Summary
New World: Aeternumis out now, and while it was supposed to be an exciting time for longtime PC players and for the new influx of fans coming from consoles, a backlash over changes to the game’s PvP combat was dominating the run-up to launch. New World had slowly been losing players since launch, butAmazon managed to anger those that were left by adding tab-lock targeting to PvP, reducing the complexity of the system.
New World’s remaining players on PC are pretty much all invested in PvP at this point, andAmazon’sswitch up to seemingly make combat a little easier for the game’s incoming console player baserankled more than a few players. Thankfully, it seems as though someone at Amazon has taken the massive amount of negative feedback to heart, as PvP target lock has been heavily nerfed in New World: Aeternum’s launch update.
New World: Aeternum Launch Update Nerfs PvP Target Lock
Announced via a news post on the New World website, Amazon has thanked fans for all the “extremely detailed, constructive feedback” that it has received, and has now outlined all the changes being made to PvP target locking. For starters, Amazon has made it so killing an opponent while target lock is active won’t automatically switch to another target. Amazon explains that this move wouldn’t be possible with a keyboard and mouse, so it has just removed it completely.
Next, target locking will now break much more easily if your opponent breaks line of sight, which Amazon claims will allow “easier evasion and better preserves stealthy gameplay”. Finally, Amazon has explained that it has also slowed character turn speed for those in target lock, which it claims will result in slower tracking speed and make homing attacks miss more frequently on moving attacks.
Those sound like pretty decent nerfs, though there is one change that is a little baffling, and kind of implies that Amazon itself is stumped regarding certain overpowered weapons that are used in PvP target lock. One of the biggest problem weapons with this new combat system was the Blunderbuss, but instead of doing something meaningful with the weapon, Amazon has temporarily reduced the damage of the Blunderbuss while it “continues to investigate long term solutions”.
We’ll have to wait and see what these “long term solutions” will end up looking like, though Amazon will more than likely try and attempt to make sure the onboarding process is as smooth as possible for the new influx of players on PS5 and Xbox Series X. Hopefully, Amazon can keep making steps in the right direction.
