New World Ditches Full-Loot Free-For-All PvP In Favor Of More Controlled PvP Fights

This weekend, Amazon Game Studios revealed that they were ditching their initial plans for an open-loot free-for-all PvP system in New World and making PvP an opt-in feature instead. Why the sudden change of heart? Well, apparently testers and devs ran into a little problem called griefing, and they weren’t too happy about it.

“One of the problems we observed with this system was that some high level players were killing low level players, A LOT. Sometimes exclusively. This often led to solo or group griefing scenarios that created a toxic environment for many players. To be clear, this behavior was not shown by all PvP players, but enough to cause significant issues.

We set out to build a compelling world full of danger and opportunity that begs to be explored. The intended design was never to allow a small group of players to bully other players.”

Naturally, this earned the ire of hardcore PvP players who were expecting, well… a hardcore PvP game as advertised. PvE players on the other hand are suddenly showing renewed interest in the game. PvP, however, will still be an important part of the game according to Amazon. Opt-in Faction and Territory wars will still be available alongside the 50vs50 PvP Siege Battles.

“PvP is important to us and we are committed to ensuring it plays a significant role in our game. To be specific, by PvP we mean, fair fights that are organized, skill based, and opted into by all participants. Not PKing (Player Killing), which is a predatory behavior that relies on exploiting another player’s lack of experience, progress, readiness, or willingness. So for those folks who desire that harsh PVP environment, New World may not be your favorite game, however, we do hope you enjoy the PVP we will offer. We are unlikely to provide PVP-only servers as it would divide our development resources and community.”

Player Killing and griefing have always been problems for free-for-all PvP games forcing developers to come up with various ways to keep them to a minimum, if not eliminate the problem altogether. What’s interesting is that Amazon already had a Criminality system, Safe Zones, and a bunch of other anti-griefing features planned as far back as 2018. Evidently, those measures weren’t enough.

Watch Game Director Scot Lane answer the community’s burning questions about PvP in the video below. You can also head over to the New World official site to find out more.