Category Archives: Developer Corner

GW2 Dev Corner: Living Story Content How It Works

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Many questions pop up after the latest Guild Wars 2 game update Flame and Frost: Prelude. Although the players expected a huge update, only several small events connected with the Refugee Volunteer Achievement appeared. On the official GW2 forum, Bobby Stein, ArenaNet’s GW2 Lead Writer, explained the Flame and Frost content progress:
 

  • The Flame and Frost story content progresses over time. You will not see everything today, tomorrow, or even the next day.
  • Expect subtle changes at first. Maybe you’ll encounter some familiar characters. Perhaps you’ll be introduced to some new ones. You might see a new structure where there wasn’t one before.
  • The Living Story content is initially about the thrill of discovery. We’ll put some markers on your map, maybe send you a letter, or parcel out details through certain characters, but the rest is up to you.
  • As the weeks progress, you’ll notice bigger changes in the world. New events may appear. Plots will advance and characters will develop.

Lost Shores Heads Up

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Martin Kerstein, ArenaNet’s Head of Global Community, posted on the official forum latest details about Lost Shores:

 

Something is stirring in the Sea of Sorrows – and we want to make sure that you are not missing out, so here is a schedule (without spoilers) for you, so you can plan ahead:
 

  • On Friday November 16th at noon PST (20:00 GMT) the weekend will kick off with an Event in Lion’s Arch that you don’t want to miss. This will trigger events in other parts of Tyria as well.
  • On Saturday November 17th at noon PST (20:00 GMT), another phase will kick in.

 

Each phase is triggered by a special event, but you will be able to enjoy additional content afterwards even if you cannot make the kick-off time. There is one exception:
 
The event will culminate in a big Finale on Sunday November 18, make sure you will not miss it. This will be a onetime only event chain that will run multiple hours, and it will kick off at noon PST (20:00 GMT). Again, this will only run once, so make sure you will be there! There will be plenty of content available to enjoy that will remain permanently in the world as a result of the outcome of this event on Sunday.
 
We will give you more details once we get closer to the event, but wanted to give you an early heads up so you can plan accordingly.

Free World Transfers Limited to Once Every 7 Days

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Martin Kerstein, Head of Global Community, posted on the official forum additional explanation about changes that will affect the world transfers.

 

Due to community concerns about the effect of free transfers on world versus world, starting on November 1 we are going to change how often players are allowed to transfer worlds. After the update, players will be able to transfer worlds once every 7 days instead of once every 24 hours. We are also actively working on getting the guesting functionality in place. Thank you for your understanding.

Developer Corner: New Halloween Recipes

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Regina Buenaobra, North American Community Team Lead, announced new opportunity for everyone to get shiny Halloween goodies:
 

You will be glad to hear that we are adding recipes to the Mystic Forge that will allow you to throw stuff you get from the Black Lion Chests into it to get a special Halloween chest (no key needed for this one). These chests will include Halloween specific loot and give you a second chance to get one of the terrifying, rare Halloween skins. Here is the recipe we will add:

You need 1 Candy Corn, 6 Mystery Tonics, 1 Boost (any), 1 Boost (any) to get a Mad King Chest.

We hope you like this gruesome addition, we will let you know immediately when they will be in the game – enjoy the celebrations!

Developer Corner: Jon Peters on Ranger update

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Poof! Someone called and I am here. We made some ranger changes this patch, but had to go back on them because of risk factor. There are some bugs being fixed and quality of life improvements coming in the next patch, as well as some other significant ranger improvements. I would Literally tell you but I think it would be considered a bit of a spoiler so you will have to be patient.

While we work hard to keep updates going on all professions, not very build us going to contain fixes for everyone due to the nature of software development. One problem with rangers is the lack of build diversity created by a number of sub par utility skills. Many signets, a shout or two, and spirits are all a bit lackluster. That is the first place to expect improvements. Second is trying to improve the feel/ pacing on some weapons.

 

Source: GW2 forum

November Content Update

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According to the Colin Johanson, ArenaNet’s Game Director, GW2 players can expect a massive game release in November with additional content and features:

 

A number of the activities/mini-games are things we decided to table for a while in favor of focusing on features and areas we felt were more important for the game. That being said, if you like activities, make sure to stop in and visit during the big Halloween festivities running from Oct 22nd-Nov1st!
 
In the short-term we’re currently focused on adding a massive wealth of additional content and features for players to do in the game using the players core skill-bar, which you’ll start seeing in the Shadow of the Mad King update in October as well as our massive November release.
 
Long term we’ll absolutely be adding more activities as well, but we want to make sure we’ve got loads of stuff to do at level 80 in PvP, WvW, and PvE using your characters core skill-bar first and foremost, and we’re dedicating our focus in that area. Down the road, we’ll continue to expand on the scope of activities available in the game as well.

 

Developer Corner: Jon Peters on Camera and FOV (field of view)

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I’ve seen a lot of topics on this both here and externally so let me try and address it. The current FOV is going to stay because increasing it, while having some benefits for some players, has too many drawbacks.
 
1) performance suffers greatly because of how things are built and view distances

2) art suffers because of texture tiling, LOD problems and just general stretching from the fisheye effect.

3) gameplay suffers because positional awareness becomes less necessary in a game where combat is greatly designed around positioning.
 
There is a a serious camera problem, however, which is making some players nauseous. We believe a large number of these cases are not FOV related but rather due to bugs in camera smoothing. Because of this we are expediting a quick fix to this issue that is currently in testing and should see the light of day in the next build we do.
 
FOV in GW2 is 75, which is the same as the default in Half Life and WoW. While I understand people’s desires, (I play source engine and quake engine games at about 105 or 110), we are not just limiting it for technical reasons, there are also gameplay implications that we are taking into account that we believe are a core part of the game. Additionally we keep it at 75 to maintain the integrity of our art which is also important to us and many of our fans. If there was a single reason we might think about looking for a workaround, but because it relates to core issues for 3 of our major departments this is not an easy problem and will remain that way for the foreseeable future.

Developer Corner: Colin Johanson on Tournaments

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Colin Johanson, ArenaNet’s Game Director, posted on the forums today an update on the current situation with Tournaments:
 

Blog post is still coming, just has been pushed out about a week, it is written and sitting in locs hands!
 
We found some major issues with the tournament backbone we’ve spent the last couple of weeks focused on making sure it’s 100% right before we start expanding any other functionality. We’d hate to for example start doing say…tournaments with more meaning, and suddenly have you not get rewarded, not matched up properly, etc.
 
We’ve almost got all that stuff ironed out, soon as we do we’ll follow up with blog posts about our plan for PvP/E-sports in the coming months.
 
Thanks for your patience folks and sorry for the misquote on timing. we were under the impression that stuff would get up earlier and wanted to wait until we were 100% sure we knew how it’d work after addressing the issues we found before talking about it.
 
Thanks everyone! Once new features start turning on, you should see them, and our E-sports support growing on a pretty rapid basis. Our goal is to be faster than the timelines of other major recent esports games like LoL after they launched in the rate at which we roll out competitive features and make sure we’ve got all the major pieces needed for long term success up and running. We know it’s very important to you, and it’s very important to us to grow and build that competitive gaming community.