New Kaineng [Lore discussion]

[EdwinLi.1284]

The trailer showing off New Kaineng.

 

As I said before, I like the design choice of having it be a mix of old and new as it gives the feel of going to a place in China that did modernize but still maintain a lot of its old building and culture while seeing development into the new technology. It shows how while certain people are accepting of the advancement, they still want to maintain certain aspect of their culture from older times.

 

It will be interesting how will they show the different opinions of Canthans involving accepting the changes of modernization while showing a side that prefer maintaining their more older culture. 

 

Also, I see a lot of potential outfits and armor sets in this trailer as well.

 

Edited February 3, 2022 by EdwinLi.1284

[Fueki.4753]

I wish they had held back with that toxic green diarrhoea. Having more than half of the map splattered with that simply is too much.

Without it (or at least with drastically less of it), New Kaineng City could have had potential.

Edited February 3, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[SunRoamer.5103]

These shots definitely look better than the ones in the Gameplay Features trailer from Monday, so I guess the weird angles were largely to blame for the disjointed feeling it gave off. I do wonder if a lot of the shadow maps are missing for now - the trees tend to glow brighter than the Jade tech, even at night.

I want to know whether this map will have some more slum-like areas like we knew from Factions, constructed more in the style of the Zephyrite Sanctum for example, but way denser. If not, I do hope the next Living Story season will take us to a different part of Kaineng eventually, where it's more "Old Kaineng" with sewers and slums. I would also like for there to be some narrower and claustrophobic areas - so far everything looked surprisingly spacious and less vertical than I'd hoped. GW1's Kaineng had some incredible height and depth.

Something that surprised me was that we could see bits of Echovald forst in the trailer. In the Echovald Wilds livestream we saw two map portals as far as I remember - one towards the Jade Sea around GW1's Jade Quarry and another to Arborstone. There might be another portal towards the north (around Aspenwood Gate (Luxon)) or west of the map, or New Kaineng and Echovald Wilds aren't directly connected. It's also possible that we travel into the Echovald through Arborstone. In any case, seeing the trees in the trailer makes it very unlikely that the New Kaineng city map will be located close to the northern bits of the city, so no Raisu Palace - unless we get a very long map. Or, of course, they've managed to increase size limitations again; afaik the desolation was already pushing the limits previously.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's live stream!

[EdwinLi.1284]

4 minutes ago, SunRoamer.5103 said:

These shots definitely look better than the ones in the Gameplay Features trailer from Monday, so I guess the weird angles were largely to blame for the disjointed feeling it gave off. I do wonder if a lot of the shadow maps are missing for now - the trees tend to glow brighter than the Jade tech, even at night.

I want to know whether this map will have some more slum-like areas like we knew from Factions, constructed more in the style of the Zephyrite Sanctum for example, but way denser. If not, I do hope the next Living Story season will take us to a different part of Kaineng eventually, where it's more "Old Kaineng" with sewers and slums. I would also like for there to be some narrower and claustrophobic areas - so far everything looked surprisingly spacious and less vertical than I'd hoped. GW1's Kaineng had some incredible height and depth.

Something that surprised me was that we could see bits of Echovald forst in the trailer. In the Echovald Wilds livestream we saw two map portals as far as I remember - one towards the Jade Sea around GW1's Jade Quarry and another to Arborstone. There might be another portal towards the north (around Aspenwood Gate (Luxon)) or west of the map, or New Kaineng and Echovald Wilds aren't directly connected. It's also possible that we travel into the Echovald through Arborstone. In any case, seeing the trees in the trailer makes it very unlikely that the New Kaineng city map will be located close to the northern bits of the city, so no Raisu Palace - unless we get a very long map. Or, of course, they've managed to increase size limitations again; afaik the desolation was already pushing the limits previously.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's live stream!

Considering the city still follows the build over the old part of the city, I expect we may see slumbs and bits of old Kaineng under the newer parts of the city. Effort to improve Kaineng has never really renovated areas that are far from the Palace even during GW1 but just built over them like sweeping dust under rugs to hide how dirty the place really is.

Edited February 3, 2022 by EdwinLi.1284

[Randulf.7614]

Looks suitably maze like whilst bringing something totally new. Really love the look and feel of it. Lots of little nooks and crannies like those enclosed spiral stairs and alleyways to explore. 

[SunRoamer.5103]

5 hours ago, EdwinLi.1284 said:

Considering the city still follows the build over the old part of the city, I expect we may see slumbs and bits of old Kaineng under the newer parts of the city. Effort to improve Kaineng has never really renovated areas that are far from the Palace even during GW1 but just built over them like sweeping dust under rugs to hide how dirty the place really is.

