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How viable Lion Arch is as a port city?


ugrakarma.9416

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Since the rest of this is going nowhere, I'll ignore those.

@kasoki.5180 said:How does Divinity's reach have river ports for trade with south if both southern sides and eastern side of DR are CLOSED OFF BY DAMS??

Who do you think Doric's Landing, Saidra's Haven, and New Loamhurst traded with? Just each other and Seraph's Landing?

The travel route was through Harathi Hinterlands which, fun fact, is not dammed off. There's a wooden gate, yes, one that swings open and lets boats through. Prior to the very recent centaur invasion, and the even more recent destruction of the dam, that route was used for trade. And guess which major city they'd pass through first? Lion's Arch.

Lake Doric is dammed from Queensdale and Lake Regent, but not from Harathi Hinterlands - and thus not from Gendarran Fields or Lion's Arch or the Sea of Sorrows.

It's also mentioned that the dam destroyed (between Lake Doric and Lake Regent) had locks, implying that ship passage was possible through that dam before its destruction.

@kasoki.5180 said:There is nothing that even remotely looks like cargo Ship in Quuensdale and ports in Lake Doric are used for military effort, not for actual trade. As a matter of fact, in human personal storyline we have an example of paper maker going from LA to DR for business purposes, and he is going by land.

Not talking about Queensdale, and Cin Fursarai wasn't coming from Lion's Arch - you misremember, the only mention of Lion's Arch is that Cin is a citizen of Lion's Arch. Besides, going through Altar Brook Trading Post to reach Divinity's Reach from Lion's Arch is an idiotic detour route. There's no mention of where Cin was coming from.

This leaves only Seraph's Landing as a possible location for trade into DR via rivers. But I don't remember anyone ever mentioning something like this. As a matter of fact I don't remember ever anyone mentioning that pirates are attacking rivers near DR or even mentioning that rivers are used for trade into DR. Is it possible you link those location's/NPCs? (I am currently re-reading NPC dialogues from Gandarran fields and will post if I find any)

First off, no one mentioned pirates attacking rivers near DR. Obviously I was referring to Lake Gendar that would need to be passed to reach Divinity's Reach to reach the Sea of Sorrows.

Secondly, if you don't remember why not do a quick wiki search? I literally just looked up Seraph's Landing, then went through the NPCs right there in the list. Took no more than two minutes.

Triskell Quay is not a port town but a fishery town.Mount Maelstrom has "remants" of ports that are obviously out of function, and have been for some time.Do note that I am not trying to say that sea was NEVER used for trade. I am arguing that it most likely hasn't been dominant form of trade for long enough that it makes little sense to currently have pirates around. I feel like this is something that is being ignored in this discussion.

If i am not mistaken, story of book "Sea of Sorrows" is placed back in history. Not in present day. I am not arguing that sea was never historically used for trade. Fact that book set cca 100 years in the past says there was a Charr port in Shiverpeaks is completely compatible with the point I am trying to make.

There's no reason for the charr port to disappear, since it was functional both before and after Zhaitan's rise. And Oxbow Isle is very much still functional - hard to say whether it was before the pact moved in though. But given we have known humans who grew up in the area it seems likely it was around before.

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To quote the Seraph linked by Konig.

"We use these rivers to move supplies and troops in from Divinity's Reach. The bandit's hang out by the docks, stealing supplies and causing trouble for the ships. Yeah, I'd call that a major problem." Seraph's Landing in Harathi hinterlands, the focus point of Seraph deployments against the Centaurs, used the waterway to get troops and supplies from DR directly.

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As an observation:

Historically, water travel wasn't just preferred for crossing seas. River travel was the preferred mode of trade even inland when there was a suitable river to do so up until the invention of railways. As expensive as a boat and crew is, it's still cheaper per ton of cargo than the porters, wagons, and/or pack animals you'd need to transport the same cargo, and often faster and safer (even with the existence of river pirates) as well.

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@"kasoki.5180" said:Its not a strawman since you don't seem to understand what I have said (or I have expressed myself poorly). There is no "first or second or third party". Thats not how commerce functions. It doesnt have to be any party in order for merchants to stop their trade if they think risk is to large. It doesnt matter if its Zhaitan fighting with himself, with only one another entity or with entire universe. Number of "parties" has nothing to with it.

Historically great risk is associated with great rewards.

when the Portugueses started the great navigations the common belief is that was impossible to get around Africa due to "sea monsters" or even a "world precipice".

for example whe had the Circus guys in Ember Bay, they was searching for "exotic creatures" overseas.

