New World – How PTR Changed Season 1

Amazon Game Studios recently kicked off the first progression season for their MMORPG New World. Featuring a new Season Pass, fresh story and group content, and assorted balance adjustments, this looks to be New World’s update model moving forward. And if you’d like to know how player feedback from the Public Test Realm helped shape this season and indirectly impacted the team’s plans for their future updates, you should check out the latest Forged in Aeternum episode.

Here it is:

Some additional details:

Greetings, Adventurers!

The Public Test Realm (PTR) helps us work with the community to improve new content before it goes live. We’re not always able to immediately shift directions for current content based on PTR feedback, but all feedback has meaningful long-term impacts.

For example, in Season 1 the Faceless fight is open world. That decision limited the design space and resulted in a battle players said wasn’t epic enough. Based on that feedback, Season 2 will instance key quest moments like final boss showdowns so that players experience even more intense encounters.

Check out the video below for insight into how PTR feedback can have a long tail but is always immediately taken to heart.

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PLAYER FEEDBACK DRIVEN SEASON 1 CHANGES

Explore some of the changes made to Fellowship & Fire based on player feedback from the PTR:

• Increased passive Season XP gain to make Season Pass progress feel consistent across all player activities.
• Introduced a new way to gain Season XP through regular character XP. Now everything you do in-game will also advance the Season Pass.
• Increased the ease of Activity Card progression via more accessible Season Activity categories.
• Added more diverse PTR Backstories to allow players to easily test additional features.
• Reduced the crafting cost of Flame Core items to make them more affordable.
• Flame Cores can now be traded between players.
• Changed Ifrit from Angry Earth to Human creature type so that players don’t need to bring Angry Earth ward gear into Empyrean Forge.
• Re-evaluated Fury of the Spriggan reward items due to feedback from the Legacy of Crassus event. Look forward to more details at a later date!

Beyond this list, a variety of bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and more made it into the Season 1 release thanks to the help of our community.

What changes to the PTR process would you like to see? Let us know on the forums, Reddit, or YouTube comments section. Thanks for your support! We’ll see you in Aeternum.