New World Dev Tracker

Maybe we should all just be calm and wait and see?

Thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond. I means a lot to see interaction with the community from your team.

One last thing. If it’s within your power to relay this kind of messages I would like to ask that if the PvP changes are as drastic as they seem, could you guys reconsider and give us PvP servers? It would just be the decent thing to do to honor your initial fans and target audience who have cheered you on for years. It would also not put a stain on your studio by showing that you’re in it for more than just money. That you’re in it for your players also. Just my 2 cents.

Thanks for talking and listening!

And thank you for having this convo with me. One of my roles as CM is to make sure I am the liaison between the community and the development team. I draft feedback reports and keep the team abreast of what the community is saying. Having those lines of communication between both parties is important to game development. We do have a very small community team currently so we can't be in all places at once. We make a concerted effort to drop in where conversations are happening and insert value if we can. This accounts for Discord, Reddit, and all our social channels. If it seems like we aren't talking enough, just know that we are absolutely around and listening at the very least.

Maybe we should all just be calm and wait and see?

I hear you. I just wanted to clarify that from our perspective PR includes more than what you might think it includes.

As far as “we do want to hear your feedback on the changes once you can try them out for yourself” goes, I would really, really, really like to point out that you are not giving yourself enough time to receive feedback on aspects of the game that have received DRASTIC changes. It just doesn’t seem fair that you change the game so much away from what you initially allowed your target audience to dream about, and then do not give enough time for feedback to be given and acted upon on those changes before the release of the game (unless you’re open to delay the release).

Do you really think that once players get to try the game and the changes are as poorly received as your YouTube video (3 times as many dislikes as likes), that you’ll have enough time to adjust the game between now and May 26th?

I do hear what you're saying. If you're asking me if I think the game will drastically change again between now and closed beta? I think there is time to implement a few changes but we're not going to be gutting any systems. I also want you to keep in mind that launch is just the beginning of the game's lifespan. As a live service game, I fully expect it to grow and evolve over time based on more player feedback and behavioral data that we collect.

The game's designers are excited and proud of the new features we've created and we're looking forward to watching players interact with them.

Maybe we should all just be calm and wait and see?

That’s not how PR works. We don’t keep track of where every single one of you work within Amazon... if you’re talking to the public you are partaking in public relations (PR).

PR is a separate function of the team, they focus on relationships with the press mainly. My point being, as a member of the community team I strive to keep the players informed as much and where I can. We have a roadmap on how we want to inform potential players on ALL aspects of the game between now and Closed Beta. My response was genuine, we do want to hear your feedback on the changes once you can try them out for yourself. The dev blog and video was a higher level piece of communication to reset expectations on where the game is at currently. This was important to us so that players can make informed purchasing decisions and that they didn't feel like we were bait and switching them. The feedback and questions we've received after the blog has certainly made it's way back to the team. We'll be working on additional pieces of information to answer the questions that were not answered by the blog or video.

Maybe we should all just be calm and wait and see?

It's not "market research" - it's actually looking at the way that players interact with the product. Anyone who has ever worked in development can tell you what you plan and what takes place ain't ever exactly been similar.

That's correct. I meant game data, data we collected from how players interacting in the game during Alpha. We paired that with direct player feedback when looking at things as a whole.

Maybe we should all just be calm and wait and see?

Yeah this is just bs PR talk, they had to say something to keep up their communication so it's the classic "we're looking into it" line. Either way, even if they do backtrack and remove opt in PvP, things are going to be all kinds of fucked now that they've spent the last 6 months gutting the systems that were in the alpha.

I don't work in PR.