Taking us into the development side of things, the latest New World Forged in Aeternum episode is a discussion about why some features are harder than others to complete and get into the game.
In a recent New World community Q&A, one of the questions touched upon this very topic. While that was part question and part criticism, the devs answered on why something might be announced now but take a long time to be added. Game Director Scot Lane and other team members have also said that there are a number of features and in-progress developments and changes that they’re not ready to talk about, and this new episode should shed some light on why.
Opening up with why they can’t “just do” something like putting 30,000 players on the same server, they cite technical constraints with scaling up like that, but also the precision in their combat system and things like not having instanced nodes. Territory would also be an issue, since competition would be so hard that many would probably quit for never getting a chance.
These discussions continue, including with feature development and what has to go into those particular changes. Sometimes the process consists of needing to budget out your resources and optimize a feature more to avoid sending it out in a state that needs more work.
On “just” adding a weapon, there needs to be animations, visual changes, impact on everything, sound, balance, how it fits with other weapons. And rewards, of course.
Lane adds that sometimes there are other demands. The team has learned lessons based on releasing some features without thoroughly having optimized them and getting bitten by dupe bugs and glitches in the past so they are taking their time on certain new changes. They still plan new features and fun things, but “not at the risk of breaking things,” he adds.
He also notes that the team is already working on features right now, by laying the foundation technically, that we may not see in New World for a year. New features, including some mentioned in the recent roadmap update are coming sooner though.
