The New World team has a new Balance of Power episode out, and they discuss the Season 5, Season of the Guardian, PTR, changes on the way, and feedback from the community.
There are a number of new features on the way, and the team has been breaking down some of the overhauls, like the changes coming to food items and cooking, but this time they're talking about the PTR and balance, combat, and more practical things that you'll notice.
Something that combat designer Josh Hurley is excited about is the arrival of what they are calling Slayer Script, the new combat scripting language that will help them to make changes more efficiently. This change “opened up a door to do so many cooler things that we couldn't previously do with the older system just due to performance”.This will give the team more flexibility and freedom to make changes, add events and make adjustments. The arrival of the next season update on the PTR is important since they’ve already been getting feedback on issues They will be fixing before the season goes live. the new flexible system helps this.
One of the other features the team is excited to be bringing to the community is controller support. Controller support has been a longtime request and now it's finally almost here.
Other changes now on the PTR that you can experience include tweaks that the team made to equip load balance. They're looking to continue adding to this but this is the first shot so they're looking for how players respond and how they feel about it.
They're also looking for feedback on the new Artifacts that are set for Season 5, and they're already planning changes to the Phoenix and Venom artifacts because they've been proving to be a little too powerful.
They also hint at a few things for future seasons, like quality of life improvements on weapons, including shaking up ability costs, and trying to adjust mana to feel less limiting, in addition to other changes like reworks they previously announced.
Watch the full video for more on the Season 5 PTR tweaks and a boss fight that went a little wrong.
