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Skyscale Guild Chat this Friday–leave your questions for the devs here!


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  • ArenaNet Staff

Hi all, we're doing our in-depth episode about the skyscale mount this Friday, and we're going to answer some questions from you all on the show.

A note: This is for specific questions regarding skyscale design that you would like the dev guests to answer during the show. If you have general feedback about acquisition, we've got a post about that and there's a discussion happening in this thread that you can join.

Here are our dev guests:

  • Steven Stadnicki, Content Programmer
  • Joel Helmich, Gameplay Programmer
  • Joe Clark, Senior Sound Designer
  • Kate Pfeilschiefter, Creature Art Lead
  • Pete Egbers, Senior Artist
  • Brian Walter, Senior Animator

I'll be getting these in front of the devs so they can choose the ones that they're able to answer from their work on the skyscale, and we'll get to as many of them as we have time for on the show!

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My personal view point is the mount does not feel like I imagined it would. It does not seem very responsive like you would think a flying mount would be. Will there be any adjustments to the overall mechanics of the mount?

Such as:Vertical and Horizontal movement speed?The rate the "Flight Juice" is consumed?Any possibility that we can get a wall grapple key so we can decide when to attach to a wall?Will there be an easier way to lower the mount outside of using the "1" key?

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Lore-wise, where did the Skyscales come from? We have seen that they appeared fully adult (and then died of old age, etc). But what birthed them? Was it magic from the Mists entering Tyria directly? Was it the impact of Aurene's magic on her grandfather? Was it the magic seeping from Kralk? Or something else?

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Not to get a lot into the details of the acquisition but why not start it when we first encounter them rather than at the end of the ep? It would not only make better sense from a lore POV but would avoid RL issues that are preventing people from being able to finish the episode (flashing lights and going WAY too high, even if the latter is simulated).

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@"Excursion.9752" said:My personal view point is the mount does not feel like I imagined it would. It does not seem very responsive like you would think a flying mount would be. Will there be any adjustments to the overall mechanics of the mount?

Such as:Vertical and Horizontal movement speed?The rate the "Flight Juice" is consumed?Any possibility that we can get a wall grapple key so we can decide when to attach to a wall?Will there be an easier way to lower the mount outside of using the "1" key?

You could use the 'Decrease Altitude' key (default 'C'), also know as 'Mount Ability 2', rather than the Skill 1 key.

It's much faster.

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@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

@"Excursion.9752" said:My personal view point is the mount does not feel like I imagined it would. It does not seem very responsive like you would think a flying mount would be. Will there be any adjustments to the overall mechanics of the mount?

Such as:Vertical and Horizontal movement speed?The rate the "Flight Juice" is consumed?Any possibility that we can get a wall grapple key so we can decide when to attach to a wall?Will there be an easier way to lower the mount outside of using the "1" key?

You could use the 'Decrease Altitude' key (default 'C'), also know as 'Mount Ability 2', rather than the Skill 1 key.

It's much faster.

I say, give us Hotkey Swim-Down as a 'Decrease Altitude'. I have Space key as 'Swim-Up', and it is also Altitude Increase for Skyscale.

One question though, not excatly about Skyscales, byt related to them. After collection completed and mount unlocked. Why you removed Gorrik and Fledgling Skyscales from the stable?

Sun's Refuge supposed to be upgradable Zone, as story progresses. I suggest to bring back Fledgling Skyscales and acitivities ( Hide and Seek, Play Catch ) as daily events for some extra MasteryXP.

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Artist question: Are the similarities between the appearances of the skyscale and the griffon intentional, or a by-product of them sharing the same rigging?

Gameplay question: How do you 'balance' mount movement? Skyscale feels really slow and Wall Launch doesn't feel very strong.

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On the previous Skyscale preview, you went into a lot of depth explaining the canopy you gave the Skyscale and the idea behind keeping it a valid mount without invaliding other mounts. This I can understand.

However, the Skyscale is never a better option than a Griffon or Springer for height ascension or air travel, nor is it ever a better option than the Raptor or Jackal for land travel, and it will never be a better option than the Skimmer over water or hazardous surfaces. Would the team consider revisiting the mechanics of the Skyscale to make it either: a more valid mount option for travel across a map or a less efficient mount in terms of speed and travel efficiently, but more flexible for exploration and flashy? On a personal level the first one feels like it would be harder to do without somehow invalidating a current mount, which was your obvious goal to begin with, so would the team honestly consider altering the rate at which the Skyscale loses altitude and expanding the canopy it can fly in so that it still does not replace any other mount as efficient travel but does feel like it's truly a strong, powerful dragon with flight capabilities that, rather than designed for efficient Place A to Place B travel, is designed for exploring Tyria in a whole new and unique way?

Additionally, the Skyscale's problem of not being a jack-of-all-trades (as it is good at generally nothing by comparison to the others) is somewhat exemplified by the fact that the wall latch seems far too liberal with what it considers a wall. Several times I would land on something on a Springer or a Griffon and the mount would come to a stand, regenerate stamina and allow me to continue, but the Skyscale will wall latch onto that same area instead of landing; this impacts the already clunky feel of the mount, as landing is part of its traversal scheme right now so that it can regenerate a new canopy based on the new position it stands at. Could the team answer why this might happen, and would it be possible for them to adjust this mechanic so that the Skyscale can more reliably land, given how important landing is to current travel with the mount?

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I think this is not friendly to new players as well as casual players and even PVP/W.Why add a lot of jumping puzzles?Why do you need a lot of 250 in Season 4 Tokens *6????So many demands are very unfriendly to many playersIt’s so much to do with it. Why don’t you show it in advance to the player to handle some of the tokens in advance?

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Are you considering giving the skyscale a little bit more flight speed? Maybe that it flies faster then a griffon in his normal flight mode but never as fast as a full speed griffon? This way the griffon is faster if you can use the is abilities and have the necessary height while the skyscale is a better choice on flatter terrain without heights?

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Thanks for the interesting quest chain for the Skyscale! A lot of it is exactly what the game needs more of and it's in many ways brilliantly designed, even if many of us, who found out the requirements step after step were quite unpleasantly surprised. It's a lot more logical for future Skyscale questers though, who can look up the requirements from the wiki and prepare while waiting & feeding. That's way better in the long run.

A question:With the help of invisible walls and no-fly- & no-mount-zones, which already exist and many have already been successfully placed to prevent the griffon from breaking the maps, jumping puzzles etc., what actually prevents the skyscale from being a fully flying mount? Are there actually still many things a fully flying mount could break in the game, considering we already have the springer, the griffon and high places?

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Since you are changing the collection and reducing the overall time gates, does this mean that each future collection development will slowly go towards instant gratification or many "throw gold and be done with it" elements? Because some players will always want it asap, without any efforts and these players will always complain. If yes (or at least some of the collections), don't you think that this will ruin the overall feeling of the game and even add some P2W elements?

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@"briggah.7910" said:why add jumping puzzles to the collections. not everyone is a fan of them

I don't want to derail or anything, but you only have to do 2 of them normally because mounts allow you skip most of them entirely.

And to the person who asked for a way to descend: Pressing "C" apparently does that. The drift key on the beetle.

Hope that helps!

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Why did the game designers think it was a good idea to force players to get 250 stacks of every LWS4 currency to finish the last step of Skyscale?Did you realize how much time it would take for a new player (like myself) to farm that insane amount of materials? Shouldn't 50 or 100 pieces for each one have been a better choice overall?

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