Orr maps are plenty of wrecked ships pointing to a heavy sea traffic.

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Historically speaking, long distance sea trade used to be extremely risky for merchants roughly until we started building ships from steel, and shipping companies became a thing. Losing a ship and whatever the ship contained(to piracy, an incompetent captain or most likely bad weather) would likely mean the end of your merchant career, and possibly your life as well if you owed someone money. On the other hand, reaping the benefits would make you a rich man for a while.

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  • 1 year later...

I always assumed the bridges in stairs of devastation could open up for ships to pass same with the scavengers' causeway probably having some kind of canal.

I always was really trigged by how they had already made the d'alessio seafront and when they did the karka instead of using it they decided to make up this massive ugly island that sucks(southsun cove) and it just completely retconned all the past maps from gw1 and even early gw2 for no reason. the legeitamately ruined the sea of sorrow's now and it doesn't make sense anymore. I really hope when the deep sea dragon is a thing he sinks the entire left side of southsun since they deleted all its content and its just an eye sore.

this was the map when the game first came out. Zesiz.jpgnotice how the sea of sorrow's is open and makes sense for it to be a pirate hub form a former sea fairing nation.

whats even worse is this location here which is right under the d'alessio seafront has always been on the map, has no lore, and is almost the exact size of south sun which is mostly a pointless zone with no content anyway so its size didnt matter as much. They could have easily put the karka stuff in the north part and the resort part on the smaller island. It's location even made more sense for the location if they were going to attack LA.

zew2CUT.png

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Lion's Arch has Asura gates, making sea trade obsolete.In fact, the existence of Asura gates make all methods of travel pretty obsolete when yu can just commission a gate at major locations then boom baby, instant trade route.

That's what waypoints essentially are no?

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@Yasai.3549 said:Lion's Arch has Asura gates, making sea trade obsolete.In fact, the existence of Asura gates make all methods of travel pretty obsolete when yu can just commission a gate at major locations then boom baby, instant trade route.

That's what waypoints essentially are no?

For the regions we are in yes but for foreign regions, they don't have waypoint technology. Such method of transpotation of supplies and other materials is only possible if the location has access to waypoints.

Elona only recently obtained Waypoints into their region due to how people can now enter Elona by Airship but they still have few waypoints that the ones they have are placed very far apart compared to regions of Base GW2 and HoT regions. It is also why the Elona region still depend greatly on trade by ships since normal small waypoints have a limited capacity to what they can teleport compared to Asura Gates.

We should probably expect Cantha to be similar in Waypoint spreading since they have been in isolation for a very long time and only method of trade for outside technology and other goods has only been through the Zephyrites once a year. Even once their borders become open, ships are most likely going to be still common trade method for them when it comes to overseas trading with other countries for large scale trading.

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While this is an old thread that was recently Necroed.

One thing to remember is that what we see in-game is by no means an even remotely accurate scale of the game world. Just because the water passages in Southsun, or between Orr and the mainland, seem too small for ships in-game, doesn't mean they actually are in canon.

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@Aravind.9610 said:I always thought Lion's Arch was more of an aerodrome city than a port city after Zhaitan.

Maybe in part (which could be used to explain away the lack of a true wharf that a port city would need) but it would be more post Scarlet rather than post Zhaitan. The airships were a Pact creation and save for the Aetherblades, who stole from the Pact and reverse-engineered the tech to make their own ships, no one else had airships until some time after Zhaitan's death.

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@The Greyhawk.9107 said:I'm not inclined to think that the D'alessio Seaboard still exists thanks to the changing sea levels caused by Orr rising. Yeah, Southsun's placement on the map is awkward but just because you don't like certain content doesn't mean that it shouldn't exists. I rather like Southsun.

The dev's removed most of the npcs and content in the second living story update. There is actually zero content on the left of the island. I was there when the karka queen died in season 1 the entire zone was gutted and left as a pointless husk.

@The Greyhawk.9107 said:I'm not inclined to think that the D'alessio Seaboard still exists thanks to the changing sea levels caused by Orr rising. Yeah, Southsun's placement on the map is awkward but just because you don't like certain content doesn't mean that it shouldn't exists. I rather like Southsun.

Actually Wooden Potatoes did a video on it years ago. They had made it and you can see all the islands still existing on the map. We got to go to claw island and that was clearly intact.

and if you scale the unfished map so the claw islands line up perfect the entire map actually down to minor details line up all around the border.47Hioc5.png

I think based on the unfortunate design of south sun being a map where it almost felt like they were trying to fill up the maximum amount of space possible with land. I feel like it was a big time mistake and an early over reaction to how everyone hated swimming, so they were like "don't release any maps with lots of water till then." another unfinished map was also lake doric which was much bigger and went around the whole city and had a massive amount of water. when we got 1/3 of the map released later on they still found a way to remove most of the water. I'm pretty sure the Karka was originally something they had planed for D'alessio Seaboard. I think its pretty safe to assume it still exist as a location lorewise.

