How is water content after Core Tyria?

[DarkK.7368]

All this time I was obsessed with having an "inmersive" ground-water experience (same weapon, same skins, etc). I suffered a lot, and that made me less free to choosing ground skins and weapons. After a lot of time suffering trying to valorate water content, I thought. Why? Anet did not care. Stopped doing water weapons, removed water PVP map, and I hear that water content is appearing less. Even the water dragon fight seems to be on ground!

So, after Core Tyria... we have 4 expansions and lots of living world maps. How is underwater content there? There is WATER to swim, like literally every core tyria map has a lot? If it has, that water has meaningful content like Core? Has any monsters, even? I would greet deep explanations about that to feel better about my decision to drop it like Anet dropped.

Deep... hahaha

Edited May 2 by DarkK.7368

[Randulf.7614]

Well, water exists.

[DarkK.7368]

3 minutes ago, Randulf.7614 said:

Well, water exists.

🤣I would love more details please

[Randulf.7614]

There is in fairness the Adolescent Leviathan which is the only real underwater mob they added and is a boss in Cantha/End of Dragons. You can also use skimmers (above/below) and skiffs to traverse water, which serves mostly to skip any annoying mobs. There was a brief attempt to do something with a rather poor implementation of adding swimming infusions and ascended breathers. It didn’t go anywhere 

HoT has an underground river with virtually nothing in it

PoF has a bit of coastline with nothing in the water

EoD has Leviathan and an underwater ruins with some lore

SoTo has some ponds

TDLR: It was dropped and never returned to. Sadly. I don’t think the Water Dragon even got her feet wet

[DarkK.7368]

3 minutes ago, Randulf.7614 said:

There is in fairness the Adolescent Leviathan which is the only real underwater mob they added and is a boss in Cantha/End of Dragons. You can also use skimmers (above/below) and skiffs to traverse water, which serves mostly to skip any annoying mobs. There was a brief attempt to do something with a rather poor implementation of adding swimming infusions and ascended breathers. It didn’t go anywhere 

HoT has an underground river with virtually nothing in it

PoF has a bit of coastline with nothing in the water

EoD has Leviathan and an underwater ruins with some lore

SoTo has some ponds

TDLR: It was dropped and never returned to. Sadly. I don’t think the Water Dragon even got her feet wet

So... Definitely Anet dropped water combat, but at least gave us water to dive in... so we can swim without having to combat, just to admire the environments. Well, it has mobs, but skipable with Skimmer, so...

Well, it's something. At least it's not pure desert. It's super sad. I definitely will stop caring about water.

If they just allowed 100% of weapons and skills of ground to work underwater, it would be an apparent easy step to fix it...

Thanks

Edited May 2 by DarkK.7368

[Randulf.7614]

Just now, DarkK.7368 said:

So... Definitely Anet dropped water combat, but at least gave us water to dive in... so we can swim without having to combat, just to admire the environments. Well, it has mobs, but skipable with Skimmer, so...

Well, it's something. At least it's not pure desert. It's super sad. I definitely will stop caring about water.

Thanks

 Mostly. Cantha waters have mobs in them like Naga and Kappa just to populate them, but the rest of the above just have the usual fish, jellyfish, drake broodmothers etc. They’re not completely empty, but there’s nothing engaging or worthwhile in them either.

Ember Bay and Sandswept Isles were missed opportunities. And Draconis Mons has some very cool boiling seas which exists only to add authenticity to the geography and kill players wandering into it

[Linken.6345]

1 hour ago, DarkK.7368 said:

So... Definitely Anet dropped water combat, but at least gave us water to dive in... so we can swim without having to combat, just to admire the environments. Well, it has mobs, but skipable with Skimmer, so...

Well, it's something. At least it's not pure desert. It's super sad. I definitely will stop caring about water.

If they just allowed 100% of weapons and skills of ground to work underwater, it would be an apparent easy step to fix it...

Thanks

Well there is fishing added with EoD

[Fueki.4753]

There is very little underwater content after core.

I do not count the Leviathans in Cantha, as those likely were intended to be fought with the boat masteries.

Edited May 3 by Fueki.4753

[Lucy.3728]

7 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

There is in fairness the Adolescent Leviathan which is the only real underwater mob they added and is a boss in Cantha/End of Dragons.

Which is fought over the water 🤣
Either from your boat or standing atop of the monster part that's slightly out of the waterline.

8 hours ago, DarkK.7368 said:

How is water content after Core Tyria?

There's none.

Orr has the most water content in the game.

Unless you count fishing.

I didn't even bother with a 7th leg. rune, because breather pffft *shrugs* 🙃

Edited May 3 by Lucy.3728

[Randulf.7614]

Not counting leviathan is a weird take. The skiff is used to take off its armour, but it’s designed thrm to fight underwater. People choosing to fight on its back (never seen that) or in other ways is a player thing. It was designed as an underwater fight.

[Nash.2681]

11 hours ago, DarkK.7368 said:

So... Definitely Anet dropped water combat, but at least gave us water to dive in... so we can swim without having to combat, just to admire the environments. Well, it has mobs, but skipable with Skimmer, so...

