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Episode 6 Guild Chat this Friday: We want your questions for the devs!


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  • ArenaNet Staff

Okay so first of all: There are almost certainly gonna be story spoilers in this thread. If you don't want story spoilers, stop reading now!

Now that we've got that out of the way! :) This Friday's Guild Chat is all about Episode 6, War Eternal. I'll be talking with five of the people who worked on the episode:*Tom Abernathy, Studio Narrative Director

  • Alex Kain, Narrative Designer
  • Kent Benson, Embedded QA Support
  • Keaven Freeman, Game Designer
  • Hugh Norfolk, Game Designer

These guys worked on the story and the new map, and we'll be making time at the end of their segments to answer some of your questions. A couple of notes: We'll be focusing on episode 6, so we can't go too much into detail about super spoilery future stuff. And if you have questions about the skyscale mount, hang onto them just a little while because we have a deep dive Guild Chat episode about the skyscale coming up on May 24. With that in mind, fire away with your questions!

The War Eternal Guild Chat begins this Friday, May 17, at noon Pacific time (UTC -7) on the Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel. If you can't join us live, watch for it on our YouTube channel after the broadcast. (If you want a quick and reliable time zone conversion, we like this site.) See you Friday!

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@"Rubi Bayer.8493" said:Okay so first of all: There are almost certainly gonna be story spoilers in this thread. If you don't want story spoilers, stop reading now!

Now that we've got that out of the way! :) This Friday's Guild Chat is all about Episode 6, War Eternal. I'll be talking with six of the people who worked on the episode:*Tom Abernathy, Studio Narrative Director

  • Alex Kain, Narrative Designer
  • Kent Benson, Embedded QA Support
  • Keaven Freeman, Game Designer
  • Hugh Norfolk, Game Designer

These guys worked on the story and the new map, and we'll be making time at the end of their segments to answer some of your questions. A couple of notes: We'll be focusing on episode 6, so we can't go too much into detail about super spoilery future stuff. And if you have questions about the skyscale mount, hang onto them just a little while because we have a deep dive Guild Chat episode about the skyscale coming up on May 24. With that in mind, fire away with your questions!

The War Eternal Guild Chat begins this Friday, May 17, at noon Pacific time (UTC -7) on the Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel. If you can't join us live, watch for it on our YouTube channel after the broadcast. (If you want a quick and reliable time zone conversion, we like this site.) See you Friday!

I think you made a mistake you say 6 people but only listed 5. I'm sorry to nitpick but I'm confused if its 5 or 6 devs,

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1) Why did you undermine Aurenes death so quickly? For anyone playing catch up, the death will exist for less than 5 mins with nothing happening in game to render her death as having any point. You regularly use death without any consequence and quite frivolously without understanding how it should be used in a story. For a team that undertook a panel on the subject, you seem to misunderstand the use of the concept entirely. Death in the GW2 Universe is entirely meaningless since a random plot point dictates someone return. You might as well remove death entirely now - it simply provides no emotional or constructive use in the story.

2) Will there be any attempt to reign in the visual noise? The last instance was pure flashing lights and effects. I have no idea what I was fighting - it was completely unviewable. Was there any need to go so overboard with the effects when if you read our feedback you should know how much your player base wants this reduced? You do seem to be going to great strides to make it worse

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As the spoilers warning has already been given, consider yourself warned...

  • What happened to make Aurene talk without needing branded Caithe?
  • Why'd y'all make the call to humanize Kralk at the end? If he wasn't afraid of his vision, I assume his killing Glint was mostly due to self-preservation, on account of her trying to kill him? How'd Glint read his reaction to his vision so incorrectly, though? Wouldn't she know "dragons don't fear death"?
  • Why isn't Aurene as torn up by all the magic she's absorbed? Is it because Kralky's more crystalline and set in his ways? Did he just absorb more than she had? Are the other dragons (Primo, Jormag, and Steve) experiencing similar issues?
  • If Mordremoth died half a continent away, how has Kralky absorbed enough of his power to cause him draco-magical indigestion? I also don't recall his absorbtion of that magic causing leafy branded or anything of that nature. I'd just assumed he hadn't eaten enough, or any, but apparently he did? Enough that it's giving him heartburn?
  • What brought about the decision to bring back the other transit methods (shrooms/oakheart essence)? I like how y'all implemented it (in such a way as to provide variety but not make it feel forced). Can we expect to see them appear again in future maps if it's fitting?

