[2020] Living World Season 4: "Daybreak" devs here – ask us anything!

Originally posted by queicherius

With the (entirely deserved) promotion of Lawton a few weeks ago, the API has effectively not been supported. This manifests itself in some parts flickering between working and broken, some parts having outdated or missing information and no new features getting developed.

The community has poured thousands of hours (1) into developing applications and sites that make use of the API (including the official wiki). This is a labour of love towards the game.

These applications support a massive amount of players (2) in their in-game pursuits (such as looking up items or helping with crafting), keep the players engaged with the game when they can't play it (such as checking on your TP orders during travel or school/work breaks) and even give additional goals to complete (such as competing on arbitrary leaderboards or finishing all parts of specific content, for example gilder skins).

TLDR: Are you planning to continue supporting the API?

1. I worked on gw2efficiency ~20 hours a week, every week, for the last three years.
2. In my case, gw2efficiency has ~200.000 registered users, ~325.000 linked API keys, ~100.000 unique active monthly users and ~4.000.000 monthly pageviews.

Originally posted by MakubeC

When are you going to announce the Design-a-Weapon winners?

Originally posted by Sodenia

I don't have a qustion, I just want to thank you for this awesome release! This is clearly my favourite content update of GW2 so far!

Everything, the living world, new fractal, new raid and even the new legendary weapon feel so connected by the living world which is absolutely one of my most loved aspects of this release. I hope that future releases will do the same thing! :)

Originally posted by MyPatronusIsABigCake

Just finished playing the story for this patch, you guys have done a great job as usual.

What was the best part of your job this patch (favourite thing you worked on for example or really anything you enjoyed) ?

Also, how many different voice recording for any character (ennemy, friendly npc, player character, really any character) do you have saying "Praise joko" ?

Originally posted by Vinnicombe

Warden Amala's outfit changes

Originally posted by EyeofJanthir032

I am so excited to start playing! I did not expect for us to go to Istan on the first episode, it seemed too good to be true! You guys are gods. A couple questions:

• What made you decide to go to Istan?

• Was the name Daybreak indeed an intentional reference to the old campaign Nightfall?

• What were some of favorite parts about this release?

• I know we aren’t supposed to ask about future items but is there a possibility we will get an Aurene griffon skin in the future? ;-)

You guys are amazing and I can’t wait to see what other parts of Elona we get to visit in the future (me here waiting for Gandara). I spent many a time in Istan in the first game, I can’t wait to see the GW2 version!

Originally posted by MyPatronusIsABigCake

Just finished playing the story for this patch, you guys have done a great job as usual.

What was the best part of your job this patch (favourite thing you worked on for example or really anything you enjoyed) ?

Also, how many different voice recording for any character (ennemy, friendly npc, player character, really any character) do you have saying "Praise joko" ?

Originally posted by Narcissus1415

Hey guys! you did an amazing job with the boss mechanics in the story! i really did loved it :) my question is: Are you pleased with the way your new Palawadan map meta event turned out? are you happy with the difficulty of it and the balance of reward it gives?

Originally posted by TyroneTyreseJamal

Domain of Istan is the best living story map so far, gj everyone who worked on it

Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

Originally posted by Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet

Hi all,

A few months ago I announced my intention to gradually hand the reins of GW2 game direction to Mike Zadorojny, "Z". You probably already know Z well: he's a 10+ year veteran of ArenaNet, who worked on GW2 from the beginning, and most recently served as the lead designer of Path of Fire.

I'm not going anywhere – Z and I sit next to each other and continue to work together – but I won't be able to continue spending virtually all my time on GW2 in the coming year as I did through most of the past two years. A game director should be 100% dedicated to the game. Z is absolutely dedicated to GW2. He has a deep passion and enthusiasm for the game, the same today as when he started working on it a decade ago. As game director I know he'll continue to champion the needs of players, and continue to set the highest quality standards for everything we do.

So today I'm making it official: Mike Zadorojny is the new game director of GW2. Congratulations Z. :) Community, please join me in welcoming him to the role.

~ MO

Originally posted by TyroneTyreseJamal

Domain of Istan is the best living story map so far, gj everyone who worked on it

Originally posted by [deleted]

What's your reasoning for doing these AMA's relatively quickly after release instead of waiting a few days to let the community experience a good chunk of the new content?

Originally posted by MyPatronusIsABigCake

Just finished playing the story for this patch, you guys have done a great job as usual.

What was the best part of your job this patch (favourite thing you worked on for example or really anything you enjoyed) ?