What we see though is on the same level as the water, so you can't exactly go "under" that (except have sewers/caves, but while also an aesthetic from GW1 that's still different from the prevalent slums of old Kaineng). Moreover, most of the base structures we see are made from stone (with wooden parts included and/or grafted to the structure in more or less convincing ways), so it's highly unlikely that these stone plazas and alleys and skyscrapers are supported by an underbelly of wooden shanty-towns.

Probably there was flooding due to Zhaitan even in Cantha which might have destroyed a lot of the old slums/flooded lower lying areas which would explain why it was rebuilt as more of a canal city of sorts. Rewatching the trailer, it feels like the further from the palace (?) we get, the less water is present and the more claustrophobic the city gets - the beginning shots are relatively spacious, and the cityscape, while impressive in scale, doesn't tower as highly as it does in later shots. Especially the upwards tilted view of the square at night after the text reads "but change is imminent" gives off quite an intimidating feeling; I don't think we can even see the sky, despite the angle.

In any case, we will see more tomorrow or at the latest on the 28th!

Edited February 3, 2022 by SunRoamer.5103

[EdwinLi.1284]

6 hours ago, SunRoamer.5103 said:

What we see though is on the same level as the water, so you can't exactly go "under" that (except have sewers/caves, but while also an aesthetic from GW1 that's still different from the prevalent slums of old Kaineng). Moreover, most of the base structures we see are made from stone (with wooden parts included and/or grafted to the structure in more or less convincing ways), so it's highly unlikely that these stone plazas and alleys and skyscrapers are supported by an underbelly of wooden shanty-towns.

Probably there was flooding due to Zhaitan even in Cantha which might have destroyed a lot of the old slums/flooded lower lying areas which would explain why it was rebuilt as more of a canal city of sorts. Rewatching the trailer, it feels like the further from the palace (?) we get, the less water is present and the more claustrophobic the city gets - the beginning shots are relatively spacious, and the cityscape, while impressive in scale, doesn't tower as highly as it does in later shots. Especially the upwards tilted view of the square at night after the text reads "but change is imminent" gives off quite an intimidating feeling; I don't think we can even see the sky, despite the angle.

In any case, we will see more tomorrow or at the latest on the 28th!

As I said, even back in GW1 the areas of Kaineng that normally goes through renovation is the areas around the Palace. Areas farther away from the Palace tend to be the locations that they focus on just building over the old parts of the city. 

 

A lot of the focus in this trailer appears more focused on Kaineng Center which is the location just right infront of the Palace. We should see the building over the old aspect of Kaineng again once we go more farther from Kaineng Center once again in GW2. 

[Teratus.2859]

I'm not a fan of the cyberpunky style Jade tech but it does seem like for the most part it has been used sparingly and a decent amount of the old Canthan architecture remains common enough to avoid a visual cyberpunk disaster which would have really hurt my opinion of this region in Gw2 lol
I really hate cyberpunk as a style and an artform.. it's just so repugnant and ugly to me and immensely off putting.

I'm still going to reserve judgement until I get in game and see it with my own eyes but so far it seems like Cantha hasn't been ruined by any modern development efforts and that is something I am very happy about.
But again, until I see it in game I'm not going to give any thumbs up or down on it.

As far as Kaineng goes though I am curious to see how much of the city will be accessible, In Gw1 this place was colossal!! expanding out into tons of different maps with different areas like rooftops, sewers, slums and of course the main city and the palace.
I hope to see all of those areas are included in the redesign and to be completely honest the one I am most looking forward to exploring is actually the sewers.

The sewers of Kaineng have some pretty great potential, aside from being massive underground areas of the city to explore there is the potential for criminal factions, hostile wildlife, underwater areas to explore and all sorts of Canthan society's undesirables to reside down there.
It's potentially a very interesting location to explore and something I would particularly love to see would actually be a secret society of friendly Afflicted survivors that have managed to survive all these years down in the sewers evading Canthan authorities and regaining some sense of the people/animals etc they once were before they were mutated into abominations by Shiro.

Honestly I would love to see the Afflicted become one of our new ally factions in End of dragons, much like the Awakened and even the Flame Legion became despite originally being enemies.
But I doubt any of them did survive the purges.. but if they did and they are friendly now that they have free will that would be pretty awesome ^^

[Tails.9372]

The jade mechs are going out of control while also having the same darkish aura effect we've seen at the end of the previous trailer. This could mean that the magic inside of the dragon jade is running out of control or even starts developing "its own mind" like the magic that tormented Kralkatorrik did.