I think that's all my questions for now...

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  • ArenaNet Staff

Guys, seriously, this thing right here:

@Rubi Bayer.8493 said:And if you have questions about the skyscale mount, hang onto them just a little while because we have a deep dive Guild Chat episode about the skyscale coming up on May 24.

None of the dev guests for this Friday's show touched the skyscale. They can't answer these questions, which is why we're doing the skyscale-focused show on the 24th.

@Wwefan.4982 said:

I think you made a mistake you say 6 people but only listed 5. I'm sorry to nitpick but I'm confused if its 5 or 6 devs,

Thanks for catching that--it should have said five, so I corrected it!

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First of all congratulations on the great job with this new map, it's the best I have ever seen in gw2, I think we have all elements from season 3 and 4 in one map, also the meta is the best. Second, why did you decide to make Kralk a conflicted/tormented character towards the end of the story ?

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Is there a way to reach you guys in Anet in terms of fan letters? Sometimes (a lot of times) I just want to gush at the nice things you did and let you know you're appreciated, but not to share the gushings with the community since....well, sometimes you just want to gush and not have yahoos agreeing or disagreeing with you. So......fan letters. I guess there's the forum private messaging, but I'm not sure if I'm supposed to private message the devs.

Is there some sort of PR filter person I can send such a thing to?

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I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and ask about the skyscale as well, but my other question is:

Why are there 22 POIs on the map but you only need 21 for map completion?

Also, Taimi's had my entire Discord server talking due to this ep-Everyone's instinctively used the contact points as soon as they come across one, and "DIE, BRANDED SCUM!" has pretty much floored people. That entire clip is on my phone! (Also her being plastered post-completion lore talk. Phlunt does not approve, but who cares?) Send her VA a shoutout for me if she doesn't get my tweet first!

Also who's idea was it to give you mini boss fights inside Kralkatorrik with Balthazar, Mordremoth, and Zhaitan's eye? That was epic as heck!

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Hello, first i wanted to say that the finale was awesome, the last Map is very fun to play and a very nice throwback for GW1 Player, also neat to see Melandrus realm for the first time! The story finale was also very wholesome and felt good, without being a massive cliffhanger. I personally think that the timegate for the mount itself is not a big problem, but it buggers me that you have to collect things 3 time in a row, sometimes in the same exact places. The first 2 times were ok, but the egg hunt then felt very wearisome! Anyway, good job with the new mount!Here are my 2 Questions:

1: I think many gw2 player spent tons of time in gw1 in the mists (Fissure of Woe, Domain of Anguish, Underworld) and would love to see more of these areas for raids or channanging content! Since we see new Mobs for the new Map, themed for the gw1 counterpart (or new ones for Melandrus realm), do we have a chance to see the gods realm again in the future?

! 2: What happened to the Magic of Zhaitan, Balt and Mordremoth? Are they now inside of Aurene? Or did they release into the world again, to cause more magic disturbance?

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1- The first fight in the sky on the back of aurene was cool why it wasn't longer like fighting minions on its back? The power ball destroying his wing was very odd. The meta is okay, but the fact is lying in the center, welp...

2- Why giving feelings to kralkatorrik?

3- Why kralk haven't eat aurene?

4- Will we see more of the latest technologies from the pact in future maps? Like holo bridge, waypoint transporter, anti brandstorm device or derv?

5- Will we destroy the world by killing some other dragons?

6- Skyscales collections are really cool.

