[Megathread] Amazon's New World MMO

**Fencers** · 2022-01-16, 05:07 PM

Originally Posted by Black Rider

@Fencers
Very interesting information, thanks for sharing!
But what about content? Making content requires money and content is required to stay relevant

Depending on what a developer calls content. Some of it can be created with fairly small teams. Over the lifespan of a product, you actually need smaller and smaller teams to develop the same volume of content.

Development pipeline and team autonomy improve over time usually. Things like writing and design eventually need like a handful of people over time. This is why you may often see once larger development teams eventually broken down into other projects while still putting out expansions, updates, DLC, etc for existing products. Very often this is when new development starts too. Turbine were masters of this- they would get crazy development turnaround between projects because they had some good team managers.

Modeling and art assets can be reused and most of the time the animation rigging is canned. It's not common to keep a huge art and animation staff on hand long term. Only a few very large and very rich companies do that- and is arguably a waste most of the time from a development POV. But it looks bad publically to say you're laying off staff or combining project teams; even if it's 100% necessary because Phil and Jane have nothing to do 8 hours a day.

VO and sound are the most expensive things. Most of which has to be outsourced and there is an implicit cost you can't really negotiate. Acting and a lot of sound work are controlled by guilds. Actors, audio engineering, etc. Even recording studios are an additional cost and that still leaves out hiring a director. Which you have to do most of the time and even have to agree to work with certain people- again, guilds/unions. A lot of VO and sound work is reused from past recording sessions- you are paying for the studio for a whole day, you don't stop recording ever until they kick you out basically.

Around 2017, I was working with WB Games San Francisco for a bit which led to doing work for WB Games Albany. They could have like 8 people developing content for their mobile games which receive twice a month updates. New characters, events, stories, etc. I think the total staff working on 3 concurrent games across two platforms was around 17 or so, with most of that Troy staff being administrative (such as myself).

It's like a hospital really. There are relatively few doctors, the docs are super important, but you don't need as many doctors as support staff. And the more efficient the hospital, the less you need of all staff. You don't necessarily need a person each to change bedsheets, another to fluff pillows, one to draw blood, and a fourth to sweep. You have specialists and general staff. The general staff is always gonna be there but is more transitory. And there is a lot more general staff than doctors.

**Edge-** · 2022-01-18, 11:13 PM

https://forums.newworld.com/t/notice...regions/678533

And character creation disabled for a bit. No official word on why yet.

Man, I keep thinking back to that Twitter thread with the guy talking about the hacked together "not-Lumberyard" engine Amazon ended up using for New World. Sounds like a technical nightmare with a lot of those short-sighted early decisions from management biting the team in the ass in a big way.

**Chadow** · 2022-01-27, 10:01 AM

I bought it today...downloading. Hope i can at least try it out :S

**Chadow** · 2022-01-29, 12:58 PM

Decided to INSTANTLY refund the game on second day after playing it.
I must say...i was enjoying it VERY much...but:

The first time i died...i was met with the longest loading screen of my entire life.

This simple thing made me insta refund.
Im not playing a game where everytime i die...im met with a 5 to 10min loading screen.

**Fencers** · 2022-01-30, 12:47 AM

Originally Posted by Chadow

Decided to INSTANTLY refund the game on second day after playing it.
I must say...i was enjoying it VERY much...but:

The first time i died...i was met with the longest loading screen of my entire life.

This simple thing made me insta refund.
Im not playing a game where everytime i die...im met with a 5 to 10min loading screen.

That's you, bro. The game loads in seconds for me.

**Edge-** · 2022-02-03, 01:44 AM

https://www.newworld.com/en-us/news/...r-announcement

Feb. PTS notes are up.

Apparently some BIG changes to weapon swapping that should make it a lot more responsive, and improvements to dodge and apparently dodge/block canceling (limited) are in.

OPS reward buffs/improvements

Some reduced crafting grinds

Amazon is weird on this. On the one they're making some terrible design decisions, but at the same time they seem fairly responsive to feedback from players and are willing to take action on a lot of core parts of the game. Just seems like the community is either super happy with them or super angry with them and there's little in-between.

**Gorsameth** · 2022-02-03, 10:49 AM

a community that isn't happy with the game is quicker to complain about small inconveniences rather then forgive/ignore them.

**Fencers** · 2022-02-03, 04:14 PM

Originally Posted by Edge-

Amazon is weird on this. On the one they're making some terrible design decisions, but at the same time they seem fairly responsive to feedback from players and are willing to take action on a lot of core parts of the game. Just seems like the community is either super happy with them or super angry with them and there's little in-between.

This is most games honestly.

**Edge-** · 2022-02-03, 05:27 PM

Originally Posted by Fencers

This is most games honestly.

To a point yes, but I don't think I've seen it with these kinds of extremes, at least not this early. WoW's facing this to a point, but that's off the back of a pretty lackluster expansion/support and some very silly design decisions.

But thinking about most other MMO's there's always friction between devs/community and the usual see-saw of community sentiment, but it seems like so much more of an extreme and so much more frequent. Like, STO sentiment may change a bit in a month or take a few months before players start getting really salty about an upcoming change, before calming back down after realizing it's not as bad as they thought. NW is like, "Dev's should all be fired!" to "Holy shit devs are listening!" back to "Dev's clearly don't even play the game!" in the matter of like, a week. And not just rando comments, the whole reddit sentiment.

Hive-mind to a point and all, I get that. But just an interesting oddity I've noticed in my feed (I follow a ton of MMO subs because I enjoy that boring and often infuriating shit).

**Proskill** · 2022-02-22, 11:38 AM

how dead is this game?

**XDurionX** · 2022-02-22, 11:42 AM

Originally Posted by Proskill

how dead is this game?

Nobody posted in this thread for three weeks. There's your answer.

**Fencers** · 2022-02-22, 02:39 PM

There has not been any new content since the mutations. The devs said they were going to take a while to just work on bugs and technical issues throughout February and into March. So the player base largely was made aware there was not gonna be anything new for a while as the devs worked on bugs/fixes.

There is no news. About 40k playing regularly according to Steam Charts. Still in the top 50.

**dope_danny** · 2022-02-22, 03:58 PM

Originally Posted by Proskill

how dead is this game?

Its lost over 95% of its users since launch and is down to a peak 40k players worldwide. Not average. Peak. At the current rate of decline it could be dead within a month. Amazon got their pump and dump money to say something from AGS hit retail but beyond that its a faster managed decline than Wildstar. I think only Crowfall has died faster in recent memory.

**Raunchy** · 2022-02-22, 04:10 PM

Originally Posted by Strawberry

I played open beta and was not impressed. Bought it during Black Friday sale because it was rather cheap.
It still sucks. Character creations needs a MASSIVE rework.
One thing is having an ugly zone, another thing is having an ugly character. It's what I'm going to be stuck to the whole game.
I don't create model looking females. I do sometimes, but I have from fat to pretty to male and female. Whatever I feel fits in the class/style/outfit I go for.
Not in New World. There's literally no way you can create a likeable character in the game. The whole character creation design is so lazy that they left beard options for females, lol.
The world looks fine. I want to explore it. But I can't play a game where my character looks like shit.
So no, I'm currently playing Guild Wars 2 and have spent about €350 in the past month. That's money I could've put into New World if it actually was a good game.

big agree, to this, if your not gonna have various races and classes, u better damn sure make sure the ONLY one race you do have, you can customize the shit out of it.

**Edge-** · 2022-02-22, 06:18 PM