[Narcemus.1348]

7 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

The sewers of Kaineng have some pretty great potential, aside from being massive underground areas of the city to explore there is the potential for criminal factions, hostile wildlife, underwater areas to explore and all sorts of Canthan society's undesirables to reside down there.
It's potentially a very interesting location to explore and something I would particularly love to see would actually be a secret society of friendly Afflicted survivors that have managed to survive all these years down in the sewers evading Canthan authorities and regaining some sense of the people/animals etc they once were before they were mutated into abominations by Shiro.

Honestly I would love to see the Afflicted become one of our new ally factions in End of dragons, much like the Awakened and even the Flame Legion became despite originally being enemies.
But I doubt any of them did survive the purges.. but if they did and they are friendly now that they have free will that would be pretty awesome ^^

Personally, if anything, I would hope that the return of any afflicted would explain the little info drop at the end of the purge during Winds of Change that the afflicted that remained we're getting bigger and more powerful. It was never really explained why this was happening (unless I missed some details), and it could be fun to learn why that is.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

Aesthetically its a fair bit too similar to the likes of Blade And Soul for my liking, but at least it doesn't seem to look like a Cyberpunk style, which I guess is something.

I just still can't get excited for it.

[SunRoamer.5103]

Overall I really enjoyed the livestream. Some of the things I noted about the location of the map and how spacious it felt were explained, and the three standout revelations for me were:

1. Old Kaineng City seems to have been entirely destroyed by the tidal wave caused by Zhaitan (somehow wreaking more destruction in Cantha than in geographically much closer Tyria and Elona - although I guess Elona was largely protected by the angle it's positioned at relative to Orr). This explains why it was rebuilt in the way we see it nowadays, although in a way it should have become even more cramped rather than less so, but who knows, maybe the "Zhaitan disaster" solved their overpopulation issues in the cruellest of ways.
    
2. New Kaineng City is "further south". The ruins of Old Kaineng that the livestream started in were said by Indigo to be in the northeasternmost part of the map (we also see her motioning her hands towards her upper right, so it's unlikely she misspoke), and afterwards they enter the city through the Nahpui Lab. Weirdly enough, its "sister lab" to the south will be the Sunjiang Lab - the Sunjiang district in GW1 was east of Nahpui quarters, so we'll have to see how exactly this lines up. It was also mentioned that lands previously not settled by Canthan humans were then acquired to construct at least parts of New Kaineng City, which could be GW1's Pongmei Valley, Qingkai Mountain or the unnamed mountain range in between the Echovald and the parts of Old Kaineng further south along the coastline (that we'd never visited in GW1). Also explains why we could see bits of the Echovald in yesterday's trailer. All of this information combined allows us to somewhat locate the new map relative to GW1, and it seems that what we get in GW2 will actually mostly cover parts we as players never got to explore in GW1. This possibly allows for all maps to line up quite nicely - Shing Jae in the west, New Kaineng City directly east of it along the coastline, then the Echovald wilds and finally the Jade Sea. I wonder if everything north of the map will actually be entirely flooded, meaning we will never get to explore the old Raisu Palace, Tahnnakai Temple and so on. In-game world maps previously discovered did show some serious changes to the Canthan coastline, after all...
    
3. There will actually be a large Unchained presence in Kaineng. We'd previously seen Orrian gorillas and Canthan guards wielding Orrian weapons, so now we know why. I do like this, as it allows us to follow up on Zhaitan lore, and it's interesting to see what happens to dragon minions long after their masters died. If anything, I now wish there had been some Unchained presence and lore in Path of Fire (Palawa experimenting on Unchained, trying to become their new master for example), but I also understand that just before then we'd explored Siren's Landing. This also really explained some of the driving force behind changes to Canthan society that we hadn't expected, such as the re-integration of tengu.

Sadly this seems to mean "no slums", at least not in the very unique style of GW1's Kaineng. Also, no sewers it seems, as Connor mentions that they haven't really thought about how sewage is dealt with (they even had the iconic dragon-sewer pipes in the very first EoD teaser, but obviously the scenes shown at the time weren't really representative of modern day Cantha and more about its past).

As a personal nitpick, some of the architectural and urban designs felt kind of nonsensical, but maybe Cantha just has bad urban planners who only do big and impractical (not like we don't construct some pretty stupid stuff in the real world ourselves).

