New World encourages cheating

New World by Amazon Games encourages cheating -- and that's not even an exaggeration.

Amazon Games cheats with faked reviews

This interesting post on Reddit shows plausible evidence that some reviews are by accounts compensated to repost the same thing: The AGS bots are doing their work in the new PTR patch notes thread. It’s good different guys. Congratulations 🥳 : newworldgame (reddit.com) And it's not just on Reddit but Steam forums as well, such as this post.

You can do a Google search on the phrase "the game feels good different in the PTR" to see just how much suspicious repetition there is online -- this combined with the timing of their new Expertise system that took away player progress and made it harder going forward.

When a company cheats, how can they be trusted to tell the truth, do right by players, and deal properly with cheaters?

Reporting exploits on forums teaches players how to cheat and exploit

Firstly, the clearest method of reporting an exploit is the public official forums. Where everyone can actually see video evidence and therefore learn of an exploit and how to perform it.

Other games don't do this for a reason -- it teaches players how to exploit!

Only months later did they recommend that exploits be reported to Community Managers through direct messaging.

Poor communication about known cheats and exploits

Aside from this glaring oversight, New World encourages cheating with their poor handling and communication around cheats and exploits (which for convenience we'll just call cheating). When developers don't clearly take a stand on whether something is a cheat, it starts to shape expectations and future behaviors:

• When a cheat appears, the player base typically becomes divided. Some support using it, typically by blaming the developers for poor coding that allows it. Others recognize it is exploiting a bug and don't want to use it.
• When developers don't say anything, cheaters continue to profit by using the cheat. Players who don't want to cheat wait for word or action against the cheaters. In the meantime, the playing ground is not levelled.
• Sometimes a developer will allow players to all use the cheat because they will patch it shortly. However, in such cases, the developer still needs to be clear to the player base that they are temporarily allowing it. By doing so, they let all players use it and be on a more level playing field.
• When the developer then closes the bug, they basically prove that it was a bug and unintended. Therefore anyone who used it was basically exploiting the bug and this is against every Terms of Service of every online game.
• When the developer then does not punish cheaters, they send a message that it is okay to cheat.
• Next time, less players will wait for a response from the developer, which they now know from past experience to not be coming. They new smart thing to do is cheat early and cheat often because you will not be punished.
• And realistically, legitimate players who still want to play the game will have to become cheaters themselves and use cheats, just to have a fighting chance and be on a more even playing field.

Below we highlight two cases, but there were (and are) far more cheats in New World overlapping them and all just as badly handled.

Case 1: No Bans / Proof of Bans for Outright Cheating

There was a severe and outright cheat and the developers also tried to fix that in Update 1.0.3: "Fixed an issue that caused holding and dragging around the client while in windowed mode to constantly retrigger invincibility."

However this fix was approximately one week after the discovery of the cheat, and during that time no steps were taken to mitigate the cheating, such as disabling Wars where it was widespread, or at least detaching the outcome of Wars from other mechanics such as Settlement ownership.

Furthermore, this fix was not effective.

Finally, there were still no bans / proof of bans forthcoming for the cheaters and since that time the developers have been silent on confirming that bans for this outright cheating were actually issued.

Clearly letting cheaters go is a sure way to nurture resentment against the developers. This happens in every game where the developers are too lax in pursuing cheaters. Players start to demand proof, and when that is also not forthcoming, they start to believe that nothing was done.

For some players, they already know nothing was done as they see the same cheaters on their server still playing week after week, using every cheat that has appeared in the game. There is growing resentment toward the developers from the few legitimate players left -- and many legitimate players will just outright quit, taking their money and business with them, and not even bother to air their grievance on the forums.

With clearly no action taken, it was only a matter of time before players bought and used blatant cheats, obviously with no expectation that they would be banned. Even partnered streamers publicly used exploits.

Case 2: Allowing continued Cheating in Wars with server-wide consequences

Shortly after launch, players discovered that excessive use of area of effects could be coordinated to create lag at the proper moments and proper locations in order to quickly win Wars. It was widely used and in fact continues to still be widely used.

Complete silence on the part of the developers:

• No clear message from the developers whether it would be considered a cheat and the cheaters punished.
• No effort at all put into mitigating the effects of Wars won by this cheat -- which subsequently resulted in cases where cheaters captured all Settlements on a server and used that control to grief the entire server. Legitimate players left in droves leaving the cheaters with no opposition to grief the remaining players.

In Update 1.0.4, they basically confirmed it to be an exploit: "Fixed a War exploit where players could use area of effect (AoE) magic effects to capture rally points without taking damage. This should be improved by the War performance and Life Staff performance updates, but we will continue to monitor to see if issues persist."

