Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 Dev Tracker




06 Oct

Comment

Originally posted by indigo121

Crystal desert team/story team: As a GW1 vet, I want to say thank you for the whole expansion. Its been amazing to revisit some of my favorite places in tyria, and to finally deal with plot threads established about a decade ago now. What were your favorite places to revisit and why?

I was lead and mission designer for GW1, laying out the world. So returning to the Crystal Desert was really nostalgic. I enjoyed revisiting Augury Rock and the Trials of Ascension, missions remember designing. I put in the kids playing Ascension to help tell that GW1 story.

And finding a place to put the Flame Seeker Prophecies. The original text was written over a dozen years ago during Prophecies development. It's changed but to finally get it in game was cool.

Comment

Originally posted by LordDankus

Who is your favorite hero and why is it Palawa Joko?

Praise Joko

Comment

Originally posted by miniatureian

Mounts team -

Thanks for making the mounts drive like dump trucks, the entire feel is great, like we're actually mounted. How do you feel having mounts affects Central Tyria aka map completion?

The Zephyrite movement system is quite fun, seems like it took some effort to develop, but is limited to three places. I thought it was limited to these to minimize taking shortcuts in other maps, but mounts open up similar ways to travel. Did you play with using the Aspect movement system in more of the game (additional maps, as a Zepherite mount, or in the next xpac)?

I can't really touch on the zephyite skills as I wasn't part of that team, but having mounts usable everywhere in the open world was the plan from the start. We knew that with such a big addition to movement and exploration, it would feel bad if it was limited to just a few areas. It would feel like we gave you this great toy then took it away from you whenever you played elsewhere. We hope it'll encourage a lot of people to go back and play areas they have played before to see it with a fresh pair of eyes. Maybe even seen some map complete speed runs. xD

Comment

Originally posted by Kami_of_Water

Hey, I love you all and all of your work, thanks for everything! I still remember the wonder I felt 3-4 years ago when my mum (a secretary at the time for you guys, IIRC) showed me the game, and I feel like in the long run, GW2 has lived up to everything I dreamed and more. The new Scourge spec makes me really feel like I'm a Commander, or perhaps a tactician, sitting in the backline and pushing out barrier and conditions to help my allies in battle, and Deadeye really feels like the heavy-hitting sniper I always knew it could be.

So, I guess since this is an AMA I should ask you guys questions - and here are mine:

During development, did you ever get an idea while playing the game that found it's way into the game? For instance, "Oh, but what if X did Y," or "Hey, wouldn't this be a really cool thing to see in GW2?"

And then secondly, what was the absolutely flat out coolest thing that was either planned, or in development but ultimately had to be cut?

...

To respond to your last question: Amnoon was a lot larger initially but had to be downsized due to performance and to add more content to the other parts of the map. The noble quarter for example hadn't been devastated by a sandstorm!

Comment

Originally posted by LordDankus

Who is your favorite hero and why is it Palawa Joko?

Mine's the Command... no, it's Joko

Comment

Originally posted by Seasniffer

Is there any plans to open servers so friends can play together? Many people have returned to the game and have found themselves unable to play WvW together because they are on different servers. A lot of the servers have been closed since the WvW patch 4 months ago.

We weekly monitor world populations and adjust them as WvW players move around.

Comment

Originally posted by AnetLaith

I mean seriously, how do you lose a city?

You see, there comes a time in every architect's life when they roll a 1...

Comment

Originally posted by Dinionis

I love the Amnoon Casino. I hope we see this type of content more times :D.

Thank you for this amazing expansion. Great story, great graphics, great events and meta events... You really did a great job <3.

Stay away from the high-stakes roulette...it's rigged.

Comment

Originally posted by weissnicht01

How often do you praise joko?

A praise a day keeps the Kralk away!

Comment

Originally posted by toffikeks

Is there a specific reason for the inconsistent health of wvw walls/gates (e.g Veloka&Ogrewatch wooden walls have more health than any other tower on EB)?

We recently did a pass on all the walls and they should all be the same health. If you have found a specific wall that is different then report it using "/bug" in game please :)

Comment

Originally posted by Auriam

Do you know anything about a lost city located somewhere in the Riverlands?

I mean seriously, how do you lose a city?

Comment

Originally posted by Lishtenbird

Being able to get to different places with different mounts feels absolutely wonderful, but switching from one mount to another via dismounting and then remounting is dissatisfyingly fiddly and frustrating, as has been shared and discussed here on reddit; this may make a player want to take a longer, more boring route just not to spam keys, wait, and spam keys again.

