The New World team has a new community Q&A video, where they discuss the Season 5 delays, the significant updates aimed for June, concerns about the direction of the game, and more.
Season of the Guardian was delayed for some more work, particularly after feedback received on the PTR build. This is, of course, one of the most important parts of testing updates before they go out. This latest Forged in Aeternum video was filmed after a GDC panel the team held called “The Power of Community Feedback to create Better Games”, which is an appropriate one considering the delayed season, which will now launch April 2nd.
One of the early questions was about why everyone has to wait until June for a promised update on features and work that they’re planning. Game Director Scot Lane took this one, saying, “We are working long hours and really hard toward a big goal this year, which we can't wait to share with you in June”. Still, they say there might be some clues in some of the other things they can discuss that offer hints at what’s coming.
Part of the reason for a quieter development period comes in acknowledging the mistakes in Season 4 and the need for more work that delayed Season 5. “We've not had a great history of releases being clean,” Lane acknowledged, saying that they are working to get it right, and this is part of that. Pivoting to Season 5, he does thank the community for finding all of the issues in the PTR and says that they’re going to work on all of them, and won’t get to everything initially, but will focus on anything really out of balance and potentially exploitable. This quieter process is new, but it is something they are trying.
Some might say you can’t disappoint if you’re not promising anything, but this quieter development could give that chance to really catch up on polish.
As for what’s to come, we don’t know much at all, though they did say they’re “working on something for PvP that's pretty darn big part of the June announcement”. Hints and clues indeed.
