Were you re-assigned back to gw2 because its development was going more slowly than expected? (2 month delay for the next expansion for example)
No, the two things are unrelated. I asked to come back to GW2 at the end of last year...I was really struggling to learn Unreal well enough to be productive, and I started teaching night classes in Narrative Design at Digipen, so I needed something more familiar and comfortable in my day job.
Read moreMatthew Medina has a series called Design Deconstructed where he talked about content he created for GW2 to serve as a portfolio after he got layed off.
Back in the day I commented about what the purpose was of this random confused cow was in the Labyrinthine Cliffs and this was his reply:
@MatthewMedina 5 years ago AH, the good old confused cow! So it actually served two purposes. It began when the art director was giving the team feedback, and asked if I could place a piece of content up there to reward/encourage players to explore up that way, since they were able to reach that plateau on their mounts. And I thought a bit about what I could put up there, and I talked with Connor Fallon, one of the living world designers and together we brainstormed up the idea of seeding a tease of the upcoming Living World episodes (wherein Kralkatorrik was in the mists, and opening portals into Tyria). We worked up this story of a cow that had wandered into one of these portal...
Shh, the return of Bessie may or may not be construed as evidence that I'm back working on GW2. 🙂↕️
The cow's latest location is on the roof above Xiko Refugee Camp in Dragon's End
Poor Bessie is actually now stuck in the darkened hallways of the Bastion of the Obscure. Will she EVER find her way home? 😲
Prices should be going down now that matthew medina is moving on from GW2. ;)
I'm in favor of anything that brings those prices down. 👣
ANet is secretly just a bunch of skritt standing on top of eachother in a trench coat
Shhhh!
Can confirm that Ivan adopted Mai's cats.
Fun fact this is what it sounds like in development too. They revealed in S4 they have a TTS bot (maybe even the same one) to read it out so they can time out when voicelines have to trigger.
Can confirm, the robovoice you hear in this clip sounds exactly like the one we hear during development. :-P
I'm so glad to see you posting here still! Hope you are doing well.
Aww, thanks. I still lurk here pretty reliably. Things are going great, actually - I had a very nice "summer off", something I haven't experienced since high school, so I am refreshed and ready to go and will hopefully have something lined up soon!
It was also not uncommon practice to hide some content objects in the air, since at launch players couldn't have ever gotten this high.
Haha either way I love these raptors they're hilarious.
Haha, of COURSE someone figured out a way to get up that high! I will actually miss how ingenious our community was at finding ways to break out of the constraints placed on them.
Fun fact - This is actually an errant gadget (a type of content object that is used to place mechanics in the world). Whenever designers place a new gadget, it automatically gets assigned this "turkey raptor" by default, because it was an obvious signifier to the team that it's placeholder art and needs to be reviewed. It was also not uncommon practice to hide some content objects in the air, since at launch players couldn't have ever gotten this high. I'm sure skyscales will turn up all SORTS of hidden designer tricks. :-P
Kookoochoo the Inauspicious.
Hehe, but yes he's been inkarcerated since last year. Only time will tell what the final fate will be for this kooky entertainer.
Read moreFirst, I want to thank you for all of your contribution in creating of this magnificent piece of art that is Guild Wars 2. It changed lives of many people and probably will continue to do so in foreseeable future.
I hope I'm not too late for this thread but I've got a question, that I think does not require any NDA breach and I would really hope to hear your opinion.
Do you think that it is technically possible and feasible for ArenaNet to create a well crafted encounter with an Elder Dragon in-game, (either open world or instanced) that would actually showcase its whole body model without frying the Player's machines or the servers? The only attempt at it was with Zhaitan and I'm pretty sure you are aware that opinions on it are... mixed. Not to mention that Zhaitan's size in comparison to Kralkatorrik's head or snout of Primordus is quite small. I would be happy to hear what you think about this.
(btw. Kralkatorrik encounter in All or Nothing was nothing s...
Your question is one that our teams have certainly set out to answer since 2012. I can't divulge anything I know about future story content obviously, but I wanted to take the opportunity to call out that the amazing encounter in "All or Nothing" was the result of tremendous collaboration by many team members, and was helmed by the incredible content designer Cameron Rich.
Read moreOh my god. I am so late for this. I hope you can still see this reply, Matthew!
I can't describe how much I love GW2. It's a game I keep coming back too after everything else---I'd play some other game for a while and feel like 'I miss GW2, why isn't this as fun as GW2' and just come back, run around in a few maps helping other players, and it'd feel almost as new as it was back in 2013 all over again. There's so much that is fun and addictive in it, and unlike much of the vocal playerbase, I really, really love the story. To say that I legitimately enjoyed it more than Bioware's offerings since DA:O and ME1 would not be an exaggeration.
I love how many things the story are not laid out in front of you or dramatized for super clear emotional impact like most other games, but are things that you have to soak in the world for a bit and let them sit for a while before they sting. I'm one of those weirdos who gain no emotional response from characters breaking down and ...
Wow, that is high praise indeed, and I'm truly humbled by your words! :">
As for the "smoke and mirrors" bit - I don't know where that idea came from, but even if writers might feel/see it that way, I think they might not be giving themselves enough credit. The truth is, the Commander is a character - we have to be careful in how we handle that character, because we want the player behind the keyboard to have a vessel that they want to inhabit while they're playing, but they still have an arc during every episode (and the most important one overall, IMO). So while all game development is "smoke and mirrors" to some extent, I think it's maybe an overstatement to think that this means that we aren't plotting out the Commander's journey or that their dialog just happens to come together by happenstance.