We know that it is technically possible to instantly remount to the "wild" mounts in the world, so have you considered changing mounts to be instantly cross-remountable (with the usual restrictions: not in combat, not in air, enough space) when pressing their respective keys while mounted? If not, is there some specific reason for the current behaviour?

This was considered during development but there were significant concerns from animation. However, we're looking into ways to streamline this process a bit.

Comment

Originally posted by Lascax

Hello there!

I am one of those who really appreciated your work on Path of Fire and I am excited to see what the next Living World will bring in!

My questions are related to Legendaries, since PoF didn't have new ones on release.

1) Can we expect PoF exclusive Legendaries in the future updates? If yes, which types ( I remember you mentioned trinkets in an earlier AMA )?

2) Will there be Legendary Mounts in the future, considering there are "Legendary Gliders" tied to backpacks?

3) I am one of those weird guys that must ask this: Legendary Aquabreathers - will we ever see them?

Thank you all ArenaNet for your amazing production and I surely am one of those that will keep spreading the word! Keep it up!

Will there be Legendary Mounts in the future, considering there are "Legendary Gliders" tied to backpacks?

There are no plans right now for a legendary mount. We don't have different quality tiers of mounts, just different ways to acquire them like griffon vs the other mounts.

Comment

Originally posted by SGDaly

Hello, Anet team! Amazing expansion, I feel like I'm back at the original launch... exploring, awe-struck by the views and scenery... really beautiful. Haven't felt like this with this game in years. I'm overall really happy about it. :)

My questions are mainly regarding the story, which I'm just not quite "feeling it" - though it does have some great moments! This will be broken apart for easier dev digestion.

Questions related to the devs

1. Is Ree Soesbee still writing for GW2? Are we going to get another novel by her, or some other author, sometime? I really liked them and I reckon a story of the time Elona was isolated would be great. The fight of the Sunspears against Joko, their resistance, Joko's side of the story or so on... so many stories that could fit a novel so well.

2. Is the open world narrative team different than the main story team? Are they the same? Writing so many stories, ambie...

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Sadly, Ree has moved on and no longer works on ArenaNet. And we wish her the best.

The Narrative team for PoF had specific assignments, but there was a ton of overlap and virtually every Narrative person contributed to both open world and story steps.

Originally posted by [deleted]

~hello, this message is for MO

  1. There were some leaks around the reddit lately regarding easy and hard mode raids: 1 . Crystal Reid said on forums that you won't be adding a different difficulty tier at this time. Has this changed meantime?

  2. How are things progressing with the next raid? We've been waiting for a while now and surely would like to hear some info. What rewards / system will the new raid use? Will it be only skins or there will be new infusions, gizmos like xera portal?

Hi! That message is really for Crystal! Her recent forum thread is still the right answer: we're not working on different difficulty tiers. We're focused on making great content and don't want to slow that down by multiplying the amount of work. We're hard at work on the next raid and development is going well; no announcements today.

Mo

Comment

Originally posted by [deleted]

I just wanted to say I love whoever put that mastery point in the tomb of primeval kings, it took me a while to figure out how to get it, and I ended up doing a really cool gryphon dive from outside near the Jackal portal hero point, entering the building and then rising up to the mastery point. It felt really satisfying. I hope you include more stuff like that in the future even though I'm pretty sure there's a way to get it with just the bunny.

It was intended for Griffon although your way of getting it was WAY fancier than the way I envisioned. Good job :D

Comment

Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

sadly probably not - we are already using very large textures for the sky and making them larger could reduce perf or cause other issues. sorry :(

Comment

Originally posted by LordDankus

Who is your favorite hero and why is it Palawa Joko?

Praise Joko

Comment

Originally posted by LordDankus

Who is your favorite hero and why is it Palawa Joko?

Praise Joko

Hi all,

It’s hard to believe it’s been two weeks already since the launch of Path of Fire! Our tradition is to hang out with you and do an AMA on launch day, but with a release this large, we needed to be all-hands-on-deck on launch day. Two weeks later, things are in good shape: we’re polishing details and getting ready for upcoming Live releases. Let’s take some time and chat.

Here’s who’s with us today.

From the Crystal Desert team – Clayton Kisko, Justin Reilly, Steve Huang, Tirzah Bauer, Tracey West

From the Mounts team – Dodge Lafnitzegger, Joel Helmich, Roy Cronacher, Steven Stadnicky

From the Story team – Bobby Stein, Connie Griffith, Connor Fallon, Matthew Medina, Peter Fries, Scott McGough

From the Elite Specs team – Irenio Calmon-Huang, Karl McLain

Bounties – Trevor Bennett

Cinematics – Chelsey Shuder

Combat Encounters – Benjamin Arnold

Engine - Jon Olson

Guild Halls – Devon ...

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