I think cinematics use music volume slider, and many players have it on 50% or less, so the difference in volume levels can be staggering. It always bugged me too.
Ah, that would explain the VU discrepancy. I'll have a chat with our Audio team and see if it's a known issue.
Now that Balthazar has been cast out and killed, who took over his role as the god of War, Fire, etc.? Did one of the other gods take it or was it usurped by Menzies? If it wasn’t Menzies, what happened to him and his Shadow Army? You really seem to be hinting at his death with The Fate of Menzies, but it’d be nice to have some confirmation. :)
That may remain an open mystery, since the gods have retreated into the Deep Mists and are more remote than ever. What do you think happened to him?
Is it possible that we get old untold stories (like what happened with the nightmare court and Malyck during HoT) within the scope of living Story releases ? I think that its not always necessary to use all 6 episodes to bridge 2 expansions. So why not use some releases to tell side stories?
Though we aren't working on that kind of one-off 'Tales of Tyria' currently, we've talked about it as a possibility someday.
In case it's not obvious, the problem with tying off Malyck's story in a satisfying way during Heart of Thorns was that the only players who would be familiar with that story would be the ones who rolled a sylvari and played one branch of three in act two of the sylvari personal story. We'd have to catch up the rest of the player population on who Malyck was before we could pick up his six year old arc, and that would have been a significant amount of time spent away from the main storyline.
Read moreHello, I have some questions. I apologise if they have been asked before.
Story-wise, what exactly happens to the remnants of the Forged after Balthazar's defeat? I forget if it's ever explained anywhere what becomes of them but an army without a leader is still an army even if it's disorganised.
1a. I suppose the above question could also be applied to the Awakened as of the latest episode, presuming that Joko hasn't pulled some trick (which given the recording in the Loyalist Warrens, I feel like even if he has gone out he still has one final trick up his sleeve)
This feels like something I shouldn't ask, but how many players do fractals often in comparison to both how many players raid often and how many players don't do either?
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I suppose this is also asking beyond what I should, but once it's finished, will Living World Season 4 have an associated Legendary Trinket equivalent to Aurora for Living World Season 3?
1 & 2 may yet be answered—stay tuned.
Troopmarshal Ogun is the legendary bounty, while the Beastmarshal is fought in the storyline. Both can also be seen while scouting Kourna in Forearmed is Forewarned.
We don't know what happened to the Wurmmarshal, though.
Stay tuned!
I think praising and adoring Joko as an Awakened is more of an effect of how you personally deal with the compulsion forced on you by the Awakening. Some recognize actively how they're being influenced/controlled and manage to discuss it in a differentiated manner, much like drug addicts who would like a way out, and some just dive into it and go full-praise mode. It probably has to do with the personal willpower and self-awareness of an inidividual, not with there being nuances to the severity of the Awakening process. But it's certainly an interesting question!
Working on Path of Fire, my conception of Joko's control over his Awakened was that he would (possibly grudgingly) give more autonomy and agency to officers with higher authority in his military and government. His warmarshals were able to express more individuality and decision-making not so much because he trusted them more but because they'd demonstrated greater loyalty and utility for his having done so.
Im not sure who to direct this question too but here it is,
thinking about distant future, given the precedent of HoT and PoF being isolated content, how do you guys plan on handling new maps where mounts cant be a requirement but can be used to possibly trivialize a lot of it?
whats the process of deciding what content stays unique to a zone/patch/expansion and what becomes "core"
From Path of Fire on, we've had to consider mounts and gliders when designing all new content.
How did she get to Kourna?
She either arrived through Blish's portal with other forces or aboard one of the corsair ships that made landfall to the south—whichever answer suggests she had more of an interesting journey trying to keep up with you and join you in your moment of triumph.
I'm thinking what BlueSakon said. Necro player character summons are pretty creative body part arrangements themselves, so I see no reason Joko couldn't have fun with corpse putty when he got bored.
Yes, this is your answer.
A bit late to the party here, but I really want to know if we'll ever get more lore that is not specifically story related. For instance, there are other MMOs and RPGs that give you more story and lore via books or just random NPC dialog that just tells you more about the world... makes it feel more alive.
The new map and really all of the new LS maps so far feel somewhat lacking in that regard. They don't feel lived in and necessarily like actual places that people exist in.
We get some during the actual story, especially during the part with the farmers, but even that is just a one and done and I really do not feel it explored enough of what those people's lives are like.
I really love the world of Tyria! It's beautiful, expansive, just gorgeous in general. But this just feels like a major part that is lacking currently.
We always want to do more of this sort of thing. A someone who wrote content for the open world of the first three episodes of this season, I'm sorry to have disappointed you.
Tell us! Spill the beans!
I think/hope it's okay if I tell you that several teams have been fighting over who gets to finally take players inside the Wizard's Tower. No matter who loses, everyone wins!
Man, the response I could make to this would exceed the reddit character limit.
I guess the long short of it would be, do you find yourselves treating the narrative as a means to an end, or merely as an end itself? I'm someone who tends to think of narratives in terms of their social, cultural, and economic implications which is why I really loved the myth-fantasy of the first game and have a huge soft spot for simple things like saving Ronjok from the Kournan army, and think dystopian-Vabbi is the best idea the game has had since launch. Exploring the magitechnical implications of science fantasy in a world that relies on nature magic and has mid-industrial races seems more like an exercise in "cool stuff" than an attempt at worldbuilding, which probably explains why I've found myself at ends with most of GW2's narrative. If your primary concern is trying to do cool things and the emphasis on societies is second, it definitely changes the perspective/approach I have towar...
