New World Team Dives into the Creation and Goals of Mounts in Outpost Rush

New World may have delayed its next season, Season of the Guardian, to a new launch date, but the team continues previewing new features coming in the next update.  This time, a new dev video covers the introduction of mounts in Outpost Rush.

Mounts were introduced as a game changer back with the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion, and have impacted New World in many ways. The decision to bring mounts into OPR was something that required a lot of consideration and planning. And even questions about whether the community would even like the addition. Similar consideration was held by the team when they were thinking about adding mounts. They had to ask themselves if they actually wanted mounts in the game.

When it comes to mounts in OPR, questions arose among the developers as to whether doing so would cause too much of a disruption. Internally, and after testing, they cite decisions like the instant dismount when taking damage as one of the ways that they make it work and feel more balanced. If you are looking for mobility, you have that option, but if you're looking to get into a fight, you're going to dismount and get in the thick of it. 

Having that extra mobility should also make things more engaging for ranged combat in addition to giving players opportunities to split their enemies, offering another aspect of strategy that those who participate in OPR will have to consider. The devs are careful to emphasize that they're not trying to disrupt the important of on-foot combat, and nor do they expect everyone to be mounted. It's not necessary and they're trying to keep all options open.

On the tech side, one of their concerns was that in a busy and heavy combat situation, having to load more things on screen might impact performance, but they made some changes to optimize for this. 

Community feedback and player behavior will be things that they pay attention to when the feature is released.

Watch the full video for more. Season of the Guardian is coming soon to New World, but the Amazon team has not set a new release date yet.