The fix was in fact only speculative and ineffective, such that one week later in tandem with Update 1.0.5 they released an "Update on Current Issues" post where they acknowledged, "But the elephant in the room is the exploits that have been plaguing this feature. In particular, the now common practice of spamming the Ice Gauntlet, Fire Staff, or the Life Staff in order to create latency problems while capturing control points."

And all this time, zero communication:

• No communication on whether bans will be issued.
• No action to mitigate or stop the server-wide effects of winning Settlements by cheating.
• No action to stop or reverse any griefing actions taken by cheaters who took over all Settlements in a server were griefing the server for profit.
• In fact, the developers enabled further griefing by promising everyone Free Server Transfers. So now companies that cheated to dominate all Settlements were letting those settlements degrade while collecting excessive taxes -- that they intended to take to another server using the Free Server Transfers. So they weren't even playing on that server at all, just waiting to move on to another server after ruining it for everyone.

Case 3: Allowing some players to cheat with Unintended Weapon Swapping

Players discovered that it was possible to use a macro to swap between weapons of the same type and get a much faster attack rate -- so fast that they were basically winning every engagement (sample report and video).

Again, no clear message from the developers whether it was considered a cheat and whether it was allowed to use it until they patched it. No word from the developers at all in fact.

In Update 1.0.5. they claimed to patch out this unintended use of weapon swapping:

• "Fixed an issue allowing magic weapons to animation cancel their primary attacks with weapon swap or targeting spells, causing rate of fire to be faster than intended."
• "Identical Weapon Equipping: Players can no longer equip the same weapon type in both weapon slots. We want each weapon slot to have a different weapon type to open up combat diversity. This change also addresses issues which could occur when swapping between weapons of the same type."

Fixing the issue sounds good, except that for over a week, cheaters used it unchecked while players who didn't want to abuse bugs and unintended mechanics were at a severe disadvantage.

And after it was supposedly fixed, there were no consequences for these cheaters.

Furthermore, the fixes in Update 1.0.5. in fact did NOT work. A Community Moderator claimed to forward the information to the developers... but still there was no communication from the developers as to whether it was an offense to use it. Some cheaters continued to use it and were repeatedly reported on the forums, and still no action was taken. Instead the report on the forums was deleted.

Clearly the developers have failed on many counts here. At the very least they could have opened the exploit to everyone while they were trying to fix it so that everyone could be on a level playing field.

And having failed to fix the bug, they should definitely have said something about whether it was a cheat and therefore punishable if used.

Instead, by their silence and inaction, they basically allowed cheaters to cheat and profit. When legitimate players feel like fools for also not cheating, they will eventually either quit the game with their integrity; or become resentful toward the developers and become cheaters themselves. And why not, when there are clearly no negative consequences.

Case 4: Allowing players to abuse the reporting system to ban other players through mass-reporting

Although AGS insists that every report is human moderated, since beta, exploiters have abused the reporting system to get other players banned. They mass-report, and with total certainty, that player receives a ban for at least 24 hours if not permanently. Players have run tests and found it can work within a half hour.

There are more and more reports by players who have asked for the reasoning for their bans and have been provided zero information. Players are also providing evidence that their appeals aren't even being read and just get an automated reply.

Players who have requested all their personal information from AGS discovered there is a record for their ban, but in that record, there is no information collected for the reason for the ban.

https://forums.newworld.com/t/surprise-ive-requested-all-my-personal-data-from-amazon-to-find-out-more-about-why-i-got-a-warning/636283

https://forums.newworld.com/t/unjust-ban-without-explanation-or-reasoning/591055

AGS continues to deny that mass-reporting does not work -- even though exploiters have been reliably using it again and again. In doing so -- in pretending that one of their critical systems is working fine -- they are in effect enabling exploiters to continue abusing a broken system.

In fact, AGS actually acknowledges that it is a known "tactic" and it apparently works reliably in their "Update on Current Issues #1" shortly after launch:

Moderation can and has been weaponized as a warfare tactic. The pattern of behavior is that two rival groups will have confrontations in chat prior to a war or big fight. These groups try to goad one another into Code of Conduct violations and then eagerly report one another when violations occur.

At the same time, legitimate mass-reports against players who violate the Terms of Service get no action at all -- such as a player who scams others day after day.

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It really is astonishing that after all these debacles, Amazon Games continues to be on the list of Fair Play Alliance members. Their membership discredits everyone else on the list, and clearly being part of the Fair Play Alliance has done them no good whatsoever.

Nurturing cheating behavior in players has widespread consequences for not just New World but all other games -- players will take this attitude to every game and start by cheating to see if they can get away with it. And if they can, they will cheat even more.

UPDATE: Now, AGS is outright hiding reports of exploiters and botters that have continued for literally weeks. When they step up with coverups, was any action ever properly taken?

UPDATE: A player requested all their personal information and discovered that there is not even a reason stored for their permanent ban. It is therefore unclear that any proper investigative work was done. The whole reporting process is suspect.