuing to polish the experience by tackling issues like lag and dysync, making transaction systems more robust in order to avoid exploits that could harm the game's economy, and the creation of new content. No update is complete without balance changes, and the Heart of Madness update has plenty of that too, with changes to the Life Staff and Fire Staff.Īmazon recently revealed New World's 2022 content roadmap, which includes a new zone, the Greatsword weapon, new events, and 3v3 PvP arenas.
This update also adds new activities out in the open world, such as Vista View paintings that can be found in each territory that, once discovered, can be displayed in a player's in-game home, as well as new roadside encounters. Verfaillie said the changes in both this update and other recent friction-reducing updates are all part of an initiative "to remove anything that is getting in the way of fun and doesn't add to the experience." Those changes range from the removal of costs associated with moving items in storage between towns, the ability to check your inventory while moving, and the addition of infinite low-tier ammo for ranged weapons, just to name a few. While the new expedition and weapon are definitely highlights, there are a huge number of other changes that should go a long way towards making New World a more enjoyable experience. In a recent email interview with GameSpot, New World creative director Dave Verfaillie said the team is looking to add a new weapon to the game "every six months or so," but that the cadence of new weapons may slow down over time as the game's weapon portfolio expands. It will be the second new weapon added to the game since launch. A close-range powerhouse, the Blunderbuss has two distinct skill trees to choose from, with one more focused on AOE damage and crowd-control abilities while the other is about dishing out damage at extremely close ranges.
The other star of the update is the new Blunderbuss weapon, the first weapon in the game to scale with strength and intelligence. Following an impressive launch (the biggest in terms of concurrent players for a game on Steam in 2021) and equally massive decline in player count, New World may still be struggling to find the rhythm that some long-running mid-tier MMOs like Guild Wars 2 or Star Wars: the Old Republic have managed to hit.? Battle the Corruption in style with the Blunderbuss - a close-to-mid range weapon that offers high mobility and two distinct playstyles. Additionally, the focus on PvE Expeditions in the 2022 updates does not seem to be playing into New World's strengths in its PvP or the player-driven economy that, while flawed, remains a unique draw. Some popular posts (opens in new tab) on the game's subreddit (opens in new tab) continue to call for more server mergers to maximize the game's contracted player base.
These all seem like welcome additions to New World, but they don't strike me as likely to address the underlying issues identified by PC Gamer's resident New World expert, Fraser Brown, in his review (opens in new tab) and 2022 state of the game (opens in new tab) piece like declining server populations and instability in the in-game economy.