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Regarding the end of the episode and season:

If possible, can the narrative team comment on why they chose to end this episode and season on a "The End" moment? Was it to emphasize the ending of Glint's grand plans and the underlying story arc that started back in Guild Wars 1? When Glint pulled Aurene aside to talk to her privately about "Ascension" was that referring to her current state after the episode?

What would happen to the server if all the players on the map were on top of the moving airship on the new map? How much of a strain on the server is it to have a moving airship and a moving brandnado? How taxing is it having these large moving objects with collision on the map?

Map is awesome, but what are the chances we will be seeing a non-lane based map meta in the future? This has been done quite a bit - Marionette / Silverwastes / Auric Bason / Dragon's Stand / etc and now Dragonfall. I realize this may be difficult to come up with a new winning map mechanic, but I do have one suggestion. A tiered system where the players start off alone and if they succeed in a trail, move forward merging with another random successful player. If they fail, they get dumped back down to the starting solo tier to try again. Players at the top tier fight a boss or something. An idea for discussion.

There are now 8 mounts. The community has made some excellent mount overlay systems that link multiple mount keybindings to one keybind and a overlay to select between them. Is there any chance we can have an official overlay like this? I ask because we are still missing the underwater mount; with that added there will be 9 keybinds for mounts.

Suggestion going forward on map design: if the map requires the players to run about, allow them to run. What I mean, is that when (Map Meta Conclusion)

you are fighting Kralkatorric's weak spots, you get locked in combat by all the mobs in the area. The tag then focuses on moving to the next objective, leaving people behind stuck in combat with upleveled mobs that are difficult / time consuming / impossible to defeat solo and unable to mount - which is necessary to traverse Kralkatorric's ginormous gluteus. There is no way, on foot, to escape. Please consider this going forward in map meta design.

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Why did Aurene ressurect so fast? You made a big deal out of it not only from the short stories but also the gdc talk, her ressurection in the first 5 mins of the instance undermined all that.

Also, if a new player were to play all the episodes in succesion Aurene would be dead for like 5 or 8 mins.

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A few things:

  1. Amazing job on the patch you guys. This is honestly my favorite episode of the entire game, and it definitely even beats expansion content! Keep up the good work <3
  2. Will we learn more about what it meant with the last part of the story? Where Kralkatorrik says "mother" and that there are now connections being made about Kralk giving Aurene's egg to the Master of Peace?
  3. Is Rox going to be joining the Olmakhan? When she was talking with Braham, was that what she was going to tell him? Or does she possibly have a crush on him?
  4. Will Logan be going back to Divinity's Reach to be with Queen Jennah, now that he's been redeemed? I love that this arc got resolved, by the way.
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@"Rubi Bayer.8493" said:Okay so first of all: There are almost certainly gonna be story spoilers in this thread. If you don't want story spoilers, stop reading now!

Now that we've got that out of the way! :) This Friday's Guild Chat is all about Episode 6, War Eternal. I'll be talking with five of the people who worked on the episode:*Tom Abernathy, Studio Narrative Director

  • Alex Kain, Narrative Designer
  • Kent Benson, Embedded QA Support
  • Keaven Freeman, Game Designer
  • Hugh Norfolk, Game Designer

These guys worked on the story and the new map, and we'll be making time at the end of their segments to answer some of your questions. A couple of notes: We'll be focusing on episode 6, so we can't go too much into detail about super spoilery future stuff. And if you have questions about the skyscale mount, hang onto them just a little while because we have a deep dive Guild Chat episode about the skyscale coming up on May 24. With that in mind, fire away with your questions!

The War Eternal Guild Chat begins this Friday, May 17, at noon Pacific time (UTC -7) on the Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel. If you can't join us live, watch for it on our YouTube channel after the broadcast. (If you want a quick and reliable time zone conversion, we like this site.) See you Friday!

First of all I'm absolutely ASTONISHED by the Finale. The story that it was trying to show was so deep, so intimate, so pure, leading Aurene through disharmony to realize how harmony and balance are important was just on spot.