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@TeeracK.3601 said:

@"The Greyhawk.9107" said:I'm not inclined to think that the D'alessio Seaboard still exists thanks to the changing sea levels caused by Orr rising. Yeah, Southsun's placement on the map is awkward but just because you don't like certain content doesn't mean that it shouldn't exists. I rather like Southsun.

The dev's removed most of the npcs and content in the second living story update. There is actually zero content on the left of the island. I was there when the karka queen died in season 1 the entire zone was gutted and left as a pointless husk.

Pure hyperbole. I've been around GW2 just as long and I do remember the changes Southsun has gone through since its release in November of 2012. Its changed but its not been "Gutted", the majority of the events it started with are still there.

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@Aravind.9610 said:I always thought Lion's Arch was more of an aerodrome city than a port city after Zhaitan.

Well it is still a Port City for ships but a new era of ships being Airships. After events of Zhaitan and the rebuilding of Lion's Arch, Airships have become most noticeably increasing as the main ships used for transportation of large goods and travel into regions without waypoints. I expect in the future Lion's Arch will become more of a Port City for Airships since current development of Lion's Arch is moving more towards Airships becoming the primary choice of trading in this new era due to the advancement of technology created by the Pact.

@The Greyhawk.9107 said:Frankly Waypoints never should have been acknowledged by canon or lore and remained an entirely game mechanics item.

It was technically already acknowledged as canon since the beginning of GW2 due to events of Orr where we can even encounter broken down waypoints. They just expanded the lore a bit more after Zhaitan arc to cover their functions and how waypoint travel is possible.

Of course this also establish there is a limit to how much a Waypoint can teleport so large scale teleportation by ships and other means are still required for basic trading since waypoints are limited to only transporting a individual person with whatever they carry on him or her. The person being teleported also must have a establish a connection to that waypoint if they wish to continue using it so transportation of goods through ships is still required since these things can't establish a connection with waypoints.

Waypoint function and limits are basically the same as FF14 Aetheryte's teleportation.

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@"TeeracK.3601" said:I always assumed the bridges in stairs of devastation could open up for ships to pass same with the scavengers' causeway probably having some kind of canal.

Well, those bridges were made by the Pact. There's no indication they raise, but no need for them to either - by the time Zhaitan dies and they open up ship trade to Labyrinthine Cliffs and Amnoon, they could have torn those hastily built bridges and made better ones. The shallowness can also be attributed to Zhaitan raising Orr, rather than having always been that way (and can also be attributed to the fact that the game downscales the size of areas in the open world rather than fitting lore distances).

I always was really trigged by how they had already made the d'alessio seafront and when they did the karka instead of using it they decided to make up this massive ugly island that sucks(southsun cove) and it just completely retconned all the past maps from gw1 and even early gw2 for no reason. the legeitamately ruined the sea of sorrow's now and it doesn't make sense anymore. I really hope when the deep sea dragon is a thing he sinks the entire left side of southsun since they deleted all its content and its just an eye sore.

It isn't really a retcon, since the entire story of the island is that it's a newly formed and still volcanic piece of land (particularly the main portion where the karka hive is, hence why there's lava so close to the surface). The only "old island" part of Southsun Cove is Pearl Inlet. This is the entire backstory of Canach's involvement. It's a newly formed island that was discovered in the wake of Zhaitan's death and the freeing up of sea travel with no/fewer dead ships. The Consortium laid claim to it, and sent Canach's team to survey the land, but despite the dead ship presence, the karka had settled there (avoiding Orr because they're smarter than quaggans and krait in avoiding dragon minions).

whats even worse is this location here which is right under the d'alessio seafront has always been on the map, has no lore, and is almost the exact size of south sun which is mostly a pointless zone with no content anyway so its size didnt matter as much. They could have easily put the karka stuff in the north part and the resort part on the smaller island. It's location even made more sense for the location if they were going to attack LA.

