New World developers tackled in-game issues in a recent – and extensive – blog post, with an entire portion devoted to addressing the conversation around minimaps (and minimap mods). The list of issues plaguing Amazon Games’ fantasy MMORPG has continued to grow since launch, ranging from exploitable glitches to server issues and beyond.
Although the game launched in late September to a 913,000 peak player count on Steam, New World player numbers dipped by about 100,000 during a four week stretch spanning October and November. The loss cannot be pinned to any specific reason; unfortunately for New World and its developers, players took – and continue to take – to social media platforms to vent their frustrations directed toward a variety of in-game concerns. Some of this negative reception is directed toward the game’s missing features, one of which is a minimap to help guide players around the immersive world.
In an official New World blog post (via PCGamesN), developers addressed the matter of a minimap. Although the statement didn’t explicitly state a minimap addition is impossible, it did emphasize the chances are implementing such a feature are very slim. The post read, “Right now creating a mini-map is not a high priority for us… The high level reasoning is that we have concerns with it meshing with New World’s action combat style and world design, that it could break immersion, may limit the drive for exploration, and there are technical limitations.” The statement also added the compass mechanic not only fulfills navigation needs, but also nurtures exploration and combat.
The blog post did take the time to address minimap mods, though. Although developers believe immersion and exploration could be compromised through the use of a minimap, the New World team stated they won’t punish players for implementing third-party minimap mods – that is, as long as such mods do not conflict with a specific set of rules. Minimap mods must, “Show player position; show folks in group as we do on compass; only show node placement if they’ve unlocked that node via tradeskills, provided it is within the range that compass would display them; only show AI that you’ve unlocked via tradeskills as compass and within range of compass; [and] show quests as they do on compass.”
Based on these parameters for incorporating a minimap into New World, it seems such mods must act as an alternative to the game’s compass feature rather than an advantageous upgrade. The news might not please players who were hoping to see developers include this helpful feature in the future, but the New World team was right when explaining it has bigger fish to fry at the moment. Perhaps New World will return to its original popularity once it works out its game-breaking issues – and then, perhaps, a minimap mechanic could be on the table.
New World is available on PC.
Sources: PCGamesN, New World Forums
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