People that wrote the lines for Aurene and Kralkatorrik are just the blessings, and know exactly what's starting to shape in our real world, that we no longer fear Death, we no longer should treat others badly, because in our modern times I and so many others realized how powerful empathy is.

I never got empathy from strangers, but there was my mom there that with her love helped me realize what empathy is, and I despite surrounding darkness and pain, should be empathetic towards everyone. who cares about the politics, who cares about gender, who cares about the crimes? Only those who never experienced empathy, never truely had someone to love. And I, and I am SO HAPPY that also you - the writers joined in to embrace empathy and show Kralkatorrik as someone lost in hatred and love, and this love only Aurene noticed. There are so little people that can see light inside of the greatest villain, but something NEW was born in our modern times, that those empathetic, those who were treated as weak in previous ages, are now the strongest in the world despite their number is not big.

This episode was the most well done episode in the sense of dialogues, and in the sense of showing the beauty. But the only complaint is that Long Live the Lich shouldn't have ended with Aurene's eating Joko... That was a mistake, that in War Eternal you had to quickly fix, because this scene with Aurene's ressurection was like cut of context, and was like - let's quickly move on.

I'm also happy that the story in War Eternal was looking just like the original Personal Story, that made me fall in love in GW2 in the first place. It didn't have any fireworks, drama, it was so peaceful, so deep, an absolute embracing the empathy, love and there is only one quote that can describe it all:

Per Aspera Ad Astra - Through the Struggles, to the Stars.

Also the music in this episode... Beautiful. Kudos to the composers and Sound Team, and once again to the whole VA Team. Well done Maclaine, Eve, and Tom and every single Dev that worked on this OUTSTANDING Episode, that brought something SO interesting, so deep!

I CAN'T wait for the next stories! You're the BEST story team in the world with this Episode, really!

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  • ArenaNet Staff

@"eldrin.6471" said:They do not want to talk about how there customers feel about the skygate problems until the 24th.LOL

I get that you want your questions answered on tomorrow's episode of Guild Chat, but tomorrow's guests didn't touch the skyscale. Asking your question anyway won't magically give them the knowledge to answer the questions, but it doesn't mean they don't want to talk about it--they just can't. None of them worked on that particular content.

We schedule shows a month or more in advance, and the devs make room in their busy schedules to join the show. If I went around the office today to a bunch of people saying "loljk you're not on the 24th, you're on tomorrow, surprise!" we probably just... wouldn't have any show at all because nobody has time for me to disrupt their schedule for 4 hours or so for impromptu show prep, a rehearsal runthrough, and the actual show with one day's notice.

Like I said, I get it. You and some others in this thread want your questions addressed on the show. We simply don't have dev guests on this episode who worked on that part of the content on this particular episode. But next Friday we're devoting an entire episode to the design of the skyscale, which is why I said "Hold on to your questions", not "trash your questions".

Those of you asking on-topic questions: These are awesome and I'm pulling them to send around to the dev guests. Keep 'em coming, thank you!! <3

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@Arden.7480 said:

@"Rubi Bayer.8493" said:Okay so first of all: There are almost certainly gonna be story spoilers in this thread. If you don't want story spoilers, stop reading now!

Now that we've got that out of the way! :) This Friday's Guild Chat is all about Episode 6, War Eternal. I'll be talking with five of the people who worked on the episode:*Tom Abernathy, Studio Narrative Director
  • Alex Kain, Narrative Designer
  • Kent Benson, Embedded QA Support
  • Keaven Freeman, Game Designer
  • Hugh Norfolk, Game Designer

These guys worked on the story and the new map, and we'll be making time at the end of their segments to answer some of your questions. A couple of notes: We'll be focusing on episode 6, so we can't go too much into detail about super spoilery future stuff. And if you have questions about the skyscale mount, hang onto them just a little while because we have a deep dive Guild Chat episode about the skyscale coming up on May 24. With that in mind, fire away with your questions!