I'm extremely pleased to read that their personality has left such a mark with you (I feel very much the same about my main human mesmer, played by t...
Read moreAs Malyck was one of my favorite story bits from GW2, I always greatly appreciated you taking the time to chat about his storyline here, especially post-HoT. While it would have been beyond amazing to learn what you had in mind for him, I'm also glad you shared that his potential story was thought about and exists somewhere, even if it might not be told.
(Though, I think you might inspire endless fervent speculation on what might possibly be contained in your 4-page outline and powerpoint pitch, haha.) (Not a bad thing at all, as far as I'm concerned! :) )
Thanks for your time and very best wishes to you and everyone affected! I'm sure everyone here is looking forward to what you do next. :)
Thank you as well for your passion and interest - I really hope that we haven't heard the last word on Malyck myself. Exploring that story is one of the things I'm personally disappointed I was not able to make happen before my departure.
Having joined in 2014 (I believe after the festival had already concluded - or I was too new and clueless to realize it was going on, haha), I was completely blown away by the quality of 2018's Festival of the Four Winds. It was by far one of my favorite pieces of content I've experience in the game - beautifully designed environments with fun, engaging map mechanics. Loved all the little touches scattered around the map for us to discover - I always spent longer than I meant to wandering around the map, and kept uncovering new, fun little tidbits added in here and there. With each little feature I kept stumbling upon, I remember thinking many times how the map truly felt like a labor of love by the people who worked on it.
It reminded me of the first time I played in 2014, with the festival map evoking that feeling of wonder and exploration. Thank you for your work on it (and everything else!), and for reviving it for everyone to enjoy!
This is wonderful to read, and thank you for playing! The Festival in particular was indeed a labor of love, and also for me at least, one of healing.
In May of 2017, I lost my father to a long bout of health issues stemming from with complications after surgery in 2016, and our family had already lost my mom in 2004. So in the wake of that loss, when it came to reviving the Festival of the Four Winds, in ways both conscious and subconscious, I explored the grief and loss I was enduring.
As a team, we knew we wanted the theme for the festival's return to be about people coming together, and the Zephyrites were suffering losses of their own, and this provided a nice springboard for me to attempt to answer difficult questions I was grappling with surrounding mortality, recovery and healing. I tried to keep that exploration below the surface (since this IS a festival, and it needed to be FUN) but in many ways, the NPC's, the execution of the theme, and even just the e...
Read morebtw the cutscene in hot were amazing to watch
I agree! Our cinematics team is rock solid, and they continued to get better and better with every release!
When people were talking about the festival and it coming back in my guild chat, I thought they were playing a trick on someone. I "played along" for a while - then I saw the news on the website.
I couldn't believe my eyes. The festival was one of my /all time favorite GW2 memories/ and I was feeling so happy and nostalgic when strolling around the cliffs and gathering crystals again. I don't think I knew that you were involved - thank you!
Man, I totally feel you on the nostalgia and happiness of running around in that map - I logged in almost every day of the entire two weeks of the festival last year! Seeing people relax and unwind, play events and compete in races together, explore high and low and just embrace that joy and freedom of movement and exploration...it is such an amazing feeling knowing that people love something you had a hand in building.
Read moreWell let's take three examples: WoW, EvE and Runescape. in runescape, you cast a spell to heal someone. In WoW, you cast a spell to heal someone. In eve, you run repair cycles to repair someone.
In gw2 if you're a water elementalist, you have 0 direct heals basically, and most of your healing capability is either very light or on cooldown. It's got some similarities with Dota2. If you're a druid, you have to have an enemy involved to use your basic heal usable, you can't just beam the ally directly.
In WoW and EvE, stealth is a thing you do, it's permanent. in GW2, it's more of an in-combat thing (by the way, I'm not complaining about this)
The ranger's first unlock with sword (aside from 1) is hornet sting, which is actually a gtfo button.
Point is, a lot of tactics in gw2 are very indirect and are seemingly designed for combination tactics, and I don't think that appeals to people immediately. I think the spirit utilities for ranger are the best ex...
Ah, that makes a lot more sense now. I can understand that, yes - there are certainly some mechanics and skills in the game which are not straightforward or simple. I know there are some classes I still can't play, with any frequency, because like you described I haven't been able to get the "feel" of it (lookin' at you, Revenant). I think that there are definitely many choices to adjust each to your particular playstyle however (unless you're looking for direct 1-to-1 healing since that was a deliberate design choice we avoided, in favor of having everyone have some ability to heal themselves).
Hopefully, if you play more, you'll find the stat/weapon/gear/skill combination that best suits your playstyle. If you're still struggling, I can definitely vouch for our community being SUPER helpful at pointing you to a set build that probably does what you're interested in doing.
Yes, definitely! The team did raise the bar of excellence. All or Nothing's final instance was one of the most impactful story moments I've ever experienced in any video game, ever. A few years ago, I would have never dreamt that the community as a whole would be crying or left in a state of shock, coupled with youtube reaction videos and internet articles being written about it.
(And now I'm afraid the lay-offs may affect what's to follow in ep6 and lw5.)
I know that there is still more awesomeness to come from the Guild Wars 2 team; I wouldn't count them out because of all this.
[deleted]
Aww, thanks for the support. I didn't see this as that kind of post (or I wouldn't have responded to it) - I actually think it's important to have discussions surrounding the nature of healthy communication and how to interact with one another when we don't agree, or when there isn't an easy solution to a difficult and thorny problem at hand.
devtrackers.gg