If you’re following along witho how Amazon Games Studio is communicating its development New World – and I know a lot of folks are not because of the confused reaction I got for calling attention to it during awards season – then you may have missed the fact that Amazon put out yet another video this week, this one focused on combat balance.
Creative director David Verfaillie says he’s transitioning to a new role on the game and introduces the two devs who’ll be taking over his combat- and balance-focused videos: combat designer Josh Hurley and combat design lead J.R. The new duo discuss dodge stamina and the “dodge spam” meta, flamethrower speed, the recently disabled artifacts, equipment weighting in the service of normalizing armor types, improved life staff trees, and proposed weapon synergy changes.
There’s also teasing for a possible overhaul to the mana system, movement and animation adjustments, and making heavy attacks PvP-friendly. Of course, the grumpy reaction from PvP players on Reddit suggest there’s much more to do along those lines. Either way, while it’ll be sad to see Verfaillie step back from the videos, players ought to be happy there are now two devs to grill on these granular gameplay mechanics.