On 2/3/2022 at 4:59 PM, SunRoamer.5103 said:

I want to know whether this map will have some more slum-like areas like we knew from Factions, constructed more in the style of the Zephyrite Sanctum for example, but way denser. If not, I do hope the next Living Story season will take us to a different part of Kaineng eventually, where it's more "Old Kaineng" with sewers and slums. I would also like for there to be some narrower and claustrophobic areas - so far everything looked surprisingly spacious and less vertical than I'd hoped. GW1's Kaineng had some incredible height and depth.

Something that surprised me was that we could see bits of Echovald forst in the trailer. In the Echovald Wilds livestream we saw two map portals as far as I remember - one towards the Jade Sea around GW1's Jade Quarry and another to Arborstone. There might be another portal towards the north (around Aspenwood Gate (Luxon)) or west of the map, or New Kaineng and Echovald Wilds aren't directly connected. It's also possible that we travel into the Echovald through Arborstone. In any case, seeing the trees in the trailer makes it very unlikely that the New Kaineng city map will be located close to the northern bits of the city, so no Raisu Palace - unless we get a very long map. Or, of course, they've managed to increase size limitations again; afaik the desolation was already pushing the limits previously.

Edited February 4, 2022 by SunRoamer.5103
Formatting

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

52 minutes ago, SunRoamer.5103 said:

New Kaineng City is "further south". The ruins of Old Kaineng that the livestream started in were said by Indigo to be in the northeasternmost part of the map (we also see her motioning her hands towards her upper right, so it's unlikely she misspoke), and afterwards they enter the city through the Nahpui Lab. Weirdly enough, its "sister lab" to the south will be the Sunjiang Lab - the Sunjiang district in GW1 was east of Nahpui quarters, so we'll have to see how exactly this lines up. It was also mentioned that lands previously not settled by Canthan humans were then acquired to construct at least parts of New Kaineng City, which could be GW1's Pongmei Valley, Qingkai Mountain or the unnamed mountain range in between the Echovald and the parts of Old Kaineng further south along the coastline (that we'd never visited in GW1). Also explains why we could see bits of the Echovald in yesterday's trailer.

This is pretty interesting news. Leaves open the old Kaineng City area for a LWS6 map.

[voltaicbore.8012]

36 minutes ago, Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

This is pretty interesting news. Leaves open the old Kaineng City area for a LWS6 map.

This possibility crossed my mind as well when they described the location of Old Kaineng in today's stream.

 

1 hour ago, SunRoamer.5103 said:

As a personal nitpick, some of the architectural and urban designs felt kind of nonsensical, but maybe Cantha just has bad urban planners who only do big and impractical (not like we don't construct some pretty stupid stuff in the real world ourselves).

I'm hoping some of that... maybe Bauhaus or even brutalist-inspired design will be somewhat masked by having more NPCs and assets out and about. And yeah, a lot of our IRL cities incorporate highly questionable design choices that have not aged well.

As for the sewage, I hope they at least make reference to it in-game and show us entry points by the time EoD launches, and maybe they can either add instanced sewer content (or just flat out open up that level of the map) in later updates. Not having reached Cantha yet in my playthrough of GW1, I myself don't feel particularly attached to the idea, but I hear it might be a nice throwback for players who do remember that from (what is now) Old Kaineng.

[SunRoamer.5103]

An approximation of where all four maps (plus guild hall and Arborstone) might be. Dimensions are obviously too large, but I just wanted to roughly pinpoint in which area they might be. Thanks to that_shaman (as usual) and @astralegend (maybe @Astralbien.9461?).

In astralegend's mapping of Echovald Wilds he put the Mori village to the east of Lake Lutgardis, but now I wonder whether it might be to its west, making it be on the border of Echovald and Kaineng. IIRC the Echovald stream mentioned tengu helping folks with passage through/into the forest, plus the Harbinger mentor previewed during the livestream today talked about Mori Village being "not too far from here" - here being the ruins of Old Kaineng.

Looking at the map again now, I'm also wondering whether New Kaineng City could be moved even further south, meaning the newly settled areas would actually include the eastern banks of whatever that river down there is called. The Nahpui Lab could be a good ways south of the old Nahpui District then, but still adjacent enough to warrant the name.

(Is it not possible to integrate images directly into a post any more?)

 

Edited February 5, 2022 by SunRoamer.5103

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

12 hours ago, The Greyhawk.9107 said:

Aesthetically its a fair bit too similar to the likes of Blade And Soul for my liking, but at least it doesn't seem to look like a Cyberpunk style, which I guess is something.

I just still can't get excited for it.

