Daniel Dociu is back at NCsoft as Art Leader and attended the Gw2 community event in Gamescom 2022. Is he back for the new Arenanet project?

[Izzy.2951]

For someone that didnt know. Daniel Dociu was one of the main artist of Gw1 & Gw2. Hes back since 3 months ago in NCsoft (not specified if Arenanet). But he attended the Gw2 community event in Gamescom 2022, going from USA to Cologne (Germany). I guess that was not only to visit friends.

Is he probably involved in the new Arenanet project? Gw3 maybe? would you like a posible Gw3 or would you prefer a new MMO and Arenanet to mantain gw1/gw2 and a new different mmo?

- Article: https://blog.ncsoft.com/eng-we-news-daniel-interview-220720/

- Daniel Dociu Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-dociu-456a223/

Plus he went with the Gw2 team to the gamescom to see fans and answer interviews

 

 

Edited August 28, 2022 by Izzy.2951

[Kori Jenkins.9017]

I really don't think GW3 ever gets made with the industry as it is, heavily favoring low-effort live-service games. The upfront cost of an MMO is staggering compared to less expensive and more profitable games that can be made. Compare how much work is involved in a Living World story patch to that of the average Fortnite update. A handful of skins in Fortnite vs an entire zone, voice acting work, armor and weapon skins, mastery implementations, narrative work, etc. 

 

To put it plainly, there's a reason new MMO releases nearly ceased after Wildstar. There's a reason Valorant, League of Legends, GTA Online, Fortnite, etc. are smashing successes. The genre isn't overwhelmingly popular right now. The novelty of interacting with other human beings online has been replaced entirely by social media. What was once unique is no longer that. 

[kettering.6823]

6 minutes ago, Kori Jenkins.9017 said:

The novelty of interacting with other human beings online has been replaced entirely by social media. What was once unique is no longer that. 

kitten. I never thought about it that way. Kind of depresses me lol. 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I'm not sure how much he is/will be involved with ArenaNet.

Specifically, I will be identifying certain areas where the game art of Korean games can be adapted and tailored to the sensibility of Western gamers. This is just one component that can be divided into multiple areas of actions. I will contribute in hands-on art work to help inspire and challenge teams, to raise the quality and originality of artwork, increasing its Wester appeal.

[Izzy.2951]

8 minutes ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

I'm not sure how much he is/will be involved with ArenaNet.

Specifically, I will be identifying certain areas where the game art of Korean games can be adapted and tailored to the sensibility of Western gamers. This is just one component that can be divided into multiple areas of actions. I will contribute in hands-on art work to help inspire and challenge teams, to raise the quality and originality of artwork, increasing its Wester appeal.

Well if traveling from USA to Germany with the Gw2 developers, to meet fans and answer interviews about Gw2 etc is not involing, then idk what involving is then.

 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

🤷‍♂️

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

29 minutes ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

I'm not sure how much he is/will be involved with ArenaNet.

Specifically, I will be identifying certain areas where the game art of Korean games can be adapted and tailored to the sensibility of Western gamers. This is just one component that can be divided into multiple areas of actions. I will contribute in hands-on art work to help inspire and challenge teams, to raise the quality and originality of artwork, increasing its Wester appeal.

Given the major Korean influence in End of Dragons (especially the art and music), its likely ArenaNet will continue down this path for the game at least for a while, so its not unlikely as you may think.

[Ashantara.8731]

48 minutes ago, Kori Jenkins.9017 said:

The novelty of interacting with other human beings online has been replaced entirely by social media. What was once unique is no longer that. 

You cannot compare the fun of playing an immersive game together with the silly illusions of social media which serves the majority of people who use it to shape a false image of themselves.

I rather share laughs with strangers in a game than waste my time talking to so-called "friends" on social media and share nonsense memes etc. 😄

1 hour ago, Izzy.2951 said:

For someone that didnt know. Daniel Dociu was one of the main artist of Gw1 & Gw2. Hes back since 3 months ago in NCsoft (not specified if Arenanet). But he attended the Gw2 community event in Gamescom 2022, going from USA to Cologne (Germany). I guess that was not only to visit friends.

Is he probably involved in the new Arenanet project? Gw3 maybe? would you like a posible Gw3 or would you prefer a new MMO and Arenanet to mantain gw1/gw2 and a new different mmo?

- Article: https://blog.ncsoft.com/eng-we-news-daniel-interview-220720/

- Daniel Dociu Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-dociu-456a223/

Plus he went with the Gw2 team to the gamescom to see fans and answer interviews

Thanks for sharing the news!

I sure hope he will be in charge of future GW2 designs, because a lot in EoD looked awful (then again, the artwork looked good, only the in-game execution looked nothing like it).
 

Edited August 28, 2022 by Ashantara.8731

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

11 minutes ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

Given the major Korean influence in End of Dragons (especially the art and music), its likely ArenaNet will continue down this path for the game at least for a while, so its not unlikely as you may think.

Doesn't make Guild Wars 2 a Korean game, but the interview is a few months old; anything could happen.

[Izzy.2951]

43 minutes ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Doesn't make Guild Wars 2 a Korean game, but the interview is a few months old; anything could happen.

Im curious how do you have 21.528 posts in the forum, the new recent version has only been up for idk 4-5 years? 

I would also like to share some concept art he did for Guild Wars Factions:

https://i.imgur.com/UP0KVsA.jpg (yeah forum doesnt show the image directly)

 

Edited August 29, 2022 by Izzy.2951

[Yttris.2945]

1 hour ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

I'm not sure how much he is/will be involved with ArenaNet.

