New World Feedback

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Hello,

Who am I? I have been a software engineer (partial game development) for nearly 10 years and I thought I would share my genuine thoughts and feelings towards the current status of New World from my personal and professional perspective.

Firstly, the initial game marketing, streamer collaborations was amazing. It’s been a while since there’s been a game showing such prospect through transparency and care for their community. The game is visually stunning and I enjoy the DS inspired combat, the RS style crafting system; props to all the developers/designers involved in getting New World to where it is.

Okay, there has to be a clear distinction made between the game studio management and the development team when it comes to decisive action and direction. Developer’s VERY rarely have much voice in guiding a games development and the deciding factors lay at the feet of management.

It’s just not feasible nor fair to solely blame the developers for these current game breaking bugs/exploits/issues. I’ve worked amongst game development teams and they’re extremely passionate people to the point of obsession. I can only imagine the disheartenment, frustration and overwhelming pressure they’re feeling due to the current games status.

Who should we blame!? - The blame needs to be directed towards Amazon Game Studio’s management team; VP in particular. I’m struggling to see how an individual with a history in mainly sales and project management possesses the skillset, knowledge and “technical know how” to lead the direction of an MMORPG of this magnitude. Again, I can only imagine that the development team had complete opposite opinions on some of the decisions made.

Why didn’t they just hold back the release!? - There’s a few elements to this but the most obvious was to maintain credibility. The game was delayed a number of times and AGS’ made a fundamental mistake in presuming that releasing the game was a top priority. It’s quite the opposite, a game can recover from multiple delays especially if it’s transparently communicated to the player base. Trying to recover from a player base going from 900k to barely 200k in a month is a completely different challenge.

Trust me, people would prefer to wait another 3-6 months than ride the shitstorm that follows the release of a barely post-BETA game. The added “hype” was great but it was just too premature.

The decisions taken have and are risking the longevity and life of New World. I do not believe the current management team in place are capable of directing this game where it needs to get too. It’s a shame because I do really enjoy New World but it’s in such a shaky position, it’s haemorrhaging players from all directions.

How do we fix this?! - I really don’t know, there is no “magic” solution to this. They can fight it out and hope that the game eventually picks up traction. They could re-structure the management team, do some live Q&A streams to outline and try to pull back the community? I think players need some clarification and admittance from Mike Frazzini personally and a clear direction of what’s going to change.

Thank you for reading this. I will be still playing New World but I hope big decisions are made soon before it’s too late.

Minisaints

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Thought the situation is indeed complicated and different people are to blame for different things, in the end we (the forums) don’t do the hiring or the firing, so I’m not sure naming and shaming would solve anything, let alone if compared to the witch hunting problems it might cause.

If anything, all we can do is to keep sending them our feedback and suggestions, regardless of whether they require fundamental changes to core mechanics of the game. It’s up to them, in the end, to decide in which direction to take the game.

The only decision that is truly up to us is what game we’ll buy and play and what virtual goods/services we’ll buy.

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I understand your comment but I disagree with the defeatist tone. You’re right, we do not do the hiring or firing and it ultimately is up to AGS’ management but that doesn’t mean decisions are not influenced based on community feedback.

I am not inciting a “witch hunt” at all but the cherry at the top of the cake holds the responsibility. Everything below that person is under their remit and VP of AGS must take accountability for this.

People will never trust AGS again unless some kind of accountability is admitted and given to the community.

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In before lock.

It’s a no-no to criticize AGS management by name.

On the positive side, a Q&A stream could be helpful if they have + things to say about the near future.

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It’s pretty clear to me, and I tend to believe to others too, that artists and coders rarely are to blame. Designers (including game the direction which is the master designer) are usually the ones truly responsible for bad games IMO.

I’ll go ahead, though, and say that I believe the absurd amount of duplication glitches seem to stem from bad code, not exactly bad game design.

The decision to abandon New World’s initial combat system in favor of some form of PvE, on the other hand, was clearly made by whoever is calling the shots from above, and wasn’t exactly bad in itself. However they seem to be still attempting to conciliate incompatible things.

To give you an example, I’ll just quietly leave here my bet with you that they are going to introduce 10+ man raids while body collision remains a thing, and only much later, after melees start spamming the forums complaining they’re struggling to compete for “real estate” around the bosses’ collision circles in order to hit it, they will try to come up with a way to band aid that problem.

The main issue is they are trying to build something on top of a completely incompatible system which was their original, breakthrough, masterwork combat system. In order for PvE to be successfully built on top of that they need to develop a new, original, breakthrough PvE system, and not try to mimic the PvE systems of other games, which is what is happening, because they will simply never fit.

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He has public facing accounts and can easily be found through their website and social media platforms. I will however, remove his name and refer to him as VP.

Criticism is subjective and I am critiquing his qualification for being in the role he’s in. How many games have been cancelled? Potentially another on the way now…

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Good move. Prevents the thread from getting removed/locked and allows for a good feedback discussion to be carried.

As much as I could agree with you, it might be beyond the purpose of these forums to provide feedback on the professional competence of individual people from AGS. I believe the feedback needs to be directed to the game itself, and not AGS employees personally.

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Bold of you to speak logically on this matter in THESE forums. You’re right though. Amazon’s management on this is the one to blame, and I just wish there was a way we could vent our frustration to them. The people that actually made this game, artists/programmers/engineers/sound dudes all did a fantastic job, the game is quite good, but it needed more time in the oven. If this game had another year in the oven, we would have still had some problems, but likely not nearly what we’ve had these past 6 weeks. It’s just a shame because you can see a lot of passion dumped into this game.

