New World Scales Down Territory Wars To 40v40, Boosts Attacker’s Chance Of Winning

Amazon Game Studios is scaling down Territory Wars in New World and making a few adjustments to the PvP encounter to make them more tactical and give attackers a better chance of winning.

Participating Companies are now limited to 40 players per side instead of the original 50 players. The devs have also taken the defending Company’s ability to respawn in capture points to make it easier for attackers to capture the three points needed to unlock the gates. Amazon explains the reasons behind the changes in a new post on the official forums:

“Currently defenders win around 80% of wars, and we would like to see this number be closer to 60%. We still want to give defenders an edge, but not have it feel so insurmountable. […] While we love the epic-ness of 50v50, when we tested 40v40 internally, war still felt grand while playing better - felt a bit less chaotic, was easier to coordinate teams, and wars felt a bit more tactical.”

Limiting players to just 40 per side also has the added benefit of slightly improving game performance during the hectic encounters. “Note that improving performance is not an explicit goal for this change,” said Amazon. “In some cases, going to 40v40 may provide a slight benefit, but we wouldn’t have tried this experiment if we didn’t feel the gameplay itself was better.”

The changes are now live on the Public Test Realm to help developers gather feedback directly from players.

“We understand that this will reduce the number of players that can participate in war, and that is a negative. If we find the benefits don’t outweigh this cost, we will go back to 50v50,” said the devs. “We also agree with the feedback that providing an always available, instanced version of war that any player can play for fun and rewards, like OPR is a great idea. It’s something we are looking into, but it will be far in the future.”

More information can be found on the New World official forums.