I tend to build huge spoiler in minecraft whenever I go back onto this game I do believe this will make for a great inspiration.
Final instance spoiler below Is this what you mean by flowing color ? The sky was glorious in this instance.
Yes, all the swirling effects in that scene in particular and to a lesser extent what is visible when you are running around in the non-instanced version of that area. Also, the sky in story spoiler
Headless and naked NPCs running around everywhere...
That was on meeeeeeeh.
Of course it is, cause once you find it you stop looking.
I've always told myself that one of these days, I'll look one more place just to say I did.
Read more1) The raptor mini collection was pretty cool which made me wonder if there is any chance of seeing the fire and ice skins as usable legendary mount skins?
3) Much like ember bay's skulls, Desolation's mouth of torment has strange faces crawling their way out of the centre. Image What drives the land to take these forms and will it ever be tied to the story in any meaningful way?
4) Since PoF is a bit more demanding, what would be the best option for people upgrading? Going the route of i7700k or the newer CPU's...
Read moreWarning: Some main plot spoilers.
Questions for the Writing Team
Questions on Balthazar and the Forged:
- Is the Herald of Balthazar actually as folks suspect?
- Balthazar seems to have changed quite a lot. He went from honorable combatant to proclaiming "I AM CONFLICT!" But we're never given a proper explanation for this change. Why did Balthazar turn from honorable god of war to evil god of war? He basically became Menzies, by all show of GW1 lore to now.
- What is the fate of Menzies? Now that Balthazar is killed, it seems rather pointless for us to ever deal with him now. Kind of like Malyck, his ship has sailed and we never got to see it.
- Why did you settle on using Balthazar as the antagonist for Path of Fire, rather than Dhuum, Menzies, or another god?
- What's the story behind the Forged accessing the Realm of Torment? As far as I could find, we're only told that they'...
4: The "last Forgotten" cited in HoT was the last Forgotten in Tarir, not the last Forgotten period. The Forgotten did not have 100% perfect communication between the two cities so they did not necessarily know exactly what was happening in their sister city at all times.
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?
...
I know when Justin did a fabulous job of remaking Augury Rock, it just brought back memories. I was running around the map and it made me remember the three ghostly heroes that were at base of Augury. What happened to those guys? Well, they're there.
Justin also was working on First Camp and there were four tents... and I was thinking, there were three trials and augury. What if we had kids help retell what happened in fun way.
And while working on the Desolation, we were trying to figure out how to include the Junundu wurms. Ben had a great idea to give them a bigger presence that made sense and we were able to fit them in. Hanging out at the perch and having the ghost guides recount old times was fun too.
Who is your favorite hero and why is it Palawa Joko?
Praise Joko
What was the single happiest moment in the development process?
What was the single biggest heartbreak moment?
Happiest: Learning that we were putting in (limited, contained) open world PVP events in the Vabbi map!
Heartbreak: Learning that we had to cut the open world PVP events (for performance reasons among others). :(
It's Lord Faren, and thanks for playing.
I'm rather surprised this is not coming from Dara first...
When are we going to get distinguishable Winds of Disenchantment, ie different colors for friendly and enemy bubbles.
It's really ruining WvW.
We are looking into it.
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?
Although Highlands was my favorite map to work on, the Desolation held a special place in my heart. My very first environment was one of the Junundu missions in Nightfall. So much sulfur!
Are you hiring?
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?
The Bone Palace. It looks better than ever, and it made so much sense to me that Joko would build it up to be grand enough to suit his ego; plus, the lifelong horror movie fanatic in me loves the utter darkness of the idea it was expanded via the addition of a nation's worth of centaur bones.
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The story team kept the open world designers well aware of what was planned, even better than the good amount of coordination that was done in HoT. So kudos to them for making the Crystal Desert and Elona feel unified, so the open world story telling and help support the main storyline.
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?
There's just so many. Augury Rock because of the doppelganger fight and how many ways there were to approach it. My favorite though is probably the Maw of Torment, it's only gotten even more hauntingly beautiful with the Forged occupation.
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 part for me was putting in little hidden jokes and goofy stuff for people to find.
Biggest technical challenge by far was getting a Skritt to wear boots. Then getting him to take them off.
Mounting back up after interacting with something is a pain. There are many areas that are dense with mobs, mobs that have new AI that fire at range, retreat into the agro range of other mobs, and won't come closer even if you line of sight them. Chasing and killing a dozen trash mobs just so I can get back on my mount is a chore and really detracts from the fun of mounts. Can you look into letting us interact with things, harvest nodes, open chests, etc., or at least make remounting after doing so much less painful?
Originally, you could interact with many things while mounted. However, there were a lot of cases where things would completely break if you interacted while mounted, especially in core Tyria. With the number of different kinds of things that can happen on interact, with some of them being quite complicated, it's a lot safer to dismount the player before taking those actions. We removed this to prevent those things from breaking while still maintaining consistency with behavior for the mount interactions in general.
Read moreThank you for everything in this expansion, it's beautiful. Just waiting to see Kamadan now.
1- Well, it was gonna be a question about the Griffon. Why did you include something this potentially broken? (I love it)
2- I heard that Scourge being unable to maintain all of its shades at the same time was a conscious design decision. Is this true? What made you make this decision, compared to other, possible, alternatives?
3- Why are the Firebrand's Tomes not (using) the old Guardian's Tomes effect (actual Tome, book thingy)? Did you lose them like with the Mistward weapons of the Revenant (:P)?
Also I loved the detail that when you Story Spoiler
Finally, be honest with me, we're never gonna have land-spears are we? Between the Spellbreaker's lore, the existance of a number of staff skins that look kinda like halberds, or other types of polearms...
Glad you liked the blind ;) There was some discussion whether it was too annoying to have the screen effect up the whole time and whether we should pull it, but in the end the hardcore GW1 fans in the office felt it would be an offense to the Six (or I guess the Five) if we didn't.
How often do you praise joko?
Depends on how often people interrupt me while I'm praising.
Swordmaster Joko.
"I'm a god-king, you know?"
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