New World influence "exploit" explained - bug or feature?

At its core, New World is a game about three distinctive factions that are trying to conquer the mysterious island of Aeternum, and your character will have no other option than to join one of the three opposing forces. There are no neutrals here.

These three factions - the militant Marauders, the overly zealous Covenant, and the secretive Syndicate - all have different end goals and purposes, but in order to achieve those goals, they all want the same thing - to rule over as many territories as they can.

The land of Aeternum is divided into territories, and each territory starts neutral, but can later become controlled by a company and its parent faction, and one of the key resources that will allow you to control any territory is influence.

New World influence exploit - how does it work?

When a faction takes control of a Territory, it does so by claiming a Fort of that territory. If any other faction wants to challenge their governance, the Territory's Fort must be claimed, and that can only be done through war, which must be officially declared.

But declaring a war is not as easy as it sounds, because influence is a key factor here.

Faction influence within a territory represents the percentage of control that a faction has over that territory.

The faction which controls a Territory must reinforce its influence by performing various PvP activities within that Territory, while other factions are doing PvP activities in order to undermine the ruling faction's influence and gain influence for themselves.

Players have quickly noticed that some factions are able to "exploit" the influence system and gain around 15-20% influence on a Territory when doing just one PvP run, while others would get only around 5% for doing the same task.

Players quickly started reporting this "exploit", saying that it will ruin the game, but it turns out that this is actually the system working as intended.

Amazon Games says there's no "influence exploit"

After a week of guessing if the influence system works as it should or not, Amazon Games has finally come out with an official response in regards to the "influence exploit" bug.

As it turns out, a mechanic which gives more influence to factions with fewer territories is intended, and it serves as a fail-safe that will keep servers somewhat balanced and not completely lopsided.

"The game behaves this way to ensure wars occur frequently, as well as to create regular opportunities for underdog Factions to battle a domination power," Amazon Games explained.

The developers added that one of their main design goals is for wars to occur as often as possible because they are "fun, they create social tension and excitement, and they give large groups of players the opportunity to work together."

The devs further explain that the mechanism that gives more influence doesn't activate immediately at full capacity, rather it is constantly being adjusted based on the state of the server and current balance between factions. Furthermore, when a war ends, there is a grace period during which all factions are gaining influence equally, and only after a certain time, influence contributions start to increase for those companies that do not control a Territory.

So, there you have it, this is why some factions gain more influence when doing PvP missions on territories they do not control. Devs are using this mechanic to make sure that wars will occur frequently and to give opportunities to weaker factions.

• Read more: New World mining guide: How to mine, crafting pickaxe, track resources and more

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Featured image courtesy of Amazon Games.