Hi, I've been playing on and off consistently from all the way back to guild wars 1. I know this is strictly a personal opinion but I really fell in love with the art style of guild wars. Just the log on screen I think is emblematic of the highest fidelity artwork I've seen for concept art in video games EVER. however sometimes I feel the world building and aesthetic designs in game especially of end game pve instanced content can really be under par to what it could be based on the concept art. Some of the new bosses look really cool (are also a well-designed encounter btw) and have ingenious visual FX and I guess the audio is pretty solid too although it is just background music so there's no stand out melody (Unique themes for bosses maybe?). As a critique, Kaineng Overlook has a really boring arena design. The Boss models are fine, but I find the palette for the area you're fighting in is really bland. The main arena is just a large rectangle with lots of grey and it's kind of depressing to look at. I recognize it may be visually cluttered to have a bright field to fight on with lots of visual ques from the battle but previous fights such as vale guardian with the trifecta of color mechanics or the slothasor mushroom field felt like it had really interactive environments. When designing bosses, I wish a lot more care would go into the scenery and environment so it would look more immersive and less like "this is a boss fight room". Dynamic environments are also cool and I really want to see what creativity the designers can come up with. Moving stages can be overtly complicated but I think changing the landscape dramatically during phases of a boss fight can create some really big crescendos in an encounter. In the Qadim fights, weaving from platform to platform can feel like fancy footwork but can be frustrating if you fall down. Compared to Kaineng Overlook, the only mobility in the map is taking a teleport to an even smaller grey rectangle which shrinking the size of the boss fight area is smart but it's just really not appealing to my eyes. I would just like to suggest the dev team not to rush out a strike or other high end instanced pve content without fleshing out the visual aesthetics so the bosses and the boss arenas look really intriguing to look at. Don't get me wrong, some bosses are very beautifully done but I'd like a more living color palette when designing fights. Actually grey platforms can work, too but the whole map has to be good. My favorite arena is Deimos because it's a reduced approach, just a small circle platform, but the lore of Saul and the prison like setting really felt haunting in a good way and I'd like future strikes to live up to that level of engrossing world building. Yes, playing strikes for a story component is cool but I think there's more to story building that just having a quest line run through the encounter. I think good instanced content can tell stories through the aesthetics of a boss and monster design, the environment you fight in which could be better right now and dynamic mobility so you're not just standing still doing damage (like Mursaat Overseer). I wish bosses were really thematic and Arena net created designs that were not just recycled tropes like big dragon or giant robot, which is why I thought the Deimos design was excellent. This is more a conceptual suggestion as opposed to specific problems but I think the arenas of strikes could use a little more life.
Hi, I've been playing on and off consistently from all the way back to guild wars 1. I know this is strictly a personal opinion but I really fell in love with the art style of guild wars. Just the log on screen I think is emblematic of the highest fidelity artwork I've seen for concept art in video games EVER. however sometimes I feel the world building and aesthetic designs in game especially of end game pve instanced content can really be under par to what it could be based on the concept art. Some of the new bosses look really cool (are also a well-designed encounter btw) and have ingenious visual FX and I guess the audio is pretty solid too although it is just background music so there's no stand out melody (Unique themes for bosses maybe?). As a critique, Kaineng Overlook has a really boring arena design. The Boss models are fine, but I find the palette for the area you're fighting in is really bland. The main arena is just a large rectangle with lots of grey and it's kind of depressing to look at. I recognize it may be visually cluttered to have a bright field to fight on with lots of visual ques from the battle but previous fights such as vale guardian with the trifecta of color mechanics or the slothasor mushroom field felt like it had really interactive environments. When designing bosses, I wish a lot more care would go into the scenery and environment so it would look more immersive and less like "this is a boss fight room". Dynamic environments are also cool and I really want to see what creativity the designers can come up with. Moving stages can be overtly complicated but I think changing the landscape dramatically during phases of a boss fight can create some really big crescendos in an encounter. In the Qadim fights, weaving from platform to platform can feel like fancy footwork but can be frustrating if you fall down. Compared to Kaineng Overlook, the only mobility in the map is taking a teleport to an even smaller grey rectangle which shrinking the size of the boss fight area is smart but it's just really not appealing to my eyes. I would just like to suggest the dev team not to rush out a strike or other high end instanced pve content without fleshing out the visual aesthetics so the bosses and the boss arenas look really intriguing to look at. Don't get me wrong, some bosses are very beautifully done but I'd like a more living color palette when designing fights. Actually grey platforms can work, too but the whole map has to be good. My favorite arena is Deimos because it's a reduced approach, just a small circle platform, but the lore of Saul and the prison like setting really felt haunting in a good way and I'd like future strikes to live up to that level of engrossing world building. Yes, playing strikes for a story component is cool but I think there's more to story building that just having a quest line run through the encounter. I think good instanced content can tell stories through the aesthetics of a boss and monster design, the environment you fight in which could be better right now and dynamic mobility so you're not just standing still doing damage (like Mursaat Overseer). I wish bosses were really thematic and Arena net created designs that were not just recycled tropes like big dragon or giant robot, which is why I thought the Deimos design was excellent. This is more a conceptual suggestion as opposed to specific problems but I think the arenas of strikes could use a little more life.