Well, it's something. At least it's not pure desert. It's super sad. I definitely will stop caring about water.

If they just allowed 100% of weapons and skills of ground to work underwater, it would be an apparent easy step to fix it...

Thanks

To be fair, the biggest problem of underwater combat are the super inconsistent hitboxes, like a big fierce shark showing 4 meters left of you while you have to attack 2 meters to the right. Now add some animationless but pretty deadly attacks and you have everything to make underwater combat an awfull experience. Unless they ever fix that, there's absolutly no reason to think about weapons, skills, etc. 
While I personally would absolutly like to have good underwater combat, I think it's save to say by now, that this will never happen.

[Liewec.2896]

i'm actually quite thankful that they never pursued more water content,

the 4D aspect of it just doesn't really feel good for combat, and a large number of skills don't function underwater.

i've been dreading a water expansion (i was sure we'd be heading into the deep to fight the water dragon.), but luckily water has remained a gimmick.

i have quite a few characters who don't even have a breathing mask or aquatic weapon.

Edited May 3 by Liewec.2896

[kouplefruit.9631]

Want to add to this what I read on Reddit... With their QoL post they made when introducing cosmetic inspect, they also referred to their graphics update and such. 

Someone on that Reddit post mentioned that the water in SotO is actually really insane, as swimmable water appears at different heights/water levels on the map. I'm absolutely a novice when it comes to developing games and such, but this person said Anet basically had to overhaul their water system to do that. 

He said this didn't appear elsewhere, and that all other maps have a water level. This is why Dragon Stand, for example, doesn't have any swimmable water, because it's really low in the map. 

This would have been a lot of work for the devs to accomplish. I'm saying this as a sign of hope that we'll see more water stuff in the future.

Personally, I'd love to see an overhaul of the current underwater combat system and more water content.

[Lucy.3728]

22 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

People choosing to fight on its back (never seen that)

I've only seen that.
I didn't see anything else, except maybe in the first few weeks after release. But as soon as people found out that you can stand on it comfortably and do your rotas without being disturbed or interrupted by any mobs, that's exactly what they did and do.

22 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

It was designed as an underwater fight.

May be. It's harder underwater. Chill over water.
You don't get swallowed. You don't get attacked. You stand there, pressing your skills and watch it die.

[Astralporing.1957]

22 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

Not counting leviathan is a weird take. The skiff is used to take off its armour, but it’s designed thrm to fight underwater. People choosing to fight on its back (never seen that) or in other ways is a player thing. It was designed as an underwater fight.

If it was truly designed as underwater fight, the boss would not have been moving at a speed higher than normal underwater swim speed.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

They had a lot of cool ideas regarding water-content and tested them over the time:
o Heart of Thorns has this massive tunnel-system in Tangled Depths, with a unique 'torch' mechanic and the poisonous lake in the same map
o LW3
- Bloodstone Fen was a first test to fix the void-jumping exploit.
- Ember Bay tried a wave-system, which looks awesome. It was basically a tech-demo without any underwater mapping.
- Bitterfrost Frontier had a little bit of underwater mapping, but was basically a tech-demo to test the freeze-over mechanic.
- Lake Doric had a lot of things going on, the water content it had was small but fitting into the scenery. Both the cave and the 'lake'.
- Draconis Mons was the first time, they have tried to make water hostile as a whole. I think they ran out of time on that map. They probably wanted to do further tests with the concept.
- Siren's Landing had low quality underwater-content. The parts near the shrines are decent, but the 'open' sea is a bit empty. Way too many features tested on a single map. Hence the massive lagg problems of the early months. They learned their lesson there ^^.
o Path of Fire had some really nice underwater areas. Not much action down there, but imo decent.
o LW4
- Domain of Istan is very empty in terms of underwater content. I remember one remote area where they ran a test with visual effects underwater.
- Sandswept Isles tested a few interesting mechanics with water-surface mechanics. Like getting kicked off from a skimmer by sharks or having a swarm of dolphins following you. They tested nice feature for a skimmer race, with high-jump mechanics. Underwater content was not really addressed though. They mapped it for the sake of mapping it. Oh and they went for their first test of a fishing-system.
- Domain of Kourna is one of those maps they ran out of time. But they have done a pretty decent job with the Ntouka Pond with a vertical pool. Not much to do there, but it was nicely mapped and the 'secret' boss feature was great. I just wish they went for a more appealing npc-model. I think the fight was originally intended to be underwater, but later moved to the surface on purpose. Kourna was one of the key-maps where they tested the future parameters for the Strike Mission bosses. Both the dragon and the golem were just HP sponges to measure open world DPS properly.
- Jahai Bluffs had a lot of tests going on. Water was not on the schedule. Which is acceptable to me, looking at the list above.
- Thunderhead Peaks did a few visual tests with ice underwater. It was mostly about reflections and the impact on the camera. That map has a lot of tests going on. I was quite surprised they did something with underwater there, too.
- Dragonfall is another map where water was just decoy. They ran a couple of visual test with waterfalls, but nothing with underwater.
o IBS/LW5
- Grothmar Valley has a nice underwater area, but mostly for visual tests (reflections and behavior of certain structures and textures). They went for a more traditional mapping in the underwater area of the Jumping Puzzle. But only for the looks. The focus of the map was on other things.
- Drizzlewood Coast had the barrier test at wolfs-crossing, with the ice at the first partial release. It also had yet another waterfall experiment - ANet surely does have an obsession with these ^^.  And the treasure-hunt. But that was only one pretty obvious location.
o End of Dragons mostly focused on showing the players Cantha. The main problem with the expansion is/was ANet's focus on fishing and skiffs. Dragon's End has some decent underwater mapping anyway and the hidden lake where you do not want to dive. 
o Gyala Delves has only a few underwater places, but those are imo nicely mapped. But sadly little to no enemies :S.
o Secrets of the Obscure has tried creating ponds of dive-able water in mid air. The mapping is OK for SotO levels. But diving does not fit into the Skyscale overkill concept, so there is no high priority on that element :S. Inner Nayos is one of the least appealing maps in GW2 for me. I rather spend an hour in Tangled Depths than 5 minutes in Nayos. So far, underwater content there is just empty. But again, the whole expansion focuses on Skyscale only.

