Hi! I think that that is because Escalation environments are a linear experience which we can guide in a more concise way as you go through each arena, while the hunting grounds are a far more open loop where we have to account for traversal across the whole island and the experience needs to be more open and dynamic.

That being said, we want to do a lot more things like you saw with the temple on Paradox Breaks, as an Environments team our goal is to really lean on the concept of environmental storytelling and open up the ability for create environments that you have the agency to change (like when you can now make the pillar sink in the temple). We 100% want to do more of that!

Hi there, thanks for your question!At Phoenix, we are a highly collaborative group & so we generally follow this process:

1. Understand gameplay goals for a season
2. When we understand these goals, our game designers & artists work together to come up with some ideas for themes, behemoth ideas, & map ideas.
3. We'll then gather research for inspiration & then start concept art for behemoths, armors & Islands.
4. Through concept and reference, we refine our ideas with feedback from our entire team.
5. We get a final concept, than move into 3D.It's an awesome process that is a lot of fun! We have different artists on behemoths, weapons, & enviros, but we all work together to create some inspring and cohesive experiences for our players!

For managing our art team, we have art leads for each one of our disciplines. They are all amazing, talented artists & we work together across the teams & with production to create the work. We all work together mainly through clear communication. We have different artists on behemoths, weapons, & enviros, but we all work together to create the player experience.

We have a lot of fun working together & we are glad you enjoy the game & the exciting new work to come!tnx again for the question, have a great day!

We love so many of the features that have become available with UE5 and we are definitely looking at it.

hi there!
Although we love seeing fan concepts of behemoths and armor and we do find them inspiring, we generally always start from the gameplay needs & goals & then we brainstorm and create from that goal.
Have a great day! tnx for the question.

Great catch! You nailed it calling out that the artist who made the previous icons is not working with us anymore. We are currently discussing solving making the Chronovore icon feel consistent with the rest.

I can answer the question about making the Chronovore a sea creature.

https://youtu.be/JIAglcnnp-o?t=78

We wanted the Chronovore to feel other worldly and a bit alien. Also we had a lot of great concepts of ribbon dragons and jellyfish and we wanted to lean into the idea of a creature that swims through time. There is so much inspiring life and weird animals that live deep in the ocean that feels so different than what humans are used to seeing. As an animator I wanted to explore the shape shifting side of ocean life to create something unique.

I actually can't remember the any of the concepts that came before doing an ocean type creature. We landed on that really quickly.

For the environment question, uh, that's an awesome idea!! Love where your mind is going with that :D
The way we want to move forward with environments is to tell more impactful stories with them and using the elements found in escalation is definitely something we take into consideration when designing new islands.

Actually, the temple in paradox breaks was inspired and thought of as a contrast to the temple elements found in umbral escalation :D

Thank you so much for that! Makes my day :)

hi Sabval, Yes, we have more crowns coming with heroic escalations and we will have more lantern trails in the future...As far as particles for behemoths, we are always looking to improve our behemoth experience, so it something we could look at the future.

Currently, we dont have plans to use dyes on weapons tnx for the questions!