Also, how many different voice recording for any character (ennemy, friendly npc, player character, really any character) do you have saying "Praise joko" ?

Originally posted by Kreiri

What is the reason for designing LS maps without general goods vendors in them?

Originally posted by Captain_Ozone

Hi Mike and the team,

Congratulations on another successful launch! Can we get anyone to check on the WvW team? I know PvP & WvW teams "release on their own cadence", but lately that feels like "dont ask us about WvW & PvP".

I'm not asking for specific details on upcoming releases, but are there any general (even vague) communications the team can give us about our favorite game mode?

Scourges & Revs still face an "obstructed" bug when placing AoEs even on the tiniest of slopes. Is anyone looking at generating a fix or is this intended?

In the last balance patch, Spellbreaker domes were given a different color if they were dropped by the enemy team, can we see this applied to other skills as well? Also, why was black chosen (a color that is covered by friendly AoE skills) instead of bright red, like in PvE?

Server populations for WvW are becoming a contention point for a lot of players in deciding to play WvW. It seems population calculations seem outdated. Why is a server like FA closed but then given a link? Why are servers who are performing terribly closed and without links? I know there are population metrics you have access too that we dont, but playing the game allows people to see things the metrics may be hiding.

Any chance at another "Adopt-A-Dev" program for WvW?

As a side-note, Is the ArenaNet partner program still being looked at and taken care of? There seems to be a considerable lack of WvW streamers / Youtubers (aside from Teapot). I think most everyone would agree twitch.tv/dyeingaming or twitch.tv/royfromash represent both NA and EU WvW pretty well. I think it would go a long way to show support / community involvement if we could get both of these two partnered.

Thanks for your time!

P.S. #dyeingaming for Anet Partner

Originally posted by regendo

Hey everyone! Great job with the reverse Nightfall, I'm only about halfway through the story but I really like it so far, especially some of those callbacks with names and locations that have been changed by Palawa's reign.

I've got a pretty unrelated question about the Gen 2 legendaries that I don't think anyone has answered in the previous Q&As. Specifically, what happened to the designs that were planned for Heart of Thorns but never released.

Originally I thought that when MO decided to bring legendaries back in LS3E02, they would be the designs that were originally planned to release for the jungle but couldn't be finished in time for release, but as more and more LS3 legendaries came out it became pretty clear that these were completely new designs that were in some way related to the episode they came with: An obsidian mace for volcano island with obsidian structures on it, a quaggan bowl for an icy quaggan outpost, a pirate ship for the city docks, a flame god for the flame god, and of course a literal piece of Orr for Orr and the literal Shining Blade for the patch that brought them back (not sure how that amazing tome fits into this yet).

So when did you decide to scrap your HoT legendary ideas and instead design completely new ones for the living world, and what happened to those original ideas? Also, am I completely crazy for thinking that the reason legendaries returned with episode 2 was that you didn't have any great ideas for an episode 1 themed legendary?

Originally posted by EyeofJanthir032

I am so excited to start playing! I did not expect for us to go to Istan on the first episode, it seemed too good to be true! You guys are gods. A couple questions:

• What made you decide to go to Istan?

• Was the name Daybreak indeed an intentional reference to the old campaign Nightfall?

• What were some of favorite parts about this release?

• I know we aren’t supposed to ask about future items but is there a possibility we will get an Aurene griffon skin in the future? ;-)

You guys are amazing and I can’t wait to see what other parts of Elona we get to visit in the future (me here waiting for Gandara). I spent many a time in Istan in the first game, I can’t wait to see the GW2 version!

Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

Originally posted by [deleted]

This is for anyone on the team if you could eat one food from in-game what would you pick and why?

Originally posted by EdmundKeppler

Hi, thank you for your hard work, as always! I wanted to ask about your design philosophy behind the new living world season. Up until this point, each living world season has been wildly different from the ones preceding it. This time however, through early exploration, it seems like you adopted the design of the 3rd season and took it for a second spin for the fourth one. While I absolutely loved what the 3rd season represented, I was quite surprised to see the 4th one having the same mechanics and not bring anything too bold in play. Maybe I hoped to see you try experiment with something new. My personal gripes are the same uninteresting rewards for story instances (they seemed way more unique back in LS2 and HoT, even in PoF a bit) and the fact that there is a new map with a meta-achievement that yet again rewards a stat selectable exotic headgear. Did you choose this design again due to the large positive feedback that the 3rd season brought with it, or was this planned for a very long time already? I do feel comfortable about going into familiar territory, but I am definitely curious to what other ideas you might have had for the fourth season.

