New World Explains Reasoning Behind Reducing Number Of Players In Wars

New World's recent update changed the size of New World's territory-control wars, dropping the number of players that can participate per side from 50 to 40. Given that War is already an exclusive activity, requiring players to be selected by the companies/factions that are participating, further reducing the number of players who can take part seems like a bad idea. But limiting your big endgame feature to only the best of the best is a tactic that worked great for WildStar, so why not -- er, wait, hang on ...

New World developer Zin Ramu took to the forums last week to try and explain to players Amazon Games' reasoning behind the change. First and foremost, he stressed that the change was "an experiment we wanted to try, and I hope you all give it an honest shot." If it doesn't get enough positive feedback, wars will revert back to 50v50.

The primary goal of this "experiment" was to reduce defender advantage. Defenders were winning about 80% of the time, a number Zin Ramu hoped would be closer to 60%. Reducing the number of players, as well as not letting defenders spawn at capture points, were intended to address this. 40v40 wars, he said, "still felt grand" while also sometimes granting a bump in performance. The reduction from 50 players per side to 40 should also make it "easier for attacking companies to gather a strong roster of 40 people to battle entrenched defenders," Zin Ramu said.

Something he doesn't mention -- though others do -- is that New World's declining population has made getting 50, or even 40, players to show up for a war a more difficult task. Even with server merges consolidating players, that's going to be an ongoing problem for the foreseeable future, so hey, maybe my level 27 can finally get into a war someday -- even if it will just be to get his face smacked in.