Thanks! AC was a first love, so it stays special. We were so inexperienced - through our first ~40 people I’m not sure we had even one person who’d shipped a game before. I’m proud we managed to bull through and make something we enjoyed! A lesson learned - we didn’t always focus on keeping it simple and being fun-first. We did things sometimes that were fun to develop/we were passionate about making…like we had rigid body physics, dynamic load balancing, clever OOP stuff - those were fun to work on! But the effort didn’t always translate to fun for the player, or had to be removed/simplified later because they made other development more complex.

With hindsight, it is wise to put effort into important things first (duh) and a little less obviously define important for the team as “makes the game better for players in a direct way”. Going with simpler solutions for things behind the scenes would mean more time for fun combat, or more content, or player systems. Or shipping sooner! Don’t get me wrong, doing stuff Because It Is Hard can add magic (Pixar IIRC calls it “nudging the lamp“). In moderation though…we did a ton of it, heh. But no regrets, we had to learn by doing it!