Originally posted by l_Paid_For_Winrar

Recently Arenanet switched from NCSOFT servers to ones hosted by Amazon on the east coast. Many players have reported an increase in overall ping with significant lag spikes as a result. West coast players are looking at a ~30ms increase and for many oceanic users the game is on the verge of unplayable. Going forward is Anet going to commit to these new servers or is there a possibility of reverting this decision?

Originally posted by zachsoul

My question is in regards to balance, is there any talks or plans to increase the frequency of balance updates. Maybe smaller updates and tweaks every few weeks or every month.

Originally posted by anet_jason

Slowly. Hoping for more improvements now that Underworld is released. Who's with me?!

Originally posted by rude_asura

just to clarify, can players who only own PoF and not HoT craft any legendary weapon from set two or just the new focus?

Originally posted by MyPatronusIsABigCake

Just finished playing the story for this patch, you guys have done a great job as usual.

What was the best part of your job this patch (favourite thing you worked on for example or really anything you enjoyed) ?

Also, how many different voice recording for any character (ennemy, friendly npc, player character, really any character) do you have saying "Praise joko" ?

Originally posted by TyroneTyreseJamal

Domain of Istan is the best living story map so far, gj everyone who worked on it

Originally posted by Rozanata

So... I'm gonna ask my favorite question, that i never found an official answere to: What is up with the waypoints in timberlandfalls and brisbane that got destroyed during scarlets ls? They were never repaired, yet remain waypoints that are always contested. I was just wondering if it was overlooked or if there is actually a reason why they are neither repaired nor transformed into a POI :)

Btw just tried the raid and its fantastic work so far!

Originally posted by HPetch

Alright, I have a couple.

Firstly, what would you (any of you) say is the hardest/easiest part of designing and/or balancing content for GW2? As an aspiring dev, I'm always interested in opinions.

Secondly, I was wondering how many people (if any) are focused on game balance, particularly skills, at any given time? PvE MMOs generally require less balance than PvP games in my observation, but GW2 seems to need more than most, and every three months can feel like too little, too late at times. I'm aware this is a sensitive topic, feel free to pass it over.

Originally posted by PseudoOAlias

Question for anyone on Weapon Design: Love the new Scythe skins!! Very Glad they're in the game. It's a wonderful cosmetic addition & their style is awesome especially considering the -spoilers- you run into in this episode! ... Why aren't they greatsword skins or why isn't there a greatsword version...?

Originally posted by Stormdancer

I really appreciate finally getting a place that's pretty RP-friendly... even if that may have just been an accidental side-effect. Was it purposeful, or did we just get lucky?

Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

Originally posted by Captain_Ozone

Hi Regina!

Thanks for your reply, it's good to see the program is still maintained.

Looking on the page, there are no requirements or minimums to be accepted into the program.

Could you maybe state what criteria you or the team look for in accepting someone?

Thanks again

Originally posted by rcbaylor

there are currently a lot of partners who dont even play the game anymore or make content on a consistent basis. twitch.tv/dyeingaming twitch.tv/royfromash twitch.tv/gregorpayne These are three people who consistently stream WvW content and deserved to be looked at.

I hope you look into maintaining current partners as well and give those that are still working hard to produce content a chance.

Originally posted by Lishtenbird

Not a question, but since there's an occasion, shout-out to /u/GaileGray (or was somewhere else responsible for it?) for making Kormeerkat a reality ;)

Originally posted by Overlord_Odin

Will that be looked at in the future?

And will you continue to add older keys to the wallet?

Originally posted by Charrikayu

Over the past five years Guild Wars 2 has slowly built up an arms race of effects and styles that have, in the opinions of some, begun to harm the artistic identity of the game. Daniel Dociu, your former art director and one of the most important visionaries behind the look of both the original Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, describes the essence of GW2's style as handcrafted and artisanal.

However, the game has built up a cornucopia of auras and infusions, humongous backpacks, and mount skins, many of which clash with the visual style of Guild Wars 2. Even before Path of Fire's launch, players expressed concerns about the possibility of further harm to GW2's artistic style.

While players, including myself, have long advocated their preference for the game's environmental style, this issue took an important turning point with the introduction of mount skins and many players began expressing their distaste more openly.

With that in mind, has Anet considered implementing such possible features as:

• The ability to hide backpacks, auras/infusions, and mount/glider skins.

• The ability to hide player models by blocking that player.

• The ability to set standard models for all players except those in your party.