NRK6zpU.png

Fun fact, but that area was a scrapped mostly-aquatic level that was slated for the core release. This is why there's a path from Sparkfly Fen to that general area. Other scrapped areas that didn't get enough development to make it into the gw.dat like the original Lake Doric or the unnamed map at D'Alessio Seaboard. There was also a planned map north of Brisban, and south of Mount Maelstrom (also mostly aquatic) - hence why we can see zone portals leading into those directions. The reason why they did Southsun Cove instead of bringing that map back, I could only assume to be because players hated on underwater combat so much (same with Lake Doric's drainage - would have been great to have had the original with a giant ass whirlpool in the lake).

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@The Greyhawk.9107 said:

@The Greyhawk.9107 said:I'm not inclined to think that the D'alessio Seaboard still exists thanks to the changing sea levels caused by Orr rising. Yeah, Southsun's placement on the map is awkward but just because you don't like certain content doesn't mean that it shouldn't exists. I rather like Southsun.

The dev's removed most of the npcs and content in the second living story update. There is actually zero content on the left of the island. I was there when the karka queen died in season 1 the entire zone was gutted and left as a pointless husk.

Pure hyperbole. I've been around GW2 just as long and I do remember the changes Southsun has gone through since its release in November of 2012. Its changed but its not been "Gutted", the majority of the events it started with are still there.

I think Terrack is referring to the removal of the Settler vs Consortium content from Secret of Southsun / Last Stand at Southsun after May 2013. 17 events were added for the duration of those four weeks, but only 7 were kept (three being "altered" (aka replaced by near identical events)), specifically those involved with the Karka Queen meta were kept; there were dozens of NPCs added, and almost all of them removed. In addition, one event was removed entirely, and another (a patrol) was gated to behind player count rather than always present.

Southsun Cove would be far more interesting if those 10 events were never removed. But we can say the same for all Season 1 content.

The Lost Shores' ending did remove a handful of events in Southsun, but also added a handful as well. namely, those removed were about establishing a base in Southsun Cove - something that would have had been removed with Secret of Southsun Cove anyways (it was barren between The Lost Shores and Secret of Southsun, admittedly). Most events removed weren't in Southsun Cove, but were involved in "phase 1" of The Lost Shores (quaggan rescue, largos escort, elixer making, karka invasion repelling, etc.) and were more story-focused. If ANet ever brings back Season 1 in a serious manner, I imagine most events from The Lost Shores would be more likely to be turned into micro story instances instead of returning as events.

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@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@The Greyhawk.9107 said:I'm not inclined to think that the D'alessio Seaboard still exists thanks to the changing sea levels caused by Orr rising. Yeah, Southsun's placement on the map is awkward but just because you don't like certain content doesn't mean that it shouldn't exists. I rather like Southsun.

The dev's removed most of the npcs and content in the second living story update. There is actually zero content on the left of the island. I was there when the karka queen died in season 1 the entire zone was gutted and left as a pointless husk.

Pure hyperbole. I've been around GW2 just as long and I do remember the changes Southsun has gone through since its release in November of 2012. Its changed but its not been "Gutted", the majority of the events it started with are still there.

I think Terrack is referring to the removal of the Settler vs Consortium content from Secret of Southsun / Last Stand at Southsun after May 2013. 17 events were added for the duration of those four weeks, but only 7 were kept (three being "altered" (aka replaced by near identical events)), specifically those involved with the Karka Queen meta were kept; there were dozens of NPCs added, and almost all of them removed. In addition, one event was removed entirely, and another (a patrol) was gated to behind player count rather than always present.

Southsun Cove would be far more interesting if those 10 events were never removed. But we can say the same for all Season 1 content.

The Lost Shores' ending did remove a handful of events in Southsun, but also added a handful as well. namely, those removed were about establishing a base in Southsun Cove - something that would have had been removed with Secret of Southsun Cove anyways (it
was
barren between The Lost Shores and Secret of Southsun, admittedly). Most events removed weren't in Southsun Cove, but were involved in "phase 1" of The Lost Shores (quaggan rescue, largos escort, elixer making, karka invasion repelling, etc.) and were more story-focused. If ANet ever brings back Season 1 in a serious manner, I imagine most events from The Lost Shores would be more likely to be turned into micro story instances instead of returning as events.

I don't dispute any of this, I remember most of it. But I think my point still stands, Terrack was being unnecessarily hyperbolic to the point of dishonesty, the majority of the content in Southsun has remained over the years, it has not been "gutted".

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@The Greyhawk.9107 said:

@The Greyhawk.9107 said:I'm not inclined to think that the D'alessio Seaboard still exists thanks to the changing sea levels caused by Orr rising. Yeah, Southsun's placement on the map is awkward but just because you don't like certain content doesn't mean that it shouldn't exists. I rather like Southsun.