I only caught the second half of the stream, and aside from the accidental kitten killing, it managed to kill what hype the gameplay stream created for me.

Still too much neon for the worldbuilding, IMHO.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

3 hours ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

This possibility crossed my mind as well when they described the location of Old Kaineng in today's stream.

If they stick with IBS style two-parter maps theres easily enough room in Cantha proper for most of a LW season, and maybe one map off on like the Battle Isles

[EdwinLi.1284]

I am curious how will they make Old Kaineng. If everything new been focused on the south part of Kaineng then it is partly expect that Old Kaineng may look like a ruined city ofthe GW1 we know and maybe see a bit of people just living in ruined or badly repaired versions of the building we once knew in GW1.

Edited February 5, 2022 by EdwinLi.1284

[Narcemus.1348]

I had loads of love for this expansion from the Shing Jea stream, the Jade Sea stream, and mostly the Echovald stream, but this one killed so much of my excitement for the game. I wanted to revisit Cantha for nostalgia for my absolute favorite game, and they start the stream with (paraphrasing) the old Kaineng you knew and love was destroyed by Zhaitan and they have built a new city. I am so tired of this trope they have used and reused over and over again. Old Guild Wars location players are excited to revisit = sunk beneath water/branded/ruined with inquest tech/tarred in Elona. Because of this I am fully in the camp of let's just visit new places from here on out. I am tired of seeing ruins of places I loved. I've done enough of that.

 

Before people fight me on this, I'm just stating an opinion. Other people can have other opinions and that is valid. I am not claiming that the city being destroyed by tsunami is nonsensical or impractical. And I am not claiming that there are no locations that exist that don't meet those criteria. I'm just tired of them deciding that new and flashy is always better than the nostalgia that some of their player base is wishing for.

[Teratus.2859]

1 hour ago, Narcemus.1348 said:

I had loads of love for this expansion from the Shing Jea stream, the Jade Sea stream, and mostly the Echovald stream, but this one killed so much of my excitement for the game. I wanted to revisit Cantha for nostalgia for my absolute favorite game, and they start the stream with (paraphrasing) the old Kaineng you knew and love was destroyed by Zhaitan and they have built a new city. I am so tired of this trope they have used and reused over and over again.

Zhaitan raised a literal country out of the ocean.. it's only natural to think that would cause far reaching effects lol

Naturally the world is going to change in 250 years, if you went back in time only 50-60 years years from the present day you probably wouldn't even recognise the world you were in.
Hell 50 years ago some Tv networks were still in the process of upgrading to broadcasting in colour and video game consoles were only just coming into existence with the Magnavox Odyssey.. and most people couldn't hope to afford one of those back then either.

Most gamers today have probably never even heard of the Magnavox Odyssey lol

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Zhaitan raised a literal country out of the ocean.. it's only natural to think that would cause far reaching effects lol

That_Shaman has even pointed out how the direction of the tidal wave makes sense also

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FK1LQ_PWQAAk9iC?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

 

Edited February 6, 2022 by Sajuuk Khar.1509

[Narcemus.1348]

Yes, there are many places where the world changes like crazy. I understand this, I lived through a mostly no computer to a computer rich existence and have watched as things grew and expanded. I have also lived and seen parts of the world where things have hardly changed. I lived in a city in Italy with a cathedral hundreds of years old surrounded by rich traditions and culture. I never claimed that it was illogical for this to be what it is, even when Cantha is far more scientifically advanced than we even are today. I merely mourned the death of my hopes for the region and voiced my opinion.

Edited February 7, 2022 by Narcemus.1348
Mistype

[Teletric.3821]

I am mainly concerned about the size of the map and also how it connects to Echovald. I hope it's not just explained away through some giant tunnel or that we get to Echovald via airship because stuff like that really takes away from the exploration aspect for me.

That being said, I think the map looks great and the direction they took with the design makes sense. 

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

35 minutes ago, Teletric.3821 said:

I am mainly concerned about the size of the map

Probably around Crystal Oasis sized, but with the city taking up the whole map. IIRC they said the PoF maps were pretty much as big as they could make the maps in GW2.

[Tyson.5160]

I was a little sceptical of this tsunami business sinking Kaineng City but after looking at the science it makes sense. The fact that Tsunami waves can travel 800 kms an hour is insane to me, as well as throwing in hordes of Risen in there. That level of force would have been devastating to the Canthan shore line and as other people pointed out, would have made short work of the rushed shanty town that Kaineng was. Plus it’s ties the first dragon we fight with the last elder dragon we fight in a nice full circle of the elder dragon story.