• This guy's mock list which is kind of a joke but also we would unironically love this

It's important to mention that we who enjoy GW2's base aesthetic are a minority and recognize that most players don't care about this issue. But for those of us to whom this matters it means everything. We don't want Anet to stop making anything they think is cool and we don't want players not to be able to enjoy these awesome things however they want. We'd just like some options to help tone down many of these effects client-side so we can enjoy the game's aesthetic in our preferred way.

Originally posted by Commander_Freir

In previous AMAs, you've mentioned reviewing the economic impact of sigil swapping of legendary weapons. Is sigil swapping something you are still looking into? If so, what obstacles are you facing to get it done? If not, why not?

Originally posted by Kashti_Gauvain

What is your go to comfort when playing the new story releases? I personally go full on bear onesie with a cold drink.

Originally posted by KarenSoxolkin

Hey @mikezadorojny, what's your favorite profession? (If you have one)

Originally posted by BobMosses

To hitch hike off of this question, how are buffs and nerfs determined? And how do they get balanced between wvw PvP and pve (fractals and raids)? Does the balance team look at each class and arbitrarily they are in a good spot, or do they take community perspective into account?

Pre PoF, there was a fairly vocal group discussing the ease of certain dps classes (Condi thief) to output high dps which was mostly ignored by the balance teams, meanwhile other builds which required much more effort to play and hot comparable numbers were faced with nerfs, or felt as if they were straight up ignored.

And what will the balance team do so that all classes have at least one viable build from a community perspective on each game mode.

I would personally love to see the balance team engage the community to get a feel for where they should apply changes instead of changing some random trait that didn't see use before or after a change and calling it a day.

Originally posted by JessicaLPrice777

Cozy and sweet is actually a pretty good description of our common area. I thiiiiink we have hot cocoa in the kitchen, but I'm a tea drinker so I'm not sure. :-)

Originally posted by Ravengm

Are pure numbers tweaks (specifically damage coefficients) the same level of implementation complexity as functionality reworks? I think the complaint I've seen in most cases is that if a change comes through that drastically changes the DPS or spike damage of a class, it takes a (relatively) long time to get adjusted. Raising or lowering coefficients is usually what people ask for.

Originally posted by [deleted]

Since HoT I've been wondering what happened to the Nightmare Court. So my question is; what did happen to the Nightmare court?

I know this is not a question about the new content, but I've been dying to know this "missing" lore. Deffinitly with the introduction of a new duchess at the end of Dragon Stand.

Originally posted by Casiell89

Was it intentional that you didn't add Greater Nightmare Keys and Aetherblade Keys to key chain? They are the only keys that are created from another items so it may be the reason, but they are also very forgettable unless you are like me and carry 50 of them just in case

Originally posted by MapleAce

Just to say I have a friend called

Originally posted by MapleAce

Haha, that’s amazing!

Originally posted by ChazGELF

I'm a little curious about the design of the new Living World map - There's a lot of tar pits and such around the place but surprisingly they aren't considered much of a hazard, mostly just slowing players down in one part of the map compared to the seas of quicksand across the other PoF maps that'd kill you quickly if you weren't on a skimmer - Map Spoilers Is there any reasoning behind this design decision?

Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

Originally posted by TekFan

I've been enjoying Daybreak so far. The story has been longer than I thought(positive), my inventory is much more spacious thanks to the key-wallet and the new map-currency started with a slot in the material storage.

I'm really amazed by the new focus. The dark theme isn't really my thing, but art-wise it's great. I know you're not talking about future designs, but...let's just say among the hammer skins Entropy and Genesis make a really nice pair. So...shiny book focus? ;)

P.S.: Could you add a "Consume all"-option to the new map currency?

Originally posted by DisappointedLily

Drew Cady

Just major props, I'm an audio/video professional myself and all the sounds in the game are so top notch and rich, from the dialogue to the FX.

The Mesmer sounds are amazing.

Originally posted by KNevermor3

I have not bought the latest addon yet. I logged into GW2 on Tuesday and it told me that the new LS is available but needs PoF to play. That's fine for me now, but is the LS3 Chapter 1 now unlocked for me, so that when I finally buy PoF I can play it straight away or do I have to purchase the episode then afterwards too, just because I did not own PoF when the LS came out?

P.S.: One of the main reasons for me not to get PoF yet was my insane pure hate for mounts. Everything is so WoW now and only half GW2, I am so sad! (now come redditors, give me your hate because I said something against your beloved mounts :p !)

Originally posted by Yazure

Hey, maybe i am too late but we can have a selfie from the office today?

Wanna see your mugs, your coffee machine! :D

Like Blue Man Group AmA.