New World Woes

 New World Season 5 is delayed.  This announcement comes within shouting distance of the recent news that the game's next road map update is delayed from May to June.  "Woe is me" sighs the New World fan.

Sigh

 The Season 5 delay was not unexpected.  The update has a major change for the game as the dev team has re-written the entire combat engine in a new scripting language called slayer script.  The team has said this change will allow them to move faster and fix more issues.  

 This is a good change for the game and sends a good message that AGS is dedicated to the game's future.  However, this is also the sort of change that a game cannot recover from if it launches poorly.  This is a rewrite of the combat system which is the core experience that New World offers and what sets it apart from other games on the market.

 Having played on the PTR (public test realm) with the changes I can agree that a delay was needed.  The combat does feel like it is improved and there is a lengthy list of bugs they have fixed with the move to the slayer script.  It does seem like the team can move faster and fix more with the scripting change. There is a but coming though: the combat doesn't feel right yet on PTR.

 It is hard to put it into words.  For me the main issue is that melee combat still feels off in PvP.  Melee attacks still struggle to register a hit just like they do in the current system.  PvE seems fine, if not improved over all, as things feel snappier and cleaner in dense combat situations.  That doesn't seem to translate to PvP where something is just not there yet with the changes.  

 I do admit this could just be my thousands of hours of experience with the current live game compared to just a couple hours on PTR.  Regardless; I want to get my hands on PTR again with the next set of changes so I feel comfortable the release isn't going to give any more ammunition to the negative-Nancy crowd.

 New World has to get this update right.  In a perfect world the season wouldn't be tied to the update so that we could get the new 10-man trial and get working on the next season pass, but I get that is not reality.  I will be patient.