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.
Read moreGot 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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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!
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."
I think you may have replied to the wrong comment.
Ibid.
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.
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.
Hi, thanks for the AMA! Love the expansion.
Is the decision to hide new PoF weapon and armor sets in the wardrobe an intentional one or a bug/something you overlooked?
What is the exotic black diamond for?
Is Kormir's library destroyed after the events of the Griffon collection or is it still there in disrepair?
Were there plans at some point to add a new character class for PoF, like the revenant in HoT?
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?
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
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.
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.
How much Guild Wars 1 did you play before designing the areas we see in the expansion? Could you estimate the hours played? :D
Many many.. I remember laying out many of the maps the first time. We made sure we lined up Elona with Tyria... and years later, it's seamless.
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 roll mostly tagged up. I find interaction to be mostly positive, if not sometimes humorous.
From all enemies introduced in PoF, which one do you feel is the most frustrating/rage-inducing to fight?
Scarabs. CURSE YOU!!
Sincerely, a salty Warrior.
Hoping there's an animator in there somewhere, or someone close to it. :) First of all, as someone learning 3D animation, i have to say i'm in love with the mount animations, they are so interesting to look at and have so much weight and life to them! It's a real inspiration.
Now for a few questions:
-What's your favourite animation from GW2? (Mine still the rolling Asura laugh)
-In terms of animation, what's the biggest chunk of work in GW2 when it comes to making a new expansion? What was the biggest challenge. (for example, mounts, creatures, new elite spec skill animations?)
-What areas do you wish you could improve in terms of animations, but simply don't have the time to?
-Any handy tips and tricks for a starting animator trying to get into the game industry?
I can speak a little to your second question, from a production perspective. Mounts were by far the largest amount of work for animation in PoF (not to diminish the hard work for any of the other things you mentioned). In general, any time we want to introduce anything new, be it some new creature, mounts...we have to consider the investment that is required to meet the level of polish players expect from ArenaNet in GW2. Requiring a new rig, with 2 sexes and 5 player races...you can start to see how animation cost can blow up for things like mounts.
How much Guild Wars 1 did you play before designing the areas we see in the expansion? Could you estimate the hours played? :D
Lots of oldtimers here, but a few of us newcomers voluntarily started playing GW1 during development to familiarize ourselves with the older lore and content, especially Nightfall/Elona.
I loved all the GW1 callbacks and cameos scattered throughout PoF. Not knowing the ultimate fates of some of these characters has bugged me for the longest time, and while some of them definitely got downer 'endings', that sense of closure was much appreciated. I do have to ask though, where's Razah!? I really hope you guys touch on him soon, such an interesting character.
I'm glad you were able find and enjoy all the call backs, especially those that brought some closure.
Do you have any favorite little detail, be it in story instances or open world?
Getting to add content as QA is really special and the fact that I got to contribute something other than thousands of bug reports makes the whole expansion feel special. :)
First off I just want to say story spoiler
Now for my questions: also spoiler
Now, and this is a very serious question :P, have you or anyone you know ever intentionally taken advantage of your Dev tag to gather a zerg?
That really depends on what you mean by "gather". I can't be blamed if the enemy faction is unable to contain their desire to claim an achievement and blindly wander into a choke point where an allied zerg just happened to be returning from a successful assault on a nearby keep. >>
Thank you for creating such a beautiful, texturally-rich world.
Are there any plans to extend the new human hair to the other races?
Glad you're enjoying your time in Tyria. :)
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