Worldbuilding is the very least part of narrative. That's not to say that no thought goes into our fantasy franchise's cultures and environments, but that stuff is very much tertiary to our team's primary concern, which is to try to tell evocative stories using compelling characters. This living world season is about people dealing with grief and loss, about accepting responsibility for mistakes made and trying to course correct. Hopefully those are relatable human themes that resonate with players.
I would like to note a tiny thing regarding this - the focus on the asura and science fantasy is, at least in my opinion, making the other races and more classical fantasy feel a bit out of place. In this episode, when Canach and the commander used seeds to create the twine walls I actually caught myself wondering why we weren't just using asura barriers or whatever phlebotinum they have this week. I had a somewhat similar experience replaying a few of the older story missions, but I can sort of put that away as times changing in Tyria.
I just want to point out that personally I too really miss the less explained, more mythical aspects of magic we used to have in vanilla and maybe they'll lose their place in this story if we don't spend a bit more time on them.
Your concern is noted.
These sorts of silly answers make me laugh and brighten my day. Thanks for being you Peter. It's always fun to see you on guild chat because I know amongst the serious answers you won't pass up a chance to be light-hearted & have fun.
I mean, we make games here…
Didn't you say the same thing about Bubbles?
Did I? Ooh, I hope I did.
Does that mean there is absolutely no connection between the magic used to create risen and the magic used to create awakened? And if so doesn't that imply that the magic spectrum of the Elder Dragons is fully separate from the magic humans can use, potentially because of their connection to the human gods?
Does that mean there are at least two separate non-coupled magic systems in Tyria, one with connection to ley-line energy and one without?
Maybe? I have no idea, honestly.
Read moreBut just taking humans as an example, you have 3 background choices, 3 "regrets" choices, and 6 gods you can worship. That's 54 variants. (I don't remember how many variants there are for non-humans, but I'll assume for the moment that human is average.)
You misunderstood me!
I meant a variance focusing on per race/gender. So you'd still have only 10 recordings, but each recording would be a different line (or every other, where race matters and gender doesn't), rather than 10 recordings of the same line.
I understand full well that account for biography options, order, greatest fear, etc. would only expand the variances well beyond the initial setting. Though having more lines for such would be wonderful (for example, in Siezed instance, Faren talks about how there should be a "Krytan" present... why doesn't human Commanders - especially human nobles who've known Faren for ages - react to such / get a different reaction from Faren...
Sometimes we need a line to be exactly the way it's written--every word.
When we don't need that, we do race variants. (I don't think we've ever been in situation where we felt it would add anything to have a female norn say something differently from a male norn.)
Read moreThanks for the awesome reply :).
Although I'm also wondering from the perspective of actually choosing how the commander reacts to things. This is a bit of a tough question to phrase. Given that there are so many different possible characters playing the role of commander, does all of that customisation perhaps inhibit the writing team from giving the commander character too much... character?
To give an example from the latest story episode (minor spoilers ahead!), Joko goes on the whole "you're the villain" monologue. Hypothetically, this might have hit a soft spot or resonated significantly with the commander. Sufficiently portraying such emotions might be difficult, since different personalities or different races might respond differently to such a claim.
Like, say, a Blood Legion Charr with the "ferocity" background chosen might act aggressively towards such a claim, but a dawn-born Sylvari with the "charm" personality chosen might have let those words...
We don't try to make the Commander a compelling character. And it's not just because of the different options.
Players have different expectations for when they're playing a single-player game with a pre-designed character (Jack in Bioshock, or Corvo in Dishonored) versus when it's a character that they have built themselves. They're more forgiving if the PC does or says something they wouldn't do or say, or don't agree with, in the former. In the latter, they often get furious at the disconnect.
So--and bear with me through this analogy, because it may sound strange at first--basically the Commander has to be a character like Bella Swan in Twilight.
I don't think Twilight was good writing. In fact, I think it's very BAD writing. Bella's not a character. She's a blank space.
Which was genius from a marketing perspective, because what the Twilight books offer their readers isn't the love story of Bella and Edward--it's the experience of being lov...
Read moreWas it intentional that the reality of Aurene growing up didn't immediately dawn on the commander and his friends? As everyone entered Joko's chamber they only commented on what Aurene was doing and not what it could mean. I think Braham and the commander did say something along the lines of "well she IS a dragon." I also really liked how Joko's magic just blasted out of him in a "he's done" sort of way.
Yeah, the Commander's not sure what it means for a dragon to be growing up, and they've also had a ton of other stuff on their mind for the last several episodes.
There must be a lot of stress coming from the story team rehaul, but I'd like to tell you that it really works. My friend and I LOVE LS4 and how it handles everybody's arcs (especially the Commander, it's perfect), so whatever team rehaul happened, you guys are doing great.
We were just talking about how LS4-3's story has so many things that we've wanted to see since HoT and that playing it felt like opening up your Christmas presents. Lots of 'did they really go there?' 'holy shit' and 'wow did they really say that'. We've been pretty invested in the Commander for sometime, and this just made them our favourite protagonist.
Which, you know, isn't really a thing I expected to be saying about GW2's MC back in early 2017, even if we've always liked the general arc they have.
(That said, I'll miss Joko. Oh well. As of this moment, I'll trust that whatever you've got in mind to replace him is going to be more engaging than he was.....which is a pretty t...
That's great to hear! Thank you. :-)
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