Specifically, I will be identifying certain areas where the game art of Korean games can be adapted and tailored to the sensibility of Western gamers. This is just one component that can be divided into multiple areas of actions. I will contribute in hands-on art work to help inspire and challenge teams, to raise the quality and originality of artwork, increasing its Wester appeal.

Sarcastic me thinks this means "We're going to make a game with pretty graphics in a broad effort to distract from industry-current monetization methods".

Give confused emotes please.

[Izzy.2951]

7 minutes ago, Yttris.2945 said:

Sarcastic me thinks this means "We're going to make a game with pretty graphics in a broad effort to distract from industry-current monetization methods".

Give confused emotes please.

I think that gw2 monetization methods and ing methods are x100 better than most of other MMOs. It is just cosmetic and quality of life stuff, theres no P2W, you dont get rekt every major patch cos ur gear is useless and so on...

I dont know why people criticizes it so much. Have you tried other games? Idk a simple example of the same company: Aion, Lineage, B&S. They are fully P2W, dont respect ur time, dont base on skill, make you useless and grind every major patch.

PD: The only thing i could see is the build templates, which is an insult to players. The rest...

Edited August 29, 2022 by Izzy.2951

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

10 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

the sensibility of Western gamers

yikes...

Edited August 29, 2022 by Arianth Moonlight.6453

[Danikat.8537]

10 hours ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

Given the major Korean influence in End of Dragons (especially the art and music), its likely ArenaNet will continue down this path for the game at least for a while, so its not unlikely as you may think.

That's likely to be specific to Cantha, since it's always been Asian themed. In GW1 it was a bit more of a mash-up of cultures, but rumour has it that got negative reactions from some people (possibly at NCSoft, but I don't think it's ever been confirmed who it was or what exactly they said).

It seems like they decided to go for a more cohesive theme for GW2 and I suppose for a company with a Korean publisher that was the obvious choice. (Or maybe they wanted to distinguish it from various Chinese and Japanese themed games with have been popular recently.)

Either way I wouldn't expect as much of an overt influence in other parts of Tyria which use other inspirations. 

[Astralporing.1957]

Notice, that he's now at the NCSoft, not at Anet. Reading from that that he will have anything to do with Anet projects is at this point pure speculation not based on anything substantial.

[Gibson.4036]

I have to admit, when we got the first oversaturated images of Seitung, I thought to myself, "I wonder if it would have been better if Daniel was still at the helm".

[Xanadrine.4352]

prob for  Throne and Liberty which looks great,  but not touching it if its pay to win

 

I mean considering it says in his profile he is working for NCSoft its a good bet he is the art director for it or on the team. https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-dociu-456a223 Its the companies new baby MMO coming out next year

https://newsconduct.com/2022/08/29/throne-and-liberty-release-date/

Edited August 29, 2022 by Zuldari.3940

[Khisanth.2948]

It is the 10th anniversary of a game he helped create. Do you need any more reason than that to meet the fans of the game?

[LSD.4673]

19 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

I'm not sure how much he is/will be involved with ArenaNet.

Specifically, I will be identifying certain areas where the game art of Korean games can be adapted and tailored to the sensibility of Western gamers. This is just one component that can be divided into multiple areas of actions. I will contribute in hands-on art work to help inspire and challenge teams, to raise the quality and originality of artwork, increasing its Wester appeal.

Geez that's a bunch of corporate tosh. He's only missing a handful of buzzwords, like "monetise" and "content", for a full bingo.

[Izzy.2951]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Notice, that he's now at the NCSoft, not at Anet. Reading from that that he will have anything to do with Anet projects is at this point pure speculation not based on anything substantial.

He is the global Art Director for NCsoft west games. He said hes involved in current and new projects in the making to push it to a better audience, so yes, hes involved 100% in the new Arenanet project, even maybe gw2 itself. (you can read all this in the interview).

Also if he wasnt involved, idk why he would attend with gw2 crew to the gamescom.

[Astralporing.1957]

13 hours ago, Izzy.2951 said:

He is the global Art Director for NCsoft west games. He said hes involved in current and new projects in the making to push it to a better audience, so yes, hes involved 100% in the new Arenanet project, even maybe gw2 itself. (you can read all this in the interview).

I have read that interview. Have you?

It seems that his role in general lies not in directly overseeing art and desing of individual games, but rather about general managing art processes, and that one of the key points he made was that he wasn't going to micromanage actual artists working on stuff for individual projects. ("My plan as Global Art Leader is to create a culture where artists can develop their talents and pursue their own artistic development path.", "My role as a leader is to point the team in the general direction with clarity, while giving individuals the opportunity and the information needed to use their own critical judgement and make their own decisions, big or small, along the way. We should not make artists feel that they are merely executing on something that’s already been decided, but rather make them trust their own judgement with confidence."). And the one art direction he will be specifically overseeing ("Specifically, I will be identifying certain areas where the game art of Korean games can be adapted and tailored to the sensibility of Western gamers.")is not the one that might apply to any new Anet project. It seems more like the exciting projects he speaks of are not Anet's, but directly NCSoft's - possibly the abovementioned Throne of Liberty.

13 hours ago, Izzy.2951 said:

Also if he wasnt involved, idk why he would attend with gw2 crew to the gamescom.

Why wouldn't he? I mean, he was likely going to visit gamescom anyway, and he's still (as far as i know) working from Seattle, so going with former colleagues that are under the same NCSoft West umbrella seems a sensible choice to me, regardless of whether they are currently colalborating on some project or not.