The War Eternal Guild Chat begins this Friday, May 17, at noon Pacific time (UTC -7) on the
. If you can't join us live, watch for it on our YouTube channel after the broadcast. (If you want a quick and reliable time zone conversion, we like
.) See you Friday!

And I, and I am SO HAPPY that also you - the writers joined in to embrace empathy and show Kralkatorrik as someone lost in hatred and love, and this love only Aurene noticed. There are so little people that can see light inside of the greatest villain, but something NEW was born in our modern times, that those empathetic, those who were treated as weak in previous ages, are now the strongest in the world despite their number is not big.

I'm going to highlight this passage to use as my counter question.

Why did you choose to humanise Kralk at the end? Giving him mortal thoughts and feelings actually severely damaged the concept and idea behind these creatures. Would Cthulhu have been more interesting if he had "mommy" issues or inner conflict? Of course not. The appeal is in the Eldritch, unfathomable nature. Talking of family and love between utterly alien creatures feels like fan fiction concepts. Their appeal was in their sheer difference to us and the emotional side of a story should only and exclusively come from us in this context. Giving the Dragons touchy feely emotions diminishes all that.

Giving villains character and dimension can work, but truly alien and eldritch abominations should never be shown to have mortal thoughts, ideals and motivations. Otherwise you might as well just write about mortal villains to begin. The remaining Dragons no longer have the same threat, the same aura they once did and that is an enormous blow to your story.

As someone who is a big fan of Eldritch writings, Dragon literature - this was probably the biggest disappointment with GW2 once fantastic story is now almost destroyed for me.

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@Randulf.7614 said:

2) Will there be any attempt to reign in the visual noise? The last instance was pure flashing lights and effects. I have no idea what I was fighting - it was completely unviewable. Was there any need to go so overboard with the effects when if you read our feedback you should know how much your player base wants this reduced?

I also had a problem with all the flashing at the last instance. Could not see where I was or what I was fighting. I just loosed my minions, kept spamming my attack keys, and somehow beat it. Couldn't tell you what most of the creatures I was fighting even looked like. So my question is -- in a patch, can you turn down the flashing effects somewhat?

Thank you for taking questions! Overall, I LOVE the map and am enjoying the achievements and collections.

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Loved the episode, what was the motivation behind having the conflicting "emotions/personalities" of kralk in this episode?

also not related to the episode exactly, but is there any chance of a small change to hide the skyscale mastery line like the raid and griffons ones are until the mount is unlocked, that way we can skill gain xp and spirit shards in PoF maps as atm its all being wasted as we play the new map.Personally I tried to hold off exploring the new map as much as possible to keep an xp source available for after i got the mount and could earn xp again but with how long its going to take thats impossible so its all going to waste unfortunatly.

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I think the best and most concise way that I can ask my question is:

Will death be used in the Guild Wars 2 storyline as a lasting consequence or vehicle to drive a storyline forward, without it being diluted for the sake of another character's techno-babble; interrupted because it's 'taking too long in the story'; or bait-and-switched to mitigate fan outrage?

The perfect example of this is Eir and Braham, and how her death could've had lasting implications on Braham's arc. Instead, it feels like it's been poorly handled for a bit of 'edge' in LWS3. And then, essentially forgotten about until LWS4 E2, where we had an amazing moment with the Commander and Braham in a realm of death and decay. However, just as it was getting poignant and interesting, Taimi interrupted with her techno-babble and I personally feel that she ruined the moment. Since then, Braham's acted normally towards us, and nothing's been brought up as he's become a bit of comic relief and nothing more.

Additionally, Aurene's resurrection is the perfect example of a bait-and-switch, which seems to have been made for the purpose of mitigating the inevitable backlash of a portion of the community. By doing so, it reduced the connection between the player and Kralkatorrik, thus limiting his threat to the world because the death of Aurene became irrelevant within 5 minutes of loading the first instance.

I just have the viewpoint that you have all of the components to make an amazing storyline that satisfies the majority of people, but it's mish-mashed together at the end and spoils it for a large portion.

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