The dev's removed most of the npcs and content in the second living story update. There is actually zero content on the left of the island. I was there when the karka queen died in season 1 the entire zone was gutted and left as a pointless husk.

Pure hyperbole. I've been around GW2 just as long and I do remember the changes Southsun has gone through since its release in November of 2012. Its changed but its not been "Gutted", the majority of the events it started with are still there.

I think Terrack is referring to the removal of the Settler vs Consortium content from Secret of Southsun / Last Stand at Southsun after May 2013. 17 events were added for the duration of those four weeks, but only 7 were kept (three being "altered" (aka replaced by near identical events)), specifically those involved with the Karka Queen meta were kept; there were dozens of NPCs added, and almost all of them removed. In addition, one event was removed entirely, and another (a patrol) was gated to behind player count rather than always present.

Southsun Cove would be far more interesting if those 10 events were never removed. But we can say the same for all Season 1 content.

The Lost Shores' ending did remove a handful of events in Southsun, but also added a handful as well. namely, those removed were about establishing a base in Southsun Cove - something that would have had been removed with Secret of Southsun Cove anyways (it
was
barren between The Lost Shores and Secret of Southsun, admittedly). Most events removed weren't in Southsun Cove, but were involved in "phase 1" of The Lost Shores (quaggan rescue, largos escort, elixer making, karka invasion repelling, etc.) and were more story-focused. If ANet ever brings back Season 1 in a serious manner, I imagine most events from The Lost Shores would be more likely to be turned into micro story instances instead of returning as events.

I don't dispute any of this, I remember most of it. But I think my point still stands, Terrack was being unnecessarily hyperbolic to the point of dishonesty, the majority of the content in Southsun has remained over the years, it has not been "gutted".

Gutted in the sense that the map itself. The literal land mass. (Which is what we're talking about) Has no purpose. I don't think anything i said was dishonest. /shrug

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@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@"TeeracK.3601" said:I always assumed the bridges in stairs of devastation could open up for ships to pass same with the scavengers' causeway probably having some kind of canal.

Well, those bridges were made by the Pact. There's no indication they raise, but no need for them to either - by the time Zhaitan dies and they open up ship trade to Labyrinthine Cliffs and Amnoon, they could have torn those hastily built bridges and made better ones. The shallowness can also be attributed to Zhaitan raising Orr, rather than having always been that way (and can also be attributed to the fact that the game downscales the size of areas in the open world rather than fitting lore distances).

I always was really trigged by how they had already made the d'alessio seafront and when they did the karka instead of using it they decided to make up this massive ugly island that sucks(southsun cove) and it just completely retconned all the past maps from gw1 and even early gw2 for no reason. the legeitamately ruined the sea of sorrow's now and it doesn't make sense anymore. I really hope when the deep sea dragon is a thing he sinks the entire left side of southsun since they deleted all its content and its just an eye sore.

It isn't really a retcon, since the entire story of the island is that it's a newly formed and still volcanic piece of land (particularly the main portion where the karka hive is, hence why there's lava so close to the surface). The only "old island" part of Southsun Cove is Pearl Inlet. This is the entire backstory of Canach's involvement. It's a newly formed island that was discovered in the wake of Zhaitan's death and the freeing up of sea travel with no/fewer dead ships. The Consortium laid claim to it, and sent Canach's team to survey the land, but despite the dead ship presence, the karka had settled there (avoiding Orr because they're smarter than quaggans and krait in avoiding dragon minions).

whats even worse is this location here which is right under the d'alessio seafront has always been on the map, has no lore, and is almost the exact size of south sun which is mostly a pointless zone with no content anyway so its size didnt matter as much. They could have easily put the karka stuff in the north part and the resort part on the smaller island. It's location even made more sense for the location if they were going to attack LA.

NRK6zpU.png

Fun fact, but that area was a scrapped mostly-aquatic level that was slated for the core release. This is why there's a path from Sparkfly Fen to that general area. Other scrapped areas that didn't get enough development to make it into the gw.dat like the original Lake Doric or the unnamed map at D'Alessio Seaboard. There was also a planned map north of Brisban, and south of Mount Maelstrom (also mostly aquatic) - hence why we can see zone portals leading into those directions. The reason why they did Southsun Cove instead of bringing that map back, I could only assume to be because players hated on underwater combat so much (same with Lake Doric's drainage - would have been
great
to have had the original with a giant kitten whirlpool in the lake).

That's really interesting. I never heard about there being a map south of D'Alessio Seaboard and south of Mount Maelstrom. There any links or info? I've always been a big fan of old scrapped map stuff.

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