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07 Oct

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by Lishtenbird

but probably won't, because it's not worth derailing a team that could otherwise be making great new content.

While I respect this opinion, for a lot of players looks mean just as much as "real" content. I know I've spent so, so much time designing my characters instead of playing actual content that was available that this argument doesn't fully satisfy me.

I hope this sentiment reaches the team :)

There are only 14 of them. But they're distinct from a lot of other appearances in the game. I'll check again on feasibility.

Mo

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by DakotaCoty

Firstly, Thank you to the team for the dedication you have all done in this expansion, my guild are extremely happy with the quality of work in PoF (about 365 members active); you have also not only made mapping once again fun but you've made it completely fair for everyone to do so - no more "play this class for the fastest map completion".

Question(s) and points for Duncan Kay - UI

However... My guild feels that the UI and the amount of clicking needs a drastic overhaul - it's been a long time since the last UI overhaul, and the amount of clicking for items is getting excessive; make people happy with their inventory and interface again.

What needs to change?
Note: I asked people from several communities, one community as large as 20,000 people.

Inventory:

  • Direct one-click buttons for: Compact, Deposit all and "delete click" tool
  • ...
Read more

Awesome suggestions. We're constantly looking at where we can make QOL improvements to the existing UI, while also continuing development on new content and features. I can't say anything about future plans for development, but I can say that the pain points you've mentioned are definitely on our radar.

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by ImNotBeyonce

What was the weirdest bug that happened during development?

I always get a kick out of the placeholder computer-generated voice. So many serious lines are accidentally hilarious because of how the computer pronounces them.

But the weirdest bug would have to be dead NPCs randomly riding mounts.

Mo

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by rude_asura

On the topic of dev teams:

Since John Smith has left the company earlier this year, was his position as game economist taken over by another employee or were his general responsibilities (as he was responsible for alot more than just the economy) transfered to several other positions?

John had helped form a working group of analysts and reward designers to monitor the economy, and that group continues to do it.

Mo

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by Anet-shwang

One of the things I enjoyed working on was trying to create memorable characters in the open world. The kids at First Camp are part of a family that has had some loss, so has Jingo. Giving the Followers of Ascension a motive why they seeking it. And how the last survivings sunspears still try to fight the good fight. Refering back to the GW1 characters in some way in the Desolaiton, that was really satisfying as well.

And finally as one who helped layout the worldmap for Tyria and Elona, just matching up some of the locations, and trying to show what became of them 250 years later. Not too many times you get to revisit areas that you worked on a decade later.

Steve, you nailed it with the First Camp!

I'll echo what a pleasure it's been to be able to revisit content and themes from GW1, with many of the same devs carrying forward their work.

Mo


06 Oct

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by kogpaw

When you were developing the mounts, did you have to go back to every single old map and fix boundaries, add textures, etc to places that players had never reached before? Or was this something that was already in place? Can you give examples of old maps that had to be fixed before PoF mounts?

Yes, every single central Tyrian and HoT map needed to be modified when we added mounts. A lot of our hills, larger props, and borders were never meant to be accessible from above, and so the Springer and Griffon were our greatest challenges. Maps like Queensdale for example, had houses where there was no collision on the roofs and you would fall right through! A well placed Springer hop could also get you out of the map and looking at mountains missing textures entirely. A consequence of this is a few accidental invisible walls being placed over JP locations and gathering nodes when we got a little over-zealous (sorry!) We did sometimes add more rocks and decals to hide the worst offenders, but we tried to keep it close enough to the mini map and pre-PoF so nothing dramatically changed visually from what you would remember.

Griffon Mount Guild Chat Livestream Coverage

Comment

Originally posted by BeowulfBjornson

Nice work on the mechanics, it feels reaaaally good to fly around on it!

Since we do not have a way to measure how fast we are going, could you very briefly answer these questions? Myself and a couple friends were really trying to go as fast as we can on the adventures and understanding the mechanics better would certainly help.

  • Is flying close to the ground faster?
  • Does flapping your wings after diving, boosting and leveling help you maintain horizontal speed or even increase it?
  • How does moving up and down impact your "horizontal" speed? Is this related to the altitude buffer?
  • It is not, but you lose altitude more slowly (this is the ground effect I mentioned in the stream).
  • It does not.
  • I'm not sure what you're asking but I'll take a stab at it. When you're climbing you will always lose some speed due to gravity, but so long as the altitude buffer is non-zero the gravity while climbing will be greatly reduced, so you won't lose speed very quickly. Once the buffer is consumed, gravity will be set back to normal and you will lose speed rapidly.

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by Anet-Connie

Re: moments during story development when we had to rework stuff, we actually were re-working the story constantly to the point we were giving ourselves anxiety attacks. Spoiler So to answer your question more directly, the last six months were full of "aw crap, we need to redo/address/change this moment" XD

Some props for Connie here. She worked on three of the most storytelling-intensive missions. That's a big workload. And it was always our deal that we wouldn't rest until we got it right. Connie put in a lot of extra work and iteration to get the details right, and I think the end result shows. Connie, your missions shine.

Mo

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by Tee_Wrex

I love my wolf mount... absolutely my favorite. Every time I ride I think I enjoy him more. I think, out of all the time spent so far, I REALLY loved working on my skills and learning new ways to use him.

Whats are some tips to getting the most out of this mount?

I've found it's fun to play around with endurance.

If you get the rhythm down, and you space out the blinks just right, a fourth one becomes available right after the third blink! It's incredibly satisfying.

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by EdenFlorence

When will we see the uprising of the Choya?

So come brothers and sisters,

For the babbling carries on!

The Watermelonale

Unites Tyria in song!

So choya come rally,

For this is the time and place,

The watermelon ideal

Unites the choya race!

