Guild Wars 2 Dev Tracker

Originally posted by Exfrus

As a rule of thumb, how long does it take to make changes like that to existing maps? Taking the mounts into old maps has been hilarious, sometimes it's hit and miss though. I keep dying in Verdant Brink because I keep trying to fly to the flax farm from Noble's Folly. I build up a ton of speed, sanic my way over there, dodge vines and low hanging rocks, lightly graze the killwall that is VB's map boundary, then watch my corpse gracefully descend into the depths. I also got up quite high in the Silverwastes and flew to the airships overhead only to find that they have no collision and you fly straight through the texture.

I was one of the players extremely leery at the prospect of mounts in Guild Wars 2. I, somewhat cynically, thought it was just going to be WoW pandering but the way they've been implemented has been a ton of fun and it's truly affected gameplay more than the speedboost and cosmetic goldsink I was expecting. You've all done a fantastic job.

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 :)

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
  
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Originally posted by ImNotBeyonce

What was the weirdest bug that happened during development?

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?

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.

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?

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?

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

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?

Originally posted by EdenFlorence

When will we see the uprising of the Choya?

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?

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?

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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!

Originally posted by Commander_Freir

I think you may have replied to the wrong comment.

Originally posted by ian421

I think you answered the wrong question there, friendo

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 ?

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?

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

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?