As you can see, they did not abandon the topic and never stopped testing new features. With all the data they have collected so far, I doubt they ignore the content in the future. I think there might be even hope for a little more. Getting more underwater-content is one of the more common requests we had over the years. I do not think they go for yet another expansion where you are forced to spend most of your time above the maps.

Note: As you can see in my list, which is far from being complete, LW mostly served as sandboxes to test new mechanics and features. Imo most of the maps are under appreciated and a lot of things work there yet nobody notices them.

Edited May 4 by HnRkLnXqZ.1870

[Randulf.7614]

2 hours ago, Lucy.3728 said:

I've only seen that.
I didn't see anything else, except maybe in the first few weeks after release. But as soon as people found out that you can stand on it comfortably and do your rotas without being disturbed or interrupted by any mobs, that's exactly what they did and do.

May be. It's harder underwater. Chill over water.
You don't get swallowed. You don't get attacked. You stand there, pressing your skills and watch it die.

Ok, but that’s still a player tactic and not as it was designed. I’ve still never seen it done this way - even when I did it last week, but I don’t dispute it. Players often find cheese methods.

 

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

If it was truly designed as underwater fight, the boss would not have been moving at a speed higher than normal underwater swim speed.

The speed isn’t an indicator of anything. It’s easy enough to swim within range of it even without swim infusions (doing so is part of the fight) and mobs moving faster than players is not a new thing on any terrain. If it wasn’t underwater based, its hit boxes wouldn’t be underwater and it wouldn’t attack underwater with its mouth or its swallow. I mean apart from a spinal fin which acts as visual cue.., the whole creature is underwater.

There are design flaws and player cheese moments, but to say Leviathan isn’t an underwater boss is incorrect

[jokke.6239]

Skimmer (with later added underwater mastery)

Skiff/fishing

 

That's the water related stuff I can think off

So not nothing

[Izzy.2951]

Underwater content is in maintenance mode too

[CoffeePlease.3082]

I wouldn't mind them exploring some water content elements in the future, but as it stands certain builds don't even work underwater the way they're designed. Mechanists don't even get their mech for example, which is tied to their way of being able to provide alac and/or heal if that's their role, so it would have to just be something incredibly trivial and at that point I don't think there is much value dedicating the resources to trying to make it work for something that historically in gaming is not popular. 

[Chichimec.9364]

Hehe, as a WvW main, I engage in underwater fights maybe 2-3 times a month. That happens occasionally when there's a battle at either Bay on the Alpine Borderlands and the losing side jumps into the water trying to escape. My WvW alt is fully equipped for underwater combat and it is enjoyably clear that many other players aren't.  😂
 

[Nilkemia.8507]

It exists.

/shrug

[Nash.2681]

On 5/4/2024 at 10:42 AM, Lucy.3728 said:

I've only seen that.
I didn't see anything else, except maybe in the first few weeks after release. But as soon as people found out that you can stand on it comfortably and do your rotas without being disturbed or interrupted by any mobs, that's exactly what they did and do.

May be. It's harder underwater. Chill over water.
You don't get swallowed. You don't get attacked. You stand there, pressing your skills and watch it die.

Granted I don't do that event very often, but I've also encountered this "tactic" lately. But so far only in Seitung, didn't seem to be possible for the Kaineng Leviathan.

[GBEW.5947]

On 5/4/2024 at 5:38 AM, Randulf.7614 said:

There are design flaws and player cheese moments, but to say Leviathan isn’t an underwater boss is incorrect

The leviathan isnt a boss. so no it is not incorrect.

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, GBEW.5947 said:

The leviathan isnt a boss. so no it is not incorrect.

Why isn't it a boss?