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by Nonstickron

I love the bag space QOL changes made for POF, with collectibles being click to consume or having tooltips that tell you you can trash them. I'd love to see this brought throughout the rest of the game, including past content. Is that something that could happen?

Its always great to see fans appreciate the 'small' QOL things that get improved. We're always keen on making QOL changes, but I can't say anything super specific about retroactive updates to older content.

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by Chiorydax

Got a few here...

  • The PoF promotional artwork for Balthazar really reminds me of the Transfomers G1 Movie designs for Unicron and Wreck-Gar. Is there any chance someone pulled inspiration from those?

  • When Spoilers. Is that simply a design choice or should we be reading into that?

  • You guys did a great job making the maps fun and nostalgic, but is there any area you would have liked to develop even deeper if it had been possible?

  • I remember seeing the interview where you guys mentioned having a grand plan for GW2 in terms of the huge story steps. So I'm curious, how far back have you been specifically planning to make Balthazar the rogue god?

...

Read more

Ah dragons! They need to be big and interesting so it is always fun to work on a new one. Kralk has some textures of energy that set him apart from others.

The audio team was recording some propane and MAPP gas torch sounds one night (outside) and we had a happy accident. As I turned down the gas the torch began to sputter and sound like an electrical arcing sound. When I started working on Kralk I used these sounds to offer the soothing spark detail. I also made a wind machine using some stretched thin plastic. I held it up in a wind storm and got some big strange drones. This created the low energy hum.

The base roar comes from an upright bass session where we tried all sorts of things. This particular roar is screeching my fingers on the side of the shiny wood. No strings needed. I then add a few different types of distortion and large reverb to root him into the world.

Thanks for listening!

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by Chrystolis

This isn't specific to Path of Fire, but I've always enjoyed that ArenaNet employees have the option to turn on the ArenaNet tag within game, and that plenty do! It's always a treat to see them in game and know that many are players just enjoying the game with the rest of us.

Out of curiosity, when/if you play in your free time, do you prefer to roll with the tag on, off, or a mix of the two depending on your mood? Do you find that the tag draws too much attention, is it mostly positive attention?

Thanks for all you do!

I usually roll with my dev tag turned on, unless I'm embarrassingly ignorant about something in game and don't want people to know how not-good I am at our game sometimes. I've never had a negative reaction! For a while after PoF launch, players would message me and say "Hi dad." which I totally didn't get. I asked one player and they said "I dunno, that's just what my brother told me to say when you see an ANet Dev."

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by Commander_Freir

I think you may have replied to the wrong comment.

Ibid.

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by ian421

I think you answered the wrong question there, friendo

Yep. I chalk that up to my relative reddit inexperience, and the fact that the post I was trying to reply to got deleted and reposted while I was replying.

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by MyPatronusIsABigCake

Loved the expansion so far, the only downside I found was that I feel like I completed most of what was new quite quickly compared to HoT but since LW4 is coming quickly that doesn't feel like a real problem to me. In other words, amazing work guys !

Now onto the question.

What's the thing you had the most fun working on for this expansion ?

And what's the biggest technical challenge you faced that you can talk about ?

The most fun was working on the minimap and worldmap art, trying to keep everything in spirit with the GW1 maps while also adding new areas and staying consistent with GW2 narrative/lore. The best part of that was watching the community get so excited to see the updated worldmap and combing over it for all the details and lining it up with old GW1 locations.

Interestingly, the worldmap was also one of the biggest technical challenges. We had to increase the total size of the worldmap to nearly double the amount of worldspace compared to GW2 and HoT launch. The art files are HUGE - it actually got to the point where it was so unwieldy to update the worldmap that I had to modify the structure of the source files just to be able to work on the art without running out of memory.

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by NotScrollsApparently

Hi, thanks for the AMA! Love the expansion.

  1. Is the decision to hide new PoF weapon and armor sets in the wardrobe an intentional one or a bug/something you overlooked?

  2. What is the exotic black diamond for?

  3. Is Kormir's library destroyed after the events of the Griffon collection or is it still there in disrepair?

  4. Were there plans at some point to add a new character class for PoF, like the revenant in HoT?

  5. How come no iconic sunspear spear weapons? Is it too big of a technical obstacle to use underwater weapons as land weapons, or was it a design decision?

  1. Kormir's library still exists! It's fate is unknown though, bc without Kormir to maintain and protect it, it is vulnerable to whatever else is out there in the Mists.

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by sharkerkiller

How much Guild Wars 1 did you play before designing the areas we see in the expansion? Could you estimate the hours played? :D

This is a fun question for me actually! When I heard I would be joining the expansion team I actually challenged myself to finish Nightfall before we shipped Path of Fire (I had previously only played GW2). I also had a stretch goal of getting the Closer to the Stars title. Many months later and I’m happy to say that I met both goals with a few weeks to spare. Thank you Joel and Jesse for donating some minis to my cause, and Jen and Laith for running around with me from time to time. I can personally attest that anyone who still wants to earn those HoM rewards can do so even today! :D

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by RichardTavadon

This is for the Elite-Spec Team. Have you considered making "Unravel" an F5 ability for weaver instead of a utility?

We had considered this at one point early on, but decided not to go with it. The weaver’s mechanic and trade offs are designed with needing to go through main-hand to off hand. We left Unravel as a unique utility option for the purpose of improving rotations or providing instant access to needed weapon skills, but did not want to embed it into the core of the specialization.

“Path of Fire” devs here – ask us anything!

Comment

Originally posted by MyPatronusIsABigCake

What happened ?

I checked in some additional NPC models, but accidentally wrote over ALL the existing models instead of integrating my change with existing models. Whoops! It was very easy to reverse, but it scared the living daylights out of QA for a minute.




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