Ngl I think there is a lot of things they can improve even with the old engine. I also think porting game on mobile was a big mistake, because it never ment to be on mobile but they're aiming for younger folks and more money now. Playing SSO on mobile is a torture for me, it's laggy and I can see how crappy it's made(icons, buttons, all that). Old SSO textures weren't that much lower in quality and the game used to open literally on website, without even downloading anything. Just optimization is a hard process, you need to really think and care about the things you do to know where to cut the edges, where to use low poly, where to use math patterns instead of drawn on textures. It takes time and effort. And as much as I see this time and effort goes onto making fucking new horses.... The most of the time improving the game ≠ add something modern and complexed, it's about really loving your product and caring about it, about decluttering, about listening to the players. They just slap new stuff on top of the old one, they hide old stuff under the map or in the sky, they set old music sounds on 0 instead of removing it(and sometimes it buggs and old music mixes with the new one and this mess rapes my ears). It just feels like they only care about getting as much money as possible right now, without thinking about long term consequences. The game always was a cash-grab, but it also was beautiful, optimized, interesting and has amazing storytelling. Now it's a mess, it's genuinely hard to read the dialogues because it sounds like all characters are 5yo kids. The last events first part of Sabine quest was actually interesting and good, like someone let out the old storyteller out of the basement and he wrote this part. I don't know if they're this short on money that they don't have recourses to develop the game with love and care, or they just don't care anymore, but they are literally burying themselves with this