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I believe it’s reasonable to provide feedback on his qualification as he’s providing the main direction of the game. You wouldn’t ask a chef for advice on heart surgery.

It’s a completely different arena from directing sales to making fundamental decisions regarding an MMO that you aren’t qualified to make. As I said before, AGS have a habit of cancelling games, there’s clearly a pattern here.

Directing feedback to the game itself is great if the game actually had solid foundations with a strong direction. There’s more bugs than players in the bug section and a huge portion of this could have been avoided by simply extending the release and perhaps squeezing in another BETA or 2.

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I agree with you.

I believe New World’s direction and maybe even higher ups (stakeholders), not exactly the coders (especially the current ones - they might not be the ones responsible for the glitched code), are to blame. I’ve also said in other topics and comments that I believe New World needs a change in direction.

I’m just not sure our words aren’t just getting lost in the wind, however.

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Couldn’t agree more. I genuinely care about New World succeeding and becoming a great game because I see how much potential it has.

New World is in a pretty bleak place at the minute and when you lose players this fast, it’s extremely difficult to get them back without some sharp intervention.

I do think if they did a live stream explained, admitted, took some responsibility for the current issues but outlined a clear path of reconciliation; things might look a little different.

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He is giving interview all around how great New World was developed under his leadership…

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A year wouldn’t be enough.

I repeat: part of the the problem is how they’re trying to attach an outdated PvE system (based on existing games) on top of the original, breakthrough combat system they had developed. They’ve gutted their combat system and still failed at making it work well just as they were bound two because the two systems are pure and simply incompatible.

To “fix” that they’d need to scrap their current PvE system and come up with something new, especially designed for their original combat system.

What they’re doing is the opposite, gutting their original combat system in order to accomodate for an outdated PvE system, copied from older games.

Reason? Not enough time.

You don’t simply design a new, original, breakthrough PvE system in a year. You need 5+ years for that. Would we wait a delay of 5+ years? They either weren’t able or willing to wait, so this is what we got.

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Not sure if you can blame the PvE? It does not explain the shitty codebase that allows for unlimited exploits.
Also dump ideas like WM grinding or orb barrier in front of dungeons are just bad management decisions, aren’t they?

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As do I. I will continue to play and support them because I think this game deserves some loyalty, especially since I’ve seen a concerted push to fix some major issues. I also agree that it is in a bit of a rough patch, but I have some confidence it will pull through.

They definitely could use a live dev blog, but I think they may be worried about PR right now. I mean, look at the vitriol on these forums. I don’t blame them for not wanting to expose themselves to further castigation.

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You are completely and absolutely right. New World has many different problems. The conflicting design between the combat system and the PvE model is only one of them. The bad code that allows for so many duplication exploits is another, completely different problem.

However I don’t think AGS’s direction (which is this topic’s main subject) is to blame for the bad code especifically (concerning duplication glitches). That one is probably fault of whoever coded the engine or those parts of the game.

Though both might be hard to tackle completely, I suspect the bad code that allows for duplication is easier to handle than the necessity for a groundbreaking PvE model if AGS wants to be able to successfully merge it with their combat system without having to slowly sacrifice every bit of it patch by patch.

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That’s true, I did read Jorge’s (Ex Amazon Games employee) twitter comments about the decision the VP made to not delay the game further by not moving to NovaNet. (The comments have been removed since, funnily enough).

Game engines do indeed takes years to develop. The infrastructure and scope is enormous and the decision to just patch up an awful codebase is now costing AGS dearly.

Personally, if the VP was qualified and understood what the developers were saying in the beginning, he might not have went down the “cut corners” route.

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The HWM and all the other artificial soft or hard time gates to progress are a byproduct of “not enough content”. However, in their defense, we all know regardless of how much content you have in place, players always eat through it x100 faster than you can produce more. Some grind is inevitable.

What they need to do in regards to the WHM grind is to make it grindable through much more ways and contents. There are many ways to make that happen. You can make it so after level 60 the “XP rewards” (you no longer need) from faction and town board missions become a chance (that increases with every failure) at a drop that guarantees a HWM increase to one slot.

That would be my dream coming true: to be able to (regardless of whether much slower or not) farm HWM while doing the content that I actually like: solo tackling missions that also help me amass faction tokens and/or territory standing, being able to actually have fun fighting mobs instead of having to run or glitch them to solo loot elite chests.

There are also other excellent ideas, like purchasing HWM rising chests from the faction store, that have been suggested like the one linked below.

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Most definitely, I admire the work the development team have put in especially under the insane level of pressure placed upon them. The PR right now would be very difficult to dissect but the longer they appear oblivious and muted to the community, the worse it’ll get until New World can’t populate a single server.

Honesty, direction and accountability are what everybody is craving for right now. Not just some news post from a community manager, it has to be somebody with credibility.

All everybody wants is too see New World succeed.

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Yeah dude, I get what you’re saying. Another year would have at least helped hammer out some of the game breaking code that persists, especially if they ran more/longer betas. This is what we have for a game now, this combat system isn’t going anywhere. As annoying as it is at times, I don’t mind it. It’s a bit too simple most times and janky, but I’m still enjoying myself after 400 hours. Most of my gripes are with how many game breaking bugs there are.