Thank you very much for making this thread and communicating with players @Shadow_Fox . I just wanted to share some of my thoughts after watching the recent dev video.
1. We hope to see and hear more of dev team’s thoughts rather than what actually happens in a week.
Honestly speaking, most of things stated in the video was something we knew or going to know in a few days by reading patch notes for both live and PTR. However, I did a translation of the video for Japanese players (because I am a Japanese player) on my personal website simply because the video was way better for us to understand the emotion of AGS, direction of the game, how AGS is really feeling about things towards next update or even longer future. Japanese community really liked the video and translated comments of dev team, and the comment I most liked from the community was “I felt like AGS is not given up with New World and it helped me to maintain my motivation grinding and trying new things in the game”.
I completely understand that AGS really wants to make sure you guys do not say anything incorrect because it can be a cause of bigger issues. Recorded and edited videos are fine, no real player involved is also fine. We kind of feel like we are heard more compare to the past. But I really hope to hear more of the real comments from dev team. I really loved the part where David mentioned that the team is starting to think like maybe it is the time to re-visit the original concept which is “survival crafting game”, and make necessary adjustment based on what team is learning from watching how people play the game now, after almost a half year from the official release. We won’t know exactly what is going to happen from that David’s comment, but we at least know that AGS is re-visiting the concept of the game. Maybe some of us don’t like it to be changed, maybe some of us want this game to be more survival crafting game, but at the same time, if we know that dev is thinking like that right now, maybe we can share our own thoughts on the forum and let AGS know what we want, what we don’t want, what ideas we have, things like that.
This does not mean all of our voices should be heard. Players are good at playing games while devs are good at making games. Player’s ideas don’t always help game development, but reading our reaction to those dev thoughts might be a good help for dev team to understand what people really want (not just what we say but more like what made us say those comments) and figure out what to add or not to add in the game. Those real comments from dev team really helps us to have a such environment. I would love to hear more things like concerns, draft ideas, direction change, ideas behind changes, things like that rather than things coming up in a few days.
2. We hope to see some pictures or slides helping us to understand what devs are saying.
The great example was the luck explanation done in Feb dev video. We could hear some things we knew and we did not know from the video. However, it made some confusion because the word choice dev team used was different from some players are using, and it also made some disappointment because some of the deeper questions were not answered. (At least people felt so)
In such situation, things might be much better if we have a picture or slide lining up all things dev wants to explain, so people will have much less chance to misunderstand, and we all know what dev team exactly meant. In addition to those, having such picture or slide would help information to be spread much easier on SNS because not all players have chance to sit down and watch an hour long video.
I hope this helps you to build improved communication between AGS and players moving forward. And again, I would like to thank you all for the great game and ongoing improvements. We kind of all know there are a lot of room to grow for New World, and I personally think so too, but this is the only an MMO which made me purchase and play 600+ hours in 10 years. I really believe in the future of New World.
Thank you and see you in Aeternum!